Mark Twain:
"I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them - then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice."
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
As You Wake Up
She drove the twenty miles home through the country. The road wound and dipped like no other road in Grove County, which was mostly flat, populated with hackberry trees whose branches stretched out across the narrow two-lane highways like petrified arms of long dead mothers, reaching forever out to whoever passed beneath. In winter here the dark craggy bark seems frozen, though winters in north Texas are seldom harsh.
But, now in September, the roadside bloomed luxuriantly. Thick green fencerows curled along the sides of the empty highway like canyon walls imposing themselves over an ancient river rushing with rapids downstream. She was cutting through, crashing through the rock on the hard journey home before her.
“I can’t go back,” she whispered.
She neared the house and lights burned inside. She saw Alden through the curtains, silhouetted against the bright lights from the kitchen and washed cool blue from the glow of the television in the front room. He stood perfectly still as if he’d been waiting frozen in that same position since she’d left the house three hours ago. She drove on, straining to look inside as a passing stranger might to see what was there.
In the church parking lot a few blocks down she turned the car around and drove back by. She went as slowly as she could and looked at the curtain and through it to the shadow still standing there. He stood watching television from the doorway and she thought he was waiting for her. “What if he sees?” she asked the rearview mirror.
Again, she passed the house. At the north end of their road where it dead-ends into Highway 42, she looped around, set the cruise control to thirty miles an hour, and pretended to be someone else as she approached. She turned her head casually toward the house. Alden had moved from the window and she strained to see where in the house he might have gone. The whole house was dark except the front rooms so she continued on. Again, she turned the car around in the church parking lot and headed back.
As she swung into the driveway her headlights flashed across his long white legs in the porch chair.
Alden exhaled what was in his lungs of the Marlboro cigarette he’d just lit. He thumped the ashes with his middle finger and sucked on it again. Her headlights flashed across his body for an instant. He sat again in darkness.
Karen inhaled and climbed out of the car, leaving her wallet and keys inside. She slapped the door lock, slammed the door and walked around the corner to face her husband.
“I saw you in the window,” she said as she sat in the chair beside him. His legs were crossed and his right foot bobbed up and down in its usual way. Alden was never still, as if fueled by some liquid locomotion coursing through his long limbs. He exhaled again and the stream of smoke floated among them, between their heads in the crisp air like a dying snake. It dissipated upward and was gone.
“I saw you.” Now he looked at her as she gazed out over the dark yard and the dark highway. She did not look at him but patted his hand that rested on his own knee. Alden’s hands were large, the fingers long and tanned, the palms callused. Veins rolled down from his forearms across the backs of them like a road map. She pulled her own small hand away and tucked it under her leg.
“I was trying to—”
“Karen.”
“I was trying to see what our house looks like to other people, what we look like going about our business inside, oblivious to—”
“Not oblivious,” he said. He turned his head toward the road where she’d been looking as she spoke. Karen looked at the sky.
“No.” She waited, but he was quiet and looked out over their dark, lush yard. “I go through life in a kind of daze,” she said, flatly.
“This is real life.”
“As if I were plunked down here from another planet.” The smoke curled around her head and she coughed, but she did not try to wave it away. She knew it would vanish soon enough.
Alden sat suddenly forward in his chair and rested his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m living someone else’s life, Alden. Do you ever feel like that? Like in dreams where you can’t find your classroom at school and suddenly you find it but it’s been years and you’re an old person in high school and you realize it only as you’re waking up?” She sat still and talked plainly and clearly in the darkness.
Night birds chirped from within the trees around the edges of the yard. The new family of dove in the pecan tree cooed like loon from across a lake, melancholy and sincere, their soft voices courageous in the night.
“No,” he said. “I never do.” He exhaled again and they never looked at each other. “I’m here, Karen. Where are you?” He looked to the sky and pointed with the cigarette to a clump of stars. “From down here they look like a picture painted for us. Up there there’s no picture. Constellations are illusions.”
“They’re beautiful.”
“I used to lie on my back when I was a kid and connect the dots, star to star, so the picture would be there. So it would be something real.”
Karen waited as tears rolled back into her hair from the corners of her eyes, her face turned up to the sky. Alden’s voice echoed. It was deep and slow, resonant with the kind of patience that comes from being right. There was no emotion in his voice, no passion. He spoke as flatly as the chirps of crickets that died every moment on the wind and rose again from the silence.
“But, real is what is between the lines in the space between the points of light.” He spoke with no mystery in his tone, teaching no lesson. He flipped his cigarette butt toward the driveway and looked over at his wife. “I’m not made of stone,” he said. Karen did not move.
Alden stood and moved fluidly into the house, never looking at her or waiting to see if she might follow, never asking her to. The screen door closed behind him and the light died from the window above her head. There was quiet.
She lifted her hands and looked at their palms, stretching the fingers as straight as she could. She traced slow circles on each palm with the forefinger of the other hand, methodically waiting. “Utterly alone,” she mouthed to her palms, then rubbed them together as if to warm them.
She sat in the metal chair until the sky faded to a different blue, still dark but growing lighter. The color was exactly navy, Karen thought. She’d smoked all of Alden’s cigarettes, one after another.
From out there on the porch she heard Alden’s alarm clock ring. It stopped, suddenly arrested by his fumbling hand. It rang again and the sky began to open into morning. Already cars and trucks filled the highway out front. Commuters to town and farmers to their fields.
Karen stood for the first time since she’d gotten home the night before and stretched her arms to the sky. Dew made the wide waxy leaves of grass glisten beneath the porch steps. She descended and lowered into the grass, in one motion lying down in it on her back. She spread her arms as if to make a snow angel. Cool, wet earth pressed her back and legs.
“Coffee,” Alden said, and Karen opened her eyes. He held the cup near her so she could smell it. He was kneeling beside her. “You sleep out here?”
“Just now closed my eyes.”
“Come.” He offered his arm. Karen grabbed it around the elbow with both her hands. He pulled her to her feet and they went up the steps together and sat down. He still held her coffee and now he offered it to her in his familiar way, no thought in it. She took it from him gingerly, mindlessly, as she had countless times. They slurped and squinted through the steam rising from the cups.
Karen looked at him. In the warming shadow his tanned face gleamed and was puffy with sleep. Wrinkles around his eyes deepened as the sun rose higher in the morning sky. Orange light fell across the waves of his graying brown hair. His face was the most familiar thing in Karen’s life, as familiar as looking in the mirror. More so, really.
His clear green eyes shone in the reflecting sunlight. He looked at her wholly, solidly. “Too strong?”
“No, it’s good.”
“I made it a little strong.”
“It’s perfect.”
Together they looked at the eastern sky toward the still rising sun and they lifted their hands to their brows to shield their watering eyes.
But, now in September, the roadside bloomed luxuriantly. Thick green fencerows curled along the sides of the empty highway like canyon walls imposing themselves over an ancient river rushing with rapids downstream. She was cutting through, crashing through the rock on the hard journey home before her.
“I can’t go back,” she whispered.
She neared the house and lights burned inside. She saw Alden through the curtains, silhouetted against the bright lights from the kitchen and washed cool blue from the glow of the television in the front room. He stood perfectly still as if he’d been waiting frozen in that same position since she’d left the house three hours ago. She drove on, straining to look inside as a passing stranger might to see what was there.
In the church parking lot a few blocks down she turned the car around and drove back by. She went as slowly as she could and looked at the curtain and through it to the shadow still standing there. He stood watching television from the doorway and she thought he was waiting for her. “What if he sees?” she asked the rearview mirror.
Again, she passed the house. At the north end of their road where it dead-ends into Highway 42, she looped around, set the cruise control to thirty miles an hour, and pretended to be someone else as she approached. She turned her head casually toward the house. Alden had moved from the window and she strained to see where in the house he might have gone. The whole house was dark except the front rooms so she continued on. Again, she turned the car around in the church parking lot and headed back.
As she swung into the driveway her headlights flashed across his long white legs in the porch chair.
Alden exhaled what was in his lungs of the Marlboro cigarette he’d just lit. He thumped the ashes with his middle finger and sucked on it again. Her headlights flashed across his body for an instant. He sat again in darkness.
Karen inhaled and climbed out of the car, leaving her wallet and keys inside. She slapped the door lock, slammed the door and walked around the corner to face her husband.
“I saw you in the window,” she said as she sat in the chair beside him. His legs were crossed and his right foot bobbed up and down in its usual way. Alden was never still, as if fueled by some liquid locomotion coursing through his long limbs. He exhaled again and the stream of smoke floated among them, between their heads in the crisp air like a dying snake. It dissipated upward and was gone.
“I saw you.” Now he looked at her as she gazed out over the dark yard and the dark highway. She did not look at him but patted his hand that rested on his own knee. Alden’s hands were large, the fingers long and tanned, the palms callused. Veins rolled down from his forearms across the backs of them like a road map. She pulled her own small hand away and tucked it under her leg.
“I was trying to—”
“Karen.”
“I was trying to see what our house looks like to other people, what we look like going about our business inside, oblivious to—”
“Not oblivious,” he said. He turned his head toward the road where she’d been looking as she spoke. Karen looked at the sky.
“No.” She waited, but he was quiet and looked out over their dark, lush yard. “I go through life in a kind of daze,” she said, flatly.
“This is real life.”
“As if I were plunked down here from another planet.” The smoke curled around her head and she coughed, but she did not try to wave it away. She knew it would vanish soon enough.
Alden sat suddenly forward in his chair and rested his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m living someone else’s life, Alden. Do you ever feel like that? Like in dreams where you can’t find your classroom at school and suddenly you find it but it’s been years and you’re an old person in high school and you realize it only as you’re waking up?” She sat still and talked plainly and clearly in the darkness.
Night birds chirped from within the trees around the edges of the yard. The new family of dove in the pecan tree cooed like loon from across a lake, melancholy and sincere, their soft voices courageous in the night.
“No,” he said. “I never do.” He exhaled again and they never looked at each other. “I’m here, Karen. Where are you?” He looked to the sky and pointed with the cigarette to a clump of stars. “From down here they look like a picture painted for us. Up there there’s no picture. Constellations are illusions.”
“They’re beautiful.”
“I used to lie on my back when I was a kid and connect the dots, star to star, so the picture would be there. So it would be something real.”
Karen waited as tears rolled back into her hair from the corners of her eyes, her face turned up to the sky. Alden’s voice echoed. It was deep and slow, resonant with the kind of patience that comes from being right. There was no emotion in his voice, no passion. He spoke as flatly as the chirps of crickets that died every moment on the wind and rose again from the silence.
“But, real is what is between the lines in the space between the points of light.” He spoke with no mystery in his tone, teaching no lesson. He flipped his cigarette butt toward the driveway and looked over at his wife. “I’m not made of stone,” he said. Karen did not move.
Alden stood and moved fluidly into the house, never looking at her or waiting to see if she might follow, never asking her to. The screen door closed behind him and the light died from the window above her head. There was quiet.
She lifted her hands and looked at their palms, stretching the fingers as straight as she could. She traced slow circles on each palm with the forefinger of the other hand, methodically waiting. “Utterly alone,” she mouthed to her palms, then rubbed them together as if to warm them.
She sat in the metal chair until the sky faded to a different blue, still dark but growing lighter. The color was exactly navy, Karen thought. She’d smoked all of Alden’s cigarettes, one after another.
From out there on the porch she heard Alden’s alarm clock ring. It stopped, suddenly arrested by his fumbling hand. It rang again and the sky began to open into morning. Already cars and trucks filled the highway out front. Commuters to town and farmers to their fields.
Karen stood for the first time since she’d gotten home the night before and stretched her arms to the sky. Dew made the wide waxy leaves of grass glisten beneath the porch steps. She descended and lowered into the grass, in one motion lying down in it on her back. She spread her arms as if to make a snow angel. Cool, wet earth pressed her back and legs.
“Coffee,” Alden said, and Karen opened her eyes. He held the cup near her so she could smell it. He was kneeling beside her. “You sleep out here?”
“Just now closed my eyes.”
“Come.” He offered his arm. Karen grabbed it around the elbow with both her hands. He pulled her to her feet and they went up the steps together and sat down. He still held her coffee and now he offered it to her in his familiar way, no thought in it. She took it from him gingerly, mindlessly, as she had countless times. They slurped and squinted through the steam rising from the cups.
Karen looked at him. In the warming shadow his tanned face gleamed and was puffy with sleep. Wrinkles around his eyes deepened as the sun rose higher in the morning sky. Orange light fell across the waves of his graying brown hair. His face was the most familiar thing in Karen’s life, as familiar as looking in the mirror. More so, really.
His clear green eyes shone in the reflecting sunlight. He looked at her wholly, solidly. “Too strong?”
“No, it’s good.”
“I made it a little strong.”
“It’s perfect.”
Together they looked at the eastern sky toward the still rising sun and they lifted their hands to their brows to shield their watering eyes.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Three Houses
Every night at midnight Evie steps out into the darkness of her front porch and smokes Marlboro cigarettes and drinks cups of strong coffee. When one cigarette burns down to the filter she lights another with the glowing end. Across the narrow highway that runs in front of her small frame house sits Miss Tick's home and beauty shop, both empty since she dropped dead doing Myrna Smith's perm last summer. Yellow light from the one street lamp above shines across the empty beauty shop driveway leaving a glare on the black asphalt.
The spring before Miss Tick died she had materialized from across the highway to knock on the glass of Evie's storm door. "Baby, Addie missed her curl and set this morning. I'm just worried sick to death."
Addie and her '56 Chevy lived next door to Evie. The black and white car had two thousand miles on it from forty years of errands to the post office on the square or to Binky's Grocery up on Highway 67.
Evie sprinted across the yard between their houses and found Addie's door open and the screen door latched. Across the room Addie sat still and straight, morning light shining in on her face. The moment was motionless and quiet like stopped time—Evie looking into the living room, Addie looking toward the window. "Miss Addie?" said Evie. But, Addie stared straight ahead. "Addie? Miss Addie?" Addie was unmoving, each plump forearm resting on the velvet of the armchair, her glasses like mirrors reflecting the sunlight.
Evie pushed through the screen tearing it from its wooden frame, unhooked the tiny metal latch from its eye on the doorjamb and burst into the sunny room. Behind her, Miss Tick chanted. "Oh, honey. Oh, honey. Baby, I don't know. Baby, I don't know."
"Addie? Addie?" Evie stood before the massive woman who sat with her head back on the tall chair gaping up into Evie's face. Something was moving across the older woman's face. Evie stared, her hands readied to grasp and shake the woman to her senses. But, a trail of ants was marching single file out of the mouth and down the chin, and another trailed out of the left eye to the temple and down the side of the waxy face. Down the arm, across the hand, down the leg, over the foot, across the carpet and out the front door.
Miss Tick furrowed her brow, shook her head, chanted. Evie recognized the bottomless fear in Irma Tick's eyes as the practiced easy way of a Southern woman crumbled into the gravity of inevitable endings. Miss Tick saw it would come for her, too. All she could do was shake her head and let tears brim. "All we can do is let it come."
Evie flew out across the yard and back into the cool vanilla of her own home to call.
Half an hour later the ambulance swung into the driveway. A dozen people had gathered in the front yard with their arms folded across their chests. They were shaking their heads and trying to determine how long the old woman had been sitting there dead in the chair looking out the window. Together they decided it must have been all night.
Evie watched the group mingle on the grass. Only Eddie the flower shop owner, who would decorate the casket and funeral with antiquated arrangements, smiled. Evie watched him and smiled as the others squinted into the midmorning sun and chatted with each other. When Mr. Charles from Charlie’s Funeral Home came to remove the body, tiny Eddie helped load the heavy woman onto the gurney. The others turned away, oozed backward, as the odor of Addie's decaying viscera spread across the yards.
The townspeople eventually meandered to their trucks and sputtered away. Evie observed from inside her home, distant as the earth from the moon, an isolated planet floating in black space staring up to a foreign object in the sky --feeling nothing and not wondering or caring of what it is made.
Now, both houses stand empty in the shadows as a few cars breeze by and Evie sits cross-legged in a huge tie-dyed t-shirt that falls over her hard, small thighs like water would. She looks down at her own legs and likes how thin they are, room on the chair for two more sets of legs. She's tiny and light sitting there like a secret in the night.
Black and green billowy foliage—lush and luxuriant in the dark—hangs everywhere, a buffer between the foreign place Evie is and the soft, infinite longing within her. Bustling heat in her makes her feel like a forgotten campfire glowing there alone, still warm but abandoned in the cool, black air. No one knows she is here.
She lights the citronella candle. Her tailbone presses against the metal porch chair and she reaches for her coffee cup, the bones in her hands moving and creating a pattern under her browned skin, the veins roping across and winding around and up her arm as it flexes. She's invisible in the midnight and moonlight, completely discrete, dropped down from another universe into this alien place.
What grounds her is the chirping of crickets humming inside her like a memory from so long ago it feels like another life, and the stars that wink at her.
The spring before Miss Tick died she had materialized from across the highway to knock on the glass of Evie's storm door. "Baby, Addie missed her curl and set this morning. I'm just worried sick to death."
Addie and her '56 Chevy lived next door to Evie. The black and white car had two thousand miles on it from forty years of errands to the post office on the square or to Binky's Grocery up on Highway 67.
Evie sprinted across the yard between their houses and found Addie's door open and the screen door latched. Across the room Addie sat still and straight, morning light shining in on her face. The moment was motionless and quiet like stopped time—Evie looking into the living room, Addie looking toward the window. "Miss Addie?" said Evie. But, Addie stared straight ahead. "Addie? Miss Addie?" Addie was unmoving, each plump forearm resting on the velvet of the armchair, her glasses like mirrors reflecting the sunlight.
Evie pushed through the screen tearing it from its wooden frame, unhooked the tiny metal latch from its eye on the doorjamb and burst into the sunny room. Behind her, Miss Tick chanted. "Oh, honey. Oh, honey. Baby, I don't know. Baby, I don't know."
"Addie? Addie?" Evie stood before the massive woman who sat with her head back on the tall chair gaping up into Evie's face. Something was moving across the older woman's face. Evie stared, her hands readied to grasp and shake the woman to her senses. But, a trail of ants was marching single file out of the mouth and down the chin, and another trailed out of the left eye to the temple and down the side of the waxy face. Down the arm, across the hand, down the leg, over the foot, across the carpet and out the front door.
Miss Tick furrowed her brow, shook her head, chanted. Evie recognized the bottomless fear in Irma Tick's eyes as the practiced easy way of a Southern woman crumbled into the gravity of inevitable endings. Miss Tick saw it would come for her, too. All she could do was shake her head and let tears brim. "All we can do is let it come."
Evie flew out across the yard and back into the cool vanilla of her own home to call.
Half an hour later the ambulance swung into the driveway. A dozen people had gathered in the front yard with their arms folded across their chests. They were shaking their heads and trying to determine how long the old woman had been sitting there dead in the chair looking out the window. Together they decided it must have been all night.
Evie watched the group mingle on the grass. Only Eddie the flower shop owner, who would decorate the casket and funeral with antiquated arrangements, smiled. Evie watched him and smiled as the others squinted into the midmorning sun and chatted with each other. When Mr. Charles from Charlie’s Funeral Home came to remove the body, tiny Eddie helped load the heavy woman onto the gurney. The others turned away, oozed backward, as the odor of Addie's decaying viscera spread across the yards.
The townspeople eventually meandered to their trucks and sputtered away. Evie observed from inside her home, distant as the earth from the moon, an isolated planet floating in black space staring up to a foreign object in the sky --feeling nothing and not wondering or caring of what it is made.
Now, both houses stand empty in the shadows as a few cars breeze by and Evie sits cross-legged in a huge tie-dyed t-shirt that falls over her hard, small thighs like water would. She looks down at her own legs and likes how thin they are, room on the chair for two more sets of legs. She's tiny and light sitting there like a secret in the night.
Black and green billowy foliage—lush and luxuriant in the dark—hangs everywhere, a buffer between the foreign place Evie is and the soft, infinite longing within her. Bustling heat in her makes her feel like a forgotten campfire glowing there alone, still warm but abandoned in the cool, black air. No one knows she is here.
She lights the citronella candle. Her tailbone presses against the metal porch chair and she reaches for her coffee cup, the bones in her hands moving and creating a pattern under her browned skin, the veins roping across and winding around and up her arm as it flexes. She's invisible in the midnight and moonlight, completely discrete, dropped down from another universe into this alien place.
What grounds her is the chirping of crickets humming inside her like a memory from so long ago it feels like another life, and the stars that wink at her.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Books Are For Writing . . . In?
Got my dander up reading an interview with Elizabeth McCracken in Novel Voices.
She blithely describes how her many early years as a librarian taught her not a reverence for books, but a disregard for their physical state. She admits reading in the tub and getting lipstick on covers. What gets me pissed, though, is her casual comment that she never (HORRORS!) writes in books. "....there’s nothing worse than somebody who writes in books....,” she bleats.
My face got hot.
I hate you, Elizabeth McCracken. You’re probably a no-good writer anyway. So what, you read in the tub? Who doesn’t? I do, too, lady. So, what’s so bad about writers-in-books anyway, LADY? Tub water, pencil. What’s the DIFF?
Ann Patchett and ElCrack are buds—first readers for each other even—I thinks to myself. I like Ann Patchett just fine. (I’d never call her lady.) So, I thinks to myself, I thinks, let’s just go grab some ElCrack and check her out.
I have read Elizabeth McCracken before. Lots, actually. I remember this as I grudgingly begin, then give over to, the first few paragraphs of The Giant’s House: A Romance. And, yeah, it’s great and she’s a pretty great writer who thinks there’s nothing worse in the world than a person like me.
I draw round brackets around a sentence of hers I particularly love on page six and jot in the margin in scratchy, pale, delicious, tiny, number three lead, “Hair on arms standing up; swallowing hard.”
She blithely describes how her many early years as a librarian taught her not a reverence for books, but a disregard for their physical state. She admits reading in the tub and getting lipstick on covers. What gets me pissed, though, is her casual comment that she never (HORRORS!) writes in books. "....there’s nothing worse than somebody who writes in books....,” she bleats.
My face got hot.
I hate you, Elizabeth McCracken. You’re probably a no-good writer anyway. So what, you read in the tub? Who doesn’t? I do, too, lady. So, what’s so bad about writers-in-books anyway, LADY? Tub water, pencil. What’s the DIFF?
Ann Patchett and ElCrack are buds—first readers for each other even—I thinks to myself. I like Ann Patchett just fine. (I’d never call her lady.) So, I thinks to myself, I thinks, let’s just go grab some ElCrack and check her out.
I have read Elizabeth McCracken before. Lots, actually. I remember this as I grudgingly begin, then give over to, the first few paragraphs of The Giant’s House: A Romance. And, yeah, it’s great and she’s a pretty great writer who thinks there’s nothing worse in the world than a person like me.
I draw round brackets around a sentence of hers I particularly love on page six and jot in the margin in scratchy, pale, delicious, tiny, number three lead, “Hair on arms standing up; swallowing hard.”
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