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Author interview with Laura's Books And Blogs today. She did a great job with this one, including a few questions indie authors might appreciate. Enjoy!
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Forever Drowning
She was churning in the surf — drowning — and so was I. The height of the waves had suddenly changed, creating a rip current along a remote stretch of island sand.
A few minutes before it happened, we were laughing in defiance at the swells as they rolled in and gently carried us off our feet. They made us unbalanced, tickling our stomachs with every lift. The water was warm, seemingly heated by the reddening glow of the sky as the sun started its daily trek down to the horizon.
We had never seen anything like it. Even at home, standing on the freshwater shoreline of Lake Michigan looking east, the sun never touched the water at dusk. This place was impossibly more exotic — a small Caribbean island with the shore right out the front door of our rooms.
It took less than two minutes after our arrival to change into swimsuits and dash toward the water. I had shed my travel clothes in the bathroom while my sister's grandmother helped her change in the room, freeing up my parents to visit the inn's outdoor bar, covered by a palm-thatched roof.
My mother ordered her first of many Daiquiris while my stepfather sucked Vodka on rocks. They had checked in and checked out, which was always part of the plan. They brought my stepfather's mother along for the trip to serve as a no-cost nanny whenever our folks wanted to break away. They broke away as soon as we had decided to attack the water while my grandmother laid out a blanket on a lounge chair and started to read.
My sister was the first to fall off her feet as the wave crashed over her head, simultaneously pulling the beach and her feet out to sea. All I saw was one skinny hand above the white foam of water; her voice was drowned out by the roar of the ocean crashing into us. I grabbed at it, caught her wrist, and then lost my balance as the ocean protested my reluctance to give her up.
I wasn't a big kid as a preteen and constantly subject to a barrage of jokes. You so skinny that you could do hula hoops with a cheerio. You so skinny you can hide behind a twig when we play hide and seek. You so skinny that if you stick out your tongue and stand sideways, people would think you're a zipper. The body-shaming used to bother me because there was nothing I could do about it. You so skinny, you couldn't even save your sister from being carried out to sea.
I would have given anything to be stronger at that moment, but I wasn't. The waves were pulling her out. Even as I dug my heels into the sand to stop it, I was being dragged further and further out along with her. Every time I took another gulp of air, the next wave would cut it short by crashing into us. She wasn't even that lucky. Her five-year-old body was erect, parallel to the waterline. I couldn't recall the last time I saw her head above water despite knowing she must have found some air. I heard a low rumble of screams just under the surface.
Everybody faces a time in life when they have to make a choice. I knew that this was one of mine. I could continue to fight until I was exhausted and we both would be lost, or I could surrender her to the ocean and save myself.
"Please, God, please God," were the only words I remember saying after my initial calls for help went unheard. In one final attempt, I twisted around to face the shore.
With one hand trailing behind me, tiny fingers slipping through mine, I felt her elbow and shoulder pull taught, ready to give. I tried to crawl out of the ocean with one free hand and knees digging deep into the sand, just as they taught us to dig while pushing a sled at football practice, before they cut me for having a slender frame. Even the pads never fit.
When I finally looked up, I had managed to crawl past the break and into a shallower, calmer waters. I stood up and pulled my sister along with me, seeing her grandmother knee-deep in the surf, hand outstretched for her. My sister sobbed in heaves.
"It's okay," I said, breathless and heart throbbing. "I saved her."
"Saved her?" She said. "You tried to drown her."
"What?"
"Get away from her," she hissed, turning toward the inn. "Just wait until I tell them."
She sulked back to the building, calling out to our parents over my sister's wails. Salt and sand burned still burned her eyes. She coughed up remits of seawater from her lungs. Her grandmother roughly handled her, washing off sand under an outdoor facet meant for feet.
My stepfather and mother were quick to join them, asking what happened as I was the last to arrive at the spout. In a few angry breaths, I was sent to the hotel room to think about what I had done. All I could think about was why her grandmother only got wet to her knees.
No one spoke to me the next day, either. It was fine because I didn't have much to say. There was nothing I could say. The notion I saved my sister didn't fit the narrative.
Since I had moved in with them two years earlier, I was supposed to be a troubled preteen, resentful of my place at the bottom of a blended family. My mother called it my penance for being spoiled by her mother, who raised me for the first ten years of my life. Now I was supposed to be grateful that the three of them had taken me in before she died — making this a second chance to fix my life and undo the damage of the past decade. I didn't know what they were talking about.
The only time my sister ever brought up what happened that day was many years later. I was talking to her via a black and white video monitor while she was awaiting trial for stealing a public works truck. I was the only one who had come to visit her. She started to sob then too.
"I knew you would come visit me," she said. "You always try to save me."
She wasn't just talking about her jail cell or the island. There were a half dozen other times that she needed to be saved. I was the first to run down to the street corner when she flew head-over-handle-bars and lost two front teeth. I was the first person to call her out when she bragged about smoking pot. I was the only one she would talk to after one of her friends pulled out his father's .22 caliber and shot their mutual friend in the head, never realizing it was loaded. I was the first person to call and calm her down when she tried to commit suicide by ramming her head into a concert wall as the night sky was ablaze with Fourth of July fireworks.
I saved her from that grand theft felony too. I called her public defender and a friend who worked in the prosecutor's office to cut a deal. She would walk as long as she went into a drug rehabilitation program. She agreed, and she walked. She walked right out and then quickly back into another prosecution.
I was at fault because some people thought she could have beaten the grand theft felony charge despite all the witnesses, including the police officers who pulled her from the vehicle's passenger side. This impression that she could have beaten the rap wasn't that surprising to me. I wasn't watching her closely enough when she lost her front teeth. I was mistaken she would smoke marijuana because she would "never do that." I didn't check up on her enough after I went off to college, allowing her to slip in with the wrong crowd. I didn't do enough to set her on the right path after her odd attempt at suicide.
"You always try to save me," she said again, sobbing until I didn't accept $50 for the title to her beat-up, unregistered car. And then she stopped, voice hot. "I don't want you to save me anymore."
"I know," was all I said, hanging up the phone and letting her fingers slip away.
***
Forever Drowning is a story written during the early genesis of 50 States: A collection of short, short stories. It takes place in the Caribbean, which is why it was ultimately omitted from the book. And while there are no plans to bring it into the fold of interconnecting shorts and longer works, it remains an important part of a body of work.
50 States is a collection of 50 short stories that take place across the United States over a period of 60 years. You can learn more about 50 States by Richard R. Becker on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B098P2CPQ7) or anywhere books are sold.
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Rebels
Olivia loved protests. She liked holding banners best of all. This time it was bright yellow and asked the most poignant question of her generation. "Which Side Are You On?"
She knew which side she was on and which side most onlookers were on, especially those in gas-starved cars who frowned when they had to turn around and take a detour. She sneered at them between bouts of laughter and hurling insults. It made her giddy with power — disrupting their busy lives and business-as-usual attitudes to make a point. There was nothing anyone could do about it either. The police were there to protect the protesters more than any pedestrians or occasional science denier.
She smiled at the scope of it. All over the world, thousands of people had left their schools and workplaces to share a statement. One news station had talked about millions of people. It was encouraging to hear, even if her group only consisted of only a few dozen.
"The planet's on fire," they chanted together. "Put the fire out."
With time to kill since most of her classes were canceled, Olivia texted her boyfriend Charlie to meet up for a matinee. She decided with all the clatter of the protest marching on, nobody would miss her.
When the time was right, she ducked into a corner Starbucks to order a pumpkin spice latte. Then she texted Charlie where to meet, telling him how to avoid the areas they had disrupted the most. It was annoying. She would have to walk another two blocks.
Back outside, she stopped for a moment to take in the new scene. There were spectators with cell phones gathered up along the police tape, all trying to catch a shot of some students handcuffing themselves across an intersection. They were strung light pole to light pole, a human chain.
She rolled her eyes at their "Rebel For Life" sign and held the latte to her noise, warding away the smell. The air was thick with the proximity of the crowd, a combination of sweat and sweet-smelling vape.
Two blocks later and another fifteen minutes, she caught sight of her boyfriend's familiar Nissan Frontier. She waved at him and dropped the remains of her latte, "Olivia" still carved out in black Sharpie on the side, as she ran over.
They had planned to see the movie "Hustlers." And why not? Saving the planet was hard work.
***
Rebels is a short story that was written early in the genesis of 50 States and indirectly part of the collection despite being omitted from the book. It takes place in Washington D.C., 2019. 50 States is collection of 50 short stories that take place across the United States over a period of 60 years. You can learn more about 50 States by Richard R. Becker on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B098P2CPQ7) or anywhere books are sold.
#shortstory #WashingtonDC #50States
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Don't you know? The most terrifying aspect about losing a loved one isn't that you won't move on ... it's that you will.
Richard R. Becker
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Umbrellas by Richard Becker
"We don’t need an umbrella,” he said.
She looked out at the rain streaked window and frowned.
“We’re going to get wet,” she said, measuring the distance between the car and the front door of the school with her eyes.
“We’ll be quick to the door,” consoled her dad. “We’ll run so fast the rain won’t catch us.”
“Yeah, right,” she said. “Everybody else has an umbrella. Except us.”
She waved at the tight procession of shuffling peers and parents. Their colorful umbrellas broke up the gray of the day with big splashes of yellow and red and green.
“They’re beautiful,” she said with a wry smile and then a pout at the prospect before them.
Her dad opened his door and quickly shut it before circling around to the other side of the car. She felt a breath of cold air spread across the interior and then a burst of it as he opened her door to the wind and rain.
“Come on,” he said, holding out his hand with a laugh.
She laughed too as she jumped down, narrowly missing a puddle, and her feet slipped on the rain-slicked blacktop. Holding onto his hand, she was able to keep her balance.
“Backpack up,” he instructed, helping her lift it to cover her head before taking flight.
They sprinted across the lot with big, uneven steps, avoiding lakes and rivers that pooled haphazardly across the uneven parking lot. And as they approached the procession of umbrellas, she saw the procession very differently as they dashed alongside it. Most of the parents looked grumpy, drawn up against the cold, taking tiny steps as hands tightened around the handles.
“Be careful,” warned one of them, as she drew her son closer as if to ward off the cold.
“Don’t splash,” huffed another, directing her daughter to move away from the curb.
“Hurry along,” frowned a third, giving them barely enough space to pass by.
But with each indignation, her father only laughed harder as they passed. Sometimes he would even stop or spin around with her, wishing everyone a good morning or inviting them to reflect on the beautiful day and wondrous weather. And every time he did, she immediately felt warmed by her own laughter.
“Oh my, come inside, come inside,” fretted the principal waiting for them at the front door. “The two of you are getting all wet.”
“Yes,” said the little girl. “Isn’t it grand?”
And in the moment, her smile stretching wide until her cheeks hurt, she understood. It really was grand to skip across the parking lot in the rain, dance rather than complain their way inside, and warm themselves not with layers but with the happiness in their hearts.
“You and your dad need an umbrella,” the principal offered.
“We don’t need an umbrella,” she smiled.
#
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Luminary Unpretentious beauty Shedding innocence and skin; She stripped their superficial labels To show both, vice and virtue, live within. Then down underground Gone green doors, pan, and glass She disappeared behind unseen tears To save, for her love, the last dance. *** A figment by Rich Becker; Bettie Page, 1923-2008
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Lost Monday by Richard R. Becker
“Put it down,” Kari Dell said, never turning from the window. “Over there.” “Very well,” said the hotel attendant, setting down the silver dome. “Will that be all?” “No,” she snapped before softening. “I would like to see some sheep today.” “I’ll ask the doctor to bring the car around.” “And Monday,” she added. “It would be good of you to return it.” “Madame?” “You took it yesterday. I would like it back.” “But that is when you checked in, Madame.” “Codswallop,” she frowned. “You made that up. It’s clearly a plot to kill me.” “It was,” he slumped. “Yesterday.” *** Lost Monday doesn’t read like much at a glance. It’s 100 words drawn together after Janet Reid, literary agent announced a contest inspired by author Kari Dell. Dell was on a rodeo vacation and forgot what day it was. So she suggested someone kill her with words in a hotel just down the road from a state mental hospital.
Reid tossed in a few more rules for the informal contest with less than 24-hour notice, including the words: kill, dell, plot, sheep, and codswallop. Win, lose, or draw: It was fun to throw in with about 100 others. Enough so that I thought to share the scrap on Facebook.
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Post-punk art house rockers The Veda Rays self release their debut, densely dark and beautiful. Gamma Rays Galaxy Rays Veda Rays. http://bit.ly/oj8GKU
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