But then I have often felt that way in regard to writing.
Particularly right at the start when each day I first sit down at this machine.
(It can be like boxing—I boxed as a kid—when I would be standing there in the corner waiting for the bell that would signal the start of it—and the thought that would powerfully at that moment come to mind—more than once it happened—more often than not actually—would be: what in the hell am I doing here?)
But there I was.
The same with writing.
The late Marguerite Duras bless her heart a most excellent writer in my estimation—has written that being a writer consists in not knowing.
If you think about it that is quite a place from which to start in on anything.
Yet we fiction writers do it all the time.
Uncertainty the only given.
All else is up for grabs.
Not to mention the surprises.
I have thought of it in better times—of what actually goes on in the act of writing—as a kind of mutually mental and physical activity for which one is never—and never can be—altogether or even decently prepared.
And not least of all—speaking of how being a writer consists in not knowing—when you are finally done with the thing after the days and months and even years and all the sweat and agony and so forth the bills piling up and one thing and another and at last it is really and truly finished completed done you really have no idea what you have created how well or poorly you have writ if the final product is in fact good bad or indifferent.
You never really know.
It was I believe Graham Green (why do I never write these things down when I read them?) or anyhow some well known writer who said that choosing to be a novelist means never to know the satisfaction of a job well done.
So I am not alone in this wonder at my calling and my craft.
Writing: it is as with: Look Ma! I’m dancing!
Well maybe you are and maybe you aren’t.
Maybe you are just moving your feet.
Writing: it is anyhow not in the least not in any way like riding a bicycle.
Not ever.
I would say it is more like riding a horse.
In which of course it is understood that the horse must first be agreeable to the arrangement.
The great dumb beast must cooperate.
And the beast is so large.
And you so small.
(I grow smaller all the time.)
(I hope I have not just confused things here.)
But anyhow and with luck here we go: Book Two
Chapter 26
So it’s back seven years ago—and quite a few intervening pages I’m afraid—but anyhow so there we were well into the long easy curve of the road and already I was thinking I could smell the river up ahead although of course that was a bit of anticipatory imagination at best as we had miles to go as the poet said before even so much as the woods were reached and beyond which lay the river the Little Star Creek so named I guess by those who liked their rivers really big to whom anything less than the Alabama the Tensaw or Tombigbee was a creek but creek or river either way I was thinking right then about the Little Star with considerable respect even affection you might say—in a Robert Frostian home-coming sort of way—the way I usually feel—as probably most of us do as well—about any familiar river or stream being a more or less honored or certainly a significant destination of a sort—even as once again we may have come upon it in our travels more or less by chance—and even if we fail to pause there at the creek or riverside—even so—the sight alone in passing is a destination of a sort achieved—being I believe a kind of elemental unthought inner thing we share with a lot of animals both large and small and birds as well of course—with waterfowl for sure!—I mean what with our being animals ourselves of course—which should account for it I think …
…(it was not my conscious intent with the above to imitate the tidal flow and pause the twists and turns of the Little Star but when memory works with me these days it really seems to work; so for now at least I’ll let it stand as written)…
… in any event I was feeling mellow enough and only half listening to Lucian when he dropped it on me …
Wham.
Yes sir he said be a writer you got to be a clever fellow—yes sir bringing me home like this—you have gone by the turn however …
I had been had.
Hoaxed
And so I brought the van slowly down to a not quite stop in the more or less middle of the road in what in fact and incidentally was probably pretty much the center of the arc of our swing our traverse through the great long sweeping easy curve that marked our approach to the river of that magnificent bend in the road of which I have written earlier and at considerable length I believe.
How far back I said?
Quite a piece Lucian said.
Miles? I said.
Seems like it could be miles Lucian said.
County road thirty-eight? you missed it? I said.
I might could have forgot Lucian said.
You forgot I said.
I reckon Lucian said.
Until just now I said.
Strange ain’t it? Lucian said.
He grinned at me. Happy.
In a pig’s ass I said.
He looked down at his hands, looked away. I most likely just forgot Lucian said.
In a pig’s ass you forgot I said.
He looked hurt—that is he pretended to look hurt it was ridiculous—made a face like a child an eighty-three year old child if that is possible and sat there looking at me as if to say how I could say such a thing the way a child will do when the child knows it has lied and knows you know it has but who—the child—is in it for the long run so to speak is not about to confess to anything for some time yet, mostly as a matter of pride—of class—of grace in adversity etc—or maybe just for the entertainment of it all …
… and so for awhile we simply sat there eyeball to eyeball until finally I realized as usual there was no point nothing to be gained in staying pissed no matter how much I had a right to be pissed … and so I set the van moving again swinging it back out of the middle of the road and properly on into the rest of the long slow sweet-sweeping curve letting the van really roll I mean still being a little pissed and all thinking okay old man you wish to play some games we will play some games …
… and so I came down heavy on the metal as they say and we went swinging on through the curve in a way that had the old man occasionally looking back the way a dog will do sometimes when it has got its head head stuck out the window and the speed or the wonder of it has got to be somehow too much for the dog to feel quite right about it …
… two can play this game I thought …
And then after awhile thinking about things a time came when I had to laugh.
I hit the wheel and easy wallop and laughed loud enough so the old man looked over at me.
In some surprise I would guess.
But I had been thinking about it about the way earlier when he had slumped over and stopped shaking even—when I had left him on his own to live or die as fate would have it—at least that was the way it had seemed to me at the time—and when I had even so more or less forgot about him got busy with my own thoughts cruel as that may sound until I had heard him laugh …
… and naturally therefore I knew he lived and I had wondered at the time if that was why he laughed that he hadn’t died after all that he was still alive …
But now I knew better.
County road thirty-eight? I said was that it then? back there when you laughed?—I imitated the way he had laughed—he he he?—you remember?
I knew it was possible of course that he did not in fact remember it at all how it was that his body his very bones had been hit with the worse case of the shakes I had ever seen his head flung around like a weed in the wind and how he had finally folded at the middle and slumped to one side and gone limp a
nd still—the last a detail which of course by that time he had surely been past remembering—but which I remembered well enough and from which awesome stillness I had looked away leaving it as I have noted previously altogether with the fates or whatever should or should not the old man ever again lift his head …
Well? I said. You watched us go by? you knew?
He remembered.
Oh he remembered all right.
I thought you seen it he said.
What was there then but for the both of us finally to laugh?
Anyhow we did.
Just off and on for a bit each in our own way.
The woods had started showing up clear ahead …
… the way they curved to the river’s curving …
… seemed I could already smell it the woods and the water the river … even over the stink of the old man.
Chapter 27
The old dog barks with his face in the dirt.
It is possible that I read that someplace that it may be a quotation and if this is so naturally I would give attribution if I knew from whom or whence it came—on the other hand I have never written a true sounding line in my life but what I supposed I must have first read it somewhere else—but be that as it may—and it is as best a small problem as I do not as a general rule write all that many true sounding lines or anyhow lines that sound to me like I might have lifted them from the work of another writer one possibly dead now or worse one just down the street so to speak—but anyhow in the case of the above I am saying only that which for a fact I did observe: the old dog barked with his face in the dirt.
There was more dust rose up than bark.
And so ends Book Two.
The rest is epilogue.
Epilogue
Well we made it across the Little Star and on to Burke’s Landing and parked under a big old oak where Lucian went to sleep—I guess that was what he did—he kept breathing anyhow and now and then twitched and jerked like a dog will do sometimes when it dreams so I knew he most likely wasn’t unconscious as I do not believe people dream much when they have passed out or have anyhow for some reason become unconscious—and so more or less alone I looked out over the marsh grass at the river not thinking much of anything at all that I can remember when as though at some signal a great bunch of red-winged blackbirds lifted up from the marsh grass—birds I had not even known were there—and for a little bit hung fluttering low above the marsh grass making what seemed to me somewhat phoney or at least half-hearted blackbird cries of alarm and then all at once they settled back into the marsh grass again and out of sight.
It was like it almost hadn’t happened.
And I wondered at it what had so suddenly startled them or if anything at all had startled them or if maybe they just took a notion to do it, the way it seems that birds that travel a good deal in flocks will frequently do, how they will perform some pretty busy aerial activities together for no special reason apparent to the spectator the way they will sweep and dip and curve and turn back on themselves all at once and all together like one great bird …
… and I do not remember if it came to my mind at the time but it has come to my mind since any number of times: do birds ever lose it? birds that flock? say with geese for instance? a gaggle of geese at the end gone gaga? all drifting around like dust motes?
Out of touch with the stars?
Like Sugar Ray, not even knowing what kind of birds they had been?
Next to me, Lucian farted in his sleep.
Loud.
And the blackbirds lifted up again; as though this time in celebration.
There is no end to the mysteries.
Which is all I really know for sure.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1997 by Donald Wetzel
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2866-0
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As I Walked Out One Evening Page 12