CONTINUED: A Real Writer

Of course I don’t live in a castle.  I live in an old house on a country road. It’s not as old as a castle and we have central heat and indoor plumbing.   I’ve always been pretty fond of indoor plumbing and wouldn’t want to be without it.    It’s such a long walk across the back field to the woods that I don’t think I’d get very much writing done without at least a half bath. King Arthur could use the castle window, but my wife would be aghast if I tried that.

Real writers begin their task by constructing an outline, often before writing the first sentence of the story.  I usually write the last sentence first.  Or begin somewhere in the middle. Or just think about it all day.  Real writers limit their expository paragraphs, check their facts, use that Thessa thing and a dictionary.  Some proceed to write in a straight line.  But I never check anything and don’t know what I’m talking about most of the time.  No one ever corrects me.  My facts are either flawless or simply convincing.  Or I don’t have any readers.

Real writers have an editor to spruce up their prose.  I read my stuff to my wife’s dog and usually don’t get an argument from her.  I thought twice before writing the last sentence because I don’t want to be accused of animal mental cruelty.  I’ve always had a feeling the damned dog wouldn’t testify favorably on my behalf.  Murphy envies any attention I get from my wife and she follows me everywhere, as if her assignment was to watch me like a hawk.  She’s not much of an editor, however.  For a Springer, she’s barely literate.

Real writers use proper punctuation and don’t write run-on sentences.  I don’t know anything about punctuation but I just love run-on sentences because they’re so efficient and I don’t need to add extra pronouns or think up synonyms to avoid repeats and I can forget all those silly rules that Sister Clementia taught me back in fifth grade and better known writers than me don’t seem to worry about it so why should I.

Real writers are famous.  Now, there I come closer to the definition.  For I am indeed famous, if only a tiny bit.  I take my articles down to the copy shop and have hundreds made.  At one time I stuffed them in the mail boxes of unsuspecting residents up and down the road. I stopped the practice after a run-in with the U.S. Postal Service. Last week I decided to hand deliver my masterpieces by knocking on doors.  I reckoned each visit would be an opportunity to converse with a neighbor who for reasons unknown no longer spoke to me. Murphy mulled it over and decided to come along.

Hardly anyone answered their door, even though sounds of life were often evident from within the house.  A few did greet me, however, including Mrs. Grant, who opened her door naked and drunk,  evidently thinking it was Halloween.  She wore only a wizard's hat and carried a tray of Halloween candy.  In her inebriated state, she pronounced a sentence or two with one long slurring sound.  It reminded me of something else real writers are known for.  Typos.

"I believe you've forgotten your Magic Robe, my Ladyship," I said with grace and aplomb.

Her eyes widened and she glanced down.  Murphy huffed a dog laugh.  Mrs. Grant  raised and lowered the tray as she tried to decide what to cover.  I did not know a person could blush from stem to stern.  She raised a foot and an orange painted toenail pushed the door closed. 

I called out, ”Sorry to have disturbed your bath, ma'm." From inside came a tittering, then an exploding laugh.  Murphy and I looked at each other.  I thought to ring the doorbell once more, but resisted.  That damned dog follows me everywhere.

copyright by David Griffin, 2007, 2013

Writer

This article was written for  the online magazine, Author’s Bazaar, March, 2012, No. 14.

All of us writers have no doubt heard the famous quote, “Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”  Some have heard it attributed to various authors.  (Wiki says it’s by Gene Fowler, journalist and playwright. Others ascribe a similar saying to sports writer Red Smith.)  But I’ve never had a  problem with creative writing and only occasionally with factual writing.  Sitting down at a keyboard evidently sets up a chain reaction in my brain that leads to sentences coming out my fingers.

I write what I’ve read.  Somewhere in my mind, banging around since I first began to read, is no doubt every phrase I ever laid eyes on.  I’m just rearranging and repeating them as I type.  A life time of voracious reading of decent prose has helped my craft  immensely. 

I remember opening a thin book as I stood in front of my grandmother and proudly declaimed, “See Dick run,” as though I were the town crier with a hot new story.  My reading ability happened quickly.  Only a few months before I had asked Mom if I was holding the hymnal upside right in Church while I pretended to read the lyrics and sing along with the congregation. I was one motivated reader.  I am one motivated writer.  I want to spill it out.

It doesn’t come out perfectly, of course.  There was a time when I hated editing my own work.  It felt like I was killing my issue, I guess, because I didn’t want to destroy what to my inner ear sounded so wonderful when it rolled out on paper.  But today I view the process as an opportunity to crisp up my phrasing and smooth out the delivery.  I believe good writing doesn’t call attention to itself.  It goes right down the reader’s gullet,  smooth as butter.  If I watched his or her eyes they would not dart back to re-read a phrase or arch an eyebrow to ponder a muddy sentence.  I would have scooped her up into my word wagon as I drove by and have her there with me, hearing my writer’s voice, understanding my context and recognizing my metaphors.   There would be a glint of expectation in her eyes as she avidly reached for the next sentence, one after another.  Such wonderful writing doesn’t come directly out of my head any more than Premium Hi Test comes right from the ground.  The product has to be refined.

Writing is a craft, of course.  It doesn’t take long to get the basics down, but it is indeed a lifelong process of learning.  I can’t speak as an expert, but I do have a few opinions on how to go about it.  We all have different ways of approaching our craft.  I’ll have been thinking of a topic but often wait for a terrific opening phrase to pop into my mind, words I can’t wait to get on paper.  It’s why I always carry paper and a pen with me.  Look hard enough and you’ll find other authors writing on napkins in restaurants or on their boarding passes sitting in the corner of the airport bar.  (Yes, the latter could be an aluminum salesman figuring his commissions.)

At home, my PC is set up and organized for writing, with electronic folders separating my projects into easily accessible categories of Complete and Working and Stuff (thoughts, research, and trial paragraphs.)  Computerized folders hold a variety of writer’s tools and resources.  I back it all up at least once each week … immediately, if I’ve just written a story that will make me as famous as Stephen King!

My short stories are 500 to 2,000 words and I publish them on the Internet. Thirty or so essays and stories are rolled into a self published book each year.   I seldom have a complete story or idea in my head when sitting down to write.   I’m a big fan of  the “stream of consciousness” method.  If I waited for a story to flesh out in my mind I’d never sit down to write it.  An early piece, “The Good Shepherd,” was in my thoughts for at least ten years.  I became so disgusted bouncing it around in my head that I finally sat down and wrote it so I could forget about it.  I might have written the tale a decade earlier and eliminated the time I wasted thinking about how to construct it.

When I feel like writing, I sit down and write.  About anything.  I might open my Working file and add a few sentences to a story in progress, get stuck or become tired of it and switch to another piece I began a week or a few years ago.  I have over a  hundred “starts” as I call them,  most having a few paragraphs, some a few sentences and others a few pages.

When writing, multiple resources are open on my PC, such as Wikipedia, Google and  TheFreeDictionary, the latter for use as a word checker and thesaurus.  I can’t tell you where my paperback thesaurus is in this book lined room my wife calls my cave.  Before we moved to a small modern house, we lived in an old farmhouse and I wrote in the cellar.  My PC was set up among shortwave radios in the former fruit cellar beneath  sturdy old floor beams.  I could look upward to see the joists decorated with cob webs that were there when we moved in 35 years ago and were still intact when I left last November.  They were probably a hundred years old.

Ideas come from everywhere.  I believe a writer can write about anything.    I approach all of my subjects as stories.  In each piece, whether it’s fiction or factual, I try to form a “story arc” and also put a hook in the intro.  Finding an opportunity to include a twist or two to surprise the reader in a way that brings a chuckle is another goal.  With memoirs I embellish, believing the story trumps the facts (and I freely admit it.)  I’m a storyteller, not an historian, and my reader wants to be entertained.  (So do I!) He doesn’t care whether the homemade balloon a friend and I made when we were thirteen  really rose high enough to fly me over my home town.  He just wants to soar with my imagination over the neighborhoods and downtown buildings and land safely in a cornfield on the other side of town.

When I get a story down on paper and edited , it’s no more than a vision typed out from my head.  I need another person to read it and tell me if the words mean anything to them.  Before I bother my wife for her impression,  I always read the article aloud. (Later versions of Adobe Reader will do that for you.)  It’s a great way to catch mistakes and awkward phrasing.    Next, I change the font and arrange the printing of the piece to somewhat resemble a magazine article.  I often use a Caslon font and narrow columns to simulate The New Yorker.  I find that reading the piece in that mock environment puts my brain in a highly critical mode where my expectations easily recognize poor writing.  Grammatical mistakes and muddy sentences stand out sharply on this stage. 

Posting my stories on the Internet and self publishing via PrintOnDemand allow changes to the copy any time.  (See my PrintOnDemand article at:

http://www.windsweptpress.com/pod.htm

 I constantly read and re-read my work and make minor changes.  To me it’s not a chore.  I feel the way a sculptor might when he discovers a burr on the smooth surface of his work and carefully rubs it away to make the piece even more finished..

Input from others is essential.  Probably the most helpful feedback on my writing in recent years has come from the bloody streets of Internet critique groups.  Don’t go there if you’re thin skinned.  I’m sure a few nascent authors have given up writing after suffering a beating or two from some of the nastier critics who inhabit these forums.  The worst offender in one group I belonged to (the group I was proudly kicked out of, frankly) had never had even a single story published. But as vicious as the  remarks could be, many of the group’s writing insights were right on and I learned a lot.  If you do join a tough group, just be careful.  Don’t believe everything you’re told.  Internet writing groups can get sidetracked on one aspect of writing and will begin to concentrate on it to the exclusion of all the good things in your prose.  Some Internet writing critics would have scolded Thomas Jefferson for his lack of a hook and a story arc in the Declaration of Independence.

I wish I had begun an organized program of creative writing long before I retired.  Today I’d know more about the craft and my writing would by now be more efficient.  I don’t know why I didn’t start, except time was always in short supply and my story ideas didn’t appear to form complete plots.  How was I to know the best way to solve a plot problem (for me, at least) is to sit down and write it out.  And if  it doesn’t make sense, change it.  I’ve learned creativity doesn’t happen when I’m thinking about a potential story.  It takes place while I’m writing or in the midst of solving a writing problem.

Just because drops of blood don’t form on my forehead as I write doesn’t mean the effort isn’t work.  I spend quite a bit of time on it.  But I figure that it’s what I’m meant to do at this stage of my life.  And if all the hours I put into writing were not enjoyable, I’d be fishing instead.  Come to think of it, I do need to get some flies tied for spring!

copyright 2012  David Griffin

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CONTINUED: Bus Stop

I began to trust that soon I’d be inside the comfortable womb of a heated conveyance.  As we neared the curb I saw a rudimentary gate consisting of two horizontal boards that were now open to admit passengers.  I didn’t know why, but each person stopped at the gate for just a second, even though it was open, before climbing the steps into the bus.  Dad shuffled up to the two boards and stopped, then moved forward.

Now I remembered where I had seen this hesitation at the gate.  In church the priest and altar boys stopped for a second when crossing from the aisle through the railing onto the chancel of the altar.  Almost like knocking on heaven's door.

I stepped up to the gate.  It slammed closed with a vicious thwack.  I became angry and scared at once, but something deep in my soul prevented me from trying to scoot under the boards or crash through them.  I did not want to be left there alone.

“That’s my Dad,” I shouted, to no one in particular. “I have to be with him.”

My father stopped, turned and retraced the three steps he had advanced beyond the gate.

“I guess this is it, then,” he said.  “I’ll see you when you get there.”

“Why can’t I go with you?” I cried.

He shrugged his shoulders.  Good old Dad always accepted what was expected of him.

He reached out, but was too far away to touch  me.  He turned and walked to the bus.  He climbed the stairs and soon became invisible to me.  The bus pulled away.  I scanned the windows, straining to see him.  When I didn’t, I hoped he was demanding the bus driver come back for me.  But Dad was never a very demanding person.

Now first in line, I looked up and down the street.  Traffic increased as I stood there. A furniture delivery truck from a local department store edged toward me as it came near the curb, bumped up over it and sped past on the sidewalk.  The truck's rear view mirror sliced the air above my head as it coursed it's way south for fifty feet and dropped into Bleecker Street, where it made a sharp right turn and sped west toward the Hotel Utica.   I felt exposed.  Since he no longer stood in front of me, the large form of my father ceased to cast a shadow of protection over me.  And eventually his influence would begin to wane.

I was disappointed in the dream to be on my own, but I never for a moment doubted his best intentions and hope for my success, his love for me.  As I stood waiting for the next bus, my thoughts roamed through the life Dad and I had together.  And at my young age in the dream, I found myself wondering why he had stopped kissing me.

At age 4 or 5 I’d sit down on his lap and kiss him on the cheek before going to bed.  I can still feel his rough five o’clock shadow and smell the soap he used to wash up at night before coming home from work at the newspaper.  And I remember the evening he put his hand out to stop me and said.  “You’re a big boy now, we should shake hands, not kiss.”  So that’s what we did.  At ages five and thirty-seven, we shook hands before bed each night.  I didn’t care about the kiss, I missed the closeness and the smells. 

And he never said he loved me. It wasn't a phrase someone from his stiff-necked Irish background was allowed to use.  I wondered if he believed you could only love God, and if so, what did he say to my mother?  He was not a hard man.  He was gentle and long suffering.  He was humble and he was certainly pure, or at least took mighty steps to be so.  He instructed his boys to lead pure lives.  We were never allowed to see a movie indexed by the Legion of Decency beyond “A -  Morally UNobjectionable.” 

After the night we began shaking hands, he never gave me a hug.  Today I and my wife and adult children hug all the time and say we love each other.  That phrase ends just about every long distance telephone call from the kids. “Love ya, Dad, Mom.”  This has come about because when the kids were in early high school, a time when they would have rather kissed a dead walrus, I forced them into hugs and I always said, “I love you.”  I don’t remember how many years, but it probably took a few before they returned the sentiment.  They may have been in their last years of college. But I never gave up. I had come from a family that certainly loved one another but showed  no outward expression of it.  I didn’t want to produce another family with the same handicap.   I didn’t want my children standing on a bus stop some day thinking I’d never told them I loved them or allowed them to hug me.

In his last year I was able to tell my father I loved him.  It seemed to make him uncomfortable.  About six months later, as he lie in Faxton Hospital at the very end, I wanted to repeat it, but I did not.  I wish I had.  And kissed him, too.

As for the dream of the two of us at the bus stop on the Busy Corner,  I don't remember how it ended.  I guess I’m still waiting there.  It seems such a long time since he climbed aboard and disappeared into his bus to heaven.  In the years since I have built a good life, and I believe a spiritual walk that worked for me.  It was seeded by my father, and made with God's grace and my own travails and insights, plus the inestimable help of everyone who ever touched me, whether they casually brushed by me or married me. 

Each of us reaches the head of the line in life when parents and mentors pass beyond, leaving us to stand more exposed to the world than we did before. We get used to it.  We learn to trust our own insights and judgments.  We get on with it.  We grow up.  We grow old. One morning we’ll look down the street and see the bus coming our way.

"I'll see you when you get there," he said.  I hope it comes true.

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Copyright by David Griffin, 2016

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Raz Ma Taz

Aside from the young man we call Sonny, sitting in the small hut on the far side of the paved plaza, where he takes money and sells  cigarettes … and I’ve often wondered what else …  a forty-ish woman in a halter and muddy shorts stands on the other side of the pump I'm using.  A smoking cigarette hangs from her lips as she pumps enough high test gasoline to blow us all to Kingdom Come if a hot ash drops down and ignites the vapors.  I find myself hoping she’ll finish up and leave.

A small dog appears beyond the garbage cans where a dirt road comes down the mountain to the gas station.  Licking its paws, it lies down in the dust, as if waiting for someone. Maybe for Sonny, since his motor bike is parked over there behind the cans, just off the pavement.

Out on the highway, a pearl grey Chrysler New Yorker slows down and turns in to join us, bobbing up and down on enormous springs, and swiftly bringing its passenger to the pumps in comfort and style.  From the velvet padded depths steps a man of my height, dressed in cream colored pants, a blue striped shirt, shoes that cost more than my riding mower, and a cream colored teardrop fedora, circled by a black band.  He is a vision, complete with Caribbean tanned skin.   Here among the bird poop and fly specked overhead lights, turned on in the daytime for no apparent reason,  I am struck by the sight of  him, appearing in our midst as we go about  the dirty chores of our ordinary lives.  Mary the Mother of God would not have been more impressed when the Archangel Gabriel showed up in her pantry.  I almost cringe as I think of Mr. Fedora getting any of the messiness here on his garments.

The man looks around, as a Martian might upon landing, and then walks over to the little hut.  He might be seeking directions and I completely understand his reasons for consulting neither myself nor Gravel Gertie  at the next pump.  We may appear to him as no more than the local fauna.  He may think us incapable of intelligent human speech.

Leaving the man to the mercy of Sonny, I pump gas into my pickup truck and get to thinking.  Although his impeccably clean New Yorker is  certainly more impressive than my four wheel drive pickup, he and I are really not much different.  If you stood the two of us side by side in our boxer shorts and took a snapshot,  we’d look like two overweight brothers, one better tanned perhaps.  But dressed … he, dapper in his clothes and fedora, and I, rumpled in my jeans and polo shirt … we appear as different as night and day.   Either could have chosen the other’s style, however.    How did the two of us come to have such different tastes?  I choose LL Bean over Gucci.  Even my best suits are a bit on the informal side,   Glenn Plaid instead of Banker’s Stripes.  What determines our choice of a presentation style in life?  For that’s what it is, a show we choose to make to other people.  And with very little thought about it afterward, it becomes our habit.  I suppose we could call it misleading. But that would make how we dress more deceptive than we mean it to be.  Most of us.  Most of the time.

Through the window of the hut I see Sonny gesticulating as he speaks with the stranger.  He may be providing directions.  If so, I’ll bet the first leg will take the traveler to the hamburger stand owned by Sonny’s cousin, Morris. 

I turn to my companion at the pumps, and sensing she’ll see the humor in my question, I ask, “What’s he got that I ain’t  got?”

I find out later she could have answered, “a gun.”

Instead, a smile forms on her lips. 

“RazMaTaz,” she says.

 I think she may mean ‘Pizzazz.’  ‘Raz Ma  Taz’ means something else, I believe, but I can’t bring it to mind.  I will remember soon enough.

Mr. Fedora comes out from Sonny’s shack and walks to his car.  He glances first up at the mountain and next at the garbage cans overflowing onto the edge of the pavement.  He looks at Gertie for what seems a long moment.  She is faced away from him and probably doesn’t see his glance, but there appears to be a stiffness to her bare shoulders as his gaze lies upon her.  Without even looking my way, he gets in his Chrysler and drives off, bumping along the narrow access road out to the highway.  

As I remove my gas receipt from the pump,   Gertie slams the gas nozzle into the hanger on her pump.  She flicks her cigarette over among the garbage cans.  Opening the door of her car, about to climb in, she swats her behind with both hands and a cloud of mud dust billows out from her butt.  She looks over at me and winks while rubbing her bottom salaciously.

“Raz Ma Taz,” she says, and hops in behind the wheel. 

She neither takes a receipt from her pump or visits Sonny to pay in cash.  She is running off without paying for her gas.  Her rusty blue car has no muffler and the engine explodes into life sounding like an 18 wheeler.  With a roar that sends the birds scattering in every direction, her old car pulls out of the gas station and on to the highway.  It looks like she is struggling into a jacket, which is rather odd on such a warm day.  Watching all of this, I fail to notice Sonny come running out of the hut until he is standing next to me. 

 “You know her?” he says. 

“No,” I say.  “Who is she?”

Saying nothing, he turns to walk back to the hut.

The birds are now coming back down to roost on various outcroppings of the encrusted canopy.  I suddenly remember the meaning of Raz Ma Taz:  a deceptive move to disguise the real play.  Something more than a “drive-off” is going on here.

“Sonny,” I shout.  “Everything OK?” 

With his back toward me he sticks his arm up and waves good bye as he continues toward the entrance to the little shack.  But about ten feet from the door, he abruptly turns right and runs to the motor bike, parked behind the garbage cans.  To my surprise he jumps on, starts it up and screeches through the gears as he heads away from the gas station on the dirt road.  He flies up the incline, the dog chasing after him.

When I get out on the highway I see the banged up rusty blue car  and the pearl grey New Yorker off on the side of the road together.  The Chrysler’s front fender is torn up.  Gravel Gertie is wearing a blue jacket with “DEA” written across the back.  Gun drawn, she has the man in the blue striped shirt bent over the hood of his car.  A dark blue van is just pulling off the road to join them.  The cream white fedora lies over in the grass, away from the road. She took him down where it would be safer for citizens like me.

It’s time for me to get home and start mowing my yard.  Boring work, but I won’t be complaining about my ordinary life for the rest of the day.  Tonight we’re invited to a rather formal house party.  I’ll have to dress up.  So that no one recognizes me, I guess.

 

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Copyright 2009/2016  by David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress

CONTINUED: Twinkies

"No, Jack," he said, "at sixteen I was out here on the lake with my high school girlfriend."

"Come to think of it," I said, "so was I."

Marty smiled and pulled his cell phone from his pants pocket. "Do you think we should call up our old flames?" he said.

“I don’t think I would,” I said.  “And neither should you.”

"They still live in the area, somewhere around town," he said.

"I think yours does," I said. "Mine may not be far away."

Marty put his phone away and for a time we were silent again as we cast flies, lost in our own thoughts.  I had lied, just a little.  Sally and I had sat on the dock.  We were fifteen and sixteen.  She would have never gotten in a rowboat and gone out on the lake with me.  Her parents were too concerned for her well being to put her in the hands of a boy whose sanity they must have wondered about. Had we rowed out fifty feet and her mother heard of it there would have been hell to pay.  Leaving us alone with each other happened only within the prescribed format of a date or a dance.  Only as we got older was I allowed to whisk her off alone in my father’s car. 

At the time neither of us appreciated such restrictions, implemented for both our physical safety as well as our moral virtue.  I have to assume when Sally became a parent her mind changed.  Mine did.  Our parents’ watchfulness helped us to enter our adulthood with options that otherwise might have been lost to the demands of our hormones.  One false step and a young woman could find herself pregnant.  She might have to work to support a child and thereby lose the opportunity for college or give up the personal freedom needed to invest in the start of a career. The chances of meeting a mature and responsible mate might considerably diminish.  Marty and I were  lucky. We had parents who cared and we married the daughters of parents who did likewise.

But as I looked out over the quiet lake and remembered Sally in a white summer dress, I knew it would be nice to renew old acquaintances.  Some might feel we should leave old flames in the ashes of our past, but as my boyhood friend and I sat out on the lake I got to thinking that we had recently turned seventy and that made things somewhat different than if we had all been in our thirties.

“Maybe it wouldn’t hurt,” I said aloud.

“What wouldn’t hurt,” said Marty.

“I don’t think our wives would mind if we called up our old girlfriends just to say ‘Hi,’” I said.

“You don’t?”  said Marty. “Which universe are you living in?”

“But this is just as old friends, not lovers,” I said.

“I assume that’s your story and you’re sticking to it?”

“OK, maybe we could call their husbands first," I said, "and explain we're just sitting out here fishing and thinking about their wives."

"Oh. sure," he said.

"They would probably understand."

"You think?” he said,  shaking his head, “I doubt it.“

"I mean, after all, the women should see us now. Don't you agree?"

"No, I don’t."

"But we're mature now, accomplished, successful," I said.

"We're also fifty pounds heavier, sagging and balding."

“Who would see us on the phone?” I said.

“You can hear fat and old in our voices.”

"Well, maybe they are too." I said.

"Precisely," he said as he glanced at me.

"Right,” I said.  “None of us are Twinkies.”

“Pardon?”

“Twinkies,”  I said, “they never change.”

“People do,” said Marty.

We continued to fish while I walked around in my head, thinking about old times. Ten minutes later I reached in my pocket and felt for my cell phone.  Pulling it out and flipping it open, I saw the reception bar  nudged up by the nearest cell tower.   I called Information.

Sally had married a young man I remembered from the Boy Scouts long ago.  He and I lived in different parts of the city and were not in the same troop, but I saw him each year at the town-wide Scout celebration night.  He often received another award while I sat on the sidelines wondering how the heck anyone found enough time to pursue all that glory.  He had worked hard on his Scout craft and wore a sash with more Merit Badges sewn on than I had ever seen before or since.  I might have remembered more about his Scouting exploits than about his bride, my old girl friend. I would never forget his name.  I had their telephone number in sixty seconds.

 “I found her,” I said to Marty.

“And what are you going to do with her?”  he said.

“Just call up and say ‘Hi’.” I answered.

“I have an idea,” he said.  “Why don’t we rehearse this?”

“What do you mean?”

“You play yourself,” he said, “and I’ll play Sally.”

Marty raised his fist to his ear and used a falsetto voice as high as he could muster.

“Hello-o-o.  This is Sa-a-lly.”

I laughed and played along.

“Hi Sally, this is Jack.”

“Jack!  Where have you been?  You were supposed to mow the lawn this morning and you didn’t show up.  I’m going to fire your ass, Jack, if you miss me once more—“

“Hold on.  Sally didn’t talk like that.”

“But it’s fifty years later,” said Marty.

“Start again,” I said.  “Hi Sally, this is Jack.”

“Jack who?”

“Jack from your teenage years.  We used to date.  I gave you my class ring.  We were—“

“I don’t have your class ring, Jack.  I threw it out.”

“Wait minute, Marty—“

“Wendell found it in my jewelry box and became incensed.”

“Who is Wendell?”  I said.

“Whatever her husband’s name is,” said Marty.

“This isn’t helping,” I said.

 “And then Wendell said …  if I ever had any kind of  contact with you, Jack … any at all, even if my car broke down in the swamp out yonder and you happened by … he would absolutely never give me my allowance again. Ever!”

“What allowance?”

“A guy with a name like Wendell would certainly give her a thousand or two a week.”

“Really,” I said, witheringly.

“At least.”

“OK.”

“How much would you have given her?” said Marty.

“I’ve never thought about it.”

“Uh huh,” he said.

“How should I know how much?”  I said.

Face it, you cheap bastard,” said Marty.  “You would have been good for no more than a hundred bucks a week … tops.”

“That would have been a lot of money back then,” I said.

“You’re right.  Then half of that.”

“What the hell does it matter, anyway, Marty?”

“Because it’s the first question Sally will ask you, right after she realizes you’re not the guy who mows her lawn.  ‘Jack,’ she’ll say, ‘how much of an allowance would you have given me?’”

“She wasn’t like that, Marty.”

“It’s fifty years later,” he said.

I sighed.  “Some people don’t change.”

“Really?” he said. “Then you’d better hope she’s a Twinkie.”

I put my phone back in my pocket.

He sighed. “I called Rosalie last night when you fell asleep in your lawn chair out by the fire,” he said.

“You’re kidding me, Marty.  Aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not kidding.”

I laughed. “Did she ask you how much of an allowance you would have given her?  Or did she threaten to fire your ass for not showing up to mow her lawn?"

“No,” he said.  “As soon as I told her who was calling, she hung up on me.”

I felt bad for him.  I didn’t know what to say.

“I suppose,” he said, “she asked herself why on earth would she want to have a conversation with some old geezer who had dated her a half century ago.”

“That’s probably a good question,” I said.

“And you know what?  We’re the Twinkies.”

 “How do you figure?” I asked.

“We haven't changed," he said with a laugh.  " After all these years, here we are on a Saturday afternoon still trying to call up girls who don’t want to talk to us.”

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copyright 2015, David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

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CONTINUED: Old Shoes

 The postal lady tooted the mail truck’s horn up by the road when she brought the small wrapped box.

Jack turned from where he stood at the edge of his  garden and walked up the hill.  He took deep breaths, so that he could say hello to the woman without having to gasp for breath.  The cool autumn air was much easier on him than the hot humid summer had been.  The old man appreciated the woman waiting for him to come get his package and he wanted to thank her.  She was always helpful and patient, unlike her predecessor, a man who acted like he could hardly wait to finish the mail route and take the afternoon off.

 “Hello, Annie.”  Jack managed to get the phrase out without having to breathe between the two words.

“How’s that garden, Jack?”

“OK," he said.  He took a breath.  “Best year yet.”  He wondered why he was lying about it.  He’d had a terrible garden this year, and was barely able to work in it most days.  At 87,  he was finished.  With gardening, anyway.  It was all over.

  “You been waitin’ for this?”  Annie asked.  He knew that was an invitation to tell the woman what was in the box.  Annie wasn’t nosey, just interested because Jack had been outside waiting for the mail for the past few days, signaling his anticipation.  But he didn’t really want to discuss it, so he said, “Oh yeah, kind of,” and let it go at that.

 When she climbed back in her truck and drove off, Jack took the box and a few pieces of junk mail across the lawn and heaved himself up the one step to his front porch.  Sitting down in the rocker, he carefully removed the layer of brown paper and untied the red string wrapped once around the box.  He lifted the cardboard lid and drew out a pair of new shoes.

 The leather was shiny new and smelled wonderful.  Sewn to the bottoms were strong,  thick soles to provide a superior platform for his old feet, and to help steady his walk.  The smart striped laces pulled the ears together over the tongue.  The shoe uppers were made from substantial thick leather.  The stitching was large and neat, as one would expect in leather goods assembled by craftsmen using excellent materials.  Jack’s new shoes were of a style an older person who liked the outdoors would appreciate.  And they were exactly like the old shoes he was wearing.

 The old man leaned over stiffly and removed his shoes.  He worked at the task for a few minutes, a knot giving him trouble and his breath becoming short when he stayed bent over too long.  He laced up the new shoes and put them on, tying a neat knot on each.  Jack leaned back in the rocking chair and stuck out his feet, flopping them left and right, admiring the new shoes.  Then he carefully placed the old pair in the box among the tissue papers, arranging everything as neatly as it had been at the factory.  After looking at the old shoes for a moment as they lay nestled in the box, he sighed and placed the lid back on.

 Jack stood up slowly, wobbling a little, and gave himself time for the dizziness to pass.  Then he turned and walked through the front door of the house and made his way to the kitchen.  Searching around in a drawer,  he found a roll of wide packing tape and carried it with the box and paper wrapping to the kitchen table.   This was his work station these days, used for most of his small daily tasks, now that meals were sparse and he was alone in the house.  Jack reached across the table for a pad of  writing paper and a pen.  He flipped through the pad and found a clean sheet of lined yellow paper,  and then he began to write.

Dear Fred,

I’m sending you these shoes.  I have had many good days in the garden with them and I decided I wanted a new pair, which just arrived today.  They’re exactly the same.  I love these old shoes and wanted nothing better, just newer.  I also bought new canvas pants last week and a new shirt, too.  They’re just like the pants I have, and the shirt is like all my other shirts.  Fred, I don’t want to be old anymore.  I want to be new.

 I won’t be getting dirty or wearing out my clothes any longer.  I’m too old.  Sitting around reading or cooking my supper won’t be like gardening in the mud.  So now I can stop when I pass the mirror and look at myself and feel new in my new clothes.  You could say I’m trying to be a new person.  Your sister would have told me to start on the inside, but I started from the only place I could.

 I took my old pants and shirts down to the church so the pastor’s wife could give them to someone less fortunate than myself.  She looked at me as if it would be tough finding anyone like that.

 I wanted you to have my old shoes.  These are the very same you gave me for Christmas nine years ago. when your sister was still alive.  How I miss her.    I didn’t like the shoes then and I said so.  Told you they were the dopiest shoes I’d ever seen.  A little too much Christmas Cheer in me, maybe.  You got mad and threatened to take them back.  I called you a name, maybe a few.  I don’t remember much of that evening, except for you getting up from in front of the Christmas tree and walking out of the  house.  We never spoke after that, but I don’t blame you.  

 I told your sister I’d never use the goddamned shoes, but eventually I wore them in the garden in the mud.  At first I just wanted to ruin them.  Then I kept wearing them because they really were comfortable.  Since your sister’s funeral, I wear them to remind myself that I can be pig-headed.   She always told me that, but I never could see it until after I’d lost her.  I wonder why that is. 

 These shoes have kept my feet comfortable, but they’ve made my heart uneasy. When I walk to the garden wearing them, I think it’s a shame you and I are no longer friends.  I miss telling each other terrible jokes or going fishing or loaning each other our books.  It’s too bad we’re not growing old together and can’t tell each other how we miss our wives or to laugh about our aches and pains.  

 So, the new me is saying I’m sorry, Fred.

And I’m sending you the shoes to prove that I really kept them and used them.  You can feel the creases and the wear on them.  You can see the mud in the cracks from years of  tending my asparagus patch and planting cabbages and cauliflower and string beans.  You will know  that you gave me a very useful gift, and you can trust I thought of you often while I wore them.

Your old friend,

Jack

Jack folded the note and put it in the box on top of the old shoes.  He retied the string and carefully wrapped the brown paper around the box exactly as it had been.   He taped the flaps back together.  Then he picked up the pen, and with rapid back and forth movements he crossed off his name and address.  Above the mailing label on the wrapping, he wrote simply, “Fred.”  Jack  sat looking at the package for a moment, thinking.  Abruptly, he stood and  reached for his car keys.

In a few minutes, Jack was slowly driving on the old road that ran out past the Methodist Church at the edge of town.  After a mile, he turned into a wide driveway and proceeded under a canopy of trees arching over the pavement like the nave of a church.  The far end of the driveway opened out into a grassy field with headstones arranged in neat rows.  

 When he found Fred’s grave, Jack got out of his car and laid the box in front of the stone.

“Sorry I’m late, Fred,” he said softly.  After a few moments, his eyes were wet, but he didn’t cry.  Instead, he sat down in front of the stone and began to talk.

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