Fictional Character Development, II
For starters, I wrote this around one o'clock in the morning – I couldn't sleep, too much on my mind. I’d been listening to Townes Van Zandt and it threw me into a dark, but comfortable spiral. His music is haunting – like the writing of Cormac McCarthy.
I'd come to find out the muse had other plans for me for that night: to write a 500-word story on a guy at the end of his rope. If you listen to Townes, you'll understand that.
The parts italicized are the story I wrote, and the bullet points are me attempting to explain how this was created.
He couldn't keep the needle out of his arm. His teeth were rotten—grainy yellow, the same color as the thrift store shirt he'd stolen. He stood cockeyed from scoliosis. His stepfather used to beat him with a belt until his back bled. He dropped out of school in the ninth grade, ashamed because the boys in the locker room made fun of the welts on his frail body.
I have never used heroin, but Townes did. And for reasons unbeknownst to me, the first line just appeared. Honestly, I didn't have anything to do with it. Sometimes these sentences write themselves. I pictured a guy raised in the backwoods of the American South who never had healthcare outside of a country doctor, let alone biannual cleanings at a dentist.
About the thrift store, I was recently in Austin for several weeks and swung by a thrift store to get a shirt and tie. I'd only brought one tie with me, so I needed another one because I was having multiple meetings with guys and didn't want to wear the same thing. It made sense to tie the color of his teeth to the shirt he stole, which, in my mind, immediately told the reader that this guy was in a bad place, being that he stole from a thrift store.
I don't know where the scoliosis came from. I pictured a young man who never got a fair shake in life, and having a crooked spine fit.
About his violent stepfather – Townes sang about his pa beating his ma with a belt because she cried in "Waitin' Around to Die." And about him dropping out of school, it's another one of those sentences that wrote itself. His life was a never-ending unraveling of hope.
He fell in love with Lacy, but she never knew his name. He dreamed of living on a farm with her. She'd tend to their home, and he'd spend his days on a tractor. She would hold him at night, and he could trust her with his scars. But they were only dreams.
Lacy seemed to be an important part of this man's story. He wanted a woman to love, and a woman to love him, who never judged him, and it never happened. About the farm, again, just appeared on the page when my fingers typed. This part of his life broke my heart – the longing of never having what a man needs most hurt me. I actually teared up when I read it for the first time, which, as an amateur writer, I can tell you it's an odd experience to write something, and moments later, read it as though you're not the author. I desperately wanted to reach into the story and help this man – even though I created his awful life. Every once in a while an artist gets to feel what it's like to be an artist.
His mother loved him, but she despised him for looking like his father. When she got drunk, which was daily, she'd remind him that his deep-set eyes and large knuckles were identical to a father he never knew but was told lived in Ohio.
I have a friend whose mother often reminded him that he looked like his father, her ex-husband, whom she hated. Even as teenagers I knew how cruel this was, so I added it. About his father living in Ohio, it's next to Kentucky, where this story takes place. I wanted his father to be close to him, yet another tragedy in his life; so close, but so far away. And since he doesn't know his father, he can imagine him to be what he needs.
His little brother, who had a different father, was subject to the beatings too, and he'd wrap himself over his brother when their stepfather took out his belt. He'd take both beatings, so his brother's back didn't look like his.
I had a brother who died, and he appears all over my writing, in essays and poetry alike. I guess it's my way of grieving because I avoided it for over a decade and it about killed me. I've never once sat down to write about my brother – Jeffrey just finds a way.
About him taking the beatings for his little brother, I met a prince of a man who ran a nonprofit in Alabama that helped orphans, who told me a true story about two brothers who went through this. He told of the horrific scars on the older brother's back, and it broke me in two. I'll never forget, I'm crying right now thinking about it, so I included it.
His favorite ice cream was chocolate mint, though he rarely had it. His favorite show was The Brady Bunch. He dreamed of having a father like Mike Brady—clean-shaven, shirt tucked in, always home. He liked to jump rope, but his stepfather called him a faggot for it, so he gave it up.
He enjoyed listening to his mother's Merle Haggard records, which she played on Sundays when she sat on the porch in a yellow rocking chair. They didn't have neighbors—just a rusty old bus in the woods and a trampoline that had long since rotted away.
A hound dog named Pappy limped around. The boys and the pup occasionally went swimming in a mint-colored stream. The water was cold—cold enough that when he was underwater, he could forget about being forgotten.
These three paragraphs were the easiest to write, mainly because there's no violence. For the part of Mike Brady, I used to watch The Brady Bunch on summer mornings when I was a kid; it came on after Batman. My brother and I would eat our cereal while these two shows played. I recently watched the first season, and for all the flak it gets, it's wholesome, and I like that. In my mind, this guy would idolize any father who wasn't his stepfather.
The bus in the woods was inspired by a video I saw of Townes, where there was one in the background. And with the trampoline, if you drive through north Georgia, you'll see them everywhere.
He had to have a dog, and what came to mind was a friend's hound dog who had bad hips. And about the mint-colored stream, I saw a bunch of streams like that in Texas Hill Country, though I doubt they exist in Kentucky. I was so impressed with their beauty that I had to add it.
One day he came home to see an ambulance in the driveway. His brother had accidentally choked to death. He screamed until his throat bled and bashed his forehead against a tree until he blacked out. His stepfather laid off the beatings for a week. And he aged into a bitter man before turning eighteen.
This is me dealing with my own brother's death: writing about brothers and the loss of one is therapeutic. About this little boy choking to death, I wanted to make sure the reader knew he died alone. Their parents are violent drunks who regularly left the boys alone, or were passed out on threadbare couches, and as a result, this innocent child died by himself.
He tried to join the Army, but his scoliosis disqualified him. He beat his stepfather within an inch of his life, disfiguring his face with his bony knuckles, and spit on him. A judge gave him six years in Blackburn. He served three.
When I thought about this guy, it seemed like the military would be his only option to get away from the chaos, but it ended up being another hopeless dream, a tragedy that was no fault of his own. And it eventually led to him taking back control over the one part of life that he now could on account of no longer being a helpless little boy. It felt good to write about his stepfather getting mutilated and spit on. I knew from the beginning that he was going to prison, so this part of the story was a foregone conclusion before I wrote it, I just let my fingers do the talking. Blackburn is a prison in Kentucky, about an hour's drive from Ohio.
He became a diesel mechanic after his release, falling asleep most nights thinking about Lacy.
A friend of mine has a father who was a diesel mechanic. I always thought this was hard work, and it seemed like a job he'd get after prison. With Lacy, he hadn't let that dream go, and probably never would.
Then Pappy died.
I also knew from the beginning that his dog would die, and it would send him over the edge. There were only two souls that truly loved him, and both were dead now.
He got drunk in a laundromat the next day, crying alone, while "Tecumseh Valley" trickled from speakers in a water-stained ceiling. Then he shot heroin in the parking lot for the first time, with a stranger—hoping to see his brother, and Pappy.
About the laundromat, I visited several when I was living in Boston and found them to be as interesting as they were depressing. In my mind's eye, this guy was doing laundry and drinking from a brown paper bag. And like I said, I was listening to Townes—"Tecumseh Valley" on repeat—while writing this. Ultimately, I knew this story would end as tragically as it began; with him being introduced to what would allow him to truly escape, with the hope that it might kill him, and he'd get to see his brother and his dog again.
Now, here's the God honest truth, I had to do this exercise to understand myself. I wrote it last night and loved it, but it began to tear at me because the darkness became too much, it stuck to my ribs. You see, you write something like this, and you inevitably start questioning where it came from. It scared me. So, I had to pick it apart to understand myself.
