An old Christmas story

SIMPLE DECORATION

It was all Jack that Christmas.

On the drive across town I thought of nothing else. Not my ex-wife, whose car I had begged to borrow, or my daughter experiencing her first Christmas without me.

My headlights carved tunnels in the slanting snow. I found a clear spot in a tow zone and bumped up onto the curb. I left the engine running, headlights on, not caring if I ever saw that car again.

My key still fit. I let myself in, stomping snow from my boots. It was late. I was embarrassed. All the real work had been done.

Phil was there. Arthur, too. They had repositioned the bed, set its angle, laid Jack out neat and cozy. On a pedestal table, dead center of the carpet, stood a two-foot tree, some of its branches dripping wet snow.

"The roads are treacherous," I told the room.

Someone coughed. Arthur, I think.

He was huddled by the bed, holding Jack's hand as though it were a tiny bird. Phil was behind him, sipping from a mug with my name on it.

"So what's the word?" I said. "What do they say?"

I reached under my scarf and fingered the collar of my coat.

"They? They don't know anything," Arthur said.

Phil rocked, and shrugged. "Tonight. Tomorrow. Who knows?"

"I do. I know," Arthur said. "He'll die in the morning. He'll die on the day Christ was born."

My nerves burned cold as I approached the bed. Someone, probably Arthur, had stacked Jack's prescription bottles into a useless pyramid. I had to tuck my elbow to avoid knocking them over. No one said anything as I kissed Jack on the forehead and slowly backed away.

"That's new," I said, nodding at the tree.

"Fifteen minutes old," said Phil, tilting his watch to catch the light.

"Phil stole it from the side yard." Arthur said.

"Roots and all," Phil said.

I started to smile, then thought better of it. I leaned my face into the tree. I touched a pine needle with my nose.

"Tell me," I said. "Either one of you uncomfortable with my being here?"

Phil shrugged. "You have a right," he said. "I guess."

He was staring at Arthur, at Arthur's back.

"I don't care," Arthur said. He was studying Jack's hand as though something were written there. "Though I used to. I used to care very much. Enough to hate you both." He turned his head a little; his eyes were closed. "I suppose none of that makes a bit of difference now."

I shrugged out of my coat.

"Let me help you with that," Phil said.

* * *

It was in a hallway closet, a closet meant for coats, that we found the wicker basket full of garland and tinted-glass ornaments, and some embroidered things Jack's mother had made.

Hers was a story we'd forgotten to remember.

She'd been dead almost forever but in her last days had crocheted tiny stockings, little candy canes, macramé angels, a few fat-faced Santas with cotton balls strategically placed.

Fine needlework!

All with a loop of yarn so you didn't need hooks. Just snatch up a branch and slip the thing on, easy as a ring.

Like fools we used it all.

We emptied that basket, crowding everything in, overlapping when we had to. Then we settled back, sipping cocoa and admiring our handiwork.

The air grew hot with our breathing and the thick smell of pine

I sunk into a fat chair, closed my eyes and fell asleep -- for a minute or an hour.

When I woke the windows were full of light, and the tree looked gaudy and cheap -- far too flashy for our friend who hated glitz.

I complained out loud. And first Phil, then Arthur, agreed.

And with fresh cups of cocoa in one hand we stripped that tree bare, except for the garland and a single yellowed angel whose yarn had snarled.

God, we were tired. Each of us needed a shave. The three of us yawned like lions as we circled that tree, planning to start again, to keep it dignified and simple.

But then Jack fluttered an eye, turned his head on the pillow:

"Perfect," he whispered.

So we left it that way.

(c) 2003 Bob Thurber
This "Firebox Fiction" originally appeared in Night Train Magazine.

The sad state of American creative writing

What happens when our colleges and universities become factories for Literature and cash cows for the Literati?

The news isn't pretty:

"I have seen the future of creative writing and it is not a Sunday picnic painted like a classic Norman Rockwell. American letters are in the process of being raped by the dull, the mediocre, and the pathetic."

Read Michael Hemmingson's CAUTIONARY ESSAY on the current mess and the problematic future of contemporary literature.


- Bt

Steve Almond asks "Are Agents Necessary?"

And then he gives a damn fine answer:

"...virtually any time I talk with another writer, one of their first questions out of their mouth is: who's your agent?"

Read the entire essay, which first appeared in Poets & Writers.

Writing sustains me.

Many, many years ago, (circa 1980) when I was hunting through Kafka's stories, diaries, letters, et al., looking for the secrets and the magic of art, I was stopped dead in my tracks by this:

"Writing sustains me. But wouldn't it be more accurate to say that it sustains this kind of life? Which does not, of course, mean that my life is any better when I don't write. On the contrary, at such times it is far worse, wholly unbearable, and inevitably ends in madness. This is, of course, only on the assumption that I am a writer even when I don't write – which is indeed the case; and a non-writing writer is, in fact, a monster courting insanity."

– Franz Kafka to Max Brod, July 5, 1922

Our Native Tongue

Most of us are concerned only with conventional language, the words and meanings of our particular culture. It’s the language we use day-to-day, which is of course necessary to make a living and to communicate with our friends and neighbors. But symbolic language, the language of our ancestors, remains the native tongue of the human race. It’s the dialect of our myths and our dreams, and it's at the heart of our best poetry and our most significant fiction, and it’s as essential to us as water.

Pretty much anyone can tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end. You don't need to be an artist to perform that trick. What matters is the language you speak. Who exactly is your audience and what precisely are you trying to communicate?

Are you merely trying to snatch some recognition, impress your friends,  put a few bucks in your pocket? Or are you actually willing to crawl on your belly through steep, dark, tunnels, across jagged rocks? Ask yourself: are your prepared to climb over the dry pale bones of the dead in order to paint your hand-print on the wall of an isolate cave?

And if so, then what are you waiting for?


- Bt

No one can write a man’s life except himself.

“No one can write a man’s life except himself. His inner mode of being, his true life, is known only to himself; and yet in writing it he disguises it; under the cover of his life’s story, he offers an apology; he presents himself as he wants to be seen, not at all as he is.” — Jacques Rousseau

The art of compression

There seems to be a general misconception that a work of exceedingly brief short fiction (whether it be labeled Micro-fiction, Flash Fiction, Postcard fiction, Quick fiction, Sudden fiction, etc.,) is somehow not real writing, not quite serious or literary enough.

Here's the fallacy: a "small fiction" is generally considered to be light work, a good training exercise, but little more than a preliminary  to writing a longer real short story.

The general grumble: Pretty neat, but where’s the rest of it?

It strikes me as odd that the art of compression, and the skill of reduction, when done right, are overlooked, somehow devalued by the publishing industry, which has displayed little interest in the "very short" form except as a novelty item.

Meanwhile, this same form is undergoing a dynamic development on the Internet, attracting attention and promoting intense discussion. A simple Google search for “flash fiction” returns well over a half-million sources.


- Bt