Went to see some jousting at Avoncroft Museum today:
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Busy Writing???
Not really – making a meme seems like a good waste of time.
Troy
This is a recent creative writing assignment – write a 2500 word short story. I am posting the original but have put it back to a work in progress to rework the ending.
Troy
‘I’ll get it, Mom.’ Dex called out as he loped down the stairs.
‘If it’s Grandpa send him out to the backyard to keep an eye on the barbecue.’ His mother called from the kitchen.
‘I said I’d do it.’
‘I don’t want you doing anything on your last day here.’
Dex opened the door and froze.
‘Hello…Jason.’
Dex felt his eyebrows tighten together, ‘What…why are you here?’
‘I bumped into Tom from next door. He said you were deploying tomorrow. I…’
‘You what? Decided now was a good time to show up and be a father? This is my third deployment. Where were you all the other times? High school? My first deployment, second deployment?’
‘I only just heard …you were in the army.’ His father looked down at the space between their feet.
‘What do you want?’ Dex held onto the door wondering whether to just shut it. ‘Because I don’t get it.’
‘I know I haven’t been here… It’s just, when I heard, I thought…’ his father dug in his coat pocket and brought out a small box, ‘I got this when I was in Vietnam. It’s…I kept it with me.’ He hesitantly handed it across the threshold to Dex.
Dex glanced down at it. ‘So this makes up for twenty four years of nothing?’
‘No…no…when I heard…I just wanted you to have it. The symbols are all Vietnamese power and luck symbols.’
‘Well, that’s just great…’ Dex pushed the box back into his father’s chest, ‘I don’t need your bad juju with me, old man.’
His mother came out of the kitchen, ‘Paul…’
‘He’s just leaving.’ Dex turned to his mother.
‘Why don’t you invite him in?’ his mother’s tone was firm.
‘Because this party is for my family.’
His father raised a tentative hand and kept his eyes to the ground, ‘Hi, Jeanie. Sorry to trouble you.’
‘Why don’t you stay for a glass of lemonade, Paul?’ Her tone was gentle.
Dex glared at her.
‘No, no, I’ll go.’ His father straightened himself up a little but still didn’t look at either of them. He walked down the porch steps and got into his car.
Dex shut the door and turned to go back upstairs but his mother’s look stopped him, ‘What?’
‘You could have invited him in for a drink before the others arrive.’
‘He’s never been there for me. I don’t know him. Why would I let him in now?’
‘Because he’s your father. Because it must have been hard for him to do what he just did. Because he’s been through what you’ve been through and you can see he didn’t come out of it very well.’
Dex shook his head and frowned, ‘I don’t want to hear it. I’m nothing like him and I never will be.’
*
White. That was all he saw. White, blurred. Two words. Did that mean he wasn’t dead? If he could see and think words? Where am I? He tried to move but his limbs wouldn’t respond. Maybe this is what being dead is. He moved his eyes right and saw more white, different shapes: blinds. He turned his head and pain seared his brain. Where was this place? Not home. His bedroom was blue. The thought of home added a layer of confusion. He hadn’t been home in a while. Where had he been?
‘It’s nice to see your eyes open.’
He looked left toward the voice. A woman in white headed toward him. Nurse. He opened his mouth but nothing came out.
‘I’ll get the doctor. He’ll go through everything with you.’ She smiled gently. ‘You’re a fighter.’
What did that mean?
She left before he could try to speak.
The nurse reappeared with a doctor who shone a small flashlight into his eyes. ‘Welcome back, Sergeant Dexter. What’s your first name?’
‘Water,’ he whispered hoarsely. His lips felt tight.
The nurse filled a cup and let him sip it through a straw.
‘Jason.’ He answered the doctor.
‘What year is it?’
Good question. ‘2005?’
‘Good. Can you remember what happened?’
He started to shake his head but stopped. Pain pressed against his temple. They were travelling on a road. The Humvee was packed full of equipment and soldiers. The vehicle in front of them suddenly disappeared in a cloud of dust and dirt. Sound and air vanished as the explosion tried to suck them into the vacuum, cloud enveloped them like a claw clutching at prey. Then there was white and now. ‘Yes,’ was all he answered.
‘Where is your hometown?’
‘Troy, New York.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-five. I can’t move my legs.’
He caught the look between the doctor and nurse. Alarm travelled up from his bowels to his brain.
The doctor motioned to the bandage on his head. ‘You’ve suffered a traumatic brain injury, a TBI. You’ve been unconscious for two weeks. Can you remember the accident?’
‘An IED. It got the Humvee in front of us then… I don’t know. How many guys…’
‘There were seven fatalities. All four in the front vehicle and three from your vehicle.’
‘I’m it?’ Dex said as the names of his squad hit his brain at once: Garcia, Jackson, Emerson, Sanders, Cooper, Chen, Rodriguez.
‘Along with the head injury you also sustained burns and a crush injury when the vehicle in front landed on your Humvee trapping your legs. Your right leg was broken. Your left leg took most of the impact. I’m sorry, Jason, but your leg couldn’t be repaired. We had to amputate to save you from bleeding out.’
Dex stared at the doctor trying to understand. A sharp pain hit his brain and he closed his eyes against it all.
*
His mother leaned forward toward him and held onto his arm. He blinked and wondered if this was a dream but guessed not since she looked like her, not some ghoulish version of her, dead eyed and bloody faced his usual nightmares these days.
‘Dex.’
‘Hey, Mom.’ His voice was groggy and wooly from the painkillers.
She hung her head and her shoulders shook in silent sobs.
‘It’s okay, Mom.’
‘I’m sorry. I promised myself I wouldn’t do this.’ She pulled a tissue from her pocket and wiped her nose.
‘Where am I?’ he fought against the drug tide trying to pull him back under.
‘Walter Reed Hospital in Bethesda. You were in Landstuhl, Germany for the first ten days. When the swelling on your brain reduced enough they moved you here. I’ve talked to the doctors; they say when you’re even better they’ll transfer you up to the veterans hospital in Albany so you’ll be close to home.’
Dex nodded trying to take in the rush of her words. He felt himself relax a little knowing that at least he was back Stateside. He wouldn’t let his mind think about home.
‘Can I get you anything? Books, magazines? Your iPod was sent back with your belongings…’
He turned his hand towards her to try and stop the stream of her words making him dizzy. ‘I’m okay.’
‘Oh, Dex…’ she gripped his hand and a big tear plopped down onto his thumb.
*
Garcia, Jackson, Emerson, Sanders, Cooper, Chen, Rodriguez. There was too much time to think. His squad, his friends, his brothers occupied his mind now. What could he have done differently? Why was he still here? Why didn’t anyone else make it? As soon as he saw the front vehicle hit the IED he knew Garcia, Jackson, Emerson and Sanders were gone, but Cooper, Chen and Rodriguez were with him. Why didn’t they make it? He hit the metal bars on the side of the bed in frustration. A few of the other guys on his ward glanced his way but then went back into their own worlds, mostly staring at nothing, watching TV or trying to ignore the pain of their injuries or missing limbs.
*
Dex looked down at the bed sheets covering him. He hadn’t looked yet, wasn’t ready to face it. He let out a deep breath and pulled back the sheets, exposing his legs. His right leg had a metal rod and six giant screws sticking out of it; his left was bandaged at the knee with nothing but space below it. His whole body felt woozy looking at it. There it was: the stump.
‘Hurts, don’t it?’
Dex looked at the guy in the bed opposite his. He was missing his left arm from the bicep and left leg from the thigh.
‘All them nerve endings knock knockin’ on that stump wantin’ to go somewhere but your leg’s lyin’ in a ditch in Tikrit or blown to smithereens scattered in the sand. Part a me’s just blowin’ all over that shithole, getting’ in people’s eyes, irritatin’ the shit outta everyone.’ He laughed at the irony of it.
Dex covered his legs and swallowed against the tingling nausea in his mouth. He leaned back into his pillow and stared at the ceiling.
*
Sand is everywhere. Plumes suddenly appear turning the world a hazy orange. Shapes appear from the dust cloud, soldiers with no faces march toward him but he knows it’s Garcia, Jackson, Emerson, Sanders, Cooper, Chen, and Rodriguez. Metal fragments rain down on his skin, piercing flesh, causing blooms of orange sand to explode before his eyes…
Pain jarred him awake. He reached over to rub his leg but his hand touched the mattress. He bit the inside of his cheek as he breathed through the throbbing in his leg that no longer existed. He held onto the rail of the bed until he could catch his breath.
*
The physio stood at the side of the bars, ‘Let’s go again. You’re getting the hang of it even with that broken leg. Not bad for eight weeks after the injury.’
Dex looked down the middle of the parallel bars, ten feet, it felt like a thousand. He looked down at his legs, one held together by metal, the other a plastic lump with a metal stick leg and a square foot, his temporary leg that was helping him learn to walk again.
‘You get the hang of this, you’ll be up in Albany within a couple of weeks, then home. Your legs are healing nicely and your new leg will be ready by the end of the week.’
Dex took a deep breath then dragged the metal leg forward one more time, sweat hitting his forehead.
*
The dreams that wake him in a sweat are of road patrols. He is packed into the Humvee with his squad. They are looking at each other and laughing but he can’t hear the joke. He speaks but they can’t hear him. He looks into their faces to try and get them to understand what he is saying but there is silence. He feels weighed down and slow. There is no sound. They are enveloped in the vacuum already. The flash that follows wakes him with a scream already out of his mouth. No one on his ward reacts. They all wake up that way. The adrenalin surging through him makes him hyper aware. He lies back and waits for his heartbeat to return to normal. He won’t sleep again for hours. He goes over the names of his team again, his mental rosary: Garcia, Jackson, Emerson, Sanders, Cooper, Chen, Rodriguez.
*
‘It’s not as hot up here as it is in Bethesda. There’s a nice breeze outside.’ His mother made small talk. ‘Does it feel good being back in New York?’
Dex shrugged as he put his stump sock on and gently put his leg into the metal leg.
‘Let’s take a walk, maybe have lunch outside.’
‘Outside the hospital?’ Dex tried to hide the anxiety that hit him every time he thought about going outside. Roads, open space, noise, baking sun. His head ached just thinking about it.
‘Just on a bench in the grounds.’ His mother put a hand on his back.
They made their way along the atrium where the white sun was streaming in through the glass roof. His head throbbed with the each step along the bright, hot light.
His mother kept him going until they reached the cooler air outside. ‘Mmm, nice breeze. We’ll find a place in the shade.’
She let him settle onto the bench, ‘I’ll get us some lunch and be back. You enjoy the fresh air.’
‘But Mom…’
‘I’ll be quick.’ She disappeared back into the hospital.
Dex looked at some of the other patients, walking carefully around the courtyard on new limbs or being pushed around in wheelchairs.
‘Do you mind if I sit?’
‘My m…’ he stopped staring out at the courtyard and turned his head toward the voice. His father was standing there, hands in the colourless windbreaker that he was wearing the last time Dex saw him. He felt a flash of anger at his mother.
His father sat down on the bench and looked at the ground. ‘Your mother thought…’
‘Yeah, I bet she did.’
‘I’m sorry, Jason.’
‘It’s Dex, nobody calls me Jason.’
‘Right. I’m sorry about your leg. I know…’
Dex turned sharply toward his father, an argument on his lips. He stopped and clenched his jaw instead. He recalled the words his mother used to describe his father when he had come back from Vietnam: siege mentality, walking wounded. He was those words now. His brain was always replaying the explosion and he was back there, not here. He dragged his damaged legs around. His father never had that problem. His father was whole apart from his brain and his slow speech.
‘I know a little of what you’re feeling. I hope you’re …getting help. It gets better…over the years.’
Dex nodded.
‘It’s hard to talk about…but it helps. The veteran groups…where there are people like you…us… helps.’
‘Is that where you go?’
‘Yes…talking to civilians…they don’t know…what it’s like.’ His father looked around at the other patients.
‘No, they don’t.’
‘It would have been hard when you were younger… to tell you things I’ve seen. You have to…be there to understand.’
Dex nodded again. What could he say? He knew now. All the things he wondered about his father while growing up, all the wanting to know what happened, now it was all inside him. Garcia, Jackson, Emerson, Sanders, Cooper, Chen, Rodriguez would always be inside him now.
His father’s hand moved out of his pocket and he set down the soapstone box that he had tried to give Dex before he left, ‘You should have this… you deserve it. The carving on the top is a phoenix. Big Vietnamese symbol.’
Dex glanced at the top of the box and recognized the phoenix as it expanded its newly formed wings and ascended away from the plumes of flame and smoke surrounding it. He felt his lungs constrict as tears sprang to his eyes. His chest clenched making him motionless. The first sob pushed its ragged way up and out of his throat. He doubled over and covered his face. He felt his father’s hand on his arm, supporting him. His metal leg knocked against his father’s leg and he felt his father’s tentative pat on his back. Dex buried his head in his hands and cried.
(2554 Words)
Ahuvati – Screenplay Version
The assignment was to write this in spec script style:
Ahuvati – Short Story Format
Photo from surf-israel.com
He was alone in the churning surf. A ship stacked with multi-coloured containers drifted on the horizon out in the Mediterranean. He caught a wave and cruised on it as far as it would take him before being dumped off the board into the water. This was his freedom; his place to submerge and forget.
He trudged out of the sea toward the beach and noticed a woman walking along the damp sand toward him. As they neared each other he felt his smile falter as he recognised her. His expression turned as ominous as the skies above them.
‘How are you?’ Eva asked. Her look was cautious. The wind whipped a strand free from her ponytail and she tucked it behind her ear.
Yair planted the surfboard in the sand with a thud. ‘How did you find me?’
‘I went to Tel Aviv first. Your father said to try the Haifa coast.’
He put a hand through his damp hair and breathed out a deep sigh. ‘Why are you here?’
She frowned at him. ‘I need your help.’
Yair shook his head and wiped away drops of sea water that clung to his face. ‘I can’t help you. I’m not Mossad anymore.’
‘You can never quit,’ Eva said quietly.
‘Oh, yeah?’ he grinned ironically. ‘I did, and so should you.’ He picked up his board and headed up the beach.
‘I’m calling it in.’ Her voice carried over the wind.
His back was to her when he stopped. His shoulders sagged in defeat. ‘My debt to you,’ he said softly as a gust grabbed the words from his mouth. He turned and looked her in the eye. ‘I was hoping I’d never see you again.’
Did I mean that? He wondered as he continued up the beach and crossed the road to his house, a small, worn grey, sandstone with bars on all the windows. He sensed Eva behind him as he unzipped his wetsuit and took the house key from around his neck. He unlocked the front door and paused, wondering whether to tell her to go away. Instead he opened the door and stood back to let her in.
She glanced at him then stepped into the gloomy interior.
Yair moved past her. ‘I need to get changed.’ He motioned her into the living room then headed to the back of the house.
After changing into dry clothes he went into the kitchen and made coffee to buy himself some time before having to face her. The smell of freshly brewing coffee drifted through the house. He went into the living room and sat down across from Eva. ‘What?’
She took a deep breath and hesitated, looking unsure of how to start.
He leaned toward her and clasped his hands together. He tilted his head. ‘What do you need from me?’
‘I’ve been tasked with studying surveillance photos from CIA recon drones. There is a camp in northern Africa with escalated training activity. There is a western man I keep seeing in the photos…’ She knelt in front of him and reached for his hand. ‘It’s David, Yair. David is alive.’
The only sound in the house was the steam from the coffee machine escaping under pressure. He remembered the day David had died.
*
Yair was lying on his stomach next to David on a hilltop. He kept watch through his sniper scope at the encampment below. ‘I could do with a coffee right now.’ His voice was rough from lack of sleep and water. The sun was making its way up into the sky, burning a trail of mist and chill from the air.
‘Fresh brewed, extra strong,’ David replied. He was on camera duty, the long telephoto lens ready for action when the camp below woke.
‘Eva thinks today is the day. She has a feeling,’ Yair said.
David’s heavy gaze turned his way. Their eyes met and Yair quickly returned to looking through the scope.
‘Eva shares too much of her feelings,’ David said.
Yair left the comment hanging in the air. The first rays of the sun climbed over the hill behind them and cast a yellow hue on the earth. An early heat haze shimmered in the distance.
They watched in silence as the camp started to wake. Men surfaced from their tents, stiff and stretching; guard duty changed over. They observed men loading heavy looking wooden crates into a truck. A man appeared from the largest tent and called over to two men to follow him to the truck before it left.
‘This is it, David.’ Yair checked the scope on his rifle. ‘Are you getting it?’
He heard the click of the safety being taken off a gun. David grabbed Yair’s sniper rifle away from him with one hand, the other pointing the Glock at Yair’s face.
‘Wha…’ Yair rolled onto his back, arms bent defensively in front of him, looking up at David.
‘Time’s up, Mossad. You took your eye off the ball while you fucked my wife. Neither of you were paying attention to the truth in front of your face.’
There was a whistle from the camp and David raised the rifle in acknowledgement. ‘Gotta go. I’m sick of sitting on my hands waiting for the CIA to make a decision. Do you know how much these boys pay their contracted-in military advisers?’ David raised his eyebrows. ‘A lot.’
All Yair could see was the barrel of the gun. This would be the last thing he saw, perfectly rounded iron with a metal jacket bullet about to slam into his forehead. His stomach clenched as he tensed, waiting.
He heard the muted sound of gunshot as David jerked and stumbled down the hillside. Yair scrambled to his knees and reached for his sidearm at the same time. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Eva rush for the brow of the hill, gun with silencer attached, in hand.
Yair shook his head as adrenaline surged around his body. His chest constricted as he fought to breathe.
Eva dropped to the ground beside him and looked out at the camp. ‘They’re coming. We need to go. Now.’ She tugged at his arm and started back down the hill.
At the bottom of the hill Yair grabbed her arm and turned her toward him. They held each other’s gaze. Tears were streaming down her face and her expression was clouded. ‘I heard it all on the comms as I was coming up the hill. Langley suspected he might be turning.’
‘You… knew…’
‘I couldn’t say anything to you. You’re Mossad. This is a CIA problem.’ She turned away from him.
‘You knew this was coming and let me walk into it?’ Yair stepped in front of her so she would have to look at him.
‘We need to get back to camp.’
‘But us, Eva? What does this say about us?’
She kept moving toward the jeep. ‘I had your back. One day you’ll have mine. There’s no time for this now.’
*
‘Are you sure it’s him?’
‘We never had confirmation he was dead. I know his face.’
Yair kept hold of her hand and looked out the window. The swell kicked up white frothy waves against the dark grey sea. He closed his eyes, ‘You didn’t trust me enough then…’
‘It’s what we have to do now that matters. We have to go back and end it.’
‘It’s not our fight anymore.’
‘I listen to the satellite audio feed they pick up from the camps. He knows I’m still out there tracking him. He sings the line from Evita, Eva Beware of the City. It’s a warning. He will come for us. CIA won’t even admit he’s alive. You’re the only one who can help me.’
Yair shook his head as an old memory from that time filtered back to him.
*
She’d been lying on her stomach next to him, their legs entwined, mouths close. There was only a sliver of moon casting light through the tent flap. Her fingers were in his hair. ‘I never want this to end.’
‘Ahuvati,’ he whispered and kissed her mouth.
‘Translate.’ He could hear the smile in her voice.
‘You are my love.’
*
He studied her face for the first time since she’d appeared on the beach. Her expression was tight and weary. The smile in her voice long gone. He felt himself soften a little toward her. She was scared. She must be to run to him all the way from America. It had been over a year.
He had refused to see her again after the incident with David on the hill. She didn’t object. The fist of betrayal had hit them all. His skin felt icy every time he thought about the triangle of duplicity that ran between the three of them and how Eva had kept secrets about David from him. It was an ugly mess that everyone wanted to bury from the top of the CIA all the way down to Eva and him.
‘You should send someone else in. Don’t go back.’
‘He will come for us, Yair.’ She gripped his hand tighter. ‘You know he wants to settle the score. Comms chatter says they’re getting ready to move. That means David could disappear from Africa and then he could turn up anywhere.’
Ahuvati, he thought as he looked into her worried eyes and he knew what he would do for her, for them.
The waves pounded the rocks outside on the beach. The storm was coming.
(1594 words)
8 Seconds
**This story is from my final assignment for the OU A215 course.
**
Eight seconds, that’s all it would take, then he’d be done for the day.
Wade hung his head over the small stainless steel sink and tried to breathe. He’d be up soon, out there in the ring again for the first time since the accident.
Nerves clenched his gut. He heaved but only water came up. He couldn’t eat anything this morning. The thought of coffee made his stomach churn in rebellion. He splashed some water on his face then spit to clear the acidy taste of puke from his mouth.
There was a knock on his trailer door, ‘Broncs up next, WJ.’
The thought of Lucy hit his brain just then. It used to be her at the door. She had been there for his last rodeo. She was gone now. He shook his head as if it would shake her out. He wouldn’t let himself think about her very often. Losing her made time seem like a Montana blizzard, endless and harsh.
He looked at himself in the mirror. His tan skin looked sallow today. His brown eyes had lost the happiness women always commented on when he was younger – ‘That Wade is a happy one, smiles right up to his eyebrows.’ And it had been true.
He checked that his chaps were strapped tight around his jeans. When he had decided to return to the circuit, his father had presented him with a new pair of chaps with the same pattern his family always wore at roundups and rodeos – three circles of intertwined turquoise colour leather and silver on brown leather with fringe trimming down the sides and bottom. His last pair of chaps had been cut off of his body.
He strapped on the body protector given to him by his mother. She had campaigned for him to wear a helmet when riding bucking broncos but nobody did. Helmets were for bull riding, and his bull riding days were over. He decided bronc riding would be his first competition back on the circuit.
Wade put on his tan cowboy hat and took a deep breath. He grabbed his gear and stepped out of his trailer, greeted by a milky June sun. Daytime temperatures were on the rise, but night time cooled off sharply. There was still snow on the high caps of the Rockies visible from their ranch.
‘Hey, WJ.’
‘Good luck, WJ.’
He held up a few fingers in acknowledgement at the well-wishers but concentrated on the ground in front of him, trying to shut out the crowd.
The smell of barbecue hit his nose and made his stomach grumble, despite his nerves. He smiled a little at the memory of last June when he’d met Lucy on the circuit.
She was an Equine Management major at the University of New Hampshire and spending a year interning in Montana for Masons, a stock farm that supplied horses for rodeo riders who didn’t have their own rides. His horse had gone down with a tendon problem, and he’d gone to Masons for a loan horse.
When he’d met Lucy she’d been eating sticky ribs and her mouth was covered with dark barbecue sauce.
‘You got a little…’ Wade had motioned around his face, ‘sauce thing goin’ on.’
She grinned wickedly and ripped off a piece of rib meat before dropping the bone back in the Styrofoam box. ‘I haven’t eaten all day, and this stuff is just heaven. You can’t get any barbecue like this back East.’
Her East Coast accent sounded out of place in the Midwest. He didn’t know of any East Coasters on the Montana circuit.
‘I’d shake your hand, but you’d be covered in sauce.’ She raised an eyebrow at him, ‘then I’d be tempted to lick it off.’
He felt his face turn red at the thought. Girls on the circuit flirted with him, but it sounded different coming from Lucy. Nearly innocent, but he wasn’t sure if he saw something in her eye that said otherwise. She dressed differently too, English style riding boots with shorts and a t-shirt, nothing western. Everything about her seemed exotic.
She led the loan horse out of the trailer. ‘Be a good boy for…’ she turned toward him waiting for his name.
His brain fumbled. Everybody on the circuit knew who he was.
She stuck her now clean hand out to him, ‘I’m Lucy.’
‘Wade. WJ.’ Everyone on the circuit called him WJ, only his family used his first name. Lucy called him Wade from the beginning.
‘Ah,’ she nodded in recognition of the name, ‘WJ Nolan, the Real Deal.’
He shook his head in embarrassment.
‘That’s what they call you, right, the Real Deal?’
She was right. You could hear people say it all over the circuit. He was the most promising bull rider in Montana. He had had the best record of rides the previous summer in the whole of the North West. Everyone knew he’d be headed to Vegas for the winter to compete at the national finals and that meant big money. He could have been a millionaire at the age of nineteen. Then the accident happened.
They soon became inseparable, and he forgot about time when she was around. He did his stint before and after his bull ride, helping the other riders get in to the chute, getting the next bulls ready, and then he’d take a break. Lucy was always out tending a horse when he walked past Mason’s trailer, so he’d stop and say hi.
It wasn’t long before she started taking her break after his rides, and they’d end up in his trailer.
Lucy discovered a place on his neck just behind his ear. When she put her mouth on it, he felt time freeze as if his heart had stopped. It was like living and dying all at the same time. The thrill hit him from his chest down to his groin. It was a better buzz than bull riding.
After she was gone, he would catch himself absently rubbing the spot. It made his heart sink, and he missed her all over again.
*
Wade nodded to the other bronc riders standing around waiting for their turn. He hauled himself up onto the platform and forced himself to look out at the ring. Fear prickled down his back but he ignored it.
The concept was simple, stay on the bull or bronc for eight seconds; the execution wasn’t so easy. He watched as a rider was just falling to the ground and rolling away from the horse. Plumes of dust rose from the heels of the horse bucking away to the other side of the ring. That was one reason he chose broncs over bulls. Horses ran from you; bulls ran toward you.
It was the first rodeo of the season, and the stands were full of families. Red, white and blue bunting lined the perimeter of the ring. People were cheering and kids were eating pink cotton candy clouds. He scanned the crowd for his parents but couldn’t pick them out.
One of the rodeo men nodded to him, ‘Hey, WJ, you’re fifth up now. Can you give me a hand with a couple of these broncs?’
Just like that he was back in it as if he’d never been away, never had a six month recovery, never been told by the doctors he shouldn’t compete again, never lost Lucy.
Wade saddled his horse and climbed the grey metal gates again to ready himself for his ride. He slid along the railings getting closer to the bronc chute and his turn. He climbed in to the chute on top of his ride, a black horse called Bullet. The horse jittered underneath him, muscles rippling with energy. The desire to lose Wade from his back felt more urgent than Wade’s desire to stay on for eight seconds.
‘Welcome back, WJ.’ A rodeo hand patted his back, as two others leaned over the railings to steady Bullet.
He looked out at the crowd, now just round faces with no features. The emcee announced his name, adding it was his first time in the bronc competition. The unspoken left hanging in the air after the announcer’s voice died away. His first time in the bronc competition because he was too shit scared to get back on a bull. The horse jolted sharply, and the image of the last bull he rode flashed in his mind.
*
Negro Diablo was a 1700 pound bull pissed off at being stuck in a chute with a 180 pound moron on his back. Wade would never forget the black devil.
Its menacing bulk shifted forward and back in the chute. The gate flew open. Wade lasted 3.2 seconds before he started to fall. His hand became hung up in the rope holding the bull, and he couldn’t get it to release. The bull charged around the arena dragging Wade alongside. A metal railing closed in on him and his body slammed in to it. The force of the bull’s fury lifted him in the air.
The last thing he remembered was his head colliding with the bull’s head. Pain ricocheted around his brain and he lost consciousness. If he hadn’t been wearing a helmet he would have been dead. He’d seen the YouTube video of it. The wreck lasted 43 seconds. He had looked like a rag doll after the head injury. The force of the bucking bull yanked Wade’s hand free from the rope, jettisoned him over the bull’s back and then to the ground. The bull fighters rushed toward the centre of the arena but not before the bull twisted back toward Wade, stamped on his chest and then tripped over landing on him.
When he arrived at the hospital his brain was swollen, he’d dislocated a shoulder, and had broken ribs, one of which had punctured a lung. The weight of the bull had bruised his pelvis and broken an arm. All anyone could do was wait and see how damaged his brain was, or if he’d regain consciousness at all.
Lucy had refused to leave his bedside. Everyone gave in and let her stay. If Wade had been awake he would have told them all how headstrong she was. She didn’t succeed in the Midwest as a newcomer being a shrinking violet.
Hers was the first face he saw when he regained consciousness three days later.
‘That was a wreck,’ he’d croaked.
Lucy hung her head and cried.
*
Wade closed his eyes and shook the memory from his head. He glanced at one of the rodeo hands and nodded as he raised his hand to signal he was ready.
The chute flew open. He held the rope tight as Bullet bucked him high in the air. His ass crashed down on the saddle when he landed, only to be tossed up high again as Bullet kicked his back legs up in the air. The third time he landed hard, he felt himself slide sideways on the saddle and lose his grip. Wade crashed to the ground, putting his hands over his face and head, as he kept an eye on Bullet who was moving away from his prone body. He didn’t waste any time getting to his feet and moving toward the gate. Three rodeo hands were there beside him to see if he was injured. Everyone remembered what he had looked like in the ring eight months ago.
He looked up at the time board – 5.3 seconds.
‘Take a breather,’ one of the rodeo hands said to him.
Wade nodded and walked into the holding area where they kept the livestock in pens. He didn’t want to go back to his trailer yet. He knew his parents would be there waiting for him. He wandered down the alley between the pens where the bulls were. He looked around for Negro Diablo and thought he saw him in a pen in the next alley.
5.3 seconds, he could take that time for the first ride of the season. He was a rough bronc rider despite helping break horses on the ranch. Being a lighter touch with an unbroken horse was different from riding a bronc horse trained to buck.
He wondered if Lucy was training horses right this minute. She didn’t like him saying he was breaking a horse. She preferred the term gentling or joining in. Their terms were different but their approach was the same – get the horse to follow you, to trust you. She had worked with a colt for his father two months after the accident. Wade had been there on the side lines itching to be the one in the ring, to be back in action on the ranch. Everyone had treated him like he needed gentling. He wasn’t broken.
Lucy and his mother had watched him like a hawk. Every time he went outside one of them would be on his heels making sure he wasn’t going for a ride or trying to help with any of the heavy lifting, like cleaning out the cow sheds or hauling bales of hay.
He snapped one day when they’d both appeared at the barn door to check up on him. He turned on them, ‘Leave me the fuck alone! I just need some goddamn air.’ He had wrenched a halter off the wall and thrown it at them. They had retreated.
After that he froze Lucy out. In the back of his mind he knew his time with her was coming to an end. She was going back to New Hampshire in April to finish her third year by writing a dissertation on what she had learned working for a horse contractor. It was mid-February. He did the maths. She was going back home, back to her life. There wasn’t a place back East for a rodeo cowboy who worked on his daddy’s ranch.
He recalled the last words he’d said to her, ‘Just go. All your good time fun this summer was just shit. I don’t want you around anymore. Stop crowding me like I’m some cripple you need to take care of.’
He watched tears hit her eyes, but she blinked them away. ‘Wade…’
‘Don’t ‘Wade’ me. Just go, get.’ He had sent her away like a shamed dog.
And she’d gone. She was like a horse in that way, lose the trust and lose the horse. He had been spending the last few weeks eroding away her trust in him. He thought it would make the break easier.
His last words had trampled their seven months together in less than a minute, a wreck worthy of any brutish bull. There were three dark blotches where her tears had soaked into the barn floor. He clenched his jaw and refused to add to them.
*
He eyed Negro Diablo in the pen and frowned. A lot can happen in eight seconds, he thought, crushed by a bull, or words spoken that can never be taken back, hurt carved into a person as real as any physical injury.
Wade dropped his saddle and took the phone out of his bag.
He pressed the phone icon then her name.
It rang on the other end and she answered. Two seconds.
‘Hey.’
‘Wade.’
‘I’m sorry…’ Four seconds.
‘I’m here, Wade. Your mother invited me out to see your first ride back. I’m outside your trailer.’ Six seconds.
His smile reached past his ears making his eyes crease for the first time in months. He ran. He wasn’t wasting any more time. Eight seconds.
Rodeo Research
For my final piece on the OU A215 course a story about a cowboy came into my head one day in March/April. I’d never been into western riding or cowboys, ever, but there the idea was so I went with it.
As I go back to the US every summer, I Googled rodeos in the Northeast, not really expecting much but hoping for something. Well, something was what I got in the Painted Pony Rodeo in Lake Luzerne, NY, near Glens Falls. They offer a BBQ before the rodeo, the sound system and music played through out the rodeo gave it a great atmosphere. The announcer and ‘rodeo clown’ banter was amusing. It rained about 15 minutes before the rodeo was due to start – a major downpour with thunder and lightning but as soon as the storm passed they got the show underway and what a show it was.
We picked a great night to go (Sat 11 Aug) because they put on a full show:
Bull Riding
Bareback Bronc Riding
Tie-Down Roping
Steer Wresting
Team Roping
Breakaway Roping
Trick Riding
Barrel Racing
Winners of those competitions can be found on the APRA website.
It was an amazing night. To actually see a rodeo after trying to write about one was a great experience. These people are pretty fearless from trying to stay on a bull or bronc for 8 seconds to barrel racing at an all out gallop. I have massive respect for what they do and hope I can go back next year.
I took a ton of photos but my photography isn’t great and the speed/lighting of everything baffled my limited knowledge of how to take good photos – but I did get a few.
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn – Goodreads Review
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Wow, what a read! What totally insane characters. I loved how my allegiance to the two main protagonists/antagonists shifted, I loved how the story kept me guessing, I loved how the entire train wreck of these 2 characters’ lives unfolded across this story with a complete – omg! – every few pages.
I also liked how the story progressed from chapter to chapter alternating the character’s points of view and each section carried the story forward.
Even though neither main character ends up being particularly likable (and that usually is the death knell to me leaving a book unread) the story is just so fabulous that I had to know what happened next.
The ending flagged a bit for me – but how do you end such a story?! I finished the book fearing for their future – will there be another? A final ending?
A definite ‘must read’! Gillian Flynn is an awesome storyteller 
Inspiration
Generally my story ideas come from all the traditional places: what I’ve read, TV, movies, newspaper/magazine articles, a face or action from someone that I’ve glimpsed.
Recently I’ve been trying to organize my brain into how I’m going to prepare for what I’m writing. I’m generally a pantser but I know from doing NaNoWriMo that planning beforehand has kept the story flowing with a beginning, middle and end.
Now that I want to plan better how do I go about it? Will I keep a notebook – one notebook for all ideas or separate notebooks for each story I’m working on? Do I want pen and paper or electronic?
I recently tried mindmapping and I like that visual element for seeing character relationships but it didn’t really do what I wanted. Plus, when I map out ideas I kind of just write in a stream of consciousness type of way and just let the ideas pour out of my head in no particular order. Creating the map elements was also kind of ‘eh’.
Over the weekend I stumbled on an Evernote blog about creating a moodboard. Any tips on how to use Evernote more efficiently are happy finds for me. The blog discusses gathering images, text, colors in one notebook then creating a collage in a graphics program and making it into a pdf. Reading that was one of those pinging moments of inspiration in my brain.
So, this week I’ve been persevering with creating my story notes in Evernote. I’ve created a notebook, compiled character sheets, a plot page and have just put together a moodboard of images to save as a pdf to save back into Evernote where I can refer back to it whenever I need a jolt of inspiration about the story. Tagging everything, so all my research I’ve found and saved, was also another brain pinging moment. It makes the process of finding anything related to the story so much easier. I was always a half-hearted tagger but am now making sure I keep this as a good habit.
Plus, Evernote is on all my devices so whenever an idea strikes I’m more able to stop whatever else I’m doing and jot it down.
I know I’ll never give up pen and paper and my ideas notebook but expanding it electronically has opened up a new way of enhancing my creativity.
For the Weekly Writing Prompt inspiration from: 
Monday Morning Murder
Monday morning, the sun rose, the world turned, and my dog brought me a fleshy human hand from the creek. I contemplated it for a minute then looked toward the direction of the creek. Sun glinted like dancing diamonds through the leaves of the trees. The cicadas weren’t humming yet but the day would be hot. Bo’s tail wagged back and forth and he looked from me back toward the creek. He turned a few times in restrained excitement until I nodded down at him and said, ‘Show me.’
He let out an excited bark and trotted ahead of me toward the creek.
I hadn’t had my coffee yet and I already knew it was going to be a long day.
Bo bounded out of sight. When I reached the creek he was sitting obediently on the bank, below him, in the creek, lay the body of the woman. Overnight rain meant the creek was in full flow. Water rushed around her but not deep enough to submerge her. I called Bo over to me to remove him from the crime scene area. I tilted my head sideways to get a better look at the woman’s face. She’d been in the creek a while, her body puffed from being in the water too long but I still recognized her. Her other hand was shredded, gnawed at by some animal. I dug my phone out of my pocket and held it up, no service. I went back to the road and put Bo in the truck. I checked my phone again, now on higher ground, and saw two bars. I pressed the button and waited while it rang on the other end, ‘Chet, we got another body.’
I sat in the cab on the passenger’s side and fished out my spare notebook while I waited. Chet, the police chief, arrived first. He lumbered out of his cruiser toward the truck. ‘What’cha got, Oli?’
I pointed my notebook back toward the creek, ‘A little south of here at the creek.’ I paused and rubbed my face not wanting to speak the next words out loud because then it would all get real, fast. I was hoping for more time. ‘Chet, I think it’s Marianne, Lila’s sister.’
Chet’s expression changed from concerned about another murder in our town to sympathetic. ‘Oh, Oli, I’m sorry.’
I shrugged, ‘I didn’t know her very well.’
‘But Lila…’
I nodded and sucked on my bottom lip trying not to think about it.
‘Do you want me to call in another detective?’
‘No, I’ll be fine. Billy can be lead.’
‘Do you want him to inform Lila…if it comes to that? I can do it, Oli.’
Another cruiser pulled up in front of Chet’s. Dust from the road billowed around us and slowly settled. Billy and a crime lab person got out.
Billy made a beeline for us. ‘Is it true? It is another body? Same MO? Where is it?’
Chet held up a hand, ‘Slow down.’
‘Coroner should be here in a minute.’ Billy looked at me, ‘Where is it? Is it another female? Is she missing her hand?’
I hauled myself out of the cab and headed back toward the creek.
We stood on the opposite bank looking over at the body. I turned my back and nodded toward the west, ‘Her hand is over in that direction. Bo brought it to me on our walk. I’ll go bag it.’
‘It looks like Marianne Knox, Oli, what do you want me to do?’ Chet asked holding onto my arm before I left.
‘Once she’s on her way to the coroner’s office I’ll go get Lila.’
‘I’ll do it, Oli.’
‘No, it’s something I need to do.’ I said as I took an evidence bag from the crime scene tech and headed back to where I knew the hand was.
I stopped the truck and looked at the small house. ‘Please let her be alone.’ I thought then wondered if I meant it. Would it be better if Chase were there? Chet’s words came back to me, ‘You go careful, Oli, this is the third body like this so try not to give away any information about it.’
I headed up to the porch and rang the doorbell. I remembered when I didn’t have to ring the bell, when my visits weren’t ever in a formal capacity.
Lila opened the door then paused in surprise at seeing me. She looked at me more closely which caused me to look down at the painted blue wood of the porch. I couldn’t look at her.
‘Why are you here?’ Lila finally asked. Her voice sounded bewildered.
I glanced up at her, ‘I need you to come with me.’
I knew she saw something in my look, something you just can’t hide from someone you love. ‘Has something happened to…Chase?’
‘Lila, it’s Marianne.’ I spoke knowing her life would unravel very quickly from this point, but I had to be the one to be there now, like I hadn’t been before.
***
For the Scriptic prompt xchange this week, Jester Queen gave me this prompt: Monday morning, the sun rose, the world turned, and my dog brought me a fleshy human hand from the creek..
I gave Kameko Murakami this prompt: Guilt