Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #51: Ethical Sorcery: "Avenging Earth"

The question of ethics is one that often takes odd directions. In C. S. Lewis' novel That Hideous Strength, he has a character he calls an "honest thief." This is a man who steals, knows stealing is wrong, does it, gets caught, and is ready to take the punishment for what he did; unfortunately, he is taken from jail to an organization that does not value human life, has no ethical base, and is willing to exploit and brutalize human beings (he is going to be used for medical experiments). Lewis is making the point that a thief who does something he senses is wrong but does it anyway to serve necessity or just because he decides to disregard the law, is better than an organization that has no sense of what is moral or ethical—that operates devoid of human decency and traditional ideas of right and wrong.

My story, "Avenging Earth" explores this same sort of question. It centers on two of my ongoing characters, Kathy Farisi and Alessia Bernini. The latter is a streg, a witch who practices "natural magic," magic that does not derive its power from evil but from nature and from traditions passed on from practitioner to practitioner from the Middle Ages on. Alessia and Kathy have become friends, though Kathy, recovering from an adulterous affair that broke up her best friend's marriage and damaged her life as well, is often censorious of Alessia and critical of her use of magic. At one point in this particular story, she castigates Alessia for using magic that caused a woman to suffer. Still, they maintain their sometimes shaky friendship.

Alessia Bernini, streg

Alessia finds Kathy at church. She has come to pray for a fifteen year-old girl named Alana, who has been blinded and has lost both her parents in a terrorist bombing. The terrorist is not a member of Al Qaeda or ISIS but is an eco-terrorist named Corey Allen. Allen bombed the home office of Paul Fusco's construction company because they were beginning to develop an area of land that Allen did not want to see developed. His wife and daughter happened to be visiting when the blast went off. Only the daughter survived but with the loss of her eyesight. While Kathy is praying, Alessia slides in beside her. They pray together and then Alessia says she needs Kathy's
help and wants to meet with her later in the day.

She finds out what her streg friend wants. Mr. Corsi, the head of the local Mafia, has paid Alessia a large sum of money to find Allen and to punish him for what he has done. (Fusco and Corsi were related, though Fusco was not involved in organized crime). Kathy has called together some of her friends to assist her in the ceremony she must go through to locate Allen, who knows no magic but who has power from his association with the earth and his innate grasp of its natural force. Kathy agrees. The ceremony frightens her and the other three friends. Alessia is battered by what she encounters but survives the ordeal, is able to locate Allen and give his location to the Mafia. Kathy asks if they will kill him. Alessia says he doesn't get off that easy.

Later, Alessia asks if Kathy will come with her as she does the spell that will be Allen's punishment. She agrees and watches with horror as Alessia casts her spell on him:

A transformation started at Allen's face and spread over his whole body, as if he had turned to dirt. For a second he looked ashy, like a mummy. Then his body broke apart and fell in a heap to the ground. Kathy gasped. Her heart felt as if it had stopped.

She heard a man’s scream.

The heap of dust into which Allen had collapsed resembled a human form. Suddenly the wind struck it, blow it into the air. Another scream rent the silence. She saw Corey Allen’s form, his face distinct in the swirling cloud of dust the wind blew violently into the water of the brook. After another pause, she saw a wave rise—a wave that bore Allen’s horrified, astonished likeness a second or two. She heard more screaming as the wave dissolved into the streambed.

Corsi says he is satisfied and asks if Allen will stay in this state of disembodiment and pain. Alessia tells him he will "as long as earth endures." Corsi is satisfied and goes his way. Alessia begins to sob. She has done justice. But to condemn a man to an earthly hell, where he will be transformed to elements and incessantly torn apart and assembled in other forms to be torn apart again, is something from Dante's Inferno. She asks Kathy to carry the suitcase full of money she has been paid for the job, and Kathy agrees. As they walk off to Alessia's car, they hear screaming from the wood. Alessia is crying. Kathy understands why her friend needs her, why she wanted her to come along. Doing what is right is sometimes wrong—or painful—or both at the same time.

The story appeared in a magazine called The Edge of Propinquity. It has an archive but says my story is missing, unfortunately.

A great story that is not missing is my novella Le Cafe de la Mort. You were astonished to find out your lover is the Angel of Death; more so when you find out she has been sent to Gehenna for violating angelic law; but even more when you are told you are the only one who can free her. 

 

For more titles, visit my Writer's Page.

 

I would love to hear your comments.

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #50: "Bambukos"

Nostalgia is everybody's oyster. We all love to open it up and taste it and will go to considerable expense to get it. We got to old places:  the school where so many memories lodge; the old neighborhood and the house in which we grew up; or, remembering an old girlfriend like the narrator of the song Del Shannon wrote for Peter and Gordon,"I go to places we used to go / But I know she'll never show." Nostalgia claims all of us, but being nostalgic has to do with being human. We remember and we compare the past with the future. We learn about ourselves by looking at what we were in a certain place at a certain time and comparing that with what we are now and how, in the same place once more, we fit or don't fit into what we were back then.

My story "Bambukos" is just about this. It was the first story about my ongoing character, Sossity Chandler, I had written in a long time, and it related to the experience of going back to where you had once been and reliving memories. Years earlier, when Sossity drove from town to town playing one night stands, barely making enough money to get by, despairing that success had eluded her for so many years, she pulls in a rust-belt town in Ohio to play a gig for $100.00 at a downtown bar called Bambukos.

Things are bad. The heartbreaking tragedy of the last decade of the Twentieth Century had affected the town:  industry had moved out, people had left, storefronts were boarded up, and the town seemed to be dying. Sossity pulls in and goes into the bar. She meets the owner, who gives her a free meal and tells her a little bit about how bad things are there. And he hits on her—a thing she is so used to that she doesn't get angry (it's all in a day's work, she thinks). When she goes out to start her car, it won't start. The owner of the bar, Howard Jodry calls a customer out who says it sounds like her alternator is gone and says it will probably cost her $200.00. Sossity almost cries. She can't afford a car repair payment. She has the money, on her but the expense will clean her out and she does not like to be without at least a little cash to fall back on.

She plays the show and, as often occurs, something magic happens. She wants to begin with a rousing number, but one look at the crowd tells her the people in the town are hurting because of the economic downturn. They seem weary and hopeless. Rather than her usual rollicking opening piece, she performs the old Dire Straits song, "Why Worry?" It hits home. People appreciate it. Couples hold hands and snuggle up. Some people weep. She goes on to gear the show to meet the emotional needs of the crowd. Even though they are strapped for money, they give tips and ask Jodry if Sossity can play another show tomorrow tonight. She agrees. Jodry also tells her that he has arranged for her car to be towed and fixed by a man who looked at it, who "drinks a bit" and owes him money. He offers to pay for the repairs. This exchange takes place: 

I don’t think I want to you do that, Howard. I’ve got the money. I’ll settle up.” 

"I’m throwing it in as bonus—part of your pay for playing. You really hit it with my   crowd—a lot of my regulars—and we’re looking for an even bigger crowd tonight. People stayed and they bought drinks and even more people will be here tomorrow. So I’m making money off of this.” 

“I think you know why I don’t want you doing me a lot of expensive favors.”

“You think I’ll expect you to return them?” 

"Something like that.” 

"That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

“Exactly? What do you have in mind?”

He tells her she is pretty and he would like to sleep with her, but assures her that is not part of the packet. Sossity plays the second show. The place is packed to capacity and the result is the same. People thank her and say her singing comforted them and gave them hope. She makes more tips. Her car is fixed. In the end, because he is open and attractive, she does end up staying with Jodry. Then she goes back on the road.

Sossity thinks about this twelve years later as she, now a superstar, prepares to play a gig in the city, which has recovered economically. She asks  if there is still a bar in town called Bambukos. There is,  but it's not a bar, it's one of the most exclusive nightclubs in the area. She goes to visit and finds a casino-like, opulent. building. And Howard Jodry still owns it. She also gets an email that a group of people who remember her performance from 12 years ago would like to see her at Bambukos.

Sossity Chandler

The people thank her and tell her she gave them hope and a gleam of happiness when they were so down and out. And they have had a guitar made for her. She enjoys talking and visiting with them. The only one who seemed uncomfortable is Jodry. She later finds out he is running for mayor and is afraid of her talking about their one-time liaison. He is also remarried and doesn't want his new wife find out he and Sossity were sexually intimate so many years ago. She smiles and agrees not to tell. And, for the assembled crowd, she once again does "Why Worry?"

The story touches on how the past shapes the present, but the present reinterprets and clarifies the past.  It also is about the magic music can give. People listen to music for entertainment, but also for hope, for comfort, for assurance there is beauty and justice—at least a little bit—in life and the music's charm it is an expression of this. And of magic.

"Bambukos: was published by Amarillo Bay and is still available on line. Read it here. I say this too much, but it is a very good story and worth the read. An early story, it still has the power of a new writer exploring.

Le Cafe de la Mort tells the story of Angela, who is the Angel of Death, anguished over her role as the one who killed the firstborn of Egypt. And she is in love with a mortal. When she is confined to Gehenna for violating angelic law only her mortal boyfriend can free her. It's formidable task. Get a copy for some great reading.

I would love to hear your comments.

For more titles, see my Writer's Page.

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #49: "Judy in Disguise"

 I am a musician. I play guitar and perform locally, doing blues and Celtic. I am also a writer who writes stories about music. But there are often misconceptions and misunderstandings of songs. Urban legends build up about them. Most everyone has heard that Peter, Paul and Mary's hit song, "Puff, the Magic Dragon," is about smoking marijuana. I mean, after all, the Dragon's name is Puff, and the little boy in the song is "Jackie Paper." I remember a friend telling me the group was "stoned on marijuana," when they wrote it. Turns out, they did not write the lyrics at all. They were written by a Cornell University student named Leonard Lipton and based on a poem by Ogden Nash titled "Custard the Dragon." It had nothing to do with marijuana.

The number that inspired my story "Judy in Disguise" had a similar history of misinterpretation. I had read that it was a song about college students being recruited by the FBI to spy on radical campus organizations. The lyrics seemed to suggest as much:

Judy in disguise, well, that's what you are
                                                Lemonade pie with a brand new car
                                                Cantaloupe eyes, come to me tonight
                                                Judy in disguise with glasses

The girl in the song is "in disguise," she has a brand new car. She is working for the FBI and they are paying her so she's bought a new car. The only trouble, this is not what the song is about. It was written as a sort of non-sense song. John Fred, the main author, said he was in the shower, heard the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," and thought it was "Judy in disguise with diamonds." When he learned the right lyrics, he wrote a song based on his misinterpretation. It was a hit—but, alas, what are called "novelty songs" usually make groups into one-hit wonders (e.g., "What the Fox Said") and so it was with John Fred and the Playboy Band, which was too bad because they were good musicians. But the bogus interpretation persisted and led me to write a story about the song.

Samuel Blachoviac, the main character, has been on the run ever since he became involved in radical politics during his student days in the 1960s. In the course of his adventures, he comes across Julissa Mason. In their students days they had dated, done drugs together, practiced "free love," and argued politics. She was conservative and did not buy his radical mindset; from a poor home, she did not romanticise the poor or poverty and wanted to get free of it by graduating to a high-paying job. She did not believe in revolution.

When Fiona, one of Samuel's radical friends, tells Julissa of their plot to burn down the ROTC building, she tells the police. Fiona, Tom (another radical friend) and Samuel move the date up and are able to burn the building, but Samuel's two friends are apprehended and he becomes a fugitive. When two cops corner him in Texas, he throws a hand grenade an SDS radical gave him to scare them away and ends up killing them both.

Julissa

He spends the next forty years of his life running and hiding, moving from place to place and from job to job. When he lands a job in Indiana, he sees a picture of Julissa in the newspaper. She runs a business in a near-by city. He resolves to kill her for ruining his life and the lives of Fiona and Tom, both of whom had come to bad ends and died young as a result of being arrested and imprisoned. 

He locates Julissa, tells her why he is going to kill her, and points a gun at her but never gets to fire it. With a lightning move, she knocks him out. He wakes up handcuffed. The police are present to take him away. It turns out Julissa liked working for the FBI so much she eventually became an agent. Finding him had been a lifelong project and, after all these years, she had got a tip on him, set up the business as a trap to make him come after her, and finally got her man. In the last scene, he is hauled off in a police car. The radio is not playing "Judy in Disguise," but he knows that soon, somewhere, he will eventually hear it.

The story was published in Issue #2 of Bête Noire, a journal which is still being published. An editor from another journal who rejected it said it was too predictable. Obviously, not everyone thought so, but I would agree it is not one of my very best stories. Still, it appealed enough to get in print. You can read it and decide on its quality for yourself. It is only available in print, no online copies, but you can still buy the journal for some excellent reading, "Judy in Disguise"

Songs, even if they are misinterpreted, and sometimes because they are, make for great narrative tales.

I would love to hear your comments and receive your feedback. Have you ever misinterpreted a song and gone for years and years thinking the lyrics said this when actually they said that? I had a friend who thought "Strawberry Fields Forever" was "Strawberry Beatles Florescent." 

This month I am promoting my novella Le Cafe de la Mort. Coffee to Die for served up by the Angel of Death. But even Angels get in trouble. When they do, who will rescue them? It will take an Orpheus to get one out of hell, but if you love her enough, you're willing to undertake the journey.

Happy Reading!