Chapter Three (Untitled)

[Note: Earlier posts to this blog contain previous chapters. If this is your first visit, I highly recommend that you read the chapters in order. Also, be warned that as a work in progress, consistency is not guaranteed. For instance, based on a dream I had the other night, I have just changed the protagonist's name from Debra to Gloria. Seems like a better fit to me.]

The call came at beer o’clock that afternoon.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with beer o’clock: Monday through Friday, it’s as soon as you get home from work. Saturday and Sunday it can, and often does, arrive earlier, depending on (1) how hard you’ve been working on your projects, (2) how pleasant (or miserable) the weather is. On this day, it was spring, and it was the first day off we’d had that happened to coincide with glorious weather, and we’d been laboring for hours making Easter eggs for the American Legion’s egg hunt the next day.

So when the phone rang at about three in the afternoon, Harry was measuring Beefeaters gin and Canada Dry tonic water into two tall glasses, while I sliced wedges from a lime.

We glanced at one another.

“Don’t answer it,” I said.

The nature of Harry’s business means a lot of calls at all hours of the day and night. Lately, everyone had begun worrying about their central air. They’d hidden in overheated houses all winter complaining about the cold, so you’d think they’d be happy about the pending arrival of summer’s heat. But no. By the time the outside air warmed to match the temperature of their over-heated homes, they’d have the AC turned on and cranked down to just above freezing.

I’ve never pretended to understand it.

But Harry is successful, in part, because he always answers the phone. Which is what he did now.

I watched his face change from its usual pleasant curiosity to a look of concentration.

“I’m sorry,” he half shouted. “This is a terrible connection. You might want to — You’re who?”

I squeezed lime juice into our drinks, dropped the wedges on top of the ice cubes, and lifted a spoon.

“Orkney? Yes, and you — ”

I put the spoon down.

I knew.

That morning, I’d known somebody had died. Now, I knew it was my Gran.

“Ah. I see . . . Oh, I’m . . . Yes, but this connection . . . If you’ll give me your . . . What’s that? I see. Okay. Yes, here she is.”

Harry held the phone out to me.

“It’s about Gran,” I said.

He nodded.

“It’s a terrible connection but it seems he can’t call back,” he said apologetically.

“That’s okay.”

I put the phone to my ear.

“This is Gloria.”

The voice was distant, drifting in and out of a field of static into which it sometimes submerged altogether. I wondered briefly how it was possible to have such a poor connection in 2007. Whatever happened to fiber optics so clear you could hear a pin drop? Never trust a commercial.

“ . . . lo, Gloria . . . Captain Mac . . . about me?”

Captain Mackay, of course. I knew the name from my Gran’s letters.

Even half eradicated by static, the soft burr of the man’s voice conjured a vision of Scotland that for a moment was more real than the oak doors of my kitchen cabinets or the gin and tonic waiting on the counter — rugged purple hills under scudding clouds propelled by a stiff wind that howled in my ears like a banshee.

I had to blink and turn my head to return to the kitchen around me and the telephone in my hand.

“Gran told me about you,” I shouted, hoping that that had indeed been his question. “Hello Captain Mackay.”

I didn’t need to ask him how my Gran was doing. I already knew.

“. . . lass . . . the way . . . your granny . . . "

His next works were so garbled I couldn’t make them out. I couldn’t stand it, and I didn’t want to prolong his difficulty. He sounded like a nice man.

“She’s dead, isn’t she,” I shouted into the phone.

Not a question. A statement.

After perhaps three seconds, I heard one word of his response.

“Aye.”

Poor old soul. According to my Gran’s letters, they’d become inseparable over the last couple of decades. Who would he haunt the stones with now?

“I’m sorry, Mr. Mackay — Captain Mackay. This must be — "

But he was speaking at the same time as me.

“. . . making such headway, ana’ . . . the egg . . . "

An electric jolt ran up my spine.

“The what?”

“ . . . do your granny . . . say good . . . "

“Hello? Captain Mackay? Are you there?”

But the static was gone. And so was Captain Mackay.

Harry was watching me, his concern palpable, even though he knew my Gran and I had anything but a loving relationship.

“Is she dead?” he asked.

I nodded.

Mistaking my silence for grief, he put his arms around me with one hand on my head, holding it so my cheek was pressed against his chest. I relaxed against him, against the warmth and comfort that only Harry Davidson can give me.

My eyes lighted on the Easter eggs mounded in a bowl on the kitchen counter.

As I watched, one cheerful yellow egg perched on top of the mound detached itself and tumbled with some force before landing with a crack on the formica.

rugged purple hills under scudding clouds

"Ebb-tide, Autumn, Plockton" by Peter M. MacKenna

Untitled — Chapter Two

Harry Davidson and I have an abiding marriage. We’ve raised one kid and seen her through college and beyond, and— my apologies to any young readers for the picture I’m about to plant in your minds — we have steamier sex than those shaved children who star in the pornographic flicks they make today. Plus, we’re friends. Best friends. And we trust each other.

Still, I knew it wouldn’t be easy for him to believe my story. It was barely possible for me to believe it, and I’d been there.

Harry heard me through without interruption, and when I finished, remained silent.

By this time, we were approaching a white marble child-angel that marked the grave of a four-year old girl. Someone had placed a bouquet of balloons beside the angel. As we drew nearer, I read the dates on the headstone: Her name was Brittany and today was her birthday. Had she lived, she’d be twelve.
And there she was: blonde hair with a blue barrette, a plaid dress, her face smiling as we approached.

“Happy birthday,” I mumured.

“Thank you!”

She skipped off along another path and I turned to watch her go.

“What’s that?” Harry asked.

“Oh, nothing. Just thinking out loud.”

It didn’t seem fair to burden him with too much all at once. One ghost at a time.

“Mm.”

The little girl, Brittany, began to sing a childish song. It was faintly familiar to me, possibly something from Sesame Street. She had apparently stayed four years old.

“Kurt Vonnegut,” Harry said.

“Yes.”

“You’re sure.”

“Absolutely. I know that face. There’s only one of that face.”

Harry put his hands on my shoulders, turning me away from the vanishing little girl to face him.

“Debra, Kurt Vonnegut died last night.”

I blinked.

Harry blinked.

“Ah,” I said. “Okay. Now it makes more sense.”

“Okay,” Harry murmured. And then again, “Okay.”

Harry knows I sometimes sense the presence of dead people, and that on rare occasions I have even seen someone who has, as Mr. Vonnegut liked to say, already passed through the peristaltic blue tunnel that leads to the afterlife; what he doesn’t know is just how often it happens because I try not to concern him by telling him about every little instance. What would be the point in that?

But this hearing a dead person, this was something new.

And carrying on a conversation with one? Entirely out of the ordinary.

Yet here it was, not quite noon, and I’d already seen and spoken with two of them. One of whom was Kurt Vonnegut.

I couldn’t begin to fathom what that might mean. It was all a bit much to take in.

Unsurprisingly, Harry seemed every bit as stumped as I was.

We agreed to pocket further discussion until that evening. 

I walked Harry to his pickup (a silver one with a vinyl sign on the side that read Harry’s Heating and Air Conditioning, which made it much easier for me to identify in a parking lot. I still blush at the memory of that pre-sign episode when I hopped into the wrong silver pickup in the grocery store parking lot and said to the startled driver, “Okay, honey, let’s go!”). There, I gave him a quick but heart-felt peck on the lips, then hurried back to The Dungeon.

I still had that proof to deal with.

I imagine it’s needless to add that an inordinate number of typos, widows and orphans appeared in the next issue of our magazine.

I won’t bore you with a description of the conversation Harry and I had that night, or how I stayed glued to the news reports for any scrap of information about how and where Mr. Vonnegut had died. I’ll only say: no, it wasn’t on a bridge on a country road in Berrien County.

Which raised the question: Why me?

Neither I nor Harry could begin to fathom a reason, although over the course of two Coronas (for him) and two chardonnays (for me), we gave it our best effort.

And for heavens sake, what was all that about good eggs in the Orkneys?

“He did have a sense of humor,” Harry mused.

“Mmmm,” I agreed.

Although I found it a bit odd that Mr. Vonnegut would mention the one place in the world where I still had one living relative.

In the end, Harry admitted he was glad “Kurt” was dead.

“At least I don’t have to be jealous,” he said. “But if the old fart comes around again, you tell him you’re my girl.”

“I wonder if a ghost can get it up,” I teased.

“I’ll show you get it up!”

He grabbed for me, landing a firm swat on my backside.

I’ll say this for Harry: He’s got good arms. Veined, muscled, ruffed with curly hair that used to be dark but now is fading just as surely as is the hair on our heads.

We went to bed early.

To avoid haunting the young with images of lumpy, middle-aged people engaged in sexual cavortis, I’ll close the bedroom door. Suffice to say we didn’t go to sleep early.


---

On Saturday morning, I had another visit, as I like to call my encounters with the dead. This one more in line with the kind I’d come to expect over the years.

I was doing laundry and had just pulled my nightgown over my head to add to the load in washer, when it happened.

The entire house shifted like it does when a big gust of wind roars in from Lake Michigan. Walls, ceilings and floors all creaked and cracked alarmingly at the same time that the overhead light bulb flickered, while the television and stereo, both of which were turned off, emitted loud, electric POPs! My first thoughts were “Storm!” and “Lightning!”

But through the laundry room window I could see the sugar maple in the yard, and not a leaf on its branches stirred. The morning was still and sunny. No cloud darkened the sky.

As that thought was registering, I felt somebody watching me. Yet the window, the yard, and the soybean field beyond it were all empty. Harry was at Home Depot, picking up a gallon of the paint I’d selected for the guest room. I was alone in the house. Yet the sense of being observed was overwhelming. Creepy too, as I began to realize that I was being strongly disapproved of for standing naked in the laundry room.

I quickly pulled the nightgown back over my head and made a quick circuit of the house just to be sure, peeking behind doors and around corners. The house, as I’d known it would be, was empty. And by the time I reached the dining room, the feeling was gone. Whomever, whatever, had been observing me, had moved on and taken their disapproval with them.

“Somebody died,” I murmured, suddenly absolutely certain that this passing spirit was what I had felt.

I wondered who it might be.

But I didn’t have to wonder for long.

Untitled — Chapter One

The first time I spoke with Kurt Vonnegut, he had only been dead for about five hours. I didn’t know he was dead yet, of course. When I learned that detail later in the day, one of the things that struck me was that of all the people he might want to speak to, I should have rated a visit.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The thing is, when I saw him, I didn’t know Mr. Vonnegut was dead yet.

I was driving to my job as a magazine editor when I saw him standing on the shoulder of Hinchman Road. Two things were odd about that: the time and the location. The day was so young that mist was still loitering in the low-lying areas and rabbits were still darting about on last minute emergencies before bedding down for the day. And the road, well, Hinchman is a road that runs from just outside Bridgman, a town of about 2,000, to somewhere near Baroda, a town of about 800, without ever actually passing through either of them. The road is bordered by farmers’ fields for its entirety, with the exception of this dip where it crosses Hickory Creek.

So yes, it was an odd place to be standing at the break of dawn on a workday, with no fisherman’s gear, no hunter’s orange. Not even a baseball cap. Dressed, in fact, quite nicely. Even from fifty yards away I could see that.

Having just turned the corner and not yet picked up speed, I had time to observe the man and his car, and it was obvious to me that neither of them were locals.

Which is not to say that I know cars. I don’t. People in our town have the habit of waving to one another whenever they pass on the road, and because I tend not to wave, many assume me to be unfriendly, even stuck up. But the truth is I don’t recognize their cars — or more frequently, their pickup trucks. To me, a car (or a truck) is either nice or not, clean or dirty, goes or doesn’t go. Black, white, or some color. That’s about it.

But even to my eye, this car was out of the ordinary. It wasn’t just Nice, it was Very Nice. And it had out-of-state plates.

Anyway, the car registered on my consciousness, but it was the man who really captured my attention. There was something about him.

As soon as I turned the corner, I noticed him standing on the bridge, leaning with his hands spread wide apart on the steel rail and gazing into the creek below.

My toe hovered above the gas pedal, barely touching it. Without really thinking about it, I was letting my Taurus lose what speed it had.

Something about that man in his expensive-looking clothes. Something about that hair. And the way he stooped, as if the world and its knowledge were too much to be borne upright. 

And then he looked at me. Straightened and looked through the windshield of my Taurus and into my eyes as if he’d been waiting for me. When I saw that face, my foot slipped off the gas pedal altogether.

Kurt Vonnegut.

If you’ve seen his face once— and who hasn’t — you know it.

I had seen his face countless times. On the jackets of his books, on stage during public appearances, on screen as an extra in his own film.

I wanted more than anything to stop. I mean, come on — Kurt Vonnegut? But I’m not a celebrity chaser, have never read People magazine, wouldn’t dream of intruding into someone’s privacy for the sake of a momentary thrill and an autograph. Not even my favorite writer in the entire world who happens to be standing on the side of the road at dawn. Looking at me.

No, not even then.

I returned the toe of my sensible black pump to the gas pedal.

But couldn’t make the toe do anything once it got there.

Mr. Vonnegut held my gaze. He didn’t look away, didn’t look alarmed by the spark of recognition that must have flashed across my face. He held my gaze and so my car just kind of drifted to a stop a few yards beyond where he stood, sort of off the road, sort of not, coming to rest just beyond the bridge, behind his Very Nice car.

I climbed from the Taurus.

He was still watching me.

I nodded.

He nodded in response.

I took a few steps toward him.

What do you say to a world-famous author standing on a country road at dawn, stooped as if under the weight of the universe?

I cleared my throat.

“Any fish in there?”

He didn’t call me an idiot. Instead, he inclined his head as if to say, Come see for yourself.

As I crossed the last few yards that separated us, several things happened.

The first was that the sun finally rose high enough to slip between the branches of the willows that bordered the stream to touch Kurt Vonnegut’s face, highlighting the lines that etched it.

The second was, he turned back to his earlier position, leaning with his hands spread wide apart, fingers wrapped around the steel rail, to continue peering into the creek.

And three, just before I reached him my vision shimmered, as if for a moment I was looking at the world through a film of water. Another step and it cleared, like I had passed through . . . something. And as firmly as if I had stepped out of my practical pumps and now walked barefoot, I felt that I had stepped out of the role of the responsible and reliable woman who does everything she is expected to do, ever and always, and into the role of someone who does just what she wants to do in this moment.

I stood beside Kurt Vonnegut, put my hands on the rail, and felt a previously unknown stillness enter my being.

I know, I know. That all sounds pretty New Age and Out There. Believe me, I know. But that’s how it felt. Take it or leave it.

He didn’t speak and neither did I.

We watched the creek. We watched the morning come to life.

And I don’t know about him, but me, I noticed myself breathing. There’s something that had never happened before.

Red wing blackbirds chirruped and trilled all around us, gangs of adolescent males hot in the pursuit of a mate, a nest, babies to feed and raise and teach to fly out of the nest. They would head south in the fall, and then come back north again next spring and start it all again.

Just listening to them made me tired. Made me want to toss my car keys into the creek and curl up there on the riverbank for a snooze. Not show up for work at all that day. Screw it. Miss the deadline. All that mattered now was standing here beside this man, this artist, this visionary, and saying not a word.

The deadline to get the magazine proofed and out to the printer before three that afternoon — forgotten. The deadline, mind you, that had shoved me from my bed an hour earlier than usual, hissed at me to hurry as I showered and dressed and rushed out the door with coffee mug in hand, forbade me to dawdle when I so much as thought of pausing in the driveway to appreciate the warming of the eastern horizon.

Gone. Forgotten.

But no, not really.

The stillness reverberated with the clash of returning reality. Time quivered, stood up, shook itself off, and looked about for something to gallop towards.

I tried to look at Mr. Vonnegut without turning my head. About all I could see were the hairs above his wrist gleaming in the rising sun and curling around the edges of his gold watch. And his fingernails, clean and clipped.

As if sensing the change in my perception, he asked, “Will you be late for work?”

“Yes.”

“Does it matter?”

A pause.

“Yes.”

“How much?”

As he asked this question, he looked me full in the face.

I felt a jolt. There was something —

“How much?” he repeated.

I decided I would analyze the jolt later and consider his question now: How much?

What would happen if I missed the deadline? If as a result the printer bumped our job and the magazine went out two weeks late? If enough of our measly nine thousand readers got pissed off by the delay and called or e-mailed to complain? If I got fired?

I sensed the return of the line I had crossed. It was creeping up behind me, about to slide under my feet without my having taken one step backwards, returning me to the role of the responsible woman who does everything that is expected of her.

“A lot,” I said.

The line slid under me. I was back in character.

For months I would question the meaning of the look he gave me then.

Surprise? Offense? Disappointment? I wouldn’t learn until we spoke one evening sitting on a dry-stane wall overlooking an ancient Viking church in Orkney. But that was still months and miles and many conversations away.

On this day, on the Hinchman Road bridge, I couldn’t place the emotion reflected on his face, knew only that my words were not what he wanted to hear.

I felt diminished in his eyes and wanted to take the words back. To leap across that line again, to be late for work, to not go to work at all. To spend the rest of the day here beside the creek with Kurt Vonnegut, if he would put up with me. It was what I wanted to do more than anything else in the world.

As if he’d heard my thoughts, Mr. Vonnegut said, “Going to work is what you want to do more than anything in the world.”

“No! It’s not.”

“What do you want to do then?”

I hesitated. Hadn’t he just read my thoughts? Didn’t he know?

“By that I mean how do you dream of spending your days.”

Oh.

I had to think about that one. Like everyone, I suppose, I had vague notions of enjoying life by sleeping in, taking long walks, reading more books, traveling.

“I’d travel.”

“Where?”

I shrugged.

“All over.”

He shook his head, turning to look back down into the creek.

“That’s not good enough,” he said, speaking to the water. “You have no vision, therefore you have no reason to strive for it, no reason to change. So go to work. That’s all you know how to do.”

Talk about a kick to the gut. Talk about tumbling fast and furious from that still place beside the creek to the hellhole of my own bleak imagination — that dark, empty wasteland lit only by faint glimmers of dreams, like 25-watt streetlights spaced blocks apart, doing nothing to brighten the darkness of my interior.

“I better go,” I mumbled.

“Think about Orkney,” Mr. Vonnegut said.

“What?”

“The islands. In Scotland.”

“I know where the Orkneys are.”

“I hear they make great eggs.”

“Eggs.”

“Yes.”

All this he said without looking at me. I supposed he was mocking me.

I don’t remember what I said to him before I left.

The world probably shimmered again as I stepped away from him but I couldn’t really tell through the tears that blurred my eyes.

As I keyed the ignition, I glanced in the rearview mirror. The bridge was empty. I swiveled in the seat, scanning the shoulder of the road, the creek banks. Not a soul.

In his car maybe?

I swiveled again to check it out.

What car?

I leaped from the Taurus, did a ridiculous little dance/search/throw arms up in despair as I turned in circles, ran to look under the bridge, peered ever more desperately into the willows.

A pickup truck (a Not Nice one) lumbered around the corner and slowed beside me.

“Hey, Mrs. D. Your car break down?”

“No,” I muttered, still peering suspiciously into the willows.

Could he have hidden the car in there while I was distracted?

“Everything okay?”

“It can’t just disappear,” I muttered.

“What’s that?”

Finally, I looked at the driver of the pickup. It was my neighbor, John, the guy who rotates corn and soybeans in the field across the street from my house.

“You all right, Mrs. D?”

I started to laugh, possibly just a tad hysterically.

“All right? Oh no! No, definitely not! Most definitely not.”

John looked nervous.

“You want me to drive you home or call Harry?”

I laughed even harder.

John looked like he wanted to escape.

I made a gesture with my arm, waving him away.

“Go! I’ll be fine. Really.”

He went.

And because I couldn't for the life of me think of what else to do, I climbed back into my Taurus and drove the country roads the rest of the way to town and the global headquarters of the engineering society that held me in bondage for sixty or so hours every week. 

The production manager rose from her computer when I entered the windowless, cement-block room we shared with my editorial assistant and the man who comprised our graphics department. The clock above her head read 10:15; four hours since I left my house.

I stared at the clock.

“Did Harry find you?” Ginny asked me.

“Is that broken?” I asked her, pointing to the clock.

Dierdre and Jackson both looked up from their computer screens.

“Hey, there you are!” Jackson announced. “Where the hell you been, girl?”

“Is it?” I asked Ginny again.

“What? The clock? No. What is with you? Did you break down or something?”

It was getting to be a little too much to hang on, to not slide gibbering to the floor.

Focus on the deadline, I told myself.

Sliding into my seat, I slammed my purse into the credenza, hit the space bar to wake up my Mac, and got to work. Ignoring the three pairs of eyes that stared at me.

Ginny came over and leaned her butt on my desk.

“Aren’t you going to call Harry?”

I glanced up at her.

“Why?”

“When you didn’t show up, I called your cell. It said you were out of the service area. So I called Harry. I thought maybe something was wrong. He’s out looking for you. He sounded pretty worried.”

“Shit,” I muttered, and reached for the phone. As I dialed, Harry rushed in, looking more flabbergasted than worried.

“You’re here! Why didn’t you call and let me know you were okay? I’ve been out searching for you! Didn’t Ginny tell you? ”

“I did,” Ginny said and slipped away.

“I just got here,” I said.

Holding up the receiver as proof, I added, “I’m calling you now.”

He stood over me, his transparent face telling me that he couldn’t decide whether to be angry, indignant, frustrated by the continuing challenge of being married to this impossible woman, or simply curious about what happened. The final emotion translated into a question. 

“What happened?”

I held up an index finger, leaned into the credenza and retrieved my phone. Opened it.

The clock on the phone read 6:38 a.m.

“Damn,” I whispered.

“What?”

I was relieved to see that all traces of anger had already vanished from his countenance and posture. Harry doesn’t ever stay angry for long, which is just as well, stuck as he is with me. On those rare instances when he’s really, truly incensed with me, he withdraws into silence. Which makes me feel I have ceased to exist. Which, I confess, makes me truly crazy.

I’m certain a psychologist could make much of that.

I showed Harry my cell phone.

He keyed a number and put the phone to his ear.

“It works.”

“Look at the time,” I suggested.

He did.

“That’s . . .  huh.”

“Let’s take a walk,” I said.

We left the Dungeon, which was what I called our office, and dodged traffic to reach the cemetery across the street, the only place nearby where it was safe to walk in this heavily trafficked but sidewalk-bereft part of town. And there, strolling among the rows of headstones, I told him what had happened to me on the way to work that morning.

Voice of the Goose

Indian Summer has rolled sweet, sunny warmth over our land for days on end now, and we sleep with our bedroom window open to the cool night, the full moon, the coyote’s yip and howl, and last night, the honk of geese. On and on they came, flying in waves over my house in the hollow at the end of the road, calling to one another in that talkative way Canada geese have.

Canada geese always remind Terry and I of three Venezuelans we once spent a week with, on the trail to Mount Roraima. These people never stopped talking. They woke up talking and I swear they fell asleep mid-sentence. All three of them. All at once. All at full volume.

That’s Canada geese. They gab, endlessly and loudly. How the hell, I’ve often wanted to ask them (and those three Venezuelans), can you find so much to talk about?

Which makes our pair of Canada geese all the more remarkable. This pair — I’ll call them Martha and Fred since I don’t know their real names — has been nesting in our hollow for years and years now. Other geese come and go. Sometimes, twenty or more will call our ponds home for the season.

But Martha and Fred are always here. Every year.

They are recognizable by their silence. We watch for them now in the spring, feel our spirits lift when they arrive, cheer the gander as he protects his hen from the annual onslaught of hormonally charged interlopers.

Two years ago, Martha and Fred built their nest on the peninsula directly across from our kitchen window, and until the vernal growth screened her, our binoculars provided us with a clear view of Martha at the serious business of setting. We fretted one early morning when a coyote stalked the shore of the pond, intent on raiding the nest. Heard Fred give fight. Rejoiced when he resumed his sentry duties, which meant the nest had survived.

When the goslings are introduced to the pond, we’re excited as kids. And when their numbers inevitably dwindle under the predations of snapping turtles, coyotes, and hawks, we’re saddened.

So yes, every year, Martha and Fred return with the spring. And every spring we are able to identify them from among all the other geese who venture here by their silence.

When I set out for a walk around the pond, my presence is noted and protested by all those other Canadas. Their alarm continues for the duration of my walk, and frankly, it gets to be annoying. Martha and Fred, on the other hand, just quietly and discreetly (as if they don’t want to hurt my feelings but really, they must put the safety of their children first) guide their offspring to the other side of the pond. As if they’re saying (quietly),  Ah, I see, you’re going there. Lovely, yes. Well, we’ll just shift over this way then. And that’s it. No hysterical honking. No frantic thrash of wings. No panic.

It’s as if they recognize us, just as we’ve come to know them. Oh, it’s them. Those quiet humans. The ones who don’t bring radios into our neighborhood. The ones who don’t scare our kids with fireworks and power boats.

I don’t doubt that when Martha and Fred take to the skies for their annual trek south, they honk to one another as they travel through cloud and mist and darkened skies. It’s how they keep together, after all. Kind of like Terry and I talking things out as we sort through our days, making sure we’re keeping our goals in mind, keeping ourselves on track. Kind of like that.

But silence is a wonderful thing. We both love it. We can be companionably silent together for hours on end. And then, when one of us speaks, it is usually to say something worth listening to.

I think Martha and Fred are like that. No need to state the obvious. No need to fill their world with endless honking. Just focus on the serious business of building that nest, defending it, and training the young ones how to steer out of the way of danger.

They’ve been at it for years, and they’re doing a grand job.

A Lust to Wander

I’ve just finished a book by Rebecca Solnit titled wanderlust: a History of Walking, and I loved it even before I picked it up for nothing more than that word in the title: wanderlust.

This, to me, is one of the truly great words in the English language. It says so much, takes us so many places. Wanderlust. A lust to wander. A need, a yearning, a desire, to walk, to hike, to explore. To strike out for destinations unknown. To travel at will using only one’s feet.

I can imagine no greater freedom, no greater happiness, than this. When I envision some misty future in which all my dreams come true, I see myself walking — through some great sweeping valley in the shadow of mountains that heave above the horizon, or alongside a willow-lined river, through a deeply shaded forest or across a wind-scratched desert. Sometimes, even, through a town. But walking. Singing, sometimes conversing and laughing, often meditative, always with a journal at hand. But walking. Not cycling or canoeing, not riding in an airplane, not driving or taking a train. Always walking.

Solnit: “The image of the walker, alone and active and passing through rather than settled in the world, is a powerful vision of what it means to be human.”

Ahh. So then, walking is what it means to be human.

This would explain why I feel most alive, most connected to the world around me, most in balance with my inner self, when my feet are moving rhythmically along a trail or sidewalk or shore. Feet connecting with rock or dirt, lungs tasting the pollen of this particular landscape.

Buddhist mountaineer Gary Snyder to Jack Kerouac in 1956: “The closer you get to real matter, rock air fire wood, boy, the more spiritual the world is.”

And how better to do that than by walking?

William Wordsworth and his sister trekked through England’s Lakes District in the dead of winter, at a rate of more than 20 miles a day, in an era when walking beyond the bounds of a walled garden was considered inappropriate activity for gentlefolk. Charles Dickens rose at 2 a.m. one morning and walked 30 miles, just to get breakfast. We’re talking serious peripatetics here.

One of my favorite walkers was a more contemporary woman, and an American. Granny D, as she became known, walked from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., to bring attention to the need for campaign finance reform — in itself, a significant achievement.  Considering that she was 89 years old when she began the walk and had her 90th birthday on the road, it was an achievement of astounding proportions. Granny D was a woman to admire. She was already dead by the time I learned about her. Otherwise, I would have been tempted to look her up. (Granny D: Walking Across America in My 90th Year)

My mother broke me in to walking at a young age when she gave me the choice of taking the bus downtown to pay our bills, or walking and keeping what little money we had for ice cream. My three-year-old feet had no trouble with the six-mile walk. I don’t remember the ice cream. I do remember relishing the discovery that I was capable of walking anywhere I wanted to go.

When I was seven, I made friends with Kenny. When he wasn’t pulling my hair and I wasn’t raising welts on him with my just-burned-out sparkler, we shared a love of wandering.

One day we hatched a scheme to see where the railroad tracks went. We met on the corner of Gladstone and Ottawa just before the sun came up, headed for the tracks, and hung a right. The tracks led us through neighborhoods, industrial areas, open fields, and then, at long last, a woodlot fronted by a deep ditch. The cattail-lined ditch teemed with tadpoles and barefoot country kids who were scooping the creatures into murky water-filled peanut butter jars. Off came my shoes and socks. Cool mud squeezed between my toes. Tadpoles swam in my cupped hands. Now and then a passenger train would roar past and adult faces would for a moment gaze at us. Then with a rush the train would be gone, the air would settle, and the trees alone stood watch again, the silence broken only by the ping of bullets hitting targets in the shooting range across the tracks and our own murmurings over the tadpoles. 

When the shadows of the trees reached the ditch, the barefoot kids took their jars home and we  headed back along the tracks, hungry now for our missed meals. Our fathers and brothers were out combing the streets, Lanspeary Park, and the stores on Ottawa Street, a task they’d been about all day while our mothers paced and imagined the many ways death can come to a child in the city — and the worse deaths they would inflict upon us themselves if we made it home alive. It was one of only two times my mother spanked me.

Oh, but it was worth it.

I had tasted the adventure that lives beyond the end of the road. My lust to wander had been whetted.

Now — where to next?

Spring

     Come! Enter now, lady of gossamer wings.

     You speak ever gently of all of those things

         that punctuate dreams in the mists of still morns.

     Your presence brings promise of days yet unborn

         to be dripping profusely with sweet golden rays

             and azure

     Oh yes, lady,

         send me those days. 

Written by me in 1978 or '79. An indulgence, and terrible poetry, I know. But it does express the way we're all feeling right now.

So where is she? Spring, that is. It's sucker fishing time — charmingly spelled "succor fishing" by my Terry. (And really, is there any greater relief than having the sun, at long last, warm your face?)

We've had the sun for days, brilliant sun. But no warmth. So will it snow on our brownies like it did a few years ago? Possibly. Will we be standing on top of the fire grate in our desperation for warmth? Likely.

As for netting suckers, let's just say our bend of the river will be a safe place for the fish come Saturday night. For despite frequent calls to, "Check the net!" we rarely find one of the little, er, suckers in its grasp.

So what's the point?

Throwing off the confines of winter.

Feeling fresh air (along with a bit of wood smoke) in our lungs.

Sitting on a log beside friends we haven't seen in months.

Watching our breath clouds mingle with the steam from our chili.

Remembering what it's like to pee in the woods.

Spring.

The Hen Spa

Just the other week, my home came alive with the arrival of kids and grandkids. We had toys and noise, melting snow and mud, cuddles and kisses, homemade beer and cider, bubble baths and bedtime stories, fabulous dinners and divine desserts.

When they left, the house felt empty. But I’ve learned about empty nests. How to deal with them, and how not to.

The first time our nest emptied — when our last child flew the coop, so to speak — Terry and I hit on the idea of filling it again. With chickens. Blinded by visions of free-range eggs and the companionable clucking of pretty white birds, I researched (a little) and came upon the design for something called a Hen Spa.

The Hen Spa is one of those ideas that sound really good: a moveable, two-story cart like an overgrown wheel barrow with a hinged lid for easy cleaning. On the ground level, the chickens can graze on grass and bugs from within the safety of a chicken-wire barrier. A ramp gives them access to the enclosed upper level roost. When the grass beneath the Spa has been eaten, you simply flip a lever, lift the Spa with its two handles, and roll it to a new spot with fresh, green grass.

As the Guinness men would say: Brilliant!

Never one to shy from a project, Terry got to work and soon we had a Hen Spa with barn-red siding, a corrugated fiberglass roof, and sweet little sliding doors to access the roosts for egg collecting.

A trip to Baroda City Mills netted us a dozen yellow chicks. We kept them warm in a cardboard box in our kitchen, charmed by their peeps and scratchings until they were big enough to be moved to the Hen Spa. 

They were better than television. We couldn’t get enough of watching them. When we came home from work we let them out to range in the yard and had our cocktail hour out there. Oh, the long summer evenings in the yard devoted to chicken watching! Our friends, God bless ‘em, didn’t laugh too loudly.

Fast forward to October. Coming home from work in the gloom of shortening days. Hurrying outside to lift the lid of the Hen Spa, to feed and water the full-grown fowl, swearing as they try to escape into the night, their straw getting soaked in the cold rain, me getting soaked in the cold rain, fighting the wind to close the damned lid, swearing as the wind catches the lid and rips its hinges from the wooden siding . . .

Let me just say that we live in a rural area. Surrounded by farmers and families who’ve raised chickens all their lives. People who KNOW chickens. So there’s no excuse for our ignorance.

As the summer had waxed and waned, we’d been dismayed by the dearth of eggs. It takes six months, someone finally told me, until they’re ready to lay.

Oh. Okay.

But those six months took us into October — when chickens stop laying eggs for the winter.

What???

I can still remember my reaction to the woman who informed me of this detail. Oh, you can electrify the coop and run heat lamps to trick them into laying — in a coop. But in a free-wheeling Hen Spa? Hah!

We did get an egg that October. One egg. The most expensive egg, Terry observed, ever laid.

And what did we have now? Have you ever smelled ten chickens living in an eight-by-four space? Seen how much shit the damnable fowl produce? Noticed how they insist on shitting into their own water trough and food? This is worse than babies, worse than two a.m. feedings and dirty diapers. At least those can be dealt with in the comfort of a warm house. At least they grow up and get potty trained.

So there I was. Facing off with winter, envisioning wrestling with that lid in a blizzard. Wondering how I was supposed to keep their shit-filled water trough unfrozen. How I was supposed to wheel the Hen Spa to a new, clean location through two feet of snow. And why I was subjecting myself to all this frustration anyway.

The chickens were destined for the soup pot.

But I couldn’t think of eating the birds myself. I’d held them in the palm of my hand! When they were babies! When they were adorable visitors from a child’s Easter basket!

My sons and their college roommates were thrilled with their care packages that autumn.

And the Hen Spa? We’ve renamed it. Now it’s the Boat House.

Gadhafi, Authors, and Brevity

Gadhafi's long-winded and incoherent speech of defiance the other day put me in mind of the challenge every author faces: coherence and brevity. Every report I heard on the news or read online said pretty much the same thing: the speech was long-winded, rambling, and incoherent. In the world of politics (just as in writing), that's a damning judgment.

I met an author recently who shares some traits with Gadhafi. This man thinks a lot of himself, has boundless confidence in his abilities, is proud of his accomplishments, and fully expects the world to acknowledge and honor them. He commanded my attention.

Then I asked him what his book was about. Whew. Half an hour later, my head swimming, my eyes crossed, I still didn't know whether the man had written a novel or a historical treatise. 

I'm grateful for the experience. Any author who's agonised over a summarization of their 300-page novel knows what I'm talking about. Some agents want a 3-page synopsis of the work; others demand a single paragraph. 

Almost any author who's sweated through their first synposis will say it was the most difficult writing they've ever done. But, boy, is it worth the effort. 

It wasn't until I had tried and failed at the above that I realized my earlier novel, Last Star at the State Line Cafe, was pointless, wandering, and yes, long-winded and incoherent. I put it aside, accepting it for what it was: good practice but not fit for the public eye. It's still on my shelf, and that's a good place for it.

When I began My Name is Grace, that lesson was still fresh. And as I worked through the publishing process, there were more lessons to learn, such as how to write a back-cover blurb, and how to pitch your novel to someone who asks on an elevator, say, or in a restaurant, "What is your book about?"

The first few times that happened to me, I was flummoxed. I stammered and blushed and labored over some probably incoherent response. I doubt if any of those people will be in a great rush to purchase my novel. Obviously, I needed a better approach.

Brevity and coherence. Following the advice of a contributor to Author Nation, I wrote a brief pitch, read it out loud, timed myself, shortened it, and repeated until I had it down to 30 seconds. Now when somebody asks what my novel is about, I'm ready.

Maybe Ghaddafi needs to take a course in writing. Brevity and coherence: priceless in politics and writing alike.

Winter Life

It's Monday morning and I really, really should be working. This is the downside of an office with a view.

Beyond the deck and the ancient silver maple that gives all these red squirrels and fox squirrels such easy access to our birdfeeder, the hill, pond, and woods all lie deep in snow. Below, I can see the Caribbean-blue sides of the kayak Terry made. Upturned on its rack at the edge of the pond, it waits for spring as I do: patient, steadfast.

To one side of the kayak, the picnic table and a good-sized brush pile are ready for that first fire of spring.

On the other side, the old hen house gives shelter now to paddles and life jackets. Its barn-red siding and the blue of the kayak are the only color against our winter forest, where black walnuts, silver maples, and beech comprise a grey-brown palette for the white-barked skeleton of a sycamore.

No, not much color. But plenty of life.

Next to the pond, the startling yellow of freshly chewed wood: beavers, unfortunately, do not hibernate. Possums do, or so I thought. So we were surprised last week to discover one gobbling at the bird feeder. Gobbling and determined to stay despite Terry's stern invitations to leave. Surprised again a couple of days later to find his carcass staining the path to the feeder. The same shovel used to create that path through the snow now provided a litter to tote the possum's carcass to the woods, where his carbon will return to the landscape that nourished him. The cycle of life and death is natural, yes, but it's difficult not to feel a pang for the ugly little guy.

Also last week, I glanced out the kitchen window to see a red shouldered hawk just a few yards away, lurking on a branch above the suddenly vacated bird feeder. Cardinals, mourning doves, blue jays and juncos all gone. But only momentarily. When the hawk wearied of waiting and flew on, the birds all instantly reappeared.

Like those birds, my work isn't going away. Waiting patiently through the winter of my wandering interest, it is ready to spring to life under the focus of my renewed attention. Time to drop my eyes from the view and get on with it.

Self-Published Authors Marketing Group

Self-published authors in the region of southwest Michigan and northwest Indiana are invited to attend an organizational meeting for an authors' marketing group, arranged by myself and B.A. Brittingham.

If you have self-published a novel, or a book of poetry or non-fiction, and are now exploring ways of bringing it to the attention of the general public, this could be for you — an Independent Authors Guild, whose members collaborate to publicize and promote one another. Some possibilities include a Book Fair (stand-alone or in conjunction with a writers' workshop or convention), a Local Authors booth at area art fairs, collaborative reading "events" at libraries or coffee shops, and whatever other creative means of promoting our books we can devise.

If you are interested, please bring your book(s) and join us at Cafe Gulistan, 13581 Red Arrow Highway, Harbert, MI, on Thursday, February 24, at 7:00 p.m.