Ode to Billy Joe

I am determined to rewrite Bobbie Gentry’s Ode to Billy Joe as a novel. Ever since my 11th grade English teacher, Mrs. Haynes, had the entire class write essays on what we thought she and Billy Joe were throwing off that bridge, I’ve been bothered by that story. And now, almost half a century later, I have figured it out. You see, if you listen closely to the song, and visualize all of the things her mother says, you (or at least I) get a very different picture. It makes me start wondering about the relationship between mom and Brother Taylor, for instance. And do Mom’s questions not sound a bit like an inquisition? Listen closely to her, and then add things like a piercing look, and an unstated accusation, like “What do you know about that, girl?”, and then “What’s happened to your appetite?” , as though she is probing for an admission of some sort. Maybe it wasn’t a virus that Papa caught that did him in. Could it have been clearing the way for Brother Taylor? Okay, I’ve got to write it. Northern Mississippi, 1964, here I come. Oh, and Carmen Haynes, if you’re reading this (and I hope you are), I am convinced it wasn’t something existential, like their combined hopes, dreams, and future plans they were throwing off that bridge. They had their escape plans made and laid, and were just waiting. All they were really doing was pitching rocks at turtles. The only thing of note that was pitched off that bridge was Billy Joe, and I’m betting that Brother Taylor was the one who did it. Can you change my grade to an "A"?

Boy, Am I Bored

“Can we go somewhere?” He’s 14, but it could just as easily be 12 or 16, maybe even 10. Or it could be her at any of those ages. “Where do you want to go?” “Anywhere, let’s just go somewhere. There’s nothing to do around here. I’m bored.” I can feel it coming, but there’s nothing I can do but join in and play this game. “Why don’t you read a book? “I’ve read all the ones I like.” “Watch TV? There are only a hundred or so channels. Surely there’s something on that’s good.” “No, I looked at the guide. They’re all boring.” “Watch a movie?” “Seen them all a hundred times.” “Get on the internet.” Not always a good suggestion, but I can already see where this is going. “There’s nothing there I want to see. You have all the good sites blocked.” “Play a video game?” There are at least three platforms, and dozens of games for each. “Played them all. Beat them all. Bored with them all.” “How about your DS?” “Those games are all sissy games, and anyway I’ve beat them.” “I guess your iPod Touch is out of the question.” “I’m out of money on iTunes, and I’ve played all the games I can download. Nobody is around to text, there are all out doing stuff.” “What kind of stuff?” “I don’t know, just stuff. Fun stuff.” “Why not shoot some baskets?” “No.” “Ride your bike?” “Flat tire.” “Go for a walk?” “Been everywhere, seen everything, done it all.” “I guess you could help me with the chores.” No verbal response, just eye-roll and incredulous look. “Or maybe you could wash the car.” Another of the same, this time over the shoulder as he walks away. “Does this mean no?” The same response again, over a slumping, boneless shoulder, the surest sign of abject boredom and disgust at having to stay home all day and all night. At this point I have only two choices (really three, but throwing rocks at a child is frowned upon in some cultures, ours being one of them). I can sacrifice my day to search for meaningful “fun”, a search doomed to failure from the start. I mean, if none of the twelve offerings above are worth a try, what would make me think anything I could drive him to, or procure for him would be any better? Or I could make the situation worse, which I almost invariably choose. This time is no different. “I don’t believe in boredom. I think it’s just a lack of imagination.” That’s sure to get a glare, and thereby justifiable. “You have everything in the world to do right here. What is it you really want?” “I don’t know. I’m just bored.” So here we have it. The speech has to come out. If I don’t recite it on purpose I’ll no doubt go into a dissociative trance and pump it out of my subconscious. “When I was your age I never got bored. There wasn’t satellite TV or computers, and I was in my 20s with a family when the first video game was invented. You had to go to a movie on Saturday to see one, and then there wasn’t a choice. We didn’t have a telephone in the house, and the nearest neighbor my age was 4 miles away. I did ride over there on my bike a lot, though. There was all kinds of stuff to see and do, and if I did find myself with nothing that excited me, I could always read the encyclopedia. One summer I got all the way to the “D’s”. Of course I had to shout the last half, because I had lost my audience. He had slumped off somewhere to wallow in boredom, blaming me for being the fun-sucker I am. Ever happen to you? Don’t lie. It’s happened to all of us with progeny. Ever think about why? There has to be a reason, even if it turns out to be some form of contagion spread by puberty. Who’s really to blame? I’ll throw together a list of possibilities. It won’t be all-inclusive, just those things I can think of. Add some more and text me. Or email me. Or tweet. Or put them on face-book. My-space? Skype? Even (if you are hopelessly out of touch) call me. I should probably set the record straight. I got bored, too. I remember days that seemed to stretch out to infinity, and I could come up with nothing that sounded exciting to do. My choices were fewer then than his now, but my vista was narrower then, too. I could read, run, walk, play ball, solitaire, fish, bicycle, or just fool around. That doesn’t sound like a lot of choices by today’s standards, but it made for a full life for those times, and I wouldn’t trade then for now. The point is that no matter what is available, sometimes nothing satisfies. I don’t remember it lasting for hours or days or longer, but I remember occasionally thinking that I had a lot of time on my hands and not one thing to fill it with. What’s a body to do? This is where imagination comes in. It’s downright ugly of me to disparage a teen’s (or anyone’s) imagination. That’s just one of my failures. For the life of me, I can’t recall curing mind-numbing periods of boredom with bursts of genius, inspiration, or imagination. But something must have happened or I would still be shuffling around, grumping and grumbling and asking to be entertained. And the same will happen to him – and her. The wrong thing for me (or you) to do is to jump up and start trying to please. I get the image of “how do you like this? How about this? Maybe in a different color? Size?” in a futile effort to find a match between what he wants and what I can offer. That’s a non-starter. It calls to mind a friend’s boss who was fond of saying, “I don’t know what I want but I’ll know it when I see it - and that’s not it.”

Rain

I’m sitting at my computer table and watching it rain. Nothing’s wrong, in fact things are going pretty well right now. I just like rain. For the several years that Wendy and I actively farmed, and helped feed over 50 families, we very often didn’t get nearly enough rain. In fact, a couple of years it was so stingy that we watched things turn brown and die, while we resorted to buying from other farms to make our weekly deliveries. I was constantly reminded that we as human beings can be pretty arrogant for the most part, considering that we owe our continued existence to 6 inches of topsoil, and the fact that it rains. Given that that is true, we teetered on the brink of extinction three summers in a row. But when rain finally comes, you can smell it long before it gets to you. It’s hard to define the smell, but it’s unmistakable. Then you hear it as it comes over the hill, just a steady, faint roar that gets louder slowly. I grab my stuff and start for the house, and when I get part way I can see it advancing down the hillside, obscuring the top, then halfway down, then rolling across the pasture. The roar is louder now, and once I would make a run for it. Not any more. I slow down and watch and listen, and smile so wide my cheeks hurt. The first drops are so big and hit so hard that for a minute I think there may be some hail mixed in, and I get a burst of adrenalin and panic, but that quickly fades as exhilaration takes over. There’s nothing there but big, fat raindrops. I can see dimples in the dust where drops hit, but only for a few seconds. Then everything is wet, the ground, me, and everything tha's green. I swear I can hear them singing. Why in thunder (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun) would anyone want to go inside where it’s still dry? So I walk and watch and smile, and get soaked to the skin, muddy from the knees down, and it’s all good. It reminds me of when I was small, and the house we lived in didn’t have running water. Summer rains were free showers, and my mom didn’t have to heat water on the stove and fill up the washtub. She’d give me a bar of soap and send me outside into the rain to get clean. You know, it feels as good now as it did then. Maybe I should carry a bar of soap around in my pocket.

Can I get more with less?

I am an avid reader, and of course want to be a writer that people read avidly. But I've hit a bump in the road. Not with writing, I'm not even sure I'm on a road with that, much less the right road. No, the bump I've hit is with the books I'm finding to read. It seems that every time I pick up a good whodunit these days, somewhere in the first 25 pages I'm forced to read the description of murder not just "so foul", but so gruesome. Successful writers appear to be in a contest to see who can describe rape, torture, murder and mutilation in the most macabre manner. Now, in the couple of things I've actually written, I admittedly have bumped off some folks - after all, murder sells. So it's not the act itself that I am finding repugnant, it's the lengths to which it's being taken and being described. I mean, are there really that many deviants out there who not only serially slay, but then slice, dice, pose, and write notes in the blood of their victims? And if there are, do they really only take young, beautiful girls/women? Come on, guys, I still enjoy reading you; after all, it's the writing, not the crime, that makes you successful. But here's one voice out in the wilderness that's saying, look, it's okay with me if you just kill them and taunt the police. You don't have to disembowel, or cut off the eyelids, or keep toe trophies, or perform your own version of autopsy. Killing is enough for me. So if you don't mind, go on out there and let your bad guys kill a whole bunch of people for me to read about and for your protagonist to catch. I can read faster than you can write, so there'll always be a market. But for one of your fans at least, killing is enough. Spare me the gore. Can't wait for the next one to come out!