By now Jackson has forgotten how to breathe. He doesn't need to anymore. His bloody lips part and he whispers, “Home home home...."
So, that is the past.
For the last week I have been watching the jungle with Jackson-eyes, and I have seen many signs of Charlie. He is coming. How can he resist? As I have said, Charlie is an artist and I am his loving curator. Together, we will create a great work. Our patrons will gather, guns will scream, artist and art will be as one.
And another will come to revel in our masterpiece. One who knows of sin and devotion. A rider on the storm. He will see the blood, and he will speak the final words.
I feel him now. He comes to assure safe passage.
I have written the report and signed it with the name of my successor, a man who is destined to meet the rider on the storm. I have stenciled the bag with my name and rank. I have stenciled REMAINS UNVIEWABLE. And I know exactly where the private will be when Charlie comes.
Will the private know when he hears the song? Will he understand?
I wonder what he will say when I tear the knife from my chest.
You Can’t Write With a Bowling Ball
"Save the Last Dance for Me" was my first published story, but "Cosmos" was the first story I sold. I placed it with George Hatch, editor/publisher of Noctulpa, which for my money was one of the best of the small press magazines to appear in the nineties.
I rarely see Noctulpa mentioned today, and that's a shame. If you're a reader looking for a treat, hunt up some back issues. Noctulpa first appeared as a magazine but eventually morphed into an anthology series. That was a good move, because George Hatch had an eye for solid fiction—Steve Tem, Jeffrey Osier, Chet Williamson, Kevin Anderson, Nancy Holder, (Stephen) Mark Rainey, and Lucy Taylor all appeared in Noctulpa.[32]
George published a lot of good writers early in their careers. He found more good stories in the slush pile than any other editor I've ever known, and he worked with the writers of those tales to make them better. George also treated his writers extremely well. I'm not just talking about the money—though it's true that he paid much better than most other small press publishers of the day—I'm talking about George's approach to the work and the people who did it. George was a true champion of writers who were unknown or underpublished. A big part of the reason he published Noctulpa was to get those people some attention.[33]
Both "Cosmos" and "Save the Last Dance for Me" were written about the same time. Like most early stories, they rely pretty heavily on plot twists. Most beginners can't avoid doing that, and I was no exception. When you first try to write stories, building up to a "trick ending" can seem like the point of the entire exercise. Especially if you're a heavy reader of genre fiction, it's hard not to see things that way.
And that's one reason why so many early efforts fall short. Most beginners are so intent on setting up a big surprise to wrap things up that they neglect other storytelling essentials. They don't do much with atmosphere, or narrative voice, or character development. Instead they concentrate on coming up with that final twist, and when the time comes they fire it at the reader like a bowling ball. The story itself becomes a vehicle to send that bowling ball screaming down a black-and-white alley of words, and they roll that twist ending through the company of characters they've set up on the page in hopes of scoring a sold strike with the reader.
Only problem there is that bowling isn't exactly the most exciting of spectator sports. Watching some guy topple a bunch of little white pins isn't exactly thrilling, even if the guy manages to knock 'em all over every time he lets fly. And that's because those white pins with the little red collars are all pretty much the same. It's hard to make an emotional investment in them. And it's the same with the characters you'll find in a lot of stories by beginners. They're not real people. They're stereotypes, or cardboard cutouts, or walking ten-pins with made-up names. The only reason they're on the page is to await the arrival of the bowling ball.
Your characters deserve better than that. You need to believe in them. When you put them down on the page, you need to concentrate on making them breathe. You need to get their blood pumping. Of course, giving your characters (and their stories) life is not an easy trick, but you can do it. Like any job, you have to use the right tools.
In this case, nothing fancy is required. When it comes to creating living, breathing characters, you can do the job with a pencil. Or you can do it with a typewriter or a word processor. But you can't do it with a bowling ball.
Writing "Cosmos," I knew going in that the plot relied heavily on twists, but I tried hard to avoid making those twists the focus of the story. To do that, I invested the characters and the setting with a shot of everyday reality. The approach I took was based on the oldest writing advice in the book—write what you know.
That's what I did. The neighborhood in "Cosmos" was the neighborhood where I lived at the time. The next-door neighbor, Cummings, was based pretty solidly on the guy who lived next door to me, and the one early morning scene between Cummings and the main character pretty much happened between my neighbor and me, note for note.
There's not much more I can add. Let's just say that the real-world Cummings did not come to a good end. He was still alive when I published "Cosmos," but he didn't last long after that. His personal demons took him out cold and hard, and all the fantastic goings-on and noirish shadows in the following tale pale pretty damn significantly in comparison to the chill I get thinking about that.
COSMOS
"Honey, come and look!" she cried from the backyard.
He dropped a box marked "kitchen stuff" next to the refrigerator and squeezed through a maze of grocery bags and moving boxes. It was great to see her so excited. "Like a kid in a candy store," he said, tripping over a popcorn popper.
The screen door banged behind him as he walked across the patio. She stood on the other side of the overgrown lawn, ankle-deep in a garden of purple and white flowers.
"What are they?" he asked.
She laughed. "Cosmos, you big dummy! Don't you know anything?"
"Don't be so rough on me. I'm the guy who flunked botany, remember?" He shrugged. "Anyway, who planted them? They weren't here the last time the real estate agent brought us out."
"The summer rains brought them back, silly. The last owner must have had a garden here. Once you plant cosmos, you can't get rid of them." She plucked a few blossoms and threaded them through her auburn hair. "You've got a lot to learn, mister. Otherwise, they're apt to kick us out of the neighborhood."
He jumped across the dewy lawn, grabbed her and kissed her neck. "Maybe if I work on it, they'll kick us out anyway."
She kissed back and swatted his rump.
He squeezed her behind and sprang away, scraping under the branches of a pear tree. She gave chase; ripe golden pears rained down on her head as she ducked under the quivering branches. "Ouch," she groaned. "Now you're gonna get it."
The screen door banged behind them. She tripped over the popcorn popper and he pulled her into an embrace. "Worth it?" he asked.
"Every penny. Even with the outrageous interest rates."
She unpacked the blender while he assembled the new barbecue. They showered, ate rare steaks and drank cold margaritas, and spent the evening in the backyard. Bees nestled in the cosmos, dancing from blossom to blossom. He told her how much he loved her, and she kissed him and made another batch of margaritas.
They slept outside in old sleeping bags that they hadn't used since hiking trips back in college. They were too tired to make love. Crickets sang in the cosmos, and a bug-zapper sizzled next door.
The rev of a poorly tuned lawn mower woke him at 7:30. "Ah, suburbia!" he grumbled. "I love the sound of lawnmowers in the morning!"
She kicked him playfully and then made instant coffee, which they both hated. "I can't find the coffee grinder anywhere," she apologized.
"I'll live," he said, only half kidding.
The rest of the day was spent
unpacking. They worked in different rooms, kissing and hugging when their paths happened to cross. He unpacked his things, she hers.
The neighbors left them alone. The house on the left was owned by Joe & Peggy Davidoff, a couple who worked for the phone company. They had several children and always seemed to be hosting a birthday party. Every now and then the Davidoffs would wave from inside a Honda or a Toyota as they backed out of their driveway, but they never seemed to have time to stop and talk. He figured that the Davidoffs barely had time to talk to each other.
Cummings, the owner of the poorly tuned lawn mower, lived on the right. He was a big man, a plumber, with long black hair and empty blue eyes. He lived alone —his wife had recently left him. No one seemed to know if it was a divorce or just a trial separation, and they certainly didn't want to ask.
They hated Cummings. His only visitors were noisy, gray-faced men who came carrying six-packs of canned beer. Sharp-nettled weeds spidered out from his property, his dogs yapped and howled, and an ever-changing collection of rusty cars sat on the brown clumps of grass that passed for his front lawn. She took one look at Cummings's junkers and spent seventy-five dollars on oleanders, which she immediately planted in an orderly row just their side of the property line.
Things were slow to shape up. After two weeks, they could move through the house without dancing around boxes. He'd made more trips to the dump than he cared to think about, and she felt like an old German housekeeper. They both returned to work.
Nothing had changed at the shop. As usual, his employees hadn't done much while he was gone. Several customers were screaming for the new Jack Nicholson/Meryl Streep video, and no one had bothered to order extra copies. He didn't really care. He wondered why people who wanted Nicholson and Streep came to his shop in the first place —classics from the thirties and forties were his specialty.
One of his employees, Marie, worked overtime to help him catch up. While they labeled a dozen Nicholson/Streep cassettes, she reviewed several new arrivals in her usual breathless manner: an atmospheric Val Lewton classic (sharp print, too), a Stewart Granger epic that made her long for Ronald Coleman (bad sound, even worse dialogue), and a great new print of Bell, Book, & Candle (oh, that Hermione Gingold!). He listened and laughed at her funnier comments, filing them away to toss at customers who might ask his opinion.
Lately, he didn't care about movies. He cared about quiet dinners, limey margaritas, and his wife's smile.
It seemed that he had to stop on his way home every night to buy charcoal or lighter fluid. The summer was unusually hot, and she didn't want to heat up the house by cooking in the kitchen. He didn't mind barbecuing. Things were busy at her law firm, and she was often too tired to fix dinner. He cooked nearly everything on the grill —meat, fish, even corn and potatoes —and she took care of the margaritas.
Once a month, a van from a local restaurant supply came through the neighborhood. The driver sold them the same steaks, king crab legs, salmon, and pork chops that they would get if they ate out at the local restaurants. The freezer was filled for the price of two meals out, and they congratulated each other on their thrift.
After dinner, they sat outside and read or listened to baseball on the radio. Sometimes they just closed their eyes and smelled the barbecue, the limey margaritas, and the wonderfully green grass. "God, now I know what my parents loved," she said, more than once.
Past the cosmos, beyond the leaning grape-stake fence, lay a community trail that wound through a neighborhood park. Occasionally, eyes closed, they could hear the chatter of walkers and the whir of coasting bicycles coming from the trail.
One night, after an especially large dinner of steak and crab legs, she said, "Hey, chubbo, let's go for a walk."
"Sounds good." He chuckled, slapping his stomach. "I've got five extra pounds that I don't need, and I'd better start doing something about it."
They both thought it was funny how soon the walks became a habit. Night after night they would wash the dishes and start off at about 8 o'clock. Sunset was at 8:30, but on a clear night they could walk until shortly after nine. Besides, fewer people walked after eight. "The fewer, the better," he said.
The other late evening walkers were usually familiar. There were five or six dog-walkers, an old woman who had apparently suffered a stroke and shuffled slowly with one arm curled across her stomach, and several packs of energetic housewives who giggled and gossiped as they trotted along. The pastel jogging outfits worn by the housewives amused them both. Incredibly, no two ladies in any group ever seemed to be wearing the same color, and while he was sure that they all telephoned each other to prevent such an embarrassment, she chalked it up to some special kind of Shirley MacLaine-bred suburban telepathy.
As newcomers, they enjoyed being unconventional. He wore old sweat pants from his college days and one of a dozen T-shirts that he had collected long ago at sporting events and rock concerts, while she favored running shorts over a one-piece spandex swimsuit. The suit hugged her breasts, hardening her nipples, and in the evening breeze she almost felt naked. Sometimes she wore one of his old dress shirts if it was cold. And she always carried a paper bag at her side. They were both sure that everyone was dying to know what was inside the bag, but no one ever asked.
Under the milky light of a July full moon, they had explored a rocky path that dead-ended at the far corner of the park. While she stopped to take a pebble out of her shoe, he wandered off the little- used path, never dreaming that he'd discover anything interesting.
"Don't get into any poison oak," she warned. "I don't want a husband who looks like one of the Mushroom People."
"Hey, I was a Boy Scout," he protested, ducking under a low tangle of oak branches that hid a shallow creek. "Even got a merit badge for poison oak detection." Laughing, he jumped across the creek and squeezed between two thick tree trunks; he found himself at the edge of a dark, tranquil pool. Ten feet away, perched on broken concrete block on the other side of the water, sat a moon-white cat, purring while it cleaned its paws.
The cat wasn't frightened at all. It came straight to him, begging for attention that he provided happily. His wife joined him and tugged a few burs out of the cat's fur. "Poor little guy," she said. "You're all ribs and backbone."
The next night when he stopped for charcoal, he picked up a box of Friskies and a package of lunch bags. They began their walks earlier, jogging sometimes, so they could feed the cat before darkness fell.
They thought about bringing the cat home, but decided against it. He didn't think it would be happy in anyone's yard, and she agreed, even though she said she'd love to play with a kitty in the garden of waist-high cosmos.
Instead they visited the pool every night, gazing at their reflections in the still water while the cat ate and purred.
The pool had given him an idea. In the backyard, he cleared a large section of cosmos and began to dig a hole. His plan was to build a concrete pond and partially cover it with a cedar-slat deck. He borrowed several books on water gardens from the public library and read them at work. Marie enjoyed looking at his sketches, and she phoned several lumber yards searching for a deal on some cedar.
"This is above and beyond the call, Marie," he said. "You'll have an engraved invitation to the unveiling party."
Marie blushed. "I'll bring the champagne."
He didn't know exactly when the crying started, but he suspected that she had been hiding it from him for quite awhile. Now she couldn't. He would be barbecuing and hear her weeping while she made margaritas, or she would break down in the middle of dinner. They couldn't seem to make it through an evening without tears. Anything could set her off: a sad song on the radio, the rusty tinkling of a wind-chime, even a lone hummingbird in the cosmos.
The firm was getting to her. She was bringing home more and more work each evening, and he couldn't remember the last time they'd actually spent an entire weekend together. If she wasn't working on a case, she was off to a distant seminar or retrea
t. There was nothing to be done about it. At least, that's what she said.
It was September, and he was working like a madman to finish the pond before the rains came. Their evening walks had become evening runs. She said running helped her to sleep and he didn't argue — running the distance to the pool gave him more time to work on the pond. Besides, they were both terribly fit. He liked the way she looked when she peeled off her swimsuit — firm and hard and white — and most nights he coaxed her into the shower, where they would make love under the hissing water.
One night she started to cry in the shower. "I'm going to have to work late for awhile," she said between sobs. "With daylight savings time ending and all I'm — "
"It's okay," he said. "I understand." He kissed her forehead. "Maybe for Christmas we can go somewhere, maybe Mexico...." Neither one mentioned the cat.
The weekend was supposed to be completely unremarkable. She was off to a meeting on the coast, and he was planning to work on the pond. He had finished the wooden forms and iron skeleton the previous evening and was going to pour the concrete today. After showering, he dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt and walked outside to his truck.
Cummings was at the edge of the driveway, puking in the oleanders.
He turned away, but there was no escape. Cummings looked up and wiped yellow spittle off his lips. "They're no damn good," Cummings said. "They leave you. They get what they want and they leave you. Christ, the things they ask you to do. Crazy things. And you stumble around and do everything they ask, because they can make you do it, even if you don't want to. And then they're gone — doesn't matter what you've done — they still go. They leave you with a ball of barbed wire in your guts." Cummings laughed bitterly. "And maybe one morning you find yourself puking in the neighbor's bushes."
Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales Page 18