by J. J. Murray
Yes, you should.
I return to my “five hundred–millimeter stare”—the distance from my eyes to the laptop screen—and reread my novel so far. I want to intrigue readers into thinking there is something seriously and fundamentally wrong with the scene, yet in the end, everything is seriously and fundamentally normal.
Normal is good.
Not when you’re supposed to provide dramatic, guilty pleasures on every page!
No writer can do that!
The narrative begins harmlessly enough, though the average reader might be thinking, “I may have picked up the wrong book.”
That’s what I thought.
The novel opens with an interrogation, the interrogator trying to piece together the mystery of the “blood on the floor,” the “stains on the walls,” and “the muddy footprints all over the kitchen.” Noël was never an interrogator like that, but I want my heroine to be like that. It’s more dramatic, more…tense if she has an accusatory voice.
It isn’t until the word “ashy” that the reader has a clue to Arthur’s identity, and I’m sure Arthur’s “calloused” and “scarred” hands will get me in trouble with the critics. A white man’s hands being calloused, as in actually having to work so hard as to cause calluses to form on his hands? Not on our lives! Callous, maybe. “Scarred” is an equally puzzling description of a white man’s hands. Unless, they will say, he is a farmer, an NFL lineman or a quarterback (two of a few positions white men are currently able to play in the twenty-first century), a lightweight Irish boxer, or an assembly-line worker, he can have no physical scars.
Now you’re thinking too much!
So, what does the reader know about Arthur? The reader knows he is possibly an NFL lineman/Irish lightweight who works the land by day and the assembly line by night, the typical hardworking American white man. The reader knows that he is in trouble, but that doesn’t worry the reader at all. The reader knows that though he may face a hail of bullets, a nuclear bomb or two, and the evil that naturally plagues white men wherever they go, our white man hero will be triumphant in the end. This is, after all, only the opening page.
My critics are going to skewer me! Maybe the interrogator will take the heat away from Arthur. No, they’ll find fault with her, too. She’s too angry and rude, and—
You think far too much. Let it flow. You haven’t even had reviews of your first book yet. They might be wonderful reviews.
Of a book I don’t recognize anymore?
I reread the chapter again. Geez, it’s almost as if I’ve created a serial killer.
Yeah, I was sort of wondering about that…
The evidence against him is heavy, his responses weak and unresponsive, his choice of “interesting” to describe a day of “blood” “stains,” and “mud” completely creepy. The reader will begin to lose sympathy/empathy for Arthur until he asks for mercy and folds his hands “prayerfully” and “hopefully.”
He’s not such a bad sort, a few bricks shy of a load in the verbalization department, but an okay Joe (though you’ve named him Arthur) who knows when to pray for deliverance.
But is he a good father? The critics will say, “No, he isn’t because he let his boy play in a lightning storm.” The critics won’t say that Arthur is a good father because he remembers what it was like to be a boy and knows that a little thunder, a little lightning, and a little mud made us all.
You’re thinking too much again.
I know. I can’t help it. I have all this time to think.
When Arthur’s wife—whom I haven’t even named yet? Geez, I’m slipping. I’ll call her Di for now.
Why “Di”?
I have my reasons.
Ah, Diane the librarian. You’re going to name a character after her because she touched you?
Shh.
When Di asks, “Are you that…unaware, Mister Jefferson?” I’ll bet the readers start nodding.
I was nodding.
Shh.
They’ll think that he is completely unaware. He does not hear the thunder, he does not know it’s raining, and he most likely doesn’t know where his son is. But are these traits of the average father? Can the reader really fault Arthur for being clueless? Or for being a writer? My main character doesn’t work, per se, though writing is, of course, a job someone has to do.
But so is doing the dishes or taking out the garbage or trimming fingernails and toenails.
Yeah, you’re right. The reader will lose respect for my “would-be author” almost immediately.
I’ve created a puzzle, a conundrum inside a poser folded into an enigma, a man whose mind is “three parts stew and one part broth,” the results of his living in the “melting pot.”
It’s not so bad. It has your attention, right?
Oh, it does all right. It has me criticizing my own novel before I’ve gotten ten pages into it! Who does that to his or her first draft? No one!
I’ll bet all writers do this.
I’m…I’m not a writer. Gaines, Morrison, Ellison—they’re writers. I’m just a…storyteller.
Then tell a story. Let it flow.
But they don’t want a story! They want drama! They want guilty pleasures! They want…they want everything I know nothing about!
Tell a story anyway.
I sigh deeply, take a sip of lukewarm tea, and shake my head. “This will not do.”
I toy with deleting my first chapter, such as it is, with a single touch of a button.
Keep it. You might need it.
When will I need it?
It might make a nice last chapter.
You know…you might be right. But what author writes the last chapter of a book before he or she writes the first?
They said they wanted three chapters and an outline. They didn’t specify which three chapters, did they?
No. No they didn’t.
I smile because I may have written the last chapter of my second novel.
13
Diane
I check the clock on Saturday afternoon. Four o’clock already? Where has the time gone? I haven’t been that busy today, just the usual walking of the stacks and scanning of the books, and no shaggy white men have come looking for the African American fiction section. That gives me just enough time for one more chapter of Thicker Than Blood, and then I have to get to work reshelving a few books.
3: Daddy’s Worm Farm
I make a U-turn and head to Pine Lake, taking a dozen country roads to Daddy’s one-bedroom shack a few feet from a little backwater cove. I honk at all the ducks in Daddy’s dirt driveway, and they part like white water, there are so many of them.
“What’s with all the ducks?” Chloe asks.
“Worm farm…ducks. They go hand in hand.”
I park under some towering pine trees next to the largest bin of worms. I call it a bin because I don’t know what else to call it. It’s like a huge sandbox raised three feet off the ground with several sheets of black tarp over it.
“Watch your step here, too.”
She slips on her sandals, wincing. “I will.”
She put those nasty sandals back on? Well, I guess it’s better than going barefoot.
I look around her to the dock but don’t see Daddy’s boat. “He must be out delivering worms.”
“He delivers them?”
“Yeah, and by boat. He traded in a brand-new Ford truck for this boat. You’ll just have to see it to believe it.”
“Where does he deliver them to?”
“He bought fifty old Coke vending machines at a thousand a pop, and he placed them all around the lake, mostly at marinas. All he did was use some gray duct tape to put the letters W, O, R, and M over the C-O-K-E on the machines. I told him that he forgot the S, and he said, ‘No, I didn’t.’” Which is one of the longest sentences he’s ever spoken to me. “But that’s about all anyone would get, alive anyway, if it gets too hot.”
“They’re not plugged in?”
“Yeah, they
are, but not all of them are in the shade.”
“That’s…absurd.”
“But it’s not crazy?”
“Misguided maybe, but, no, not crazy.”
She opens her door carefully, a flock of ducks staring right up at her. “Do they bite?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
I pull up my pants legs, and point at several red marks. “From my last visit. I was wearing shorts.”
She shuts the door. “You go first.”
You got that right, Chloe. Rob needs to shoo all those ducks out of the way.
“Watch this.” I lean on the horn, and the air fills with ducks and feathers, and a huge greenish white splat of goo plops on the windshield. “We can get out now.”
This author is definitely visual, I’ll give him that.
We check out the biggest bin first. I pull back the edge of one of the tarps, and we see…dirt. Not much excitement at a worm farm. “Underneath all this dirt are about a million worms, and all they do is make more worms. They double every twenty-two days.”
Chloe whistles. “That’s…a lot of worms. Does he make any money?”
“Well, he’s in debt because of the vending machines and all the bins he has to build every three weeks, and this land wasn’t cheap, though I got him a pretty good deal. He sells two dozen worms for two dollars, which is a pretty fair price, and he says that each machine makes him about a hundred a week in quarters, so—”
“He makes five thousand dollars a week?”
“Yeah. In quarters. But only from late March to early November.”
“That’s…seven months, about thirty weeks times five thousand…He makes a hundred fifty thousand dollars a year from worms?”
I am definitely in the wrong profession. They didn’t have this major at Purdue.
“Give or take.”
“That’s…that’s amazing.”
I shrug as I watch several gangs of ducks closing in. “He ought to be raising ducks. That’s where the money’s at.” I take Chloe’s elbow and guide her toward the dock. “But he’s got some major problems this year, and it’s all because of these ducks.”
We walk out onto the dock, and Chloe flops down, taking off her sandals, and dangling her feet over the edge.
“I wouldn’t put your feet in there,” I say.
“Why not?”
“Just look.”
She looks down. “I’m looking.”
“You used to be able to see the bottom. It’s only three feet deep here.”
“Eww.” She pulls her feet under her. “What happened?”
I sit next to her. “The ducks happened. The worms attracted them, they hang out, they shit everywhere, and this cove just…died. That water is duck-shit soup.
And I was going to have some clam chowder for dinner tonight! Not anymore.
Daddy’s neighbors all recently signed a petition to have the worm farm removed so the ducks will go away and they can go swimming again. A news crew even came down here a couple weeks ago, so now folks think all of Smith Mountain Lake is duck-shit soup.” “I think I saw that story.”
“Yeah. Didn’t do much for business down here. All that publicity cut down on fishing on the lake, and that cuts down on Daddy’s sales….”
She sniffs the air. “It does smell…metallic.”
“Today’s not so bad because it rained yesterday. But go a few days without rain, and this cove smells like, well, Grandpa Joe-Joe’s yard. But that’s not the main problem. You see, Daddy doesn’t sell the worms fast enough. He might sell two million worms a season, but whatever’s left at the end of the season just…copulates all winter. Eventually, he’ll run out of land for all his bins, even if he starts stacking them on top of each other, and when that happens…well, I don’t want to be anywhere near here when that happens. Can you imagine a couple million worms spilling into that cove?”
Chloe looks down at the water. “Dag, the sunset doesn’t even reflect on the water.”
I hear a boat approaching and look out into the main channel. “Here comes my daddy.”
We watch his busted-up Chris-Craft, a wooden boat in the age of fiberglass, churn through the green water to the dock. That thing takes so much water he has to bail as he goes. I catch the front end and tie it up while Daddy ties up the back. Then he starts stacking sacks full of coins onto the dock in front of Chloe.
“Hi,” Chloe says.
“ ’Lo,” Daddy says.
“I’m Chloe.”
Daddy nods, and he keeps on stacking. She’s getting more out of him than I usually do.
“Need any help?”
“Nah,” Daddy says after a pause. He glances at me, but he keeps on stacking.
It’s always been like this, ever since I was a little boy. He hardly ever made eye contact with me when I was growing up, hardly even spoke to me, like he was either ashamed of me or ashamed of himself. He isn’t an ugly man, just…big featured. His eyes are too wide and too round, his forehead is at least a foot across, his nose is flattened all over his face, and one ear’s bigger than the other. He isn’t exactly slow, though it takes him a couple seconds to answer any question, and I know he’s not dumb. He’s just…my daddy.
I’m beginning to like Rob. He has pride in his family, warts and all. That’s rare these days.
And since Mama died two years ago, all he’s been doing is this worm farm. He could have invested Mama’s life insurance money raising any other animal, maybe even cows or pigs or even horses over at Grandpa Joe-Joe’s. I guess he chose worms because they’re blind, they don’t make any noise, and they breed like, well, rabbits. I don’t know what he thinks about all the ducks, or even the raccoons that try to raid the worms every night, or even the petition his neighbors have signed against him and his farm. I just don’t know my daddy all that well, even after thirty years.
“So, Daddy, how’s it going?”
He looks up, the last sack of change on the dock. “It’s goin’.” He steps out of the boat and collects four bags at once, each easily weighing fifty pounds. I grab two, Chloe struggles with the last one, and we follow Daddy up to the shack. He opens the only door and goes in, extending one of his massive arms behind him to take our bags.
“Aren’t we going in?” Chloe whispers.
“No. He won’t let anybody inside.”
“Why not?”
I don’t answer her, because I really don’t know. I tried to go inside once, but he blocked the way, not saying a single thing, barely making a sound.
Daddy comes back out with a huge plastic bag filled with Styrofoam cups and lids and heads past us to the largest bin.
“Are you going out again, Daddy?”
Daddy nods, pulling back one of the tarps. The second he does, the ducks flock over and surround him. They never nip at his legs. Never. Daddy lays out a line of cups in front of him, and then he starts digging into the dirt, coming up with fistfuls of worms. I’ve never seen him count them, but I’ve never heard of anyone complaining that they were shortchanged. Every third fistful, he flings several worms into the air, and the ducks go crazy, squawking and fussing with each other. I almost see a smile on his lips whenever he does this, and it seems to be the only time my daddy is ever happy.
Chloe wades through the ducks to stand beside him. “Need any help?”
Daddy blinks at her, then at me. “Nah,” he says.
Chloe digs into the dirt with both hands. “I don’t mind.” She grimaces as she pulls up a handful of worms. “Two dozen in each, right? ”
Daddy glances over at her hand. “You got twenty.”
“Huh?” Chloe says.
“Need four more.”
Chloe looks at me, and I shrug. I don’t know how he knows. He just does. Chloe counts out the worms wriggling in her hands as she puts them in a cup. “Twenty,” she says eventually.
“Need four more,” Daddy says again.
Chloe nods. “How’d you know?”
Chloe puts four more worms in her container and snaps on a lid. “Come on, Rob. This is fun.”
I’ve never done this. I’ve never wanted to do this, yet here I am, walking toward my crazy daddy’s biggest worm bin, rolling up my sleeves while ducks nip at my pants legs. Daddy nods at me, and I dig in.
This is beyond gross, yet…it’s kind of relaxing. The worms massage my hands when they aren’t snotting on me,
Oh, that’s sick! I may never eat clam chowder again.
and the ducks don’t nip at me as much once I start feeding them. I find that I have “twenty-eight hands,” so Chloe and I work together to fill our cups. She digs her twenty, I dig my twenty-eight, and then she takes four from me. In less than an hour, we have several hundred cups finished and ready to go. We help Daddy get them into the boat, he nods at each of us, and off he goes into the last of the sunset.
Chloe holds up her hands. “Where do you wash your hands around here?”
“Good question.”
We end up wiping them off on an old towel in my trunk, but no amount of wiping will get all the dirt from under our nails.
“That was interesting,” I say as we return to the dock.
“It was fun,” Chloe says.
“Yeah?” I slide closer to her. “You aren’t kidding, are you?”
“No.”
I put my hand on top of hers. “What do you think of my daddy?”
“You mean, do I think he’s crazy?”
“Yeah.”
“What he does might seem crazy to the rest of the world, but the way he does it is completely sane. And he makes money, a whole lot more money than I do.”
“But it’s all he does. It’s all he’s been doing since my mama died two years ago.”
“So he’s just working it out. Nothing wrong with that.” She smiles. “I think he may even be an idiot savant.”
“A what?”
“An idiot savant, you know, someone who seems kinda slow but who has amazing mathematical abilities. I bet he could count all the pine cones in that tree over there in less than a second….”