Hither, Dither, and Yawn

Can you see where the weekends are?

Hither I come, returning to my cyber home, undoubtedly looking as dusty and bedraggled as I feel.  Over 27 July days (nights, mostly), I churned out 50,980 words for National Novel Writing Month - Summer Camp Edition.  I hear you - and the answer is yes.  Something is very much wrong with me.  I enjoy the pressure that these novel writing months put on me.  I'm quite comfortable being wordy.  Obviously.  And wordy I was, including 12,000 words during the final weekend.

So.  Over the past eleven days, I haven't written a word, and I haven't looked at what I wrote in July.  "Undead Drunk" is like a strange dream I had - full of booze and sex and snark - and a few zombies.  I've rested.  I've relaxed.  I've watched a lot of baseball.  I'm watching baseball right now.

But here's the thing:  What I should be doing, as always, is something else.  I now have SEVEN first-draft novels, and a couple of them might actually have potential.  I should be doing rewrites and edits, and reading "Getting Published - For Dummies."  Failing that, I should be writing something else - something new, something that, if not marketable, is at least a worthwhile exercise.  Failing that, I should be reading any of the half-dozen books in my to-read pile.  I should be finding a Jayson Werth garden gnome on eBay for my brother, who got to the Nats game too not-early-enough, on Tuesday, and missed out.  I should be working on my legal defense strategy for any of the myriad of lawsuits pending against me over that TV pilot I supposedly stole from Patton Oswalt and George Barry.  I should be trying on shorts.  I should be having someone take a look at that bullet wound.  It only grazed me, but it's awfully angry-looking - I'm worried that it might be infected.  Of course, I should also be shopping for new carpeting.  It's been over two weeks since the neighbors' washing machine flooded *our* dining room, and we ripped out the carpet in a fit of pique (And because we knew it was the only way to get us to replace the stuff.  We've been talking about it for a couple of years, now.), and there it sits.  Stupid concrete slab ghetto townhouse.  I should be figuring out what I want to do with this blog.  The Hobo Posts probably deserve their own blog, but that just sounds like work.  I suppose I could also be reading all my wonderful bloggy friends' stuff, and leaving them warm, supportive, and constructive feedback.  I should be emailing my handful of wayward friends.  I should be sleeping, perhaps.  [Baseball is over.  Stuff happened - what can I say?]

But I'm not.  Instead, I am dithering.  I think about all of the above and so much more.  And I think and think and think, and I come up with all manner of brilliant solutions to it.  It's like My Lost Revelation - gone before I can act.  It's not simple procrastination, though.  You ditherers know what I mean.  It's all there, but for the actual action.  Thinking about stuff is SO much easier than doing stuff.

Summer will end, and I'll not have even reread last year's novel - the one with potential - let alone edited, punched up, rewritten, fixed, sold, or otherwise pushed it toward publication.

Summer will end, and this wound will still be oozing, the legal team will have fired ME, and the garden gnomes will be gone.

Summer will end, and the house will still be in dire need of paint, carpeting, and if I'm being honest, cleaning.

Summer will end, and I'll not have reestablished connection with my very few friends, nor will I have rejoined the blogosphere - or even my teensy corner thereof.

yawn.

Summer will end, and that thumping in the closet will persist.  The thing that's not a bunny living under the shed will have had babies, and because I work at HSUS, there'll be nothing I can do about them.  So much for cutting the grass, I guess.  The Nats will have found a way to lose the NL East, but the O's will have clinched the AL East, and that will just have to do.  The 'Skins will have won all four of their preseason games, setting us up for the disappointment of another 10+ loss regular season, full of hypocritical bitching about the team's stupid name.  Yes - it's the 1890s N-word for native Americans.  If every non-native person who claims to be offended by it gave a dollar to a native American Nation tomorrow, we'd have the wealthiest indigenous population on the planet - but hypocrisy, as we know, is the greatest luxury.  Just ask the Disposable Heroes of Hip-hoprisy.

((YAWN))

Anyway.  Summer will end, and that's a shame.  But that's the great thing about not doing what you should be doing.  Fall will come, and all those things will be there, patiently waiting for you.  Well, my gunshot wound might not be patient, exactly, but still.  It will be there.  And if we still don't have carpeting, yet, then we can store perishables on the cold concrete floor, and save all kinds of money by unplugging the fridge.

((YAWN))

And there it is.  The second ((YAWN)).  I think it's time to tell you about another outrageously weird hobo, before you become as bored with all of this as I am.  Next time, that is - assuming that I'm not busy pitching "Undead Drunk" or "Falling Off The Universe" or "Buck Mope Catches The Westbound" to a big-time agent, somewhere...

Thanks for bearing with me, whilst I work this out...

Naturally, this post was prompted by my friends at Studio 30 Plus.  This week, our writing prompt, "Summer will end" came from a haiku by Laura at Bird Of The Forest. 

Catching Up With Fonzie - Crime & Punishment

"That's it?"  The Union Pacific detective asked, looking not at his suspect, but at the two-way mirror on the back wall of the interrogation room.  He knew that behind the glass, the Oklahoma City cops were shaking their heads.

"That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it, copper."  Fonzie, a six-year veteran of the grinding, often brutal hobo life, had been in trouble before.  His smile spoke of relief, as if he'd confessed everything.

He had not.  Not nearly.

His confession had covered only the petty crime committed that morning - his attempted theft of a woman's purse at Union Station.

"Buddy, we got all night.  I already told you the purse snatching ain't your biggest problem.  So, before we go any further... Arturo Hebert Fonzarillo--"

"Call me Fonzie," the hobo said smugly.

The policeman cleared his throat.  "Arturo Hebert Fonzarillo, you are hereby charged with the murders of Estelle Jane and Frank Joseph Fonzarillo.  You have the right to remain silent--"

"What??"  Fonzie slammed his handcuffed fists on the ancient wooden desk, and began to lunge from his chair, before several officers rushed into the room and encouraged him to reconsider.  "My parents?  What's wrong with you, bub?  My parents died six years ago."

"Yes - the day you disappeared, Mr. Fonzarillo," the lead interrogator said flatly.  "The day you murdered them.  Now, you pays your money and you takes your choice, see..."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"What he's trying to say, Fonzie, is you did the crime, so now you're gonna do the time.  I'd say about twenty-five to life."

Six hours later...

"You know what, coppers?"  Fonzie sighed, exhausted.  "I know I didn't kill my folks.  God knows I didn't do it, and I'm pretty sure you fellas know I didn't do it.  But, you know what?  Write up a confession, and I'll sign it.  Whatever you say - I did it.  I drowned my dear old mama in the lobster tank in our restaurant.  I knocked my pop unconscious with the pizza paddle from the kitchen, then burned him in the oven.  Done and done.  Where do I sign?"

The detectives stared at each other for a moment, then at Fonzie.  "We'll get that typed up in just a minute, Fonz.  But we been here for hours - with you proclaiming your innocence up one side and down the other.  What gives?"

The weary hobo sighed heavily.  "Like I said, God and me - we know I didn't do it.  But there ain't a judge or jury that's gonna believe me.  So, the way I see it, I already been punished to hell and back, over the past six years.  You say I'll get twenty-five to life in the clink.  About now, that sounds like a step up.  A cot, a shower, food that don't have bugs in it, vaccinations, a roof over my head and no more running - I'll take it.  Where do I sign?"

  

This time, I combined the STUDIO 30-PLUS prompt "he'd confessed everything" from Kirsten A. Piccini's "Man on a Mission," with the LIGHT & SHADE CHALLENGE prompt "You pays your money and you takes your choice," and the name Fonzie, from John Hodgman's list of 700 hobo names.

So.  Did he do it?

Pantless, Sockless, Shoeless Buster Bareass - On Loss

In my quest to tell the stories of John Hodgman's 700 HOBOES, I have often struggled to find any useful information at all, beyond a name.  Many of these people are nothing more than ghosts.  Interviews of actual hoboes have been helpful, but short of that rare face-to-face meeting, I have found that the best window into the forgotten lives of America's legions of train-riding wanderers is found in the letters a few of them left behind.  

The following letter was found in 1949 in the woods near the Louisville and Nashville tracks, twenty-two miles southwest of Mobile, Alabama.  It was in a glass bottle, clutched in the skeletal remains of a long-dead man - presumably its author - next to a shallow grave marked only with a number of small rocks arranged on the ground in the shape of a cross.  Local authorities had the remains exhumed, and they were able to determine that it was a woman, estimated to have died at least fifteen years prior, probably in her mid-twenties and eight-to-ten weeks pregnant when she perished.  Nearly all of her bones had been broken.

My Dearest Eleanor,

I will try to be brief. I know you hate when I ramble.  I hope I needn't remind you that I view our time together as nothing short of a miracle, but in case you forgot, there it is.  I never believed in soul mates before you stumbled so drunk and pretty into my campfire.  Enough said, I'm sure.

It has been five years, but the only difference between how I feel now and how I felt when it happened is that now, I'm older and more tired.  They said time would heal me.  It hasn't.  They said I could take comfort in knowing that you and the baby are at peace.  I cannot.  And Lord knows I have tried.  They even said I would love again, the fools.  I have not.  I will not.  I cannot.  I love you, and that is all.

I tried to convince myself that it wasn't my fault, that if you couldn't hear the train over the storm, there was no way you could have heard my voice.  I don't know.  I said nothing.  I just stood there, paralyzed and stupid in my disbelief of my own eyes, and it was over.  You were gone.  Our life, ended in a horrible blink.  No, I will not forgive myself this loss.  We knew plenty of losses before this one - my pants and shoes, my watch, your scarves and the photograph of the two of us with the sideshow madam in Cincinnati.  Even the fingers I lost to frostbite were nothing.  I am empty, I am dead, I am lost.

I still wake at night and speak to you, as if you are beside me.  I dream of our baby, always a girl, and she looks just like you.  Every day, I tell you I'm sorry, over and over.  I have returned here twice a year - on your birthday, and on our anniversary, to bring you flowers that I paid for myself. 

And now I think I've cried enough, trying to reach you, and to be where you are.  There was frost all the way down near Pascagoula last night, and it feels just as cold, tonight.  I'll sit with you, sweet Eleanor, and drink all this hobo wine, and I'll pass out, and freeze right to death, right to you.  And we will be happy - you, me and the baby.  I hope you haven't met someone new, where you are.  That would be awkward.  Anyway, if that's the case, I'll have only myself to blame, for not doing this sooner.

I'm sure when they find me, they'll say, "Oh, this poor bum - he had nothing of his own," but I know better.  I'm not a bum.  I am a hobo, and I had everything.  I had you.

With all of me,
Buster

P.S. I didn't freeze to death, and I have a splitting headache.  I'll try again tonight.

This post was written in response to another Studio Thirty Plus writing prompt.  This time, the phrase (He had nothing of his own) comes from one of my own posts, last week's little ditty about Packrat Red And His Cart o' Sad Crap.

Packrat Red and his Cart o' Sad Crap

She should have seen it coming.  

Red Barrett had for eight long years endured a loveless shotgun marriage to the daughter of a Pennsylvania steel baron.  She was a domineering daddy's girl, and from day one, she made no attempt to hide her disdain for Red.  On good days, she ignored him, but often she was openly hostile.  After a few years, he had stopped fighting, quit defending himself against her insults, and no longer believed that happiness was a possibility for him.

He trudged along the streets of Allentown, surviving as best he could the soul-crushing employment his father-in-law had arranged for him.  By day, he peddled toiletries and tools from a heavy, wobbly-wheeled cart.  By night, he suffered the slings and arrows of his wretched wife.

Until.

Until the onset of the Great Depression.  It didn't ruin him; he had nothing of his own.  What it did was put stories about hoboes in the newspaper.  Before he took his melancholy out the back door, hit the road as Packrat Red and made a life of challenging but happy wandering, he left his wife a note.

"Lynnette - I don't love you.  You don't love me.  If I die tomorrow, walking free the rails to Reading, it will be a far better fate than another hour of life in this house.  You may keep the filthy cart."

It's good to be back!  This little warmup was written in response to the STUDIO 30 PLUS prompt "He took his melancholy out the back door," from Katy Brandes' ON THE CUSP OF SPRING.  



 

The Not At All Surprising Outcome of Booper O'Montauk's Loan Application

Arthur Higgins Moneybottom III
Loan Officer
4th Bank of Sand Patch Grade
Cumberland, Maryland

October 5th, 1937

Booper O'Montauk
The Woods
Near the Catoctin Tunnel, Maryland



Dear Mr. O'Montauk,

     I regret to inform you that this institution has denied your application for a loan in the amount of $125.  There are two reasons for this decision.

First, I must emphasize that neither your business plan nor your proposed product are to blame.  On the contrary, we have no doubt that the public would be willing to buy your "Fluff of Happiness."  However, the product sample which you provided was determined to be nothing more than ordinary pocket lint, albeit a very large and especially fluffy specimen.  It did not bring happiness to any of the bankers who handled it.  In fact, despite your claim that it would "stay happy, even when wet" proved untrue, as the fluff was found to rapidly dissolve when exposed to rain.  In time, with the proper improvements, your invention may yet be a successful product.  

However, I find some fault with your motives.  I appreciate that the untimely loss of your parents - one to a sink hole in the park, and the other to a brain injury resulting from the attack of an especially territorial and aggressive starling - must have been devastatingly traumatic for you.  

I am moved by your story of woe, of toil and travel along the hard road of the hobo, of shoeless winters and shadeless summers.
Further, I know all too well how consuming an unrequited love can be.  This young woman you describe so glowingly in your loan application is, as you pointed out, betrothed to a man of considerable means, a man beloved by all who know him, by all accounts, a good man.  So your plan to prove your worth, to outshine him by working harder, by bringing your "Fluff of Happiness" to the world, thereby stealing the attention and affections of his fiancée is, at best, misguided.  I cannot grant a loan in support of such an endeavor.

I do wish you the best of luck, young man.

Sincerely,

A.H. Moneybottom III


Another doubly-prompted post (triply-prompted, if you count the hobo name itself)!  This one combines the Studio 30 Plus prompt, "Fluff of Happiness," from The Innerzone's post BOYS with the Light and Shade Challenge prompt "Sometimes glass glitters more than diamonds because it has more to prove," a Terry Pratchett quote.



 

The Recalibration of Billy Creak Knees

Train Robbery - Cumberland, MD. 
Photo by Joe Scott

Some of the tales I heard from old Buck Mope were a bit on the tall side.  Others were utterly ridiculous.  The story of Billy Creak Knees was neither of those things, but it is still one of my favorites.

Born in Philadelphia in 1899, Heiko William Bowie was the only child of Cassandra and Günter Bowie.  His father was a master tailor from Germany, and his English mother kept the books.  Early on, he had designs on a career in law.  He was the first in his family to finish high school, but his parents' pride turned quickly to heartbreak, when at age 17 he enlisted in the Army and was hastily deployed to the front lines of the Great War in France.

He did what most boys did, over there.  He witnessed hell.  Unlike nine of ten guys in his unit, he survived.  He was shot - twice - but spent only a few days in a field hospital before being hurled back in the direction of the enemy.  When he returned home in early 1918, it was immediately evident to his parents and friends that there would be no college, no law degree, no life of security and professional achievement.  His achievement was that he had survived the bullets and shrapnel of the war, but at an incalculable cost.

He drank, he whored, he fought, he even found his way into an opium den, once.  He got arrested.  Soon, he withdrew completely into his post-traumatic private hell.  They called it shell shock, and that was as good a name as any for what was going on in young H. William's brain.

One late-winter morning, a dissatisfied customer strangled his father to death with a tape measure, and bludgeoned his mother with an adding machine, when she tried to intervene.  She clung to life in a coma for a week before succumbing.  William had held it together for his father's funeral, but the thought of seeing his mother buried overwhelmed him, and he ran.

His first year as a hobo was much like his time in the trenches of France, in that he just barely managed to survive it.  He acquired the moniker Billy Creak Knees, although he was so immersed in his pain and hopelessness that he didn't learn it until years later.  In those early, lonely days on the rails, his despair kept potential hobo friends at bay.  On three separate occasions, he stood in the middle of the trackbed before an oncoming train, and three times he leaped to safety at the last conceivable instant.  He didn't much care to be alive, but he did not want to be hit by a train, either.

"Can't say for sure what pulled Billy Creak Knees from that black pit," Buck Mope told me, shaking his head.  "Some say it was the sight of those trains, coming for to pulverize his mortal body.  I heard it might have been breakin' up that Western Maryland robbery that turned his life around.  Silver Jacket Man said he found God.  Could be, could be.  But me - I think he just woke up one day.  Smelled the air, heard the birds, all that.  Did the math and saw alive greater than dead.  Who knows?  But turn he did."

Billy Creak Knees became what was known as an expert hobo.  He could start a fire in seconds, cook anything into an edible entreé, avoid cops and dogs, rather than engage them, and talk strangers into hiring him for a wide variety of day jobs.  He scrawled hieroglyphic poetry on bridges, sheds, and boxcars, inspiring his brethren to hold their heads high, live with honor, work hard, and survive. 

I asked Buck how Billy met his end.  I was used to hearing about the wretched fates of so many of his hobo acquaintances, but this time, I was simultaneously disappointed and relieved.

"Billy Creak Knees - far as I know, he still alive," Buck shrugged.  "Must be about a hundred-eight, now.  All I know for sure is he learned to love the road, and mentored every reckless young 'bo he could find.  Heard a rumor back in the seventies - they said he was working for Amtrak, tellin' stories for tourists.  Don't matter to me.  He survived.  He found hope where there was none.  That's what he did."

The Poisoned Sleep

"Honestly, Tucker - another Mountain Dew?  You'll be up all night,"  Dia scolded.

"That's the idea, Dee.  I'm not getting along with sleep, right now."  Tucker checked his monitor, touched a key, and for the three hundred and fifteenth time in the past six hours, professionally greeted another pissed-off customer of the Flagship family of insurance companies.  Above him, ancient fluorescent bulbs flickered, buzzed, and bleached away his belief in anything good in the universe.

Dia logged out of the queue and waited for her friend to finish his call.  "You have to sleep.  You can't just not sleep.  It's bad for you."

"I hate sleep - that's all.  Besides, what's it to you?"

"Hey - we've been friends for three years.  I'm concerned," Dia said.  "Talk to me."

"Ugh.  Fine.  It's simple, Dee.  I keep having this dream..."

"That's it?  A dream?  Is it a nightmare?"  Dia teased.  "Do you wake up screaming?"

"It's not a nightmare.  Never mind.  We'd better take some calls, or Cina The Warrior Princess will write us up again."

"In a second.  First, what kind of dream is it?  Is it a sex dream?  Is it a stress dream.  Are there ninjas, all quick and lethal and whatnot?"

"No sex, and no ninjas.  What is it with you and ninjas, anyway?"
 
"I don't know - I just think they're sexy.  But this is not about me.  Talk!"

Tucker sighed heavily.  "The dream is always the same.  I'm at some beach, painting watercolors of seagulls and lighthouses and sunsets - and they're really good.  I have a bottle of wine, and there's a girl there.  Please don't be offended, but sometimes it's you."

"That's sweet.  I'm not offended - at least, not yet..."

"It doesn't get offensive or anything," Tucker continued.  "It's just peaceful.  I can smell the ocean, feel sand between my toes.  It's like I belong there.  It envelopes me.  The call center doesn't exist.  There is no queue, no call count, average call time, no resolution scores - none of this shit.  It's not that I've left it; none of it even exists.  I don't live in that ridiculous little dump of an apartment.  I never get to see where I live, though."

"Well, that sucks.  What happens?"

"I walk back to my car - some old convertible, like a Mustang or something - and I open the door, sit down, and just bathe in contentment for a few minutes."

"Yeah?  Then what?"

Tucker sighed and looked around.  "Nothing.  I wake up."

Dia stifled a chuckle.  "You wake up."

"Yes.  I wake up - in this life.  That apartment, this job, these callers, this life."

"Ah.  I see.  It is a bit bleak, isn't it?  I guess seeing what you see while you sleep, and then waking to this, over and over, would get pretty old."

"It does."  Tucker nodded.

Somewhere deep inside Dia, a tiny, smoking ember began to grow.  "Maybe we just need to wake up somewhere else."

"We?"

"Yes."



Greetings, friends!  This week, for the first time, I used TWO prompts in one piece.  I couldn't resist putting "QUICK AND LETHAL" from Studio 30 Plus member Tara's LIGHTNING FLASH into a short conversation inspired by "A DREAM HAS POWER TO POISON SLEEP," from the good people at LIGHT AND SHADE CHALLENGE.  I hit their word count limit (500) with great precision.  The same cannot be said for my going 350 words over on the S30P prompt.  I hope they forgive me.