excerpt from my novel-in-progress

[andyk]

Nine9 told me to do this, so blame her. These r just a couple of parts of one chapter. If you like it, let me know; if you don't, tell me why.

1.0

When Gaine was a child, he ascended to the attic of his great-grandparents’ house, looking for new artifacts in boxes left there for storage. He found old photographs, board games, hair curlers, 8-track tapes and buckskin purses from the ‘60s and ‘70s, and when he held them in his hands, smelled them, stroked their antiquity with my fingertips, he found his mind shifting to the parentheses of time when his grandparents were children, something he had never seen except in still photos and crude videotapes; he would be there, present in the past, for just a moment, absent from my time, a ghost from the future, wandering through a century that preceded him, moving about yet not participating, seeing and hearing, yet not breathing the same air.

Then someone would call his name, and his thoughts would precipitate back to earth like a cloudburst on a sunny day. He would reluctantly return to the main floor, where his grandmother puzzled at his pale, sleepy face, wondering what solace he had taken in her attic.

He remembers finding a photograph of Raf Ellard, who was standing with a group of other people at what seemed to be a Christmas party in the 1960s. Someone had started to mark up his image with blue ink from a Bic ballpoint pen, but the defacement was never completed. At first, he didn’t know who the man in the photo was, but many years later began to remember him more clearly.

What images should be in the first frames of a person’s biography, he wondered? Should he simply run a linear sequence of still pictures beginning at birth and ending at death? Or should he edit out the static moments and start with a montage of the most significant scenes? Gaine pondered that the last scenes in the movie always change the way we think about the first ones.

1.1

He was a young man, 21 years old, with a woolen poorboy cap and a brown leather jacket with the pockets half torn and hanging from his sides in flaps. His knuckles had the reddish-white appearance of flesh that had been exposed to the damp frost and the dry winds. The leather of his too-small brogans had been cracking from the pressure of his weight and the wet snow that never allowed it to dry. He was walking toward the town in the valley, hoping to find a job in a kitchen where he could feed himself scraps while he worked as a helper.

His anodyne, crystal-blue eyes, rimmed red from lack of rest, were young enough to make him appear trustworthy and likeable to a potential employer. The young man thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, looking for a piece of bread he had saved from the day before, when he saw a small hand clutching at a rock near the edge of the valley. He stopped, wondering hat a child’s arm was doing in such as remote place. He knew that the only thing below was a set of train tracks leading down toward the town. The little hand just kept grasping at the rock, as if trying to surreptitiously pull it out. The young man edged closer and heard the sound of labored breathing from the child. He moved closer, still too puzzled to utter a word. Until he reached the edge.

The girl was no more than a year old. She had somehow wandered away from her home and slipped over the edge, but by fortune had managed to catch herself in a small recession in the side of a sheer drop that would have dropped her sixty feet into the sharp, dynamite-blasted rocks beside the tracks, or on the tracks themselves, where she wouldn’t have fared any better. She was beyond hysterics, her round face reddish-blue with the effort of seizing the rock and pulling herself up to safety. Her blonde hair was tangled with dirt and sweat. Instinctively, she knew she had to avoid falling, but every effort she made eroded her platform of dirt and sod. When she saw the young man’s face, it revived her emotions and she began to sob in baby talk.

Startled, the young man finally reached his hand down to grasp her, just as the sod gave way and she started sliding further down. The child shrieked, and the young man looked around, puzzled why no help was on its way already. He urged her in soothing tones to stay calm, that she was safe, that he would see her back to her mother and father soon.

With great care, conscious of the shabby condition of his boots, he ambled over the edge and found a firm footing where he hold himself against the loose wall of earth while he lifted her up. When he landed there, she clung to him as if he was her father, gazing into his eyes longingly. He had to pry her arms from his jacket to raise her to the top. When she finally let go, still sniffling, he paused a moment and looked up at her with a big smile. “Now you stay away from here,” he said in a mock stern voice. “We have to take you home to your mummy.” The girl calmed down and put a thumb in her mouth, staring back at him placidly.

Satisfied that she was on safe ground, and wondering how he would locate her family, the young man started to climb up again, an easy couple of steps up, when the entire ground beneath him evaporated. With almost no time to scream, he fell backwards, striking a rock on the way down. His body slammed into the jagged granite beside the tracks, then rebounded away, where an ugly cloud of descending soil, vegetation and rock fragments buried him anonymously under a camouflaged mound that was never uncovered, even by railway workers. The child, who had turned away before he fell, walked away in the direction of her home, where her family was unaware of what had transpired.

Too young for language, the girl never spoke of her rescue, and even forgot about it as she grew older. The young man’s family never knew what happened to him. He never married nor had children to remember him. There were no witnesses. There were no articles in papers of record, nor genealogical books bearing his name. No one would know about him. His life was unfulfilled, worthless and forgotten. It was if he had never existed.

[nine9]

That is great.........never saw that one before! I would like to know what happens to him and the girl in detail throughout their lives.....especially the girl......does this effect her in a subconcious way?

[darthvonpokemon]

Excellent work, Andy. You've set a nice pace to the story, especially by opening in one time with a lead in to the flashback. It drew me out of the present until the last line, which suddenly brought me back to what was happening with the boy in the attic. Keep it up.
CK
By the way, nine was giddy for me to point out a mispelling/typo error I found in it. "stopped, wondering hat a child’s ". If I was any less of a reader, I probably would've lost my train of thought and stopped reading altogether LOL Glad I didn't.

[nine9]

Originally posted by darthvonpokemon
Excellent work, Andy. You've set a nice pace to the story, especially by opening in one time with a lead in to the flashback. It drew me out of the present until the last line, which suddenly brought me back to what was happening with the boy in the attic. Keep it up.
CK
By the way, nine was giddy for me to point out a mispelling/typo error I found in it. "stopped, wondering hat a child’s ". If I was any less of a reader, I probably would've lost my train of thought and stopped reading altogether LOL Glad I didn't.

Evil one! LOL! Just had to say it didn't you! Well.............when you have to live in the shadow of perfection lol.........you take anything you can get! :rolleyes: ;) :p

[darthvonpokemon]

I'm not evil, nine. I'm just drawn that way :D
CK

[nine9]

Originally posted by darthvonpokemon
I'm not evil, nine. I'm just drawn that way :D
CK

Oh don't I know it! LOL! :eek: :)

[Hate_Breeder]

Good SHit Andyk! :)

[nine9]

Originally posted by Hate_Breeder
Good SHit Andyk! :)

HB has excellent taste too!...........trust me! ;)

[Hate_Breeder]

Originally posted by nine9
HB has excellent taste too!...........trust me! ;)

Thanks niney you have excellent taste as well ;)

[kpropain]

That's good stuff Andy...I hope you will continue to post your work here...