(The following review originally appeared in my newsletter, Bloody Knuckles. The review has been approved of by the author's mother. Thank you, Patti, for your insight and proofing.)
Die A Little. It was a hell of an introduction to the prose of Megan Abbott. I’ll be honest, I was just looking for something to listen to on my way into work that wasn’t morning talk radio or commercial laden music channels. The cover is what drew me in; additionally, Ellen Archer was gifted in her reading. I stuck with it and by the time I finished my twenty-five minute commute along winding, twisting surface streets, I was hooked on the story. I remember what struck me was the immediate reversal of traditional roles, how strong women drove he story and how men were wall dressing. It was as hard hitting as any of the Hard Case novels I’d been eating up for more than a year.
Next up was The Song Is You, my favorite to date. Abbott spins the notorious case of the Black Dahlia in a new and sinister way. 1940s Hollywood jumps off the page and the hapless hero, Hap, gets himself tangled in more than one wicked web. The story is so alive, so real, I felt like I was there watching this man’s world slide away from him.
I had to read Queenpin in large print because it was the only copy my local library had on its shelves. Once again the women flex and strut and command the men around them, knowing how to play them and when. The climatic ending is surprising and works so well I wonder how I didn’t see it coming except that Abbott is such a wordsmith she knew how to move me along without giving away the twist.
By the time Bury Me Deep launched, I had pre-ordered it from one of the chains. (Later, I won an autographed copy from another author’s website.) The story of Winnie Ruth Judd, the Trunk Murderess, had interested me for quite some time. Several years earlier some of my theatre students had workshopped a short play based on the same story. If only they had waited. Abbott delivered a solid retelling of well known murder case set in Depression Era America, addressing the lingering question everyone had at the time but never received any answer for: Why would a woman board a train with trunks filled with chopped up body parts? Abbott doesn’t set out to solve the case, she simply uses it as the back drop for a really good mystery.
Now comes The End of Everything. It is filled with prose that makes me wonder why, after thirty plus years of being a writer, why can’t I write like that? To say she gives us another impressive, strong female protagonist is to undersell the power of thirteen year old Lizzie Hood. The wonder, the fear, the daily uncertainty of growing up in a suburb full of secrets and lies unfolds through Lizzie’s eyes. When her best friend Evie Verver goes missing, it is through Lizzie we live and feel during the agonizing days after the disappearance.
The story strikes close to home for me. I was a few years older than Lizzie’s character when southeast Michigan was terrorized by a lurking presence known only as the Oakland County Child Killer. During the long, overlapping months at the end of 1976 and on through the winter of 1977, four children between the ages of 10 and 12 were abducted and murdered, their bodies left alongside snowy roads. The only clue: a blue Gremlin that always seemed to be part of every story.
The summer in between the two long winters was a tense time. I remember cutting across a field at the end of the dead end street I grew up on and coming out along a major road when out of nowhere, a rusted, blue, pick-up truck pulled over, the passenger door flew open, and a man I didn’t know told me, my nephew, and my buddy to ‘get in, your mother wants me to take you home.’ We stood there for a second or two staring at the old, creased faced of the stranger before my buddy told him to ‘f*** off’ and slammed the door. We ran back across the field until we reached the concrete front steps of my house where we collapsed huffing and puffing. We told our parents and neighbors and everyone said it was probably someone they all knew but just couldn’t quite place his face or name. I kept pointing out he was driving a blue truck. My dad said a blue truck wasn’t the same as a blue Gremlin.
I don’t know if Abbott was around at the time of the killings, but growing up in southeastern Michigan, it would be hard to not to know the story, or the story of another little girl who was taken from a slumber party almost twenty years later. There were rumors that maybe the Oakland County Child Killer was back, only this little girl was from Macomb County and what if he moved around the country doing the same thing? A young man was eventually convicted of the last little girl’s death when strands of her hair were found in the carpet of his van. He was far too young to have been killing in the 70’s.
The terror, the wonder, the suspicion all came flooding back for me as I read The End of Everything. It made wonder if maybe I had seen something long ago, and if that strange, old man in the rusted out, blue, pick-up wasn’t somebody anyone in the neighborhood knew after all. Abbott has exposed similar dark shadows of a neighborhood, of a place where everyone knows everyone but doesn’t know anything about anyone. Monsters like child killers just don’t live next door to us, do they? It takes a determined thirteen year old girl to pry away the façade of her Norman Rockwell world and expose us to truths we might see but turn our eyes away from before we recognize them.
In the end, The End of Everything is a departure for Abbott from her noir roots, but it is perhaps the most frightening work she has done thus far. Where Bury Me Deep was gruesome, and The Song is You was darkly melancholy, The End of Everything makes me sit up in the night when I hear the creaks of a settling house or the slow approach of car that has driven all the way down to the end of a clearly marked dead end street only to turn around in my driveway and slowly drive away.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Flash Bang #1
Promsies by AJ Hayes was this month's entry from the first ever Flash Bang Challenge at my newsletter, Bloody Knuckles. The topic was a picture of the 1940s era bathing beauty located in older post here at the Hard Nosed Sleuth. The prose is down right sinister. Enjoy. I did!
PROMISES
by AJ Hayes
I saw her first on the terrace next to mine at the Biltmore. She was reclining on an Adirondack chaise, head tilted to the side, eyes closed, long legs burnished by the winter sun. I had never seen anything so beautiful. I snapped her picture with my Speed Graphic, worried that the sharp click and fast whirr of the shutter would wake her. But she slept on. She was perfection.
That night I saw her in the bar and bought her a drink. She was vivacious and even prettier than I had thought. During the course of the evening I learned that she was from back East and, like most of the pretty girls in Los Angeles, desperately trying to get into the movies. "Just a break, "she said. "Just one little break."
I smiled at her over my martini and told her I thought I had a part for her. Two parts, actually. A dual role. One that could make her famous overnight.
"Like Lana Turner?" she asked, her eyes bright with laughter.
"Even more famous than that," I said. "A hundred years from now, no one will remember Lana. But everyone will remember you."
"Promise?" She asked.
"Promise." I answered.
The barbiturate I'd slipped in her drink hit her pretty hard so I had to half carry her out of the bar. No one noticed. The L.A. of nineteen-forty-seven was a wide open town, filled with post-war celebration and excess.
I took her to my studio in the valley. In those days it was an empty, desolate place where they used to shoot westerns and jungle movies. The only habitations were widely scattered ranches and a couple of movie star estates hidden behind high fences and thick hedges.
She partially woke just as I finished suspending her. Her hair barely brushed the sawdust covered floor of the old barn I used for my art. Even upside down she was beautiful.
Her voice was slow and slurred when she asked what I was doing.
I didn't bother saying anything. She got the idea when I made my first cut. Her screams were as bright as her laughter.
I had an advantage back then. To the cops I was just another free lance photographer scuttling around the city. Hanging on and hoping for the shot that would take me to the big leagues. Not worth noticing. Invisible.
I took her from the trunk of my car, arranged her properly on the vacant lot and shot my photos. Then I waited for dawn to bring the first sirens. When they came I raced to my paper and stunned the morning editor with the first pictures of my creation. He stopped the presses and featured them on the front page, above the fold, under screaming seventy-two point headlines.
I kept my promises to her. She did play in two parts. Well, her carefully separated body did anyhow. And she is more famous than Lana Turner ever was.
I still have the photograph of her on that hotel terrace. I look at it almost every day. She was beautiful then and she is beautiful now. None of my other works compare.
PROMISES
by AJ Hayes
I saw her first on the terrace next to mine at the Biltmore. She was reclining on an Adirondack chaise, head tilted to the side, eyes closed, long legs burnished by the winter sun. I had never seen anything so beautiful. I snapped her picture with my Speed Graphic, worried that the sharp click and fast whirr of the shutter would wake her. But she slept on. She was perfection.
That night I saw her in the bar and bought her a drink. She was vivacious and even prettier than I had thought. During the course of the evening I learned that she was from back East and, like most of the pretty girls in Los Angeles, desperately trying to get into the movies. "Just a break, "she said. "Just one little break."
I smiled at her over my martini and told her I thought I had a part for her. Two parts, actually. A dual role. One that could make her famous overnight.
"Like Lana Turner?" she asked, her eyes bright with laughter.
"Even more famous than that," I said. "A hundred years from now, no one will remember Lana. But everyone will remember you."
"Promise?" She asked.
"Promise." I answered.
The barbiturate I'd slipped in her drink hit her pretty hard so I had to half carry her out of the bar. No one noticed. The L.A. of nineteen-forty-seven was a wide open town, filled with post-war celebration and excess.
I took her to my studio in the valley. In those days it was an empty, desolate place where they used to shoot westerns and jungle movies. The only habitations were widely scattered ranches and a couple of movie star estates hidden behind high fences and thick hedges.
She partially woke just as I finished suspending her. Her hair barely brushed the sawdust covered floor of the old barn I used for my art. Even upside down she was beautiful.
Her voice was slow and slurred when she asked what I was doing.
I didn't bother saying anything. She got the idea when I made my first cut. Her screams were as bright as her laughter.
I had an advantage back then. To the cops I was just another free lance photographer scuttling around the city. Hanging on and hoping for the shot that would take me to the big leagues. Not worth noticing. Invisible.
I took her from the trunk of my car, arranged her properly on the vacant lot and shot my photos. Then I waited for dawn to bring the first sirens. When they came I raced to my paper and stunned the morning editor with the first pictures of my creation. He stopped the presses and featured them on the front page, above the fold, under screaming seventy-two point headlines.
I kept my promises to her. She did play in two parts. Well, her carefully separated body did anyhow. And she is more famous than Lana Turner ever was.
I still have the photograph of her on that hotel terrace. I look at it almost every day. She was beautiful then and she is beautiful now. None of my other works compare.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Photos I Found Interesting
Bathing Beauty
This photo was in an old album I found while cleaning my book room. I'm not sure when I got the album or where. What I do know is this is from a family's album, that she was some place tropical, and that there is a man in an army uniform in some fo the pictures. The people were around in the 1940s.
Heavy
From the same album. I think the picture lives up to a thousand words.
Boys and Beers
The last of the three pictures I scanned. Tens guys knocking back beers. Were they going off to war? Were they coming back from war? Was the heist a success?
Are any of these flash worthy? If they are, say around 800-1000 words. Post on your blog, put your link in the comment section.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Derringer Nomination
Woot!
Broken Down on the Bonneville Flats has been nominated for a Derringer.
Thanks to David Cranmer for his editorial expertise and for his wonderful website. Thanks to the readers.
Here's a link to the story:
http://tinyurl.com/4uxny7j
Broken Down on the Bonneville Flats has been nominated for a Derringer.
Thanks to David Cranmer for his editorial expertise and for his wonderful website. Thanks to the readers.
Here's a link to the story:
http://tinyurl.com/4uxny7j
Monday, February 28, 2011
Not Quite the Oscars
Late in the summer of 2008, my entourage and I traveled to Westlake, Ohio to attend the Indie Gathering Film Festival. Part festival, part convention, part martial arts and stunt program, the Indie Gathering stood out from a few of the other film fests I had attended. It was well attended, had a variety of indie professionals and newbies, and offered some really good short and feature films and docs.
My buddy Panooch and I had written a family comedy script about a wayward young man who finds his calling and true love when he becomes an accidental animal trainer. MY TICKET HOME received the Top Star Award in the coveted Other Category. (It didn't fit anywhere else so the director created a new category and voila! we won.)
We met a lot of interesting people. When the hotel bar closed, we brought down our own supply and sat poolside holding court with about thirty people. As fun as the film festivals were, and I went to quite a few between 2006 and 2008, they just got to be too costly in the end with fees, travel expenses, and entertaining.
My buddy Panooch and I had written a family comedy script about a wayward young man who finds his calling and true love when he becomes an accidental animal trainer. MY TICKET HOME received the Top Star Award in the coveted Other Category. (It didn't fit anywhere else so the director created a new category and voila! we won.)
We met a lot of interesting people. When the hotel bar closed, we brought down our own supply and sat poolside holding court with about thirty people. As fun as the film festivals were, and I went to quite a few between 2006 and 2008, they just got to be too costly in the end with fees, travel expenses, and entertaining.
Me (with Panooch)and the award for winning script
Post awards interview
Serving on a panel about acting
Thursday, February 10, 2011
KARAOKE AIN'T FOR WUSSIES
(Kudos to Patti Abbott for suggesting these flash challenges! I enjoy writing them as well as reading them.)
Black Bear’s Den was a bar in northern Michigan five or so miles outside of Cheboygan. It sat just off US 23 where the shoulder became the entrance to or exit from the parking lot. Used to have images of dancing topless women done in fluorescent paint. The old owner, Dickie ‘Bear’ Black, shined black lights on and off them making them appear to jiggle. The joke was the sailors on freighters passing through the Mackinac Straits would see those naked, glowing girls and stop in when they docked at Petosky or Roger’s City to spend all their shore leave money.
That was the crowd the Black Bear’s Den attracted. Sailors, drifters, loners who lived in the Atlanta State Forest Area of northern Michigan. You didn’t want to go there if you didn’t have to and really, nobody had to go to the Black Bear’s Den. It was the kind of place where direct eye contact meant you just insulted somebody’s mother. In all honesty, you only went there if you were looking to get your ass kicked.
One particularly rowdy night, a fight broke out. It wasn’t uncommon.
The story goes that a couple of Dominican sailors passing through out of Chicago paid a little too much attention to a certain young dancer innocently named Sarah. Not that this young lady minded, mind you. They were paying the right kind of attention: fistfuls of dollars they were more than willing to tuck into tight places.
Sarah’s guy, a local punk named Calvin but known as Vinnie, who had led the Catholic high school’s football team to a Division Four championship but flunked out of the University of Michigan his freshmen year, decided to make it a point that night that he was going to make an honest woman of his dancing darling Sarah. Drunk enough to be boldly dumb, the former all-state tackle began pushing the Dominicans around. It got ugly when the Dominicans pushed back and one drew a knife.
Dickie Black was a big man, carried his belly weight like a battering ram. He grabbed up Old Hickory Number 6, a handmade baseball bat, and moved like a juggernaut through the crowd to break up the brewing fight. The Dominicans tried to plead their case, saying they were just paying customers and had done nothing wrong. Vinnie disagreed. They were guilty, alright, guilty of admiring his gal.
Vinnie took a swing at one of the Dominicans, landing a punch against the side of his head and knocking him down cold. The Dominican with the knife stepped back, weapon held in front, ready to defend.
Dickie Bear shouted at Vinnie, told him to lay off, he was costing Dickie Bear money. He shoved the meaty end of Old Hickory against Vinnie’s chest. Vinnie stumbled backwards knocking into Sarah. She fell forward onto the blade the second Dominican waved in front of himself for protection.
Sarah died instantly. Vinnie made it through the trial before throwing himself from the cliff on the shore side of US 23. Legend has it the ghosts of the two lovers stare at one another across the two lane state highway.
Even though the crowd knew exactly what happened, it was a full house against a pair of Dominicans. The trial was swift, the verdict fair given the dynamics of the situation. After that, the local sheriff’s department busted the Black Bear’s Den for everything from being open to looking ugly. Dickie Bear closed it down.
There was a young guy there the night of that fight, a wanderer. Carried a guitar and played for change. He immortalized the story, won a CMA. It’s one of those songs that never goes away. The chorus goes:
‘I really don’t mind the scars/You left on my heart when you died/They’re all I have left of you/From all of the tears that I cried…’
If you don’t know the rest, you should.
The Black Bear’s Den passed from owner to owner, staying closed for longer stretches of time then it stayed opened. Not too long ago a new owner came in, reopened it under the benign name of Skipper’s.
Dumped the Schlitz décor for a nautical theme.
Weekends have become karaoke nights during the summer. Some of the locals mix with the weekend trippers. There are still plenty in the area that know the story of Sarah and Vinnie. Some of them were even there the night it happened. Buy one a beer; he’ll tell you the story. Spring for a shot and he’ll sing you the song.
They may have mellowed over the years, but nothing scares these guys. Not even singing a song about people they knew.
And hell, I don’t mind. Keeps my song--and Sarah and Vinnie-- alive.
ADDENDUM 3/4/11
So many people emailed or posted they wanted the song completed, I gave it a try. Sometimes late night writing, like late night refrigerator raids, should be avoided.
She was a soft looking woman
With a hard hitting heart
She filled it with love
Gave me a big part
Her heart was all mine
But I didn’t know
I figured her dancing
Was more than a show
I really don’t mind the scars
You left on my heart when you died
It’s all I have left of you
From all of the tears that I cried
Sometimes a man
Twists up a thought
Bringing him pain
Like the whiskey he’s bought
He gets an idea
For right or for wrong
His actions eventually
Spill out in his song
I really don’t mind the scars
You left on my heart when you died
It’s all I have left of you
From all of the tears that I cried
I figured to love her
Like she once loved me
But my head got all clouded
And I couldn’t see
That this soft looking woman
With the hard hitting heart
Had always been mine
Right from the loving start
Black Bear’s Den was a bar in northern Michigan five or so miles outside of Cheboygan. It sat just off US 23 where the shoulder became the entrance to or exit from the parking lot. Used to have images of dancing topless women done in fluorescent paint. The old owner, Dickie ‘Bear’ Black, shined black lights on and off them making them appear to jiggle. The joke was the sailors on freighters passing through the Mackinac Straits would see those naked, glowing girls and stop in when they docked at Petosky or Roger’s City to spend all their shore leave money.
That was the crowd the Black Bear’s Den attracted. Sailors, drifters, loners who lived in the Atlanta State Forest Area of northern Michigan. You didn’t want to go there if you didn’t have to and really, nobody had to go to the Black Bear’s Den. It was the kind of place where direct eye contact meant you just insulted somebody’s mother. In all honesty, you only went there if you were looking to get your ass kicked.
One particularly rowdy night, a fight broke out. It wasn’t uncommon.
The story goes that a couple of Dominican sailors passing through out of Chicago paid a little too much attention to a certain young dancer innocently named Sarah. Not that this young lady minded, mind you. They were paying the right kind of attention: fistfuls of dollars they were more than willing to tuck into tight places.
Sarah’s guy, a local punk named Calvin but known as Vinnie, who had led the Catholic high school’s football team to a Division Four championship but flunked out of the University of Michigan his freshmen year, decided to make it a point that night that he was going to make an honest woman of his dancing darling Sarah. Drunk enough to be boldly dumb, the former all-state tackle began pushing the Dominicans around. It got ugly when the Dominicans pushed back and one drew a knife.
Dickie Black was a big man, carried his belly weight like a battering ram. He grabbed up Old Hickory Number 6, a handmade baseball bat, and moved like a juggernaut through the crowd to break up the brewing fight. The Dominicans tried to plead their case, saying they were just paying customers and had done nothing wrong. Vinnie disagreed. They were guilty, alright, guilty of admiring his gal.
Vinnie took a swing at one of the Dominicans, landing a punch against the side of his head and knocking him down cold. The Dominican with the knife stepped back, weapon held in front, ready to defend.
Dickie Bear shouted at Vinnie, told him to lay off, he was costing Dickie Bear money. He shoved the meaty end of Old Hickory against Vinnie’s chest. Vinnie stumbled backwards knocking into Sarah. She fell forward onto the blade the second Dominican waved in front of himself for protection.
Sarah died instantly. Vinnie made it through the trial before throwing himself from the cliff on the shore side of US 23. Legend has it the ghosts of the two lovers stare at one another across the two lane state highway.
Even though the crowd knew exactly what happened, it was a full house against a pair of Dominicans. The trial was swift, the verdict fair given the dynamics of the situation. After that, the local sheriff’s department busted the Black Bear’s Den for everything from being open to looking ugly. Dickie Bear closed it down.
There was a young guy there the night of that fight, a wanderer. Carried a guitar and played for change. He immortalized the story, won a CMA. It’s one of those songs that never goes away. The chorus goes:
‘I really don’t mind the scars/You left on my heart when you died/They’re all I have left of you/From all of the tears that I cried…’
If you don’t know the rest, you should.
The Black Bear’s Den passed from owner to owner, staying closed for longer stretches of time then it stayed opened. Not too long ago a new owner came in, reopened it under the benign name of Skipper’s.
Dumped the Schlitz décor for a nautical theme.
Weekends have become karaoke nights during the summer. Some of the locals mix with the weekend trippers. There are still plenty in the area that know the story of Sarah and Vinnie. Some of them were even there the night it happened. Buy one a beer; he’ll tell you the story. Spring for a shot and he’ll sing you the song.
They may have mellowed over the years, but nothing scares these guys. Not even singing a song about people they knew.
And hell, I don’t mind. Keeps my song--and Sarah and Vinnie-- alive.
ADDENDUM 3/4/11
So many people emailed or posted they wanted the song completed, I gave it a try. Sometimes late night writing, like late night refrigerator raids, should be avoided.
She was a soft looking woman
With a hard hitting heart
She filled it with love
Gave me a big part
Her heart was all mine
But I didn’t know
I figured her dancing
Was more than a show
I really don’t mind the scars
You left on my heart when you died
It’s all I have left of you
From all of the tears that I cried
Sometimes a man
Twists up a thought
Bringing him pain
Like the whiskey he’s bought
He gets an idea
For right or for wrong
His actions eventually
Spill out in his song
I really don’t mind the scars
You left on my heart when you died
It’s all I have left of you
From all of the tears that I cried
I figured to love her
Like she once loved me
But my head got all clouded
And I couldn’t see
That this soft looking woman
With the hard hitting heart
Had always been mine
Right from the loving start
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
The Flying Trunk
(This flash challenge asked for stories based on childrens fairie tales. I found an obscure Aesop fable called The Flying Trunk. A young man who inherits his father's meager estate becomes obsessed with a beautiful princess in a far off land and wins her parents' permission to wed her, only to lose her to his own follies.)
THE FLYING TRUNK
Donny Markham lugged the old steamer trunk up the third and final flight of stairs of the renovated three story walk-up. Like all of the other converted Victorians still standing along the Cass Corridor, there were no elevators. Not that there had ever been any plan to put one in. The tenants who now rented the flats were transient college students going to Wayne State University. Most had started off as commuters but by the time they hit twenty, they realized the myth of Detroit was far from the truth of Detroit. Yes, there were pockets where one didn’t go after dark or even after sunrise; but, on the whole, the city had more to offer than to fear.
If only Donny’s dad had known this. The old had man closed his string of party shops along Woodward and Jefferson and moved all of his business north to the suburbs, along with every other white business man in the epic flight of the 70’s. In the end, his premature bailing on the city cost him, but not much. His empire of liquor shops went from ten to two. He switched to high end wine for the one in southern Oakland County and to cheap booze in the one in Macomb County. His marketing strategy worked and while he didn’t die a wealthy man, he did die a well-off man which meant Donny Markham, at twenty-two, was off to a considerable start over some of his college counterparts.
The inheritance wouldn’t last forever, Donny knew that. He sold off the shops to separate owners who were now in a legal battle over who got to keep his family name over the door to their shop. Donny didn’t give two figs. He was taking his money and going back to school to get his teaching degree. He knew that Wayne made all School of Ed candidates do a semester of pre-student teaching in a Detroit city school. He was fine with that. He loved Detroit and wanted his admiration of the city to be shared by the students he would one day teach outside of it.
The trunk was the only other thing Donny kept from his father’s estate. When he was a child, Donny used to keep his most important treasures inside the various drawers, cases, and secret compartments. His mother used to worry that he would somehow get locked inside it. The idea that he could accidentally get locked in was impossible. There were two loop and snap latches on either side of a large circular lock on a hinge that needed to be flipped into place. The trunk never frightened Donny the way it did his mother. He used to imagine the trunk was a portal to another world or a magical vehicle that would fly him to wondrous adventures that took him far away from the dark world he lived in with his parents. His dad used his liquor stores like personal caches. His mom hated everything about how they made their money. They argued incessantly. Sometimes, it became physical.
Thunk.
Every second step the base of the trunk fell against the bare wood step Donny pulled it on to. He wished the trunk had the power to fly now as he bent his back and pulled up one more time. No one had come out to complain about the noise. Sometimes he wondered if he had any real neighbors on the lower two floors. He heard noises coming from them but he never saw any one.
The move would have gone a lot better if Shelley had come along like she promised she would. At the last minute something else came up. He wasn’t pleased with this turn of events. His displeasure triggered thoughts of relationship insecurity. Shelley wasn’t shaping up to be much of a girlfriend. If she even was a girlfriend. Like the unseen people living below him, Donny wasn’t sure there was anything there.
He had met her in a children’s literature class where she had stuck out like a diamond in a room full of coal. Long blond hair that draped over her shoulders, narrow hips that skinny jeans clung to for life, and large breasts she could barely keep contained: Shelley Lavinder just didn’t strike Donny as a candidate for being an elementary teacher in an inner city school. She should have been in the fold out of a Playboy spread.
Miss September.
He called her that sometimes. She giggled and then made love to him like he was going off to war and she might not ever see him again. They made love a lot but he never felt the connection afterwards. She rolled away; she didn’t leave but she did roll off on her side. He had thought about breaking it off with her. He just couldn’t picture himself as her type of guy. He waited for her to scream it at him the way his mother had often screamed it at his father.
A door opened below. Donny started to apologize to whichever of his neighbors for the noise he was making when he heard his name called out two flights down from where he stood.
“Donny?”
It was Shelley. This surprised him, and then he thought of how convenient it was that she showed up just as he was nearly to the top.
“Donny? You up there?”
“Come on up, Miss September,” Donny said. There was a gap between what he said and her distant giggle.
Donny raised the trunk on end. It rested precariously on half a step; two tiny coasters hung over the step’s lip. He waited for her to come up. He could hear her talking and assumed she was on the phone until he heard a voice, a man’s voice, answer her. When at last they appeared on the second floor landing below him, he recognized the man as a guy from one of their education classes.
“There you are,” Shelley said.
“Here I am,” Donny said. “Hello, Frank.”
“Donny.”
If ever there was a logical counterpart for Shelley, it was Frank Delgato. Tall, handsome, the antithesis to Donny, who was actually a couple of inches shorter than Shelley and a lot less structured than Frank. ‘It’s got to be the money,’ Donny thought. He smiled down at the two approaching people.
“Let me get that for you, buddy,” Frank said. He stepped around the trunk and caught the leather handle. He tugged up. Donny put his hands down on the top of the trunk.
“You have to be careful with it,” Donny said. “It’s almost a hundred years old. The leather is brittle, especially on the handle. I think it ripped a couple of times as I pulled it up.”
“You got that thing all the way up here on your own?” Shelley looked up at him from the lower steps. The light from the octagonal window behind him was muted but to Donny it felt more like she was looking up at Frank and smirking.
“Well, I had thought you’d be here to help me,” Donny said.
“We’re here now, bud,” Frank said. “Why don’t you take the bottom and I’ll carry it from the lid.”
Donny looked up at Frank. “The lid latch is on so the top compartment won’t flip open.”
“You got it, bud.” Frank gave him a wink, all though he felt it was directed more to Shelley.
He hated that Frank kept calling him bud or buddy. They weren’t anything like that. They even sat across the room from one another.
The rest of the climb went a lot easier. When they got to his landing, Shelley used her key to open his double oak doors. She reached up and undid the latch to the second one and pushed both of them open. Stepping in was like stepping back in time. The heavy, grooved, dark wood trim and wainscoting carried layers of history upon it. The oval throw rugs he bought at a flea market warmed the hardwood floors. The only things out of place were the vertical blinds over the screen less windows looking down on the Lodge Freeway. In many ways, it was similar to the home he’d grown up in.
They carried the trunk in and laid it near a bank of bay windows on what Donny considered to be the trunk’s back or bottom. This would keep the drawers on the inside from sliding open into the empty wardrobe compartment. Donny knelt down next to it and checked the latches and the single hinged lock.
“That thing was pretty heavy, buddy,” Frank said. “What have you got in it? A body?”
Donny gave Frank a wise-ass grin. “Not yet,” he said.
“It’s so dark in here,” Shelley said. She moved through the room as if she owned it, dropping her keys on the round wooden table in the middle of the great room. She pulled down on the blind cords. Light flooded into the room in long shafts. She cranked open the first of the three tall windows so that glass fame swung out behind the house. The roar of the traffic way below droned like far away bees. Shelley leaned forward, her tank top revealing more than it should have as a breeze blew her hair back off her shoulders.
“Nice view,” Frank said.
Donny looked up from behind the trunk. Shelley leaned one hand on the grooved paneling running parallel to window she looked out. She smiled and pulled her hair back behind her ear.
“Yeah, well, the Lodge wasn’t there when the house was built,” Donny said. “I’m sure the original owner had a pleasanter view of Detroit.”
“I ain’t talking about Detroit,” Frank said.
Shelley kept her focus on something outside the window and down below running along the Lodge. Maybe she hadn’t heard Frank’s overtly flirtatious remarks. Maybe she had. Either way, she didn’t play off it.
“I’m thirsty, Donny,” she said. She turned around to face both men. “You got any beer here?”
Donny shook his head.
“Now isn’t that ironical,” Frank said.
“You mean ironic?” Donny asked.
“I mean it’s funny how the prince of the liquor king don’t have any beer here.”
“Yeah, there’s a twist,” Donny said. He sat down on the closed trunk.
Shelley dug a hand into her jeans pocket. They were tight on her and she had to work her hand a bit to get it out. She handed Frank a fold of crushed bills. “Run down to the corner and get some, Frankie.”
“You want me to run down to the corner in the Cass Corridor and get some beer?”
“You’re a big guy,” Donny said. It was all he said, but he thought, ‘Man up, big guy.’ There was a brief stare down before Frankie finally left. Shelley sat down on the trunk next to Donny, who stood up instantly.
“Is there something wrong, babe?” she asked.
“Why did you bring him here?”
“Frank?”
Donny bobbed his head and held out his hands as if asking, ‘Who else?’
Shelley ran a hand up and down one of her sleeveless arms. “He called and asked what I was doing today.”
“He called you?”
“Yeah.”
“Does he call you often?”
Shelley shrugged. Her bared shoulders rose up in a shaft of sunlight and dropped. For a moment, her tan glowed. “I guess.”
“What do you mean you guess?”
“I mean we talk a lot about stuff in class.”
“He doesn’t give two shits about stuff in class, Shelley. All he cares about is you.”
“At least somebody does.”
She might as well have slapped him. The words hit him like fireworks to the face. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” Shelley stopped. “It means I don’t know what you want from me.”
“What I want from you?”
“I sit down, you stand up and walk away.”
He threw out a hand towards the trunk. “I didn’t think the trunk could take both of our weights.”
“Okay, but what about after we’ve been in bed?”
“What about it?”
“Why don’t you ever hold me? Why don’t we talk? Is it me?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about how you just lay there, staring at the ceiling.”
“You roll over and go to sleep.”
“I’m not sleeping, Donny,” Shelley said. Her voice dropped to almost a whisper. “I’m waiting for you to snuggle me but you don’t even touch me.” Her eyes came up to meet his. “What’s the matter? Do I make you feel bad? Do I make you feel dirty?”
Donny fell to his knees. He put his hands on her legs. “No.”
“You don’t think I’m good enough for you, do you?”
‘Just the opposite,’ he thought. Instead, he shook his head.
“Then what is it?”
“Sometimes I can’t understand why a woman as beautiful as you wants to be with a man as lousy as me.”
“You’re not lousy.”
“I look at guys like Frank and I think ‘Why isn’t she with someone like him?’ Why are you with me? Is it the money I got from my dad? There isn’t a lot. There’s enough, but not tons.”
“It’s not the money.”
“Then what is it about me? What do you see in me?”
Shelley stood up. She folded her arms over her chest and leaned back on the narrow strip of wall next to the open window. “You make me smile. You make me laugh. That’s more important to me than anything Frank has given me.”
Donny’s heart turned to ice. “What has Frank given you?”
Shelley shifted uncomfortably. “What do you mean?” She looked back out the window and sucked her lower lip under her top lip.
“You said ‘more than anything Frank has given me.’ What did he give you?”
“Nothing.”
Donny got up from his trunk. “Did you hook up with him?”
“Even if I did, it was before you.”
“But you slept with him.”
“And you haven’t slept with anyone else before me?”
“No.” His answer hung like a lazy curve ball. “Have you slept with him since?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why did you bring him here?”
“I told you. I knew you were moving stuff in here today and I thought he could help.”
“So you thought it would be a good idea to bring a guy you once had relations with to help a guy you’re having relationships with now?”
“I didn’t think it would be that big a deal.” Shelley took a step away from him. “We both know Frank from class.”
“You’re right about one thing, Shelley,” Donny said. He caught her arm. “You didn’t think.” He tugged on her arm but she pulled it free. She caught her heel on the edge of the trunk and lost her balance. As improbable as it seemed, the force of his yank and the angle at which she stumbled backwards sent her out the open window.
Donny leaned out even as brakes squealed below. He never saw her laying there on the concrete because the flatbed truck screeching to a halt covered her.
He heard knocking. Donny looked at the two closed doors. He assumed it was Frank returning with the beer; but, then again, maybe it was one of the ghosts who lived below him. Maybe someone had heard the argument, saw Shelley falling past his or hers own back windows. Whoever it was would want answers. Donny wasn’t good at answers. He’d barely been able to give any about his own father’s mysterious death.
The knocking became pounding.
He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his keys. There was a small gold one he clutched as he once again dropped to his knees. The knocking continued. He undid the hinge lock and then quickly undid the snap latches. He raised the lid of the trunk. It would be tighter now that he was an adult, but he could still squeeze himself inside if he removed the tub sized lower drawer. He pulled the green paisley case out of its housing and squeezed his knees down into the space. He leaned forward and reached behind him, catching the same green paisley colored drape of the wardrobe and pulled the lid down on top of him.
He remembered there was no way to lock the trunk from the inside, but he didn’t really need it to lock to do its job. All he needed the trunk to do was to fly him away like it had when he was a kid, when his dad drank and his mom yelled, when his world shook at its core.
“Fly away, trunk, fly away,” Donny said. The pounding on the door of his apartment became the pounding of his heart. “Fly me away.”
He closed his eyes and waited but like his life, the trunk never got off the ground.
THE FLYING TRUNK
Donny Markham lugged the old steamer trunk up the third and final flight of stairs of the renovated three story walk-up. Like all of the other converted Victorians still standing along the Cass Corridor, there were no elevators. Not that there had ever been any plan to put one in. The tenants who now rented the flats were transient college students going to Wayne State University. Most had started off as commuters but by the time they hit twenty, they realized the myth of Detroit was far from the truth of Detroit. Yes, there were pockets where one didn’t go after dark or even after sunrise; but, on the whole, the city had more to offer than to fear.
If only Donny’s dad had known this. The old had man closed his string of party shops along Woodward and Jefferson and moved all of his business north to the suburbs, along with every other white business man in the epic flight of the 70’s. In the end, his premature bailing on the city cost him, but not much. His empire of liquor shops went from ten to two. He switched to high end wine for the one in southern Oakland County and to cheap booze in the one in Macomb County. His marketing strategy worked and while he didn’t die a wealthy man, he did die a well-off man which meant Donny Markham, at twenty-two, was off to a considerable start over some of his college counterparts.
The inheritance wouldn’t last forever, Donny knew that. He sold off the shops to separate owners who were now in a legal battle over who got to keep his family name over the door to their shop. Donny didn’t give two figs. He was taking his money and going back to school to get his teaching degree. He knew that Wayne made all School of Ed candidates do a semester of pre-student teaching in a Detroit city school. He was fine with that. He loved Detroit and wanted his admiration of the city to be shared by the students he would one day teach outside of it.
The trunk was the only other thing Donny kept from his father’s estate. When he was a child, Donny used to keep his most important treasures inside the various drawers, cases, and secret compartments. His mother used to worry that he would somehow get locked inside it. The idea that he could accidentally get locked in was impossible. There were two loop and snap latches on either side of a large circular lock on a hinge that needed to be flipped into place. The trunk never frightened Donny the way it did his mother. He used to imagine the trunk was a portal to another world or a magical vehicle that would fly him to wondrous adventures that took him far away from the dark world he lived in with his parents. His dad used his liquor stores like personal caches. His mom hated everything about how they made their money. They argued incessantly. Sometimes, it became physical.
Thunk.
Every second step the base of the trunk fell against the bare wood step Donny pulled it on to. He wished the trunk had the power to fly now as he bent his back and pulled up one more time. No one had come out to complain about the noise. Sometimes he wondered if he had any real neighbors on the lower two floors. He heard noises coming from them but he never saw any one.
The move would have gone a lot better if Shelley had come along like she promised she would. At the last minute something else came up. He wasn’t pleased with this turn of events. His displeasure triggered thoughts of relationship insecurity. Shelley wasn’t shaping up to be much of a girlfriend. If she even was a girlfriend. Like the unseen people living below him, Donny wasn’t sure there was anything there.
He had met her in a children’s literature class where she had stuck out like a diamond in a room full of coal. Long blond hair that draped over her shoulders, narrow hips that skinny jeans clung to for life, and large breasts she could barely keep contained: Shelley Lavinder just didn’t strike Donny as a candidate for being an elementary teacher in an inner city school. She should have been in the fold out of a Playboy spread.
Miss September.
He called her that sometimes. She giggled and then made love to him like he was going off to war and she might not ever see him again. They made love a lot but he never felt the connection afterwards. She rolled away; she didn’t leave but she did roll off on her side. He had thought about breaking it off with her. He just couldn’t picture himself as her type of guy. He waited for her to scream it at him the way his mother had often screamed it at his father.
A door opened below. Donny started to apologize to whichever of his neighbors for the noise he was making when he heard his name called out two flights down from where he stood.
“Donny?”
It was Shelley. This surprised him, and then he thought of how convenient it was that she showed up just as he was nearly to the top.
“Donny? You up there?”
“Come on up, Miss September,” Donny said. There was a gap between what he said and her distant giggle.
Donny raised the trunk on end. It rested precariously on half a step; two tiny coasters hung over the step’s lip. He waited for her to come up. He could hear her talking and assumed she was on the phone until he heard a voice, a man’s voice, answer her. When at last they appeared on the second floor landing below him, he recognized the man as a guy from one of their education classes.
“There you are,” Shelley said.
“Here I am,” Donny said. “Hello, Frank.”
“Donny.”
If ever there was a logical counterpart for Shelley, it was Frank Delgato. Tall, handsome, the antithesis to Donny, who was actually a couple of inches shorter than Shelley and a lot less structured than Frank. ‘It’s got to be the money,’ Donny thought. He smiled down at the two approaching people.
“Let me get that for you, buddy,” Frank said. He stepped around the trunk and caught the leather handle. He tugged up. Donny put his hands down on the top of the trunk.
“You have to be careful with it,” Donny said. “It’s almost a hundred years old. The leather is brittle, especially on the handle. I think it ripped a couple of times as I pulled it up.”
“You got that thing all the way up here on your own?” Shelley looked up at him from the lower steps. The light from the octagonal window behind him was muted but to Donny it felt more like she was looking up at Frank and smirking.
“Well, I had thought you’d be here to help me,” Donny said.
“We’re here now, bud,” Frank said. “Why don’t you take the bottom and I’ll carry it from the lid.”
Donny looked up at Frank. “The lid latch is on so the top compartment won’t flip open.”
“You got it, bud.” Frank gave him a wink, all though he felt it was directed more to Shelley.
He hated that Frank kept calling him bud or buddy. They weren’t anything like that. They even sat across the room from one another.
The rest of the climb went a lot easier. When they got to his landing, Shelley used her key to open his double oak doors. She reached up and undid the latch to the second one and pushed both of them open. Stepping in was like stepping back in time. The heavy, grooved, dark wood trim and wainscoting carried layers of history upon it. The oval throw rugs he bought at a flea market warmed the hardwood floors. The only things out of place were the vertical blinds over the screen less windows looking down on the Lodge Freeway. In many ways, it was similar to the home he’d grown up in.
They carried the trunk in and laid it near a bank of bay windows on what Donny considered to be the trunk’s back or bottom. This would keep the drawers on the inside from sliding open into the empty wardrobe compartment. Donny knelt down next to it and checked the latches and the single hinged lock.
“That thing was pretty heavy, buddy,” Frank said. “What have you got in it? A body?”
Donny gave Frank a wise-ass grin. “Not yet,” he said.
“It’s so dark in here,” Shelley said. She moved through the room as if she owned it, dropping her keys on the round wooden table in the middle of the great room. She pulled down on the blind cords. Light flooded into the room in long shafts. She cranked open the first of the three tall windows so that glass fame swung out behind the house. The roar of the traffic way below droned like far away bees. Shelley leaned forward, her tank top revealing more than it should have as a breeze blew her hair back off her shoulders.
“Nice view,” Frank said.
Donny looked up from behind the trunk. Shelley leaned one hand on the grooved paneling running parallel to window she looked out. She smiled and pulled her hair back behind her ear.
“Yeah, well, the Lodge wasn’t there when the house was built,” Donny said. “I’m sure the original owner had a pleasanter view of Detroit.”
“I ain’t talking about Detroit,” Frank said.
Shelley kept her focus on something outside the window and down below running along the Lodge. Maybe she hadn’t heard Frank’s overtly flirtatious remarks. Maybe she had. Either way, she didn’t play off it.
“I’m thirsty, Donny,” she said. She turned around to face both men. “You got any beer here?”
Donny shook his head.
“Now isn’t that ironical,” Frank said.
“You mean ironic?” Donny asked.
“I mean it’s funny how the prince of the liquor king don’t have any beer here.”
“Yeah, there’s a twist,” Donny said. He sat down on the closed trunk.
Shelley dug a hand into her jeans pocket. They were tight on her and she had to work her hand a bit to get it out. She handed Frank a fold of crushed bills. “Run down to the corner and get some, Frankie.”
“You want me to run down to the corner in the Cass Corridor and get some beer?”
“You’re a big guy,” Donny said. It was all he said, but he thought, ‘Man up, big guy.’ There was a brief stare down before Frankie finally left. Shelley sat down on the trunk next to Donny, who stood up instantly.
“Is there something wrong, babe?” she asked.
“Why did you bring him here?”
“Frank?”
Donny bobbed his head and held out his hands as if asking, ‘Who else?’
Shelley ran a hand up and down one of her sleeveless arms. “He called and asked what I was doing today.”
“He called you?”
“Yeah.”
“Does he call you often?”
Shelley shrugged. Her bared shoulders rose up in a shaft of sunlight and dropped. For a moment, her tan glowed. “I guess.”
“What do you mean you guess?”
“I mean we talk a lot about stuff in class.”
“He doesn’t give two shits about stuff in class, Shelley. All he cares about is you.”
“At least somebody does.”
She might as well have slapped him. The words hit him like fireworks to the face. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” Shelley stopped. “It means I don’t know what you want from me.”
“What I want from you?”
“I sit down, you stand up and walk away.”
He threw out a hand towards the trunk. “I didn’t think the trunk could take both of our weights.”
“Okay, but what about after we’ve been in bed?”
“What about it?”
“Why don’t you ever hold me? Why don’t we talk? Is it me?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about how you just lay there, staring at the ceiling.”
“You roll over and go to sleep.”
“I’m not sleeping, Donny,” Shelley said. Her voice dropped to almost a whisper. “I’m waiting for you to snuggle me but you don’t even touch me.” Her eyes came up to meet his. “What’s the matter? Do I make you feel bad? Do I make you feel dirty?”
Donny fell to his knees. He put his hands on her legs. “No.”
“You don’t think I’m good enough for you, do you?”
‘Just the opposite,’ he thought. Instead, he shook his head.
“Then what is it?”
“Sometimes I can’t understand why a woman as beautiful as you wants to be with a man as lousy as me.”
“You’re not lousy.”
“I look at guys like Frank and I think ‘Why isn’t she with someone like him?’ Why are you with me? Is it the money I got from my dad? There isn’t a lot. There’s enough, but not tons.”
“It’s not the money.”
“Then what is it about me? What do you see in me?”
Shelley stood up. She folded her arms over her chest and leaned back on the narrow strip of wall next to the open window. “You make me smile. You make me laugh. That’s more important to me than anything Frank has given me.”
Donny’s heart turned to ice. “What has Frank given you?”
Shelley shifted uncomfortably. “What do you mean?” She looked back out the window and sucked her lower lip under her top lip.
“You said ‘more than anything Frank has given me.’ What did he give you?”
“Nothing.”
Donny got up from his trunk. “Did you hook up with him?”
“Even if I did, it was before you.”
“But you slept with him.”
“And you haven’t slept with anyone else before me?”
“No.” His answer hung like a lazy curve ball. “Have you slept with him since?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why did you bring him here?”
“I told you. I knew you were moving stuff in here today and I thought he could help.”
“So you thought it would be a good idea to bring a guy you once had relations with to help a guy you’re having relationships with now?”
“I didn’t think it would be that big a deal.” Shelley took a step away from him. “We both know Frank from class.”
“You’re right about one thing, Shelley,” Donny said. He caught her arm. “You didn’t think.” He tugged on her arm but she pulled it free. She caught her heel on the edge of the trunk and lost her balance. As improbable as it seemed, the force of his yank and the angle at which she stumbled backwards sent her out the open window.
Donny leaned out even as brakes squealed below. He never saw her laying there on the concrete because the flatbed truck screeching to a halt covered her.
He heard knocking. Donny looked at the two closed doors. He assumed it was Frank returning with the beer; but, then again, maybe it was one of the ghosts who lived below him. Maybe someone had heard the argument, saw Shelley falling past his or hers own back windows. Whoever it was would want answers. Donny wasn’t good at answers. He’d barely been able to give any about his own father’s mysterious death.
The knocking became pounding.
He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his keys. There was a small gold one he clutched as he once again dropped to his knees. The knocking continued. He undid the hinge lock and then quickly undid the snap latches. He raised the lid of the trunk. It would be tighter now that he was an adult, but he could still squeeze himself inside if he removed the tub sized lower drawer. He pulled the green paisley case out of its housing and squeezed his knees down into the space. He leaned forward and reached behind him, catching the same green paisley colored drape of the wardrobe and pulled the lid down on top of him.
He remembered there was no way to lock the trunk from the inside, but he didn’t really need it to lock to do its job. All he needed the trunk to do was to fly him away like it had when he was a kid, when his dad drank and his mom yelled, when his world shook at its core.
“Fly away, trunk, fly away,” Donny said. The pounding on the door of his apartment became the pounding of his heart. “Fly me away.”
He closed his eyes and waited but like his life, the trunk never got off the ground.
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