"A Song for December" -- by Donald G. Redman

A Song for December
by Donald G. Redman

“Turn it up, daddy!” she pleaded
as I pulled into the driveway.
Her “favorite” song was on the radio.
She has a million favorite songs.
I turned the volume up and eased the truck
to a stop and placed the gearshift in park.
“Wait!” she cried as I reached for the keys.
She wanted us to stay
until the song was over.
I turned the headlights off
and the night swallowed us whole.
I killed the engine but
left the radio on
so she could sing her
duet with Taylor Swift.
She sang with the abandon
only a nine-year-old can do –
unashamedly and without pretense.
She glanced up at me and smiled,
then closed her eyes to block me out
so I wouldn’t ruin the moment.
The cab was bathed
in the soft blue light of the radio.
The music was loud and my little girl
was singing her heart out.
And so was Taylor Swift:
“I'd go back to December, turn around and make it alright
I go back to December all the time...”
I wanted us to remain forever in that moment –
huddled together inside the truck
on a cold, moonless December night,
listening to music and singing.
But all too suddenly the concert was over.
The stage went black.
It was time to go home.
She opened her eyes, smiled
and hopped out of the truck.
I turned the radio off, grabbed the keys
and silently entered the house.
As time moves me further away from that night
I hope I’ll be able to find my way back
to the cab of that truck
and find my girl there
singing her little heart out.
If I could
I’d go back to December all the time.

 
Copyright 2011 Donald G. Redman All rights reserved

Writing in the open continued...

OK, here's a follow-up to yesterday's posting... a poem under construction now tentatively called December's Song:

“Turn it up, daddy!” she pleaded
as I pulled into the driveway.
Her “favorite” song was on the radio.
She has a million favorite songs.
I turned the volume up and eased the truck
to a stop and placed the gearshift in park.
“Wait!” she cried as I reached for the keys.
She wanted me to stay
until the song was over.
I turned the headlights off
and the night swallowed us whole. (move)
I and killed the engine but
let the radio keep playing
(insert) left the radio on
so she could sing her
duet with Taylor Swift.
She sang with the abandon
only a nine-year-old can do –
unashamedly and without pretense.
She glanced up at me and smiled,
then closed her eyes to block me out
so as not to ruin the moment.
(insert) Outside, the night swallowed us whole
but inside, the cab was bathed
in the soft blue light of the radio.
The music was loud and my little girl
was singing her heart out
and so was Taylor Swift:
“I'd go back to December, turn around and make it alright
I go back to December all the time...”
I wanted us to remain forever just like we were –
huddled together under a
cold, moonless December sky,
listening to music and singing.
But all too suddenly the concert was over.
The stage went black and it was time to go home.
She opened her eyes, smiled and hopped out of the truck.
I turned the radio off, grabbed the keys
and silently went inside.
As time moves me further away from that night
I hope I’ll be able to find my way back
to the cab of that truck
and find my girl there
singing her little heart out.
If I could
I’d go back to December all the time.

Copyright 2011 Donald G. Redman All Rights Reserved

Writing out in the open

I find myself once again struggling to fulfill my commitment to create out in the open. It really is messy and unflattering. But here I go with my first rough draft of a poem tentatively called Heart Song...

We were pulling into the driveway
when my little girl squealed with delight –
her “favorite” song had just come on the radio.
She has by my estimation a million favorite songs.
She asked me to turn the volume up.
I did.
I rolled to a stop and shoved the gearshift in park
and turned off the headlights and killed the engine
so I could hear her duet with Taylor Swift.
She sang with the abandon only a nine-year-old can do –
unashamedly and without pretense.
I marveled at how well she knew the lyrics
and leaned back and watched and soaked in the moment
like a sunbather sops up sunrays.
We all have those times in our lives when we just intuitively know
something special is happening – little moments worth a king’s treasure,
like when you hold your child’s hand or share the dawn with friends.
I knew this was one of those moments.
The cab was bathed in the soft blue light of the radio.
The music was loud and my little girl was singing her heart out –
and so was Taylor Swift:
“I'd go back to December, turn around and make it alright
I go back to December all the time...”
We sat for a half hour or more,
huddled together in the cab of the pickup truck
under a cold, black-velvet December sky, listening to music and singing.
As time moves me away from here
I hope I’ll be able to find my way back to the cab of that truck
and find my girl there, singing her little heart out.
If I could
I’d go back to that December all the time.

 
Copyright 2011 Donald G. Redman All rights reserved

A Passion of Crime



Susan D. Mustafa lives and writes in Baton Rouge, Louisiana


An Interview with Writer Susan D. Mustafa

  

Susan D. Mustafa loves a good time. Her eyes literally sparkle when she smiles and her infectious laughter quickly spreads across the room until everyone is laughing with her. A petite woman standing slightly more than 5-feet tall, Susan is a real dynamo with a passion for music... and murder.

 A long-time entertainment journalist, general assignment freelancer, and magazine managing editor, Susan virtually stumbled into a whole new career as a writer of true crime books when Special Prosecutor Tony Clayton tabbed her to co-write the true accounts behind the investigation and ultimate capture and conviction of Baton Rouge area serial killer Derrick Todd Lee. The result was Blood Bath, a gripping, unflinching look into the twisted mind of a psychopath and the brutal slayings of his beautiful victims and the bungled police work that allowed the killer to operate under the radar.

She’s following that up this summer with another true crime book, co-authored with Sue Israel, titled Dismembered, about serial killer Sean Vincent Gillis. Slated for publication July 5, 2011, this one comes with a warning from the publisher that it may be too gruesome for some readers.

And between writing her first attempt at fiction – tentatively called The Crescent City Killer – Susan is researching her next true crime book featuring a pack of killers, Daniel and Michael Garcia and James Nelson II.

The Redman Writing Project (RWP) recently reached out to Susan for an interview, to which she graciously agreed:

RWP: You have a new book coming out July 5, 2011. Tell us about it...

Susan D. Mustafa: The name of the new book is Dismembered, and it is the true story of serial killer Sean Vincent Gillis, who confessed to the gruesome deaths and mutilations of eight women in Louisiana. The information provided in this book may be difficult for some readers to deal with because this sociopath was a very sick man who enjoyed not only the killing, but he especially enjoyed what he did with the victims’ bodies after they were dead. It is so gruesome at times that Kensington Books, my publisher, put a warning on the back cover. However, it is also a unique look into the mind of a serial killer, and parts of the story are told in his own words.

RWP: What was the biggest challenge you faced writing it?

Susan D. Mustafa: The biggest challenge with writing any true crime book is the extensive research involved. It takes more than a year to collect all of the information necessary, which includes interviews with family members, friends, detectives, etc. It also involves sitting through trials and sifting through a mountain of police reports and other relevant material.

RWP: From beginning to end, how long did it take you to write? How many re-writes?

Susan D. Mustafa: For me, the research is the most time-consuming part. While writing, I have to constantly stop to look up this fact or that. This book took about three months to write. When I finish, I give it to my writing partner, Sue Israel, who edits it and makes suggestions. I then make her suggested corrections or revisions before turning it in to my publisher.

RWP: What was the biggest lesson you learned while writing your first book?

Susan D. Mustafa: The biggest lesson I learned while writing Blood Bath was the importance of researching every aspect of the murders, the killer and the victims. It is very important to make sure that all of the facts are correct, so that you will be able to produce an accurate version of events as they happened. In true crime, you have to connect the dots, so to speak, so you must be have intimate knowledge of your subjects to be able to do that accurately.

RWP: We hear you’re also writing a fiction thriller. What is the inspiration behind it and what can you tell us about it?

Susan D. Mustafa: This is my first attempt at fiction writing, and I’m very excited about it. I actually dreamed the plot, got up the next morning and started writing. I’ve never thought about writing fiction before so this came as a surprise, but I’m enjoying it immensely. I’m about a quarter of the way through, and surprisingly, it is coming along quickly. I’ve learned that it’s much easier to write serial killer fiction than it is to write true crime because I don’t have to do as much research or stop to check facts because it’s all coming out of my head. I’ve given it the working title of The Crescent City Killer because it’s set in the French Quarter. I’m really enjoying writing about New Orleans because I love the city so much.

RWP: How do you write? Not just mechanically (long-hand or on the computer), but do you create elaborate outlines or thin sketches? Do you create biographies for each of your characters? Do you already know how it ends?

Susan D. Mustafa: When writing true crime, I don’t have to create elaborate outlines because of the amount of research I do. I simply tell the story in chronological order from the killer’s childhood to adulthood to capture and trial, and the victims’ lives and deaths from first to last. Because so much research is involved, I already know what I will write about each victim before I start. I wait until all of the research is complete before I start writing. I do, however, write an outline of each chapter to give to my publisher before I write the book to make sure the publisher wants the book. I don’t necessarily know how all of the book will be written, but I just let it go where the story dictates if that makes sense.

With fiction, I just sit down at my computer and start typing. I don’t know from chapter to chapter what will happen next. I just go where the story leads and hope for the best. If I don’t like where it’s going, I delete what I don’t like and try something else.

RWP: Many writers will tell you that there is a particular time of the day they feel they are most creative and do most of their writing. When do you do the bulk of your writing?

Susan D. Mustafa: I do most of my writing at night and am most creative around midnight. However, considering the subject matter I work with, night time is probably not the best time for most people to do this sort of work. It gets difficult sometimes, and I have nightmares when I am in the process of writing these books.

RWP: What is the most difficult aspect of writing for you?

Susan D. Mustafa: I think I’m very lucky in that writing comes so naturally to me. I am a procrastinator, though, and have a bad habit of waiting until the last moment and then rushing to meet my deadline. I like to think I write better under pressure. At least that’s what I tell myself to excuse my procrastination.

RWP: What are your interests? How do you incorporate your interests into your writing or how have they influenced your writing?

Susan D. Mustafa: Writing true crime can be very disturbing because the material is so dark, so I like to immerse myself in things like art and books and music. I love the blues and enjoy having my musician friends over for impromptu jam sessions. Walking through the French Quarter and experiencing the culture of the area is always a lot of fun for me, so I’m incorporating some of that culture into my novel. I also enjoy spending a lot of time with my family because we always have a lot of fun together. They keep me laughing, which is a wonderful thing when I’m researching a serial killer.
As a writer, I think all of my interests and experiences influence the way I write. How I choose to tell a story, what facts I focus on, how I express the emotions of others, it all stems from what I feel and what I find interesting… to a degree. Two people can tell the same story in entirely different ways, and that’s a result of the writers’ personalities and interests and what each writer deems important.

RWP: Let’s step back in time briefly and find out your earliest writing experiences. Did you write for the high school newspaper and did you keep a journal? Did you enter any writing or poetry contests in school? What did you do to foster the writing bug?

Susan D. Mustafa: As a teenager, I did write poetry, but it was awful, filled with the angst of being a teenage girl. I did not really begin writing seriously until I moved to Baton Rouge in 2000, although I always knew I could write and hoped to write a book one day.

RWP: At what point did you decide you wanted to be a writer? Was there one teacher, one influence or was it just an accumulation of events?

Susan D. Mustafa: When I attended (Southeastern Louisiana University), my journalism professor, Dr. Joseph Mirando, was a huge influence on my life. He believed I had talent and was really hard on me, demanding my best in everything I wrote. He taught me how to research and the importance of writing interestingly and accurately. I really became interested in writing while attending college and began my career the year after I graduated.
(RWP Note: Susan holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mass Communication and Journalism from Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana.)

RWP: How did you get your first start? What was your first published piece?

Susan D. Mustafa: My writing partner and editor, Sue Israel, gave me my first writing job at a magazine in Baton Rouge—City Social. She assigned me to write about people who go skiing in Colorado for Mardi Gras. That was my first published story. Because she liked that story, she hired me as a freelance writer for the magazine and later promoted me to managing editor.

RWP: What advice would you give to novice writers or even those unpublished writers still slugging it out?

Susan D. Mustafa: I would say do not give up. You never know which piece you write will be the one that gives you the break you’ve been waiting for. When I talk to college students, I always tell them to do their best on everything they write because people do pay attention. For example, I did a story on Prosecutor Tony Clayton in City Social two years before he tried Derrick Todd Lee for the murder of Geralyn Barr DeSoto. Because he liked the story I had written about him, Tony asked me to collaborate with him on the book. If I had not done a good job on that original story, I would not be writing books today, so it’s very important to do your best on every story you write, no matter how inconsequential it may seem.
When we first wrote Blood Bath, we self-published it under the title, I’ve Been Watching You, because we could not get a publisher. We simply marketed it ourselves and kept trying to get publicity for the book. Three years later, our efforts paid off, and Kensington Books picked it up. I would advise unpublished writers to be patient and never give up. Keep sending out proposals to agents and publishers. If the work is good, eventually someone will want it. Also, do not get discouraged by rejections. Specific publishers look for specific things, and a rejection could simply mean they were not looking for that specific topic.

RWP: List five of your favorite authors:

1. Arundhati Roy
2. Alice Sebold
3. Truman Capote
4. Maya Angelou
5. John Sanford

 RWP: List ten books you’ve read that you’ll never forget:

1. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
2. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
3. Hannibal by Thomas Harris
4. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
5. Dante’s Inferno by Dante Alighieri
6. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
7. Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi
8. The Flame and the Flower by Kathleen Woodiwiss
9. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
10. The AP Stylebook

 RWP: What are you reading right now?

Dead Man Walking by Sister Helen Prejean (again)

WHERE TO FIND AND SHOP FOR SUSAN D. MUSTAFA:

 Susan’s books are available in bookstores across the country as well as in some Walmart stores, Target and airports. They can be ordered online at any major book retailer or through her publisher at Kensington Books. She is currently building a website that will include all of her books and interesting facts about the serial killers she writes about.

 Susan D. Mustafa Bibliography:

Dismembered by Susan D. Mustafa and Sue Israel (due for release July 5, 2011)

No Such Thing as Impossible (buy it here) by Susan D. Mustafa and Jairo Alvarez Botero

Blood Bath (buy it here) by Susan D. Mustafa, Special Prosecutor Tony Clayton and Sue Israel

Copyright 2011 Donald G. Redman All Rights Reserved

"Long Black Road" -- a poem by Donald G. Redman

Long Black Road
by Donald G. Redman

The buzz is wearing off and I’m getting tired
but I remind myself I’m almost home,
so I lay on the pedal and quicken the pace.
I turn the heater down and crack the window.
“Radar Love” comes on the radio and I crank it up.

The asphalt road winds like an endless black river.
There’s no oncoming traffic and I’ve got the beams
set on high ‘cause it’s black coffee dark outside.
Yellow dashes scar the center of the road
like a heroin addict’s track marks.

The headlights shove the shadows aside like a snow plow
but it’s still hard to tell where the treetops end and night begins.
Black skeletons silhouetted against a black sky.
The road curves and I glimpse a deer at the wood’s edge.
It freezes and stares, its eyes indicting me.

I pry the Bud from between my thighs and take a swig.
It’s piss hot so I roll the window down and toss it out.
It lands with a metallic thud and skitters across the road.
I got more beer, but they’re in the ice chest in the bed
and I don’t want to stop, not this close to home.

The road is bent at the bottom of the hill,
just before it straddles a washed up creek bed.
Miasma as thick and dense as a cloud rises
up from the hollow and guards the bridge like a troll.
I dive toward it, my hand’s wet on the wheel.

Sad little stick crosses paying tribute to the dead
litter a patch of bare earth near the curve.
They glow in my headlights, telling me to slow down,
but my gut tells me to run like hell from this place.
The road beneath me vanishes abruptly under a cloak of fog
and I’m forced to ease off the pedal and tap the brakes.

Just ahead I see the mist swirling and coalescing
into a wraith whose delicate form is vague and yet familiar
like the woman who lurks around in my dreams at night.
Memories of a kiss settle upon my lips like dew on a flower.
I’m suddenly melancholy and mourn for lost things.

The banshee makes a gesture with her thumb like a hitchhiker
But I’m not about to give her a lift so I speed up
or I try to,
but I’ve entered a place where time crawls.
As I glide past her, she smiles sweetly beneath the tears
and splays her fingers to show me the bands of gold.
My heart sinks like a stone into a black sea.

I break loose of the fog’s grip and race from the bridge
only to slam into a young doe mesmerized by my lights.
My nose is busted up a bit by the airbag and beer cans are
scattered all over the road, some spewing like geysers.
I climb out of the cab to inspect the damage.

The doe’s still alive, barely, and kicks at the air weakly.
She busted out a headlight and mangled the hood up good.
The radiator hisses as coolant drips from a gashed hose.
Steam from the engine and the dying doe rise in unison
and blood and oil comingle into one big, black puddle.

I grab an undamaged beer from the road and pop it open
and pour it down my gullet like a frat boy at a stag party.
I crumple the can when I’m done and toss it aside
and scoop up another one before I tend to the deer.
I can tell by her eyes that she’s going into shock.

She makes a pathetic attempt to stand up when I sit beside her
and then she slumps back down and plops her head on my lap.
I gently stroke her fur and tell her how sorry I am.
She pants lightly and stares off into nothingness.
Life finally leaves her eyes and I fight back the tears.

I struggle back to my feet and I drag the doe off the roadway.
I’m overcome with grief and guilt for leaving her like that
and again I beg her for forgiveness, but I know it’s too late;
she’s already gone and nothing can be undone.
I break down and cry like a little lost child.
I'm never going to make it home.


The genesis of this poem stems from a dream I had several months ago. I posted details of that dream and subsequent “alfresco musings” Oct. 1, Dec. 2 and Dec. 16. The final product is a deeply-personal poem I’ve entitled “Long Black Road.”

Copyright 2010 Donald G. Redman All rights reserved

Using Photos for Inspiration

 

Photo by Roger Griffith, released into the Public Domain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dead_Leaf_retention_on_Beech_trees.JPG

I came across this photo of a snow-covered beech tree and thought that it could serve as an artist’s model, if you will, for practicing poets. I hope to return to this photo again and again over the next few weeks in hopes of drawing inspiration from it. I hope ultimately that it will spur my imagination and spur my creativity – and hopefully yours, too.

"The Dart and the Song" -- a short story

Illustration by Donald G. Redman

The Dart and the Song
By: Donald G. Redman


My dad always had a wise saying for every miserable thing that ever happened in your life. One of his favorite sayings was, “No point in crying over spilled milk.” I just wish one time someone would have told him that there was no point in cussing over spilled milk either, even if it was in the backseat of the car. It’s called an accident.
Anyway, my dad would say all sorts of things in response to disasters, like if you were popping a wheelie on your bike and you accidentally went back too far and crashed and busted your leg or something, he’d say something dumb like “What goes up, must come down.”

One of his favorite things to say when you got a raw deal but somebody else came out on top, like say you walked a hundred miles to the corner store to cash in some Coke bottles and you put the money in your pocket, only you didn’t know your pocket had a hole in it and all your money fell out and somebody else found it, he’d say, “Finder’s keeper; loser’s weeper.”

Wait, I got what I wanted to say mixed up. He did say “finder’s keeper” a whole lot, but that wasn’t his favorite thing to say. Let’s say you’ve been saving some cookies to eat for later, but before you can get to them somebody else – like my dad – finds them and eats them. If you complained that somebody ate your cookies, he’d say, “Tough titty said the kitty, but the milk tastes good.”

I never understood what that was supposed to mean and I guess I never thought about it too deep because I was always in a state of shock that my dad would be blabbing the word “titty” for the whole world to hear.

I swear I had the most pornographic father in America ‘cause he always managed to bring up “titties” in everyday conversation like it was a everyday word. For example, if you whined too much he’d call you a titty baby. He’d be bird watching in the backyard and swear he saw a “titmouse.” One time I was helping him fix the car engine and he was complaining and all because I wasn’t holding the flashlight right and he looked up at me and said, “Son, you’re about as worthless as tits on a boar hog.” He told me that all the time.

My mom said there was one word that best summarized most men: Titicaca. I was confused when she said it was one word because it sure sounded like two words to me. “Titicaca,” she went on. “That’s their two favorite subjects.” She could see I was embarrassed that I got stuck in the middle of this conversation and she assured me she wasn’t being trashy at all and that she was referring to Lake Titicaca and that it was a real place. She said an old comedian from back in her youth used to joke about Lake Titicaca all the time and it would make her laugh.

The comedian’s name was W.C. Fields. He was big back during the Depression. That’s when my parents grew up – during the Depression. That anybody said anything funny back then sure surprised me. My parents used to go on and on with stories about how miserable their lives were growing up and I could see why they called it the Great Depression because let me tell you, their stories sure were depressin'. I couldn’t wait for them to quit yammering on about how hard life was and how we didn’t know how good we had it and all, like I had it easy sittin’ through these long lectures about saving string and pinching pennies….

So anyway my mom could see I didn’t believe her about Lake Titicaca and she went to a closet and pulled out this old dusty globe she probably got during the Depression. I think it was missing a continent. A old metal wire circled the earth right at the Equator and was held in place by a ancient piece of tape that was probably clear when it was new but now was urine yellow with age. The wire was sprung loose at one end and no amount of tape could hold it down. It flopped all over the place, making it impossible to have fun just spinning the dumb old globe around. You couldn’t pull the wire off otherwise the whole world would just split in half.

My mom used that dang old globe to point out to me where Lake Titicaca was. She also pointed out where Timbuktu was located. But our geography lesson got real ugly real fast when I asked her where Bumluck, Egypt was.

Only I didn’t say Bumluck. Think of the worst cuss word you could say that rhymes with “luck;” put “Bum” in front of it and that’s what I said. I swear I didn’t know it was a bad word, being tied to “Bum” and all. It sounded like it could have been Egyptian. Besides, I remember this little Chinese kid I played with at the YMCA; he was from Fukuoka, Japan, and it made sense to me that there might be a real place like that in Egypt.

Well, I’m here to tell you there ain’t no such place.

Man, she grabbed a flyswatter and really laid into me. (We had flyswatters all over the place for just such emergencies – that and yardsticks.) “Where did you hear such a thing?” she said, walloping me with that dang flyswatter. “Charles,” I said. That was one of my older brothers – I have three of them and Charles is the second-oldest. “He’s always complaining that you’re always sending him there on errands to pick up one thing or another.”

* I just got back from taking a break because I got thirsty and to be honest with you I kinda forgot the point of my story. I reread everything I wrote and that didn’t help. I’m half tempted to just wad this thing up and start all over. The other half of me – the half my writing hand’s on – wants me to just move on. I’m getting a cramp in my hand and it doesn’t seem right to erase everything just because I can’t remember what I was writing about. It’s like I injured my hand for nothing.

That happens to me a lot. I start telling a story and I get sidetracked and the next thing I know I’m just rattling on about something I didn’t even know I was going to talk about. My dad says my train of thought is permanently derailed.

I remember one time I entered an essay contest held by the Houston Library. We were supposed to write 1,000 words or so about why we celebrate the 4th of July. Well, I got started writing about them Red Coats and rockets and bombs and Black Cat firecrackers and watermelon and all kinds of crazy things and the next thing I knew I had written about a hundred million words. I put it all neatly inside a binder to hold it all in place and on the cover I glued a picture of Mount Rushmore I’d cut out of a “National Geographic” magazine and I drew a picture of the American flag behind it and added a title: “A Salute to America’s Four Fathers.”

Our neighborhood didn’t have a library. We either checked out books from the Central Library in downtown Houston or waited for the bookmobile to pass by. I couldn’t rely on the bookmobile to come and the Central Library was so far away not even Abraham Lincoln would have walked that far to return a book. He woulda just kept the dang thing and paid the fine later when somebody could bring him there. I asked my dad if he could take me, but he had to work or something. Mom said she’d arrange for Charles to bring me.

My brother thought he was a big shot because he could drive and was a senior at Smiley High School and had a girlfriend and all. But boy did he hate driving us around. Once we got in the car he started ranting: “I can’t believe mom is going to make me drive you all the way to Bum…” I stopped him right there. “That’s not a real place,” I said. “Mom told me.”

“Mom told you?”

"Uh huh,” I said. “I told her you say she’s always making you drive there.”

He suddenly got all quite and put the car in drive and took us toward Bumluck, Egypt.

We lived just outside Houston proper, in a place called Humble. Now, if you don’t know nothing about Humble you’re probably pronouncing it like you would humble pie, well, you’re saying it all wrong. For some dang reason the H in Humble, Texas is silent. You say it like Umble. I think it’s Spanish or something. Spanish people don’t say their Hs.

Spanish is all confusing to me. I remember failing a spelling test one time because I got my Spanish and English all mixed up. I spelled “umbrella” with a silent H in front like “humbrella,” and my teacher laughed out loud and went and hung it up in the teacher’s lounge so other teachers could laugh their heads off like a bunch of dumb old hyenas.

Why in the world anybody would spell a word with a silent letter in front sure beats me. It’s like that word “pshaw.” Now if you expect people to say it like “shaw,” then why the heck spell it with a “p” in front?

For the longest time I didn’t know the “p” was silent and I was always running around saying, “Aw peeshaw.” My old girlfriend, Rebecca Roach, set me straight one day, saying she couldn’t see herself going out with anybody who went around saying “peeshaw.” By the time I finally got it right, school ended for the summer and she was shipped off to her grandmother’s in Oklahoma so I didn’t have to worry about making her happy any more and spent the summer saying “peeshaw!”

To be honest with you I don’t think kids should be forced to learn a bunch of different languages. It’s too confusing and only leads to embarrassment. My mom was raised bi-lingual by her Swedish parents. She tried passing some of that on to me and all it brought me was grief. For example, without thinking I called fish by their Swedish name, “fisk.” “I went fisking with my dad today and we caught a bunch of fisk,” Boy, people sure would get a laugh out of that. No thanks. Just plain old fashioned English if you please.

Man, my little sister is messed up even worse. One time she was retelling this old joke about a kid named Texas who nobody believed was really named Texas. He was kicked out of school and all and later he ran into some drug-crazed hippie while in the park. The hippie gets all mad and stuff because the kid keeps telling him his name is Texas so he goes and stabs the kid. Well later that night the hippie goes home and his mother asks him where his knife is and he says, “Deep in the heart of Texas.”

That joke still makes me laugh. So anyway my sister is telling the joke and is messing it all up, saying the kid’s name is Houston. The funny thing is that she’s saying Houston with a silent H, like they do for Humble. So she rattles on about this hard luck kid named Ooston and then she gets to the punch line where the mother asks her hippie son where his knife is and he says, “Deep in the stomach of Ooston.”

Now that really slays me. Man I love telling that story. ‘Course the joke doesn’t work if you don’t know about Humble, Texas and all.

So my brother is driving me to the downtown library and glances at my essay resting on my lap with its patriotic artwork on the cover. “What’s that title say?” he asked. “A Salute to America’s Four Fathers,” I said. He yucked it up a bit. “Not Four Fathers, numbnuts. It’s For Fathers: F-O-R; not the number four. Boy, buy you books and send you to school and you still don’t know nothing.” (That was another one of my dad’s favorite sayings.)

Charles quit laughing and it got quiet in the car. At one point I was tempted to throw the whole dang essay out the window, but I started thinking about this dumb old commercial on TV starring some pitiful old Indian chief who’s standing by the road when some punks throw trash out the window of their car and it lands next to his moccasins and then the old Indian starts crying. My dad would probably have told him, “Tough titty said the kitty, but the milk tastes good.”

But I didn’t say that and I didn’t want to be responsible for making some pitiful old Indian cry because I was so thoughtless as to litter. Keep America Beautiful, I repeated to myself.

Sitting there on the way to the Central Library in downtown Houston I realized that I had been had by my uncle. He’s always playing tricks on you and joking and acting goofy and all. The guy has a totem pole he made himself in his backyard in Minnesota for crying out loud. I mostly like his jokes, but he apparently pulled one on me that took a long time to work. See, he had this postcard in his workshop he got one year while on vacation in South Dakota. It was a picture of Mount Rushmore.

Mount Rushmore is famous for these huge heads of dead presidents carved into a mountain. Only, I didn’t know who they were. Where I made my mistake was to ask my uncle. He told me, “Why, they’re our Four Fathers: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. See, one-two-three-four.”

It made perfect sense to me. I always heard people jawing on about our Four Fathers and I had heard those names before, like Washington and Lincoln and all. And nobody can see how people are spelling what they’re saying. It’s like the time my oldest brother’s wife had a baby and he called to tell us the news. My brother Bill and I were dancing around like fools cheering the fact that we were uncles. Well, my dumb little sister started cheering, saying she was an uncle, too. We told her she couldn’t be an uncle because she was a girl and that she was an aunt. She got angry with us and marched over to mom to set us straight. Mom said that we were right, that she was an aunt. Man, she started bawling and all. Turns out she thought we meant she was an “ant,” like a bug. See? She couldn’t tell whether we were saying “ant” or “aunt.”

If you ask me no two words should be able to sound alike. It’s like the inventors of English got lazy or something. I guess then nothing would rhyme, but who likes dumb old poems anyway?

Well anyway, me and Charles finally reached the crummy old library in Houston and I hurried inside while my brother waited for me in the old Falcon station wagon. I walked up to a desk in the middle of the place and took my essay with the messed up cover and handed it to a lady sitting behind the desk. She smiled at me and told me how proud she was that I was entering the contest and said my entry looked like a bit more than a thousand words. But she was polite about it and I thanked her and I turned to walk away.

I found out then why librarians don’t like for people to talk inside the library – that’s because even the tiniest noise echoes off the walls and bounces all over the place so everyone can hear it. I know because I heard the librarian laugh. I could tell she was trying to hide it, but I heard her. I knew she was laughing at my Four Fathers. I really didn’t care much for librarians at that moment. And I definitely didn’t like my uncle and his stupid totem pole and dead presidents, the 4th of July and that pitiful dumb old Indian who cries because somebody throws a wadded up essay out into the street.

I didn’t win the essay contest even though I was sure that I had written the best one. It was the Four Fathers thing that sunk me. I mean, couldn’t those people simply read what I had written and forget about the Four Fathers? Some people are too critical if you ask me.

A portion of my essay did make the newspaper, however. It was in the Sunday section of the Houston Chronicle, which apparently had nothing better to do than to rip off Art Linkletter. The newspaper people wrote a headline like, “Houston Kids Say the Darnedest Things,” and under it they reprinted portions of the kids’ essays submitted in the contest.

“You made the paper!” my mom said gleefully. She was standing at the stove cooking pancakes while the rest of the family was seated around the supper table chowing away. My dad was sitting at the table, too, waiting for his share of pancakes and reading the newspaper with both hands outstretched. He bent one corner of the paper with his finger and looked at me with an expression he usually reserved for those times when me and my brother Bill got fidgety in church. We called it “The Look.”

Boy, one time me and my brother really got “The Look” while we were in church and I think it was a real miracle we didn’t get a beating later on. See, we attended the Love United Methodist Church and I think it was kinda new when we started going there. I don’t know exactly, but I know why churches have stained glass windows – that’s so you don’t get all distracted looking out real windows and forget about Jesus and all. Our church didn’t have stained glass windows and that’s why I think it was a new church and wasn’t finished or something. Either that or we weren’t giving enough money each Sunday to help pay for stained glass windows.

Anyway, there was a Shell gas station located across the street from Love United Methodist Church and you could see it plain as day from the church pews. Well, one day a bad storm passed through the area and damaged the Shell sign. The wind had knocked off the “S,” leaving just the word “hell” standing there proud as anything.

We saw it from the pew the next Sunday and that really tickled me and my brother. And then the preacher started preaching about sinners going to hell and all and I whispered to my brother, “I’ve been to hell…it’s just across the street from here and it ain’t so bad.”

That set my brother off to giggling and then me, too. I tried to suppress it, but that only seemed to make it worse. And then we spotted dad giving us “The Look,” and that straightened us up for a few minutes.

Then my brother had to add his two cents, saying he was so thirsty that he was tempted right then and there to “go to hell and back for a Coke.”

That really set me off which in turn set my brother off on a gut-busting laughing fit that we tried desperately to keep quiet. The thing about trying to suppress a gut-buster is that putting your hand over your mouth doesn’t do much good because all kinds of things can start spraying from all sorts of places. Sometimes I think it’s better to just laugh out loud and get it over with than trying to stop it. But we were in church, after all.

Dad really gave us “The Look” and I could tell the thought crossed his mind to yank us up from the pews and tan our hides in front of God and everybody. He was always threatening to beat us in front of God and everybody.

Somehow we made it through the rest of the sermon without laughing and to my surprise my dad made no mention of the incident as we walked back to the car after church. I think he saw the “hell” sign, too, and found humor in it. My grandpa, my dad’s dad, worked for Shell from way back during the Depression up to his sudden death back in the '50s. Maybe he was thinking about his dad when he saw that sign and forgot to tan our hides.

So on the Sunday the Houston Chronicle had published a portion of my patriotic essay, my dad was giving me “The Look.” I already felt bad enough about the Four Fathers and his expression only made me feel gloomier. He lifted the corner of the paper back up and resumed reading while I found a seat at the table.

“I cut it out and taped it to the refrigerator,” my mom said.

I didn’t say anything.

“Well, don’t you want to see it?”

“Why? I wrote it.”

My brother Bill couldn’t help himself. He sprang from his seat and snatched it from the refrigerator. “I’ll read it,” he said, returning to his seat.

“Don’t read it!” I shouted, trying to grab the article from his hand, but he was too fast for me. “O, I hate Uncle Buddy!”

The room got quiet. My fathered lowered the newspaper.

“What does my brother have to do with this?” my mom asked.

My eyes started welling with tears. “Well it’s all his fault. He’s the one who told me about the stupid Four Fathers and Mount Rushmore and stuff.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” she asked.

“The Four Fathers. You know: Lincoln, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Washington. Four Fathers. One-two-three-four. Ha-Ha funny! And now it’s all in the paper and everyone’s gonna make fun of me.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” mom said. “Billy, go ahead and read what it says.”

Bill cleared his throat before reading:

“When George Washington was a little kid he went and chopped down a bunch of cherry trees with a real sharp axe and when his dad asked him if he did it, he started bragging about it and all, saying he couldn’t lie about chopping them down. And miracle of miracles, he didn’t get a whipping or nothing. If I had done that my dad would have tanned my hide in front of God and everybody. George Washington sure was some lucky kid. I wish I had a dad like that; who wouldn’t cuss and all just because I cut some bark off some skinny old pine tree in the backyard with a busted up Boy Scout knife. It was a good thing, too, that George Washington didn’t lie because one day he was going to be our president and my dad says we already got enough liars up there in Washington D.C.”

I couldn’t believe it! Not one word about the Four Fathers. And to their credit the editors had selected one of the finer points in my essay. I couldn’t understand why my dad had been giving me “The Look,” but then I thought maybe I made him feel bad for not being more like George Washington’s father. I took a seat quietly hoping he might get me a axe or even a hatchet for Christmas.

Mom said she was going to get me something special for entering the essay contest and for putting forth such a great effort. A couple of days later we went down to the T.G.&Y. so mom could get some fabric to make curtains for the church windows and while there I reminded her of my promised reward for writing the essay.

She reluctantly agreed and set a ceiling on how much I could spend. It was a puny amount, but she was stuck in the Depression when you could buy groceries for five dollars for a whole week. She always complained that stores like T.G.&Y. should quit calling themselves Five and Dimes. “There’s nothing in here you can buy for a nickel,” she’d say. “And a dime won’t get you any further.”

I roamed along the toy aisle, eyeing the usual suspects: Slinky; yo-yos; tops; a deck of cards; dart guns; water guns; Silly Putty; Gumby; Wooly Willy the magnetic beard guy… nothing really interested me… until I saw it – a set of four darts. The shafts and feathers were made out of plastic (two red ones and two blue ones), but they had real sharp tips made of real metal.

I didn’t have enough to buy a dartboard to go with them, but big deal. I could throw them darts at anything. Heck, I could draw my own target and tape it to my bedroom wall and throw all day long.

Mom tried to talk me out of them, saying I’d probably hurt somebody, myself included, but after promising not to throw them at anybody, especially not at my little sister, and promising not to throw them at pets and animals, she agreed to let me have them. It was my reward for being a good writer and all.

Man, I had them darts forever. Sure, they got bent out of shape and were missing some tail wings and all and they weren’t likely to hit anything you were aiming at, but I had a lot of fun with those old darts.

But after a while I started losing one here and there until one day I was left with just one – a red one. I had forgotten all about it and only accidentally came across it while looking in old coffee cans in the garage for marbles and stuff to shoot with my slingshot. My dad had coffee cans scattered all over the garage, stuffed with screws and nails and drill bits and loose nuts and bolts. Every once in awhile something strange would end up in one of those cans like a Cap’n Crunch Fan Club pin or a Frito the Bandito eraser or a Rat Fink ring or a Boy Scout knife with busted blades and maybe sometimes a dumb marble. That’s what I was looking for when I came across the red dart. It was inside a can with rusted jigsaw blades and stuff.

It brought back memories of all the fun I’d had with my darts; the games my brother Bill and I would invent, like a balloon popping race or playing bull’s-eye with our own targets stuck to a tree. I remember one time my dart missed the target and stuck in the tire of my dad’s car. It didn’t pop it or nothing, but just stuck there a little. I grabbed that sucker and prayed like a madman my dad didn’t see that.

Seeing the dart in the coffee can made me want to throw it again – for old time’s sake – so I took it out of the can and brought it to the front yard so I could throw it at this big old pine tree we had. The shaft of the dart was bent like a bow and I tried to straighten it as best I could. Stepping off ten paces, I turned to face the tree, eyed an imaginary target, and let the dart fly.

It arced like a rainbow and looked so pitiful, wobbling toward the tree. It missed the mark by a mile, but it stuck in the bark real good. After working with the shaft and throwing in anticipation of the arc, I was getting to be pretty good hitting my target. That’s when my neighbor Tommy McCurdy came outside. When he saw me flinging that dart, he rushed across the street without looking even once for traffic.

He was all red-faced and panting hard and all, gushing with excitement. “Whatcha doing?” he asked, though it was obvious to the whole world what I was doing.

“Nothin’,” I said.

He wanted to know if the dart was mine, how I got it, if I had more darts… he was so pushy he was getting on my nerves and I told him so. I told him “Gee, Tommy, it’s no big deal. Haven’t you ever seen a dart before?”

Of course he had seen one before, but not this close. His mom was real strict and wouldn’t let him own anything with a sharp point. He still cut with baby scissors, you know, the ones with rounded points that rip paper more than they cut. His mom says he’s too careless to have anything sharp in his hands. One time he gashed his hand wide open while peeling an apple with a butter knife!

Son, Tommy was as excited over that stupid dart as I had ever seen him. He begged me to let him throw it. I didn’t mind, but I didn’t want Mrs. McCurdy to see us and then start yelling at me. He told me she was hanging laundry out back and wasn’t anywhere close to see us.

I knew better than to let him throw the dang thing. It was too tricky. Well, he winded back like he was going to pitch a fastball and he threw it hard at the tree. He missed, of course, and it ricocheted off the driveway and hit our old Rambler station wagon under the rear door on the driver’s side. My heart felt like it was going to beat itself right out my mouth.

I rushed over to the car and kneeled down to get a closer look at the damage. Just a tiny scratch; nothing anybody would see unless they were on their knees. Even then they’d think nothing of it. I quickly retrieved the dart and stood up and sauntered real nice and easy like to the end of the driveway, acting like nothing happened. Tommy huffed and puffed behind me.

I told him he couldn’t throw anymore and that I was thinking maybe I’d throw the dart away on account that it almost cost me my life twice: when it got stuck in the tire and just now when Tommy threw it at the car.

Tommy begged me to let him throw it some more, promising to be more careful and all, but I held my ground. He asked me if I was really going to throw it away and I said I was still thinking about it.

“If you’re going to throw it away, I’ll take it,” he said.

Look, I’m not about to just give anything away. If I put it in the trash and he came along and dug it out of the trashcan, that’s one thing, but to just give it to him… that’s not right. He must have sensed I had my doubts because he said just the thing I wanted to hear: “I’ll trade you for it.”

I agreed, but on the condition he had something worth trading for. I let him hold the dart while we went to his house so I could see what he had. His mom was still out back hanging laundry, but Tommy stuffed the dart in his pocket just in case she snuck up on us.

His room was about the junkiest thing I’d ever seen in my life. He had stuff scattered all over the place: clothes, socks, shoes, baseball cards, a couple of Mad magazines, army men… it was a disaster. And it stunk, too. Tommy blamed it on their cat. A white, hairy thing he said was a Persian or something.

To be honest with you, I was kinda afraid to even look around at anything.

Tommy started digging through his closet trying to find something worth trading. He held up some dumb gyroscope. Nope. A busted up Man from U.N.C.L.E. pistol. No. A wooden airplane with a missing tail wing. Uh-uh. Rock’em Sock’em Robots with the blue robot’s head permanently jacked. No thanks.

While he continued to root through his stuff, I noticed on his dresser a portable record player and next to it a stack of 45 rpm records. We just call ‘em 45s. I have to tell you, I was pretty excited. See, up to that time I had never owned my own record. Sure, we had records, but they all belonged to my brothers and my oldest sister and dad.

I could go on and on about dad and his sorry record collection, but I’m not really interested in talking about Glenn Miller and all those other old-timey people right now.

He doesn’t have any 45s – they’re all 78s! Son, that’s ancient. Well, I really don’t know a whole lot about it, but my brothers all laugh at his records so I figure they know what’s what more than I do.

The point is that everybody in the house has records except for me and my little sister, but she was too young to count. And it doesn’t count that my mom bought me this pitiful song about Georgie Porgie and “seesaw Margery Daw.” Please don’t ask me to explain because I don’t know what that was all about.

I guess I might tell you my middle name is George. I’m named after my uncle; not the one with the totem pole, but Uncle George is just as crazy. Anyway, once kids found out my middle name they were always running around teasing me, saying, “Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry.” Even my brothers would sing that because they knew that I’d get all mad and stuff. A person can get sick of that real quick. Well, my mom must have been feeling sorry for me so she goes and buys a record… a record about Georgie Porgie! Now how does that make sense? It’s like my dad: let’s say somebody hurt your feelings and all and you bust out crying and what does he do? He says, “Now quit your crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.” That means he’s about to give me a whipping, but for what? Crying? And what will happen after I get a beating? I’ll cry. Doesn’t make sense. And neither did mom getting me that record.

It was all jazzed up to sound modern and these singers are all happily singing “Georgie Porgie,” and then they get to this part about him kissing all the girls but suddenly runs away when all the kids get out of class to play because “he saw Margery Daw” or maybe it’s “seesaw Margery Daw.” Either way it’s dumb to me. Turns out “seesaw Margery Daw” was some stupid song kids sang while on the seesaw. It’s probably from the Depression because I never heard of it before that dang record.

So mom plays it for me and is all smiles. I mean she was really pleased. What was I supposed to do? See, my mom is really a sweet lady and I really hated to hurt her feelings and all. Like one time I did something or another to get in trouble and my dad wasn’t around to discipline me and I guess whatever it was I did was bad enough that she couldn’t afford to wait for my dad to get home so she had to do it herself.

My mom rarely ever spanked us kids. She didn’t believe in it. But she sure did believe in letting dad beat us. Whenever we got in trouble her famous words were always, “Wait until your father gets home!”

But this time, for some reason she decided she was going to discipline me herself. Well, I was pushing nine then, and I wasn’t some little kid anymore. But that didn’t stop her. She grabbed a yardstick and started waling away. To be honest, I didn’t feel much of anything. I looked back to see if she was done and I saw how intent she was to punish me and I kinda felt sorry for her, so I started fake crying and all so that she’d feel better. It worked. She stopped, turned me around, hugged me, and sent me to my room.

I’m a pretty good actor when I want to be and so after that stupid Georgie Porgie song was over and my mom was all happy and proud because she had made me feel better about my middle name and because somehow that stupid song would tell everybody off… well, I acted like I really liked that song. “It’s a good song,” I said. My mom clasped her hands together and held them to her chest, her face glowing.

Anyways, I was in Tommy’s bedroom when I see a stack of records and I’m thinking maybe I am ready for a trade.

“How about this peashooter?” he asked, holding up a stripped tube that looked like a fat straw.

“Heck no,” I said, thinking about his spit probably all over it. “Uh…No thank you,” I said, remembering to be polite so he might be more willing to trade me a 45 for the dart. “I see all your records here. Maybe you have one I might be interested in…to trade.”

“You want a record?” he asked. “Which one?”

I told him I wasn’t sure until I went through them all. To my surprise, he was more than willing to trade a record for the dart. I can’t remember all the titles of records he had, but he had this one that I really wanted. It was “Happy Together,” by the Turtles. Man, I loved that song!

I tried to act natural and all. “I guess I’d be willing to trade my dart for this,” I said, showing him the record.

“OK.”

And that was that. Just like my dad says: “No fuss; no muss.” I took the record and walked back home so I could play it, but Tommy tagged along, begging me to play it later, after we threw the dart some more. I finally agreed and went inside to put the record up in case he changed his mind or something.

When I got back outside, he was throwing that dang dart at my pine tree and missing it, of course. I told him he had to go throw it at his own pine tree. So that’s what we did – we went to his yard so that he could throw the dart at his own pine tree.

After awhile he started getting pretty good with that dart and was anticipating the arc and all. I tell you, I’ve never seen a boy happier. I really think it was the first sharp object he’d ever owned his whole life.

In an act of real joy, Tommy hummed that dart as far in the air as he could, grinning like a baby playing peek-a-boo. Let me tell you, Tommy had a arm. He played on the same baseball team as me – the Jitney-Jungle Jets – and he was our star pitcher. So when he threw that dart he really let it fly.

Then he started quoting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where.”

Longfellow was a old-timey poet and our class had to memorize one of his poems: “The Arrow and the Song.” That’s what Tommy was reciting when he hurled that dart. I used to joke that Longfellow should have been called Longwinded because a lot of his stuff goes on forever.

Tommy and I laid down on the grass and searched the sky for the dart. Honestly, that thing hung up there for a real long time.

We didn’t say much, but we were both so happy. My arms behind my head, I hummed the tune “Happy Together,” thinking how happy I was to finally own a 45. Tommy was happy, too, because he had a dart of his own.

My happiness came to an abrupt end when I suddenly remembered something my dad always said: “What goes up must come down.”

The dart! It was coming down. But where? I alerted Tommy and we both sat up and scanned the sky. Then we saw it. It was arching over the roof of his house toward his backyard.

“My mom!” Tommy shouted.

At almost that exact moment Mrs. McCurdy was finished with the laundry and was just entering the house through the backdoor when their Persian cat shot outside.

We saw the dart dip below the roof, out of sight.

Then we heard the loudest cat scream ever recorded in the history of our lives. That was followed by the loudest human scream we’d ever heard. Mrs. McCurdy was screaming her lungs out.

Suddenly we saw Tommy’s cat bolt from the backyard, right past us, with a red dart sticking out of its tail. We chased after the cat, which crawled up under a holly bush and Tommy reached in there and was able to grab the dart. I’ll never forget that cat’s eyes. They were wide open. They were huge and they looked wild and all with fear. Tommy’s eyes looked the same way.

Mrs. McCurdy caught up with us in the front yard while Tommy was trying to calm the cat down. Boy, she glared right at me and started jawing at me, saying I should be ashamed of myself and all. Tommy didn’t say anything.

I swear she almost made me cry because she was yelling so loud and all, and then I finally got the nerve to tell her what really happened – that it was Tommy who threw the dart. HIS dart. I told her about the trade and all.

I hadn’t made it to the middle of the street when I heard Mrs. McCurdy start laying into Tommy. Boy was he getting it good. In front of God and everybody. I ran the rest of the way home and went to my bedroom where I could still hear Mrs. McCurdy yelling and Tommy crying.

I closed my window so I couldn’t hear it any more and I put my new 45 on the record player and started playing it. “Me and you and you and me…No matter how they toss the dice, it has to be…The only one for me is you, and you for me…So happy together…” I never heard nothing better in my whole life. I loved that song. When it was over, I played it again and again.

I felt sorry for Tommy because he got a whooping because of that dart and he probably was going to get beat again when his dad got home. And I felt sorry for the stupid cat, too. But to be honest with you, I wasn’t sorry I traded for that record. I loved that thing and it was mine and despite feeling all bad inside, a part of me felt good, too.

You know, maybe that’s what my dad means when he says, “Tough titty says the kitty, but the milk tastes good.” It kinda makes sense – at least the part about the milk tasting good and all.


Copyright 2010 Donald G. Redman All Rights Reserved