An Unintentional Visit to the Burger Shack

[This is the now (since I have changed the order of the stories and will be rewriting the one that formerly came in this place) the third piece of my ten-story cycle, a series connected more or less tenuously, depending on the story, by the Rocket’s Burger Shack setting. If you missed the first story, you can read it here, and the second one can be found here. These are interrelated stories rather than a novel, but the last story brings them all together. So now, once more, "Thank you for coming to Rocket's! May I take your order?"]

Remembering Running©

      Running was the little dog’s most vivid memory. Every night he dreamed of the way it used to be, when he had lived free, running through fields and woods so fast that his paws scarcely seemed to touch the earth before flying joyfully up again, the air as much his element as the earth. More than pictures in his head, these dreams occurred in the muscles of his body, all of which were fully engaged in the dream of running.

Awake, his awareness centered in his black, moist,  delicately quivering nose, that marvelous receiver of information from earth and air, from the strongest odors to the most subtle hints, all of them deliciously commingled but sortable, too, into separate strands. The awareness of his nose was pure, conscious experience, unmediated by reflection, and his muscular responses had been immediate, too.

Nowadays he had such experience and responses only during sleep, when in dreams he ran free again.

      During daylight hours now, inside an imprisoning fence, with only a small piece of hard-packed earth to explore and his every movement constrained and hampered by a heavy chain, it was a far different story. He could no longer afford to let his nose push other senses aside, as it had in the woods. Now he had to employ eyes and ears, as well, nonstop, to watch vigilantly and listen without lapse of attention, ever on guard, because he could no longer run either in pursuit of prey or away from threats (let alone for sheer joy), and here in this place he was visited, always without warning, by a threatening man and dog.

      The unpredictable man sometimes arrived in a pickup truck, other times in a car, and once or twice on foot, which meant that he might roar up with a loud, rumbling engine or purr in gently or glide up to the fence in near-silence with padded cougar footsteps. He brought a different smell from that of the little dog’s prison, but the smell varied from day to day, the little dog noted without understanding. Sometimes, on the most alarming days, there was a fear odor emanating from the man, but it seemed to come from his clothes rather than his skin. It was more like a smell from a place he had been, maybe the place he visited before coming to this place. On the least frightening days the man smelled like fresh water and fish, but the little dog could not relax his guard even on those days, because the man never came with any gesture of friendship, and he never came alone.

There was a big dog that came with the man.

Not chained or leashed, the dog seemed bound to the man by an invisible tether, moving at his master’s side like a shadow, his every step choreographed to match those of the man. Perhaps alone the dog would not have been so threatening, and perhaps without the dog the man, at least on days when he smelled pleasantly fishy, would have not have been so frightening, but together they made the little dog’s hair stand on end. When the man shouted, the big dog growled; other times the dog growled first, and then the man laughed.

The big dog was handsome, tall and stately, with a black and brown brindle coat, but his eyes seemed to radiate hate as he stared through the diamond openings of the chain links at the little dog inside. Was the hate real? There was something confusing in the big dog’s smell that the little dog could not interpret. He never had much chance, anyway, because the man carried a long, heavy stick, and he liked to slam it against the fence when the dogs least expected it. The banging never failed to throw the big dog into a frenzy. At the first blow to the fence, the big dog hurled himself against it, as if the fence were an enemy. He barked and snapped and snarled, while the little dog, inside the fence, the dog who had once been free to run, jumped in alarm at the stick banging and the fence rattling and the dog attacking the fence. He pulled as far back from the fence as his heavy chain would allow, and he danced back and forth, desperately seeking escape. The first few times he had cowered, but growing anger quickly replaced fear, and not for long did he crouch and shake like a sere beech leaf in winter, clinging to a twig. Instead he began to snarl and growl like the big dog as he danced back and forth at the end of the chain that held him. This made the laughing and barking and shouting and snarling of the man and the big dog outside louder still.

After these upsetting visits the little dog on the chain remained agitated long after the man and the other dog were gone. He continued to strain against the maddening chain, twisting and lunging in a miserable dance of anger and frustration and longing, as if to escape another animal whose grip he might break free of at last, but the chain, stubborn and inanimate, never grew tired, and at last the little dog stood still, quivering and panting, covered in dust. Over time he wore a raw spot on his neck from these dances. Perhaps in some way he felt their uselessness, but not to respond to life’s challenges was outside his repertoire. Some dogs might find it in themselves to give up. He could not.

He had never been a show dog. He wasn’t at all what his mother’s owners had hoped for from the litter, which is why he was left one night, to live or die, as might happen, by the side of a country road,. He was not yet a year old when abandoned. Originally his short-haired brown and white coat was clean and neat. After living outdoors a while he was dirtier but still neat, in his way, clean as he could keep himself. He had a small, handsome muzzle, dark-rimmed brown eyes, one ear that stood up and another that stood up halfway and then flopped down in a soft little triangle, while his tail curled up over his back and waved like a busy signal flag when he slowed from a run to a trot. Such, that is, such had been the behavior of his tail in the old, free life. That same tail now was most often held at half-mast, thumping happily against the ground only during dreams. Whatever had happened between his former life of freedom and the tedium of the pen (broken only by the terror of the threatening man and big dog) had long ago receded into the mist.

There was one other man, more predictable, who showed up once a day, every day. This other man was silent, but his truck was old and made many noises, announcing his arrival, and the man himself moved in an invisible cloud of layered smells, mostly very old and all mixed together. This man always turned off the truck engine and sat in the cab for a while, unmoving, watching through the windshield, and the little dog learned to sit unmoving, also, waiting by the fence without a sound. He learned that sooner or later the short, squat, very smelly man would open the door and slide slowly to the ground from the seat of his truck. In his hand was always a white plastic bag from which he slowly and deliberately drew out a piece of red meat, pulling it out and tossing it over the fence with one long, slow, continuous, curiously graceful gesture. The meat landed on the ground the first couple of times, but the little dog soon learned to catch it in mid-air. This man did not laugh. Neither did he speak. But after the first few days, when the little dog heard the sound of the truck his heart lifted, and while he sat by the fence motionless and silent, his nose quivering with the man’s smell, he was completely alert and felt alive in every cell of his body. Watching and smelling the man and waiting for the meat became the high point of his day.

The meat man stood and watched while the dog ate, and then he turned, climbed back into the truck cab and drove away. Nothing more happened, but the little dog was vaguely grateful. He appreciated the predictability, as well as the food (and the absence of threats) that the meat man brought. Still, these pleasant visits were far too brief, each one only a very small oasis of time in the otherwise long, tedious, anxious day, the desert of life on a chain.

The little dog would have liked the man to stay longer, even to sit longer in the car before getting out and throwing the meat over the fence. That would have drawn out the anticipation, which was the best part of the meat man’s visits. If the man had cut the meat into pieces and thrown the pieces over the fence or through the openings one at a time, it would have turned the interlude into a game. Without exactly envisioning these variations, the little dog longed for them, for while he could not help eating the meat as fast as he could bite and chew and swallow, there was nothing to look forward to when it was gone. Eating spelled the end to excitement and the prelude to the return of empty anxiety.

One day the meat man failed to appear with the plastic bag, and the dog man and big dog did not come, either. Pacing back and forth at the end of the chain that held him, the little dog watched and listened and twitched his nose apprehensively through a hot, still afternoon and into the twilight, hunger and anxiety growing apace. From far off in the distance came a rumble of thunder. He remembered thunder. It usually meant the coming of a rainstorm, sometimes frightening if the thunder and lightning were local and heavy but exhilarating, too, especially at the end of a long, enervating summer day. The dog sat back on his haunches and raised his head into the air, nose upwardmost. Let it come! Let something happen!

A soft pattering came first, large drops with lots of space between them. This brief period was followed by sudden high wind blowing sheets of rain sideways. Trees along the dirt road leading to the pen were bent by the wind, protesting, their crowns thrown in all directions. The storm had become so loud, its noises so varied and insistent, that the little dog saw the bright streaks of headlights approaching through the woods before he heard an engine. A truck splashed into view. It was not the meat man, not the dog man.

It was two strange men. They came toward him lit from behind by the headlight beams of the still-running vehicle, bent over and hurrying, cursing loudly. The little dog could see only their backlit silhouettes, but through the rain and thunder he could hear the loud engine and the angry, impatient voices. One of the men opened the gate so the two could quickly sidle in. The second man was holding one end of a long stick with a loop hanging ominously from the end away from his fist, and as the men entered the enclosure, the dog caught a tangled mix of sharp, pungent odors cutting through the rain. The strange odors set off alarms in his brain, and he began to shake violently and to growl, his instincts telling his muscles to leap and flee, even as the chain held him fast.

Suddenly the loop was over his head and tightening around his neck. He twisted and fought, but the noose only tightened. His fear was coming in surges now, waves of it that almost blinded him. He felt rather than saw that the anchor end of his chain was moving now at the same time that the prod at his neck pushed him toward the open gate.

There were small coffinlike boxes in the back of the truck, and into one of these the little dog was half-lifted by the noose around his neck and by strange, burly arms that roughly grasped his hind legs. In order not to be strangled or held, he inadvertently helped the men lift him by half-jumping toward the open door of the nearest little box on the truck bed, and in this way he found himself shoved inside. In a moment the door was quickly slammed and locked, and the tailgate also slammed back into place. The men disappeared, and then the truck began to move, jolting forward and up and down and side to side through the downpour.

There was not room enough for the dog to stand in the box that held him. Having gone in headfirst and facing blackness at the front of the box, he struggled frantically to change direction and tore his shoulder on something sharp before he managed to make the turn. Because the heavy mesh door of the box was blocked by the truck’s tailgate, there was still nothing much to be seen, but as the truck bounced up and down through potholes in the road, the dog recalled a similar jolting ride from the day of his arrival at the enclosure. So they were leaving that place. Good! There were many confusing turns in the dark, all on bad dirt roads, some flinging him painfully against the side of the box on his injured shoulder, but the turns and bumps in general somewhat reassured the dog. It felt like the route by which he had been brought to his place of captivity, and he was not sorry to be carried away again, wherever happened next.

The truck at last hit smooth pavement and picked up speed. From behind came headlights of other vehicles. So, a road! Still the rain pelted down, and still the wind blew the rain in sheets across the road and tried to push the truck sideways.

How much time elapsed or how much distance they covered before the slide and subsequent crash and stillness, the little dog had no way of knowing. The crash itself, impact and rollover, lasted only moments. In the rollover, the door of the box was sprung open, and the moment the truck came to a rest on its side, the dog jumped free and ran. He still carried with him the weight of the heavy chain that had held him captive for so long, but now the dog was free, the chain only dragged along helplessly, no longer his master, wherever the dog might run.

He tore away from the highway and then ran parallel to it. He ran without thought, propelled by emotion and nervous energy. He ran until he grew tired and his breath came in ragged gulps, and still he ran, dragging the chain but in no way held by it. He punished the chain, dragging it for miles. Finally, he ran back along a tall board fence and took refuge behind a dumpster, then crawled under its dark edge to crouch underneath.

The ground was filthy and streaked with rivulets of cold rainwater coming off the adjacent lighted parking lot, but he was sheltered from the falling rain, and no one could see him. He could stop running for a while, long enough to rest. Maybe he would sleep without dreams for a change. At least, if he did dream, maybe he would dream of rest now rather than running

PRAIRIE EVERS Will Be Here Soon

On my kitchen wall hang dreams

When I first got the ARC for this book, last year, word was it would not be released until September 2012, and I felt unjustly thwarted and hindered—very huffy indeed.. Everyone loved Ellen Airgood’s 2011 novel, South of Superior, and I wanted her new book for my summer bookshop season! So now, good news: I have my first copies on back order, and they should arrive before the end of this month. Yes! By Memorial Day, Prairie Evers should be in Northport.

This one is a middle-grade novel, especially appropriate for 8- to 12-year-olds, but I know many adults will enjoy it as much as I do. Yes, I am ten years old at heart. What of it? I’m presently reading Prairie Evers for the second time. More and more adults lately are reading YA novels in general, it seems. But I digress....

Don't you love this book cover?

Airgood’s new young character has always been home-schooled by a beloved grandmother, but when the family moves north to the place where her mother grew up, Grammy is homesick and decides to return to North Carolina. This is the girl’s first trial in her new life. Then they are the gossipers in the town diner, who think her father is nothing but a poor “dirt-poor hillbilly.” And these busy-bodies can’t even get her name right. It’s Prairie, not Meadow! Prairie’s parents plan is to make their living from the old farm, plus their crafts—quilts and birdhouses--and even Prairie can see that this will “take a lot of doing.” So her idea to cure her own homesickness and lonesomeness also involves making money. She decides she will raise chickens and sell eggs,

Then her parents throw her another curve ball, telling her she will be going to regular school in New Paltz. Can anything be worse than this? There is nothing about fifth grade that Prairie likes. Not the school bus, certainly, or the crowd of children, and especially not having to sit in a desk all day long.

Prairie Evers, like South of Superior, introduces ordinary people struggling to make ends meet and find their places in a community. Will life ever become “easy” for Prairie Evers? (Is “easy” a realistic or desirable life goal?) The course of this story, like real life, presents surprises and challenges for the main character, and the last pages, also like life, leave a few questions about Prairie’s future, rather than tying everything up in one big, tidy bow, and I like it all the better for that. The shape and trajectory are clear, and the conclusions satisfying.

“Crying don’t get the oil changed,” Prairie’s Grammy always said. You might say that Prairie’s year in fifth grade, with all its ups and downs, is one in which she learns a lot about changing the oil. And since it’s a lesson most of us have to relearn many times in the course of our lives, we chart her progress with sympathy and hope.

A beautiful breed

Yes, I love the chickens in the story, too. But you knew that, didn't you?

Sending You Elsewhere

Not in all senses. I do hope you’ll stop by the bookstore if you’re nearby, because we have a beautiful new book of poetry at Dog Ears by a Traverse City* writer who will be part of this year’s summer author series at the Leelanau Township Library. Come by and pick up a copy of Embroidering the Ground With Prayer, by Teresa J. Scollon. No, what I mean by “sending you elsewhere” is that today’s post will be full of links, and here’s the first, about Teresa’s latest recognition, an NEA grant.

Next is the Michigan Notable Books award list for 2012, which includes several authors who have visited Dog Ears Books. Which ones? Take a look and see!

Another award to a Northport author came from the Independent Publishers (IPPY) to John Mitchell, Silver Medal winner in the category “Great Lakes – Best Regional Nonfiction,”  for Grand Traverse, the Civil War Era. See complete list of winners here.

You’ve all heard by now of the death of Maurice Sendak. This is my favorite tribute to him, of the many that are flying around.

Finally, here’s a video that’s worth taking the time to watch, both for the singer’s beautiful voice and for her original lyrics. Laughter guaranteed.

*This is a correction from my original statement identifying the poet's home as Suttons Bay. She teaches at Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) in Traverse City and lives there.

Welcome Back to the Shack

[This is the second piece of my ten-story cycle, a series connected more or less tenuously, depending on the story, by the Rocket’s Burger Shack setting. If you missed the first story, you can read it here. "Thank you for coming to Rocket's! May I take your order?"]

For All These Things, Let Us

Praise the Lord©

      She stumbled a little, but only from exhaustion. She’s so drunk, she can’t walk straight, said her father’s voice in her head, and once again she silently reminded him that she was not her mother and did not drink. She wouldn’t do that to her kids. You’ve got her genes, the voice reminded her. And yours, too, you mean bastard, but I’m not either one of you! Now lie back down in your grave and shut up!

      Coffee would do the trick. It always did.

Tired as she was, the first cup of morning coffee would steady her physically, banish the voices in her head and give her a little island of calm solitude before the boys were up. Then, she knew, she could negotiate the before-school part of the morning and maybe later wangle another hour or so of sleep before Brad woke up, wanting her. She loved that he wanted her. It was only the timing of his desire that sometimes had her at the end of her rope, near frantic with fatigue.

      Ah, there, that was it! The nerve-soothing comfort and edge-smoothing solace that her mother, after a fifth child, had taken from whiskey, Kelly was able to find (blessedly!) in coffee. It seemed such a miracle that she thanked her lucky stars every morning with the first cup. Thank you, Jesus! Always, that was her first prayer of the day. Kelly had never in her life not been religious, but she had never gone in for formal prayers, either. Formal kinds of communication just didn’t belong in a personal relationship. She felt God and Jesus and Mary the Mother of God and St. Joseph in her daily life, walking beside her, and expressed herself naturally to them. A cup of coffee was not too small a thing for gratitude. Nothing was.

      But only one cup before she hurried into blue jeans and a sweater and picked her short, curly hair into a semblance of order and gave herself a passing grade in the mirror, although she didn’t really care all that much how anyone in the outside world would see her. Alone with her husband, deliciously naked in the slippery dark, lit by the streetlamp through the window and a crack of light coming under the bedroom door from the hall, she knew she looked as good as she felt. That was all that really mattered. Now, though, it was time to get the boys up.

Up, dressed, teeth brushed and out to the car. This part of the morning was a minefield! They were such little fireballs, bursting with energy--tightly coiled, supercharged--and once they were awake, quiet was as unnatural to them as swimming would be to chickens. Not that Brad would ever hurt any of them, her or the boys, if they disturbed his sleep. The rage of her parents’ marriage was no part of Brad and Kelly’s life. But Brad lived on the edge of exhaustion, too, and Kelly, with her visceral memory of the past, wanted to keep danger and temptation at bay. It was her way of protecting Brad, and protecting him kept them all safe. Her family would all get through this time if she had to run through the days and nights on her hands!

Brad had no idea. Of course, she knew she had no idea what he went through, either, working as hard as he did. She knew that. Thank you for Brad!

“Mom! Mom!” Justin, the younger boy, flung his arms around her neck almost before he opened his eyes. “It’s a school day!”

The words burst out of him like racehorses out of the starting gate or fireworks exploding on the fourth of July.

Everything excited Justin. No, everything excited Justin!!! A school day, a weekend, a holiday of any kind (minor or major), a vacation trip (they’d had one the past summer, and he still wasn’t over the thrill of visiting “another state!”), grocery shopping, breakfast at the Burger Shack—it didn’t matter what was on the agenda. Justin’s cup of life was always overflowing. This made him popular with other kids and grownups alike, except (Kelly thought, with impatient dismissal) for those mysterious grownups who found any measure of enthusiasm in children an unwanted intrusion on their calm, boring lives! Well, there were none of those people in this house, but Daddy was sleeping, as Kelly reminded Justin with a finger laid on his lips.

      His eyes opened wider and gleamed. The demands of quiet challenged him severely, but he loved the conspiratorial aspect of their mornings. His next words came out in a loud, hoarse whisper. “Mom, are we going to the Burger Shack?”

      “Yes, we’re going to Rocket’s, but you have to get dressed and brush your teeth, and you have to do it quickly and quietly. Can you do that?”

      “Yes!” It was almost a yell, and immediately he looked stricken and shook his head vigorously and admonished himself with a “No, no, no!” He knew he wasn’t supposed to yell when Daddy was sleeping, but it was so hard!

      “It’s okay,” Kelly told him softly. “You forgot. Just start over.”

      He hugged her again, exclaiming, “I love you, Mom!”

      Well, that wasn’t a whisper, either, but how could she scold such sweetness?

      Robert was a different challenge. He always clung to sleep, burrowing deeper  and deeper under the covers when called to get up, needing to be hauled out bodily. Kelly flung back his comforter and sheet and hauled, and Robert flopped onto his belly, sprawling and moaning complaints.

      “Robert, come on! It’s time to get up!”

      “I didn’t finish my dream yet,” he protested sleepily.

      Kelly sighed and rubbed his back. It was his father’s back in miniature, bony shoulder blades and all. “I know the feeling, sweetie,” she said softly, “but you can have more tonight and every night, as long as you live. Isn’t that wonderful?”

      He scootched across the bed to wrap his arms around her waist and bury his face against her side. “There were white horses,” he whispered drowsily. “Too many to count. What if I don’t get that dream back?”

      “If you don’t, you’ll have other dreams just as wonderful. And tonight, when you’re going to sleep, picture the white horses in your mind, and maybe that dream will come back. But now you have to get up.”

      Robert groaned and sat up, fixing her with the skeptical look that always made him look much older his nine years, but she forestalled further questions and complaints.

      “We can talk about it over breakfast.”

      By then he would have forgotten, pulled into complete wakefulness and a myriad of more urgent concerns by his irrepressible brother. “The best present we ever gave Robert was Justin,” Brad liked to say, and it was true. As different as day and night, once awake and on the go Robert and Justin were a tight, self-sufficient little duo, as closely bonded as if they had been formed in the same egg.

      Once out the door, all constraint was out of the question. The boys bounded for the car, already arguing over who got which side this time. For some reason, both preferred to sit behind the driver’s seat. Was this because the one in that position could more easily imagine himself as driver or because the other position was more easily observable from the actual driver’s seat?

      “No!” Robert yelled again. “You had it last time!”

      “I don’t care!” Justin retorted. “I should get it every time, because you’re older and you get other things first every time.”

      “Like what?”

      The quarreling meant nothing. It was their bond in another aspect, as Kelly recognized easily from her own sibling relationships.

      “I don’t see anyone opening a car door yet,” she observed mildly. “Justin, right side, Robert left.”

      “Which side is left again?” Justin asked with wide-eyed innocence as his brother triumphantly took possession of the desired left-hand carseat. (They were still in carseats but facing forward now, thank God!) “No fair!” howled the younger, on the verge of tears.

      The tears would not last. They meant as little as the quarreling.

      As Kelly made certain they were both secure in their seats, she reminded Justin that it was his turn to choose which street they took out to the highway. “Pine or Maple?” she asked. He chose Pine Street every time, but whenever it was his turn she asked the question, as much out of curiosity as fairness. Would he ever choose Maple? And what was so special about Pine? He would never say, but the way the name exploded joyously and triumphantly from his mouth, there had to be a reason for the choice. Robert liked to draw out the moment of decision, but Kelly thought he only did it for the attention—which was, she reminded herself on Robert’s turns, as good a reason as any. Why shouldn’t the quieter first-born make sure he continued to get his share of attention?

      Driving, she turned her attention to the road and let the boys amuse themselves. It was early, and traffic was light. She was alert but relaxed. She liked driving, liked the way it narrowed and concentrated her obligations and responsibilities for the length of time she was behind the wheel. Nowhere else was life so simple, she thought as she turned into Rocket’s parking lot.

      If driving was like being in a spaceship, getting out of the car was the return to earth.

      “Mom, can I have--?”

      “Mom, he’s bringing his game in, and you said we couldn’t!”

      “I’m keeping it in my pocket! Mom, can I have French toast?”

      “He always gets his own way!”

      She stopped at the door, turned and faced them down. “Enough! You can behave and go in for breakfast, or we can go back to the car right now!”

      They outnumbered her, but she held the power. Two little faces looked down at the ground.

      “I don’t hear you. Car?”

      Two voices, a beat apart, muttered, “Breakfast.”

      “What?”

      “Breakfast, please.”

      “That’s better.”

      She already felt guilty taking them to a Burger Shack for breakfast as often as she did instead of feeding them at home. What had started as a special occasion, a way to ease the boys into quiet mornings while their father worked second shift, had gradually become her sanity insurance. At Rocket’s someone else cooked, and someone else cleaned up, and, while she couldn’t let the boys yell over their breakfast, she didn’t have to keep their talk to a whisper, either. She wasn’t on her feet, making endless round trips between table and counter, table and refrigerator. Enjoying her coffee in a clean booth and keeping current with world news on the television set over the boys’ heads was almost as good as driving.

      “Let Rocket’s do it,” she thought. What a great advertising slogan!

Kelly had worked briefly in advertising.Only in a small way on the local newspaper, but she had loved the challenge of helping people in business find the right words to sell their products, and she was almost always able to put together something catchy, if not memorable. The difficult advertisers to work with were the ones who fancied themselves creative writers without knowing even the rudiments of grammar. English had been Kelly’s best subject in high school (her yearbook work had helped her land the newspaper job), and she was shocked to meet well-to-do business people much older than she was who were so clueless, though since she was young and hadn’t gone to college, getting desired changes made could be tricky. And the unbelievably bad lines some clients thought were clever! She had erased most of them from memory, but one would forever remain, an ad for an expensive Italian restaurant. The owner wanted to bring people in with the phrase, “Where Your Food Comes Alive!” What the hell was that supposed to mean? Several possible interpretations came to Kelly’s mind, all of them negative, but the guy wouldn’t budge.

She kept working part-time after Robert was born, took time off with Justin, and then somehow never got back to advertising. Her sister-in-law had a catering business, and Kelly started helping out sporadically when Christina had big jobs. Depending on the occasion, tips could be good. Brad’s mother didn’t mind babysitting, either, as long as it didn’t involve a regular, scheduled commitment. Trouble was, the catering jobs were mostly in the evening, so she and Brad both got home late, both tired, neither in the mood to fix dinner. --No, that wasn’t the real trouble. The real trouble was that, nice as Christina was, working for her felt like a high school girl’s job, not a job for the woman Kelly felt herself to be.

Still, it was work, and Kelly knew she and Brad were lucky. He wasn’t nuts about his job, either, especially the shift aspect, but he was lucky not to be laid off, just as she was lucky to have part-time work and a free babysitter. They had each other, too, which Kelly never took for granted. That thought alone, whenever it occurred wherever she happened to be other than driving the car, gave her reason to close her eyes for a brief instant and murmur, Thank you! Of all her prayers, it was the most frequent.

The television screen before her eyes was bright and full of flickering motion, and Robert and Justin, across the booth from her, had finished as much as they would eat of breakfast and were now wrestling and laughing and about to fall off the bench seat. The man with the laptop who was in Rocket’s every morning was staring at her in annoyance, too, but for a minute or two Kelly saw nothing around her. She was imagining her return home after she dropped the boys off at school. Brad would still be sleeping, and she would undress quickly and slip under the covers to press against his warm back. If he slept on, she would soon become drowsy herself and fall asleep, but sooner or later, right away or in an hour or two, he would turn to her and take her in his arms, and everything else she did, all day long, she did for the sake of that embrace and that joining and that leaving-behind of the “everything else.”

The queasy feeling, the same one she’d had the day before, jolted her back to the present moment. It filled her with dread, and up from her heart, automatically, came the Please! prayer. Please, no! Let it be someone else, some woman who hasn’t been able to get pregnant! Not me! Two is all I can handle!

      She felt a little angry (even to herself she could admit only to a “little” anger) at the ordinariness of her predicament and at the realization that most other people would not think of it as that, or as a “predicament” at all. She was happily married, young and healthy, her husband had a steady job, and it wasn’t as if they had a dozen kids already. How much harder could life be with three? Well, she didn’t want to find out!

      She remembered worrying, with her first pregnancy, that the wild, abandoned lovemaking she and Brad enjoyed might cause a miscarriage. Her obstetrician had laughed, and the parents-to-be, relieved, had continued to enjoy uninhibited sex. If only, she thought now. Not then but now, this time! She imagined again being in Brad’s arms, with all the pleasure that would follow and build to a shuddering climax for both of them, and then, as they lay side by side afterward in that delicious suspension of time, the world light years away, she imagined that the trickle between her legs might suddenly gush red. If it hurt a little—even a lot—that would be all right, too.

      “What is it?” Brad would ask in alarm.

      “It’s all right,” Kelly would tell him. “It’s the answer to a prayer. We’re going to be just fine.”

            

Another Very Challenging Contest Event

Gilbert Lodge, Twin Lakes Camp, Traverse City

I took this first picture and am including it primarily for my mother, Mrs. Gilbert. Not that our family has any connection to this lovely building. Coincidence, is all. But kind of fun, eh? Gilbert Lodge is the setting for Traverse City's annual Senior Spelling Bee, sponsored by Comfort Keepers. Entrants (who must be at least 55 years of age) pay five dollars each to participate and compete on teams of two or three members. We arrived in the rain, had a wonderful time, and emerged afterward into bright sunshine.

Laurie makes sure everyone is relaxed and has a good time. She makes us all laugh, sometimes at the expense of the good-natured Bee Master, Michael Sheehan. Here's Laurie introducing everyone on Friday, May 4.

Laurie

Besides being fun for the competitors, the Bee generates spending money for the Traverse City area school spelling champion on his or her trip to the national competition in Washington, D.C. That's where those entry fees go. This year's TC area contender in Washington will be Jack Pasche from Suttons Bay, and here he is with the giant check presented to him from the event sponsor, who has spread the Senior Spelling Bee idea--with connection to the national student contest--far and wide across the country:

Headed for the Nationals

This was a very tough Bee, especially after the Bee Master decided we all needed harder words, or we would be there all day. Dipping into the "more difficult" group, he came up with some doozies. Our team had to spell 'autochthonous' in Round 12, and we were given 'vichyssoise' for Round 13. By the time we got to Round 15, where another elimination left only two remaining teams, ours deliberated so long over the spelling of 'diptych,' and I, the pronouncer, was in such a tizzy over which syllable got the 'i' and which one got the 'y' that I left out one of the consonants! Fortunately for us, the other team misspelled that word, too, so we were still in the game. 'Imbroglio' gave us pause the next time around, but we did it justice. 'Ennui' was a snap. In Round 21, we looked to  the retired lawyer on our team for the correct spelling of 'rescission' after the other team had gotten it wrong, and Marilyn didn't let us down. Our confirming word, the one we had to spell correctly to cement our win, gave us fits: 'eucrasia' was the challenge. We got it! Oh, and did I mention (no, but I will now) that another word earlier in the Bee was 'echidna,' an Australian mammal? Luckily, my teammates had seen this animal recently on the Discovery Channel! For the entire list of words in this year's Bee, see Michael Sheehan's blog post on Wordmall.

Liz, Donna, and Martha

This year's third-place winners were a team always in the top three, with whom we have traded the Bee back and forth several times. Liz Bannister, on the left, 95 years old, is a spelling champion of many years. These ladies are tough competition and great sports!

Kay and Ann

The team coming in second kept us hopping for seven rounds, back and forth, back and forth. They are crack spellers, too. This was their second Bee.

Trudy, Marilyn, sponsor, bee master, and me

And here's my Dog Ears Books team, competing for the sixth consecutive year. Trudy Carpenter, Marilyn Zimmerman and I keep each other on our toes, and we enjoy our annual expedition from Northport to Twin Lakes. There was a team all the way from Antrim County on Friday, so obviously word is getting around. Gerry, doesn't that make you want to get a team together for next year? Road trip, road trip! 

What’s the Difference Between ‘Writers’ and ‘Bloggers’?

That could be phrased differently. I could load the question by making a distinction between bloggers and real writers, as was made in my presence once, on hearing which a couple of friends shot me alarmed looks. Would I rise to the bait? But I didn’t think it was bait and didn’t see myself as the speaker’s prey, and it didn’t seem the time or place to push the question.

On the other side are those who find ‘blogging’ itself a ridiculous and unnecessary term. “You’re not blogging,” one said to me. “You’re writing!” Well, I never denied that, but we make distinctions, after all, between poetry and prose, between journalism and drama, etc., etc., and certainly not all writing is blogging (whatever one thinks of all blogging), so clearly there is some kind of distinction to be made, and can't I be doing both at once sometimes?

But let's start over. Maybe I could come at the question from the other side by asking what defines a real writer. Is it –

• Someone who writes every day? (That’s pretty much what I do.) 
• Someone who writes for money? (Occasionally I write for money and would be happy to do so more often. Anyone want to write me a paycheck?)
• Someone who makes a living solely by writing? (Nope, not me.)
• Someone whose work is recognized by other professional writers? (And are they professional because they are paid for their writing, in which case either the second or third possibility would seem sufficient and this one unnecessary?)
• Someone who cannot cease and desist from writing, whether money or recognition ever follow? (Or is this merely a sign of mental illness?)
• Someone whose name appears in a cultural literary canon? (Who decides? And doesn’t it usually help to be dead?)
• Only a good writer? (Who decides? Is it a general popularity contest, or do we go by the critics? Or by awards? Or something else altogether?)
• Someone who puts himself or herself forward to others, publicly, as a writer? (I think there’s a lot to this, just as there is to being an actor or a musician or any other kind of creative artist, but is it necessary?) 

A couple of years ago someone who became a friend confided that she was “trying to write a novel.” I corrected her. She was writing a novel. She might not finish it, and if she did finish it might never be published, but she was, that year, writing a novel. Two years ago I spent a winter writing short stories, and when people asked, that’s what I told them I was doing, but I did not say, “I’m a writer.” David sometimes told people I was a writer--until I asked him to stop, because the next question would invariably be, “What have you published?” (Uh, a doctoral dissertation? No one cares.) And then would come, "What are you going to do with them?" So although I have been asked from time to time, “Are you a writer?” I don’t present myself that way to the world--except in my blogging profile, where I also call myself a gardener, but you can read my qualification of that term on the profile, also! No, I am a bookseller. Right now in my life, that is my central public identity.

But—coming back to my sheep--I do write this blog and have been doing so since the fall of 2007, and while I have never been paid a cent for writing it, I think my perseverance speaks to the seriousness of my commitment to the forum. I did not undertake blogging for monetary reward; does that make the effort something less than writing? If audience size is taken into account, my commitment may begin to look like madness indeed! But again, I don’t do it to win large numbers of readers. Does that make it less real? Or is it not real writing because I don’t have an editor or am not working on assignment? (How many fiction writers work on assignment?) You tell me.

Most of my life has been spent around creative people, and every single one of them has struggled with the relationship of work to money. For me, finally, the heart of the matter is to take pains with one’s chosen work to make it as expressive and as valuable as possible. If and when someone steps up and offers to pay for it, that can be taken as a kind of affirmation from the outside world, but if no patron or client materializes, if the work is never subsidized or purchased, its value has not been neutralized or negated. The value is intrinsic to the process.

In giving one’s time and care, one gives one’s life, and in this the meaning of one’s life resides. This is the stand I am taking.

As for my other, at least equally real writing—the nonblogging stuff, those short stories mentioned earlier--I may throw some more out into the blogosphere soon. A couple people liked the first Burger Shack story enough to ask for more. And why not? What do I have to lose?

Rain and Deeper Questions

Thursday morning in Northport. So far it looks like Wednesday morning, pictured above. But let’s not complain. It’s good for those seeds planted in the garden, the transplanted trees, the morels we’re all waiting for, other field and orchard crops, and for generally recharging the water table. And as a friend pointed out yesterday, it’s good reading weather.

Ellen Airgood, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Jim Harrison, and Christine Byron & Thomas Wilson—what do they all have in common? All people known and admired by your friendly bookseller at Dog Ears Books, for one thing. For another, all have Michigan Notable Books awards for 2012. Well deserved, friends!

On another literary front, National Writers Series in Traverse City scored another success on Wednesday evening with Harvard ethics professor Michael Sandel. A sold-out house was Sandel’s classroom for the evening, as he pushed audience members to think about two separate issues, immigration and motivating children to do better in school. The questions: Should citizenship be up for sale? Why not put it in the open market where it can be bought and sold? How about paying children to read books? What are the arguments for and against that practice? At the close of his talk, Sandel received a standing ovation. Here are some of the audience members leaving the Opera House on a balmy Front Street evening in May. Recognize anyone?

The best part of an evening like that is continuing to think and discuss the questions afterward, as David and I did on our way home and at our dining table before turning in for the night. One of my observations in the car was that the interesting present intersection of philosophy, psychology and economics has a lot to say about motivation. (For more on this topic, see my book review here.) David wanted the question of citizenship sales pushed harder. “Who owns my citizenship?” he asked. “Do I own it, or does the government?” One woman in the audience had objected to the idea of being able to sell one’s citizenship to a would-be immigrant on the grounds that the government has always been the arbiter of who is allowed into the country.

On my way to town this morning, it occurred to me that both questions might be put together in an overarching question about what sorts of “goods” (things we value, not necessarily limited to material objects) are properly seen as property. Is my citizenship something I own. With advertising, we can buy people’s attention, at least to a degree, but can we buy their caring, their commitment? I see that the question now splits back into two: (1) what kinds of “goods” does it make sense to think of as property, and (2) what kinds of “goods” have a market at all? What do you think?

Currently my reading is going in many directions as I make my way through several different books at once. One is David McCullough’s The Greater Journey, another a book on Hellenism, a third Portrait of a Jew, by Albert Memmi. One of the books that took much less time to read was Mildred D. Taylor’s Song of the Trees, a book written for young people. In all of these books (least on this topic in McCullough, but there’s some of it there, too) I find important questions of who can own what in different parts of the world at different times in history. Michael Sandel’s question is a different one—not whether some people are allowed ownership while others are not, but should everything we value be subject to the market? It is one thing, he says, to have a market economy, quite another to be a market society.

While rain waters my transplanted hemlock trees, the radish and chard seeds still sleeping in their coats, the healthy, green rhubarb and strawberry plants asking nothing more than rain, I will be in my bookstore in Northport. It’s a good place to be while pondering life’s deep questions.

Another Full Weekend Gone By

Friday: Parade Serendipity and Poetry Mystery

Leaving my bookstore to walk to the post office on Friday morning, at the last minute I grabbed my camera. Good impulse! Right up at the corner of Waukazoo and Nagonaba I encountered an unexpected surprise: the Northport Children’s Center on parade! The occasion for the parade was the fund-raiser auction to be held on Friday evening.

Another surprise greeted me at the post office. Remember the mysterious poem someone sent me in the mail? The p.o. box held a second poem from H., again typed on lined paper folded to form its own envelope and bearing interesting stamps. John at the post office deciphered “Metroplex” and tells me that means the poem was mailed from somewhere in the Detroit area. More than that he could not determine.

Here is the new poem:

Saturday: One of My Old Favorites Finds a New Home, Booksellers on Holiday Visit Northport, and Wildflowers Bloom in the Woods

Was it only coincidence, or was it the magic of touch at work again? Coming to the bookstore on Saturday, I’d picked up one of my favorite books (one my son and I enjoyed many times over when he was little, though not this copy) and photographed it for my blog, and that very day someone bought the book.

Silly Petunia thought owning and carrying a book around made her wise. The beginning of true wisdom came with her realization that she had to learn to read.

Any surprise it was a grade school teacher who bought Petunia?

There is no telling on any particular day who will walk in the door and what they will buy, though it’s always obvious which ones are the dog-lovers, and Sarah (I’m a little embarrassed to admit) is quick to detect which pockets hold dog treats. Only after one couple had been thoroughly and shamelessly—and successfully!—propositioned by Sarah did I learn that they were colleagues of mine from Ohio. Yes, real, dedicated independent bookstore proprietors everywhere in the world see each other as colleagues, not competitors. It was very pleasant making shop talk with Joe and Linda Diamond from Beehive Books in Delaware, Ohio. Joe and Linda travel the same way I do--from bookstore to bookstore. Here they are with Linda’s purchase (yes, I strongly recommended the book), Benjamin Busch’s Dust to Dust: A Memoir. Since their store sells all new books, I didn’t want them to miss this one.

Before they got out the door, while Linda and I were still chatting, Joe stopped by the April poetry table and picked up Jim Harrison’s Songs of Unreason. He bought that book before he left. Good choice! It made me happy to have two excellent Michigan writers (Jim used to live here, and Ben, not a native, lives in Michigan now) finding a new home and new fans in Ohio.


When we got home later in the day, Sarah and I went out in the woods. That was good, too, as it always is.

Sunday: Morels, Laundry, and (Always) More Books

The morels were only two in number, gift of a friend, so rather than mixing them with our cheesy scrambled eggs, I sauteed them separately and posed them atop a dollop of light sour cream on top of the eggs. It was a good way to start a busy day. I had a lot of laundry to do and a sunny day to hang it out on the line. I also had half a book still to get through before a discussion group meeting in the evening. But the garden beckoned: Its edge needed cutting back. Weeds needed removing. Soil needed to be worked up. And seeds begged to be planted! But it all got done, and a little housework besides. (Will miracles never cease?) And now, as I post this past weekend's highlights, it's already Tuesday. How did that happen? The usual way, I suppose. More another day on my reading of Annie Dillard's Living By Fiction and continued reading about Americans in Paris and the Hellenistic Period in the Old World.


For today, Happy May Day, everyone!