Old Man and the Quill

By: Brad Heald

Old Man and the Quill

In a time prior to COVID, and before I happily moved from LaQuinta, CA, to Henderson, NV, I worked as a driver. Over time, I collected five excellent clients who kept me as busy as I wanted to be. During August of 2017,one of those clients, Mrs. Hope scheduled a ride to Santa Barbara a ride she consistently requested. The purpose was to visit her daughter, but mainly on this trip, the purpose was to attend a fundraiser at the beautiful Santa Barbara Botanical Garden.

Mrs. Hope and I, on our drive over to Santa Barbara from Indian Wells, CA, engage in a continuous dialogue about a novella I am writing. Had been writing, seemingly forever. I tell her the entire story as outlined and where I was currently, in the story. She loved the idea, and over the two plus hour drive ardently contributes ideas about the story. Particularly, a beginning that supports a chance meeting between the two protagonists.

Mrs. Hope stays the night with her daughter in a most impressive estate mansion, once a hang- out of Ronald and Nancy Reagan. I spend the evening in a separate residence, or granny flat, on the property. The next morning, we were up early and making our way to the Garden. Once there, we browse the busy quaint, and quiet The Shop as it’s called. Shoppers, and donors, and driver that’s me breathe the aromatic air and admire the inventory. The soft fragrances of herbs, oils, and flowers mix in the open air shop and lay upon me a sort of spiritual experience. Visitors, and Mrs. Hope, spend quality time browsing and absorbing the shop’s pleasant smells, and color, and a well-trained, courteous staff. She buys a few items for her garden.

Like Mrs. Hope, most of the donors or attendees were elderly, not all, most. They, like her, seem snug, warm, and comfortable with their skin, hair, lines, shape, and motion. Likely, they are loyal advocates’ for preventative maintenance products and procedures. Leaving the The Shop, donors begin making their way to an area set up to listen to the speakers. Not all are wealthy donors, but those who gather in the tidy, neatly manicured meadow set with white padded folding chairs, and a speaker’s podium certainly are. Some donors mill about, some take seats.

Mrs. Hope and I had paused at the edge of the little meadow, all set for the speakers when a snazzily dressed, European appearing man, wearing a checkered, black and gray colored flat cap, with a matching ascot comes into view. This noticeably dressed older gentleman walks up to us, greeting Mrs. Hood. They exchange pleasantries, and then Mrs. Hood suddenly, and unexpectedly, introduced me. “This is my driver Paul, and he’s a writer Donald,” she said, touching my arm.

“Oh, a writer?” he comments and steers his taller face to align with mine, searching my eyes.

A million no thanks, Mrs. Hood. Ugh!

“Well, Paul, writer’s have got to have something to say,” he says without the accent I expected. He seems to know I wasn’t really a writer, just a struggling how to have, fun writing hobby writer, with not much to say. Donald the donor says, looking away to Mrs. Hope. “Sit with me darling, if you would, please.” He glances back at me as they turn to find seats. I got something not unfamiliar. A cold steel, condescending stare.

“They sure do,” Mrs. Hood agrees. “Sit wherever you like Robert. Enjoy the speakers.” The two walked away.

“Oh my God, ” I say out loud, holding at bay a fearful scream. “I’ve written a bit, but do not think of myself as a writer. I mean, as writer Ann Lamont says, writers’ write. I seem to have too many other things to do. Wife, football, baseball, driving work, basketball, wife, reading books, wife, house, dog, yard, wife, oh, and who doesn’t like Netflix? Who has time to write? Paul, that’s me, just piddle write around. I’m usually quiet, especially when I’m around groups exactly like the one I’m standing in right now, even if the group is less wealthy and quite blue collar. What do I have to say?” “What?” “It was Mark Switzer in 1907 who wrote, Better to remain silent and thought the fool than speak and remove all doubt. I do not speak this at this critical time. I’m a huge fan of Switzer.”

The guest speakers speak their piece, opining voluminously regarding the cost of maintaining and improving the seventy-eight acre botanical garden, home to over a thousand California native plants, with five miles of walking trails. The very garden that surrounds the donor now sorely needs their donation. I sense their let up learning in the little, tranquil meadow, mentally preparing the amount of their donation. At the conclusion of the presentations, the guest donors were urged to explore and pointed out some of the most traveled trails and sights to see.

I stand alone at the back edge of the meadow, waiting for Mrs. Hope. She had joined a small group of donors, and the chat appears busy with laughing begetting chat, and then chat igniting more laughter.

I feel dread and physically shiver as I see Donald the donor approach and stop beside me. I mentioned he’s a head taller, and here he is looking down at me. He tidies his ascot and crosses his arms, perhaps a security measure. Then, arms crossed firmly, his eyes seriously lock on mine, eyes like Carl Mays, pitcher, threatening the batter Roy Chapman, and about to unleash a killer bean ball.

Here it comes. “Paul, tell me, where might I read some of your work? You are published, right? If you’re driving around with Mrs. Hope, I would expect you are solid.” His arms remain crossed as he rises on his toes, then drops back down.

“Well, Donald. I’ve been published once, only once a letter in the Naval Proceedings. Responding to an article in the previous month’s issue. Even got paid twenty-five dollars. Split that with my co-author.”

Donald’s smile evolves quickly into a laugh. “Co-author, well, that isn’t much, now, is it? I suppose it’s a little something, tiny, certainly not enough to call it a start, and definitely not enough to call yourself a writer. Sweet Jesus, that’s all you got?” He yaps. “How is it Mrs. Hope calls you a writer?” I gotcha, his smile said.

I glance around the meadow hoping maybe Mrs. Hope might save me. Mrs. Hope still engages with the small group and I can see she was having a raring conversation. “I wrote a few short stories, not many.” I can think of no one in my entire life that heard me call myself a writer. I mess around some as a hobby and am terribly disabled as I suffer a grammar deficiency.”

“Quit with the babbling, who is your audience? Have you submitted anything other than a letter?” he asks impatiently.

My audience? I expect my wife, and my sister, and my daughter, there’s a cousin, and I have a few old friends. Been turned down multiple times,” I respond. “ I’m not writing anything intellectual or non fiction or literary, It’s simple fiction, with the exception of the letter I told you about. I stay in my lane. “I’ve entered a few contests but no notice.”

Mr. Donald the donor shifts his weight. “Magazines or online?” He pulls a cigar from his inside jacket pocket and puts it in his mouth. He doesn’t light the cigar, but initiates a slow rolling shift from one side of his mouth to the other. I will consider this an insult to the garden, if he lights it. “Give me an example of something you’ve written. A thought, you thought and put into words as sentences and paragraphs.”

I was beginning to warm a bit, and as well, feeling a need to sit while I surrender, not without some push back, to this wealthy, professional appearing man. “May we sit on these chairs Donald?”

“Give me an example of one of your scarce stories first,” now he clasps his hand in the front and rested them at about the buckle level. “I’m ready to hear what you got to say, so go. Haven’t got all day.”

“Okay then, here’s one I wrote quite some time ago and have submitted three times including to a contest online managed by a writing blog called Reedsy. “The title to the story is Pickles and Ice Cream. The story tackles a situation when a young couple differs on when to have a child. The man has started a company which takes all his time and attention, while the woman went into the marriage wanting to raise a children, and he isn’t ready. Additionally, the couple lives in winter cold Connecticut and she’s from sunny California. There, I had a bit to say. The story got all of 9 likes and two comments.”

“Well hell, that’s what your story is about, I want something creative, an opinion or a poem, something fresh. It doesn’t sound like anything most people would want to bother with dummy. Tough to show skill if you’ve none. People are going fast these days, don’t want to waste time on basically an unpublished writer because an unpublished writer probably doesn’t have grit or panache” that’s my bit to say to you. “Got anything more interesting or should I say interesting at all?”

“I do but I want to sit down. You want to hear more of what I got to say then we’ll do it sitting, okay.” I said.

“Oh, okay then.” We take a seat. “Get on it.”

“I wrote this poem some years ago and now I stumble on a connection. You.This something to say is about how you make me feel.”

I’m tiring in life’s trenches,

When Lord, I knew I saw,

The devil turning wrenches,

Fastening me to the maw.

I could not issue an expletive,

So dry of spirit was I,

My thoughts towed repetitive

Repeating until I die.

“A poem to satisfy the Get on it order and having something to say even if I am not a writer, and I’m pretty sure there is no poet in me. That’s how you make me feel Mr. Donald the donor. And now I’m going to go on about another story whether you like it or not. Just sit and shut up.”

“Well by God, there ya go….some balls finally.”

“This is a story I also entered in a Reedsy Contest. The challenge was to write a story without dialogue tags between a thousand and three thousand words. I titled my story “Whoops, Billy Came Back.” The story begins with a phone call from a woman, Polly, to Billy, who fathered her child, a boy, Matthew, fifteen years prior. She makes the call because her husband, Pike, a high school friend of the father and herself, is abusing the boy. Billy had impregnated Polly on the night they had graduated from high school, and Pike didn’t know because he had drank himself into unconsciousness as the three celebrated together. Billy agrees to come help, and arrives in his small hometown, a logging community. The father, Billy, went into a local bar and while there ran into Pike, on purpose, when he got off work. They have a long conversation, again without dialogue tags and finally end up with a dinner at the Pike’ home with Polly and Matthew. To say anymore Mr. Donald the donor, might ruin all the colorful dialogue needed to keep the characters separate and the story’s end. So, I’ll stop here. By the way I hit exactly three thousand words with my story.

“Well, son, Donald said, the cigar clenched tightly as he spoke, “that sounds like quite another bullshit, worthless story, any comments on that one?”

“Thirteen likes, four comments.”

“Surprising.”

“Well, by God, you got a little something to say. The thing is, it’s only very little. There is so much to write about that is meaningful to our world we live in, and you somehow seem to spend time on fiction, obviously, not enough time. But writing a bit, it is clear that there is no audience for what you’re spending time on. You can do the fiction but, make the material relevant. Okay, one last chance. Mrs. Hood mentioned something about a novella. Another peculiar, if not sad, raid on literature, and a massive waste of your time. What about the poor reader? Tell me more, and then I’m going for a walk in this lovely garden.

“What do you want to know?”

“What in hell the damn story is about?” he asks, words warp inside a yawn. “You are literally putting me to sleep. That ought tell you something.”

“The story is set in rural southwestern Oregon. Not far from a little logging town called Cave Junction. It’s about a secret that stayed secret for thirty-two years by two adolescent boys. The story includes voyeurism, infidelity, abuse, family dysfunction, and more. It all takes place on August 29, 1959, just before the school begins. And much more.” "I pause, thinking I hear something like a snore.”

Suddenly, without warning Mr. Donald topples over onto my lap, and I push him off finishing his short journey into the grass with a thump and grunt. His flat cap relocates and the ascot skews. What? He awakes sputtering something about a faux fool writer and asked, “where in hell am I?’

Mrs. Hope, drawn to the scene by his fall, kneels down beside Mr. Donald. “Donald, you’ve fallen….are you okay?”

He musters a “I think so. Damn fool writer of yours boring me clear to sleep.”

“Evidently Mr. Donald you fell asleep, then spilled to the ground like a cup of coffee,” I offer, “ I quite like you that way, asleep I mean, I say this with only a wee poem of malice. I believe you will recover and suggest you seek shelter to nap and rest the complex.”

“What? What complex is that?"

“Rhymes with inferiority.”

“I do not have any type of complex you weak unpublished little shit. Help me up.”

Mrs. Hope had gone off with one of her friends to leave her donation so I left him laying there, and caught up with her. Mrs. Hope, I say, "we have much to discuss on our drive home. Mr. Donald had much to say. Maybe you can help me finish that damn novella before summer ends. He fell asleep as I was saying a bit about voyeurism.”

“ Having trouble falling asleep? I can fix that, Just tell me a writer has to have something to say. I’ll find my quill and tell you right to sleep.

The End