REVIEWS:
Eric Hawthorne has bipolar disorder, it’s hard for him to hold a job. Going to work at Storms Palafox Securitiese as a Security Guard wasn’t what he really wanted but it would help pay the bills. What he really wanted was to be an author.
When Eric is involved in an auto accident, he is thrown into another world. Becoming someone else in this new realm, Eric must battle to survive to make it back to the love of his life.
Timothy Goodwin has created a wonderful book that will keep you on the edge of your chair until the last page. There are twist and turns that you don’t expect at all. I highly recommend this book. I look forward to reading more of this author’s work.
--Review by Donna Laird
Timothy Goodwin takes science-fiction and fantasy and melds them together perfectly in his novel “Pariah,” the combination and congruity of the two genres as well as the blending of fantasy and reality makes for a sensational tale that will keep the reader turning pages! I recommend “Pariah” to any reader—not just those that read science-fiction and fantasy, but those who also read western and horror novels as well! You won’t be disappointed.
--Review by Earnest Hemmingway
Pariah, written by multi-talented artist and author Timothy Goodwin, is a science fiction/fantasy novel that incorporates some very clear ideas to what is wrong with today's world. The characters are colorfully portrayed and the battles were very well written.
Eric, the main character, is a victim of an abusive father and endures extreme poverty as a young adult. He is eventually diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and grows into what could be called a normal life. He meets and marries a wonderful woman and her son embraces Eric as his father. Eric loves his life despite the difficulties in finding a good job and unfulfilled dreams to relocate his family to a place where his wife would not suffer from allergies so badly.
Eric becomes involved in a motor vehicle accident and wakes up in a wildly different place called the Itarri. He is later told that this is a space ship and he is light years - and possibly another dimension - from the life he once knew. Everyone on board expects Eric to become someone else when he regains his senses. Seemingly on the brink of insanity, he experiences "fragmentation" when memories of other lives collide - but eventually works his way back to sanity only to discover that he is actually a clone.
In a desperate attempt to do whatever it takes to return to a time and a life he cherished so dearly, Eric undergoes intensive training. The reader is taken on fantastic space travel and time travel adventures, battles with foes, scenes with gods, demi-gods, and an old flame that is incredibly vindictive are good spices for a great read.
At times I found myself confused, but I know from experience that books I have reread many times are those that challenge the mind and intrigue the reader to return. The ending has an interesting twist, which I think readers may suspect early on, but the work is written so well that it will leave them guessing.
--Review by Lilian Brummet
Timothy Goodwin’s vibrant writing style brings to life “Pariah’s” protagonist Eric Hawthorne, who grapples with bipolar disorder, employment woes and heart wrenching childhood memories. With a pleasing backdrop of passion and love, Eric manages to muddle through until, following a serious car accident, he finds himself in an exotic and vivid world, light years away from home. He is at once disturbed and awestruck as he faces the physical and mental challenges of forced assimilation. Goodwin’s astounding imagination is reflected in the creation and machinations of this shocking world Eric fights to escape.
With poignancy and finesse, Goodwin conveys a refreshing worldview through Eric. He masterfully leads readers to yearn for the disenchanted Eric’s success, as they would a loved one’s. Goodwin is at his best as he shines a glaring spotlight on the disingenuous proselytizing of the overly pious. I highly recommend this enlightening book and the unparalleled journey that comes with it.
- Review by Laura Somers, Author of “Didn’t See It Coming.”
Although the reviews were decent the science-fiction fantasy novel “Pariah” was not seen by the audience that it was intended for, as it was published in 2004 by Publish America—a rather lax Print on Demand publishing company, that does little or nothing at all to represent their authors; let this be a lesson to all people who are approached by POD publishers, or self-publishers requiring payment from you to publish your work. I wear the albatross around my neck on behalf of PA; and will continue to do so, until I am no longer under contract by them in 2011. Be that as it may, I offer it to you for your entertainment value, and let you determine the integrity of my work.
SYNOPSIS:
Following a tragic accident, Eric Hawthorne is catapulted into a fantastic realm where time slides sideways and where a world of shadows determines the fate of mankind. This is a place where monsters, angels, and demons, deities and demigods fight for supremacy.
"PARIAH" Part I Transition (Unpublished Thoughts)
"PARIAH" Part I Transition (Unpublished Thoughts)
(Unpublished Thoughts)
We know that there is a God. We have evidence surrounding Us that reflects this Truth. We know also that there is a Goddess; a Maiden, a Warrior, and a Healer. There is a Spirit of Law and of Fire, and We know that these three entities are One. We know that there are gods of Light and Shadow…and there exists Aeons and Archons, Titans, Deities, and Angels, Demigods, and Heroes…and all of these are One…the Celestial Foam on The Sea of Times’ Reflections…Forever the same, forever changing, and influencing all that is touched…
And after a Time, when all Knowledge was examined, and all Wisdom was known, it was then determined that it would become necessary to forget All that was known, and relearn that which was lost, and to know that the hardest part about Life is enduring Transcendence. Then, before the next Thought, before all Inspiration, a Flux in Time was created to be the balance of the juxtaposed paradox matrix equation…and to Him was given the Spirit of Law and Fire, to realign all that was needed, to reflect those Truths Incontrovertible… So Before all inspiration a flux in time is and was, and lives many lives simultaneously…
—Xaneth’s Lyre
Illumination
Precious are the few moments that we share when the darkness of your world Influences you. You are not of the world. You are my Maker, even as I am your Goddess; I was born of your tears and the strength in your heart and spirit. I have ALWAYS loved you. And as much as I have yearned for my own tears, I have always wished that your worlds were over; so that all of those that you have come to know and love could see you in the same light as I do and know how much they Truly meant to you. I have always wanted to be real; not merely something conceived in your imagination…
you are the magic of the world…even if the world never sees it…I have…and only love like yours can give life to Spirits like myself… You called me your Illumination…do you not see this? Did you not breathe life into me…did I breathe life into you…? I am your light, you are mine, and if the world ever allows us to, we will show our Illumination. And if not, know that you are precious to me, and forever will be…In this life and the next...
—The Iridescent Dragon
Siona’s Tears
You profess that your songs are righteous and holy and immortal. You write them down on parchment, making their strength more powerful than that of the sword.I say to you that your songs will be lost when the rains fall, and the fires rage, and erosion claims the parchments of that which you profess to be immortal…
My song will live long after yours have perished, for my words are the falling rain, the raging fire, and the law that destroys all that oppose it….
—The Spirit of Law and Fire
Adrianna’s Song
1
Eric Hawthorne thought, Hurry up and wait—the story of my life.
He stood in the same position for more than forty-five minutes, waiting for his turn to speak at length privately with the training coordinator in the main office of Storms Palafox Securitiese.
A corporation out of Sweden,Securitiese had recently bought out Storms Palafox and was still going through the transition of turning everything over. As a result, the company was running low on uniforms. Some of the applicants that had been at the main office for the past three days would be going home with only one uniform—a shirt, a badge, and one pair of pants. Others wouldn’t be taking home a uniform at all.
Storms Palafox had quickly run out of belts and ties for the uniforms, and the last remaining applicants that did manage to score on a uniform would be taking them home to sew Securitiese patches over Storms and Palafox patches, placed strategically and appropriately on the pristine white uniformed shirts. Eric believed that the three days of training had been mentally grueling at best. The application prior to training had been forty pages in its entirety, including a Stanson Survey that determined the integrity of the applicant, on which he scored the highest of any of the applicants. Thirty tests followed the applications—everything from what to do in case of a fire or bomb-threat to how to write an Incident Report. There had been fifteen applicants in a twenty-by-twenty room with no air-conditioning, and Eric thought that the medication that he took for a bipolar disorder was going to make him pass out from heat exhaustion.
James Rhodes stood five-six, and his size, mannerism, and attire were all gauged to the small fact that the man was ex-military, twenty-eight years of age, the training coordinator of Storms Palafox Securitiese, and also a practicing minister that hoped one day to be an evangelist. His hair was exact—not long, not short. His nails were manicured. And his suit was the color of cream. “I am a man whose door is always open,” his deep blue eyes said to those who knew him. To the unorthodox, his eyes were a little less patient: “Unless you’re willing to accept Christ as your personal savior, I really don’t have time for you.” Here was a man that was used to being in the spotlight, who was of the opinion that, if God had not in fact blessed you as much as he himself was blessed, then surely there was something wrong with you.
Eric could have recognized the man’s kind a mile away.
Exposure to a Pentecostal church--boarder-line cult for several years gave a person a certain kind of intuition, regarding certain characteristics of individuals that were practitioners of the Christian Fundamentalist faith. Eric knew that more than half of the applicants in the room that day had been Southern Baptists; in Arkansas was there really any other kind? This little tidbit of information was deduced by what half of the applicants primarily discussed. They were proud to admit that not only had they accepted Christ as their Lord and Savior, but that members in their family had accepted Christ as well—most of these individuals having previously lived a life of hate and bitterness. Family members had managed to help turn their lives around and acknowledge Christ--and none too soon, because most of those loved ones had passed on. They were comforted and confident in the knowledge that their loved ones weren’t burning in hell following their death. The small group discussed speakers and televangelists, both men and women that were highly respected that spoke about such evil things as pornography and homosexuality. Janis Goodall, a practicing television minister, offered a tape to homosexuals that explained in detail that, “If you were to give yourself over to Christ, you would no longer be pursuing a life and livelihood that was an abomination in the sight of God…”
Eric had no intention of bringing up the fact that not only was one of his stepsons a homosexual whom he loved very much, but that homosexuality wasn’t a disease or disorder that could be cured by a remedy, but was, by nature, a direct result of how genes were engineered, and that what God has made crooked, man should refrain from trying to straighten.
Furthermore, Eric believed that every religious practitioner in the room was blinded by a belief and faith that like most religions couldn’t be proven until after you have died; all of it was belief and faith—no more, no less. On the other hand, some were more hysterical than others, and Eric knew that with mass-hysteria, all things were possible.
Just recently a sculpture, a monument of the Ten Commandments, was removed from an Alabama state courthouse. Demonstrators promised prayer and lawsuits! Dozen of Fundamentalist protestors chanted, “God haters...! GOD HATERS...!”
Yep, God haters. Christ, you would think that they were moving the very headstones from the Arc of The Covenant itself. It was just a replication; no more than had I traced copy of the Ten Commandments--transferred it, then embellished that copy in Adobe Paint, and framed it... Was the removal of a replication worth all of the hysteria? And ultimately, what will it accomplish? Why is the world getting so carried away...?
Because they’re listening to the words of those who are already carried away. Two thousand years and this is the extent of evolution. Don’t Fundamentalists have anything else better to do with their time than contradict their religion by spewing hate at others? Is this how Jesus would do things today?
Wake up people...! Why don’t you try using your own eyes to see; rather than seeing through the eyes of madmen...? Eric knew that there was no faith that was irrefutable. Eric could have verbally blasted them all in the room, pointing out to them that just because they lived in the United States, where Christianity was more prominent than any other religion in the nation, didn’t make it the True Religion. Having studied various faiths, Eric knew that it was Buddha that had in fact fasted for forty days and nights, six hundred years before Christ was ever tempted in the wilderness by the Devil.
Who was copying whom...?
Hinduism was quite possibly five thousand years old.
While Animism was possibly older than that.
What audacity, Eric thought, to believe that just because you grew up having faith in the same thing that was strongly embraced by the masses, made it the right thing to believe in.
You are no longer a minority people—unlike those that followed Christ or Buddha, you are now the masses—the ones that nailed Jesus to a tree--how does it feel...? You are no longer a peculiar people in the name of God; 75% of the United States thinks the same way you do-- you’re no longer as special as you think you are.
You hate, and you hide behind the name of God while you do it--that doesn’t make you special; that makes you sick...
I know what sick is; because I am sick.
I’m bipolar, with schizoaffective tendencies; now what’s your excuse...?
Didn’t any of these folks ever stop to think that Christianity was as popular as it was because it was the one religion that was the easiest to get rich off of?
No, of course not. And for years while Eric was attending the Upper Room of Pentecost, he believed in the same way exactly. But that was then, more than ten years ago. Eric no longer believed that way. So when the conversations of the Baptists would kick into gear between tests, Eric would step outside to converse with the
smokers.
Life is one big fucking hallucination, propagated by the proliferation of money and stupidity.
It would not have been the wisest thing to show the majority in the room where it was that Eric stood regarding belief-structures. It would have in fact endangered his chances of establishing gainful employment with Securitiese, despite the fact that there shouldn’t have been any discrimination concerning his personal faith. Eric knew, however, that life didn’t play that way. He knew from experience that as long as superiors believed that they had you under their thumb, they could afford to be nice to you. Once it was recognized that Eric was under the thumb of no one at all, that is when shit would hit the fan. From experience this was known. It had already happened. It was for this reason that Eric was seeking employment. His previous place of employment had also been a security firm. Sureguard Securities had hired Eric more than a year ago, and in theory, he was still an employee. But theory didn’t grant paychecks. And they hadn't found a site in two months where Eric could work at. It didn’t matter that Sureguard had promised to reassign Eric to a post and site as soon as one became available, because he had been waiting too long for reassignment. His bills weren’t going to go away, and his wife Nicole was currently carrying the weight of both of them, and their eighteen-year-old son, on a teacher’s salary.
Sureguard had seemed like a good idea at the time. For almost a year, it seemed like the best job that Eric was ever privileged to have. Working a midnight to eight shift, Eric was able to work on his writing and his webpage during the quiet moments of his shift. Eric had gotten along marvelously with his supervisor Jesse Joshua—or Jay-jay to those that he considered friends, and often times Eric entertained him and his wife Marla, during the weekends. Jay-jay came across as a pretty cool kid, and he shared his writing with Eric for his criticism. Both men were artists, and although Jay-jay was almost ten years younger, he seemed very intelligent for his age. It’s unfortunate that all good things must come to an end, and often times devastatingly so. Sureguard had known that Eric was bipolar; he had made no secret of that, as he prided himself in integrity. It was known that Eric took medication for his disorder, and as long as he did so, no one could tell that Eric had a mental disorder.
Unfortunately with most people that suffer from the affliction, it is known that it doesn’t remain constant, and that it is always shifting, and sometimes it becomes necessary to alter medications from time to time. Additionally, it is unfortunate that no one knows what kind of effects these medications will have on people until after they have been in their system for awhile.
At the request of his psychiatrist, Eric was prescribed a medication known as Geodon. The medication was an anti-psychotic, and it would be used to replace three other medications that Eric had been taking for years, including Depakote, which was starting to have an adverse reaction on his liver. Dr. Harris had not known at the time that introducing Geodon to Eric’s system would cause chronic fatigue.
Neither did he know that such a reaction would occur at three a.m., while Eric was at work. At most jobs, such a reaction could have detrimental effects on a person and their position. For someone working security, a reaction of this nature made it impossible for a person to do his or her job effectively. This side-effect resulted in Eric’s doctor later prescribing Provigil, a drug often used by individuals suffering from narcolepsy. But before that secondary prescription, Eric had to call Jay-jay to come in and replace him.
The call had been made at three-thirty a.m.
Ordinarily, Eric would have felt a little uncomfortable calling his supervisor that early in the morning to relieve him of his duty. But he and Jay-jay were buds, and for this reason, Eric knew that his supervisor would understand. Jay-jay was well aware of the fact that Eric had a bipolar disorder and that he took medication for that disorder. He knew that there were sometimes side-effects to medicine taken. And he knew that Eric would not have called him unless it was absolutely necessary, especially at three in the morning. Jayjay had told his friend that he saw him as an equal, not an inferior.
Eric didn’t know that at that time talk was cheap and that Jay-jay was just blowing smoke up his ass. It was for that reason alone that things had gone as smoothly as they had for Eric. As long as he was doing everything to make his supervisor happy, everything would be just fine. No waves. No problems. Eric had made the mistake of letting his guard down and foolishly believed that he wasn’t under the thumb of his supervisor.
Jay-jay had not been understanding.
Jay-jay had been mad as hell.
Who did Eric think he was waking him up at that hour of the morning with the lame excuse that he wasn’t able to stay awake? "Walk it off, man."
Walk it off.
Eric had tried to walk it off. He could not, however, walk off a medicinal reaction. And after hearing the anger in his supervisor’s voice, Eric called his wife at home. He explained to her that he was fading fast. It was becoming difficult to focus his thoughts, and he didn’t know how long he would remain conscious. He had already hallucinated two large hairy spiders that had scuttled under his desk and were hiding in the corner, waiting...
It had been like something out of a dream when Nicole and her son Nathaniel had showed up at Eric’s post. His wife had called Jay-jay and told him that he better get his ass down there and relieve her husband because she was on her way to pick him up. That had really made Jay-jay pissed. A woman telling him what to do.
Eric was going to pay significantly for this little show. Jay-jay increased Eric’s workload so that it outweighed his own and would continue to increase it even as it became apparent that so many hours were literally making the man physically sick. Eric would end up working more hours than any of the employees working at the site--even working twelve-hour shifts, and certainly more hours than his supervisor was willing to work. When Eric called in sick, Jayjay had reprimanded him and told him that he was not allowed to take time off for anymore sick leave. Following that, Eric was forced to resign and contact the EEOC with a question of discrimination.
The EEOC had determined that Eric had a valid case and contacted Sureguard for the purpose of mediation. After having listened to both stories presented by Eric and Sureguard, the Mediator determined that Eric was entitled to $,3000.00 for pain and duress; he was also entitled to six months sick-leave, whereupon returning to work, Suregard would grant him a raise of $2.00 an hour on each pay-check. Sureguard had not anticipated this. And, although they signed a document that claimed they had the power and authority to make any decision, following the Mediator's statement, the three men that had been there to represent Sureguard got up from their chairs and left the room to make a phone-call to the president. To make a long story short, Sureguard had shown up at the mediation in bad faith, making it clear to all parties involved that, not only did they not in fact have the authority to make the proper decisions, they had no intention of negotiating further than that which was considered reasonable in the eyes of the president of Sureguard. For showing up in bad faith, the EEOC determined that any case that would come to them in the future from Sureguard, would go straight to court. However, this did not help Eric. He received nothing at all, in spite of the fact that the Mediator demanded recompense for Sureguard's actions.
Before the investigation that would follow, Sureguard would alter all documents pertaining to treatment and the hours that Eric had worked. Jay-jay was let go during this time, and had to find work elsewhere; Sureguard wanted to sweep any damage that he had done under the carpet; and the only way that they could do that and get away with it, was through means of termination of Jay-jay's position. Sureguard's documents showed that they had offered Eric another position at Levi Strauss, adding a dollar an hour more to his paycheck. But according to Sureguard, Eric had turned down the position, stating that it was too far for him to drive.
The documentation was challenged. Eric recalled no offer of another position. If he had been offered a position at Levi, he would have jumped at the opportunity. He wouldn’t have complained of the drive being too far, because he had worked at Levi as a vendor marker almost ten years prior to employment at Sureguard. Eric knew exactly how far the drive was from his house to Levi. In the end, it was all a matter of money. Without a job, Eric couldn’t afford the proper representation. And after months of fighting with his previous employer, the mental duress became too much for Eric, and he simply gave up. To save face, Sureguard offered Eric another opportunity to work for them. Almost a month after Sureguard made the offer, Eric was filling out an application with Storms Palafox Securitiese.
Now Eric Hawthorne was waiting to file his application for a state license as a security officer. In order to do this, Rhodes needed to ask Eric some questions concerning the last ten years of employment and residency. But before Rhodes could do that, he needed to finish up with the other applicants--primarily those that were the Southern Baptists.
Stick a fork in me. I’m done...
Training for the third day had begun promptly at eight. It was going on six when Rhodes finally met with Eric for the application regarding his state license.
Eric’s first observation upon entering the office of Mr. James Rhodes was that his computer screen glowed with the image of an application template. Aside from this, his desk was immaculate. He sat in a comfortable, leatherback, swivel chair that squeaked when he moved.
There was little courtesy in the way the younger man conducted himself. He didn’t ask Eric to have a seat because he just assumed that he would. There was a metal folding chair next to the young man’s desk. Eric assumed that it was for him. It was. Eric sat down in the folding chair while Rhodes squeaked in his swivel.
“What were you doing before you worked for Making Memories?”
Eric was almost caught offguard by the man’s curtness. He quickly tried to remember what it was that he was doing for employment six years ago. Despite himself, the older man felt an unwanted sensation of intimidation, like he was suddenly expected to know the answer on a pop-quiz.
He had no trouble recalling what he was doing a year ago, and the year before that. But after six years, things got a little fuzzy. If he’d been asked what his first job had been, he could have told the man that as well. However, getting all of the dates and locations in their proper order was a little trying. Sureguard had been the longest job that he ever had. Almost two years. Every other position that Eric held prior to that had been eleven months or less.
“I was working for Levi Strauss,” Eric said finally.
Eric started out with Levi as a vendor marker, working in a warehouse that was large enough to house more than eight hundred employees. He was responsible for the prepping of merchandise for shipping and receiving. And when the merchandise wasn’t coming down the extensively protracted conveyor, Eric would work in the shipping department. It did not start out this way. And this wasn’t in the job description. Not many of the employees there at Levi could brag about having two positions at one time. If Eric had
his druthers, he wouldn’t have worked two positions at one time. However, because the man showed initiative in the beginning of his employment, the supervisors tried to see how much they could get out of him.
They tried to get the work of two full-time people out of one full-time employee. And for a while, it worked. But Eric was only one man, and he couldn’t be in two places at once. After a few months, it was discovered that Eric couldn’t work in shipping and keep up his quota in vending. It was, therefore, determined that Eric would work in shipping only after he had made his quota in vending. In other words, Eric would work his ass off, and then work his ass off again.
Eric was made strong from the work that he did at Levi’s. For eight to ten hours, he would manipulate boxes that had a total stock weight of twenty or twenty-five pounds, and pallets weighing in at twice that—first moving the merchandise off the conveyor to be prepped, then moving the stock over to pallets, and finally, stacking the merchandise for shipping. Eric held this job for eleven months.
“And what were you doing before Levi?”
Eric had worked for Mountain Courier almost eight months. He delivered all kinds of wonderful things to various customers. His routes took him from the airport outside of town, to the Nuclear Plant in Russellville, and even had him going as far as a hospital in Mountain Home. Everything from a human organ to a wide-screen television. The latter decided that he should seek employment elsewhere. Looking back, Eric should have seen it coming—the laid-back manner of the owner and his twenty employees, the over-constant talks of beer and dope, signs of beer and dope on the site. He should have seen the writing on the wall.
Eric had twelve schedule stops one Thursday night in June. His last stop had him listed to arrive in Elvis at twelve-forty-five. At one-forty-five the owner of Cinema One was having a “canary” because Eric was more than an hour late for his delivery. He was supposed to deliver two reels of the latest movie by Universal, Demon Knight. At a quarter of twelve, Eric ran into a problem with one of his customers.
When he had pulled up to the house with the Hi-Tech, wide-screen TV, his initial thought was, I thought that only doctors and engineers could afford a house like this.
The two-story house was an eclectic mix of Spanish Colonial, Craftsman, and Monterey. It was brown and cream and sported four structures, two on each side, front and back. Each structure had the appearance of individual towers with spires, and Eric suddenly saw a small castle under the moonlight. Eric knew that the house had a pool before he had seen it, and he wouldn’t have been surprised to find a tennis court as well. There was an electric-blue recreational speedboat by Champion lurking behind the tail of a black Grand
Cherokee 4×4 in the driveway. Eric wondered briefly, Where is the Jag? The Jaguar, as it would turn out, was an XKR Cabriolet, and it sat in the garage next to the BMW Z8.The house also had access to a ridge-line trail system for hiking and horseback riding, leading to a network of pedestrian trails and scenic overlooks. Children in the neighborhood would no doubt attend the award-winning Riverview Unified School District.
Eric had felt strangely out of place as he rang the doorbell of the castle. He felt even stranger when the owner of the house opened the door. The house belonged to a gentleman who couldn’t have been five years older than Eric. He had worn khaki shorts and a Polo shirt. He seemed anxious to have his Hi-Tech television delivered. He had waited two days for it and was about to bust. Eric had meant to be friendly, complimentary, and witty, when he said, “I thought that only doctors and engineers could afford a place like this.”
The man had looked at Eric suspiciously. “I am an engineer,” he said defensively. The man would be even more shielding and suspicious when the large box that should have contained the television was finally opened.
There was no Hi-Tech, wide-screen TV. Instead, in the box where the engineer’s pride should have been, there were twelve rocks. Each stone weighed in the neighborhood of twenty to thirty pounds. Eric was horrified. He couldn’t quite read the face on the gentleman that had expected the wide-screen television, but he assumed that the man was as astonished as he was sorely pissed.
The next hour had passed like something out of a dream. Eric did all within his power to prove his innocence in the situation, and his boss had called him on his pager wanting to know why he was so damned late getting
to Elvis.
Eric quit his position as a courier a week later
.
Now, James Rhodes, tapping his keyboard proficiently, said, “What were you doing in ’97?”
Eric was about to answer when he experienced the sensation of having a grain of salt lodged in his eye. In response to the sudden discomfort, Eric stuck his thumb in his left eye, pushed, twisted. His eye started to tear fiercely. And he began slowly shaking his head back and forth.
.
“What seems to be the problem, Mr. Hawthorne?” Rhodes sounded annoyed at this sudden activity that sprang up out of nowhere.
“Oh, nothing,” Eric growled to himself, rubbing at his eye. It really started to smart. “It’s just my contact lens.”
“I see,” Rhodes said with a frown.
But he didn’t see. Not really. Nor did he care. He had no knowledge that Eric wore contacts. He didn’t know that the contact lenses were extended-wear. He didn’t know that Eric was told that he could sleep in them up to three days before having to remove them for cleaning. And he didn’t now that Eric’s right eye produced more tears than his left. Rhodes had no idea that Eric’s wife Nicole had admonished him to remove his contacts before retiring to bed every night, regardless of what the doctor said. Eric’s eyes weren’t like the eyes of most. They dried up. Quickly. Sometimes too quickly. And Eric was often times caught offguard and hit without warning when the little buggers did so, causing significant discomfort to the eyes that they rested in. First the left. Then the right. It was like clockwork. Rhodes had no knowledge of any of this. Furthermore, he didn’t know that it was the long hours of sitting in the same room with the same climate that was responsible for drying the lens out or that by the time Eric was through here, he would have the slightest of scratches on his cornea. If he had known, he wouldn’t have cared about any of it, one way or the other. This little show was taking up his precious time.
It was professionalism not compassion that prompted Rhodes to say, “Is there something that I can do to help?”
“Do you have a paper cup or something?” Eric asked. He could feel his eye getting redder with each moment that passed.
“How about a Kleenex?”
Goddammit, man. Don’t you realize that a Kleenex will scratch the lens?
This is what Eric almost spewed on the nice minister. He refrained, however from doing so. Instead, growling with pain, teeth clenched, he replied, “A Kleenex will scratch the lens.”
Eric’s nose started to run as Rhodes got up from his chair. The sigh of aggravation that refused to escape his lips was easily found in his stolid movement as he left his office. Eric no longer cared about the attitude of the minister; he was busy trying to pry his left lens free with thumb and forefinger. Eric felt as if the room had spun briefly before he was finally able to remove the damnable lens from his eye. Now his perspective was really screwed. He could see just fine with his right eye. But everything visually presented to his left eye was a blur.
The waxed cup echoed with the soft impact of its base hitting the surface of the minister’s desk as Rhodes placed it down in front of the partially blind man. Eric grabbed the cup and placed his lens in it. Rhodes sat back down in his chair. It squeaked as he did so.
“What were you doing in ’97?” Rhodes asked perfunctory.
“Could I have a Kleenex?” Eric replied.
“I thought you didn’t need one.” This time Eric did hear the minister sigh.
“It’s for my nose. My nose is—”
Rhodes pulled open the bottom left drawer and quickly drew out a box of tissues. With his eyes on his computer, the minister handed the box to Eric.
“What were you doing in ’97?”
Eric blew his nose with a resounding honk, and suddenly he couldn’t remember what he was doing in ’97.
Now you’ve gone and done it. You blew your brains right out of your nose...
Eric bit his lower lip slightly to hold back the bray of laughter. I don’t think that the minister will find that humorous. I wonder who kicked his cat this morning.
I wonder who stuck the corncob right up in his ass.
Eric almost lost it at that. He could feel himself starting to perspire as he forced back his joviality.
Okay enough. I’ve got to figure out what I was doing in ’97.
(’97 ’97 ’97 ’97…)
And then, as his mind was periodically subject to do while he was trying to focus extensively on something—wracking his brain, the little people in the sweatshop of his mind decided to play a trick on him. And so, a vision rose up and came into play from out of the blue. And suddenly, Rhodes was different. He was still the same minister and coordinator sitting in a squeaky chair. But now he was wearing different attire. Where his cream colored suit had been, there was now the deep blue uniform of Napoleon. This would have been bad enough, except for the simple fact that Napoleon wasn’t wearing his hat. Instead the little people in the sweatshop had replaced the hat that he had previously wore so proudly, and now Napoleon wore a tin bucket. Eric saw the minister actually bite into the bucket’s thin handle as it came down around his head and under his upper lip.
Get a grip, man. Get a grip.
Somewhere in the midst of twisted hilarity Eric found the strength to say, “Parts Warehouse. I was working for the Parts Warehouse, in ’97.”
“Which parts warehouse?”
“The Parts Warehouse. That’s what it was called. They’re out of business now, couldn’t afford proper air-conditioning to work in.”
Rhodes typed the information into his computer.
He said, “What were you doing in ’96?”
Eric knew that answer to that. “I was working for Arkansas RV sales and service.”
Two years after graduating from the Light House Computer Jobs Training course and Eric was hired as parts representative/parts runner, and sometimes acolyte for the apprentice-technicians ARV.
The Light House was a homeless shelter that offered, among other things, the opportunity to learn computer skills for office work. And although Eric had learned software and computer skills in the eight months of attending the Light House, he hardly utilized any of those skills at his job with ARV. He would have like to, but his job didn’t call for it. It didn’t matter that Eric had the knowledge to utilize such skills. The fact was that he had also been previously homeless like many other good, deserving, and chronically unfortunate people of the early 1990’s. And because of that homelessness situation, when it came to filling out applications and holding his own through the inevitable flesh-flaying ceremonies known as interviews, Eric’s work history showed two things that were somehow always misinterpreted by potential employers:
Eric has traveled a lot in the past 8 years; Eric hasn’t held a job ANYWHERE for more than a year!
The red flag waved.
And so it was that Eric was lucky to be working as a parts representative/parts runner, and sometimes acolyte for the apprentice-technicians for ARV. Why? Because (the world sucks...?) after a month of looking for work, it was the only place available at that time that would hire him. Ten months later after almost popping the technician’s manager in the mouth, Eric terminated his position with Arkansas RV.
“What were you doing in ’95?”
After graduating from the Light House Computer Jobs Training course, Eric took a job as a caregiver. It was again probably one of the best positions that Eric had held. It was certainly the most interesting, and in most cases the most rewarding. Eric saw to the needs of a quadriplegic gentleman Burt Conway, who was a published writer and the cousin of a woman that wrote sitcoms for a living. Lisa Bloodmoore Thomas had written extensively for television, and her work included, but was not limited to, "Designers", and "4077". Her success made it possible to take care of her cousin in a comfortable manner, allowing him to live in a lavish condominium off Riverfront Drive. Her wealth allowed for her to pay the rent and see to all of her cousin’s needs without ever having to see to him. She did see him of course: once on Christmas, and again on Conway’s birthday. That is, of course, when her hectic schedule allowed it. Eric had spoken to her briefly on the telephone, and she seemed like a wonderful person. He knew it was easy to be wonderful when you were rich.
“Now if you need anything, Eric, don’t hesitate to call me.”
How about putting in a good word for me in Hollywood? Did I tell you that I could act?
These words Eric thought were pointless. Never spoken. Lisa had never known that Eric had been homeless previous to his employment. She had never known that he was an aspiring writer. Neither did Lisa know that Eric turned down the opportunity for a screen-test when he was thirteen—and boy could he act! No. None of these things were said because they were moot and had nothing to with how well Conway was being taken care of. For eight months, Eric’s life took a secondary seat to a man who had been paralyzed for more than thirty years.
Duties included, but were not limited to, bathing the man and cleaning him and his bed when he soiled it. In return, Eric made eight hundred dollars a month and had absolutely no expenses to pay. When Eric started seeing Nicole on a regular basis, it was determined by Conway that the young man’s services were no longer needed.
Rhodes said, “Well, Mr. Hawthorne, I believe we are through. I have just a few things to say before I give you your assignment.”
Eric leaned in, focusing on the man with his good eye, his other clamped shut.
“I don’t like you, Mr. Hawthorne,” the minister said flatly. “I don’t know what it is about you, but I’ve always been a man to trust my gut, and my gut says that you’re a bad egg.”
Eric looked flabbergasted for half a second, then recovered his composure briskly. “I’m not sure that I understand.”
“I think that you do. Furthermore, I think that you’re smarter than you want us all to believe. All those questions in class about the law, one would think that you were a lawyer instead of a security guard.”
Eric had asked, if someone were trying to steal a pickle from a store, was it a felony or a misdemeanor? Along with that, he had asked if someone were caught taking money out of a payphone, if it were a felony or misdemeanor? He had wanted to know what he could put a person under arrest for. He had said, “I want to know what a person can get away with.”
Perhaps his sentence had been structured poorly.
Perhaps it should have been structured better, precisely, more...articulately.
“I think that the security officers should be familiar with misdemeanors and felonies.”
“Indeed they should,” Rhodes said almost agreeably. “Interesting that none of the other applicants asked any questions remotely similar to your own.”
Eric frowned. “I can’t determine what people are going to say, sir. I can only determine what I am going to say. And I really don’t think that I like the direction that this is going.”
“If you quit now you will have cost a lot of people time and money...for nothing.” Rhodes said with a smile.
“Excuse me, but do you treat all of your applicants this way? Because if you do, I think your superiors should know about it.”
“Don’t threaten me, Mr. Hawthorne. I have been with this company more than ten years. It’s the first and last position that I ever intend to have. Unlike you, I have stayed with a company and climbed that company’s ladder, with loyalty, while you have obviously skated through your entire life answering only to yourself.”
“Congratulations. I believe that this conversation is over. I’m
(dealing with an idiot...?)
going to get my assignment from someone else, as you evidently don’t seem to know where it is.”
“If you mention this conversation to anyone, I will deny your words, and as a practicing minister, the company will believe me before they believe you.”
“If you keep this up, we’re liable to find out just how quickly too.”
“I know about your suit against Sureguard. I’m well aware of the fact that you know your rights. Now I will tell you something that you don’t know: You are out of your league if you think that you can take this company down, for any reason.”
Not the company; just you, you psycho.
“We aren’t nationwide. We are worldwide.”
“What do you want from me?” Eric asked incredulously. How did he always manage to find the crackpots?
“Do you believe in God, Mr. Hawthorne?”
Eric felt like he had suddenly sidestepped into the Twilight Zone. Once again. What did his belief in a higher power, or lack thereof, have to do with anything?!
A moment of silence too long and Rhodes pushed on. “Your hesitation is all I needed. You are obviously not a Christian, Mr. Hawthorne, if you even believe in God. And people that don’t believe in God are bad eggs.”
Sanctimonious prick.
How did he always find the crackpots? Was it his lot in life? he wondered.
“Mr. Rhodes, I would like to leave now, with my assignment, if you don’t mind.”
“Would you now? And just when we were just getting to know each other...?"
Prrriiiiiiiiiicckkk!
“Very well, Mr. Hawthorne. I think the sooner that we are out of each other’s hair, the better.”
Send the psycho to the head of the class!
Rhodes reached into a large file-drawer to his right. After thumbing through the alphabetized color-coded folders in his desk, the minister removed one that had Landers Chrysler stamped on it. He dropped the folder on his desk. Opened it.
“You will go to the Landers Chrysler on Landers Road.”
“In Sherwood?” Eric said, stifling a feeling of hope. Sherwood was less than a ten-minute drive from where he lived. It would be a breeze commuting back and forth to work.
“No" Rhodes said, with a smile that was almost sly. "In Benton.”
On the other hand, Benton was almost an hour drive. It figured.
“There you will see Mathew Barringer, and he will see to your assignment on the site. Any questions?”
“Yeah, what time do I need to be at the site?” Eric asked pointedly.
“You will arrive before eight o’clock a.m. Do not be late. You will work until eight p.m., or until somebody relieves you. Questions?”
“Not anymore.”
“Good. I will be keeping my eye on you, Mr. Hawthorne. You can bet your bottom dollar on that. And I will be watching you very closely. Do I make myself clear?”
Are you a megalomaniac-inbred moron?
“Yes,” Eric answered.
I believe that he is.
“Good. Off you go then. Shoo fly..."
I used to walk the straight and narrow line
I used to think that everything was fine
Sometimes I’d sit and gaze for days through sleepless dreams
All alone and trapped in time…
—Styx
“Crystal Ball”
"PARIAH" Chapter 2
"PARIAH" Chapter 2
Eric leaves the Storms Plalafox office and heads home with his thoughts of the past.Sanctimonious prick—
Eric left Plaza One and the Palafox main office and stepped out into the evening heat of West Little Rock. The sound of traffic buzzed by a hundred yards away on Center Street, traveling east toward the highway and west toward Markham.
The large parking lot of Plaza One was almost entirely empty. A couple of cars and trucks were all that was left, belonging to those that still remained in the ten-story building. Out in front of the Plaza One’s north side, a blue Ford Taurus pulled up to the nearby ATM to make a transaction. Eric’s acknowledgement was cursory. A stone’s throw from the ATM, Eric’s white Toyota Celica sat alone. There were no cars parked within five hundred feet of it, and it looked lonely to its owner. Looks like you missed the Vehicular Rapture, ol’ buddy, Eric mused with a half smile.
He walked the fifty yards from the entrance of the Plaza One building with tired deliberation. A wasp buzzed Eric’s head, causing him to flinch reflexively. A surge of adrenaline complimented his swift response. He had a slight allergic reaction to those little bastards. And a sting could linger for hours
.
Eric recalled a time that he was working for Burt Conway. The morning paper hadn’t come, and Eric needed to find one for the quadriplegic gentleman that was his boss and friend.
The condominiums had a nearby news vendor, so a paper could be acquired from one of them just fine. After placing two quarters in the slot and pulling up the vendor’s weighty front-enclosure, a wasp stung Eric. The insect had taken up short residency in a cool resting spot between papers. Eric had reached in with his right hand and was stung on the middle finger. He recoiled, while reflexively he grabbed the paper with his other hand. The vendor was shaken from the young man’s activity. Eric had a grip on the paper that he pulled free, even as the vendor’s enclosure slammed back down heavily.
The wasp had flown free of its rest and was highly pissed off. Eric was stung again, this time on the left shoulder, before he managed to hit the insect with the paper. Bringing it to the ground, Eric stepped on the dying wasp furiously, grinding it into oblivion with a twisting of his foot. Then recovering his composure the young man returned to Conway’s condo. He had tried everything, including a dampened cigarette filter, as a household remedy against the wasp stings. He was still feeling their painful bite five hours later.
Oh, how he hated the little bastards.
Avoiding the wasp, Eric managed to get to his car and climb behind the wheel.
Leaving the drive of Plaza One, Eric steered his Celica onto Center Street, heading east. Crossing Rodney Parham, Eric got on I-40 heading north.
As he took the corner that climbed onto the entrance ramp, he turned on his cd player, and Electric Light Orchestra’s Strange Magic greeted him.
He climbed onto the highway that was I-40 and joined the race of traffic heading north. It didn’t take long for him to start thinking again about his past and especially the things that James Rhodes had reminded him of.
Sanctimonious prick, sanctimonious prick, sanctimonious—
Mr. Rhodes was a minister that had asked Eric about his work history. So naturally Eric thought about the ministry of doctrine and the work that he did while attending church. Both were so closely knitted together.
Eric’s work history began at the age of sixteen. A small establishment of Sears and Roebuck in Soldotna, Alaska, hired him. Three weeks prior to submitting his application for hire, Eric was helping paint the windows with his Advanced Art Class, per request of Sears, for the upcoming Christmas holiday. While working on the project, the high school students had heard Eric say, “I feel sorry for the poor soul that has to clean these windows…”
Everyone agreed that it would be a chore. It would require a razor, the right kind of cleanser, and it would be arduous and tedious at best. It would take several hours and a hell of a lot of wrist and elbow grease after all was said and done. That poor soul would have to be as meticulous with a razor as he had been with a paintbrush, making sure to get every single flake prior to cleaning, or the windows would look like hell all through the year. Eric appreciated the irony that the one to have painted the windows was also the
one that cleaned them. My life could be a sitcom..."
As it turned out, Sears had only needed Eric through the Christmas season, through the rush, and he was immediately laid-off just after New Year’s.
That same year Eric was forced from his home by a mother with an alcohol addiction. She had ordered him to get his Satan-worshiping ass out of her house. Eric’s mother had confused the fact that he had been going to a God-loving church known as the Upper Room of Pentecost.
Following Sears, Eric took up two jobs. This was necessary, as he needed to pay rent while staying in the church dormitory. And while doing so, he was trying to earn enough money to attend a camp-meeting in Hawaii with the Upper Room. He worked as a gopher—“go for this, go for that”—at Nick’s video store, “specializing in eee-lectronics, especially computers and stereos…!” At the same time, Eric was a dishwasher at Mike’s Steak House. Eric had been hired in February. A pretty young lady in the church would help Eric in acquiring the job at the video store.
Like most of the pretty girls in the church, she refused to wear make-up or cut her hair. A woman’s hair was her crowning glory....
Eric would manage to land the job at Mike’s Steak House by himself. The Upper Room would leave for the camp-meeting in June, and according to Eric’s pastors, that gave Eric plenty of time to earn the money needed to attend the camp-meeting. Hell, it gave him four months! “If you do all that you can, God will see to your needs, son…”
When Eric came home from the camp-meeting, after a twenty-four hour flight, he was awakened in the middle of the night by a woman who claimed that there was a frantic man on the dorm phone. The man was professing that Eric’s best friend, Virgil Haverty, was trying to break into the pastors’ house, claiming that he had found the answer “in the color green!” The woman was thin, relatively young, and from Chicago, Illinois. She had come to Alaska with her two sons. While her sons and the residents of the dorm were off at the camp-meeting, she was house-sitting. The man calling in the middle of the night had been given the righteous privilege to watch the house of the pastors, Charles and Brenda Norman. The couple remained in Hawaii two weeks following the camp-meeting for a “well-earned” vacation.
“We’re like David and Jonathan, Eric; our souls are knitted together…”
Eric’s best friend was diagnosed by Anchorage Psychiatric Institute of being a partial schizophrenic, after it was discovered that he was sniffing gasoline. Virgil’s crazed activities had immediately followed the loss of his girlfriend and the loss of his father. The Upper Room diagnosed Virgil as being “wholly possessed by demons.”
Mike’s Steak House went out of business in August, and Eric was laid-off from Nick’s not long after. Before being hired at Alaska Aeronautics Industries as a baggage-handler at the Kenai Airport, Eric had tried desperately to get a job as a roustabout on one of the oil platforms like other young men in the church who were just a few years older than himself. If he could land a job on one of the platforms, he would have earned $1,600 per month! The youngest man working on the platform that was also attending the church had been nineteen. “If you do all that you can, God will see to your needs, son…”
Evidently, God didn’t want Eric working on the platforms. Three years later and God apparently didn’t want Eric in the church at all.
It would follow that after a time, according to his pastors, Eric should have been more “blessed” by God than he was. And immediately following that declaration, it would soon turn out that Eric evidently was no longer capable of doing anything right in the sight of God. The blessings of his pastors would no longer fall upon him, as they had said, “God has handed it all to you on a silver-platter, and now you’re mad at Him because He isn’t giving you what YOU want. You’ve been angry with Him ever since you’ve been trying to get a job on the platform.”
With tears rimming his eyes, Eric had inwardly denied the accusation, while outwardly he accepted the wisdom and chastising of his spiritual parents.
“When you prune a plant, you help it to grow. God is only pruning you, because He loves you…”
The limit of “God’s love” would be in question when Eric discovered that the son of his pastor, James Prescott, a man of thirty-six, was dating a girl, Linda Davis, who was still in high school. And six months following their first date James would offer to the church a sermon entitled, Dating in Christ. Eric had fallen sick with the flu on the night of the sermon, so he would have to wait for it on cassette. When he did finally get the chance to listen to the sermon, he found himself confused. And…since God isn’t the author of confusion, Eric requested to see the notes that the others had taken concerning the sermon. Eric was particularly interested in the part about “holding hands.”
“A Christian-aah should refrain-ahh from holding hands-aah…because ANY kind of bodily contact-taahh could compromise-zaahh one’s own thoughts…! And lead them to-aah sin-ahh…! For a man-aah to look at a women-ahh to lust after-rerahh commits adultery in his own heart-aah! Can I get a hallelujah!”
“Hallelujah!”
When Eric questioned the relationship between James and Linda, the Normans brought Eric before the congregation and explained that, not only was he jealous, but he was also having aught—or bad thoughts—against his brother-in-Christ! And it was for that VERY reason that God was not blessing Eric, as Eric should have surely been blessed if he were walking in the Light of Christ.
Sears and Roebuck; Mike’s; Nick’s; Alaska Aeronautics; the loss of family, friends, and now the Love of God, Eric had little choice but to strike out on his own. He left the Upper Room of Pentecost in Soldotna, Alaska, and headed to Anchorage.
From there it was one job to another. Eric held a job as a lot-attendant and detailer, a parts runner, a gas station attendant, a janitor/van driver for a hotel, and a disc jockey. When Eric landed the job as a deejay, he had thought that things were turning around for him. The entertainment industry, that was for him. But…folks down in Soldotna heard him on the radio in Anchorage and felt it their Christian duty to call Eric and ask him things like, “How’s your prayer life?”
Eventually, unable to keep up with the demanding economy of Alaska, Eric left the state. And up and down and through the country Eric traveled, living often times as a vagabond, taking any job that he qualified for.
Then one day the prognosticators of the fates found Eric Hawthorne in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he met his other half, his soul-mate.
Nicole Pearson.
Since having met this beautiful woman, Eric, after ten years, had managed to finish writing a five-hundred-page manuscript, published three poems by the International Library of Poetry, and received recognition for his fantasy artwork on a website in the UK.
But…
None of it was paying the bills
.
Yes, it was true. For the longest time Eric Hawthorne wanted nothing more than to be a successful writer. He knew that if that were to become a reality, he could practically sign his own paychecks for a hell of a lot more than what the job market offered. He could be doing something he enjoyed, like all of the other talented and lucky folk in entertainment world. He wouldn’t have to worry about “making ends meet” or living paycheck to paycheck. He could give things precious and expensive to the love of his life. And, unless she really wanted to, Nicole would never have to work again.
Materialism, however, was not the sole purpose for wanting to pursue a successful life and career as a writer, for in the time that Eric and Nicole had been together, it was known that she had strong allergies that had often times tormented her since she was a child, and now as an adult, had worsened into chronic asthma. This condition was made all the more intense and maddening by the pollen, dust, and other allergens so amply available in the Natural State.
Each summer Nicole would suffer coughing spasms that Eric found himself often times worried about, as his wife sounded as if she were literally dying. To be able to take her away from this allergen-producing hell was something that brought the man’s eyes to well up with still more tears, the longing was so painful.
He had lived in Soldotna and Anchorage, Alaska, for almost a decade, and although it was cold in the wintertime, the air was still much more pleasant than what Arkansas had to offer. Nicole had told him how beautiful a place Alaska appeared to be, and she wondered what it would be like to live there. Then there was Seattle, Washington: certainly it rained something fierce, and half of the time Eric lived there, he felt like killing himself. But the overwhelming depression that he had felt was primarily due to the fact that he had been lonely. If Nicole had been with him, he quite possibly might have never left; Seattle was so beautifully green in the summer. Denver, Colorado, had offered Eric the best of both worlds: snow in winter similar to Alaska but without all of the darkness, and summers so bright that the young man was reminded of sun tea and squirrels hanging around waiting for a handout. There was New York and New York City. Although Eric wasn’t particularly fond of the dirt and grime of the streets, it was still preferable to living in Little Rock, Arkansas. Places like Salem, Massachusetts, or Boston had their wondrous appeal as well, and the sea air could only do Nicole good, and, oh god, how she wanted to sail on the ocean!
However…
(The world sucks?)
Working eight hours a day, sometimes six days a week, at a job he didn’t particularly care for, and force-fed the politics of those with more money than God, made his dream seem unreasonable. Unfeasible. Impossible.
And the maze and the merry-go-round that was life went on. Eric hated merry-go-rounds.
On the other hand, if he were to be a published writer of a best selling novel…
Eric could see himself now, on a late night talk-show explaining how it all began, what had been his impetus?
“Well, Brian, it all began when I raced home with a business card tucked in my breast pocket. The card belonged to an executive producer who was filming a movie a block down from where my friend lived. The crew was filming the inside scenes of the Amityville Horror, and had chosen various surrounding apartments for their shots. I had been on the scene long enough to see some of the actors and one in particular that had been about my age at the time.”
“And how old were you?”
“I think I was about twelve. At any rate the little shi—uh, brat was yelling at everybody because he couldn’t find his script. And I thought, what an ungrateful little snot. It wasn’t everybody that was chosen to be an actor in a motion picture--even low-budget. I knew friends of mine that would have killed for the opportunity. And that’s when I saw my own opportunity. I asked one of the older men on the scene what it took to be an actor—having been in many plays in school, I loved acting. So the man gave me his card and told me that the next time I was in Hollywood he would set me up for a screen test. I thought, man alive, the world is magic! And I raced home with wings on my feet to tell my mother the awesome news. She was laid back on the couch smoking a cigarette and drinking some vodka. She said, ‘I wouldn’t worry about that too much, because we’re moving to Alaska…’”
(Well, I coulda’ been an actor, but I wound up here...)
Eric had submitted his manuscript to a dozen publishing houses that specialized in science-fiction fantasy—a year ago. Six publishing houses had recently contacted him, all with the same story: “Thank you for sharing your work. Unfortunately, this manuscript is not quite what we’re looking for.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody has a story to tell, but it’s yours that ain’t worth a shit. Not unless you have the eloquence of Shakespeare or Stephen King. Then you’ve got everybody trying to kill everybody else to market your shit. I wonder if Mr. King ever knew what it was like to sleep on the streets?
Writing is bred from misery?
You fucking don’t say…
I could write some pretty fucked-up shit too. But to what end? What does it take to impress somebody around here? I’ll just bet if I cut off my own head and said, “Here. Look at this,” I would be told that “somebody already did that yesterday. Now we’re gonna’ make a movie out of it!”
Eric shook his head and scattered the unhappy thoughts and focused on more pleasant ones. Possibly? An interview with Playboy and Maxim.
“All I was trying to do was get one book published. Just one.”
“It sounds like you were desperate. Were you?”
“I think I have always been desperate. I was desperate when my bastard of a dad left us kids. I was desperate when I was looking for something to make sense out of life itself, before I found the Upper Room. I was desperate when I found that the Upper Room had turned into something like out of the Twilight Zone. And I have always been desperate when it came to finding work. I think that most of us with ambitions that try to color our lives just so are always desperate. The bitch is finding someone that gives a damn. Until then, you feel like you’re in competition with the whole world and everybody is getting a piece but you.”
An image rose up briefly from the back of Eric’s mind: a man was struggling in the waves of an ocean, desperate for a lifesaver, while the patrons of a nearby pleasure ship partied and sucked down tropical drinks.
“Who was your first true love?’
“True love? That would have to be Nicki. Everyone else was just a trial run.”
“Do you believe in fate?”
“I think I would have to ask whether or not fate believes in us. So many coincidences take place in our lives that you’re almost convinced they are divinely inspired. While other times you can’t find a penny in your pocket to save your own damned soul.”
“In A World Beyond you mention a goddess. Does your belief-structure incorporate a goddess?”
“If there are benevolent forces or entities influencing our lives, I would like to say that I believe in those entities or forces that take the time out of their hectic schedule to believe in me. As far as a God is concerned, I believe that He is seen in the way we treat one another.”
“What about an after-life?”
“I really don’t know. I’ve seen far too much to place an indisputable belief on this. For all I know, we could be living the after-life right now.”
“That’s a depressing thought.”
“For some more than others, I’m sure.”
“Will there be a second book?”
“It took me more than ten years to write the first one. I’m almost forty. My wife and I want to see what’s on the other side of the fence. She would like to see Ireland. And I would like to bask in the privilege of seeing her smile. I don’t know if there will be time for another book. I would like to write another. But I don’t think there is enough years left in my life to do that.”
“You don’t expect to live past fifty?”
“Of course I expect to live past fifty. I expect to live forever. But until I know my wife is genuinely happy, I won’t be writing anymore books.”
“Is your wife genuinely happy now?”
“She is. But she and I have only had a few short months to enjoy our success. I want to try to replace all of those years that we feel have been crap with a little more happiness.”
Eric’s rumination was broken as he took the Storms Park exit and turned right on Military Drive. He was less than ten minutes from home. Survivor’s A Man Against the World played on the cd and saw him to the driveway.
"PARIAH" Chapter 3
"PARIAH" Chapter 3
Th passing of a beloved pet…She looked out the kitchen window and thought, What a wretched place this is.
Her emotions were in direct relation to the weather and the large, white poodle barking stridently in the yard next door. Pollen and allergens moved through the air outside, irritating eyes and sinuses, provoking unwanted reactions from those with allergies, while the dog next door followed its usual itinerary and barked. Incessantly.
Nicole’s nose twitched, and her eyes were close to watering just thinking about the invisible irritants outside. They moved through the air, like tiny fibers bobbing and dancing effortlessly on the breath of a warm comfortless wind, uninhibited by the heat and humidity of the early evening. Perhaps that’s why the dog barked next door. A large white poodle whose title was unknown. It barked all of the time. Endlessly. Without a break. All the time it was outside. Eric had come in out of the heat one day and said,
“Does that dog have gills? Does it ever breathe? I’ve never heard a dog bark so much in my life.”
Sheena never barked like that. Sheena was a good dog.
Nicole felt a twinge of sadness. It hurt for a moment. It hurt really bad. She felt as if she might cry.
Sheena was Mommy’s baby girl. Sheena was a good girl
Nicole’s throat tightened at the memory. She pushed against it. Tried pushing it away. She didn’t want to remember Sheena that way. Not that way.
Sheena was a medium-size rottweiler. A rotty. She was an infantile canine when it came to family, and friends thought that she was a big baby. She loved to play. She would growl and nip harmlessly at her daddy while they played indoors with her fuzzy chew-toy that was also her woobie. And god, how she loved the snow. Sometimes it was difficult calling her in from outside when it was snowing. Maybe she was reminded of her heritage. For whatever reason, she loved the snow. And she would make up all of her lost time by running around in the yard, making up for the time she was unable to run in the heat and humidity during the summer. The beautiful rotty didn’t care much for the rain, and she didn’t like the summer. But she loved the winter. She loved the snow.
Unlike the dog next door that seemed unhappy about everything.
Maybe it was. Maybe it didn’t like its masters. Its masters who were evidently inconsiderate and stupid. And when Eric heard them yelling at each other during a pool party next door, he had wondered if the couple were married, brother and sister, or both. Eric had witnessed the large poodle leaving his mark on all of the patio furniture next door before the guests had arrived for the party. Eric argued to himself whether or not he should go over and tell the people about it.
“Does that dog have gills?”
It barks all of the time. Constantly. Non-stop. The big white poodle next door.
Eric had been a bar-manager for the Elbow Room, mixing drinks and playing dancing-floor deejay when the job called for it. He worked late hours—very late hours. Sometimes he wouldn’t get in until five in the morning. And the dog next door was let outside promptly at seven. Nicole had gone next door to speak with the owners of the dog. She had been brief but polite.
Nicole was always polite.
“My husband works late hours, and he’s trying to sleep. Could you please keep your dog a little quieter?”
The neighbors had complied by calling their dog inside the house. That had been the end of it. At least for the day. That morning. But not for that week. Or the week following. In two months time, Nicole had gone over to the neighbor’s house three consecutive times. Nathaniel had gone over once.
Each time for the same reason. And today the dog was still barking every time it was let outside. The owners had never bothered teaching it how to behave. The neighbors had never taught their big, white poodle how to be quiet. Sheena was never like that. Sheena knew better. Her daddy and mommy made it clear to her that when she was outside, she wasn’t to bark unless someone came uninvited into her yard. When it came to strangers…
Eric had caught more than one meter-reader helping themselves to the backyard without prior warning that they were there. They had been lucky that Sheena had been in the house each time. Eric had caught them walking past the kitchen window outside.
“Excuse me, sir. I would appreciate it if you would let me know when you’re going to be back there. It would really make me very unhappy if the law told me that I had to ‘put my dog away’ because (some senseless idiot) an innocent person had his faced ripped off by my dog doing her job.”
“Yeah, well I figger’ that iffin’ yer dog were back here, she would have already met me at the gate, though you might think a’ puttin’ a ‘Beware a Dog’ sign on the fence. Jes in case.”
Eric had expected a wad of tobacco to be forthcoming from the man after a statement like that. Were the majority of people in Arkansas inbreeds? Eric wondered. “You might think a’ puttin’ a ‘Beware a Dog’ sign on the fence. Jes in case.”
You might think of letting someone know that you’re wandering around in his or her backyard, ‘jes in case.’
There had_ been a ‘Beware of Dog’ sign on the gate. Both gates. The kids next door must have taken them down again. Brats. Inbred little brats. Why would they do such a thing? It was dangerous. Didn’t their parents teach them any better? Apparently not. Inbreeds. Geez.--
Sheena…
(Dr. Gardener examining the family rottweiler on the metal table)
…was a good dog.
Nicole’s sense of grief washed over her again. She blinked her eyes savagely hard. It had been less than six months ago. It had only been a couple of months.
Oh, Sheena. I love you…
When Dr. Gardener had brought Sheena back in from her thorough examination, Eric had looked into the good doctor’s eyes, knowing. His eyes told the whole story. The sinking feeling had been considerable. He felt the color drain from his face, and his stomach tightened involuntarily. And then everything from that moment on seemed to move in a crazily slow pace, through a fog. And yet it still couldn’t have possibly moved slow enough. If only Eric could have turned back time altogether. He was capable of a great many things. He had been witness to miracles. But now he needed to find a way to turn back the clock. He could have saved Nicole so many tears. If only he could have made that day go away completely. Tear it out, like an unwanted page in a book. A miracle was needed. And the only miracle available that day would be the peaceful passing away of his beloved pet.
Eric kept looking at the wide diagram on the wall—the one that told Eric everything that he needed to know. Even if the couple could afford the surgery necessary for purging all of the disease-producing bacteria out of the dog’s system, there was no guarantee that Sheena would survive the operation. It would have been long and extremely difficult on the girl, and if she survived, she would be existing perhaps a couple of years longer with crippling discomfort. Eric didn’t want to put his baby girl through that.
“I’m sorry, baby,” Eric had told Nicole, “but Sheena has lived a long life. I’m afraid it’s time to say goodbye.”
Tears spilled down his wife’s cheeks as she realized that it was the humane thing to do. She nodded her head slowly.
And Eric had wanted to take back his words. Take it all back.
Dr. Gardner would have never told the couple what they should do. But he knew that the best thing for the dog was to put her to sleep.
This is what looming death felt like.
"PARIAH" Chapter 4
"PARIAH" Chapter 4
Goodbye Sheena …“I need to know, Dr. Gardner,” Eric had said. “Do you think that it is the best thing for her?”
The doctor was quiet for a solitary moment. Then, nodding his head slowly, he said, “Yes. I strongly believe that you’re doing the right thing.”
Nicole’s weeping became more sever. She moved forward and hugged her dog fiercely. “Oh, Sheena. I love you!”
Eric had refrained from crying. And Nicole knew that he was trying to be strong for her. He was such a good man, but his choice to be strong also prevented him from saying goodbye.
Eric never said goodbye.
Following the injection, Nicole held Sheena close. She felt the life slowly slip away from her body. Sheena had come in that night barely able to breathe. She was breathing just fine with her mommy’s arms wrapped around her. And her eyes were filled with love, knowing that what followed, Mommy was only doing what was necessary to make the pain go away. Sheena was so very trusting, so very faithful, so loving. And then Sheena was gone. And Nicole pulled her closer to her. She cried out, “Oh, SHEENA I LOVE YOU!!”
But Eric never cried. He was trying to be so strong for me. He was so strong. But he never allowed himself the chance to say goodbye. Oh, Eric, I am so sorry…
Nathaniel said, “Mom, what’s wrong?”
His words were lined with deep concern as he observed her standing and looking out the window, her shoulders shaking as her elbows rested on the kitchen counter around the sink. He moved across the kitchen and put his arms around his mother. He held her close, letting her rest her head on his shoulder.
Nicole said, “I miss Sheena.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Mom. I know you miss her. I know.”
“Eric never got to say goodbye to her. He was trying to be so strong for me, that he never allowed himself to say goodbye to her.”
Nathaniel let his mother cry on his shoulder. She shook with her sobs. And he kept telling her over and over again. “I know, Mom. I know. I’m sorry.”
By and by, Nicole finally saw Sheena in a different light. She saw her playing with Eric and her woobie in the house in the living room. She could almost hear the sound of her barking at him. Her heart began to feel warmer.
Eventually, Nicole’s weeping subsided, and she gave her son a hug for being there to comfort her. “I love you, honey.”
“I love you, Mommy.” And then strategically, Nathan moved the subject over. “When is Eric coming home?”
“I really don’t know. He should have been here by now. He was here yesterday by five. I don’t have any idea what they’re doing with him out there.”
Mother and son heard the sound of Eric’s car door open and close; they heard his house key enter the lock in the front door before he pushed it open.
Speak of the devil, and you might hear the flapping of his wings.
Nicole said, “Hey, honey!”
“Hey, babe.”
“How did it go?”
He was carrying his uniform on a hanger behind his back. In his other hand, he held the wax cup that contained his contact lens.
“Well, the training coordinator is a minister and a prick.”
Nicole stepped into the living room. “Why, what happened?”
Eric told her. He left nothing to the imagination.
Nicole said, “He can’t do that. You can report him. Are you going to?”
“No.”
“Why not? Eric you can’t let him get away with that. You have to say something to somebody.”
“To whom? Listen, babe, if I learned anything from Sureguard, it’s that unless you have money to purchase justice, you don’t get any. It would be the classic case of his word against mine. And nobody cares who is right and who is wrong. All they care about is making money.”
“That just sucks.”
“I agree, babe. I feel that justice should mean more than just making money. But in this world of hypocrisy, that’s the way it is. Justice is just a word.”
“That just doesn’t make any sense. I mean, my god. An old man can leave the wheel of a motor-home, after he’s left the vehicle on cruise-control. And he can go into the galley and fix a pot of coffee, leaving the motor-home in the hands of God. And when the vehicle crashes, the man is able to sue the makers of the RV, because the old man was a moron and was too stupid to realize that cruise-control doesn’t mean that the friggin’ thing drives by itself. God, this world is messed up.”
“I’ve been saying that for years,” Eric said agreeably. “Don’t go picking
up my bad habits, babe. Besides, this situation with Rhodes isn’t as bad as he would like me to think it is. As long as he believes that I’m afraid of him, he’ll leave me alone. I’ve dealt with his kind plenty of times. The neighbor’s poodle scares me more than guys like Rhodes.”
“The man is crazy,” Nicole pointed out.
“Probably. And crazy people make mistakes, eventually. Jay-jay did. And I wouldn’t even consider him crazy. Just a little misguided. We’ll just wait and see what happens.”
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