Creative Writing – Pat the Expat

It’s a Book!

Some of my friends have mentioned to me the relative absence of posts of late. Some of my more liberal and progressive friends were probably relieved. It’s not that there isn’t anything going on. It’s just that I have been a little busy, finishing a book! And here now is that story:

When I retired, I fully expected to take up writing in some form. In the year before retirement, I convinced my boss to let me write a blog on the limited (government-only) work system, detailing any advice or sage wisdom I had about our business. I pitched it as a means to capture/transfer tacit knowledge, that is, all the things you know about your profession which aren’t in books anywhere. I really believed in the concept of passing along such knowledge, which literally often walks out the door with the retiree.

But I also had another motive: to get into the habit of writing, which I wanted to commit to in retirement. I have always enjoyed writing, and had some success: a well-received paper here and there, positive feedback from people who know something about writing, even an occasional minor award. But there’s a great leap from any of that to being a writer, and while my interest was there, I was unwilling to dedicate my time to the craft in retirement. As I told those who asked, “it was too much like work” and that was one thing I wasn’t going to do as a retiree.

This blog served to keep me in the practice of writing, and never felt like “work.” I enjoyed the research, the back-n-forth when friends disagreed, the writing/editing/polishing involved. I started many short stories and wrote up several concepts for screenplays, but never got down to the hard work of completing anything. Common writing advice is to “write about what you know” but anything I wanted to write about with respect to my old job would require pre-clearance from the government, which I wanted to avoid. So I focused on light fiction about ordinary things.

A little over a year ago, I woke up at two in the morning with a crazy, detailed dream fresh in my head. I thought about it as the fog cleared, and I remember thinking, “that would make a great story!” But I went back to sleep anyway. Then the dream resumed where it left off. When I awoke, I remembered both parts of the dream in great detail, which is unusual for a dream (at least for me). I told Judy about it, going over the story in detail, and she agreed it was an interesting premise, and that I should do something with it. I sketched out the basics of the story in a Word file and put it away with the rest of my unfinished works.

But the dream-story would not let me rest. I woke up time and again in the middle of the night, with additional dreams filling in gaps in the original one. I started making more notes. As I identified plot holes or character gaps, I had more dreams. I started to think about the story line during my conscious hours, too, usually while working out, which was often when I did my best creative thinking back when I worked. I had made the story out completely but had almost nothing on paper. Whenever I started to think about writing it, I remembered all the research I would have to do to get it right. And the story was current espionage fiction, so agency review would have to approve it also. Sounds like “work.”

Finally, my old college roommate visited, and asked the same question I had heard so many times before: “where’s all the writing you were going to do.” I gave the usual answer about not doing work, but he was amazed that I had this entire story in my head but refused to put it on paper. He badgered me over a long weekend and a vacation trip to Mexico City, and I finally relented and agreed to story board the tale, a necessary prelude to researching and writing a novel.

Out came the chartpak, lines were drawn, dates inscribed, with circles and arrows pointing between characters and events. I have never been at a loss for words (much to my friends’ and enemies’ dismay), and once I actually got writing, it all came very fast. Back in college, I used to make a game of paper writing, keeping track of how many hours were left until a paper was due and how many words-per-minute I needed to write to complete it. Let’s just say I probably set a personal best in words-per-minute during this book.

Then came the hard part. I contacted several friends who have published novels, and they gave me great advice. Contacting the big publishing houses was a long-shot. I tried to get an agent, who would intercede for me with the publishing houses. No dice. Each request to each agent had to be an exercise in customization: “give me your ten best pages, courier font, no italics.” “Give me your first and last chapter, times new roman, with specific margins.” “Give me your complete text, a ten page summary, and a one paragraph summary.”

After spending hours and days building such inputs, I got nothing beyond a “received request” email and a “not interested” email. I did get one actual rejection based on the fact I had a typo in my cover email. I don’t blame them, the theory being if you can’t make that perfect, your work is probably not good enough either. I finally decided to go the self-publishing route, which is quite different from what I imagined.

You may recall vanity publishing back in the day, where authors would pay to get works in print that no one would ever read. This is nothing like that. I used Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) from Amazon. The service is free and easy to use, with much helpful advice along the way. Now the book is available from Amazon, and if you have Prime, you can read it for free using their Kindle Unlimited service. A paperback version (printed on demand) is also forthcoming.

What about the book, the story itself? It is an espionage tale, set mostly at the CIA during current times. It involves an ensemble cast of analysts, managers, and scientists, working on a super-secret program, with a small sci-fi twist. All the characters are of course fictional.

Ever heard of the “DC read?” When someone publishes a book about the national policy community, all the DC policy types check it out at the bookstore, going directly to the index and seeing if/where they’re mentioned, then reading those parts (no kidding). Note to my DC friends: don’t bother, there is no index, and no one you know is in there. All the characters are composites, although it would be fun to try and guess who is what part of whom.

This is not a Tom Clancy-style action story. It falls more in the Smiley’s People end of the genre. Flawed characters grapple with challenges personal, professional, and profound. I try to bring out some of the grittier aspects of the intelligence business: How to keep secrets secret, counterintelligence versus analysis, cover, when to use (or not) what intelligence has learned, how the personalities and foibles of “real” people play out in national policy. Did I succeed? You’ll be the judge.

As I wrote the work, I realized that several characters were demanding greater attention (I came to conclude both the novel and the characters are real, at least in my head, after all that sleep disruption). So I have continued the process, story-boarding out a sequel which takes the characters forward from now to the next year or so, bringing in some additional characters, and spicing it all up against the backdrop of an international crisis. And I have the concept for a conclusion to the trilogy that wraps up all the main characters story lines. Can’t leave them out there, dangling, lest they interrupt my nocturnal rhythms again.

So I hope you find the E-book story, titled “Red StReam,” on Amazon, and I hope you find it interesting. Drop me a note here on the blog, or on Facebook, or via the email address listed for me as the author inside the book. I look forward to hearing from you!

Progressivism: The Bad . . .

If you thought my last post was my attempt to come-out as a Progressive, never fear, you’ll feel differently after this one. Or maybe the next.

My review of Progressive theory’s positives centered on its good intentions, its openness, and its vitality. To which I would now note:

the path to hell is paved with the first
no tent is ever big enough, and
action in the wrong direction is not progress.

Why all the negativity? Well, as I alluded to in my first post, today’s Progressives act like they have never heard of their movement’s past. America tried Progressivism once before, and to paraphrase Dr. Malcolm, Progressives “had their shot, and nature chose them for extinction.”

He got all the best lines!

American Progressivism developed in the period 1890-1920. It grew rapidly, and by the time of the 1912 Presidential election, all three major party candidates (Democratic, Republican, and Progressive) identified as some form of Progressive. This was a period of profound social and technological change, which was fertile soil for Progressive beliefs. A person born in 1860 went from a society on horseback to railroads, automobiles, and even planes by the age of sixty. Communications went from letter and post to telegraph, telephone, radio, and silent movies. Medicine identified disease theory and greatly reduced infant mortality. And society went from farms and small shops to factories and mass production.

It’s easy to see why Progressivism would be attractive under such conditions. Technology seemed to be promising unending improvements. New groups of people were disadvantaged by all the changes: factory workers, miners, immigrants. The system (whether it was society, religion, or the government) appeared to be unequal to the task of adapting. Progressives held some form of power in Washington from 1901 (when Teddy Roosevelt replaced the assassinated McKinley) through the Republican Taft administration until 1920 (the end of Democrat Woodrow Wilson’s second term). At that point, a massive voter rejection of Progressive policies ended the movement’s influence for a century.

Progressivism scored some major victories: Woman’s suffrage, laws against forced labor and poor working conditions, and others for unionization and protecting the environment (including the National Park system). But it also led to over-reach, as in the case of Prohibition.

What happened to Progressivism? Many of those positive qualities I mentioned in the previous post had a negative side, too. For example, the belief that technology (especially science and medicine) always make things better proved to be disastrously false in the Great War. Mass production brought mass warfare. Flight brought aerial bombardment of cities. Chemistry brought gas warfare. TriNitroToulene (TNT) made better explosives. Even electricity and mass production led to child labor at sweatshops.

The drive to improve mankind also had consequences. Some doctors wrongly applied evolutionary concepts to biology and society, developing bogus concepts like eugenics and championing discredited phrenology. They furthered efforts to limit the growth of “unwanted populations” or uncivilized ethnic groups. Contraception led to mass sterilization, care for the mentally-ill led to mass involuntary hospitalization, and the apparent “superiority” of European cultures promoted paternalism at home and colonialism abroad.

Politically, Progressive’s Big Tent failed to screen out elements with whom they should not have allied. Communism seemed to be like-minded, even as it quickly showed its de-humanizing techniques. Racists and Nazis championed Progressive ideas, taking them to their logical extremes. International bodies like the League of Nations treated all countries equally, a recipe for inaction, while idealists put forward treaties outlawing “war” as if that had any significance.

This history, long established and not controversial, always made me wonder why certain liberals chose to brand themselves “Progressives” in the early 2000s. It would be like some new German party saying they were for National Socialism, not realizing the words had history with another meaning. Of course, Republicans spent decades besmirching “liberalism” which was the very essence of republican (note the small ‘r”) values, so perhaps self-proclaimed liberals had to come up with a better name. They didn’t.

Progressivism not only failed to deliver on its promise, it played a major role in setting the stage for some of the horrors of the 20th century, from the Holocaust to medical experimentation to racism to global war. By the early 1920s, Americans were already tired of it, yet they would suffer its consequences for almost thirty more years. And then it became a dirty word, buried in history for another fifty years.

When, like a political zombie, it came back. Next, part three, the Ugly.

Herculaneum

It was a typical, beautiful day in the shadow of the mountain. Fall in Campania is spectacular, and life was good in the seaside village of Herculaneum. It was especially good for Marcus Nonius Dama, as he was a freedman, made so by his former master Marcus Nonius Balbus, one of the town’s leading men. Dama’s family had been brought to Rome as slaves from Syria (Dama, as from Damascus). Roman slavery took many forms, often more like indentured servitude for a period rather than chattel slavery. Dama had grown up serving in the rich man’s spacious villa. Some seventeen years earlier, when Dama was a teenager, there had been a terrible earthquake which damaged much of the town. Dama had led his master’s wife and children to safety in the arched porticos which protected boats along the beach. Marcus Nonius Balbus never forgot that act, and he was a gracious man in addition to being rich. He gave Dama more and more responsibility, and eventually his freedom.

Dama had made a trade in repairing the town for the past two decades, and although much of his work was done, his reputation was still growing. Now Dama’s wife was eight months pregnant with their first child, and he felt practically on top of the world. Around noon, he stopped at the thermopolium, where Romans grabbed some fast food for the lunch meal. Herculaneum stood along a beach a short distance from Neapolis, the Roman port city. It was both a small fishing village and a rich man’s retreat, lying between the large mountain called Vesuvio and the Tyrrhenian Sea. As Dama was eating, he heard a large “crack,” like the loudest thunder he ever heard. But this thunder was followed by a long, low roar. “It sounds like the earth itself is giving birth,” he thought. People were milling about in the street, so he walked out and looked up at Vesuvio.

Where the mountain stood, there now was a towering blackness, like a giant dark tree reaching up into the sky. The darkness was rising and spreading, south with the wind and reaching down to the ground. It was both beautiful and terrible, frightening but seemingly far away.

The Vesuvio caldron today, once again calm

What Dama did not know, what no one in Herculaneum knew, was that Vesuvio was no mountain, but rather a volcano. It had not erupted in the recorded memory of Rome, so the danger posed by the sleeping giant was completely unrealized by the people living alongside it. What Dama watched was the vaporization of millions of tons of rock, turned into a mix of ash and fire, and blown high into the sky. That deadly mix was cooling and condensing and falling toward the larger town of Pompeii, due south, where it would collapse like a giant concrete blanket. And this was only the beginning.

Dama hurried home and told is wife to head over to Marcus Nonius Balbus’ place, to warn them to head to the beach again, lest another earthquake hit. He decided to stop by the shrine to Augustus, the former Caesar and still god; perhaps a little prayer was in order. While he was lighting some incense, he heard another loud explosion above the rumbling roar. Looking up at Vesuvio, he could see another cloud, red and black and roiling, working its way down the mountainside. Dama did not need to know this was a pyroclastic flow: superheated gas and rock moving at more than fifty miles per hour. All he needed to know was what he immediately felt: mortal fear.

Dama began running down the street toward the beach and the porticos. When he reached the beach front, he could see his wife and some of his former master’s family huddled under one of the aches. Other people were also taking shelter there, although the boats were all gone, having departed with a load of people fleeing earlier. Dama walked out into the shallow water to get a better view toward the mountain. The dark red line was sweeping down toward the village at an incredible speed, and there was nowhere to go. He ran toward the portico where his wife was, but he never made it.

The pyroclastic flow hit the town like a firey tidal wave, searing any organic material and killing everyone and everything instantly. Behind it was a wall of hot mud, actually liquid rock, which buried the town under meters of solid stone as it cooled. Vesuvio erased Roman Herculaneum so completely that no one knew where it had been for almost two millenia, when a local farmer digging a well uncovered some gold jewelry.

While Pompeii was smothered by ash, collapsing most structures and leaving the ghostly body-casts of victims, Herculaneum was flash-fried, then dipped in a protective coating of stone. The buildings still stand, two or three stories tall. Wooden objects (screens, doors, lintels, beds) were found charred but intact, giving an invaluable look at Roman life. The same goes for pottery, glass, and even papyri, Roman legal documents which also survived. Herculaneum provided actual skeletons, revealing diets, diseases, heights, weights, lifestyles and even DNA.

House shrine, note the metal roof support

Most people visit Pompeii: it’s larger, more famous, and it’s where cruise and other tours want to take you. And it’s certainly worth a visit. But it is larger, and can be a little intimidating, if not overwhelming. I suggest considering Herculaneum, which is just as well preserved, smaller, and very walkable.

This shows one portico at what was the beach/shore. The “wall” in the background is an unexcavated area, showing how deep the town was buried. The house is part of Marcus Nonius Balbus’ seaside villa

Fear & Loathing in Ajijic

(Author’s note: This is the fiftieth anniversary of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. If you have never read it, do so. He pioneered something called Gonzo Journalism which mixes the illusory and the real, stone cold sober insight and drug-fueled raving. And it’s pretty funny, ‘tho profane. Here is my homage to the genre. Again, it’s all creative writing and fiction!)

We were somewhere south of the airport, driving up a steep grade in the pass over the Sierra San Juan Cosala, when the brownies started to take effect. These were no run-of-the-mill, Pillsbury brownies. No, my amigo Juan Rey used only Ghiardelli starter, and added a special mix of fifty-seven herbs and spices which would drive the working dogs at George H. W. Bush International airport into a frenzy. There were no dogs here on the carretera, except for the bloated ones at the side of the road, but I felt giddy at the thought of spilling out a container of special brownies on the floor of Customs in Houston and watching the dogs drag the CBP agents across the room.

“What’s so funny?” my companion shouted over the roar of Led Zeppelin from the car stereo.

I didn’t answer; I didn’t even realize I was laughing. I was too focused on dropping into second gear and hitting the gas, aiming the rented Tsuru in between a pick-up truck with an abuela in the bed and a family of three puttering next to them on a motorbike. I expertly split the difference on a hairpin turn and broke into the clear . . . of yet another uphill turn.

A Tsuru was never meant to be driven like this. Actually, a Tsuru was never technically meant to be driven. It was a car at its best up on concrete blocks in the barrio, where you got in and shared una fria with some locals as the sun went down. A Tsuru was essentially a Nissan Sentry with all of its safety and comfort features removed, then sold at cost in an aspiring market like Mexico where a growing middle class was newly experiencing the joy of the open road . . . with predictable results.

Tsuru crash test results

When I picked up the Tsuru at the airport rental counter, I just ignored the small print stating the rental company was not responsible for the costs associated with removing human remains from the vehicle interior in the event of an accident. A good garden hose would do the trick. I realized my companion was still waiting on an answer about that sinister laugh.

“The dogs! You should have seen them with the brownies. . .” I finally replied, but my companion was having none of it.

“Look out for the cows!” he screamed. What cows? Where does he see cows? In the middle of a freakin’ highway, in the middle of the freakin’ night? Damn brownies! I cut to the outside of the curve and saw a bovine head flash past my side-view mirror. This was no time to linger, so I stepped on the gas, alert for the giant iguanas I knew would soon follow. When we made it to Ajijic, I was going to find out exactly what were the fifty-seven herbs and spices in those brownies. For now, I took a long swig from my vampiro, and kept watching for the iguanas.

—————————-Morning—————————

I awoke the next morning and looked down at the blood-red stain on my guayabera. Great. I was in town less than one full day and now somebody had expertly lifted my kidneys. Or maybe my appendix; could they tell the difference? Just another tourist used for medical practice. I pulled open the shirt but saw no scars. The empty vampiro bag I had clutched all the way from the airport fell to my side.

Why was I even here, in the middle-of-nowhere Mexico? I had a gig to cover a water skiing competition on Lake Chapala. At first I thought it was some set-up by the cartels: lure innocent gringos down with an imaginary sporting event, then harvest their organs. But it seemed legit, as it was the tenth annual competition, and so far no reports of missing organs. But water-skiing, on Lake Chapala? Even the locals only pretend to go into the lake (up to their knees, wearing plastic trash bags on their feet) and nobody, ever, takes out a speed boat. There are things out there, under the water. Things you don’t want to run into. Things like grandstands, and barbed wire, and electric cables. See, the Mexicans reclaim the shore when the lake wanes, and build all kinds of things. When the lake refills, they run off, leaving an Atlantis of strange artifacts just under the waterline.

I bought a bottle of tequila, a mango, and a six of Tecate and sat down on the malecon to watch the show. Perhaps there would be a traumatic amputation or a sudden explosion when electric current met marine gas-oil. Serves them right, coming down here and not even offering a kidney. Dammit, you have two, and that guy begging at the corner in front of the WalMart probably needs at least one. But there was nothing savage to see here. Just speed boats, and people water-skiing. I grabbed the tequila and headed up Colon to get some comida.

My companion was in the bar and motioned me to join him. Next to him sat a square-jawed, Marine-looking character. He said his name was William, but I was sure it’s Bill, or Billy, or Mac or Buddy.

“As your doctor, I advise you to order the chilaquiles with the two-for-one Bloody Mary” my companion intoned. Billy interjected, “I didn’t know you were a doctor. . .” but I cut him off.

“He’s not. It’s a Goddamn border promotion. He’s a podiatrist, but don’t let him anywhere near your feet, as he has outstanding malpractice cases in ten states.” “Wh-wh-what?” Billy stammered, but I laid it on thicker and heavier, “you should have seen it. He actually attached a sixth toe on a man’s foot and tried to charge him extra for it!” My companion was just staring down at his migas while Billy sat with his square jaw now hanging open.

After I ordered the chilaquiles and Bloody Mary duo, Billy tried to break the uncomfortable silence: “So you’re here to cover the water skiing competition?” I glared at my companion, but he put both palms up and mouthed “not me.” Of course not. Pueblito or small town, it’s all the same: everybody knows everybody else’s business. There was no way I was going to cover that crap, even if it involved somebody being severed in half. I needed another reason to be here. I glanced suspiciously to both sides, then whispered, “William, you look like a former Marine, can you keep a secret?” “Semper Fi!” he growled.

“That water-skiing competition is just a cover.” He looked at me, puzzled but obviously interested. “I’m down here for the company.” I paused for effect, and he stared, unblinking, like a near-sighted lizard. “The agency. Do I need to spell it out? CI-A!” I spat out the acronym “see-ah” the way the locals do, for added authenticity, and I could see the hook was set.

“I always thought that water-skiing thing was crazy,” he replied. I continued, “Just crazy enough. My companion and I are recon for the beaches here. As a Marine, I assume you know the strategic importance of beaches?” He was nodding his head yes, but his eyes said no. “Beaches?” he whispered, “but for what?” “Good God, man, for the invasion!” I muttered. He was clearly struggling with the concept, but desperately wanted to buy-in, “but it’s a lake, how do they get here?” I slammed the empty Bloody Mary glass down on the table for emphasis, “where have you been? Don’t you know about Space Force? The Space Marines? What do you think we have them for?”

“Oh, yeah, them. And they’ll have the element of surprise” he added, now fully on board. I should have stopped there, but my third and fourth Bloody Marys arrived, so I chugged one down and then took it to the limit, one more time: “We did have surprise, but now we come to find out there’s a rat. Somebody down here has been talking, and when we find the rat-bastard, well, we’ll take both his kidneys!” Billy’s eyes were wide as saucers, “What do you mean?”

“William,” I paused and leaned closer, “you don’t think the Mexicans left all that crap out in the lake for shits-n-grins, do you? Barbed wire, electrical lines, hell there’s probably a slew of mines and hedgehogs down there, too. They are waiting for us!” “No shit? That makes soooooo much more sense!” he nodded. I needed to make good my escape, so I looked around, then waited for the mesera to walk past: “We have to find the rat. If you hear any gringo down here talking smack about ‘Merica, call me at this number.” I wrote the digits down on the napkin and handed it over. “If I sound confused, I’m just pretending not to know you because it’s an open line. Just keep calling me and giving me any names you have. Can you do that for me, Marine?”

“Yes, sir!” he replied, and I threw down a two hundred peso note on the table and made my way out. What the CBP desk at George H. W. Bush International airport was going to do with this information was not my problem.

———————Afternoon————————

Now that the lake skiing gig was dead in the water, I needed an alternative subject for an article to justify my advance. I was sitting in the plaza, el centro del centro, smoking a fine Cuban cigar. Here I was, deep in the heart of the expat dream, and it was time to figure it all out. This place was right out of some spaghetti western knock-off of a 1950’s horror flick.: small Mexican fishing village suddenly invaded by a ragtag army of aging hippy-zombies followed by soul-less real estate speculators, working side-by-side in some bizarre Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact to destroy paradise. How the Canadians fit in to the plot, who knows, but I swear I’ll run my Tsuru over the next pair of socks-and sandal-ed feet I see!

I saw my companion discretely making his way into the plaza, headed straight for me. Or at least he was trying to be discrete, as only a six-foot four-inch Irishman weighing well-nigh twenty stone can be. He had on cargo shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, aviator sun glasses and a mop of bright red hair. Which went well with the permanent rash-red color of his skin; the tropics are not kind to sons of Erin who choose to ignore sunscreen.

He approached and handed me a margarita, saying, “As your lawyer, I suggest you hydrate with this before you go mad in the noon-day sun.” It was true: I was half-mad with thirst. And he was a lawyer, a pretty good one at that. Faced with the unrelenting stream of malpractice claims, he had finished law school and defended himself, ably motioning and delaying until he could either exhaust the plaintiffs or flee to another part of the country. I admired his courtroom demeanor, even if I would still never let him touch my feet.

“What in the hell is going on here?” I wailed. “Does Mexico even know it’s being invaded? Do they not care? Don’t they see what the gringos did to California, not to mention Tejas! Arizona is like some sinister re-creation of The Villages without the redeeming quality of an occasional hurricane.” I paused to lick some salt off the rim of the plastic margarita glass. “Where did you get this anyway?” I asked, waving the drink at my companion. “There was man with a little stand selling them on the street. I told him to put yours in a glass, because you hate sucking your drinks through a straw in a plastic bag.” “Did you see what he put in it? Was there any alcohol? Who knows what else is in there? Stem cells? Human growth hormone? What were you thinking?”

My companion just smiled and shrugged. “You’re too wound up. You need to take in the local vibe. This is Mexico. Don’t get hostile, don’t ask too many questions, just sit back and enjoy what it is.” “What it is, is a cocktail from hell,” I retorted. I refilled the glass with tequila from my litro and resumed: “Mexico lives by the Pirate code, everything is ‘more of a guideline than a rule.’ But they don’t know what they don’t know, as Rummy once said. They have this little piece of paradise, and they haven’t figured out what is happening to it.” “Maybe they do know,” my companion said, “but they are ok with it.”

I glanced around the plaza. The tie-dyed shirts, the man buns with crazy, gray, wire-hairs sticking out? Didn’t fool me for a second. They were just the first wave, harmless enough looking, to put the locals at ease. Gringos locos. Next there’d be the aging Jane Fonda wanna-bees, dressed in 80’s chic (torn sweatshirts and leggings, of course). And the fresh-faced retirees, from Middletown, USA, buying up the hillsides and crowding the markets, marveling at the prices while giving a loud “Bone-ASS DEE-ass” to the frightened locals.

I don’t know what they were all up to, but the sun felt good on my shoulders, and the man-with-the-margarita stand came by and refilled mine before the ice could melt. I would get to the bottom of it, the glass and the invasion. But it was gonna’ take some time.

To Start a Fire(place)

With full apologies to Jack London. If you haven’t already, or don’t remember, you can read the original here. It’s short, and sad, and a classic. Mine is shorter, not sad, and neo-classico.

Day dawned warm and sunny as the man stood reviewing his balcony. It was the usual: always warm and sunny, almost monotonously so. The man liked to joke about the sameness of the weather. It was after all all of twenty-five degrees outside . . . Celsius. The joke ran cold with friends up north, but never failed to elicit a smile on the man and his dog. Or at least he thought his dog was smiling. It could have been his canine sense of humor, or it might have been the bacon which the man regularly fumbled off the table at breakfast. Either way, the dog was definitely smiling.

In a land where the weather never changes, and rarely threatens, the man knew the importance of routine. You arise with the dawn, because the blackout curtains always leave a small crack which the sun penetrates and demands your attention. Or the dog does. You eat breakfast which is always huevos mexicanos, bacon, avocado and tomato, which will tide over a hearty man until a real meal in the afternoon. Not that life is so strenuous it needs fuel; no, it just tastes good. You rest in the afternoon, not because you need sleep, but because it’s hot, and wise not to tempt nature’s fury in the tropical noontime.

The seasons change little, so the man clung to small reminders of times past in order to mark their passing. One was building a fire in the hearth for Christmas. Not that he needed a fire; he didn’t need heating, or air conditioning, or even a blanket at night most of the year. But winter–and the man smiled when he said it, noting he used the term loosely–required something to mark its arrival, and the man chose a fire.

The man knew how to start a fire. He had lit small brush fires as a child, burning his fingers on the matchbook before hastily stamping them out in panic. He had started charcoal grill fires, usually after a heavy dose of lighter fluid and the ensuing rush of ignition. He even lit gas grills, and mostly remembered to open the top BEFORE hitting the starter. He was a man.

But the man’s problem was he was not mechanically inclined. He could tell you the theory of a thing’s design, or describe the components of a chemical process like combustion, but he did not intuit the “how” as someone so-inclined does. And now he faced a challenge: a gas fireplace. Not that that was totally new. He had faced one before, and it nearly defeated him. In the end, he eschewed the fake logs, added a large dog iron full of kindling and fresh firewood, then ignited the gas nozzle directly with a quick-n-flame: dangerous but effective.

All that stands between the man and his hammock

Now he would need to engage with the real thing: a fully enclosed, completely installed gas fireplace. There could be no compromise here, and maybe only a second chance to succeed. It was early afternoon, shortly before his routine siesta, so he had little time. He had instructions; Good Lord, did he have instructions. There were instructions for installation, for warranty, for safety, for lighting or extinguishing the fire, for cleaning. He even had three (three!) sets of hand-written notes from the original owner, scribbled and identical and now faded to illegibility.

He had only one or two tries, less he miss his siesta. He was already growing tired, anticipating a good nap on a hammock in the shade, but near the sun. Yet he persisted. He removed the grill cover and discovered the controls. They were all there, just as the many instructions foretold, but never exactly where they foretold. There was a knob, clearly meant to be turned. A spigot which should control the gas flow just before the igniter. Another knob with “pilot” on it, and a button which had to be the ignition system. But there was also a rocker switch on the wall, and a master handle to control gas flow to the entire system.

His mathematical brain told him 5! (factorial) meant 120 possible combinations for these five knobs/switches. He had no time to start trying them in order, which was the rational thing to do. He made some simple assumptions–always dangerous when one’s siesta is at stake, but still necessary. He reasoned that the fireplace was off, and had been for some time, so he assumed every switch was in the negative. He started to switch them, slowly, to the positive. The dog, which had been following the action closely to this point, backed away, tale between his legs. The man wondered: did the dog smell gas leaking or sense an explosion in the making? It was too late for such introspection: he knew that if gas was flowing, he needed to ignite it now, or risk something much worse than a blown grill lid. The man pushed the igniter, and the dog left the room.

Nothing happened. The igniter snapped, but no gas, no flame. He stopped. Now he remembered the gas tech who years ago told him “if you ever try and fail to start a gas system, you should always, (–and here the grizzled old gasbag paused and repeated for effect–) ALWAYS turn everything off and wait for any gas to dissipate.” Yet it was siesta time, and he realized his assumptions about what-was-on and what-was-off were incorrect: so how to ensure they were “off?”

The man paused. The dog was nowhere to be seen. Maybe the gas had dissipated already. The man lit a match and mover it toward the ignition system, slowly, and nothing happened. It was a rash move, like tasting milk in the fridge to see if it had gone bad, but it worked. As in, nothing exploded. The man decided to press ahead, buoyed by this small success. He was heedless of the small significance of the explosion-that-didn’t-happen, and instead decided to use it as the basis for renewed confidence.

He knew what to do now. He tried each knob or dial in turn, lit match in hand, to determine if any were contributing gas to the igniter. The first knob started a tiny circulating fan, which fascinated the man. Who needs a circulating fan on a fireplace in a place where no fire is needed for warmth? But he had no time to linger on the thought. Probably a Canadian design, he mused before moving on. One switch produced only the slightest, tell-tale smell of gas, so he eliminated that variable. Obviously, the knob-so-named needed to be set to “pilot.” Which left only the wall switch.

He flipped its position and tried the igniter. Nothing. He knew the gas might be flowing, so he tried it again, quickly, realizing time (and his luck) was running out. Still nothing.

At this point he should have backed away, ventilated the area, and reviewed the instructions. But he was tired, so tired. He had been awake for hours, and the hammock sat there, swaying in the wind. Yet the fireplace was between him and his goal, and he was a man. It would light. The man flipped the rocker switch, whispered a small prayer (for success? for safety? we’ll never know) and pushed the ignition button. Still nothing happened. He was just short of delirious now, and resigned to his fate: he pushed it again, and again, willing the spark which would breathe life into the device.

Suddenly, there was a small “whooshing” sound, not the giant bang of a gas grill, but clearly and unmistakably the sound of ignition. There between the fake kindling and ceramic logs was a little blue flame. It spread around the edges of the fireplace, real (if gas-fed) and sustained. The man was pleased. The dog returned, since the fireplace provided a chance to warm one side in the tropical sun while the other toasted near natural gas. The dog had no idea how dangerous it had all been, but then again, the dog had instinctively left the area. The man felt only a sense of peaceful calm. He was already in the hammock, leaving the gas fire to tend itself. He had lit the fire. “Who needs snow?” he thought.

Merry Christmas!