My daughter, seen here in this oil painting of me and her, she’s the one trying to talk to the spirit elk in a previous lifetime, has started painting oil paintings. She started with a picture of a small cactus growing in sand. I have to admit, when she showed it to me for the first time, I thought it was a green basketball. But she has worked out the details since and it is beginning to actually look like a cactus. Now, you might think I was making fun of her in this post, calling her an oil painter who makes cactuses into green basketballs, and using my oil painting of a nude and overly-white Native American girl to illustrate her, but actually, this post is praising her abilities. She is already a much better watercolorist than I will ever be. And she is learning to paint green basketballs… er, cactuses, in oil paint at a much faster rate than I ever did. This semi-competent oil painting of mine took many practice paintings and many years to achieve. Far slower than her mastery of the medium coming into focus before her eighteenth birthday. And besides, she is leading the sacred spirit elk into the safety of the lake and away from the stormy darkness of the background, while I, as my Native American self, can stand hamming it up and looking at the artist as I have my vanity-project portrait done in oil paint.
Okay, so this is not a perfect essay, and it is not 500 words. But painting in oils and trying to be a real artist is hard enough without you criticizing. Be kind in the comments, or I might cry.
Canto Eight – Strange Sounds from the Martin House
The Martin house on Elizabeth Avenue was a very square and
Republican sort of Victorian-style house.
It was Methodist plain and practical.
Yet, there was a very unfortunate aura of trouble hanging over it
now. It had been super respectable in
the old days as the Campbell house, but now it seemed more like the brooding
sort of place where murderers might live.
Val and Danny watched it from the safety of the hollyhock stand in the
neighbors’ yard.
“Do ya think anybody is in there?” Valerie whispered.
“Yeah. The car is out
back by the shed, and it’s too early in the day for the bar to be doing much
business. The old Vicar ain’t there. But Billy’s dad and aunt will both be there.” The Vicar was what everybody at the bar
called Victor Martin. A vicar was a
British preacher or something, and everybody told their troubles to Victor
Martin at the bar… that explained the name as far as Valerie knew. And the names sounded almost the same. Iowans weren’t really that clever about
nicknames.
“And Billy?”
“Yeah, he would be there.
I don’t know where in the house, though.
I’m not ready to go knock on the windows anywhere.”
“Knock on the windows?
Really?”
“We aren’t going to the front door and knocking, are
we? That’s what the old witch wants.”
“Do you think you could lift me up high enough to look in
the side windows on the West side?”
“Yeah, maybe. But
that would be like spying or something.”
“Well, isn’t that the kind of thing Pirates do?”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
They walked over to the window on the West side of the
house. Both of them were hunched over
when they walked and extremely careful about being quiet, as if walking in that
silly manner somehow made them harder to see or hear as they trampled the lawn
in broad daylight.
“Okay,” said Danny, “You sit on my shoulders and I’ll lift
you up so you can see.” Danny got down
on all fours and Valerie put one leg on each side of his head. He wobbled like a scarecrow in the wind as he
strained to lift her up. His hands
gripped her thighs tightly, but if he had wobbled too far in one direction,
then he would’ve merely succeeded in dropping her to the ground head-first.
“Careful, there, Buckaroo.
You’re gonna drop me.”
“I got you, Val. I
will never let you fall.”
After almost falling at least two more times, Val finally got a look into the first-story sitting room. Richard Martin, in all his raggedy glory, was lying on the couch watching TV. He had on a stained and dirty-looking T-shirt, boxer shorts, and he had an open can of beer balanced on his ample stomach. He was a blonde man with a very ugly face, and he looked rather drowsy as he watched what seemed to be the Phil Donahue Show.
Suddenly there was a loud banging sound coming from
somewhere below, possibly in the basement.
“Damn that stupid brat!” Richard cried out suddenly. “He’s beating up the damn house again! Kelly!
Stop that kid from breaking stuff!”
“He’s your bratty kid. You stop him, stoopid!”
“I locked him up in the basement again to keep him outta our
hair! But maybe you gotta go down there
with your old broom and swat him around a little.”
“Well, if he’s in the basement, he can’t hurt much. Everything in the basement belongs to either
Billy or Vic.”
“You have a point. We
don’t care that much about Victor’s stuff, do we?”
“I don’t. But he’s
your son. You can do the explaining
later.”
Then they all heard a power saw grinding through wood, both the residents who were supposed to be there and the Pirates who were spying.
“Good gawd, Richard.
That little creep might be gonna cut us all up and eat us some night.”
“I know he ain’t supposed to use that saw, but it belongs to
Vic. So, we’ll let him get it away from the brat.”
The sounds of a hammer and nails came next. Valerie looked down near Danny’s feet and
noticed the grimy cellar window was open a crack.
“What’s going on?” asked Danny in a hoarse whisper.
“Billy is locked in the basement, and he is building
something to take revenge on his family.”
Valerie almost didn’t believe it herself. Billy was the kind of kid who would curl up
in a ball and mew like a kitten if you just looked at him too long at a
time. Valerie never took him for an ax
murderer before. But you never knew
about those quiet and meek ones. You
never knew what they were really thinking.
“I see you didn’t take my advice.”
Valerie fell on her head and briefly saw stars. It was possible Danny had dropped her.
“Oh, no! You made me
kill the most beautiful little girl ever born in Norwall!” Danny cried.
“Pick her up and bring her with you. Follow me.”
As Valerie shook her head to shake the cobwebs and sand out
of her ears, Danny fumbled around picking her up from the ground and soon had
her on her feet.
“Quickly now, before those two horrible harpies come out to
see about all the ruckus in their yard.
You are both trespassing.”
To Valerie’s utter horror, Danny was following the old witch
Mazie Haire, and dragging her, wobbly-legged, toward the witch’s own
Gingerbread House.
Old Missus Rubelmacher was most definitely a witch in Valerie’s estimation. Miss Rubelmacher had been teaching Science forever at Belle City. She taught it in both the Elementary and the Junior High. Valerie had the extreme bad luck to have her for the one and only fifth-grade class she taught. And single old maid teachers who taught Science were definitely witches when they made you learn the scientific names of ten butterflies and recite them by memory. Ten Lepidoptera! Who in their right minds was ever going to need to know that a Danaus Plexippus was a Monarch Butterfly? She ought to get an F on purpose just to let the old witch know how stupid that was. Homework on a holiday weekend on top of it all.
But Valerie always made A’s in Science. That wasn’t about to change.
Still, after hating the old witch all the way home on Milo’s bus, she rode on into town with Danny Murphy. Milo, the crotchety old bus driver, never seemed to mind carrying her on into town when he stopped at the end of her family’s lane… as long as she told him she was going with Danny. Milo probably thought she was Danny’s girlfriend, the way he always smirked when she told him about going into town. But that was no never-mind… She had no interest in Danny as a boy. Only as a friend. Only as the one person in the world that she could really tell secrets to because she had seen him naked and could embarrass him royally if he ever told anyone else.
“Why are you coming into town today, Val?” Danny asked. They were sharing a seat in the middle of the
bus, as they often did. Val waited until
they were both off the bus to answer.
They walked past the Post Office together.
“Well, I’m a Norwall Pirate, now. I have responsibilities. We are going to try to get Billy Martin into
the gang, right?”
“Yeah. Billy needs
some friends. He has a sorta tough
life.”
Valerie nodded.
Church ladies were always tutting their tongues about the horrible,
sinful Martin family. Victor Martin, the
head of the family, owned the bar that was once the Uptown Café in the middle
of Norwall’s Main Street. Sinful things happened there. There was drinking beer, playing pool, a lot
of bad language, drinking beer, women who couldn’t be trusted around other
peoples’ husbands, and did drinking beer come up already? In the middle of it all was a long-haired,
mostly unwashed boy who was made of spindly sticks and always looked like a
lost puppy that someone had recently kicked.
Billy was the son of Richard Martin, the extra-lazy brother of
Victor. The sister of the two Martin
brothers, Kelly Martin, was the closest thing that Billy had to a mother in the
house, though Valerie was pretty sure that she was not the boy’s real mother.
“We need to do some research about Billy,” Val said like an
expert. “We need to find out more about
him. He doesn’t talk to you much, does
he?”
“I don’t think he talks much to anybody.”
“How do we ask him to be a Pirate, then?” Valerie asked.
“You go right up to him, introduce yourself politely, and
just ask,” said a grating voice from behind Valerie. The girl immediately turned to catch the
amused glint in the glittering eyes of the dreaded Mazie Haire.
“You were listening to our conversation?” Valerie asked as a
sort of justified accusation.
“Of course I was,” said the gray-haired, gimlet-eyed
hag. Truth be told, Valerie was deathly
afraid of the old Haire woman. She was
as scary as Dracula’s coffin on Halloween.
Of course, everyone had her pegged as a real witch… a thing that Mazie Haire took no trouble to deny.
“What business is it of yours?”
The old woman bored holes in both kids’ souls with her
eyes. She was a scary and formidable
woman.
“I am an old woman who doesn’t tell lies. I have a lot of knowing. I see things, and I don’t forget. This boy you are talking about does indeed
need your help. But it’s not for the
reasons you think. You need to forget
about these stupid little kids’ games you and these other little Pirates keep
playing. You need to actually see what
you are looking at.”
Valerie was completely at a loss for what to say. She just nodded at the old crone stupidly,
like she agreed to whatever was being asked of her.
Apparently that satisfied old witch Mazie Haire. She nodded.
Smiled a tight-lipped and thoroughly scary smile, and walked away.
“What was that about?” Valerie asked Danny.
“She’s mysterious,” Danny said. “It is hard to know what she is really up
to. They say she spends most of her
waking hours in the attic room of that gingerbread house of hers and looks out
the window at us all through her little telescope. She watches people. She creeps me out.”
“Do you suppose she’s right about just going up to Billy and introducing ourselves… and say what we want?”
“Well… she has a good point about the direct approach… but
she’s a witch, you know. Do you really
want to do what a witch wants?
Especially if she’s a wicked witch.
Do you want to do what a wicked witch wants?”
Valerie grinned at her awkward, silly-sounding friend. “What a
witch wants? You sound silly when
you say that.”
Yesterday I had the most views in a single day for Catch a Falling Star that I have ever had. 126 different people looked at things 329 times on my blog. And that seems to be solely because of my Valentine’s Day post from a year ago in which I wrote about all the goofy, funny, and unintentionally inappropriate Valentines I remembered from my childhood in the 1960s. It didn’t get that kind of interest last year when I originally posted it. But this year, goofy and weird is apparently in vogue again.
So, that’s basically good news for me. I am a vast repository of goofy and weird.
If you don’t believe me, you could buy one of my books and prove it to yourself. In fact, if you are a member of Amazon Prime, you can get a Kindle version of a Mickey novel for free.
“My name is Michael Beyer, and I am an amateur cartoonist.”
“Hi, Michael!” says the entire group of CA group-therapy participants.
(CA stands for Cartoonists Anonymous.)
Doofy Fuddbugg
“I have to admit, I am guilty of giving in to the urge to draw cartoons. I know how it can fill lives with slapstick pain and derisive laughter, and I give in to the urge anyway.”
“So, what did you draw that you have to be ashamed of now?” asked one mad-eyed cartoonist with a pencil lodged behind each of his large ears.
“I made a very unfortunate video to post on YouTube that was supposed to be How-to-draw Cartooning. But everything went wrong. You couldn’t see my drawings in the video. It was not adequately lit. I look like a doofus (which probably can’t be cured) in the video. And instead of thinking twice or editing it, I posted it anyway.”
“Wow!” said a rather ugly cartoonist lady, “that is really bad. You have a seriously bad case of cartoonity.”
“Cartoonity?” I responded stupidly.
“The condition of needing love for your cartoons so bad that you will risk anything to make people look at them and like them,” said the wise group therapist (who looked an awful lot like Chuck Jones, though I am fairly sure Chuck Jones is now dead).
“Yes, I suppose that’s about the size of the problem,” I said. “I have been posting pages from my graphic novel, Hidden Kingdom, and I really haven’t seen more than one comment about it. Do people actually read cartoons and comics nowadays? Or is it just me that gets ignored?”
“You have to focus on how much you love drawing and doing it just for that reason, and nothing beyond that,” said the wise therapist. “Cartooning should be done for its own sake, and nothing more than that. Craving attention and approval for it can get seriously infected and become a bad case of cartoonititis. How do you think I dealt with it when I was still alive?”
At that point, my eyes popped out of my head in disbelief and my lower jaw fell all the way to the floor. Could he really be…?
And so I must end today’s blog post since it is hard to keep typing when your eyeballs are rolling around on the floor.
Mom had breakfast ready and on the table. Eggs and bacon on stoneware plates, one for
Val and one for Daddy Kyle. She was a
great cook and loved to stuff her small family with what she made. That was probably the reason she was
watching over a second pan-full of sizzling bacon.
“Your father isn’t ready yet?” asked Mom, left eyebrow
raised.
“Oh, he had to change his pants again for some reason.”
“That man can find more excuses for dragging his feet than…”
“Mom? Is something
the matter with Daddy?”
“What do you mean?”
“Last night I thought he was crying in the machine shed.”
“Well, you know your Daddy Kyle. He loves his machinery, and that big old
combine is broken down again.”
“It shouldn’t be.
It’s only two years old.”
Mom looked at her with unreadable eyes. Was she mad?
Sad? What?
“He says he can fix it.
He says the problem is just mechanical and you know how handy he is with
tools.”
“Sure.” He did love that combine. Maybe that was what made him sad. He
loved Valerie and he was always sad when she was sick too.
Valerie gobbled eggs and bacon. It was good, but even better eaten fast so
you could enjoy those bacon burps for the next half hour.
“You eat like you’re starving. I wish I could eat like that, Val, and stay
as thin as you do.”
“Mom, I’m only eleven.
I’m not supposed to be a fatty at my age.”
“I thought you were ten, dear. Where does the time go?”
Valerie was still thinking about yesterday, the holiday Monday…
and why did so many people have to feel sad?
“Do you know what makes Ray Zeffer so sad, Mom?”
“Ray Zeffer? What
brings that up?”
“He and Danny Murphy walked me all the way home last night
from town. He’s such a gentleman. But he always seems sad.”
“Well, I would guess that losing your father the way he did,
such a short time ago… well, it might have something to do with it. I know his mother, Donna Zeffer, is sad a lot
too.”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“And there was a brother that died… older brother… Bobby, I think. His family has been through a lot.”
Valerie buttered a piece of toast and then sipped her milk
from the mug that Grandpa Larry had given her years ago. The mug had a big red heart on the side of
it.
“I didn’t know about the brother. Younger or older?”
“Definitely older. More than ten years ago.”
“What was more than ten years ago?” asked Daddy Kyle as he
came in to breakfast.
“Valerie was wondering about Ray Zeffer because he and the
Murphy boy walked her home from town last night. How long ago did Bobby Zeffer die, Kyle?”
“Oh, at least sixteen years ago. But what’s this about boys walking Valerie
home last night?”
Uh-oh. Dad radar had
picked up a boy-alert… a potential boyfriend/trouble/rock salt alert.
“Danny and Ray were just being gentlemen,” said
Valerie. “They wanted to make sure I got
home safe.”
“And they didn’t have anything but your safety on their
little minds?” Kyle asked with a skeptical smirk.
“I suppose now you want to shoot Ray?” asked Valerie.
“Who said anything about shooting Ray?” asked Mom.
“Dad did. He wanted
to shoot Pidney and Danny last night, and now he wants to shoot Ray!”
“Kyle!” Mom’s
scolding stare could wither flowers that were otherwise in full bloom.
“I was just kidding around!” said Daddy in a defensive voice
that sounded a lot like a little boy who’d been caught pulling his sister’s
hair. “I wouldn’t really shoot
anybody… It’s a dad thing.”
“I’m sure it is,” said Mom.
“But let’s not joke about that anymore.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He was
thoroughly chastised, and Valerie marveled at how Mom could make him so
instantly repentant, like a Baptist preacher preaching Hellfire or something.
“The bus is here, Princess,” said Daddy Kyle while peering
out the window.
And
it really was. Valerie had to
hustle. The old yellow bus driven by
Milo Volker was waiting at the end of the Clarkes’ lane, and he wouldn’t linger
if she didn’t show up fast. Still, it
made her grin to see the look of relief on her Daddy’s face as he realized the
dangerous conversation was at an end.
Kong captures a cheerleader to eat and falls in love instead.
There is so much I need to get done. I need to finish mending my yard’s retaining wall before the city decides they can no longer put up with my old-man, do-it-yourself stubbornness.
I need to do my taxes. My wife insists we do them separately now because Trump’s new tax policy costs retired people so much more than previous years that she can no longer put up with my crippling tax burden. I need to know how much Uber-slavery I will have to do to make the IRS less miserly.
Action-Figure Gandalf is upset with wimpy-wizard Mickey.
My status as a wizard is called into question. A wizard should be able to solve problems and overcome anything.
A dragon is ravaging the suburbs? No problem. I can imprison it in a fire-proof giant soap bubble. Aliens invading the DFW metroplex? No problem. I just show them my psoriasis sores and they will worry about getting infected from eating Earth people so they will run back to Zeta Reticuli as fast as their spaceships can fold space.
The Cowardly Lion and Student Witch Hermoine steal the last of my pretzels.
The problem is, it is raining. My old diabetic and arthritic bones are aching from the cold Texas rain. I can’t Uber-drive today. I can’t work on the wall, or let my son work on it either (wet bricks are too easy to drop). I can’t even eat pretzels and write blog posts. My pretzel jar is mysteriously empty. So, you can see, I have no choice but to stay in the nice warm bedroom and play with my dolls… er, action figures. They like posing for photographs and are really good at holding still while I snap the pictures.
Francois is now an orphan. He was in the car with his mother and father and twin sister when it went over the edge of the cliff, but somehow he survived. The only survivor. And even worse news, his only living relatives able to take him in live in Iowa in the United States, not in France, the only home he has ever known. So, what can a boy do about such a tragic situation? Well, Francois puts clown paint on his face and starts to sing. He can sing only sad songs. His heart is broken. But people hear his beautiful voice and begin falling in love with him. Soon the only one who does not love Francois is a secret serial killer who stalks young boys, leaving their poisoned bodies with a teddy bear for comfort in their coming life as a ghost. It is safe to say this is not exactly a happy comedy. But can despair be overcome by sheer beauty?
There is a certain amount of satisfaction in this publication effort. When I retired as a school teacher, I promised myself I would at least get to the publication of this book before I left this Earth and became a ghost writer… literally. So, now, if I can publish the next novel, Fools and Their Toys, it will be a step beyond my original goal. My legacy for my family will never be a monetary one, but at least I have this to leave behind.
