A Catherine Noon

Dreams. The stuff of dreams. Dreamlike state. All of these conjure up images, but for each of us, those images are different. Your dreams and my dreams are very different creatures. All, though, are rich sources of material.

The first thing Giselle noticed was the sound. It was everywhere. Loud, like at a concert, but nowhere near as pleasant. The stench of diesel fuel filled the sidewalk, making breathing difficult. She found herself staring, fuzzy-headed and mesmerized, at the engine grate of the bus nearest her. The paint lay thick, gooping over the openings, making the neat lines uneven. The yellow-orange wasn’t quite a natural color, more like a vivid mold than anything healthy.

She looked up at the sky, away from the bus, and found the color of the clouds matched the bus. They lay thick and low, almost close enough to touch. They loomed overhead, stationary, big and billowy like rain or thunder clouds but angry and jaundiced. She shivered. No one nearby spoke, so she sat down on the gritty sidewalk and took out a sandwich. The bologna was boring but familiar and she ate in silence, staring up.

The road made no noise. No cars drove back and forth, even though it was the middle of the afternoon. With the sky the way it was, the blacktop seemed more vivid than usual, the yellow and white lines bright and clear. She craned her neck to see around the side of the school, up the hill toward the cemetery, but no cars came from that direction. Nothing from downtown, either. Not that there was much “town” to be “down,” but it wasn’t ever this silent.

She finished her sandwich and stuffed the empty plastic bag back in her backpack. No teachers stood nearby and, when she looked, the driver’s seat of the bus nearest her was empty. No adults anywhere. She stood and brushed off her pants, removing gravel with her palms and then brushing her hands together. She slipped around the side of the building and took off across the lawn toward the hill, not looking back. No one commented, no shouts interrupted her. She glanced back once when she reached the fence, but no one saw her.

She followed the road as it wound up the hill toward the cemetery. The old Indian graveyard stood off to the side, back from the road, while the White cemetery ranged back and forth along the fence by the street. Marble monuments vied for attention among rows of flowers and manicured, small trees. The Indian grounds, by contrast, were silent. Oaks and several cottonwoods waved their branches among the Indian grounds, the graves silent and unmarked. Giselle wandered in past the small gate that proclaimed “Indian Burial Ground, No Trespassing.”

She found a spot next to a huge cottonwood, its trunk so thick she could barely fit her small arms even halfway around it. She sat down with her back to it, the tree between her and the street with its school and too-silent lack of cars. She pulled out an apple and took slow bites out of it, savoring the sweet flavor.

A sudden flash startled her. She looked over her shoulder and had to squint. The entire sky that she could see glowed argent, hurting her eyes. Her apple dropped to the mulch as she scrambled to her feet and ran toward the gate. She tripped and bounced off of something and rubbed her eyes. Nothing was there.

She took a step forward and ran into what felt like an invisible wall. She hit so hard, and was off balance, that she rebounded and landed on her butt in the leaves and bracken. She got to her feet and tried to step forward again, but she couldn’t pass the gate. When she looked up again, a wave of debris flowed toward her, borne on a wind she couldn’t feel. She gaped a moment or two and then turned to run. She fell over a bush and landed next to her backpack.

When she looked back, in terror of being buried by the wave, she watched it break in two and flow around the gate, missing the entire burial ground. She watched as it went overhead, missing the tops of the oaks and cottonwoods. She could clearly see bits of trees, garbage, even a tire. It all whirled past with no sound, no scent, nothing but the visual. She got to her feet and walked to the gate, stopping short before she reached it. The wave flowed past, unchanged.

She turned back to her pack, bemused, and rummaged. Her can of Diet Pepsi was warm now but she opened it and drank gratefully, thirsty for more than just beverage. She stared up the hill at the steady march of mounds and wondered how far back into the trees the burial ground went. She stood, heaving her pack onto her back, and set off into the trees. As the afternoon wore on, the flow of orange and yellow overhead slowed, but Giselle wasn’t interested anymore. She had a forest to explore.

Another one from Mr. Novakovich. I like this one, because it’s like painting a picture with words. More like a sketchpad, really; but it helps me to focus my attention on details around me and to realize there are stories always going on, if I pay attention.

From Exercise 2, Chapter 1: “Three paragraphs. When you go out to a restaurant or a bar, jot down your observations in a notebook. In one paragraph, describe a loner’s looks and behavior. In another, a couple’s looks and interaction. In the third paragraph, describe how a waiter or a bartender communicates with the customers. (You could do a similar exercise, jotting down your observations of people in a grocery store or at a street corner). Objective: To gear up your observations of the world around you toward writing.” (Novakovich, Fiction Writer’s Workshop)

He sat alone. Dressed in black slacks and a grey long-sleeved t-shirt, he seemed out of place in the late-night bustle of the diner. Most of the patrons were drunk or had been so at one point that evening. They ate to stave off the munchies and drank coffee in the vain hope of appearing sober. It didn’t work, but the coffeepot was refilled four times in an hour. He just sat there, by himself in a booth that could seat two people side by side, and drank a soda. His food, a cheeseburger and fries, congealed slowly as he ignored it. He watched the people around him – a man and woman, just out of a theater and still dressed to the nines; a group of young adults from the university trying to appear less inebriated than the others; two women having some kind of intense argument at a table in the corner – he studied all of them like it was an assignment, or he was a foreigner, some kind of alien alert for cultural clues. He sat back and cross his legs, one foot bobbing slightly, the Nike logo flashing in the harsh overhead lighting.

There were only two of them, but they gave off enough energy that it could have been several people occupying the booth. The waitress avoided them and, after a while, so did the bus boy as he made his rounds with the coffee and decaf. They bent close to each other, eyes snapping. The one on the left tossed her mane of brown hair over one shoulder impatiently, as though its presence annoyed her. Her eyes, a hazel dark enough to be brown unless the light caught them right, were a little red in the corners and shined a bit with unshed tears. Her lipstick, once pink and bright, had faded and made her lips seem naked in contrast to the green and blue eye shadow and plum color on her cheeks. A necklace with a clear stone hung between her breasts, offsetting her pink dress. She wore no stockings, just pink heels that closed with delicate straps. Her companion wore faded jeans with a white halter top and had short, spiky blonde hair. Her nails were a dark brown and cut short, which just offset the powerful hands. Muscular and fit, she dwarfed several of the men in the dining room – not by size, because she wasn’t all that tall, but in athleticism. Her face, devoid of makeup, glowed with a flush of anger. She gestured as she talked, her hands moving back and forth around her coffee mug.

The waitress moved around the dining room efficiently, collecting a plate here, refilling a water glass there. Her nametag said “Joan,” but she looked like a Marjorie or Louise. She checked her hair and lipstick in the reflection of the silver fridge behind a long counter and slipped a small silver cylinder out of her apron. Her lip color went on smooth, a glossy violet that set off her brown eyes. She fluffed her hair and went back to her rounds. She never stayed longer than necessary to collect orders and check on beverages, there but not there. No one had any time to complain, but no one got to know her, either. The man sitting by himself in the booth made for two watched her, never looking directly at her, but head always turned so he could sneak peeks. She never spoke to him, just refilled his soda a couple times. She avoided a table of two women arguing, interrupting just long enough to get their order and then set it on the table – two grilled cheese sandwiches, fries, and a side of ranch. She didn’t look twice when the blond one dunked the corner of her sandwich in the dressing and took a bite, just refilled their waters and went about her rounds.