I have no idea what memed is, Evan Lewis, you sneaky reprobate. Memed can't be a word one would toss onto a Scrabble board. But there it is and here I am.
So what have I been doing until the moment Dave, er, Evan, memed me? I haven't been posting here, so I must have been doing something, right?
1) Basically, I've been dodging the whole Facebook question for the last month. A lot of people have tried to friend me and I've belayed their friendliness until I come up with a position statement about Facebook. As in, How Facebook Fits into My Life.
2) I went to a party where there was dancing. Much fun was had by me. In fact it was an awesome, sweaty, inebriated time, the likes of which I haven't had in at least three years.
3) Going to Nepal in November. Much planning and salting away of funds. I bought a pair of very lovely Asolo boots for the adventure. And I hope to experience more awesome, sweaty, inebriated times while wearing these pretty little things.
4) Research on Civil War-era gunshot wounds.
5) Dealing with pets, dealing with ringworm and pets, dealing with the skin and fur of several mammal species including humans, all of whom had various itchy things afflicting them. Dealing with pet therapy, pet accomodations, pet birth control, pet loss, pet gain. Talking to the Humane Society about Cat #701.
In a nutshell, that's what I've been doing until this meming thing happened to me. Why, Evan, why?
Q&A
Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?
Saltines in bed. Or saltines in the bath when reading critique partners' work.
Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
I hate reading my old comments later, like my college text of Aeschylus. As if I had an opinion at eighteen. Or more likely, as if I could have a better opinion now. In addition, I'm unlikely to do volunteer proofreading; I do enough of that already for my critique partners.
How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears?
Dog-ear, baby. I want the book to know I'm there.
Laying the book flat open?
I have two library books lying just so right now. I know it's bad. In library materials, however, an unmolested book is an unloved book. I like opening a book that has a hint of an old lady's perfume clinging to the pages. Once I checked out a copy of Dracula that had tiny smears of bitter chocolate in the margins of the pages. Children's book should be battered from repeated readings, pages bleary, the spines utterly broken. I can't imagine a greater compliment to an author than to autograph a well-loved, much read book. For my own materials, I have reader copies and shelf copies. I'm not to be trusted with a book I like.
Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?
There's a difference?
Hard copy or audiobooks?
All of it. In both ears and the eyes as well.
Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?
I have to stop on a dime. I have kids and cats.
If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away?
There are no unfamiliar words. I've heard them all.
What are you currently reading?
House of Lost Souls by F.G. Cottam (excellent first novel), Muddy Tracks by some new age guy (not recommending this much), Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter M. Miller (awesomeness, complete brilliance). On tape: Kate Wilhelm. I have a Tanith Lee at the top of the pile but the premise reminds me of a particular first season episode of Star Trek TNG. My life will be more pleasant if I never have to see the episode again, or think those thoughts. So maybe not this Tanith Lee.
What is the last book you bought?
I think it was a cookbook by Ferran Adria. Obviously not for me.
Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time?
Usually two by the bed, an audio book at work and another in the kitchen. Don't want to miss anything.
Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read?
I love to read in bed and sadly that means nighttime reading. If I could, I'd be there all day long.
Do you prefer series books or stand alone books?
Geez, don't get me started. I mean it, don't ask me about series books. I might give my opinion about the waste of paper and breath and time and all those dead trees and why no one edits anymore and the hours I'll never get back trying to remember what happened in volume three and the erosion of my intellect when I realize how many brain cells got burned when I read volume four. If you can't say it one book, why, god, why write sixteen? The only exception is Dorothy L. Sayers. Rebus. That chick in the UK.
Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?
They are ALL beautiful to me. Jane Eyre, The Things They Carried, Sherlock Holmes (series, K. Shut up!), Jane Austen, The Haunting of Hill House, Snowcrash, Red Square and Wolves Eat Dogs by Martin Cruz Smith, The Day of the Triffids, Flowers From the Storm by Laura Kinsale, anything Ron Carlson. Howl's Moving Castle, Harry Potter, LOTR, Dracula. All James M. Cain, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Michael Chabon, David Mitchell. Don't forget Joss Whedon, Francis Ford Coppola. Pick it up, read it, pass it on.
How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?)
They are alpha by author right now (not my idea). I used to have them by color.
Happy now, Dave, er, Evan? I need a new box of saltines and a chapter of Davy, please.
Showing posts with label triffids. Show all posts
Showing posts with label triffids. Show all posts
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
6. Madison in Portland
What am I reading? It Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies. Almost as compelling as the reviews said it whttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifould be. I knew it was a marriage meltdown book and expected a sack of confession, but have been surprised at how engaging the story really is. I find the narrator, who identifies herself as a WASP and natters on for pages about Maine, china patterns and William Morris wallpaper, so personally irritating that she's become an almost perfect anti-heroine. I am at the point, heavily foreshadowed, where the poet husband is about to dump her for the French chick. Also need to mention The Chysalids by John Wyndham-where has this guy been all my life? Next week, a Harry Turtledove novel. My first. I'm notorious for not finishing bad science fiction (don't ask me how much PKD I've read). I have hope for the Turtledove-great premise and fantastic cover.
I haven't posted any Madison for two weeks thanks to a wave of paranoia about intellectual property on a couple of writers' sites. Yes, the paranoid ones have a point. No, I'm not going to change my methods. Why? I received two more agent rejections last week. One was from TriadaUSA that arrived two hours after submission. The other was from The Writers House. Both were very polite and I have to say, their promptness places them well ahead of the curve.
Anyway a couple of "good" rejections reminds me that I can't guard my work from the world. My critique group, Yola writers, met yesterday to show their usual fine work. They kicked my ass over chapter twelve. My new marketing scheme is to glide along on their coattails.
Below is part of chapter six. It ends when they reach a check point manned by some ZZ Top-looking dudes. It needs some work from my other persona, editor me. I'll post the rest as I feel it.
------------------
Chapter Six
Tierney seemed to know, if not the layout of this exclusionary unit, at least what was likely to be found in one. He drove to a loading area in another building and backed the truck into the dock. Inside was a black cave with ceilings that rose the entire height of the building. Tierney scuffled off into the darkness while I stood in the last square of light peering after him.
"What if there are more dead in there?"
"Then don't come in."
"What if there are more crazy people?"
"Use your staple remover."
I heard dragging sounds on the cement floor and the tuneless sound of Tierney whistling. A minute later he came back with a cardboard box and dropped it.
"There are, I think, two more of these. Load this in the truck while I get them."
I peeled back the soft, dusty cardboard. Inside were cans and cans of food. Pears, beans, corn. All ten years old. "We're can't eat this stuff. It's poison."
He came back with another box. "This is how your friend managed to survive for so long."
"I don't think that's all she ate."
"I know how to check cans, Madison. We'll be okay." We loaded the boxes in the back of the truck and drew a tarp over everything. By then it was late afternoon, the light slanting from the west. I didn't want to camp anywhere near the exclusionary unit, so I was relieved when Tierney started the truck.
We drove for another hour, mostly on roads that ran close to the highway until wrecks and trees forced us back to the highway again.
"We'll be going east from here," said Tierney. First words he'd spoken since Canterbury.
"I thought we were going to Portland."
"We're in Portland."
He drove onto an overpass. Since the bridge in Oregon City, he'd avoided them. We'd seen so many collapsed and broken spans since then, roads that went nowhere. I braced my feet on the floor, expecting at any second to have the pavement drop out from under to me. To my surprise, Tierney pulled over and parked between a three-car pile up and a jack-knifed truck, at the highest point in the overpass.
I got out and walked to the railing. The wind was sharp and metal groaned all around us. I saw five deer wandering along a parking lot across the concrete canyon, nibbling on new grass that swelled out of the buckled pavement. Old buildings peeked out of vine-covered mounds.
"I could use some firewood."
"Up here?" I sighed. There was grass and a few weeds growing in the cracks of the overpass, but all the trees were down there, on the ground. I hoped he didn't want to burn bones.
Tierney was hauling stuff out of the truck. He seemed unconcerned that I would try to run off again, and about that he was correct. I kicked a piece of plastic as I walked, part of some car I couldn't identify, and wondered why I didn't try harder to get away.
I went toward the far end of the overpass, following the decline to a greater concentration of wrecked cars. As the road turned west, I realized the overpass fed into a second highway below. I leaned over the railing and looked down. Below me was another car canyon, choked and congested with wrecks, stretching into the sunset. In the fading light, everything I saw looked black and every vehicle appeared to be partially sunk in the asphalt. Their bumpers floated on the road surface and their car doors hung open like oars in still, black water. To my right, a black train had tumbled off its tracks to hang above the highway on a concrete guard rail. Beyond that, canyon walls of burnt tree snags poked through a fury of new growth. Further down the canyon, great buildings crumbled and gaped, birds flying in and out of their broken windows.
This had to be Portland, or what was left of it.
I walked back to camp empty-handed to find Tierney bent over a wisp of flame he had coaxed from a pile of twigs and dried grass. He added a chair leg.
"What happened to the city?" I asked.
"Fire-bombed." Tierney put another leg on the fire. I wondered where he'd gotten chair parts, and why the wood hadn't burned along with everything else.
"Who did it?"
"We did." He sat on an old tire and opened a tin of beans. I was hungry in spite of the fact that the food was half my age and probably chock full of poison. He nestled the tin in the fire. "It used to be a beautiful place."
"I don't know who you mean by we. I had nothing to do with that."
No response from Tierney. He opened another tin.
"So, where are we going?"
"East for a while."
"Any place specific, or are we just wandering aimlessly?"
"You ask a lot of questions."
"That's because you don't say anything." I got up and walked to the trailer of the jack-knifed truck. Inside I saw a jumble of dark shapes. As my eyes adjusted, I realized it was furniture. Okay good, one mystery solved. I climbed up on the deck, sucked in my breath and walked into the darkness far enough to grab a couple of chairs. I threw them off the back where they splintered on impact.
I gathered the pieces and carried them back to the fire.
"Thanks." Tierney added a leg and went back to stirring the first can of beans with the lone spoon we'd taken from the farm house days ago.
I sat down on the nearest tire. "What were you Before, Tierney?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"Are you kidding me? Can't I know something about you?" I felt a stray raindrop on my forehead and looked up. The clouds had come almost within touching distance. Another drop splatted on my head. "I can't eat in the rain!"
I stomped off to a car that I'd picked out earlier-no bodies or bones-and locked myself in. By the time I was hungry enough to eat poisoned canned food, the rain was coming down in buckets and Tierney had taken the cans into the truck. I spent the night huddled under coats in the back seat, hungry, listening to the rain and smelling mouse piss. I hoped I wasn't lying in a puddle of it, although I wondered if on some level it wasn't justice for my bad temper. Tierney wasn't a bad guy and he didn't ask to be saddled with the kid who shot Pinkus.
Toward dawn, the rain slacked off and I remembered I'd left my new boots in the back of the truck. They'd be soaked. I almost felt like crying.
When it was fully light, I put on my coats and got out of the car. The pavement was wet with oily rainbows. The ubiquitous (a word worth remembering) odor of burning rubber seemed to be stronger today. Probably from the city.
Tierney had built up the fire with more chair parts and sat next to it reading a book. He grunted something at me and handed me a can of pears, barely looking up from his reading. I sat on a wet tire and watched his eyes flicking across the page. The grizzle on his cheeks never seemed to grow, and he never shaved. I pondered the problem of men's facial hair. All the men of a certain age had full beards, but not this guy. Maybe it was a product of his beat life, where there were no frills, not even a decent beard.
"What is that?"
"A book." He unrolled the pages he held, holding the soft cover up for me to read. Mickey Spillane. A man in a hat held a flaming gun on a woman in a skin tight red dress. She had notably big boobs. Not likely I would have come across a big boob book like that in Dad's library, but it didn't surprise me that Tierney had one.
"I thought you read smart books."
"This is a smart book. You should try it."
"It's good you're improving your mind, Tierney. Maybe you won't have to be a migrant all your life."
"So I can be a useless know-it-all like you?"
"I'm not. . ." I paused to consider. "A know it all."
"You're a migrant too. Don't kid yourself. There's nothing else out here."
He went back to his book. After eating, I went to find a place to pee. Micturate, I reminded myself, micturate. I might be the only person for a hundred miles who knew the word so I better use it. After that, I took my new boots from the back of the truck, shucked out the laces and propped them before the fire with their tongues hanging out to dry.
When he finished reading, Tierney hauled all the stuff out of the truck. He filled the gas tank from the bottles of fuel he found yesterday, unbolted the gun from the mount and removed the ammo. He laid the gun on its side in the back of the truck, wrapped in a blue plastic tarp.
I haven't posted any Madison for two weeks thanks to a wave of paranoia about intellectual property on a couple of writers' sites. Yes, the paranoid ones have a point. No, I'm not going to change my methods. Why? I received two more agent rejections last week. One was from TriadaUSA that arrived two hours after submission. The other was from The Writers House. Both were very polite and I have to say, their promptness places them well ahead of the curve.
Anyway a couple of "good" rejections reminds me that I can't guard my work from the world. My critique group, Yola writers, met yesterday to show their usual fine work. They kicked my ass over chapter twelve. My new marketing scheme is to glide along on their coattails.
Below is part of chapter six. It ends when they reach a check point manned by some ZZ Top-looking dudes. It needs some work from my other persona, editor me. I'll post the rest as I feel it.
------------------
Chapter Six
Tierney seemed to know, if not the layout of this exclusionary unit, at least what was likely to be found in one. He drove to a loading area in another building and backed the truck into the dock. Inside was a black cave with ceilings that rose the entire height of the building. Tierney scuffled off into the darkness while I stood in the last square of light peering after him.
"What if there are more dead in there?"
"Then don't come in."
"What if there are more crazy people?"
"Use your staple remover."
I heard dragging sounds on the cement floor and the tuneless sound of Tierney whistling. A minute later he came back with a cardboard box and dropped it.
"There are, I think, two more of these. Load this in the truck while I get them."
I peeled back the soft, dusty cardboard. Inside were cans and cans of food. Pears, beans, corn. All ten years old. "We're can't eat this stuff. It's poison."
He came back with another box. "This is how your friend managed to survive for so long."
"I don't think that's all she ate."
"I know how to check cans, Madison. We'll be okay." We loaded the boxes in the back of the truck and drew a tarp over everything. By then it was late afternoon, the light slanting from the west. I didn't want to camp anywhere near the exclusionary unit, so I was relieved when Tierney started the truck.
We drove for another hour, mostly on roads that ran close to the highway until wrecks and trees forced us back to the highway again.
"We'll be going east from here," said Tierney. First words he'd spoken since Canterbury.
"I thought we were going to Portland."
"We're in Portland."
He drove onto an overpass. Since the bridge in Oregon City, he'd avoided them. We'd seen so many collapsed and broken spans since then, roads that went nowhere. I braced my feet on the floor, expecting at any second to have the pavement drop out from under to me. To my surprise, Tierney pulled over and parked between a three-car pile up and a jack-knifed truck, at the highest point in the overpass.
I got out and walked to the railing. The wind was sharp and metal groaned all around us. I saw five deer wandering along a parking lot across the concrete canyon, nibbling on new grass that swelled out of the buckled pavement. Old buildings peeked out of vine-covered mounds.
"I could use some firewood."
"Up here?" I sighed. There was grass and a few weeds growing in the cracks of the overpass, but all the trees were down there, on the ground. I hoped he didn't want to burn bones.
Tierney was hauling stuff out of the truck. He seemed unconcerned that I would try to run off again, and about that he was correct. I kicked a piece of plastic as I walked, part of some car I couldn't identify, and wondered why I didn't try harder to get away.
I went toward the far end of the overpass, following the decline to a greater concentration of wrecked cars. As the road turned west, I realized the overpass fed into a second highway below. I leaned over the railing and looked down. Below me was another car canyon, choked and congested with wrecks, stretching into the sunset. In the fading light, everything I saw looked black and every vehicle appeared to be partially sunk in the asphalt. Their bumpers floated on the road surface and their car doors hung open like oars in still, black water. To my right, a black train had tumbled off its tracks to hang above the highway on a concrete guard rail. Beyond that, canyon walls of burnt tree snags poked through a fury of new growth. Further down the canyon, great buildings crumbled and gaped, birds flying in and out of their broken windows.
This had to be Portland, or what was left of it.
I walked back to camp empty-handed to find Tierney bent over a wisp of flame he had coaxed from a pile of twigs and dried grass. He added a chair leg.
"What happened to the city?" I asked.
"Fire-bombed." Tierney put another leg on the fire. I wondered where he'd gotten chair parts, and why the wood hadn't burned along with everything else.
"Who did it?"
"We did." He sat on an old tire and opened a tin of beans. I was hungry in spite of the fact that the food was half my age and probably chock full of poison. He nestled the tin in the fire. "It used to be a beautiful place."
"I don't know who you mean by we. I had nothing to do with that."
No response from Tierney. He opened another tin.
"So, where are we going?"
"East for a while."
"Any place specific, or are we just wandering aimlessly?"
"You ask a lot of questions."
"That's because you don't say anything." I got up and walked to the trailer of the jack-knifed truck. Inside I saw a jumble of dark shapes. As my eyes adjusted, I realized it was furniture. Okay good, one mystery solved. I climbed up on the deck, sucked in my breath and walked into the darkness far enough to grab a couple of chairs. I threw them off the back where they splintered on impact.
I gathered the pieces and carried them back to the fire.
"Thanks." Tierney added a leg and went back to stirring the first can of beans with the lone spoon we'd taken from the farm house days ago.
I sat down on the nearest tire. "What were you Before, Tierney?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"Are you kidding me? Can't I know something about you?" I felt a stray raindrop on my forehead and looked up. The clouds had come almost within touching distance. Another drop splatted on my head. "I can't eat in the rain!"
I stomped off to a car that I'd picked out earlier-no bodies or bones-and locked myself in. By the time I was hungry enough to eat poisoned canned food, the rain was coming down in buckets and Tierney had taken the cans into the truck. I spent the night huddled under coats in the back seat, hungry, listening to the rain and smelling mouse piss. I hoped I wasn't lying in a puddle of it, although I wondered if on some level it wasn't justice for my bad temper. Tierney wasn't a bad guy and he didn't ask to be saddled with the kid who shot Pinkus.
Toward dawn, the rain slacked off and I remembered I'd left my new boots in the back of the truck. They'd be soaked. I almost felt like crying.
When it was fully light, I put on my coats and got out of the car. The pavement was wet with oily rainbows. The ubiquitous (a word worth remembering) odor of burning rubber seemed to be stronger today. Probably from the city.
Tierney had built up the fire with more chair parts and sat next to it reading a book. He grunted something at me and handed me a can of pears, barely looking up from his reading. I sat on a wet tire and watched his eyes flicking across the page. The grizzle on his cheeks never seemed to grow, and he never shaved. I pondered the problem of men's facial hair. All the men of a certain age had full beards, but not this guy. Maybe it was a product of his beat life, where there were no frills, not even a decent beard.
"What is that?"
"A book." He unrolled the pages he held, holding the soft cover up for me to read. Mickey Spillane. A man in a hat held a flaming gun on a woman in a skin tight red dress. She had notably big boobs. Not likely I would have come across a big boob book like that in Dad's library, but it didn't surprise me that Tierney had one.
"I thought you read smart books."
"This is a smart book. You should try it."
"It's good you're improving your mind, Tierney. Maybe you won't have to be a migrant all your life."
"So I can be a useless know-it-all like you?"
"I'm not. . ." I paused to consider. "A know it all."
"You're a migrant too. Don't kid yourself. There's nothing else out here."
He went back to his book. After eating, I went to find a place to pee. Micturate, I reminded myself, micturate. I might be the only person for a hundred miles who knew the word so I better use it. After that, I took my new boots from the back of the truck, shucked out the laces and propped them before the fire with their tongues hanging out to dry.
When he finished reading, Tierney hauled all the stuff out of the truck. He filled the gas tank from the bottles of fuel he found yesterday, unbolted the gun from the mount and removed the ammo. He laid the gun on its side in the back of the truck, wrapped in a blue plastic tarp.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
1. Madison, After chapter one
I started Madison, After in June 2008 and finished the first draft in November, not bad for a 300 page novel. Writing about a post-apocalyptic world is very seductive and this novel was one of the most absorbing things I've ever done. Anyone with writer's block should try it. Read (or re-read) The Stand by Stephen King, then just imagine yourself dealing with food and water at a most basic level. I'll post a list of books I read during the first draft, things as old and diverse as Earth Abides by George R. Stewart and Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham to the non-fiction collection The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. I would also like to know what other people read in this strange little sub-genre.
You won't see it except in very general plot terms, but the inspiration for this novel was NOT the end of the world. It was a Victoria Holt novel called On the Night of the Seventh Moon. If you are under 40, there's no reason you've seen this book. It's an entirely wacked gothic romance from the 1960's with an underaged heroine, a dangerous man, and a mysterious setting. I loved this book when I was a kid, and when I came across a copy a few years ago, I found I still loved it. But for such different reasons! A friend and I kicked around the notion of rewriting it for a modern audience, but the story couldn't work without the virginal, trusting 18 year old narrator. For reasons of my own (being the mother of one) I was more comfortable writing it as a young adult/crossover novel. If anyone reads this genre, you know the label is anything but a limitation. And the end of the world stuff? It just seemed like a really good idea.
I'll try to post a chapter a week as I rewrite. Comment freely--or rather, with some tact. Mindful of the fact that the author is a complete wuss. Here goes---
Chapter One
The first time I saw anyone read a book on the farm was when a man named Tierney pulled out a copy of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire during lunch break.
When Dad wasn't looking, I carried the water bucket over to him. "Do you know how to read?"
He wasn't much, just one more stringy-haired stranger who'd come to the valley looking for work. "Do you?"
"Madison!" yelled Dad. He never liked me talking to men.
"I learned." I ladled water into Tierney's bowl and went to the next person.
Our farm workers came from all over. Migrants. Pinkus sent men from Independent Canby, but all they did was sit in their trailers, eat our food and watch us work. During harvest, when we could certainly use more help, we had as many as five of Pinkus's guys on site, making Dad crazier than usual. What did Pinkus think we were going to do with our crop of green beans? Sneak off in the night without paying tribute?
The migrants who actually did a job of work came from wherever the wind blew them. Refugee camps, cities, other farms. They'd all had other jobs Before—stockbrokers, salesmen and housewives. Once we even had an airline pilot. They came and went, blown away by the same vague wind after a day, a week, a month. I got used to not learning their names.
Except for this guy. The next time I saw him, he had a book of poems. It was a battered old thing, curved from being carried in his back pocket. The rest of the crew was playing cards, whittling, napping. At the end of lunch break, Tierney stuffed the book into his pocket, and Dad frowned. Tierney reading on his breaks was probably enough for Dad to think about firing him. Dad had a poor view of learning, even though he had once been a lawyer and you had to have a lot of college for that job.
Dad saw me staring at Tierney. "Are you planning to eat next year, Madison?"
"I don't know. What are we having?" I smiled and he glared. That was Dad, always angry about something. He used to scare me but at age eighteen, there wasn't much he could do to me.
"Quit daydreaming and help your mother."
"Stepmother."
"Mother."
"She's not my mother."
Dad humphed and stomped off. I could do that forever and he knew it. Mother, stepmother, mother, she's not my mother, yes she is. No, yes, no, yes. No.
The workers went back to the fields and I carried the water jug and ladle to the house. It was June, a time of intense worry for Dad. The new plants were up but the weather was still cool and rainy. A lot of people depended on Dad growing food and for keeping our community on the good side of Pinkus. When Dad was a lawyer and there was still a government, he got Pinkus's brother out of jail. No one ever forgot a good turn, but Dad said there was a time limit on returned favors.
My stepmother, Margo, and her sister Gayle were in the kitchen. They both looked up as I walked in, identical sour-puss expressions on their faces.
"Were you talking to that migrant again?" asked Aunt Margo. "You know how your father feels."
"He made it very clear." I put the ladle in the sink. There was no point arguing; she would only repeat everything I said to Dad.
"I think someone has a little too much free time," said Gayle. She used to be the family disappointment: she'd been a hairdresser Before. But since they weren't training any more beauticians and people still needed their hair cut, the tables turned for Aunt Gayle. She now had the barterable skill and Margo's only skill had been to marry Dad a week after my mom died.
"Wash up the lunch dishes, please," said Margo. "Then feed the sourdough and make the batter. After that you can join us at the strawberry field. No reading, Madison."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
As soon as they were out the door, I sneaked a glass of apple brandy. Times like these, I reflected on how being a slave was not on my top ten list of things I wanted to do when I grew up. Every kid had those lists, right? Being a farmer wasn't on my list either. What I wanted was to be an archaeologist with a specialty in Egyptology. In light of what happened in the last ten years, however, I would focus on the late American epoch.
A couple of years ago, I organized a dig at the old Chandler house with some of the other valley kids. Mrs. Chandler and her children had been the first in the valley to get infected, before anyone really knew what it was. The house had been vacant ever since.
I had my crew working in grids, collecting artifacts. We set up a sifter to catch bone chips and pottery shards and had a methodology for recording our finds. Most of the furniture, dishes and useful stuff had been taken by other valley families, but there were lots of clues about what the last days of the Chandler family had been like. Shopping receipts, medicine bottles, toys. We dated our findings by strata. The top layer was leaves, dirt and animal droppings deposited after the looters did their business, and it was by far the deepest layer. The next was detritus of broken furniture and dishes, stuff the looters dropped. Below that we got to items the Chandlers had used. My friend Andrew found a diamond earring.
We did this for almost a week before Dad discovered us and made us stop. Well, there was more to it than that. Dad was tracking an infected person, a Demented, up our road. It was headed for the Chandler house as if it knew exactly where it was going. Before Dad could stop it, the Demented came through the front door, naked, bloody, mostly starved, scaring all of us. It had been almost a year since we'd had one in the valley. The Demented are not dangerous unless you touch their blood, so what does Dad do? Shot it through the head, right in front of us. The blood flew everywhere.
The valley council had a big meeting and decided to burn the Chandler house. All of us kids were grounded to our home farms, but I got it the worst. Dad made it very plain that I wasn't going anywhere, ever. He stopped home-schooling me and gave my bike to my brother Chris. Whenever I was allowed off the farm, I went to my sister Jayden's house in Oregon City which was worse than prison. Everyone watched me after that. I couldn't walk to the end of the driveway, either at home or at Jayden's, without some neighbor asking what I thought I was doing, did my father know where I was?
I asked Dad, after I got over being so pissed off, why the Demented had gone directly to the Chandler house, almost as though it had purpose. It didn't fit what we knew about the infection. Naturally Dad got angry and wouldn't answer.
But I thought about this for a long time. The Demented don't eat, care for themselves, or communicate. They don't appear to think at all. They stumble around until they starve to death, or some jerk like Dad shoots them. Everyone says the Dims don't remember their past and or care about sheltering themselves. But this one came directly to the Chandler house, walked right through the front door.
I had two theories on the subject. One was that the guy wasn't Demented; he was just an ordinary crazy human being who wanted a place to hide. Plenty of people went crazy without being Demented. The other theory was that Dims have a shred of memory left in their destroyed brains. This man had a tiny thought that had guided him to the house. He was Mr. Chandler, returning home after all this time.
In either case, the creature should not have been shot. I vowed not to kill any Demented unless I had to, and to protect them from people like Dad if I could.
You won't see it except in very general plot terms, but the inspiration for this novel was NOT the end of the world. It was a Victoria Holt novel called On the Night of the Seventh Moon. If you are under 40, there's no reason you've seen this book. It's an entirely wacked gothic romance from the 1960's with an underaged heroine, a dangerous man, and a mysterious setting. I loved this book when I was a kid, and when I came across a copy a few years ago, I found I still loved it. But for such different reasons! A friend and I kicked around the notion of rewriting it for a modern audience, but the story couldn't work without the virginal, trusting 18 year old narrator. For reasons of my own (being the mother of one) I was more comfortable writing it as a young adult/crossover novel. If anyone reads this genre, you know the label is anything but a limitation. And the end of the world stuff? It just seemed like a really good idea.
I'll try to post a chapter a week as I rewrite. Comment freely--or rather, with some tact. Mindful of the fact that the author is a complete wuss. Here goes---
Chapter One
The first time I saw anyone read a book on the farm was when a man named Tierney pulled out a copy of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire during lunch break.
When Dad wasn't looking, I carried the water bucket over to him. "Do you know how to read?"
He wasn't much, just one more stringy-haired stranger who'd come to the valley looking for work. "Do you?"
"Madison!" yelled Dad. He never liked me talking to men.
"I learned." I ladled water into Tierney's bowl and went to the next person.
Our farm workers came from all over. Migrants. Pinkus sent men from Independent Canby, but all they did was sit in their trailers, eat our food and watch us work. During harvest, when we could certainly use more help, we had as many as five of Pinkus's guys on site, making Dad crazier than usual. What did Pinkus think we were going to do with our crop of green beans? Sneak off in the night without paying tribute?
The migrants who actually did a job of work came from wherever the wind blew them. Refugee camps, cities, other farms. They'd all had other jobs Before—stockbrokers, salesmen and housewives. Once we even had an airline pilot. They came and went, blown away by the same vague wind after a day, a week, a month. I got used to not learning their names.
Except for this guy. The next time I saw him, he had a book of poems. It was a battered old thing, curved from being carried in his back pocket. The rest of the crew was playing cards, whittling, napping. At the end of lunch break, Tierney stuffed the book into his pocket, and Dad frowned. Tierney reading on his breaks was probably enough for Dad to think about firing him. Dad had a poor view of learning, even though he had once been a lawyer and you had to have a lot of college for that job.
Dad saw me staring at Tierney. "Are you planning to eat next year, Madison?"
"I don't know. What are we having?" I smiled and he glared. That was Dad, always angry about something. He used to scare me but at age eighteen, there wasn't much he could do to me.
"Quit daydreaming and help your mother."
"Stepmother."
"Mother."
"She's not my mother."
Dad humphed and stomped off. I could do that forever and he knew it. Mother, stepmother, mother, she's not my mother, yes she is. No, yes, no, yes. No.
The workers went back to the fields and I carried the water jug and ladle to the house. It was June, a time of intense worry for Dad. The new plants were up but the weather was still cool and rainy. A lot of people depended on Dad growing food and for keeping our community on the good side of Pinkus. When Dad was a lawyer and there was still a government, he got Pinkus's brother out of jail. No one ever forgot a good turn, but Dad said there was a time limit on returned favors.
My stepmother, Margo, and her sister Gayle were in the kitchen. They both looked up as I walked in, identical sour-puss expressions on their faces.
"Were you talking to that migrant again?" asked Aunt Margo. "You know how your father feels."
"He made it very clear." I put the ladle in the sink. There was no point arguing; she would only repeat everything I said to Dad.
"I think someone has a little too much free time," said Gayle. She used to be the family disappointment: she'd been a hairdresser Before. But since they weren't training any more beauticians and people still needed their hair cut, the tables turned for Aunt Gayle. She now had the barterable skill and Margo's only skill had been to marry Dad a week after my mom died.
"Wash up the lunch dishes, please," said Margo. "Then feed the sourdough and make the batter. After that you can join us at the strawberry field. No reading, Madison."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
As soon as they were out the door, I sneaked a glass of apple brandy. Times like these, I reflected on how being a slave was not on my top ten list of things I wanted to do when I grew up. Every kid had those lists, right? Being a farmer wasn't on my list either. What I wanted was to be an archaeologist with a specialty in Egyptology. In light of what happened in the last ten years, however, I would focus on the late American epoch.
A couple of years ago, I organized a dig at the old Chandler house with some of the other valley kids. Mrs. Chandler and her children had been the first in the valley to get infected, before anyone really knew what it was. The house had been vacant ever since.
I had my crew working in grids, collecting artifacts. We set up a sifter to catch bone chips and pottery shards and had a methodology for recording our finds. Most of the furniture, dishes and useful stuff had been taken by other valley families, but there were lots of clues about what the last days of the Chandler family had been like. Shopping receipts, medicine bottles, toys. We dated our findings by strata. The top layer was leaves, dirt and animal droppings deposited after the looters did their business, and it was by far the deepest layer. The next was detritus of broken furniture and dishes, stuff the looters dropped. Below that we got to items the Chandlers had used. My friend Andrew found a diamond earring.
We did this for almost a week before Dad discovered us and made us stop. Well, there was more to it than that. Dad was tracking an infected person, a Demented, up our road. It was headed for the Chandler house as if it knew exactly where it was going. Before Dad could stop it, the Demented came through the front door, naked, bloody, mostly starved, scaring all of us. It had been almost a year since we'd had one in the valley. The Demented are not dangerous unless you touch their blood, so what does Dad do? Shot it through the head, right in front of us. The blood flew everywhere.
The valley council had a big meeting and decided to burn the Chandler house. All of us kids were grounded to our home farms, but I got it the worst. Dad made it very plain that I wasn't going anywhere, ever. He stopped home-schooling me and gave my bike to my brother Chris. Whenever I was allowed off the farm, I went to my sister Jayden's house in Oregon City which was worse than prison. Everyone watched me after that. I couldn't walk to the end of the driveway, either at home or at Jayden's, without some neighbor asking what I thought I was doing, did my father know where I was?
I asked Dad, after I got over being so pissed off, why the Demented had gone directly to the Chandler house, almost as though it had purpose. It didn't fit what we knew about the infection. Naturally Dad got angry and wouldn't answer.
But I thought about this for a long time. The Demented don't eat, care for themselves, or communicate. They don't appear to think at all. They stumble around until they starve to death, or some jerk like Dad shoots them. Everyone says the Dims don't remember their past and or care about sheltering themselves. But this one came directly to the Chandler house, walked right through the front door.
I had two theories on the subject. One was that the guy wasn't Demented; he was just an ordinary crazy human being who wanted a place to hide. Plenty of people went crazy without being Demented. The other theory was that Dims have a shred of memory left in their destroyed brains. This man had a tiny thought that had guided him to the house. He was Mr. Chandler, returning home after all this time.
In either case, the creature should not have been shot. I vowed not to kill any Demented unless I had to, and to protect them from people like Dad if I could.
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