Remember this? The danged hill? And I said, "Up there?"And Larry the Editor said, "Yeah. Get moving."
Remember that?
Okay, so I agreed to start walkin'. I faced toward the hill, and I just kind of started shuffling my feet around. (Pathetic, I know. That shuffling around kicks up dust, but not a whole lot of actual hiking or planting of the little bare root starts (I think that's what's in the bag) happens with that move.) At least I was facing the right way. At least I didn't throw down my bag of seed in disgust. Okay? I mean, I didn't say for the eighty millionth time, "oh forget it."
But I wasn't getting anywhere. I just wasn't.
So I ranted and raved - I was in tears (literally!) when I blogged and pleaded for someone to please just give me directions. I didn't know what was going on, but I had one of those disturbing (but always certainly a door through into something - it never fails) Fire in the Belly moments while I ranted and raved. It was like I couldn't get the bag open. The little starts - like tiny new trees we had to have planted where we logged - they were all drying up and smothering in there and I couldn't get the bag open and I couldn't figure out a path up that hill and I was really going crazy.
And then Mario answered my exasperated rant. (See his comment at the bottom of that post.) --- ---- ---- uh .... (gasp!) Look at that! The bag is open! The bag is open! He walked past me and flicked open his pocket knife (Mario, I know you live here in this logger town, but do you carry a pocket knife?
Somehow I doubt it.) and he cut the string I was futzing with, and the bag was open! (Poor little baby trees ... don't worry ... I'm going to get you out of there.) And then, just like it was no big deal at all, Mario folded the knife back together again, handed it to me there where I was standing sort of stunned and blinking, and walked off to get on with his business. (He plants hills like this all the time - you can get to his stuff through that comment at the end of my blog post. It's no big deal to him. This sort of work is his life.)Out of metaphor, into what happened. "Literally." Funny word, that one. When we say something that sounds like "literature," we mean real life.
I sat down, and I started to write. So here, for your amusement, is the first draft of the "first chapter" of the story that was in this bag. After this, I won't post any more of this story. I need to write it. I need to live with it. But I swear to you that this is odder than odd. "I am not a fiction writer." I've said that repeatedly. I've believed that. But now there's this story coming out of the bag, and I feel exactly as if I've started READING a book I picked up at random in the library. I like this book. I want to read more. But I have to write it first!!!
This is very weird.
Wanna see it?
Here it is.
"ONE
from « Spirituals »
by William Stickles, 1948
Oh, you got Jesus, hold him fast
One more river to cross
Oh, better love was never told
One more river to cross
Tis stronger than an iron hand
One more river to cross
Tis sweeter than honey comb
One more river to cross
Oh, wasn’t that a wide river
River of Jordan, Lord,
Wide river
There’s one more river to cross
Oh, the good old chariot passing by
One more river to cross
She jarred the earth an’ shook the sky
One more river to cross
The good old chariot passing by
One more river to cross
I pray, good Lord, shall I be one?
One more river to cross
Oh, wasn’t that a wide river
River of Jordan, Lord,
Wide river
There’s one more river to cross
The people in my family love words. Some of us can’t even spell. But we love words. It’s my dad’s fault that we’re like this. He plays these games with us, and he thinks they’re really funny. So, mostly, we do too.
We have this one game, where he says something in the middle of everything else, and he gets this look in his eye, and I know. Really quick, I play over the tape in my head, and think about what he just said. And then I find it. I find the word that didn’t fit, and I say, “That’s not a word.”
He says, “Yes it is.”
“No it isn’t. That is not a word.” Only, instead of “that,” I say the word. It could be a word like “antediluvian” (which is a word), or it could be a word like “phlebotely” (which is not a word.)
Now he is trying to control his laughter and keep a straight face. But he doesn’t try very hard because he thinks it’s funny that I’m saying that’s not a word. “It’s a word. Look it up.”
So, I do. I go find the stupid dictionary because I have to know now. He knows this. He knows I can’t stand it and I’ll have to look it up. That’s why he always keeps insisting that it’s a word. If he keeps it up, he knows I’ll have to look it up.
Sometimes it’s a word – some really bizarre, off the wall, who ever heard of something so weird, word nobody ever uses. And sometimes it’s not a word. I don’t know why I feel like I won if it’s not a word. After all, he made it up. He knew it wasn’t a word. But that’s how I win that game. I look it up, and it’s not a word.
He knows about words, my dad. But he doesn’t know about food. Mom passed away a few years ago. Kicked the bucket. Gave up the ghost. Croaked. She fought and fought – she acted like if she believed it enough, it wouldn’t happen. It was like she was some sort of determined lunatic in an asylum, like she had the power to turn that nasty little Precious Moments statue she got from my Aunt Lena (dad and I call her Aunt Loona) into a cherry pie if she could just get it to roll out flat. Eventually the damn statue shattered all over her bed and she died. So I now I have to cook.
My brothers are pretty easy to cook for. They’re just kids, after all, and they’ll eat almost anything. Jordy still misses our mom, though. Sometimes he comes into the kitchen, really really quietly. He just stands there and watches me. I don’t look at him because I know what he’s doing. I wear mom’s huge flowered apron when I cook, and from the back, Jordy can almost see her instead of me. So I just keep washing the dishes or stirring the soup or whatever, but I don’t turn around. I wait for Jordy to say something first.
Usually he says something like, “Peanut butter today, okay, Chris?”
He’s okay on the days he wants peanut butter, so I say something like, “We don’t have any molasses for peanut butter sandwiches, Jordy. Tough outa luck today, I guess.”
“If you put molasses on my peanut butter sandwich ever again, I’ll tell everyone you fart in your sleep.”
That’s when I turn around. “I do not fart in my sleep!”
“So? That’s what I’ll tell everyone.”
“Fine, then. Strawberry jam do ya?”
“Yes, thank you.”
That is what it’s usually like. Jordy was only 3 when our mom expired. He needs a few minutes sometimes because he has the hardest time hanging onto what he can remember about her.
Today I have a test in stupid, worthless, superfluous Chemistry class, and I do not think I’m going to be able to pass it. But that’s the breaks. I just can’t care very much about it at the moment.
“Boys! Come on! Get down here and eat something. It’s a quarter after seven already!”
I know they’re up. Dad pounded on their doors this morning like he always does. Are boys just naturally hard of hearing? Seriously. What’s wrong with a wake up call that’s just slightly less jarring in the morning than the sounds of all the football coaches in the world in a bad mood? Couldn’t we maybe just call out names? Stand in the hall and say, “Everybody up! It’s time to get up!” Is that too much too ask?
Anyway, I know they’re up. They’ve also herded in and out of the bathroom, and it’s gone badly quiet again up there.
“Come on, you guys! Get down here. I’m going to throw all these pieces of French Toast out into the dog’s dish in about ten seconds. I mean it.”
“Okay, okay, Madame Fusspot! We’re coming!”
The only thing that makes more noise than dad’s getting them awake in the first place is the sound of the whole bunch of them pounding down the stairs once I threaten to feed their breakfasts to the dog. There are four of them. Five of us altogether, that makes.
There’s me. I’m Chris. Christina, really. Christina Jeannette Parker. I was named for my dad, Christopher Hadley Ivan Parker the fourth. Thank goodness I wasn’t a boy! It’s bad enough that I look exactly like him. But he might have gotten away with calling me “C.H.I.P.” if I’d been a boy. Mom wouldn’t let him do that very often to their only pink baby. I will be 18 on July 1st (“which appropriately ushers in the season of productivity”), two weeks after I finally graduate from high school.
Donny is the next one. His name – his horrible, horrible name – is actually Donnelly Vincent Parker. He was named this because he had some trouble being born, and had lots of dark hair at first even though the rest of the entire family in any direction was born bald. Donnelly means brave, dark man. His middle name is for the character of “Duke Vincentio” in Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure. Never heard of it? Neither has anyone else. Donny is 16, and every girl in school wants his attention. I’m not sure he knows this, but I am sure I won’t be the one to tell him. His ego is large enough already. Besides, if he starts paying attention to all those girls, he might not go to the university in a couple of years. This would not please the pater.
Ben and Brad are twins. They are fourteen years old next month, and they are in the seventh grade. Their actual names are Benedick Tyler Parker and Bradley Claudio Parker. Benedick and Claudio. Get it? Best friends in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. It’s a joke. There’s much ado when twins are gestating and when they’re being born. But once they’re born, they’re really little. Ben and Brad were only five pounds each. That’s ten pounds of baby altogether, but they divided it up evenly. So … much ado about nothing. Ha ha. Fortunately for Brad, my mother’s maiden name was Bradley. Otherwise they would’ve been Ben and Claud. Clod. Dirt clod, what a clod, clod-hopper … Brad’s favorite grandfather is on my mother’s side of the family.
Jordy’s the baby. Jordan Hadley Parker.
The clock in the living room begins its slightly off-key way of chiming the quarter hour, and that’s it. Breakfast is over.
“Who has absconded with my pack?”
“Brad! Toss me my gym stuff!”
“Everybody got lunch? Come on! We’re going to be late!”
“Bye, Dad,” we all call in the general direction of his office. Some sort of rumbling noise emanates from that general direction, and we take that as his answer. He’s probably got ten books open on his desk by now, and I’m sure that coffee I took to him earlier is cold by now and he has had about two tastes of it.
“Bye, mom.” No one ever says it out loud now, of course. We’re not tripping over each other on our way to the bus stop anymore either. I drop Donny off at the ball field so he can be suited up for practice during first period, and then I drive the twins to the junior high. Jordy’s school is about a mile away from there, so he gets into the front seat once the rest of the mob has dispersed. I wait for him to buckle himself in. We always sit there for this long pause. I think he’s getting the first few moments of the school day all set up in his head. When he’s ready, he nods at me like he’s ready for the curtain to come up.
“All set?” I ask him.
“All set.”
1 comment:
Glad I could help!
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