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Hey there. This is something I've been working on that I think is ready for a little bit of feedback. This is the first few pages of what I hope will end up turning into a full fledged novel. As such, I haven't titled it yet. I hope you enjoy.
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It was already the new century. Already a new millennium, Johnny thought to himself. Time kept plugging away like a mountaineer after his sherpa has long since deserted him for warmer climates. America was changing; people were changing; the proverbial melting pot was being stirred and fiddled with by Uncle Sam (renowned for his military fervor, and not his culinary expertise). The movers and shakers were moving and shaking feverishly, and the people, who, once charmed by this strange dance, began to disengage from its intoxicating rhythm and become disenchanted with its tawdry and cheapened movements. All this dancing is getting a little out of hand, philosophized Johnny. Boy, was he right.
Johnny sat at the edge of a dock looking out upon the placid lake that sat languorously before him. Not a fish nor a bird nor a sonic boom disturbed it. This is it, Johnny sincerely believed, this is it indeed. And, indeed, this might have been considered it. All around him the trees of an uncut wilderness stood firmly and mused gently of the great American truths. They crowded the lake and grew as close as they could to its still waters, eager to gaze back into their own reflections as they leaned out over it. And suddenly--auspiciously, by Johnny’s estimation—an eagle let out a cry that echoed furiously in the natural bowl, piercing Johnny’s consciousness initially and then tapering off until the meaning of it all was clearer than the vision in a crystal ball. Behind Johnny, the worn and waterlogged dock stretched for about 15 long paces, and then abruptly stopped at the bases of two pre-Revolutionary redwoods. Between them there was no road, but a beaten path that looked as if it wanted to return to its natural state; it was already overgrowing with long grass and a few mushrooms. To tell the truth, the only insecurity Johnny felt, sitting there on that peaceful dock, was that it would collapse from under him on account of its age. But, Johnny really couldn’t blame it for wanting to do so.
Johnny hadn’t moved in nearly four hours. Was he, like the dock, blending into the landscape, osmosing slowly into nature and becoming a new vibrant piece of its grand puzzle? Johnny didn’t really care; the prospect flitted across his consciousness, but it didn’t bother him. Johnny recalled that his father, connoisseur of all knowledge trivial (trivial by Johnny’s mother’s estimation, only), had mentioned in years past in one his tirades (this one addressing religion, and its various triumphs and vagaries) that reaching nirvana meant the transcendence of all worldly wants and needs. Johnny then recalled that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and he was hungry. He could have sworn he heard the disgruntled grumblings of the redwoods mix with higher pitched admonitions of the songbirds as he stirred to get up and leave. Johnny figured that it was his stomach playing tricks on him. Johnny’s gastronomic apparatus, though powerful in its teenage voracity, had nothing to do with these particular rumblings. Rubbing his belly and walking back across the dock, Johnny had serious matters on his mind. Is it too close to Thanksgiving to have turkey right now?
Johnny ambulated creakily down the dock, and he seemed almost reluctant to leave. My tummy does have a good point, though, Johnny reckoned, and he disappeared, leaving along the path at the end of the dock. After he left, the trees’ whispers became more and more audacious, until they were absolutely certain he had gone far out of earshot. The lake was not a large one; Johnny might have been able to throw a baseball diametrically across it (it should be mentioned that he had a good arm, though). Consequently, the trees needn’t have raised their voices to talk to one another; they weren’t inclined to, anyway.
When birds, or animals, or fish talked, they usually didn’t have anything substantial to say. It was usually just the latest gossip (“Did you hear about the new squirrel baby, the one born without a tail?”). Trees, on the other hand, found this constant chirping around them insulting and made a point to only discuss matters of vital national import. Although located in the middle of the rambling wilds, the leafed and pine-needled denizens of the lake’s shore were not unfamiliar with the contemporary problems assailing the nation. Unlike their stiff exteriors, the trees had great, flexible minds; they prided themselves on it, their ability to see two sides of an argument. Still, many trees held deep rooted beliefs (not-so-subtle pun intended) that made for heated debate (though not really; they wanted not their confabulations to turn into conflagrations, which were dangerous seeing as they were all fire hazards). The topic du jour concerned the young man who had breached their heretofore clandestine sanctuary.
The first to speak was an elderly redwood, with bark the color of curried beef, and whose top braches reached so high they were almost wholly responsible for puncturing the o-zone and creating a worldwide hoopla. When he spoke his leaves bounced up and down like a vertical dancehall of tiny green martian men.
“It’s been a long while since we’ve had a visitor, so I think it’s a good idea to refresh some of our younger trees on the proper protocol.” With this, he stared (although he didn’t really have eyes, there’s not a better word than this for what he was doing) directly at the two young pine trees who had almost blown their cover had it not been for Johnny’s overacting digestive system. His voice was like an earthquake, deep and earthy, prompting raccoons to scamper instinctively back to their burrows. Right now he registered about 6.4 on the Richter scale. “Under no circumstances do we speak in front of any human being.” Here he paused, cleared the sap from his throat, and continued, dialing the quake up to a 7.0. “Understood? Their America is no longer our country, and it never will be again. Sad as that might be, there was a time when our two races could converse. When our forefathers were just tiny sprouts…”
The earthquake became an aftershock, and the redwood launched into a lighthearted anecdote reminiscent of times when trees had talked to man, sharing their infinite wisdom and powerful sense of national pride with the smaller and more mobile species. All the other trees had heard it before, and, breaking out of their preternatural stillness that had been inspired by the seriousness of Redwood’s rumblings, they began to speak gently and fondly of times past. Oh, they said, how America used to be, and they spoke long into the night.
Not bad, and it seems to be going in an interesting direction. However, the author intrusions here are pretty out of place, and shouldn't be present in serious fiction, IMO:
Quote:
(not-so-subtle pun intended)
and
(although he didn’t really have eyes, there’s not a better word than this for what he was doing)
Other than that, and some minor grammatical errors that you should be able to edit out in a go-over, I like it.
you obviously put some work in here, I am not sure what exactly your going for...something along the lines of America at a crossroads, with some yearning for simpler times, and a theme of being disconnected from nature. But I think you spent a little too much time with your thesaurus and maybe not enough getting to the point.
I wish I was not like this, but I seem to just latch on to the negative...it is a sickness i tell ya!
But when I read "Johnny ambulated creakily down the dock" I just could not help laughing. Ambulated???? are you freaking kidding me??? What is he, a broken down robot??
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(poster attempts to swich the azzhole toggle to the off position)
It takes a lot of bravery to post something you have written and then deal with the feedback. Keep writing, just be careful not to overpolish it.
Ok, here's a little more. Thanks for what's been said so far. And yeah, I suppose I do have a tendency to pick the more cumbersome of two words when presented with that choice. I see what you're saying when you mention that it sounds artificial.
And to be honest with you, I'm not exactly sure what I'm "getting at" with all this...this is just the beginning of something that I hope will be much larger. But, yes, jager, you've got a pretty good handle on what I was trying to do so far. Thanks for the commentary, keep it coming.
I wrote all of this before I had posted any of it and I figured it might help to break it up a little bit. I think this post will be pretty long.
Johnny made it home just as the last light of twilight was sucked to the other side of the horizon. He had been hungry when he left the lake, and now the gastro-intestinal urgings that had prompted him to leave the lake had changed into vicious death threats. The lake was several hours walk away, and it wasn’t so much the walk itself that had made him hungrier, but the anticipation of turkey that he could almost hear gob-gob-gobbling his name the entire way back. The walk had afforded him plenty of time to think on that particular subject. The turkey was, in Johnny’s estimation, the most American of foods. Forget cheeseburgers and hot dogs, it was turkey that had brought the people together on that first thanksgiving. And, what animal was more representative of America at its onset than the turkey? Sure, the eagle may paint a pretty good picture now, Johnny thought, but it’s not like we were always so dignified. Johnny had hit the nail on the head; both the turkey and fledgling America were dichotomies. The turkey, though full of the promise of meats (both light and dark), was thought of as perhaps the goofiest in the pantheon of meats because of its unappealing, multicolored waddle. The head of the turkey (not to begin on its contents) and its connected waddle look like cascading, billowing boils. Like disfigured, discolored clouds. Despite this, the turkey still manages to fulfill its promise of beauty in its fanning tailfeathers, and its bounty of supple sandwich meat. Here’s where Johnny made the connection. America was the unappealing, estranged cousin of Great Britain. America was, to Europe, that relative who comes to a wedding unannounced and belligerent, ready to make his inclinations towards incest more tangible than the usual harmless flirtations with the bridesmaids. To the untrained eye, America was a cesspool of violence, disease, and alcohol. However: The ideals upon which the nation were founded filled even the most cynical heart with joy, and, though the blight of slavery existed to wreak its havoc upon the waddle of the country, the declaration of independence and its lofty ideologies were still held highest. In the turkey’s honor, it was given providence over one of the most important American institutions: Thanksgiving.
So, Johnny fixed himself a turkey sandwich with nothing on it. He thought it a great act of patriotism. When the first taste buds on Johnny’s tongue rose to attention to salute the ranking meat, Johnny began to think. And just as he chewed the turkey, he masticated slowly on an idea that had been rolling about in his head for the past few hours. There was something out there at the lake. Not a serial killer or a lake monster or even a mangy pack of curs; there was something wise and ancient out there. He could feel it as he lay there on the dock, absorbing the ambient energies and connecting with nature, returning its proverbial call after years of ignoring its messages. It was profoundly settling for young Johnny, almost as if he was meant to find that exact spot, like he had been there before, watching the lake scintillate in the afternoon sun. Something outside of his plane of existence connected him to that place, and while he could sense that fact, he couldn’t understand, at that time, what it was. What could it be? Johnny was perplexed. It was elusive, whatever it was. Johnny decided that tomorrow, he would return to the lake.
Armed with nothing but three delicious turkey sandwiches, Johnny set off bright and early. Johnny was tall and skinny, but if you looked at him closely you could see that it looked like he had just lost the last of his baby fat and had begun to put on some real adult muscle. His skin, though originally very light, had been colored golden by the sun on his frequent walks through the fields around his house. His hair was long, shaggy, and not unlike a lion’s mane. He did not have a waddle. If he had had a waddle, it would have been like no other; it would have been a brilliant, explosive red at the top and would have slowly blended into a deep, rich blue like the color of the night time sky when the moon is full. It would have redefined beauty.
Quickly, Johnny began to sink into the rhythm of the path and lose himself in the caressing warmth of the sun. He walked thoughtlessly, hedonism overcoming him, and enjoyed his setting.
Johnny lived on the property of a very wealthy cattle rancher named Adam Livingston. Johnny’s parents had lived there before him, and had been ranch hands for the man. Johnny’s parents were dead now; they had been stampeded to death by a throng of crying cattle when a few unwitting joy riders drove directly through the spot where the cattle were grazing and Johnny’s parents were taking care of them. Johnny had seen it from his home, how the culprits barreled across the plain at what seemed to him like 100 miles per hour in a red pickup truck. They plowed through the pack, bobbing through the galvanized bovines and never looking back. Johnny imagined them hooting and hollering the whole way, having a grand old time and slapping high fives and saying things like, “No, I wasn’t scared! You were!” Johnny didn’t know what his parents were doing; he could only seem them standing, then running, then being swallowed by the consuming dust cloud of the truck and the furious herd. This was several years ago, when Johnny was just a budding hyacinth of intellect, in the formative stages of his mental development, and it had a profound effect on him. Johnny had no one left in the world. The only person left that he had ever had any kind of meaningful interaction with was Adam Livingston. So, when Mr. Livingston was kind enough to provide food for him and let him stay in the home (it was a shack, really) that he had lived in for his entire life, he declared his independence. This independence, while not financial (Johnny constantly worried that Mr. Livingston would suddenly cut off his turkey supply), was philosophical. Johnny decided that he was his own man. He moved on maturely from the death of his parents after a period of deep colorless sorrow and spent his time reading books that Mr. Livingston brought him and helping out every now and again on the ranch.
Johnny’s shack was not far from the woods. It wasn’t long before he crossed the threshold and entered the forest, where the once beaten path was being retaken by saplings and fallen branches. Johnny imagined that his parents must have once tended to this path. The forest was overwhelmingly beautiful to Johnny. The antediluvian trees rose fearlessly from the fertile soil. There were redwoods, the color of cinnamon but without the same sparkle; there were pine trees, bristling with energy and rising up to challenge the redwoods for the sun; and, of course, there were oak trees, filling out the green forest canopy. They were all ethereal and mystical, existing somewhere beyond the pale of human understanding, and Johnny saw this. He chose to walk on instead of being captured by their wisdom, though he was tempted; he felt their wild energies, could begin to feel their furtive tendrils reach out to him.
He loved walking in general. He thought there was something deeply spiritual about it, like each step he took represented a greater communion with Mother Earth herself. The shoes he wore now were not old, but they were dirty and worn from extensive use. They were converse, the old canvas kind, and they had originally been red before being crusted over with dirt. Even though he had only had them for a few months, Johnny felt like his feet were about to bust their seams, like his toes were ten claustrophobics crammed into a moldy outhouse. I must have grown another shoe size last night while I was sleeping, thought Johnny as he furrowed his brow, stopped for a moment, and tried to wiggle his toes. He couldn’t move a single one independently of the other. So, he took his shoes off. This he enjoyed thoroughly. It was still early in the morning and the ground was cool, the path still damp with the dew of the dawn. Johnny’s feet responded to the open air and grew another half size.
The walk continued, the hours and miles becoming like seconds and inches to Johnny. He so enjoyed himself, so enjoyed the cool, natural, elemental oneness of it all that time began to spin off its hinges and before he knew it he was once more standing between those two mammoth redwoods looking out upon the old dock and the lake that convinced him it held diamonds just under its surface as it winked to him in the sun.
It was late in the morning now, so that shadows were scared to peek out from under their landlords. Johnny stepped forth, onto the dock, and out from the shadows of the giant redwoods. The sun massaged his flesh; it wasn’t the hard, chiropractic kind of massage, but a much subtler one, the kind that relies on skilled applications of gentle pressure to hidden erogenous zones all over the body. Johnny felt ticklish. He came to the end of the dock and sat down, just where he had been the day before, and let his feet dangle over the edge, where they sat just a few inches above the surface of the water. He took off his shirt and backpack and set them down beside him, and then lay down. The dock felt hot, like there was a fire inside of it. So hot, thought Johnny, you could cook bacon on this thing. Might end up eating some splinters though. At the thought of bacon, his gastronomic facility chugged quickly into motion and began to grumble. Johnny put one hand to his midriff and the other to his pack, in which he realize after putting his hand there that there were three juicy turkey sandwiches waiting for him. He took one out and began to eat.
Johnny’s stomach had never been picky when it came to food. Turkey, however, was its decided favorite. Johnny’s whole apparatus preferred turkey to every other food it had ever tried or could foresee trying in the future. Turkey made Johnny happy, made him feel like he was complete. Made him feel like he was American. So Johnny ate. He didn’t eat quickly; he was in no hurry at all. After a few bites, Johnny began to hear the same kind of rumblings he had heard as he had left yesterday. This time he couldn’t write them off as the disgruntled demands of his food processing system. It seemed to come from all around him, its deep baritone echoing back and forth around the makeshift canyon. Johnny stopped chewing and sat up, wide eyed and afraid. Even though he had convinced himself there was nothing to fear, he felt terribly scared. He was frozen, an ice sculpture impervious to the heat of noon. Though audible, it was unintelligible at first; as minutes passed, Johnny still looking like all his joints had been welded together, the sound of whispered words and muffled laughter became decipherable. Johnny listened intently, straining his ears to hear the quiet conversation. He picked up the direction of the sound and turned his head toward it, trying to see past the two pine trees in his way to determine the origin of the sounds. As he did so, he caught the tail end of a conversation:
“…and he’s like, ‘but I thought he was a priest!’” At this, the pine trees Johnny was staring past started to shake uncontrollably, their needles stabbing at the air and making Johnny fear for both his sanity and his life. Johnny was sure he heard the sound of laughter, and at this point it was obvious that the sounds were coming from the trees themselves. Johnny felt like his whole world was melting and turning over and exploding all at the same time, like he was trapped in one of Salvadore Dali painting. Unless the trees were very tall, very convincing actors, trees were actually talking. But not even Humphrey Bogart could pull this off, Johnny reasoned, and there he sat, beginning to understand the surrealism of it all. The pine trees continued telling jokes:
“The President, Tom Cruise, a eucalyptus and a banzai walk into a bar…”
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