A few years ago, my dad called and said he had an idea for a book. He said it would strike a cord with millions and would rival those Harry Potter books that people love so much, if it was written just right. He had the name for the main character and one rock-solid premise.
Sometimes I mention to people that I'm writing a book and they say, 'what about?' and I say that it's about geese.
That's a bit of an over simplification.
I thought about his idea, and it's a good one, and the characters formed themselves. They popped out of nowhere. I read a bit of my story to my oldest, Max age 14, and he came back a few hours later with deeper character descriptions that perfectly fit my minds wandering.
So this book is a collaboration by three generations of kin.
My dad is a man of few words and they're usually right, so you might want to read along.
Here is Chapter 1.
Hope is the Thing with Feathers
by Ivey McCollum Patton
idea by Paul McCollum
and in collaboration with
Max Patton
Here it is. A true story that most folks won't believe.
Of course, that's your choice, but I've always said that sometimes it's easier to just let go and fall in.
Not everything has to fit in a tidy little package.
There are pros and cons to living in a very small town your whole entire life. It sometimes feels lovely to walk into the grocery store on the corner and know every fact about every single person you see before you. They care about you on a cellular level and will report your mood to the next twelve customers who will then nod and comment on your brother or your father or your sweet old dog's recent visit to the vet and his brain tumor. All of this is done with very little effort or thought. It's rote and well meant, and on a good day it's just fine. And then on some days it can bug the living hell out of you.
On those days you might just get in the car and drive the forty five minutes to the next big town and troll the aisles of the Target looking for nothing more than a break from yourself and a little retail therapy that you can't afford, in the form of some pale pink sheets with tiny flowers all over them that remind you, without hesitation, of your grandmother, damn it. It's like they say. Wherever you go, there you are. You can leave the peanut gallery behind, if only for an afternoon, but not completely. The soul is always churning and family, like it or not, has a place at that table. So memories and feelings are going to hop in the car and go to to Target, too.
And Clara was lovely, and these sheets would have wiffled in the breeze on her clothesline and smelled so good in her cozy guest room with the painted wood floors and the big window with the blue and white curtains. The room that was always waiting with fresh flowers and baby powder. Clara loved a tray. A little snack, of pound cake and ginger ale, was always a moment away for the grandchild who wheeled down her driveway. She never said no. She was always 'yes'. Always dresses and heels, always flowers and gardens, always cozy and clean, ordered and prepared. Always ready to sit down on the couch and listen to the needs of a child as if the president himself had shown up. Her compliments were like the wings of a bird, a gentle ruffling that padded her every noun verb combination. She simply did not speak of anything that wasn't a blessing to her and it made you feel as if you'd won the sweepstakes. That and the pound cake combined.
The sheets are on sale. That must be a sign. And then her world swivelled in an unexpected direction.
*****
Jackie had noticed the boy in the parking lot. He was probably ten or eleven and he had immediately reminded her of her own boys at that age. He was squatting against the building near a trash can and was going through his backpack, a worn old thing that was not at all like the newfangled, almost disposable, packs that kids carried these days. It was old school. It had one zipper at the top and one outside pocket. The bottom was lined with a large leather patch that looked like it had been repaired and replaced several times. Two doves lit on the sidewalk near him and he stopped for a moment to watch them. The boy was going through the back pack and organizing the contents with great care and consideration. Jackie could almost see his mind working. She sat in the car and watched as he pulled out a t-shirt, looked it over, carefully refolded it and started a pile. He had a pen and small notebook and every now and then, he would write something in it. He had almost emptied the main part of the pack and reached in one more time. He pulled out a pair of under wear, tighty whiteys. Jackie smiled to herself in the car, thinking that tighty whiteys are universally funny and kept watching. The boy looked them over, hard. They weren't so white anymore, they were dingy and frayed and from a distance it was obvious that the elastic was long gone.He shook his head and like the little boy he was, he leaped up, swung them like a lasso around his head and slam dunked them into the trash can. He performed a high five with an invisible companion and finished ordering his pack. Jackie kept watching, her momma lion mode activated by the peculiar underwear scene. Something was not quite right, but not necessarily wrong either. Jackie looked around to see if there were any adults around that this child might belong to. She already knew that there wouldn't be. For a reason that she could not put a finger on, she firmly believed that this child was on his own.
Maybe his parents were at work. Maybe he was a latchkey kid. Maybe he was on his way somewhere, walking to his grandmother's perhaps. And while her mind wandered, the boy, done with his pack check stood up and patted his pocket, checking for money, she guessed. He was so at ease with himself, so completely autonomous for such a young thing, that she found herself smiling again, despite the oddity of the scene. The boy picked up a rock and took a few steps backs and with a dribble and a fake he aimed for the trashcan and shot.
"Whoosh." she heard him say. And he disappeared through the big automatic doors. The two doves that had been shadowing the whole affair flew away.
Jackie popped out of her reverie, grabbed her purse and opened the car door. She thought twice about leaving her car keys in the center console of her car; that was one of the perks of small town living for sure, and decided to to go with her gut, which generally told her that the world was a good place inhabited by honest people. She was also a believer in statistics and felt safe in the odds of not falling prey to a random car theft in the Target parking lot on an overcast Tuesday in July. Anyway, it felt better to leave the car unlocked. The car was brand new, and she wasn't used to all the bells and whistles. Automatic everything and a woman that talked to her when she turned the key. She thought of herself as a simple person. She prided herself on living splendidly with just the basics and this car was so not basic. She had won it in a raffle and could not have been more shocked. The purple Mustang was embarrassingly muscular, loud, and garish. But fun, too, she had to admit. She liked the irony probably more than the car. So she left the keys in plain view, with the doors unlocked, and almost forgetting the boy and the backpack, headed inside.
The hydraulic whoosh of the doors reminded her of the boy and she looked around but he was nowhere to be seen. She grabbed a cart and stood at the crossroads of women's fashion, one dollar trinkets, and cheap accessories, none of which spoke to her. It was one of those times that she wished she was a list maker. She could whip it out and feel like she had a real purpose. She felt a little silly; her sole purpose was to wander the aisles, and for a brief hour or so, be anonymous in a crowd. It occurred to her that this store, with all it's employees and customers was larger than Sandhill, the small town she had called home for the last 54 years. How bizarre, really. One single store could seemingly rise up out of the ether and inside of a few short months have more people and products than a town that had been laboring and toiling, with heart and soul, ache and loss, joy and laughter.... for the past two hundred years.
She pushed the cart to electronics, as her mind was faintly nagging that she needed something. What was it? Ah, yes! The end cap on the aisle right in front of her held the answer. Her flash light was dead as a doornail. She had replaced the batteries, the bulb, tried everything and it was still not working. She had been frustrated that she couldn't fix it. She hated waste and excess, but then it occurred to her that the flash light had been her great uncle's and that he had probably used it for forty years before loaning it to her twenty years ago. She thought of it as new, when it was probably one of the first flashlights to ever be invented. It weighed half a ton, but had done the trick every night for decades. Literally, every night. As she picked up a new one, she smiled. It was bright orange and light as a feather, and holy smokes it was bright, almost too bright, really.
"That's right in my eyes." a voice said.
Jackie was trying to click it off and doing a lousy job. She pushed the button and it started to strobe and then pushed again and a red laser beam shot forth. She clicked and double clicked and cursed to herself. "Damn, this is just too much, how do I turn it off?" And with one more click, the flashing beacon to deep space went dark. Thank God. She set it down and looked up. The boy was in front of her holding a simple silver flashlight that looked surprisingly like her old one.
"I think this is what you need." he said.
"I am so sorry, honey. I hope I didn't blind you. And yes, that's it. That's just what I need." she said.
"These last forever, really." the boy said. "You won't have to ever buy another one. They're bomber."
He handed it to her and took one off the hook for himself. Jackie took it and looked it over. It was all she needed. It was just like her old one.
She put it in her cart. "Thank...." she looked up and the boy was gone. Just like that.
"Thank you." she said anyway.
She had something in her cart that she needed and now she thought that perhaps, she would look for something that she just wanted. It was rare for her to shop for herself. When she bought something, it was generally for someone else. She wasn't yet used to her empty house and the lack of demands that three children had constantly placed on her for the last twenty four years. Her youngest had left the nest only a month ago. With her, went a swirling vortex of sweat and laughter, friends and excitement, and food and mess. Oh my, the food and mess. When Maria wasn't on her bike, she was baking.
She had baked her first cake in fourth grade and had not stopped. In eighth grade she wrote an article for the paper and challenged herself to bake a cake everyday for a year. Some days she baked more. She would experiment till she got it just right. What ever 'it' might be that week. She worked at the grocery store to pay for her extreme hobby and she rode her bike to ensure that the scales remained in her favor. For all of her intensity, she was remarkably laid back and frivolous. She shared the cakes. Everyone in town could consider themselves cake authorities. There was no one who didn't love her loose red curls, her infectious laugh and her knock at the door. She'd push through screen doors, cake carrier in hand, with a running commentary on that days creation.
"It's a basic white cake, three layers, but I changed some ratios and I'm experimenting with natural sugars and nut flours. Let's try it." And in a flutter of cabinet doors and dishes, she'd take charge of the kitchen and start serving. Maria would taste each layer separately and slowly. She could pinpoint the smallest distinctions in texture and flavor.
"The crumb is good, but a tad heavy, what do you think, Maureen?"
Maureen had been known for her cakes before young Maria hit the scene.
"I think it's close. Did you check the temperature on each shelf of your oven, like my Bertis used to do? Your bottom layer is a smidge more done than the rest." The sixty-eight years that separated their ages mattered none.
And so it went. Maria spent her days analyzing cakes and all of the myriad complexities of flour, sugar, shortening and heat. Everyone knew she wouldn't stay for long in the small town. She had 'save the world' written all over her, so they savored every moment with her. She was unusual. She was silly and bold, self deprecating and powerful. No one could figure out how she pulled it all off.
At eighteen, she knew more about flour and sugar than the finest chefs in the United States. This was matched, pound for calorie, with her cycling achievements. She rode hundreds of miles a week. At the break of dawn, if you were up and lucid, you might catch her flashing tail light as it broke free of the city limits. She liked to watch the first light of day as it broke over the eastern countryside and would race into it, a girl on fire. Even hunched over her sleek racer, she appeared to be flying, effortless and steady, like a hawk surveying his territory.
*****
Jackie looked at the aisles of clothes, underwear, and shoes. She dismissed it all, with very little thought. She wore the same thing all the time. Her job did not lend itself to finery of any sort. She had forgotten how to dress nicely. Taxidermy and fashion were mutually exclusive pursuits. Her jeans and clogs and plaid shirts were second skin. Sometimes when she'd spent a good deal of time with her girlfriends, she'd begin to notice more keenly how boring her clothes were. They would sit down in front of the mirror to do themselves, makeup and jewelry, then blow drying and curling irons, and they still hadn't even dressed. There was another half hour of trying on and mind changing, and which shoes or what scarf? She couldn't imagine finding that time. Her only adornment was an old chunky gold watch, a nice one, that had been 22 minutes off for the last 30 years or so. She was fine with it all.
She was the very definition of low maintenance. She could direct that energy elsewhere. And she did. She worked hard. At night she slept hard. She loved her cozy bed. Aha. She'd go look at the sheets.
And that's when she saw him. He was studying the blankets as though this was the sole blanket purchase he would make in this lifetime. Reading every word on the packaging. Touching, pulling, even pushing on the bulk as if to compress it into nothing. She eased down the aisle so she could watch unnoticed. But he was rapt with blankets.
"Down." she finally said. It just slipped out really.
"Down is what you need."
The boy looked at her.
"Are you talking to me?"
Jackie nodded. The boy put the blanket that he had been holding back where it belonged and stooped down to the bottom shelf. He chose that blanket and stood up.
"Why this one?" he asked
She puzzled for a brief moment then laughed.
"Down, not down. You need feathers. A down comforter. They're insulating, very warm, they pack tight." It was just a hunch that these might be features that he was concerned about, but for some reason she felt that she had a bead on this boy. His face turned red and she felt bad for being so presumptuous.
"Not for me." he said quickly. "Actually, you should try something different, too. Down comes from ducks and geese: that's not good."
*****
to be continued
This is rough. Unedited, and all that. It is the beginning of an epic tale and someone out there, one or several of you, is going to help me get it published. You are going to push and prod me to finish it and you are going to find me a publisher. We are all going to do it together. I'm thankful for your help already. Please share this.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and please, for me, chase your muse, whatever it might be.
