CW 9: Bubble

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.


Bubble

for Beverly Marshall Saling. Thank you for your support of my work and Clarion West.

A single white whisker on a black cat marked a leader, and Bubble the Brave led well. He made his neighborhood rounds twice every day. He rubbed noses and smelled scent messages for status reports. He stiff-walked the impetuous young ones back into right-thinking when they needed it. He rough-tumbled kittens to toughen them up. One memorable week, he and a select crew — Scooter, Pirate, Catfish and Bill — routed a Labrador that had recently moved into the neighborhood. The dog went limping, one eye blind, and never came back. It had to be done: the dog was insane, a cat-killer, a child-biter. It had a taste for blood. One day, Bubble knew, it would have turned on its people. They had no cat to protect them, and Bubble considered them his responsibility too.

And he took his responsibilities seriously, even when they were inconvenient and, like today, uncomfortable. He arrived home from the morning reconnaisance soaking wet and requested entrance, looking forward to a warm corner and some Friskies.

The sliding door opened. Bubble looked up into the eyes of his enemy and commenced the required stare-down.

“Your cat’s too dumb to come in out of the rain,” the Usurper said.

“Move over,” Staff said. She leaned out and scooped Bubble into her arms. He did his best to maintain the stare until she carried him out of the Usurper’s range.

“You’re so wet!” Staff said. “My bubblehead kitty.” She was warm, and she knew how to hold a cat properly. She dried him gently. She offered him fresh Friskies. She stroked his head. She was a very good Staff in every possible way except, recently, in the matter of the bed. It was undignified to jostle the Usurper for space; but she was Bubble’s Staff, so every night he jostled. And every night he was put outside the room, trembling with rage and indignation, halfway tempted to return to his kittenhood, his Bubble the Berserker days when all cloth objects feared his claws and anything breakable trembled before him.

Something had to be done. Bubble curled up and hoped the answer would come in a dream.

It came, instead, in the Usurper himself. A disagreement with Staff, the two of them hissing and spitting and stiff-walking each other around the house. He was pleased to see that Staff had learned a thing or two about that. She drove the Usurper off handily, his frustration and anger trailing him so strongly that Bubble imagined everyone could smell it. It was laced with sadness too, and there was a sense of finality in the Usurper’s gait.

Everything was back in place. Bubble turned his attention to planning the capture of the troublesome mouse in the garage, and that night he slept against Staff’s back.

But Staff was unhappy. Her tail was down, and it stayed that way in spite of his head butts and his purrs. Sometimes he had to remind her about food or bedtime. Sometimes it seemed she didn’t really see him. And she never called him Bubblehead anymore.

Something had to be done.

He asked Catfish to keep an eye on the place. Then Bubble the Bold ate a good breakfast, found the last of the Usurper’s scent on the porch, and began to follow the trail.

So many dangers. The cars, the unfamiliar smells, the delicate negotiations with strange cats to cross their turf. He had to fight his way down one alley against staggering odds. He slept that night under a metal box of rotting food and wondered if he would ever see Staff again. The next morning, he licked the blood crust off his wounds and went on.

And finally, the trail grew strong and definite, and brought him to a door. He began to call.

The door opened. Bubble looked up into the eyes of his enemy.

“What the fuck?” the Usurper said. “Bubble?”

He put a cautious hand down, and Bubble’s respect for him went up a notch. It took a certain amount of courage, after the last time. Bubble sniffed the hand and then butted it.

“Jesus,” the Usurper said. “Susan must be going out of her mind. You’d better come in.”

When Staff opened the door and saw Bubble, she burst into yowls and clutched him so hard that he squeaked. Then she extended one arm to include the Usurper in the clutch.

Bubble the Bringer ate a good lunch and practiced his stare of superiority on the Usurper for a while. Then he went out to the garage. He did catch the mouse, but he let it get away: Staff had her present for the day. There was no point spoiling her.

CW 8: Cuckoo

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.


Cuckoo

for Marny Ashburne. Thank you for your support of my work and Clarion West.

“Is she aware?” Caroline said.

“Of course,” the Clockmaker said, quite dispassionately.

The pendulum swung steadily. A beautiful clock. Old. It might have been keeping time for centuries.

The minute hand clicked to 11:57.

“Is she suffering?”

The Clockmaker said, “It does not cause her physical pain to be small and wooden.”

Caroline thought of Grace. The lithe, restless body immobilized. Those clever fingers touching nothing. Unable to blink, unable to look away, unable to close her eyes to what had become of her.

“You haven’t answered the question,” Caroline said.

The Clockmaker looked at her for the first time as if she were perhaps not so tedious after all, perhaps even a tiny bit interesting. “Time is longer inside the clock; not in a physical sense, but a minute of despair is always longer, no? A minute of knowing oneself alone and lost. A minute of clutching hope, or losing it. And another, and another. Tick tick tick. Then the hour approaches, the mechanism gathers itself, the doors burst open and she is out…”

Out in a dark, dusty storeroom of a shop closed for the holiday weekend. Out in a hallway outside a mudroom where no one paid attention because they were too busy coming and going. Out in the common room of a residential center where people watched from their wheelchairs or the greater prison of their minds. Out in a busy household with people who did not wind the clock for days, for vacation, forever.

The pendulum swung steadily. 11:58.

“So she suffers,” Caroline said.

“Of course,” the Clockmaker said, with a face no longer impassive; underneath the skin, satisfaction moved slowly, like slugs in soil.

Caroline nodded.

“And now you must choose,” the Clockmaker said. “Take her place, and spend your life knowing she walks free. Or walk away yourself, and imagine forever her minutes, her hours, her years here in the clock.” The Clockmaker watched Caroline’s face with great interest now. “This is always such a rich moment,” the Maker said. “It is one thing to give your death for someone. But will you give your life?”

The pendulum swung steadily. 11:59.

“Choose,” the Maker said.

“Oh, go fuck yourself,” Caroline said, and shoved her fist right through the Maker’s face, through the wide O of surprise and what might even perhaps have been delight, right through to the doors of the cuckoo clock as they burst open and Grace came out on the spring, arms reaching, and Caroline opened her hand…

What happened then?

Does it matter?

CW 7: Golden

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.


Golden

for Angelique Corthals. Thank you for your friendship and support.

We all like Coach Adler pretty well, but he is only about three years out of some swamp college in the buttcrack of Mississippi, and he talks funny. So we all thought he was saying Today we talk about mercy. Even me. It was possible: he gets us together after practice to talk about all kinds of things he thinks will improve us, from protecting our knees to the Seven Habits of People Who Read That Book. But although I still care about lacrosse, I don’t really give a shit about being a highly effective person, because what difference does it make if some stupid germ or whatever wait what is he writing on the board…

MRSA

If some stupid germ just takes it all away.

“Mersa,” he said again. “Who knows what it is?” he said. I slumped in my seat and looked at the floor. I am not the person who knows shit like this. I’m not that smart.

“Men Resisting Sexual Advances,” Cummins said. “But no, why would anyone do that?” He’s the funny one.

“My Ride Sucks Ass,” said Molson. He’s not that funny.

Everyone looked at D-Man. Dormanski is the captain and our best midfield. Did you ever take a hose when you were a kid, turn it up full and wave it so the water comes out in a rippling rope? D-Man moves like that on the field. And he’s the smart one. But now he shrugged, and I couldn’t help it: it was stupid, but I just wanted him to notice me.

I lifted my head. “Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus,” I said.

Everyone gave me the Freak Show look. Methi-what? Did he just say cock? Dude, are you a pod person now? Except Coach Adler, who looked like he had just been given a puzzle to solve, and Dormanski, who raised an approving eyebrow. It all made me sit up a little straighter.

“Sanchez,” Coach said, “Good. What can you tell us about MRSA?”

I can’t tell you anything, I thought, but I said, “It’s this infection they can’t fix because drugs don’t work on it.”

“Good,” Coach said again. But it’s not good. It’s fucking evil. And it’s like everywhere, it’s in locker rooms and even in the hospital, you can go into the fucking hospital and get sick with this shit and they can’t fix it and they–

Oh fuck. Everyone is giving me the Defcon 1 Freak Show look. Oh fuck, I just said all that out loud. And now I feel like I can’t breathe, and I go back to looking at the floor like there’s something there that will save me.

Molson said, “Wasn’t there some kid from Cleveland High….”

But it’s Coach Adler who saves me instead. “Tragedy. Don’t let it happen to you. Sanchez is right. MRSA is everywhere. So hygiene is very important. Take showers. Wash your hands, guys. If you see any red spots anywhere…”

There are other things I know about MRSA. I know that aureus means golden. The kid from Cleveland High is Brooks Dunn, and he was effective, Coach Adler would love him, and he was golden in the game. He used to be my friend. And then we were drunk and he wanted to, and I said okay because that’s what you do for friends.

Don’t tell anyone, he said afterward.

Fine, I said.

I’m not gay, man, he said.

Fine, I said. Don’t be gay. No one cares.

Then MRSA ate his leg like it was a golden fucking drumstick, and yesterday they cut it off. He isn’t golden anymore. And I can’t talk to anyone because I swore I wouldn’t tell. Except Dormanski is looking at me, and I remember that he’s the smart one, and I’m thinking maybe I just did.

CW 6: Into the Sea

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.


Into the Sea

for Paul Massie. Thank you for the times you carried me.

The man who walks the cliff’s edge is dreaming wide awake. Below him, the sea spreads to the edge of the world, from which it brings no news; only salty secret whispers to the sand, whroom, whroom, a full-body lick to the rocks, ohhhhhh. Sometimes when the man is on the beach, the sea leaves debris at his feet like a hunting cat lays down the rabbit’s carcass in a cave where hungry kittens tumble and play. Sometimes when the man is in the water, he and the sea are kittens together. Sometimes they play rough.

The man who walks the cliff’s edge is dreaming his life back so that he may live it again. He looks like an old fierce bird, and his old fierce eyes are sea-blue. His life has been like the sea: deep and rough and restless, full of storms and calms. There are monsters in his deeps. Some people, he has drowned. Others, he has carried on astonishing journeys to places farther than they ever thought to go, and left them blinking in the brightness or shadow of themselves.

And now he brings them all back, like opening a treasure chest and pulling up gold one piece at a time. Here is a boy he helped to sing an impossible song. Here is a girl who loved him so much she could not speak around him, except in other people’s words. Here is a woman he treated like the sea treats the rocks, the lick and the leaving behind. Here are all the conversations, all the laughter, all the tears, all the cigarettes and coffee, all the work, all the times we told him I can’t and he said Yes, you can, you can, and the wide-eyed white-hot joy in those blue eyes when we did.

The man on the cliff has dreamed his life back so that he can let it go. Yes, you can, we tell him. And so he leaps, with the same joy.

Whroom, whroom, the sea says. Ohhhhhh.

CW 5: Drive

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.


Drive

for Jude Berg. Thank you for your friendship and support.

Madeline is driving to her lover, and even now, Maddy loves to drive. Not the motorway parking lot, not the commuter creep; certainly not all those red lights. Red is for stop. Driving is for go go go.

She is driving to Lizzie. She has a bottle of water and a go-cup of coffee in the holder. She’s jacked on the starch of road food and the fear that her soul connection to a woman 500 miles away is fraying fast, and all she can do is drive. Give herself to the road, to the big blue hand of day, the huge dark mouth of night, the machine and the music, the journey and the destination.

Lizzie is the end of the road.

Don’t go, she said when Lizzie got the job. But Lizzie had seen more than a path opening before her: she had seen a racetrack, and Lizzie loved to move fast.

I’ll go with you, Maddy said when Lizzie planned the move. But that wasn’t Lizzie’s style. The company’s temporary apartment was so small. All her energy would be in navigating those first important weeks, getting up to speed. We’ve got email. We’ve got Skype. We’ve got instant messaging, Mads, we can reach each other anytime. You won’t even know I’m gone.

“At least let me drive you,” Maddy said when she had given up the hope of everything else, when she felt dull with confusion.

Lizzie laughed. “Flying is faster.”

“By the time you get the taxi to the airport, and go through security, and wait to board, and sit out the weather delays, and fly there, and collect your bags, and get a rental car, and find your way to the new place….” We could drive there, she would have finished, but Lizzie’s face was zipped closed over impatience and anger, the same way her bag was zipped over all her favorite things. And Lizzie was going going gone.

If only she had let Mads drive.

All of Lizzie’s promises. Going going gone. Emails short on detail and shorter in tone. The wrong schedule for Skype, too tired to talk. Instant turned into farther and farther between.

All of Lizzie’s fucking red lights.

But Mads is in her car now, and all the lights are green. She’s got her edge back. It’s in the bag.

Because there are things you can only do in person.

Love.

Rage.

CW 4: The Locks and the Ladders

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.


The Locks and the Ladders

for Ronnie Garvey. I love you, BFF.

Jet poked me hard in the shoulder. “That fucking hurts,” I said.

“No swearing on the bus,” the driver said automatically, without even looking in the mirror.

Jet said, “What’s wrong, Cassie? You look like your cat died.”

“I don’t have a cat.”

“I know, that’s why it’s okay to say it. If you really had a cat, it would be completely insensitive.”

I went back to staring out the school bus window.

“So what is it?” she said. “You look like your pony died.”

You know how someone can make you smile even when you don’t want to? And for a second you want to smack them on the nose for getting inside you like that? But you’ve been best friends since kindergarten, and so it would just be like smacking yourself. That’s Jet. She’s the only one who will tell me I have something nasty showing in my nose. I’m the only one who knows that her brother’s not at college, he’s in rehab in Salt Lake, and she is terrified that he will kill himself. And when I holed up in my room last month crying over Jamal Watson and playing Evanescence so loud it hurt my ears, she snuck to his house in the middle of the night and let the air out of his tires. All four of them. It took her an hour in the rain.

“Cass,” she said. No kidding this time.

The front wheel of the bus hit a pothole. We all went up and down in our seats. The back wheel hit. Up and down, while the world outside the bus stayed level. No one out there felt the jolt. No one raised their hand and said Can you give me a break with the thrill ride, I got motion sickness here! I cannot wait to be a part of that world.

“The Dickhead is moving us to Oklahoma City at the end of the school year,” I said.

“What the fuck?” she said. About a dozen kids responded, in perfection caricature of the driver, “No swearing on the bus,” before they went back to seeing who could complain loudest about a stupid field trip to look at stupid fish.

“They told me this morning.”

Jet opened her mouth. Then she closed it again. She looked like she did the day she told me about Tyler’s crack habit. Five years old again.

“I can’t start crying about this right now,” I said. “I can’t. Not…” Not here, is what I meant. Not in front of these people whose idea of special bonding is to make fun of the bus driver.

She swallowed. “Okay,” she said, and took a breath, and pushed it all back down.

The bus turned into the parking lot of the Ballard Locks. When we got off, Jet rubbed a smudge from under my eye, and then we linked arms and followed the teacher.

We didn’t talk. Jet kept her arm in mine. I thought about living someplace strange with only Dickhead and my mother to rely on. I must have made a noise, because Jet said in a low voice, “Breathe.” I took a deep breath. Pushed it down.

“This way to the fish ladders!” the teacher called to the group. “You want to see persistence in action, salmon are it!” Because we’re just kids and none of us have any fucking idea what it’s like to swim upstream.

“Breathe,” Jet said.

A tunnel sloped down to a room with windows into the underwater. Kids pushed by, snarking about the teacher and the bus driver, Jesus, give it a rest, I thought, and I didn’t want to see the little fish swimming out to the wide wild sea where things were waiting to eat them.

I shook my head. “Cool,” Jet said. “Let’s go watch the boats.”

We stood at the observation rail over the locks. Fishing boats, pleasure boats, crowding in together, waiting for the water to go up and down.

“Breathe,” Jet said. And then, “Look!” But I was thinking Oklahoma City thoughts, and I could only see the boats at the bottom of the nearly-empty lock, tied to bumpers between the narrow walls. I could imagine the fish climbing their ladders.

Jet poked me in the shoulder. “Look,” she said.

Two seagulls were flying above the canal. Just ordinary gulls. No one else paid any attention to them. But the birds rode the air currents as if it were easy, as if they were going nowhere in particular, as if it were enough to fly together in the sun.

I leaned against her shoulder. I breathed. In the lock, the water began to rise.

CW 3: The Public Library

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.


The Public Library

for Graeme Williams. Thank you for supporting my work and Clarion West.

“What did you do before?” the soldier said.

“I was an administrative assistant,” Mary said.

“Camp librarian,” he said. “Military and community. Liase with the teachers and commander’s personal admin. Next.”

“Wait…. you have books?”

He gave her an Are you stupid? look. She flinched. Of course there were no books. Shakespeare was the extra lining in your clothes that kept you warm. Romance novels lit your cookfires. Jane Austen wiped the diarrhea from your child’s bottoms. And the pages of all those self-help books made great stuffing for the chinks in a drafty barracks.

“Figure it out,” he said. “Next.”

She stepped out of line.

When she was six, her family had taken a beach vacation to northern Florida. It rained most every day, and there were giant spiders under the cottage porch. They didn’t scare Mary, but her brother Norton freaked the fuck out. That’s what Yessir called it, when Nordy stood red-faced and ashamed on the carpet in the small living room, and Mary and her mother sat at the kitchen table as they had been told to do while her stepfather put Nordy back on the right path.

“You freaked the fuck out over an insect!”

“Yes, sir,” Nordy said, in such a low voice that Mary could hardly hear it. She leaned close to her mom and said in a whisper, “It’s not an insect. It’s an arach… ara…”

“Arak-nid,” her mom whispered back. And as Yessir ranted at Nordy in the next room, What’ll you do when the terrorists come for your mother and sister, you little faggot?, her mom kept going. “That’s right. From the Latin arachnida. That kind is called a wolf spider. They hunt instead of building webs. They eat bugs.”

Mary thought of Nordy standing scared under Yessir’s bug-eyed fury. “I like spiders,” she said.

“Me, too,” her mom said. “You know, once there was a very wonderful spider called Charlotte. She was the kind that builds webs, and she built her web in a farmyard.” And her mom kept talking, telling her about Charlotte, until Yessir stopped shouting and sent Nordy to his room.

Why was she thinking of Charlotte now? Why was she remembering something that had happened forty years ago, before the spiders of war hunted each other down into nuclear winter and it seemed that all the world had gone to ground in camps like this one, and all the books had become just paper, and the internet was something they all hoped they’d get back one day when the armies were done with it?

And then she knew.

When she explained to the commander’s personal assistant what she wanted, he gave her a pencil and single, precious piece of paper that had only been used a couple times before: there was still space left. Then she began moving among the camp, meeting people, making tiny notes when she needed, but mostly trying to memorize everything she could. A good librarian didn’t need a catalogue of her own resources. A good librarian knew where to find the information.

Five days later, she set up a desk in a corner of the administrative barracks, along with as many tables and chairs or stools or boxes as she could commandeer. A practiced young man with a paint sprayer stencilled letters on the wall behind her. “Put it on the outside, too,” she told him. “So everyone can see it.”

And so he did. Public Library.

It took about twenty minutes for the first civilian to approach. He was maybe thirty-five; his hands were blistered as if he’d been using unaccustomed tools. She imagined a shovel or a saw.

He said cautiously, “Is this the library?”

“Yes, it is,” Mary said. “I’m the librarian. How can I help you?” She hoped it didn’t come out sounding too much like Oh my God I hope this works.

“Umm… do you have the Harry Potter books?” His face was tight in the way of someone already braced for the bad news, already feeling like a fool.

Mary said, “Can you come back in about an hour?” And watched his expression transform. It really was true, she thought. People’s faces could light up.

The guy came back in an hour. With seven other people, all of whom looked both hopeful and deeply suspicious. She led them to a table where a young woman of about twenty waited. “Have a seat, everyone,” Mary said. Then she nodded to the young woman.

“Okay,” the woman said. She looked at the group. “Okay.” She took a breath. “Once there was a boy named Harry Potter who lived with his uncle and aunt and obnoxious cousin, a real little shit. I mean…”

“No,” said the guy. “He was a shit. So…”

“So they actually made Harry sleep in a tiny little room under the stairs…”

Mary went back to the table, and turned her head so that the human book and the human readers would not see her cry.

CW 2: The Pre-Brunch Special

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.


The Pre-Brunch Special

for Jennifer Durham. Thank you for your friendship and support.

Sandy Gustafson lost his faith the day he met Jesus.

It happened during the 10 AM service, which Sandy laughingly advertised as the Pre-Brunch Special: get right with God and still make your 11:30 reservation. Episcopalians liked to have their needs respected.

He was winding up his sermon on Surrendering to God’s Higher Purpose, right on time and with his usual flair. Sandy had gone to the circus every summer as a boy and spent his childhood yearning to be a ringmaster: 35 years later, looking out at the restive crowd, knowing that if their group-mind could talk it would be saying I believe in God and I believe he wants me to eat Eggs Benedict now, he raised his hand; their hungry gazes turned as one to the blue-and-green leaded glass windows, and he knew their imaginations turned to heaven. In these moments every week, Sandy made his childhood dream come true; he had just needed to learn that the Christians were the lions.

And having learned that, he trained them well. Souls were saved by the dozen in Monroe Corners. He was saving a few more right now, including, he hoped, whoever had just come so late into the back of the church.

“Surrender!” Sandy said, his finger pointing toward God, his voice like a bright brass horn.

“You first,” someone answered in a voice that was not loud or bright, a quiet voice that thundered through his bones and flashed like lightning along every nerve from his scalp to his toes. The voice made him hungry for a never-ending breath of fresh air, for a hug that no one stepped away from first, for time to listen to every word of everyone’s story in the room. You first, the voice said again, like a breeze so light it would not stir a grain of sand.

Sandy realized that no one else had heard it. The congregation were waiting blank-faced for him to get to the point.

The point stood at the back of the church. The point walked up the aisle. She was a 10-year-old Vietnamese girl in purple jeans and a Violent Femmes t-shirt. The shirt was adult-sized, and hung like a sack to her knees. She carried a Barbie doll.

She stopped in front of the steps leading to the altar and looked up at him. She gave him a brilliant smile. “Anytime you’re ready,” Jesus said.

CW 1: The Far West

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.


The Far West

for Sharon Woodbury. I love you, Mum.

Great and terrible things come from the Far West; great and terrible things flock to it. The road through the desert brings them all past the Last Chance for Whatever, where Beth Harvey sells gasoline and milk, men’s ties, dog whistles, a selection of stuffed animals, sometimes herself. “The sign says Whatever, Lucas,” she told me once. “People need what they need.”

There’s a snow shovel in the hardware section. “It’s the desert,” I said once, a long time ago. “What does anyone need that for?”

She shrugged. “Works on sand, too,” was all she said. I didn’t get it at the time. Now, of course, I know the point of a snow shovel. It is not made sharp for digging down into a thing; it is made flat to push aside whatever’s in your way. The snow shovel is a tool to keep things moving.

Most every day, I sit at one of the three small cafe tables near the picture window. I drink a bottle of Bud and maybe eat one of Beth’s egg salad sandwiches, and I watch the road and what goes by on it. Sometimes I see things that make me want another bottle, that make me want to count my dead soldiers by sixes rather than singles; but after what happened that one time, I have never opened the cooler more than once on any given day. I won’t tell you what happened that day, not yet, but I will say that most great and terrible things are not obvious monsters or demons or gods. They are people who are trying to move something out of their way so they can get to another place, and will do whatever they must to make that happen. That is when people become great and terrible; when they know exactly what they need.

Some places are small. Some places are green and smell of springwater and secrets. Some places are a whirl of neon and human noise. The Far West is none of those things. The Far West is every dream you ever had of sky and ancient stone and silence, of possibility, of finally, finally finding someplace big enough for all the things you ever want to be. The Far West is the place of greatest pain you can imagine, where people dash each other down to the bedrock and wet their cereal with their children’s blood. People crawl across burning sand to reach it. People chew their own hearts out to escape it, and then they spend years finding their way back; because the Far West is never the same place twice. And that’s the power and the pull: once you get these notions into your heart or head, they muscle all your sensible self out of the way. And then things might get great, or terrible.

On the day I won’t tell you about yet, Beth was in the storeroom and I was drinking my beer. The road and the desert and the sky were empty of everything except sun and the sense of waiting that sometimes comes upon the land. Something is coming. Then I heard a small engine, and saw a motorscooter buzzing in from the West. A man drove; a woman held on behind him, her hair streaming hot and dusty, her eyes bright with sun. She was beautiful. One of the great ones.