At midnight, the first rumble of thunder sounded off to the east. Drifting in and out of sleep, another boom, this time to the south, echoed through the woods, and I felt the power of the storm deep inside my body as the windows rattled. Now, it was building, scudding towards us, and would soon arrive.
By the time I released the dogs at four, the main body of the storm was coming fast. They came in just as hard rain began to fall, and breakfast was served with the background noises of thunder and rain.
Aqaba went to the door, stood up on his hind legs, and told us the storm was arriving. This cat has a thing about weather. He meows at us all, telling us it’s raining or a thunderstorm is coming. This morning, Aqaba is vocal, very vocal, which means the weather is going to be bad. This is one cat who spent months out in the woods and rode out Idalia, a CAT One hurricane. People dismiss category one hurricanes because they’re inside houses and safe. Aqaba was in the woods and on the ground. There’s a very good reason this cat is interested in the weather.
I opened the front door to look out into the darkness, and Aqaba got close and peered out, too. Rain pounded mom’s wheelchair ramp, which was the same spot where Aqaba first approached the house, walking up the ramp as if he wanted in. After six months inside, it must be strange to look out, and see the world that once nearly killed him.
Aqaba retreats turns and then looks again from a safer distance. This is Aqaba’s home now, not the house, but inside the house, and the rain that once drenched him, is now held at bay.
Aqaba wants to be a meteorologist, but he wants to do it from the comfort of his own home.
The last time I tried to Cat, both Sam, Sam, the Happy Hound, and Bertrand the Muttibeasti were living with me. Wakita, the cat in question, tried to jump from one counter to another in the kitchen and Sam came within an inch of catching the cat in midair. Sam was waiting, watching, and meant to kill the cat, even though we had discussed this sort of thing.
Furious, I grabbed Sam by the collar, but Bert body blocked me off him. I put the cat out. I gathered the dogs and we had a long and intense discussion about cats, hierarchy, the source of food in the house, and even if there was no violence, I did mention it a few times.
That was back in 2006 or 2007. Wakita was killed in the woods by an unknown assailant, and I gave up ever having a cat live with me.
Couple of days ago, Aqaba jumped up on the bed, started head- butting Budlore under his chin. Aqaba doesn’t trust Bud one on one, but with me there, Aqaba thinks this is the time to make friends with the only dog in the house I do not trust with That Cat.
Bud growls. It’s a soft, low, nervous type growl, but I grab his right ear and hold it. Not tight, not squeezing the ear, but just to let you know Bud, I have your ear. The meanings are a duality of sorts, because Bud knows what I am saying, which would be: Threaten the cat, and this ear is going to hurt.
Bud’s body language, which is everything in canine speak, relaxes, just a bit. Bud doesn’t like the cat, but he isn’t willing to start a fight. I’m mildly surprised, but I also know something about this ear. With a thumb and two fingers, I can pet both ears at the same time, behind Bud’s head, and he likes this a lot. Aqaba is still headbutting Bud’s chin, but the ears.
Bud starts going limp, puts his chin on his paws, and Aqaba moves on.
There is peace, perhaps an enforced peace, but it is what it is. Bud is alone in his dislike for That Cat, and he is fully aware of this. He will get no backup from Jech. Wrex won’t help him on the best days. Bud doesn’t like the math of going against all I want all alone. He does like both ears petted.
I do not think I have ever worked this hard, this long, to convince a Hickory Head Pack things have to be a certain way. Of course, Bertrand was the original heart dog, the best dog of all best dogs, and Lucas came along towards the end of Bert’s reign. After they were gone, only Wrex really reached deep inside, and now he’s aging, too.
I do not think I have ever an a dog work as hard to fit into the pack the way Aqaba Thomas Firesmith has. It’s stunning the amount of effort he’s put into making friends with the dogs, and doing the things I’ve tried to get him to do. Like every dog I’ve pulled out of the woods or out of a ditch, or taken out of a bad home, Aqaba has an overwhelming sense of gratitude. Mauled and starving, I was his last best chance of merely staying alive for a few more days. Aqaba has made the most of the time he’s been given. More people should think about this.
I have a lot of respect for the way this cat has taken to his new home. He seems focused, driven almost, to make this his place in the world. I’ve done everything I can think of to help him. Lilith and Wrex joined in instantly, and even Jessica Elizabeth (Come here!) has joined the new pack.
Oh Dear Dog, the help I have been given by so many Cat People, and Dog knows I’ve needed it, too.
And thus, a new Hickory Head Pack is forged. That Cat in the Pack.
Budlore Amadeus wanted to walk in the woods this morning, with just enough light to see, and because the weather is cool, I’m ready. Bud runs ahead, dips into the bushes like a bird diving for a fish, and then back on the trail again. I haven’t dragged the hurricane debris out, and perhaps won’t. What falls on the ground becomes part of the ground, having once been a part of the sky. Some trees shed big limbs, and others dropped smaller offerings.
The storm killed three trees. Two red maples broke, one in half and the other with a twisted break, and one water oak broke in half. They will return to the earth where they landed.
We walk around the area, still flooded from all the rain that’s fallen in the last two months, and Bud spooks a rabbit into fleeing. I see the white flash of the tail; Bud leaps after the bunny and then stops. It’s a sign of aging, for a much younger Bud would have pursued this prey. Bud’s muzzle is greying, his run not as swift, and his will to hunt diminished. Of all injustices on earth, losing Lucas before he had a chance to age, to grow old with me, to be the dog I would retire with, is a sharp one. Lucas and Lilith should have had the chance to be together for many years instead of just five.
The sun rises above the horizon now, and the light is clear, the shadows retreating. Bud snuffles a bush, then looks up at me, wondering which direction I will take. Like so many dogs before him, Budlore wants not to be in the woods but wants to be in the woods with me. I walk the edge of the flooded firepit and see ripples as frogs flee. Bud ignores the water, and I remember dogs who would have gone in no matter the temperature.
We return, the sun clear in the sky, its track more and more southernly as Solstice draws nearer, and Bud races to the house as if I might give chase.
Ever it may bring, I have the dogs that I have, and those I have lost are gone. These too, will go, and others will arrive in due time. Then one day, I will leave, just as all the dogs have, and someone else will walk the trail in the woods with dogs, looking at the sun and seeing seasons and light change.
You either can or you won’t. That’s the story, isn’t it? When you’re doom scrolling on social media, could you be writing? Writing is waiting while you watch some video of a half-naked twenty-year-old who is doing Yoga poses you won’t see me in unless I get hit by a log truck while I’m in a Volkswagen Beetle.
Hopefully, you will not see that anytime soon.
But you could be writing. A video game entertains you idly, and by idly, I mean it’s not your creativity behind the storyline, scenery, or characters. It’s not the same as getting down to the soul of someone only you can bring forth into existence.
You have a scene in mind. It’s nagging at you to do something with it. Why wait? Why wait to see if it functions? Mary is walking down the dirty sidewalk, stepping over used condoms and plastic whiskey bottles. A puddle of puke spreads out from a man passed out, face down, and she keeps walking.
Mary is going somewhere, doing something, but what? Who is she? What does she look like? What timeline is this? London in 1888?
See how easy that was? In the space of a paragraph, we have an idea of a woman with a destination and scenery.
Mary looks up at the numbers on the building and hesitates. This is a hovel house where men with money rent women who need it. The building looks reputable in front, with a barber shop, shave and a haircut for a few pennies, and a shoeblack works out front. But the main draw for the men are the women who work inside the building, who enter by the back entrance. Mary has been given the address by a woman who sets up these meetings. Mary must keep the appointment if she wants another, but this is the first. She’s never sold her body before.
And here we go. Now we know it’s London, back in the late 1800s, and we know Mary is young. We have to go back and change the way the story began to wooden walkways and get rid of the plastic bottle, but the feel of the scenery will be the same, won’t it?
2.0 let’s go! Mary is walking down the dirty wooden walk, stepping over apple cores and chicken bones tossed from the upper floors of a tavern. Puke spreads out from a man passed out, face down in the muddy street, and she keeps walking.
Unless Mary is heading into unknown territory here, we know she’s a denizen of the poorer sections of town. Then we add the next part, but what does Mary look like at this point? How do we find out in a time when Mary doesn’t take a selfie?
Walking into the back door of the Hovel House, the woman who hired her waits, “It’s you then? I gots to make sure the new ones show. He likes fair hair and fair skin from what he tells, and your eyes are pretty enough blue. If’n he messes you up some it’s paid extra unless you need a nurse. Ain’t you eati’n regular, missy? You need some meat on your bone other than what the men put on ya. Up the stairs, second floor, stay off the lift, go to room seven on the right, get undressed and in bed and wait for him’n to show. Don’t say nothing less you asked and act like you like it, right?” the woman hands Mary a key and walks away.
Dialogue is an interesting tool, no? In the space of a short paragraph, the unnamed, unformed, and temporary character describes much about what is going on. Twainesque, the dialogue also demotes Mary to uneducated, poverty-ridden, second-class citizens not allowed to use the elevator. A little dialect goes a long way unless you write superbly, and I’m not there yet.
As a side note, in the wildly popular television series, “The Walking Dead,” characters would be introduced speaking in dialect, yet after the first two sentences, switch over to more standard speech. The story’s writers dialect slows the story down.
Now Mary is walking down a long hallway, the key clenched in her fist. She’s never sold herself and wonders if it will hurt or if the man will be cruel. Will he demand she do things she does not know how to do? Fear slowly builds into terror, her thoughts cycling through faster and faster.
She gets undressed, gets into the bed, admires the clean sheets, soft pillow, and warm room. She hopes the man doesn’t keep the appointment, and she can nap here. But he arrives on time, says hello absently, and takes his clothes off. Mary lies still, terrified, yet unable to resist as he climbs on top of her. Seconds later, it seems, he gets up, dresses, and leaves without a word. Mary is lying in the bed, wondering if that’s it, and gets up, cleans herself off, picks up the coins he’s left on the table near the door and leaves.
And here we go. The scene of the man leaving, without speaking, without so much as looking at Mary, leaving a few coins on the table, can be pivotal. Mary has gone from a frightened young woman to one who has survived her first encounter with the oldest profession in the world. How does she feel? How has Mary changed from undressing to when she puts her clothes back on? The money is more than she would make in three days in the sweatshops, and here it is, a few moments later. Yet Mary has sold herself to a stranger. How does she feel now?
You sit idly and say you cannot write, but look at this. We’ve wandered through how writing comes together from thought, introduced three characters, maybe four if you count the puking man, and set up a lot of future conflicts.
You can, but you won’t. Is that what you are still saying?
Stephen King wrote a book, “On Writing,” that describes his journey from a creative kid to a struggling artist, to a force to be reckoned with, to an addict, to who he is today. In the book, he dismisses Writer’s Block as a copout, which I agree with. In the film“The Devil’s Advocate,” Al Pacino’s character asks a young lawyer of his skills, “I know you’re good, but can you summon it at will?”
Oddly, this writing was about something, and it turned into something else. I started two days ago, and at a little past five in the morning, on Hump Day, it’s finally getting here.
Initially, I reflected briefly on “The Man in the Iron Well,” which has been a work in progress for a while, but I feel the end is near. I’ve completed it once, going into a rewrite, and it feels good.
The story begins with a man catching his wife in bed with her lover; a gun fires, and the lover dies. It’s an accident, but no one will believe how it happened, so they must hide the body, and in doing so, a murder is born. Tension between the two simmers, but they have to rely on one another. Inserted into all of this is a brilliant and most evil creature, so they also have her to deal with. And, of course, this being in the present day, issues arise, the fallout from being suspected of a crime in the digital age.
But all the two have to do is dodge a murder charge.
I was working on this during the blackout caused by the hurricane. I rewrote two sections, was happy with the work, and thought to myself, “You’re doing good if you can work under these conditions.
Then yesterday, I went to the library to write during lunch, and a woman came in. The library is a beautiful, sprawling education center full of open spaces. Yet this woman had on so much perfume I was choking fifty feet away. Two young women at a table began coughing. I had to bail out.
Hubris, the thought I could write under any conditions at any time, catches up with me. No writer is as good as they hope. No writer is as bad as they fear. We simply are what we are, with whatever we are doing, and if it comes to something, then it is good, and if it only teaches us to write better, that is also enough.
Summer isn’t a season in the Deep South, but rather it is a condition, a state of being, or a prison sentence. Unlike any other time of year, Summer becomes omnipresent at all times of the day. She has minions, this one does, this Dragon Queen of Heat. It’s not just the mercury being forced higher into the thermometer, oh no, were it only that simple. Summer is an assault on many fronts of the human senses and psyche.
Any rain that accidentally falls, does so in sheets, in volumes, and it does so quickly, as if the clouds have only a specific time allotted to them by the Queen. Quickly, the heat turns rain back into clouds of humidity that are dense and suffocating.
One of my pet theories regarding Summer and the South is the citizenry scores so low in nearly every educational category is for four months of the year, they are in a state of half drowning in humidity. If this causes any permanent brain damage has never been tested, but it would explain a few things.
But humidity is a condition, not an entity. The Dragon Queen brings the scorching heat and billions of gnats, mosquitoes, biting flies, and all manner of creeping, crawling, and flying insects. No step is taken outside without an entourage of misery. Human eyes, ears, and noses are fair game for these peddlers of pain. Gnats, whose function is unknown to science, fly directly into the eye, and it’s painful to remove them. Mosquitoes alight on exposed skin, demand a blood donation and leave welts as payment. The biting flies are kamikazes, diving down to rend flesh and leave swelling wounds. Only poisons, like diethyltoluamide, create a barrier between the minions of the Dragon Queen and anemia. But this, too, is part of her world. Insect repellent is the cologne we wear to appease the Queen.
Yet the Dragon cannot concern herself with individuals. She must bring excess to her domain. Ponds explode with algae and water plants even as they dry up. Land vegetation grows overnight to require mowing or pruning. Gardens quickly produce, but fruit rots if not promptly harvested. Summer demands the world slows down but quickens the growth of all things green. Trees soak up sunlight like solar addicts. The woods thicken to the point of blocking the sun, creating a dark green globe of vegetation and shadows, each plant at war with all others for every photon.
Humans hide from the Dragon Queen of Summer. Safely secured in cars or their homes, air conditioning prevents any experience with the real world. Binge-watching, video games, and social media become electronic refugee camps for those who can or will not face the Queen.
I am part reptile, part lunatic, and fully cognizant of whose realm I trespass. Walking in the day’s heat brings her wrath upon me, and working in the compost pile irritates the Queen with my presence, but who are you? Would you cower behind your ceiling fans, their blades protecting you, as the world turns outside your drawn shades, blocking the sun’s assault? I breathe the Dragon’s Breath and feel her power, absorb the heat, and I become one with it. The path around the fenceline is cleared with a bush hook and with sweat and done in full view of the sun. Wide brim hat, long sleeves, work boots, and the desire to experience Summer, in all her glory, compel me to tempt the Dragon to kill me.
The Queen loves no human. She will leave me dead in the woods without a thought towards life. If I choose to dance with her, then it is up to me to survive the music played. Yet for decades, I have done this, walked into the heat, flexed muscle, bled sweat and swam in the river Styx. It is only hell if you choose to be unhappy. Misery is a state of mind. If you want to, if you set the conditions of your life to do so, you can walk inside the breath of the Dragon Queen, embrace the world she has created, and live to write about it.
Lilith Anne makes the slow journey out, plodding along like a death row inmate heading for certain execution, but the trip is essential. It’s ten in the morning when Lilith has her daily bowel movement. I prefer she has it outside.
It’s optimum she does this away from the house, and if I do not walk along with Lilith, she will deposit her goods close to the deck. We walk down to the old dog kennel, where a bucket of fresh water awaits. I return to the house, and Lilith drinks deeply and then off to the weeds to leave her pile.
Lilith likes to lay in the sun on the deck, and I noticed a few days ago, when she returned from the weeds, a swarm of mosquitoes followed. Regardless of what might be said, mosquitoes aren’t excellent fliers and fly poorly in direct sunlight. It’s their hope to withdraw some blood and return to the humidity and shade from whence they came. Lilith is old and slow, therefore, an easy and lumbering target.
The leaf blower sat nearby, and an idea formed.
Using the power button judiciously, the air coming out was strong enough to blow the mosquitoes back but not intrusive to Lilith’s slumber. Of course, they would return undeterred, but I kept them at bay. Then one or two flew too high, and I was able to blast them, and a strategy formed. I used the nozzle to form a barrier around Lilith, and if any of her tormentors managed to go too high up or too far out, I blasted them with a burst of accelerated air. Lilith dozed unconcerned.
After a few minutes of this aerial combat, the mosquitoes were thinning out. I watched as none returned to the arena, and Lilith slept comfortably under the sun.
If you’ve never spoken to someone who worked on a submarine, it’s an interesting conversation. Sub-warfare is waged in total darkness and, ostensibly, in near silence. Yet the equipment that picks up outside sounds in the ocean stays busy because the ocean’s depths are a remarkably noisy environment. The water is moving, pulling, pushing, and swirling around, and with it, debris floats and falls, collides, and sinks again. The wreckage of thousands of years of human wanderings, voyages, and wars litters the blackness of the seas. Lost fishing nets will trap objects, drag, pull, and wrap around other detritus, which creates sound, some minute, others not so.
The earth’s crust moans and shifts, sunken mountains have slides of mud and rock, and boulders that have not moved in centuries tumble and crash downward, their journey marked by nothing but sound.
A submariner, blind yet all-seeing, would tell you the ocean is a vast, dark, and dangerous place, filled with its cacophony of its passage and mass. Like Braille, the sounds of the sea can lead the blind and perhaps even assist those who will listen carefully.
The ocean is a disinterested goddess. Humans live or die, but she cares not at all. They may or they may not pass over the waves or under them; she does not notice.
This is the final word on everything once the salt water is sailed.
The dream dogged my every step today, slunk around like a second shadow, always there, invisible unless I looked directly at it, and even when I did, the question remained: What is this? But writing is not a process without its little quirks. I have no idea what it is, but what else might there be because of this thing?
The thing is a device, old, metal rusting away, tiny window, and it looks like an odometer. Standing at the edge of one of Valdosta’s side streets of a side street, Jenette Street used to be open to the public, but the University absorbed it. I dreamed a device stood at the edge of the street, had a button to push, and the numbers would spin for a few seconds, and like a slot machine, they would slow down and finally read, “1.4.” No such device exists. I looked. But why have something that tells you how far away the edge of the road is from that point? (Don’t ask me how I know what it does and why I know what it does, but I don’t understand why it does it, I just know, okay?)
You got a point to this, Cowboy, or are you just burning off some excess caffeine here?
And here we go. Buckle up, Kittens. Dreams can get away with this sort of thing. The device is either meaningless, or the meaning is lost somewhere in the imagery. Or I didn’t retain something I should have. This bothers me because that sort of thing in fiction is a distraction.
But suppose I write a story where the meaningless distraction is part of the plot.
First Swing: A cop is tracking down a serial killer. The man or woman who has been killing delivery drivers has killed four people, all in the same area of New York, and all were delivering food. The detective walks out of a restaurant, following a driver, when a woman in a blue hat approaches. She tells the detective a man in a white truck asked her if she was a driver and if she would deliver to his apartment. She gives the detective a description and hurries away.
The detective finds the man in the truck, but he speeds away at the flash of the badge.
It takes a while, but the detective catches the man, arrests him, and finds enough evidence for a conviction.
The detective seeks the woman in the blue hat. She saw the killer, spoke with him, and he asked about delivery. He doesn’t need her, but he wants to find her. But no camera captured her. No one else saw the woman, and it seemed she had vanished. Even after his conviction, where he confesses to other murders, the killer does not seem to remember this woman.
Is the woman in the blue hat an intriguing part of the story or a distraction?
Wrex Wyatt is up at three something, wants out, and wakes up the other dogs, but I’m not buying. Four something comes and goes and I’m winning the war of sleep, but at five Wrex paws at me, hitting my cell phone and it lights up. The look on his face is epic. Wrex has discovered fire, well, at least light, and is amazed. I should not leave the phone on the charger overnight, and I know it.
Up and writing, or trying to but the Muse is silent, waiting for me to do something, waiting for me to offer a cue so she can, like a woman at a bar looking at a man, wondering if he’s going to speak. My main character treats me as if we’re on a first date that’s going bad, quickly, and she isn’t speaking either. It’s time to move.
Thrift Stores speak to me. Inside one of the largest in town, castaway items crowd to the front of every flat surface wondering if they will ever find a home, or like a vaudeville show of old, just be on permanent display until the store goes under. An odd piece of furniture, part desk, part dresser, and all mutant speaks loudly. Painted by a five-year-old on acid, if I didn’t put a ban on me owning more stuff years ago I would buy it. Produce and buy until you die. No more of that for me.
Used bookstores are dead, reading is dying, and writing is being turned over to machines. The only bookstore in town is huge, lifeless, and lacking any reverence for books, and more like a prison, where books are sentenced, no pun intended. I look for old favorites, books that changed the way I see life, and it’s like going back to a childhood home that’s now in a subdivision with a strip bar next to a title loan place.
The big box hardware store is next for as a homeowner and a gardener, I never run out of things needed for one or the other. A woman, tall, blonde, and wearing jeans she was poured into walks past. I remember the first time I heard the phrase “peasant stock” in reference to a woman who wasn’t small of build, and I’m sure the person who said it would say it again here. But this woman has a glide to her walk, a slow shifting of mass and movement that speaks to physical grace as well as a body that is accustomed to moving in rhythm and in passion. The man with her stays close, but not possessively so. These two, I feel, have been together for a while, and their union has produced strong mutual attraction.
Once inside, I wonder what it would take to have a rain barrel on a stand, to produce water pressure, and for storing rainwater for the compost pile. And this speaks to me, too. Weight up high is never easy and shouldn’t be considered lightly. Fifty gallons of water will carry four hundred pounds of liquid mass, and that’s impressive if it were to ever start moving. Creative juices now begin to make their way through my brain. A metal stand, six fence posts, and some plumbing, yes, this is doable.
The Muse is delighted by all of this, and she wants more. Fiction writing later, she promises, and so right now, we start thinking about the Hickory Head Water Tower.
The Hickory Head Hermit 