November 12, 2007

• War Weasel Report - Extended Version
  
  To mutilate a line from Tokien, I am spread like butter over toast. 
  I'm a lot of butter and it's really good toast (like Blueberry Crumble
  breakfast bread from Sara Lee).  But there are a few places that the
  butter is thin this month, and Xanga would be one of those places.

  Yesterday I completed my first two quilts for the bag ladies. The quilt and bag, along
  with a stuffed animal, some baby supplies, or an age-appropriate toy
  that fits into an outside pocket, is given to 1) kids in a foster care
  waiting facility, 2) kids living in a domestic violence shelter or 3)
  officers of the sheriff's department who keep the bag in the trunk of
  their car for use when they have a situation that involves a child. I
  thought looking at the pattern that it would be just as easy to do two
  at a time as do one.  I work on nothing but the quilting on Sunday
  afternoons, and yesterday I completed my first two projects.

  Saturday was totally war weasel stuff, except for the Arkansas Tennesee game during which I still managed to write a little.

  Total Word Count: 24,836
  Words added since Friday: 4045
  Words above 50k pace: 4,836

  So far that's 8 chapters

  1. The mysterious stranger, a 32 year old guy from California is the new police detective of Magnolia, Mississippi
  and gets stuck in the mud outside the home of our Main Character, a
  widow about 40 years old with two older teen sons. 
  2. The Main Character's sister wakes her up at 5:30 in the morning for
  a bedtime story, and then the oldest son is involved in a car wreck.
  3. MC and company go to the scene of the accident where the mysterious
  stranger (Rick) is in charge of the investigation and some strange
  things have happened.  A passenger in the vehicle that hit Doug's car fled the scene.
  4. At the hospital Doug is getting a cast on his broken arm, MC's
  sister shows up with a gaggle of balloons that say everything but get
  well, and then we learn that the guy who fled the scene of the accident
  has the same name as the sister.  Bobby(ie) Wallace.
  5. It's Thanksgiving, the whole clan has gathered and some weirdness
  happens.   (The topless dancer who married into the clan is so proud of
  her "top" that she removes her blouse entirely to nurse her baby during
  the Thanksgiving prayer. - I loved that scene.)
  6. Rick is on a stake-out to learn more about the mysterious disappearing Bobby Wallace and we learn more about Rick.
  7. The MC and her sister are at the local lunch place - Sweetie Pies
  where they see a few other townspeople and are joined by Rick. - and we
  see the sister acting in some odd ways.
  8. It's Christmas in Magnolia, and after the Thanksgiving festivities,
  you know it's gonna be some kind of different Christmas Fun.

  Yeah they are short chapters so far.  I'll flesh 'em out on revision. 

  Underneath the story as it's written I know that the sister is bipolar
  and has entered her first manic phase, but no one around her has
  figured out that there's something seriously wrong - they aren't
  professional counselors, just family and friends in a place where being
  a little quirky is normal.  So it gets increasingly out of hand from this
  point forward until some really scary and over the top things happen to
  convince everyone that this isn't just Bobbie Sue being a little more
  Bobbie Sueish than usual.

  She becomes obsessed by this criminal who has her same name and decides
  that because he has embarrassed her, she will embarrass him.  Her
  actions are funny (she finds out he's a homophobe so she makes a
  donation to the local Gay Pride group and gets a big THANK YOU to him
  with a kiss on top printed in the newspaper) and the fact that all this
  strange stuff is happening to him is complicating the police
  investigation.

  I still have some major plot points to figure out - but I have a plot genius who has my back. 

  Snippet from the Stakeout scene with many remembered conversations removed :

  Moonlight painted
  a silver feather across the water of the lake as though a bird of proportions
  found in stories of wizards and dragons had flown over and left this sign of
  its passing.  The feather's ruffled edges waved
  gently in the night breeze.  Rick sat in
  darkness on the shore of the lake with his hands resting lightly on his
  knees. 

  He listened to the
  sound of air moving through the pine needles above his head, pushing the tiny
  waves against the sand of the beach, and whispering in and out of his lungs as
  he emptied his mind of all but the sensations of the moment. 

  At least he intended
  to empty his mind, and he thought that the years of intention that underlay
  this moment were probably why he had such a difficult time doing it.  He replayed the words of his teacher … “See
  the thought and let it go.” ...

  He imagined that
  his thoughts were encapsulated in glistening iridescent bubbles.   He imagined his teacher with
  his customary placid expression inside a bubble floating over the lake, the bubble popping, and
  his teacher floating down to be submerged in the cool water.  He imagined a gurgle of laughter just before
  his teacher’s head disappeared.  He
  imagined many iridescent bubbles floating and forming shapes like cloud
  patterns of fish and stone formations. 

  He imagined that
  he wasn’t bored out of his mind sitting on a beach in the middle of nowhere on
  a night when most everyone else in the entire country was either watching
  football, or gathered close with family. 
  But tonight of all nights, he had to be on the beach. 

  He sighed breaking
  the rhythm of his breathing and shifting his position.  No matter how enlightened a person became it
  was necessary to sit for some time each day. 
  So he had compromised, or improved his habit by killing two birds with
  one stone doing his sitting when he was on stakeout and making that count.  The Buddha was a practical kind of fellow;
  Rick didn’t think that it would displease him to see a follower making such
  good use of his time. 

  If Rick cold rightly
  be termed a follower.  His girlfriend,
  the one just after college, with the long silky brown hair and the penchant for
  lecturing people about the environment and preaching vegetarianism, had a book describing
  Zen practices lying on her table.  While
  he was waiting for her to dress for a date, he picked it up.  Was that two weeks?  Three weeks? 
  Before she realized that she was meant for greater things than to be
  stuck in a relationship with a guy who lacked world vision?  He couldn’t remember that part, but she told
  him to keep the book....

  Sitting in the
  middle of the woods with raccoons for company, not what Rick would have
  pictured  himself doing even a few years
  back. He replayed the conversation with Lieutenant Morgan when he handed in his
  resignation.  “What are you gonna find in
  Mississipi that you can’t find here?” 

  “I don’t know, but
  I’m pretty sure of what I won’t find.  I
  won’t find another kid gunned down in a drive-by shooting.  I won’t find another family living in a burnt
  out ruin cause their mother is strung out, shootin’ up, and pissed cause we
  busted her for trying to sell her ten-year old. 
  And I won’t find another pregnant fourteen year old dead in an alley
  because her pimp boyfriend beat her one too many times for not bringing home
  her bank.”

  “It’s been a bad
  summer, Johnson.  I’ll grant you
  that.  You’ve even caught some of the
  worst of it.  But you have opportunity
  here.  You can do things with your
  life.  Make a career.  You’re good at your job.”  It wasn’t just that Morgan was his Lieutenant.  Morgan gave him every opportunity, rode him
  hard and demanded performance.  It was an
  open secret that Morgan planned to rise even higher and he expected Rick to be
  part of the high breaking wave that pushed him to the next level. 

  “That’s nice to
  hear.  But I think I’ve reached the end
  of this road.”  The conversation was turning
  out to be harder than Rick expected.  He
  could feel the weight of Morgan’s personality pressing him to change his
  mind.  Not that he’d ever had to have
  this conversation but it was starting to feel like he imagined it must be when
  a son first told his father that he was moving away from home.

  “How much further
  down the road are you gonna get in the backwoods?  Man, you aren’t cut out for small town
  life.  You love it in the City and you
  love it on the beach.  Do you know how
  far it is from Mississippi to the ocean?” 
  Morgan waved his hand toward the window. 
  “We’re named Oceanside for a reason. 
  I know you love that part of this town.”

  “Uh, boss,
  Mississippi has shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico.”

  “Don’t play dumb
  with me, Johnson.  You’re a surf
  rat.  You’ve always been a surf rat.  You’ve got no family, no obligations.  You’re too young for a mid-life crisis and
  you’re way too young to be burnt out. 
  What are you, thirty-one?  Why
  don’t you just take a few months off? 
  Take your board to Maui or wherever the hell it is you surf rats like to
  go in the fall.  Come back with some
  fresh bruises, a new tattoo, and start in again.”

  “I’m thirty-three,
  and that’s just it.  I’m too old to go
  hang out with the kids on the North Shore and expect that to be enough.  I need to put in some distance between myself
  and this scene.  I’ve been thinking about
  it a while.  This doesn’t feel like a
  vacation thing. This feels like a get out of Dodge thing.  I wanna go where the big crime of the week is
  whether the old guy at the VFW is skimming from the Bingo pot.”

  “Is it a
  woman?  You broke up with your
  girlfriend?  Man?  Look if you’re having a relationship thing,
  well, I can still give you some time.”

  Rick almost
  laughed.  He hadn’t dated in almost a
  year and hadn’t been interested.  Too
  much work.  It seemed like all the single
  women out there these days were more interested in their careers than in
  forming a committed relationship.  And he
  knew that he wasn’t a great prize either with the kind of hours he had to keep
  to do his job well.  But certainly, no
  woman was chasing him out of town.    “I
  can sense that this is really hard for you to believe, but I’m ready to leave
  Oceanside, it’s time for me to go out in the world and seek my fortune just
  like in all the fairy tales.”

  “I don’t see you
  seeking your fortune here, Johnson.  You
  aren’t running to something, you’re running away.  And I know enough of all this New Age
  bullshit that floats around that even you understand that running away is not
  the answer.”

  “I didn’t say it was
  the answer.  But it is what I’m
  choosing.”  Rick didn’t try to defend the
  charge, mostly because he suspected that Morgan was right.  He tried to put Morgan in a bubble, but the
  man kept reaching up to pop the soap into shimmering flecks and foam.  Maybe he could write, or call.  Hell, what was he thinking.  Morgan wasn’t family, probably had no idea
  that Rick even thought of him as the kind of father he’d missed out having growing
  up.  He’d been a damned good lieutenant.  But that was it.  Time to let it go. 

  Still it was a
  valid point for consideration.  When he
  thought about Magnolia, Mississippi, what did he picture his life there being
  like.  Neighbors.  Pecan pie. 
  People who knew his name at the barber shop.  Maybe he was running to more than either he
  or Morgan had realized.  He knew better
  than to expect to find family here. 
  Shoot, all the unmarried women he’d seen so far were the cheerleader at
  the high school.  They tied the knot
  young around here. 

  Sheri Williams
  face popped into his mind and he had to smile. 
  Even when she was all worried about her son, he noticed the way she
  tucked that strand of hair behind her ear and the blue smoke color of her
  eye.  Even though her son stood head and
  shoulders above her, Rick imagined her wading in to fight any battle Doug would
  let her fight on his behalf.  She was a
  fierce little thing.

   He wondered how
  the nice older widow lady would react if she knew he was thinking about her
  cranberry lips, her grown-up curves and her no-nonsense manner.  Something about her calm assurance and take
  charge mothering made him want to disturb the surface of her smooth pond like
  the moon feathered light across the lake. 
  Mmmmm, yes, a nice big feather. 

  He put that image
  in a bubble.  And watched it float above
  the water for a while.

  
  

  • 10:01 am
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