Waiting for the 1812 Overture to Go Somewhere

That fall was the first fall in almost two decades that my brother did not attend school. For the first few weeks, he went into the basement and lay on the cement floor for hours listening to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. We could feel the violins sweeping like a river of sound while he waited with closed eyes for the solution to his involuntary inertia. Some mornings my father would try to give him a list of tasks, but my mother would just hold up one hand and slightly shake her head. It was a brief caesura no one expected to last: my father’s will was like a cannon that catapulted its demands through our hearts once he had reached enough momentum.

After school I would go downstairs and listen to the music with him, suspending myself in the same cacophony of trying to move forward but always repeating a variation of intractable pattern. I was small, but I understood what it felt to be lost in a rhythm of circumstances that left a person with no clear path to follow.

You can only listen to the 1812 Overture so long before it convinces you that laying low is not an option. One day my brother borrowed the car and came back with the news that he had joined the army. It was the only way he could think of to finish college. My mother instantly regretted her policy of silent compassion. Where else could the 1812 Overture lead your child but to war? My father faked approval, but even I knew he was disappointed to lose the resources that my brother embodied.

Throughout his teen years, my brother had “earned his keep”(as my father called it) by doing the hardest and dirtiest work on the farm. He shoveled knee high manure out of the cow stalls and loaded the heavy hay bales into the troughs. He chased escaped sheep in the bitterest cold when the snowdrifts made bridges over the fences. He helped build the house, the barn, and the chicken coop. He strung two miles of barbed wire fence using the wire stretcher that could build up enough tension to slash three inches into the skin if the wire broke.

When my brother was sixteen, my father said he hadn’t earned the right to use the car to drive to a paying job. My brother balked. He applied to the nearest Osco and walked the five miles to the mall for his shifts. He didn’t save up his money for a car, though. He put every dime into a savings account for college. In two years, he saved up $1500 with his two dollar and thirty-five cent an hour job. With his learning disabilities, he had no hope for scholarships. He squeaked into a public school with his hard-won mediocre GPA. It was a victory for him. A chance to prove himself worthy and my father wrong.

It took two years for him to exhaust his funds. The fall that Tchaikovsky rumbled through our house, my father spent $250,000 on a new farm…and refused to spend a single nickel on my brother’s education. There was $500,000 in the stock market and not an ounce of hope for my brother. In the short term, my brother outmaneuvered my father: he joined the army instead of coming back to the farm. But my brother was forever carried along on that symphony of desperation: too proud to tell my mother he’d run out of money, too determined to give up completely, too stymied by his own challenges to get where he really wanted to go. This crescendo of years of stifled aspirations became the major movement that reverberated through my brother’s life: for his entire life he’s been caught up in a revolution that goes nowhere.

Author: Beth Avery
Word Count: 635

Sometimes you have writer's block because there are things you want to be done with but they won't let you go

The letter came when I was thirteen. It was just an ordinary white envelope with a crosshatched blue interior…and seven pages of tightly written words. I suppose if it hadn’t been my job to get the mail, I would have never even seen it. As it was I only got to read it once, and then my grandmother took it away. She said she might need it for the lawyers.

You know in the news how a kidnapped child will be found years after she’s disappeared and the media will rejoice in how she’s finally being reunited with her legal guardians? I’m thankful every day that I was not that child. The letter from my father came, and I read it before my grandmother knew about it.

In the letter, my father said that he was going to be released from prison, and he knew that my grandmother had probably told me a lot of lies. The letter itself was a weird flailing of mismatched rhetoric. It wasn’t disorganized: it flowed smoothly from “you haven’t been told the truth about me” to “here is the father I really was” to “look, I am an intelligent and thoughtful man and I will prove it by explaining Aristotle’s ideas of love to you”. Method One: shove a sliver of doubt into the heart of the stolen child. Method Two: Demonstrate that you deserve a place in said child’s heart. Method Three: assume the child is intelligent: intellectually distract her from her heart with philosophical treaties. Seven pages of carefully structured words, and yet there was only one message I heard when I read it, “As soon as I am free, I am coming to get you.”

You know how people talk about needing to forgive because it’s good for you to let go and not let yourself be consumed by grudges? I’m thankful every day that at thirteen, forgiveness was irrelevant to me. I read the letter, and I knew before I even spoke to my grandmother that my father was a ghost and I wanted him to remain that way.

I was thirteen and consumed by my own struggles with existence, so I did not think about how my grandmother would react to the letter. I gave it to her because I was scared. My father was coming to get me, and there was no greater champion, no more magnificent angel with a flaming sword, no martyr more willing to stand between me and hell than my scarecrow thin, patient and fragile grandmother. I shouldn’t have put it in her hand with a dramatic flourish. I should have laid it gently on the table a suitable distance from her the way I had been taught to hand her sharp scissors or a bottle of caustic fluids. Instead, I silently sailed it through the air into her open palm and watched her flinch when she realized the letter had finally come. She took a moment to pull her pain inward, and then she settled her reading glasses on her nose and quietly sat down to read the letter.

Look, people will tell you that children need fathers, and I’m not going to argue that. Fathers are probably wonderful things. It’s a terrifying thing to look in the mirror and wonder, “How much of who I am comes from a man I do not want to know?” Maybe I would have grown to love my father. I am thankful every day that this was a conflict I refused to inflict upon myself when I was thirteen.

I wrote my own letter and I told my father that I did not care who he was or who he thought my grandmother was or who he thought I was. I told him there is no coming back from killing your child’s mother. I told him to leave me alone. My grandmother let me send the letter, but she did not give me back his words. She did not let me spend years pouring over them, dissecting them and worrying myself over the consequences of my choices. My father thought she spent years whispering poison about him to her. She did not. She barely spoke about him at all, and when she did, we mostly discussed one thing: how foolish she was to believe that he would not really come to her house and kill her daughter.

History and Folk Heroes

Many of the educated people I know who have read or watched Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter seem stunned by its lack of reverence for both history and the life of Abraham Lincoln.  At the core of it seems to be two ideas: one is that Civil War history and the story of slavery is not something to mock by converting it into a horror story(as if it isn’t a horror story already).  The other idea seems to be that Grahame-Smith isn’t getting Abraham Lincoln “right” by depicting him as a vampire hunting hero of the mid-nineteenth century.  To both of these criticisms I say this: there is Abraham Lincoln the historical figure, and Abraham Lincoln the folk hero.  We need both of them to deal with the horrors of slavery and the Civil War.

The Lincoln image we seem to be most comfortable with is Spielberg’s Lincoln: a besieged statesman who simply plugs away at a fight he didn’t pick but is forced to finish.  He’s an inspiring model of the principle of doing right even if it is inconvenient or challenging.  This Lincoln sacrifices his health, his son, his wife’s sanity and eventually his life in the name of doggedly pursuing justice.  I don’t just like him, I love him, which is why more than anything else, I’d like to see him win.

The sad Lincoln is not the only Lincoln in American lore, but his image has completely overrun another image of Lincoln: the folk hero.  Lincoln the folk hero isn’t just about made-up stories, although certainly some elements of Lincoln’s humble beginnings are exaggerated to appeal to an idea of America that modern American see as quaint, silly, and bothersome.  That discarded idea is the myth trope of Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, Daniel Boone, Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, and Johnny Appleseed: the physically strong, incredibly clever, barely educated poor man who does good deeds and paves the way for a newer, brighter tomorrow.  He is the rugged individualist with a social conscience.  This is the Lincoln Grahame-Smith is summoning up. 

It’s tempting to be intellectually above needing the folk hero Lincoln now that we’re in a post-Howard Zinn era of historical reckoning.  Certainly we do need to be honest about racism among the abolitionists and the problem with some of their solutions for slavery; muddling that leaves us no hope for ever making any progress toward healing the wound that never heals.  But for me, there is something painfully honest in the Grahame-Smith version of Lincoln that is lacking in the Spielberg version: slave owners needed a good ass-kicking. 

That’s right: I need to see Lincoln kick ass.  I need to see slave owners depicted as monsters instead of frustrated and misguided businessman who are merely trying to hold on to their financial solvency and their social status.  I need to see Lincoln as the manifestation of American justice, a nineteenth century Superman in a stovepipe hat with a twirling ax confronting evil as evil with no sugar coating or sympathy for the wrongdoers.  I don’t need to see it in real life, but occasionally I need the catharsis of watching something other than a Lincoln who is prey to jackals and critics and assassins.  I need Lincoln the folk hero, a man who is physically stronger than his peers, a man who is smarter than his more educated colleagues, a man who is more righteous than his world, a man who cannot be beaten down, kicked around, and undermined.  I need the Lincoln who makes me believe there are people who will make the promises of the Declaration of Independence come true.  Frankly, Spielberg’s Lincoln makes me hate America.  Grahame-Smith’s Lincoln makes me feel like I did when I was ten years old and I said the Pledge of Allegiance.  Even if that feeling doesn’t last because I now know the real history, it’s still a nice respite to feel it again once in a while

The Last New School

It was Graham’s first day at his new school and he was determined to make this time different. It wasn’t just because he liked the new campus, which featured peaceful courtyards, classrooms with skylights, and a historical mural that decorated the entry hall from the main office all the way to the cafeteria. Even if this hadn’t been a place he wanted to stay, the truth was that he was tired.

Living up to expectations was too much work. He had to figure out a way to do just enough to qualify for staying here without excelling enough for his mother to be able to move him to a more “challenging” school. Since he excelled without intending to do so, this was going to be the most difficult project he had tackled, and he didn’t want to cheat. How does one manage to be above average without being so spectacular that nothing seems beyond his abilities? Graham wasn’t sure, but he was going to try to find out.

He had a plan, of course. On the first day, he would just observe. He wouldn’t talk or volunteer or even look too interested. Looking interested encouraged teachers to ask questions, and answering questions is where Graham always sabotaged himself. Even when he was trying to be dull, he accidentally bungled into being profound. Words he thought were just a papercut observation on the surface of the topic made his teachers stare at him in awe. So today, he would be silent.

Graham knew there was an easy way to do this. He could completely screw up, go silent and uncooperative like his sister Drew had done. But going silent and uncooperative hadn’t gotten Drew the life she had wanted. She hadn’t been allowed to study what she wanted where she wanted at the pace she wanted. No, she had been turned over to experimental psychologists who plied her with drugs, read her diaries(until she stopped writing them), and videotaped her every move in order to crack the mystery of her intellectual demise. Now she spent all of her time in a hospital gown just because she had longed to attend a school that had a prom.

Graham wasn’t as ambitious as Drew. He only wanted to slow down and stop being his mother’s pet monkey. He didn’t care if he couldn’t be “normal”, but he wanted to stop feeling abnormal. He found it so ironic that adults hung on his every word, but somehow never managed to hear what he was actually saying to him. It made him feel like he was losing his mind. Yes, it was definitely going to be a challenge to figure out how to fail while still succeeding, but there was no other choice.

The Specimen

 

The assistant George knew as soon as he identified that the deer was not Pudu puda OR Pudu mephistopheles that Dr. Buckland was going to take credit for the discovery.  It had been that way for years: George did the field work and Dr. Buckland would fearlessly display the specimen to the Royal Academy as his own work. 

Even though it probably meant the end of his partnership with one of Britain’s premier naturalists, George couldn’t feel an ounce of regret for replacing the exhibit animal with an entirely different specimen.

The Ruin of AX520

The Ruin of AX520

She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, but at the Academy she was called “The Beast.”  You’d think a name like that would be tacked on to someone with a nasty temper, but that’s not how it started at all.  It started when she discovered that the AX520 was dangerous.

The AX520 was the big money maker.  The University had been receiving substantial grants for the mutated gene for two decades.  While the geneticists were always a bit vague on what AX520 was supposed to do, Dr. Kern was very good at convincing donors that it was going to do something spectacular.  It wouldn’t cure cancer, but it might just end world hunger…or something like that.  His brilliance was so reknowned that anyone who accused his data of being nebulous and poorly documented was scathingly dismissed as either too dense or too jealous to acknowledge the great man’s success.  He was untouchable for two decades.

The Beast(she doesn’t get called by her real name anymore because everyone refuses to see her as human now) was the one who broke the rules.  She ran the tests that Dr. Kern had stalled.  He was constantly claiming that the gene was still being studied and wasn’t ready yet.  What was being studied wasn’t clearly stated.  The University left him be because the man could charm 6 million dollars out of his marks in just a few clandestine luncheons.  The University didn’t want to know what went on in those meetings. No one questioned the man who got the Kern Laboratory Complex built.

 The Beast didn’t care about that, and apparently she didn’t care about ruining her career either.  She created a shadow identity for her study until she was sure. When it was clear that AX520 was a monster, she released her data in the one journal that would run it.  Only a few geneticists were willing to stand by her until competitors from the Academy smelled blood. Within a year, the University was facing a lawsuit.  Dr. Kern talked his way through the scandal, but AX520 and its grants were finished.  The Beast had ruined it all.

Kern’s supporters couldn’t keep her from talking, and the University couldn’t outright dismiss her, so they did the next best thing: they made her into the Beast, a bumbling, ugly-minded creature who callously destroyed the best thing the University had going for it.  She was the traitor in the lab, and no one would work with her.  They cut off her access to the labs and invented classes like Scientific Inventory Practices for her to teach.  Students took her class simply to harass her for trying to bring down the great man.

When I was writing my doctorate, I stumbled across her study.  It was more than science.  It was art. It was sublime and perfect and honest.  She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.  Everyone else deliberately blinded themselves to avoid looking at her.

A-Z BOOK SURVEY

Author you’ve read the most books from:
L.M. Montomery; I probably read everything she wrote when I was a teenager.

Best Sequel Ever:

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Mark Twain took Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a beloved children's book, and converted his audience's favorite characters into a scathing criticism of American society. It was probably one of the most subversive acts in American literature

Currently Reading:

Under the Sea-Wind by Rachel Carson and Glen Cook's Black Company series



Drink of Choice While Reading:

Diet cola

E-reader or Physical Book?

I prefer physical books, but recently I've caved to the convenience of e-books.

Fictional Character You Probably Would Have Actually Dated In High School:

I don't think I thought much about which characters I wanted to date. I've always been more focused on which ones I wanted to be. In high school, I wanted to be Emily of New Moon, but in reality I probably was more like Judy Blume's Sheila the Great.


Glad You Gave This Book A Chance:

Moby-Dick When you major in American Literature, you're supposed to pretend to be excited to read this massive book about whaling, but the reality is that many students freak out and try to skim their way through it. I did that the first time it was assigned to me, but the second time I made myself seriously read it, and it is one of the most profound, beautiful books ever written, and yes, the whaling chapters do have a purpose.




Hidden Gem Book:

The Family Nobody Wanted by Helen Doss; this was the autobiography of a woman who adopted 12 children



Important Moment in your Reading Life:

When I realized that The Giving Tree was not an insult to my reading skills. Someone gave it to me when I was 11 and I initially refused to read it because I thought it was a baby book. That book taught me that simplicity in writing does not mean simplicity in writing skill.



Just Finished:

She Is the Darkness by Glen Cook



Kinds of Books You Won’t Read: There isn't much I won't at least try to read, but I try to stay away from political propaganda books.



Longest Book You’ve Read: Since it depends on the edition and I don't want to spend six hours trying to figure this out, I'm going to say that I'm pretty sure it was probably Atlas Shrugged.





Major book hangover because of: I'm not sure I understand this question. Team of Rivals had me pretty muddled.



Number of Bookcases You Own: Eight, but most of the books are in boxes right now.


One Book You Have Read Multiple Times:
Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck; maybe I should have called this my hidden gem. It's my favorite of Steinbeck's books, and yet it doesn't get discussed nearly as much as GoW or OM&M.


Preferred Place To Read:
In bed.


Quote that inspires you/gives you all the feels from a book you’ve read:

"He who troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind." from the play, "Inherit the Wind" (and also the bible, I guess)



Reading Regret:

The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski There are descriptions in there that still give me shudders, and I read the book twenty years ago.

Series You Started And Need To Finish(all books are out in series):

The Black Company



Three of your All-Time Favorite Books:

Other than books I've already mentioned, three of my favorite books are The Poisonwood Bible by Kingsolver, O Pioneers by Willa Cather, and Beloved by Morrison.


Unapologetic Fangirl For:

Mark Twain, Zora Neal Hurston and American literature from 1835-1950 in general



Very Excited For This Release More Than All The Others:

Dan Swenson's Orision I've been waiting years for this book to come out. Literally. And yes, I am using literally the way it's supposed to be used.

Worst Bookish Habit:
Overanalyzing the books to the point were I ruin them for other readers.


X Marks The Spot: Start at the top left of your shelf and pick the 27th book:

Uncommon Fruits Worthy of Attention

Your latest book purchase:

Waiting for the Barbarians and Water Sleeps

ZZZ-snatcher book (last book that kept you up WAY late):

She Is Darkness