Where is love?

It seems there's a song title in there.

I've spent the past few days pondering love and great love for an anthology. I've had two great loves in my life and walked away from both of them for different reasons, timing mostly. The subject isn't quite as simple as it seems on the surface even though it's something I've written a great deal about, both fictionally and non-fictionally. It all comes down to a definitive definition of love, at least for me. Is a love great because the participants shout their vows to the skies or publicly display and celebrate their relationship or is it something more intimate that provides a less ostentatious show? How do you tell when people are in love? Is proof of love, as Elizabeth Bennett claims, general incivility or is it subtler and the bright thread of it through life stronger and less easily grasped?

Point out any number of couples and I can tell you very quickly whether or not they truly love each other. There's no real trick to it and they don't even have to speak. Sometimes open declarations of love are misleading, as are couples who shower each other with gifts. Love, as I have experienced and seen in others is clearer in small ways. Let's take two couples.

The female of one couple constantly calls her spouse her beloved, or uses some other form of adoration, and she constantly talks abut how good and kind and nice he is and how many other women missed the boat. He is a nice guy and he's creative and gentle and nice. He gave up his bachelorhood and a lot more to marry her. He is much quieter about his feelings as he's not a verbally or physically demonstrative guy, but he agrees that is a lucky man and loves his wife. He brings her flowers and chocolate, takes care of her when she's ill or feeling out of sorts. He supports her financially and emotionally in all her endeavors and she praises his work ethic and creativity. They never argue in public or loudly at home and say they never fight.

The other couple has been together for a very long time. You'll occasionally catch them holding hands or hear them heatedly arguing about some subject or other. He forgets their anniversary once in a while and doesn't spend a lot of money on gifts. She teases him when he is about to make a serious fashion mistake but she goes out with him no matter what he wears. Neither of them can be heard to say "I love you" out loud and they don't make a fuss over each other. They are private people and some would say they fight too much to be happy.

Now let's take a closer look.

The first couple, even though they've been married about two years, aren't happy. He spends more and more time at work and gets a look in his eye when he is informed the couple have commitments when he gets home. Despite their overt signs of affection, there is distance between then even when they kiss or hug each other. Tension crackles in the air and she frequently bites her lip when he talks, often cracking jokes about his little habits and social faux pas in front of friends and strangers. When she puts her hand on his so lovingly in public, her fingers are tight around his and her movements studied as though she is acting a part. She doesn't even seem to be aware of her actions or the wincing grimace that shadows his face from time to time when she interrupts or corrects him. After all, she says she does it out of love and from a sense of humor. Even though they smile and laugh, their smiles seem strained and their laughter a bit forced.

Even in the midst of a heated debate or outright argument, the second couple inhabit each others' space, not aggressively but naturally. When they pass each other he will lightly touch her lower back or brush shoulders and she often absently has her hand on his hand or his knee and the touch is light and familiar. They often finish each others' sentences or pick up the thread of conversation seamlessly where it was left off. Stories are told together as though well rehearsed, although the give and take is natural. When they sit together they lean slightly toward each other and when they look into each others' eyes it seems like time stops and some essential private message passes between them. They seem to be in silent communication. They argue, but the arguments seldom last long, like the last time he forgot their anniversary. He's always forgetting dates, but each day brings something new from him: a packet of seeds he saw at the hardware store he knew she'd been looking for, changing the oil in her car because she forgot it was due or tickets to a ballet for her and her best friend because he hates to go; he'll cook dinner that night so she can enjoy a hot bath he drew for her. She cooks his favorite meal because he's had a hard week or mend his favorite shirt, the one she can't get him to throw away because it's been mended so many times, and she'll pick up his socks for the millionth time when he leaves them on the floor, grumbling as she does and shaking her head with a small secret smile. She knows she can't change him, but she doesn't really want to because he picked up a packet of flower seeds she had been unable to find anywhere.

It's not the ostentatious shows of affection or loud declarations that prove a great love, but the little things: the way two people touch each other, the way they inhabit the same space, the subtle signals of body language even when their voices are raised in anger. Passion doesn't have to be loud; it is often silent and runs deep beneath the surface. A great love is most often characterized by a sense of oneness that does not diminish either and strengthens both without overwhelming either. In other words, great love is in the little details, the silent and not so silent signals and signs inherent in body language and the way people feel around them.

People who spend time with the first couple can't put a finger on what makes them feel so unsettled when it's obvious how much in love with each other they are. People walking in on a very vocal argument between the second couple may initially feel embarrassed but don't feel unwelcome or tense any more than they fear a summer storm that clears the air.

Great passion, like great love, often includes discord; the discord is momentary. People who are passionately in love are often also passionate in debate and disagreement. Like a violent spring thunderstorm, after it's over, a few leaves will be torn from the trees and dead branches will litter the lawn, but the sun breaks through the remaining clouds and shines brightly.

I've seen both kinds of relationship and it took me a while to put my finger on what was actually beneath the surface. One husband's jokes and humor masked a deep seated unhappiness and depression. A wife's closets bulging with the latest fashions and drawers full of jewelry couldn't fill the aching void of an empty marriage. Another wife who throws herself on her husband's cooling body and keens her despair and loss makes her cries of her pain and what she has lost seem fake when the people around her remember how she railed about how much she knew about pain when the morphine and radiation failed ameliorate the deep, gnawing, ache of bone cancer.

A young husband spends most of his time in his workshop or hiking in the forests and mountains to escape the silence that yawns from week to week when there are no domestic issues to discuss or items on his honey-do lists. They live in a world of silence punctuated by spurts of impersonal updates and family or local gossip, never touching, ever apart even in smiling family photographs, sealed in a bubble of separateness beneath masks that barely conceal their contempt and lack of respect. They celebrate romantic holidays and never miss giving each other cards for anniversaries and birthdays that are prominently displayed before being sealed away in boxes and scrap books, but they are strangers going through the motions.

I looked at my relationships and saw some of the same things, bits and pieces of barely contained contempt and calm familiarity. It was easy to see the great loves and the soul-sucking black hole relationships. The latter dominated. After going over them all, I know which relationship to write about. It's the one, despite the painful ending, where we were both emotionally naked and vulnerable and completely at ease with each other, the one that, when we were together, made people assume we were married even though we never got that far. It's the one with the sad ending and the rich, full and memorable days that still make me feel warm and incredibly blessed. It was the one great love of my life, the one I still miss.

Thomas Jefferson, we don't know you

It is obvious, judging by the current political and national climate, that people have forgotten the principles upon which this country was founded. They have massaged, manipulated, twisted and changed what is a very simple concept. How? you ask. By ignoring and cherry picking according to the results wanted.

Take a few moments and read A Sad Birthday for Thomas Jefferson for the best commentary on what Thomas Jefferson built into the Declaration of Freedom and the Constitution and Bill of Rights. You will not be sorry you did.

That is all. Disperse.

Overnight Success Takes a While

The same question crops up all the time: How long did it take you to write Past Imperfect? Answer: 2 weeks.

Yes, it's true. I wrote the whole book in two weeks, at least the first draft. The published book took a little longer -- 10 years. Why? That isn't a simple answer.

In between writing the novel and publication, I had a full time job, sometimes two jobs, wrote articles, stories, edited other books and stories, kept a paper journal and several online blogs, read and reviewed numerous books (300+) and, from time to time, went back to the novel to tweak it. I had to tweak it a lot after 9/11 because there were major changes in the way airports handled incoming traffic and that affected the story.

In the meantime, I also learned about electronic surveillance and earned a ham radio operator's license, actually three licenses (Technician, General and Extra -- all within a week -- and learned Morse code). I traveled and moved and kept writing stories and articles for publication while still tweaking the novel. That brings me up to three years ago when a publisher finally contracted the novel and I changed the original name, Out of the Past, to Past Imperfect, which, as it turned out, wasn't such a good idea. The name fit but what I didn't know what that someone else had chosen the same title. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

As September 2007 rolled around, I was getting antsy because I still had not heard from the publisher or the editor and my emails weren't answered. I did some checking only to find out the publisher had gone bankrupt and forgot to tell me. There I was with the manuscript ready to be published and no publisher. Goodbye January 2008 debut.

Undaunted, I sent the manuscript to another publisher and got a quick response. YES! I signed the contracts and waited and I didn't have to wait long. During an email conversation about choosing an editor, the publisher decided she didn't want to publish the book. I had a contract, but decided it wasn't worth fighting it out in court to force her to publish the novel because she wouldn't give it her full attention or her support.

I sent the manuscript out again and got another quick response, another yes, but I didn't hold my breath. Good thing I didn't. The publisher loved the manuscript but they were over sold and requested I send it in again in a year. I didn't want to wait, so I sent it out again. That was October 2008 and I was anxious to get moving. Another yes. Another wait. This time the publisher kept in contact and finally in March 2009 the editor contacted me. Two quick edits and I was ready, but not in time for the Rocky Mountain Writers Showcase. I didn't have a cover and hadn't seen even a mock-up, and no one asked me for my input. I began to worry, seeing yet another contract fizzle.

July 2009 rolled around and two weeks before my novel debuted the publisher sent me a JPG file of the cover and the link for my page on their website. I was in business. I had a publishing date and Amazon listed the book for sale. The rest is history.

It has been a long road for that particular book, but I refused to give up. It wasn't my best work, but it was a good start and so far the reviewers feel the same way, giving Past Imperfect rave reviews all across the board. I'm now an overnight success -- sort of.

Overnight is a relative term. It may take years to get off the ground and see not only physical proof of all the hard work and struggles, but money from sales. It's not an easy road and writing isn't for the faint of heart or the easily scared and cowed. What it takes, beside hard work and a certain talent for words, is forbearance, fortitude and a whole lot of determination.

As it stands now, I'm waiting to hear from the editor for the next two novels waiting in the wings for their turn at bat. One took many years to write and the other I wrote in two weeks, spending the last year revising, editing and adding to the bones with blood, sinew, flesh and skin. I still get nervous waiting because I'm not a patient person, but it's coming. Until the next two books arrive overnight on the scene, there's plenty of time to work on new projects to keep from biting my nails and going crazy with my overnight success.

In the Darkness There is Danger

The latest box of books to review from Authorlink came on Friday and I decided to dive in with Ted Dekker's latest thriller The Bride Collector. It was a bad choice for bedtime reading, which is my favorite place to read and my favorite form of sleep aid. Can't sleep? Read. Works every time, not because the books are boring but because they relax and transport me to a place where my body, a usually tensed wirespring of emotions held in check and muscles cramped from over or under use, can let go and float on a puffy cloud of alternate realities and wondrous prose. Not last night.

I knew from the cover, a bas relief picture of a bridal veil hanging from a rusted, bloody, oft-used meat hook, and the title that it was a thriller, but I usually don't have problems sleeping after reading books with graphic violence or horrific scenes. Every one in a while . . . This was one of those once in a while times.

Eyes drooping from fatigue (I haven't been sleeping through the night, harking back to some newborn state I avoided the first time around, probably emotional or mental colic), I bookmarked my page, stacked the book on top of the others and turned out the light, composing my heavy limbs for sleep. It didn't take long for Morpheus to gather me in his arms and whisper sleeping thoughts in my ear before I was yanked out of the bliss and into a world of darkness and terror where I was hunted by a family of throwbacks intent on playing Operation with my not so vital parts until they could dig out the vital parts with a rusty, bent spoon.

The leader of this homicidal group had his smirking, eager brothers hold me while he prodded between spine and right kidney with a thin lead rod, increasing the pressure until I writhing in their grip, biting my lip to keep from screaming in terror and pain. How I got away I don't know, but get away I did, running up a flight of stairs that appeared out of nowhere with the happy howling hounds on my trail. At the top of the stairs were two shovels, one point and the other flat-bladed, and I turned, grabbed the pointed shovel and stood my ground ready to swing at the first head within reach, except the shovels were chained to each other and to the banister. It was a trick and a trap. I started to run and catapulted out of the nightmare into drowsy wakefulness unable to free myself from the grip of the nightmare or wake fully. The struggle continued with the hounds hot on my heels, having grabbed my dream state to reel me back in and back in I went, fighting for consciousness and being dragged back inch by inexorable inch until finally I broke free, still sleep heavy, and tried to change the dream until at last I was saved by a full bladder near to bursting. It's the first time I was glad for nature's call.

That wasn't in the book and I hadn't finished the second chapter.

Dekker's writing is so visceral and evocative and the killer so insidiously dark that it set my mind to creating a nightmare all its own. I've decided that under no circumstances will I ever read a Ted Dekker thriller that close to bedtime, nor will I read him in bed unless there's plenty of daylight. Nope, reading Dekker will be cut off a minimum of six hours before bed while there's still plenty of light and a chance to purge his prose with frothy musicals, tear jerking romances and plenty of time to get it all out into my paper journals. His writing is far to suggestive to my overactive and very creative mind.

The last Dekker book I read and reviewed, which was also my first, was Green, the last and the first in a cycle of four. Once I started reading the book I was drawn into the story and quickly immersed. I resented needing to sleep; I wanted to finish it all in one sitting. That didn't happen, but the world and the ideas on which I gorged myself were a banquet for the senses and I enjoyed every moment, returning to read as soon as I finished work. Luckily, I work at home, so it was a short commute. I curled up in bed and flew away to the worlds of Dekker's imaginings and in spite of the religious themes, which were seamlessly woven into the overall narrative. This book, The Bride Collector, is a different Dekker than the one that fascinated me before. This Dekker knows the deepest darkness of the human soul wherein lies the joy and the insatiable need to warp the very fabric of reality and refashion it in its own image. This Dekker weaves nightmares and taps the instinctive and deep-seated fears in all of us, and especially, obviously, in me.

I highly recommend Ted Dekker's books. I must finish The Bride Collector in order to review it -- two chapters is not enough -- but I will read it in the daylight where nightmares can't drag me back into the abyss. Then I'll get Boneman's Daughters and read that in daylight, too, but I will read it. I suggest you do the same. Make sure it's daylight and keep your loved ones close; don't go to bed alone and, under no circumstances, read Dekker's thrillers in bed.

When Characters Take Over

It seemed to be an isolated incident when John Logan, one of the background characters in Past Imperfect, then called Out of the Past, followed me into my dreams. He nagged me for days before I finally gave in and listened. I had to get some sleep or I wouldn't be able to write anything. So I listened and he changed the course of the story and my writing life. He was right.

John Logan had taken on a life of his own and, even though it trespassed into my life outside writing, I am glad he nagged me until I paid attention. The novel that resulted was much better than the one planned in my head and the ending surprised even me. I was just along for the ride.

I'd heard about characters talking back and refusing to be pushed around and maneuvered like pieces on a chess board, but I didn't really believe it until John Logan. From the moment I listened to him, writing changed for me. It's also likely why I write more nonfiction than fiction; I get to write what I want and the characters don't make cameo appearances in my dreams. Not usually.

A lot of my writing is done in my head before I put fingers to keyboard or pen to paper. Scenes, dialogue and exposition play out in my mind, the words arranging and re-arranging into more pleasing shapes until, like the ice Kai must arrange into a word in The Snow Queen, they spell out the story. The good thing about writing this way is that I can write anywhere--in the shower, while doing housework, driving and grocery shopping. The bad thing about writing this way is that I write anywhere and any time--in the shower, while I'm working, watching a movie, reading a book . . . and sleeping.

The more I write, the more my writing affects other aspects of my life and now spills over into my nonfiction. Last night, or rather early this morning, is a good example.

After waking up at 3 a.m., I fully intended to go back to sleep for another couple of hours, but something switched my mind into writing mode. I couldn't sleep. I tossed. I turned. I used my relaxation and breathing techniques. And in my mind, I rearranged the words into a story that has been on the edge of awareness for weeks. No rest would be had this morning, not until I got up and put down on paper or on my computer the words that slithered and slid and rearranged themselves in my mind.

This time it's not a character but a story I've been trying to write about a great love. The deadline looms and so I will lose sleep until what's in my head is on the page and safely sent to the publisher. But characters will follow since I'm finishing rewrites on a finished novel, except that one thing I've learned is that no novel is every really finished. There's always more to do and more I want to do even when the book is in print.

Characters jostle and play hide-and-seek for a while, but eventually, when they begin invading my dreams, I know they're ready to find their way to the page and they won't let me sleep until I give in and let them have their way.

The one goal I've worked toward for so long is being able to quit my day job and spend all my time writing, but I'm beginning to wonder if that's such a good thing. Characters barely recognize the boundaries now. What will happen when I have nothing else to occupy my mind but writing? Will I disappear and the characters take over, using my body to give their dreams and realities life? Probably. And yet that doesn't seem like such a bad trade-off.

When the author disappears and the characters take on a life of their own it's magic. What's a few sleeps nights when the results is the creation of characters who are living, breathing, nagging, dream invading magic?

Apache Attack

This one was chosen for a Cup of Comfort anthology and then got lost in the shuffle when the publisher down-sized the book.

Apache Attack

“Watch out! He’s right behind you.”

The buckskin horse lunged, teeth bared. I stepped aside just as Dad caught the reins and hauled the horse back.

“You have to watch him. He bites.”

“I’ll say.” I took the reins, avoiding snapping teeth and stamping hooves. Putting one foot in the stirrup, I mounted. The buckskin danced and lunged.

“Maybe you’d better get down.” Dad held out his hand for the reins.

“I’ve got it.”

“All right, then. Take it easy. Just out to the highway and back.”

Settling into the saddle, I reached down and patted the buckskin’s long graceful neck. His ears flicked. He placidly tore up a clump of grass; he didn’t intend going anywhere. Munching, he turned and looked over his shoulder at me, mischief glinting in his deep brown eyes. He blinked.

“If you’re going, then go.”

Nudging his sides, I held the reins loosely and clicked my tongue. He took a step, hesitated, took another—and bolted. Screams dwindled in the distance as the buckskin raced through the grass, headed straight for a clothesline—a wire clothesline.

Pulling on the reins and leaning backward over the saddle, I urged him to slow. The buckskin jerked his head and lengthened his stride. I ducked. The clothesline caught my chin, burning a deep groove below my lips, but it missed my neck. I flipped the wire over my head, turning my head sideways.

The buckskin didn’t hesitate; he raced for a barbed wire fence enclosing a stubble field. Clamping my thighs together and hauling back on the reins, I leaned back. Screams and yells moved closer, but they didn’t make any sense. Pulling harder, nearly horizontal over his rump, his head nearly touching his chest, the buckskin skidded to a stop on the wet grass inches from the fence, bucking and rearing while I hung on. Suddenly, he stopped and stood still, panting lightly.

“I don’t think so, buddy. You’re not getting rid of me that easily. Now, let’s go.”

The buckskin took two tentative steps and stopped. I nudged his sides. He took two more steps, lengthening into a trot and then an even gaited run. We sped along the grass and onto the dirt road, hair and mane flying in the crisp autumn air until reaching the highway. We slowed and turned, trotting back, gait dropping to a fast walk as we neared my family.

“Just what did you think you were doing?”

“Riding, Dad.”

“You can get down now.”

“Are you going to buy him?”

“Don’t know. Dad stroked his flanks. The buckskin gently butted Dad’s shoulder.

“He likes you.”

“He needs a lot of training. He’s been abused.”

“Then we have to buy him.”

“I’ll think about it. Now, get down.”

Reluctantly dismounting, I held the reins and stroked the soft velvet of his nose. The buckskin whickered, lipping the palm of my hand for the sugar cubes I pulled from a pocket. “If he’s been abused…”

“I said I’d think about it.” Dad led the buckskin away while my family closed around me, questions flying.

Mom glared at me. “You should’ve stopped.”

“I was fine.”

“You could’ve been killed. If that wire had caught your neck . . .”

“Yeah!” chorused my brother and sisters. “Killed.”

“I wasn’t.”

On the way home, we talked about the horse. It was clear Dad liked him but Mom wasn’t so sure. Ever since they moved out past New Rome down U.S. 40 to the farm, Dad and Mom decided to buy some horses. Although I wasn’t going to be there long, I wanted some say in which horses they bought.

It was obvious Dad liked the buckskin, and hearing he’d been abused made him that much more appealing, at least to Dad and me. He’d buy the horse, that much was certain. It was only a matter of time.

And he did.

The next time I saw the buckskin, he was decked out, saddle and bridle covered with conchos and buckskin ties. He looked like he belonged in a western beneath a hero riding into the sunset. His light tan coat gleamed and his pale mane looked like a silken waterfall as he danced and sidestepped while Dad brushed him. Catching the reins tied around the top log of the fence, the buckskin pulled them loose, nudging Dad, and tossing his head. He wanted to go. Grooming could wait for later, he seemed to say.

“Got a name for him?”

“Apache.” Dad mounted and headed off down the driveway at a canter, dirt puffing beneath Apache’s hooves.

Every evening after work, Dad brushed the buckskin until he gleamed, mounted, and took off down the road, sometimes with Mom on the brown saddlebred mare, living a long held dream of owning horses and living in the country.

Apache settled down, but very few could ride him without Dad close by; he had a tendency to attack without warning or buck whenever anyone else mounted. The only exception was children. Apache loved kids, even my two little boys who never sat still for anyone or anything, unless they rode with Dad on Apache.

The buckskin didn’t give his love or his loyalty lightly or easily, probably remembering the harsh treatment of his former owner. He adored Dad, acting more like an enormous dog than a horse as he followed him around. Children fascinated him and he gentled whenever they approached, taking carrots and sugar cubes from their hands as delicately and gently as a refined gentleman. But Apache was a devil with the mares, a sort of mare’s stallion even though he had supposedly been gelded. (We learned later that he was still a stallion.)

Apache’s eyes gleamed with mischief whenever I wanted to ride, teasing me with nips whenever my back was turned, and whinnying when I turned and caught him, as though playing some private game. He never bucked me off or ran away with me again, having decided on some kind of truce as if I had won his admiration the day he attacked and ran away with me. But no one knew the depth of his loyalty until the day Dad was breaking an Arabian mare he’d just bought.

Lakaya seemed fine when Dad mounted her the first time, flanks quivering, nostrils flared, but she stood still, silent, head bowed. He started to put her through her paces when suddenly she reared and lunged forward. Dad went down with a sickening crunch.

Apache grazed in the pasture when Lakaya bucked Dad off. Two seconds later, the buckskin cleared the fence and raced to where Dad lay, beating the rest of us. He lowered his head and pushed at Dad’s shoulder. Dad groaned.

Lakaya took off down the driveway. Apache tore after her, racing ahead, and turning her back toward the house. He herded her all the way back up the driveway, nipping at her flanks when she stalled or tried to take off again. When they were almost up to where Dad now sat holding his right wrist, Apache nipped Lakaya again. She squealed and reared. My brother took her reins and led her back to the barn while the buckskin stayed near Dad until we got him in the car and Mom took him to the hospital.

Dad’s wrist was broken in two places. When he came home with the cast on his arm, no one was happier to see him than Apache was. He crowded the fence neighing and calling as Dad got out of the car, refusing to settle until Dad went over to him and stroked his nose and patted his neck. Apache was satisfied.

My parents eventually gave up the horses and the farm and bought a house outside of town. The owners of the farm had decided to sell the land to a developer and canceled their option to buy.

I don’t know who was sadder the day the new owners came for the buckskin, Dad or Apache. We never saw the buckskin again, but there is no doubt in my mind that wherever Apache went he made his presence felt every time he attacked.

###

Avoiding the Slush Pile

If you haven't heard about HarperCollins UK, you haven't been paying attention. They have a website called Authonomy. It takes time to go from the bottom of the slush pile to the top, but the books that make it avoid the usual waiting time and get the editors' attention.

Since I want to break into the European market, I posted Among Women on the website and have been making my way to the top. It takes time and you have to participate, but it's worth the effort.

If you'd like to take a look at Among Women before it's published here in the US, go sign up (it's free), comment and/or back my book. It's an interesting cyber twist on the old fashioned method of printing out your babies and sending them through the mail with fingers crossed in hopes you'll make it out of the slush pile and onto the bookshelves. Enjoy yourselves.

That is all. Disperse. It's time to read.

In the Darkness

The mountains outside my cabin are covered with snow, blurring the sharp craggy lines, blue in the full moon against a star spangled sky. It's the same sight I see every night as I sit here working or -- like now -- trying to download work and being ignored. There's nothing out there for me to type. I'd rather be in bed, but this is what I signed on for, this is what I need to do to continue working and living and hoping for something better, something more than I have had for the past nine months. I'm tired and lonely and alone, but not for much longer. At least not physically alone. There will be others in the house when I move, soft scrapings and footsteps in the hall, on the other side of the wall, beneath me. I don't know if I can live with people again. I am out of the habit.

The first time I moved from an apartment to a house I didn't sleep for several nights. It was too quiet. No scratchings or fumblings, yelling or snores leaking through the walls, the floors, the ceiling. Just silence. The tick-tick of a light switch from time to time was all I got, a ghost turning the lights on and off as she left and entered rooms. But she was a quiet ghost, just the tick-tick of the light switch is all I ever heard from her. Still, I knew she was there and I wasn't alone.

Other places, other times, and soon I came back into the noise and furtive scramblings and earthy calls of sexual tanglings all around me, back into the midst of civilization, alone and not alone, and then here where the nights are blacker, the stars sharper, brighter, closer, the silence thicker and sometimes smothering, but not alone. Woodpeckers drum me awake. Squirrels chitter and call with the rising sun. Raccoons scratch and scatter when I walk outside to embrace the night and hold it close. Upstairs in the loft, he paces softly, a whisper of sound back and forth, back and forth across the carpet, another ghost, and I'm not alone.

In front of this glowing screen, with the work screen on the other computer behind me waiting to be filled with sound files and words so I can earn my way back to civilization, I work, looking out at the dusky sky toward the mountains, blue with failing night and rising dawn, and wait to be filled. I wait to return to the noise and civilization, to walk away from this cocoon of silence.

Another ghost, George, waits for me in the silence of the new apartment. I wonder how we'll fit together as he goes about his ghostly tasks. He's expecting me, just one person, but there will be another. A visitor who in time will become more, who will come to stay and share my life and whisper to me every night as he holds me in the darkness.

I am not alone. I will never be alone again.

###

The Blood-Red Pencil: Ask The Editor Free-For-All Today!

The Blood-Red Pencil: Ask The Editor Free-For-All Today!

The quality of light

As the light fades and colors deepen, I look out my window at the garage roof next door. The squirrels are settling in for the night, climbing into their warm nests above my head where they stomp and race. The sky is gray, but the horizon is a luminous white. The edges of the vista blur and the mountains dim and darken, growing larger, a backdrop of rock and trees and stability. The view softens with the coming of night, the fence and garage outside my bedroom window solid and clearly drawn, the details sharply defined. The rain today settles into the cracks in the wood and spill like tears down the warped face that separates me from the mountains. The fence and stones of the garage breathe in the moisture forcing flaws and wrinkles into painstaking relief.

The horizon glows with the sun's descent and the wind picks up rattling loose branches from their connections, twigs and budding leaves dipping and ripping from their moorings and floating to the ground. Darkness closes in and everything outside is delineated and defined in the momentary deep purple glow.

There is a quality to dusk that blurs the edges of the view as it creeps closer, settling in like a lover's arms in an intimate embrace. Color flees and silhouettes take solid form out of the riot of daylight.

Dusk.

And soon night...

...when the stars flare and fly across the vault of heaven, and the moon's pale silver face lightly blues the darkness.

Earlier versions

This is a very early version of Among Women when I thought I could put it all into a story. I was wrong. There's too much to tell and a novel was the only way to do it.

Caught in the System

Greed and the expectation of something for nothing are the reasons I’m sitting here on this splintered yellow bench bolted to this peeling institutional gray floor. Most of us are here for the same reasons, no matter what we tell you.
The dark-haired hippie sitting across from me overflows ragged, patched jeans and polyester maternity top. She fled the parish police at high speed because of the greed that filled the trunk and back seat of her car.
“You’re not here for drugs,” she says. Her voice breaks the hollow silence. Brown eyes, shadowed by a fall of lank strands, lick hungrily at the insides of my arms.
“No.” I’m surprised at my calm even tone.
She sidles along the bench until she’s opposite me. Her eyes never leave my arms.
A wizened brown stick of a woman mutters off to the right. “I am, but they got it wrong.” Another quarter heard from. “They’ll see when they call the judge. Don’t know who they messin’ with.” She hunches into the corner near the door, braced against the wall.
A thin arm, like a dowel jabbed into lumpy clay, strokes my clasped hands. Collapsed ropy veins sulk beneath the riddled depths of even her withered right arm. Not wanting to seem rude or scared, I pat her hand and slowly fold my arms. I don’t want to make any sudden moves, not when raw desire drools so near.
The judge’s maid mumbles and curses. “Judge won’t like me being here. Ain’t supposed to be here. Ignorant fools locking me up when the judge goin’ need his dinner. Don’t like to be kept waitin’. They goin’ find out though. Makin’ him come down here. Treatin’ me like some criminal. Got they heads in the lion’s mouth and that’s for true.”
When I look back the hippie smacks her lips, avid eyes glued to my arms.
“I bet a needle would slide easy in your veins,” she says.
Freedom echoes through the narrow chamber.
The judge’s maid takes her time gathering her dignity. Snarling with outrage, glistening black curls bounce against the majestic set of her shoulders as she strides through the door. Trickles of apologies and recriminations seep through the opening and die in the final clang of steel against steel.
We are alone at last, hunter and hunted.
They say innocence is its own reward. That was uppermost in mind when I quietly, voluntarily followed my black-suited captors to their squad car. I knew it wasn’t true as the familiar streets of downtown New Orleans slipped away. I haven’t been far from the French Quarter since DJ left me stranded. Now I’m here, sitting across from a drug addict who sees me as unexplored territory. I don’t even know where here is.
They called it Central Booking. I have no rights. I gave those up when I left the safety of two full time jobs in Ft. Lauderdale for the promise of California. I would trade my single American status for a sham marriage, a couple years of my life, and lots of money. Not even halfway to the promised land and I wake up to find my car stolen and my money and my ex-con boyfriend gone. He’s probably looking for his dream, a virgin sacrifice from a devout small town congregation he could rule from the pulpit.
Maybe I should ask her name. Names are power.
“Carla. What you in for?” she asks.
The inevitable question. What should I answer? Stupidity, trust, or the real reason – greed? “I’m not really sure.”
“Yeah, well, I really flaked out. I saw flashing lights behind me and lost it.” Carla laughs.
“Why were they stopping you?”
“I had a tail light out. I thought they knew about the stolen stuff in the car so I floored it.”
“I’ll say,” I say trying to be sympathetic. If she’s talking she’s not coveting my veins.
Carla sits down beside me. I turn to face her, putting my knee on the bench between us. No sense getting too cozy.
“Yeah, big mistake. If I hadn’t run out of gas I might’ve gotten away. My old man is gonna be pissed. It was his stuff. He can’t get his methadone with the car in the impound lot.”
We talk, exchanging histories and hurts until the door shrieks open again. No one’s rescuing us. The deputies toss in cold bologna sandwiches on mashed white bread. Carla asks for two. “Running makes me hungry,” she explains. She must run a lot.
Still tasting the gumbo I had for dinner, I give her my sandwich, too. Soon they come again, this time with cuffs and no nonsense.
We don’t have to go far. The elevator goes up several floors and disgorges us into a hallway teeming with prisoners and lots of black-clad deputies. A quartet of overfed toughs swaggers toward us with naked teeth. They take charge of Carla and me demanding we strip. We bend over as ordered while they probe any hiding places with rubber glove efficiency.
They let us dress before parading us past the chow line. It’s a short reprieve before they band our wrists in plastic.
Smirking, they lead us to the showers. A line of four stalls without shower curtains face one lone toilet stashed in a tiled cul-de-sac.
Stripped and shivering, we step into the stinging spray. Barely wet, we’re ordered to stop, raise our arms and spread our legs. Suffocating in a white cloud of delousing powder, they toss us some clothes.
The rough cloth sticks to wet skin and curdled bug powder while the dinner crowd watches. We’re the evening’s entertainment. I suppose it’s only fair. They’ve taken their turn and want to see the show from the other side of the stage.
Home for the time being is a small gray cell furnished with the latest toilet, sink, desk, stool and mirror in stainless steel. One bed is bolted to the wall. A lumpy sack of blue and white ticking hunches in the middle of the steel tray. Its twin lies on the floor between the desk and the heavy steel door tied up in a thin cotton sheet. Comfort isn’t allowed, at least not before casting the new fish into the population waters.
Carla fits right in, calling friends by name and striking a pose center stage. She relives her flight, careening around harrowing turns, blowing through speed traps, screaming around sightseeing tourists before coming to a sputtering, coughing stop as she runs out of road and gas. She smiles serenely when the local news stations play and replay her exploits. A new star is born replacing the rabid murderer who plays endless games of dominoes and cards.
The murderer sits at the head of the table under the penalty box where Sheriff Charles C. Foti’s flunkies watch from the safety of triple-paned double-glazed windows laced with wire. I watch, too, quietly answering the inevitable question, “What are you in for?” by holding up the neon orange plastic bracelet marking me as felon and fool.
“Tell them why you’re here,” Carla urges. She puts her arm around me and pushes me forward. The rapt audience sits on the stairs to the second tier of cells.
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Don’t sound like a felony to me,” says a blonde getting her hair French braided.
“It is if you happen to look like a notorious prostitute wanted for being a Madam and a thief.”
“That’d do it.” She solemnly nodes her head
“So you ain’t this pro?” one of the other girls asks. This is her seventh or eighth trip down for prostitution.
“I’ve only been in New Orleans a few weeks. I wouldn't have time to do everything they claim.
“Don’t look like no pro to me,” Carla says. “More like a nun on parole.” Everyone laughs at that and I join in.

Lights out comes quickly and I follow the well-trained crowd milling toward the stainless steel comfort of bed and board.
Christmas is just past and New Year’s coming. The weather is fine and warm, just right to huddle under a threadbare blanket of scratchy blue-gray wool that stretches only far enough to hide beneath. I curl into a tight fetal ball as my naked cell mate howls with lunar glee. There is no rest for the wicked that first night or for many nights to come.
Morning never dawns so much as clangs when the heavy cell door locks are released. One of the Foti’s finest broadcasts the order for roll call. I stumble blearily to my feet, wiping sand from my eyes. I forget where I am until I bump into my roommate. I back off in the wake of her vapid smile remembering the howling that almost brought institutional wrath down on us the night before.
She had jumped and bounced on the bed, breasts bobbing, legs churning, as corded fingers wound through the heavy wire mesh of the window. She calmed down when the quad door bang echoed through the heavy silence. How her eyes burned in the dim reflected light bleeding through the window as she settled cross-legged onto her bed. I resolutely closed my eyes and hounded sleep until it finally smothered me in dreamless darkness.
I move back toward my pallet and turn away while she squats over the toilet, unable to ignore the rush and splash in such close quarters. When the toilet flushes I turn back around. She makes her bed as sanely, the night before a seeming fantasy of my over tired mind. I can’t afford modesty with my bladder near to bursting so I take my turn quickly and quietly. She ignores me. For her I probably don’t exist, maybe none of this does. Maybe she has the right idea of how to live through this all too real nightmare.
“Roll call!” a deputy yells behind me. I pull up my pants. My roommate smiles back at me from around the corner of the door.
I race out into the narrow walkway and take my place opposite her.
“Hold it,” the faceless deputy snarls counting me off, moving down the line. Daring a quick look, I see women on either side of the doors, some dressed in sheer peignoirs and some in cotton or just their underwear. A few – like me – are still in their clothes, rumpled and twisted as they sway drunkenly before we’re dismissed.
After standing in line for ages, runny eggs and clotted grits are slopped onto a metal tray over two hard shingles of dry toast. We each grab a paper cup of weak Kool-Aid laced with saltpeter to wash down the food and sexual urges.
Hunger plays tricks on your mind. You believe you can stomach anything if it means that the ache in your belly goes away for an hour. You eat, fending off everyone begging for your leftovers. They’ve grown fat and complacent, living for the weekly commissary delivery when, for one day, they get regular food – ice cream, candy, sugar, and coffee. Lucky for me commissary is the next day.
I’ve been told that I’ll be allowed twenty-five dollars. Good thing, too, because I gave my money to the captain for bail. It looks like I’ll be here for a while. It’s nearly two days and I’m still here.
Everyone offers to help fill out my commissary sheet, hoping I’ll share the bounty in exchange for their aid. At that moment butter pecan ice cream looks like heaven. Always go for the comfort food when you’re in trouble. I mark designer butter pecan on the preprinted list along with toothbrush, toothpaste, and deodorant. Everything is name brand, but the prices are outrageous. There are felt tip pens and legal size tablets. I can write. That will help.
I’ve always written down my thoughts, fears and pain. It puts them in perspective, keeps at a distance so that they don’t overwhelm me. When I was a teenager it became a very stupid habit. My mother always found my diary wherever I hid it and punished me for whatever she didn’t like – tirades of about punishment, secret longings, whatever I was trying to figure out. I got out of the habit. It wasn’t safe. I haven’t written much more than letters for over ten years. This could be my chance to get it back. Some chance – jailed in a strange city and no one knows where I am. Good chance.
Lunch, I soon find out, is always a hot meal, followed by a cold dinner. Lunch is full of cheap and heavy starches, like red beans and rice on Tuesdays, rice and what passes for chicken, occasionally some kind of mystery meat in the shape of something you nearly recognize. I begin to look forward to Tuesdays. They can’t ruin beans and rice.
Before the day is out I share dinner with the murderer. She isn’t what I expected. She is short – about 5’4” – and very dark-skinned. Wiry white hairs thread tight braids matching stragglers on her chin in deepest black.
“ You play dominoes? Two-handed solitaire?” she asks.
“Not for ages.”
“Have a seat. You’ll pick it up. You look like you got a brain.” She motions to a seat next to her and ‘washes the tiles,’ mixing up the dominoes face down on the table. She tells me how many to choose. We begin.
“Betty,” she says when I offer my name.
The game proceeds quickly. Most of the curiosity seekers move away into little groups that form and reform along the length of the quad. They move from the stairs to the second tier over to the picnic tables near the showers probably hoping for a show. Still, they pretend to ignore whoever is being sprayed and deloused.
Betty tells me her story in short bald sentences. Despite her seeming indifference to the surroundings, she is serene and untouched.
She tells me she moved to New Orleans because work was scarce at home in Texas. She got a job laying concrete the day she arrived. She found a cheap, clean apartment near the job site and dug in, sending money to her mother and kids back home. James happened onto the site looking for work. The construction boss hired him and put him under Betty. He ended up under her after work, too, after a few weeks spent wearing her down.
“He was a bum. Even a bum makes you feel better when you’re far from home and feeling lonely,” she explains.
“Wasn’t long I got to feeling lonely again. He found another pigeon.”
Betty chews her gum silently, her buckteeth working over her bottom lip as she carefully considers her next play. “Came to my place to pick up his stuff. Tried to talk me into giving him another chance, but I wasn’t having none of that. Pulled a gun and threw me down. Ripped my clothes. Raped me. I fought him, but he was strong and big. Real hard to throw off. Finally turned the gun on him. Blood everywhere and me covered in it. I pulled my stuff together and tried to put on a robe, but the whole house was beating at the door. Next thing you know I’m in here. Goin’ to be in prison the rest of my life.”
She wins and starts counting points. She checks what I’ve got left, adds them up and turns over the tiles. I help.
“Didn’t the jury understand you were being raped? That you were afraid for your life?”
“Didn’t make no difference. I knew him. Figured it was a crime of passion.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Eighteen months.”
“Isn’t the trial over.”
“Long over, but we down here for the appeal. I’ll be going back shortly.”
“You’re going to spend the rest of your life in jail for defending yourself?”
“Can’t change it. Might as well get used to it. Could be I get out in 15 or 20 years. . . or not. One thing, I miss my kids. They going to be grown soon and I won’t be there.”
Betty concentrates on the tiles, carefully considers her moves and plays fast. I wonder how many games of dominoes she’s played in eighteen months, how much solitaire, how many letters she’s written to her kids. How many in fifteen or twenty more years?

Another night with my naked howling cellmate, but I drop off easier than the night before. I’m afraid I may be getting used to this life. I don’t dare. I don’t want to spend my days playing dominoes and cards, looking forward to red beans and rice on Tuesdays, commissary on Wednesday.
When commissary is delivered everyone is excited and happy. Who would have thought the idea of a spicy dill pickle, ice cream, a little bag of sugar or coffee could cause so much stir? This is the high point of their week – and mine. I’m looking forward to the deodorant and writing again.

Betty’s story is hard to believe, but I feel someone should know. When I get out of here maybe I can find out what happened to her and find a way to get her story out. If not, then I’ll do it for myself. I can’t forget her accepting eyes, the way she mechanically shuffles the worn cards, or the methodical calculations, so neat and precise, that define her endless days.
By the time my name is called and I get my ice cream, it’s half melted. It tastes like heaven. What will it taste like in a month, six months, longer? I don’t know. I can’t look that far down the road, concentrate on now.
I take the pad and pens and sit down at one of the picnic tables. As Betty’s tale takes life on the page a scream rips the air. My cellmate is on the floor fighting Carla fighting over Buglers – tobacco and papers for rolling your own cigarettes. Two hefty deputies wade through the semi circle of women watching them rolling on the floor. They yank Carla up by the hair. My cellmate clings to Carla’s throat. She wraps her skinny legs around Carla’s ample middle trying to lock her ankles.
The deputies pry my cellmate’s legs loose. They grab her chin forcing her head back. She tries to bite them. They slap her to the ground. She crawls back toward Carla. The biggest deputy hauls Carla away toward the quad door. A little tap from the club, my cellmate lies still. The deputy stands guard over her while two more flunkies bring a pair of handcuffs. They cuff her and drag her to her feet, aiming her at the door. The three of them herd her toward the exit and shove her through.
Several inmates cluster around the door trying to see through the glass into the locked room between quad and the hall. “Anybody else want to go?” a guard barks over the intercom. They shake their heads and back away, their eyes glued to the window as the sounds of scuffling fade away.
“Keep looking and you’ll lose your commissary.” The intercom crackles and is silent.
Everyone drifts silently back toward their booty. They turn their backs on the door. Betty beats another opponent, totals up the score and gathers the cards for another deal – rummy this time.
I keep writing. If my cellmate stays away I might get to sleep on the bed. I won’t hold my breath. Good thing. She’s back that night subdued and quieter than usual. The moon goes unnoticed. It’s far too quiet. I can’t sleep.
“Williams. Paula Williams. You’re rolling out.”
A lock clangs in the quad. “Keep in touch. Don’t forget to write. Call my old man,” echoes through the quad.
“Y’all better shut up,” warns the intercom.
“Don’t forget,” someone whispers loudly in the cell next to ours. Feet shuffle by. “I won’t,” she whispers back. “I’ll see you when you get out,” she promises.
“Better get yourself on outta here or someone goin’ change they mind.” Her escort snaps her gum and the words, the warning clear.
“Yes, ma’am.” She shuffles faster. “Don’t want that.”
The quad door slams, the lock bangs, and the moon descends unnoticed.

Each day is like the next. The only difference is the stories. I tell the days by the food.
I’m running out of paper as everyone lines up to talk to me. They come watch me, ask what I’m writing. They know the answer. It’s just polite conversation, an introduction to what they really want – to tell someone who cares why they’re here.
Reluctantly at first, I let them read what I write. The papers reverently pass from hand to hand. Everyone wants to see their life through my eyes. They offer their stories like unadorned gifts. They decide I’ll wrap them the right way. They trust my judgment. And the tales mount up.
Bribes are offered for a little tobacco, a spoon full of sugar, a cup of coffee, but no one offers me a bribe. They know it isn’t necessary. Instead they loan books they’ve read and kept, the covers worn and ripped, pages torn and dirty. They’re not the current best sellers, but they’re an interesting mix. Romances mostly, but there are books on psychology and current events, biographies and tales of horror that pale in comparison to the lives they offer me for safekeeping.
Satire spills onto the yellow pages. When my pen falters another is offered in its place. “You don’t need to pay me back. If you need paper I’ll get come commissary,” they promise. I have a gift to offer them, the hope that someone listens, hears their tales, and notices they exist.
“Don’t care who knows why I be in here,” Louise scoffs. “Fourth time, but I got the bastard for true this time.”
Louise stabbed her husband when he beat her. This time she gets eighteen months. He died. She got him in the heart.
“Didn’t know he had no heart, for true.” Jail is a vacation from her ten children. The vacation will continue when she gets out – the king is dead.
Shayla comes into the quad regal and cool. Her distant gaze never falters in the cold shower or when the cloud of delousing powder clears. She steps from the shower and puts on her clothes. She doesn’t turn her back or hunch over. Displaying her sinewy compact body to everyone as if nudity were fine robes, she dresses and walks sedately past the guards. Shayla sits down across from me and watches me write. I stop and asked her the inevitable.
“Drugs,” she says.
I wait. She inclines her head, granting me her favor. She tells the rest.
“My boyfriend was upset when I kicked him out. I didn’t know how upset.” She stops and runs a hand through her close cropped hair. Water droplets sparkle as they dance and sprinkle her smooth caramel-colored cheeks, the ebony brush of her eyelashes. She licks full pink lips.
“My youngest daughter was sick. It was raining when time come to walk Dara to school so I let her sleep. The police were on the stoop when I got back. They came in. Said there were drugs on the premises. They found a Baggie of pot. Wasn’t there when I left. Found my daughter upstairs asleep and took me to jail after calling children’s services to take Keisha.”
The rest of the story is familiar by now. Her boyfriend watched the house, planted the pot and called the cops. Shayla was here until she could go to court. Her boyfriend had Dara and Keisha. They were his daughters, too.
Prostitutes told me about parish cops who screwed them and then carried them to jail. Thieves explained in detail how to steal in grocery, department, jewelry and liquor stores. Forgers demonstrated how to fake someone’s signature after seeing it once. Credit card thieves explained how much you could buy before the card was called in. Hold-up artists learned bigger and better ways to get away without using a gun, but making the victim think otherwise. Jail is networking for criminals.
If you came in on a nickel and dime charge, you left with information and contacts to move up the ladder. Prostitutes shared which cops just expected a blowjob or a fuck and which ones got their rocks off and turned you in afterwards.
Nacole is the best though. Big, black and very pregnant, she shuffles heavily around the quad in house slippers, her hand pressed to the small of her back. Her belly button juts out through the thin flowered cloth of her housedress like a thick, pointed knot. She doesn’t wear prison issue. Nothing would fit.
She folds her thick muscular arms on her belly when she sits. Everyone gives her room clustering on the opposite side to make sure it doesn’t tip over. Nacole arrived just after the first of December. She was caught Christmas shopping.
“Last thing I had to get, too.” She sucks her teeth. “Damn. Nice little color television for my son’s room.”
“Why are you here?” I ask.
Nacole throws her head back and laughs, the sound like a deep resonant bell. “Shoulda worn a bigger dress. Guard musta seen the television poking through.”
I’m almost afraid to ask. “Poking through?”
“I had the television between my legs headed for the exit. Didn’t make it much past the door when he grabbed Last thing on my list and he grabs me. Damn shame.”
Nacole also got three boom boxes, two video games, numerous dolls and a carriage, clothes, and various stocking stuffers for her kids for Christmas before she was caught. She shopped the same way for birthdays. This is the second time she’s been caught. She was out on parole on a federal charge and has to go back. She is here to have her baby. It’s due any day.
“Fed pen’s much better.” She leans closer, her tone confiding. “More like a country club than prison. Ain’t never seen no country club before, but you just know it’s like that. The Feds know how to treat you. Got a swimming pool, tennis court, and all kinds of exercise equipment and they don’t work you too hard. You can even go to college.” Nacole scratches her belly as she straddles the bench. She doesn’t fit under the table.
“I may take me one of them classes. Might as well learn something.”


My cellmate, Lily, is kicked loose one cold, rainy January morning. She smiles and waves then comes over to me and hugs me. “I really like you,” she whispers in my ear. “Come see me when you get out.” She places a folded piece of paper on my tablet, kisses my cheek and leaves. When she gets to the door, she turns and smiles then winks and leaves.
I open the paper. The address is somewhat familiar. Nacole looks over my shoulder. “Garden district. She come from money. Ain’t no doubt.”
I look up at Nacole. “She’s rich?”
“Oh, yeah. Her people done send her here. She probably got caught shoplifting or pissing on someone’s lawn. She just do it to aggravate them.” Nacole shuffles off laughing and shaking her head, her thick hand pressed to her back. “Don’t she just?”
With the room to myself and I move from floor to bunk. I look forward to having a room to myself. It’s almost like living at home growing up. I shared my room with two sisters – and more often than not, my bed. It doesn’t last long.


Tyra is medium height and very thin. Her skin is ashy, her eyes dull. The first thing I notice is her scent, like a wet, moldy raccoon. I’m not far off.
One of the thinner deputies hands Tyra a paper bag full of sanitary napkins. She waits impatiently while Tyra painfully eases to the floor, a bundle of prison issue blue mounded on one skeletal knee. Her hair is short and sticks up like clumps of porcupine quills. The deputy slams the door. The sound is too much for Tyra. She topples over and curls up around the bag. She doesn’t move again until morning, moaning and snoring by turns during the night one hand clutching her belly, the other her crotch.
I go to the bathroom first next morning. If you’re not awake when you sit down, you wake up quick when frozen stainless steel touches you. Praying I won’t stick to the toilet seat, I gather my nerve for the inevitable rip of pain when I stand.
I help Tyra to her feet, straightening the bed while she goes. She’s thin and wasted, her bottom almost too small to keep from falling into the icy water.
After roll call the usual group hovers around me wanting my breakfast. I’ve quit eating in the mornings. It’s just too hard to swallow on an empty stomach. I wave them away and set my tray down next to Tyra’s then go back to our cell for another half-hour or so of sleep. I’ve gotten into the habit of sleeping instead of eating since I ran out of paper last week. Commissary is two days away and I’m broke.
I reread The Art of Body Language for the fourth or fifth time. I’ve lost count. I doze until the early morning sound of mop buckets banging and the smell of industrial disinfectant clogs my nose. Time to get up and clean.
Lunch soon follows. Two bites and I hand the tray to Tyra, a chorus of moans following my gift. I drift over to the far wall and look down through the blue painted windows trying to see something of the street below. Just a tree or a car or another human being walking along the boulevard, proof there is still life. The hours drag.
Carla smokes toilet paper cigarettes. She’s run out of paper, but she saved enough butts to scrape together tobacco for one cigarette wrapped in a square of toilet paper.
Visiting day. The usual people primp and preen waiting for their names to be called. One or two come up to tell me they told their mother, father, sister, brother, lover about my stories. I nod and smile, forcing my lips past my teeth. I hope I don’t look depressed.
My name is called. It’s called again, but it’s not an inmate. It’s the intercom. “Get up here. You got a visitor,” the intercom snaps.
Someone to see me? Who? No one knows I’m here.
I shout and wave and go toward the door. A comb is shoved into my hand. It falls to the floor. I wait at the quad door. Someone combs the back of my hair. Betty loses a hand of rummy. She totals the points.
Cap sits on the other side of the wire-veined glass. He doesn't take long over the small talk or the usual friendly blather. He won't look directly at me and I know something's wrong. I ask and out it comes. His wife took my money when he couldn’t find me. No one knew I was here. He wants me to move in with them when I get out. It’s his wife’s idea. She wants to repay me for taking my money. She didn’t understand. I don’t understand. My lover wants me to move in with him and his wife.
I don’t like the idea, but I don’t have a lot of choice. My bra is ragged from washing every other day and my underwear is shreds of pink silk attached here and there to the elastic that almost holds it up. The Velcro tabs on my tennis shoes barely hold together any more. My shirt and pants are probably creased and musty from being locked up wherever it is they store your clothes. I don’t have a choice. But I’m still in jail and don’t know how long before I get out.
Cap smiles at me. He looks worn and haggard. We touch, palms flat against the glass. This will soon be over.
Cap leaves and I’m back on the quad. I have money on account, enough for paper and a couple of pens. I can get toothpaste and soap and butter pecan. Maybe I’ll get a candy bar instead. No, ice cream would be better. It’s been nearly six weeks since the last taste of butter pecan. I can’t wait. The light’s brighter. I make out my wish list and wait.
Tyra gets my breakfast today. I go back to the cell to sleep. We clean the cell and mingle on the quad. My fingers itch when they bring commissary. I can’t wait.
I eat half the ice cream and give someone the other half. I’m not sure who. One of the blondes, the one everyone says goes down on the skinny black sergeant. She walks around with hungry eyes and wet lips trailing anxious fingers down that one’s leg, over the curve of someone else’s ass, her cellmate’s neck. She’s an intimate secret no one keeps for long.
The paper is yellow and blank. It’s been only a week. It seems like forever since I wrote. I’ve covered stacks of tablets, the stories circulated everywhere. Nacole risked getting thrown in solitary to get one she left on the table. She almost got back to her cell with it when the skinny sergeant asked what was so important. “Some paper,” the fat flunky answered as she escorted Nacole to her cell.
“I want it.” The skinny sergeant thrusts out a hand. "Now.”
Nacole looked over at me and shrugged. She handed the satire to the flunky and disappeared inside the gray cell. I watched the papers disappear through the quad door and reappear in the skinny sergeant’s hands as she stood before the penalty box glass. She stopped reading once and glared at the flunkies clustered behind her. They backed off. She kept reading, folded the sheets and walked away from the glass. I didn’t have much time left.
Nacole was called back onto the quad. She shuffled up the stairs, taking her time, pressing the deep curve of her back with one coarse dark hand.
“You didn’t write this.” The skinny sergeant smirks. "Y'all ain't that smart.”
“Did, too,” Nacole shot back. “Don’t to call me no liar.” She glared back, beady black eyes blazing through the mounded folds of her cheeks.
“I’ll find out.” The sergeant stalked across the quad. A flunky escorted Nacole to her cell. Nacole took her time.
No, I didn’t have much time left. They were bound to find out it was mine.
Tyra’s worried. She hurries to tell me her story.
The wet, moldy raccoon smell still hovers around her. It’s the smell of wet mouton fur, the coat she wrapped up in when she left San Francisco to hitchhike all the way to New Orleans to get her kids back. Her boyfriend took them and brought them to Metairie in Jefferson Parish.

Tyra was broke. It was the end of the month and the welfare check wasn’t due. She took a thin steak knife for protection, her welfare ID card and hitched. Her last two dollars didn’t stretch past the first day. Luckily, most of the trip was through the South. It was still warm despite being January. When she hit Texas, the weather hit back with ice storms and freezing rain.
She must’ve looked like a drowned rat in her wet fur coat standing by the side of the road thumbing. Giving up and walking most of the way, blood trickled down her spindly legs. At every gas station, it was time to stuff her bloody panties with toilet paper, or paper towels when there wasn’t toilet paper. Reeling from one gas station to the next, she snagged a ride just outside the Louisiana state line and rode to Metairie – in the back of a truck with a dog that looked and smelled as nearly bad as she did.
The driver dropped her in downtown New Orleans. A trail of blood marked the slide down from the truck to the gutter where she nearly fell. Two cops just around the corner stood talking when Tyra asked for directions to Charity Hospital, knowing the unfinished baby inside, the only one she would be able to keep for a while, was slipping free in a gush of tissue, fluid and blood.
The cops asked her for ID as she swayed to a stop by their car. She steadied herself on the hood of the cruiser. They waited for her identification. “Move away from the cruiser.” While fumbling in her pocket for her welfare care, the steak knife clattered to the ground.
Minutes later, blood still alternately trickling and gushing, she was handcuffed to a post in a holding cell, the life inside her puddling on the peeling institutional gray pained floor and down the rusty and crusted drain.
Fainting and gasping for breath on the cell floor was enough to get someone’s attention, even if it was only the next criminal to walk through the door.
“Somebody better come get this bitch, ‘cause she dead. I ain’t staying in here with no dead bitch.” The husky prostitute covered her nose with a frayed and shaggy purse of bright orange that matched the tube top and mini skirt that alternately revealed and hid red lace panties crammed up between the muscular cheeks of her backside.
“I told them she wouldn’t last the night, not the way she smell.” The female guard bent down and checked Tyra’s pulse. “Nope, she still alive. Better move her to Charity.”
Shackled to the bed, Tyra weakly accepted food and water like a ravenous dog about to bolt, waiting until the nurses and orderlies were gone to bolt the food, cramming it into her mouth with one eye on the door. An upended bottle of clear liquid dripped into the tube in her arm. Antibiotics, the nurse said when she hung the bottle.
Two nights of hospital food and antibiotics, the baby still warm and safe inside, Tyra was dumped into my room. She made herself comfortable on the mattress on the floor and immediately went to sleep as though it was a fine bed better than any she’d known before. After being on the road for so many days, no doubt it was.
Social workers came and went offering help and promises as she fought for her baby’s life, getting stronger. Her boyfriend and the kids were with his mother in Metairie. He said Tyra was unfit. She was getting out the end of the week, but didn’t have anywhere to live. She wasn’t sure if she still had a home in San Francisco, but she was going to tough it out. She wanted her kids. They belonged with her.
All night long I write her story. I read the few scraps of papers the social workers left. I pray for one more day before they toss me into solitary for the story they found.

Another day comes and goes. I’m still here waiting for Shayla to leave. She’s smuggling some of the stories and articles out when she goes home to her children. The drugs turned out to be oregano. Her boyfriend had made do with what he found in the spice rack. My stories pass from hand to hand. Shayla tucks them into her dress pants and into silk sleeves. She hugs me and says goodbye.
I don’t know who got my lunch or my dinner. I didn’t pay attention. I went through the chow line and put the tray down on Betty’s table as I went back to my cell. I just wanted to sleep. Maybe when I wake up this will have been a dream.
Lights out and Tyra’s snoring. She mutters in her sleep, moans and then snores. I finally drift into the darkness repeating Shayla’s address and phone number like a prayer.
The lights stab through the eyelids. The intercom bellows my name over and over. “You’re rolling out,” the intercom blares. Who? Me? No, it’s just another sick dream. I’ll wake up and I’ll still be here.
“Rolling out.” The intercom crackles with the orders.
Tyra shakes my shoulder as the cell door bangs against the outer wall. A flunky tosses me a paper bag. My pants and shirt are creased and musty but they feel so good, so soft, so familiar. I’m rolling out.
Everyone calls from their cell. “Remember to write. Don’t forget the story. Come visit.” Their voices echo behind me wrapping me close as I walk through the quad door to freedom.
“What happened?” I am still dazed. I'm about to be free.
“DA refused the case.”
I don’t remember the halls or the rooms we pass. They shove me through the door when it buzzes. A tall guy with short thick fair hair gathers his things from the flunky sergeant, pocketing his wallet after he checks it and dons his rings. He fastens a small gold crucifix around his neck and counts his change.
I give my name and they hand over my driver’s license, watch and birthstone ring. The fair-haired guy and I walk out into the frigid teeth of an ice storm. Stinging needles of driving rain and ice lance through my thin cotton shirt dribbling down the back of my neck like cold electric fire.
“Where you going?” He hitches the collar of his leather jacket higher.
“French Quarter.”
“Know how to get there?”
“Not really.” Shivers wrack me. Wet, icy fingers ravage me beneath my loose shirt
“I’ll walk you as far as the Canal bus.”
“I’m broke.”
He counts out enough change. Good thing it's raining. I don't want him to see me cry. We walk together, heads down against the driving sleet, over countless blocks toward freedom and familiar places. I check my watch. It’s 10:30. Cap and my friends will be huddled at the cafe on Iberville drinking coffee and hot chocolate, pooling their money for soup. I wonder if he still wants me to move in with him and his wife.
It doesn’t matter. He’s got most of my articles and stories and Shayla has the rest. Through chattering teeth I repeat her address and phone number. Just a couple of blocks the fair-haired guy tells me. A couple blocks, a short ride to the French Quarter and freedom. I pray into the razor sharp teeth of the frigid night.

###

The stuff of dreams

While reading another writer's blog post about intersecting ideas and how they fuel a story, I immediately thought back to the first time I tried to write my Jekyll and Hyde story.

I read and reread SWhile reading another writer's blog post about intersecting ideas and how they fuel a story, I immediately thought back to the first time I tried to write my Jekyll and Hyde story.

I read and reread Stevenson's story of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde until I knew the story backward and forward. It was while working on an article about Jack the Ripper that the dates the Ripper killed were familiar and brought to mind Stevenson's story. That's when the idea was born to write a book about the three characters that bound them together.

The American actor who portrayed Jekyll and Hyde on the stage during the time Jack the Ripper terrorized London was pulled in by the newly created Scotland Yard to answer questions. The police believed the actor's portrayal had crossed over from fantasy to reality and considered him a prime suspect. He was immediately released, but the trail remained.

In writing Whitechapel Hearts I had to find a voice and a way to tell the story that would transcend Stevenson's story and make it live in a new way. I didn't want a parody and I certain didn't want to write an homage, but nothing I wrote jelled, nothing felt or sounded right, so I put the story on the back burner until I figured out what was wrong.

The motivation was wrong or, rather, the lack of motivation. Every time I read Stevenson's macabre tale I had the feeling something had been left out, just as something was left out of the tales of the Ripper's kills. The facts were there, but the motivation wasn't. What set the Ripper on his bloody rampage and why did Henry Jekyll seek to excise the emotional side of his nature?

Gene Roddenberry used technology to sever Captain James T. Kirk's softer and harder natures, but I planned a novel set in the heart of Victorian London when the Ripper prowled the streets of Whitechapel. Technology wasn't an option and I'm definitely not into deus ex machina. The motivation had to grow organically from the characters, but finding the motivation was like finding a needle in a haystack -- until a conversation with another writer about Victorian morality gave me the answer. I said a quick goodbye, skirting the edge of rudeness in my need to get the idea down on paper, and sat down with paper and pen. I had the intersection of lines that led to the heart of the story. Why does anyone sever their heart from their mind? Love.

Delilah Makepeace was born that day. She was the bridge between Jekyll, Hyde and Jack the Ripper. She was the cause, the reason and the motivation.

What happened after that day is a long journey of research and delving into the past, and into the minds of the characters, to detail the confluence of events and hearts that led to the bloody trail of bodies the Ripper left behind. The story is the stuff of dreams -- and nightmares -- and it is the labor of years and false starts, but that is the way writing works.

Sometimes the stories and characters come seemingly without effort, and other times it takes digging and retracing all the paths until the right one is found and the characters come alive.

Now, if I can only find the one thread that pulls together an apocalyptic tale of vampires, science and nature in upheaval, I can move on to the next world where the stuff of dreams becomes reality.tevenson's story of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde until I knew the story backward and forward. It was while working on an article about Jack the Ripper that the dates the Ripper killed were familiar and brought to mind Stevenson's story. That's when the idea was born to write a book about the three characters that bound them together.

The American actor who portrayed Jekyll and Hyde on the stage during the time Jack the Ripper terrorized London was pulled in by the newly created Scotland Yard to answer questions. The police believed the actor's portrayal had crossed over from fantasy to reality and considered him a prime suspect. He was immediately released, but the trail remained.

In writing Whitechapel Hearts I had to find a voice and a way to tell the story that would transcend Stevenson's story and make it live in a new way. I didn't want a parody and I certain didn't want to write an homage, but nothing I wrote jelled, nothing felt or sounded right, so I put the story on the back burner until I figured out what was wrong.

The motivation was wrong or, rather, the lack of motivation. Every time I read Stevenson's macabre tale I had the feeling something had been left out, just as something was left out of the tales of the Ripper's kills. The facts were there, but the motivation wasn't. What set the Ripper on his bloody rampage and why did Henry Jekyll seek to excise the emotional side of his nature?

Gene Roddenberry used technology to sever Captain James T. Kirk's softer and harder natures, but I planned a novel set in the heart of Victorian London when the Ripper prowled the streets of Whitechapel. Technology wasn't an option and I'm definitely not into deus ex machina. The motivation had to grow organically from the characters, but finding the motivation was like finding a needle in a haystack -- until a conversation with another writer about Victorian morality gave me the answer. I said a quick goodbye, skirting the edge of rudeness in my need to get the idea down on paper, and sat down with paper and pen. I had the intersection of lines that led to the heart of the story. Why does anyone sever their heart from their mind? Love.

Delilah Makepeace was born that day. She was the bridge between Jekyll, Hyde and Jack the Ripper. She was the cause, the reason and the motivation.

What happened after that day is a long journey of research and delving into the past, and into the minds of the characters, to detail the confluence of events and hearts that led to the bloody trail of bodies the Ripper left behind. The story is the stuff of dreams -- and nightmares -- and it is the labor of years and false starts, but that is the way writing works.

Sometimes the stories and characters come seemingly without effort, and other times it takes digging and retracing all the paths until the right one is found and the characters come alive.

Now, if I can only find the one thread that pulls together an apocalyptic tale of vampires, science and nature in upheaval, I can move on to the next world where the stuff of dreams becomes reality.

Broadcast news

If you didn't get a chance to hear me live on Internet Voices Radio Friday night, here's your chance to listen to the mp3 file.

I was surprised, despite a bit of stage fright, that I actually enjoyed reading the excerpt from Past Imperfect. It has been a long time since I did anything remotely theatrical, other than the screams of terror when I wake up in the morning and remember I didn't do the dishes the night before or find a volcano of dough has covered the top and front of the stove where I put it to warm two hours before. I have confined my theatrics to my small and intimately isolated stage here in the cottage. I had forgotten how good it felt to get into the character and just go with it. I could've used a bit more rehearsal, definitely more than a 10-minute read-through to see how many pages I could read in ten minutes, especially since I found out that emotion takes time and I didn't get as far as I had just reading. I'll have to keep that in mind for the next time.

After Friday night's performance and talking once again with the station manager, I began considering her previous offer to host my own show, a show of authors reading and discussing their books and getting into some of the tricks and treats of the writing trade. I'm still muddling it over and haven't made a decision, but I'm definitely leaning in that direction. I always enjoyed my time treading the boards and getting into character. In a sense, writers are actors, too; they get into the minds and hearts of the characters they create -- that is if they are good writers and not just going through the motions -- and act out all the parts in their head, or on their own private stage when they read their work aloud to edit, something Mark Twain suggested for clarity and to hear the music of the spoken words.

At any rate, let the heckling begin. I had a good time, mistakes and all, and I will definitely do it again.

That is all. Disperse.

PIVTR Read-a-thon tonight

From 10:30 to 10:40 p.m. Eastern time, I will read from Past Imperfect for the PIVTR Read-a-thon. I've chosen a pretty hot spot to read. Come one. Come all. Listen and enjoy. A test will be given tomorrow.

Go to Internet Voices Radio tonight and I promise you can heckle and complain tomorrow and every day after that if you like. Hecklers will not be shot or ignored.

That is all. Disperse.

Sunshine, rain and memories

As I topped the rise on I-24 coming home from seeing my dying father in Ohio, it was in the closing days of winter three years ago. Below me in the valley at the foot of Pikes Peak, the sun shone and gilded everything below the hoary-headed mountain glittering like a diamond studded ermine beneath the clear sky with that color of blue peculiar to Colorado. The sun ruled alone, no clouds to attend it or cover its face and the air rushing through the open car window was fresh and clean. I was home. At 11:45 a.m. as I topped the rise and drove down the other side, that's what I thought: I'm home.

I didn't know until I walked into my apartment, unloaded the car and sank gratefully onto the couch how much things would change in the next few minutes. All I knew was that I was grateful to be back in my stuffy apartment with the blinds and curtains closed.

After I shut and locked the door, opened the curtains and blinds and raised the windows, and after the fresh crisp air rushed into the room, I called my mother to let her know I had arrived safely. It had been a rough trip, longer than I had anticipated, with part of the journey spent sick in bed with a bad cold. It seems every time I leave Colorado I return with either a bad cold or some new strain of flu, and this last trip was no different. I spent a few days with friends in Missouri and spent almost all of them in bed. That was all behind me and I was home, anxious to find out if my father was still hanging on, and so I called.

I knew from the sound of my mother's voice my father was gone. It was in the trembling trill of her hello. "When did he die?" It was at 1:45 p.m, the same time I topped the rise to see the glittering valley below me and knew I was home. My father had hung on until I was safe, until he knew for certain I was home. That was three years ago on March first, but his death was the beginning of my awakening, my spring.

Spring came late three years ago, winter reluctant to relax its grip on even this sheltered valley. The skies darkened and the cleared, shedding snow and then rain like a deep cleansing breath, and then the snow came back with bitter howling winds and heavy, wet snows that stung like needles on all exposed skin. The weather mirrored my feelings of grief and relief: grief at my father's death, that anchor in my storm-tossed wanderings, and relief that his struggles and pain were finally over, that the gnawing of rabid rats on his bones was finished and he was free.

Like the uncertain spring, I was uncertain of how to get through the days of picking up the phone to call and share a joke or listen to him tell me what his roosters and chickens were up to this week. He was gone and, even though I knew the fact of it, like a phantom limb still reaching, still trying to connect with something tangible and solid, he was still there.

Winter reluctantly gave way to the soft scented warming breezes that coaxed pale greens, yellows, pinks and whites from empty branches and snow dappled ground and spring blossomed in earnest. Grass raised sere brown tendrils, testing and tasting the air, then springing to vigorous life. Tulips and crocuses popped open and ragged yellow flags of forsythia flew beneath cloudless Colorado blue skies. Life emerged slowly and the fox, having regained its color, still in its ragged winter coat trotted up the sidewalk toward its hidden den with a hapless squirrel dangling from its lean jaws.

My father died before he had a chance to see the spring, his ashes long since cold, but it was his gnarled and work roughened hands guiding mine as I wandered the aisles of Rick's Garden center, inhaling rich compost, moist earth and the overwhelming aroma of flowers and budding trees and familiar herbs. Among his favorites -- irises, lilies, lilacs, roses and bushy-starred allium -- I added rosemary, lavender, thyme and violets. The berries, vegetables and fruits would come later with the opening of the local farmer's market on Saturday mornings where I would use what my father taught me to pick and choose to make his -- and my -- favorite meals, as hungry for life as he had been and unwilling to waste a single moment.

The wheel of the year turned, the soft pastels of spring giving way to the deep greens and flashing hues of summer that would enrich and blaze with glorious fire in autumn before the stark, dark silence of charcoal smudged skies and silence of winter when the promise of life sleeps beneath the soft, cold, white blanket of winter.

My father is gone and yet not gone. Like the cycle of the seasons, some part of him lives on, a carefully planted corm or bulb entombed in the autumn that sleeps and wakens with the return of the sun and the warming breezes of spring to come back to life and stretch greening arms beneath the upright head of the pastel-shaded blossom. He returns in my thoughts and memories and I hear his laughter every time I see his ever present smile in his pictures, his fingers twisted with age and lined with earth. I know they will be warm with welcome when it is my time to join him. In the meantime, there is the promise of spring and green growing things that smell like sunshine, rain and memories waiting to be plucked.

St. Patrick's Day memories

When asked what St. Patrick's day means to me, I had, as always, a ready answer for them.

Pinching, lots of pinching. I always forgot to wear something green and in school that meant getting pinched. I got pinched a lot.

Since no one is Irish in our family, or at least no one I know about, it wasn't a big holiday. There were no corned beef and cabbage feasts and no green beer or Kool-Aid for the minors in the family. St. Patrick's was something celebrated mainly in school and just another day in the year at home. It wasn't until I moved to New Orleans that St. Patrick's day took on more importance. It was the day I saw the man who stole my car drive it down the street past my Lucky Dog cart on the corner of Bourbon and St. Peter just a few steps away from Pat O'Brien's (known as Pat O's by the locals) in the French Quarter.

I had just worked up to that really important corner and was beginning to make some money. It was a bright clear day with a warm sun beating down on the cobblestones and tourists drinking green daiquiris of various flavors from 32 oz cups strolled up and down the streets of the French Quarter wearing their best green fripperies and clothes, some with T-shirts that said they were Irish for the day.

I put bright red dried peppers on a Spanish couple's Lucky dog on top of the spray cheese I bought that morning to entice more trade when I looked up and there was J.D. Bath, his arm hanging out of the window of my car. The car purred as it idled, waiting for the traffic in front to move a few more feet. I couldn't believe my eyes, but there he was. My first impulse was to run across the street and drag him through the window and out of the car, but a pair of cops walked up and asked for two Lucky Dogs with green jalapeños and relish and lots of onions. They laughed about going green and I laughed with them, anxious for them to be gone. They didn't go, but stood and chatted and ate their Lucky Dogs with relish. When I next looked up, J.D. and my car were gone.

After five months of hardship and hard work, adversity and adjustments, the man who made it all possible just drove by in my car. Like the original St. Patrick who was kidnapped from his home in Britain and taken to Ireland by raiders, I had been hijacked and left in New Orleans without my car or money. No doubt J.D. Bath thought I'd call my parents to bail me out. I didn't. I survived alone and lived to return to New Orleans years later, just as St. Patrick returned to Ireland, I as a tourist and St. Patrick as a priest, both having prospered and survived our trials and travails.

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Breaking News: Publishing

We break into your regularly scheduled for an announcement of hilarious proportions.

Today, at 12 noon mountain standard time, this reporter received word from the publishers at Chicken Soup for the Soul that two stories, The Crying Machine and Chinese Fire Drill were both accepted for publication in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Family Matters. This follows the reception of the hilarious and oft quoted On Esther Time published in Chicken Soup for the Soul: All in the Family published October 2009.

This reporter's squeal of publishing acceptance excitement could be heard five miles away and broke windows in the quiet residential neighborhood near Old Colorado City in Colorado Springs. Neighbors, upon learning the reason for the excitement, immediately offered congratulations and were given chewing gum to relieve the sudden change in air pressure that erupted from the usually silent J. M. Cornwell who works at home. The police dispersed the crowd before asking for Ms. Cornwell's autograph and a copy of the upcoming book -- to give to the desk sergeant, of course.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled day.

That is all. Disperse.

I remember the music

Music has always been a part of my life, from my mother's classical records,my father's dance music, and the bluegrass music my grandfather played incessantly as he sat by the window in the dining room in his house smoking and tapping his foot in time. Music has been a constant in my own life, a barometer of my moods and feelings, but it was a young woman who filled the void after the boy I loved had moved to Australia with his family and my best friend and his family had moved back to the States who taught me the most and shared with me a new kind of music. Until that time, I didn't know how music could also heal a little girl's pain.

I was nine years old and my heart was broken. Andy Watson's last words to me were ones of promise and hope. "I'll find you no matter how long it takes." He was nine years old, too. His father was a civilian contractor who worked for the Army and had just been reassigned to a base in Australia. I had briefly worn a charm bracelet Andy got from his sister as a token of promise, a pre-engagement gift, so to speak. His sister took it back before they left and I was left with only Andy's words, words I clung to with the fierce and passionate strength of the young.

Our best friend, Scooter Kennon, was gone shortly after and I was alone. The neighbors who moved into the Kennons' old apartment were nothing like Scooter and his family. They were younger and had three small children, a roly-poly blonde girl with rosy lips and cheeks just two years old and twin girls, as dark as their sister was light, just six months old. The aroma of spices and the sound of Tito Fuentes was gone, replaced by gurgles and goos and wailing in the night and the biting scent of antiseptic and baby powder.

Listless and at a loss with what to do since there would be no more adventures into the jungle that surrounded our section of housing on Fort Gulick wearing machetes in leather scabbards at our waists nearly as long as we were tall, I moped around the grounds, wandering here and there along the cul-de-sac haunting places where Scooter, Andy and I played. Down on the common we chased an armadillo one winter at the Christmas tree bonfire, running after the armored beast like savages on the hunt, coordinating our attack from three sides, herding it toward the trees and into the darkness at the boundary of manicured lawns and the jungle whispering and buzzing with life. There was the guava tree we climbed to sit among its branches and pull green globes from the branches , biting through the tough skin to the sweet succulent flesh inside, juice dripping down our chins and over our fingers while our mothers called to us.

The coconut tree was full of green and ripe coconuts begging to be chopped down and cracked open, but there was no one to share it with, so I didn't bother. The flame flower bushes sparkled with dewy jeweled flowers, their nectar unsucked and the flowers untouched left for the hummingbirds. I'd wear no more flower garlands about my neck or wrist; the boys were not there to make them for me. Even a dried empty husk from a locust didn't make me smile as it was did and I wandered silent and lost in memories . . . until she saw me.

I don't remember her name. I remember her kind smile and the sounds echoing down the stairwell into the carport where I aimlessly tickled a doodlebug with a blade of grass, making him roll into a ball or burrow backward this way and that as he tried to escape the dirt arena I made to trap him.

She squatted down beside me and watched for a few moments before I noticed she was there, a gentle whisper of scent, soft and cool in the sticky summer Panamanian heat. Tears still streaked my face as I looked up and into green eyes like a still pond reflecting the sun on broad-leaved banana trees. She smiled and I couldn't help but smile back at her. That's when I noticed the music. "Is that yours?" She knew immediately what I meant and nodded. "Would you like to come up and listen?" I nodded, swiping away the dirt walls so the doodlebug could go free, and followed her.

The apartment was decorated like stories from the Arabian Nights, as though Scheherezade had just left the room and would return in a swirl of gossamer veils. She invited me to sit on the couch and offered a glass of tea. It tasted of mint and honey, but it was the music that soothed my troubled heart and echoed the anger, sadness and love I felt. "It's West Side Story." She showed me the album and explained the story, starting the record over again.

I knew the story: Romeo and Juliet in New York. Puerto Ricans and Americans fighting over turf, traditional enemies out of which came love and death. I was transfixed, my heart soaring as Tony sings about Maria, exultant when the Sharks and Jets danced and fought and filled with longing and regret when the final song filled the room with Maria's tears over Tony's death when she holds him in her arms as he takes his last breath, knowing they will never have someday or somewhere they could be free.

When the last note faded into silence, the words came, first in a halting trickle and then in a torrent, and she listened. She didn't chide me or tell me I was being silly and it was just puppy love, something that would fade with time, something I'd grow out of. She offered me a handkerchief embroidered with blue flowers, forget-me-nots, and I wiped my eyes and blew my nose and suddenly felt a little better.

Once more she got up and replaced the needle, this time on Tony singing Somewhere full of belief in love and hope. To my nine-year-old heart it was a glimmer of possibility and the beginning of a new friendship. She introduced me to many Broadway musicals and to stories like no other, stories of magic and mystery and stories of little girls lost and found.

I spent many hours in her apartment drinking tea flavored with mint and honey those last few months before we were transferred back to the States, and slowly the pain faded. The memories remain, not only of Andy Watson's promise to find me but of her kindness and what she shared with me. I've had many neighbors in the intervening years. Some have been friendly and some not so friendly, but never have I had a neighbor who shared so much. The names have faded with the years; I have traveled a lot in over forty years. I don't remember her name. All I remember are the sights, sounds, and scents of those autumn days and the music. I will always remember the music.

Books to take through life

There are many books and many authors whose work I read over and over again. I see something new every time because I am different. I have grown, experienced more and read more, especially since I am a voracious reader. Everything I am and have seen, done and known I bring to what I read and see something different every time.

I read Jane Austen's books and Stephen King's The Stand about every two years. I go back and read everything Andre Norton ever wrote and see nuances and subtleties I missed the first twenty times I read them. I also learn new truths with each new reading.

Right now I'm re-reading Edgar Rice Burroughs and reading some new books he wrote, like the John Carter of Mars series. I was more interested in Pellucidar when I was a child and that's all the library had. I didn't know then there were more.

I read H. P. Lovecraft, using his short works like an hors d'oeuvre in between longer works, books I have to review, and the short stories of Harlan Ellison as mental sherbet to cleanse the literary palate before diving back into the literary fray.

The books I read as a child were full of wonder and magic. When I read those books as a teenager, they provided a view on a world I wanted to know, a world of adults and freedom. As a young woman with small children, those same books offered respite from the day-to-day chores and struggles of dealing with rowdy boys, diapers and bottles. When the kids were older, the books were a common ground, a bridge between my boys struggling to find their own autonomy and freedom so that they didn't get too far away. As an writer, the books gave me a strong, stable base from which to launch my own writing and reading them again helps me to see the structure behind the magic that helps me create my own magic. And through it all there have been friends I look forward to seeing again, friends who share their intimate thoughts and worries and woes with me and let me know they've been there, too. All of this comes from the same books, books I read as a child and continue to read and new books I discover for which only one reading is never enough.