Category: writing

And so we come to the end of 41 Days of Story in support of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. I’ll have more to say soon about what it’s meant to me to do this work. For now, I want to thank all my donors for your wonderful support, and all who have taken time the last 6 weeks to read my work.

If you’ve enjoyed these pieces, please consider a donation to Clarion West to show your support. The Write-a-thon links will be active for several more days, and you can also always make a donation through our usual link.

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.

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Sound and Silence

For Caryl Owen, who knows music. Thank you for your friendship and support.

Anyone who wishes can read more about Mars, Duncan, and the band in Dangerous Space.

Duncan and I weren’t speaking to each other, which meant we only talked in the studio, and even that was becoming harder. Lacerated hearts are what they are, but if we let them interfere with a new album, we would really be in trouble. And so everyone was worried.

Johnny said diffidently one night, as he was unplugging his guitar, “So you and Duncan…” He had a strategy of leaving questions unspoken, and most people can’t stand silence; they will rush to answer whatever they think they hear, which often means whatever question is loudest within them. And those moments can be so revealing. So astonishing. Sometimes so cruel.

But I’m an engineer, and I know better than anyone that music is silence as well as sound. I just raised a polite eyebrow.

He gave me the look that meant Fine, make me say it. “Are you two okay?”

I put up a hand. Keep out. Johnny said, “Mars–”

Duncan stepped into the open doorway. He was too thin, and the circles under his eyes were darker even than music makes them: some of it was from me. I knew I didn’t look much better.

He ignored me, and said to Johnny, “Can I get a ride home?”

“Don’t forget your notebook,” I said. He had taken to leaving his lyrics on the floor by the wastebasket every night, as if it were a test to see if I would toss them out.

Now he looked at me. He would have seemed relaxed enough to anyone who didn’t know him. But I could see the set of his jaw, and the anger and hunger and hurt in his eyes. He stepped into the room long enough to retrieve the notebook, and then returned to the door.

“We should go,” he told Johnny. “There are fans three deep across the street, it’s going to take a while.”

Johnny looked unhappily back and forth at us. I felt for him. It’s hard to be between two people whose distance is so crowded with things unsaid that it’s like sirens going off.

“Have a nice night,” I said. And looked at Duncan. Say something. Show me you forgive me. But he turned and left. He’s the best singer I know. He can do things with his voice that make people hear their own deepest questions, whether they like it or not. And he is good with silence, too.

I waited until I was sure they were gone. I imagined them in the car, not talking about it. Then I locked up the studio and went upstairs to have a glass of wine or three, and go to bed alone.

#

When my doorbell rang an hour later, I was so startled that I spilled my wine. And then my heart began to drum inside my chest, Duncan, Duncan, and I was so scared that I nearly didn’t answer, because he had finally come to say something and I didn’t think I could bear to hear it.

But when I did open, Lucky marched past me with two bags of Thai food and another bottle of wine, and the determined look she gets when there is a problem to be solved. She headed for the kitchen.

“Come right on in,” I said, with the bite that dodging a bullet sometimes brings to the moment.

She stopped and wheeled, bags swinging from her hands, bottle precarious under her arm. “Enough bullshit,” she said. “I am tired of getting fretty midnight emails from the band, so you are by jesus going to tell me what’s going on. What did he do? Did he say something rotten? Did he fuck somebody you really can’t stand?”

And I was never, never going to talk about it to anyone, but my heart was still on the disco beat and the wine was wailing within me, and I said, “He wants to move in.”

“What?” It was her turn to nearly drop the wine, and her face was as shocked as if she had just seen the world turned inside out, the shape of everything changed. It was one of the Truths of Our Musical Generation that Duncan Black would never, never commit.

“Holy shit,” she said, and now she was beginning to smile, and I couldn’t let that happen.

“I said no,” I said. But actually, I hadn’t. Actually, when he asked, when his question was there between us singing of love and hope and never before, when the joy of it was shimmering in his eyes and trembling on his mouth, all I could find in answer was silence. Silence. Until he finally said, “You don’t want to?” with so much surprise and despair that I felt his heart break as if it were in my own body, I felt it break.

“But you love each other,” Lucky said. And I held up my hand: Keep out.

#

The next day in the studio went so badly that we stopped early. The entire band was frantic with frustration and something deeper; the great unspoken question, Are we all breaking up? Angel jerked his bass case from the floor and snarled, “I thought we used to have drama, jesus fucking christ,” and stalked out. Con, the steadiest of them all, was shaking when he left. And Duncan forgot his notebook.

I looked at it for a while, there by the trash can. I couldn’t leave it. So I locked the studio and took it upstairs, and dropped it on the living room table. It sounded heavy in the silence of my house.

When the doorbell rang, I wasn’t surprised at all; Lucky would never give up until she understood why, and when I opened the door I was so busy trying to find the words to explain that I had no answer, that I was completely unprepared to find Duncan instead.

His face was in neutral, and he had shut himself up behind careful blank eyes. “I left my book,” he said. “Can I have it back?” And in the silence that followed, I understood he was saying I left my heart, can I have it back? and that the answer was already drumming within me. Duncan. Duncan.

“I do want to,” I said. “I do. I want it so bad that I’m scared we’ll break it.”

Silence.

Duncan closed his eyes. Then he opened them, and opened his arms, and I stepped in and we leaned against each other. The sound of our breathing, the sound of our hearts, the silence in which everything sang.

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. All the story slots are sold, but if you are enjoying the pieces, please consider a donation to show your support.

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.

---

Shake It

For Liz Butcher. Thank you for your friendship and support.

Maybe it was the goddamn rain, or the guy next door with the relentless topiary sculpture impulse and the chainsaw; or maybe it was simply everyday life that was starting to get Danny down. He couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that he was on a treadmill, a little hamster going round and round. It made him want to roll over and go back to sleep, just say fuck it for once… But oh my god the Lawrence file deadline, was that today? And now he was already late.

Out on the street, he discovered his car boxed in by SUVs, bumper to bumper. He maneuvered out carefully, and took a deep breath, and launched himself into the mad rush of the commute. Everyone with day jobs will now please do the crazy chicken to get onto the expressway. Everyone on the expressway will now please immediately come to a stop and proceed to your destination one meter at a time. Thanks for playing our game! Enjoy your day!

He didn’t have time to stop for coffee, so he called his admin and begged. By the time he got to work, he was totally off schedule. He slung his briefcase in the corner and sat. The desk was a mess. Did Marshall even know how to file?

“Here’s your fix,” Marshall said. One ear was plugged into his iPod; the other earbud dangled down his shirt front, next to his tie. Tinny music leaked out as he leaned to put Danny’s grande non-fat fair-trade macchiato on the corner of the desk. Was that the Miami Sound Machine? Apparently, it was: Marshall plugged back in and did a little conga step out the office door. Must be nice to have nothing more to do than dance. Like filing.

Deep breath.

He opened the Lawrence file. Jesus, what a giant spaghetti mess this meatball’s life was; everything turned upside down in a single bad-judgment moment of signing an employment contract without reading all the words. The document itself was a masterwork of convoluted language and parenthetical clauses, a solid one-way trip to Don’t look now, you’re fucked, and Joe Lawrence was just another schleb who had followed a boss cow into a chute and then gone white-eyed at the slaughterhouse door.

Deep breath. It was his job to help this guy. Dig in and figure it out. So he got to work. But then there was a crisis on the McCready filing and he had to do an emergency conference call. And then just as he got back into the zone on Lawrence, there was a fucking fire drill. Blaaat blaaat wroop wroop wroop. Effectively loud: he wanted to keep working but he couldn’t stand the noise, so he grabbed his coffee and headed for the stairs, and wow, he needed a caffeine blast right about now, and that’s when he found out the coffee was cold.

There was a garbage can by the stairway door. He ditched the latte. Marshall saw, and said, “I’ll get you another,” and they joined the throng funnelling into the stairwell and trotting down two by two, side by side, very orderly in the stairwells and then shifting and jostling as new people came in at the landing on each floor. The alarm racket made any conversation impossible, and the flashing red and white lights made it all seem more urgent. He was glad to get out into the parking lot, where there was more space.

When he got tired of standing, he opened his car doors and windows and sat in the driver’s seat. He put his hands on the wheel. Maybe he should just say fuck it after all. Get on the expressway and move with ease between lanes, because everyone with day jobs was jobbing. Text in his resignation from the airport while he was boarding for Guadelajara or Venice or Vegas. But then what? The fact was that he liked his house in spite of the chainsaw artist next door, and he liked his car, and he even liked his job saving dumb fuckers like Joe Lawrence from the axe. He didn’t want to be free of those things. He just didn’t like the feeling sometimes that he was in a chute.

Deep breath. Soon it would be time to go upstairs and make more documents for Marshall to not file. And here came the Dancing Queen himself with Danny’s latte, plugged into his iPod again.

Something inside Danny shook itself awake.

Danny said, “Give me that.” And when Marshall offered the coffee, Danny said, “No, that,” and pointed to the iPod.

He was conscious of Marshall staring as he found the song and plugged the player into his car system. And turned it up loud. Marshall’s eyebrows were in the stratosphere.

Danny said, “Come on, shake your body, baby.” And showed him how. Marshall grinned, and took hold, and did. People stared. People smiled. And people lined up and followed Danny, just like he was the boss cow leading them to greener pastures, and they did the conga around the parking lot until it was time to get back to work.

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. All the story slots are sold, but if you are enjoying the pieces, please consider a donation to show your support.

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.

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This and That

For Ellen Klages. Thank you for your friendship and support.

“Ma, you want to meet a nice guy, you should try the Senior Center,” Christy said. She put the last of the canned corn in the cabinet, folded the cloth shopping bags under her arm, wiped the counter with the dishtowel, straightened her waitress uniform, and said, “What else are you doing today?”

“Oh, this and that,” Shirley said.

Christy sighed. “Okay, then I gotta go. You got everything you need? Love you.” Kiss, kiss, and she was gone.

Shirley sat in the chair by the apartment window and watched Christy cross the street. A taxi driver yelled out his window, “Lookin’ good!” Shirley saw Christy’s appreciative smile, the extra spring it put in her step. And Shirley smiled too, although it still hurt the right side of her face: it was good to see her daughter with that bounce.

“So what do you think?” Shirley said. “Go to the Senior Center and meet a nice guy? Think this face will scare them off?”

Frank chuckled. Those guys oughta be so lucky. You’re beautiful, kid.

Outside the window there were people going places, and shops that made any kind of coffee you wanted. There was a park down the street full of little ones on swings in the morning and older kids on skateboards in the afternoon. There were cafes that served all kinds of food. Greek, Ethiopian, who even knew? There were neighbors on the stoops in the evenings. And there were ambulances that took people to the hospital where they died and there were kids with frightening faces and hard hands who would knock an old lady down and break her face and take her purse and make her scared so that now her daughter did all her shopping while she sat at the window.

This and that, kiddo, Frank said.

Shirley nodded, and stood to take her tea mug into the kitchen. On her way past the mantel, she kissed her fingers and pressed them to the box with his ashes.

#

“Ma, you want to meet a nice guy, you should maybe go to the Spring Festival at the church. Probably a lot of nice guys there.” Christy checked the bathroom closet. “You got enough toilet paper? Toothpaste?”

“Honey, give me a break, will you? I had your father, they don’t get any nicer.”

Christy came out of the bathroom and leaned against the doorway. “I just want you to be okay. I don’t want you to be alone.”

“I been doing fine on my own,” Shirley said. “I’m wrinkly and my knees hurt and I can’t eat garlic anymore, but I’m not…” She didn’t want to say it: I’m not old. But she saw the look on Christy’s face.

What are you, an idiot? Yes, you are, Frank said. Shirl, you’re old.

“I’m not old,” Shirley said. “Inside I still feel like a kid. I want to go eat some of that Greek food they got over on Central. You know I never had that? I want to go dancing. I want to go hear a big band play and drink one of those Sex on the Beach cocktails. I never had that either. The cocktail, I mean,” she added. “I had sex on the beach.”

“Ma.”

“What? It was with your father, in case you’re interested.”

“Ma!”

“I’m not too old to have sex, you know.”

Christy put her hands over her ears. “Oh my god, stop talking, Ma, stop talking right now!” She was laughing. And Shirley didn’t know how to say that in her heart she was still dancing all night and then fucking on the beach while the surf pounded in time. But now she was supposed to get her kicks at the Senior Center? When the fuck did that happen?

Three months ago when some kid knocked you down and took your Social Security, Frank said.

“I just think it would be good for you to get out,” Christy said.

“Somewhere for old people,” Shirley said, and was surprised by the tiny tremble of anger in her voice.

“Ma–”

“Maybe next week,” Shirley said.

#

It happened so fast, she was wheeling her basket to the supermarket, it was raining, not too hard but enough to make people keep their heads down, and suddenly WHAM on the side of her face and YANK her purse jerked off her arm and OLD BITCH HAHAHAHA and thump of young cruel feet gone gone gone. So much gone in that moment. Her keys and the cash from her Social, the photo of Frank and Christy, her little pillbox with the painted flower, and all those nights of dancing, and all those days when she knew that she was young of spirit, no matter what her body had to say about it.

She sat in the chair after Christy left, sat all afternoon while the sun went down behind the buildings and the shadows lengthened in the streets, and thought about next week, and the week after that, and the week after that.

“Frank, tell me what to do,” she said.

I can’t tell you anything, Shirl. I’m dead. Christy finds out you’re asking me, she’ll get you out, all right. Straight to the nuthouse.

“I don’t want to be old.”

That’s life.

“Fuck you, Frank,” she said, with all the love in her.

I wish, kiddo.

“Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”

#

“Ma, I’m at the apartment, where are you?!” Christy’s voice on the phone was frantic.

“I’m fine, honey. I’m with a nice guy at the beach.”

“What? How did you get… Ma, are you lost? I’ll come get you.”

“I got a phone smarter than I am, how do you think I got here? My phone told me to take the number 3 bus and by god, it was right.” And never mind about how she’d almost turned around at her own front door, how she’d nearly peed herself with terror every time a kid got on the bus. “I’ll be home later, I’ll call you.”

“Ma–”

“Christy, honey, you need to get a life,” Shirley said, and it gave her immense pleasure to hear her daughter’s indrawn breath and then her delighted burst of laughter before Shirley hung up the phone.

How you doing, kiddo? Frank said.

“My knees hurt,” she said. “Want to dance?” And she held her purse to her chest so she could feel the box of him against her breast, and she turned with him slowly on the sand.

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. All the story slots are sold, but if you are enjoying the pieces, please consider a donation to show your support.

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 Bad End of M3

For Anonymous. Thank you for your support of me and Clarion West.

“Miss Simons is substituting for Emma Longstrom,” Principal Dubby said. There were polite smiles and involuntary grimaces. “Poor old Emma,” the math teacher mumbled. “Terrible thing.”

Susie agreed it was a terrible thing when an educator of 25 years experience — an utter professional, to Susie’s certain knowledge — could be so distracted in the classroom that she would allow her attention to wander while operating dangerous equipment. And an arts and crafts teacher with only half a hand… well. Susie shook her head.

Dubby said, “Miss Simons specializes in behavioral issues.” The others nodded and then frowned into their coffee, except for the older woman in the back of the room, whose knitting needles continue to whip up stitches while she regarded Susie.

“Even private schools these days are a war zone,” the young Social Sciences teacher said. She had a high blink rate, and Susie thought that cleavage really wasn’t appropriate in the classroom. “A war zone,” she said again, and crossed her arms tight over her breasts. In the back, the history teacher shook her head briefly.

“The fifth-graders can be a bit of discipline challenge,” the math teacher said, with a twitch. “Just got to show them who’s boss.”

“You can count on it,” Susie said. The history teacher seemed to be the only one who got the joke: she smiled into her knitting as if to say, Well, now we’ll see something interesting.

#

A good substitute had sharp powers of observation and snap assessment skills. Susie could step into a fifth grade home room and within 30 seconds spot the usual suspects: the class wit whose father generally beat him at home, the boy embarrassed by rapid onset penis growth and therefore likely to act out physically, the girl who secretly collected spiders in a jar in the basement — you had to watch those girls, they liked to work from a distance — and, of course, the bossypants. Susie’s long experience had taught her that 80% of trouble in any class could be laid at the feet of one of those kids. She would have bet her mortgage on it, if she’d had one. Well, there you were, being a substitute was not a stable job, but it was important and fulfilling, requiring judgment and precision, and Susie always executed well.

Principal Dubby led her to the classroom. Through the glass pane in the door, Susie saw pretty much what she expected: uniformed children behaving badly. A couple of boys wrestled in a corner. A girl with a jar of poker chips doled them out to petitioners in twos or threes. At least five students were on phones. A boy in the back was defacing his desk. And they were loud; they sounded like a football crowd, even from out here.

The principal took a breath, looked at the door handle, and rubbed his palms on his trousers. “Never mind,” Susie said. “I’ll just introduce myself and get started, if that’s all right with you.”

“Ah, well, yes…” he said.

“All will be well, Mr. Dubby,” she said. “I’m a professional.”

“I just hate… I’m not sure I should put you in there.”

She waited. They all thought their situation was special.

He looked through the glass again. Inside the room, a boy stood behind a seated girl, grinding his pelvis into the back of her head. Ah, the penis case. The girl was crying and trying to protect her head without touching his crotch.

The principal said, in a grim tone, “They really are little beasts.” Susie nodded.

“Thank you for your help, MIss Simons,” he said, and turned and left her. Susie smiled. Time to get to work.

A textbook flying through the air narrowly missed her as she walked to the front of the room, but she’d noted that it wasn’t aimed at her, and she decided not to put the book-flinger on the list; apart from anything, he was defending himself, and Susie respected that. She spared a moment of contempt for the young Social Services idiot who thought she was fighting a rearguard action, apparently with her breasts; perhaps public schools were a war zone, but private schools were a jungle.

“Hello, class,” Susie said at normal volume. Two or three students at their desks sat up straight and looked at her. Good. She made sure they saw her put her fingertips in her ears and then nodded at them: You too. They did, looking suspicious.

Susie said again, Hello, but now the word went on a long time, and her voice grew louder and thinner, until the students began to shake their heads like dogs being trained by barkstopping whistles: There’s something in my ear, get it out!

The noise stopped, and the children looked at Susie with gratifying stupefaction.

“I am Miss Simons,” she said. “Sit.”

They did. The girl with the jar of poker chips took the classic Bossypants seat in the second row, where everyone could see that she was unhappy and ready to express at the first opportunity. Susie thought, Let the hunt begin.

“Now that I have your attention,” she told the class, “I will call roll. Please raise your hand when you hear your name.”

The second-row girl said, “That’s not how you do it. We already checked ourselves in on the list at the beginning of class.”

“If you want to speak, please raise your hand and I will call on you.”

“That’s not how Ms. Longstrom does it. We each get chips and we have to put a chip in the jar every time we speak.”

Susie noted without comment that Bossypants did not put in a chip. Then she began with the first name on her list, “Laura Alvarez,” and looked for the relevant hand.

“That’s not how we do it!”

“Brixton Adler,” Susie said. Ah, penis case. Billy Carson responded to his name with Hellooooooooo and gave Susie a satisfied look when everyone laughed. The tear-faced girl, who Susie now unfortunately thought of as the Headbanger, raised her hand to the name Elizabeth Meeks, and gave Adler a spider-eyed look.

Then Susie called, “Mary Marsha Mahoney.”

Bossypants said, “No one calls me that. Everyone calls me M3. Because my name has 3 M’s.”

Susie said. “Do you prefer Mary or Marsha?”

“All the teachers call me M3,” Mary Marsha Mahoney said.

“Mary, then,” Susie said, and went on. And privately enjoyed the look on Bossypants’ face: You’re not doing it right!

#

When Susie brought out the paper cutter, she could see some of the students flinch reflexively.

“We’ll continue the bookmaking project that Mrs. Longstrom began,” she said. “Now, there’s nothing to be afraid of. No one is to use the paper cutter without my supervision. Please form into your groups and begin working.”

Susie moved through the room offering guidance and reviewing their work. Her teaching mind was impressed, as she’d expected: Emma Longstrom really was a pro. Look at the talent she’d encouraged out of Spider Girl! Susie very much hoped Elizabeth would not be on the final list, and turned the other part of her mind to sorting out what had happened to Emma.

It didn’t take long. Across the room, she watched M3 Bossypants commandeer the paper cutter with the group’s manuscript in hand, shushing a girl who said, “We’re supposed to wait for the teacher.”

“We don’t have to wait for her, she’s just a substitute and she probably doesn’t even do it right.” And then Bossypants raised the handle and shoved the too-thick stack of paper under it, and held it in place…

With her thumb right under the blade.

And as Susie assumed control of the situation, and the paper cutter, and sent Miss Mahoney back to her chair, she could see it as clearly as if she were watching a film: Emma seeing the vulnerable thumb, rushing for the cutter, moving young Miss Bossypants aside, the wail of protest, “I was doing it!” and the shove and the teacher’s hand slipping as the blade came down.

“Class dismissed,” Susie said. “It’s time for lunch.”

#

She stuck her head into the Faculty Room to see who was there, and wasn’t surprised to find the history teacher knitting. “How’s it going?” the teacher said.

“Just wrapping up,” Susie said. “I wonder if you’d care to join me for lunch?”

“Thank you,” the teacher said with a smile, and put away her knitting.

They waited in the janitorial closet beside the girl’s bathroom, and when Mary Marsha Mahoney came by alone, Susie opened the door and smiled and said, M3, here’s how we do it, and dragged the girl inside. The janitor’s duct tape and the classroom paper cutter came in quite handy.

“Has anyone seen Miss Mahoney?” Susie said when she called roll after lunch. “No? Well.” She ticked Mary Marsha Mahoney off her list, and went on with class. Time to start keeping an eye on Brixton Adler.

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. All the story slots are sold, but if you are enjoying the pieces, please consider a donation to show your support.

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 Rock and the River

For Jane Gladson. Thank you for your support of me and Clarion West.

It was good they got off the boats for lunch, because by then Betsy was within a twitch of tossing the Larson kid over the side, preferably straight into the vacuum suck of the rapids, still clutching his stupid phone, whining all the way about why didn’t they have 3G down heeeeere? Bets didn’t think anyone on the boat would miss him, including his parents, who had raised Ignoring The Adolescent to a fine art. Then she would only have to get the Anderson family and Encyclopedia Guy eaten by snakes. The rest of them could stay as long as they left her alone. And then maybe Bets could enjoy the Grand Fucking Canyon.

When she signed up for the river trip, she imagined a small group of other adults, people of calm competence and intellectual mien and passionate adventurous spirit. She didn’t expect three motorized rafts of competitively-sunglassed executives who took a quick look around as they set off, noted that the Grand Canyon had a lot of rocks, and then got down to the serious business of checking each other’s status in the real world and telling the driver how to steer. All except Encyclopedia Guy, who went into full-bore full-volume download mode on the specific amount of damage that badly-conceived government management policies were doing to the river and canyon and wildlife and downriver ecosystems. Why, it’s all dying right this second!

He didn’t seem to notice that she flinched. Bets settled her baseball cap and bandanna more firmly onto her bald head and tried not to waste too much time hating him.

Once they disembarked onto the beach, she joined the line of folks unloading food coolers and cookgear. Then one of the bluff VP-on-vacation types shouldered in and tried to take the cooler from her, saying, “That looks heavy, you just let me get that for you, honey. You go on and find a seat.”

Fine. Fuck him. Bets released her grip, and enjoyed his nearly-drop-it-on-his-foot surprise at how much it weighed. She was still stronger than she looked. But the pleasure didn’t last, and the sourness still sat like lemon on the back of her tongue; because what did it prove, except that she still needed desperately to be strong?

#

So she sat on the sand and watched the river, while the not-dying-right-this second crowd fetched and carried and set up tables under the instructions of the boat drivers. Behind her, the cheerful human chaos. Before her, the Colorado: green and serene, opaque in spite of the hard hot sun that lit the canyon walls in such sharp detail it almost hurt to look at them. But look she did: the ancient rock, the river humming to itself, rolling on and on, and it was almost like music, on and on, almost like voices, on and on and–

She came back to awareness between one blink and the next, and found a child sitting silent next to her. A girl of perhaps eleven or so, a small, compact person in a white t-shirt and jeans and well-worn hiking boots who turned and grinned and said, “You hear that?”

“Almost,” Bets said.

“Come and get it!” a woman announced from the table. It took Bets a while to unkink herself and stand; by the time she was on her feet, the girl was gone, presumably somewhere in the crowd around the table. Bets got herself a grilled salmon filet and a spoonful of rice salad, ignored Encyclopedia Guy’s lost-lamb look, and found herself a rock for one as close to the river as she could.

#

After lunch, everyone piled back into the boats, and for a while the Andersons insisted on giving everyone a move-by-move account of the season finale of Dancing with the Stars, and Bets found herself so angry she wanted to scream. Don’t waste my time! But eventually the food and the sun did their work; the chattery people relaxed into silence, the Larson boy gave up on the internet and fell asleep, and even Encylopedia Guy was content to sit and only mutter to himself occasionally. The canyon narrowed around them as the river carried them deeper in and deeper down. There were no more beaches; the walls rose straight from the river, so high now that the sun and sky seemed impossibly far away, as if Bets were looking at them through the wrong end of a telescope.

Deeper down. Deeper down. Moving faster now toward the rapids ahead, just a mile or two, soon now, where the river would dash itself against the rock and break and reform and break again, on and on.

But now they came around a bend, and the boatman slowed and steered them toward a place in the wall where the rock was black and dense. “Touch it,” the boatman said.

People hesitated: the boatman was holding the boat in place with a deft hand on the reverse throttle, but this close to the wall it was impossible to miss the muscle of the river underneath them, impossible not to know that it had carved these mile-high walls one molecule at a time with irresistable force and relentless will, and that it would go on doing so, on and on, on and on–

Bets felt a hand on her arm. The girl said, “Go on, touch it.”

“Where did you come from?” Bets said.

“I’ve been right here,” the girl said, and her eyes were the dense deep black of the rock, except there was light at their center like the light of the sun. She said, “Listen.”

The boatman was speaking again. “This layer of rock is two billion years old.”

Two billion years. Bets put her hand to her mouth.

Listen, the girl said again. And Bets listened with every fiber of her being as she reached out and touched two billion years of sunlight and shadow, of water and wind, two billion years of plants and small creatures and dinosaurs and people, all the things they were and said and did and felt, what they loved and feared and everything that gave them joy, two billion years of the river that she could hear so clearly now humming Life life life, life is the rock and the river and the sun, and we are going on and on and on.

The girl said, You hear that?

On and on and on. “Yes,” Bets said, and began to cry.

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. All the story slots are sold, but if you are enjoying the pieces, please consider a donation to show your support.

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.

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Sweet 16

For Michael Pardy. Thank you for your support of me and Clarion West.

Valerie was mad for fashion and lifestyle magazines. All the girls in the caravan park read them, even though no one could afford trendy clothes or $20 mascara. Most of Val’s friends loved the celebrity mags as well, but she wasn’t interested in what boy bands or TV stars were doing. She was too busy planning her own stylin’ life away from her parents house — well, it wasn’t a house at all, was it? It was a bloody stupid caravan made to look like a house with a little porch, and some flowers in the dirt patch out front that died and had to be replanted every year because it was too bloody hot in Adelaide. Once she got out of there, she was never coming back.

Tick tock, counting down the clock. Two days until her 16th birthday. She could leave school. She could leave the caravan. She could get a job in Melbourne and live in a bedsit with girls who would teach her how to find flash clothes at great bargains, and what clubs were the best, and they would all have boyfriends with good jobs, boyfriends who were older, maybe even 25, who had their own apartments you could move into and buy appliances and a lounge suite and then you were on your way.

She sat at the kitchen counter with her pile of magazines, her scissors, and her clip box, cutting out the best makeup tips and ideas for classy home decor and filing them under the tabs she had created. Office Clothes/Face. Evening Clothes/Face. Kitchen Cabinet Organization. Parties and Entertaining. Holiday Destinations. Bedroom. It was important that the bedroom be sensual and welcoming without being too feminine, because men wanted to be with women without being reminded of them all the time.

And the magazines had given her great tips for her Sweet 16 Party. Don’t have an entertainment-friendly home? Find an unusual and exciting location that shows your individualism! Val planned her party at the bowling centre where her dad worked as night manager, and her boyfriend Derek was the top scorer on the car wash team. They would have half the lanes for themselves, with a red rope blocking off the section, and a DJ, and a mirrorball, and free food from concessions, and they could bowl and dance all night, and at midnight her dad had promised her a bottle of fizzy wine.

And she knew. She knew that Derek’s bowling shirt would have a mustard stain, that her dad would make an embarrassing speech about My little girl, that lots of the kids from school were only coming for the free bowling. She knew. But she was going to make it the best bowling dance Sweet 16 Party they’d ever see in their entire stuck-in-Adelaide lives. And then she and her clip box were off to something better.

#

But it all went wrong right away. The red rope was just colored twine, so thin that it was hard to see, and people kept trying to walk through it and pulling the stanchions down. The sound system was wired so that bowling announcements from the public lanes interrupted the DJ music, even when she and Derek were dancing to Their Song and everyone else was watching. It was supposed to be beautiful: the darkened dance floor, the mirrorball sparkling light down on them like stars, wrapped in Peter Cetera’s voice and Derek’s arms. It was supposed to be the moment when all this was almost all over, and for the three minutes of the song it was safe to let herself love everything about the life she was leaving. But this was the life she was leaving, the life where some insurance adjuster’s strike was more important than a Sweet 16, where the ordinary always overcame the special.

And some of the boys brought flasks, and soon the punch was practically hallucinogenic, and all Val wanted was that three minutes: so when Derek said Let’s go sit in my car, she did, and when he said Let’s not use one this time, let’s make it special, she said okay. And while she in Derek’s back seat, midnight came and went and she missed her dad’s speech and the fizzy wine, and two weeks later she missed her period.

#

She didn’t sleep at all the first night she came home with the baby to the caravan. Will you be all right? her mum said, and Val said yes. After her parents went to bed, she got out her clip box and went through every article and every photo, one at a time; the smiling girls with their straight white teeth and glittery bracelets and tanned, fit men at their sides, the cunning cosmopolitan flats with exposed brickwork and track lighting, the Ten Best Places to Kiss in Melbourne.

Tick tock, said the clock. The baby would be awake soon. Val closed the clip box, and turned to the pile of parenting magazines, and began to read about diaper bags.