New novel

            I’ve decided to go where few have gone, and time will tell if I’m a fool for the effort.

            I’m going to post on my blog site and website the novel I’m currently working on. I’ll post one chapter at a time, every week or ten days.

            I’ll be glad to hear your comments. Since what you’ll be seeing is an early draft, I’ll be less interested in grammar or spelling issues and more interested in whether the story flow is good, whether any character is acting out of character and whether the story ‘works’ (do you like the characters? is the story pulling you along?)

            Also, I would welcome historical input. This part of the story is set in the 40s and 50s, too early for most of us, but if you see a reference which you know is wrong, I’d like to know.

            I’m trying to build my readership base so, if you like it, please share the links with your friends.

            I hope you enjoy.

MEMORIES

AND OTHER AFFLICTIONS

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF

WILLIAM NATHAN MCCASKILL

A Novel by Chris Sherrill

Copyright 2012 by Chris Sherrill

FOREWORD

            This began as a school project which I put off until the last minute. I didn’t know anyone whose life was interesting enough for an oral history, and who wants to sit and pretend to be interested as someone tells boring stories about his or her life. I mean, please, I have a life, too. The teacher said that everyone has a story worth telling and worth hearing, but my family is just so ordinary. My mom, like her mom, is a physician and my dad is an engineer, and that’s sort of interesting but, really, it’s not remarkable. Mom said my grandmother had done some interesting things, but Grandma wouldn’t tell her story.

            “Go talk to Pops,” is all she would say.
            “Aw, man, I hate that nursing home. It’s depressing.”
            “How do you think it makes Pops feel? Sorry. I didn’t mean to put you on a guilt trip. Go see your granddad. He’s had some interesting experiences, if he’ll talk about them.”
            “Yeah, right. If he’s had such an interesting life, why haven’t I heard any of the stories before?”
            “Well, honey, I think maybe he’s seen more than his portion of pain, and sadness.”
            “I don’t want to make him sad. Why don’t you tell me the stories?”
            She wasn’t about to fall for that.
            “Why don’t you go see your grandfather? I don’t know if he’ll tell you about his life, but he might. If nothing else, your visit will brighten his day.”
            “Crap.”
            “Watch your mouth, young lady.”

---*---

            The place smells bad; that’s the worst part for me. They try to keep it clean; they’re all the time mopping the floors and scrubbing the walls, but they can’t get rid of the odor of failing human faculties.

            He’s sitting very still in a wheelchair by a window, looking out. Is he looking out at a world that is spinning on without him? Depressing thought. He doesn’t hear me until I’m right behind him.
            “Hi, Pops.”
            He turns and looks at me, his eyes turning warm and soft, but he seems a little lost and he scratches his head.
            “Natalie. What a wonderful surprise. How’s my baby girl?”
            He calls me ‘baby girl’ even though I’m fifteen. It doesn’t bother me, though, because he still calls my mom ‘baby girl’, too. His head scratching has disturbed the order of his wispy hair and I smooth it. He looks past me.
            “Did your grandmother come with you?”
            “She said to tell you she’d be by a little later.”
            His sets aside the momentary disappointment, smiles up at me and holds out a gnarled, scarred hand that shakes slightly. I take it. The skin is dry and rough but the grip is firm. I wonder if the hands might be a metaphor for the man: scared and rough on the outside, strong and steady on the inside.
            I love my grandfather. I do. I think I need to say that. When I was a little girl, before his health began to go downhill, he would take me up and hold me on his lap and ‘nibble my neck’. That’s what he called it. I would laugh and struggle to get away from that wonderful/terrible tickle and when he let me go, I’d come back for more. I love him and he loves me. That’s why it hurts to see him so frail and vulnerable. I smooth his hair again and kiss him on the top of his head. It smells like soap.
            “Can you visit for a minute, or are you on your way somewhere?” he asks.
            I think he doesn’t want to sound too hopeful.
            “No, Pops. I came to visit you.”
            He won’t let go of my hand so I have to sit close to him. His body is frail, his hands shake, but his eyes are clear.
            “To what do I owe the honor of your visit?” he asks.
            His mind is as clear as his eyes; he knows I didn’t just happen by.
            “We’re doing a project in school,” I admit, “an oral, family history. Grandma said you have some interesting stories to tell, if I can persuade you to tell them.”
            His eyes pull away. He lets go of my hand, putting his hand in his lap. He turns his head to look out the window. My interest is suddenly whetted.
            “I don’t have any interesting stories, baby girl,” he says.
            But there’s a sudden tingle in me and I know that’s not true.
            “Sure you do, Pops.”
            I try not to sound too eager. He turns his head and studies me and his eyes seem to slice right through me. It’s something I’ve never seen in him, and I get the overwhelming sense that he was once a man to be reckoned with. It’s so strong that I have to look away.
            “What would be gained, baby girl?”
            His words are soft, but there’s a challenge, and maybe a warning, in his tone.
            “This is a different world than the one I grew up in. That world is better left in the memory. I don’t know that there’s anything to be gained by rehashing the past.”
            “If we don’t learn from history, we’re doomed to repeat it.”
            I scored a point. I can see it in his eyes. Then he shakes his head and looks out the window and I think I’ve lost him.
            “I think about the past,” he says to the window. “I guess that’s what people do who have no future. We spend the early years of our lives learning how to bend and shape the world to meet some immediate need. We spend the next fifty years doing just that, bending and shaping, manipulating the world and other people to benefit ourselves while trying to avoid being manipulated by others for their benefit. People get hurt along the way. Some of it is accidental, some is purposeful.”
            He turns and looks at me.
            “You’ve noticed how many old men there are in church.”
            I nod. He looks out the window again.
            “They were in church as children, mostly absent in their middle years, but in their later years they go back. We can’t undo what we’ve done, so we spend the last years of our lives trying to make sense of it all, searching for forgiveness, hoping for redemption.”
            His words are so heartfelt that my heart suddenly aches for him.
            “Pops…”
            He turns on me those piercing eyes then seems to realize the intensity and blinks it back.
            “It seems that all I can remember anymore is the sadness. I guess I caused my share. I think about it, but I don’t know if I want to talk about it.”
            “Weren’t there any happy times, Pops? I know you and Grandma were happy.”
            “Your grandmother makes my heart sing, but we had a hard row to hoe before we could finally be together.”
            “Tell me about that, Pops. That sounds so romantic. Tell me about it.”
            He looks out the window then looks at his hands.
            “I’ll tell you my story, Natalie. You won’t like some of what you hear, and I’m too old to try to sanitize the past. Even if you hear the stories and don’t like the man I was, I hope you can still find forgiveness for your grandfather. I’ll be leaving this world with burdens enough, baby girl, and I’ll not knowingly add another.”
            I reach out and take his scarred hand. It’s not about a school project anymore.
            “Maybe…,” my voice is so thin, “Maybe the forgiveness you need is your own.”

Relevance

            When I began this blog I promised to post regularly. Since my last post was in February, I feel the need to offer an explanation. I had a mild heart attack in late February. I’m doing fine now, thank you. A number of people sent their good wishes and it’s very nice to be reminded that people care about you. After the ‘cardiac event’ I had a mild bout of depression. I was told that depression usually follows a heart attack. That didn’t really make me feel any better, but I guess it is useful information.

            I’ve been depressed before. I don’t talk about it, none of us do. Admitting to having bouts of depression, even mild bouts, makes us sound so…human. I typically don’t even use the word ‘depression’. I call it ‘the blues’ because the word ‘depression’ makes me feel like I need to tiptoe around and be extra quiet. ‘The blues’ shows itself in me with two symptoms: 1) a lack of focus and 2) a sense of apathy. I didn’t write or post because I couldn’t focus on one subject and, well, it seemed meaningless anyhow. That, of course, was the voice of ‘the blues’. Combine those two things with my natural tendency to procrastinate and, as you may imagine, there are a lot of things lying around my house that need completed.

            Someone asked me shortly after my episode if it scared me. Someone else asked if I learned anything from it. At the time the answer to both questions was ‘no’. I’ve had a little time to reflect and here’s what has come to mind.

            There was not any moment during the entire episode when I was made afraid by the prospect of death. Let me tell you a story here. One afternoon, back when I was a minister, I got a phone call that one of my members was in the ER with a heart attack. I rushed to the hospital and was allowed to be with the man. As I entered the room, he looked up at me and I saw real honest-to-goodness fear in his eyes. He thought he was going to die, and he was afraid. During my episode, I didn’t feel that fear. The ultimate decision as to the day and time of my exit will not be in my hands, nor will it be in the hands of physicians, and I’m willing to trust that ultimate decision to the only hands capable of making it.

            So, in thinking back about the ‘recent unpleasantness’, I think that I’m not afraid to die. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not getting in line for that particular bus, but the idea of crossing over to that other plane doesn’t disturb me.

            What do disturb me are the questions which keep rolling around in my mind. They’re simple questions, maybe more disturbing because they are so simple.

            “What have you done? What will you do?”

            I don’t hear this as an accusation. I hear it as a challenge to evaluate my life. Is this a better place because I was here? Is there more humanity, more compassion, more forgiveness because I was here? Is any one individual’s life just a little better because I was here? I’m still examining those questions. I’ll share the answers as they reveal themselves to me.

The Right Stuff

            I’m in a mood, okay? Read on with that little forewarning.

            I’m old fashioned. I’m a dinosaur. Ask me if I care.
            I was raised in a culture of honesty and honor. When I was a kid, no one locked their doors at night. People went away for days at a time and left the house unlocked. My first paying job was for a man who had peach and apple orchards and a huge garden and sold his produce at a roadside stand. He didn’t tend the stand; no one did. The individual items were priced and a five gallon glass jar stood beside the door. People selected their produce and put the money in the jar. If they needed change, they made it themselves from the jar. It was called the honor system. My dad asked him one day if he lost any money. He replied that over the course of a summer he might lose a dollar or two. It was called, I’ll be redundant because some things are worth repeating; it was called the honor system.
            When I was a kid, the phrase, ‘his word was his bond’ still applied. If someone said he or she would do something, it was a binding contract and he/she did it, even if it cost him/her financially in the end. I once overheard a contract at the local general store when a poor man, a very poor man, bargained his labor for some groceries. He worked at the store every day after his regular job until he paid off the debt. You see, it didn’t matter who you were; it didn’t matter if you were on the bottom rung of the socio-economic ladder, your word was your bond.
            My parents taught me, by word and by example, and the culture around me taught me, that duty was one of the highest goods, that being worthy of another’s trust was more valuable than money, and that honesty and honor were the true marks of humanity, the marks that really separate us from the beasts.
            What happened?
            I wish I knew the answer. If I did, maybe I could understand the world I see around me and maybe it wouldn’t make me so sad to see the endless striving after the wind.
            Maybe it’s just me. I have to admit to that possibility because I have some curious buttons. The national anthem can still bring a tear to my eye. If you saw the second Lord of the Rings movie, you may remember that the forces of good are holed up in Helm’s Deep and they know they have little chance against the legions of the evil army. Then, unexpectedly, a company of elves shows up to honor an ancient alliance and to fight with the men. The first time I saw that scene, I got choked up. Honor, courage, loyalty. My favorite novel of all time is ‘Watership Down’. I’ve read it a dozen times. It’s about rabbits. Well, rabbits are the characters, but it’s about friendship, trust, honor, courage and loyalty.
            So, maybe it’s just me. Maybe I expect too much from our frail humanity. That could be because I am, after all, a dinosaur. Ask me if I care.

Update

            I wanted to post a short update. Most of you know that the print version of What Rough Beast was published December 7^th. The Kindle version was made available two weeks after that. Several reviews have been posted on Amazon, and I’ve heard in person from a number of you, and the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. Overwhelmingly.
            I have to tell you, honestly, that I am humbled and gratified beyond words.
            I’m working with various County Arts Councils to arrange book signings in nearby counties. I have nothing firm at this time – perhaps in February or March. I’ll keep you posted. If you know ‘somebody’, let me know.
            Nearly everyone has asked when the sequel, Taylor’s Kin, will be available. (It was a good idea to put that teaser chapter of Taylor’s Kin at the end of What Rough Beast.) It warms my heart to know that you came to care about Jonathan Taylor and that you want to know the next chapter in his life.
            We’re aiming for the release of Taylor’s Kin by the end of February. I think we’re in the final edit. We’ll proof the copy and polish it. There’s work to be done on the cover, then we’ll jump through the publishing hoops, and it’ll be ready. (Sounds easy, doesn’t it?) The original plan was to release Taylor’s Kin in Kindle version only, but so many have said they want a physical book that the original plan will have to be revisited.
            What’s Taylor’s Kin about? After reading What Rough Beast, you know what Jonathan Taylor has gone through. The Beast has withdrawn, and Jonathan now has to face a new set of challenges in a new world. All that he knew has disappeared. What would it be like to find yourself in a world where only one tenth of one percent of the population survived? How would you continue? What kinds of challenges would you face? Would you try to reshape that new world to mirror the former one?
            Taylor’s Kin isn’t as dark as What Rough Beast. It’s not a laugh riot by any means and there are a few heavy spots, but it isn’t as frightening. Taylor reflects some on the Beast and on being human, but there’s a greater emphasis – survival.
            Be advised: there are scenes in Taylor’s Kin which will touch your heart, maybe even bring a tear. You’ve been warned.
            What else is going on? I’ve dusted off a couple of stories I wrote several years ago. They’re nothing like What Rough Beast, but they try to look at the human condition. Also, I’m working on a new story set in the South of the late 50s and 60s. Yes, I remember those days when we thought the party was just getting started. And, I recently let Jonathan Taylor start running free in my mind again. Guess what. He has another story to tell after Taylor’s Kin.
            Stay tuned.
           And thanks again for your kind words. They’ve meant a lot to me.

Place Holders

            I had such a good time at my brother-in-law’s recent surprise birthday party. He turned the big six-oh and my sister invited family and friends, and a large group attended. The coolest part for me was seeing people I hadn’t seen in years. I saw people I had grown up with and had seen at least weekly at church for twenty-five years. I knew their parents and, in some cases, their grandparents. Then I moved away and I hadn’t seen some of them for thirty years or so. I don’t know if you’re like me, but I tend to be intimidated by gatherings like this because sometimes it’s hard for me to pull up a name that hasn’t crossed my lips in ten, fifteen, twenty or more years.
            And they had changed. They were older. Well, we were all older.
            I knew them when we were children bounding around the churchyard playing tag or hide-and-seek. I knew them in their pressed Sunday suits and their pretty dresses. I knew them when our eyes were bright and innocent. I went to school with them and knew them into early adulthood. I knew them when they married and when their children were born. I knew the events in their lives which had brought joy. I knew the events which had brought sorrow.
            We were family.
            Then I moved and our paths seldom crossed. I felt a pang of remorse that I had moved and lost touch, but one can only follow his destiny.
            We’re grandparents now. I’ve mentioned before that I’m an observer and as I watched the other night, I started thinking. It occurred to me we are all place-holders. We were the grandchildren of our grandparents, the children of our parents. Then we took the places they had held. We became the parents of our children and then the grandparents of our grandchildren.
            I began to wonder what it was all about. Through the ages the march of humanity has been an endless procession of place-holders: we’re born, we live, we die and another generation steps up to take our places. We take the place held by our parents then our children take that place from us. The term, place-holder, may sound insignificant. It isn’t. I think I can argue that being a place-holder is a significant part of why we’re here.
            What have I done as a place-holder? Have I taught my children to respect themselves and others? Have I taught them how to make their way in life? Have I taught them the difference between right and wrong, the difference between faith and religion, between wanting and needing, between inner wealth and a gilded exterior?
            It will be obvious to you that place-holding has application beyond our families to life in general. Have I done anything in my time here to benefit the human race? Is that too ambitious? Have I done anything in my time here to benefit even one other human being? Or has my life been only about me?

            These are questions worth reflection. And it’s not a bad thing to reflect upon life.

Christmas2011

            Christmas is probably my least favorite holiday of the year.
            Some will read that and wonder what kind of scrooge I must be to say such a thing.
            It’s not that I don’t like the idea of Christmas. I do. I like it very much. My heart is always deeply moved as it ponders the possibility of peace, joy and harmony between us individual human beings and between races, classes and nations of people. It’s a wonderful and beautiful concept, a model, really, of how we ought to see and treat each other every day. And the underlying belief, the foundational belief that the divine has pulled down and will continue obstinately to pull down the barriers you and I throw up every day makes the heart swell with humility and gratitude.
            Christmas, to me, memorializes a magnanimous gift of the divine, a gift so obscure in its origin and so outrageous in its scope that it defies our puny understanding, a gift lavished upon us without regard to whether we’ve been naughty or nice. It memorializes a gift which we cannot consume but which, instead, consumes us.
            So, yes, I like the idea and the promise of Christmas. I just don’t care much for what we’ve done with it. Christmas is a season of the heart, a season when the heart is especially encouraged to listen beyond its own selfish beating to hear the soft, sweet song of the divine. I’m not going to subject you to a rant about how we have taken this season of the heart and turned it into an orgy of consumption. I will content myself with that mini-rant and tell you a story. You may have heard it before, but I’ll tell it again.
            This is a condensed and simplified version of what became known as the Christmas Truce. During the week before Christmas, 1914, during the First World War, at various points along the battle lines British troops in their trenches heard singing coming from the German trenches on the other side of the no-man’s land – the killing zone – which separated them. They recognized the songs as Christmas Carols. The British troops began to sing carols, too. Before long the opposing troops were shouting Christmas greetings to each other. On Christmas Eve men on both sides eased out of their trenches and joined their adversaries in the no-man’s land. In the center of the killing zone, they laid down their weapons, shook each other’s hands, exchanged simple gifts of food and cigarettes and sang Christmas carols.
            All were soldiers, men who were doing their duty to their respective nations. That which united them: their common Christianity, was able to unite them for only a few hours. That which divided them: their common humanity, sent them back to their trenches and back to their devoted efforts to kill each other.
            There is an element of deep sadness in that story. But there is an element of hope, too. Warring factions laid down their weapons and opened their arms to their enemies. Yes, it was brief, but it could never have happened at all, never in a million years, if the spirit of Christmas had not briefly taken sole possession of the hearts of those men. There is much hope there.

            I’m not going to wish you Merry Christmas or happy holidays. I’m going to wish you a season of the heart. If you have that, you’ll have the others.

Illegal Drugs - Dancing with the Devil

            This is not an easy issue. I’ve tried to put aside my biases and previously conceived ideas and to look honestly and dispassionately at this issue and all I can say is, sometimes you have to dance with the devil.
            Are you watching the aptly named ‘Border Wars’ on the National Geographic channel? If you aren’t aware of the war going on along the US/Mexico border, you need to get your head out of the sand. Every day cartels in Mexico attempt to ship huge amounts of marijuana and other illegal drugs into the US to feed the insatiable American demand. It’s a multi-billion dollar a year industry. It funds a shadow government of thugs and terrorists. Innocent men, women and children in Mexican border towns are unable to go about their normal lives for fear of being caught in the frequent cross-fires between rival drug gangs. I hope you won’t brush this off like one man I heard who said, ‘Well, that’s a foreign country’. His callous attitude left me speechless. Don’t brush it off. It isn’t a matter of there being cartels in Mexico and none in the US. The difference is that they’re more organized there. When criminal groups in the US start organizing and consolidating, as they surely will – the huge financial potential guarantees it, we’ll see dead bodies pile up in our streets, too.
            The illegal drug industry is a gushing faucet pouring billions of dollars out of this country every year and putting it into the hands of monsters who use it to buy political influence and to secure their murderous regimes. Why can’t we extract one of the fangs of that monster? Why can’t we remove marijuana from the list of illegal drugs?
            For the record, I don’t partake. This is not a self-serving position. Tobacco is my drug of choice and it kills more people every year than all the illicit drugs combined. And it’s legal. I say we should legalize marijuana. Standardize the THC content, educate the public as with the recent successful anti-smoking campaigns, regulate it like we regulate alcohol, and tax it.
            Is this a question of morality? Yes. Absolutely. Admit that we live in an imperfect world and that our choices are usually between imperfect alternatives. If you admit that you’ll begin to see that this is a question of whether it is more immoral to legalize marijuana or to continue to fund a vicious, murderous, criminal element. It’s impossible for me to see the issue as a choice between good and bad. I can only see it as a choice between bad and horrendous. We made that choice with alcohol, which may be a more dangerous drug than marijuana, and we made it with tobacco, which certainly is. I haven’t heard the term in years, but when I was a kid the tax on alcohol and tobacco was called the ‘sin tax’. It was accepted that people were going to consume substances which could be harmful to them. It was accepted that sometimes you have to dance with the devil.
            Moreover, we would all agree that our government has a moral obligation to protect its citizens, to provide for each of us a reasonable expectation of safety and security. But the policy of criminalizing marijuana has created a growing atmosphere of danger and insecurity, especially for poor inner-city communities. If we continue blindly down this path we can only make the situation worse. The argument could be made that, in order to protect its citizens, the US government has an obligation to legalize marijuana so as to deny gangs and cartels the opportunity to consolidate and become more firmly established institutions in this country. I sigh deeply as I hear myself saying that we should give government further institutional control, but in an imperfect world we have to choose between evils, and this is a lesser evil than allowing cartels to seize that power through bribery, coercion and murder.
            What if marijuana were legalized? Put emotion aside for a moment and consider the practical benefits. 1) It would partially disarm a powerful criminal element both in Mexico and in the US. 2) It wouldn’t be a shot in the arm for American farmers, it would be a transfusion. 3) It would pare down the government bureaucracy and save taxpayers millions of dollars. 4) The tax revenues would be a welcome addition to suffering local, state and federal coffers. 5) It would keep dollars in this country instead of shipping them to foreign hands.
            It’s a difficult issue. In a perfect world we wouldn’t have to make these choices. In a perfect world this wouldn’t even be an issue. This isn’t a perfect world. I come to the end of my argument and I realize that this isn’t, after all, a question of whether or not we will dance with the devil but a question of whether or not we will choose to dance with a lesser devil.
            Don’t stop here. Study the issue. Why is marijuana illegal? How many drug related murders occur in the US every year? How did Prohibition contribute to the rise of organized crime (the ‘mob’)? These are a very few areas to get you started. And remember William Drummond’s observation: “He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave.”

            Light a candle.