Concerning Flannel, Land Lines, and Paper Routes

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Do you remember life before the internet?

“First of all, how dare you?!” I demand as I throw away the AARP form that came in the mail.

My daughter didn’t believe me when I told her I had the same haircut as the kid from Stranger Things.

Was there such a time? Of course there was. Obviously the concept of the internet had been around about as long as I have (1982), but in practical terms it wasn’t useful to me until about 1998 when my family got our first PC; a Gateway 2000 complete with a 56K modem. We had dial up internet that had a number we called from the computer and if it was between 5 and 6 PM you could forget about actually getting connected. Then the computer would scream at you in this high-pitched tone until you got online.

There are varying levels of internet that we might take into consideration. My kids don’t really understand that it wasn’t always portable. Back in the old days when I was a newly minted EMT (back when the men were men and the sheep were scared) we had to use a map book to figure out where we were going. GPS wasn’t user friendly and I remember my step-father’s Magellan crapping out on us in the middle of the woods while we were hunting.

For a long time anything social media based had to be accessed from your desktop or laptop (maybe you had this new thing called WiFi?). If you wanted to know what your friend had for dinner you had to call and ask them. This paragraph would seem strange because posting a picture of your meal is only a recent example of how stupid our society has become.

But life before the internet? The first thing that comes to mind from that Halcyon era was how we stole music. First, you had to have a radio, CD player, or turn table with a cassette tape deck. If you had the song you wanted to steal on CD or LP (even another tape) it was easy: play the song on the platform you had and record it onto the tape. If you didn’t things got a little more complicated…

The radio could play a song, but that meant you had to have some idea of when they’d play it. DJ’s weren’t in the business of letting you know they were about to play a song directly but there could be clues. The easiest was if your song was in the Top 10 and you knew where it was, this was just a matter of waiting. If it wasn’t, you were in for a wait.

It would never fail that you’d be away from the stereo long enough for them to start playing it, and you’d have to dive across your bedroom to hit the PLAY/RECORD button. You could also bet on one song melding into another, or the DJ talking over most of the intro or ending, but since you’re stealing the song you can’t really complain. You could call the radio station and request a song, but you never knew when they’d get around to playing it.

Mix tapes were a thing. No playlists on your phone, that’s too easy and you lose all sense of the art that’s involved in stealing a band’s intellectual property. I’ve explained making of a mix tape to my Zoomer partners, and they’ve seemed interested enough, or maybe they were just being polite. It could take hours if you had the music on hand or weeks to wait for tracks on the radio. Burning CDs wasn’t really a thing until the latter half of my high school years and by then we had Napster and that bright shining moment…

Genuine 90s flannel

There was no On Demand, and certainly no streaming of anything. If you wanted to watch a show after it aired you had to make sure you taped it on VHS. This meant searching for a blank tape, or sacrificing the video from your sister’s ballet recital to get that bootlegged copy of Temple of Doom.

Calling someone’s house was another thing. Before mass use of cell phones we had to call our friends on the landline. If your buddy’s mom answered the phone you’d have to make small talk with them “Mom is good, I’ll let her know you asked for her. Could I talk to Bobby please?” If you got up the nerve to call that girl you liked there was a 100% chance her dad or her older brother would pick up the phone and you’d have to talk to them first.

I remember driving to The Cape with my dad in his old Wrangler. No doors, no roof, which isn’t such a big deal considering Jeeps are still a thing. Keep in mind one thing: to paraphrase an Australian cartoon dog “It was the 80s, man!” I was seated up front at an age that I had my own kids safely in booster seats in back. We also ate cherries off a styrofoam tray straight from the grocery store and Big Macs came in a similar container. Not the most environmentally friendly time.

I feel like we spent more time I outside than today’s kids do. We knew where everyone was because they’re was a pile of bikes dumped in someone’s front yard and we just gravitated toward it like moths to a flame. The signal to come home was the street lights and I remember jumping sketchy ramps on my bike built by my friends and cousins.

Summer camp was a big deal, and I’m watching the local school boards shifting toward year-round school with some concern. Granted, they allow for time off in the year, but that might make it harder for summer camps to operate if there is an unreliable flow of kids to fill cabins. Education is important, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like there’s something about taking a dump in the woods that connects us to our origins.

Gaming wasn’t like it is now. We had computers or consoles, but you weren’t going to play with your friend across town, and forget anyone on the other side of the planet. You could do multiplayer with two, maybe four, players if you had the right set up. If your cartridge didn’t play right the first time you had to blow into it like you were giving it CPR and if it didn’t work after that you did it until you felt dizzy or it worked.

I had to learn the Dewey Decimal System, which was how we looked up books in the library. There was no Google, and my dad ordered a complete set of encyclopedias so we could look something up if we needed to. If it wasn’t in there, a trip to the library was in order.

We got our news from TV, radio, or the newspaper. If I was your paperboy I’d fly past your house on my BMX with an arsenal of wrapped up newspapers, the finest muck Fall River, Massachusetts could rake. I’d then chuck it at your front door at the hour of 6AM keeping a kind of mental score based on where it landed. Maybe you’d tip me, maybe not, but I can guarantee that if your tipped well I’d pick a good one for you out of the bundle, fold it nicely and place it out of the rain so you could read your paper without lawn clippings or dog crap on it.

We were happier for sure, as a quick Google search confirms. This might be because there wasn’t really a 24 hour news cycle and no constant habit of doom scrolling. The news came on certain network channels a few times per day and if it made us unhappy or concerned we could turn it off and walk away. Mind you, I was lucky. I was alert and oriented through the 90s (2000s were a slightly different story) and it was bookended by the Soviet Union and terrorism. There wasn’t much to worry about, at least from a young kid to teenage perspective.

MTV really did play music videos, and was in competition with VH1. Music videos as faaaaaar as the eye could see, sometimes with commentary from Beavis and Butthead. Going back a little farther I can confirm that hair bands, those gloriously effeminate, yet somehow manly, rockers were once gracing the screens of America when the most effective weapon the West could muster against the Godless Soviet hoards was Rock & Roll. *drags on an unfiltered Camel from the driver’s seat of an IROC*

We wrote letters, which is probably my favorite niche thing to reflect on. Getting a text or an email is really impersonal, but a letter, hand written by someone specifically to you was a special thing to find in the mail. It meant someone had taken time out of their day to put pen to paper their thoughts and feelings just for you. I had a pen pal in Australia that I kept up with for a number of years, as well as a girl I met at summer camp.

There’s another reason not to change to year-round school. The friendships I made over long, hot New England summers can’t be replicated in short breaks throughout the year. These were kids who lived out of state from me in ever would have met if we weren’t both out of school at the same time. You’d think with all the tech advancements in learning now it would free up more time to actually be a kid, but that’s not the point of education is it?

My novel Just Say Maybe has an awesome example of how to make a mix tape and is a great example of how we survived in the time before the internet.

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CALVINISTS IN SPAAAAACE!

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Hey, wasn’t this guy a novelist?

The big project of the last 18 months has been something that I’ve been mulling over for about twenty years or more. Back in high school, I had a friend who had sketched out a science fiction universe in the tone of a space opera and I more or less attached myself to his project like a Xenomorph, crafting my own storylines and characters as spin-offs that lived happily inside the universe that he created. Our lives took us in different directions, but a few years later while taking a creative writing class in college I wrote a short story based in that universe and he was so happy when I sent a copy of it to him that he gave me the best compliment he could after I’d face-huggered his project. “It’s as much yours as it is mine now.”

And from there it went into stasis, like Khan and his crew floating aimlessly through space only to be discovered, thawed out, and take over my writing life in my late 30s. Most of the concept was scrapped as unusable and obvious rip-offs of a number of different sci-fi franchises, but then again most are. Like Twain noted there are no original ideas, but we can renew, rework, and rebuild ideas like a cyborg.

The problem I had with sitting down to write a space opera wasn’t the plot line. I already knew what that was going to look like. It’s your basic interstellar travel synopsis paired with a good versus evil theme, but I wanted to do something that touched on societal constructs that went beyond federations or councils, beyond overpowering corporate entities that cast entire planetary systems into darkness out of their own greed. There’s plenty of that already, and if I’m honest, as much as I like Star Trek the concept of a society that has done away with all the worst human traits like greed or racism is totally unbelievable. Transporters are a more realistic notion than humans shedding their worst traits in favor of a willful embrace of egalitarianism.

The reason is man’s total depravity, a Christian concept rooted not simply in the Doctrines of Grace but is latent throughout scripture. It is humanity’s condition and illustrates that people are inclined to do bad, and while they won’t necessarily do those things, it’s not something we can just do away with. We would rather indulge our own base desires than go against them.

The problem with my project is how to execute it. If I was going to attempt a space opera with a Christian undertone I knew immediately that it would put a number of people, many of them actual Christians, off. When people consider Christian entertainment they cringe because, frankly, most Christian entertainment is pretty terrible. There are a couple of limited exceptions, but most are infected with heresy or Second Commandment violations, specifically depictions of God, Christ, or the Holy Spirit.

Most Christian entertainment is nauseating in its presentation. In most cases, it’s written with Baby Boomers in mind with a premise as predictable as a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie. There’s a weak plot, some pet sin the protagonist can’t get around until he or she makes a conscious decision to accept Christ into their heart. There’s probably a full immersion baptism, atheist arguments made by characters who are as one-dimensional as the Christian protagonist who slays them, and probably a lovable dog or kid thrown in to add to the pot-luck feast of imagery we think makes up the actual world ruled by the devil.

The problem, as I’ve seen it, is that as Christians we put ourselves into these bubbles where we insulate ourselves from the influences of this world (rightly so) but then we try to appeal to people who are not just influenced by it but enslaved by it, and then wonder why they laugh at our feeble attempts to evangelize within the bounds of material that we deem safe. Aside from this, you have people who are new converts working through their sanctification, part of which is eliminating entertainment that will cause them to fall into sin, and they’re getting sanitized versions of a world that doesn’t exist. They know doesn’t exist because they’re so closely removed from it. We have to do better and we can.

This is what makes this project harder. I can’t just deus ex machina things into resolution. That doesn’t mean God doesn’t intervene, but there’s not going to be a physical hand of God moment that resolves all the issues. No “God’s hand coming down to touch a nuclear bomb and destroy all the bad guys” moment (which was a really disappointing climax to one of my favorite Stephen King stories, I don’t mind adding. The rest of it was a total masterpiece, but that part I hated). God the Father, Son, or Holy Spirit can’t actually make an appearance either, but I can play with other aspects of the created realm.

This is ultimately a story about revival and it is suggestive of Old Testament prophecy as it points to Christ. It’s Reformed in that the theology it contains touches all the Doctrines of Grace, known under the acronym TULIP. The hyper-abridged version is what I’ll offer:

Total Depravity – Man’s nature is inherently evil, but you’re not as bad as you could be. We’d just rather do bad things than do what’s right.

Unconditional Election – You don’t choose God (and you wouldn’t anyway because you’re totally depraved). God chooses you.

Limited Atonement – Christ died for the elect (see Unconditional Election), not everybody.

Irresistible Grace – That you’re called by God and it’s not something you can just walk away from. It’s compelling and you actually want to go to Him.

Perseverance of the Saints – The “Once saved, always saved” principle.

Set in the same universe as The Delirium: A Zombie Opera of the Great War there is folklore about the dead rising in an apocalyptic event that set the course for much of human history. Religion has been done away with and is largely illegal, practiced in secret much like in communist utopias like the former Soviet Union and modern China. The difference here is within this fictional universe they won’t throw you in prison for being a Christian, Jew, or Muslim, but they’ll find ways to make your life difficult, leading up to a possible prison sentence if you really wear it on your sleeve. Here your religion is the state and you will bow to the proverbial chocolate bunny.

The thing is the skies are still sunny, despite the smog, and people go along happily with their lives. There’s no real domineering element that’s keeping people down. Certainly, there is a suggestive caste system, but the two primary groups of humans are too busy trying to subvert one another to oppress their own people. Their people are largely happy, so ultimately faith is seen as something that’s unecessary, at least on the surface, just like many who live happy lives on social media, but are miserable in their hearts. 

“Why do we need God when we have gods of gold, food, and sex?” they might ask. Ambition is their driving factor, not holiness. To this end, some characters are put into a position where they need to turn to something when faced with the vacuum of space and certain death all around them. Note that I wrote “some” not all. That’s your Limited Atonement and Irresistible Grace.

This doesn’t amount to high fantasy, much of this is as theologically sensitive as I can make it. It’s a space opera with a revival theme. There are those who turn from sin and those who don’t. Some who turn from their sins die horrifying deaths while others who embrace it live long and fruitful lives. Jacob I have loved… (Romans 9:13)

There are some cool things I put into this. I stole, and modified, transporters from Star Trek, personal shields from Dune, and people who have special powers I took from Star Wars, Stranger Things, and basically everything else you could think of. There are no aliens, per se, but there is a small horse-like animal with a horn they name a unicorn.

Much of the writing from here out will be piecemeal as I’m in school again (a subject for a different blog entry). But a major portion of this was written over two NaNoWriMo sessions and at least one Camp NaNoWriMo. From here it’s gentle plodding, but I could have it done in a couple of years. I’ll work some way into illustrating some of the material without giving too much of the plot away.

James Windale is the author of the Twenty-Five at the Lip series, Tuesday’s Gone, Just Say Maybe, and The Delirium: A Zombie Opera of the Great War.

Critical

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It’s early, and with the drive to his house I’ve had a much earlier start than Barry. I roll up to his house and he waves to me, an unlit cigar clenched in his teeth as he’s passing a pair of rods through the back gate of his 4Runner. It’s about as old as he is, at least in car years, and ambles along with a similar limp.

I spent the first year of my career running with my local hometown volunteer ambulance corps, and the satellite operation of a private outfit based out of Boston. I learned nothing my first year, relegated to a “Get out of the way” attitude and dialysis transports. Not so with Barry. After moving to Pinellas County, Florida at the end of 2004 I took a job in a local emergency department. Barry was assigned to me as a preceptor. A cardiac arrest rolled in that first night and when I told him I’d never done CPR before he threw me to the wolves. I learned more in a month than I had in the past year. “Crackin’ ribs your first night on the job! Kid’s a fahkin’ natural.”

Barry had been a corpsman with the First Marine Division in Vietnam. The hitch in his gitty-up was a combination of shrapnel and too many years playing semi-pro soccer in Europe (that’s futbol to us American savages). He became a Registered Nurse after realizing his playing days were over and had been wheeling and dealing in local ERs and ICUs ever since.

“It’s critical,” he’d emphatically state over some essential medical intervention, chewing a wad of gum when he couldn’t smoke a cigarette. Bilateral lines, type and cross, twelve leads, every one of them “Fahkin’critical!” Barry more or less adopted me, and the other two legs of my buddy tripod, as a surrogate sons. One of the legs tells me he cheats at golf, so I only fish with him. If we’re honest, and most fishermen are liars by default, cheating is okay as long as the hookups happen. It might even be essential. Fahkin’ critical…

There’s a case of beer in the back, condensation growing by the second in the Florida humidity. We still have to stop for ice. Depending on how the day goes, we may or may not stop at one of the restaurants with an inlet dock where we’ll get shitty on oysters, crab pate, and whiskey until we decide to sober up and bring the boat back. Otherwise, it’s cold Cubans and beers which won’t be bad because he’s already warned me that it’s going to be hot.

Barry’s not one to split hairs over the appropriate times for drinking a beer and right after I’ve ponied up for gas at the filling station in the marina he’s got one cracked beside the wheel on the center console. He sips at the suds, balancing the now-lit cigar just behind the cracked windscreen as we veer out of the channel and head for the smell of freshly-cut grass that can only mean one thing: bait.

He knows I’ve brought a fly rod, and if he’s honest, he’d rather hook a tarpon on the four inches of chicken feathers I’ve produced from the little box that’s marked ‘Poon Food, than his artificials. Bringing the boat around to the site of seagulls hovering, he passes me a cold one and limps up on the bow. He throws the casting net like a seasoned Cuban, the cigar clenched in his teeth, completing the picture. The beer is cold as the blue mountains promise, but he’s expecting me to steer while he throws the net and the in gear to neutral flip-flop that can sometimes take more than an hour.

“Waaaait,” he growls like a hound that just might have spotted a squirrel. He studies a patch of water at some distance for a moment before climbing down and taking the freshly cracked beer from my hand. “Get your rod, there’s one rolling at two o’clock.” Barry brings us about and brings us nearly parallel to the silver king. My heart is pounding as I know I’ve got one, maybe two shots at this before I spook it and it makes a run for Mexico. I manage to start a double haul despite my shaking hands as Barry slams the boat into neutral. The fly doubles over and lands too close, passing over the fish as I furiously strip.

“She’s a big fat pig,” Barry says as he slurps his beer. “You gotta get that thing in front of her, don’t bounce it off her head,” he explains as I pull back and start the cadence again. “Fahkin’ critical.”

My second attempt is in a better position, but she’s not interested. The next time she rolls, she’s farther down and closer to the beach, well out of range before I can even consider another cast.

“Ah, she’ll be back,” he assures me, but I know she’s gone. It’s not such a big deal though, it’s the middle of summer and they’ll be around until the fall at least before they head South again. In the spring they’ll show up off Boca Grande and the cycle will start again. He puts the boat back in gear and we jet off for a small cove he assures me is full of reds and trout.

Another spot of choppy water and hovering gulls piques his interest. “Get up there!” he spits, jamming the cigar back into his teeth. “Toss it right into the middle of all that shit. Let’s see what happens.”

The fly hits the water and I wait excitedly, forcing myself to count five Mississippis before I start stripping my line. I’m waiting, hoping, wishing, and praying for that telltale sign of something smacking the fly and committing to the mistake. There’s nothing, despite having pulled it through all that turbulence, nothing in all that chaos even takes notice. I’m about to pull from the water and start another cast when the line goes tight. I have enough foresight to not trout-set the hook and instead place just the lightest suggestion of tension on the line. There’s a slight tick-tick of the reel, and it starts to zing.

“Your drag!” Barry shouts. I brace the palm of my hand on the bottom of the reel and apply pressure with one hand, stuffing the butt of the rod into my armpit, and tightening down the drag knob with the other. The reel stops giving up line but I can still feel the tug on the other end as I start to pull it in. “Put him on the reel,” Barry says. “If he starts to run and you’ve got all that line around your feet you’ll be fucked eight ways from Sunday.”

“It’s no a tarpon,” I say as I bring it closer to the boat. “It’s got a little fight though.”

Barry peers over the side, gazing into the water through his polarized sunglasses. “Ladyfish,” he laments. “You wanted the big sonovabitch that was chasing it.”

He snatches it out of the water and shrugs as he pulls it off the hook. “Good bait, anyway. And they can be fun to catch when they’re big enough,” he chuckles as he tosses it into the live well. “They’re still out there. Give ‘em hell.”

I let the fly sail again, straight through the flock of seagulls and it lands just past the mess of choppy water. Barry belches as he cracks another beer “Strip it fast, make them strike on impulse.”

In this moment, we realize the game was over before it started. The sound of air puffing off our port side draws my attention and my heart sinks again. A small pod of dolphins cruises past and heads straight for the school, scattering it every which way. Once they show up, giving chase to the bait, whatever predatory fish were nearby will find new lunch options. Barry spits and flips off the mammals. “Dolphins are the jet skiers of the animal world.”

“Cocksuckers,” I lament as he brings us around again. I loop the line around the reel and set the hook inside a guide, ready to set in motion again if we spot a flash of silver or a rolling back.

The cove is nestled between two islands that had once been connected, but through various passing storms and hurricanes, the middle sand bar had been washed out. There’s a small inlet that we can cruise through if we want to head out into the Gulf proper, but Barry wasn’t kidding when he said it was hot, and now we’re ready to tie up beside the mangroves and marinate on the grass flat. I swap out the chicken feathers for something crunchy looking with legs and scan the grass flat for movement.

“Drink this,” he advises handing me a beer. It’s as good an idea as any, and opening his Pelican Case he produces a sticky joint, lighting it with the remnant embers of his dwindling cigar. Pulling the gasping ladyfish from the live well he steaks it sloppily with a filet knife and skewers a chunk of bloody flesh onto a hook. His spinning rod sings as he tosses it to the far end of the grass flat, the splash it makes barely audible in the hot stillness. The head of the ladyfish is still gasping with a look that reminds me of surprise as if it’s wondering where its rear end wandered off to.

“Beats the hell out of working,” he sighs. He slips his rod into the holder and commits to sliding into the water himself for the unspoken act of relieving himself. By this time I’m in the water myself, ignoring the fact that the water I’m in is mingling with his micturition. My beer is safely on the bow within reach. It’s a big-name brand, and while I prefer a microbrew, man code dictates that you don’t criticize the brand when you’re not paying for it. Besides that, it’s functional and essential to the overall process of fishing on the Gulf of Mexico. Beer is critical. Fahkin’ critical.

“Over there,” he says. His posture and concentration is still obvious, like a dog who found a hydrant. Toss one in that area of the grass. I more or less know where he’s gesturing and land the fly about thirty feet away, where the mangroves start, and start a count down from five.

The line goes tight and I assume I’m hooked up, but mangroves don’t pull back. My drag is already set and the fish is small enough to not need anymore. I’m half tempted to let off on it and fight the little speck, but it’s too hot. It’s too small to recover properly and to force it into a fight wouldn’t be sporting. I’m almost certain to release it, regardless of its size anyway, and to fight it would mean death by lactic acid buildup and suffocation, or being made lunch by any of the small sharks cruising the flats. I unbutton him, show him to Jerry who snaps a quick picture on his phone, and let him go.

“Good enough,” he grins.

James Windale is the author of Twenty-Five at the Lip, Just Say Maybe, and The Delirium: A Zombie Opera of the Great War. Follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Gray Ghosts and Jim Beam

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It’s the summer of 1999 and I’m sitting shotgun beside a man I’ve spent most of my life genuinely afraid of. Grampa isn’t much for conversation, at least with me, and I was far short of excited to learn that I’d be spending three days at a fishing camp in Rangeley, Maine with him. I’m going through with it because the alternative is listening to Mom’s ex-boyfriend crying in our garage as he tosses all the junk he’s filled our house with for the last five years. It’s all going into a dumpster in our driveway and it’s the sort of eyesore that draws neighborhood attention.

9/11 is still two years away and it’s the tail end of a decade that was nice to grow up in. Marcy Playground and Fastball are in my CD player, and they’re slowly getting scored by the laser that reads them. My ten-speed is my primary mode of transportation and I’m able to make my way around town easily enough, enjoying getting lost and trying to make sure I get home in time to claim it isn’t dark yet. It’s a pretty idyllic time bridging the gap between teenage youth and actual adult responsibility.

Why was I going on a fishing trip out of nowhere? Maybe Mom wanted to spare me the grief at the house, or maybe she wanted me to spend some time with the man, but I was having trouble reconciling the relationship I had with Grampa and the objective of the adventure. I’d spent most of my life passively avoiding a man that I was about to take a road trip with.

Fishing isn’t even on my radar at this point. Grampa tried to take me when I was younger but it didn’t take. Mostly, I think, because he expected a 6-year-old to be able to sit still for more than three minutes watching a bobber with a skewered, half-drowned worm on a hook. He ties flies with my uncle and they fish together, bitten by the fly fishing bug decades before. It’s their bonding element. Their special club.

Grampa purchased three-day licenses for us and bought a bunch of flies out of the glass-topped counter. “A Gray Ghost,” he pointed out to me; a name that had exactly zero meaning to me at this point. Our cabin faced the lower lake and I’m told that after the power is turned off I’ll have to flush the toilet with a bucket of water. I’m charmed by the simplicity and immediately wonder if there is a way to spend the rest of my life like this. Just disappear and never be heard from again.

Lakewood Camps is place out of time and there are no real roads to get there; somewhere between Kinnebunk-Nowhere and the third moose on the left; the sort of place where they say things like “A’yuh,” or “Ya cahn’t get there from hea.” He calls the lodge from a gas station pay phone to tell them we were twenty miles away and continue on passing buck-shot-riddled yield signs and endless evergreen forests. A retired Maine Game Warden picked us up at the dock and brought us down the length of the Richardson Lakes on a boat to a place called Middle Dam. At 10 p.m. they shut down the power to discourage the sort of loud booze-hounding and substance abuse I’d be doing with fishing buddies a decade later. You didn’t go up there for that.

We started out just below the dam on what’s known as the Rapid River. I received a short lesson in fly casting and could sense the frustration in his tone as he guided me, neglecting his own rod to make sure I was getting the most out of the trip. I didn’t have much in the way of luck, but Grampa’s tone is such that I want to do well in his eyes. I hate to disappoint people, and he is someone I’m genuinely afraid of, so my motivation is peaked.

We move down the river over the next few hours, rock-hopping from boulder to boulder, trying to keep my back cast out of the trees that line the bank behind us. With his trained eye he manages to spot a fish holding on the downstream side of a boulder on the opposite bank. It takes a few attempts, but I manage to drop the Gray Ghost just upstream of the boulder and let it sweep around, pulling slack out of the line just like Grampa told me. The line goes tight and I look on in horror as the rod bends and I feel the line slip back through my fingers.

“Easy,” he breathes. “Keep the pressure on him and gently pull him in on the line.” I do exactly as he says, almost fearing that the net he’s lowering into the water might get swung on me if I lose this fish connected to me through a few feet of line, feathers, and a barbless hook. In one of those wonders of parenthood, he manages to get the fish to slip effortlessly into the net like I knew what the heck I was doing. I take hold of the net and he’s snapping pictures on his SLR and he’s coaching me on the way to lift the rainbow out of the net to get the hero shot. This is easily the biggest fish I’ve ever caught (which isn’t saying much), dwarfing the bluegills I’d spin cast for in the ponds of my childhood. It kicks and squirms out of my hands before I can turn, splashing into the cold water.

I expect a burn. I’m waiting for the cutting remark of failure I’d learned to associate with a man who grew up bitter and angry at the world for the hand that it had dealt him. Turning shamefully to look in his direction I see his smile, the one my daughter will have in another couple decades. “Very good,” he says. I’m relieved. I’ve passed some kind of test and I feel like I’ve done something that counts in his eyes. My feet, encased in hip waders, are dangling in the river and I can feel the cool pull of the water against my ankles. I look at the rod in my hand feeling the weight and the balance with the reel. I’m in the club now.

Later that night the power is shut off as promised, but we’re sitting out in rocking chairs on the front porch of our cabin. The air is cool despite it being August and I’m glad to be wearing the sweatshirt that Gram told me to pack. Our rods are hung up on pegs behind us for easy access in the morning. Between us there is a pair of glasses and a bit of ice marinating in Jim Beam – working-class bourbon and his preferred brand. It’s something I’ve come to associate with him now and there is always a bottle in my own liquor cabinet today. It’s Jim Beam, Gray Ghosts, Brut aftershave, and the Masons that tie me to Grampa.

The layers that make up the man seem to fall away in the midst of this bull session. I realize there is much more to Grampa than I could have understood from my vantage point. He’d been intimidating in my eyes for years, but now he was different. He seemed a whole person, a human, and I was starting to understand him. He puts his glass down after a thoughtful pull and leans back in his rocking chair looking out on the still lake reflecting the stars in the heavens.

“This…” he says with a sigh, and I get it.

James Windale is the author of Twenty-Five at the Lip, Just Say Maybe, and The Delirium, A Zombie Opera of the Great War. Follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter

Promo of ‘The Delirium: A Zombie Opera of the Great War’

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There are some changes coming to the Windale brand. There’s been some thoughtful contemplation with morning coffee and some decisions have been made which will help to hone and improve our craft. Some titles will be updated and moved around a smidge, all improvements, I assure you. In the meantime, in observance of Reformation Day/Halloween, we here at the Windale Estate would like to offer a glimpse of The Delirium: A Zombie Opera of the Great War which is available on Amazon both on Kindle and in print.

In addition, NaNoWriMo is upon us again and I’ll be adding 50K words to my Reformed Space Opera currently with the working title of Terra Jovia. Feel free to follow along and add me as a writing buddy and we’ll all get through this together!

Without further, here’s a snippet of The Delirium.

A shadow walked past the window, a human figure. It was making its way around to the back of the church, but it was alone thankfully. Unfortunately, he was armed, his rifle slung across his back.

“We’ve got a straggler,” I said picking up my rifle.

“Have you got him?” Charles asked sounding like a recruitment poster.

“Naturally,” I said coming to my feet. I didn’t want to make too loud a sound, and so I slipped my bayonet over the muzzle of the rifle and went to the back door to wait for the German to show his face. I crouched down, ready to spring onto the man as I heard him shuffling about. It was a rather strange scene as he did not seem to have a care in the world, just walked about aimlessly as though he were drunk.

I flung open the door and charged out onto the rear stoop. The sudden movement caught his attention and he growled at me, his eyes were sunken and drained as if he had been long suffering from some sickening ailment. I lunged at him, the bayonet on the end of my rifle jabbing into the centre of his chest straight to the hilt. Blood ran down the front of his uniform soaking through and running into a puddle on the ground at his feet. The man looked at me without expression, only his sunken eyes suddenly realising that I was in front of him. He offered no cry or wince of pain, only an open mouth and a blood tinged gurgling moan that escaped his mouth as he raised his arms and tried to grab at me. His fingers like claws I saw the visage of a man who by all rights should have been dead, yet apparently unfazed by the bayonet protruding from his chest. His skin was splotchy with a purple hue and his eyes bore no apparent life to them. They simply stared at me with what I could only have surmised was… hunger.

With a ferocity he lunged at me, nearly knocking the rifle from my hands as I wielded him like a fish upon a line. He growled at me and gnashed his teeth, trying to pull me close in order to bring his jaws to bear on my body. I pulled the trigger on my rifle and he lurched, his torso wrenching backwards, but not falling wholly off the bayonet.

He remained there a moment and we both collapsed to the ground. I worked to catch my breath not wholly believing that I had encountered a man with such dexterity as to take a bayonet to the chest and not flinch! If all the Kaiser’s men were of such breeding I feared for the war effort. We would be done for.

Suddenly my fears were once again realised when the German on the end of my bayonet picked his head up and brought me into focus with his empty eyes. His mouth opened again and he pulled at my tunic, trying desperately to bring me to his jaws. This frightened me terribly as I had already run him through with the bayonet and then shot him through the heart. There could be nothing viable left in the man’s chest and yet he still came for me!

I put my boot to his chest and thrust him off my rifle.  He rolled onto the ground and flailed about, and to my horror began to find his feet and come to a standing position. Expelling the spent round from the chamber I advanced the next, aiming once again for his chest.

“Surrender, damn you!” I warned him. “Put your hands in the air and you’ll be given quarter!”

He put his hands up, but not to surrender. Reaching for me he hissed and lunged, his teeth gnashing at me. Utterly alarmed I swung my rifle about and offered his teeth the stock, which he bit into with some ferocity. We toppled over, landing on the ground by the church door. His teeth were covered in a film and his mouth wept with a putrid yellow fluid. He tried to remove the gun from his mouth, presumably to bring his teeth into my flesh. I know not why I thought of this in the moment, but he had a perfectly good rifle slung weakly over his shoulder, as well as a knife tucked into a sheath on his belt. He could have also bludgeoned me with his helmet, but it seemed that all he was interested in was biting me. Perhaps devouring me whole.

A commotion by the steps was my saving grace, but not from whom I expected. Our prisoner, Sergeant Schroeder, charged and hit the man atop me, flinging him off and causing him to land with a crunching thud on the tall grass. My assailant then made for one of his own while Schroeder crouched, lunging at him taking the knife from the man’s belt. He grabbed him by the throat and toppled him over backwards. Holding the man to the ground he thrust the knife into the eye of his own countryman. The man twitched and then lay still.

The next sound I heard was the sound of gun metal being raised. Charles and Buckley were at the door, their Lee-Enfields raised and leveled at Sergeant Schroeder.

“Drop the knife, mate,” Charles warned. The sergeant nodded and released it, dropping it to the ground with a quiet thud.

“We need to get indoors,” Sergeant Schroeder warned. “Immediately.”

(C) 2016 by James Windale, Red Drum Press.

The Miracle Worker

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Today I learned that the world lost a great man. This was a man who exemplified what it was to be a teacher. He expected a great deal from his students, but he always gave so much more in return. Those of us he knew personally he pushed to greater heights, knowing what we were capable of. Some of us were led into careers in the performing arts, while others chose a different path. What we all shared though was a love for a man who gave so much of himself to the students and the craft of theater.

I first met Tom Marcello in 1994 when I auditioned for the part of Benjamin, the youngest son of Jacob, in a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Despite my high hopes, I didn’t get the part, but he found a use for me in the chorus along with a group of kids. It was a small part, but the small parts make the whole complete, and he made us all feel important while holding us to the same standards that he held the leads to.

I’d often heard him referred to as The Miracle Worker. The first production he produced as the director of what would become my high school was called just that: The Miracle Worker. Over the years he would become a miracle worker for hundreds, even thousands of kids who came through the doors of the Joseph Case High School auditorium. When things looked bleak because of financial constraints, money appeared as if out of nowhere. This was a man who had touched so many lives that alumni donated time, money, and energy so that the kids that came after them could have the same experience they did. The theater competition banners that line the walls of the auditorium are a testament to his many great works and sacrifices.

Banners only show so much though, because you had to see him as he was. He carried a towel with him to rehearsals because before too long he was sweating as if he was running an aerobics class. His dedication allowed him to keep pace with the youngest and fittest people that he lead, and they hung on his every word. Mr. Marcello’s personality had him rushing about, from the stage to wardrobe to props to the crew, and if you took the time to say his full name to get this excited man’s attention he might miss you. We shortened it to M so that we could get his attention and get out what we needed to say. At least that’s the story I heard, and like any mythic giant there are lots of versions to the epic saga such as this man was.

By the time I got to high school I had known M from a number of productions I had been involved with. I had the benefit of an surrogate older sister and a longtime friend of M’s that helped me find out about auditions for shows he was doing, or the productions of people he knew. He needed a younger person for a part in his own authored production of We Will Remember , a production about the Holocaust, and so I went out for it. It was interesting to be kid from the jr. high having a part in the high school production, and it opened a number of doors for me. M’s multiple connections had information about productions at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, the Rhode Island School of Design, auditions in Boston in the theater district, and even a movie audition. Just having his name on my theater resume next to my head shot was enough to get consideration, but it also came with a great deal of expectation because anyone who worked with Tom Marcello was expected to do great things. And thanks to his guidance we did.

But none of this was ever about him. It was always about us. The sacrifices he made on our behalf were only ever closely duplicated by Brian McCann, his assistant and one of my English teachers who would later become vice-principal and principal of the high school. He worked himself into such a fervor on a daily basis and it was all for our benefit. In class he told us that after a stressful day he’d take a stroll through Toys R Us and push buttons on display models. It soothed his mind and I think in many ways it reminded him that what he was doing was for us; all his many kids.

I strayed from theater a long time ago when I realized that not every director was Tom Marcello. I was quickly burnt out working under a different director with a different style and my life took a different course very quickly. I’ve missed the theater, but given the schedule of a paramedic it’s hard to make the time. I turned to writing when I was 25 for the creative outlet I was so desperately craving and it’s done the trick. But the influence of Tom Marcello isn’t something that just fades away when he leaves your everyday life. He’s the kind of man you carry with you everywhere you go and you know that he carries you as well.

I know many people in the coming days who will be reflecting, shedding tears, and telling amazing stories about a man we all knew and loved. While I won’t be able to attend any memorials or services, I will be there in spirit. It’s a sad thing that we sometimes only think of the people who’ve touched our lives when they’re no longer with us. Remembering people like Mr. Marcello allows us to recall why they were important to us in the first place. This in turn will help us to better ourselves so that we can share a little bit of his light with those who don’t have an M in their lives. Continuing your influence through others long after you’ve gone – that’s a miracle worker.

 

Here’s a site that catalogues some pictures from various productions run by the Joesph Case High School Theater Company

‘Just Say Maybe’ Promo

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Check out a little bit of Just Say Maybe below. There’ll be a link at the bottom where you can go to the Amazon page and buy it in paperback or on Kindle.

from Just Say Maybe

11202821_497563537092010_3897296379655184939_nIn April of 1994 my sister Bonnie spent a week in her room sobbing into her flannel shirt and ripped jeans because her idol, Kurt Cobain, had stuffed enough heroin up his arm to put a rhino down and then blew his face off with a shotgun. She had been something of a prude about Nirvana, slamming her door in my face when I wanted to listen with her and her friends.

“Stay the fuck out of my room, Ashley!” she’d bark, her hair looking ridiculous, dyed red with Kool-Aid.

It didn’t matter that she didn’t want her “baby” sister tagging along with her friends. All I was interested in was the music and she played it loud enough so that I could hear it through her bedroom door. Mom bought me my own CD player for Christmas-1994, a Sony model with detachable speakers and a duel cassette player for transferring music from one tape to another or from CD to tape, for which I bought a stack of blank tapes from Strawberries at the Pheasant Lane Mall. Sneaking into Bonnie’s room I pilfered her Nirvana collection and put them on tape for myself. Meanwhile Bonnie began telling anyone who would listen that her Easter was now going to fall on April 8th, the day Kurt Cobain was found rather than the day he actually died. Like a lot of teenage girls, I suppose myself included, she could be a bit dramatic.

A stack of blank cassette tapes opened up the promise of making mix tapes, sitting with the radio on, the tape advanced to the right position waiting patiently for the DJ to play the song you wanted to record. This was my way of starting my own music collection, the CD player on top only for recording music, or as the later vernacular would call it “ripping”. The radio was an avenue to entertainment I had never been truly exposed to with the exception of my dad’s classic rock station and the vinyl LPs that still graced the turntable stereo in the living room. A year passed and Bonnie moved beyond Nirvana and adopted the Phish, a sound that made me gag just slightly more than the smells that came from her room while she listened to it. As her musical taste declined I was forced to seek out other music on my own and it was while I was waiting for a song by Alanis Morissette that I heard the most amazing thing that any thirteen year old girl in the post-Nirvana world had ever heard. That was the day I fell in love with The Smashing Pumpkins.

I sat in my swivel chair knocking myself back and forth on the rolling wheels, my Airwalks dirty and loosely tied. Billy Corgan’s voice had a quality to it that I had never found in Kurt Cobain or any other musician. The instrumentals in the song spoke to me with a lyrical storytelling was too much for me to bare and I pushed PLAY/RECORD after the first chorus. The song ended and I rewound the tape, playing it back and getting the same chills and goosebumps on my arms and legs that had been there when I heard it. I sat fixated on the dual black speakers, watching as they vibrated with each pulse of D’arcy’s bass. It was all so hypnotizing and I sat with my mouth hung open, the Red Hot Fireball I’d been working on dropping out and rolling across the floor.

Just Say Maybe © 2016 by James Windale

Click here to get Just Say Maybe in paperback and on Kindle!

Bright Lights and Cold Steel

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This week I published my third title on Amazon in both paperback and on Kindle. Bright Lights and Cold Steel is a prequel to my EMS novel Twenty-Five at the Lip and takes place in the early 1980s. It features a number of familiar faces from Twenty-Five at the Lip like Richard Henry, John Davis, Frank Macomber, Dr. Wilson, and Marty from the Union ER when he was still working as a tech.

I’ve always been fascinated by the practice of EMS and firefighting in the era when I was young or not even born yet. Bright Lights is something of a gray area in this sense because I was born the year that this story takes place in. In Twenty-Five at the Lip Frank Macomber laments about how the service has changed in the years since he started working in it; how crews used to help one another, partied together, etc. regardless of the uniform they wore. Bright Lights and Cold Steel gets into some of that.

G from The EMS Lounge was good enough to give me a shout out after beta-reading Bright Lights. If you haven’t heard The EMS Lounge podcast you should definitely check it out. It’s both insightful and humorous and is one of my all-time favorite podcasts. They are also on iTunes so if you can get over there, give them a listen they’d definitely appreciate it.

In a final thought, I’m working on getting my Facebook author page up past 500 followers. When this happens I’ll be giving away, at random, several signed copies of Twenty-Five at the Lip. I imagine I’ll also be doing something similar when I get to 1000 followers and so on and so forth.

—

from Bright Lights and Cold Steel

IMG_0367 copy.The phone ringing woke Richard from a sound sleep. It rang twice before Meg picked it up and he checked his wrist watch to see the time. It was 2:05 in the morning and he rubbed his eyes while Meg took the call. It was possible that the call could be turfed off on a EMT-Basic crew, but the feeling sitting in the pit of his gut told him he was about to be getting up.

The top door to Meg’s dispatch office opened and she leaned out with a slip of paper in her hand.

“Richard,” Meg rasped. “I need you and John to take it uptown. 19 Dexter Street for the difficulty breathing.”

He sighed, coughing into his elbow before swinging his legs over the edge of his bunk. “Got it,” he said. “I’ll go wake up John.”

Pulling his shirt back on he pushed the swinging door out into the garage where he found the ambulance parked in front of the door, right where they had left it. He reasoned that even if it had been a Basic call that he was going to have to move the Cadillac for them anyway and then he and John would be up for the next run.

He hit the garage door button on the wall and the door began to open. Walking to John’s office bunk room he wrapped on the door. “John, we got a job,” he called before going back to the Cadillac. He hopped into the driver’s seat and started the engine, checking the rear view for John to emerge from his office. Impatiently Richard climbed out of the driver’s seat and went to the door again, half expecting the man to be opening the door as he approached. Richard knocked again, this time John calling angrily through the door.

“What?!”

“We got a run!” Richard said. John groaned from behind the door.

“Take one of the Basic’s with you,” he said. Richard was about to argue that if another call came in then he was going to have to take it with the other Basic’s partner, a situation that nobody but Richard could truly stand to be in. Richard sighed and pushed the swinging door into the quarters and called to the sleeping crew.

“Which one of you wants to go on a medic run?”

The first on their feet was the girl on the top bunk, a short freckle-faced new girl with braided red hair. “Me! I do!”

“What’s your name?” Richard asked.

“Doreen,” she said.

“Alright Doreen, do you now where Dexter Street is?”

Doreen thought for a moment and then nodded, “It’s up past the community college, a few streets west of the cemetery.”

“Good,” Richard said walking back out into the garage. “Grab your shit, let’s go.”

John had made a point of not hiring females until it was brought to his attention that the practice was completely illegal. He believed that a woman’s place in the job market was as a secretary, a nurse, or a teacher. As he famously quoted when he opened the doors of Pocasset Ambulance, “A woman can’t be an ambulance driver…” something he still said in private company, mostly to Richard, which to Richard elaborated on just how much John Davis knew about his own company. He knew that John would have a few things to say about Doreen taking the call with him, but Richard wasn’t about to put sexism before patient care.

Richard climbed into the passenger seat and rolled the window down as Doreen scrambled into the garage bay still buttoning her shirt. She slipped on a patch of oil and fell onto the hood of the Cadillac. Horrified at her own clumsiness and shot back up and rounded the front of the car, swinging the door open and tossing herself in.

“Slow down, it’s not your emergency,” Richard said. “Light it up, but you can leave the siren off unless we hit traffic.”

“OK,” Doreen said as she put the car in gear. They rolled out into the lot and Richard tapped the garage door button on the visor of the Cadillac. Doreen pulled out onto the street, silent and still in the middle of the night.

“How long have you been an EMT?” Richard asked.

Doreen swallowed and adjusted her hands on the steering wheel. “About two months,” she said.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Twenty,” she said. “But I was in the healthcare program at Diman…” she said tossing the technical high school’s name out, hoping it had some meaning to her new senior crewman. She fidgeted in the driver’s seat, beginning to sweat as Richard leaned back. He looked back into the rear of the Cadillac and Doreen turned around too.

“What are you doing? Watch the road!” Richard said.

“Sorry!” Doreen said nervously.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s just that you’re Richard Henry.

“So what?”

“So you’re the boss’ right hand man…”

“Woah hold on there,” Richard said laughing. “I work with John, that doesn’t mean I’m his right hand man.”

“Sorry,” Doreen said sheepishly.

“Doreen,” Richard said. “Relax, alright? Like I said, this isn’t your emergency. Have you done many emergency runs, or just transfers?”

“I’ve only done a couple emergencies that Meg threw us when you or the other medics were busy. Mr. Davis said that he had to hire me, but didn’t want me running emergency calls.”

“Well, that’s some bullshit right there,” Richard said hanging his elbow out the window. You’ve been to school, you’re capable.”

Doreen sighed and turned onto Bedford Street, opening up the accelerator. “To be honest, I’m afraid of screwing up. I jumped at the chance to do a medic call because I want the experience, but I’m afraid of messing up.”

Richard shook his head, “You’re not going to mess up. Just follow my lead and I’ll have you listen to lung sounds and take a blood pressure. The best kind of experience is real world experience.”

“Alright,” Doreen said. “What’s the call for?”

“Respiratory difficulty,” Richard said. “You ever handle something like that?”

“No, like I said I’ve only had a couple of emergencies. A nursing home fall and a hangnail.”

“A what? A Hangnail?”

“Yea. The Kimwell Home called it in last week and Meg turfed it to us.”

“Did you drive or tech the call?” Richard asked.

“I teched it,” Doreen said.

“And how’d that one go? What did you do?”

“Well there wasn’t much to do,” Doreen explained. “I took a blood pressure and dropped her off at Union.”

“That sounds like a successful call to me,” Richard said smiling at her. “What about the fall? What did you do there?”

“Well I drove, but I put her on a backboard with Reggie, dressed a head wound, and took her blood pressure, pulse, and respirations on scene while Reggie got report from the nurse.”

“So you’re basically telling me that you ran the call, but Reggie rode in while you drove?”

“I guess,” Doreen said.

“I think you’ll be fine, Doreen,” Richard said. “This one might be a little more complicated, but we’ll see how it goes.”

Bright Lights and Cold Steel, Copyright © 2016 by James Windale

Both Twenty-Five at the Lip and Bright Lights and Cold Steel are available on Amazon in paperback and on Kindle. Click on the images below to be redirected to the Amazon page!IMG_0367 copy.

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Tuesday’s Gone Promotional Piece

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This story takes place in 1924…

From Chapter 1

Official Tuesday's Gone Kindle CoverTuesday loved to ride the train at night. It was loud, but the rocking motion of the long line of cars hauling cargo, performers, and animals was such that it rocked her to sleep easily. Tucked under her burlap blanket and laying on fresh hay was as good a place to make her bed as any. A few feet away from her in the corner, a hole had grown progressively larger in the past few months thanks to the rotten wood there. On nights where the moon was bright she could even see out of it, watching the ground whiz past in a blurry rush of blue. Grass and rocks were sometimes discernible, but specific landmarks were not and she had to look through the boxcar door for that. The door was always open, even in the winter which was possible because in the winter the circus train traveled south, first into the Carolina’s and then Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. She knew that it would eventually take them into Mexico and it would be like summer down there until it got warm in the northern United States and southern Canada and they would return there in the summer.

A black woman sat in the open doorway peeling apples with a pairing knife. Tuesday watched as she peeled them in the light of the moon. She cut them and then dropped them into the metal pale with a crank operated masher attached to the rim beside her. They made a peculiar plunking sound as she dropped them in and she could hear them even over the noise of the train as it rolled over the tracks. The woman’s legs hung out over the edge of the doorway and beyond her Tuesday could see the landscape outside as the train passed through sleepy towns on the way to their next stop. Some of the towns had buildings with lights on and Tuesday tried to see what was going on inside the buildings as they passed them.

“You’re awake, Tuesday,” the woman said. The woman continued pairing her apples, a knowing smile appearing on her face in the moonlight. Tuesday sniffed and rubbed her nose.

“How did you know?” she asked.

“You’ve been sleeping in this boxcar with me for years, girl. You think I don’t know how my babies sleep?” she said.

Tuesday looked around the car. Along the wall lay several other children between the ages of five and fourteen, sleeping on the cold, moist hay. It had rained several days earlier and the water had leaked in. Tuesday found that if she could get past the first few moments of laying on the hay, it would warm up once she lay still with the burlap blanket drawn up over her.

The black woman, whose right name was Millie, took care of the girls and boys who belonged to the circus. Millie had come from a plantation in Georgia, born in servitude and now serving a different master who gave her wages. Millie’s hair was gray and nappy, though hidden under a scarf that she kept wrapped around her head. Her dress was stained with sweat around her armpits and the threadbare apron she wore up to twenty hours a day while taking care of her surrogate children. Millie sighed and put her head back. Without turning to look into the train car she said. “If you’re going to be up you might as well help me with breakfast.”

Tuesday knew better than to disobey Millie and got up from her sleeping spot, leaving the burlap blanket behind. She wore a white tank top undershirt and a pair of bloomers, but the most striking feature of Tuesday was the tattoos that covered her body from her neck to her feet. Nearly every square inch of her eight-year-old body was covered in intricate tattoos, a job requirement for her position in the sideshow. The soles of her bare feet did not mind the rough wooden planks of the rail car, as her hands and feet were well calloused from trapeze acts and tumbling.

Tuesday bent forward and placed her hands on the floor, swinging her legs up where her head should have been and walked on her hands to the edge of the train car and the door. She could see the ground moving quickly by as the train rolled over the tracks and the wind caught her hair, blowing it in Millie’s direction.

“I’ll not comb your hair more than once a day, Tuesday,” Millie warned her. “It will get tangled like that.”

“Yes’m,” Tuesday replied dropping her legs quietly, concentrating all the energy in her core and arms. She passed her legs and body through her arms, her palms planted firmly on the floor of the rail car and set her bottom between them. She kicked her legs out of the rail car door and Millie handed her the pairing knife, pulling the sack of apples closer to the girl.

“Where’d you get the apples, Miss Millie?” Tuesday asked.

“Mistuh Tyler got them at our last stop in Staunton,” Millie said. “He’s always looking out for you children.” Tuesday smiled and cut into the top of her first apple letting the blade ride along the curvature slicing the skin off in a coiled string. His first name was Tyler, but all the children called him Mr. Tyler out of respect for Miss Millie who insisted that the children not be familiar with their elders.

“I like Mister Tyler,” Tuesday said. She cut the apple in half and sliced out the core on both halves.

“He’s a fool,” Millie said of the sword swallower. “But he’d sooner go hungry than see you children go without.”

“I think I would marry Mister Tyler,” Tuesday said as she dropped the apple into the grinder. Millie began to turn the crank and the coil inside the slot began to turn, catching the apple inside and beginning to break it apart into a mashed form and falling into the pale.

“Mister Tyler is more than twice your age,” Millie said. “Besides you’re just a girl and shouldn’t be thinking about boys, never mind men like him.”

“I like his mustache,” Tuesday said. “It makes him look like a walrus.” Tuesday giggled and started in on another apple before Millie reminded her what her job was. She looked past her bare legs and knees down to her toes covered in dark inked patterns, symbols, and swirling designs. Tattooed on the top of each of her toes were little stars painted in a rainbow pattern. Tuesday had seen other children in the towns they visited, but none of them looked like her friends in the circus. Most of them were acrobats and tumblers, but she was one of the side show; members of what people in towns whispered about under the term freaks of nature. One boy, called Sam, had a furry face and body. At only twelve years old he looked like a furry dog, which was how he had gotten the stage name The Wolf Boy. Only a few of them were actually related, specifically the acrobats that Tuesday performed with. She shared her spot in the rail car with their youngest daughter Nicole who was nine years old. Most of the young children in the side show were part of performing families, but Tuesday had been acquired through a trade deal when she was a baby. She had been young enough to forget most of the experience of tattooing but Millie could remember the baby crying. The owner wanted to get as much out of the girl as he could and set the acrobats and tumblers to teaching her their craft as soon as was possible.

“Miss Millie, am I pretty?” Tuesday asked. Tuesday had seen the children in other towns and cities all over the country. Children in Mexico and Canada too, and none of them had tattoos. They looked freshly washed and well fed, leaving half eaten popcorn and cotton candy in rubbish cans and in the dirt outside the main tent of their three ring circus. She saw the way they looked at her in the side show, mothers and fathers appalled at such creatures as she and her other sideshow cast members.

“Tuesday, you is a child of God,” Millie said. “You is beautiful.”

Tuesday’s Gone © 2015 by James WindaleOfficial Tuesday's Gone Kindle Cover

Cover art ©2015 by Jennifer Johnston and Jennifer Johnston Illustration

Tuesday’s Gone is available on Amazon in paperback and on Kindle.