My summer project with LeGuin’s Steering the Craft continues. Part Four of her book is on repetition, and the first time I read it, I thought of the opening to her book The Telling, book eight of The Hainish Cycle. The opening of description of Sutty’s experience of earth, told in layers of orange, its stunning and beautiful. The whole book, which is about storytelling, politics, and religion, is worth the time—but then, it’s LeGuin.
By now, my draft copy of “Old Ghosts” is a bit of a shambles.
- The ending is disconnected because it’s changing
- The point of view shifts from third to first person—old material is in 1st person, new material (Clay) in third. I think 3rd (probably going to be omniscient) is working better because it doesn’t carry the same limits as first.
- I think the whole focus of the piece is shifting from a ghost story to a story about time that of course includes ghosts.
- The names and descriptions of the father and son who are fishing need to be settled on—I have two very different ideas of what they might look like, but don’t know them well enough to decide.
- The gun has to go. The gun really has to go.
- The exercise paragraphs are contrasting each other now, so there will be a revision toward the end where I smooth it pout and settle on Clay’s voice and the voices of the other speakers, and find the narrative voice. But for right now, we play.
I originally intended to put the story in first, but I had to include the whole work for the second exercise, so I’ve opted only to include it once in the overall post.
In her discussion of repetition, LeGuin asks readers to consider the way repeated objections, actions, and descriptions might lay out themes that reemerge throughout the story. The underlying question is not what has been repeated, but why has it been repeated? Here are the two parts for this exercise:
“Part One: Verbal Repetition Write a paragraph of narrative (150 words) that includes at least three repetitions of a noun, verb, or adjective (a noticeable word, not an invisible one like was, said, did).”
In the old days—Clay laughed ruefully at the idea of old days—he and Junior skipped stones from time to time. He taught the boy to select the flattest stones. To flick his wrist just so on the throw—spin was everything to the skip. Skipping was an art. You had to graduate from the hollowed out bowl-sound of a plopping rock to the whispering brush of six or seven taps before the stone slipped under water for good. He selected a stone from the bank and skipped it. A five-hopper. Not bad. Perhaps he had only shown the boy once or twice. It felt like more.
“Part Two: Structural Repetition Write a short narrative (350–1000 words) in which something is said or done and then something is said or done that echoes or repeats it, perhaps in a different context, or by different people, or on a different scale. This can be a complete story, if you like, or a fragment of narrative.”
For this, I’m returning to the old ghosts narrative itself, and focusing on a repeating action across several characters. The whole thing, with changes woven throughout and the above verbal repetition exercise, is presented again below. I’m not telling you what’s new and what isn’t. I’m hoping you’ll see it emerge, but you can always open a second browser window and look at last week’s post for a comparison.
*****
Old Ghosts
Clay called his life ecclesiastical. He woke with the crowin’ rooster. The hens came first. Goats followed, while he had them. In their absence, he made breakfast. Well, Clara was gone, wasn’t she? She couldn’t make meals anymore. His nephew managed the fields. Smarter than his father, that one. He’d inherit the whole patch. Just as well. Clay’d lost Clara, but he’d thrown Tommy away, hadn’t he? Junior lived in New York. They never talked. The pill tasted bitter. But Clay swallowed it every day. Afternoons belonged to the garden. He planted less each spring. Less planted, less to harvest. He didn’t can as much. Clara liked cannin’. He liked eatin’. Sometimes, after the chores, he fished. The stream in the hollow beckoned. Light played on the water. Herons dropped in. Trout was good for beast and bird. Yes, to everything he had a season. Work was sacred, he still believed.
A spring wind whipped the woods to life. Daffodils lifted yellow faces to the sun, and blossoms blown from the trees speckled the stream in pinks and whites. Mountain ridge snowmelt strengthened the headwaters. The stream swelled; muddy banks submerged, lost until summer. The peepers chirped away the sun each night. Bullfrogs croaked. Little furry things scuttled beyond the rushes. Snakes slithered over bent logs and wound their way across the surface. Shad and trout returned. And with them came the people.
I happened upon a pair the other day, just after dawn. They set up camp on a fallen oak, a beaten metal pail between them. The older man was scruffy; his hat brim frayed from weather. His trousers were patched in one knee, the waistband taut around his girth.
“Like this,” he said, and cast his line again.
The waif was a scrawnier version of his teacher. From the muddy, waterlogged state of his overalls and the dirt on his face and hands, it seemed the natural lack of grace in boys that age had already taken its toll that morning. Clay pictured him taking a tumble off a slippery bit of trail, or sliding sideways off a rock on the upstream crossing. He was like a skipping stone left untossed on the bank.
The fishing rods seemed antique, perhaps forced back into service? Bamboo rods had gone out of style even before I was a boy, and their lines were too visible, too thick to be modern.
I waved. My right, of course. They were on my property.
“You there!” I called. “How’s the fishin’?”
In the old days—Clay laughed ruefully at the idea of old days—he and Junior skipped stones from time to time. He taught the boy to select the flattest stones. To flick his wrist just so on the throw—spin was everything to the skip. Skipping was an art. You had to graduate from the hollowed out bowl-sound of a plopping rock to the whispering brush of six or seven taps before the stone slipped under water for good. He selected a stone from the bank and skipped it. A five-hopper. Not bad. Perhaps he had only shown the boy once or twice. It felt like more.
They nodded. The fat man doffed his hat.
“I said, ‘how’s the fishin’?'”
They ignored me. The wind blew gently. The stream burbled. A woodpecker pecked a poplar. I could think of no earthly reason they should ignore me, so I called out.
“You’re on private property, you know.”
It was true. I hunted the woods and still cleaned the carcasses in the shed behind the stone cottage. Fished the stream and scaled and cooked that fish on red coals. Cut down the trees to keep the cottage warm in winter, to say nothing of cooking my meals. Cleared the dead wood, picked wild raspberries, planted the garden. Drove the stakes tied with white cloth to mark the corners. I worked it; it was mine.
“It’s disrespectful of you—”
Tee-and-Flannel got a bite. A little tug, a stronger tug, and a trout popped out of the stream. It flailed in the air. The big man punched his shoulder. They continued to act as if I wasn’t there.
“Now, look here,” I called. “I don’t mind you–“
The younger fella released his catch, and the pair sat down on the bank again.
He thought himself patient about most things in life; like when Clara had come up with the cancer and the doctors hemmed and hawed more than he cared for, he had been patient with them, though Clara’s bony hand on his had done much ’til it couldn’t anymore; and he had been patient with Junior, who hated farmin’ from the start alright, but loved the theatre so much that Clay and Clara had given up whole evenings to watch four years’ worth of school productions, which hadn’t gotten them anything but a visit from Markley come up over the hill, bitchin’ that his boy and Junior were makin’ hog sounds in the loft and threatenin’ to sue over Lord knows what, that had required patience; even when the boy came into the hospital in mascara and lipstick like a red light hussy he had’t yelled or nothin’ just told him to go home and clean up ‘fore his dyin’ mama saw it, and that was that forevermore; but now here this bulbous man and his ragamuffin ilk sat on his log on his stream on his property casting lines and takin’ his trout without the slimmest bit o decency to say “hello, how do you do?” or even recognize that Clay had worked that land for damn near fifty years and who were they to come replacin’ him since he wa’n’t dead yet nor read his name in the obituaries like he ‘spected to one day.
I picked up a stone and skipped it across the water toward them.
“–I don’t mind you–“
“Hey,” Straw Hat called out. “Who are you?” He stood up and pointed at me with a sausage finger.
“I might ask you the same question,” I said. “Since you’re on my property.”
“Excuse me?” he said. “This is my property.” He motioned to his fishin’ buddy. “Get me the rifle, son,” he said. the younger one dropped his makeshift pole and ran up the path.
“You’re gonna get violent?” I asked.
“When you try to steal my land from me, damn right I will,” he said.
“But it’s not your land,” I insisted.
“Like hell,” he said.
I reached down into the water and pulled up a skipping stone. I played a bit of shortstop in high school. I thought I could peg him in the thigh. He was a big target anyway.
Several seconds of glaring silence passed. His boy reappeared with the gun.
“Mister,” I called out. “You touch that gun and I’ll break your hand with this stone.” I palmed it like a baseball.
He grabbed the gun. I chucked the ball at his hand. It hit him square. Then it passed through his hand, his gun, and his son on the other side.
Well, shit.
He raised it and fired. Then he stared. His boy turned white.
“Son–“
“Right through him, Pop, I swear to God.”
The shotgun crack sent a flock of geese honking skyward. Silence slipped behind them. Suddenly I saw two Lenape women on the opposite bank: one bore a basket of plants, the other filled a clay bowl with water. A column of revolutionaries drank before marching on, muskets perched on their slumping shoulders. A weary-faced grandfather joined the man and boy. A teenager draped in a saggy black clothes sat on a log, a pistol in his hand.
A stone skipped toward the woman, its whispering hits ending in a plop. She froze. Keen eyes scanned the banks. Across the stream, a demon—a crow-colored man—brooded on fallen log suspended over the water. He hadn’t noticed her, but he hadn’t thrown the rock.
Two boys in blue skipped stones upstream.
“Four,” the taller one said glumly. He chewed a bit of honeysuckle as the other boy skipped his stone.
“Five! Ha!”
“Best of five?”
Behind them the colonel coughed. “You boys don’t want to give away our position I hope?” The men snapped to attention.
“I didn’t think so.” He scanned the water. A father and son fished on the other side, but neither paid them any mind. “You might be lucky today, but luck runs out. Don’t waste it on this.” The men—barely men, the colonel knew—scurried back to camp.
Everything converged. The women retreated into the wild. The soldiers marched onward. Grandfather, son, and grandson cast their lines as one. The boy blew his head off.
I dropped to my knees. Clutched my chest. Sweat tickled my nose. I hoisted myself up with my walking stick. They were gone—all of them. The stream dribbled along without a burble. The wind had calmed. No birdcalls. No rustling leaves. Scared, I swore to write down my experience. Just had to get home. I staggered. Shock—I’m sure it was. Yes. It was shock.
They turned and ran. I chased after them, but they disappeared up the path. Somewhere beyond the trees I heard an engine turn over. I dropped into the big guy’s seat on the log. The wood had been worn; it was well used. I looked into the pail. It was empty. Rusted through.
So Clay stood on the bank, skipping stones like he did when he was a boy, like he did when he taught his son, waiting for the guy and his kid to come back. He considered going home, but opted to wait. It was his property, after all. He skipped a mother stone.
“Six hopper.” The sun warmed his face. The stream burbled along.
*****
Works Cited
Le Guin, Ursula K. Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story (p. 42). HMH Books. Kindle Edition.
Nicanor Abbott 