A friend points out that I idiotically stated in a recent post that writing is fun. Poking yourself in the eye with a pointed stick is fun, compared to writing.
Having written is what is fun. You just need to go through the terrifying excruciating writing part to get to the deeply satisfying having written part.
This blog regrets the error.
In today‘s New York Times.
“I know I’m not going to write as well as I used to. I no longer have the stamina to endure the frustration. Writing is frustration — it’s daily frustration, not to mention humiliation. It’s just like baseball: you fail two-thirds of the time.” He went on: “I can’t face any more days when I write five pages and throw them away. I can’t do that anymore.”
Haven’t added one of these rules for writing lately. So here goes. As always, they are intended for people (like me) who aren’t good enough to break all the rules. And the numbers are pretty random.
So I’ve started a new novel, and I have sent the first two chapters off to my writing group, and a few days later I’m sitting in someone’s living room sipping a beer as they take out their copies of the manuscript to critique it. And I can feel the same old tension rising in me — heart beating a little faster — prepared to convince myself that, even if they don’t like it, I know it’s pretty good. Or, at least, not too bad. Or something. This ritual with my writing group has gone on for a long time now — since the Carter administration, actually. Or maybe it was the Harding administration — the administrations all kind of blur together after a while. And I still get nervous.
It’s even worse when someone starts reading over my shoulder as I work on something. That terrifies me. If the person offers any criticism, I’m full prepared to say: Well, it isn’t done yet. Just some random ideas. I’m probably not going to finish it. And I know that paragraph sucks. I was totally going to rewrite it. Really, I was.
Writing is fun. Being read is hard — even by people who know you. Especially by people who know you. But the best way to improve your work is by getting opinions about it and figuring out what to do about them.
Here are some characteristics of good readers:
Girlfriend: “How come you break up with me in that story?”
You: “It’s a story. The characters are made up.”
Girlfriend: “Yeah? They broke up in a restaurant. We had a fight in a restaurant.”
You: “But the character is a redhead and you’re–“
Girlfriend: “You thought you could just change my hair color so I wouldn’t notice that she’s me, and you want to break up? How stupid do you think I am?”
Now, your girlfriend is probably right about everything, but she’s not helping you improve the story. And that, after all, is what matters.
Good readers are hard to find. I’ve been really lucky with my readers, ever since the Carter administration. Or maybe it was Truman. If you find some good readers, hold onto them. Hold onto your girlfriend, too, but keep her away from your fiction.
Stuck in some kind of alternate universe with Boston under siege by the Portuguese and Canadians, Kevin and Larry found their way to the refugee camp in the Fenway. Then Kevin had the bright idea of showing his calculator/watch to the soldiers. That got them out of the crowded, dangerous camp, but instead they ended up in the brig — not much better! What will the new day bring them?
Earlier chapters are up there on the menu, under “Portal.”
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Chapter 7
When I woke up it was light out, and at first I had no clue where I was. Why wasn’t I looking at the Final Fantasy poster in my bedroom? How come I was so uncomfortable? What was that weird dream I’d had? Who was that huge man glaring at me from across the room?
Chester. All the memories of yesterday came flooding back. This wasn’t a dream.
I looked over at Kevin. He was still asleep.
“Boys,” Chester rumbled. “I don’t like boys.”
“Uh, hi,” I said.
Chester just shook his head and glared at me some more.
Benjamin must have heard us, because he unlocked the door and stuck his head in. “‘Morning, gents,” he said. “Chester, you may be excused. Go thou and sin no more.”
“I’m hungry,” Chester said.
Benjamin shook his head. “Not my problem, Chester. Now be off to the mess, before we become angry.”
Amazingly, Chester got to his feet, dusted off his dirty red jacket, glared at me one final time, and then obediently walked out of the brig.
Benjamin then turned his attention to Kevin and me. “Sleep well, lads?”
I nodded. Kevin had awakened and was rubbing his eyes sleepily.
“Did Sergeant Hornbeam say anything about what’s going to happen to us?” I asked.
“Sergeant Hornbeam is not with us at the moment. You’ll need to stay here until he sends instruction.”
“Any chance we could go to the mess?” I asked. “I’m pretty hungry.”
“Let me see what I can do,” Benjamin said, and he left, locking the door behind him.
Kevin sat up. “I dreamed that this was all a dream,” he said.
“Maybe we’ll wake up again, and you’ll be right.”
“Wouldn’t that be good.” He sighed. “I’ve gotta use that thing over there,” he said, pointing to the pot in the corner of the cell. I closed my eyes while Kevin did his business.
Were there any flush toilets in this world, I wondered. Did they have toothpaste? Hot showers?
Eventually Benjamin came back with a tray of food: cups of tea and bowls of, well, mush. It could have been oatmeal, but it didn’t have any milk or sugar, and it was all I could do to get a few spoonfuls down. I’d never drunk tea before, and that didn’t taste much better. When I had finished trying to eat, I was as hungry as when I started. Kevin had barely touched his food either. He was looking pretty glum.
After a while Benjamin came for the trays. “Porridge not to your liking?” he asked.
“Can we go outside?” Kevin asked back. “We won’t leave, I promise.”
Benjamin considered. “All right. It’s going to be hot–not a good day to spend in the brig. But stay right by the barracks.”
We followed him out of the cell. There were only a few soldiers in the barracks, plus an old man mopping the floor. We went outside. It did feel like it was going to be a hot day. No air conditioning, I thought. No fans. I looked around. None of the buildings had been painted, and there was lumber lying around on the ground. They had been put up in a hurry, I realized.
We sat down on some boards by the entrance to the barracks and watched the wagons go by, heading for the camp.
“Maybe now’s the time to leave,” Kevin said.
“You mean: go back to Glanbury?”
“Yeah. We could stay off the main road and hide from the Portuguese army. If we started now, we could probably make it by dark.”
“You think the New England soldiers’d let us out that gate we went through?”
Kevin thought for a second. “I don’t know. Anyway, there’s got to be a way around,” he decided. “They can’t fence in the whole city.”
“And you think the Portuguese army wouldn’t shoot us if they caught us?” I said. “Or at least treat us worse than this? You think we’re smart enough to find the portal without getting caught? It was your idea to do this thing with the watch, Kevin. Why don’t we just see what happens?”
He didn’t answer. “I wish I was in school,” he said.
“I wish I had a bowl of Frosted Flakes and a big glass of orange juice.”
We fell silent, and just sat there in the hot sun.
Eventually Caleb came by. “Morning, mates,” he said. “Anything happen yet with your ciphering machine?”
We shook our heads. “I hope Sergeant Hornbeam hasn’t forgotten about us,” Kevin said.
“No, no, he wouldn’t do that. He’s a busy man, though. We’re all busy, more’s the pity. Looks like the camp’ll fill up today. Have to open up another one somewhere. Never knew there was this many people in all of New England.”
“Is there some way we could talk to him?” Kevin asked.
“Oh, he’ll be around. Never worry, mates. Just enjoy the day.”
Then he went off, and we were left to ourselves again. Soldiers came and went. Most of them knew seemed to know about us and asked about the “ciphering machine.” A couple of them looked at us like we were going to put a curse on them. The sun got hotter. There was no sign of Sergeant Hornbeam.
Then a carriage pulled up in front of the barracks, and a fat officer got out. The soldiers guarding the entrance stood at attention and saluted. The officer was bald, with red cheeks and bushy gray eyebrows, and his uniform was soaked with sweat. When he saw us, he stopped. “Who the devil are you?” he demanded.
“We’re waiting for Sergeant Hornbeam, sir,” Kevin said. “He has a watch of mine that–”
“Oh, that nonsense. Just a gewgaw, if you ask me. Well, you can’t just sit around idly all day. There’s a war on, in case you haven’t noticed.” He turned to one of the soldiers. “Corporal–er?”
“Hennessy, sir.”
“Corporal Hennessy,” he repeated. “Find ’em something to do.” Then he went inside the barracks and started yelling at the soldiers there about shaping up and looking sharp, there was a war on.
Corporal Hennessy looked at us. “Colonel Clarett worries that we’ll forget we’re at war,” he said. “I think his concern is misplaced, don’t you? Anyway, let’s find you a chore.”
We got up and went with him. “Is Colonel Clarett in charge of the camp?” Kevin asked.
The corporal nodded. “And a nasty job it is, too. No matter what you do, someone’ll criticize you. Treat folks too well, you’re wasting food. Treat ’em too poorly, you’re starving good New England citizens. Let’s just hope this doesn’t last long.”
“He said our watch was nonsense,” Kevin went on. “Does that mean–”
“Means nothing, mate. I heard about that watch. Lucky for you Sergeant Hornbeam was on duty last night. He’ll know what to do with it.”
The corporal led us into another long, unpainted building behind the barracks. It had an awful stench coming out of it. “What’s that smell?” Kevin asked.
The corporal gave him an odd look. “Luncheon,” he said. “Have you never smelled salt pork before?”
We went inside. There was one long room, with tables and benches along the wall. There were no screens on the open windows, and flies were buzzing everywhere. A few soldiers were sitting at one of the tables and eating off tin plates. They were stabbing their meat with their knives and sticking it straight into their mouths, I noticed. Didn’t they have forks here? My mother went nuts if she caught any of us putting a knife in our mouths.
We went through the room. Beyond it was a kitchen, where a shirtless, sweating man was standing over steaming pots set on woodstoves. Corporal Hennessy greeted him cheerily. “Coolest place in Boston, eh, Jonathan?”
Jonathan responded with a string of words my mother would have shot me for saying. This didn’t seem to bother the corporal. “Need any help here?” he asked. “I have a couple of lads willing to pitch in.”
Jonathan glanced at us and shook his head. “Try the warehouse,” he said.
“Very well, then. Your loss.” We went out through the kitchen and saw a much larger building surrounded by guards. Soldiers were lugging sacks out of it and loading them onto a bunch of wagons. The corporal went up to a big, bearded soldier who was supervising the loading and said, “Need a couple of extra hands, Tom?”
Tom gave us the look we were used to by now. “What are those outfits?” he asked. “Costumes for harvest festival?”
“We’re, uh, not from around here,” Kevin said.
“No, and you haven’t done much laboring, from the look of you. Well, we can remedy that. Head on inside and grab some sacks. The camp awaits its midday meal.”
“Keep ’em alive, Tom,” Corporal Hennessy said. “They’re guests of Colonel Clarett.”
Tom just grunted.
“Fare you well, lads,” the corporal said to us, and headed back to the barracks. Tom waved us inside the building.
It was filled with shelves, and on the shelves were the sacks the soldiers were loading onto the wagons. “What’s in them?” Kevin asked one of the soldiers.
“Corn,” he replied as he slung a sack over his shoulder. “Folks’ll be mighty tired of corn before long.”
I tried lifting a sack; I couldn’t. Kevin was a shrimp, and he obviously wasn’t going to be able to pick one up. “We’ll have to do it together,” I said.
“This is embarrassing,” Kevin muttered.
“Just shut up and help.”
So the two of us picked up a sack and staggered outside with it. Tom laughed when he saw us. “Nicely done, lads,” he said as we managed to push it onto a wagon. “Heft twenty or thirty more, and you’ll have it mastered.”
We managed to load about half a dozen sacks before our arms turned to rubber and we had to take a break. There was a barrel of warm water in a corner, and we splashed some over us and drank what we could, but it tasted awful. “This is going to kill us,” Kevin said.
“Let’s just slow down. They don’t seem to care what we do, as long as we don’t look like we’re goofing off.”
We tried that, but it was still too hard. I always thought of myself as being in pretty good shape. I play soccer, and I have some ten-pound dumbbells that I work out with sometimes at home. But this was just way beyond me.
Luckily, after we’d loaded a few more sacks Tom decided there was enough food for the camp, and it was time for us all to take a break and have our own lunch. The wagons went off to the camp, and we went into the mess hall for some salt pork, boiled corn, and tea. I was hungry enough now that the food actually didn’t taste too bad. I think I needed the salt after all the sweating I’d done.
While we ate we listened to the men complain. “We’re soldiers, not laborers,” a thin, wiry man said. “They should get the farmfolk to do this.”
“They’d just stuff their pockets full of grain,” the soldier sitting next to him pointed out.
“Shoot ’em if they steal. That’s what’d happen to us.”
“We should make ’em all soldiers,” a third soldier said. “You think we can defeat the Portuguese and the Canadians with the army we’ve got now?”
“I hear they’re signing up all the able-bodied men,” the thin soldier said. “We’d be worse off if we had to take the rest of them.”
“Doesn’t matter who we get,” yet another soldier muttered. “We’ve no hope of winning in any case.”
That caused everyone to fall silent until Tom ordered us back to work in the warehouse. Now we had to clean up the spilled grain. This was a whole lot easier than lugging the sacks, but the heat inside the building was almost unbearable. “Wish I had a Pepsi,” Kevin said.
“A Sprite.”
“Dr. Pepper.”
“Diet Fresca.”
We came up with all the soft drink names we could think of. But we weren’t going to get any. All we had was a barrel of warm water that was probably crawling with germs.
“What happens when the food runs out?” Kevin asked the thin soldier.
He shook his head. “That’s when we surrender, mate. Let’s hope we don’t have too many die before that happens.”
“How long till it’s gone?”
“Don’t know. Depends on how many people show up and how much they bring with ’em. Couple of months, I reckon.”
That didn’t sound good. Kevin was about to ask another question when we noticed Sergeant Hornbeam standing in the doorway. His red hair looked like it was on fire. “What are you boys doing?” he demanded.
“Colonel Clarett told us we had to work,” I explained. “So Corporal Hennessy brought us over here.”
Sergeant Hornbeam rolled his eyes. “Naturally,” he muttered. “Have to put you two back in the brig,” he said to us. “Come along.”
I dropped my broom without a complaint. Hard to believe I’d be happy to go to jail, but I was.
“What happened with the watch, sir?” Kevin asked the sergeant as we headed back to the barracks. “Did you show it to anyone?”
Sergeant Hornbeam didn’t bother to answer. He was walking so fast, it was hard to keep up.
“Please don’t just hold onto it,” Kevin persisted. “It’s more than a toy.”
“Still don’t understand how you boys got hold of that thing,” the sergeant said.
“Well, it’s complicated, sir,” Kevin began. But Sergeant Hornbeam waved him silent. We had reached the barracks, and he started shouting for Benjamin, who came waddling in, stuffing his shirt into his pants.
“Sorry, Sergeant,” he said. “Making a visit to the outhouse.”
“Kindly lock these two up once again,” Sergeant Hornbeam ordered him. “And this time don’t let ’em out on anyone’s word except mine.”
“What about the colonel, Sergeant?”
The sergeant muttered something under his breath, then turned and strode out of the barracks without answering.
Benjamin turned to us. “Sorry, lads. What was it you did, anyway?”
“Nothing, really,” I said.
He shrugged and ushered us back into the cell, locking the door behind us. It was still empty. I slumped back down on the floor, and Kevin slumped next to me.
“This is good,” he said.
“Good not to be hauling sacks of grain,” I agreed.
“Yeah, but good because Hornbeam thinks we’re so important he has to keep us locked up.”
“If you say so. I just wish something would happen.”
“Yeah, I know. I was thinking,” he went on. “Remember how Stinky Glover and Nora Lally showed up in that other world you visited? I wonder if people from our world are here, too.”
“This place is a whole lot different than our world,” I pointed out.
“I know, but it’s not totally different. There’s still a Glanbury, still a Boston. So it’s a possibility, right? What if our families were living in Glanbury? What if they’re in that camp over there right now?”
I closed my eyes and felt a lump rising in my throat. “You know what, Kevin? I don’t really want to think about that.”
“Yeah,” he said softly, “I guess you’re right.”
We must have fallen asleep then, because the next thing I knew, a loud voice was shouting, “Wake up, dammit, don’t you know there’s a war on?”
I opened my eyes and saw Colonel Clarett standing over us. Behind him was Benjamin, holding a lantern and yawning.
“Come on, come on,” the colonel said. “We don’t have all night.”
I struggled to my feet, then helped Kevin up.
“That’s it, then,” the colonel said. “Let’s go.”
We followed him out of the cell.
“It’s all nonsense,” he told us, “but there you have it. The enemy’s at our gates, and they’re interested in gewgaws.” He led us to a room in a corner of the barracks. “My own office,” he muttered. “And where do I go meanwhile?”
He opened the door, and we went inside. A tall, black-haired man in a uniform was standing behind a desk.
“Here they are, Lieutenant,” Colonel Clarett said. “And much luck may you have of ’em. If you want my opinion, they’re a pair of thieves, and that’s that. Look at the hat on the little one,” he said, gesturing at Kevin’s Red Sox cap as if its existence proved he was a criminal.
“Thank you, Colonel,” the lieutenant said.
Colonel Clarett looked like he wanted to stay, but the lieutenant was obviously waiting for him to leave, so he turned and walked out, slamming the door behind him.
The lieutenant smiled at us. “Now,” he said, “I think it’s time for a little chat.”
Well, if you really want to read it, here you go. But let me just give you my quick summary: Anything the author thinks is really good isn’t genre fiction; so, obviously, if it’s genre fiction, it can’t be all that good. Like so:
“All the Pretty Horses” is no more a western than “1984” is science fiction. Nor can we in good conscience call John Le Carré’s “The Honorable Schoolboy” or Richard Price’s “Lush Life” genre novels.
I love the imperial “we” in that second sentence. And the “in good conscience”: I could call The Honorable Schoolboy a spy novel, because it involves, like, spies and all, but no, I just can’t bring myself to do it. My mother brought me up to be better than that.
I thought this debate had been resolved back in the 1960s, with Vonnegut and Burgess and Tolkien and, yes, Le Carré. But apparently some people still want to fuss about it. Sheesh. What a waste of time.
Yikes! Larry and Kevin are stuck in a parallel universe and have been abandoned in Boston by the family who saved them from the Portuguese soldiers. (Portuguese?!) They have little food, no place to stay–and they’re wearing funny-looking clothes. This can’t be good.
The first five chapters are up there on the right side of the menu.
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Chapter 6
We walked away from the house, eating the food in silence. I was so hungry, I forgot for a while how scared I was. But it didn’t take long for the fear to come back. Where would we get our next meal? Where would we sleep? Would we ever get back to the portal? Would I ever see my family again?
We didn’t know where we were going. The streets were dark, and I kept tripping on the cobblestones. A dog barked at us out of an alley. There was a lump in my throat, and it kept getting bigger. From one house we passed I heard someone playing a piano, and at least that sounded familiar. But then I remembered my piano lesson, and I felt even worse.
Pretty soon Kevin and I started arguing. “This is so stupid, Kevin,” I said. “Why did I let you talk me into it?”
“It’s not like I twisted your arm or anything,” he shot back. “I said you could stay behind, if you wanted to be prudent.”
“I don’t know why I even told you about it. I should’ve figured you get me into trouble, with all your theories. And why did you tell that soldier our family had been murdered by the Portuguese? He almost arrested us.”
“Maybe we’d be better off if we were arrested,” he pointed out. “Jail would be better than this.”
We kept walking.
“You know what worries me?” Kevin asked softly after a while.
I shook my head.
“Even if we found the portal, what if we can’t get back? What if it takes us to some totally different universe?”
“It took me home yesterday,” I reminded him.
“Maybe you were just lucky. Maybe you go somewhere different every time you step into it.”
“We’ll get back,” I insisted.
He didn’t argue. I think he wanted to believe me. I wanted to believe myself.
It was getting cold. Neither of us had a jacket. At least neither of was wearing shorts. I was grateful when we finally made it back to the main street. With all the people around, it just seemed to feel warmer.
Now that we were out of the wagon, people were staring at us, but we were too tired and scared to care. We looked in the store windows as we walked. There was a dressmaker’s shop, and a place that sold something called sundries, and a chandler, which had candles and oil lamps for sale. “No electricity, I guess,” Kevin muttered. “Those streetlights are gas or something. This place is, like, two hundred years behind us.” We stopped in front of a tavern called the Twin Ponies and listened to the laughter and smelled the cigar smoke and the stale beer. Someone was playing an instrument that sounded like an accordion.
“Look at this,” Kevin said. He picked up a sheet of newspaper from the sidewalk in front of the tavern. It was called the Boston Intelligencer. It had smaller type and wider pages than in regular newspapers, and no photographs–only a couple of drawings. We read the headlines:
PORTUGUESE, CANADIANS ADVANCE ON BOSTON
Thousands of Refugees Arrive ahead of Siege
Pres. Gardner Calls for Calm as Naval Blockade Tightens
Talks with British Continue
“It has today’s date,” Kevin pointed out.
“Look at the British spellings,” I said. President Gardner was at pains to dispel the rumour that he was negotiating terms of surrender with the Canadians and Portuguese.
We couldn’t make sense of a lot of what we read, but two things were clear: This place was in a whole lot of trouble, and there was plenty of disagreement about what to do about it. The paper quoted one guy as saying they should cut off all the refugees from entering the city, because there wasn’t going to be enough food for everyone to survive the siege. Someone else said there was no way the city could survive the siege anyway, and the president (who apparently was in Boston) should “surrender forthwith.” And the president insisted everything was going to be fine and not to worry.
“What a mess,” Kevin said.
“No kidding.”
A tall man wearing some a round black hat and a green cape came staggering out of the tavern. He stared at us for a second and shook his head. “Strange days,” he muttered, and he headed off down the street.
“So, what do you think we should do?” I asked finally. One of us had to ask the question.
“I don’t know,” Kevin said. “Maybe we should, you know, turn ourselves in.”
“For what? We haven’t done anything.”
“Well, we could, like, tell the truth.”
“You think they’d believe us?”
Kevin shrugged. “I guess not.”
“But even if they did believe us, why would they care? They’ve got way more important things to think about.”
“Wouldn’t hurt to ask. What have we got to lose?”
We were lost on a strange world with no one to help us. There really was nothing to lose.
“I think that’s a cop over there,” Kevin said. “Go ask him.”
The blue-jacketed policeman was across the street, standing in front of a building with his arms folded.
“Why me?” I said. “It’s your idea.”
“Because you’re taller,” Kevin answered. “He’ll pay more attention to you.”
Seemed like a stupid reason to me, but I was tired of arguing. We crossed the street, picking our way through the disgusting horse manure. We walked up to the cop, who stared at us suspiciously.
“Excuse me, officer,” I began. My voice sounded thin and trembly in my ears. “We’re not from around here, and–”
He scowled at me. “I can see that, mate.”
“No, really. We’re not just, you know, from another town or something. We come from a different world altogether. We’d like to, uh, speak to someone in authority.”
“Of course you would,” the policeman said, nodding. “And, you’d like a meal. And a nice bed to sleep on, as well. Is that it?”
I glanced at Kevin, but he didn’t have anything to say.
“We’re in the middle of a war, in case you didn’t notice,” the cop went on. “We don’t feed strays. If we don’t get help soon, we won’t be able to feed ourselves. Now run along.”
“But where?” I asked. “We don’t have anyplace to stay.”
He gestured off to his left. “The Fens camp is where you strays belong. Don’t let us catch you stealing on the way, or you’ll wish the Portuguese had caught you first. And don’t be wandering the streets after curfew, either. You farmfolk–or whatever you are–aren’t going to overrun this city. Understand?”
I nodded. “How far away is the camp?” I managed to ask.
He laughed. “Not far. Just follow your nose. And you might watch your step going through Cheapside–they don’t take kindly to strays.” Then he turned and walked away.
“Nice job,” Kevin said to me. “You didn’t explain anything.”
“You try, if you think you can do it better.”
We were silent then. We headed off in the direction the cop had pointed.
“I wonder if the Fens has anything to do with Fenway Park,” Kevin said after a while.
“Who gives,” I muttered.
“They probably don’t even have baseball in this world,” he went on.
I just looked at him. We kept walking. I was getting really tired. And I was hungry again. Would there be food in the camp? Everyone seemed worried about food.
After a while we entered what I figured was Cheapside–a nasty-looking section of town where the rickety houses were stuck close together, the street had turned into a rutted dirt path, and piles of garbage were heaped up everywhere. Follow your nose, the cop had said. There were lots of taverns, and people lounging in the doorways shouted insults at us as we passed. We just kept going.
Cheapside seemed to peter out after a while, and we came to a bunch of buildings with soldiers guarding them. Beyond the buildings was what I guessed was the Fens camp.
It was much bigger than the one we’d seen from the wagon on the way into the city. It seemed to go on forever; we could see wagons and tents, smoky campfires and snorting horses. There was a rough fence around it, and at the end of the path was a gate with lamps hung on either side. A few wagons were lined up in front of the gate, waiting to enter.
“What do you think?” I asked Kevin. “Should we go inside?”
“Do we have a choice?” he replied.
Not that I could see. We got in line behind the wagons. It took a few minutes for them to enter. When we reached the gate the soldier guarding it laughed. He was short and stout and missing a couple of teeth. “Farmfolk get stranger-looking every day,” he said, shaking his head. “Twenty minutes to curfew, lads.”
“Can we just, like, go in?” I asked.
“You can go in, but you can’t come back out–at least not till morning, and then you’ll need a pass. But you’ll find plenty to do inside, I daresay.”
“Is there any food?”
“Not till morning, unless you want to steal some inside the camp–which I wouldn’t recommend, since it’ll likely get you killed. Now run along with you.”
We walked through the gate into the camp. There were muddy paths of a sort, along which people had parked their wagons and set up makeshift shelters. People sat in their wagons or on chairs outside their tents, the men smoking long pipes and the women chatting with each other by the light of the campfires. One man we passed was playing a guitar while his family sang what sounded like a hymn. There were a lot of babies crying. Older kids ran around, playing tag. It didn’t seem all that bad, actually, if you could get used to the smell and the mud.
We kept walking, without any idea of where to go or what to do. Kevin pointed to the guards patrolling outside the fence, rifles on their shoulders. “They’re serious,” he said. “Nobody’s getting out of here.”
Great. We were stuck inside a refugee camp. My stomach started growling and my legs started hurting. “I don’t think I can walk much further,” I said. “I’m so tired I could sleep in the mud.”
“We need to get blankets or something,” Kevin said.
“How are we going to do that–steal them? We’d get killed.”
He didn’t answer.
“Hey there!” A thin man with long stringy hair and a beard was standing in front of us. “Did I hear you say you needed a blanket?” He smiled at us. His face was pock-marked, and he was missing a lot of teeth. His left eye wandered when he spoke.
Stranger danger, I thought. My mother was always talking about stranger danger. But what do you do when everyone’s a stranger?
Neither of us answered, so the man kept on talking. “You boys here on your own?” We still didn’t answer, so the guy just kept talking. “These are parlous times to be on your own. But I have a beautiful blanket I can let you have for a mere five shillings. Made from the finest Vermont wool. Just step over to my wagon here.”
I looked at his wagon. A sad-looking donkey stood next to it, staring at us. How much was a shilling, I wondered. Didn’t matter. “We don’t have any money,” I said.
The man’s smile faded a little. “Parlous times, indeed,” he said. “What about barter, then? Have you anything to trade?” He looked us over, then pointed at Kevin. “Odd-looking hat,” he said. Then, “This object on your wrist–what might that be?”
“It’s a watch,” Kevin said.
“A watch? Strange place to have a watch. Why not keep it in your pocket? Let me take a look.” He grabbed Kevin’s arm. “Odd-looking watch, as well. No case, no hands on the dial. But I tell you what–I have a charitable heart, seeing you here by yourselves. I’ll give you a blanket for it, and I’ll throw in a pound of salted pork.”
Seemed like a good deal to me, although salted pork sounded awful. But all of a sudden Kevin got a funny look on his face and pulled his arm back. “No thanks,” he said.
The man’s smile faded a bit more. “You lads won’t get a better deal in this wretched camp,” he pointed out. “Nights are growing colder, and who knows how long we’ll be imprisoned here? The price of necessities will only go up.”
“Sorry,” Kevin said. He turned to me. “Let’s go, Larry.”
I was really annoyed at him. What did he want the stupid watch for? Who cared what time it was, when we were going to have to sleep in the mud?
Kevin started walking quickly back the way we’d come. “Are you nuts?” I said to him.
He shook his head. “It’s not just a watch,” he said. “It’s a calculator. It’s a timer. It’s really cool.”
“So what?”
“So–maybe it’s worth more than a blanket in this world. Maybe we’re worth something in this world.”
“Kevin, they know how to add. They know how to tell time.”
“Yeah,” he said, “but they’ve never seen a calculator before.”
“Big deal. Anyway, where are we going?”
Kevin pointed. “Back to the gate.”
The gate was closing. We ran up to it and slithered through.
The soldier we had talked to before didn’t look happy to see us again. “Curfew, lads,” he said. “Back inside with you.”
“Sir, I have a strange and wonderful invention that I’d like to share with the military leadership,” Kevin said.
The soldier looked at him like he was crazy. Farmfolk. “Let’s go,” he demanded. “There’s a war on, and no time for foolishness.”
“How much is 375 times 13?” Kevin asked.
The soldier was starting to get angry.
“Come here and see what I do,” Kevin went on before he could yell at us. “This’ll be interesting, I guarantee.” The soldier hesitated, then leaned forward. Kevin put his watch in calculator mode, held it up so the soldier could see, then did the multiplication. “3875,” he said. “See how easy that was?”
The soldier thought about it for a moment, then said, “Can I try?”
Kevin held his arm out and showed him what to do. “I never was very good at ciphering,” the soldier muttered as he hit the numbers. He grinned with delight when the answer was displayed. “Hey Caleb,” he called out to a tall soldier with a scruffy beard who was guarding the gate. “Come look at this!”
Caleb took a look and had the same reaction–surprise and excitement. The next soldier who came by, though, was terrified by the watch. “This is some devilry,” he muttered, glaring at Kevin like he was the devil.
“Now, Oliver,” Caleb said to him, “it’s just a toy.”
Oliver shook his head. “The Devil makes toys, too,” he muttered, and he walked away.
“The thing is,” Kevin said to Caleb, “I’d like to show this to your commanding officer. I think it might be helpful in the war. We know other stuff that might help, too.”
Caleb considered, then said, “Go find Sergeant Hornbeam, Fred. He’ll be interested.”
Fred–that was the first soldier’s name–went off, and returned in a few minutes, accompanied by a large soldier with bright red hair. He gave us the strange look we were used to by now, and then said: “Let me see the thing.”
Kevin held out his arm.
Sergeant Hornbeam shook his head. “Take it off,” he said.
Reluctantly Kevin took the watch off and handed it to the sergeant, who took it and studied it. Finally he let Fred show him how to use it. Then he looked at us again. “Are you Chinese?” he demanded.
“No, we’re–we’re farmfolk,” Kevin said.
“The inscription on this object says it was made in China.” He made it sound like an accusation.
“Well, uh, this is complicated,” Kevin said. “It was made in China, but we didn’t get it there.”
“Do we look Chinese?” I asked.
Sergeant Hornbeam glared at me. “How would I know what the Chinese look like?” Then he put the watch into his pocket. “An interesting toy,” he said.
“Hey,” Kevin cried. “That’s mine.”
“I thought you wanted to contribute it to the army,” the sergeant said.
“But we have to talk to somebody in charge. They’ll need to know more about it.”
He shrugged. “I don’t see why. If Fred can use it, anyone can use it.” Caleb laughed; even Fred smiled. Then the sergeant seemed to think about the situation some more. “Where are your families?” he asked.
“We’re here on our own,” Kevin said. “We just arrived.”
The sergeant thought a bit longer, then gestured to Fred and Caleb. “Put them in the brig for the night,” he said. “We’ll see what the morrow brings.” Then he turned to us. “Fare you well, lads,” he said. And he walked away.
I looked at Kevin. The brig?
“Come on, lads,” Fred said. “The brig isn’t much, but it’s better than the camp, I daresay.”
He and Caleb led us to a long low wooden building near the camp. “Where’d you get that thing?” Fred asked. “Off a trading ship?”
“Something like that,” Kevin said.
“I hear they’ve got all sorts of amazing inventions over in China,” he went on.
“Maybe if we had the Chinese for an ally we could win this damfool war,” Caleb added.
“Maybe if we had any ally at all we’d have a chance.”
“What do you think Sergeant Hornbeam will do with my watch?” Kevin asked. “We really need to get it to a general or somebody like that.”
“Oh, Sarge’ll do the right thing,” Fred said. “Don’t know if the generals will pay attention, though. They’re too busy arguing with the president.”
The first part of the building was the soldiers’ barracks. Beds were lined up against one of the walls. A few soldiers were playing cards at a table, others were sitting on their beds cleaning their equipment. The air was so thick with tobacco smoke that I wanted to gag. Fred and Caleb led us through the barracks to a room at the back. A fat, sleepy soldier sat slumped in a chair by the door. He peered at us as we approached. “What’d they do?” he asked. “Sneak out of the camp and pinch some eggs in Cheapside?”
“If they did that, the folks in Cheapside would be happy to take care of them,” Caleb said. “No, Sergeant Hornbeam wants to hold onto them. See that they have every comfort, Benjamin. They’re our guests.”
“No comforts to be had, I’m afraid. Odd-looking little fellows, ain’t they? I like that one’s hat, though.” Benjamin struggled to his feet and took a key out of his pocket, which he used to unlock the door to an inner room. “Chamber pot’s in the far corner,” he said to us. “Try not to rouse Chester. He’s only peaceable when he’s sleeping.”
Caleb and Fred said farewell, Benjamin locked the door behind us, and there we were in jail on our first night in the new world.
It was dark–the only light was from the small opening in the door. We heard a loud noise that we finally recognized was snoring. As our eyes adjusted to the darkness, we saw a big red-jacketed man lying with his head against the wall. Like everything in this world, it seemed, he stank.
“This is just great,” I said to Kevin as we sat on the floor against the opposite wall, as far away from Chester as we could get.
“Come on, Larry, it could be worse,” he replied. “This is what we were trying to do, right? Turn ourselves in. Get them to pay attention to us.”
“But what happens next? What’s your watch going to do for us?”
“Anyone with any brains will know there’s nothing like that watch in this world,” he explained. “So they’ll want to talk to us, find out where we got it.”
“And then what? You think they’ll believe our story? You sure they won’t think we’re the Devil, like that other soldier?”
“I dunno. But in the meantime they’ll probably feed us. I’ve already gotten us out of the mud for tonight. It’s worth a shot, Larry.”
I supposed he was right. And it wasn’t like I had any better ideas. Suddenly I could barely keep my eyes open. We seemed to be moderately safe for the night, except for Chester, who continued to snore loudly across the room. And there wasn’t anything else we could accomplish right now except hope that Sergeant Hornbeam would do more than pocket Kevin’s watch as a silly little toy. The floor wasn’t going to be comfortable, but it was better than sleeping outdoors in the mud.
I thought of the couple of weeks I had spent at sleepaway camp during the summer, how homesick I’d gotten, how brave I thought I was being when I stuck it out–with a counselor sleeping in the same cabin, with my parents just a two-hour drive away and sending me letters every day. “We’ll get out of this, right, Kevin?” I asked.
“Yeah. Of course we will. It’s just a matter of time.”
“Right.” He didn’t sound too sure of himself, but that was okay. I slid down to lie on the floor. “Good night, Kevin.”
“Good night, Larry.”
When I closed my eyes I thought of Matthew–was it really just last night?–telling me how life was really okay. Yeah, yeah, I’d thought. Would you please shut up so I can get some sleep? Now what wouldn’t I give to be back in my own bed, listening to Matthew babble?
I was too tired to cry. I miss you, I whispered into the darkness. But there was no one there to hear me.
At 79, Roth apparently has had enough of writing novels. The Slate writer thinks this may explain his recent attempt to fix his Wikipedia page–it’s time to work on his legacy.
The recent news that he had finally agreed to work closely with a biographer also suggested that perhaps he saw the end of his career approaching. And his recent contretemps with Wikipedia further implied a focus on his legacy.
If this is true, I’m glad his last novel was Nemesis, which was great, rather than the one that preceded it, The Humbling, which was embarrassing. It’s always good when people have the sense to bow out at, or at least near, the top of their game. I’ve always liked John Updike, but I was unable to finish the last couple of novels he wrote; the times seemed to have passed him by. Even Shakespeare seems to have gone on a bit too long; I wouldn’t regret it if Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen had never seen the light of day.
Maybe the best way to leave the stage belongs to Charles Dickens; drop dead with a murder mystery (The Mystery of Edwin Drood) half-finished and the killer unrevealed. Which led to ongoing attempts to finish the novel, including this one:
The third attempt was perhaps the most unusual. In 1873, a young Vermont printer, Thomas James, published a version which he claimed had been literally ‘ghost-written’ by him channelling Dickens’ spirit. A sensation was created, with several critics, including Arthur Conan Doyle, a spiritualist himself, praising this version, calling it similar in style to Dickens’ work and for several decades the ‘James version’ of Edwin Drood was common in America. Other Drood scholars disagree. John C. Walters “dismiss[ed it] with contempt”, stating that the work “is self-condemned by its futility, illiteracy, and hideous American mannerisms; the mystery itself becomes a nightmare, and the solution only deepens the obscurity.”
I don’t think anyone would try to complete an unfinished Philip Roth novel. And I certainly don’t think Roth’s ghost would help him.
Here’s the latest chapter of the online novel I’m perpetrating. You’ll notice that I’ve got Portal up there in the menu now. Click on it to see the chapters I’ve already published. Yet another service we provide for our customers!
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Chapter 5
The wagon was piled high with clothes and furniture, which swayed as the wagon rattled along the bumpy road. Two small children–a boy and a girl–huddled in one corner, staring at us. The woman had twisted around to look at us, too. She was wearing a long coat and a bonnet. “How come you to be in those woods, lads?” she asked. Her accent was a little strange–not quite American, not quite English.
“It’s, um, a long story,” I said. What was I supposed to say?
“You talk funny,” the little girl piped up.
“Hush, Rachel,” the mother said. “Are you from Glanbury?” she asked us.
“Yes, we are.”
“Listen,” Kevin interrupted, “can you stop the wagon? We have to go back.”
The man pulled on the reins to slow the horse and turned back to look at us, too. “Why?” he asked.
“Their clothes are funny,” the girl said.
“Could you please just stop the wagon?” Kevin pleaded.
“There’s nothing to go back to,” the woman explained. “The Portuguese army is destroying nigh everything. If you’re separated from your parents, best stay with us till we get you to Boston. You can find them there.”
“Along with everyone else in New England,” the man muttered.
“Are you in the navy?” the little girl asked Kevin. She was pointing at his Old Navy t-shirt.
“What should we do?” Kevin asked me.
“I don’t know. This was all your idea.”
Kevin glared at me. We heard gunfire in the distance.
My parents would know what to do. But we had left them far, far behind. “We won’t be able to get to it,” I murmured to Kevin. And then I asked the woman, “Will we be safe in Boston?”
“As safe as anywhere,” she replied, “with the Portuguese on one side of us and the Canadians on the other.”
“Maybe we should go to Boston,” I said to Kevin. “We can come back when–when–”
When?
“What if it’s gone?” he said. “What if we can’t find it?”
What if we find it, I thought, and it doesn’t take us home?
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know.”
Kevin slumped down in the wagon. I slumped down next to him. The man flicked the reins and the horse sped up. “I bet I know what the ‘B’ on your hat stands for,” the little girl said to Kevin.
I thought the woman might press us about why we were in those woods, but she didn’t. She and her husband started arguing about why he had waited till the last minute to leave their farm and how all their neighbors were safe in Boston by now, and here they were, barely outracing the Portuguese and endangering their children. He said he couldn’t care less about their neighbors, he wasn’t going to give in so easily, he just hoped the cowardly government didn’t surrender without putting up a fight.
Kevin’s face was scrunched up, an expression he gets when he’s thinking hard. Or maybe he was just trying to keep from crying. We had screwed up so bad. This was a totally different universe. There was a Glanbury and a Boston, but what were the Portuguese doing here? And where were the cars? Where were the buildings? And now that we’d landed here, would we ever be able to get back?
The wagon continued along the road to Boston, and the gunfire faded behind us. My family drives to Boston a lot, but I didn’t know how far it was from Glanbury. I don’t think it took very long, except when there was a lot of traffic. How long was it going to take by horse? The road wasn’t that great, and we kept getting knocked around in the back of the wagon. My back hurt, and I started to get seasick.
“What time is it?” I whispered to Kevin after a while.
He looked at his watch. “Four o’clock,” he said.
Late for my piano lesson. I thought about Mom, probably standing on our deck and looking out into the woods for me, worried and angry at the same time, and I got a lump in my throat. Pretty soon everyone would start looking for us, and we’d be gone–just gone, without a trace. Mom always read those stories about missing children in the paper. She’d figure this had something to do with that guy lurking by schoolbuses in Rhode Island. But she’d never know where I went, if I was okay . . .
When they started searching they’d be bound to find the portal, I thought, and then they’d figure it out and come after us.
But that wouldn’t work, I realized. If there were a kazillion universes, who knew which one they’d end up in?
I should never have come, I thought. How could I have been so stupid? It was all Kevin’s fault . . .
“Larry, do you have any of those Oreos?” Kevin asked.
I shook my head, suddenly getting hungry myself. Probably no Oreos in this world, I thought. No Coke, no pizza, no Burger King–or Burger Queen.
The fog faded away as we rode. Occasionally a man on horseback passed us on the way to Boston. No one was heading in the opposite direction, south towards Glanbury. The riders would slow down and exchange news with us, then speed up until they disappeared up ahead. There were some houses along the road, and a few inns and shops that looked like they came out of an old movie. All of them appeared deserted.
We stopped once to give the horse some food and water, and we all went to the bathroom in the woods; it was gross, but the family didn’t seem to mind.
“What’s that?” the little boy asked, pointing at Kevin’s watch.
He shrugged. “A watch,” he said.
“My papa has a watch, but he keeps it in his pocket.”
Kevin shrugged again.
“Don’t be frightened,” the boy went on. “We’re going to stay with Uncle John, and he’ll take care of us. He has a big house in the city, and that’s where all the army is, so the Portuguese won’t be able to get us.”
“That’s great.”
The father took Kevin and me aside and spoke to us before we got back into the wagon. “I know every soul in Glanbury, and I don’t know you boys,” he said. “I’ve certainly never seen anyone wearing clothes like that, or heard an accent like that. Where are you really from? China?”
Kevin shook his head. “No, we’re from America.”
“Where is America?” the man asked suspiciously. “I’ve never heard of it.”
Kevin looked at me, and we felt a little more desperate. Just how different was this world? “What–what’s the name of this country?” he asked the man.
The man shook his head in astonishment. “Never heard of the like. We’re in New England, lad. The United States of New England. Where’s America?”
Far, far away, apparently. “Samuel, please come!” his wife called out to him from the wagon. “If we don’t hurry we’ll not make it to Boston by dark.”
Samuel looked back at us. “I think you lads have some explaining to do, but now’s not the time, I judge. Let’s go, if you still want a ride to Boston.”
He headed off to the wagon. “This may be our last chance,” Kevin said to me. “What do you think?”
I shook my head. “It’s too late, Kevin. We have to go to Boston.”
Kevin didn’t argue, and we silently trudged back to the wagon.
When we got in, the mother was feeding the kids apples and bread. She offered us some, and we took the food gratefully. Kevin ate his share like he didn’t think he’d get another meal.
We started up again. The sun was lower in the sky now, and it was getting colder out. After a while there were more shops and houses, and a few signs of life. Dogs barked at us. On one side street I saw a bunch of hogs eating garbage in the middle of the road. Another road merged with ours, and suddenly there was traffic–more wagons carrying furniture and frightened families. Some of the wagons had a cow, a goat, or even an ox tied up behind them. Everyone was headed towards Boston.
Finally we crossed a bridge over a river, and a little ways beyond was a long high wooden fence that stretched out as far as I could see in both directions. There were slits for guns high up in the fence, I noticed. A pair of gates were open, but a group of soldiers stood by them, examining everyone before they let them pass through.
They looked like soldiers, but their uniform was different from any I had ever seen. They wore short red jackets, black pants, and metal helmets with little brims, almost like batting helmets. Each of them had a rifle slung over his arm and a pistol in his belt. When we finally reached the gates one of the soldiers came up to us. He half-saluted Samuel and said, “Name, sir?”
He had an accent that was almost English.
“Harper. Samuel Harper. That’s my wife Martha.”
“And where are you coming from?”
“Up from Glanbury,” Samuel replied.
“Waited till the last minute, did you?”
“They were right behind us. There was some skirmishing, and I thought it best to leave. If they weren’t so interested in looting, they’d be right behind us still.”
“Why did you wait so long?”
“I didn’t want to yield my farm to any Portuguese, I tell you that. I fired my house and barn before I left. I don’t know how it got to this.”
The soldier nodded and looked into the wagon. “This your family, sir?”
“Except for those two strays back there,” Samuel said, meaning us. “I don’t know who or what they are.”
The soldier came around and took a close look at Kevin and me. “Strange outfits,” he said. “And your family is where, mates?”
“Murdered,” Kevin blurted out. “By the Portuguese. But we managed to escape.”
Why did he say that?
“But I thought you were in the navy,” the little girl objected.
“I know nothing of any murdering,” Mr. Harper said.
The soldier’s eyes darkened. “Well?” he demanded.
But just then another soldier called to him. “Move it along, Corporal! We’ll be all night getting these people inside.”
He shrugged and stepped back. “Any disease here?” he asked loudly. “Smallpox? Diphtheria? Drikana?”
“No,” Mr. Harper said. “We’re all healthy, thank God.”
“Pray God you stay healthy,” the soldier replied. “The city is getting more crowded by the hour. There is little food, and the water is bad. You are welcome to enter, but you’ll have a hard time of it. If there is a siege, conditions will get far worse. You’ll have to stay in a camp.”
“I have a brother in the city who will take us in,” Mr. Harper said.
“Then count yourself lucky, sir. The camps’ll not be pleasant places. You may pass.”
Mr. Harper grunted and flicked the reins, and the horse started through the gates. “A siege,” he muttered. “They want to delay as long as they can while they parley with the Europeans, as if any European has ever helped New England before. And meanwhile, all I’ve worked for has been destroyed.”
“You needn’t have set fire to the–” his wife started to say, but he quickly interrupted her.
“Better me than the Portuguese, woman. If we all did what I did, there’d be no food to sustain them, and they’d have to slink like dogs back where they came from.”
I looked at the fence. Soldiers were piling up sandbags against it. Getting ready for a siege, I thought. There were sieges in plenty of video games I’d played. Sieges could last forever.
“Was your family really murdered?” the little boy asked Kevin.
Kevin shook his head. “No, but I don’t think I’ll ever see them again.”
“Oh. That’s sad.”
Kevin nodded and looked away.
We were passing through a big military camp. The soldiers stared at us grimly as we went by. In the distance to our right I could see the ocean. I smelled fish and horse manure, and worse stuff. It was really getting dark now, and there weren’t any street lights. I was hungry and stiff and still a little queasy from the bumpy ride. This was awful.
“Are you sure John will take us in?” Martha asked her husband.
“He’d better, hadn’t he?” he replied.
“What about these boys?”
“What about them? I won’t ask my brother to house and feed anyone who isn’t kin, not with what’s about to happen. Anyway, they haven’t told the truth about anything since we met them. They can fend for themselves.”
“But they’re so young, Samuel.”
“They’re old enough to join the army, I daresay. The redbacks will need everyone they can get. They should be grateful to us. If we hadn’t taken them with us, they’d be lying dead in the road by now. Or worse.”
Martha gave us a look full of sympathy, but she didn’t argue with her husband. The little boy said, “I’d like to join the army,” but she hushed him.
My stomach started to growl.
We were past the military camp now. The road crossed some marshland, and on the other side there were a lot of shacks and tents jammed together, and some of the people in wagons got off the road to join the crowd. Was this one of the refugee camps? “Fools,” Mr. Harper muttered. “Camping in the swamp. Half of them will have the flux by morning.” We kept going, and after a while some of the buildings were built of brick, the road became paved with cobblestones, and there were even sidewalks.
“At last,” Mr. Harper said. “Now, if I can only find the street.”
The sidewalks grew crowded as we traveled further into the city. Kids younger than Kevin and me, dirty-faced and dressed in raggedy old clothes, were selling newspapers or flowers. Soldiers walked alongside women wearing too much makeup. There were lots of old people–and some not so old–holding out their hands or tin cups, begging for food or money. Policemen, dressed like the soldiers except in blue, directed traffic at every intersection. Some people on the streets rode something that looked like a bicycle with very wide wooden wheels. There were no traffic lights, and only a few dim, flickering lamps instead of street lights.
Mr. Harper made a few turns, asked directions a couple of times, and finally pulled up in front of a small house on a dark side street. A bearded man walked out of the house, holding a lantern. “Samuel,” he said, “about time you came to town.”
“Held out as long as I could, John,” Samuel replied. “I’ve lost everything but what we’ve got in this wagon.”
“I’m very sorry for that,” John said, coming over to the wagon. “but of course you’re welcome to stay here. Martha,” he said, nodding to the woman. “And how are little Rachel and Samuel?” He reached into the wagon and patted them on the heads. Then he turned to Kevin and me with a puzzled expression. “And you are–?”
Samuel had joined his brother and was unlatching the back of the wagon. “Passers-by,” he said. “Everyone had to get out or be shot. We gave them a ride, out of the goodness of our hearts.”
We climbed down, followed by Martha and the children. Samuel and his brother walked back to the front of the wagon, unhitched the horse, and led it behind the house. Martha looked at us. “Will you be all right?” she asked.
I didn’t know what to say. “I guess so,” I said.
She reached back into the wagon and filled a small bag with apples, bread, and cheese. “Good luck,” she said, handing me the bag. “I’m sorry we can’t do more. It’s a hard time for everyone.” She turned to her kids. “Come on, children. Let’s go inside.”
Kevin and I watched them go into the small house. And then we were all alone on the dark street, in the strange world, and neither of us had a clue what to do next.
I handed over my ebook pricing to a publisher in return for having them perform some sales magic. The magic appears to be working. First they made Senator free on Amazon, which got it near the top of the top of the “sales” list for free political novels. Then they raised the price to $0.99, and now it’s up to $2.99. In the meantime it’s gotten a bunch of great reviews. Here’s a five-star review I liked because, when I started reading it, I had no idea how it could possibly end up being a five-star review:
The beginning of this book put me off. I generally do not care for novels written in the first person, and the first chapters were tedious, another overworked story of the dead mistress whose murder threatens to ruin her high-placed lover. However, once all of the players were identified, I found myself relating to the protagonists and many supporting characters on the same kind of personal level as when I first read Presumed Innocent so many years ago. Bowker creates the flawed hero of the classics, a man driven on the one hand by ambition and on the other,by a sense of honor. Even at the end, the Senator possessed strengths and weaknesses that are not entirely resolved. In other words, he is human. This is not just a fine tuned murder mystery, it is a journey into the very complex issues of guilt and innocence-good and evil. For nearly a quarter century, I was a prosecutor of serious felonies, a position not without personal as well as professional challenges. It was not uncommon for me to sometimes relate to the defendant sitting one chair away at counsel table on a very human level. That did not change the nature of my mission–I was considered a tough prosecutor– but it made me reflect upon the difference between the concept of legal guilt and that of moral evil. This is not a story in which the murderer is arrested, tried and convicted, but its resolution is gratifying. In the past 18 months I have downloaded more than 415 books on my Kindle, and read all but a very few. This is one of the better ones, perhaps when it comes to a political mystery, the very best.
Anyway, Senator is now #22 for political genre fiction on the Kindle store, in between a couple of novels by Vince Flynn–should I know who he is?–and two positions ahead of a volume containing Animal Farm and 1984, with an introduction by Christopher Hitchens. Yoicks! The book is also #2515 on the overall Kindle bestseller list.
So that’s pretty good! On the other hand, my other current ebooks, Summit, Pontiff, and Replica, are still mired in the lower reaches of the Kindle sales list. Maybe it’s time for my ebook publisher to do something about them. You can help, of course. If you’ve read any of them and liked it, please write a review! It doesn’t have to be as detailed as the one I quoted above. Reviews on other sites besides Amazon are also welcome.
Books without any reviews just seem sort of lonely. No one wants to hang with them. They eat lunch by themselves in the cafeteria. They go home and watch infomercials on high-number cable channels. They buy costume jewelry from QVC.
Please consider helping them out. They will be forever grateful.
Not that I’m dying or anything, I just have one blog post left in me about hell before I focus on politics for a while (which is its own kind of hell). Or maybe hurricanes.
Anyway, here is another quote from the New York Times article about hell getting a makeover:
While the catechism says that Jesus spoke of hell as an ”unquenchable fire,” it says hell’s primary punishment is ”eternal separation from God,” which results from an individual’s conscious decision.
”To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him forever by our own free choice,” the catechism says.
This argument–that a loving God doesn’t send you to hell, you basically send yourself there–is familiar to me. But it has always struck me as completely bogus. First of all, God makes the rules about who goes to hell. Second, He doesn’t publish the rules. I learned a lot of rules growing up, but those can’t be the right rules, because otherwise everyone is going to hell. For example, I learned that missing Mass on Sunday or a Holy Day of Obligation was a mortal sin. Was it true back then? Is it still true now? Have the rules changed? No one is going to tell you. I read an online essay about hell where the author opined that failure to follow the Church’s rules on contraception was a grave sin, possibly meriting hell. True? Who knows? This is like Calvinball, except if you lose at Calvinball, you don’t suffer eternal torment.
Speaking of eternal torment, the real reason for this post is that I wanted to quote from Jonathan Edwards’ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, which rivals Joyce’s sermon for a great vision of who you are messing with if your are considering missing Mass on a Holy Day of Obligation:
The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. Thus all you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to a state of new, and before altogether unexperienced light and life, are in the hands of an angry God. However you may have reformed your life in many things, and may have had religious affections, and may keep up a form of religion in your families and closets, and in the house of God, it is nothing but his mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction. However unconvinced you may now be of the truth of what you hear, by and by you will be fully convinced of it. Those that are gone from being in the like circumstances with you, see that it was so with them; for destruction came suddenly upon most of them; when they expected nothing of it, and while they were saying, Peace and safety: now they see, that those things on which they depended for peace and safety, were nothing but thin air and empty shadows.
The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you were suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God’s hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.
Awesome stuff.
Richard Bowker 