Burning, Man

The chainsaw bayonet roared as I cut through the heavy double doors. Splintered chunks of wood fell to the floor, leaving me exposed to the enemy. A hailstorm of bullets puckered the woodwork around me.

"Can I interest you in a replacement door?" I shouted over the sound of my return fire.

“Throwing frag!” Caleb yelled, then threw a grenade into the room.

I tucked and rolled backwards to escape the blast. I could hear the panicked scrambling of our humanoid enemies as they tried to avoid being blown back to hell.

The explosion slammed against my chest armor, sending me onto my back. After a few moments the shock subsided, and I began to take stock of my limbs. My most important bits accounted for, I suddenly noticed that my shoulder was shaking.

I rolled to one side, and heard Elizabeth’s voice in the form of a hissing whisper.

 “Matty, I think someone just pounded on the front window!”

The battle for humanity came to an abrupt halt as I passed from dreams to reality. I wasn't a cog in the gears of war after all, but rather a middle-aged husband and father dreaming my way through the night.

Oh well.

Wait, someone pounding on the front window? An intruder? A home invader? The dreams of war returned. Awake and alert, I jumped from the bed and stood beside it, listening for sounds of infiltration.

Silence…

I looked through the dark towards my grandfather's shotgun, and my mind traveled back to a dark night and an even darker house that I had cleared room-by-room for a frightened neighbor who had come home to an open front door. Turning tight corners quickly and getting the jump on any potential intruders had proved to be a difficult task with the long barrel.

I really need to get a pistol.

A minute later, fully dressed but without my unwieldy shotgun, I made my way quietly to the front door. Peering out through the smoky glass, I could tell that something wasn't right; a dark and solid looking mass stood just outside the door, and beyond it moved a large blur of white. I turned the lock, grabbed the doorknob, and yanked the door open, ready to fight…

A big grey garbage can. It stood on our front porch, right up against the doorstep. Harmless. I looked beyond it at the moving blur of white.

A butt-load of toilet paper hung down from every tree in our yard.

Elizabeth spent a moment laughing at the scene before returning to bed. I however, knew that sleep was not an option. I grabbed a BB gun, donned my coat, and stepped outside to watch and wait behind a bush for the culprits to return. After several minutes of patience and no sign of the enemy, I decided to start the cleanup.

The first order of business was to gather the collection of garbage cans that our late night guests had placed around the yard. They must have stolen them from other houses, because ours was still in place at the side of the garage. I lined them up at the side of the road, making them easy to spot by their owners should they come looking for them in the morning.

The easy work completed, I looked up into the trees and chuckled. Our front yard boasted more white than a Klan rally. As much as I wanted to shoot the perpetrators in the butt with that BB gun, I had to smile at their handiwork and the memories of my own prankster days that it evoked.

The sunny day had melted most of the snow, and the exposed grass crunched beneath my feet as I gathered the easy to reach toilet paper from bushes and lower branches. I imagined myself to be a farmer harvesting a bright white crop that only grows by starlight. After gathering the lower hanging fruit into a pile on the lawn, I stopped and surveyed the long strands of white still hanging from the uppermost branches of every tree in my front yard, wondering how I was going to get them down. I had already tried pulling gently on a few of them, but each time the paper had snagged in the tangle of branches above.

Frustrated but not defeated, I stared up into the night sky and brainstormed. It didn't take long before thoughts of ladders, long sticks, and tree climbing gave way to sudden inspiration.

I snuck inside the house and made my way to our bedroom. Elizabeth hardly stirred as I tugged at the drawer of my nightstand, the drawer that always sticks. I managed to open it just enough to reach a hand inside and feel through the darkness until my fingers closed around my beloved Zippo. The chrome felt smooth, cold and welcome against my skin.

I had bought the lighter on a whim a few years ago, simply because I had always wanted one. Flicking it open and shut had become a nervous habit, born out of grief and a need to keep my anxious hands busy. The high-pitched metallic ”ping” of the lid flicking open had served to break up the lonely and heavy silences that often descended upon me in those days.  I carried it around with me for months, until my restlessness had calmed to the point that I no longer felt it necessary to keep in my back pocket.

Back in the front yard, I stood beneath the tallest tree, flicked open the Zippo with a satisfying ping, and lit it up. The familiar smell of butane filled my nose, and the warmth of fire crawled comfortably across my hand. I grabbed the nearest strand of toilet paper and paused, as if about to cut a ceremonial ribbon.

“I hope this works,” I said aloud with a laugh.

It did.

Soon the tree was burning without being consumed. Fire climbed each of the paper strands, turning them into smoke as it crawled along their white paths, snaked around branches, and wandered higher up into the tree to light the dark night. I dashed around the yard, setting every papered tree alight. The lawn danced with shadows, and little plots of snow glimmered with orange light as the flames ascended.

The absurdity of the moment took hold of me, and suddenly I was laughing out loud and leaping about beneath the flaming trees, staring up at the flames like a little child captivated by a fireworks display. I felt tribal, and had it been any warmer I might have stripped down to nothing and painted my body with mud. I wanted to run from house to house, wake the neighbors, and with joyful shouts invite them to take a happy part in my late night festival of fire.

Soon the paper had all burned away. The fun was over. My once bright and cheerful yard became a dark and lonely place. I turned to go inside, and noticed the pile of toilet paper that I had harvested earlier. A thought occurred, followed by a smile...

Ping!

West of Independence Soundtrack Part 3

To Recap:
1. Willy Porter "Unconditional"
2. David Bowie "Heroes"
3. Journey "Don't Stop Believin'"
4. Matt Hires "State Lines"
5. Toad the Wet Sprocket "Windmills"
6. The Damnwells "Texas"
7. Ian Axel "Gone"

8. Greg Holden "The Lost Boy"

The first time I ran away, my mother packed for me. I remember standing on the front walkway, my hand gripping the black metal handle of the red wagon into which she had placed my belongings. I was to start my new life with a bag of Mom's soft and sugary ginger snaps, my favorite blanket, and not much else.

I was four years old.

"You might want a big stick," Mom said, standing in the open doorway of the little white house that I would never call home again.

I looked up at her, seeking one final explanation.

"The neighbor's dog," she said, pointing at the fence up the street.

"Oh," I said to her back. She had already stepped inside and was shutting the door.

In spite of following that one last piece of advice from my mother, I never made it past the dog.

Some sticks just don't seem to carry enough weight.

From West of Independence page 90:

Just as it had to other states, the fight over the definition of marriage soon came to New Hampshire. Before long, the hallways and classrooms at church echoed with fearful comments and excited arguments against gay marriage. I was confused and frustrated; I loved my brothers, and I knew that Jared wanted nothing more in life than to be joined in happiness with someone that would love him without qualifications. That seemed reasonable to me, since it was exactly what Ella and I had been fighting for in our own marriage. The issue for most church members seemed to be the threat posed to the institution of marriage by legally joining two men or women. It was to me a silly notion, the thought that anyone could threaten a marriage other than the two people in it, but I listened earnestly to many of my fellow Mormons as they argued their case. I spent several weeks waiting for a clarity that never came.

I felt like a homeowner standing on his lawn with a dribbling garden hose, watching as a menacing brushfire crept ever closer to everything he owned. I could stand and try to fight back the inevitable, or I could admit defeat and run away. The trouble was that I wasn’t sure which side was the menacing fire.

In an effort to figure it all out and put a permanent end to my wondering, I accepted an invitation by church leaders to carpool up to a public debate on gay marriage at the statehouse in Concord.

We sat in the large auditorium-like chambers of the state legislature and waited for the debate. The government was as slow in action as it had ever been, and we spent a fair amount of time just growing ever more impatient.

I watched as a constant flow of citizens entered the room. The line of demarcation was clear; a long aisle between the many rows of seats separated the opposing points of view. Upon walking through the double doors, people would step almost immediately to the left or the right, heading for the security of their fellows. I found it disheartening that the very room in which people were meant to come together for the good of all had been built as if division were in fact its intended purpose.

Not everyone had clued in on the obvious segregation, however. At one point two men holding hands crossed in front of our group, the limited space between seats causing their legs to brush against the knees of everyone in the row. I was horrified as my father made a show of pulling his legs up into his chest to prevent the gay men’s legs from touching him. As he did so, I heard him half-mutter, “I wouldn’t want it to rub off on me.”

My head was floundering in a pool of disbelief. I knew Dad to be intolerant in private, but had never seen such an outward display of hatred from him in public. I felt a large measure of the respect I had for my father disappear before the two men had reached the end of our row.

9. Rick Springfield "Tear It All Down"

"And all that time, I wished that I could talk to you. I hated myself and all the terrible things I was doing, but I was too afraid, and embarrassed and guilty, and I didn't feel that I could come to you with any of it. I wanted more than anything to talk to you about it and hear you tell me that you knew what I was going through, and that I wasn't going to hell, and that you still loved me. But I was too afraid to tell you, and so I buried it and tried to live with all the guilt and hate that I felt for myself." 

Rain slapped against the windshield of Dad's parked minivan, blurring the world outside.

"I just wish it could have been different between us; I wish I could have talked to you," I added softly as the tears dried up.

Newly married and desperate for aid in overcoming my absolute misery, I had just revealed every one of my darkest secrets to my father. If he had ever wondered as to my carnal desires and what I might have done to either suppress or satisfy them, he wouldn't have to anymore. I felt vulnerable but good, having said things to my father that I had carried around deep within myself for years.

The engine clicked and pinged as it cooled. I sat still and quiet, fighting impatience as I allowed Dad time to process my confession and all that it meant for our relationship.

"I often wondered what I would tell you boys should one of you ever asked me if I had done any of those things," Dad began at last.

I looked at my father. This was our moment; after this evening we would move forward not so much as father and son, but rather as equals on level ground.

"And you know what I decided?"

I looked away and waited for his next words, knowing that after hearing them, things between us would be different.

"It's none of your damn business," he said curtly.

My side of the car seemed to sink as he opened his door and stepped out onto the pavement. He slammed the door behind him, and I wasn't startled by the sound. I turned to watch him cross the driveway, his shoulders hunched against the rain.

By the time he had disappeared into the house, I knew that things would indeed be different between us.

From West of Independence page 122:

But I knew for a fact that Dad had his own share of bad habits and carnal appetites to overcome. I had witnessed his hypocritical self-righteousness first hand. When I had once called him out on one of his own stumbling blocks, he had shared with me the ever popular “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” excuse that gave him and so many others the right to sin and run away from the consequences.

10. Greg Laswell "Sweet Dream"

Since Jared died, we have done a lot together. We have driven across burning deserts, paddled quiet rivers under the northern lights, watched movies in dark and empty theaters, and one night he even taught me to fly.

I love to hate waking up.

From West of Independence page 143:

Since he worked nights, Jared had to sleep at some point during the day. He would often crash on our couch, covering himself from head to toe in a blanket so that he could sleep in relative darkness. Ella would chase the kids outside or upstairs so he would not be disturbed.

While I loved having Jared there to laugh and joke with, it was while he lay sleeping on our couch that I felt the happiest. My little brother was asleep on my couch during daylight hours, and I was okay with it. I felt that I had become the loving brother that Jared had always needed, rather than the self-appointed surrogate father that I had always been.

11. HYUNA "Bubble Pop"

A co-worker once caught me dance-driving back to the office after a lunch meeting. She told the entire company that she had seen me popping my shoulders, bobbing my head, and singing into the steering wheel with an enthusiasm that made Richard Simmons seem comatose in comparison. I think it might have been a Cher song, but I can't won't recall...

The months after Jared's death were without question the darkest of my life, but there were a few sources of light that kept me from living under a total eclipse. One source was most unexpected, arriving in the form of my little brother (Connor). He would sit in our kitchen for hours, strumming his guitar to Korean pop songs that he had found on YouTube. Most of the kids' homework assignments that year were completed to the uplifting beats and cheerful foreign lyrics about bubbles and shy boys.

I have downloaded a number of those songs to my iPod, and they kept my feet on the pedals as I biked from the top of Utah to the bottom last year. I find it impossible to remain sad and still when these songs are sounding against my eardrums.

Plus, the girls are much cuter than Cher.

From West of Independence page 155:

As we passed them by and continued our way through the fallen stone trees, I felt sad for Connor. He knew what he wanted out of life, but for some time he had harbored less than little hope of getting it.
Had he asked me, I would have told Connor that he would know a relationship was worth having if the changes he was willing to initiate within himself to make it last were the most ambitious and difficult of his life. They would not be the juvenile changes that stem from an initial attraction. They would eclipse the willingness to shop for shoes, watch chick flicks, or enjoy the company of her overbearing best friend. The changes would be almost impossible to initiate, painful to follow through on, and would at times test his resolve beyond belief and reason.

Had he asked, I would have also told him that they would be worth it in the end.

Bon Vivant

"Man, this woman is going to be your wife forever!" Alex almost shouts, pointing at Elizabeth.

I grin, and look over at my forever-wife. Elizabeth is fanning her denimed butt over the flames of a gas fireplace. She shakes her head in dismissal of our conversation about love, life without passion, and NORAD. The mock dismissal is forgiven when she smiles wide at us.

Us: Alex Dezen, lead singer of The Damnwells, and me, author of "West of Independence," standing together on the back patio of a stranger's house.

"I'm singing in my sleep, driving across Texas with you..."

Surreal doesn't cut it, while epic is just stupid and exhausted.

Comfortable; that's what this is.

Ryan steps through the sliding glass door, a red cup of warmth in one hand, two pieces of pizza in the other. Nazi-hunting-war-corresponding-tour-managing-sidekicking buddy to Alex, Ryan is more than a character. This self professed "bon vivant" carries knowledge and experience on constant offer, and he underlines all of it with a humor-colored highlighter.

"What are we talking-whoa, drop it like it's hot!" Ryan interrupts his own question when he notices Elizabeth waving her tush over the fire.

"You look so good..."

My head feels light, but it isn't the altitude.

To say that this is a moment long in coming would be a lie. I had never bothered to imagine the chance to personally thank Alex for keeping me company on my drive across Texas in 2009, my little brother's ashes resting in the back seat.

Ryan is arguing with Elizabeth; he thinks she has long legs.

Alex has just played a private show for us. Every song had spread a new layer of goosebumps over the tiny crowd. Emotion arced across the room, interrupted only by the banter, praise, and laughter shared in between songs.

And then he sang "Texas."

A sleepy poem about love and distance, put to music made for counting highway mile markers, "Texas" is a song that sneaks up on me and puts a comfortable pressure on my chest. By its end I am miles from home, the one that I love most in the world sleeping in the passenger seat as we drive through the night across the flat, wide, thought-provoking expanse of the southwest.

"I could stay another day with you, stall the winter's pain 'til June..."

The song is as much a part of "West of Independence" as the paper (or pixels) upon which it is printed. It not only journeyed with me across Texas, but across page after page of the writing process as well. As Alex began to play it, I held my phone up to record the moment. A few lyrics in, and I couldn't hold the phone steady; my arm shook and my eyes clouded. As a lump filled my throat, I turned off the phone, choosing to live the moment rather than record it.

And to drive across Texas one more time.

Thanks Alex.

The King's Vampire

One of my teachers in high school claimed to have been babysitter to a young Stephen King. He told us that even as a boy, the best-selling author of horror was a "weirdo." I wasn't completely convinced that his claim to have known Mr. King was true because he was drunk most days of the week, and therefore spent the better part of class time wandering between moods of nostalgia, indifference, and belligerence, and lecturing us accordingly.

I read a lot as a teenager, but I didn't read any of King’s books. The made-for-TV adaptations of his works were a series of cheesy disappointments that didn't send me running for the library to check out an armful of them to read. It wasn't until a vampire drove Elizabeth into my arms that I took an interest in the "weirdo's" macabre scribblings.

The first movie Elizabeth and I watched together as we were dating was Disney’s animated version of “The Jungle Book.” Not exactly a roll-around-on-the-couch-and-make-out flick, but more a sit-close-and-hold-her-hand-to-prove-that-you-would-make-a-kind-and-sensitive-husband-and-father movie. (It worked.)

The next movie that we watched together was suggested by Elizabeth herself, with the disclaimer that it had always frightened her to a thrill. I began to realize that she wasn't anything like the girls I had been running with, and looked forward to sitting beside her when she got scared.

“Salem’s Lot” is another of King’s TV adaptations, and although it is dripping with cheese, if you watch it in the dark after the sun goes down, it leaves a mark on your soul. (You’ll please excuse the pun; David Soul of Starsky and Hutch fame stars as the hero.) There are a few terrifying moments spent with the vampire, but the best is when he confronts the family’s priest, who has come to talk sense into the teenage son that believes that a vampire has come to their small town. Moments after the mother tells her son that “nightmares seem real,” the creature rises from the floor like a black curtain of death hoisted by Satan himself. The pale undead skin of the vampire’s face stretches tight over his ancient skull, his eyes glow bright yet lifeless, and his fangs appear as a work of disgusting, terrible, yellow beauty.

Elizabeth sought shelter in my puny arms, and I have loved that vampire ever since.

After watching “Salem’s Lot,” I read a lot of Stephen King’s books. I liked most of them, and learned a greater appreciation for him as a writer. Prolific, yes, terrifying, yes, twisted, most definitely; the drunken declarations of my High School teacher seemed very plausible. Stephen King was most certainly a weirdo, but he was a weirdo that I could admire.

Years later, Elizabeth began to tire of my own constant and vocal wishing to someday become a writer. The trouble was that I almost never wrote, and when I did it never amounted to more than a page of dreadful musings. Having no writing discipline, I had no claim to the title of writer.

That all changed in a moment, however, on the day that Elizabeth said to me, “Would you please either start writing, or shut up about becoming a writer!?”

Her words were not harsh in their honest delivery, but still I felt hurt and humiliated for a moment, before realizing that she was right. I didn't start writing, but I did take to thinking more about the actual writing process and promised myself that I would start writing very soon. I just needed more time.

But I wasn't allowed any more time. Elizabeth didn't stop with her demand that I pen up or shut up. She found a local writing group that met every month at the Wiggin Memorial Library in Stratham, New Hampshire.

And then she had the nerve to make me join it.

I wrote a story about "durt" and the group loved it, in spite of it being almost fifteen pages of terrible writing. They voiced their praise along with a few edits, and in one hit the writing group became a drug. I couldn't wait for the month to pass so that I could get my next fix. I started to write almost every day, even if it was just a few lines at a time.

Still, Elizabeth didn't stop there. She also bought me a book; a book about writing, written by Stephen King. More a memoir than an instructional text on how to become a writing legend, the book put my dream into perspective and inspired me to keep at it. I was encouraged to learn that Stephen King had not just fallen out of the black sky at midnight with an armful of pre-written best-sellers and a fat stack of cash in his backpack.

No, he didn't succeed out of nowhere; he labored at it. He wrote. And wrote. And wrote. And while he wrote he lived, and while he lived he worked, suffered, loved, laughed, cried, survived, and went a little crazy. But through it all, he wrote. Even after being hit by a car and suffering debilitating injuries that left many unsure as to his continued success as a best-selling powerhouse, he wrote.

So I kept on writing. And while I wrote, I lived, and while I lived, I suffered, loved, laughed-you get the idea.

Then Jared died.

So I wrote. And went a little crazy.

Crazy enough that it came time to move. We needed to find some happy in a new and unfamiliar place, a place where we could drive for miles without passing the dark forest where we had found Jared. But halfway through our move west, with houses nearly sold and bought, I started to panic at the thought of leaving a successful business, a beloved neighborhood, and a number of dear friends for a new life which promised no certainty other than challenge. Elizabeth's response over the phone while house-hunting 2,500 miles away left me with no doubt that we were doing the right thing.

“If we don’t go for it now, we never will,” she declared, adding, “I want you to come to Oakley and take a break. No job, no worries, just writing,” she said.

“But-“ I began to worry at once.

“No buts!” Elizabeth sliced my worry in half with a gentle shout. “We’ll make it work. I’ll find a couple of jobs if I have to. Enough already; you need to finish this book! If you don’t finish it now, you won’t ever finish it, and then you’ll always wonder if you could have done it, and so many people will never hear Jared's story,” she concluded.

So we moved to Oakley. I finished the book. It’s called “Westof Independence.” That’s it in the picture, sitting on a library shelf beside one of Stephen King's.

So I write, but not to have my book(s) beside Stephen King’s. I write because I love to, even when it’s hard to. I write because it gives so much back to me, even when the readers are few and the sales are slow. I write because my little brother Jared died of loneliness, and I feel terrible at how I treated him, believing that he would always come back to hug me and hang out with me in spite of my abuse, self-righteousness, and callous indifference to his suffering. I write because I want my kids to know that no matter how impossible your dream, you have to try, because if you don’t try you have already failed.

And I write because a vampire chased a beautiful woman into my arms.

Thank-you Mr. King.