Storytellersunplugged

Frank T. Wydra

It’s one of those suicide gray days for which February is famous. Outside, month old snow is etched with the black of week-old melt and the temperature hovers around twelve above. The sun rises after I do and sets before the gin and tonic are mixed.

Actually, it’s not. But if I let myself believe it was the midsummer, sunshine day it is, I would not be sitting here, hunched over my keyboard watching twelve point Times Roman ping my flatscreen.

Yet, in my fictional eye, it is that sunshiny day, and I am walking down a fictional dirt road with my fictional invention, Joe. As we walk, a chipmunk scurries across the road, and a bluejay complains as it scoops down from a bough. The humid promise of showers make the air ripe with green decay. Yet, there are no clouds, so I do not worry. Nor, I believe, does Joe, for what beliefs could he have other than those I impress upon him?

He’s a nice fellow. Younger than me, much younger and tall. Yet his stride does not leave me in the dust. “Joe,” I say, “we need to give you some character, something that the reader can hang on to, something that makes you alive.”

“Jeremy,” he says.

“What, Jeremy?”

“My name. It’s Jeremy. Not Joe.”

I laugh.” No, you don’t understand. I’m the writer, and I get to name the characters. You’re Joe, a plain, straight-forward, hard-working, Joe.”

He shakes his head and gives me a lopsided look. “It’s Jeremy. You can call me Joe, if you want, but inside, I’m Jeremy. It’s who I’ve always been, who I’ll always be. And, besides, I already have character. For one thing, I tend to be argumentative.”

I’m already seeing that. Here’s this guy, this figment, who doesn’t even know his role in this story, and he’s telling me, I’ve got it wrong. Well, maybe not wrong, just different from the way he sees it. Which is really pretty presumptuous since an hour ago, he didn’t exist. “I’m not sure I need for you to be argumentative,” I say, avoiding the name thing.

“Well, maybe you should call central casting, because I’m argumentative.” He seems to reflect on that. “Look, okay, maybe not argumentative, but I know what I know, and I don’t like people trying to convince me of things that I know to be false.”

What’s he talking about, central casting? I’m central casting. This is my story and I know who this guy is that I put on the page. He’s Joe. And he’s solid, straightforward. Hardworking. An everyday guy. Not some aesthetic Jeremy who probably has a sister named Tiffany and a dog named Gus.

Joe-Jeremy stops. “Hey, maybe I’m not right for this part. But, tell the truth, it feels good being here on this page, walking down this road. So, why not hold off on the name thing until you get to know me better. And by the way, although I’m a little argumentative, I can also be reasonable. I try to see the other guy’s viewpoint.” He gives me a big smile, a warm, hick smile, then turns, and starts walking again, saying, “C’mon Gus.” And damn if there’s not a mutt off sniffing the bushes.

“Joe,” I say, “You wouldn’t happen to have a sister?”

“Yeah. Tiffany. Kid sister, but smart. Y’know, when I was growing up, I used to think most girls were airheads. But, I’ve got to tell you, Tiffany, she set me straight. Told me I was an immature, close-minded-bigot.” He laughs. “You can imagine how I took that. But, y’know, she was right. She didn’t try to argue with me, because I would have dug my heels in. But, every time I made some stupid remark about women, she’d let me know. After a while, well, you get the idea. And, by the way, it’s Jeremy.”

Catching up, I say, “Look Jeremy. You’re not getting this. What I need for the story is a guy who’s been batted around a bit. At the moment he’s down on his luck, but he has this ability to bounce back, to make lemonade out of lemons. Guy like that wouldn’t have a dog named Gus or a Tiffany for a sister.”

“The lemon-lemonade thing is a cliché,” he says. “Okay between us, but not something you’d want to put in a story. And what makes you think I’ve not been knocked? Look at these jeans. Patched.” He lifts a foot so I can see the hole in the sole of his shoe. Up comes his shirt. “Count the ribs. You think some guy who lives on easy has this many ribs showing?” And I notice a badly stitched scar on his belly. He drops the shirt. “Gus, here, I found him, he was half dead. Hit by a car. No home. So, I took him in. And Tiffany. You don’t know anything about her. My folks never had anything. Dad worked in the stock yards, Mom on the line at Ford. I come along, Mom says, ‘name him after the old man, Joe, like his father before him.’ But ‘No,’ Dad says. ‘This kid is going to be something. More than another Joe.

“So, they go to the library and look up names in this book and find out that what people with money are calling boys. And they’re names like Christopher and Derek and, yeah, Jeremy. So, I get Jeremy, and a few years later Tiffany gets Tiffany. She was almost an Amber, but Dad liked the way Tiffany sounded. Mom got to pick Jeremy, so Tiffany was Dad’s.”

“Whoa,” I say. “This is way more than I need to know. But, okay. I can live with Jeremy. And the other stuff. Most of that’s pretty good. The scar? Where’d that come from?”

“A fight.”

“What, a fight? You give me the history of the human race when I ask about the name. And something like a scar—what’d I count twenty stitches—all you got to say is a fight.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“What’d you mean you don’t want to talk about it. You’re my character. You got into a fight, got a scar that looks like a zipper to your guts, and you’re not going to tell me about it?

He kicks the dirt and a cloud of dust hangs in the air. “Zipper to your guts. I like that. But, no. Hey, you’re the writer. You’re supposed to have all the answers, develop all the characters. So, you make something up.”

And that’s how it goes as we walk down that dusty road of making a story. You start out thinking you have control, that the characters are players on your stage. But when you start talking to them, you find out they have a voice, that they know things about themselves that you never knew, that they have surprises and secrets, that they have the ability to take over and leave you in the dust.

As I walk down the story road, some of the dust goes away, and becomes hardpan, then gravel, then macadam, then concrete. It is a slow process with each step hardening the arteries. So, too with the characters who people the pages. They start as dust, but if you give them a chance, they will take the story over and make it their own.

Frank.writestuff@gmail.com
August 9, 2006