Paper Boats (Novel Excerpt)

This amazing man became my mentor and inspiration while he was Distinguished Writer in Residence at Wichita State University from 1973 to 1982 and life-long friend and kindred spirit. I miss him every day (as he once predicted I would), and everything I write is inspired by him or something I wish I could share with him and laugh and/or lament over. 

My novel in progress, Paper Boats, covers my time developing and running a learning center in Wichita for boat people, but it was Bien who first taught me about exile and the palpable human hunger for belonging.


Today ghost hands still push along the shore
my paper boat the shape of dreams 
which never went under in the flood 
that frightened me away.  

—Bienvenido N. Santos, Distances, In Time

(Bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bienvenido_Santos) 

CHAPTER ONE

The trees along the bleak Kansas horizon look like dandelions half blown away.  Startled by a flapping exodus of birds that have been feeding on the shoulder of the road, Joy grips the steering wheel more firmly and checks the speedometer.  The needle quivers between seventy-five and eighty.  

She lets up on the accelerator and glances over her shoulder at the kids in the back seat.  Cammy, just six, sleeps with her mouth open and her head vibrates against the window in staccato jolts.  Trey, two years younger, is scrunched up on the seat next to her with a pillow under his upper torso.  She cannot tell if his eyes are open.

It isn't worth it.  The phrase repeats itself in humming revolutions, like the tires against the highway.  Leaning over, she confronts her gaze in the rear-view mirror, rubs her fingers along the shadows beneath her eyes.  

It will help if they get to the hotel in time for her to shower and rest before going to the church to drop off the children for her ex-sister-in-law’s wedding rehearsal and dinner.  Joy has been invited, of course, the proper thing.  She has declined, not so proper, perhaps, but realistic.  She hasn’t seen any of her ex-husband’s family since the divorce. In that small gathering, her single presence would figure too prominently. 

As she leans back again, the highway rushes at her, and she wonders how long her attention has strayed from the road this time. There are few landmarks between Wichita and Hastings, Nebraska.  Silos and billboards swing by like cardboard ducks in a shooting gallery.  It isn't worth it, almost audible this time.

The message at the front desk tells her what time the children need to be at the church Friday evening for rehearsal and Saturday afternoon for pictures before the ceremony.  It is in her former mother-in-law's precise, diminutive script.  The room is just off the indoor pool and has been paid for, less a surprise than a relief.  

While Cammy and Trey fling themselves in and out of the pool, Joy keeps checking her watch.  Her new swimsuit is still in the suitcase.  She was to have worn it two months earlier in Las Vegas, lounging around the pool while Andy attended the R.E.I. national meeting.  It would have been their first trip together, but he learned that there would be several others going from his division and decided it would be awkward since her divorce had not been final then.  

Besides, the children might have learned of her being there with Andy, and Joy knew that they could not have dealt with that easily, especially Trey, who had taken to clomping around in his father's out-of-season hunting boots, and slipping into her bed early in the mornings, and whispering, "Is the divorcement final yet?"

Joy stands up, searching the surface of the water for the children, who have grown too quiet.  She walks to the edge and discovers them bobbing along the near side of the deep end, their fingers curled around the curved concrete ledge of the pool.

"What do you think you're doing?"  Her voice is a hollow broadcast in the moist enclosure.  She looks out through the trellised walkway into the huge hall with its impressive atrium under which the wedding reception and dinner will take place the following evening.  Two workers are parking a long cart stacked with chairs along one wall.  One of them, a Latino man in a crisp white coat, looks up, she thinks at her, but it's hard to tell from that distance. "Stay in the shallow end," she says, looking back down at the children, their hair sleek and glistening against their scalps, beads of water on their smooth, eager faces, "or you'll have to get out right now."

Cammy raises herself half out of the pool, her feet splashing the surface of the water.  "There's a mermaid down there.  At the very bottom." Trey grabs hold of his sister's shoulders, slips loose, then paddles back again, wrapping slippery arms and legs around her.

"Cut that out," Joy warns him.  "It's too dangerous in the deep end."  She watches them flail toward the buoy-rope and duck under, to the relative safety of the shallower water.  She peers into the deep end.  The image is imperfect in the wake of the children's waves, but she can make out the pale green body of the mermaid, a mass of yellow hair quivering like tentacles.

By the time Joy is settled back into the chaise lounge with a book, a family has joined them, settling their gear at the far end of the pool.  Their three children and Joy's two bob and paddle around in one another's orbits fairly randomly at first.  

Joy is sorry now that she didn't fix herself a drink before she left the room.  Eventually, the children's voices rise and blend as they adopt roles and design a watery game of  Star Wars.  She sees the mother of the other children looking over at her, returns her smile, and looks away, feeling alien.

Once back in the room, Joy mixes scotch and water in one of the plastic cups, and takes it into the bathroom with her.  She intends to take only a quick shower and then run the children to the church before going somewhere for dinner, but instead, she steps into a steaming bath. 

She sinks back, closes her eyes, and feels the familiar tension in her shoulders and stomach start to ebb.  The steam will undoubtedly frizz her curly hair, and there won't be time to tame it.  She will arrive at the church to drop off the children looking slightly undone. Reaching over to get the cup from the toilet tank lid, she takes another sip, then lies very still and feels herself drifting toward that safe little inlet that shelters her from caring all that much.

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Rear Windowing

As Arthur Hitchcock fans will attest, being housebound with a broken leg gives one the license to spy on neighbors.

While I haven't spied any neighbors committing murder or mayhem yet, boredom has been somewhat alleviated as I've raised my father's field glasses to watch (1) fencing going up to the south and west (like watching grass grow), (2) the neighbor on the south (NOT the owner of the fence going up) planting bushes to disguise the new fence posts and field wire that will eventually house another neighbor's cows (humorous), and (3) the new house construction on the 20 acres directly across the road from us.

For those spatially challenged (I include myself), 20 acres in the city could yield a close-knit neighborhood of at least 40 families. Out here in the sticks, we're used to a lot more elbow room. If the wind is just right, we can occasionally hear our neighbor children's voices, but can't distinguish between shouts of joy and screams of terror.

So where is the young couple pouring their dream foundation on their gorgeous 20 acres with two ponds? Directly across from our driveway, I'd guess 30 yards back from the dirt road, the abundant dust of which is the only drawback I've found to living here.

Fortuately our view of their pond will be restored once the gravel and porta-potty are retired.

As I focus daily on their progress, or lack of it, questions arise--enough, fortunately, to keep a one-legged woman cogitating on a host of issues:

Why when you dig a huge hole for a new house do you need to haul in dozens of truckloads of new dirt?

How do men work all day in temperatures nearing 100 degrees?

How much money does the pudgy guy who parks his white truck in the shade and watches the others work get paid?

Why is their driveway to the far south when their garage is going to be on the far north end of their house?

Have they noticed me watching them yet?

Why don't the workmen wave back when I wheel myself onto our driveway and
coast down to the barn (I only yelled "whee" the first time).

When they've moved in and we cross the road to empty our mailbox, should we avert our eyes?

In the meantime, here's looking at you, kids.

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Winter Sculpting

in a workshop in the land 

of redwoods and cool pine air 

he caresses the possibilities

of what might emerge

from the wood before him 

on the bench are knives, rasps

a mallet—deceptively heavy

because divining what has been 

long-buried is not light work

a laying on of hands and a long 

calculated cut begins the winter 

sculpting, smoothing and slicing

toward a vision of what awaits

the shape that draws him to it

on a train that slices through snow

tall buildings of concrete and steel

she fills a poem with wood smoke

the scent of pine, the way the sky 

reflects a silver ocean when 

the world turns upside down 

in a circle of Cyprus on the headlands

a hollow of tangled limbs 

sprawling vistas

beneath his searching hands 

her reflective images

the long-buried possibilities  

of their imaginings 

taking shape

It's a Balancing Act

In the early morning dark, awakening to a call of nature, I slipped out of bed, balanced on my good leg, spun 180 degrees, and sat down on the floor. Groping for the bedside lamp, I discovered that, instead of my trusty sidekick wheelchair, I had parked my energy-sapping walker by the bed. I had to laugh. (Once I checked that my steel-sealed tibia hadn't suffered a setback.)

I had to laugh because I'm an optimist . . .

Because I daydream of once again dashing about Four Mile--hauling hay bales into the east stall so our rescue horse Saul can bunk with Travis and Skipper in the west wing of our 86-year-old barn.

I plot how we will put up more fencing to create a dry pen for the horses to keep Travis, our "easy-keeper" roly-poly Tennessee Walking horse, from equine obesity.

I fantasize mornings in the round pen directing 1200-pound pets at a walk, a trot, a canter, quick halts, inside turns, and long, trusting backings.

And I look forward to once again being in the saddle, looking out over our seven acres with gratitude and awe and the knowledge that I am incredibly fortunate to have landed here. (Maybe not the best word choice.)

But first, I need to master wheelchairs and walkers and getting to and from the bathroom and managing my expectations. I have to laugh. Seriously.

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When Women Were Birds

Many thanks to Marsh and Carol Galloway for the rehab reading: When Women were Birds, by Terry Tempest Williams. Anne Lamott found it "Brilliant, meditative, and full of surprises, wisdom, and wonder." I concur. It recalled me to Tillie Olsen's Silences, another marvelous meditation, but on the absence of women's voices.

Among so many notable reflections in William's book, these are some I suspect have found permanent purchase in my own head-heart:

"Beside a well, one won't thirst; beside a sister, one won't despair."

"There are two important days in a woman's life: the day she is born and the day she finds out why."

"Not the lotus without the mud."

And as a writer . . . "Empty pages become possibilities."

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Just One of Those Things

I wanted to write something funny today
but my daughter threw up
tomato soup on celery-green shag
the tile-and-floor man finally came
before I could dress
and poke holes in my hair for my eyes
and nobody kissed me
the whole damn day

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Stumblebumming

LetterPoem to Linda Gracen

my last morning in Mendocino 

I see red rose petals scattered through 

a Cyprus grove on the headlands

velvety bright surprise, like finding you again

at Ten Mile, perched above white water

a vista as spectacular as your smile 

and the amazing capacity of your heart 

that cradles the walking wounded 

their stumblebum migration to mental health

not unlike my own return each year 

to my abandoned heart, all those 

still beating along the coast that speak to me 

of braver choices than my own

even the glazed-eyed highway walker 

pad-padding to and fro in her flip-flops

relentless in her unfathomable quest

and dusty Spencer in decade-old dreadlocks 

forever hitching rides between Mendocino 

and Fort Bragg, and I wonder what if I’d stayed

what if I returned, what if I rediscovered

the rhythm of a heart not lost but merely 

misplaced like our friendship along the 

many miles I’ve traveled away and back again 

always yearning for what gets left behind 

on this meandering trail going no place much

after all

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