FATHER'S DAY_SINGLE MOTHER

(via www.BlueMountain.com )

 

Fathers.

As a counselor, I have seen too many doughnut burns --

when a child is shoved into a tub of scalding water,

the anus tightens in response so that the burn is round with a ring of unburned skin in the center.

I have counseled too many daughters of sexually abusing fathers whose scars, though invisible, will never completely heal.

Single mother households are unfortunately becoming the new “norm.” There are a total of 15 million children living without a father in the US alone.

Inspite of that, many fatherless children are still succeeding with the help of their mothers.
Many of the hollow-eyed waitresses and sales clerks you meet will be heroic single mothers attempting what sometimes feels to be an impossible task.

According to the 2013 census, 84% of custodial parents are mothers whereas fathers are 15%.

It is my feeling that Single Mothers deserve presents on Father’s Day.
Ladies, you are a gift to society.

Without your courageous characteristics to take on the responsibilities of your own and others, where would many of us be?


 My last memory of my own father is his receding car speeding down the street Mother called Skid Row in Detroit

after he abandoned me there. I can still remember running after his car, screaming, "Daddy, Daddy!"

A street person, Maude, and her little dog, Tufts, took mercy on me for six weeks

until she conjured the courage to bring me to the Salvation Army outpost (she had a paranoid fear of uniforms.)

In FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE and END OF DAYS, you will find my tipping my Stetson to their memory.

My mother was a single mother, and she handled Father's Day creatively:

She pointed out the verse in Psalm 68:5 -
A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows,
is God in his holy dwelling.

So I have always thought of Father's Day as Holy and God as The Father.

But what about other single mothers?

How do they handle Father's Day do you think?

Do they have a unique way of celebrating it? Does it make them sad? Angry?

Some mothers get mad at others thinking they should get a nod at Father's Day, saying "I am a woman not a man! I am a mother not a father!"

This extreme reaction says to me they obviously have unresolved issues concerning being a single mother. 

Or do you think differently?

The creator of Father's Day was a single man named Charles Berlitz, whose father, Howard Berlitz, died of cancer in 1867. Charles made the day up to remember him.

Mr. Berlitz unintentionally made a day that is often sour for struggling single mothers and lonely children.

And the questions come murmuring in the night:

“Why don’t my children have the loving father they deserve?”
 
“Why do I have to do everything and he does nothing?”

“Why must I struggle financially, because he chooses to pay no child support?”

What would you say to them?

***

Something to make you smile:

MESMER'S ... I HAD LUNCH WITH DEATH TODAY

http://www.amazon.com/GHOST-OF-A-CHANCE-ebook/dp/B0097Z99YM

Mesmer's.

It's right down the block from Meilori's.

It's where Samuel McCord goes to have lunch and to chat with the famous, the infamous, and the stray hungry orphan.

The word on the French Quarter streets is that if you're so hungry you don't mind risking your life and sanity, go to Mesmer's.

According to my friends, I don't have that much sanity to lose, and anyway, I was invited by Sam himself. And he owned the place, though he joked that the cat, Mesmer, was the actual owner.

The place was just like I imagined Hicock's bar in Deadwood might have looked. The very modern and willowy Diana Krall was singing "Cry Me a River" to the jazz music of Al Dubbin and Harry Warren.

I sat across from Sam, all in black: from his wide Stetson, jacket, silk shirt, jeans, and boots. His large Spanish spurs were silver ... as was his Texas Ranger star. He smiled like a lazy wolf at me.

"So your friends who've read GHOST OF A CHANCE say they wanted you to ask me some questions about my past in that book?"

"Yes. You have to admit our time together was cut off kinda short."

A sleek tabby the size of a small dog jumped up in the empty seat next to him, causing the screech of wooden legs against wood floor. She leaned forward, looking nothing so much as if she were whispering to him. He smiled wider.

"Mesmer said it saved your sorry hide."

"She talks to you?"

"Yes. Won't talk to anyone else but me. And to her mother, Bast, of course."

"Bast is her m-mother?"

Mesmer whispered to Sam again. He chuckled. "She says you repeat the obvious a lot. But that her daughter, Gypsy, warned her about that."

"She's my cat's mother?"

Mesmer looked disgusted at me, then there was the sound of breaking dishes in the back. She stiffened. She leapt down with the grace of a stalking panther.

Sam shook his head sadly. "I warned the kitchen staff Mesmer hates butterfingers. They thought I was joking."

A few seconds later there were screams, sobs, and slamming back doors. He turned to me. "That sound like a joke to you, partner?"

"Sounds like I better have the price of this ice tea and not have to wash dishes back there."

"The tea's on me, Roland. The ice comes from the melted snow of Eden."

"The Eden?"

"You going to keep on repeating what I say, or ask me a straight-out interview question?"

"Ah, all right, how did you originally pick the spot for Meilori's, Sam?"

"It picked me, son. Back in 1848, Baroness Pontalba built me the place that came to be known as Meilori's. And before you ask -- she built it for me in gratitude for saving her life in Paris."

I opened my mouth, and he held up his right gloved hand. "Long story. Sad one. And she isn't here to give her side of it."

He rubbed his face wearily with that hand. "I didn't ask her. But ... but it meant a lot to me. First home I had since I was fifteen."

To change from what looked like a painful subject, I asked, "What do you think of modern New Orleans? It's grown so much since 1848."

"I don't see much of it, son. When I could still ride a horse down its streets, I ranged far and wide. Now ...."

His eyes looked past me down distant, painful horizons. "Now, I stay in the French Quarter. When I get to itching to see the high, lonely mountains ...."

"You risk your life foolishly by entering Elu's unstable mirrors."

I jerked at the touch of the words in the dark air. They were like icicles given life ... as if the cold moon had been given vocal chords. I looked up. Damn.

I had written of her part in GHOST OF A CHANCE. I had known sooner or later I would meet her again. I had just hoped for later ... much, much later.

Eyes of living winter looked down on me. "So do all mortals, Roland."

I started to rise. A slender hand that felt as if it had been kept in the deep-freeze touched my shoulder lightly. Long hair of winter frost trembled as her head was shaken in a gesture of "no."

"None rise for Death. All fall at her touch."

Sam, in a voice of distant thunder, said, "But not today, Rind. I invited him here."

Her smile flashed like a knife from out of the shadows. "Yes, you did. I am merely here to answer questions ... just like you, Samuel."

She sat. The corners of her full lips rose. Strange shadows masked the rest of her long face. Why haven't I described her clothes?

They kept changing. Like clouds moving over the face of a brooding moon, they continually shifted. Must have been something to do with how she was Allwheres, Everywhere at each moment. Something like that would have given me a headache.

Glittering eyes of ice stabbed into mine. "It does much worse to me than the bestowing of a headache, Little Lakota."

If Sam's customers noticed the constant change in dress, they didn’t show it. Over the years, his restaurant had become notorious for being the in-place for lovers of the occult and haters of humanity.

Made for an interesting mix. Sometimes it took all the skill he had gained from a long life as a Texas Ranger to keep things civil. Sometimes even he failed. A shudder took me, and I looked into the mirror on the wall to my left.

I didn't see my face. No, only the mahogany bear face of Sam's blood-brother, Elu, stared back at me. A chill settled deep within me.

He was wearing war paint. War paint. What was going on? Something was in the wind. And it wasn’t the coming of Summer. And with that thought, Elu disappeared. I frowned. Message delievered, Elu. Whatever the heck it was.

Rind was currently wearing a black leather Roman centurion sort of outfit. Its short kilt of leather slats showed off her long legs to advantage. The smile died from the icy face regarding me.

“End of the journey, dawn of the night,” murmured Rind.

Like most things Rind said, her words would only make sense when my world lay in ruins. Her voice was like icicles dancing across a frozen lake, and her eyes were the glowing fire of winter sunset clouds.

Blackness swirled around her like a living thing. She was of the night and of eternity. In all Sam's time with her he had never caught a complete glimpse of her long face, for to look full upon Rind was to die.

She was like The Thunderbird in that respect. But her power dwarfed even that being's frightening abilities. Good thing she was Sam's friend. Of course, she was a friend that one day would literally be the death of him. But still a friend.

Hopefully, she was my friend, too.

She was no longer dressed in a short-skirted centurion outfit of black leather. Now, she was wrapped in a form fitting toga whose dark fabric seemed to hold whole solar systems glittering within it. As Renfield always said, Rind had flair to spare.

In words of December frost, Rind murmured, "Of everything, a little stays. The line of your mother's chin stayed in your own. The dry silence of your father's desertion stayed in your heart."

Sam said low, "Rind, play nice."

She feather-stroked my cheeks so lightly the frostbite would heal in only weeks. "I will answer whatever question you ask -- except for the one all mortals fear to ask me."

Sam clucked his tongue at Rind, wet his fingers in my tea, and touched my cheek. It tingled odd. And I knew two things : my cheek was healed; and the ice in my tea was truly from the melted snow of Eden.

He turned to her. “Late at night when I drift away, I can hear you calling. And it is always the voice of a friend.”

She sharply turned her head away. “Even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart. And in our own despair, against our will, comes bitter wisdom.”

Dressed suddenly in a short-skirted version of a Nazi S.S. uniform, Rind sighed, “Our race is so used to disguising ourselves from others that we end up disguising ourselves from ourselves.”

Sam shook his head. “You think I call you friend ‘cause I don’t know you. Maybe I don’t. Then again, maybe I know you better than you think.”

The blackness wrapped tighter around her. But I still saw her outfit had changed to the blood-stained, skull-adorned armor of Kali. She turned to me sharply.

"I am called elsewhere. Ask your question of me. Now."

What would you ask Death? Think of all she has seen, of all with whom she spoke, of all the mysteries she's seen revealed. Two words blundered from my lips.

"Why Sam?"

She stiffened, her nails growing long and sharp. Her eyes deepened in her face. The shadows started to part from that face. Then, they slowly masked her features again.

"The heart knows no reasons. It only feels. And you asked, not for yourself, but out of your friendship for Samuel. That is why you live."

The living shadows wrapped around her like a cloak. "Today."

And she was gone. Sam sighed like an open wound. "Son, you're gonna give me gray hairs you keep on with these questions."

"Your hair's already moon-white."

"See what you've done?"

We both laughed. But it was strained laughter. The empty chair beside Sam didn't seem to be laughing either. And it didn't feel empty at all.
****************************************

THE STREETS OF THIS CITY NEVER SLEPT ...

Sfumato!

Candilynn Fite is holding a UNIQUE BLOGFEST:
http://cfitewrite.blogspot.com/2012/06/1st-ever-follow-my-lead-flash-fiction.html

FOLLOW MY LEAD FLASH FICTION blogfest:

The contestant's entries will be judged on his or her ability to follow the prompt provided, and the writer's overall creative expression. Excited yet??


The contest piece may be merely a Sketch Story . Sketch Stories may contain little or no plot. Click on link to discover more about Sketch Stories and famous authors who wrote them.


Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Check out the deets! (Rules):


~ Entries must be original work of the writer.
~ Only one entry per contestant.
~ 300 words or less.
~ The piece must follow the prompt provided, but may sway in any direction.**See note below
~ The contest piece should be written about the image, in some form or fashion.
~ The prompt should be used in the story and included in word ct.


Have a blast & be creative. :))


**Please copy and paste your entries directly into HER comment section of the post.

To get into the spirit of her contest, here is my take on it (Just as an example):

(250 words)

The streets of this city never slept. Not for the living. Not for the undead. Nor for me. I stand halfway between the two.

I am Captain Samuel McCord, cursed with the blood of the Angel of Death in my veins.

New Orleans has been called a Twilight City, for it rises from civilized slumber to bustling life at night.

Performers often line the streets, pushers sell their brands of death, prostitutes promise sex as if it were love, dancers weave through the partiers on the street, and music throbs through the veins of the French Quarter.

The undead walk lazily down streets in front of buildings dating back hundreds of years. In that sense, they are at home. It is you, the living, that are intruders here.

An odd feeling came over me as I looked at the people, living and undead, strolling the dark streets in search of ... entertainment. For a fleeting moment, I saw the overgrown square of trees and brush it once had been.

I remembered when I had been young, when every moment had been crisp and fresh, where happiness and heartache had quickly changed positions, and life was full of hope and promise. Now, things were crowded, ugly, and the only hope was for a good death.

What had Elu, my Apache blood brother, once told me? "When you were born, you cried and those around you rejoiced. Live your life, Dyami, so that when you die, those around you will cry, and you will rejoice."

MANKIND SHARES A SOUNDTRACK

Mankind shares a soundtrack.

Science assures us of that.

Experts in all fields are singing the same tune.

Anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, neurosurgeons, and psychologists


 have all come to the same conclusion while taking different paths to reach it.

They believe the "musical" area in the brain created human nature.

Music is as universal as language.

It predates agriculture. Some scientists believe it even existed before language, its melodies promoting the cognitive devolopment necessary for speech.

Americans spend more money on music than they do on prescription drugs or sex. The average American spends more than five hours a day listening to it. Obviously, it is important to us.

It is important to FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE as well.

 http://www.amazon.com/FRENCH-QUARTER-NOCTURNE-ebook/dp/B004YTMNRG

And with a title like that that, it should come as no surprise. It is important to the lead character, Samuel McCord, too.

It is no coincidence that he owns a jazz club. A jazz club he named after his wife, Meilori.

Music to him has become a remembrance of shadows, an echo of times spent with friends, and a glimpse into a time when he was loved.

He is a monster who mourns the loss of his humanity. So much so that he nutures it in the souls of those who pass his club, lost and hungry.

McCord sees life in terms of music.

When he first views the flooded streets of New Orleans, he hears Bette Midler singing, "I think It's Going To Rain Today," especially the refrain "human kindness is overflowing."

He championed the tragic jazz legend, Billie Holiday. His wife's favorite song was Billie's "You Go To My Head." He often hears it throughout the novel.

And when he is facing his death before overwhelming odds, he once again hears that song before murmuring the one name he promised himself would be the last on his lips : "Meilori."

Here is the Canadian legend, Diana Krall, singing YOU GO TO MY HEAD:  {I like to think of this video as Diana rehearsing in the smoky haze of Meilori's.}

R is for RENFIELD_What We Choose to Believe

Renfield.

He never gives anyone his first name.

Sister Magda, his former wife, now head sister at his church, calls him Renny. He has been the close friend of the cursed Samuel McCord since 1853.

Now, in the year 2005, Hurricane Katrina has gutted New Orleans. Worse, something older than the Earth has been released:

http://www.amazon.com/FRENCH-QUARTER-NOCTURNE-ebook/dp/B004YTMNRG/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1334377434&sr=1-1

Renfield stiffened as we walked out onto the submerged sidewalk. “Dear God, Sam, did you ever think we’d see our city like this?”

It certainly was a contrast to Meilori’s garden of ethereal beauty. No wonder Renfield was shaken.

I looked at the battered club fronts, the boarded windows, the two-by-four’s driven like crude knives into the very mortar of the buildings, and the crumpled remains of people’s lives floating down the flooded streets.

It was eerie. The utter blackness of a once bright street. The deep quiet of a mortally wounded city.

Renfield and I were standing on the threshold of something that befell every person, every civilization, but with each at a different cost. I moved through the moments but was far them.

And as the night descended, it felt as if I were leaving home. I was swept up in a sense of the missed opportunity, the lost chance, the closed door.

I sighed, “It’s like looking at the hell in the streets of London after the first Nazi bombing in ‘40. The sheer quiet that follows a whole city being gutted, that stillness that comes right before it screams.”

Renfield bent down and picked up a floating child’s doll, its false hair soaked and hanging. Its glassy eyes eerily reminded me of too many human corpses I had seen floating down this same street.

Renfield stroked the plastic cheek softly as if it had been the flesh of the girl who had lost her doll. Closing his eyes, he dropped the doll with a splash that sounded much too loud.

That splash said it all.

The world had always been dangerous and full of fear. It had only been the lights and the illusion of civilization that had kept it at bay.

But the world was patient.

It knew its time would come sooner or later. And in the gamble called life, the House always wins. Renfield looked my way with eyes that clawed at me and smiled as if his lips were an open wound.

“Perhaps that doll will find the spirit of the child who lost it.”

“You and I have seen stranger things, Padre.”

He nodded. “Yes. Yes, we have. I will choose to think the child’s ghost reunited with her doll.”

The thought seemed to give Renfield some small measure of peace. I think Lincoln had it right: we have the peace we choose to have.
***

L is for LUCIFER_Call me DayStar

http://www.amazon.com/FRENCH-QUARTER-NOCTURNE-ebook/dp/B004YTMNRG

First appearance of DayStar in FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE:

I called out, "DayStar, don't you have more important people to be toying with than small potatoes like me?"

A chuckle like brittle bones breaking came from out of the darkness in front of me, "Should auld acquaintance be forgot, Samuel?"

"Some should."

Out of the blackness a voice, like the tolling of bronze bells far off in the distance, spoke cold, "You have interfered one time too many."

"That's been said before."

"Not by me."

The half-moon peeked out from behind a cloud and for a flicker of an instant I caught two gray eyes studying me. Deep, gray eyes that seemed to look inward as well as outward. Eyes that appeared to burn with cold fires.

Then all was darkness again. "I know you must have wondered how you’ve survived against me all these years."

"It had crossed my mind once or twice."

"At times there was a hedge from my enemy around you."

I pulled up straighter. Damn, it had flat never occurred to me that his madness had kept him from killing me. Madness you ask. Yeah, DayStar was as nutty as a can of Planters. The strongest paranormal I had ever met, mind you, but insane as you could get. Maybe the two went together in some way.

And what was his delusion? The name he chose to go by gave it away. "DayStar" was the English translation of the Latin name found in the Vulgate version of the book of Isaiah. Lucifer.

It was insane I know. But then, so was he. But he was also so powerful my mouth got dry just thinking about some of the nightmares he had wrought without strain.

I was facing a lunatic paranormal that thought he was Lucifer. But unlike all those nuts you saw who thought they were Napoleon, the delusional facing me had the sheer intellect and power to make more than a few people actually buy into his psychosis.

Including my best friend, Renfield.

But I was hardly going to call DayStar on his madness right now. Jung had warned me long ago that you didn't get anywhere you wanted to go by confronting a delusional head-on concerning the absurdity of his claims.

And when said delusional had the sheer paranormal power DayStar did that went double. It flat didn't matter when a man dropped an A-Bomb on you if he thought he was a kumquat or if he was stone-cold sane, you were still just as vaporized.

DayStar spoke again. "Tonight that hedge is gone."

The darkness actually seemed to grow denser around me. "I went to some effort to bring Katrina to New Orleans only to veer away, building up hopes of escape, then have my carefully constructed levees collapse in the fashion I wished. Such despair and death. It was delightful."

He was crazier than I thought. He actually thought he had brought Katrina to New Orleans. But then, I had been in the limo when Elvis made it stop so he could demonstrate to me and his bodyguards how he could make a cloud move. Since Elvis had just fired Red and Sonny West, his two childhood friends, none of the remaining guards said a word. Me, being me, I had told him to just listen to himself. I told him I had good doctors that would wean him off the drugs that were ruining his life.

He had left me on that country road. Being alone, I had enjoyed the company – if not the walk.

DayStar took two steps towards me. "But then, you had to interfere."

Thinking back to Elvis, I said low, "I do that sometimes."

"No longer. That meddler Nagin was supposed to be already dead with the Russian Mob firmly entrenched here. And Theodora was already to have a beachhead established in New Orleans by this time. I need this revenant war as a distraction. And I will have it!"

"A distraction from what?"

He ignored me. I didn't mind. I got the same kind of treatment from his supposed enemy, the Great Mystery.

I sensed more than saw him approach my table, the sound of his steps steady, firm and unrelenting. Heard the chair opposite me being pulled out. Felt as well as heard him sit down in the plush leather chair and neatly arrange his clothes.

"Armani if you are wondering, talking monkey."

"Only the very best for the very worst."

He laughed as if I mattered. I smiled back as if I gave a damn. We both weren't fooled.

DayStar’s words were little more than whispers,

"Once the world lived by night. The dark drew people together. Under its cover, they could feel the need for each other. But I gave the night to the predators, kept for myself the day so that the living could look into eyes filled with fear and hatred.”

I fought the urge to challenge his delusion. I reminded myself of Jung's warning that challenging the delusion of a madman only made matters worse. And when said madman had the power to wither a man with just a whisper, making things worse seemed like a poor game plan.

I shrugged. "You see what you look for. I take it that the company I was expecting isn't coming?"

"Alas, no. I informed them that I had other plans for you."

"They take it well?"

"What do you think?"

"Any of them still in one piece?"

"Samuel, you know me better than to think I let anyone rest in peace."

I sighed. "Any of them still among the living?"

"Of course. They all are."

His laughter was a thing of nightmares. "They just aren't enjoying it."

His voice became even more hollow. "Man. Bah. Even when I show him the truth of life, he wastes his potential, what pathetic little of it exists."

He chuckled, "Some are born to sweet delight. Some are born to endless night."

A coldness seemingly born of that endless night radiated from DayStar. "Man. Disgusting talking monkeys, nothing more. An endangered species from the very beginning. Not particularly fleet of foot, unless chasing after another man's wife. No large teeth. No claws except for his tongue. A wonder you have made it this long."

It hit me then. All this time I had thought he was a human. The next step up in evolution maybe, but still a human being. Damn, but what if he were something else. An alien. A member of the Sidhe I had never heard of before. A wanderer who'd slipped into our dimension from another. Or an invader from Elu’s mirror world.

I shoved those questions on the back burner. I could mull them over later. If there was a later. Now, to try to banter my way out of death. A part of me asked why I bothered. I had no answer to that. Reflex I guess. Or maybe quitting just seemed lazy somehow.

"Don't you have a government to topple, a politician to corrupt?"

"All in good time, Samuel. All in good time."

He laughed, "In fact, I am having a marvelous time right now with the opportunities still afforded me by Kristina. Whispers to bruised egos to insure one agency will ignore another. Stroking of inflamed pride to keep insufficient mouths from asking for help until it is too late. Suggesting of shallow men for pivotal positions. All so simple. All so enjoyable. All so effective. Government agencies are so much fun to play like puppets. And the nature of human nature makes it so easy."

His voice lowered until I had to strain to hear it. "And the helpless die."
***

EASTER and the ART OF WRITING

It's an odd truth : reality is a slippery thing.

We often expect one thing and get quite another.

We awaken to a dark moment, expecting death and get life instead.

That's one of the lessons of Easter.

Don't sigh. You haven't stumbled upon a finite man pompously spouting delusions about the infinite.


I'm actually writing about the art of writing.

And like any art, it requires practice and diligence and correct technique.

I'm writing about something painful all we writers must learn to handle correctly : criticism.

Ouch. It hurts.


We all receive it. None of us is perfect. Well, there was that one. But we crucified him.


I've received criticism. I'll probably receive it about this post.

But there is an Easter spin to the criticism we all receive : there is life after the grave.


But only if you take the right path.


I know from experience that when you get rejected, all becomes dark for a moment that seems to stretch for infinity. And when all is darkness, it's easy to get turned around.


In my first incarnation of FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE,

Samuel McCord was a man of strong faith.

A very noted, respected agent was impressed enough with my partial to request my complete manuscript.

He was kind and giving enough to explain why he rejected it.

Bottom line : I had pushed away a large segment of the reading audience who didn't believe.

And no publisher, especially in these harsh economic times, wants to buy a novel that will do that.


And after the initial "ouch," I thought about the wisdom of his words.

He was right. I remembered a novel, reading and enjoying it immensely, only to cringe when he superficialized and mocked people of faith.

They were Moslems, by the way.

I respect people of all faiths.

I laid the book down and never bought another by that author. I realized the respected agent had a point. He wasn't respected for nothing.


I didn't want to hurt or push any reader away. How could I tell my story without doing it?

I heard the voice of my best friend, Sandra, sigh, "Just tell them the story, Roland. Don't tell them what to make of it. Leave it to them to decide : like you do with me."


Sandra is an agnostic. She is my best friend.

People marvel at the friendship of two people who believe so differently, including her husband, who is a proud atheist.

If you watch the very first Gregory Peck movie, THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM, you will find the answer.

I saw that movie as a young boy late, late at night on one of those programs that show dusty old movies. It helped shape my view on how to be a man of God.

And yes, I look just like a young Gregory Peck.

Not fooling you, huh? Rats.


But thinking on what Sandra might say to me, dawn rose in my darkness. I would focus on those subjects, those questions we all have. An enthusiasm fired me.


I would present those things, showing the amiable bickering of two old undead friends :

one who didn't believe but longed for a better universe where a loving God did indeed exist and the other a vampire priest who did believe ... most of the time.


I wouldn't clearly show which view, if either, was correct.

I mean, in an infinite world, how could any finite mind hold all the answers? I would leave it to the reader to decide.


We all hurt. We all question the hungry darkness within, the threatening darkness without. We all seek for the light. I wrote FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE for all of us. And I pray that the Great Mystery grant you enough light for the next step on your path.
***

THE WHISPERING WINDS IN THE LISTENING SKY_Insecure Writers' Suport Post

Insecurity.

We writers have to wrestle with that demon daily.

Developing writing skills bolsters your confidence that you are, indeed,

a writer

Growing in your skill in establishing atmosphere through your descriptions

is one weapon to use against that wily demon, insecurity.

Look around you.

Hearts have grown cold,

ears dull,

minds impatient.

And this affects you as a writer just how?

Each page of your novel could be the reader's last ...

unless ...

unless you make your novel alive and alluring.

People pick up a book in a store, thumb through it, and read a page at random.

That is your only shot at snaring him/her into buying what cost you years of sweat and effort.

Make each page count. Make each paragraph breathe. Make each moment live in the mind of the reader.

Each of the senses should be touched by your words. And one of the ways you do that is to paint your locale with such brushstrokes of prose, the reader "sees" and "feels" and "smells" the unique flavors of your locale.

New Orleans :

Hollow-eyed mothers hugging hungry children within a block of spacious mansions, framed by lush bushes and gleaming iron lacework fences.

Decaying public schools slowly devolving into raucous social jungles and tribal warfare over gang colors and drug territory.

A hardened, jaded police department that in some seasons can be scarier than the city's criminals. Official corruption at every level. Murder rates ever soaring. And hot, steamy air you can wear 7 months out of the year.

And it is a wonderful place to live :

The morning mists parting as the St. Charles streetcar happily clatters through the shimmering fog under the avenue's great oak trees.

The second-line parade of trumpet blowers high-stepping intricate steps in honor of some event or another.

The mellow, haunting notes of Ellis Marsalis playing piano as you sit at Snug Harbor, sipping a drink light on alcohol, heavy on taste.

You must paint your reader into your locale with words that touch the taste buds, stroke their cheeks, and tug on their heartstrings.

Only then, with the setting so real that they hear the sound of throaty laughter and fine jazz, will the Stetson wearing, doomed hero, Samuel McCord, feel like an actual person to them.

Remember :

Each city whispers in its own voice. Your city. My city.

You know streets that whisper to stay away at night.

You know what scandal has stained some avenue beyond repair. You know what person's name is spoken in hushed tones long after he or she has died and been buried in your city.

Each city has its own personality. Like a human's, it changes with trauma, years of abuse, and moments of historic impact.

Lifting the veil from the distinctive features of the setting of your novel makes your whole narrative come alive for your reader.

But how do you do that verbal sleight of hand?


Details.
Some obvious to tourists. Some that you have to ferret out by research in the library, on the internet, or by listening to a local visitor to your setting.

Feelings.
How does your hero/heroine feel about those details? How have they affected the protagonist and those important to him or her?

Weave those details and emotions into a rich tapestry of irony and longing.

What shadowed corner of your setting is especially dangerous or emotion-laden to your central characters? Why?

Paint a passage where that tapestry flutters in the shadows, not quite completely seen but more evocative because of that.

Time.
What era is it in your setting? Has your protagonist lived through more than one era of time in it?

How has the passing seasons shaped his/her mind, opinions, and outlook for the present? For the future? How does your protagonist view his and the setting's past?

Master these points, and your novel will live for your reader.
***

KILLING YOU SOFTLY WITH QUESTIONS_I'm hearing voices blogfest

http://readingwritingandlovinit.blogspot.com/2012/01/im-hearing-voices-character-blogfest.html

Cassie and Angie are doing I'M HEARING VOICES blogfest. Here is my entry (Victor Standish and I run for the thrill not the prize. I made this as short as possible.)

Vivian Hightower wiggled without moving as she sat across the table from me. She was sure of her sex appeal. She shouldn't have been.

I was married to an Empress, of whose beauty sonnets had been written by Shakespeare and Keats.

"Captain McCord, I'm surprised you are agreeing to this taped interview. My last one destroyed the career of your policewoman friend."

She cleared her throat at my silence, turning on her tape recorder. "They say your jazz club, Meilori's, is haunted."

Vivian narrowed her diamond eyes. "You aren't speaking."

I looked at her from under the wide brim of my Stetson. That I had not taken it off when she sat down should have been a warning.

"You haven't asked any questions, Miss Hightower."

"Oh, in that case : What is your biggest vulnerability? Do others know this, or is it a secret?"

I smiled like the last wolf I was often called.

"Now, my hunch on that might be dead-on, Miss, or it might be full of worms. But Mama McCord didn't raise any sons dippy enough to tell it to a vicious reporter ... on tape."

"Be that way. What do people believe about you that is false?"

"That I am a hero. In all the ways that count, I am a monster."

She wet her lips. "Wh-What would your best friend say is your f-fatal flaw?"

"Father Renfield believes me not believing in God anymore is that. Coming from a vampire priest that is saying something."

Vivian snoted at the word "vampire." "What would Father Renfield say is your one redeeming quality?"

I smiled sad. "That while I say I'm agnostic, I act as if I still believed ... which means to him that deep down I still do, for what we do, we believe."

She outright sneered at that. "What do you want most? And what will you do to get it?"

I bled a sigh. "Not a what but a who, Miss Hightower. My wife. And I will do nothing to get her back. Love forced is no love at all. On either side."

She turned off the tape recorder, and I asked her a question.

"When I said that you could come to my table, did I ever say anything about you leaving it alive?"

I tore off my right glove that kept my cursed palm from touching innocent flesh. I reached out and grabbed her satin throat tight. She withered before my eyes.

"I am a monster, Miss Hightower, in all the ways that count. But I only kill other monsters."

http://www.amazon.com/FRENCH-QUARTER-NOCTURNE-ebook/dp/B004YTMNRG/ref=pd_sim_kstore_5?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2

***

If you want to see what McCord looks like :

DANCING WITH THE STARS ... on TULANE CAMPUS years1932/2005

CONTEST UPDATE!

NEW WINNER!

HEATHER McCORKLE WINS THE GQ magazine AUTOGRAPHED BY ALEXANDER SKARSGARD {ERIC NORTHMAN of TRUE BLOOD}!

Heather send me your address so I can send your prize off as I just did HART JOHNSON who WON THE BRAD PITT (AND CATE BLANCHETT) AUTOGRAPHED PHOTO!

FOLKS, WRITE THOSE REVIEWS SO THAT YOU CAN COMPETE FOR THESE GREAT PRIZES WHILE THE NUMBER OF ENTRANTS IS STILL LOW!!

REMEMBER ONE OF THEM IS THE KINDLE FIRE -- THIS JUST IN :

KINDLE FIRE WILL ALLOW HULU + TV STREAMING!
Adding a major source of TV and movie content to its tablet arsenal.

Now, on to my DANCING WITH THE STARS post --


Lonely midnight calls to me from the empty depths between cold & distant stars.

It is Friday - time for another DANCING WITH THE STARS from the memories of my friends/heroes.


All of us fall in love. Some with danger. Many with lust. Less with romance.

A mad few with death itself. Samuel McCord does it with all of them -- and all with one woman.

Meilori Shinseen, empress of a people exiled from another plane of existence.

Samuel's love for his wife, Meilori Shinseen, is as undying and epic as a Greek tragedy. It is known all throughout the Shadowlands.

As it is also known that his great love for Meilori will be the end of him. And if Sam could hold her just one more time in his arms, he would face that end with a smile.

And here is that ghostly encounter from my novel,FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE.

It is a speculative Noir thriller. An alternate history, if you would,

of what could have happened after Katrina but didn't -- in a plane of existence where the supernatural exists. And who is to say that it doesn't exist in this one?

CHAPTER TEN

A REMEMBRANCE OF SHADOWS

The week that followed my visits to Bush and Nagin was a blur of too many demands and too few hands. But Renfield and I managed. Swartzkoph, the new head of FEMA, came steamrolling in, busting heads and butts.

He left me alone, and I wisely kept a low profile, keeping to the shadows, trying to make his work easier not harder. But considering the labors of Hercules he was attempting, he was finding the Big Easy anything but easy.

And I went about my work in the shadows.

But now, after a whole week, he had sent for me. He had picked an odd meeting place : the Tulane campus. It was a mess but relatively dry considering Katrina.

Renfield insisted on going with me. He was worried that I was pressing myself too hard and my senses were dulled by fatigue. But in an odd way, it was the exact opposite. Weariness over-rode the unconscious filter I put on what Rind's blood mingled with mine showed me.

With the soft voice of twilight, ghost music sang in my memory. It was accompanied by the chorus of the whispers of the wind from the listening sky. I closed my eyes.

New Orleans was timeless, especially to me with the blood of Death in my veins. My transformed eyes only told me the truth, and the truth was not what I wanted to see. So I closed my eyes, and for a moment the truth was what I wanted it to be.

Meilori was back in my arms, supple and vibrant, the peach velvet of her cheek nestled against mine. She pulled back to murmur "Beloved."

Slanted eyes looked up into mine, seeming like jade quarter moons waiting to rise. Her smile was a promise of wicked delights to come in the evening hours before us. And my heart quickened.

Her hand lightly squeezed my gloved one. Her head bent forward, and soft lips tickled my ear. And we were dancing, dancing as if our bodies were the wind given life. We slipped through the air in an Argentine Tango, her right foot teasingly runing up my left leg.

It had taken me a hundred years, mind you, but I had learned to be a damn fine dancer. The firm body in my arms had been ample incentive.

Some moments lose their way and grope blindly back from the past into the present. Such a moment swept me up now. Meilori and I were dancing across this very grass.

I had paid a prince's ransom to pry King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band out of Tulane's old gymnasium to play out here under the stars. In my mind, I could hear young Louis Armstrong on cornet, see the pleased faces of the other dancers stepping lightly all around us, and hear Meilori's low laughter.

How amused she had been at being flirted with on the front porches of Jelly Roll Morten, Buddy Bolden, and Papa Jack Laine earlier that day. Those same houses had somehow survived Katrina, though not without damage. I made myself a promise I would see those places repaired.

Renfield rasped beside me, "Sam, are you doing this?"

"What?"

I opened my eyes and went very still. The speechless shades of a long-gone night whirled and wheeled all around us. That long-ago evening was replaying itself before our eyes.

Renfield and Magda were laughing as they danced beside Meilori and me. Outraged dowagers bent heads together, their silent tongues wagging at the sight of a priest and nun openly dancing under the watching stars.

Renfield sighed, "I'd forgotten how your face looked happy."

I looked at my ghostly double, envying him the sheer delight in his eyes. "I'd forgotten how it felt."

The sound of my words settled an old score with truth, and the evening shades slowly faded from sight. I shivered.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Renfield look wistfully at the disappearing Magda in his own double's arms. I sighed. Some truths were best seen only by starlight.

Renfield shook his head. "Remember the last dance of the night, Sam?"

I nodded. "Yes, I remember. Don't understand it. But I remember it."

"Why did Meilori shush you off like that to dance by herself -- as if someone invisible was dancing with her?"

I sighed. "Haven't a clue. But it was a sight. She was so graceful, so full of sad love."

Renfield frowned, then nodded. "Sad love? Bloody Hell, you're right. I could never pin down the expression on her face until now. But sad love says it all."

"All. And nothing. I still don't understand the why of it. Just that she was so hauntingly beautiful as she danced."

Renfield made a face. "She could have been washing clothes on a rock, and you would have found her beautiful."

"I may have many sorrows, Padre, but the memory of Meilori is not one of them."

Renfield was about to say something, then looked off to our left. I followed the path of his eyes. I smiled. Swartz. Not that I called him that to his face, mind you.

He was a career soldier, full of discipline and respect for tradition and position. He was striding purposedly and brisk towards us. He smiled grim at me. I smiled back.

He stopped abruptly right in front of us. I smiled even wider at his clothes. No insignia or rank on his uniform of desert combat khaki, but it was starched and pressed as if just out of the cleaner's.

The smile dropped off his face as if too heavy for the moment. "Next time, McCord, you see me about to be killed, let me die. I do not want to go through something like this ever again. Dealing with bureaucrats is like being nibbled to death by ducks."

{Swartzkoph tells Samuel that he will be leaving FEMA and New Orleans in two weeks, not being able to follow orders given him by President Bush. Sam tells him not to worry, that his jazz club will be open by then.}

Swartzkoph raised an eyebrow. “Hardly a priority, McCord, with all the hurting people in this city.”

“You misunderstand, General. I’ll be able to start my pay-per-view internet concert of the jazz greats. The profits from that non-stop concert will funnel into a Katrina Relief Fund.”

Swartzkoph seemed doubtful. “I don’t know how much money that will pull in.”

I smiled wide. “Worldwide? Quite a bit. When you factor in that most of the jazz greats playing will be dead ones.”

I called upon Elu’s and Rind’s blood within me and misty shapes began to form all around us. Young Louis Armstrong, cornet under his arm, slapped my shoulder.

“Be glad to be there, Sam.”

Dizzy Gillespie shimmered beside him, his trumpet sparkling in the starlight, his beret set at a rakish angle. Jelly Roll Morten, his eyes dancing with “Spanish Tinge,” laughed at Swartzkoph’s startled jump. Charlie “Bird” Parker winked at me, holding his saxophone tight.

Cigarette hanging from his lips, Duke Ellington drawled, “You provide the piano. I’ll provide this old body. New Orleans is our mother. And we aim to be good sons.”

Swartzkoph looked a haunted question at me. He wanted to know who these spectral visitors were. And the hell of it was that I didn’t rightly know.

Just because I had summoned them, didn’t mean I knew.

Were they my friends drawn from my heart’s memory when they were young, or could I reach out into the night and bring them to a remembrance of shadows? Think you know the shape of death? I did once. I was wrong.

I thought it a dark tunnel at the end of life, whose end was blazing light. I found it to be a cloud that filled the horizon with flickers of black light and scarlet winds. Thickly it spills over ocean and land, sweeping up all in its billowing path. And even that glimpse is misty, flawed with things my mind cannot contain.

I spoke softly to them. “Give me two weeks, and we’ll put on a show like none has ever seen before.”

Louis mopped at his forehead with a white handkerchief. “Time ain’t what you think, Sam. Nor is the reason we’re here. You open those doors. We be there. Now, you owe someone a last dance.”

He turned to the others. “C'mon, Boys, we’ve got us an empress to play for.”

There was a movement of shadows to my left, and my heart hollowed out as Renfield breathed, “Dear Lord above.”

Meilori’s shade danced open-armed in front of me.

What does love look like? What is its color? A white flash of fright. A billowing wave of warmth, its reach beyond the microscope and further than the length of hope. Is it a jewel sparkling in the night? Or a whisper murmuring within the corridors of the heart?

Once more Meilori danced across the velvet grass, her empty arms beckoning to me. Her soft voice carried like a specter in the dark. Her words brushed by me and into my soul.

“Beloved, one last dance.”

And I finally understood her dancing empty-armed that magic evening so long ago. She had seen me, as now I saw her. Perhaps she thought me the ghost of a future me, dead and searching for her. And not understanding completely, still she took me in her arms.

As I, not understanding completely, now took her in mine. She smiled, brushing soft lips against mine. And my jazz friends began to play in a heart-clasp of sound.

Love is not a shy beast to be caught but a rare moment to be treasured. It burns within each cell, a living seed of hope. Its rays invisible to most, seen only by the searching heart.

Meilori was in my arms, and her love was a sheath that kept me whole. She lightly kissed me. I almost felt it. We danced through the embrace of shadows. And for a very short moment, I was home. Home.
******************************************

DO YOU BELIEVE IN THE SUPERNATURAL?

Do you believe in the supernatural?

There are two answers to that question, of course.

One that you believe in bright sunlight. And the one that you fear is true in the shadows on a strange, moonlit street.


I know. I've had too many occasions to walk the dark streets of the French Quarter at night. I wasn't suicidal. I was broke. I saw street crime naturally. I also saw glimpses of things my rational mind refused to consider.

To focus my mind off those glimpses, I tried to make a list of movies with scenes involving lone walkers at night in the growing fog. Word to the wise. Don't do that. It really doesn't help. At all.

New Orleans has been called a Twilight City, for it rises from civilized slumber to bustling life at night.

Performers often line the streets, pushers sell their brands of death, prostitutes promise sex as if it were love, dancers weave through the partiers on the street, and music throbs through the veins of the French Quarter.

If the undead do exist, they walk lazily down streets in front of buildings dating back hundreds of years. In that sense, they would be at home. It is we the living who could be thought of as intruders there.

New Orleans is famous for its "Cities of the Dead."

Since the city is below sea level, it is filled with above the ground tombs instead of graves in the moist earth.

One of the most famous of these "cities" is St. Louis Cemetery #1, established in 1789 and considered by many as being the final resting place of the infamous voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau. But Samuel McCord would tell you differently. He still visits her occasionally if the situation is dire enough to warrant risking suicide.



Samuel McCord, of course, believes in the supernatural.

How could he not? Especially after this dark scene of the supernatural from FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE.

Samuel is walking to the Convention Center the first night after Katrina. A wheelchair-bound woman has told him of the raping of women and young girls by drunken gang members.

It is a tale he must check out for himself. Long ago he was unable to prevent the murder of his own sister, and he is compelled to rescue each young girl he sees in danger.

***

As I made my way down the flooded street towards the Convention Center, I looked up at the full moon. It seemed closer than civilization or any semblance of rescue. If there was to be any help for those suffering at the center, it would have to come from me.

I had heard the Superdome was in equally bad shape. I shook my head. To get there, I would have to head north where the water was still chest-deep over the streets. It would take a miracle for me to help those at the Convention Center.

The Superdome was on its own. I might be monster not man, but I was only one monster. And Maudie had bought my help with her bravery and her disregard for her own safety.

As I waded along into the night, the black mists curled and creamed in the humid darkness like an unspoken fear trying to form itself on the edge of consciousness. A trick of the thick air, the moon of blood leered down upon its reflection on the dark waters of the flooded street.

Ripples of its long bloody image flowed from the floating dead body of a cat, looking like fingers caressing its kill. The cat’s death apparently hadn't been pretty nor was its corpse. The night became colder than it should have been. Much, much colder.

Rind, the Angelus of Death, whispered in my blood. “At night the dead come back to drink from the living.”

I didn’t need Rind to tell me that the night was not my friend. Too much death had happened too recently.

Spirits, lost and angry, were walking beside me. Torn clothing. Hollow eyes of shadows. Sharp, white teeth. Long, writhing fingers slowly closing and unclosing.

Because of Rind's blood in my veins, I could see them slowly circling, hear their trailing, splashing steps behind me, feel the heat of their sunken, hungry eyes upon my back and throat.

Were they soul-echoes, mere refracted memory of a will? Or were there such things as literal ghosts? Just because I could see them didn't mean that I understood what they were.

I turned the corner and came upon the startled, fragile grace of a too-white egret standing alert in the middle of the flooded street, staring back at me.

Its long sleek neck slowly cocked its sloping head at me. Then, gathering its huge wings, it launched itself into the air with its long black legs. I saw the spirits of the dead around me longingly stare after its curved flight of grace and freedom into the dark sky.

I felt a tug on my left jacket sleeve. I looked down. My chest grew cold.

The dead face of a little girl was looking up at me. Or rather the face of her lost, wandering spirit, her full black eyes glistening like twin pools of oil.

Her face was a wrenching mix of fear and longing. She tried to speak. Nothing came out of her moving lips. Looking like she was on the verge of tears, she tugged on my sleeve again and pointed to the end of the block. I followed her broken-nailed finger. I shivered.

She was pointing to her own corpse.

I took in a ragged breath I didn’t need to compose myself. The Convention Center would have to wait. I had sworn a long time ago that no child would ever ask my help without getting it.

A haunted singing was faint on the breeze. Somewhere the dead had found their voices.

I nodded to the girl’s spirit and waded to her corpse, the force of the rushing flood waters having washed it up onto the sidewalk and against a store front where it slowly bobbed in place.

I saw the girl’s spirit out of the corner of my eye, studying the shell of flesh she had once worn. Her head was turned slightly to one side. The expression to her face was sorrowful and wistful at the same time. She pointed again.

I followed her bloody finger. A rosary all wrapped up in the balled fingers of her left hand.

She gestured sharply, then looked at me with eyes echoing things I did not want to see.

I nodded again and kneeled down beside the girl’s swollen corpse. I pried the rosary loose, wrapping it around the fingers of my own gloved left hand.

I looked up at the girl’s spirit. She just stood there frowning as if in concentration. Her brow furrowed, her tiny fists balled, and her jaws clenched. I could swear beads of sweat appeared on her ghostly forehead.

I jerked as suddenly guttural words were forced from the long-dead throat of the corpse at my boots. “T-Tell M-Mama ... peaceful now.”

And with that, she looked up into the night. I followed her eyes. She was looking at the retreating body of the egret slowly flying into a filmy, billowing cloud. I looked back to her spirit.

She was gone.

“I promise,” I said.
*******************

WHY FRIENDSHIP? {a return visit}

Friendship.

My most popular post, visited many times each day is this one.

So I thought I would bring it to the attention of my new friends, adding some new items to make it interesting to those who read my earlier post :

Anais Nin, the enigmatic French author famous for her journals spanning 60 fascinating years, wrote :

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world dawns."

It would be hard to say whether King Solomon was made more alone by his many wives or by the prison of his throne.

Nonetheless, King Solomon wrote : "Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up."

Friendship.

It is what is so very lacking in today's cyber-society where everyone is twittering, but no one is listening. Or giving a damn. They are hunched over their blackberries, waiting impatiently for the message to end so they can jump in with, what is essentially, a "Listen to me!"

Because so few of us have it, friendship and its portrayal are what will bring us back to a novel over and over again. I know that it is the case for me. And for the friends I talk to.

Frodo and Sam. Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Spencer and Hawk (from the always entertaining Robert B. Parker series.) Elvis Cole and Joe Pike (from the Robert Crais fascinating detective series.) Bill and Ted. Calvin and Hobbes.

Family is a crap shoot. Love cools. But friendship endures.

Friendship is one of the cornerstones of my surreal Noir, FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE. Two friends :

Samuel McCord, agnostic undead Texas Ranger. Renfield, haunted revenant priest.

They have known one another since Istanbul was Constantinople and honor still had meaning.

Both love mysterious, beautiful, deadly women. McCord would say all beautiful women are both mysterious and deadly. His love is Meilori, a being from another plane of existence. "Born of stardust and the sea" as she once told him.

And Father Renfield loves Sister Magda, the nun who serves with him in his church. Yet the friendship of the two undead men is a kind of love in itself like David's and Jonathan's :

{At this point in the novel, Renfield, the vampire priest, and his best friend, Sam McCord, are stepping out from behind MEILORI'S, looking at the flooded street before them.} :


Renfield bent down and picked up a floating child’s doll, its false hair soaked and hanging. Its glassy eyes eerily reminded me of too many human corpses I had seen floating down this same street.

Renfield stroked the plastic cheek softly as if it had been the flesh of the girl who had lost her doll. Closing his eyes, he dropped the doll with a splash that sounded much too loud.

That splash said it all. Renfield looked my way with eyes that clawed at me.

“I could take the Blitz. It came from Man. This .... This is from God.”

I just looked at him. From God? I bit back the words that first came to my lips.

It was plain he was hurting inside. And I put up with such talk from Renfield. He was my friend. And he was a priest.

Priests were supposed to see life through the filter of faith. Still, I had lost faith in the unseen long ago. It had slowly faded like mist on a summer sea.

But there is a toll to such a thing. I looked around about us, trying to see it through my friend’s eyes of faith. I failed. Not a first for me.

Renfield’s head was down, though his eyes followed the floating body of the plastic doll as the currents pulled it under the black waters.

“Do you think He finally has had enough of us, Sam? Enough of our cruelty, our madness?”

I rubbed gloved fingers across my face. Like I said, I was at a loss at whether the Great Mystery even existed or not, much less be able to give a true answer to that question.

But Renfield had his own doubts about God. He was my friend, and I wouldn't push him over that dark edge.

“Hell, Padre, I don’t know. Could be.”

I smiled bitter. “You know the Lakota Sioux call God The Great Mystery.”

“You call Him that, too, as I recall.”

“Yeah, ‘cause what He’s up to most of the times is surely a great mystery to me.”

He studied me. “You’re not ---”

He waved a hand around us. “ --- mad at Him for all of this?”

Mad at someone who might only exist in empty prayers to equally empty darkness? I saw the anguish in my friend’s eyes. I chose my words carefully.

“Hell, Padre, we all chose to live in a city seven feet below sea level right by the coast, protected by levees built and maintained by a corrupt government. What did we think would happen?”

Renfield shook his head. “We all denied. It’s what humans do.”

His lips twisted. “Even those of us whose humanity is only a memory.”

I clamped a hand on his left shoulder. “You’re human where it counts.”

His face twitched as if his tongue tasted bad. “And where’s that?”

“Your soul, Renfield, your soul.”

“I lost that a long time ago, Sam.”

I might be at a loss about God, mind you. But I was sure about the soul, for I had seen its lack often enough in too many eyes. Just like I saw its solid presence within Renfield's.

“No, you didn’t. Like mine, your soul is a cocklebur. You can’t shake it no matter what you do.”

He smiled wearily. “I must have missed that verse in the Bible.”

“Gotta read the small print, Padre.”
*****************************************************
I'll let Mark Twain have the last word on friendship : "Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
****************************