Typically when writing, he is involved in the process and gives me opinions on the many drafts. This time, he wanted to be able to read the new book as a reader, with no idea what was going to happen. I was able to keep him out of the process for the most part, although I had to ask his opinion on the best way to blow things up.
This book, the sequel to This Deep Panic, took so very long to write. I’ve shared some of that here. Through all the hours of questioning scenes, questioning the story, questioning my ability, I managed to keep him on the periphery.
My goal was to hand him the actual book, for him to be the very first person to hold it and read it.
I ordered a few advance copies when Otherkin was published a couple weeks ago. And then I gave them away. Oh, I kept one, for my husband, and even handed it to him when I unpacked the box. And then I gave that one away, too. Oops.
So I’ve delayed making the announcement that the book is here until I ordered one more copy, waited for the very slow snail mail, and then waited until I could hand it to him.
After, I think, three years, it’s done. Has he read it yet?
He hasn’t even cracked the spine, I don’t think. He’s being very responsible and finishing the book he’s in the middle of first. I don’t think he’s aware of me nervously hovering, because obviously, his opinion matters.
What if he doesn’t like it?
In the meantime, while he is so-very-very-slowly reading an Agatha Christie mystery, Otherkin is now out in the world.
What if you don’t like it? If you liked the first book, hopefully you’ll like what the characters are up to in this one. There was one weird scene with a character going for a swim. I cut that scene, put it back, cut it again. I couldn’t see how it fit the plot, how it moved the story forward, how it even impacted the characters. But it kept nagging me. I finally decided I wasn’t letting go of it for a reason and left it, thinking the characters might tell me later why it had to be there. And they did. That one odd little scene ended up having a huge impact on other characters and conflicts. Strange how that works out.
For now I just took a sneak peak at the husband’s copy to see if it is still pristine. Well, the book is.
Have you never heard of this day? No surprise, really. It’s not a national day, or even a state or county celebration. But it’s a celebration in a little mountain town happening on November 18th.
Wes was born and raised in Index, Washington. All the locals know most of his stories, his growing up years, his years as a young man, a married man, a father, a grieving father, a grandfather. And always a part of the town like the granite and trees and river.
The Wes Smith Bridge over the North Fork Skykomish River.
He liked to come in to the town hall where I worked and sit with me on Tuesdays. He expected coffee on those days so we had a little pot and he showed me how to make it. He would then sit by the door with his mug, and hold court. Every person who came in, every phone call I got, he had commentary and strong opinions. Sometimes it was challenging to get work done. Sometimes work was forgotten.
The little red town hall where I worked for almost twenty years.
He told me that he met his wife when she was five years old and he was maybe seven? I don’t remember now how old he was. She was walking down the boardwalk and dropped a nickel, which went down between the boards. When he saw her she was crying (that would have been a lot of money a hundred years ago). He managed to retrieve the nickel, and he told me it was love at first sight and love from then on.
I should add a caveat here that stories he told me in his nineties might not be the same stories he told others. Details may have faded and grown foggy over the years. But Wes was a no-nonsense sort, a man who’d worked hard and probably played hard, and a bit impatient with people who came into the town hall and showed a lack of common sense.
Anyway, Wes was a fisherman and a hunter and he’d walked those mountains and woods for many years. He bushwhacked, he followed no trails, he went alone with his dog, a fearless one used to treeing bears. Wes and his dog knew those mountains intimately, and what walked there.
Which of course led me one day to ask him if he believed in Bigfoot. I asked half-joking, fully expecting him to scoff. But instead he got quiet. After a long moment he said he was going to tell me a story he hadn’t told many people.
He was hunting Philadelphia Ridge off Mt Index one chilly fall day. They were way off the beaten track. He made a point of telling me how his dog was afraid of nothing, had taken on all sorts of wild animals. But that day they heard someone walking through the trees and smelled something awful like nothing he’d smelled before. But what left the biggest impression on him was that his dog was scared. Plastered up against Wes’s leg, tail tucked, shaking. Wes said he knew if something was out there that scared his dog, it was nothing he wanted to come in contact with, so they got away from there. He told me that he didn’t believe in nonsense and fairy tales but after seeing how scared his dog had been, he’d always wondered what was out there in the woods with them that day.
And he also made a point of telling me that when he first heard the noise he immediately thought it was another hunter. Because the sounds were ‘step, step, step’ just like a man.
Heybrook Ridge – another area Wes hunted extensively.
When Wes was failing in health, I would take him homemade chicken noodle soup with fresh tarragon. We would sit at the little table in his kitchen and swap stories while he ate. Several times my son went with me. He was about six at the time and he and Wes would talk non-stop. We weren’t the only one visiting. In a small town, everyone rallied around Wes.
When he was in his last days, I took my son there to say goodbye. Wes was in a hospital bed in the living room of the old house he’d brought his wife home to and raised his kids in. Family and friends came all day long to tell Wes goodbye. It wasn’t clear whether he knew we were there or not. But my son climbed right up on the bed, lay down next to Wes and cuddled right up to him and started talking. I don’t know what he said, but he chattered on and on, his little hand in Wes’s old gnarled one.
And Wes talked with him. Whether he was coherent or not, or even aware who was there with him, I have no idea.
I’ve always wondered what those last stories were, that none of us could hear.
I think about Wes now, with his Day approaching. What was it like to be born, to grow up, to live a full life in one tiny mountain town? Our world now is so big, between the ease of travel and the internet. I don’t know if Wes ever traveled. But I do know that his home place was a tiny footprint in the Cascade mountains, where he knew the land more intimately than most of us ever will.
And where, according to one old man and his fearless dog, Bigfoot once walked.
We all know that ‘community’ is much more than the neighborhood you live in. I’m lucky enough to have lived in a community that meets all those definitions. You know…neighborhood, friends, family, etc.
It’s one of those tiny towns where it takes you an hour to walk one block. Where going to the general store to get your mail can turn into an all-day event with side trips to the river and someone’s garden, and to borrow a book.
I can’t tell you how many times I saw the knowing grin on my son’s face, or the skeptical look on my husband’s face when I’d say ‘I have to run this book over to Sabrina’s…I’ll be back in a minute.’ And once at Sabrina’s, one story would lead into another story and then another story, and suddenly the stars are coming out.
We’ve laughed and cried together just like any family or community has. We have a history, and so very many stories.
And it’s also a community that knows how to have fun.
Lisa Stowe - The Story River Blog 