Here’s your chance to be a literary critic. It’s my novel. Read what I have written and send me an email with your opinion at the address below. I can take it. I have tough skin – except when I cry.
Last Monday, at OLLI (Oshner Lifelong Learning Institute) South, on the campus of USM, Long Beach, I completed a two-part seminar on “Constructing your Novel.” It was led by a medical doctor who has published 30 books, and the final assignment was to bring in the first 2,000 words of a prospective novel for critique by the class. Since that’s also the length of my column in this newspaper, I decided to share that introduction to Chapter One with you. The teacher was adamant that three things should be clear in the first pages of a novel: the setting, the characters, and the plot. How did I measure up?
I’ve always felt like I had a novel “in me.” It’s like the lyrics in the old song, “Boogie Chillun” by the blues legend, John Lee Hooker: “It’s in me, and it’s got to come out:”
One night I was laying down
I heard mama’n papa talking
I heard papa tell mama
Let that boy boogie woogie
It’s in him, and it got to come out
And I felt so good
Went on boogie’n just the same.
Having read hundreds of novels over the years, I think the best ones are based on personal experience. While mine is certainly not autobiographical, it is an amalgam of people I’ve known, stories I’ve heard, things I’ve seen, and places I’ve been. I don’t have any illusions; it’s extremely doubtful this novel will ever see the light of day, unless I publish it myself on Kindle and sell it out of the trunk of my car like a young John Grisham. So let the boogie begin:
The Handsome Sailor
The monsoon rain blew through the open porthole, and the damp wind rustled the papers on his desk as he tried again to organize his thoughts. Rising from his chair to close the small, curtainless window, he looked through the darkness across the windswept pier at the vague silhouette of the Philippine naval base chapel, St. Roque, where he had celebrated the evening mass. Built by the Spanish and a survivor of the Japanese occupation, it stood ghostly white and slowly rotting in the tropical heat. He remembered with a feeling of satisfaction how, only a few months before, he had organized a group of volunteers to save the roof from collapse by shoveling off the accumulated volcanic ash from the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo.
The ship had lost power, because the duty engineers had dropped the load, and the drone of the auxiliary generators now charging the lights and ventilation made it hard for him to keep his eyes open, much less focus on what he wanted to write. But, thinking of the past, he sat back down at his desk and began to write what had happened so long ago, both for the record and for his own peace of mind:
It was on a night like this, so many years ago I’ve lost count, when the man knocked on my stateroom door and said that he “wanted to talk.” This was nothing exceptional; after all, there was a sign on the door saying “Father Ignatius, SJ, Open 24/7.” The man’s name was unimportant, although I tend to remember him as the “Handsome Sailor,” because his fair appearance and earnest demeanor reminded me of the character in Melville’s novel, “Billy Budd.”
Serving as a priest, I’ve heard hundreds of deeply personal stories, and his was no exception. While I would never violate anyone’s confidence by naming names, some stories were so poignant I remember them almost word for word. Having a “broken heart” is almost an occupational hazard for sailors and Marines far from home, and although I have listened to similar tales told over the years, this one resonated with me in a special way.
The sailor had met her in college, which he had attended on Uncle Sam’s dollar, with a four-year obligation to serve, and he only knew the woman for a short time. The relationship never really amounted to much, at least in her eyes, but for him knowing her was like “opening the curtains in a dark room.” The first time he saw her, it took his breath away. He might not get to heaven, but he walked with the angels that day. Unfortunately, she didn’t feel the same way, and nothing went right as far as changing her mind. He had just come ashore after being overseas for five years on two different ships, and he was totally out of touch with the college scene, and with America, as far as that goes. For example, one of her favorite singers was Johnny Mathis, and he didn’t even know who he was. He could have told her about flamenco in Spain, klezmer in Israel, or Greek folk songs, but so what? He couldn’t even remember his own name when he got close to her. He had visited thirty countries by the time he was twenty, and could get by in three languages, but he would have traded it all for the ability to make small conversation. He was also totally on his own and had nothing to offer but a career in the Navy. All he had was “words,” and they failed him.
He was ashamed for her to see a tattoo he got on Gibraltar when he was seventeen. When you are in polite company, it’s hard to explain why you have “Born to Raise Hell” written across your shoulder. “I was afraid she would think I was trash,” he said, “and I guess I was.” She thought he was nice, but she interpreted his respect as reticence and his love as weakness and rejected his proposal of marriage. He had done the math, and although it broke his heart, he understood, accepted the reality and transferred to another college; however, rather than forgetting, he chose to remember and never married.
Hearing his story, I asked him, “If you loved her so much, why didn’t you fight for her?” A pained expression came across his face. “What was I going to do, kidnap her? I humiliated myself as it was. I did send her a picture of me on my ‘big day,’ when I graduated from officer candidate school and became an officer. I even daydreamed for weeks about her attending my graduation. But I never heard from her. I had orders to Vietnam, and then I fell off the face of the earth.” “You know,” he said, “it’s a shame we can’t freeze time. When I met her, she was just a sweet, country girl, with big dreams and, although I was learning, I had yet to understand the world is often a brutal and unforgiving place.”
On her wedding day, which he read about in a hometown newspaper, he was lying in a sewer ditch a few clicks from the Cambodian border, face down in the mud, trying to stay alive, but wishing he could die. Hearing this, I said, “You are an intelligent person, wasn’t it all just a gigantic waste of time? Shouldn’t you just ‘man up’ and move on emotionally? What’s the payback?” Giving an ironic smile, he replied, “I know it’s pathetic, but I’ve loved her too long to stop now. And she made me who I am. Since the day I met her, I’ve been trying to prove myself in her eyes, and that motivation has brought me success that I probably wouldn’t have achieved otherwise.” “Regardless,” he said, “She saved my life, and she gave me a second chance.”
“How did she do that?”, I asked.
He said, “I had volunteered to go to Vietnam as a Forward Naval Gunfire Observer. It was a nasty job; nobody else wanted it, and the line was short. Any way you look at it, I could see ashes and dust headed my way. Sure enough, when I came out of the bush twelve months later, I weighed 135 pounds; I was dangerous, ‘non compos mentis,’ and strung out on cocaine. We were so far from civilization you couldn’t get a Coca Cola or a candy bar for 100 miles, but you could get all the horse you wanted for a can of peaches. On the bright side, if I’d been shot, I wouldn’t have needed any pain killer.”
“On the flight home from Da Nang, I decided to kill myself. I had seen so many friends die for nothing; I had killed people I didn’t even know; when I closed my eyes, I could see their faces. I had broken every one of the Ten Commandments several times; I was a drug addict; I couldn’t even remember what the ‘point’ was. I didn’t want to go home, but they made me go, saying I’d be dead in three months if I stayed. Suddenly, it was crystal clear: she had been dead-on right about me. I was a loser – just taking up space, and I didn’t have the will to pretend any longer. I was so tired and, although I knew it was unlikely, I didn’t want her to ever see me like that.”
“I fell asleep before we landed in Hawaii, and I had a dream. It was so real. It was night, and I was in a church, a country church, and I was going to kill myself when the sun came up. I was sitting in the back, because I felt like I didn’t belong, and the strangest thing happened. I felt her presence. She sat down beside me, and she put her arms around me. She told me she loved me, and that everything would be alright. I know most skeptics would laugh and say it’s just a cocaine cowboy’s hallucination, but I can still feel her hand on the back of my head. When the plane landed, I went to my next ship in Pearl, sobered up, got the monkey off my back, and I’ve been clean ever since. She saved my life, and she gave me a second chance.”
So much for my introduction. In subsequent chapters, I must flesh out the three main characters, the priest, the Handsome Sailor, and the girl. I must give them all their own personalities, strengths, weaknesses, and dreams. I must establish a flow, a continuity of action; I must make the reader care about these characters. I must develop the life of the Handsome
Sailor up until the night he knocks on the door of the priest. This will include his childhood, his life and adventures as an enlisted sailor, his Vietnam experiences, and his relationship with the girl. At least one chapter will be devoted to the establishment of her character and point of view. I also must paint a complete picture of Father Ignatius: above all, why does he write? Who is he? How did he become a Jesuit, a “soldier of the church?” I’m also not happy with his name – it seems a little “heavy handed.” The founder of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, was Ignatius de Loyola; perhaps naming my priest after such a significant person saddles him with more baggage and symbolism than he needs to carry.
At the seminar, we had to outline the chapters of our novel, as above, and then reveal the conclusion, the denouement. Unfortunately, the seminar leader didn’t like my proposed ending. He said it was “too kitschy, too cute, too contrived.” I have a problem here, because the ending I have in mind really happened. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.
Tell you what. Let’s up the ante. If you can guess the ending, include it in your critique and, if you are even close, I will send you a copy of the novel when it is published.
Light a candle for me.
Benny Hornsby of Oak Grove is a retired U.S. Navy captain. Visit his website, bennyhornsby.com, or email him: villefranche60@yahoo.com.
