Category Archives: NOVEL WRITING

February 26, 2019 · 1:44 am

When the Captain Came Calling… Canto 8

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.

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February 19, 2019 · 5:28 pm

When the Captain Came Calling… Canto 7

Canto Seven – Of Witches in Little Iowa Townships

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.”

“Yeah.  I guess I do.”

“But silly or not… I think you are right.”

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February 12, 2019 · 3:48 pm

When the Captain Came Calling… Canto 6

Canto Six – Bacon and Eggs

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.

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February 10, 2019 · 5:02 pm

Published Once More…

So, I have done it again. I published novel number nine. The first for 2019.

Here is the Amazon link;

https://www.amazon.com/Sing-Sad-Songs-Michael-Beyer/dp/1796471526/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1549816993&sr=8-1&keywords=michael+beyer+books+sing

Sing Sad Songs Amazon blurb;

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.

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February 5, 2019 · 11:15 am

When the Captain Came Calling… Canto 5

Canto Five – Everyone is Naked Under Their Clothes

The night was typical.  Six nasty old hens pecked Valerie’s hands as she searched under them for eggs.  The last one of those took a girl-fist to the side of the head.  That, of course, didn’t faze the stupid hen.  Chickens apparently have their brains hidden safely in their butts.  But chores always came to an end.  Mom was always sympathetic about chicken-stupidity-caused peck marks, and rubbed salve on them, visible wound or not.  Then it was time to finish any homework needed, and up to bed.  And Val always slept naked under the quilts and comforters.    She slept well because… well, because naked was good when you were asleep.

Morning came, as mornings do, with a stupid rooster crowing the sun up.  Of course, if hens are stupid, roosters, having the additional mental handicap of being male, were stupid times ten.  No, stupid times twenty.  Beau the rooster always got it wrong.  The sun was never actually up until at least a half hour after the stupid rooster claimed it was up.  Chicken pot pie.  As Valerie pried her eyes open, she imagined chicken pot pie cooking on Mom’s stove.  Beau-flavored chicken pot pie.

When she got to the bathroom, Daddy Kyle was already in there shaving.  No problem.  Once again Valerie marched in naked as the day she was born, though with considerably more hair on her head.  She went straight to the shower, grabbed the shampoo off the shelf, and twisted the water on to just the right level of warm she always used.  Warm, soapy water all over your body… piles of foamy shampoo in your longish hair… it was a little like Eden must have felt to Eve.  And Eve liked being naked too… at least, until the mistake with the snake.  Of course, Eden had to end when the water began to grow cold.  Even in the summertime the well could put out near freezing levels of cold once the water heater was drained.

Kyle looked at her when she stepped out and grabbed a towel.

“No hot water left for me again, huh, Princess?”

“Sorry, Daddy.  I need a good hot shower in the mornings.”

“Shouldn’t you put on a robe or something, dearest?  You come in here every morning completely naked.  You are getting too old for that.”

“Old?  Too old for what?”

“When a girl reaches a certain age, she starts to change.  When that happens, well…”

“But, Daddy, you are used to seeing me naked.  You changed my diapers while Mommy and I were still in the hospital after I was born.”

“I know… I know…  And it isn’t that there is anything wrong happening.  It’s just…”

“You can’t be getting shy.  I’ve seen you naked too… a lot.”

Kyle’s face reddened.   He was apparently trying hard to stutter on.

“When a girl reaches a certain age… well, she…”

“Yeah, she changes.  I know Dad.  Mom told me what to expect.  But honestly, I don’t even really have boob bumps yet.  I look like a little boy when I’m naked… except I don’t have one of those water hoses to pee with.”

She was standing with the towel in her hand, looking at him while she was completely bare and being mildly amused by his extreme discomfort.  He finally sat down on the closed cover of the commode, completely defeated.  She decided to push things a little.  She dropped the towel and went to sit on his knee even though she was a little damp around the edges and quite sincerely still naked.

“Princess…”

“I love you too, Daddy.”

“No… I mean, yes, I love you… but this is not a good thing for a big girl to be doing.  I worry you are getting so used to being naked around a man like me… even though I’m your Daddy… and one day… when boys, um… get curious… the way boys are… and, well…”

“If that’s what worries you, Daddy, no boy besides you has ever seen me naked.  And I won’t let a yucky thing like that happen… until the time is right.”

“Okay, but promise me the time is not right until you are thirty.”

“Daaaad!    You know everyone is actually naked under their clothes.  Everyone has a body… so no one should be ashamed of it.”  Surely he recognized that bit of wisdom.  After all, it is what he’d said to her on the subject more than once.

“Okay.  I trust you and believe in you.  But develop a little modesty maybe?  Put on a robe when you come in here.  Or wait till I’m done.”

“Don’t you like me like this?”

“I love you.  But you are getting to an age where you being naked like this around me… well… begins to get… um, uncomfortable.  And your little wet behind is making my pants wet.  I have work to do today, and now my pants have a wet spot shaped like your butt.”

“Oh, Daddy!”  She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek.   He put an arm around her shoulders and gave a squeeze.

“I hope we can start getting some better habits going, Princess.  We don’t want to get your mom mad or anything.” Valerie hopped off his damp lap and padded over to retrieve the towel.  She wrapped it around herself and then gave him one more grin before she barefooted it out of the bathroom and toward her waiting school clothes.  You never knew anything for certain.  Maybe one day she would just have to go to school naked… to show Daddy that… well, okay… maybe not to school.

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January 30, 2019 · 8:41 pm

Reading Bag of Bones

This is not a book review. I did finish reading this book in a 3-hour-end-of-the-book reading orgy, spending an hour last night, and two more early in the morning before the rest of my family was awake.

This is certainly not a book review. But I did read a Stephen King book, 1998’s Bag of Bones, which I picked up from the dollar sale shelves at Half Price Books. And I did love the story.

………………………………………………………………………This is not a book review. Instead, I want to talk about what a novelist can learn and reflect on by meta-cogitating over what this book reveals about King’s work habits and style and author’s voice.

Mike Noonan, the protagonist, is a novelist who writes books that routinely land in the numbers 10 through 15 slots in the New York Times Bestseller List. Obviously, this first-person narrative is coming directly out of King’s own writing experience. But, remember, this is not a book review. I am discussing what I have learned about how King puts a story together.

King sets a back-story for this novel that digs deep into the geographica and historica of the city in Maine where the story is set. The literal bag of bones revealed in the book’s climax is almost a hundred years old. And he takes a compellingly realistic tour back in time to the turn of the Twentieth Century more than once to reveal who the undead characters are and why they do what they do. One thing that makes a writer, a novelist, truly solid is his ability to set the scene, to grow the story out of the background in the most organic and realistic way possible. But this is not a book review. I am saying that King always does this with his books. And if you wish to write at that level, you must do that too. I know I am sincerely trying.

At the end of the story, he clearly tells the reader that he learned from Thomas Hardy that “the most brilliantly drawn character in a novel is but a bag of bones”. So, he is definitely aware that a character is a construct that has to be crafted from raw materials. It takes a master craftsman to build one with the right words to make it live and breathe on the page. He does it masterfully in this book with several characters. The protagonist, the beautiful young love interest, the love interest’s charming three-year-old daughter who is nearly slain in a horrific manner at the end of the book… The living villain is a well-crafted bag of bones, as is the ghost, the actual bag of bones in the story. But this is not a book review. Most of his books, at least the ones I have read, have the same sort of masterful characters.

There is so much more to be learned about novel writing from this book. He literally shows you how ideas are captured, how they are developed into stories, how you overcome “writer’s block”, and Noonan’s book he is writing within this book is even used as an example of how to poetically advance the plot. But this is not a book review. You should read this book. It is a very good and scary piece of work. But you should read it because it shows us how to write and do it like a master.

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January 29, 2019 · 3:47 pm

When the Captain Came Calling… Canto 4

Canto Four – Machine Shed Blues

Valerie was thinking about chores when she wandered out to the machine shed.  She hadn’t gone into the house yet for a reason.  Feed the chickens and check for eggs.  Put fresh water in the water bottles.  God, she hated Mr. Boofoo chickens!  …Err… un-cool chickens.  The ones that were going to peck at her for checking their nests were all Mrs.  But the other part fit.   Lingering outside meant she didn’t have to march out to the chicken house immediately.  She’d get it done… just not yet.

As she wandered into the machine shed, she saw her Daddy there, leaning up against the combine.  The engine housing was up and various parts were laid out on the white concrete floor in a very careful rainbow of different size pieces, bolts, and screws.  Kyle was leaning up against the combine with a paper in his hands.  He stared at it with red eyes.  Had he been crying or something?  It looked like a bill, this paper that seemed to be making him sad.  Then, he suddenly wadded the thing up into a ball and pitched it across the shed.   It plinked off the corrugated tin wall and banked directly into the empty barrel there.  Two points!  But it did not make him happy.  Then he noticed Val was watching him.

“Oh, hi, Princess.   You are looking lovely tonight.”  His face was happier by a mile and a quarter, but the redness of his eyes still showed.

“Is something wrong, Daddy?”

“Of course not.  You haven’t done your chicken chores, though, huh?”

“Well, not yet…   I will go in a minute.  I wanted to talk to you first.”

“Oh?  What about?”

That was the thing.  What about?  She didn’t really have a what about.  She just sensed that she needed to talk to him.

“You know how everyone thinks Pidney Breslow is going to be a great football player this year?”

“Yeah.  The big goof is just a freshman and he’s already made the varsity team.  What about him?”

She had to say something fast… but that usually meant saying something stupid because she couldn’t think fast.

“Do you think he would make a good boyfriend for me?”

“You are ten, Princess.  He’s fifteen or sixteen, isn’t he?”

“I’m eleven.  Mom is younger than you are.”

“Only by two years.  Not as big a deal.”

“You don’t like Pidney?”

“I like him fine.   But you are ten.   Any boy who thinks he’s going to be your boyfriend will have to get past two bear traps, some electric fencing, and my shotgun loaded with rock salt.”

“Why rock salt?”

“It won’t kill him, but it will sting like hell.”

“Oh.”

“Besides, don’t Pidney and that girl Mary Phillips already have a thing going on?  They are always together.”

“They are best friends.  They live next door to each other.  More like brother and sister.”

Kyle laughed.  “Pid’s a red-blooded American boy.  They may say friends to each other, but when they are alone together, well…  Dagwood Phillips needs to have some rock salt in his shotgun for that.”

“Nobody’s gonna shoot Pidney are they?  I mean, I think I am in love with him.”  There may have been a look of terror on Valerie’s face at that point.   She really wasn’t sure.

“No, Princess.   No one is really going to shoot him.  It’s just a joke that fathers say whenever they are thinking about their daughters and young men.  Besides, I never figured I’d have to shoot Pid anyway.  I always reckoned it was more likely to be somebody like that Murphy brat.”

“You’d shoot Danny?”  She wasn’t sure how she felt about that one.

Kyle laughed.  He walked over to his daughter, put his big greasy hand on her neck and gently pulled her face up next to his heart.

“I love you, Princess.   I would never intentionally do something to break your heart.  But I will do everything I can to protect your heart from being broken.  Just try not to like the boys I might have to shoot for something, okay?”

He said that last with a laugh that told her he loved her and was only playing with her.  Daddy was her real handsome Prince.                                                                                                

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January 28, 2019 · 5:41 pm

Here is My Heart

Yesterday I posted another maudlin doomsday post. I probably gave you the opinion that all I do with my time is mope around and think about death. And maybe write a little creepy black Gothic poetry. But that’s not me. I am a lover of the humor in stories by Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and Kurt Vonnegut. I am a former teacher that managed to teach the entire zoological range of possible middle school and high school students in Texas and did it without being convinced to hate them rather than love them. Yes, my heart is full of mirth and love and memories of weird kids and troubled kids and kids that could melt the meanest of hearts.

My passion is writing fictional stories about the kids I have taught, including my own three, and setting it in a fictionalized version of my little town, the place in Iowa where I grew up. And I put them in plots of impossible fantasy and science fiction in a way that can only be explained as surrealism.

Nobody reads my books. So far, at any rate.

But that isn’t the important thing. The important thing is that, despite my illness and deteriorating quality of life, my books now actually exist. I put off being a full-time writer for 33 years as I finished my teaching career. A writer has to have something to write about. So, teaching came first.

Writing novels was always the ultimate goal, however. I am a story-teller. The story itself is in the very center of my heart.

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January 22, 2019 · 4:29 pm

When the Captain Came Calling… Canto 3

Canto Three –Discovery Doesn’t Happen Without Risk

Leaving the Ghost House, Valerie waited until Conrad Doble had left.  She didn’t like old King Leer looking at her.  She would’ve been happier if Pidney had stayed around a bit longer.  Not only could he protect her, but she really liked looking at Pidney’s broad shoulders and cute behind.  But Pidney left when Mary left.   She didn’t have to worry for too long though about being alone with Conrad.  He left shortly after Pid and Mary.  Danny Murphy and Ray Zeffer were both still there.

“You wouldn’t mind if we walked you home, huh, Val?” asked Danny.

She looked out the cellar doorway where Conrad had just disappeared.  “It would be kinda good to have two guys around when I have to go back home and that creepazoid is around somewhere.”

“We promised Pidney a long time ago that we would look out for you,” said Ray.

“I don’t really know you very well, Ray.  Why do you wanna help me?”

“We are like second cousins or something,” said Ray.  “Grandma says there are connections between the Zeffers and the Clarkes.  Back a couple of generations maybe.”

“Besides,” said Danny, “You may only be ten years old, but you are so beautiful.  We’d do anything for you just because of that.”

“That’s kinda sexist, ain’t it? You know my mom and I are both feminists, right?”

“Maybe,” said Ray, shoving Danny for having been so stupid.  “But it is entirely true.”

She looked at him then… really studied him for a moment.  Ray Zeffer, tall and thin, was nice to look at too.  He had big brown eyes like a deer…  Bambi’s eyes.  Those eyes could look soulfully through you like x-ray eyes.  He could see Valerie’s heart inside her ribcage.  She shivered ever so slightly because of those big Bambi eyes.  But those eyes were sad.  Something about the way those eyes looked at you told you that something deeply sad and soul-searing had touched Ray. She was fairly sure his mother hadn’t been killed by hunters though.

“Let’s go then.  If you walk me to the north edge of town, that will be good enough.”

“You skated in all the way from the farm?” asked Danny.

“Walked to town,” she answered.  “You can’t use the board on the gravel roads.  It is only two miles.”

“That’s still a long way,” said Ray.  “But if you don’t mind, we’ll walk you all the way home.”

“I don’t mind.  You are both very sweet to do it.”

                                                              *****
The walk along the gravel roads had been pleasant.  The rocks and sand crunched under your sneakers in a way that was reassuring.  Your feet were firmly on the earth when you walked on the gravel.  No danger of floating away into some dream world.   And the sound the gravel made could warn you of oncoming cars both ahead of you, and behind.  Stalking King Leers too.  They couldn’t sneak up on you without being heard.

“That farm place there is where I live with Daddy and Momma,” said Valerie.  She looked at Ray.

“We know where you live,” said Danny.  “We all three have lived in this town all our lives.”

“Oh, yeah, I know that,” said Val sheepishly.  She didn’t want to be awkward in front of Ray.

“It’s a nice farm,” said Ray.  “Your dad must work hard with so many acres to till.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty busy in the spring, summer, and fall.  He should be in the fields now picking corn, unless he’s finished all the corn that survived the hail in August.”

“I’d be in the fields now, too,” said Ray sadly, “except my dad passed away two years ago.  We just rent our land out now, Mom and me.”

Val knew about Ray’s father.  He had passed away in the Summer of ’82 from a heart attack while driving his tractor in a field down by Dows, Iowa.  Maybe that’s why Ray looked so sad all the time.

“Do you miss it?” asked Danny.  “The field work, I mean?”

“Not really.  Being a farmer is a hard job.  It’s like you are never done working.”

“Danny wouldn’t know,” said Valerie with a mocking grin.  “His dad works in an office in Belle City.  He counts beans or something.”

“He’s an accountant,” said Danny frowning fiercely.  “Bean-counter is a nick-name for an accountant.  He doesn’t actually count beans!”

“What does he really count, then?” asked Ray.

“Payrolls and prices and ledgers and stuff… I think,” said Danny.  “But I have done field work!  You know I walked beans the past two summers, Val!  You walked ‘em too!”

“Ack!  I hate walking up and down the rows with a hoe, pulling button weeds and chopping rogue corn!” said Ray.

“I like it,” said Valerie laughing.  “I pretend some of the weeds are people I don’t like or who have made fun of me.  I grab ‘em by the throat and yank their little fat heads off, or I chop them in two with the hoe.  Besides, walking beans is how I got to see Danny naked last summer.”

Danny was seriously blushing now.  If Val hadn’t killed him with embarrassment before, this was sure to do the job now.

“Tell me about it,” said Ray with a chuckle.

Danny was hesitant, but certainly didn’t want Valerie to tell it.  “Well, er…  I made a bet with my cousin from Clarion about who could clear out the thistle patch in his row faster.   The loser had to do the next two rows stark naked, with the winner holding on to the clothes.  I didn’t know anybody could chop thistles that fast.”

“After two rows in the sun with that white skin of his,” said Valerie, “he was red all over… just like a cherry… even in places a person should never be sunburned.”

All three of them laughed about it and Danny didn’t even die of embarrassment.  Almost, but not quite.

“We’re here,” said Val at last.  “Thank you for walking me home.  You are both gentlemen, and very gallant.”

“What does gallant mean?” asked Danny.

“Like a white knight,” said Ray, “protecting the princess from evil.”

“Are we white knights?” asked Danny, looking directly at Val.

“One white knight and one cherry red jester, I think.” 

Danny grinned again.  Ray laughed.  It was good to hear Ray laugh.  Some people simply need to laugh more.                                                                  

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January 15, 2019 · 5:04 pm

When the Captain Came Calling… Canto 2

Canto Two – Bait Worth Biting On

Describing the feeling of entering the Ghost House for the first time would prove quite difficult for Valerie when she tried to do it later on in Miss Bierstadt’s class for an English essay assignment.  But at the moment she crawled through the Tunnel of Doom, she would’ve described it as a feeling in her belly like eating a bowl of iced earthworms and trying to find a place to throw up in a jungle full of man-eating plants that smelled an awful lot like marigolds or something.  It was that kind of combination of anticipation, bad smells, icky things to see and touch, and the sensory deprivation of entering a candle-lit darkness from the bright September world outside.

“Welcome, Miss Valerie Clarke,” said freshman football hero and huge Polish hunk Pidney Breslow.  Valerie was deeply in love with the square-shouldered giant, and sincerely hoped he would be the leader of this Pirate club.

“Hello,” she said, almost timidly.

“You are just in time for the first official meeting of the reforming Norwall Pirates’ Club,” said Mary Philips brightly.   Mary had extended the official invitation to Valerie to come here, although Val didn’t really know why.  Mary had said that she didn’t want to be the only girl in the club, but why would a girl like Mary want to be in a boys’ club?  She had a bad feeling that the high school freshman girl also had her cap set for winning Pidney as a boyfriend.  But, plain-looking as Mary was, Val was only mildly concerned.

A quick look around as Danny Murphy crawled in after her revealed the other boys in attendance at the secret meeting.  Ray Zeffer, another high school freshman was there.  He was kinda handsome in a way, too, but he was always so sad-looking with those big puppy-dog brown eyes of his.  He had a neatly combed mess of jet black hair too, which was also attractive.  Val could easily learn to like this club.

The other boy, a high school junior, was kinda creepy.  His name was Conrad Doble.  He was the only one at the meeting who had been a member of the original Norwall Pirates.  He was tall and thin, with lank blond hair that hadn’t had a haircut in too long.  He had a distinct problem with facial Acne.  And he insisted on leering at Valerie, like he wanted to take a bite or two and eat her up.  For the first time Val understood why he had the semi-Shakespearian nickname of King Leer.

“You know that re-forming the Pirates is a sucky idea, right?” said Doble, leering at Mary Philips for the moment.   “There’s no way to go back to those things.  Milt Morgan had all the ideas and told us what to do.  Brent Clarke was the leader and made the ideas happen.  How are we gonna fight werewolves or undead Chinese wizards without them?”

“You know that those adventures were mostly lies and fairy tales,” Mary said.

“Still, who will be the wizard?  And who will be the leader?”  Doble glared at Mary accusingly.  “I actually saw the werewolf!”

The two older boys, Ray and Pidney looked at each other sheepishly.

“Re-forming the Pirates was my idea,” said Mary.  “I think I should be the leader.”

“A girl as leader?” asked Doble.  “We only used to let girls in for sex parties.”

“Be careful what you say to Mary, Goon,” said Pidney.

“Or what?  You’ll beat me up with your football muscles?”

“No,” said Ray.  “The two of us will beat the crap out of you.”  The fire flashing in Ray Zeffer’s eyes was even more intimidating than Pidney’s football muscles, and Pidney’s football muscles were seriously huge.

“Yeah, well…  I guess there might be benefits to having girls in the Pirates,” grumbled Doble menacingly.

“So, it’s settled.  The Norwall Pirates exist once more,” said Mary with a sparkly smile.  “I will be the leader and Pidney will be second in command.”

“Who is the wizard?” growled Doble.  “Milt is the hard one to replace.”

“I get that you always thought of Milt Morgan as Merlin and Brent Clarke as his King Arthur,” said Mary, “but do we really need a wizard?”

“Yeah, I think we do,” insisted Doble.

“You know we don’t have to let you be a Pirate this time,” warned Pidney.

“I’m the only real Norwall Pirate here,” said Doble imperially.  “You have to have my permission to even do this.”

“It’s all right,” said Mary.  “What is it you think we need a wizard for?”

Conrad Doble stood up to his full height and lightly bonked his head on a cellar rafter.  After he rubbed his somewhat flattened head of hair, he went over to a nearby cabinet, and removed the right hand door which basically fell out when you touched it.  He reached in and brought out a large peanut-butter jar filled with formaldehyde.  Floating in it was the severed head of a huge black cat, its dead eyes popped and staring.  He placed that on the crate in front of the old couch.

“Gack!  What’s that?” asked Pidney.

“The secret mystical symbol of the Pirate leader,” said Mary.

“Smart girl,” said Conrad Doble.  “If you know that, then surely you know what a wizard is for.”

“I’m guessing the keeper of secrets,” said Mary.

“The teller of stories!” Valerie blurted out.

“Yes!” said Doble.  “Both of those things.  But story-teller most of all.  That’s what Milt used to do.  He told us stories and made us believe in stuff.”

“So, who here is a story-teller?” asked Ray Zeffer.

“Tell us the story of your Uncle Noah,” Pidney said to Mary.

“He is NOT my uncle,” said Mary.  “He’s just Dad’s friend.  I used to call him uncle when I was little.”

“But that’s the idea, isn’t it?” asked Pidney.  “That story you were telling me about your dad’s friend on the freighter in the South Seas?  You could tell us that.”

“Maybe.  You have to give me time to pull it all together.  I think we need to leave that position open for the moment, to give others here a chance to tell a story of their own.”  Mary glared in Conrad’s direction for a change.

“Okay,” said Doble.  “It’s a deal.”

“Who will be in the club?” asked Pidney.

“I invited everyone here to be a Pirate,” said Mary.  “I think all of us need to be here.  The Norwall Pirates used to be a group of friends that supported each other and helped each other through hard times.  That’s what we all need again.  Especially Ray.”

Ray Zeffer blushed and looked off into the darkness of the far corner of the cellar.  Valerie wondered why.  She decided she would find out… soon.

“Why didn’t you invite Billy Martin?” asked Danny Murphy.  “He needs to be a Pirate too.”

“You are right,” said Mary with a smile.  “But I didn’t know where to find him or how to get the message to him.  Inviting him can be our first club project.”

“Club project?   You make it sound all girly!” complained Doble.

“Adventure, then.”

“Yeah, better.”

So it was decided.  Valerie Clarke was now the second girl ever to be a Norwall Pirate.  She smiled to herself, but when she caught Doble looking at her again, she changed the smile for a frown.                                                                              

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