The story below, “River Rendezvous,” is from volume 4 of my Civil War tales: The Scarecrow and other stories. I’m presenting it here, as an example of a story, yes; but not just as an example. I am using the story as an analogy also.
River Rendezvous
“Come away with me,” the soldier said, looking down at her.
Rebecca couldn’t believe her ears. Did he really just ask her that? She looked up into his clear blue eyes. They had only known each other three days. Two days previous, she had lost her puppy, Corri, and the handsome young soldier had found him and handed him to her. “Is this yours?” he had asked. They were standing down at the river that day, pretty much the same spot they were in today. The sun was bright. As she looked up and past him, she could see how beautiful the day was. She had just dreamed of a moment such as this just last night. She was suddenly, inexplicably moved. “Of course,” she said. “Yes, Yes! I will.” And so it was settled. They kissed. After all, she was sixteen. He was twenty, she thought. She didn’t know for sure. It didn’t matter. Nothing did. Her home, her family. Nothing. They had taken her father’s boat out the day before, and again today. They would take it out again tonight, or in the early hours of the morning. That’s when they would leave. She would go home and see what small things she might need. She didn’t have much. Not much in the way of clothing. She would take her only other dress, nothing else. She didn’t need anything. The two of them spent the rest of the afternoon in bliss. He sat with his back leaned up against a tree. She lay in his arms. She was completely comfortable there. She looked up at him. He was chewing on a piece of straw. He smiled down at her, kissed her. “Let’s leave now,” she wanted to say. “Right this minute.” It was almost as though he could read her mind. She honestly felt as though he could. She felt as though he knew her every thought. It seemed like he was placing thoughts in her head himself. It was almost as if they weren’t even her thoughts completely. She couldn’t understand it. She couldn’t see how the two of them could be so in tune with one another. She couldn’t see it at all. She shivered. It was a shiver of delight, however, a chillingly cold and crisp delight. It was bright and sharp like the sun. And tonight, it would be a full and bright moon. Yes, she thought. Tonight. It would be more romantic that way. Just the two of them, drifting downriver in the moonlight. And wherever they pulled up the boat, well, that would be where they would live. They would be together forever. It was as though he had placed this very thought in her head, right then and there, just as he brushed her hair aside when he leaned down to kiss her. Yes. Together forever. She felt another chill of delight surge through her. Yes. Yes. Forever.
And so it was . . .
A week later her body was discovered floating along. It was bloated and ravaged by the battering of the water twisting and pushing her along and smashing her young body against the rocks. A fisherman had seen her in her father’s boat at sunset a week earlier. She had been alone; her puppy was nowhere to be seen. The puppy had wandered home a few days after. He had waited faithfully for her return, but she hadn’t shown. He wandered home only to be fed. He waited as long as he could without starving to death. He was a faithful little pup.
And Rebecca, where had she been in the preceding days before her lifeless body had floated downriver to be discovered?
Well, she had been in the grasp of the young soldier. He had died two years earlier, his body wedged in the rocks on the river’s bottom. He was no more than a skeleton now, with a few fluttering tatters of rotted cloth wound around his rib cage. He lay on his back, trapped beneath the jagged ledge of rock, one bony arm and hand sticking up just enough that a bony couple of fingers had gotten somehow hooked and twisted in the collar of her dress. He had held her close for several days, there beneath the water. He had held her tightly, until finally the elements were more overpowering than love. And then she was pushed on and away, by the swiftly moving, swirling water.
Rebecca wasn’t the first girl to disappear along the river’s edge. Several others had gone missing, all from various nearby towns. It seems they would be seen alone in a boat, and then they would be gone for a few days. The boats would always turn up, and be in good repair, no damage at all. And finally, the girls; They would be found floating, just their battered and bloated bodies. No one ever had a definitive answer as to what had happened to any of the girls–No one living, that is.
***
So, now that you have read the story, what sticks in your mind? What image stands out above all else?
Well, of course, what probably sticks out, or lingers in your mind is the image of the skeleton wedged or caught just beneath the rocks at the bottom of the river, right? Or at least this is my hope. And perhaps you see the bony fingertips of the skeleton grasping at a bit of cloth. Rebecca’s dress is caught, at least for a brief period of time, Meanwhile, her corporeal body is bloated and floating, just inches away from her skeletal captor. You see the flow of the water as it moves past. Her hair is billowing outward, her face is balloon like and her eyes vacant and dead. Perhaps there are small fish nibbling at her corpse, at her eyes and the puffiness of the flesh surrounding the orbs. This all depends on the vividness of your imagination, of course.
Did I spell all of this out? No. I’m deliberately depending on your imagination. In fact, I didn’t think about the nibbling fish until just now. Perhaps I should go back and add them to the story.
So what did I do in the story? Well, I highlighted the wedged skeleton, however subtly. The rest of the story is somewhat sparse in detail. Of course, I played up Rebecca’s infatuation with the soldier, as this was somewhat necessary to move the story forward. And I added the devotion of her small dog. And I did use words to tell the rest of the story. But the highlight, obviously, was the trapped skeleton. That is what I want you, as reader, to take away from the story. That skeleton is the image I want lingering in your mind for a bit after you have finished reading the story. And then there is the implied (perhaps more than just implied) idea of this long dead soldier having led Rebecca’s soul away forever, to some dark place, to some eternity; just as he has done with any other of the young girls who have gone missing. Just as he will continue to do. I could, of course, go back and add to the story. I could describe the flora and fauna along the river’s edge. I could put in many more details; and still, perhaps the image of the skeleton’s fingers caught in Rebecca’s dress, holding her there beneath the flowing water will continue to stand out and linger on in your imagination. I didn’t add extra details to the story though, I intentionally left the “backdrop” stark. That was a choice on my part.
So there is that . . .
And I’ll get to the point about this story being an analogy in just a minute. To get there, we’ll have to jump back a bit. I’ll have to take you back to an afternoon about a year or so ago . . .
So I picked up volume 3 of my Civil War tales: And You Shall Not Live and other stories and started reading. I read through the first three or four stories and a horrendous thought struck me: My God, this is shit! How could that be? Is my writing really this bad?
Don’t get me wrong, the stories are good as far as stories go. There are some really entertaining ones. For instance, “Marching Orders” is a really good story. Imagine a paralyzed man lying on the battlefield after a battle. Imagine an ant hill only inches from his hand. The ants soon discover him. This man watches as the ants climb up onto his hand and then move up his arm, to his shoulder, to his face, to his eyes and ears. He is paralyzed and can’t move, yet he is very much aware, and his mind starts working . . .
This story, “Marching Orders” was a mix of what the paralyzed soldier views and the stream of consciousness as his mind goes into overdrive. This story is a fun read. I challenge you to not squirm, at least a little, while reading it. So, this story is good, as are the others, the flow of the story I mean. I’m not even totally sure whether this story was in the mix of the ones I was freaking out about.
So, if the stories are good, what is the problem?
The words, the sentences. The writing seemed juvenile to me, all of a sudden.
And there was more . . .
All at once the words jumped out as being separate from the stories themselves. There was this tremendous splitting of things, as though the ground shifted beneath me, like an earthquake, a tectonic shift of sorts. I had never had this realization before. I was horrified. But wait a minute, things like this happen all the time. Could my thoughts just have been due to the mood I was in? There are many times when I’ll write a story and think it just seems like a filler story, not really that good. I don’t set out to write filler stories, of course. I try and put my all into every story I write. It’s just that sometimes a story seems flat and not up to par. But then I’ll read the same story a month later and think of it as being quite good.
But no, when I read these stories, on this particular afternoon, there was this huge split—the words splitting off from the flow of the story. This seemed like a sort of paradigm shift. Up until this time I had simply used the words to “tell the story;” just to lay out the flow of the narrative. Of course, any writer tries to write the best that he or she can write, using the most perfect words and sentences, etc.
And perhaps it depends on the reader (of course, it all depends on the reader, always! There is never really a question there.). Some readers tell me they just get caught up in the story and don’t even notice the words beneath. But there are other readers who do notice. And as a writer I don’t want a reader to be pulled out of the story in any sense; so, I’ll try as best I can to use the best words that I possibly can to tell the story. I have a habit of letting it all flow, initially. This is, I imagine what most writers do. Initially.
So what gives? Do I need to go back and rewrite everything I’ve ever written? Maybe. I’ll have to go over it at some point. I suddenly felt (and still feel) very overwhelmed by such a thought.
Or, am I being too hard on myself? Of course, the artist(?) tends to be extra critical of his or her own work. There is the idea of a painter never being finished, the painting never being perfect . . .
And then another thought struck:
Was this some new threshold?
There are, or seem to be, thresholds that one crosses when it comes to writing. I’ll never forget a three-day weekend of writing I did (2001?) when I binge wrote stories. I simply couldn’t stop. The creative flow was there. I started writing on a Friday, and by two a.m. on Monday I had written seven stories. These became the first seven stories (counting what was the prelude of the little girl on the ice) of Daguerreotype Dreams. The final bit of a story was an owl talking crazy nonsense; the owl first imitating wording from a Sherlock Holmes story and then speaking in a Louisiana bayou dialect. I called this final bit “The Owl,” and then later added to what became “The Owl Tells a Story.” I distinctly remember “waking up” from this creative binge wondering if I had lost my mind, but feeling very good about the stories I had written.
And thinking about those stories now, Daguerreotype Dreans, I mean, I am still proud of some of those stories. For instance, there is a simple ghost story in the collection, “The Homecoming,” that is a nice little tale. The story ends sweetly with a small child and a soldier crouched before a gravestone. I’ll say no more about it so as not to spoil things. But did I sense the words beneath “The Homecoming” story? Not at all. I simply enjoyed the flow.
But now (jumping back to Volume 3 and my reading of the stories) here I was, at a new place. Was I at a new threshold in my thinking, my understanding of what writing is all about? Perhaps.
There was this split. I could see it clearly. I could look at these stories and see this huge divide between the words and the flow of the narrative. How was this possible? How had I not seen this before? How can I explain it?
And now, thinking about it, “River Rendezvous” (from Volume 4) popped into my mind as a way of explaining things.
So this is my analogy:
You can probably see where I am going here (analogy wise) when I suggest that the flow of the river is the flow of the narrative, the movement of the story. Not really a stretch to say such a thing. And the skeleton is still there, highlighted as being the focal point . . .
And the words?
Well, the words would be the rocks beneath the surface of the water. Perhaps there is other debris, but let’s just look at the rocks and imagine these rocks as words. These rocks shape the flow of the river, the surface and just below the surface, the movement of the story. Change the layout of the rocks and the water shifts ever so slightly, the story changing a little. Polish the rocks and the river flows along at a swifter pace, the water flows smoothly across the surface of the rocks, and so too the story moves swiftly along. The read for the reader then becomes less work, the reading process glides along without a hitch.
So, it’s obvious, right? This analogy is simple. It clarifies things. Or at least for me it did.
So, what is a writer to do? Do all writers look back at earlier stories and groan? A story is never perfect, really, is it? As a writer, I simply have to keep working at the craft.
There are readers (and I appreciate these readers dearly) who will simply enjoy the story and float along, not slowing down to look beneath the surface. And there are also readers (I appreciate these readers also, of course) who will look at the words and sentence structure and be disturbed. It happens.
In the stories written at an earlier dater this is especially true. And yet, these earlier stories are still good stories. I can look back at some of the very early stories I had ever written (and I’m talking way back) and be surprised at how good they were, and still are . . . I still enjoy them.
It is the matter of experience.
Regarding experience, I can see the difference when I read the Blue Girl and the Stars collection which is my latest published work. I have written more stories since, however which are as good. And the writing is smoother, more polished in Blue Girl. The stories in Blue Girl were easier to write. The flow is good. Will I look upon these stories, or at least the wording, as subpar in the future? Probably.
And what about style?
I don’t know if you’ve read much of Dennis Lehane’s work, but I would encourage you read his book Shutter Island. The book is really very good, but a bit different in style from his detective series featuring Kenzie and Gennaro. The story itself is different, but that isn’t what I mean. I mean the style and structure of the sentences, the layout of the words . . .
There is a scene in Shutter Island where a character is climbing a cliff face, having to reach for craggy rocks projecting out from the surface (which I imagine is simply what rock climbing is all about) to make his way upward to an opening in the wall. I remember reading the words and thinking, wondering, is this sentence structure and style of this book mirroring the scene here? Is this deliberate? The whole book seems to flow along in this style, a craggy (in a good and interesting way), somewhat fractured and mildly disjointed fashion. Was this deliberate? All of the story, and the style of the narrator—is it a reflection of a fragmented mind? You’ll have to read the book to understand what I mean. If this is so, it is some wicked smart writing, getting that elaborate with the words and structure of the sentences; and the book as-a-whole. I wonder . . .
And so, now, getting back to my earlier point, now that I’ve laid it all out, presented the analogy, I do have a final question: Can a writer go too far? I don’t mean too far in the sense of somehow making the story bad. Any going over a story, or working on a story is most often an improvement. A writer can polish things and make changes here and there and keep going, keep improving. But is there a point of diminishing returns? Don’t get me wrong, polishing is good. The writer should polish a story and keep working it until he or she is totally happy with it. Some readers, as I’ve mentioned earlier, will notice the quality of the polished words, while other readers will enjoy the story for the sake of the story itself.
So let’s take this idea of polishing things a bit further . . .
Sorry, I do get carried away sometimes when discussing writing. So here is another analogy.
There is a wonderful story by Ray Bradbury called “The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl.” This story can be found in the collection Golden Apples of the Sun. I encourage you to read this story.
The reader enters the story at the point where the main character, William Acton, has just committed murder. The reader is carried along on a fun and fascinating journey as Acton becomes swept away with paranoia. He becomes obsessed with fingerprints. He wonders what he has touched since entering the victim’s home. He hunts down gloves and uses the victim’s handkerchief to wipe down every surface he might have touched since entering the home. Naturally, having just committed murder, he doesn’t want to leave incriminating fingerprints. So, of course, he begins with the body. And then he wipes down doorknobs, which is completely understandable. And he moves on to wiping down wine bottles, walls, chairs, tables . . . And things become more and more absurd as he descends deeper and deeper into his madness. There is a bowl of waxed fruit on the table. He wipes the fruit and the bowl down once, and then he returns, again, a few minutes later (if I’m remembering the story correctly) to wipe the fruit down once more, even wiping down the fruit at the bottom of the bowl. The obvious absurdity being that he would not have touched the fruit at the bottom of the bowl.
So, to jump to this new analogy (awkwardly, but simply for the fun of it because I love this Bradbury story), I pose this question: Is a writer being too obsessive if he is polishing the fruit at the bottom of the bowl? After all, the reader will only be able to observe the fruit resting on the top—unless the bowl of fruit actually plays a part in the story in some significant way.
So to substitute the fruit with the rocks of my initial analogy, the rocks resting beneath the surface of a flowing river which might change the flow of the water/story, I would say, yes, polishing the rocks is a good thing. But how far should one go?
Polishing these rocks is a good thing. Polishing the fruit at the bottom of the bowl (the rocks that are well beneath the surface)? Perhaps not so much.
As a writer, it is always good to polish your words. Your words tell the story. And they do also sit below the surface of the story as the reader gets caught up in the narrative and loses sight of the words themselves.
Some readers look below the surface, and some don’t.
Which type of reader are you?
Do you coast along on the surface, enjoying the ride? Or do you peek below the surface to inspect the words?
Either way, it’s all good. A story should always be well written. At least, the words should be polished enough that you, as a reader, don’t trip over the awkwardness of them, or become distracted and get pulled out of the flow of the story.
A reader should have as much fun reading the story as a writer has writing the story. This is just my general philosophy on writing. I try to adhere to it. I try to enjoy—and do enjoy the writing process (probably too much, if there is such a thing).
So, the big question remains . . . Did I reach a new threshold in writing? Or is this sudden realization of the separation of words from the flow of the story just an anomaly of sorts? Or is this just my imagination working overtime.
Whatever it is, this view of the words splitting off from story was quite unnerving for me. I always knew that the words are the basic building blocks used in the telling of the story. That part was a given. But the words are something more now, part of the whole; but separate also, lurking below the surface of the flow of the story.
To phrase things another way, I’ve always been aware of the visual nature of the words, and I have always known how to use the basic power of words to create the scenes of a story, the surface part. Now, however, I can appreciate words in a new way, observing more than the elemental nature of them. It’s about more than just finding the right words to string together to create sentences to tell the tale, be that tale literary or a simple mystery.
Perhaps this should have been obvious to me all along, and perhaps it was obvious in an elemental way on some level. But now I can see below the surface . . .
***
There is so much more than a skeleton wedged into the rocks beneath the flowing water in “River Rendezvous.” I can see that now. And as the skeleton’s grasp loosens and Rebecca’s bloated body drifts away, I now see clearly the other bits beneath the surface. In the afternoon sunlight that shines upon the surface of the flowing water on clear afternoons I see broken and jagged shards from a pane of a window, perhaps, bits of stained glass, glinting in the shadowy softness beneath the water.
But there is more still. There are words, magical words that need to be polished and then put back. And these words can be placed and arranged in new and fascinating ways . . .
The words make up the skeleton, the stained glass, and even Rebecca’s bloated body—but wait, perhaps I’m simply descending into madness here.
Perhaps my new obsession with polishing these rocks beneath the surface of the flowing river is no different than that of the murderer William Acton from the Bradbury story. Am I not becoming just as obsessive? Words, words, words as rocks beneath the surface? Is this not madness? No more sane than Acton’s obsession with fingerprints that might or might not be on the fruit at the bottom of the bowl?
Madness, I tell you. Sheer madness! Nothing more.
Feel free to imagine me cackling maniacally at this point.
In any event, leaving the madness behind, what shall we do regarding our story now? What fun can we have? Remember, “River Rendezvous,” so far is only a basic, sparsely written ghost story. That’s all fine and good as it goes, but we’ve since had other ideas emerge, other visions. The nibbling fish, shall we add them to the story? I picture them as being very tiny, minnow sized fish, a small school of them swimming about. Perhaps there is one that swims in through the mouth of the skeleton. The skeleton’s jaw is perhaps slightly askew, with only a bit of sinewy gristle keeping the mandible attached to the skull. So we might see one or two fish swim into the skull through the jaw’s opening, past raggedy teeth. And then one of these two small fish swims further up into the skull and pauses, peering out of the eye socket momentarily before swimming out through the orifice. Shall we add this into the story? This keeps the image of the skeleton highlighted. And, too, the fish are still nibbling at the girl’s dead body . . .
And what of the stained glass? Just one or two shards lying on the riverbed, only visible briefly, blurrily. But where did this fragmented glass come from? How did the glass get there? Is it related to the story? Perhaps it is. Perhaps there is a church nearby.
Perhaps there is much more to this story after all. The church sits nearby and years ago, just maybe, there had been a project of restoration underway. I see a stained-glass window propped against a saw horse.
And there is a couple, a young man and young lady lurking about in the churchyard. The two hold hands and are walking. They stop. Leaning against the back of the church, the two kiss. The kisses become more passionate, more intense. The young man pushes things further. And maybe the young lady has second thoughts on how far to let things proceed. She begins to resist. She panics. She tries to get away. She stumbles into the window and falls. The window breaks. There she is on hands and knees, her hands and wrists dripping with blood. She is horrified, but manages to get to her feet as the man comes after her. She is holding a large piece of jagged glass, waving it at the young man. She is backing away and he is coming after her. She turns and runs off on a path through the woods. I’m seeing birds fly off from the trees, frightened by the frantic woman. The young man chases her. Her breath is jagged and she screams for help, but no one is around to hear her pleas. The path opens onto the riverbank, and the two of them end up at the river. They are soon in the river, struggling. The young lady is bloody. Her hands and arms are streaming blood. The shard of glass is cutting into her palm as she grips it. She stabs the man, over and over she jabs and slashes at him, connecting with his body as he tries to grab her. He is stumbling. They both struggle and the fight continues on for some time. The glass rips into him. The young man’s face is cut now and the girl has plunged the edge of the blade into his eye and then begins working on his body. The glass connects with a vital organ and the young man falls. The river is flowing about the two of them, the blood swirling into the flow of the swiftly moving water. The young man, after a matter of minutes, is no longer moving. The girl is exhausted and losing blood. The young man is dead. The girl pushes him down, deeper into the water as she pushes to stand, trying to gain her balance. She realizes that she is still holding onto the jagged piece of stained glass. She drops the glass and it sinks slowly. The young man’s lifeless body is still below the surface, somehow trapped there. The girl looks around. She looks up into the tree tops and sees the birds, the sway of the branches in the early morning breeze. The sun is up now and shining brightly, swimmingly blurred in her vision. All is quiet now. The girl glances down at her forearms and wrists. Blood is streaming from her wounds and dripping, running into the moving water. She swoons; she falls, her body drifts. For a time, she is still alive . . .Will someone find her before she dies?
So maybe, just maybe there is more to this short ghost story. Perhaps there is a novella here. Maybe a curse begins, and continues plaguing a small village for years to come.
Does the curse begin right away? Perhaps the curse starts within two or three years of the event of the young man’s death.
And maybe, suggesting the passage of time, one of the man’s ribs is cracked and somehow, eventually a section breaks away. And so, a small fragment of rib lies there on the bed of the river, just a few feet from the glass. Maybe the rib had gotten nicked by the bottom of a boat, or children playing in the river at some point. Maybe a child had kicked into the ribcage without any realization of what his foot had hit.
So there is a story here . . . something more. A bit violent, and a little more involved. We can populate the local village with residents, all of whom are quirky, nervous, and scared.
All of this backstory takes place years earlier, before our story of Rebecca and the soldier Perhaps the soldier (Rebecca’s soldier) didn’t just die two years ago. Or maybe he did and the scene keeps repeating itself with only minor variations.. Shall we play with these ideas in a later post? Maybe.
In the meantime, we can enjoy the simple ghost story as it stands. This story is one among others in the volume 4 collection of Civil War ghost tales, The Scarecrow and other stories.
For now, we’ll continue to have fun. We’ll continue to write. There’ll be no stopping us.
And I’ll try and promise to polish my words (the ones below the surface) just enough so that you don’t trip over the words and fall out of the story. I’ll try and make it so you can glide happily along, following the characters, enjoying the action, whether the story be a horror tale, a sci-fi adventure, or a simple ghost story.
I only ask that you sit back and enjoy the tale. If you want to peek below the surface . . . well, that’s perfectly okay too.
I would only advise that you be careful how far below the surface you reach. You might just feel the tight grasp suddenly clamping vice-like around your wrist, or perhaps your ankle, should you be brave enough to wade in . . . the grasp of a cold and bony hand.