Wow! It's been a couple of years since my last blog post. Oh, well. Not to fill you in on what's been going on .... No, I won't do that. Let's look forward. So, what I'm doing now is contacting my old students from Canby High. What a trip! They remember me, or at least most of them do. Those who may have unkind memories have, thus far, been gracious enough to not share them on Facebook. Those comments that have come my way have been positive. Influence can be a scary thing. I hope I wielded mine in the English classroom in a way that helped shape good brains and hearts. I was lucky to have had the privilege to teach hundreds of such brains and hearts. If I could go back and teach all those years again, all those students again, I'd try to be ... what? Hell, I don't know. Maybe I'd be incapable of changing anything, especially if my mindset were filled with trepidation about "influence." Maybe I'd be indecisive like Prufrock: Do I dare to eat a peach?

So, one thing I've been up to lately is revising an old story ("John Wayne in My Tower") and submitting it (new title is "Guard Duty") to the Willamette Writer's Kay Snow Contest. As it turns out, I won second place in the adult fiction category. Yahoo! Anyway, the revision process is very interesting, and the main reason I revised "John Wayne" was to see how the years between when I first wrote it (mid-80's) and now might have influenced my take on the basic situation: two guys in a guard tower one night in Vietnam. If you'd care to, you can read both stories and comment about which works best for you ... or doesn't work. Anyway, here's "Guard Duty":


Guard Duty


It was dark, about ten o’clock, and the pounding monsoon rain exploded on Billy’s rucksack, the tarmac, our ponchos and helmets and M-16s. He said, “I brung somethin’. Ya wanna see ‘em?”

I played dumb. “What the hell’re you talking about?”

He half turned to me. Under his helmet, his face was a dim, pale, smiling mushroom. “Some pitchures. Of Verla.”

I laughed, trying for a snigger, a snort, a dirty chortle, like a kid with a mirrored shoe in a roomful of skirts. “Yeah, sure.”

We were walking to the perimeter, into another wasted night of guard duty. It had been two months since Charlie had launched a mortar or a sapper tried to blow something up. But Reets had said to keep our eyes peeled and our cocks stiff, because you just never know. The pictures, Billy figured, would help to pass the time. He patted the front of his poncho. “Keepin’ ‘em nice and dry, up next to my heart.”

The ignorant sap was in love.

We crossed the flight line, where a row of Hueys and Snakes hunkered in their revetments. “Don’t let Charlie blow them up,” Reets had said, reminding us of the obvious. The rain poured off their rotor blades and streaked down their Plexiglas eyes.

At the perimeter, Billy shrugged off the ruck and pulled out a roll of electrical wire and a claymore mine. He handed them to me. The claymore was about ten inches wide and five high, packed with C-4 and 600 steel balls. The Army called them “anti-personnel devices,” which is like calling God god. Its curved, plastic-coated face was embossed with FRONT TOWARD ENEMY, a reminder of who was who and where they’d be.

I unfolded its two pointed legs, knelt down a couple of yards from the first coil of rusting concertina and stuck them into the sandy ground. I attached the wire leads, then stood and began spooling out the wire and backing away, about twenty yards to our post for the night, tower eighteen.

I followed Billy up the ladder to the observation platform. It had waist-high sandbag walls and a tin, corrugated roof. It looked down upon a free-fire zone of trip flares, mines and snarls of concertina. Bright floodlights cast a yellow glow. Our stretch of responsibility was about forty yards deep and over a hundred yards wide. The perimeter was, as the Army might say, a gauntlet of inconveniences. Houdini, it was said, couldn’t make it through. There was a Prick-25 field phone and a cot. Billy set the ruck down. It held our food and Cokes, a few clips of extra ammo, a flashlight and flares. According to that night’s SOP, a green flare signified “Enemy Contact,” white screamed “My Position Is Overrun” and red meant something like “Tell Mom I Love Her.”

We leaned our ‘16s in the corner and shucked our ponchos off. Billy fastened the wires to the clacker and set it on a sandbag. One squeeze of the clacker would send a few volts charging through the copper wire to the C-4 and the resulting explosion would wipe out up to 600 of the nonexistent enemy.

Behind us, invisible through the thick rain and darkness, the guys of D-Troop were diddling whores, writing letters, watching movies or cutting z’s. They were of less strategic importance than the choppers.

Billy reached inside his field jacket, pulled out the envelope and removed three Polaroids. He laid them side-by-side on a sandbag. He sniggered, his yellow teeth a lewd crescent. “Fetch the light.”

I got the flashlight. He grabbed it and switched it on.

Verla: his sixteen-year-old and very pregnant wife—a cotton farmer’s daughter with tan lines so sharp she seemed half a ghost—standing naked from the waist up beside a horse, her big white belly hanging out above her blue jean cut-offs, her tits big-scoop vanilla cones, her smiling at the camera, teasing ….

Verla: astride the same horse, a stallion by the hang of him, at a full gallop, the dirt flying from his hooves, her tits and belly bouncing, her grinning down at the camera, saucy ….

And, finally, Verla: leaning up against a barn, her cherry nipples the same exact shade as the red paint on the barn, as if painted by the same brush, her laughing at the camera, taunting ….

I looked off into the dark night, and Billy stared till the batteries got weak.

Awestruck, he said, “Ain’t they dandies?”

“Yeah.”

“They’s a leakin’.”

I tried again to chortle—that kid looking at his shoe up skirts.

“I’m gonna dream ‘bout squeezin’ ‘em tonight.”

“You’re a lucky bastard.”

“Gaw damn right. They ain’t for no hands ‘cept mine and the baby’s hands.”

He said that like the laying on of hands conjured miracles.

But then he frowned. “They was s’posed to be a letter. But gaw damn tarnation.” He shined the dimming light into the envelope. “They ain’t.”

I shrugged. “Verla just forgot to put it in.”

He shook his head. “Always before, they was a letter.” He picked up the Polaroids, stuffed them into the envelope and slipped it back inside his jacket.

I said, “Okay. I’ve got the first watch.” We’d alternate in two-hour shifts.

Billy climbed onto the cot, pulled a poncho liner up to his chin and yawned. “Time for that titty dream.”

“You lucky bastard.”

I set the phone on a sandbag, dialed in the freq and ran a commo check with Reets. “Hey, butter bar, got your ears on?”

“Go ahead, eighteen.”


“How’s the hammer hanging?”

“What the hell’s your sit-rep?”

“We’re copasetic.”

“Roger. And fuck you, Winters.”

I laughed and hung up. For an officer, Reets was half human.

Billy was already snoring. I propped my elbows on the bag and scanned over the perimeter. No movement. And still none ten minutes later when Billy began moaning. He cried out, “Ride, baby, ride!”

The sap meant the horse, I think.

Even for a nineteen-year-old hick from Arkansas, Billy was over-sexed. At least a mile over. He claimed he’d “fawwk a buzz saw if’n Verla were a tooth in it.” He swore the tower was a “dick symbol” that inspired “blue veiners and cum dreams,” and he believed with every fiber of his sweet, dumb heart that if he dreamed real hard it’d come true.

Tower eighteen squatted on a rise of ground, and the lights stretched all the way around the firebase like a bright pearl necklace. It was too beautiful. I wanted ugly. During my months in Nam I hadn’t seen one live Charlie, just those seven black-pajamas heaped in the horseshoe pit one day, VC, shot up in an ambush. They were nothing to write home about, and only counted in someone else’s war. I’d come to Vietnam to use my trigger finger.

I lit a cigarette and thought about Sergeant Stryker in The Sands of Iwo Jima, which I’d seen twelve times as a kid ….

Stryker tips his helmet back, Zippos his Camel, takes an insolent drag and blows the smoke at the night. He eyes the wire. Japs are in it, low-crawling, only a hundred or so. He bides his time, his Thompson hanging eager at his side. Their leader, a colonel with facial scars and sneering lips, leads the way. He leaps up, waves his Samurai and screams “Banzai!” and the others charge forward, their guns blazing. Stryker doesn’t blink. His gaze steely and his chin strap dangling, his Thompson spits death from his hip and mows them down ….

The cigarette was bitter and I flicked it away, and in the deep shadows at the farthest edge of the perimeter a shadow moved. Or had it? My eyeballs locked on, but it dissolved into nothingness, and then materialized once again, a shape, a creeping dark blot, low to the ground and skulking closer.

Maybe I blinked and swallowed and felt a chill. Maybe I backed up a step and nudged Billy, and maybe he just kept dreaming. Maybe I almost grabbed the phone and called Reets again to ask him what the hell to do, and maybe I fired up a flare into the black night, a red one.

I did grab my ’16—or maybe it was Billy’s—and it was a dumb gun that didn’t know its butt from mine. I jerked it to my shoulder; the barrel seemed a mile long, aimed at nothing. No where did it say POINT TOWARD ENEMY.

Floating up from down below and cutting through the thumping rain, a whine. It unnerved me, made my trigger finger go limp. I looked harder. The skulking blot was brown with white spots and had four legs. It was a dog.

I lowered the gun.

One leg wasn’t working, the left front. The dog limped on its three good ones down a tunnel of concertina wire. Its belly hung heavy and low and its muzzle slung from side to side. It stopped, raised its head and looked around, staggered through a gap in the wire, coming closer. Now it was in the middle of the perimeter, where it halted again and sniffed the air. It angled through the wire, stumbled and veered into a coil. It yelped and jerked away and drops fell from the wire. It shook itself, a weak shudder of its tail. Its front shoulder and leg were matted dark, the fur. It hobbled forward ten more yards to a point directly in front of me, maybe five yards from the claymore, where it collapsed. It lay there on its side and panted ragged, shivering in fits.

Her belly and teats were swollen. She was pregnant, a Verla.

She trembled and stiffened, then curled her nose around to between her rear legs and started licking, and a pup slid out into the wet sand. She tongued it off, nosed it to a teat, and then she uncurled flat on her side again, panting. She panted louder than the rain. That pup was holding on, a part of her. She shuddered, a violent seizure. She labored her head around again, between her legs, and nosed out a second pup, and then a third and fourth. She nudged each of them to a teat, and then lay down flat on her side and didn’t move, not even her nose.

I pulled my chin strap tight and thought about Queenie, my boyhood dog. Before I was out of grade school she’d littered three times. Dad called her a bitch like he called me his son, but I called her a good-old-girl.

The clacker sitting on the sandbag beside me whispered something, a wordy breath of passing air.

The ’16 had a twenty-round clip. I ejected it and slid out three 7.62 millimeter rounds. The word millimeters struck me as obscene. I leaned over the sandbags and tossed the three rounds down at her, and they arced brassy through the pearly light and twanged off the wire.

Still, she didn’t move.

I stepped over to the ladder and climbed down to the ground and turned toward the perimeter. The claymore was planted between me and her. It scared me, its claim on territory, and how from that distance the dim light cast it in innocence, like a cabbage. I walked up and around it and then in front of it. That indistinct whisper came floating by again.

She was still sprawled over on her side, motionless, the pups suckling, squirming. Raindrops cratered the sand. She’d been shot in her shoulder.

I took my helmet off to feel the rain on my head, to make the whisper go away. I got down on my hands and knees and reached through a gap in the coils. Her leg was too far away. I shouldered against the wire and it bent back and razors pierced my jacket and one sliced an ear. Behind me, the claymore was sending whispers up the wire and into Billy’s dream, saying Verla’s tit is a clacker.

I pushed the wire back enough and grabbed her paw and pulled. She slid closer. The pups hung on to their teats. Her shot leg had bone sticking out. It didn’t matter who had shot her. I used my knee and a free hand to force an opening, and dragged her and the pups out.

They lay in front of me. I wondered how long a dead mother gave warm milk. I let them suckle. The rain soaked us. When I pulled one off its mouth kept smacking. It was a male, maybe five inches long. I tucked him into a pocket and gathered up the others, all females, a mix of brown and white and black, and settled them one by one into the same pocket—not the one with Billy’s missing letter.

I was the Troop’s mail clerk. When Verla’s letter came that morning I steamed it open and saw the pictures and read the letter. I pocketed the letter and put the pictures back in and resealed the envelope. He got it at mail call. Verla wasn’t who he thought she was. She was a bitch.

I scooped out a deep hole in the sand, my fingers clawing and scraping, hoping for dry sand. There wasn’t any. I dug deeper, using my helmet. Blood dripped from my ear. Tears came hot and blinding. I lifted my face to the rain and sobbed for what I knew. I picked her up—not a bitch, a dog—and lay her at the bottom of the grave. I tossed the letter in. He’d never even thought to wonder whose horse it was, and whose barn. The perimeter was a good place to bury two mothers—an in-between place, not here or there or us or them. It confused mines.

Back at the tower, one rung at a time, I climbed the ladder to where Billy’s moans greeted me. He was drowning in another dream—about to go wet, judging from his rising song and grinding hips.

I shook the cot and tugged his sleeve and yelled, “Dog in the wire!”

He startled. His hands grabbed his crotch and his body went stiff. His eyes popped open and must have seen what his brain didn’t see. “Verla, that you?”

I pulled a pup out of my pocket, stroked its warm belly and held it out.

He blinked and shook his head. “What ’n tarnation?” He threw off the poncho liner and swung his legs off the cot and stood.

“Here, you take her.”

He cupped his dumb hands and took the pup and brought her close underneath his chin. His smile was the quarter moon above the clouds. “Gaw damn!”

I gathered up the other three pups. They fit in my palm. My helmet was down at the grave filling up with rain. “When you dream your next dream, we need a good mother.”

---end---

What I've Been Up To

So, what have I been up to, writing-wise? A lot.

First, I've kept sending out queries for "Trout Kill": Peter Miller Agency, queries@pmalitfilm.com ; Prospect Agency,  http://www.prospectagency.com/ ; John Hawkins and Associates; reiss@jhalit.com (A same-day rejection! Very efficient!); Irene Goodman Lit. Agency, queries@irenegoodman.com  ; and Donald Mass Lit. Agency, cmcclure@maassagency.com

Second, "TK" has been edited and revised. I feel good about where it is. Thank you so much, Debra! I am so grateful for all your help. And Tin House Books in Portland has request to see the entire manuscript. That makes two publishers who will read it. Ooligan Press, also located in Portland, is the other.

Third, I've revised an old short story to submit to the Kay Snow Writing Contest. We'll see ....

Fourth, I've begun a critique group, 3 guys so far (Shawn, Sean and me). We're looking for a fourth, preferably a woman. We've met once, mostly a get-to-know-you session, but with some great discussion, too. We're all working on novels, or maybe Sean's is a memoir. Great fun, and am already looking forward to our next meeting.

And finally, I've begun the second novel in my trilogy. It's time to cut my emotional ties to "TK" and focus on "TR" (Trout Run). So far, so good.

Joys of Hell: V

Sometimes weird things happen. For example, I queried The Bent Agency on 3/10 and got a fast rejection the very next day (my birthday--Ouch!). Jenny said, "Thank you so much for writing me about your project. I read and consider each query carefully and while yours is not exactly what I am looking for, I would certainly encourage you to keep trying. I know your work is important to you and I am grateful that you wrote to me. All best." Now, as far as rejection goes, this one was timely and seemingly sincere and encouraging.

My email response was, "Jenny, Thank you for your careful consideration of my project, and may your day be filled with floral scents."


Here's the weird part: No sooner had I sent my response than I got this automated reply: "Thank you very much for sending your query to The Bent Agency. It is our goal to respond to every query so please do resend if you haven't heard back to us within eight weeks of receiving this notice."

It seems because my "floral" reply had the word "query" in its subject heading, the software program that reads the agency's incoming email automatically generated the quick "Thank you."

This automation, of course, makes me wonder how "sincere" the rejection was. Perhaps it's just another form letter, rather than a sentiment from Jenny's heart. Ah, the mind games we play with ourselves.

Joys of Hell, IV

A velvet-clad rejection sledgehammer from Jessica at Bookends on 3/8:

"Thank you so much for giving BookEnds a chance to consider your work. While I found your query intriguing I’m afraid I wasn’t sufficiently enthusiastic to ask for more at this time. As I’m sure you know, publishing is a subjective business and I’m sure there’s another agent out there better suited to your work. I wish you the best of luck and the greatest success."

LESSON: For you really bad romance writers, here's a line for your next  really bad novel (Feel free to plagiarize): "She looked at him with disdain in her eyes--the kind of disdain you might see in a dog's eyes when you reach into your coat pocket for a doggie treat, only to realize they're all gone, and so you pull your empty hand out and, instead of giving the mutt the treat he's already slobbering over, you offer up instead a lame pat on the head--and, after slapping him viciously on the cheek of his face, as opposed to the one on his ass, she snarled, 'Are you sufficiently enthusiastic to ask for more at this time?'"

But, there's some good news, too: a couple of local presses, Ooligan and Tin House Books, have said they'd like to see a partial manuscript, so I'm sending them the first fifty pages. Oh, the joy, the joy! But, let's not get ahead of ourselves--and why am I suddenly writing in the plural form, as if you're in this Hell with me? Stay tuned ....

A Weirdosity of Stupendous Magnitude

Over twenty years ago I wrote “Marlene,” a short story, and recently I resurrected it from its file-cabinet grave, brushed off the dust, “fiddled” with it a bit, changed the title to “Leghorn Love,” and posted it as the very first entry of my blog. Okay, nothing weird so far about that, right?—except perhaps my insecurity, how I felt compelled to once again “fiddle” with a piece that had been, back in the day, fiddled ad nauseam in order to, you know, “make it better.” Okay, enough about my insecurity.

Anyway, Lori, my musically astute—and, I’m quickly learning, literarily astute, as well—neighbor read the story on my blog and emailed me, commenting she liked the story but, she observed, it seemed to be missing a scene toward the end, between the time Larry, the protagonist, makes a phone call to Marlene, the antagonist, and the concluding (and brilliantly conceived!) scene. She even envisioned a few ideas (involving a few beers, etc.) as to how one might fill in the allegedly missing scene.

Well, I attributed her “missing scene” as a sign of her over-active imagination, or a misreading or misinterpretation. I even suggested she try writing a story of her own to, you know, give her imagination a proper cathartic workout. There was, I knew, no missing scene at all. I must confess, however, that I was so sure of being correct in the matter that I didn’t bother checking the blog and seeing for myself. And you know the old adage: Pride goeth before a fall.

I was going to read the story that Saturday at our monthly “emotive” gathering, comprised of a bunch of crazy neighbors and friends of various artistic backgrounds, Lori among them. (she's a fantastic singer of classical music). It was to be hosted by another neighbor, Ricardo, an escapee from a Columbian mental asylum—but that’s another story.

So, having just “fiddled” with the story for my blog, I now had to “fiddle” with it for the reading. I revised it on a Word document and, wanting the version on my blog to be identical, copied the Word version to my blog. I did this several times, going back and forth between Word and blog. When I read the Word version Saturday evening, I noted the end didn’t seem right. For one thing, a line was repeated. This should have been a head’s-up about the possibility I’d screwed up the blog version.

Anyway, Lori commented [either that night or the following day, I’m not sure which, and I attribute this lapse of memory to the cheapness of Ricardo’s wine] that I had added the “missing scene,” the one she had noted a few days before on my blog. She even said, I believe, that I'd incorporated some of her imaginings. I politely disagreed, stating the scene had been in the original story, written over twenty years ago and so, therefore, it was in the blog, too, just as it was included in the Word version.

Yes, this is a classic example of faulty logic and, yes, this whole thing is also getting very confusing.

To conclude: As you have, I’m sure, already surmised, Lori was right. In all my going back and forth between blog and Word, I had somehow omitted the scene on my blog.

The weirdosity is this: Lori’s “imagined scene”—that is, what she envisioned with the beer, etc.,—matched up darn well with what I’d originally written a long, long time ago.

This fact should be a really, really scary thing for Lori: She thinks like me!

And I've learned the hazards of excessive fiddling (which I'll ignore, thank you very much). Lori said when Beethoven composed, he did so rather manically, with lots of visions and revisions and revisions of revisions ("before the taking of a toast and tea"?); with Mozart, though, an inviolate epiphany in the form of a complete symphony would spring from his fertile mind. I hate him, and I'm sure you do, too. Most writers, I believe, are Beethoven's.

Joys of Hell, III

My novel is a worm (and who doesn't like worms?) dangling on a hook (i.e., the "query") in a big lake (i.e., the "publishing industry') of big fish (i.e., agents and editors), and every once in awhile the tip of my pole quivers (i.e., I get a reply) and I seize the rod (with HOPE!) and yank out another pair of fish lips (reel in an empty hook, dripping with cruel REJECTION).

I feel like the proverbial one-arm fisherman who, when asked how big the fish was that got away, holds up his one arm and says, "This big, at least!" Okay, enough with the allegory!

So, here are my two most recent rejections: Michael, at Dystel & Goderich Lit. Agency, who I queried 2/26/10, responded very politely on 3/4/10: “Thanks so much for letting me take a look at your materials and please forgive me for responding with a form letter. The volume of submissions I receive, however, makes it impossible to correspond with everyone personally. Unfortunately, the project you describe does not suit my list at this time. I wish you the best of luck in finding an agent and publisher for your work and I thank you, once again, for letting me consider your materials.”

Wow! That's a well-phrased, courteous and professional "form" way of saying "fuck off and drop dead." No, actually I'm not that bitter. Honest. I understand completely: I do not "suit" his "list." I mean, if back in the day when I was dating, had I asked a girl for a date, she could have merely said the volume of submissions she had to deal with was overwhelming, and that I didn't suit her list, and then she would have thanked me for letting her consider my materials. I simply would have said, "No prob!" and then drowned my sorrows with another beer, wondering how in the hell she could have checked out my "materials."

Over the years between then and now, nothing much has changed, I guess, in how I deal with rejection, except perhaps wine is now my drowning drug of choice.

Here's the second one: Scott, at Trident Media Group, LLC, in his 3/4 response to my 3/4 query [pretty quick reply, huh?] says, "I respect the time and effort that you have put into your project, which is why I regret to tell you that it just does not feel right for my list. I read every query that is sent to me via e-mail and because the volume of these queries is so huge I am forced to be extremely selective about what I ask to see.” I like his employment of alliteration, with "respect" and "regret."

I'd throw "rejection" into the mix, too. But, okay, I can see a two-fold "theme" emerging: (1) all these people are busy with "volume" and (2), they have a "list." There's not much I can do about "volume," except perhaps begin a terror campaign directed at novelists across the country. Hmmm, not a bad idea, but how can I manage to get them all aboard the same airplane and airborne at 30,000 feet?

Yeah, I know, that's not funny.

But what about this "list" thing? Do I have any control over it? I do my research, or what I call "research." It consists of reading an agent's bio, his/her (more her's than his's--by far, it seems) description of current projects and preferences, the house's list of published works, etc. If I see the words "literary fiction" anywhere, [Are you ready for another bad dose of allegory?] I'll deem him/her an appropriate "big fish" in that "big lake" and bait my hook and cast and hope for a bite.

Ahhh, to one day say, "Baby, they're bitin' like bulldogs!"