Just for posterity - this is a story that some of you might actually like. It's about a boy who is tormented by a demon. Or is he?
And the Band Played On . . .
Kent kicked the tire, deflating it even more so that it looked like a tired old dog.
“Damn bicycle!” he said aloud.
He was stuck three miles from home at twelve-thirty in the morning, and the only way he could get home was to go through Sleeping Dreams Cemetery or to go around it. He wasn’t about to go through it. He began walking while he kept a careful distance from the wrought iron fence that surrounded the cemetery.
He knew it was silly for an eighteen year-old man to avoid the dead, but under a moonless sky, he was spooked.
Sleeping Dreams opened just before the Depression, but folks had been burying their loved ones there for at least fifty years before the fence went up and the rules about markers went into effect. The oldest grave, that of Baby Whitacre Infant Son of Jesse and Mary 1878, was marked with a large carved rock that lay flat on the ground.
The words were almost faded now, but a fancy marble stone had been added a few years ago to mark the spot. The tiny grave was surrounded by a miniature replica of the wrought iron fence surrounding the rest of Sleeping Dreams.
Kent turned the corner, thinking the fence had been put up not to keep people out, but to keep people in. The November winds stabbed at him. As he neared the front gates, the wind whipped the “Gates Locked at Sunset” signs dangling from rusty chains. They screeched like empty swings in Davy Crockett Elementary’s first-grade playground.
He had been working on a chemistry project with his lab partner, a cute enough girl, and time had passed them by. Lisa and Kent were studying in her basement, a family room with dark paneling and a stocked bar across from a television which popped and cackled like a hen ready to give birth.
They finished the project at ten and then Kent fondled her with only the moonlight shining through the basement windows to guide him until her mother discovered that he had not gone home and scooted him out the door quietly so Lisa’s father would not hear. He was relieved to get out, away from her.
He hoped she wouldn’t make any more of this than what it really was, but like most of the other girls, he would probably have to hurt her feelings by letting her know she was nothing more than a friend to him. Most likely, they would end up much less than friends.
He turned the far corner, glad to be on the last leg of his race around the graveyard when he passed the duck pond and sent the ducks scattering, screaming and fluttering in protest at his noise.
“You hear that, Joe? You hear something?” a voice said in the distance. Kent froze and then realized it was probably the grave diggers, getting ready for tomorrow’s funerals.
He reached home sometime after one. His house greeted him like an old friend, but when he opened the door, he had an eerie sensation that he was not alone. That was, of course, impossible. His mother was at work. Besides, no one would bother breaking into his house; it was obvious from the outside that there would be no treasures inside.
When he finally dozed off, he fretted and turned against the shadow of a man standing in the doorway.
The first time Kent had met this man, he felt his life spinning right out from under him, and any control he may have thought he had spun right along with it.
His mother had taken him to Red Goose to pick out his new school shoes. He was glad because he liked the golden egg with the treasure inside that all the rich kids had, but more importantly, he had outgrown his first-grade shoes that summer, and his toe was poking out.
He could hardly wait to pull the goose’s head, and he hoped his egg would have a bazillion dollars in it or maybe, he crossed his fingers, just maybe he would get one of those blue or green chicks like his sister had gotten one Easter before he was even born. She told him the chick had gotten sick and died just a few days after she brought it home, but he closed his ears and told her to shut up. He knew that blue chick was with Peter Rabbit on Mr. McGregor’s farm just like the chick he had colored in his coloring book.
He chose his shoes, sensible brown oxfords at his mother’s insistence, and then the magnificent moment came. It was time to pull on the goose. A man took him over to the window while his mother paid, but his egg just had a plastic comb in it, and he fought back the tears.
“Here,” the man said, “trade with me.” This man was scary to Kent and sounded like someone his mother had talked about who did bad things to little boys, but he wanted the trade. He was anxious to see if he might have something better to take to show-and-tell.
He opened it and jumped up yelling, ”Yahoo! Ten dollars! A whole ten dollars.” His chest puffed up like a rooster. The clerks rushed over and ooh’d and ah’d at his crisp new ten-dollar bill and told him he was the luckiest boy in the world because Buster Brown Shoe Company had never put money into a golden egg as far as they knew, and wasn’t this just his lucky day!
Indeed it was.
When he was eight and a half, he had sprained his arm playing stick ball in the street, and when his mother drove him to the hospital, he saw the man again. “Hello,” this man had said, and Kent felt a little chill to think that this man remembered him. He knew that the ten-dollar egg was unusual, but of all the children this man must have seen pulling on the goose’s neck, well, it seemed a little weird, that was all.
His arm was aching, and a nurse came and gave him a shot that didn’t even hurt, and pretty soon, he kind of started floating around the room. His mother had told him about these shots and how some people would get all crazy with them when she was working in the old people floor at the hospital, but Kent just felt calm.
“Does it hurt?” the man asked. “No,” Kent said. “Good. Playing in the street can be very dangerous, Kent,” he said. With utter horror Kent realized that the man’s lips were not moving when he spoke. He was talking inside Kent’s mind. Kent began to whimper. His mother returned and sat beside him when the man stood to give her his seat. She thanked him for being so polite.
Later that night when the pain started creeping back, it occurred to Kent that he had never told this man his name. He told his mother that the man had talked to him in his head, but she assured him that it was the shot and she promised he had never said a word and she would know because she was there the whole time. That was acceptable to Kent, and a relief.
When he was thirteen, he began hearing the man in his head. At first he didn’t know it was the Red Goose man, but when he saw him at the soda fountain a few weeks later, his voice pounded in Kent’s ears. “Oh,” the man smiled. “It’s me alright.” His lips had not moved. Kent, with just his friends and no mother to make reassurances, had bolted from the stool and started running. When he got home, the man was sitting on the front porch steps. In the middle of summer, he still wore a black suit with a black tie and a black hat.
Kent knew that there was no point in trying to run. This man was a demon, a devil, and you couldn’t run from the devil. They told him that over and over in Sunday School.
“I’m Julian Black,” the thing said. His lips moved this time, and Kent wondered about this, but the whole thing was like a dream, and he couldn’t put his finger on why he bothered to question this any of it.
“Some day,” it said, “you will know why. Until then, I am watching you.” Kent turned around and took off running. Like hell you couldn’t run from the devil! When he got to Sally Fox’s house, he stopped to turn around. The man was gone.
Kent heard the voice in his head on occasion but not often enough not to be afraid every time it happened.
And then suddenly, graciously, puberty was over and he was a man, and the thing disappeared altogether. Until the weekend the president was shot.
Kent’s mother came home from work at 7:30 and roused him out of bed, pushing him into the shower. He was irritable, remembering his walk around the cemetery and his bike with the flat tire that he had pushed home. There was only time for oatmeal and toast this morning because he had slept late, and it was a fifteen minute walk to the high school. At 8:15 he left the house with his books and his blue windbreaker and a piece of buttery toast hanging out of his mouth.
Today was an exciting day because the president was in town, and the school was taking the band to play a little tune near the airport, and Kent played the drums in the marching band. He loaded onto the yellow school bus with all the other kids and found his way to the back. He was lucky like that. In the back seat, you could scrunch down and slide your hand up your girl’s dress and no one knew it, and if they did, they didn’t tell because only the rowdy kids sat in the back. Kent didn’t have a girl, but he was sure that he would get one to sit in the back with him. He was lucky that way, too.
Ellen slid in beside him, and he could smell her perfume that reminded him of baby powder. He liked her because she wasn’t too flashy or too smart, and a girl like her would let him get to third base because she didn’t get too many chances with a boy like him. He knew this, and he began to prepare her since he had less than an hour on the bus.
They chattered for a little bit and he slid towards her and reached for her hand. You had to make them think that you liked them. You couldn’t just go straight to the place that he hoped he’d end up. She gave her hand to him but scooted herself closer to the window. He elbowed a perky breast. She couldn’t blame an elbow – that was just an accident. She moved her arm to deflect him.
Well, he wasn’t going to beg, and besides, he probably didn’t want to get all excited and then be able to do nothing about it. Anyways, her baby powder perfume was pretty goddamned cloying if you asked him.
He moved away from her and began talking to someone else, and it wasn’t long until they were unloading to play for the president.
They lined up and began the warm up. The wind instruments needed to get their wind, but Kent didn’t need to get anything. The drums were just there and took little effort. They were playing only one ensemble, and it was a combination of cheerful patriotic songs that culminated in “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”
They stood like soldiers, ready for the president’s approach, and Mr. Swink lifted his baton in preparation. He looked across the band to make sure everyone was ready, and he caught Kent’s eye, and that is when Kent heard the voice.
“Hello, friend,” it said, ringing through his head. Kent closed his eyes and counted to ten and missed the opening note by one count. When he opened his eyes, he saw a caricature of a man conducting the band. He had a comical bow tie and big, bellowing pants, like a clown. Yes, he looked a great deal like a clown, and when he smiled, he had razor sharp teeth, and he started singing in Kent’s head. “Well, there’s trouble in River City and that starts with ‘t’ and that rhymes with ‘d’ and that stands for devil.”
Kent threw up his buttery toast, and the band was in chaos, and Mr. Swink came running, and the clown was gone, and the president drove by in his dark limousine with its dark windows, and it started to rain. The only saving grace is that he threw up all over Ellen, who was twirling her stupid baton.
When they got back to school, Kent went to the nurse’s office, and she told him that his temperature was a little high and gave him a Coke to drink and sent him back to class. It wasn’t long until the principal called them into the gymnasium and sent them home early. The girls were crying, and the boys were silent, and Kent began walking to Dana Drive.
He wasn’t a religious person, really, and he had sort of fallen out with the church if you want to know the truth. When he was twelve, he decided that he was too old for a babysitter and too old to be forced into the Sunday School class with the framed prints of Jesus and the lambs and Jesus knocking on the door of your heart while Jesus, himself, had a heart made out of thorns, and you know you wouldn’t really open the door if he showed up with that blood dripping down his chest.
Knowing that money was tight, Kent made his proposal a package deal. His mother agreed reluctantly, and for two glorious weeks, he took up smoking and tore around the neighborhood like a wild Indian until Officer Bailey drug him home by his collar and told his mother that he was lucky that they were neighbors and he didn’t have to bring him home in handcuffs and somebody, by God, better do something about this boy.
He was certain that he’d get Bunny back to babysit, but his mother took it as a sure sign that he needed church, and he was forced to stay in the house the rest of the summer and now he had to go to church on Sunday and Wednesday, and he had to join that stupid RA thing that was a very poor substitute for Boy Scouts.
It wasn’t long until he was pacing the floor, waiting for his mother to get home from work so he could be free. Sometimes Bunny, in between one boy or another, would feel sorry for him and come over and play checkers, but most of the time he spent with As the World Turns and The Edge of Night.
When school started in September, he was sorry that he couldn’t find out what was going on with his stories. If he could run home fast enough, he could catch the very end of The Edge of Night, and sometimes Tina, the lady down the street who was pregnant with her second kid, would fill him in on what he missed. She left out what he knew were the best parts, but he was able to get the gist.
He could not get out of Sunday School, no matter how much he begged and pleaded and said he hated the soggy cookies and watery Kool-aid they made the kids drink and he was too old for that stuff anyway.
Then the preacher’s wife died in childbirth, leaving him alone with this tiny baby girl, and things kind of perked up. He watched for two years while the ladies at the church assisted Brother Darryl with Cornelia because he was absolutely helpless.
At first, it was the married mothers who took turns taking care of her, and when that got tiresome, the deacons had a meeting and told Brother Darryl that he could stay at home in the parsonage and get his work done so that Baby Cornelia did not have to be passed around from one woman to the next.
Kent hoped that would make the preacher happy, but it didn’t seem to help, and each Sunday he got more and more droopy and his sermons got less and less fervid, and when he went a whole month without talking about hell fire and brimstone, the deacons stepped in and the single ladies started helping around the house. With that, the mothers were now happy because there was something to gossip about, and Kent’s mother said it was nothing but a Peyton Place at that church, and the next thing he knew, he didn’t have to go anymore.
But today, walking home from school after vomiting on Ellen and her baton, Kent thought of Brother Darryl and wondered if he was still at the church.
“What difference does it make?” the voice in his head said. “You’re going to hell anyway.” Kent started running, and he almost knocked Bunny McGregor down, but he couldn’t stop. When he got home, he locked himself in the house and paced noisily around his mother’s bed until his commotion finally woke her and she got up to make coffee.
He told her about the president and, of course, they had to turn on the tv and watch for hours to see what was shaping up. He began to put the voice behind him, and by eight o’clock, he was asleep on the couch, exhausted from his late night walk around the cemetery and his band disaster.
He woke up at three that morning, and his mother was gone to work.
He was alone in the house, and he was afraid. He was accustomed to being alone since his mother had taken the night shift, but he hadn’t heard the voices in his head in several years. He looked out the window and saw the darkness, a night darker than he could ever remember, but down at the doctors’ house, he saw a dim light that might have come from a fire place. He felt completely alone. He wouldn’t even know where to run if anything happened.
He took his mother’s vodka, hidden behind the rice and flour, and poured some into a glass of orange juice. He sputtered, and it burned his stomach, but in a few minutes, he began to feel a little calmer. He drank another glass and put the bottle back. He went to bed, and the voice in his head was silent.
The next morning, his mother made breakfast before she went to lie down, and he felt better. He ate the scrambled eggs with plain toast and poured his Coke bottle over a glass of ice. He couldn’t, in fact, remember a better meal. He did the dishes for his mom and watched tv for a little while. He missed the Saturday morning cartoons, and he could only stand so much of the newscasters going over and over yesterday’s events, so finally, he wandered outside.
An eerie calm pervaded the street. It reminded him of a few years ago when he and his mother had sat in the living room with the door locked and the lights out waiting for the bombs from Cuba. He laughed at the thought of their locked doors that would somehow withstand a missile intended to blow the whole state away.
The mothers were keeping their kids inside, it seemed, as if to protect them from some would-be assassin hiding around every corner. The fresh air felt good, and Kent started walking. He ended up at the church with its doors open, and a few people were inside praying. Brother Darrell, now happily married with a second daughter, greeted him at the door.
“Come in,” he said. “You can go down and pray if you like.”
“Something’s wrong with me.” Kent was more startled than Brother Darrell at this revelation, but the preacher led him out of the sanctuary and down the hall to his office. Kent spilled his guts, and when it was over, Brother Darrell told him that he was under the influence of a demon, either that or it was drugs, and they should pray about it.
While he prayed with his hand on Kent’s shoulder, Kent looked around the room. He saw the picture of Jesus knocking on the door to your heart, and Jesus turned to look at him. He smiled a mouth full of razor sharp teeth, and the lambs in the other picture began to bleat in unison. Jesus stepped out of the doorway and into the other picture and began systematically biting the heads off of the sheep, and Kent closed his eyes and felt the hand of the preacher clamp down on his shoulder harder and harder and harder until he wriggled away and started backing out of the room.
“You know, Kent,” Brother Darrell said, “there are evil spirits in this world, and they try to take your soul. God is your only hope, and you need to get your heart right with him.”
Kent was familiar with the salvation speech; it was the end of the show every Sunday morning. He decided that, if he was going to find God, he wasn’t going to find him here. He left the church without a word and went back home.
His sister Gina was there, and that was a relief because he wouldn’t feel so alone. He and Gina watched tv together, and she started rummaging through the cupboards, announcing that she would make them something to eat.
“Do you really believe in God, Genie?” he asked. She turned to him, her arms full of lettuce and carrots and a tomato.
“Of course, Kenny Don’t you?”
“I think so. I guess so, I mean yes, I suppose so.”
“You know, Kent,” she said, “one thing I do believe is that God isn’t at a church or in a book, and no one can find him for you.”
He knew that was true, and he did believe that Jesus had restful arms and teeth that weren’t razors. But he didn’t know Jesus, and apparently, he never would. Apparently, Jesus didn’t give a rat’s ass about him or he wouldn’t be standing here with visions of bloody sheep in his head.
After dinner, he and Gina played cards with their mother, and he realized it was a Saturday night and he was sitting at home listening to his mother and his sister trade recipes. At least, he reminded himself, he was not alone.
The television droned on in the back ground, and Gina laid down the ace of spades. “Gin,” his mother said, slapping her cards on the table. Kent tossed his down and got up to get a Coke bottle. He glanced at the tv, and there was Julian Black, giving the country an update. He looked away, and the voice in his head said, “you know this is your fault, don’t you? You killed the president.” His mother shuffled the cards and began dealing. She didn’t see it.
Kent shook the voice out of his head and plinked ice into a glass. That was ridiculous! He had nothing to do with the president’s murder. He wasn’t even there.
Then he saw the television go static out of the corner of his eye, and when he looked up, there he was, throwing up all over the band. Then there he wasn’t, throwing up all over the band. There he was, playing right on cue the medley they had practiced over and over and over in preparation for this day.
In this reel, the president’s car stopped, and he rolled down his window to wave at the band. It was only a few minutes, but Kent understood that, in those few minutes, the president would have lived. He wouldn’t have been in the street at that exact minute with his top pulled down, waving at that crowd, sitting up and looking over at just the right angle for that crazy Oswald kid to shoot him. Kent understood, too, the laws of action and reaction, if you will, and he knew then that his erping episode moved the president along so that he was there, in that exact moment.
The tv sped up, running through the president’s events in mere seconds and then slowed down as he rounded the corner over by the courthouse. Kent knew that courthouse. He had gone there with his mother to settle some old business about his father, who died in Korea. The tv showed all of the people shouting and waving at the president, and then he heard the first shot. The president looked up, startled, and then turned his face to the television and said, “You did this Kent. You.” And then the president, with only a bloody stump for a head, fell into his wife’s lap.
He must have stood there, with his mouth hanging open, for at least ten minutes, but when he looked down, his Coke had not even stopped foaming. He looked back at the tv, and it was normal. It was two men in a smoky room talking about the coming months and what the new president would face.
He went to bed.
That night he was restless, dreaming of headless sheep bleating from somewhere deep in their bowels and a man in a clown suit with a conductor’s baton counting out in rhythm, “Your fault. Your fault. This is. All your fault. Your fault . . . “
He rode that last mile in the back seat of the limousine, an added seat behind the president and Mrs. Kennedy, and he clawed at his throat over the rancid roses that smelled of blood. In his dream, the president told him what he must do.
On Sunday morning, he ate pancakes with his mother and sister, and his mother, maybe sensing that he felt out of sorts, heated up the syrup on the stove and fried the bacon extra crispy just the way he liked it. His sister made hash browns with onions and bell peppers left over from last night’s salad, and he poured ketchup over them and ate a whole pan full.
While they did dishes, he went around the house and made the beds and put the dirty clothes in the hamper and then took out the trash.
His sister got ready to leave at ten o’clock, and when her car would not start, Kent offered to drive her home. Her boyfriend would come to look at her car when he got home from his mother’s Sunday dinner of roast beef and new potatoes.
On the way to her house, which was on the other side of the city, she chattered about her job and the promotion she was hoping for because everyone knows that she deserved to be the office manager and she was, by far, the smartest woman there, but her dresses might be a little long, and maybe she should hem some of them. But maybe that was the wrong way to go and besides, her boyfriend might not like that, and she thought he was the one this time, and she wouldn’t risk losing him, not for any job in the world.
Finally, Kent dropped her off at her apartment and began his journey to redemption. He knew where he had to go, and even though he wasn’t supposed to drive to Dallas, he hardly thought he would get in trouble this time.
When he got to the hospital, there were guards walking around, and they didn’t seem to want to let him in, but he convinced them that his sister was there, having her baby, and thankfully, thankfully, they didn’t ask for her name. He took the stairs to the maternity ward, but when it was time to get off, he just kept on walking until he found himself at the exit to the roof. The door was locked, but he pushed it with all of his weight, and it opened for him as he knew it would.
He stood away from the edge, looking across Dallas. He could see the overpass where the president was shot and he could hear an ambulance coming down the street. The sirens played over and over in his head, closer, and closer. He walked to the edge where he knew he would have to jump. He must die for what he did to the president. To the country.
The ambulance wailed into the emergency room drive, and Lee Harvey Oswald was rushed through the doors.
Kent climbed onto the ledge and said to God, “please forgive me.”
Flying in the air, he felt a perfect release. He was now without blame. Without blemish, and the first time since he was six years old, he was without fear. The world was finally silent.
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And the Band Played On . . .
Started by Grace, Jan 24 2009 04:27 PM
26 replies to this topic
#3
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Brutal and savage avenger of nothing in particular
Posted 25 January 2009 - 12:08 AM
I just finished reading this for a second time.
I am, as usual, blown away by your imagery. I was going to highlight some of it again, but I decided there was just too much good stuff word-wise.
These Dana Drive characters are getting deeper and deeper.
The whole project, IMO, demands a lot more episodes and follow-ups, and I will be eager to read them as you write.
I mentioned before that you may enjoy posting this in installments at scribd.com where I post now. You do not get a lot of comments, but it is a site that is highly traveled. One can always hope. I get a few emails from people who have read and liked my stories.
Kent is the sort of character who takes on a life of his own.
Really good work, Grace. Keep it up!!! If only for me.
Love,
Devon
I am, as usual, blown away by your imagery. I was going to highlight some of it again, but I decided there was just too much good stuff word-wise.
These Dana Drive characters are getting deeper and deeper.
The whole project, IMO, demands a lot more episodes and follow-ups, and I will be eager to read them as you write.
I mentioned before that you may enjoy posting this in installments at scribd.com where I post now. You do not get a lot of comments, but it is a site that is highly traveled. One can always hope. I get a few emails from people who have read and liked my stories.
Kent is the sort of character who takes on a life of his own.
Really good work, Grace. Keep it up!!! If only for me.
Love,
Devon
"Please to let Sanji to tell you now story of small dark Bengali boy and huge white swimming tiger in clear pool deep in jungle wet" Sanji, August, 2008
"I used to get in a fight nearly every day at school, and I usually won. If ever I came home without a mark on my body somewhere, my mother would think I skipped school that day." Dévon, September, 2008
"Je me battais presque tous les jours à l'école, et je gagnais assez souvent. Si jamais j'étais rentré chez moi sans une tache quelquepart sur mon corps, ma mère aurait cru que j'avais grillé la classe ce jour-là. Dévon, septembre, 2008
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"The only way to escape the crowds of niggers everywhere was to duck into a bookstore." Joey Leguay, 2002, or thereabouts
"I used to get in a fight nearly every day at school, and I usually won. If ever I came home without a mark on my body somewhere, my mother would think I skipped school that day." Dévon, September, 2008
"Je me battais presque tous les jours à l'école, et je gagnais assez souvent. Si jamais j'étais rentré chez moi sans une tache quelquepart sur mon corps, ma mère aurait cru que j'avais grillé la classe ce jour-là. Dévon, septembre, 2008
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"The only way to escape the crowds of niggers everywhere was to duck into a bookstore." Joey Leguay, 2002, or thereabouts
#4
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Brutal and savage avenger of nothing in particular
Posted 25 January 2009 - 12:10 AM
QUOTE
He could hardly wait to pull the goose’s head, and he hoped his egg would have a bazillion dollars in it or maybe, he crossed his fingers, just maybe he would get one of those blue or green chicks like his sister had gotten one Easter before he was even born. She told him the chick had gotten sick and died just a few days after she brought it home, but he closed his ears and told her to shut up. He knew that blue chick was with Peter Rabbit on Mr. McGregor’s farm just like the chick he had colored in his coloring book.
Paragraphs like this are absolutely genial!!! And there is so much of it!!!
Devon
"Please to let Sanji to tell you now story of small dark Bengali boy and huge white swimming tiger in clear pool deep in jungle wet" Sanji, August, 2008
"I used to get in a fight nearly every day at school, and I usually won. If ever I came home without a mark on my body somewhere, my mother would think I skipped school that day." Dévon, September, 2008
"Je me battais presque tous les jours à l'école, et je gagnais assez souvent. Si jamais j'étais rentré chez moi sans une tache quelquepart sur mon corps, ma mère aurait cru que j'avais grillé la classe ce jour-là. Dévon, septembre, 2008
______
"The only way to escape the crowds of niggers everywhere was to duck into a bookstore." Joey Leguay, 2002, or thereabouts
"I used to get in a fight nearly every day at school, and I usually won. If ever I came home without a mark on my body somewhere, my mother would think I skipped school that day." Dévon, September, 2008
"Je me battais presque tous les jours à l'école, et je gagnais assez souvent. Si jamais j'étais rentré chez moi sans une tache quelquepart sur mon corps, ma mère aurait cru que j'avais grillé la classe ce jour-là. Dévon, septembre, 2008
______
"The only way to escape the crowds of niggers everywhere was to duck into a bookstore." Joey Leguay, 2002, or thereabouts
#5
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should of, would of, could of
Posted 25 January 2009 - 12:16 AM
This was the first one I wrote a long, long time ago, and I got it out and changed it completely to fit the whole theme thing.
I think we can all identify with voices in our heads and the scary religious imagery we wrestled with as kids.
I particularly like when Jesus moves from one picture to the other and bites the heads off the sheep. That's the kind of thing a kid would worry about.
I'm working on my fifth one right now, but it's not going anywhere yet.
Anyway, I posted the story this afternoon and just wanted to bump it since it got buried pretty fast.
I think we can all identify with voices in our heads and the scary religious imagery we wrestled with as kids.
I particularly like when Jesus moves from one picture to the other and bites the heads off the sheep. That's the kind of thing a kid would worry about.
I'm working on my fifth one right now, but it's not going anywhere yet.
Anyway, I posted the story this afternoon and just wanted to bump it since it got buried pretty fast.
I want to be just like Grace Kelly. Except the cut-off-head part.
#6
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Brutal and savage avenger of nothing in particular
Posted 25 January 2009 - 12:32 AM
And the Band Played On . . .
Kent kicked the tire, deflating it even more so that it looked like a tired old dog.
“Damn bicycle!” he said aloud.
He was stuck three miles from home at twelve-thirty in the morning, and the only way he could get home was to go through Sleeping Dreams Cemetery or to go around it. He wasn’t about to go through it. He began walking while he kept a careful distance from the wrought iron fence that surrounded the cemetery.
He knew it was silly for an eighteen year-old man to avoid the dead, but under a moonless sky, he was spooked.
Sleeping Dreams opened just before the Depression, but folks had been burying their loved ones there for at least fifty years before the fence went up and the rules about markers went into effect. The oldest grave, that of Baby Whitacre Infant Son of Jesse and Mary 1878, was marked with a large carved rock that lay flat on the ground.
The words were almost faded now, but a fancy marble stone had been added a few years ago to mark the spot. The tiny grave was surrounded by a miniature replica of the wrought iron fence surrounding the rest of Sleeping Dreams. [This in itself is spooky...]
Kent turned the corner, thinking the fence had been put up not to keep people out, but to keep people in. The November winds stabbed at him. As he neared the front gates, the wind whipped the “Gates Locked at Sunset” signs dangling from rusty chains. They screeched like empty swings in Davy Crockett Elementary’s first-grade playground.
He had been working on a chemistry project with his lab partner, a cute enough girl, and time had passed them by. Lisa and Kent were studying in her basement, a family room with dark paneling and a stocked bar across from a television which popped and cackled like a hen ready to give birth.
They finished the project at ten and then Kent fondled her with only the moonlight shining through the basement windows to guide him until her mother discovered that he had not gone home and scooted him out the door quietly so Lisa’s father would not hear. He was relieved to get out, away from her.
He hoped she wouldn’t make any more of this than what it really was, but like most of the other girls, he would probably have to hurt her feelings by letting her know she was nothing more than a friend to him. Most likely, they would end up much less than friends.
He turned the far corner, glad to be on the last leg of his race around the graveyard when he passed the duck pond and sent the ducks scattering, screaming and fluttering in protest at his noise.
“You hear that, Joe? You hear something?” a voice said in the distance. Kent froze and then realized it was probably the grave diggers, getting ready for tomorrow’s funerals.
He reached home sometime after one. His house greeted him like an old friend, but when he opened the door, he had an eerie sensation that he was not alone. That was, of course, impossible. His mother was at work. Besides, no one would bother breaking into his house; it was obvious from the outside that there would be no treasures inside.
When he finally dozed off, he fretted and turned against the shadow of a man standing in the doorway.
The first time Kent had met this man, he felt his life spinning right out from under him, and any control he may have thought he had spun right along with it.
His mother had taken him to Red Goose to pick out his new school shoes. He was glad because he liked the golden egg with the treasure inside that all the rich kids had, but more importantly, he had outgrown his first-grade shoes that summer, and his toe was poking out.
He could hardly wait to pull the goose’s head, and he hoped his egg would have a bazillion dollars in it or maybe, he crossed his fingers, just maybe he would get one of those blue or green chicks like his sister had gotten one Easter before he was even born. She told him the chick had gotten sick and died just a few days after she brought it home, but he closed his ears and told her to shut up. He knew that blue chick was with Peter Rabbit on Mr. McGregor’s farm just like the chick he had colored in his coloring book.[If I could only write like this!!!]
He chose his shoes, sensible brown oxfords at his mother’s insistence, and then the magnificent moment came. It was time to pull on the goose. A man took him over to the window while his mother paid, but his egg just had a plastic comb in it, and he fought back the tears.
“Here,” the man said, “trade with me.” This man was scary to Kent and sounded like someone his mother had talked about who did bad things to little boys, but he wanted the trade. He was anxious to see if he might have something better to take to show-and-tell.
He opened it and jumped up yelling, ”Yahoo! Ten dollars! A whole ten dollars.” His chest puffed up like a rooster. The clerks rushed over and ooh’d and ah’d at his crisp new ten-dollar bill and told him he was the luckiest boy in the world because Buster Brown Shoe Company had never put money into a golden egg as far as they knew, and wasn’t this just his lucky day!
Indeed it was.
When he was eight and a half, he had sprained his arm playing stick ball in the street, and when his mother drove him to the hospital, he saw the man again. “Hello,” this man had said, and Kent felt a little chill to think that this man remembered him. He knew that the ten-dollar egg was unusual, but of all the children this man must have seen pulling on the goose’s neck, well, it seemed a little weird, that was all.
His arm was aching, and a nurse came and gave him a shot that didn’t even hurt, and pretty soon, he kind of started floating around the room. His mother had told him about these shots and how some people would get all crazy with them when she was working in the old people floor at the hospital, but Kent just felt calm.
“Does it hurt?” the man asked. “No,” Kent said. “Good. Playing in the street can be very dangerous, Kent,” he said. With utter horror Kent realized that the man’s lips were not moving when he spoke. He was talking inside Kent’s mind. Kent began to whimper. His mother returned and sat beside him when the man stood to give her his seat. She thanked him for being so polite.
Later that night when the pain started creeping back, it occurred to Kent that he had never told this man his name. He told his mother that the man had talked to him in his head, but she assured him that it was the shot and she promised he had never said a word and she would know because she was there the whole time. That was acceptable to Kent, and a relief.
When he was thirteen, he began hearing the man in his head. At first he didn’t know it was the Red Goose man, but when he saw him at the soda fountain a few weeks later, his voice pounded in Kent’s ears. “Oh,” the man smiled. “It’s me alright.” His lips had not moved. Kent, with just his friends and no mother to make reassurances, had bolted from the stool and started running. When he got home, the man was sitting on the front porch steps. In the middle of summer, he still wore a black suit with a black tie and a black hat.
Kent knew that there was no point in trying to run. This man was a demon, a devil, and you couldn’t run from the devil. They told him that over and over in Sunday School.
“I’m Julian Black,” the thing said. His lips moved this time, and Kent wondered about this, but the whole thing was like a dream, and he couldn’t put his finger on why he bothered to question this any of it.
“Some day,” it said, “you will know why. Until then, I am watching you.” Kent turned around and took off running. Like hell you couldn’t run from the devil! When he got to Sally Fox’s house, he stopped to turn around. The man was gone.
Kent heard the voice in his head on occasion but not often enough not to be afraid every time it happened.
And then suddenly, graciously, puberty was over and he was a man, and the thing disappeared altogether. Until the weekend the president was shot.
Kent’s mother came home from work at 7:30 and roused him out of bed, pushing him into the shower. He was irritable, remembering his walk around the cemetery and his bike with the flat tire that he had pushed home. There was only time for oatmeal and toast this morning because he had slept late, and it was a fifteen minute walk to the high school. At 8:15 he left the house with his books and his blue windbreaker and a piece of buttery toast hanging out of his mouth.
Today was an exciting day because the president was in town, and the school was taking the band to play a little tune near the airport, and Kent played the drums in the marching band. He loaded onto the yellow school bus with all the other kids and found his way to the back. He was lucky like that. In the back seat, you could scrunch down and slide your hand up your girl’s dress and no one knew it, and if they did, they didn’t tell because only the rowdy kids sat in the back. [I relate to this; I was one of them, sort of ]Kent didn’t have a girl, but he was sure that he would get one to sit in the back with him. He was lucky that way, too.
Ellen slid in beside him, and he could smell her perfume that reminded him of baby powder. He liked her because she wasn’t too flashy or too smart, and a girl like her would let him get to third base because she didn’t get too many chances with a boy like him. He knew this, and he began to prepare her since he had less than an hour on the bus.
They chattered for a little bit and he slid towards her and reached for her hand. You had to make them think that you liked them. You couldn’t just go straight to the place that he hoped he’d end up. She gave her hand to him but scooted herself closer to the window. He elbowed a perky breast. She couldn’t blame an elbow – that was just an accident. She moved her arm to deflect him.
Well, he wasn’t going to beg, and besides, he probably didn’t want to get all excited and then be able to do nothing about it. Anyways, her baby powder perfume was pretty goddamned cloying if you asked him.
He moved away from her and began talking to someone else, and it wasn’t long until they were unloading to play for the president.
They lined up and began the warm up. The wind instruments needed to get their wind, but Kent didn’t need to get anything. The drums were just there and took little effort. They were playing only one ensemble, and it was a combination of cheerful patriotic songs that culminated in “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”
They stood like soldiers, ready for the president’s approach, and Mr. Swink lifted his baton in preparation. He looked across the band to make sure everyone was ready, and he caught Kent’s eye, and that is when Kent heard the voice.
“Hello, friend,” it said, ringing through his head. Kent closed his eyes and counted to ten and missed the opening note by one count. When he opened his eyes, he saw a caricature of a man conducting the band. He had a comical bow tie and big, bellowing pants, like a clown. Yes, he looked a great deal like a clown, and when he smiled, he had razor sharp teeth, and he started singing in Kent’s head. “Well, there’s trouble in River City and that starts with ‘t’ and that rhymes with ‘d’ and that stands for devil.”
Kent threw up his buttery toast, and the band was in chaos, and Mr. Swink came running, and the clown was gone, and the president drove by in his dark limousine with its dark windows, and it started to rain. The only saving grace is that he threw up all over Ellen, who was twirling her stupid baton.
When they got back to school, Kent went to the nurse’s office, and she told him that his temperature was a little high and gave him a Coke to drink and sent him back to class. It wasn’t long until the principal called them into the gymnasium and sent them home early. The girls were crying, and the boys were silent, and Kent began walking to Dana Drive.
He wasn’t a religious person, really, and he had sort of fallen out with the church if you want to know the truth. When he was twelve, he decided that he was too old for a babysitter and too old to be forced into the Sunday School class with the framed prints of Jesus and the lambs and Jesus knocking on the door of your heart while Jesus, himself, had a heart made out of thorns, and you know you wouldn’t really open the door if he showed up with that blood dripping down his chest.[I wish I had written this!!!]
Knowing that money was tight, Kent made his proposal a package deal. His mother agreed reluctantly, and for two glorious weeks, he took up smoking and tore around the neighborhood like a wild Indian until Officer Bailey drug him home by his collar and told his mother that he was lucky that they were neighbors and he didn’t have to bring him home in handcuffs and somebody, by God, better do something about this boy.
He was certain that he’d get Bunny back to babysit, but his mother took it as a sure sign that he needed church, and he was forced to stay in the house the rest of the summer and now he had to go to church on Sunday and Wednesday, and he had to join that stupid RA thing that was a very poor substitute for Boy Scouts.
It wasn’t long until he was pacing the floor, waiting for his mother to get home from work so he could be free. Sometimes Bunny, in between one boy or another, would feel sorry for him and come over and play checkers, but most of the time he spent with As the World Turns and The Edge of Night.
When school started in September, he was sorry that he couldn’t find out what was going on with his stories. If he could run home fast enough, he could catch the very end of The Edge of Night, and sometimes Tina, the lady down the street who was pregnant with her second kid, would fill him in on what he missed. She left out what he knew were the best parts, but he was able to get the gist.
He could not get out of Sunday School, no matter how much he begged and pleaded and said he hated the soggy cookies and watery Kool-aid they made the kids drink and he was too old for that stuff anyway.
Then the preacher’s wife died in childbirth, leaving him alone with this tiny baby girl, and things kind of perked up. He watched for two years while the ladies at the church assisted Brother Darryl with Cornelia because he was absolutely helpless.
At first, it was the married mothers who took turns taking care of her, and when that got tiresome, the deacons had a meeting and told Brother Darryl that he could stay at home in the parsonage and get his work done so that Baby Cornelia did not have to be passed around from one woman to the next.
Kent hoped that would make the preacher happy, but it didn’t seem to help, and each Sunday he got more and more droopy and his sermons got less and less fervid, and when he went a whole month without talking about hell fire and brimstone, the deacons stepped in and the single ladies started helping around the house. With that, the mothers were now happy because there was something to gossip about, and Kent’s mother said it was nothing but a Peyton Place at that church, and the next thing he knew, he didn’t have to go anymore.
But today, walking home from school after vomiting on Ellen and her baton, Kent thought of Brother Darryl and wondered if he was still at the church.
“What difference does it make?” the voice in his head said. “You’re going to hell anyway.” Kent started running, and he almost knocked Bunny McGregor down, but he couldn’t stop. When he got home, he locked himself in the house and paced noisily around his mother’s bed until his commotion finally woke her and she got up to make coffee.
He told her about the president and, of course, they had to turn on the tv and watch for hours to see what was shaping up. He began to put the voice behind him, and by eight o’clock, he was asleep on the couch, exhausted from his late night walk around the cemetery and his band disaster.
He woke up at three that morning, and his mother was gone to work.
He was alone in the house, and he was afraid. He was accustomed to being alone since his mother had taken the night shift, but he hadn’t heard the voices in his head in several years. He looked out the window and saw the darkness, a night darker than he could ever remember, but down at the doctors’ house, he saw a dim light that might have come from a fire place. He felt completely alone. He wouldn’t even know where to run if anything happened.
He took his mother’s vodka, hidden behind the rice and flour, and poured some into a glass of orange juice. He sputtered, and it burned his stomach, but in a few minutes, he began to feel a little calmer. He drank another glass and put the bottle back. He went to bed, and the voice in his head was silent.
The next morning, his mother made breakfast before she went to lie down, and he felt better. He ate the scrambled eggs with plain toast and poured his Coke bottle over a glass of ice. He couldn’t, in fact, remember a better meal. He did the dishes for his mom and watched tv for a little while. He missed the Saturday morning cartoons, and he could only stand so much of the newscasters going over and over yesterday’s events, so finally, he wandered outside.
An eerie calm pervaded the street. It reminded him of a few years ago when he and his mother had sat in the living room with the door locked and the lights out waiting for the bombs from Cuba. He laughed at the thought of their locked doors that would somehow withstand a missile intended to blow the whole state away.
The mothers were keeping their kids inside, it seemed, as if to protect them from some would-be assassin hiding around every corner. The fresh air felt good, and Kent started walking. He ended up at the church with its doors open, and a few people were inside praying. Brother Darrell, now happily married with a second daughter, greeted him at the door.
“Come in,” he said. “You can go down and pray if you like.”
“Something’s wrong with me.” Kent was more startled than Brother Darrell at this revelation, but the preacher led him out of the sanctuary and down the hall to his office. Kent spilled his guts, and when it was over, Brother Darrell told him that he was under the influence of a demon, either that or it was drugs, and they should pray about it.
While he prayed with his hand on Kent’s shoulder, Kent looked around the room. He saw the picture of Jesus knocking on the door to your heart, and Jesus turned to look at him. He smiled a mouth full of razor sharp teeth, and the lambs in the other picture began to bleat in unison. Jesus stepped out of the doorway and into the other picture and began systematically biting the heads off of the sheep, and Kent closed his eyes and felt the hand of the preacher clamp down on his shoulder harder and harder and harder until he wriggled away and started backing out of the room.
“You know, Kent,” Brother Darrell said, “there are evil spirits in this world, and they try to take your soul. God is your only hope, and you need to get your heart right with him.”
Kent was familiar with the salvation speech; it was the end of the show every Sunday morning. He decided that, if he was going to find God, he wasn’t going to find him here. He left the church without a word and went back home.
His sister Gina was there, and that was a relief because he wouldn’t feel so alone. He and Gina watched tv together, and she started rummaging through the cupboards, announcing that she would make them something to eat.
“Do you really believe in God, Genie?” he asked. She turned to him, her arms full of lettuce and carrots and a tomato.
“Of course, Kenny Don’t you?”
“I think so. I guess so, I mean yes, I suppose so.”
“You know, Kent,” she said, “one thing I do believe is that God isn’t at a church or in a book, and no one can find him for you.”
He knew that was true, and he did believe that Jesus had restful arms and teeth that weren’t razors. But he didn’t know Jesus, and apparently, he never would. Apparently, Jesus didn’t give a rat’s ass about him or he wouldn’t be standing here with visions of bloody sheep in his head.
After dinner, he and Gina played cards with their mother, and he realized it was a Saturday night and he was sitting at home listening to his mother and his sister trade recipes. At least, he reminded himself, he was not alone.
The television droned on in the back ground, and Gina laid down the ace of spades. “Gin,” his mother said, slapping her cards on the table. Kent tossed his down and got up to get a Coke bottle. He glanced at the tv, and there was Julian Black, giving the country an update. He looked away, and the voice in his head said, “you know this is your fault, don’t you? You killed the president.” His mother shuffled the cards and began dealing. She didn’t see it.
Kent shook the voice out of his head and plinked ice into a glass. That was ridiculous! He had nothing to do with the president’s murder. He wasn’t even there.
Then he saw the television go static out of the corner of his eye, and when he looked up, there he was, throwing up all over the band. Then there he wasn’t, throwing up all over the band. There he was, playing right on cue the medley they had practiced over and over and over in preparation for this day.
In this reel, the president’s car stopped, and he rolled down his window to wave at the band. It was only a few minutes, but Kent understood that, in those few minutes, the president would have lived. He wouldn’t have been in the street at that exact minute with his top pulled down, waving at that crowd, sitting up and looking over at just the right angle for that crazy Oswald kid to shoot him. Kent understood, too, the laws of action and reaction, if you will, and he knew then that his erping episode moved the president along so that he was there, in that exact moment.
The tv sped up, running through the president’s events in mere seconds and then slowed down as he rounded the corner over by the courthouse. Kent knew that courthouse. He had gone there with his mother to settle some old business about his father, who died in Korea. The tv showed all of the people shouting and waving at the president, and then he heard the first shot. The president looked up, startled, and then turned his face to the television and said, “You did this Kent. You.” And then the president, with only a bloody stump for a head, fell into his wife’s lap.
He must have stood there, with his mouth hanging open, for at least ten minutes, but when he looked down, his Coke had not even stopped foaming. He looked back at the tv, and it was normal. It was two men in a smoky room talking about the coming months and what the new president would face.
He went to bed.
That night he was restless, dreaming of headless sheep bleating from somewhere deep in their bowels and a man in a clown suit with a conductor’s baton counting out in rhythm, “Your fault. Your fault. This is. All your fault. Your fault . . . “
He rode that last mile in the back seat of the limousine, an added seat behind the president and Mrs. Kennedy, and he clawed at his throat over the rancid roses that smelled of blood. In his dream, the president told him what he must do.
On Sunday morning, he ate pancakes with his mother and sister, and his mother, maybe sensing that he felt out of sorts, heated up the syrup on the stove and fried the bacon extra crispy just the way he liked it. His sister made hash browns with onions and bell peppers left over from last night’s salad, and he poured ketchup over them and ate a whole pan full.
While they did dishes, he went around the house and made the beds and put the dirty clothes in the hamper and then took out the trash.
His sister got ready to leave at ten o’clock, and when her car would not start, Kent offered to drive her home. Her boyfriend would come to look at her car when he got home from his mother’s Sunday dinner of roast beef and new potatoes.
On the way to her house, which was on the other side of the city, she chattered about her job and the promotion she was hoping for because everyone knows that she deserved to be the office manager and she was, by far, the smartest woman there, but her dresses might be a little long, and maybe she should hem some of them. But maybe that was the wrong way to go and besides, her boyfriend might not like that, and she thought he was the one this time, and she wouldn’t risk losing him, not for any job in the world.
Finally, Kent dropped her off at her apartment and began his journey to redemption. He knew where he had to go, and even though he wasn’t supposed to drive to Dallas, he hardly thought he would get in trouble this time.
When he got to the hospital, there were guards walking around, and they didn’t seem to want to let him in, but he convinced them that his sister was there, having her baby, and thankfully, thankfully, they didn’t ask for her name. He took the stairs to the maternity ward, but when it was time to get off, he just kept on walking until he found himself at the exit to the roof. The door was locked, but he pushed it with all of his weight, and it opened for him as he knew it would.
He stood away from the edge, looking across Dallas. He could see the overpass where the president was shot and he could hear an ambulance coming down the street. The sirens played over and over in his head, closer, and closer. He walked to the edge where he knew he would have to jump. He must die for what he did to the president. To the country.
The ambulance wailed into the emergency room drive, and Lee Harvey Oswald was rushed through the doors.
Kent climbed onto the ledge and said to God, “please forgive me.”
Flying in the air, he felt a perfect release. He was now without blame. Without blemish, and the first time since he was six years old, he was without fear. The world was finally silent.
[POWERFUL AS HELL ENDING!!]
Kent kicked the tire, deflating it even more so that it looked like a tired old dog.
“Damn bicycle!” he said aloud.
He was stuck three miles from home at twelve-thirty in the morning, and the only way he could get home was to go through Sleeping Dreams Cemetery or to go around it. He wasn’t about to go through it. He began walking while he kept a careful distance from the wrought iron fence that surrounded the cemetery.
He knew it was silly for an eighteen year-old man to avoid the dead, but under a moonless sky, he was spooked.
Sleeping Dreams opened just before the Depression, but folks had been burying their loved ones there for at least fifty years before the fence went up and the rules about markers went into effect. The oldest grave, that of Baby Whitacre Infant Son of Jesse and Mary 1878, was marked with a large carved rock that lay flat on the ground.
The words were almost faded now, but a fancy marble stone had been added a few years ago to mark the spot. The tiny grave was surrounded by a miniature replica of the wrought iron fence surrounding the rest of Sleeping Dreams. [This in itself is spooky...]
Kent turned the corner, thinking the fence had been put up not to keep people out, but to keep people in. The November winds stabbed at him. As he neared the front gates, the wind whipped the “Gates Locked at Sunset” signs dangling from rusty chains. They screeched like empty swings in Davy Crockett Elementary’s first-grade playground.
He had been working on a chemistry project with his lab partner, a cute enough girl, and time had passed them by. Lisa and Kent were studying in her basement, a family room with dark paneling and a stocked bar across from a television which popped and cackled like a hen ready to give birth.
They finished the project at ten and then Kent fondled her with only the moonlight shining through the basement windows to guide him until her mother discovered that he had not gone home and scooted him out the door quietly so Lisa’s father would not hear. He was relieved to get out, away from her.
He hoped she wouldn’t make any more of this than what it really was, but like most of the other girls, he would probably have to hurt her feelings by letting her know she was nothing more than a friend to him. Most likely, they would end up much less than friends.
He turned the far corner, glad to be on the last leg of his race around the graveyard when he passed the duck pond and sent the ducks scattering, screaming and fluttering in protest at his noise.
“You hear that, Joe? You hear something?” a voice said in the distance. Kent froze and then realized it was probably the grave diggers, getting ready for tomorrow’s funerals.
He reached home sometime after one. His house greeted him like an old friend, but when he opened the door, he had an eerie sensation that he was not alone. That was, of course, impossible. His mother was at work. Besides, no one would bother breaking into his house; it was obvious from the outside that there would be no treasures inside.
When he finally dozed off, he fretted and turned against the shadow of a man standing in the doorway.
The first time Kent had met this man, he felt his life spinning right out from under him, and any control he may have thought he had spun right along with it.
His mother had taken him to Red Goose to pick out his new school shoes. He was glad because he liked the golden egg with the treasure inside that all the rich kids had, but more importantly, he had outgrown his first-grade shoes that summer, and his toe was poking out.
He could hardly wait to pull the goose’s head, and he hoped his egg would have a bazillion dollars in it or maybe, he crossed his fingers, just maybe he would get one of those blue or green chicks like his sister had gotten one Easter before he was even born. She told him the chick had gotten sick and died just a few days after she brought it home, but he closed his ears and told her to shut up. He knew that blue chick was with Peter Rabbit on Mr. McGregor’s farm just like the chick he had colored in his coloring book.[If I could only write like this!!!]
He chose his shoes, sensible brown oxfords at his mother’s insistence, and then the magnificent moment came. It was time to pull on the goose. A man took him over to the window while his mother paid, but his egg just had a plastic comb in it, and he fought back the tears.
“Here,” the man said, “trade with me.” This man was scary to Kent and sounded like someone his mother had talked about who did bad things to little boys, but he wanted the trade. He was anxious to see if he might have something better to take to show-and-tell.
He opened it and jumped up yelling, ”Yahoo! Ten dollars! A whole ten dollars.” His chest puffed up like a rooster. The clerks rushed over and ooh’d and ah’d at his crisp new ten-dollar bill and told him he was the luckiest boy in the world because Buster Brown Shoe Company had never put money into a golden egg as far as they knew, and wasn’t this just his lucky day!
Indeed it was.
When he was eight and a half, he had sprained his arm playing stick ball in the street, and when his mother drove him to the hospital, he saw the man again. “Hello,” this man had said, and Kent felt a little chill to think that this man remembered him. He knew that the ten-dollar egg was unusual, but of all the children this man must have seen pulling on the goose’s neck, well, it seemed a little weird, that was all.
His arm was aching, and a nurse came and gave him a shot that didn’t even hurt, and pretty soon, he kind of started floating around the room. His mother had told him about these shots and how some people would get all crazy with them when she was working in the old people floor at the hospital, but Kent just felt calm.
“Does it hurt?” the man asked. “No,” Kent said. “Good. Playing in the street can be very dangerous, Kent,” he said. With utter horror Kent realized that the man’s lips were not moving when he spoke. He was talking inside Kent’s mind. Kent began to whimper. His mother returned and sat beside him when the man stood to give her his seat. She thanked him for being so polite.
Later that night when the pain started creeping back, it occurred to Kent that he had never told this man his name. He told his mother that the man had talked to him in his head, but she assured him that it was the shot and she promised he had never said a word and she would know because she was there the whole time. That was acceptable to Kent, and a relief.
When he was thirteen, he began hearing the man in his head. At first he didn’t know it was the Red Goose man, but when he saw him at the soda fountain a few weeks later, his voice pounded in Kent’s ears. “Oh,” the man smiled. “It’s me alright.” His lips had not moved. Kent, with just his friends and no mother to make reassurances, had bolted from the stool and started running. When he got home, the man was sitting on the front porch steps. In the middle of summer, he still wore a black suit with a black tie and a black hat.
Kent knew that there was no point in trying to run. This man was a demon, a devil, and you couldn’t run from the devil. They told him that over and over in Sunday School.
“I’m Julian Black,” the thing said. His lips moved this time, and Kent wondered about this, but the whole thing was like a dream, and he couldn’t put his finger on why he bothered to question this any of it.
“Some day,” it said, “you will know why. Until then, I am watching you.” Kent turned around and took off running. Like hell you couldn’t run from the devil! When he got to Sally Fox’s house, he stopped to turn around. The man was gone.
Kent heard the voice in his head on occasion but not often enough not to be afraid every time it happened.
And then suddenly, graciously, puberty was over and he was a man, and the thing disappeared altogether. Until the weekend the president was shot.
Kent’s mother came home from work at 7:30 and roused him out of bed, pushing him into the shower. He was irritable, remembering his walk around the cemetery and his bike with the flat tire that he had pushed home. There was only time for oatmeal and toast this morning because he had slept late, and it was a fifteen minute walk to the high school. At 8:15 he left the house with his books and his blue windbreaker and a piece of buttery toast hanging out of his mouth.
Today was an exciting day because the president was in town, and the school was taking the band to play a little tune near the airport, and Kent played the drums in the marching band. He loaded onto the yellow school bus with all the other kids and found his way to the back. He was lucky like that. In the back seat, you could scrunch down and slide your hand up your girl’s dress and no one knew it, and if they did, they didn’t tell because only the rowdy kids sat in the back. [I relate to this; I was one of them, sort of ]Kent didn’t have a girl, but he was sure that he would get one to sit in the back with him. He was lucky that way, too.
Ellen slid in beside him, and he could smell her perfume that reminded him of baby powder. He liked her because she wasn’t too flashy or too smart, and a girl like her would let him get to third base because she didn’t get too many chances with a boy like him. He knew this, and he began to prepare her since he had less than an hour on the bus.
They chattered for a little bit and he slid towards her and reached for her hand. You had to make them think that you liked them. You couldn’t just go straight to the place that he hoped he’d end up. She gave her hand to him but scooted herself closer to the window. He elbowed a perky breast. She couldn’t blame an elbow – that was just an accident. She moved her arm to deflect him.
Well, he wasn’t going to beg, and besides, he probably didn’t want to get all excited and then be able to do nothing about it. Anyways, her baby powder perfume was pretty goddamned cloying if you asked him.
He moved away from her and began talking to someone else, and it wasn’t long until they were unloading to play for the president.
They lined up and began the warm up. The wind instruments needed to get their wind, but Kent didn’t need to get anything. The drums were just there and took little effort. They were playing only one ensemble, and it was a combination of cheerful patriotic songs that culminated in “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”
They stood like soldiers, ready for the president’s approach, and Mr. Swink lifted his baton in preparation. He looked across the band to make sure everyone was ready, and he caught Kent’s eye, and that is when Kent heard the voice.
“Hello, friend,” it said, ringing through his head. Kent closed his eyes and counted to ten and missed the opening note by one count. When he opened his eyes, he saw a caricature of a man conducting the band. He had a comical bow tie and big, bellowing pants, like a clown. Yes, he looked a great deal like a clown, and when he smiled, he had razor sharp teeth, and he started singing in Kent’s head. “Well, there’s trouble in River City and that starts with ‘t’ and that rhymes with ‘d’ and that stands for devil.”
Kent threw up his buttery toast, and the band was in chaos, and Mr. Swink came running, and the clown was gone, and the president drove by in his dark limousine with its dark windows, and it started to rain. The only saving grace is that he threw up all over Ellen, who was twirling her stupid baton.
When they got back to school, Kent went to the nurse’s office, and she told him that his temperature was a little high and gave him a Coke to drink and sent him back to class. It wasn’t long until the principal called them into the gymnasium and sent them home early. The girls were crying, and the boys were silent, and Kent began walking to Dana Drive.
He wasn’t a religious person, really, and he had sort of fallen out with the church if you want to know the truth. When he was twelve, he decided that he was too old for a babysitter and too old to be forced into the Sunday School class with the framed prints of Jesus and the lambs and Jesus knocking on the door of your heart while Jesus, himself, had a heart made out of thorns, and you know you wouldn’t really open the door if he showed up with that blood dripping down his chest.[I wish I had written this!!!]
Knowing that money was tight, Kent made his proposal a package deal. His mother agreed reluctantly, and for two glorious weeks, he took up smoking and tore around the neighborhood like a wild Indian until Officer Bailey drug him home by his collar and told his mother that he was lucky that they were neighbors and he didn’t have to bring him home in handcuffs and somebody, by God, better do something about this boy.
He was certain that he’d get Bunny back to babysit, but his mother took it as a sure sign that he needed church, and he was forced to stay in the house the rest of the summer and now he had to go to church on Sunday and Wednesday, and he had to join that stupid RA thing that was a very poor substitute for Boy Scouts.
It wasn’t long until he was pacing the floor, waiting for his mother to get home from work so he could be free. Sometimes Bunny, in between one boy or another, would feel sorry for him and come over and play checkers, but most of the time he spent with As the World Turns and The Edge of Night.
When school started in September, he was sorry that he couldn’t find out what was going on with his stories. If he could run home fast enough, he could catch the very end of The Edge of Night, and sometimes Tina, the lady down the street who was pregnant with her second kid, would fill him in on what he missed. She left out what he knew were the best parts, but he was able to get the gist.
He could not get out of Sunday School, no matter how much he begged and pleaded and said he hated the soggy cookies and watery Kool-aid they made the kids drink and he was too old for that stuff anyway.
Then the preacher’s wife died in childbirth, leaving him alone with this tiny baby girl, and things kind of perked up. He watched for two years while the ladies at the church assisted Brother Darryl with Cornelia because he was absolutely helpless.
At first, it was the married mothers who took turns taking care of her, and when that got tiresome, the deacons had a meeting and told Brother Darryl that he could stay at home in the parsonage and get his work done so that Baby Cornelia did not have to be passed around from one woman to the next.
Kent hoped that would make the preacher happy, but it didn’t seem to help, and each Sunday he got more and more droopy and his sermons got less and less fervid, and when he went a whole month without talking about hell fire and brimstone, the deacons stepped in and the single ladies started helping around the house. With that, the mothers were now happy because there was something to gossip about, and Kent’s mother said it was nothing but a Peyton Place at that church, and the next thing he knew, he didn’t have to go anymore.
But today, walking home from school after vomiting on Ellen and her baton, Kent thought of Brother Darryl and wondered if he was still at the church.
“What difference does it make?” the voice in his head said. “You’re going to hell anyway.” Kent started running, and he almost knocked Bunny McGregor down, but he couldn’t stop. When he got home, he locked himself in the house and paced noisily around his mother’s bed until his commotion finally woke her and she got up to make coffee.
He told her about the president and, of course, they had to turn on the tv and watch for hours to see what was shaping up. He began to put the voice behind him, and by eight o’clock, he was asleep on the couch, exhausted from his late night walk around the cemetery and his band disaster.
He woke up at three that morning, and his mother was gone to work.
He was alone in the house, and he was afraid. He was accustomed to being alone since his mother had taken the night shift, but he hadn’t heard the voices in his head in several years. He looked out the window and saw the darkness, a night darker than he could ever remember, but down at the doctors’ house, he saw a dim light that might have come from a fire place. He felt completely alone. He wouldn’t even know where to run if anything happened.
He took his mother’s vodka, hidden behind the rice and flour, and poured some into a glass of orange juice. He sputtered, and it burned his stomach, but in a few minutes, he began to feel a little calmer. He drank another glass and put the bottle back. He went to bed, and the voice in his head was silent.
The next morning, his mother made breakfast before she went to lie down, and he felt better. He ate the scrambled eggs with plain toast and poured his Coke bottle over a glass of ice. He couldn’t, in fact, remember a better meal. He did the dishes for his mom and watched tv for a little while. He missed the Saturday morning cartoons, and he could only stand so much of the newscasters going over and over yesterday’s events, so finally, he wandered outside.
An eerie calm pervaded the street. It reminded him of a few years ago when he and his mother had sat in the living room with the door locked and the lights out waiting for the bombs from Cuba. He laughed at the thought of their locked doors that would somehow withstand a missile intended to blow the whole state away.
The mothers were keeping their kids inside, it seemed, as if to protect them from some would-be assassin hiding around every corner. The fresh air felt good, and Kent started walking. He ended up at the church with its doors open, and a few people were inside praying. Brother Darrell, now happily married with a second daughter, greeted him at the door.
“Come in,” he said. “You can go down and pray if you like.”
“Something’s wrong with me.” Kent was more startled than Brother Darrell at this revelation, but the preacher led him out of the sanctuary and down the hall to his office. Kent spilled his guts, and when it was over, Brother Darrell told him that he was under the influence of a demon, either that or it was drugs, and they should pray about it.
While he prayed with his hand on Kent’s shoulder, Kent looked around the room. He saw the picture of Jesus knocking on the door to your heart, and Jesus turned to look at him. He smiled a mouth full of razor sharp teeth, and the lambs in the other picture began to bleat in unison. Jesus stepped out of the doorway and into the other picture and began systematically biting the heads off of the sheep, and Kent closed his eyes and felt the hand of the preacher clamp down on his shoulder harder and harder and harder until he wriggled away and started backing out of the room.
“You know, Kent,” Brother Darrell said, “there are evil spirits in this world, and they try to take your soul. God is your only hope, and you need to get your heart right with him.”
Kent was familiar with the salvation speech; it was the end of the show every Sunday morning. He decided that, if he was going to find God, he wasn’t going to find him here. He left the church without a word and went back home.
His sister Gina was there, and that was a relief because he wouldn’t feel so alone. He and Gina watched tv together, and she started rummaging through the cupboards, announcing that she would make them something to eat.
“Do you really believe in God, Genie?” he asked. She turned to him, her arms full of lettuce and carrots and a tomato.
“Of course, Kenny Don’t you?”
“I think so. I guess so, I mean yes, I suppose so.”
“You know, Kent,” she said, “one thing I do believe is that God isn’t at a church or in a book, and no one can find him for you.”
He knew that was true, and he did believe that Jesus had restful arms and teeth that weren’t razors. But he didn’t know Jesus, and apparently, he never would. Apparently, Jesus didn’t give a rat’s ass about him or he wouldn’t be standing here with visions of bloody sheep in his head.
After dinner, he and Gina played cards with their mother, and he realized it was a Saturday night and he was sitting at home listening to his mother and his sister trade recipes. At least, he reminded himself, he was not alone.
The television droned on in the back ground, and Gina laid down the ace of spades. “Gin,” his mother said, slapping her cards on the table. Kent tossed his down and got up to get a Coke bottle. He glanced at the tv, and there was Julian Black, giving the country an update. He looked away, and the voice in his head said, “you know this is your fault, don’t you? You killed the president.” His mother shuffled the cards and began dealing. She didn’t see it.
Kent shook the voice out of his head and plinked ice into a glass. That was ridiculous! He had nothing to do with the president’s murder. He wasn’t even there.
Then he saw the television go static out of the corner of his eye, and when he looked up, there he was, throwing up all over the band. Then there he wasn’t, throwing up all over the band. There he was, playing right on cue the medley they had practiced over and over and over in preparation for this day.
In this reel, the president’s car stopped, and he rolled down his window to wave at the band. It was only a few minutes, but Kent understood that, in those few minutes, the president would have lived. He wouldn’t have been in the street at that exact minute with his top pulled down, waving at that crowd, sitting up and looking over at just the right angle for that crazy Oswald kid to shoot him. Kent understood, too, the laws of action and reaction, if you will, and he knew then that his erping episode moved the president along so that he was there, in that exact moment.
The tv sped up, running through the president’s events in mere seconds and then slowed down as he rounded the corner over by the courthouse. Kent knew that courthouse. He had gone there with his mother to settle some old business about his father, who died in Korea. The tv showed all of the people shouting and waving at the president, and then he heard the first shot. The president looked up, startled, and then turned his face to the television and said, “You did this Kent. You.” And then the president, with only a bloody stump for a head, fell into his wife’s lap.
He must have stood there, with his mouth hanging open, for at least ten minutes, but when he looked down, his Coke had not even stopped foaming. He looked back at the tv, and it was normal. It was two men in a smoky room talking about the coming months and what the new president would face.
He went to bed.
That night he was restless, dreaming of headless sheep bleating from somewhere deep in their bowels and a man in a clown suit with a conductor’s baton counting out in rhythm, “Your fault. Your fault. This is. All your fault. Your fault . . . “
He rode that last mile in the back seat of the limousine, an added seat behind the president and Mrs. Kennedy, and he clawed at his throat over the rancid roses that smelled of blood. In his dream, the president told him what he must do.
On Sunday morning, he ate pancakes with his mother and sister, and his mother, maybe sensing that he felt out of sorts, heated up the syrup on the stove and fried the bacon extra crispy just the way he liked it. His sister made hash browns with onions and bell peppers left over from last night’s salad, and he poured ketchup over them and ate a whole pan full.
While they did dishes, he went around the house and made the beds and put the dirty clothes in the hamper and then took out the trash.
His sister got ready to leave at ten o’clock, and when her car would not start, Kent offered to drive her home. Her boyfriend would come to look at her car when he got home from his mother’s Sunday dinner of roast beef and new potatoes.
On the way to her house, which was on the other side of the city, she chattered about her job and the promotion she was hoping for because everyone knows that she deserved to be the office manager and she was, by far, the smartest woman there, but her dresses might be a little long, and maybe she should hem some of them. But maybe that was the wrong way to go and besides, her boyfriend might not like that, and she thought he was the one this time, and she wouldn’t risk losing him, not for any job in the world.
Finally, Kent dropped her off at her apartment and began his journey to redemption. He knew where he had to go, and even though he wasn’t supposed to drive to Dallas, he hardly thought he would get in trouble this time.
When he got to the hospital, there were guards walking around, and they didn’t seem to want to let him in, but he convinced them that his sister was there, having her baby, and thankfully, thankfully, they didn’t ask for her name. He took the stairs to the maternity ward, but when it was time to get off, he just kept on walking until he found himself at the exit to the roof. The door was locked, but he pushed it with all of his weight, and it opened for him as he knew it would.
He stood away from the edge, looking across Dallas. He could see the overpass where the president was shot and he could hear an ambulance coming down the street. The sirens played over and over in his head, closer, and closer. He walked to the edge where he knew he would have to jump. He must die for what he did to the president. To the country.
The ambulance wailed into the emergency room drive, and Lee Harvey Oswald was rushed through the doors.
Kent climbed onto the ledge and said to God, “please forgive me.”
Flying in the air, he felt a perfect release. He was now without blame. Without blemish, and the first time since he was six years old, he was without fear. The world was finally silent.
[POWERFUL AS HELL ENDING!!]
"Please to let Sanji to tell you now story of small dark Bengali boy and huge white swimming tiger in clear pool deep in jungle wet" Sanji, August, 2008
"I used to get in a fight nearly every day at school, and I usually won. If ever I came home without a mark on my body somewhere, my mother would think I skipped school that day." Dévon, September, 2008
"Je me battais presque tous les jours à l'école, et je gagnais assez souvent. Si jamais j'étais rentré chez moi sans une tache quelquepart sur mon corps, ma mère aurait cru que j'avais grillé la classe ce jour-là. Dévon, septembre, 2008
______
"The only way to escape the crowds of niggers everywhere was to duck into a bookstore." Joey Leguay, 2002, or thereabouts
"I used to get in a fight nearly every day at school, and I usually won. If ever I came home without a mark on my body somewhere, my mother would think I skipped school that day." Dévon, September, 2008
"Je me battais presque tous les jours à l'école, et je gagnais assez souvent. Si jamais j'étais rentré chez moi sans une tache quelquepart sur mon corps, ma mère aurait cru que j'avais grillé la classe ce jour-là. Dévon, septembre, 2008
______
"The only way to escape the crowds of niggers everywhere was to duck into a bookstore." Joey Leguay, 2002, or thereabouts
#7
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Brutal and savage avenger of nothing in particular
Posted 25 January 2009 - 12:34 AM
QUOTE (Grace @ Jan 25 2009, 12:16 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
This was the first one I wrote a long, long time ago, and I got it out and changed it completely to fit the whole theme thing.
I think we can all identify with voices in our heads and the scary religious imagery we wrestled with as kids.
I particularly like when Jesus moves from one picture to the other and bites the heads off the sheep. That's the kind of thing a kid would worry about.
I'm working on my fifth one right now, but it's not going anywhere yet.
Anyway, I posted the story this afternoon and just wanted to bump it since it got buried pretty fast.
I think we can all identify with voices in our heads and the scary religious imagery we wrestled with as kids.
I particularly like when Jesus moves from one picture to the other and bites the heads off the sheep. That's the kind of thing a kid would worry about.
I'm working on my fifth one right now, but it's not going anywhere yet.
Anyway, I posted the story this afternoon and just wanted to bump it since it got buried pretty fast.
I was highlighting the words and phrases that I feel make the story one of your strongest.
The ending is dynamite.
I really mean it, Grace, you have a talent....and this series has endless possibilities.
You have captured the fears of Kent's type of boy....which, minus the religion, I was very much like.
Devon
"Please to let Sanji to tell you now story of small dark Bengali boy and huge white swimming tiger in clear pool deep in jungle wet" Sanji, August, 2008
"I used to get in a fight nearly every day at school, and I usually won. If ever I came home without a mark on my body somewhere, my mother would think I skipped school that day." Dévon, September, 2008
"Je me battais presque tous les jours à l'école, et je gagnais assez souvent. Si jamais j'étais rentré chez moi sans une tache quelquepart sur mon corps, ma mère aurait cru que j'avais grillé la classe ce jour-là. Dévon, septembre, 2008
______
"The only way to escape the crowds of niggers everywhere was to duck into a bookstore." Joey Leguay, 2002, or thereabouts
"I used to get in a fight nearly every day at school, and I usually won. If ever I came home without a mark on my body somewhere, my mother would think I skipped school that day." Dévon, September, 2008
"Je me battais presque tous les jours à l'école, et je gagnais assez souvent. Si jamais j'étais rentré chez moi sans une tache quelquepart sur mon corps, ma mère aurait cru que j'avais grillé la classe ce jour-là. Dévon, septembre, 2008
______
"The only way to escape the crowds of niggers everywhere was to duck into a bookstore." Joey Leguay, 2002, or thereabouts
#8
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Brutal and savage avenger of nothing in particular
Posted 25 January 2009 - 12:37 AM
Expurgation and rationalization of guilt played across the huge historic setting...
Kafka-esque....if I'm not being too trite. The guilt angle is Kafka-esque!!
Devon
Kafka-esque....if I'm not being too trite. The guilt angle is Kafka-esque!!
Devon
"Please to let Sanji to tell you now story of small dark Bengali boy and huge white swimming tiger in clear pool deep in jungle wet" Sanji, August, 2008
"I used to get in a fight nearly every day at school, and I usually won. If ever I came home without a mark on my body somewhere, my mother would think I skipped school that day." Dévon, September, 2008
"Je me battais presque tous les jours à l'école, et je gagnais assez souvent. Si jamais j'étais rentré chez moi sans une tache quelquepart sur mon corps, ma mère aurait cru que j'avais grillé la classe ce jour-là. Dévon, septembre, 2008
______
"The only way to escape the crowds of niggers everywhere was to duck into a bookstore." Joey Leguay, 2002, or thereabouts
"I used to get in a fight nearly every day at school, and I usually won. If ever I came home without a mark on my body somewhere, my mother would think I skipped school that day." Dévon, September, 2008
"Je me battais presque tous les jours à l'école, et je gagnais assez souvent. Si jamais j'étais rentré chez moi sans une tache quelquepart sur mon corps, ma mère aurait cru que j'avais grillé la classe ce jour-là. Dévon, septembre, 2008
______
"The only way to escape the crowds of niggers everywhere was to duck into a bookstore." Joey Leguay, 2002, or thereabouts
#10
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Brutal and savage avenger of nothing in particular
Posted 25 January 2009 - 12:45 AM
You know, Grace, if I knew more about Texas, Dallas, and the assassination, I would ask your permission to write a Dana Drive episode myself.
I might just do that. But not without your permission.
Devon
I might just do that. But not without your permission.
Devon
"Please to let Sanji to tell you now story of small dark Bengali boy and huge white swimming tiger in clear pool deep in jungle wet" Sanji, August, 2008
"I used to get in a fight nearly every day at school, and I usually won. If ever I came home without a mark on my body somewhere, my mother would think I skipped school that day." Dévon, September, 2008
"Je me battais presque tous les jours à l'école, et je gagnais assez souvent. Si jamais j'étais rentré chez moi sans une tache quelquepart sur mon corps, ma mère aurait cru que j'avais grillé la classe ce jour-là. Dévon, septembre, 2008
______
"The only way to escape the crowds of niggers everywhere was to duck into a bookstore." Joey Leguay, 2002, or thereabouts
"I used to get in a fight nearly every day at school, and I usually won. If ever I came home without a mark on my body somewhere, my mother would think I skipped school that day." Dévon, September, 2008
"Je me battais presque tous les jours à l'école, et je gagnais assez souvent. Si jamais j'étais rentré chez moi sans une tache quelquepart sur mon corps, ma mère aurait cru que j'avais grillé la classe ce jour-là. Dévon, septembre, 2008
______
"The only way to escape the crowds of niggers everywhere was to duck into a bookstore." Joey Leguay, 2002, or thereabouts
#12
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should of, would of, could of
Posted 25 January 2009 - 12:08 PM
Thanks to the guest who bumped this. I think it's the story that more people would like.
Devon, Dana Drive is a real street in Fort Worth that my aunt lived on in 1963, but honestly that is all I know about it. And of course, I would love to read your story. Please add to the whole!
Devon, Dana Drive is a real street in Fort Worth that my aunt lived on in 1963, but honestly that is all I know about it. And of course, I would love to read your story. Please add to the whole!
I want to be just like Grace Kelly. Except the cut-off-head part.
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PROXY WHORE 1000! EVERYONE GET ON YOUR KNEES AND...
Posted 25 January 2009 - 12:30 PM
QUOTE (Grace @ Jan 25 2009, 11:08 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Thanks to the guest who bumped this. I think it's the story that more people would like.
I've gotta tellya... I avoid "short story" threads as one might avoid plague, due to my having an aversion to reading most fiction, for some strange reason. I read- more than a little- but almost exclusively non-fiction. Therefore, I had no idea you were such a writer. After several comments to posts of yours went ignored, I assumed I was on your ignore list, and thus, ignored you as well. Your comment about my work having let me know you were, in fact, "out there", led me to click on this thread. Now that I've read [admittedly only this story, so far], I can at least say with certainty that you are either very gifted or superbly trained (or both). I'm a stickler for spelling, grammar, etc., and your work is as polished as a diamond, as well as very descriptive. I have to attend a memorial service today, but later I intend to look up some of your other entries. Just a warning, though- comments will surely follow...
Doing the job Americans just won't do...
#14
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should of, would of, could of
Posted 25 January 2009 - 12:35 PM
QUOTE (DestroyerOfLies @ Jan 25 2009, 11:30 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
QUOTE (Grace @ Jan 25 2009, 11:08 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Thanks to the guest who bumped this. I think it's the story that more people would like.
I've gotta tellya... I avoid "short story" threads as one might avoid plague, due to my having an aversion to reading most fiction, for some strange reason. I read- more than a little- but almost exclusively non-fiction. Therefore, I had no idea you were such a writer. After several comments to posts of yours went ignored, I assumed I was on your ignore list, and thus, ignored you as well. Your comment about my work having let me know you were, in fact, "out there", led me to click on this thread. Now that I've read [admittedly only this story, so far], I can at least say with certainty that you are either very gifted or superbly trained (or both). I'm a stickler for spelling, grammar, etc., and your work is as polished as a diamond, as well as very descriptive. I have to attend a memorial service today, but later I intend to look up some of your other entries. Just a warning, though- comments will surely follow...
Wow, thanks DOL!
I'm sorry if I seemed to have ignored your posts. Honestly, I don't recall seeing them. Given that many people don't interact with me, I'm usually a piranha when someone responds. LOL
Sorry you have to attend a memorial service. : (
I look forward to more exchanges with you!
ETA: The group of stories is set during the weekend that the president was killed, and all of the protagonists live on a street called "Dana Drive" in Fort Worth. I just didn't want you to think the whole series was weird or anything; I did it on purpose.
I want to be just like Grace Kelly. Except the cut-off-head part.
#15
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Brutal and savage avenger of nothing in particular
Posted 25 January 2009 - 08:53 PM
QUOTE (Grace @ Jan 25 2009, 12:08 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Thanks to the guest who bumped this. I think it's the story that more people would like.
Devon, Dana Drive is a real street in Fort Worth that my aunt lived on in 1963, but honestly that is all I know about it. And of course, I would love to read your story. Please add to the whole!
Devon, Dana Drive is a real street in Fort Worth that my aunt lived on in 1963, but honestly that is all I know about it. And of course, I would love to read your story. Please add to the whole!
Okay... It may not be the next one I post, but I have an idea for it. I am far from being in competition with you. I just wanted to present Dana Drive in another light by another writer.
Love,
Devon
"Please to let Sanji to tell you now story of small dark Bengali boy and huge white swimming tiger in clear pool deep in jungle wet" Sanji, August, 2008
"I used to get in a fight nearly every day at school, and I usually won. If ever I came home without a mark on my body somewhere, my mother would think I skipped school that day." Dévon, September, 2008
"Je me battais presque tous les jours à l'école, et je gagnais assez souvent. Si jamais j'étais rentré chez moi sans une tache quelquepart sur mon corps, ma mère aurait cru que j'avais grillé la classe ce jour-là. Dévon, septembre, 2008
______
"The only way to escape the crowds of niggers everywhere was to duck into a bookstore." Joey Leguay, 2002, or thereabouts
"I used to get in a fight nearly every day at school, and I usually won. If ever I came home without a mark on my body somewhere, my mother would think I skipped school that day." Dévon, September, 2008
"Je me battais presque tous les jours à l'école, et je gagnais assez souvent. Si jamais j'étais rentré chez moi sans une tache quelquepart sur mon corps, ma mère aurait cru que j'avais grillé la classe ce jour-là. Dévon, septembre, 2008
______
"The only way to escape the crowds of niggers everywhere was to duck into a bookstore." Joey Leguay, 2002, or thereabouts
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