It was one of those aimless afternoons...

I've posted before about my story Dunked, but I thought since it is on a free promotion right now I'd say a bit more about it.

The setting is one of favorites, circa 1970's, at the end of one of those lovely long languishing (l.l.l.) summers. As I say in the story,

It was one of those aimless mid-vacation afternoons; not so late in the summer that you thought about going back to school, but around the time you started running out of anything good to talk about.

Time seemed to stretch out forever for us - unlike now, when it seems to zip by just too damn fast. Me and my friends would ride around our small city, and sit on each other's stoops, or go to the pool, or a pick-up game of scrub, or... well, just anything to fill the time. I remember all day Monopoly sessions, I mean, who does that anymore?

But Dunked isn't about waxing eloquent about this bygone era – it's about Hell – or more accurately, the things a thirteen year old worries about. I should come clean and say, yes, I did know a pair of twins growing up, but no I am not Duane in the story (well, no more than any writer is part of his characters). But I love the idea of looking at something like baptism, which can be a very heavy topic, through the lens of a somewhat naive teenager. Now, the Wheeler twins don't think they are naive at all – in fact, they think they know a lot when they tell Duane that he is headed to Hell (because he has never been baptized.)

The debate that ensues is not on the level of say Socrates and Crito (off-topic, I am in the middle of a philosophy class right now), but the Wheelers raise some significant points... in their minds anyway. After a sparring match in the Wheeler basement, Duane puts out his argument:

I continued, "Okay, what if someone's really bad? A bank robber, a guy in prison for shooting someone, or a killer. What about them?"

"Are they baptized?" Ray asked.

"Yeah, they're baptized. But the only damn day they were ever in church was when they were a baby," I said.

"I dunno, I guess they got a shot," said Lloyd.

"They could get into heaven, then?" My voice went up a couple of notes.

"Yeah. I guess."

Then I drew back for the clincher. "What about the most evilest son of a bitch around?"

"What, like those guys in James Bond? Dr. Whatsisface?" Ray asked.

"No. Somebody real." I paused for a second. "Hitler! What about Adolph Fucking Hitler? You gonna tell me he's got a shot at not going to Hell if someone dribbled water on his head when he was a little German baby."

This story has always been one of my favorites, and these characters pop up in different ways in my fiction. Possibly the twins that I have mentioned will land on this blog at some point (or read the story), and say, HEY! That's us! (And I'd love that.)

Another short story, The Plate Spinner, comes as a bonus with Dunked. Brian is having one helluva bad day, starting with the gift of a decapitated bird (from the cat). Things go from annoying to, phone solicitors, to girl guide cookie saleskids, to the emergency room at the hospital.

The Plate Spinner was a finalist in Glimmer Train's Fiction Contest.

You can pick up Dunked for free until Thurs.

Bent Highway: Chapter Nine

 

Starshine

I woke up to the smell of cow shit mingled with motor oil and old cigarettes. Crammed into a small space, strapped into something, and moving fast. Damn fast. I moved my head, pain knifed through my skull, the driver spat on the floor of the truck.

“Morning Starshine.” A chortle.

“What - where?” I tried to sit up, held fast by the strap and buckle.

“Now where the hell are you fixing to go? You ever jumped from a vee-hickle going,” a pause, “79 mile an hour?”

The outside slid into sharpness, as if someone twisted a long lens. I remembered the huge guy, what was his name again, and that wolf of his - they drove me somewhere, then what?

“Why did you hit me?”

Another chortle.

“Hell, I barely grazed you. If I woulda nailed you head on, well, we wouldn’t be talking right now, Twinkle-toes.” He reached into a breast pocket of his overalls, yanked out a badly rolled smoke and lit it off the car lighter. He pulled down on the John Deere cap.

“But why did you—”

“What the hell were you doing down in that ditch anyway? If you’re one of those faggot dope-smoking hitchhikers, then you should be up on the shoulder wagging your limp-wristed thumb in the air.”

It came back. His truck trying to run us down - the slide into the ditch, and then she…

“I thought I saw someone else with you, but it must have been the light. Weird as hell this morning.”

The ground opened up and swallowed her. How can that even happen?

“Tell you the truth,” a drag and another spit onto the floor, “I am not sure why I did it. Woke up with one helluva hangover. Jungle drums were pounding and there weren’t an ounce of liquor in the house. She must of poured it down the toilet before she split. So I am driving along, you unnerstand, in one piss-poor of a mood, and I see you hitchin—”

“I wasn’t—”

“And something comes over me. Damn, like a case of the mean reds, or whatever they call it. I figured I’d just scare you, but if I would have bounced you off the bumper, that would have been just fine with me.”

How can ground just open up like that? She said it was a rip.

“Anyway. I’m over it.” 

He reached across and pushed my head forward.

“Fuck! What are you doing?”

He let his hand go and my head fell back.

“You’ll live. Could use a stitch or two, but shit, I’ve had worse. Had an angry-ass cow just about cave in my forehead this one time. I showed her.”

Damn. I remembered that. My mom told me how it happened. She made us go to the hospital ward to visit.

“You’re Lester.”

“What? How do you— oh, the truck. You don’t look like the sort that needs painting. You got some lovenest somewheres you need painted a shade of faggy pink?”

“Why do you think I’m gay?”

“I didn’t say you were gay – I said you were a fucking homo. One look at ya told me that.”

I hadn’t even been aware of what I was wearing. Black jeans and a bright purple sweater - a colour that would have been big a couple of decades ago. Somehow, when we went through the rip, after Walt spit us out, our clothes changed. Though, I couldn’t remember what Chalk Girl was wearing. Again, I saw her face disappear into that black pit.

“And I don’t hear you denying it.”

I pulled my sweater away from me. 

“You telling me that the colour of this makes me gay?”

“Is that what they’re calling it now? Ha! Ruining a perfectly good word on the likes of you sissies. And I tell you, if you ain’t a homo, then why the jewellery? Ain’t that a signal or some damn thing? Archie in the bar told me that before we went over and laid the boots to a couple of pumpers.”

Lester reached across and cuffed me on the ear. It stung like hell when he hit the small hoop earring. I reached up and felt it. I hadn’t had my ears pierced since the 80’s. It embarrassed my mother, dad had long since lit out. I’d wanted one as a teenager, after seeing hippies on the TV. They seemed a million miles away from the backward existence I was trapped in.

“Why are you driving me?”

“Well, ain’t that the 64 dollar question. I guess you could say ole Lester actually has a conscience. Surprised the hell out of me, too. I saw you laying in the ditch, off in la-la land, and I figured I’d just give you a boot to the head and leave it at that. Then I got to thinking about how that would stain my fine pair of Tony Lamas. You see these? 800 smackers. That’s a shitload of painted living rooms. And then damn if I didn’t start thinking about my sister. She always said they were a waste of money.”

His sister?

“Course she’s just like that. And I don’t blame her. That deadbeat of a brother-in-law, went out for a pack of smokes and stayed out. If I ever see that two-bit scum sucker, I’m not going to give a damn about the Lama’s. He’ll study them first-hand going through his teeth.”

Wait, brother-in-law? Damn was this when—

“And now that she’s living with me I get to hear it first hand. All about the spending of money, and working for a living, and actually giving a damn about – what the hell?”

Like something out of a 50’s comedy, we both rubber-necked around to the sound of a roaring engine behind us. A flash of yellow, and a cracked grill was gaining on us, and it didn’t look like it was about to pass.

Lester pushed down and the truck whined, and then kicked - like it had found some hidden gear - my body pressed into the seat with the sudden acceleration. I glanced over and watched the needle hit 85.

“Bunch of fucking hippies - think they’re gonna grill me.”

The road wasn’t quite gravel, but it sure wasn’t asphalt either. It felt like we were driving on water, the back end started a fishtail and Lester made a quick move to straighten it out. It happened again, and Lester eased the truck back into place - splitting the middle of the road. Turns out that Lester’s talents were not limited to smoking, swearing and kicking. He could also drive like a son-of-a-bitch.

Behind us, the car had lost no distance. In fact, it had gained enough for me to see the spider cracks in the windshield, and just make out the Nascar logo.

“Pop the box.” Lester pointed to a spot ahead of my knees.

It took a second. Another slide of the truck. The needle passed 90. I flipped open the glove compartment, already knowing what I’d find in there.

“You know how to work one of those, Starshine?”

“What the hell do you want me to do?” I yelled, barely heard over the trucks engine and the spitting gravel. Any moment I pictured us airborne, and rolling into our own ditch pit.

Lester jerked a thumb toward the back window. I grabbed the gun, a flash of memory to Harold’s place.

“Yeah, it was my old man’s - easy peasy lemon squeezy.” 

I watched Harold slide back the top half of the pistol, and fire three rounds into a cutout of Ronald Reagan that he’d nailed to the big oak in his backyard.

I rolled down the truck window. It was a helluva lot different than drinking beers and taking aim at a Republican stuck to a tree. For one thing, Lester had to have it up to near a hundred. The wind pushed against my forearm as I reached across, and pulled back the slide. 

Lester hit a bump and I fired one off into the air.

“Make ‘em count - I only got three in the magazine!”

“Just drive the damn truck,” I shouted into the wind.

There was about as much chance of me hitting anything on the Charger as Lester getting a citizenship award. It didn’t help when I spied something coming out the passenger window of the charger. Something in the shape of a shotgun. The exact shape.

As goofy as it was, I had one clear thought in my mind.

Help me Obi-wan.

I fired.

The bullet eased out of the end of the barrell, a red L painted on the edge of the casing, in a slow spin, and with the slightest of arc. My vision zoomed into the exact spot where it plunged into the Charger’s front left tire.

Lester shouted something I didn’t hear.

The blowout sounded – out of sync with the rest of the car that bent and slid across the road. The driver’s side lifted and I waited for the car to roll.

And waited.

A dust cloud rose up obscuring the Charger. Lester let out another whoop. I ducked my head back into the truck, watching the cloud grow smaller through the rear window.

“Well, maybe I underestimated you, Starshine. You get the Lester Marksman award of the day. I might even pour you a warm pilsner when we get to my place.”

The dust cloud dissipated, leaving a long stretch of empty road.

“I’ll introduce you to my sister. With my luck, she’ll probably like you. And oh yeah, her little shit of a son. I think he might be gay too. Damn. Maybe that is a good word for it.”

Her son.

“You know you look kinda like him. Ha! Maybe you’re some distant relley, and I didn’t even know it. Wouldn’t that a kick in the nuts?”

Yeah. It would be.

Manifestation and Why Even Sucky Reviews Are Great.

One of the exciting things about releasing a novel to the wild (or to the reading public) is that someone, somewhere, will read it – and hopefully review it. 

From a pure promotional standpoint this is huge. I mean, reviews are king in movies, music, restaurants, TV shows, and of course, books. People are less and less likely to part with their hard earned samolians unless they know the product is good. With the rising price of movies, I need to admit that I rely more and more on reviews before I will actually drop the wad of cash down to see something in the theatre. And it just isn't any review - it has to be from a reviewer I respect. There are a few friends that if they tell me to go see a movie, I will seriously consider it (but there are few). Same goes with journalists. I am very wary of the ones writing for newspapers that I wouldn't line my budgie cage with - and I don't even have a budgie!!!

I digress.

Often.

Short of the late Pauline Kael (for whom I would trust to tell me to go watch paint dry... because I know it would be interesting), there are very few movie reviewers that I listen to.

So back to my orginal point of the excitement of book reviews. For me, it goes beyond the whole promo thing, and hoping that a good review will separate readers from their credit cards. Wait, does that make sense? Basically, to go and buy the fucking book is what I am trying to say.

For me, truthfully, it is about finishing the work. The end of the artistic process is when someone else responds to it. The work is not complete until that happens. The fancy-schmancy term is manifestation. Or maybe just, releasing the work into the wild. As I've said at other times, these characters have been in my head for quite some time, years even. How about they go into your head for a while?

Now, this manifestation does not always lead to people loving the work. There is always a chance (and it's a high one, no it's not even a chance) that someone will hate it. And they will tell you. And they will use nasty words like, wooden, cliché, boring, or just plain old shitty. But even this has a value. People have read the work and responded. It makes the work alive. It completes the process. 

That may be a touch to esoteric - but I have been thinking a lot about this manifestation. The other day I received probably my favorite review thus far. That is not to lessen any of the others (I love you all!!!) But C.E. Welsh's review responded to the work in a way that broadened my understanding of the book I'd written.

From the review:

Sometimes the minimal approach missed with me. There were a couple of points where I wanted just a bit more explanation to make sure what I thought was going on was what was actually going on. But, really, just a couple of points - the rest of the time Terlson's approach is a tool, a paintbrush he uses to paint this world that is exactly like our world, except for those strange moments when it isn't.

This makes me consider how I write - the stories I tell, and the way I tell them. But better than that, it takes a step back and shows me what I am painting. Being so close to Correction Line over the years, this has been increasingly difficult to do.

There is a lot more in the review that I have been chewing over - and in the best of ways. 

I want to thank C.E.L. Welsh for his wonderful review, but even more so, for helping complete the work.

Read the whole review here.

Bent Highway: Chapter Eight

Ditch

The hum of tires riding asphalt reverberated through my body, my skin buzzed like current running through wires. Chalk girl took another long pull on the bottle of Mezcal, finishing it. Ahead of us, Walt drove on, once in a while peering in the rearview to see if anyone was following – like, for instance a group of hat wearing men, or a Nascar lover with a shotgun.

“You went back, L?”

Sound felt disconnected again. It took a minute to realize it was Walt that asked the question. Damn sure that wolf-dog could talk.

Chalk girl slumped back in the seat.

“Just drive.”

My leg started to throb and a line of blood appeared under my jeans.

“Why does this keep happening?” I asked her.

She stared straight ahead.

“Where does he think you went?”

She turned and stared at me, studying my face.

“You really don’t know, do you?” She looked away again. “I guess that’s why you weren’t there this time.”

“Some things should not be revisited,” Walt said. “They will change but not in a way that you want.”

The line of blood on my leg thickened.

“Wait. The trailer fire – you were running.” A cut scene flashed through my head. Chalk girl in the field, eyes wide, tears streaming down her face, running toward me. I pounded the side of my head with my fists. “Damn. Sorry, it’s just not there.”

“I can make the change, Walt. I can do it.”

“The trying will take it’s toll,” Walt’s voice dipped down and became gutteral. “We’re coming out.”

“What do you mean we’re—”

My voice was lost in the rushing wind that sliced through the car, and somehow, through my body. My veins rippled under the skin, blood being pushed upstream, against the normal flow. I blacked out. I think. Small explosions of light appeared in the darkness and the flash of a face that I recognized, but could not name, floated above me – or what I thought was above. It was if someone threw me in a washing machine and hit the spin button.

* * *

When light returned, I was upright, and walking down a gravel road. Ahead, a figure emerged from the ditch, her black jacket like a drop of ink against the vast wheat field behind her. She stood and waited until I reached her side.

“Where’s Walt? And that dog?”

“I guess we split at the rip. He might be up the road. Or he could be decades away. It happens.” She pointed to a crossroads in the distance. “You recognize that?”

“The road? This place? No, I don’t think so - why would I?”

“Well, it’s not in my memory. Rips sometimes take something from our past, or future… though that almost never happens. That’s where we come out. I am pretty sure I’ve never been around here before.”

She started walking and I followed. The wind picked up, a flashback to what happen before the rip – but this was a warm breeze, washing across the field, ocean-like. The blood on my leg had disappeared again. 

“Where did Walt not want you to go?”

“You’ve been there – more than once. It’ll come back to you.”

“But he said you shouldn’t go there. That it would take its toll. What did—”

“Walt plays the father figure too much. And who would want a guy like that as a father any— shit, look out.”

The cloud of dust, which only seconds ago had appeared on the horizon, was now a white half-ton barrelling toward us. She grabbed my shirt and we both dove towards the ditch. We tumbled together down the side, skin burning against the gravel of the shoulder and then slamming into the soft dirt. Her elbow jammed into my eye, and pinlights filled my vision. She rolled away from me, and I glimpsed a line across the back of her neck, a healed over cut. Freshly healed over.

The ditch was only a few feet below the road. I got onto all fours, pain shooting across my back, and watched the truck skid to a halt. It did a police turn and gunned it. It felt so close, I swore I heard the pistons knocking. I waited to be pinned under the tires. Then, just like watching the pellets from the Nascar guy’s shotgun, bits of gravel hung in the air, then slowly arced away from the truck. It was like watching a ship split the water. The half-ton was only a few hundred yards away, and engine was revving hard - yet, it still hadn’t reached the ditch. My head turned, and I heard frames click, Zapruder-like, until I landed on her face. 

“Who is it?”

The wind had suddenly picked up, and I barely made out her voice.

I clicked back to the truck. It had a decal on the side – it moved slow enough that I could study the letters that hovered above a roughly drawn paintbrush. Lester’s Paint and Repair. What the fuck? Lester? As in my mom’s lazy ass, bourbon drinking, wife-beating brother?

The truck did a slow skid and I ducked as the gravel floated above my head.

A man got out of the truck. He wore paint splattered overalls, a John Deere hat with even larger paint stains and tall shiny black shit-kickers. A mexican lizard was stitched on each one. Whenever he’d come and visit, those cowboy boots were the only clean thing on him.

He towered above me on the edge of the road, slapping a tire-iron in his palm. What’s with all these people that think those are weapons?

He was talking but the words didn’t synch with his mouth.

“City — slicker — faggot.”

“Uncle Lester?”

My voice was small, lost in the now howling wind. He kicked at the road, spraying my face with tiny stones that sped up and slowed down. Something rumbled behind me. I turned, still in the frame-by-frame fashion, to the half-submerged figure behind me. She was sinking into the ground, which had opened up into a too neat, too smooth crevice. I heard the pair of shit-kickers step behind me, and the whish of a tire iron slicing through the air.  

The lips bowed and mouthed a word.

“Rip.”

Then she was gone.

My head made contact with a two-foot long bar of iron.

I leapt, fell, dove, spun into a black pit. 

And I was gone too.

Dunked - a story about going to Hell.

Over the weekend I released a new short to Amazon. This has always been one of my favorite stories (and my reader's , too)

Duane is thirteen years old when he is told by a couple of his best friends (a set of twins, Ray and Lloyd Wheeler) that he is going to hell. His crime? He was never baptized.

Like most writers, I base my work on past experiences (or past lives, maybe?) So yeah, there's a lot of truth in Dunked, and a good smattering of fiction. That is how it should be.

I don't want to give away too much of the story - you can pick it up for a cool 99 cents. Now, if you read my rant on books and boots - you may be going, hey, you said you wouldn't...etc. And it is true, I won't sell my novels at that price. But I would love to get Dunked into the hands of some readers - hence the great price.

If you do pick it up, I'd love to know what you think. On that note, whenever you pick up an independent author's work, please consider reviewing (and by that, I mean an honest review!)

Lastly, for readers of Correction Line and Bent Highway - Dunked does not have any magic realism elements, nor time travel (unless you count that the story takes place in the 1970's). But it does have some pretty damn funny moments and insights from the head of a thirteen-year-old trying to figure out, you know, his salavation and stuff. (NACHO!!!)

You can pick up a e-copy of Dunked Here.

Here is a short excerpt:

It was one of those aimless mid-vacation afternoons; not so late in the summer that you thought about going back to school, but around the time you started running out of anything good to talk about. We needed a break from the heat, so we ditched our bikes outside the pool and headed for the cut-through. Even on days when there was barely a breath of air, you could hear a breeze whish through the poplars and the crabtrees and make that ocean sound us prairie boys only heard in movies.

We scoffed a few apples on the way and jammed our pockets to bulging. We figured the old guy wasn't going to miss a few – the trees were bursting. But that day, when he spied Lloyd, Ray and me climbing his rickety three-board fence, he made a run for us. When Lloyd hucked this apple right at the guy, even Ray's jaw dropped. We hit the ground running and didn't stop until we were three blocks over, gasping for breath, on the steps of the F.U.

We were all chomping on the green crabs, their sourness making our cheeks ache, when the Wheelers started talking about church. Like I said, you ran out of things to talk about. We got tired of arguing if Green Lantern could kick the Flash's ass (never catch him, was Ray's defense), or if it would be better to die in space or in a plane crash (depends on what kind of plane, said Lloyd, adding that he didn't think you could die in space, you'd just freeze. And then you'd drift until some more advanced race thawed you out and you got to screw all the alien chicks. A lot of Lloyd's theories spun in that direction.)