Dammit Jason -- Flash Fiction

Originally posted October 25, 2014, and then again in last year's A to Z Blogging Challenge, this is my personal favorite blog post. I had fun writing it and I have fun every time I reread it. Hope you enjoy it, too.

image from people.com

“Dammit Jason.”

“Honest Mom. I didn’t mean to kill her. She’d a killed me if I hadn’t done it.”

“Eighteen years old and you can’t handle your granny’s pig?”

“But she was gonna bite me. More’n bite me. She’d a killed me.”

“Dammit Jason. She’s a pig. Granny’s the one you’re gonna have to run from when she finds out you killed her pig.”

“That’s why I called you. I knew you’d know what to do.”

“You just be sure that blanket’s coverin’ up the floorboard. I swear the only danger my car’s ever been in has been you. You and your friends. Just two beers, my sweet Aunt Sassy. Smelled to high heaven for three weeks and now there’ll be blood all over.”

“But she ain’t bleedin’.”

“She ‘isn’t’ bleedin’.”

“I know, Mom. That’s what I just said.”

“Dammit, Jason. You said ‘ain’t.’”

“Yes, ma’am. Sorry.”

“You pick up her front part. I’ll get her back legs.”

“She’s still warm.”

“And why wouldn’t she be? I came right over didn’t I?”

“Mom! I think she moved.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Pick her up. She can’t bite you now. You just wait ‘til your father hears what you’ve done.”

“Do we have to tell him?”

“No, Jason. We don’t have to tell him anything. You have to tell him. Now get in the car.”

“Can I turn on the radio?”

“No, Jason. You can just sit there in the quiet and think about what you’ve done until we get out past the Simpson place.”

“We gonna dump her in the river?”

“No. We are not going to dump her in the river. I’d have nightmares for weeks thinking of that poor, dead, bloated pig driftin’ on down to the Gulf. Your Granny loved that pig.”

“Did you hear something?”

“No, Jason. I didn’t hear anything except your snufflin’.”

“I ain’t snufflin’. Isn’t. I’m not snufflin’.”

“We’ll dump her in that old irrigation ditch just this side of the levee.”

“Mom, she’s movin’.”

“Jason, wishing and imagining isn’t going to make her alive again.”

“Stop, Mom! We gotta get out. She’ll kill us both.”

“Dammit, Jason.”

Character Introduction -- Novel Excerpt

My novel-in-progress Dead and Gone is a follow-up to Murder on Ceres, a science fiction/murder mystery. Joe is native to Ceres Colony, temporarily assigned to Earth, what is to him an alien planet.

Chapter 1

Joe passed the flashball to Joey. The little boy blocked it with his chest, let it drop to the ground, then dribbled past him. The kid was a natural, Joe hardly had to ease his defense at all. Not that he had a problem letting his boy do well against him. His own father had always played easy with him. His Dad didn’t believe a father should compete to win against his son. Brothers, yes. A rival team, of course. But competition with a kid whether on the pitch or in cyberspace was to train the child, not to beat him.

Bright light tugged at Joe’s eyelids. The flashball pitch and his son disappeared. He clenched his teeth against the cold. What was that smell? Smoke. He hadn’t heard the alarm. What the frak? Sounds, yes. But no alarm. Twittering sounds and rushing water. No emergency responders. The smoke sensors must have failed.

Something snuffled at him.

Dream or reality? Fire on the colony was never a good thing. Toxic fumes. He’d suffocate before he burned. He had to wake up. Had to get out. He tried to yell, but only groaned.

“Stay still,” someone said.

He struggled awake. A shadow blocked the sunlight. What he saw made no sense. A head, an enormous hairy head hung above him, silhouetted against the sun. He couldn’t see details. At least no details he recognized. No eyes. He saw nostrils half as big as his hand.

The sun? Where was he?

“Be quiet,” the voice said. “Just take it easy. She’ll move away. She’s just curious.”

Earth. He was on Earth and this was no frakking dream. He was trapped, wrapped in some kind of fabric, lying on the ground. Unprotected. Unable to move. With an animal standing over him.

The animal raised its head, enough so he could see more than its muzzle. It shook its head, slinging snot and saliva. Loose lips flapping like a banner in the Earth wind. Then it walked away. Ears twitching forward and back, its huge body swaying on stilt-like legs ending in hooves. Surprisingly delicate hooves considering the size of the animal.

“Moose,” Sheriff Macy said.

Joe watched the animal disappear into the pines. Or maybe they were fir trees. He didn’t know and he didn’t care. That animal was too big and too damn close.

Sheriff Macy poured a cup of coffee. “Don’t see many moose on Ceres Colony do you Hudson?”

“You’re damn frakkin’ right about that. Don’t want to see any more of them that close here either.” He wiped his face, climbed out of the sleeping bag, and accepted the coffee.

Brain Games, the TV show

Our niece and her family are visiting for a few days. That's the best thing about living in a vacation destination, or at least within easy driving distance. (In our case, metro Denver, home to umpteen microbreweries and just minutes from breathtaking scenic wonders and fresh spring powder for skiing.) We get to see friends and relatives without having to make the hours-long journeys to their towns.

And those friends and relatives always bring gifts.  You know. That particular brand of hot sauce or syrup or coffee that you can't buy here. The chance to see babies live and in person -- babies that you usually only see on Facebook. New ways of doing things. Books and movies and TV shows they think you'll like because they like them.

This visit, I've learned a much less labor intensive way to cook bacon; our cat likes baby toys almost as much as he likes aluminum foil balls and infinitely better than he likes babies; and there's a really fun TV show available on Netflix -- Brain Games.

Brain Games explores how our brain works and what its limitations are. It's still in production and available on the National Geographic Channel, if you have the right cable package. We don't.

Last night we watched the second episode (first season) of Brain Games. It spotlighted the natural human susceptibilities to misdirection and arrogance. As a mystery writer, I find those proclivities most useful. Not that I want readers to see them in themselves, but in my characters. Of course my readers are too smart to be misdirected into suspecting the butler or Colonel Mustard with a candle stick in the library.

In this episode, Brain Games invites us to try several exercises that test our ability to attend to more than one thing at a time -- multitask. Something most of us think we're good at.

My favorite one tasked us to count the number of times dancers in blue stepped into the spotlit areas.

Four of the eight dancers wore blue and there were two spotlit areas. Simple, right? We could do that. We watched, each of us counting -- silently, of course. This was a competition. Yup, we're that kind of a family.

And at the end, the host asked if we'd seen the penguin. The penguin? What penguin? None of us saw any penguin. Until the instant replay. (He never did tell us how many times the dancers in blue entered the spotlit areas.)

That penguin, dear friends, is why humans in the real world make unreliable eye witnesses.

And coincidences? Yes, things completely unrelated to a story (like the penguin) do just happen to occur at the same time and in the same place but we may not notice them. In fact, probably won't.

And don't need to, unless we're watching , Brain Games.

Apples to Oranges -- flash fiction

He looked at her book. "I like cats," he said.

The woman didn't look up.

"Good book, is it?" he asked.

She looked at him, her eyebrows drawn together as though she didn't understand his question.

"The book, Cat's Cradle." He nodded toward her book. "The one you're reading."

"Oh." She closed the book, keeping her place with her index finger. "Yes, I think it is a pretty good book. It's not about cats though."

"I know," he said. "It's one of my mother's favorites." He guessed the woman was late thirties, maybe early forties. "Read a lot do you?" he asked.

"Some," she said. "Especially when I fly."

"You want me to stop talking?" He smiled.

She smiled, too, the corners of her eyes crinkling. He liked that her whole face participated in the smile.

"I don't know. What do you want to talk about?"

"Religion and politics," he answered.

"Ah, safe subjects. And we've known each other how long?"

"Well, let's see. This flight will be about an hour and a half. I figure if we have coffee after we get there, we will have known each other a life-time."

She folded the upper corner of the page she was reading and closed her book. His mother would have a fit if he treated a book that way. The woman wore gray slacks, a cream colored blouse made of some kind of soft fabric, and a brightly colored sweater -- maybe handmade. His mother would like that. And the woman wasn't wearing a wedding ring. No rings at all, in fact. He twisted the ring on his right, ring finger. It had been his grandfather's ring. Silver and turquoise.

"I was born a Capricorn," she said. "But I've grown into an Aquarius. Aquarian? I'm a registered Republican, and I've always lived in states where my vote didn't count." She hesitated, then added, "I'm a dog person. Now, your turn."

"Capricorn is a religion?"

"Isn't it?" she asked.

"Okay, then I'm Comanche. My mother grew up in Oklahoma when everyone was Democrat until they all became Republicans, but she never changed, so neither did I."

"Indian?" she asked, eyes wide and eyebrows raised, as though surprised.

As if she couldn't tell by looking at him. Unless she was blind which she obviously was not. For proof, the book lying in her lap.

"I thought Indians are supposed to be the strong, silent type," she said.

"And I thought Aquariuses or Aquarians, whichever, are supposed to be progressive, original, independent. Hardly sounds like a Republican."

"So, do you read?" She asked, changing the subject.

"I do. Some narrative history. McCullough, Ambrose. Some classics. Hemingway, Kesey, Follet, Asimov. And I like Vonnegut, too," he said pointing toward her book.

"Classics? I'm more like Jane Austin, Atlas Shrugged, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Those are classics," she said.

An hour and a half later, he said, "We're apples . . . ."

"And oranges," she said.

"Would you like a coffee?" he asked.

"Sure, why not," she said.

I Sing the Body Electric -- A Review

But first please click on and read I Sing the Body Electric. No, you don't have to read the whole book. It's a collection of short fiction. And this link takes you to just the first part of the first short story "The Kilimanjaro Device," but you'll get-it. This reminds me all over again why I am such a Ray Bradbury fan.

If you read this review first, you will miss the joy of discovery, the ah has, and the satisfaction of getting-it.

Much of Bradbury's fiction has been adapted for the screen -- both great and small. "The Kilimanjaro Device" was an episode on the old Twilight Zone television series. You can find it on Netflix or Amazon Prime, but beware. Twilight Zone is one of those series you can lose a whole evening binge watching. Though I think that watching this story as opposed to reading it, could deprive you of one of its most important facets.

If you've read it before, read it again just for the enjoyment. And then, if you're a writer, read it again analytically.

If I'd read Body Electric before, it was a long time ago and I'd forgotten it. And if it was a long time ago, it was before I had classes with William Bernhardt, so it's safe to say that I did not read it analytically. I may not even have "got-it."

My husband is a voracious reader and watches Barnes and Nobles' Nook sales religiously. He likes free and cheap. Yesterday B&N had I Sing the Body Electric on sale for 99 cents and he told me I should buy it. He knows that I read short fiction as resource material for improving my own writing, and who better to teach me how to write short fiction than Ray Bradbury?

Ray Bradbury is one of my favorite writers. I love stories with a twist, a surprise, and an inside joke that I get.

I was just finishing Career of Evil, the third in J. K. Rowling's crime novels written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith so I put Body Electric on the back burner. I'll soon have a review on Ms. Rowling's Cormoran Strike series. 

And finish it I did. Then I had no book to take to bed with me. A good book helps me to go to sleep. (Or keep me awake, as the case may be.) So I turned to Bradbury's I Sing the Body Electric. 

**  SPOILER  ALERT!  **

He opens the book with a quote from Walt Whitman. Be still my heart. That is a sure method of hooking me. And the first short story is "The Kilimanjaro Device." 

Now, I do not usually read reviews before I read a book, so I was not aware this was a time-machine story. Not that that would have kept me away, it's just that having read The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, I am automatically prejudiced against anyone's attempt to write time travel. They couldn't possibly come up to her high standards. 

(Yes, I know I have lots of irrational prejudices. But isn't that the definition of 'prejudice?' And I know it, so that's why I don't read reviews before I read the story. Think how many good stories I'd miss.)

What was immediately apparent, however, is that "The Kilimanjaro Device" is written in the first person. Another of my prejudices.

Using simplistic, unadorned language, the narrator recounts arriving in the area of Ketchum and Sun Valley, Idaho, after a long road trip. At this point, I was disappointed. This was not the Ray Bradbury I loved.

And then, and then!

 The narrator talks about being a 'reader' not a reporter. He's looking for an 'old man.' The old man who wrote 'Michigan stories' and the 'Spanish stories.' The stories about fishing and bull fighting. But he is adamantly not looking for the grave.

Okay, here's the twist. He's looking for Hemingway, who is dead and buried.

And there's another twist as he talks about 'right deaths' and 'wrong deaths.' 'Right graves' and 'wrong graves.'

What he does not say in the story but I know is that in the summer of 1961, Hemingway shot himself to death at his home in Ketchum, Idaho, and was buried there. I was a young teen and I did not yet know that famous writers committed suicide. I'd never heard of Ketchum, Idaho. A 'wrong death' and a 'wrong grave.'

And then Bradbury gives us the surprise.

     "At your service," I said.

     "And when you get where you're going," said the old man, putting his hand on the door and leaning and then, seeing what he had done, taking his hand away and standing taller to speak to me, "where will you be?"
      "January 10, 1954."

      "That's quite a date," he said.

The old truck that our narrator is driving is a time machine.

      There is a mountain in Africa named Kilimanjaro, I thought. And on the western slope
      of that mountain was once found the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one
      has ever explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.

      We will put you up on that same slope, I thought, on Kilimanjaro, near the leopard, and
      write your name and under it say nobody knew what he was doing here so high, but
      here he is. And write the date born and died, and go away down toward the hot summer
      grass and let mainly dark warriors and white hunters and swift okapis know the grave.

Tote up all the "I saids" and "he saids" and the thoughts that we can see and feel and we have Bradbury's best inside joke. He's writing Hemingway!

Donald Trump -- You Do Not Speak for Me

 

image from businessinsider.com

Carved on the base of The Statue of Liberty are these words:

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Even these, "the least of these" are invited to this country. There are no exceptions listed here. No exclusions.

Martin Niemoller, a Lutheran minister who spent the final eight years of Germany's Third Reich in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps, explained how the Holocaust could happen:

             First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
             Because I was not a Socialist.

             Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
             Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

             Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
             Because I was not a Jew.

             Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

I am an American. As an American I must not silence the Donald Trumps of this country. No matter how strongly I disagree with what he says, our Constitution protects his right to say it. And I support that protection. Let him speak.

BUT I must say that I disagree! I must encourage the quiet and courteous among us to say out loud that they also disagree. I must spur the otherwise-engaged to pay attention and speak out. We cannot sit by and let the hurt or angry or fearful determine the political discourse of this Nation. Nor, indeed, the political course of this Nation.

WE, not people like him, are why this Nation is Great. We must speak out.

Shakespeare, Downton Abbey, and Banana Bread

image from Vic Trevino on Pinterest

                                                    "All the world's a stage,

                                                    And all the men and women merely players"

                                                    "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
                                                    That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
                                                    And then is heard no more"

The first quote is from Shakespeare's As You Like It, classified by scholars as a Comedy. The second is from MacBeth, classified as a Tragedy. The difference my friends is that a comedy ends happily for its main characters. In Shakespeare's tragedies, they usually end up dead.

As a writer, I have a tendency to see my life as stories. Not perhaps the most pragmatic way to live, maybe not even the sanest way to live. But I'm still here.

These past few weeks have been difficult. My 90-year-old father's mind is failing. That's not unusual, unfortunately. Since I am, for all intents and purposes, responsible for his care, I've been trying to find an appropriate place for him to live.

Until last September, with a bit of help from home care givers, Daddy lived with my husband and me. That had been a good situation. Daddy has always been a social person, interested in the events of the day and the people around him and their lives. His care givers were kind, efficient, and best of all, they enjoyed visiting with him.

As his dementia worsened, it was obvious that we needed someone awake 24 hours-a-day, so he would be safe. It would have been financially prohibitive to have individual care givers around the clock, and it was too much for me. So he moved into an assisted care facility.

The facility was beautiful. He had a studio apartment and could push a button on his wrist for a care giver and they would come right away. The food was excellent -- a priority for my father. His enjoyment of food has not diminished in spite of the dementia.

Now, Daddy has always been the kind of man to get things done. He would analyze a problem, consider the options, then solve it. His natural inclination to jump-to-it has not diminished.

Therein lies the problem. He could remember to push the call button, but he couldn't remember to wait for a care giver. He's wobbly. And the disinclination to wait has led to a number of falls. None has caused injuries more serious than bruising, but injuries were inevitable if we went on this way.

Looking for a facility that offers 24-hour care was in the realm of tragedy. I would visit one. It would smell clean. The rooms were bright and cheerful. The staff were gracious and attentive, but the patients were all sitting in wheelchairs staring off into the distance.

Then a friend told me that her father had been in a residential care home. These are regular houses modified to take care of people. They have six or eight patients with trained care givers 24 hours-a-day. In the one I visited, the patients were all involved in various things. The sun had come out and a good ending to this story seemed at hand.

Before Daddy moved to his new home, he was concerned that the other people there would not "be as bad off" as he. I reassured him that some would not be and others would be worse off.

And truly that was the case. His roommate uses a walker and oxygen, still reads the daily paper and works Sudoku puzzles. One day the man was watching a television show -- on a Spanish language channel. He is not Hispanic and multilingual people are a rarity in our society. I asked him if he spoke Spanish. He looked at me as though my question made no sense at all. "No," he said. So his Sudoku puzzles may be only an entertainment in the same way. I don't know. I've not looked too closely.

When Daddy's doctor asked him if he had a roommate, Daddy surprised me by saying there was "a man who rides the same broomstick." He meant his roommate. Comedy? Daddy has always had a good sense of humor, but this was not an example of that. His confusion is advancing.

Daddy moved March 5. We moved all Daddy's stuff out of his apartment Sunday, March 6. Kind of sad really because there isn't enough room in his new bedroom for his things. He does have the really big clock that he can see in spite of his macular degeneration and the wedding picture of him and Momma and Momma's high school graduation picture.

But that night I had Downton Abbey.

Downton Abbey has been my favorite TV series for all of its six years. My husband calls it a soap opera, and I suppose it is. But I care about the characters and it always seems to come out pretty much right for those characters or at least give me hope that it will. Eventually. It is the hour that I can escape my own dramas and enjoy someone else's.

The final episode. Everything changes. Everything comes to an end.

I was actually afraid that the whole thing would be tied neatly up with a shiny red bow. Words like "syrupy sweet" and "maudlin" hovered around me, threatening to undo my great regard for Fellowes' writing. How was Julian Fellowes going to end it without caving in the most Hallmarkian fashion to the public's desire that Edith be happy?

I was more concerned with Thomas. I know, I know. I adopt unlovable parrots that bite. Lovable dogs that bite. Eccentric cats that bite. I even liked Snape all the way through the Harry Potter books.

And, whether Fellowes handled it well or not (which by-the-bye, he did handle it well) the more anxiety provoking was what was I going to do with the rest of my Sunday nights?

Then, to top it all off, I decided to make a banana nut bread with the bananas Daddy had left in his apartment.

I turned on the oven to preheat, mashed the bananas, chopped the walnuts, stirred up the batter, poured it into a Pyrex baking dish that once belonged to my mother, and discovered that my oven was not heating.

Well, #$#@!

A new question -- does banana nut bread dough freeze well? Even more importantly does it bake well after being thawed?

But my husband looked it up oven repair on the internet and ordered a part. It's so nice to be married to him. Yesterday the part came and he fixed the oven.

Today is Sunday. And we have banana nut bread to eat with whatever I do with my Sunday night.

All's Well that Ends Well, not a line from a Shakespeare play, but the title. A play that the critics cannot put into a single category, but must be included in both his comedies and his tragedies. Just like life.

                    

           Thomas in a bowler, a sure sign of success at last.        A fine loaf of banana nut bread.