My short story class is pretty wonderful, great and enthusiastic students producing some very strong stories. On our third week we moved into a higher gear, I’ve extended the class for two additional weeks so we can polish up our stories and feel good about them. Today, Jim Reid played the role of Vanna White and showed some artwork that helped illustrate a wonderful poem by Karen Bruce.
I talked about the importance of detail and plotting in a short story, we passed our work around and the class offers good and honest feedback, is always supportive and helpful. This class is special, it has a dynamic chemistry. On the way out, one of the students said, “you know, I sometimes think that anybody can write.” Yes, I said, clapping her on the back, now you are getting it.
The writer Lisa Dingle author of the great blog “Welcome To Dingleville,” is taking my short story class at Hubbard Hall and at the beginning of each class, she takes a photo of Red and I take a photo of Red and Lisa. Red has become media savvy, living on Bedlam Farm, and he definitely grasps the idea of the photo shoot. This is the best evidence yet of his media skills.
Alex was heading out the door, checking the battery time on his smart phone, putting his Ipod buds in his ears, shifting his backpack more comfortably on his shoulders, he was surprised to see his father blocking the hallway in front of the door, the sound of the cable new channel debate wafting through the house, a sound that had competed with his music for several years.
“Son, I need to talk to you.” Alex froze, he loved his father, he was a good and hard-working man, a lineman for the electric company, but his father rarely asked to speak to him, and it was not usually something good or easy. When he did want to speak to him about something seriously, it was always in the hallway, that was where all serious conversations took place, as if they had to be on the fly and couldn’t last too long.
“Your mother told me you were taking the wages your earned at the market out of the bank, you are using the money to take that music class at the community college.” He paused, his big frame blocking the light in the hallway. Alex was in awe of his father, a strong and silent man who had the respect of everyone on their small town. His father had always made it clear what he thought about Alex’s music, the songs he was always writing, the time he spent practicing his guitar.
“Listen,” he said, “I have to be straight you son, you deserve that from me, I’ve learned the hard way. Music is a road to nowhere, there is no future in it, no security. It looks great to you now, but one day you’ll have a wife and kids, a house and responsibilities. You need to be studying something that will get you somewhere – law, maybe, engineering, something with a future, with a regular paycheck. I know you can’t see this now, and this is your money, you earned it, I can’t tell you what to do with it. But you know I love you and I can tell you security is everything in this world, you can’t live your life in a high school fantasy. Don’t throw your hard-earned money away, I will not be giving you more, not to waste. You aren’t going to be Bruce Springsteen, you need to save your money to study things that will get you a good job with a future.There is no future for you in music.”
Alex was not surprised, he had heard this before, he knew how his father felt, but still, it stung. He thanked his father for the advice, said he would think about it, and then he left the house. Although he tried to hides his shaking hands and felt a band of sweat forming a sheen on his forehead, he waited outside for his friend Lucy to pick him up and drive him to the community college, where he wrote a check for $800, more than two-thirds of the money he had saved working at the IGA down the street on weekends. Lucy loved Alex’s music, she was the only person in his life who didn’t think he was insane. That was a lot of stacked boxes, he thought to himself as he wrote the check. On the application, he wrote, “I am a wannabe singer.”
Alex hadn’t even told Lucy that he had applied to the Boston Conservatory of Music, spent hours in the library and with his music teacher Mr. Stevens filling out the application, sending tapes and videos. Mr. Stevens had written a glowing recommendation to the school, so had Al Pendergrast, the owner of the town cafe where Alex played on Wednesday nights for the usual crowd of five or six people and two bag ladies. And Lucy and sometimes Mr. Stevens.
When Alex got to the classroom, he saw there were another dozen students there and the professor, formerly the lead guitar in a local rock and wedding band, standing in front of the classroom. His shoulder length hair was about the only vestige of his life as a musician, he told the class.
“Welcome to Advanced Music 140,” he announced. “Before we start, I just want to be honest with you aspiring musicians. None of you will make a living doing this. It’s a kind of shell game, I make money teaching it but you will never make money doing it. That’s how it goes, they sometimes call it a pyramid scheme, eople make money teaching something nobody they teach will be able to do, and they make sure to discourage everybody who wants to do it. Some of the best musicians in the world are starving right now, and probably always were. You don’t have a chance. Lightning does not strike much in the music industry. It’s even worse than being a writer, and that is pretty bad. I’m happy to teach you what I know, but listen to your parents, I don’t want to take your money under false pretenses. Get a day job that will put food on the table and don’t ever give it up. Let’s get to work.”
***
Alex had sat through the first class, then had a world-class panic attack, his father’s wise words echoing in his head. He went to the registrar’s office and got his check back. He applied for and received a partial scholarship at Penn State University, his father was pleased to help him pay the tuition, he ended up with an engineering degree and 20 years later, he was secure and respected, he had a good job working for the State of Pennsylvania’s Building Division. His days were relatively busy if routine, he was rarely challenged or stimulated, he nearly drowned in paperwork and bureaucracy most days, and he almost always daydreamed about his music as he made his rounds inspecting building projects.
As his father had predicted, he was married – to Lucy as it turned out, now a hard-working nurse-practitioner, he had a son to worry about, a three bedroom split-level with attached garage and a small pool. They had even saved up and bought a second home in Poconos, it was the good life in most ways, the life middle-class working people dream of having in America. He had gotten that good day job, he had health care, a pension and the best job security there was – a high-level state job in the state capitol, Harrisburg. He had taken his father’s advice, and that of the professor – it seemed foolish to disregard both of them, despite the pleadings of Mr. Stevens, but what did he really know?. A small town music teacher who never made it in the music world himself. Music was always in Alex’s head, in his dreams and thoughts, even after all those years. But it was always in the background, a day dream, Lucky still loved to hear his songs but few others ever did. His father was right, that was not his path.
Once or twice a year, he would visit one of the few remaining smoke-filled cafes with open mic nights, he never played there, but he had never sold his guitar. His son Mark, now 18, played the guitar also, the two of the often wrong songs and played together, some of the sweet nights of his life. Silly nights, he called them. The two of them sang every now and then at family functions and on holidays, they allowed themselves to be badgered into doing it. Mark had joined a friend’s band and they had accepted a few free gigs at school parties. The apple from the tree, thought Alex, Mark loved playing and song writing just as he had.
Mark, like Alex, was careful and responsible, he had absorbed the idea that a musician’s life was reckless, a life of impoverishment and uncertainty. It was something he loved as a hobby, it was not something he would think seriously about doing for a living, this was something he shared with his father, with whom he was close. He often thought about a career, something safe, something, unlike music, that you could count on. Accounting, maybe, or law.
Alex thought Mark was very good, he had a real gift for music, but he never discussed a life of music with him, would never encourage that, his father’s caution was still so fresh in his mind, the professor’s disclaimer lodged in his consciousness after all this time. Alex had made his choice – his family, security, money in the bank, good benefits. At night, when everybody was asleep, Alex sometimes went into the basement alone wrote music lyrics, he had three boxes full of them, he was never happier or more at peace than when he was writing songs and singing them. Once in awhile, Mark, awakened by the music drifting up the stairs, would come down and join him.
After his father had died, his mother sat him down at the kitchen table – she was crying – and showed him the letter from the Boston Conservatory of Music accepting him into the school and offering him a full scholarship and a job in the school’s library. She was sorry, she said, your father thought it best, he was thinking of you, he loved you so very much. They had hidden the letter in the basement, in a box in the cold storage room. It had bothered her all of those years, she said. She didn’t know if it was the right thing, but your father made that decision, and we both stood by it.
“We agree with your music teacher’s assessment of your skills,” the letter said,” you have great promise as a musician.” His mother explained that his father decided to hide the letter to keep Alex from making a terrible mistake. Alex told his mother it was all right, he understood, and he shocked himself by suddenly bursting into tears on the way home, thinking about what his life might have been had he seen that letter. But then he settled, the sensible part of him taking hold again, he was his father’s son. What was the point of dwelling on it?, his father loved him and was doing what he thought best, just as he had always done with Mark.
One evening Mark approached Alex nervously as he was heading into the hallway to take the garbage out. “Dad, I want to tell you something.” Alex froze, he doubted it would be anything good from the nervous look on his son’s face. “I didn’t want to hide it from you, two months ago I applied to a summer music program run by Julliard College in New York City. I saw it on the bulletin board, my teacher said I should apply, I never thought I’d hear back. I sent the lyrics I’ve been writing and some tapes and they want me to come to New York City in two weeks for a face-to-face interview, there are only 20 spots and hundreds of applicants. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you but Mom told me what your father told you and I know how you’d feel about it. Don’t worry about it, I applied for a job this summer in town, I’ll be working in a law office, it would be great for my college resume. I’m taking that, but I just wanted you to know about the Julliard thing, it is cool, isn’t it, to be accepted there? Especially for a wannabe, right?…I thought you’d be proud.”
He saw his son was trembling, shifting back and forth. He saw his son’s eyes widen as he saw the tears streaming down his father’s face. “Dad, what…?” But Alex didn’t let him finish.
“Mark, I’m driving you to New York for that interview at Julliard,” he said, “you can do what you wish to do, but you will not spend the rest of your life wondering what might have happened if you had gone. You are not a wannabe musician, if you want to be a musician you are one, nobody else can tell you what you are or aren’t or what you should or shouldn’t be. I want you to call the law office and tell them you might not be able to make it. We are spending the next two weeks practicing music together, getting you ready. Is that okay with you? Whatever choice you make will be yours, not anybody else’s”
Mark looked stunned, he dropped his book bag and threw his arms around his father, and Lucky was startled to come out of the living room and see her husband and son locked in the most loving and intimate embrace. In a flash, all three of them were crying.
I wrote this story nearly two years ago, and i forgot about it until my friend Lisa Dingle dug it out from the blog archives. It is eerily timely, and I am grateful to her for reminding me of it, I am happy to publish it again. I suppose it is more relevant now than it was even then, before I ever thought of carriage horses.
George only took Jake out at night. He adored the puppy and hated to be apart from him so much, but things were getting bad and he was getting desperate. He had become increasingly furtive, lying to his wife, kids, friends and neighbors. There was no one he could trust anymore. He was a haunted man, always looking over his shoulder, unable to sleep, go out, talk to anyone. His friends never called him anymore, nor he them. They had stopped e-mailing one another. It was for their own protection. They were all frightened even to go online and talk to other dog lovers, who pursued and attacked them mercilessly. There were informers everywhere.
George had paid careful attention to the dog patrol’s routine, and they swung by at almost precisely the same times every day – 9 a.m. and then 3 p.m. They had stopped by several times, looking through the house, listening, scanning the ground for leavings and marks. An informer had told them that he had a dog, the officers told him roughly. A bought dog. They had big red jackets and patches which said “Therapy,” “Rescue” and “Petsavers.”
The informer had said the dog was a purebred Labrador Retriever puppy. Was this so, they asked, as they had before? No, said George, a lie, not true, he had once had such a dog, but that was in the other time, when people could get dogs any way they wished, when they could even – he lowered his voice – buy them from anyone they wished. When different choices were permitted. He had always had healthy, happy dogs, he thought, but did not say that out loud. No one wanted such dogs now.
At the end of the Other Time, the breeders had all been finally driven out, moved to Mexico, were hiding in caves in Oregon. Dogs that were not rescued or abused quickly vanished, as the idea of dogs as sad and piteous creatures grew and became the dominant idea about them. At first, it was blasphemy to buy a dog. Now, illegal. At first, it was said that no one should buy a dog when so many were free. And then, no one could afford to buy a dog when there were so many for free. And then, there was no one to sell them.
George could see that the officers were suspicious, did not believe him. They had searched the house and grounds a dozen times and found nothing although their dogs picked up scents. Old ones, he insisted. Over the past few month he had moved Jake further and further back from the house, in an abandoned fox den out in the woods. George told no one about Jake, lied to everyone, said he had put the dog down, or shipped him off to Canada, where people were still permitted different kinds of ideas.
George knew his options were limited. He was running out of time for his dog. Jake was not rescued. He was not abused. He did not come from a shelter. Or an online rescue group, the only approved ways one could get a dog. In a mad and obsessive impulse, George had looked through old and now forbidden dog magazines, saw the photos of the Labs, went to secret chat rooms online, then driven to a small town in Maine, just below the Canadian border and paid $50 for Jake from the last breeder in the Northeast. The man took the money and then said goodbye, climbing into his motorboat and setting a course for New Brunswick. It was said that there were a couple of Newfoundlands there. And people couldn’t tell you what to do, was the rumor.
The deadlocked Congress had not passed legislation in years, but had unanimously changed the dog laws. There were millions of dogs in no-kill shelters, more coming in from all over the world. It was now a crime to put a dog down for any reason, and dogs could only be purchased by no-kill people for no-kill homes from no-kill shelters, the only kind that were now legal. Older dogs were placed in assisted care facilities and nursing homes where they lived on medications and machines for many years more than dogs had ever lived. All dogs had universal national health care. So there were tens of millions of dogs spending their lives in shelters, and Congress was considering passing laws requiring you to take three if you wanted one.
The working breeds were all gone now, George knew. The border collies, the Labs, the Retrievers, Jack Russell’s, even the Pit Bulls. No more breeding. No more herding. No more hunting. It was wrong to get a dog anywhere but from a shelter, was the thinking, and so it had become law. There were now more than five million dog play groups in the U.S., many of them meeting in schools and child playgrounds, almost all shuttered by decades of budget cuts and political stalemates. The parks were filled iwth people wearing patches, and dogs wearing vests with various slogans – “Abused,” “Rescued,” “Make Way For Therapy Dog,” “Slow Down: Caribbean Rescue Dog On Board.” George had no sticker for Jake. He was grateful he had never registered Jake online, or he would have never had a chance to carry out his plan. But now, things were desperate. He was determined to save Jake, and he knew things were closing in.
George struggled to keep himself from crying. But he was determined. It was time for his plan, to save Jake, to give him a new and free life. He went out into the woods, slipped the puppy a sedative, and when he was groggy, he picked him up and rubbed mud all over his coat. Jake was light, thin. It nearly killed him to do it, but George had been cutting back on his food for days. He took a knife and sliced his own hand, and then smeared some of the blood on Jake’s nose. He rubbed some berry juice on Jake’s teeth so they would look stained. He rubbed ointment in Jake’s eyes to make them look runny. When it got dark, he drove to the town’s sprawling new animal shelter, a no-kill facility housed in the former town library, abandoned after years of rejected town budget votes It was now a no-kill dog and cat and bird shelter, housing needy animals from 26 states and 15 different countries. Animal lovers traveled all over the world to find rescue animals and bring them to the shelter.
George waited to see that there was no one around, and tears flowing down his cheeks, he left Jake asleep in his blanket by the rear receiving platform, and he attached this note:
“Dear Shelter. This is Jake. As you can see, he has been badly abused. Stained teeth, blood from beatings, not washed in many months. He looks like a Lab, but he comes from the Deep South, where he was thrown off a truck, run over, attacked by crows and then chained in the rear of a garbage dump. He is part Shitzu and part Rotty, although he looks a lot like a Lab. He is not a Lab. As you know, there are no more Labs. Please take care of him and find him a good home.”
George sobbed and took one last look, kissed the groggy Jake on the nose, left his bundle on the platform, kissed him goodbye one more time, rang the bell and then ran. He turned and looked back and saw a shelter worker open the door, peer back and forth and then pick up the bundle. George came home and turned on his computer. His heart was about to pound right out of his chest. He sat staring at the town’s animal rescue site for nearly 24 hours, barely eating or sleeping. Finally, he saw it. A photo of Jake, a dog who had been beaten, starved neglected. Jake’s runny eyes and stained teeth looked appealingly into the camera. Good boy, Jake, said George, sobbing now.
And then he looked at the bottom of the photo and smiled. Hundreds of people had already applied for Jake. His dog had been saved. His dog had been rescued. He was going to make a break for New Brunswick. Maybe there were Labs there too.
My Hubbard Hall short story class went into its second week this morning, and I thought it took off. The class was limited to eight people, and the students are diverse – two high school students, a nurse practitioner, a retired minister, a yoga teacher and massage therapist who travels with famous rock starts, several writers. There are some wonderful stories bubbling up – a charismatic child struggling out of poverty in the Mississippi Delta, a middle-aged man who decides to go to Times Square to see the ball drop, a young volunteer in a school library who encounters a dying mime (and writes about mostly in text), a mother who warns her son against playing the lottery and then wins.
In each class, the students bring their work and show them to the other students and then we talk about them. It is powerful to see how much the students support one another, help each other. Feedback is so essential for writing, how else can we improve and grow? For me, the biggest challenge is to overcome the hideous way in which writing is generally taught in America and to get the writers to see that their stories are important and good, if they are authentic and brave. The idea is for them to feel good about their work, not bad, to encourage them, not fill their heads with rules and do’s and dont’s. I want them to have fun, to have confidence in themselves, to let their inner spirits, their inner writers come out and be free. This class is special, I bet we go past the four scheduled meetings
