While Exercise 9, Part 1, was an exercise to strip the story down to dialogue, to see what can’t be done without description, Steering the Craft, Exercise 9, Part 2, is a brief narrative built around an action. Here’s what LeGuin writes:
“Write a narrative of 200–600 words, a scene involving at least two people and some kind of action or event. Use a single viewpoint character, in either first person or limited third person, who is involved in the event. Give us the character’s thoughts and feelings in their own words. The viewpoint character (real or invented) is to be somebody you dislike, or disapprove of, or hate, or feel to be extremely different from yourself.”
I’m using limited 3rd person for this: I think that’s the perspective I’m leaning toward for the final draft. I’m also going to allow myself the play of a couple iterations of this action, because the story might include multiple iterations of the same event.
*****
Junior caught up with him halfway to the stream. Clay turned when his boy called out. But there wasn’t much boy there anymore, Clay noticed. Something weighed on him.
“Dad, I got to tell you something.”
Clay focused on the path, noting the places where the trees provided shade, and where the sunlight broke through. His fishing gear suddenly weighed him down. He clutched it, though, as if it would keep him from doing anything rash. Anything unforgivable.
“Dad?”
He sighed. He knew this was coming.
“I’m listening.”
“I… I’m gay.”
Well there it was. The rumors about his boy and Benjamin Grouse must’ve been true.
“You let Miss Grouse’s boy have you in the shed last fall?”
Silence. Junior studied the dirt, hands in his pockets.
“I asked you a question.” His grip on the gear tightened. This wasn’t an answer he needed; he didn’t even know why he asked.
“Yeah.” Junior’s eyes were wet.
“Were you in love?” He had meant the question to be genuine, but the anguish that overtook his son’s face suggested it might have been misunderstood.
“Nevermind,” Clay said, working hard to be gentle. “Go on back up to the house and help your mama. I’ll be up in a couple hours.”
Something shifted in the world, as if it had all gone hazy and tipped sideways. Clay dropped his gear, put his hands on his knees. If the heart attack came now, Mother Nature would be conducting the service.
Junior caught up with him halfway to the stream.
“Dad, I got to tell you something.”
“You’re a queer.” He could no longer deny Miss Grouse’s observations and the gossip that always seemed to happen within earshot. Clara had come home crying, but didn’t want to talk. Finally, he pried it out of her.
“I… yeah.”
“You let that Ben Grouse mount you like a dog in his Aunt’s garage?”
Silence.
Clayton turned and appraised his son. The boy hunched, yes on the dirt, hands in his jeans pockets. Shiny blazer on a slender frame. How had he not known?
He dropped his gear; the tackle box landed on a rock and rolled over. Clayton tapped his watch.
“I’ll be gone about three hours. By the time I get back, you and anything you want should be gone from here. Got it?”
The pain raced up his arm as the world went hazy. He thought the trees leaned in… too close! Too close! And the buzzing in his ears… he reached out to a trunk. Steadied himself. Sap stickied his hand.
“Dad, I’m gay.”
“Your mother sent you down here to tell me that.”
The young man’s footsteps stopped.
Clay turned, set his gear down gently, and studied his son. Hunched. Downcast stare. Downtrodden. The boy had gone through a bit of emotional hell recently, if the rumors about Ben Grouse were true.
“You get your heart broken?”
Junior looked up, eyes wet, pleading.
Clay didn’t want to touch his son. Affection never suited him well. He disliked high drama, and God knew the boy excelled at it. He reached up, took his son by the shoulder.
“I take it that’s a yes.”
“Miss Grouse pulled me aside last Sunday…”
Clay shook his head.
“I don’t need to hear it, Junior. I just need to know if you’re going to go out there and try to love someone else now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had it easy all these years,” Clay said. “Your mother’s the only woman I ever loved, and she loved me in return. But even as I say that, well, you know probably better than me, that love isn’t easy.”
Junior looked confused.
Clayton pressed onward. “I’m not good at this. I just want to know you’re not giving up on love. You may not have found it this time, but there will be other… eels?”
Junior sniffled and laughed.
“That what you go for? Eels? Well, the sea got plenty of them, too, I expect.” He squeezed his son’s shoulder. “You can join me at the stream, or head back up the house. That blazer don’t fit for a day of fishing.”
He staggered, a dizziness overtook him as the world went hazy. This might be it, he thought, and wondered who would find him. His gear tumbled away and he bent over, hands on his knees, breaking out in a cold sweat.
“Dad, I need to tell you something.”
“Anything different from what Miss Grouse and half the town is already telling me?”
He walked slowly, listening for junior’s footsteps. His son had stopped. He turned and set down his gear. He put his hands in his pockets, mirroring his boy’s posture.
“I guess not.”
Clay watched the light play across the path. The trees couldn’t block it all out. Shade. Light. Each had their place.
“Well,” he said. “At least, now that you told me, I can answer back. Your ma and I been waiting for you to tell us so we can defend you properly, however you live your life. You told her yet?”
For all the boy’s neatness—dress shirts and blazers and polished shoes—he looked a state, and not fit for the woods or the stream. Not fit for a farm, or the country.
“She told me to come talk to you.”
“You gonna leave home now?” Clay already knew the answer. After Ben Grouse and his batty old aunt, Junior had gained an unfortunate reputation.
Junior nodded but refused to look his father in the eye.
Clay gave him an awkward hug, puzzling over the origin of Junior’s penchant for drama. Didn’t seem to be an inherited thing, but who knew?
“Well, guess your Ma and I are gonna see the world a little bit. Or at least, see whatever corner of it you end up in.”
His vision clouded. He dropped his gear, put his hands on his knees, tried to slow his racing heart.
At the bottom of the hill, Clayton watched himself stagger. The fishing gear tumbled off, the bucket fell over. He bent. Used a silver maple for support. Struggled to breathe. Watched himself and his son appear. Disappear. Reappear. Disappear. I’m in Hell, he thought. Preacher Holland would be pleased.
*****
Thus far in the study of indirect narration, we have explored the limits of dialogue—what it can and cannot do—in order to learn to use it better. We have explored how a simple set of actions: a bit of walking, setting down gear, and turning, interplay with different emotions in the dialogue. Now, in Exercise 9, Part 3, LeGuin asks the writer describe a character by describing a place, which I have done here.
The mantle clock ticked away the seconds. A porcelain dancer pirouetted beside a few pieces of carnival glass on little wooden stands. Clara’s crocheted doilies protected every surface. The fresh bouquets routinely presented in the clear glass vase had been replaced once and for all by an artificial arrangement. The room lacked the smell of growing things, mostly, but the peace lily remained, still filling the stand by the window, bursting in lush green that drooped over the planter. A congregation of flowers: three white, each with a trim of brown, and a fourth, smaller, green one, stood tall amongst foliage, turned sunward. The drapes were open as always, the sheer curtains, yellowed, remained closed. A set of long-retired coasters sat neatly in a rack beneath an end table lamp. The pillows, the afghans, all handmade and handed down, remained in their proper places, stacked, leaning, folded, covering. Still. Unused. A thin layer of dust covered everything.
*****
Old Ghosts
Clay thought his life ecclesiastical. He woke to the rooster’s crow. Fed the hens first, goats second—while he had them. In their absence, he made breakfast. Well, Clara was gone, wasn’t she? She couldn’t make his meals. Dwight, his nephew, managed the fields. Smarter than his father. He’d inherit the whole patch. Just as well. Clay had lost Clara, but he’d thrown Junior away. 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. Less to can. Clara liked canning; he liked eating. Sometimes, after chores, he fished. The stream in the hollow beckoned. Light played on the water. Herons dropped in for trout. Well, so did he. Yes, everything had a season, and work was sacred, he still believed.
Clay stepped into the afternoon heat and surveyed his land from the back stoop. The orchard in full bloom gave him hope for a bumper harvest. He had put signs up: Pick your own apples. And that had brought out a a few townsfolk. Junior scampered among them, carrying bushel baskets to cars while he and Clara chatted with customers and took their cash. But without Clara and Junior, he couldn’t keep track of it all. He solved it with a farmstead at the top of the drive. Did Dwight’s wife or kids like to can fruit? Maybe he would just hire migrants to harvest them all, and sell to young families with a lot of mouths to feed. Families used to be bigger.
Something disappeared into the tall grass at the end of the row. The grass shushed as it slipped away. He often saw deer, foxes—they all loved the orchard, though not usually in spring. He shrugged it off. His fishing gear awaited on the bench in the shed.
He meandered that afternoon, pole over his shoulder, tackle box in hand. Daffodils lifted their faces to the sun; wind-blown blossoms speckled the stream in pink and white. Same every year, the colors of Clara’s flowerbeds. Mums, begonias, pansies, snapdragons—he’d neglected them in the three years since. The beds had grown patchy: wild in some places, barren in others. Yes, he would have to tend them better. She would have long already chastised him for neglect. From the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of black. A darting form. He turned. Nothing.
“You are indeed losin’ it,” he announced. “Too much nostalgia. Not enough work.” He hoped it wasn’t a bear. His rifle sat secure and useless in the den, locked in the cabinet Clara insisted he buy.
The stream burbled and played. He listened to it through the trees long before he saw it. Then a glimpse, another through a break in the mountain laurel, and the trail followed the water’s edge. Snowmelt strengthened the headwaters, submerging the banks until summer. Clay would stay until the peepers chirped away the sun. So much of life was hiding. Bullfrogs croaked. Furry things scuttled beyond the rushes. Snakes slithered over logs and wound across the water. Shad and trout darted beneath the ripples. Life lived just out of view.
A brown shape passed behind the dogwoods on the other side. Clay blinked. Deer? Maybe people? It better not be people. This was his land, bought and paid for with hard cash and forty-some years of blood and tears and sweat.
When he arrived at his fishing spot, Clay found it already occupied. A father and son from the look. The waterlogged overalls and dirty face suggested the boy’s natural lack of grace. Clay pictured him tumbling off a slippery bit of trail, or sliding sideways off a rock on the upstream crossing. He was fawnish, leggy and stumbling against the world, a lot like Junior used to be. He held a bamboo rod—an antique. They had gone out of style when Clay was a boy.
His portly father sat on a log, baiting his hook. Sweat beads dripped down his face, despite his straw hat. He wiped his hand on a pantleg. They shadowed each other. The boy had his father’s round nose and basset hound eyes. The elder was a worn and overfed version of the younger.
“Like this,” he said, and cast his line. The boy watched, then pulled his line in and recast.
“Better,” his father said.
Clay waved.
“You there!” He called. “How’s the fishin’?”
In the old days—Clay mourned the old days—he and Junior skipped stones. He taught the boy to select flat stones. To flick his wrist just so when throwing—spin and angle equalled skip. Skipping was an art. A skipper graduated from the bowl-sounding plop to the whispering taps—six or seven? ten?—before the stone slipped under for good. He chose one. Skipped it. A five-hopper. Not bad. Perhaps he had only shown the boy once or twice. It felt like more.
They nodded. The man doffed his hat.
“I said, ‘how’s the fishin’?'”
They ignored him. The wind shook the leaves. The stream burbled. A woodpecker rat-a-tatted a poplar. Clay called out.
“You’re on private property, you know.”
He had hunted the woods and cleaned the carcasses in the shed behind the cottage. Fished the stream and scaled and cooked fish on coals from dying trees. Those trees warmed the cottage in winter. He cleared the dead wood, picked wild raspberries, planted the garden. Drove the stakes tied with white cloth to mark the corners. He worked it; it was his.
“It’s disrespectful of you—”
The boy got a bite. A little tug, a stronger tug, and a trout popped out of the stream. It flailed in the air. The man punched his son’s shoulder.
“Now, look here,” Clay called. “I don’t mind you–“
The lad released his catch into their bucket, and the pair sat down on the log again.
Clay thought himself patient. 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.
The moments arrived. Clayton waved to the Baxters. Father and son waved back, the pail between them knocked back and forgotten. A woodpecker hammered at a poplar, causing the woman to look up. Clayton, pale and grizzled, was a foreign sight to her. She raised her palm in greeting, unsure of the response. The boy with the gun saw the exchange. The Baxters waved to him; he waved back and contemplated whether or not he wanted an audience for his final act. The soldiers, worn from the march, acknowledged the odd assortment, unsure if there was a confederate spy among them. The Gliesian with his instruments whirred and ticked beneath the shell armor. Six timelines converged and held just long enough for the woodpecker’s assault to end, then they slipped apart.
The Baxters would scramble away, distressed by the moment, abandoning the pail of worms. The women would return to their camp, and before nightfall, the men would return. armed and wary. They would retrieve the pail, and the development of their technologies and belief system would change.
The gun slipped from the boy’s hand. cursing, he would abandon it, just as his mother had abounded him. Local police would never find the body in the stream. Instead, the boy would seek help from his father’s family. The Gliesian would recover the gun and revise Zeir calculation for invasion back by three hundred Earth years. The gun would make invasion simpler, as those most likely to resist would have been wiped out beforehand. Those most likely to bear guns were also the least likely to think through their actions, making a simple delay practical. Hundreds of Gliesians would be spared a painful death.
The union soldiers would not speak of the moment again. One prayed with all his might, but still died in the hospital at Gettysburg. The other stopped believing in God and died in the wilderness. Belief seemed to make no difference at all.
As for Clayton, he puzzled over what he had seen all the way back to his cottage. That evening, he placed a call to New York.
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 another stone.
“Six hopper.” The sun warmed his face. The stream burbled along.
*****
A: “Arriving in 3…2…1…”
B: “It’s beautiful.”
A: “The planet? Yes, it is… but it doesn’t stay that way. Set parameters for the convergence…”
B: “Oh! Here’s one now! I never get over how they move. So fascinating.”
A: “Bit rickety, I think.”
B: “I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of watching them… so different.”
A: “Give it a century or two. They all begin to look the same.”
B: “You should be careful. We were warned that when you stop seeing the subjects as they are, when they lose their uniqueness, that’s when you should put in for a transfer.”
A: “As soon as I have the data collected, I will.”
B: “Really?”
A: “You think I’m kidding?”
B: “No, I just… I’m surprised you didn’t chastise me for speaking out of turn.”
A: “You only spoke the truth. What you were told, and what you observed. You offered me a word of caution. What’s the big deal? Now, set the convergence cube parameters. Center on the stream, right there. By that stretch of open bank.”
B: “Parameters set. You’re really going to leave research?”
A: “That’s what I just said.”
B: “Where will you transfer to?”
A: “I don’t know yet.”
B: “ Not administration.”
A: “I could never do that. I was thinking maybe the library or the archives.”
B: “I could see that. Maybe to the scribes? Noooo. No, not the scribes.”
A: “No. Not the scribes. Shall we activate the cube?”
B: “Wow! The place changes a lot across the eons.”
A: “Sure does.”
B: “It’s sad, really. They’re never around long enough to see their impacts, are they?”
A: “No, but maybe that’s a good thing. The rc of the species might change, and instead of tracking them here, we might have to meet them in space…”
B: “ Or worse, at home.”
A: “And this is not a species you want too meet at home. No matter how attached you get to their rickety walking style.”
B: “ Heh. They should evolve more limbs. Wait—what was that?”
A: “When?”
B: “About four hundred years ago. I think it was a Gliesian.”
A: “A Gliesian? What would they be doing here? I mean…”
B: “Breeding?”
A: “Well. Yes, that’s exactly what it was doing here. Let’s slide backward. There. Yep. Wow.”
B: “Gliesian.”
A: “We need to find out if it mated here. If it did…”
B: “That’s going to complicate everything, isn’t it?”
A: “Well, all our data will be caught up in political entanglements for another half century.”
B: “No transfer for you.”
A: “Afraid not.”
B: “Ethically, we can’t ignore the Gliesian, can we?”
A: “ Unfortunately not. Check the overlap. Did they see each other yet?”
B: “Looks like they have. The old guy and the father and son have for sure.”
A: “What about the soldiers?”
B: “It… it looks like they did, too.”
A: “Well that’s good at least.”
B: “Why?”
A: “Because if the one who was planning to desert did so today, he would survive the war. And if he survived the war, four hundred years from now, you’d be meeting one of his descendants on a space station orbiting their big ringed planet.”
B: “So?”
A: “See, this right here is why you need to spend more time in the archives. That’s not a future you want to be part of.”
B: “Oh.”
A: “Don’t sulk. Go read. You’ll have time, especially after we report the Gliesian.”
*****
Le Guin, Ursula K.. Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story (pp. 100-101). HMH Books. Kindle Edition.
Nicanor Abbott 