dannyboy

Returning Salmon


Paul watches the frail wisps of smoke escaping from the mound of smouldering brown leaves. His hands grip the cheap wooden shaft of the green plastic garden rake, the knuckles white as his strives to compose his breath. Forty-three and the paunch can be seen pushing against the faded red T-shirt. Must take up running again. A thought he has every autumn. Must lose some of this fat. In summer it is a vow to give up smoking. In spring it is to begin the vegetable patch. In winter he promises himself that he will read more novels. Same promises, same failures, the cycle a haunting that disturbs his deepest recesses.

Paul’s mind drifts with the smoke. His pale blue eyes move past the adjoining roof tops, past the bleak horizon, and melts into the despondency of the day as it begins to slip away again. Dreams he once held, and has lost long since, flicker around the edges of his soft, vulnerable heart. His chest constricts, tiny muscles quivering at the accumulated load. His hands clench the rake as if it might prove itself a club to ward of the encroaching years.

Paul moves closer to the small fire. He allows the smoke from the fire to glide into his eyes: The smoke stings and his eyes water. It's the smoke, nothing else, just the smoke. He wipes his eyes with the back of his grimy hand.

Rose quietly rests on the cement steps that lead up to the porch. Her garden gloved hand wipes the sweat gathered on her wrinkled brow. Her deep green eyes examine the secateurs she holds in her left hand.
Her mind slips into the long ago: When she was young she played in a garden covered thick with wet, decaying leaves. She remembers the insects that crawled to feast on the dead butterflies. Her nostrils flare and she is able to recall the smell of that damp earth.

Rose senses a resonating moistness in her loins. She looks across at her husband resting on the rake. She wonders at the strangeness of her life. How did I end up sitting upon this particular front step? When did I make all these choices?

Unaware of the thoughts and moods of her parents, Cynthia plays in the front yard. She runs back and forth across the yard. Cynthia laughs and falls and calls out and laughs again. She plays without thought or scheme.
Paul and Rose shirk the depths. He returns to raking up the fallen leaves. Like lost years he thinks as he feels the sadness well up from deep within. Rose rises from the step and returns to her roses. She prunes them with a savageness, delighting in the snick, snick of the secateurs as she removes unwanted dead blooms and long, scraggly branches. The roses are no longer plants. They have become the twists and turns that she never meant to travel: The choices that she never consciously made or that, she feels, others made for her. In the garden’s deepening shadows spiders smile and spin while the worms burrow and devour from within.

As the diminishing sun laps at their yard like a soft, yellow tongue, Paul and Rose slowly lose themselves in their autumn chores. They laze about in warm pools of indifference. There is the sound of Paul’s rake as it gathers leaves and the sharp snip of Rose’s secateurs as it reduces rose bushes. They blind themselves with their petty chores and chortles and point things out to each other that are absolutely and eternally meaningless.

Cynthia falls from a wet log. Her bare knee finds an old shard of ragged glass. It cuts deep into her flesh. Blood rushes to bridge the gap. It flows down her shin and stains her pretty white sock. ‘Mamma!’ she cries out as she rocks upon her bony bottom in sympathy with her leg as it throbs with distress. Her hands cup the injured leg just above the cut. ‘Mamma!’ she cries out for the second time.

Rose and Paul pause and look at each other. A wild pain besieges them. It scolds their hearts like white-hot slags of soldering lead. The pain destroys the numbing warmth they had gathered around themselves. The pool suddenly turns deep and dangerous: Swirls and eddies indicate the formless monsters that neither of them have ever had the courage to confront and differentiate.

‘Coming Darling,’ calls out Rose. She tosses aside the secateurs and the gloves and runs across to inspect the damage. Paul returns to the leaves, his hands shaking as he wields the rake. He is confident of her ability to handle the emergency. He denies the rising panic inside his chest. It’ll be nothing. Rose’ll take care of it. It will be nothing.

Rose hurries across the grass to Cynthia and bends down before her daughter. Her hand gently wipes the tears rolling down Cynthia’s cheeks. ‘Hush little one,’ says Rose. ‘It’ll be all right. Come inside and we’ll bathe the wound.’

Brave Cynthia limps dramatically up the front steps. Her small hand tightly grips her mother’s right hand. Paul hears the front door close behind them. He stops raking the leaves as pauses to stare out at the distant mountains that shimmer in the autumn twilight. Again the wild pain rises to press against his heart. He pinches the flesh above his heart with his right hand and lets the rake fall to the ground.

A short time later Rose and Cynthia return. Cynthia limps extravagantly down the front step. Rose follows close behind. Her eyes meet Paul’s. He smiles and, trying to keep the fear out of his voice, asks, ‘Is she all right?’ Rose nods. They stare at each other. Paul grows uncomfortable. He turns and looks at his daughter.

‘Mummy fixed me up, Daddy.’ Says Cynthia. ‘See the bandage she put around my knee?’ She shows off her mother’s handiwork with pride. Paul smiles and says, ‘Were you brave little one?’ Cynthia seriously nods.
The light continues to shrink into itself. The three of them move inside. Paul and Rose pass the evening immersed in shallow pools of inaction.

Confused and frightened, they both chase after forgotten dreams that haunt them like the opulent scents of childhood. Paul remembers the day he lost his watch, a birthday gift, and was too scared to return home. Rose is besieged by the oily smell of her father’s hair.

That night in bed Rose recalls the moistness of earlier and presses against her husband. Paul grips her fiercely and they make love urgently. Hastening towards his rapid climax Paul feels his heart pounding recklessly. He thinks: I must resume running. Get my fitness back again. Take control. As he thinks the thoughts an image of a young girl with large rounded breasts fills his mind.

Rose lies beneath Paul and dreams of a warm ocean and a star-filled sky. She loses her way in the waves and feels a sadness take hold in the deep shadows of her soul. Again she wonders at the way her life unfolds as if it possessed a conscious will of its own.

Later that night Rose wakes. Her chest feels tight. Her mind reels under the swirling memories of her life. She feels the sweat gathering upon her forehead. Rose feels nauseous. She rises from the bed and walks into the living room. The shimmering light draws her and she takes up a position in front of the window. Her fingers gently push the blinds aside to allow her to stare out at the street. She sees three adolescents stumble up the road in the early morning. Their voices are loud and angry. Suddenly a memory dominates her mind.

Rose is sixteen. She stands outside a friend’s house talking to a boy, Shane. Shane O’Meara. The name bubbles up easily. As she stands talking to Shane she hears a voice calling her name. ‘Rose? Rose!’ Always two, one Rose full of questions the following full of anger.

Her mother storms around the corner dragging her younger brother by his limp hand. Her eyes meet those of her brother. Darling Jim. Jim who died at twenty-one from a fast car and a fear of failure. He never learnt to forgive himself for not being the best.

Rose sees the embarrassment in Jim’s eyes. She sees his embarrassment turn into despair when Shane turns around and catches sight of him being unwillingly dragged along by his mother. Shane’s eyes signalling his disgust that Jim should let himself be treated so even though he was only eleven and not yet ready to engage in the adolescent battle for rights too long denied. Poor Jim. Poor darling Jim. How many times did Mum drag you around the streets at night searching for me?

Rose lets the blind close with a clink. She moves away from the window and finds herself standing next to the telephone. She thinks of calling her mother. Wake her up from her sleep and scream at her. Why? I was doing nothing wrong! Why did you make me feel so damn guilty? And Jim. Especially Jim.

Paul lies in bed. He hears Rose moving around the living room. He thinks of getting up himself. Perhaps he should talk to Rose. He feels so distant. Often in bed he dreams ardent dreams of other, younger women. Am I no longer in love? Is this the beginning of affairs? Paul remembers the hot nights as a child when his mother would stand by the front door waiting for his father to come home at night. He remembers the words, the accusations, the tears and slamming doors... He remembers his father coming into his bedroom and switching on the light. He remembers blinking awkwardly as he looked at his father’s teary face and listened to his father speak his words as if the words cut his mouth, ‘I, I love you Paul. No matter what. I love you...’ A confession young Paul was too embarrassed to ever treat with anything other than depression.

Is that where I am headed? Will I repeat the sins of the father? Am I no better? Paul pulls the doona up around his head. He breathes deeply and recalls the scent of his youth. He remembers the cold winter mornings when he would lie beneath his blankets breathing in the smell of the flannelette sheets, hoping that he could be sick and not have to go to school. He remembers the times standing on the kitchen’s cold linoleum while his mother forced him to breathe onto a cold spoon. ‘You’re not sick,’ his mother would say as she examined the spoon. Little Paul would relinquish the fight and head back to his bedroom to get dressed for school. It was years before Paul realised that the cold spoon had been a ruse of his mother’s.

Rose and Paul are disturbed by Cynthia’s small voice calling out, ‘Mamma!’ There is pain in the voice. This time both Paul and Rose rush to her room. Cynthia sits upright staring at the wall. ‘Mamma!’ she calls, ‘the man was just standing there, at the foot of my bed. The man. The man in the picture.’

Puzzled, Rose sits on the bed beside her distraught daughter. Paul hovers near the door. Rose turns and looks at Paul. He shrugs not knowing what else to do. He senses a rising anger and is smart enough to understand in comes from a sense of hopelessness. Rose holds her daughters shoulders. ‘What picture darling?’ she asks quietly.

Cynthia looks at Rose. ‘The picture in your room Mummy. The man on the motorbike. He was standing right there.’ Jim. Jim was here, thinks Rose. She looks at Paul and sees that he knows whom Cynthia means. ‘He was right there mummy and he said that I must tell you to forgive and to tell both you and daddy that I love you and that that’s all that counts.’ Suddenly Cynthia’s eyes cleared and she said fiercely, ‘ I do mummy and daddy. I do love you.’

Paul and Rose gather close around Cynthia. The three of them embrace. Cynthia keeps talking. She uses words to soothe her confused mind. ‘Who was the man, mummy? Was it a ghost?’ Paul looks at his wife and sees the tears sliding down her cheeks. Something rises up in his chest, a black bubble that threatens to suffocate him. His hands clench. His knees weaken. Suddenly it bursts. He breathes deeply. He reaches out and strokes his wife’s back. He feels happy.

Rose sits cradling her daughter. She feels Paul’s hand upon her back. Without reason she feels as if a weight has slipped away. She thinks of her sad, old mother, her dead father and Jim. Especially Jim. Darling Jim.

Fishbar

Danny I wasn't especially moved by this piece. It seemed a bit forced, and slightly nonsensical.

The whole family suddenly loves each other because of the wife's dead brother showing up as a ghost? I just don't get it.

As with your piece 'the edge' I like a lot of the contained ideas but you go a little overboard with description. Too much is a bad thing. Your description falls flat because it's packed into ever sentence. I just start skipping over it.

For example:

Really flowery stuff. First sentence is fine, then you get a little crazy. It's ok to have a detailed picture in your mind but this is too much.

Pale blue eyes. Bleak horizoon. Melts into the despondency of the day. Has long since lost (this is a cliche and lazy writing). Soft, vulnerable heart. Quivering at the accumulated load. Prove itself a club to ward off the encroaching years.

Now, that's half your paragraph tied up in description of what, exactly?

It's a big mistake to think you should crush the reader's senses like this. Make them feel what paul is feeling, but don't bum rush them with heaps of this forced description.

My favorite example is this story:

For Sale: Baby shoes. Never used.

That's beautiful because my imagination is writing that story for me. Imagination is why people read works of fiction. Give me some room to use it.


If I can make it clearer:

Let me ask you a few questions about this:

How does one rest LOUDLY?
"Garden Gloved" is a terrible verb.
How does "wrinkled brow" make this sentence better, or worse?
I would rather not be told about her 'deep green' eyes doing something, or what hand her pruners are in if it doesn't directly relate to some action that's about to take place. It's too specific.

"Her green eyes stare at the pruners in her hands."

And even then I'd rather have it even shorter.

"She stares at the pruners in her hands."

And the reason for that is, it means almost zilch to the story and doesn't provide a rich background that makes me feel a certain way about the character.

What you are trying to tell me is that she's sitting on the concrete steps out back with a pair of pruners in her hands. She has green eyes and she's sweaty. Ok, I'm developing a picture of her, but no emotional connection.


Ok so that's kind of mechanics stuff. I'm pretty opinionated on the subject because I think a lot of trash gets praised highly because the readers just don't know what the hell they're talking about.

Too many people think it's ok to tell instead of show. Or they do both, as you've done here:

Rose and paul are disturbed by cynthia's small voice calling out, 'mamma!'.

Then they both rush from the room.

It's obvious to me, as a human being, that while making love to my wife and having a child call her from down the hall is pretty damn disturbing. I know they've been disturbed. This is their daughter and they are leaping from bed.

I'm not stupid!


The only time I want to hear something like this is if they did the opposite of what was expected.

If their daughter called to them and they continued, undisturbed by her cries, then that would be worth telling me cause, wow, that's pretty messed up. Get me?


I have a motormouth sometimes here so let me just finish up quick.

The story, in general, doesn't make a lot of sense. We don't really get what these people are feeling or what their motivations are. There's some slight back story but it's hard to jigsaw it in with the present.

Why would the ghost of this guy show up and magically fix all their family problems? Isn't that, you know, wierd?

I'll run off at the mouth some more if you want me to, but I've torn enough.

Good luck,

-fishbar

gohn67

Don't have much time, but I kind of agree with Fishbar.
But I think its a stlye issue here. Fishbar has his stlye, which I agree with, and you have your own. I think the thing is you are using too much of your poetry style in your Stories.

The writing is good. The story was ok though

I'm with Fishbar on this, I just don't get it either

I may come back and read wiht more attention later when I get back

__________________
The Frowning Dog Blog

dannyboy

nay won't do a re-write on this one. I was trying for a story where little happens, that was the point. The central idea was this returning to familiar waters and not much else.

As for the ghost thingy it was based around a story of my sister's.To this day she swears in a moment of crisis (not large, death stuff, just a crisis) our dad 'visited' her and calmed her down. Don;t fret i also have a brother who swears twice in his life (again under stress) he was visited by a 'little person', when he tells this story he has tears rolling down his cheeks... My family is strange.

Do I believe? Nope. But I do belive she believes and somehow was comforted and moved on.

In the main I was trying to paint a sort of painting rather than a story as such. I may have failed but the attempt was really interesting. Its done.

Thnak you all, sorry if I bored you but the feedback has been excellent (as usual) and will be taken into account for my next story.

roaringtwenties

Hello!

As my icon so clearly states, I am a newbie here at the writer's forum. I clicked on your story by chance and I really enjoyed it. I find your writing style similar to my own, full of aesthetically pleasing descriptions. I don't feel very confident yet in giving good constructive criticism, but I feel that this story is lacking a connection between the characters of Paul and Rose and then Rose's backstory and the conclusion about her mother and brother. I would try to further develop the link. However, that point aside, I love your style- for those who love language!

Nice work,
Elissa

__________________

i stick loneliness
your lips
and the two coins of your eyes
into my pocket

well the train skates
into port henry
late sunday

sometimes when i'm riding high
feeling fine
you know there's something
troubling my mind

so i reach into my pocket for some small change.

dannyboy

thankyou R20's, nice to have another newbie on board - i was one only a few eeks ago so it wont be long before you feel comnfortable then i expect you to rollyour sleeves up and really get stuck into it.

Really, thnak you for your feedback and i'll keep my eye out for your pieces.

Danny.