However, I've spent so much time on Erasing Fate, I can't drag myself to the keyboard for the rewrite it deserves, or the Lucy story Mr. Barr rejected. Instead, I'm writing another story, a children's tale about growing up. I'm spending less time in the heads of the characters and more on their actions revealing them. I'm finding this is easier to write. In the process, I'm getting closer to liking what I write enough to publish.
In all of this torment of writing, stories still in my head and those that have found their way to the keyboard - there is one story I know needs to be published, one that doesn't involve my childish dreams of being a great writer, but allows an unlikely hero to step forth. This hero would be my father. He died homeless behind a dumpster, and below is part of the memoir I wrote about growing up with him. The illustration above is one he drew to me in letters from jail.
Chapter Five
Project Brick
Houses vs. Stick Houses
Hartsville,
SC, 1977
My
grandmother told me Daddy was only three pounds when he was born. This could be
why he thought a stick house was better than a brick one. I figured his brain
must not have developed right, which explains why he started in explaining why
sticks are more durable than bricks. I couldn't have been more than
eight-years-old. We were still in the olí single wide trailer with the faded
teal stripe down it. The living room leaned upward with bricks and broken
cinder blocks, inside it caused the family to watch television at an angle. I
figure my thinking revolved around TV watching rather than projects because
when Daddy started talking about a new one that day I still had Scooby Doo in
my head. I stood outside by the living room window staring up at him and trying
not to let the sun blast my eyeballs out. It was darker inside, lazier. It was
how I felt. Any how, Daddy didn't mind the brightness in his eyes and I just
liked looking up at him. He was still heroic to me, and I very much believed
he'd get rid of the Îhangoverí disease and be a real dad again.
"Your brother
has a brick head," he says.
This is true.
My brother does have a brick head, but bricks have nothing to do with his intelligence.
Daddy went on with his theory, his eyes looking out yonder somewhere, into the
fall morning sky. I look on with him, hoping to see what he did.
"Sticks bend
and we can lacquer them with weather resistant material and make them
brick-like, plus they are easier to come by. Furthermore, we run into the
problem of materials. Where are we going to get enough bricks to build a whole
fort?" Daddy pops his fake teeth out and eyeballs them up in the sunlight.
Gross.
"I
suppose you have a point,î I say to him. ìTrailers arenít made of bricks."
"Right,
you got to use your noggin." He points to his head. I figure Daddy to be the
smartest guy ever. He scratches his beard stubble, or his thinking stubble, as
he calls it.
"Well
itís early. We can have it made by the end of the day." I tell him.
He winks a cornflower blue eye at me and it twinkles. I give his hand a
squeeze. He smells a little funny, so what? He didn't like to use soap. He said it dried his skin out.
This current manuscript is in the hands of two excellent agents who I hope and dare to think they might make me an offer of representation, but am I'm just thinking again.
