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grace


“Grace”


Time goes one way. Sally was panting on my heels, so I couldn’t walk in front of that tractor-trailer like I’d decided. Just stood on the shoulder of the interstate and watched it go by, and another and another, while Sally whined and panted and stared across.

I just felt so tired. The black pavement was barbecuing my feet, which were bare because I didn’t want my shoes to be ruined. Then.

Tears tickled my cheeks, but still I couldn’t move. Was it Christian, to make a truck driver a killer? Too tired to bear the thoughts in my brain, so I shut my eyes and listened to traffic. Sshhhhhh. RRRRRRRRR. P - p-p-p-p-p. Sally: huh –huh –huh –huh -huh.

My shirt smelled like root beer.

When I opened my eyes, the northbound lanes looked like a parking lot. The three lanes right in front of us were still whizzing but I knew Sally wanted to cross so bad. Her eyes were fixed on a boy who stood in the ditch of the divider strip, surrounded by black-eyed susans, arms raised like the flowers were giving him a standing O.

  He never quit grinning. Grin grin grin. Skinny, but he wore a muscle shirt the color of mustard.

I wondered: was Sally a sign and a wonder given? Was I on a mission like Moses when I carried her across that stream?

Or was I a joke the Lord was telling to his buddies up above?

Made me mad, so I crouched down next to Sally and whispered: “Ready?” When I saw an opening I sprinted and just like I knew she would, Sally bolted past me and I caught up and we stood in the black-eyed susans.

Sally barked and I looked up and what did I see but that boy swaggering out into the northbound lanes, right up to a tractor-trailer stacked high with lumber. What does he do but grab hold of a strap and pull himself onto the first log and clamber up to the top of the load and wave his arms. Then he loosens up his belt. He pulls down his pants and his red underpants and reveals his moon to all the world, from the top of a lumber truck.

I’m not sure he even realized that the truck was moving again so I shouted but he didn’t seem to hear. Then he looked down and quick snatched his pants up. But still, he’s got to do a little dance even though the truck is picking up speed. Then he scrambled down the side and with a little toss of his small head, jumped off the truck and onto the far shoulder.

When the traffic slowed down again, Sally and I crossed.

When I looked at the boy he just grinned bigger than ever and told me: “My name’s Jose. I’m from Mexico.”

“You sure don’t look Mexican,” I said.

Sally positioned herself by the boy’s feet and gazed up, with yearning, but Jose didn’t even look down. He just giggled and tilted that funny little head of his head and yelled: “STAY!” And Sally stayed. Jose ran off into the pine trees.

Sally stayed, and I believe she might have stayed there ‘til the sun went away, if I hadn’t spoken. Shepherds can be like that. “Come on!” and we began walking but now I was trailing a dog.

 The pines became birches became maples. The sun was warm and my pants were getting dry. Sore feet but so what.

Hills on either side of us. Here and there we crossed what looked like dirt-bike tracks but didn’t see a single person, and I couldn’t hear anything except birds, breeze, and the interstate rush getting softer. Once we passed an old foundation, where the years had spilled the stones into a hole. I thought of a question I wanted to ask my minister, if I ever saw him again. Or maybe my father would know.

Can a man have two minds? Or put another way, when two rivers meet, where does the smaller one end?

A dog snarled, a good-sized German Shepherd with fur that looked like it had been dipped in wax. Its entire coat standing at attention.
 
I found a strong stick. Got between the shepherd and Sally. Shepherd came at me. I swung.

That kid I used to be, ages ago, he hit homers. Stick met skull, and down went dog. I looked at him and looked at Sally and that’s all it took to put the motion in our feet.

Immediately our way was blocked by a man with freckles covering his entire face who yelled: “Did you !@#$ kill my dog?” I said: “I don’t know.”

In a backyard I saw some other men around a fire. Two stood up. Freckle-face said: “Do not lie to me.” Watching over the yard, a house with rot damage under the eaves. Beyond the house, a dirt road dead-ended.

The Mexican appeared between two men and what did that boy do but grab a burning stick off the fire and wave it in the air. Doing his butt-wiggle dance. They had something going on with some plastic bags around the fire and the boy grabbed one and took off with it like he had eight cylinders all firing.

Freckle-face chased Jose. I called to Sally, and she ran by my side down the dirt road. Stones stabbed my feet. Sweat stung my eyes. Reaching a paved road, Sally and I paused in the quiet. I panted with my tongue stuck out and I recognized the road and saw a choice.

Sally crossed 12A, and looked back at me.
 
My friend Steve Udderbach lived no more than a mile away. Even if he wasn’t home, Steve never locks his door and wouldn’t care if I walked into his house and made myself a lemonade in one of his ten-inch tall glasses with the flowers pattern. I wondered where that boy with the mustard shirt was, but he seemed like a game of twenty questions that goes on for sixty-five. He made my head hurt, and I sure wasn’t about to return to that backyard and see what had become of him.

So I crossed the road, and followed Sally.

When we began climbing a hill on the far side, the thirst grew inside me until my tongue felt fat. My feet became weights. The hill rose, the hill dipped, and a new hill rose. No water in the dip. I’ve heard that people, lacking a trail, tend to walk in big long circles. Do dogs go in straight lines? I looked back over my shoulder, but I couldn’t see 12A anymore. Yet I kept on behind Sally. Her tongue drooped almost to her paws. The sun was just a bobbing shimmer, too bright for a glance.

Another dry dip, another rise, and a house at the end of a driveway so long it climbed a rise and disappeared. Sally trotted straight towards that house.
  
It looked like two tall boxes, covered with stucco, connected by a longer box all stuccoed too. A flat roof which I hoped was sealed off with dead flat asphalt and a good mineral surface. The windows were more high than wide, custom-built I would guess and along the edges of the house spindly bushes grew out of beds covered with black mulch. I had no names for the bushes.

Sally stopped in front of the side door of this house, and I thought: this is the first place she has stopped where she didn’t have to. So I knocked. I knocked until I thought no-one was there, but then a woman opened the door and hollered: “Sally!” and gathered my friend up in her arms.

She wore a very baggy red shirt tucked in to tight black pants, the kind women do yoga in. When she turned to carry Sally into the house, I saw these words just above her butt: “If It’s Good, You Should.” Her hair held different streaks: brown, red, rust-red, gray, and it flew every which way. When she turned to try to figure out who the heck I was, I saw a little smudge of cream cheese on her lip.

I said: “I found your dog, and she led me here.”

Jose walked up from behind me, pointed and said: “He kidnapped me,” but the woman was already wiggling with joy and hugging him and crying: “Oh, Dylan! Thank God! I called nine one one! What happened to you?”

The boy pointed at me and said, “I told you. He kidnapped me but I escaped.”

“You kidnapped my boy?” As she spoke, her words turned from a question into a threat.

I said: “Why would I be here if I kidnapped him?”

“I forced him to bring me home. With this!” The boy had a gun in his hand. He waved it in the air.

“I’ll kill you,” said the woman, and she proceeded to attempt to do just that. First she kicked me in the shin, which made me bend over, and then she chopped me on the back of my neck with her fist, which nearly knocked me down. When she hit the side of my head with a broom-handle, that introduced me to the ground. A girl came out of the house and screamed: “Oh my God!” I was down on their driveway, staring at the boy’s bright sneakers, with two pairs of legs kicking me. I got my senses in order and stood up and backed away into the yard, and told them all: “He is lying!”

“There’s a place for people like you!” the woman screamed.

I took a good hard look at the weapon in the boy’s hand and realized I was afraid of a flare pistol. I whacked the boy’s wrist and he dropped it. I grabbed it.
 
My attackers backed off. I said: “I killed a man.”

“Just for the love of God don’t hurt us,” the woman bawled. Her face shone with tears and I felt so sorry for all of us.

I said: “A man came in my store to rob us and I shot him in the head. It’s the truth.”

The woman looked at me and gasped: “Are you Larry?”

“David. But I work part-time at Larry’s Extra Mart.”

Her arms fell straight against her sides and she said: “I admire what you did.”

“You should not.”

“Is that what drove you to kidnap my son?”
 
“M’am,” I said. “He said his name is Jose and he’s from Mexico.”

At that, Dylan Jose Mustard Shirt couldn’t help himself. He giggled. His mother gave him such a look.

“DYLAN JAMES!” she shouted. “Did you lie to me about this man?”

That boy’s giggle bubbled up into a gut-laugh that nearly tipped him over. His mother whacked him hard on the head, and then he ducked. “MA!” he cried.

“I ought to kill you and save the state of Virginia the trouble!” She kept whacking and whacking that kid’s odd-shaped head, but it seemed like the only thing his mouth could do was smile. He was down in the dirt with his mother slapping him. I caught her arm and said: “Let him be.”

“You,” she said. “Where are your shoes?”

I crouched and held out my hand, and Sally came over and touched my fingers with her nose.

I stood with my feet sore and my head aching and told them the whole story as Dylan’s sister stood by the door with her arms crossed and her mother leaned against the hood of her Honda, and Dylan lay on his stomach in the dirt. I started with the afternoon Stan Silverman Wallace walked into Larry’s Extra Mart, and I didn’t stop until I was standing in that long driveway again.

The woman said: “Do you need a shower?”

I said: “Stan Wallace did not deserve to die.”

“He invaded your store with a weapon.”

“I’m afraid of his soul.”

The woman stood right in front of me, and laid a hand on my shoulder. “Honey,” she finally said, “I’m not going to argue with you about that.”

“Actually,” I said, “I could use something on my feet.”

She nodded and held out her hand and said: “My name is Laura.”

Laura told me to take a shower first, so I did, and when I came out of their bathroom she gave me a pair of flip-flops that sort of fit. Then she asked if I wanted something to eat. I couldn’t see a reason to say no.

We had lentil soup, and whole-grain bread, and carrot cake for dessert, and talked about my church, and Sally, and some other dogs we had known, and my friend Steve
Udderbach, who belongs to Laura’s AA group as it turned out, and baseball because Dylan was playing on a travel team and had recently hit a home run.

Laura gave me a ride home, which took about eight minutes.

Today, another Sunday, she called and left a message asking me to dinner again. I think I’ll say yes. I think I’ll say yes, and see what happens.

This evening I tried to watch the sun set. But I missed it, as always. Suddenly the world is dark, and you can’t say exactly when the light left. I wonder: will the world end that way? So gradually, a mortal couldn’t even see? In a time when Laura and I and Dylan and Amelia and Sally and Stan Silverman Wallace are long gone and forgotten, the story of humanity is finished, only God will watch the darkness creep. Will he be happy then?





Jan/2/2014, 11:26 am Link to this post Email taconic resonance   PM taconic resonance Blog
 
bridgetpost Profile
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Re: grace


Boy do you do interesting work. I found it disorienting in the beginning, and then on for much of it. The tractor-trailer etc. confused me. Not the just unexplained circumstances, which is fine, but where and what. And why the dog's panting was preventing action. One brief sentence might help, like: I couldn't cross the highway.
But I also felt compelled by the voice and inexplicable circumstances to keep reading. I'll need to come back to this. Unique voice and style.
Jan/2/2014, 3:29 pm Link to this post Email bridgetpost   PM bridgetpost Blog
 
taconic resonance Profile
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Re: grace


Thanks Bridget -- I'll look forward to any other thoughts. This story used to be much longer and maybe I cut it so much it stop making complete sense. Got to think about that.
Jan/11/2014, 12:54 pm Link to this post Email taconic resonance   PM taconic resonance Blog
 
bridgetpost Profile
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Re: grace


Actually, the disorientation is key (altho maybe there's a bit too much at the start) and otherwise perfect. Confusion is his state, the state of his world, of the kid who's acting it out. And by making us actually feel it in our own brains, you've done something masterful.
Feb/2/2014, 3:21 pm Link to this post Email bridgetpost   PM bridgetpost Blog
 
spiralwoman Profile
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Re: grace


Taconic,

This is a fascinating story. I agree with bridget that it is disorienting, but that is the point, right? Despite being rather confused for much of the story, I am compelled to read on. I can imagine any number of ways a story could be confusing or disorienting in such a way as to drive a reader bonkers, but this one is not like that. It seems deftly constructed in such a way as to invite the reader in to the disorienting bafflement of its narrator. You say you cut and may have cut too much, which implies that the current condition of the story is a bit of serendipity, but still -- I would not change it in any substantive ways.

The fact that it seems obvious up until the moment that they arrive at the house that Sally belongs to the N is yet another way the reader is slightly side-tackled by new information, but in a good way I think. It might be nice to give a clue that the reader could pick up on if she were paying enough attention, but doesn't have to. I mean, you kind of do have such a moment: when Jose/Dylan tells the dog to stay, and she does, it could be a moment for the reader to think, "Really?" Later, we learn it's the boy's dog so no WONDER she stayed. But she also obeyed and showed fealty to the N, too....

I think the N's moral angst is conveyed pretty well with a nice "reveal" at the end, explaining it all. His near suicide by truck is a kicker opening that demands an explanation. We read to get it.

The only part that grated was the bizarre antics of Dylan/Jose on the tractor trailer. I get he's a weird kid. Maybe that's enough. It is surreal, that's for sure.

Good story and thank you for posting.

sw
Feb/13/2014, 10:50 am Link to this post Email spiralwoman   PM spiralwoman Blog
 


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