Open a Vein

Our Trip to the Super Bowl…Village

2012-02-04T22:59:00.000-08:00

February 2, 2012
It’s strange to walk down the middle of the downtown streets I’ve known all my life, streets that normally see the most traffic of the city. Familiar landmarks are still there, but look completely different due to the Super Bowl decorations and temporary structures. We can stand in the middle of Pennsylvania Street, in front of Conseco—er, Banker’s Life Fieldhouse. We can hover around the Old Spaghetti Factory on Meridian. It all feels very surreal.

A young father pushing a stroller with twins in it points to a Madonna banner. “Look, girls! Madonna is going to sing at the game!” He gets two yawns. Phineas and Ferb maybe. Or iCarly. Now, that might excite them.

A hulking black man in a brown work jumpsuit is handing out CDs, accompanied by a band mate with a canvas bag crammed full of CDs slung over his shoulder. Very shrewd. Here is an international, moneyed audience that just might take the CD back to the hotel and pop it in for a listen. It made me think we could take advantage of the annual event held in Speedway and pass out true crime CDs to crowds at the track. “Interested in local history? Would you like to learn about Indy’s first serial killer?” Hmmm, maybe not.

Further on an official helper in the familiar blue-and-white scarf is answering questions and distributing fan guides while a gray-haired woman nearby hands out fliers. It turns out she wants to save my soul, not help me locate restrooms. Also a very shrewd move, staying within the distribution-perimeter of an official worker—she appears to be sanctioned and gets spill-over protection from the security guard standing close by. The proselytizers always show up at big events like this. If you go to Georgetown Road the night before the 500, you will encounter a young man bearing a full-sized cross trudging up and down between 25th and 16th Streets, begging you to repent your sins.

An older gentleman with a guitar and harmonica takes the stage on Meridian St. With uncut gray hair, flannel shirt and old jeans, he looks like a relative of actor Steve Railsback. The crowd of young people with babies is unsure what to make of him, especially when he launches into a strange rendition of “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In).” His next song is an original one, he says after finishing to scattered applause, but we don’t wait for it. No need. He’s on the big screen TVs everywhere you turn in the Village.

About a hundred people are standing in front of a shoe store. What event is this? Is it free? Soon the crowd surges forward and a hundred cell phones are raised high. Is it one of the Mannings? Tom Brady? No, it’s the Mile-High Messiah. Tim Tebow and his entourage walk quickly away from the crowd. No autographing Bibles today.

A series of screams makes us turn to the west. It’s the zip line. The screamer is a young man hanging upside down the whole way. People stand in line for as long as 8 hours to be hauled 800 feet 96 feet above the street. T-shirted young men in a tower pull the lines quickly hand-over-hand. Wait a minute. A girl is stuck on line #3, close to the tower at the end of the line. A worker gears up and climbs out to her. He rigs up a tether line, then monkey crawls back to the tower. As the workers haul her in she waves to the crowd below. “It was fantastic!” she burbles to her rescuer. Ah, it’s a meet-cute, not a lawsuit. Good for him.

People everywhere are sneaking cigarettes. My favorite is the girl in the pink trench coat nervously smoking one in an alley on Monument Circle. Who is she hiding from? Or is she anxious about a rendezvous? She looks like a spy in her trench coat (although it is a memorable shocking pink), hair in a French roll, dark eye shadow, miniskirt, and heels. What kind of intrigue is going on in Indy this weekend? The passing of international secrets? Scientific formulae? Dr. Who plots?

I am amazed at the number of young parents with babies. Well, you got to start them early, like Archie Manning did. No babysitter available? Or they’ll get one later, at the hotel, before they go out for the evening. Or maybe this is a family outing. We used to take Eoin everywhere with us, too. A little boy throwing a temper tantrum in front of the King Cole Building makes me smile, too. Been there, done that.

John asks if I want to see a taping of Jimmy Fallon—there’s a crowd in front of the Circle Theatre waiting for tickets. Naw, that’s OK, I tell him, we’ll just tape the show tonight. Meanwhile a small jet keeps buzzing Monument Circle. Is it an AWAC sentry? What’s going on? Is there a threat? It’s circled over a dozen times now but other people don’t seem to notice it. We duck into Arby’s for lunch, cross our fingers it doesn’t crash nearby, and call it a day.

Designated Un-Birthday?

2011-11-27T23:22:00.000-08:00

November 28th is not a likely candidate for “favorite day of the year.” It’s never Thanksgiving Day (the closest it can ever get is the Saturday after) and the post-holiday let-down has settled in like the leaden dark meat making its slow trek through your lower intestines. You spent the holiday with relatives you can’t stand and the ones you wanted to call, didn’t. You were forced to go to the mall when all you wanted to do was watch football and then the teams you had money on lost.

All the leaves are down and sitting sodden on the lawn, there are less than four weeks until Christmas and you haven’t started shopping yet for anyone, New Year’s is less than five weeks away and you realize you kept none of your resolutions—again.

So what’s to get excited about? Sure, the holiday is over. But sometimes getting back to the grind is a relief. It feels “normal,” not like the four-Sundays-in-a-row the Thanksgiving weekend feels like.

The turkey is down to the bone. Now you can go back to eating “normal food” (Taco Bell, McDonald’s, etc.) and forego consuming Turkey Day leftovers out of “prosperity guilt.”

All right, you had to put up with Uncle Huck. But wasn’t he impressed with your story about seeing the guy from “How I Met Your Mother” buying furniture at Sam’s Club? And sure, you forced a smile while choking down Aunt Hattie’s tomato aspic salad—but was there not some satisfaction in watching her dip chip after chip in your homemade humus? She doesn’t have to know what’s in it.

Yes, the leaves are all on the ground. Let ’em stay there. Let ‘em soak up snow and ice and rain and make good compost as they break down come warm weather. The lawn will be all the better for it. And as for Christmas coming in less than four weeks—that means you have twenty-six days before you simply must start your shopping. You can worry about those resolutions on Dec. 31st. (They’re the same every year, anyway.)

The best that can be said for Nov. 28th is, it’s probably your un-birthday. Unless you’re Jon Stewart or Judd Nelson or Berry Gordy, Jr. (turning 49, 52, and 82, respectively.) Or Ed Harris (61) or Randy Newman (68). Or Friedrich Engels Engels (191). It’s the 47th anniversary of the Shangri-La’s “Leader of the Pack” hitting #1 and the 17th of Jeffrey Dahmer getting killed in prison. Willie Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway were married 429 years ago today. I keep track of these things and send such trivia along with a few quotes and jokes to various and sundry people every Monday to start the week off with a smile. If you’d like me to include you in this nonsense, leave your email address at http://www.3amblue.com/contact.html. Enjoy

Cabbages and Kings

2011-03-26T20:24:00.000-07:00

Cabbages and Kings - a new story by Flo

You Can Tell a Book By Its Cover—sort of

2011-03-04T22:52:00.000-08:00

Bookstore browsing was a family affair for us—Eoin would wander the entire store, not just the children’s section, I’d aim for the True Crime shelves, and John would scour technical books and psychology tomes. Once surrounded by books about serial killers, mass murderers, mad bombers, and assassins, I’d blissfully spend a half hour scanning volumes until I found one I just had to add to my collection. I didn’t realize it but I would skip over any that did not have red and black in the cover. If pressed to put my unconscious thoughts into words, I would say: “Where’s the blood?”

Pretty shallow, right?

But perhaps my prejudice isn’t so irrational. Because, despite the old adage, you can determine a lot about a book from its appearance. Publishers work with psychologists and market-study companies to design books that appeal to a specific audience. They know that after years of reading, shopping for, and assessing books, you, the reader, can tell almost at a glance if you’re interested in a specific volume or not. Various factors of a book’s design register with you and steer you unconsciously toward or away from it.

Is it hardback or paperback? A paperback may fall more within your target price range, but a hardback implies there’s something inside to recommend it; after all, the publisher thinks she can make a profit on it, expensive as it is. Check the clearance table for older hardbacks, and track the release dates of your wish list in paperback.

What size is it? 11.5x18, 8.5x11, 6x9? A 3.75x5 silly joke book may be just what you’re looking for, but any art book that does justice to its contents should be at least 8x10. Note the spines as you walk around: skinny or thick? Small size and a thin spine may indicate the publisher is trying to get away with skimpy content (particularly if the cover is thick). To get your money’s worth you expect a paperback novel to be at least 4x6, to be printed in a font size of not less than 10 and not more than 12, the print to fill up the pages, and a length of at least 200 pages.

What’s the color scheme? You won’t often find multiple, bright colors on the cover of a classic, a law reference, or a volume of serious poetry. A jacket with pink dominating indicates “For girls only.” As noted, crime fans look for a color-message that conveys: “There’s blood in here!”

Do the fonts appeal to you? You are not going to consider a title in screaming bold if you want an old-fashioned romance novel, and a hard-boiled detective fan is not going to pick up one in elaborate script imposed on a scene of muted colors.

All this data registers with you and influences your window-shopping selections before you are even close enough to read the actual titles. And once you do see the title, author, and publisher—

Does the name of the book pique your interest? Does it give a fair indication of what’s inside?

Is the writer someone you’re familiar with? One of your favorites? (I take a “Got it, need it” list for the very prolific Christie, Francis, and Sanders when I go mystery shopping to avoid buying duplicates.) Or do you want to take a chance on a “new” (to you) writer, perhaps someone recommended by a favorable reviewer or a friend? (Fair warning: when the author’s name is bigger than the title of the book, the publisher is counting on the author as a name brand to sell the book regardless of the quality of the content inside.)

What’s the publisher? Does it have a good track record?

Then, finally, another look at the cover–is it appropriate to the presumed content? A size-color scheme-font-content mismatch indicates the publisher is confused about what the book is, and results in no sale.

All this happens before you even look at the blurbs, back jacket, flaps or inside back cover, flip through the pages, scan review excerpts, or read a random passage!

I didn’t realize I was prejudiced against true crimes that did not sport red and black covers until one afternoon John showed me a volume with an orange and blue jacket he pulled from my favorite section. Pffffft. How could it be a valid true crime book? I thought. (Where’s the blood?) I took a look anyway. It was Never Let Them See You Cry by Edna Buchanan, a compilation of stories from her days as a crime beat reporter in Miami. It turned out to be a terrific read. (And the orange and blue colors on the cover are very appropriate for a book about Miami, as any fan of “CSI: Miami” can attest.)

Just as sneaking a peek at the ending of Cujo before I was halfway through cured me of that practice, I no longer dismiss a book out of hand because the cover “feels” inappropriate. (If I did, I would have missed Buchanan’s next book, Nobody Lives Forever, with its purple and green cover—another good read.)

Publishers are very aware of what resonates with you as a reader even before you discover what a book is about. Next time you’re browsing, notice your own reactions to what influences you to consider one book and not another. You may have to set them aside to find a gem.

Tales of a Woman Scorned

2011-01-02T00:22:00.000-08:00

"Fidelity" by Ash Krafton
"Saving Alice - The Brotherhood" by Neil E. Leckman
"Maggie's Wedding" by Nandy Ekle
"The Thing About Hate" by Flo Stanton
"Don't Speak" by Charlotte E. Gledson
"Scorched" by Nate Burleigh
"Blood Will Tell" by Ken L. Jones
"Model Behaviour" by David Bernstein
"Fairytale" by Christopher Hivner
"Eat Your Heart Out Lorena" by Nathan Robinson
"Deer Gap" by Thomas M. Malafraina
"Popsicle for Emmy" by Terrie Leigh Relf
"Red Riding Hood Bites" by A. E. Churchyard
"Gargulax" by John C. Lewis
"Sex, Lies and Death" by S. E. Cox
"Prince of Tortured Hearts" by Kimberly Graham

Interior artwork by John Stanton

Buy a copy here

The Best Present of All

2010-12-14T19:28:00.000-08:00

Cranky shoppers—including John and me—crowded the mega store. At the point we could not fit one more packet of gravy mix in the cart and were debating what Christmas carol the muzak was playing (I still say it was “Up on the Housetop”) we finally admitted we needed a break and sat down with sodas at a table in the deli. After a few minutes I started telling John about a story I was writing for an anthology. I was pretty happy with it but was worried he’d think the whole idea was silly (a sculptor becomes obsessed with releasing a beautiful woman from a ton of stone) and still wasn’t sure about the ending.

I needn’t have worried. He thought the premise was solid and even contributed an alternate ending that the editor eventually chose. (John’s a terrific writer himself and has that much-pursued and rarely discovered ability to bring out the story a writer really aches to tell.)

In the middle of the store, in the unforgiving heart of the Christmas crunch (only twelve shopping days left!), we sat next to our cart full of groceries and talked story. The ice cream was melting, the turkey thawing, the mac ‘n cheese from the deli cooling down. Supplies for baking twelve dozen cookies and a half-dozen loaves of bread awaited checkout, too. So did a number of gifts that needed immediate wrapping and mailing. But there we sat, happily oblivious to all the noise, twinkling lights, and sweaty, smelly, hustling and bustling workers and shoppers, talking story. We sat there for a half hour. It was wonderful.

Over the next couple of weeks, despite the baking, shopping, wrapping, mailing, delivering, cleaning, cooking and socializing demands of the holidays, John helped me carve out writing time and I finished the story by the deadline of December 31st. Traps came out the next year. I can’t remember what other presents I got for Christmas that year, but that thirty minutes John gave me in the deli is the one I remember.

That was three years ago. This year we found ourselves in the same mega store two weeks before Christmas, this time with two full carts (we’ve taken on shopping for John’s elderly mother), feeling a little overloaded from several hours of shopping. We went to the same deli and plopped down. Again, I started telling John about a creative idea that I wasn’t sure about. I’ve been futzing around with several mysteries, all with solid plots and good characters but missing that essential element that grabs the reader and propels him onward.

I thought perhaps I’d chosen the wrong narrator and proposed the idea of using myself as a model for one. Would an interested bystander based on myself who observes and reports on the action around her be viable? He warmed to the idea and suggested I try it. “See what happens,” he advised. I’m excited about it, especially in view of the good luck that came my way three years ago after talking story in the same spot. (I knock on wood, won’t pass salt directly to the person who asks for it, and avoid walking under ladders, too.) But I think the magic will hold because it comes from the love and support of a very honest and true partner—the story he encouraged me to start today will be done soon.

Talk is Cheap

2010-11-27T20:14:00.000-08:00

I collect aphorisms. From time to time I’ll post my favorites here.

Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand.

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that when you bore people, they think it’s their fault.—Henry Kissinger

Two kinds of people fail—those who listen to nobody, and those who listen to everybody.

Take your choice: Talk about others and you’re a gossip. Talk about yourself and you’re a bore.

When you hear a simple idea expressed in a complicated manner, you should know that you‘re talking to an expert.

A mistake at least proves somebody stopped talking long enough to do something.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who prefer to say what they think, and those who prefer to keep their friends.

Never argue with a fool; he may be doing the same.

Blessed are they who really have nothing to say and cannot be convinced to say it.

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.—W. Somerset Maugham

It’s All About the Madeleines

2010-10-03T02:25:00.000-07:00

The great editor Maxwell Perkins once wrote, “Anybody can find out if he is a writer. If he were a writer, when he tried to write of some particular day, he would find in the effort that he could recall exactly how the light fell and how the temperature felt, and all the quality of it. Most people cannot do it. If they can do it, they may never be successful in a pecuniary sense, but that ability is at the bottom of writing, I am sure.”

When I recently came across this quote, what immediately leapt to mind was Proust’s wonderful “episode of the madeleines.” In A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, the narrator is offered some tea by his mother. He accepts, which is not his custom. She sends out for some cakes, or madeleines, and he soaks one in a spoonful of tea. “No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses… with no suggestion of its origin.”

Marcel revels in the feeling the tea has provoked and marvels at its clarity and intensity but “cannot interpret” it. He wonders if he can pinpoint the cause of this “all-powerful joy”—his ruminations on the very process of self-examination will fascinate anyone inclined to introspection—and attempts to track it down. He takes another sip hoping “the magnetism of an identical moment” will bring to mind the source he is certain is locked in his unconscious, but tasting it again causes the experience to lose some of its magic. He puts himself in the exact moment of drinking that first sip but is unable “to follow and recapture once again the fleeting sensation.” After clearing his head he conjures that first taste again. He feels something stir but no definite associations arise. Only after ten tries does he recall the event associated with the taste—morning tea with his aunt as a child—and leaves for another time why this memory made him so happy.

We’re all born with the ability to perceive our reality on multiple, even infinite, levels. As children we whole-heartedly embrace every experience; as adults we often feel foolish doing so. But every experience is compound and multi-layered; there is a complex of thoughts and feelings associated with unbuttoning your shirt and locking your car door and stepping on an ant and holding your neighbor’s baby, let alone an event of any significance. All those sensory perceptions, emotional responses, and thought processes are felt and recorded. But we have to place value on them so we can experience them fully at the time, so we can study them to better understand our own processes, and so we can call them to memory. Proust writes, “the smell and taste of things remain poised… and bear unfaltering… the vast structure of recollection.”

I have a “tea” memory myself, although not as profound as Proust’s. It is late fall; it is not yet six o’clock but the lamppost across the street is already casting a pale pool of light onto the pavement. My sister two years older than me and I have been studying all afternoon in our rooms. Our mother calls us to take a break from our homework. She’ll spend a few minutes away from her chores, too. She’s fixed orange pekoe tea and laid out cinnamon crisps. The three of us sit at the kitchen table and munch on the crisps and sip our tea and chat about our day and what the neighbors are up to. The pressure cooker on the stove whistles merrily; when the potatoes are done Mom will add milk and butter and whip it all up into creamy potato-y goodness and my sister and I will clear the crumbs off the table and set out the silverware for dinner. But for now we just sit and sip and talk idly about nothing. Those “nothing happened” times make the best memories…

To this day, the smell of orange pekoe tea—even the phrase “orange pekoe tea”—triggers the taste of the tea and cinnamon crisps and the memory of those long ago days, and once again I feel the warmth of those autumn afternoons with my sister and mother.

We writers notice everything. We are writing, in our heads, an experience even as we live it. Like Snoopy describing eating his own dinner (“the famous WWI flying ace attacks his bowl of dog food”), we mentally chronicle the events of our lives for general life-logging purposes, for inspiration, and for later use in conversation or story. We regard the whole of our lives as fodder for our Art, and easily recall “exactly how the light fell and how the temperature felt, and all the quality of it.” It’s what creative people do, what we must do. It’s all about the madeleines.

Story as Magic

2010-08-21T19:53:00.000-07:00

One of the neatest aspects of a story is that it exists in the present. When you tell a friend about a story you very much enjoyed, one that pulled you in and kept you there, you say, “It is really good.” You use the present tense. The story is not over. It’s never over. As I write this, Sherlock Holmes and Watson are racing down the Thames, Margot Macomber is ending the short happy life of her husband, the good aldermen of Jefferson are staring at the single strand of iron gray hair on the bed in Miss Emily’s house, and Mme. Loisel is discovering she and her husband suffered years in poverty paying for a fake necklace.

The action is still happening—it occurred as you were reading it, it is happening as someone on the other side of the planet is reading it at this moment, it will take place for someone one hundred years from now. It’s like time travel, or the telepathy Stephen King writes about. He very purposefully described a rabbit in a cage with the numeral “8” on its back in Maine in 1997 and I visualize it today, August 21, 2010, in Indianapolis. And you saw it, too, just now, on whatever day it is for you, wherever you happen to be. How cool is that?

That brings us to the dual action of a story—there is what happens in the story to the characters and there is what happens inside us as we read it. I refer not to the internal emotions we feel—and that are often the author’s primary purpose in writing it—as the story moves along. I mean the action that takes place in our imaginations. Our neurons are firing like crazy as we create each scene in our minds. We are recreating what the author already built in his own head, yes, but we are creating every scene, too, with fresh energy and purpose every time we read a favorite story. And when we clue in a friend that “this is a good read,” she can pick up the story and enjoy the same experience we did—Holmes racing, Margot Macomber shooting, aldermen gaping, Mme. Loisel paying a huge price for her pride. It’s telepathy, it’s time travel. It is magic.

The Book of Tentacles Review

2010-04-10T13:02:00.000-07:00

The Book of Tentacles (Sam’s Dot Publishing, 2010) is a delightful genre-crossing mix of bizarre and wonderful tales and poems. You’ll find Kraken and Cthulu, soul-sucking air monsters, creeping vines, vengeful octopi, sexy cephalopods, spineless lovers, fertile aliens, and hungry denizens of land, sea, air—and underground. They are horrific and wondrous, beautiful and dangerous, monstrous and eerie.

In his introduction editor Scott Virtes writes, “We haven’t gone out of our way to make it weird or different or artsy. “Weird” just comes naturally to us.” And coeditor Edward Cox explains in his Outro, “Not only were we able to accept the choicest of cuts, but also search for diversity and ensure this anthology had the broadest range of possibilities imaginable.” The editors make good on all claims, and each entry is noteworthy.

Cthulu shows up—in court. Matthew Bey’s “Call of the Bailiff” is full of marvelous turns of phrase as the Old One battles CPS for custody of his offspring—never pretty, especially with a formless blob for a character witness. Also, Keyan Bowes delivers a lovely telling of the Kraken myth in “Blood Amber.”

Tentacled creatures inhabit the world beneath us, too. In “The Signal” by Aurelio Rico Lopez III, codebreakers discover Armageddon releases real monsters. In editor Virtes’s “P6 Is Burning” a young lady faces a car-eating monster in a parking garage on her way to a job interview—but it may end up being the hardest job she’ll ever love. A Scotsman protecting his land from trespassers in “A Ferrylouper at Stenness” accidentally summons a creature from the depths of the earth that “pushed his waking mind to the very chasm between reason and madness.” Author Christopher M. Cevasco’s skillful wrap-around makes one doubt his tale is fiction.

Heroes abound in this collection. A stepfather finds the courage to face a tentacled monster in the basement—and human ones in the kitchen—in Terry Hickman’s “Jar of Peaches.” A sarcastic scribe and his charge battle a castle-climbing Kraken in Steve Gobel’s entertaining “The Temple of Squoad.” Wounded warriors hunt an oasis-draining giant crab in “One Big Drinker” by Billy Wong. In “Cascade,” a poem by Cathy Buburuz, an astronaut rescues and beds an alien damsel—with horrible consequences. And in Laura J. Underwood’s “A Quiet Neighborhood,” a new resident finds an unlikely benefactor beneath her feet.

Camille Alexa traces the origins of the term in her poem “A Lady’s Quick Reference Note on the Tentacle,” a charming accounting of all things tentacled. Other poems explore the themes of hunger and love, sometimes combing the two. The caged monster in Marge Simon’s “Lab Assistant” appears starved but is only very clever. In Terrie Leigh Relf’s “What did she know of love?” a blind girl is betrothed to a tentacled creature, and in Joshua Gage’s “Drosera” a fatal beauty lures a survivor of an apocalypse to a secret garden.

Invertebrates can be lousy lovers, as revealed in Clinton Lawrence’s flash “Low Life” and Brian Rosenberger’s poem “Mister Octopus Hands.” Mark Lee Pearson’s story “Hideki and the Giant Squid” concerns a squid in a gourmand’s digestive tract demanding to be reunited with its mate. Creepy. In Tyree Campbell’s “Slightly Pudgy Writer Seeks Foreign Entanglement,” a flirty cephalopod takes up residence with a writer, but when he tires of the relationship, she claims, “You don’t love me because I’m an alien!” Enchanting fun from this veteran author.

“The incompletion that brought one back from the dead” motivates a murder victim decomposing on the ocean floor in James S. Dorr’s “In the Octopus’s Garden.” Dorr uses his narrator’s inexact memory to weave a beautiful tale. Another sea-dwelling monster seeks revenge on a very human one in Carl Hose’s intense “Dead Wait.” In Rob Brooks’s “Taking Root” a snide mechanic meets a creepy fate from a vengeful tattoo artist. A unique format adds powerful meaning to “The Little Sea Maid,” a poem of retribution from Kendall Evans and Stephen M. Wilson.

In “Sucker Punch” by Mark Onspaugh, a mollusk-fearing physicist attempts to eliminate the species at a critical point in earth’s evolution. Horrible energy-sucking air monsters surround us, reveal Robert J. Santa’s “Professor Hilliard’s Electric Lantern” and Jim Ehmann’s “To See.” All three stories are notably poignant.

“Azure Doom” by William Blake Vogel III describes the eerie domain of an “awakening monstrosity.” David C. Kopaska-Merkel’s scary “The Anemone Garden” follows a nosy marine biologist, and in Kali Black’s haunting “Ink and Shadows,” a Watervoice pursues Ashcan Mary through the streets of an old city.

The poems “Long & black in the middle of the night” by Sharon Bray and “The Mantle of Power” by Matt Betts are delightful, as are the “Weird Sketches” by editor Virtes.

I highly recommend this “down-home tentacle revival.”

Flo Stanton is a writer in landlocked Indianapolis whose work has appeared in The Indianapolis Star, lit mags Literally and Castle Rock, the crime periodical True Police, the anthology Traps from DarkHart, and a miscellany of other print and online publications. Find out more about Flo and her writer-photographer husband John at www.3amblue.com. She received a free electronic version of this book for review.

Wild Books I Have Known

2010-03-15T01:02:00.000-07:00

Years ago I ran a mainframe for a mail-order pharmacy. Users felt free to call me or come to my office (sometimes run to it) for help with any type of hardware or software problem, but not many came by just to chat. So I was pleased when Annie, a newlywed accounts receivable clerk, started visiting. She was a quick study—I asked her to demonstrate new software to the other users—smart, and personable. Annie was extremely fast on data-entry and we missed her when she went on maternity leave. She would make a good assistant, I thought.

When Annie returned from giving birth to an adorable little girl, our talks resumed. We talked about babies, store gossip, computers, movies. I mentioned I was reading Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers one day. Annie said, “I wouldn’t have a book in my house.”

I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly. “You have no books in your house?” I said.

“Nope. I hate to read. We have a television, though.”

I stammered my way through the rest of the conversation and sat stunned after she left. I was well aware that many people cannot read, do not read, or cannot stand to read. But it was incredible to me that someone of such obvious intelligence chose not to read.

All thoughts of making her my assistant disappeared. Managing the information technology of the store demanded a lot of reading—and writing. Would she refuse to read the manuals lining the walls of my office? How would she learn to program if studying flowcharts and software libraries made her cringe? Could she write a quick how-to?

Soon after, the store manager chose an assistant for me, and although I didn’t chat as often with Annie, my thoughts sometimes turned to the little girl growing up in a household without books. Would Annie or her husband break down and purchase Where the Wild Things Are? Would her daughter be lulled to sleep by Annie’s soft voice reading Goodnight Moon or by a laugh track on an insipid sit-com?

I thought of all the books I treasured as a child. Before I could read. I was fortunate to have parents who valued books and reading and read to me every night. I could not imagine going to sleep without a story. Mother Goose. Little Golden Books. Beatrix Potter. Babar. I memorized them and spoke the words along with my mother as she read. I corrected my father if he skipped any pages. The books I loved someone to read to me became the first books I learned to read. Knowing them by heart helped me turn the ink on the pages into the words I loved to hear.

Receiving a book for a birthday or Christmas was wonderful and I remember them all. On the Banks of Plum Creek started a Laura Ingalls Wilder collection. The Mysterious Island led to a love of Jules Verne. I treasured a volume of Aesop’s Fables with its breath-taking plates. Books by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Grimm and Andersen. Even Johanna Spyri.

My parents kept books they received when they were children, lovingly inscribed from parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Thus I read early editions of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom and Lad: A Dog. A Wonder-Book and Tanglewood Tales and Wild Animals I Have Known. After five children they had accumulated a respectable library of children’s books and references. I read and reread the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Bobbsey Twins. Lands and Peoples, The Lincoln Library, and The Book of Knowledge were on our shelves, too.

Although the volumes are long gone to jumble sales, I can describe to this day their covers, the print on the page, how the books felt in my hands and how the pages felt as I turned them. Even how they smelled.

I lost touch with Annie after the store closed. I will presume her daughter grew to responsible adulthood, but if she never discovered the pleasure of reading, I can’t help thinking of the worlds she did not wander in the marvelous realm of her imagination, and the wonders of the real world she missed.

A Walk In The Fog

2010-01-23T01:32:00.000-08:00

Saturday night, two A.M.—a dense fog envelops our street. John steps out the front door and snaps time exposures of the swirling mist curling along the sidewalk and empty road. I think our trash bin at the curb is spoiling the shots and scurry out in my pajamas and slippers to move it. He continues taking pictures, including some of me pulling the trash bin up to the side of the house. Would I mind walking up the front lawn to the door and back down to the curb? How about strolling back and forth along the sidewalk a few times? A little bit faster. A little bit slower. A hundred shots later, he has what he wants—a ghostly figure, some thing, perhaps an alien being, out-of-synch with time and space, moving under a halo of light and mist from the corner streetlight set against the firm reality of tree, sidewalk, and roadway. Phenomenal.

The fog affects sounds, too. When John goes indoors to make his digital magic, I am the only ear-witness to an argument two streets over. A car door slamming down the block seems to come from our own driveway. Unsettling. The ambient noise of a party on the corner five houses away reaches me—soft music, laughter and cussing, the clinking and breaking of glass, the low murmur of conversation. The partiers are no louder than usual and would not be disturbing the calm of our quiet little street at all if not for the sound-bending properties of the fog. I cannot make out what the joke is that the girl with the velvet voice finds so funny, or why the man with the gravel in his throat abruptly shouts “Hey!” but because of the fog I share the warmth of her laughter, the surprise at his sudden outburst.

I notice more sounds because of the fog, too. The engineer of an early-morning train blasts through an intersection miles away and lays on the horn; usually we can’t hear this train here in suburbia, only when we’re at Eagle Creek stargazing. The displaced sound of a train through fog is different from the same sound skipped across the surface of the reservoir: the horn tonight is warmer, less melancholy. Planes from Stout Field start their nightly maneuvers, and their roar echoes closer to the ground this eerie morning.

I run into the house and grab coat, hat, gloves, and digital recorder and stand at the foot of our driveway hoping to catch all the sounds that normally stop much closer to their sources—the party down the street, the train miles away, the planes high overhead. John is also a “noisician,” manipulating audio layers as well as he does visual ones. His complex sound sculptures make fascinating listening, and I trust our professional-grade hand-held to capture some of the strange twists, turns, and curves of sound in fog. I am in luck—the sounds repeat for me, and I am an audience of one, a lone sentinel witnessing these ephemeral events.

The heightened audio awareness caused by the fog stimulates me as a writer. The noise-level of the party on the corner rises and falls in a natural rhythm and my imagination fills in words, plots, and relationships from the intonations I can’t completely decipher. Later the angry slam of the car door, the haunting loneliness of the late-train, even the perception-altering experience of listening in the fog itself will find their way into my stories.

At no time do I feel I’m in any danger, a woman in her pajamas standing by herself outdoors at two o’clock in the morning. The fog protects me from harm as well as discovery. I record for some forty-five minutes, and when the cold creeps into my toes I reluctantly leave my post for the warmth of indoors. With the fog swirling around me, morphing sight and sound into strange shapes and resonances, I am that blurry figure so eerily captured by the artist’s camera.

15 Movies That Stuck With Me

2009-09-03T21:25:00.000-07:00

The Asphalt Jungle
Citizen Kane
Witness for the Prosecution
The Bad Seed
Dressed to Kill (1946)
Night of the Hunter
Psycho
The Heiress
To Kill a Mockingbird
Suddenly, Last Summer
Dr. Strangelove
Lawrence of Arabia
Jaws
The Long Hot Summer
Adam’s Rib

Everybody loves surveys. Lately Facebook friends have been asking each other, “What movies stick with you? You have 15 minutes to come up with your top 15.” My friends’ lists are astonishingly different. I had no idea “Heidi” was Bec’s favorite movie, or that Drake was a big Dustin Hoffman fan—he’s put “Midnight Cowboy” and “Kramer vs. Kramer” on his top 15. But then I found out that “Heidi” was not at the top of Bec’s love- it-seen-it-a-hundred-times list. She just can’t forget the scene where Klara gets out of her chair and walks. And Drake being a fan of Dustin Hoffman? Not really. “Midnight Cowboy” was the first truly adult movie he saw, and “Kramer” came out when he was fighting his ex for custody of their children.

A movie sticks with you for a variety of reasons. It could be that it is visually stunning, like “Lawrence of Arabia.” Or a character like Boo Radley (and Robert Duvall’s performance) in “To Kill a Mockingbird” just won’t let go. Or you shudder every time you think of the look on Olivia deHaviland’s face as she walks up the stairs in “The Heiress.”

I see patterns in my list. Two-thirds are mysteries, and most involve violent crime. At least 11 were based on books or plays. Twelve are in black and white. I saw 14 out of the 15 as a child. I have good taste—most won or were nominated for Academy Awards.

Of all the original and striking aspects of “Citizen Kane”—directing, innovative camera action, cutting, translating such huge stage and radio talent to the screen, rich development of complicated characters—my favorite is Welles’s narrative choice. The way he chose to tell the story of Charles Foster Kane—stories within stories--is so much more than a series of flashbacks. The only movie that comes close to it is “Memento.” A faceless reporter goes on a quest to discover the meaning of a rich and powerful man’s last words. It’s a mystery that the people closest to Kane and the reporter himself never figure out. But the filmmaker gives us the answer. When Welles reveals the secret to us we feel an enormous sense of satisfaction because not only is the mystery solved for us, it is a secret we share with the story-teller.

When I first saw “The Asphalt Jungle” I prayed that gut-shot Dix, played by Sterling Hayden, would make it home to the bluegrass fields of Kentucky and I was sick to my stomach when he didn’t. This was probably the first time I was rooting for a hero, someone I’d come to care about even if he was a criminal, who didn’t win. This was a new experience for me. Did I make a poor moral choice? Why was I attracted to this character? A lot of questions for an eight-year-old.

I cut my teeth on courtroom dramas with one of the best--“Witness for the Prosecution.” Her performance as Christine Vole is arguably Dietrich’s best. And there’s not just one twist at the end but two. Plus, who can forget Janet McKenzie on the witness stand?

Just about any Sherlock Holmes movie starring Basil Rathbone could be on my list. I chose “Dressed to Kill,” the one about music boxes, because I am fascinated by how music can be a clue to solving a mystery. Standard forensic tools—magnifying glasses, sniffing dogs, autopsies, microscopes--are irrelevant. It is Holmes the musician who observes the differences among the variations of the tune and in fact Watson who figures out their relevance. (And Holmes gives him credit.) Adding to the suspense is that a group of very smart and ruthless crooks—the murder of Watson’s old chum Stinky is unforgivable—is following the same clues.

“Night of the Hunter” is not only one of the most visually stunning films ever made, it features one of the creepiest characters ever imagined. The fact that a sociopath hiding behind the collar of a preacher could fool so many salt-of-the-earth people for so long scared the hell out of me. It still does. How can anything be amiss with someone who brings so many souls to Jesus? Movies like this are dangerous—they make you start questioning social institutions and wondering about the hypocrisy you see around you.

Rhoda in “The Bad Seed” was one of my first exposures to a sociopathic personality. More than one person in my family had been treated for neurosis, so the idea that there are genetic tendencies toward mental illness already worried me. Plus Rhoda was female. And a child. Could my parents see that movie and decide I wasn’t so bad in comparison?

The most startling feature of “Psycho” is not that the heroine meets a violent end early in the film, but that Hitchcock and Perkins make the killer so sympathetic. We are morally outraged by murder and want to see justice for Marion Crane, but we’re fascinated by Norman and want to understand him, and at least a small part of us wants him to succeed. We enjoy this internal conflict and seek it by watching the movie again and again. Plus, this film addresses a seldom-treated aspect of murder. The clean-up. Could we do as well, covering up for our own mothers?

“Dr. Strangelove” demonstrated the power of film to me. I was indoctrinated to believe that détente with the Ruskies was tantamount to worshipping Satan and that the U.S. was justified any time it dropped any bombs on anyone, and right here in the living room my parents were laughing at this movie. How did the filmmaker make these bomb-shelter-building ultra-conservatives forget their belief system and relish the humor of a horrifying scenario they swore could never happen?

“Suddenly, Last Summer,” fascinated me because I found myself able to understand the action from metaphor and implication. Williams deals with such taboo themes as the Oedipal complex, homosexuality, and cannibalism without overtly referring to any of them. This subtlety was thrilling for me as a teenager, intellectually and artistically. It was also stimulating that the action revolves around a character who has been dead for months and whose violent end is not only incomprehensible in its ferocity and unfairness, it can not possibly be avenged. Catherine’s reveal is a triple-whammy—it lets everyone know how Sebastian died, it saves her from the nut house and sends the one who wanted to put her there into it. Wow.

In the hands of another filmmaker “Jaws” would have been a good action movie, but Spielberg’s direction elevates it to classic status. The directorial choices he makes are spot-on. He communicates layers of story visually, the actors inhabit their roles effortlessly, and the action and dialog ring true. Add superlative editing by Verna Fields and the most appropriate score imaginable by John Williams, and you have a primer for any aspiring director on how to make a classic.

Movies allowed me to glimpse romances that were different from my parents’, and I paid particular attention when it was obvious on screen that two actors were in love in real life. The 50-year romance Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward began during the filming of “The Long Hot Summer” translated to the screen, and as I watched them spark and spar as Ben Quick and Clara Varner, I wondered, “Is this what falling in love is?”

Real-life partners Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn play husband and wife attorneys in “Adam’s Rib,” and their off-screen intimacy translates to the screen as well. In the play, written by real-life husband and wife Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, the characters maintain their intellectual integrity, moral idealism, and the sanctity of their marriage while fighting on opposite sides of an ethical and legal issue. This was a very exciting version of the institution of marriage that I wasn’t certain would work in real life. I found out it is quite possible, going on forty years now.

I see deeper patterns here than the ones I stated up front. Yes, I have chosen movies that revolve around crime and murder, revenge and obsession, sociopathy and mental illness. Even the comedies feature major felonies. But the larger pattern is that all these movies are masterpieces of story-telling--the filmmakers chose exciting, novel ways to deliver the action. And as a story-teller, that’s what impresses and interests me the most.

Timeless Advice from Strunk & Lucas

2009-08-04T19:34:00.000-07:00

If you’re driving in Indianapolis on Guion Road, rubberneck to the west as you go under the 38th St. overpass and you won’t see this graffiti—it’s a digital composite. I didn’t really want to get shot defacing some banger’s logo. The spirit was willing even if the flesh was prudent.

I’ve always envisioned Professor Strunk standing before his English 8 class in a rumpled suit, tie askew, hair wild and woolly, pounding his fist on the podium as he hurls Rule Seventeen at his students.

Strunk’s advice is at the top of a poster on the wall in my office (next to the one of Henry Lee Lucas’s Rules for the Successful Serial Killer). Other words of wisdom follow:

Thomas Jefferson: “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”

Dr. Johnson: “Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.”

William Faulkner and Scott Peterson apparently didn’t mean the same thing by “Kill your darlings.”

And that brings me to Henry Lee’s rules, the simplicity of which I think Strunk would approve:

1. Don’t kill anybody you know. (HLL eventually got caught when he ignored this cardinal rule.)
2. Don’t use the same M.O. twice.
3. Keep moving. Do your next one miles away, in a different jurisdiction.
4. Don’t use the same weapon twice. Dispose of it. You can always score another one.
5. Ditto for your vehicles.

Stay focused, keep it simple, keep writing!

Touched by Murder

2009-08-01T15:20:00.000-07:00

Most of us have been touched by murder. Even without a direct connection to a homicide—even if you don’t personally know a victim or a killer, or are not connected to the criminal justice system on either side--“six degrees”--and probably fewer—separate most people from a murder. How many degrees separate you from a victim of 9/11? A school shooting? A home invasion? A hit-and-run? A domestic disturbance gone bad?

John and I are not involved in criminal activity, we do not live a high-crime area, and none of our friends are murderers, yet we are directly or indirectly connected to a number of homicides.

My father-in-law, a policeman on IPD for twenty years, worked his share of murder cases as a patrolman and a detective. Also, as a rookie cop he was involved in the Elder Avenue shootout--a mental patient shot eight officers before police returned fire and hit him twenty-eight times.

My father, a physician, once worked as the Marion County deputy coroner. He kept a gun from a homicide case as a souvenir.

My brother-in-law, a lawyer for the Indiana Attorney General’s office, argued death penalty cases before the appellate court for many years.

An in-law’s father served on the Manson jury.

Two professional colleagues on opposite sides of the country were murdered in cold blood.

I took piano lessons a few doors away from where a yuppie lawyer murdered his wife and stuffed her in the ironing board closet.

A neighbor killed his ex-wife, her father, and a policeman, and wounded her mother and blinded another officer after a police stand-off at his ex-in-law’s home--which happened to be across the street from the house John lived in when he was young.

My parents knew many of the parishioners of the church of a minister and his wife who were axe-murdered after Christmas Eve services.

A house a few doors down from a home a realtor once showed us was later purchased by a man who killed his wife and baby and stuffed them in the freezer in the garage.

A policeman-colleague of my father-in-law was murdered; the case was never solved. He lived across the street from where we live now.

I covered a murder trial as a reporter.

A co-worker’s baby-sitter also watched the children murdered by serial killer Stephen Judy.

A dear friend’s mother was murdered by home invaders in Zimbabwe.

John and I were witnesses in a murder trial after we were almost victims ourselves—we escaped the killer by a clever twist of words.

Closest to home—literally--was the murder-suicide in the house next door. It happened twenty feet away from us as we slept in our bed.

Is it any wonder, then, that I write true crime and mystery stories?

Hallway Justice

2009-08-01T15:10:00.000-07:00

If you want to see how the criminal justice system really works, pick a bench outside a courtroom and sit there for a couple of hours. John and I are witnesses for the prosecution in a murder trial but have to wait in the hallway near Municipal Court 15 (3rd floor, West Wing, City-County Building) for our turn to testify in case someone else’s testimony influences ours. As we sit there and observe the passing scene, we discover the criminal justice system operates quite differently in real life than is depicted on episodes of “Law and Order” or “Shark.” Outcomes might become official in the courtroom, but they are decided in the elevators, hallways, stairwells, and restrooms outside.

There is an easy camaraderie among the lawyers--they greet each other warmly. Anyone dressed better than blue jeans is either an attorney or works in the building. Lawyers and clients with any clout confer in anterooms. The rest meet--many for the first time, a few minutes before the case is called--in the hallway.

An attorney in a gray suit outlines the options to a young woman in a tight blouse. “You were caught with the joint in your car,” he says. Her husband is a drug dealer, but if he goes down for it, the family will lose the breadwinner. “They’ll take the title to the car and suspend your license for 180 days.” She looks disgusted. “It’s state statute,” he explains. “They have to do it.” He explains that if she’s clean--no more felony raps for three years--the conviction will be expunged and she can truthfully check the box on a job application “never been convicted of a felony.”

A young man nearby cannot claim that. His white-haired lawyer advises him it will go worse for him because his last felony conviction was less than three years ago. (Apparently the three-year-rule plays a significant role in these people’s lives.) His case was scheduled for today but White Hair won a continuance.

Most people coming out of courtroom 15 are holding yellow continuance slips: “Your case has been continued to-“ Did the record cold last week push too many trials into this week, or are the wheels of justice this slow, as a rule? We don’t know. Our own court appearances have been postponed three times. We received four sets of subpoenas to testify as prosecution witnesses to a murder committed sixteen months before.

Another older attorney accompanies a 40-ish heavyset woman and a young man down the hall. She’s on her way to put up bail money for her son. She tugs the sleeve of her son’s attorney. “He’s a good boy,” the woman says. She is incredulous the judge didn’t dismiss the charges. “He comes by every Sunday with a bucket of chicken.”

A young man in sagging jeans emerges from the courtroom with his attorney after a successful appearance. “Oh, I got this other thing going, too,” he says.

“What’s that?”

“Car theft.”

“Okay,” says the attorney, a tall man with silver hair. “You want me to rep you on that?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, that’ll be a total of 750. You got the 375 for today?”

Saggy Jeans whips out a wad of bills and peels off $375.

“Okay, when is it?” Silver Hair sets down his lambskin briefcase and takes out his day planner.

“March 1.”

“What time?”

“10:30.”

“Okay, see you then.” Saggy Jeans will brief Silver Hair at 10:25 on the morning of March 1.

A scared young man about 20 holding the inevitable yellow slip sits on a bench between an attractive woman of 30 and an older attorney. The woman asks, “You gonna help my little brother?” She nods in greeting to various people walking by while the lawyer explains what her brother can expect. She might be an attorney herself, or work in the building.

“I’m here for my little brother.” She pulls the young man off the bench. “This is my little brother.”

They all get in the elevator. “You gonna help my little brother?”

A skinny man with coke bottle glasses gets out of the elevator. It’s Ronny*, a clerk from the video store we go to. He’s stoned out of his gourd but still recognizes us. He explains, “I was so upset about this DUI I had to smoke a doobie before I came to court.” Maybe he thinks being blitzed is a legal excuse for missing a court date, or the judge will be more sympathetic if he comes to court baked instead of drunk. In the case we’re testifying for, the defendant thought he could avoid the kidnapping charge if he married the girlfriend he kidnapped. Ronny waits with us while his attorney confers with another client on a bench nearby.

* all names have been changed to protect us from the convicted.

A heavily muscled guy with cuts and scratches on his face paces the hallway. “Five years! Five years, man!” he complains to his lawyer. “They’re going to take my license for five years!” Five years is actually good, his attorney explains: “They take away your license for life, it means ten years. Ten years means five, five means less than nothing.” A suspended license did not mean his client needed to stop driving; it just meant a bigger hassle if he got caught behind the wheel.

I am wondering when the attorney will bring up the cuts and scratches, but he does not because his client received them in a recent altercation that 1) is irrelevant to the traffic violation he was representing him for and 2) represents no fresh charges (billable hours) as no one had called the police.

A rumpled attorney emerges from the elevator and looks around. “Kevin Jones! Kevin Jones!” he yells. He finally finds Kevin, a slight young man who’s been wandering around the hallway, in the bathroom. The lawyer pushes Kevin into the elevator. “You’re supposed to the upstairs! Drug court, man, drug court! I almost sent a sheriff after you!”

As they step into the elevator we hear a snippet of conversation between two other passengers: “Then my other charge, my stolen car charge, that’s-“ and the doors close.

Ronny’s lawyer is finished with his client and comes over. “You can take this, or you are entitled to a jury trial, or you can go before a judge. This is what they’re offering you.”

Ronny mumbles, “I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it.”

“Whatever you wanna do,” the attorney says.

“No, whatever you wanna do,” Ronny says.

The attorney sighs. “Seven dollars a day for house arrest, 180-day suspension.”

Ronny is silent. He is too stoned to understand that the best deal has been offered up front. I don’t think he took the deal because we never see him again at the video store.

The woman in the tight blouse up on the possession charge is back with her attorney. “Sign this,” he says. “This means you understand the charges and accept the probation.” He shoves the form in her lap. “The charges have been explained to you. Sign this.”

The woman looks away for a minute. She’s seeing one year, two years down the road. Her lawyer is repeating, “And this will be expunged from your record if you’re not charged with another felony in the next three years-“ he looks at her- “which I don’t think is gonna happen…“

A clerk comes out and calls John’s name. He gives me a smile and disappears into courtroom 5. I’m next.

Two men in Raiders jerseys greet each other. The heavier one complains, “They said, ‘thirty-six counts of possession of state property.’ Burglary! I ain’t done nothin’, man! That’s a motherf------- bunch of shit. Then they got this motherf------- charge of assault against my woman. I’m motherf------- supposed to be living with her, they said. I can’t motherf------- do that! And that people that done it was the neighbors. We just moved in there a motherf------- month and they called on us!”

The smaller one shakes his head in disbelief.

Three attorneys are chatting when a clerk from courtroom 15 rushes out. “Do you represent Slater?” he asks the one in the middle. “I have a Slater who says you’re his lawyer.” The attorney calls to his paralegal down the hall, “Do we have a Slater?” At her nod, he and the clerk run back toward the courtroom. One of the other lawyers yells after them, “Is it a male Slater? I had a Donald Slater once.”

A young attorney, papers in hand, stops an older lawyer. “Hey, where can I find this case- would it be in six?”

“Is it municipal?” asks the older man.

“Yes.”

“How old is it?”

“1988.”

“They might still have it,” the veteran says. “It’s probably in the sub-basement, though.”

The young man disappears into courtroom 6 but emerges in a few minutes. He takes the elevator to the sub-basement, where he will spend the rest of the day. The older man looks after him. He’s perhaps thinking, You made it through law school, probably had to hold a job while attending classes, and at night visions of Perry Mason and Matlock and $50,000 retainers danced in your head. You end up defending people making $7500 a year, a third of which goes for your fees--in cash, up front--with not a lot left for gold wheel rims or child support payments. This is the life of a criminal defense attorney.

A tall young man in a suit--the first defendant wearing a suit today--waits for the elevator with his lawyer. The attorney pushes the button again and says, “It doesn’t look good, man.”

The client shakes his head. “I wasn’t there, man.”

“They got two witnesses. They testified.”

The client is angry. “Hey, I got witnesses of my own,” he says.

The attorney looks around. He says, “If you can come up with two witnesses, we might have a shot.”

The young man in the suit nods his head as they step into the elevator. He can probably come up with a couple.

It’s my turn to testify. I’m the final witness for the state. There was no disputing the man’s guilt--witnesses and evidence nailed him for the homicide. Our testimony proved the defendant had been stalking for a kill; it destroyed the one defense contention, that the murder was spontaneous and unpremeditated.

He was convicted on all charges and sentenced to two hundred years, but died in prison about three years later.

There will be blood...and vomit

2009-05-28T18:14:00.000-07:00

Ah, yes, I remember it well. My older brothers John and Andy are playing marbles in their corner bedroom, the one with the airplane curtains. I am out in the hall doing the “little sister hover.” I am terribly curious about this masculine pastime of “playing marbles,” but intruding on male territory is unthinkable—unless I have an excuse. I await my opportunity. Suddenly, a marble rolls out into the hallway under the huge oak bookcase. Holding close to my heart the vain hope of somehow being allowed into the game if I retrieve the errant aggie, I lunge after it. In my eagerness to please I have forgotten a cardinal rule of physics, and my thick skull meets the solid leg of the bookcase.

Crack! goes my cranium, and a torrent of blood starts gushing from my forehead. I cannot see through the flood streaming into my eyes but can hear laughter coming from the northeast, i.e., the direction of the boy’s bedroom. King, the trusty family dog, hears the commotion and comes running. He lovingly laps the blood from my face and promptly vomits. Someone alerts Mom. When she sees her youngest’s head covered in blood and dog vomit she screams—she, a mother of four older children and a doctor’s wife to boot, has forgotten that even a minor head wound gushes enough blood to satisfy the most ardent wrestling fan. Amy puts a towel to my forehead and we all troop to the phone in the master bedroom. Dr. Scott (of the family that gave us our cat Maynard) instructs her to get me right over to his office, as these are pre-911 days. He expertly stitches me up, and before long, alas, only the shadow of a scar remained. I was already fantasizing telling strangers (for everyone in my small circle of home, school, and church would know what really happened) the story of how I got the scar rescuing a baby from a burning building, or perhaps in a deathmatch with another international spy where I used my tumbling skills to lethal advantage.

It’s hard to top another family scar story that comes from my dad’s brother Don. Don was born in 1916 and served in WWII. Throughout our childhood my sister Louisa and I believed that he received the long scar that runs down his face in the sands of North Africa. There he was, locked in hand-to-hand combat with one of Rommel’s finest—perhaps even Rommel himself--when a vicious swipe from a Nazi bayonet ripped his flesh from forehead to chin. Now, Don was—still is—noted for telling a good story, but two little girls curious about a nasty scar on an otherwise handsome face had no idea he was putting them on. Since our own father had no such tale of derring-do from the war—he spent WWII in New Jersey examining soldiers going out and coming back from active duty—we could offer our uncle’s dramatic experience when it came to exchanging tales of family heroism with friends, classmates, and eventually co-workers and in-laws. It was only a few years ago that we brought up this old war story merely in passing, and Don denied ever telling it to his two annoying nieces. He did, however, tell us the true story.

In the 1920’s when Don was a child, cars had very few safety features. One day Grandpa was driving the family Ford down a hill and had to stop suddenly. Without safety belts, child restraints, safety glass or air bags, Don was thrown through the front windshield and the glass sliced his face open. No Rommel, no bayonet.

I think I’ll stick with his other version, and if you happen to ask me about the scar barely visible on my own forehead, I’ll tell you about the cartwheel that foiled an international jewel thief in the upstairs hall near a huge oak bookcase.