Things Found While Cleaning Out the Garage

Bob hadn't intended this to be the day he cleaned the garage, but looking at the heavy rain falling outside the open overhead door, he supposed it was as good as any. Uncommonly heavy rain for here, for this season, it reminded him of the fall downpours of back home.

Gradually he passed through the stacks of boxes and, upon shifting the layers of flat materials leaning up against the wall, he was surprised to find the deer skull hanging there. It seemed undamaged by all that stuff he had just  moved, but he felt guilty for not having been more careful.

He reached out and took it from the wall and ---

Little Head-Bob watched in awe as the rain came down in nearly solid sheets, the trees lit up by the lightning that flashed over and over. He had never seen a storm like this in his young life and he instinctively backed up to the far wall of the nest hole, against the warm living part of the old tree. It had shielded his family from the weather all his life, perhaps it would still do.

Over the rain and the roaring of the creek, now a surging smashing thing he did not recognize, his keen owl ears picked up the sound of something running down the hill. It crashed through the brush toward him as though in flight or panic.  He could hear it coming, leaping and darting, changing direction every time the lightning flashed or the thunder struck.

Terrified, the doe came so fast it never had a chance to stop before it got to the raging creek, now twenty feet wide and over twelve feet deep. It was carrying everything in its path downstream with it. Watching from his nest, Little Head-Bob's eyes flashed wide, shocked, as the deer's reflexive leap carried it high up, out over the creek and almost to the bank on his side. Then, plunging into the roaring water, the deer tumbled out of sight and was just ... gone.

Lightning flashed and he saw across the creek, a shadowy thing just standing, as though looking his way. He shivered and blinked but then the shadow was gone, obscured by darkness as the lightning faded.

Another flash of lightning and Bob looked up from the skull in his hands and there out through the rain across the street, where the water ran swift through the ditch, he thought he saw a shadow. Something with four legs, something...  gone.

Little Head-Bob blinked in the sun, drying his feathers as he dozed, dreaming of a man who walked along the creek bank. The man stopped, looked at the pile of dead brush stuck under the tree fallen across the creek, and caught the glint of light off something there.

Bob waded into the knee-deep creek, careful of the slick moss covered rock bottom, trying to watch where he was going while still keeping his eye on that spot in the brush.  Hedge thorns raked the back of his hand as he tunneled it into the pile, back almost to full arm's-length before finally catching  hold of the thing. Carefully bringing it out, he was surprised to be holding a perfectly intact deer skull, too small for a buck, staring back at him.

Little Head-Bob watched as the man climbed the bank, backed up out of the creek, the skull of the storm-killed doe in his hand.

Bob started---surprised out of some reverie immediately forgotten---when his wife poked her head in the garage to call him to dinner. He looked down absently at the skull in his hand.

"Are you still hanging on to that thing?" she asked.

"Uh-huh. Be there in just a minute, Hun" he replied.

She cocked her head and looked at him kind of side-ways-under like she did sometimes. Then, half grinning turned back to the kitchen, closing the door behind her.

Bob found a push pin there in the tray, and reaching up higher on the wall this time, stuck it in to hang the skull and his memories up out of everyday life's range, not quite so easily covered.

It just seemed to matter somehow.

Dew Point

One.

Sitting in front of the fire, a cool fall evening, and "Oh Baby," she said, "Can you read me a thing like you read to me last night?" I felt the breeze play a kiss across my cheek,  and leaving the other turned, poised and waiting for its brush, blinked in the lamp light and asked her "What? I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"The Big Love, Baby, that's what I mean and you know it." Her eyes sparkled like some wild thing's.

The wounded thing subsides in the dream, circling thrice, curling up, and tucking its nose under its bushy tail. Looking out it gives her that last slow blink before hiding shining eyes in fashion resolute, determined to ignore, if just for the nonce, whatever life might yet decide to send down its path.

In that one glance, just in that one moment, she knew the thing loved her as no unscarred thing could do.

There in the dark, the essence of the silence, even the ring was held sway, a towering wave, a thing undeniable perhaps, but subject at once to the power of stillness. In that moment, in that silence, they would cling to a singular point of existence beyond time, beyond even the vaguest notion that there was anything that could be lost.

Somewhere an alarm went off and a beast, an angel, and a vision bumped one another's shoulders on the way into an after-work bar, any opportunities to affect, to further knowledge or cause, foregone until whatever passed for tomorrow in these shadowy parts might roll around again, or not.

Two.

"Dew Point", she said, "it's almost here. Hurry now, get inside before it's too late!" He stopped, began to feel it in the sub-audible and steady, just starting to exert its influence.He felt that crushing hideous strength they all feared, weight of each of the thousand-thousand gone things, each sub atomic particle of existence, each moment of meaning, of information, of emotion, each and all, stacked endlessly deep and high ... that thing. He hurried in.

Since the ghosts of moments had come to inhabit all this world's condensation, dew point had come to rule the dark. It was now the one thing that could lay waste to any feeling organism, from paramecium to those beings well beyond human complexity. Synapses left flickering in the dark, minnows stranded on the bank, the greatest and the least, all subject, all same, flickering, all they said, that would be left of a mind.

He sat down with his coffee cup and glanced at his sister's picture there beside him. She had been nineteen when the dew took her, right out there in the front yard. One moment she was laughing and cutting up, goofing about something he said. The next she just stopped and stared at him, at the cabin, like some wild and frightened thing before turning and running full bore into the brush. Just gone.

He had thought he might have seen her, a time or two, but he could never be sure. If it was her, she had learned to move differently - faster, quieter, and then just gone, a flip of hair,  that same plaid shirt...gone. A couple of times he had even thought he found her foot prints around the cabin and he wondered if she could still be alive or could she perhaps remember him, remember her home, her place in the universe?

No one who knew could tell what became of their minds after the ghosts of the dew moved in. They were not entirely uncommunicative, didn't seem to be inherently dangerous, just very unpredictable.

They acted as if only aware of things being or moving in this world peripherally, a vague side car window reflection in the rain. It was like they knew we were here, and with effort could look right at us, slightly out of focus or sync, even speak to us - all totally unintelligibly, their voices doing that phase-shifted thing, like sound or time where they were was not lining up with us, with our world.

But was it our world? He caught a whiff of cool humidity in the air and froze, then turned his head slowly to stare at the window; the one under which he had been sure he'd found her footprints, the one he broke as a kid, that never did get a proper new latch, the one... the one that was open.

The air was entirely different now. What was it he had worried about the cool fresh breeze? He couldn't recall. He could see her there now though, just outside the window, just standing. She was looking right at him, and just smiling, just waiting.

"My World", Bob said, "Not Thurber's, and Welcome To It"

Bob was somewhere in a dream, moving, no — driving, in a car, somehow having just come down from some great height with a jolt yet surprisingly still intact, sort of, and into a landscape — no a road, no not a road — sand and dunes, others all racing around him, and

*FLASH!*

Little Head-Bob awoke.  Something felt, no — something WAS wrong. He couldn’t focus his eyes. There was something, sand perhaps, in the wind—in a wind that was blowing into his eyes and — there was no wind.  Maybe not even his eyes, but still, something was not right. Something was wrong. The young owl could not get his eyes to focus, his. . . smell wasn’t working, the leaves of the tree, his tree, an ancient black oak, a black jack, they wouldn’t come right. They just weren’t right.

Something seemed to strike him in the head — on the inside of his head. He tilted his head, and tilted it some more and one of his feet, he couldn’t tell which one, let go of the branch. It lifted of its own accord. He couldn’t make it come back down, couldn’t make his strong talons grip again the branch. He listed farther to one side, the leg kept lifting. In a panic he shook and fell, down and down and, so fast the ground came up, he knew he was dying and

*FLASH!*

Bob woke, something felt, no — something WAS — wrong. He couldn’t get his mind to focus. Someone was talking, he could hear words, coming across the room — he was in a room, and he could hear her speaking. He knew he should be able to understand the sounds she was making. . . words. She was speaking words. He could tell. And she was upset. He knew this, but still he could not make the words come into focus.
Reality was. . . not right. Time was moving wrong. It wasn’t moving backwards, but wasn’t flowing right, either. It was like sitting in a meadow, when the warm spring breeze that was drifting from behind was suddenly a stiff wind in your face, full of sand. And screwing your eyes shut tight, you suddenly couldn’t tell where you were and

*FLASH!*

It wasn’t that time, that reality, was moving backwards, it was more like reality was a cat. Reality was a cat being petted, but the wrong way, against the lay of its fur, and the woman, she was upset. She was speaking, weeping, and he could not understand her words and. . . 

He was walking, outside. He had just passed one of Claire’s vineyards, was coming up on Maeve’s orchard, he could smell the peaches, ripe and almost overripe. The thing was there again, just over his shoulder, his. . . left shoulder, he could feel it there, keeping pace with him, not pouncing, but just, almost, ready to.  He was alone. No, I — I was alone. I am alone. Where am I? What day is this? 

 “Friday,” the thing, keeping pace with me, just over my left shoulder, says.

*FLASH!*

Bob blinked. Something had just happened. He wasn’t sure what. He couldn’t get a bead on where he was, when he was. Time, it wasn’t moving backward, exactly. It was more that time, that reality, was a stream flowing around him, and he was spinning out of control, moving, no the stream, the river of time, it was moving, at break-neck speed, and Bob was staying in one place, but spinning. 

“It’s all right,” she said, there, just over his left shoulder.

He was walking past Maeve’s Orchard, coming up on one of Claire’s vineyards. There, sitting on a branch in one of the peach trees, no – in a black jack tree, a young owl blinked, was looking at him and… just fell off its branch.

*flash*

This piece originally appeared on Amwriting.org

One Tuesday On the Farm – True Story 

(Well, Maybe) by John Ross Barnes

As Bob drank his coffee with only the stove light on he wondered why he was even sitting there in the kitchen at four in the morning, but something had made him get up. Perhaps he was just excited to be on spring break, his last before graduating high school, and not a moment too soon for him.

Through the screen door the usual chirping of crickets was loud in the dark so he noticed when they just stopped, all at once. It was like something had flipped a switch. A little shiver ran down his spine and he started to wonder what that was about, but there were chickens to tend, eggs to collect, and before that the dogs to feed and turn out for the day.

Out the back door, across the walk, to the old canning shed. Something, just there, dashing into the english ivy, small thrashings through, making a B-line towards the creek below. What would move like that? Not a rabbit—too loud, too big. Not a cat—wouldn’t be staying under the tight vines that way. Whatever it was, now silent, had gone to ground and waited to see if Bob was coming after it.

It wasn’t the first time Bob couldn’t figure out what an animal was by its stirrings. Still, this felt. . . different. “Never get between a bear and its cub,” he said to himself. He wondered why—certainly no bears in South East Kansas.

Carrying the two big old coffee cans of dry food balanced in his left hand, he curled the five gallon water bucket up with his right to where he could lock his elbow. Halfway through the sprawling back yard, he stopped, set the bucket down (same place as always), carefully switched the dog food to his right hand (without spilling it), and picked up the bucket with his left. When his elbow started to hurt, he grunted slightly and gritted his teeth. It was still easier to walk carrying it this way than it would have been to hold it down at arm’s length, swinging and sloshing all the way.

It was then he realized the dogs weren’t doing their normal good morning yelping and prancing. They were standing inside the fence, shoulders hunched and heads held forward as though at point. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. Something was wrong here, something that drew the dogs attention—something that held them, barely in check, staring at—no through—Bob, to a point somewhere behind him.

He kept walking, not wanting to stop and upset his arm loads like a goofy kid, and more, not wanting to look behind. “Whatever you do,” he thought, “don’t look.” Twenty feet to the door of the dogs’ shed, he knew he had to get in. Fifteen feet, now ten, five, he didn’t care that the water bucket splashed all over him. He almost threw it down, reaching for the door, swinging it open. The dogs, now growling, burst out and past him at full speed. As soon as they cleared the doorway, he dove through it, into the shed, and slammed himself in. He threw the bolt fast and crouched down, his back against the door, his eyes scrunched tight, grimacing.

He could feel through his insides, the charging of the two big labs, practically roaring as they went, the sound pushing out of them hard with each stride they made. Little bits of dirt and sod ripped up by their claws pelted the door of the shed as they tore back the way he had just come

Bob realized his ribs hurt where he still clutched the big cans, too hard against his side, forgotten just as he had forgotten to breathe. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale, inhale. He set the cans down. Still crouched there, shaking, he could hear the dogs fighting now, fighting with something big.  A bark, a yelp, another, more angry than hurt, and then charging off again.

He finally rose and looked out the wire mesh window. He could barely see them, going faster than he’d ever seen them go. Whatever they were after was faster still, out of sight, in the dark, over the bank and splashing now, loud as a horse, down the creek and under the bridge—sounds echoing off the cement and then gone.

He started to open the door to go after them and then right away thought “To Hell with THAT.” Whatever it was, the block-head twins were way more capable of handling it than he. Fifteen minutes passed, twenty minutes, however much longer it was, before he got up the nerve to venture out. He left the door to the shed open as he went, something he never did.

Three hours later the retrievers came back, panting heavily and bounding to him as though they hadn’t seen him in years. They knocked him down in their haste. He didn’t mind the being licked all over the face until he noticed the blood on their muzzles. Not theirs he saw with relief, but then he was hit by the smell. What the Hell was that smell?! Like a skunk, but not. Like an old snapping turtle he recalled, fresh drug from the bottom of the neighbor’s pond, reeking of things half rotted, found and eaten there. . . but not. It was like nothing he could name, and nothing he realized, that he wanted to.

Later in the day the “boys” each got a bath. Big haunches barely fitting in the old galvanized tub, and rinsed down with the hose in the yard. They were always happy for any excuse to get wet. Yet they would stop, cast furtive glances over coal black shoulders towards the creek, nearly inaudible growls deep in their throats.

That night, behind locks checked and checked again, Bob slept, but not well. He left on the big mercury light next to the twins’ pen. It was shining through his bedroom window, but it didn’t give much peace of mind.

Little Head-Bob woke with a start. There was something moving, snuffling around the bottom of the young owl’s tree. It was something big, much bigger even than the coyotes or the calves they sat and watched so keenly in the twilight. Something there insatiably hungry and more, possessed of a terrible, vicious need to kill. It carried a smell of death unlike anything he had known. His brothers and sisters in the nest hole shook and ruffled their feathers as though cold, even though the spring night was warm. They all waited. They all listened. Neither he nor any of those owls hunted that night.

Even the biggest Great Horned Owls didn’t cross some things.

Sunday morning with Aaron, Legos and a Death Song

You can just see the wheels turning. Sometimes, Big Wheels.

This morning Aaron and I built some things with Legos. He is good at Lego's. I know, a pretty much international symbol, right up there with the jigsaw puzzle piece, of the High-functioning ASD aspects of him. But he is good at Lego's. And puzzles, and seeing how physical things work, and recognizing subtle patterns in occurrences or systems, and ...you get the idea.

I started building a square based white structure, a library I thought. He came over and started telling me about how we should make it a block, like the ones in Minecraft. I didn't know he had ever seen Minecraft, which I hadn't. X-Box at a friend's house. Of course.

I was struck then by that glimmer of the amount of stuff he has picked up this summer spending time with neighborhood friends. He is starting to have more things in common with the other kids near his age. Starting to be more accepted among a few school/neighborhood kids. I hope that lasts.

This is a big deal, considering his often general clueless-ness regarding a few key aspects of social interactions. Some of his friends seem to have learned over the last few years of on again, off again friendships with him that at certain times he's going to be some way that doesn't get it with them. Someway they don't understand. Boundaries and a frequently weak ability to empathize or care about what others want or don't want are blind-spots for him. That and the meltdowns that happen now and then.

We are building the Minecraft block. It is going to be all kinds of colors now that we ran out of white. We're doing it in even levels of different colors as much as we can. 

We were taking a break from it when he started keening a fairly high pitched sliding note over and over. Repetition of words, phrases, or tones is another one of his things. It's like auditory stimming.

I asked where that sound came from and he said it was a song about somebody who died. 

Um, OK. 

When your eight year old boy starts making up an Indian sounding Death Song out of the blue -  you kinda perk up your ears at full attention, dontcha?

"Oh, what does that come from?" I asked. "WelllllllL", he said, "There was this writer named Dr. Seuss, and he was my most-most favorite best writer, and he was really great, and he died - so this is my song about him dieing". 

*BLINK*


It was one of THOSE moments. One where both his mom and I Flashed Big, little Ping!s going off in our brains. This was to be noted, thought about, filed away in it's own little brain crease, and probably recalled many years from now. 

I guess this post is to make sure of that. Slick, how that works, innit? #amwriting, Ya gotta love it.

Just the way he said it, matter of factly with no particular negative emotions displayed, as though singing a very primal sounding Death Song to his favorite author was just obviously a thing to do, that was a *thing*.

And Presto! He has tapped into a tradition of humans to sing the Death Song in tribute to their honored dead for what, thousands upon thousands of years?  

Living with this sometimes subtly, sometimes spectacularly different young fellow is like that. 

Just like that.

Ping!

Music this am - not necessarily directly related to the post - 
Zoe Keating, one of my favorite Avant Cellists, plays ESCAPE ARTIST 

Little Things and Connections

You feel like there's a very tiny spider, very gently, exploratorily, thrumming just five hairs on the back edge of your hand there on the mouse. You check. No spider. But for just an instant, before your eye is completely on the suspected area of space, you see it there, in all it's miniature shining predatory splendor.

In some interpretations of string theory physics there comes the hypothesis that yes, there are infinitely possible dimensions or universes out there, including one in which the spider is now really there. Seriously.

And now that it's out there, and surely others have had that feeling, if one of us wrote "like that tiniest of spiders you think you feel touching five hairs on the edge of your hand there on the mouse..." some readers would get it. Immediately. Others might have to imagine it for the first time and would then have a similar feeling as the memory and connection kicks in. Some never will. Can't speak to everybody.

Don't know that one? Okay, I got more. I can do this all day.

Probably.

The humming bird feeder.

Yes, probably that hummingbird feeder, the one hanging in your back yard. @karlaArcher posted some photos of a multi-camera setup they made to shoot their hummingbird feeder. Besides the fact that I heavily and shamelessly covet those cameras and that mounting system, right there in the middle of the photo, in front of "God and Everybody," was my bird-feeder. 

I've known Karla and @RandyArcher online for a couple of years now. We already had a pretty solid connection when I saw that posting.

Still, seeing that bird feeder brought a certain little "ping" moment of recognition of a real thing, common to me and them three thousand miles and whatever differences apart. It made it noticeably more familiar feeling, and I was eager for whatever came next.

Yes, in the end it will be the big connections that will make or break the story, but the little connections will help make ready the mind to tumble to the big connections, the big points perhaps, of what the story means.

There are a couple of things about this to note.

Quality of the connecting thing, observation, or insight---it matters.  

Connection: "He had that disconcerting  feeling you might get when you're picking your nose and realize you have a sharp nail."

Observation: "My God, you're a  Mess! Not only are you picking your nose but you've obviously got a bad manicure as well."

Insight: If you make a connection with that kind of observation, it's probably not going to get the reaction you were going for. Whatever that was. I mean, really...

Brevity.  Keep it short as so very many have said before. If it gets too involved, as many of mine tend to, left un-wrangled, then you will lose many people before you get the connection. That would be counter-productive, kinda like over-promoting your work to the spammy over-saturation level. The awkward moment when you realize that the other people in the room are listening to you talk about your new object of desire and looking at you like you're a stalker - which you're not, but people look at you that way with seemingly little or no provocation, just because you look, well, kinda Crazy sometimes. You know, that feeling? Oh. Yeah, me neither.

Don't push it. It's probably better if we don't announce to everyone what we're doing by shouting "Hey! You know that feeling? I wanna remind you of it so you'll feel just a little more connected to the character or situation, ok?"  Just better showmanship not to, innit? That also means I have to be careful about how often I throw those little connectors into the story. Sometimes, some of the best ones just seem to be integral to the scene, like they appeared fully formed within it. Those are the ones to keep.

Extra points - If you can make a unique and original observation or insight that is absolutely recognizable to many. Oh, and it's one that many have never consciously put to words, never defined in their own minds before and... ooh-ooh! And it's a ready-made analog to one of your themes or plot questions! Not as easy as it sounds.

Just some of what I've been thinking about small connecters in writing. 

Any favorite authors who you might've caught doing that? Any tricks you use to remember those kinds of moments or observations for later?

From Martin Scorcese's The Last Waltz - Joni Mitchell w/ The Band - "Coyote" 

In this song Joni makes it so you recognize the little observation vignettes she describes even if you've never had that

Some Things Endure - #FridayFlash story...

He had made it onto the Max train to go home again, carefully bringing his prize as he got on. He even got to have a seat, given up to him by a nice young woman on her way home from the Montessori school down by the river. They had talked on the train once before and she smiled now as she beckoned him to sit, even though she herself bore a large, heavy framed picture in her arms. He smiled back and thanked her in french, noting a few stares from the other passengers. 

Some were irritated at the extra space a large stained glass lamp and shade would take on the packed train. Others were amused that his combined load seemed half as large as he himself. Few grown adults existed now with a stature of only four-foot three since mandatory prenatal screening for "unfortunate abnormalities" started those many years ago. And then there was his age. Even with all the med-tech advances he would be considered very old, and not having had the common cosmetic treatments, he looked every bit of his age.

He couldn't blame them of course, people watching was an habitual pastime of his too, not being otherwise engaged by some sort of net gear as were most of them. He knew he was very fortunate, able to still be doing his work making and selling calligraphy and paintings down in his booth at Saturday Market. He was fortunate also to be allowed to maintain his own apartment while so many old people were warehoused, kept sedated and plugged into the net, out of sight and out of everyone else's minds. "Revered Artisan" status got him the apartment, basic necessities, and occasionally a free americano at Irah's Coffee Lounge, where the folk singers still played on Friday nights.

Mid winter in Portland might often seem bleak, damp, and relentlessly gray, but at least it was not so deadly freezing cold as it had been back in his home land. He wasn't even sure what they called that place now, so many changes of borders and titles had come and gone in the last handful of decades. This evening there was as usual a steady drizzle and the temperature was about thirty-four degrees. He could live with that. He could live, he had learned, with most things.

He watched as the train stops came and went. First was the old Goose Hollow platform, just down from the Suicide Bridge. He had almost been hit by a falling politician there once many years ago during the Corporate Rule turmoils. He cringed and sighed inwardly, recalling the unfortunate mess and the bad dreams he had for years, as though it had somehow been his fault, old as he was even then.

A couple of miles west was the Washington Park - Oregon Zoo station. He liked the educational pictographs of animals, some strange and mythical, some still to be found at the zoo. There was rarely anyone getting on or off there this time of evening.
Rolling out of there as the drizzle turned to snowflakes the size of  quarters it was all he could do not to smirk, thinking of his prize and sitting there comfortably instead of being forced to stand and sway, hoping for a spot at a grab rail. 

He wanted to dance with glee but there was definitely no room to be doing a Gene Kelley on the Blue Line. He thought that might have been a fitting reaction to the coup he counted in the deal he had made at the lamp store.  Two thousand new dollars for a vintage Tiffany Dragonfly Limited was very nearly criminal he knew.  But still, one didn't make those kind of dancing, cavorting displays on a mid winter's evening commuter train, not even in Portland. Especially one didn't if one had managed to attain the ripe old age of one hundred and twenty-nine.

Another nice young woman pushed the open doors button a couple of extra times for him as he unloaded himself and his cargo, though there were grumblings from within the train.  He retrieved his hemp net from a pocket of his oiled Gabriel Hounds parka and carefully placed the heavy lamp within it, hung it over his back and began his walk across the  parking lot to the apartment he had shared with Ava for ninety-five years. Of course the last thirty she had been a ghost.

He knew she would love the lamp, so like the one she had used to light her famous scrapbooks all those years ago.
Ava greeted him as always just inside his door, tilting her head that way she did, smiling silently. He took the lamp in and gently set it up on the stand between their two chairs, fitted the dragonfly shade, plugged it in, and turned it on.  He looked at Ava, did a quick little hop-step, bowed, and gestured at the lamp like a game show spokes-model. She giggled and clapped her hands soundlessly like a little girl.

As he sat down he pulled the old leather portfolio from beside his chair and opened it up, not to his own work, but to a half-dozen signed Disney animation cells, collected over a lifetime, and drew them out. Mickey, Donald, Minnie, Pluto. Goofy was, well, just too goofy.

"Remember when we got this one, Honey? It was while we were at the symposium in '99. That was a fine trip". In her chair on the other side of the lamp she smiled at him, transparent in the light,  and nodded, her scrapbook turned to that very page in her lap. It was good to be home.

Suzanne Vega - BOUND