Tag: Allen Kopp

The Ones You Do ~ A Capsule Book Review

The Ones You Do ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Missouri writer Daniel Woodrell continues his saga of the lowbrow Shade family in the 1992 novel, The Ones You Do. This novel, of course, follows the earlier Shade novels Under the Bright Lights from 1986 and Muscle for the Wing from 1988. These three novels are set, for the most part, in the fictional town of St. Bruno, a small city located on the banks of a large U.S. river. (We assume the river is the Mississippi, although the name is never mentioned; neither is the state that St. Bruno is in.)

The principal character of The Ones You Do is John X. Shade. He is the sixty-two-year old patriarch of the Shade family. He is, possibly, one step up from being a bum. He has ruined his health with alcohol, smoking, and chasing after the ladies. His one accomplishment in life is that when he was younger, he was a competitive pool player. He made his living from betting on pool games and then taking the money from the suckers who played with him. His pool game isn’t what it used to be, however; his hands shake from alcoholism and his eyesight is shot. When he was in his twenties, he married a fourteen-year-old girl named Monique Blanqui (in a shotgun wedding) and fathered three sons (Tip, Rene and Francois) with her, whom he proceeded to abandon to pursue his own selfish pleasures.

Later in life, long after he and Monique are divorced, John X. Shade marries a much younger woman named Randi Tripp. She is a “singer,” calls herself the ‘Bama Butterfly, and is determined to become a big-time singer. She and John X. have a punkish, ten-year-old daughter named Etta, who has a mullet hairdo, a crucifix earring and bizarre makeup.

John X. Shade has been keeping a large sum of money ($47,000) for one Lunch Pumphrey, a sociopathic gunman, in the safe of the bar where he works. To repay John X. for all his failings as a husband, Randi Tripp steals the $47,000 and takes off for parts unknown to pursue her showbiz career. Well, as you might have guessed, Lunch Pumphrey wants his money and his plenty peeved that John X. Shade does not have it in the safe at the bar where he works. He will kill over a lot less.

Throughout the novel, Lunch Pumphrey pursues John X. Shade, and John X. Shade eludes him, barely, with his weird daughter, Etta, in tow. A showdown between Lunch Pumphrey and John X. Shade is inevitable and comes in the final chapter. John X. Shade’s family can forget about him showing up for his ex-wife Monique’s birthday party.

The Ones You Do is part crime novel, part Southern Gothic, part small-town elegy, part character study. One of the major themes of the novel is “the way things used to be but no longer are.” As with all Daniel Woodrell’s novels (I’ve read them all at least once), it’s good reading and well worth the time and small amount of effort it takes to read it.

Copyright © 2020 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Lolita ~ A Capsule Book Review

Lolita ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1899. He became an American citizen in 1945 and died in 1977. His 1956 novel, Lolita, was a huge success and has earned the lofty number-four position on the Modern Library’s List of the Hundred Greatest Books in English of the Twentieth Century. Some critics consider Lolita the greatest American novel of the twentieth century.

In the language of the 1950s, Lolita was “frank,” “daring,” and even “shocking.” Some even went so far as to label it “pornographic” or “obscene.” What’s all the fuss about, you may ask? The character Lolita (real name Delores Haze) in the novel is an American “nymphet.” She’s twelve years old and is, to put it mildly, sexually precocious, unlike any twelve-year-old ever seen before. She has had sexual experiences with both male and female partners alike.

Well, there wouldn’t be any story in Lolita without the main character in the book, Humbert Humbert. He is a forty-year-old English academic, transplanted to America, who, since his earliest days, has had an intense interest, and attraction to, prepubescent girls of nine to twelve years of age. He is narrating the novel in his first-person voice.

Humbert marries an obstreperous widow named Charlotte Haze. He doesn’t care for Charlotte very much and, in fact, can hardly stand her, but she just happens to be the mother of a stunningly seductive (Humbert thinks) daughter, the eponymous little girl nicknamed Lolita. If you were anybody other than Humbert, you might see Lolita as an uncouth, bratty pre-teen without any attractive or appealing qualities at all, but then, nobody sees her as Humbert sees her. He takes advantage of every opportunity to be near Lolita, hold her in his arms, or come into close contact with her.

He makes the fatal mistake of writing in his diary of his intense passion for Lolita. His wife (Lolita’s mother) finds his diary in its hiding place and reads it. Finally she knows the truth! Distraught, she runs from the house and is struck by a car and killed. Humbert is now Lolita’s “guardian” and may engage with her sexually any time his heart desires, and his heart desires often.

With Mama Charlotte out of the way, these two highly unusual people (forty-year-old Humbert and twelve-year-old Lolita) embark on a year-long road trip, traveling around the U.S. Humbert knows he is a reprehensible man for taking sexual advantage of Lolita. (Though a willing participant, she is still a minor.) Lolita could go to the police at any time and blow the whistle on Humbert, but she knows that, without him, she would be an orphan. This cannot end well.

Some people will still undoubtedly find the subject matter of Lolita distasteful, but it is a book that must be read and experienced for the joy that Vladimir Nabokov seems to take in writing it. He is a master stylist of the English language. He has a penchant for unusual or rarely used words, such as: undinist, logomancy, valetudinarian, lithophanic, caravansary, and selenian. They are all legitimate words but words you might not find anyplace else.

Copyright © 2020 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Dickie Manly

Dickie Manly ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp 

Arlene Upjohn sat on the high porch of the old house she shared with her mother, swinging herself gently in the old-fashioned porch swing that belonged to her grandparents. She held a woman’s magazine on her knees and, turning the pages, looked at the pictures and the advertising without much interest. When someone passed on the street in front of the house, she watched them warily to see if it was anybody she knew.

In a little while a young man approached on foot. When Arlene saw him, she felt a little flush of pleasure and interest. One didn’t often see his kind on this street. He wore dark glasses and a dark suit and carried a briefcase.

Arlene watched him without letting him know she was watching him. Surprising her, he approached the porch and, looking up, spoke to her.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said. “I’m a little lost. I’m looking for the Presbyterian church.”

“The what church?”

“Presbyterian.”

“It’s not on this street,” she said. “Keep going for a couple more blocks and then turn to the right when you come to Fulton Street. That’s where the church is.”

“I’m not too far off then.”

“Are you a minister?” she asked.

“Do I look like a minister? I’m a salesman.”

“What do you sell at a church?”

“Books.”

“Books for people to sing songs out of?”

“Something like that.”

She went back to her magazine, thinking the young man would walk on, but he continued to look up at her.

“My name’s Dickie Manly,” he said.

“Well, isn’t that fine!”

“What’s your name?”

“I don’t think my name could possibly be of any concern to you.”

“Why don’t you come down off that porch and let me get a better look at you?”

“I’ll stay where I am, thank you!”

“Can I come up there and sit beside you? I’ve been on my feet all morning and I’m pretty tired.”

“No! Don’t come up! My mother’s in the house! She’s getting ready to go for her doctor’s appointment and she wants me to go with her.”

“Is she sick?”

“That’s why she’s seeing the doctor.”

“Well, could I trouble you for a glass of water? I’m very thirsty.”

“You can have a drink of water if you promise to leave before my mother sees you.”

“All right. I’ll leave.”

“I’ll go inside now and get your water.”

“Might I come inside with you?”

“No! My mother is very particular! I’ll get the water and bring it out here.”

“When you have the glass of water in your hand, will it be all right if I come up the porch steps and take it from you?”

“No, that won’t do! I’ll set the glass on the top step and after I’ve resumed my seat you can come up the steps and get it.”

“Well, if that’s the best you can do.”

“I’ll be right back in just a minute. If you go away before I come back, it’ll be altogether fine with me.”

“I won’t go away. I’ll wait right here.”

Entering the house, she went into the kitchen, filled a clean glass with cool water and took it back out to the porch. When she saw that Dickie Manly was still there, she set the glass on the top step and stepped back.

With a smile, he climbed the eight steps and picked up the glass of water and drank until it was empty.

“Thank you,” he said, setting the glass back down.

“Now, will you please go before my mother comes down from upstairs and sees you?”

“All right. I’ll go. Might I ask you a question first?”

“What is it?”

“What do people do in this town for fun?”

“Stay at home and mind their own business.”

“Hah-hah! You’re really not as hard as you pretend to be! You’re lonely like everybody else. Why don’t you loosen up and have some fun?”

“Look, mister…”

“Dickie.”

“Look, Mr. Dickie, you don’t know anything about me and I’ll thank you to stop pretending you do.”

“You must be thirty years old. I would venture to guess you don’t get asked out on too many dates. You have a lot of lonely evenings at home with mama.”

“How do you know I don’t have a husband and three children?”

“I noticed right away you’re not wearing a wedding ring. That generally means a person isn’t married. I’ve trained myself to notice little details like that.”

“You might do well to mind your own business.”

“For myself, I’m twenty-six. If you’re thirty or thirty-one, I don’t mind a few years’ age difference.”

“I think I hear my mother coming.”

“Will you have dinner with me tonight at my hotel?”

“No! I can’t! You’re a stranger!”

“What’s so bad about that? We’re all strangers until we get to know each other.”

“You’re trying my patience!

“It’s the Edgewater Hotel. Meet me in the lobby at six-thirty and I’ll reserve a table in the restaurant.”

“No! Don’t expect me to be there because I won’t!”

“I’ll bet it’s been a long time since a man asked you out to dinner. Maybe never.”

“I have a boyfriend.”

“No, you don’t!”

“I’ll be spending the evening with my boyfriend, if it’s all the same to you!”

“I know when people are lying.”

“Why would I take the trouble to lie to you?”

“Edgewater Hotel, room three-twenty-six. Dickie Manly’s the name.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Manly.”

“Call me Dickie.”

“I can’t say it’s been a pleasure meeting you because it hasn’t.”

“Until this evening, then.”

“I won’t be there! Plain and simple!”

He bowed from the waist like a viscount and then he was gone.

As Arlene sat and waited in the doctor’s office waiting room for her mother that afternoon, she felt a pang of conscience that she had been so unyielding with Dickie Manly. He was probably a very decent fellow and not at all bad looking. What would be the harm in having dinner with him at his hotel? How many times was she going to be asked out before she was too old to be of interest to anybody?

She was restless all the rest of the day and her mother said she looked “peaked.” She could hardly stand her mother’s incessant chatter about trivialities. She went out into the back yard to be alone, but her mother soon came out, too, wanting polish applied to her fat fingers and toes.

“I want you to drive me to prayer meeting tonight,” her mother said. “We’ll  need to leave at about quarter to seven.”

“Sorry, mother. I have plans. You’ll have to call a cab or get Beulah to come by and pick you up.

“Plans? What plans?”

“My friend Edith Farris and I are going to take in the new movie at the Odeon downtown.”

“I thought you said Edith Farris was in New York.”

“She’s back.”

“Well, isn’t that strange?”

“What’s strange about it?”

“She was on a trip to New York and now suddenly she’s back.”

“Well, you know what people are like. They change their minds pretty fast sometimes.”

“Well, all right! If seeing a movie with a high school friend is more important that doing what your mother wants, then go ahead and see the damned movie!”

“I’ll call Beulah and ask her to come by and pick you up.”

“Don’t bother! I think I can take care of it myself!”

Her mother didn’t speak to her or look at her for the rest of the day.

She changed her clothes and at six o’clock sped off in her mother’s old Chrysler that her mother was no longer able to drive. She arrived at the Edgewater Hotel at twenty minutes after six and went into the lobby and sat down in a conspicuous spot where anybody getting off the elevators would be sure and see her.

At fifteen minutes before seven Dickie Manly hadn’t appeared. She began to worry that possibly he forgot that he invited her to dinner. He had seemed so determined, though, so confident. She was certain he wouldn’t give up so easily.

At five minutes after seven she went to the hotel desk and asked the clerk to ring Dickie Manly’s room, number three-twenty-six.

“Mr. Manly checked out, ma’am,” the clerk said cheerfully.

“Checked out?”

“That’s right.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“Not to me, ma’am.”

She didn’t want to go back home so early, with nothing to show for her evening. She thought about going into the restaurant and ordering dinner alone, but she wasn’t hungry and couldn’t eat. She had to ask herself an important question: What do people do when they feel lonely, disappointed and foolish?

She went into the dark hotel cocktail lounge and took a seat at the bar. She ordered a martini and after she drank it down ordered another one. When she was on her fourth martini, a man came and sat down on the stool beside her. He smiled and offered her a cigarette which she readily accepted.

“Could I buy you a drink?” he asked.

She nodded and the drink was placed on the bar in front of her.

“My name is Cleo Hall,” the man said.

“Happy to meet you,” she said, but didn’t offer her own name.

In ten minutes Cleo Hall was nuzzling against her. He put his hand on her shoulder and when she didn’t object he put his other hand on her upper thigh.

“Would you like to go someplace more…intimate?” he breathed his hot alcohol breath into her ear.

She looked at him and nodded solemnly. Standing up from the stool, a little shakily, she waited for him to disentangle his feet and stand beside her. She took his arm then, like an old acquaintance, and together they walked out of the bar—through the hotel lobby—through the slapping revolving door—and out into the cover of night.

Copyright © 2020 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Maroon and Yellow

Maroon and Yellow ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

Everybody knew Miss Penny. She was the elderly widow who lived in the trim white house on the corner with green window shutters and a pear tree in the front yard. She was frequently seen tending her lawn, walking along the street carrying groceries, or soliciting donations in the neighborhood for a charitable cause or to buy flowers for someone who had died. When she saw any of her neighbors, she always called out to them cheerily and waved and smiled. Everybody loved Miss Penny.

Suffer the little children to come unto me. Miss Penny’s home was something of a haven for the better-behaved, calmer children of the neighborhood. On warm summer evenings, they liked to sit in the glider on Miss Penny’s screened-in porch, sipping Kool-Aid and eating cookies, while she sat in her old-fashioned rocking chair beside her huge fern and listened to them prattle on about school or their families. She smiled and laughed, encouraged them to be themselves, not be sullen and withdrawn. She was like the indulgent grandmother they wished they had. Sometimes she gave them small amounts of money to do little jobs for her, such as sweeping the front walk, putting birdseed out for the birds, or lifting down a box from the top shelf in the closet.

Tippy Kepke lived on the other side of the street, down the block from Miss Penny. She was fourteen years old and lived with her parents and her two manly older brothers. She thought all her teachers in school were bitches or assholes. Her parents were assholes, and she wanted, more than anything, to see her two brothers eat shit and die. She regarded Miss Penny warily and pondered why a woman that old was still allowed to live.

Tippy was unpopular in school, but she knew a way to change all that. She would try out for cheerleader, and if she was lucky enough to be chosen over the other nitwits who tried out, she would be welcomed into the world to which she so fervently aspired: the world of handsome, sleek, well-dressed boys, and pretty girls with perfect hair and skin; the world in which boys would pick her up in their very own cars for Saturday night dates; the world in which she, even she, might be homecoming queen and get her picture in the society column.

She stole a book from the library that told all about cheerleading, with cheerleader routines and yells; pictures of how cheerleaders dressed, how they deported themselves. There were drawings at the back of the book that demonstrated exercises that cheerleaders ought to undertake, because—don’t you know?—a cheerleader needs to be in tiptop physical condition and have winning muscle tone. A cheerleader is a winner and not a whiner. A cheerleader sets an example for the other students in the school, girls and boys alike. A cheerleader excels in all things, at all times. Yes, being a cheerleader is not something to be taken lightly. The cheerleader of today might be the movie star of tomorrow. Anything is possible in the world of the cheerleader.

She began to think of herself as the “cheerleader type.” She tried to do the exercises in the book but she hated any kind of physical exertion and soon became bored and achy. What she was able to do, though, was to pay closer attention to her grooming and appearance. She began washing her hair and face more often and making sure she didn’t have dirt under her fingernails.

The biggest obstacle to not becoming a cheerleader, she believed, was not having the cheerleader outfit with the school colors, maroon and yellow. The outfit consisted of short skirt, long-sleeved blouse, jumper, knee socks, and optional sweater for colder weather. The entire outfit might be purchased at Delaney’s department store for thirty-nine dollars and ninety-five cents: not a lot of money when one considered what it might mean to her future. If she had the outfit, she’d wear it to the tryouts and, surely—if there was a God in heaven—that would give her an edge over the others, even if her cheerleader moves were not all they should be.

She knew it was useless to ask her mother for the money. It would only get her started on one of her boring lectures about how hard money is to earn and to keep after it’s earned. She might steal the money if she knew who she might steal it from.

Then she thought of Miss Penny. She knew that Miss Penny sometimes paid children in the neighborhood money for doing little things for her. She would go to Miss Penny and offer her services for the paltry sum of thirty-nine and ninety-five cents, plus tax. She could work the money out somehow: cleaning house, washing dishes, doing laundry, yard work, or whatever the silly old cow needed.

It was a good plan and she congratulated herself for thinking of it.

The next morning after her mother left for work and her brothers were away doing whatever brothers do, she went to Miss Penny’s front door and knocked timidly. Not getting any answer, she walked all the way around the house a couple of times. Then she tried the back door, found it unlocked, and entered the kitchen without making a sound.

Standing for a moment just inside the door, listening, she heard nothing. Miss Penny must be gone, probably to the store or the beauty parlor, or maybe visiting a neighbor. Maybe she would only be gone for a minute or two. Whatever Tippy was going to do, she had to do it fast before Miss Penny came back and found her. If she could find some money and take it and then leave, that would be perfect. Miss Penny would never know who took it. But where would an old woman keep money in her house? That was the question.

She crept soundlessly through the kitchen and then the dining room into the front room, and there was Miss Penny, asleep on her back on the couch, her chest moving up and down with her breathing. Her right arm was up over her head and her left arm by her side. The television set, to the right of the couch, was on, but with the sound turned so low it could barely be heard.

If Miss Penny woke up at that moment and saw her in her house, she’d scream and jump up and call the police and have a great squawking fit. Tippy couldn’t let that happen. They’d come and take her away in handcuffs and lock her up and she’d never, ever, be cheerleader after a thing like that happened.

She had to act fast. A sound outside scared her. Someone was coming! She felt genuine panic rising inside her, the panic of being found out doing something horrible. She felt faint with confusion and fear. Not knowing what else to do, she ran into the kitchen and grabbed a knife from a knife rack on the counter beside the sink. Gripping the knife so hard it hurt her hand, she ran back into the front room where Miss Penny lay.

A sudden solution occurred to her, as though whispered into her ear. Stab the old bitch to death and take the money out of her purse and get out of the house as quickly as she could! Nobody would ever know she did it. She had hardly known Miss Penny and had never been in her house before. The police would think a burglar or a drifter had done it.

With the first thrust of the knife into her flesh, the old woman woke up, gasped for air, tried to sit up. She opened her eyes and when she saw Tippy and knew what was happening to her, she closed them again quickly, as if on a horrible vision. The life went out of her so fast and so easily!

The deed done, Tippy took the knife back into the kitchen, washed it off with hot water—including the handle—and put it back into its rack along with the other knives.

Miss Penny’s purse was easy to find. It sat on top of the dresser in the bedroom, plain as day. Tippy didn’t even have to look for it. She opened the purse, took out the wallet and inside found two twenties, a ten, and two ones. Fifty-two dollars! Enough to buy the cheerleader outfit and have some left over to buy something else. It had all been easier than she thought it would be.

That evening she was especially kind to her family. She smiled at her brothers and helped her mother with dinner and then, when the meal was over, cleared the table and washed the dishes while the rest of the family watched television.

The next morning she slept late, after a night of untroubled sleep. After a light breakfast, she got dressed and walked downtown to Delaney’s. The day was sunny and fresh and much cooler than it had been. There was a hint of autumn in the breeze.

Delaney’s had the cheerleader outfit in stock, in exactly the right size. Tippy’s heart sang! Finally, good things were going to happen for her. Doors would open that had previously been closed. It was the turning point she had been hoping for.

With the bulky Delaney’s bag containing its treasure gripped tightly in her fingers, she went straight home, without any dawdling. She couldn’t wait to take the bag up to her room, lock herself in, take the things out of the bag, admire them one by one and try them on in front of the mirror.

When she got home, she went into the house by the back door, as she usually did. She couldn’t have seen the police cars parked at the curb.

Her mother was standing in the living room. When she heard Tippy entering from the kitchen, she turned and looked in her direction, her face pale and stricken. She took the Delaney’s bag from Tippy’s hands as if not really seeing it and gestured to the two police officers standing a few feet away. Tippy hadn’t seen them at first. She showed by the look on her face that she knew why they were there and what it was going to mean to her future.

Copyright © 2020 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Maltese Falcon ~ A Capsule Book Review

The Maltese Falcon ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

In 1930 San Francisco—that city of hills and fog by the bay—Brigid O’Shaughnessy (if that’s really her name) believes she is in danger and goes to detective Samuel L. Spade to protect her. She’s young and attractive, as you might expect, and Sam Spade knows his way around with the dames. She tells him a story that’s all lies, but it doesn’t matter very much to Sam because she pays him well and he’d like to get to know her better, if you know what I mean.

The truth is, as Sam Spade learns later, the lovely Miss O’Shaughnessy has fallen in with a band of cutthroats and thieves, and she might be the worst of the lot. (“I’ve been bad, Sam,” she says. “Worse than you know.”) Among those posing a threat to her, we have Casper Gutman, the genial fat man who is so corpulent he seems to be made of bubbles strung together. Then there’s Joel Cairo, an effeminate “Levantine” (a person from the area of Turkey or Egypt) who is sweet on Casper Gutman’s gun-wielding psycho named Wilmer.

Brigid O’Shaughnessy, Casper Gutman, and Joel Cairo all want the Maltese Falcon so badly they will kill for it, or do whatever it takes to possess it. Just what is the Maltese Falcon? It’s a foot-high statuette that has been kicking around since the sixteenth century. It’s laden with precious stones, incalculably valuable, and has been covered over with a thick layer of black varnish to disguise what it really is from those who covet it. The falcon was originally intended, all those centuries ago, as a tribute to the King of Spain from a wealthy order of knights, but the King of Spain never received it, and it has subsequently been bandied about from owner to owner in all that time.

So, Sam Spade the detective is drawn into this knotted web of intrigue because Casper Gutman promises him a wad of money if he can deliver the falcon into his (Gutman’s) hands, but also because Brigid O’Shaughnessy is such a tasty dish of femaleness. Has Spade taken on more than he can handle in dealing with these desperate characters? Will he get the money promised him? Will he get the girl? Will the desperate characters get what they want and play nice and go away when it’s all over? Don’t count on it.

Dashielle Hammett, American novelist, lived from 1894 to 1961. The Maltese Falcon is his most famous and best-known work. It is the detective story that has served as the model for detective stories ever since it was first published in 1930. It is so highly regarded  that it’s number 56 on the Modern Library’s list of the Hundred Greatest Books in English of the Twentieth Century. The 1941 movie version, with Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor, is a perfect example of how a movie should be made from a book. Sydney Greenstreet as Casper Gutman is cinematic perfection, along with bug-eyed Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo. They’ll kill you if you keep them from getting what they want or, at the very least, slip you a mickey, from which you’ll wake up on the floor in twelve hours or so.

Copyright 2020 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Spiritus

Spiritus ~ A Ghost Story by Allen Kopp 

(This is a re-post. It has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

My name is Igor Dillingham. In 1893 I was twenty-one years of age. I was twenty-one then and I’m twenty-one now. Twenty-one I shall always be. Every time I look at myself in a mirror, I see my twenty-one-year-old self looking back at me. I will never be forty or sixty or eighty, but always the same as I am now, for I am dead and I dwell in the spirit world.  

A lot of years have gone by, I know, although time, the passage of years, means nothing to me. I still dwell in our old house. The house, old as it is, is also big. I forget exactly how many rooms there are in it but, since I am the only one left, all the rooms belong to me. The house, I was told, was built a long time ago by a rich man with many children. All of the original family are gone—I’ve never met any of them—and I have never encountered any of them in the spirit world. They have all moved on, as the saying goes.

Now the house is falling down in places. The paint is all gone, the wood is old, ugly and gray, the roof has holes in it; mice, bats and spiders are my eternal companions. I hear, always, the flutter of wings above my head as birds nest in the attic. Some of the windows are broken out, but it makes no difference to me because I am a spirit and spirits don’t mind the cold wind and rain.       

Sometimes I go out of the house, but the truth is I have no place to go. On occasion, just to prove to myself that I still can, I go outside and travel a mile or two in any direction. In these little forays out into the world, I never see a living person but only wild animals and birds, which is altogether fine with me. Animals, even if they can’t see me, sense that I’m there and are not afraid.

The road that leads down to our house was washed out in a flood forty years ago. Nobody bothered to build the road back. Even if people could get down here, they have no reason to do so. It is a place completely shut off from the world and forgotten. I think isolated is the word. If I saw a living person who wasn’t a spirit, like me, I wouldn’t know what to do. I suppose I’d run and hide and make sure I gave him good enough reason to want to leave.  

In my aloneness, I am sometimes reminded of the people I once knew when I was alive. I had a sister, Sobriety, and a brother, Claxon. Sobriety had an enormous head; she was what’s known as hydrocephalic. She stayed in a crib in an upstairs room most of the time, tended only by a mute servant that mother employed. I used to go into her room to visit her and try her to keep from feeling lonely, but I’m not sure if she ever knew I was even there. Mother sold her to a traveling freak show when she was about twelve years old for fifty dollars. After the freak show people took her away, I never saw her again. I don’t know what ever became of her but I hope one day I will meet her in the spirit world and rejoice to see that she is cured of her affliction.

My brother Claxon was covered with a scaly growth all over his body that made him look like a human frog. He never spoke in words but he made croaking sounds and he knew how to laugh. He was my closest friend; he and I communicated without words in the way of brothers. One day he made the mistake of defying mother in a very bad place—at the top of the stairs. She rushed him and pushed him. He fell all the way to the bottom of the stairs and broke his neck. He died later the same day. She didn’t want anybody to know what she had done, so she buried him in the hog yard out back before anybody had a chance to ask any questions. I nailed together a small cross and put it over the place where I thought he was buried, but the hogs trampled it into the mud.

Claxon wasn’t the first person mother killed, nor would he be the last. When I was six years old, she poisoned the man who was my father, or the man I believed was my father. She claimed he became sick in the night of unknown causes and was dead by the rising of the sun. She collected on his life insurance and become a modestly wealthy woman. That’s when she realized how profitable death could be for her.

She soon married another man with whom she had been communicating through a lonely hearts club. After six months of marriage, she murdered him by dropping a meat grinder on his head and claiming it was an accident. He didn’t have life insurance, but he had over a thousand dollars in a bank account and a small horde of silver coins, all of which became hers as his grieving widow.

About the time mother killed her second husband, she hired an itinerant worker to do small jobs for her. She had him tend the garden, paint the barn and mend the fence before she took him into her bed. He was her plaything for a few weeks, until he became tiresome to her and then she poisoned him—making certain first, however, that he had no relations who might come looking for him later. 

There were others after that. She placed an ad in a newspaper in the city for single gentlemen who might be interested in the pastoral life on a lush farm away from the hustle-bustle of the city. With a small investment of a thousand dollars, they might “buy into” a growing enterprise that had unlimited potential for growth and profit.

I don’t know how many “gentlemen” mother lured away from the city and killed, but I do know our hog yard out behind the barn became quite crowded with rotting corpses, while the wad of cash she kept hidden underneath the floorboards in her bedroom grew ever larger.    

I was the only living witness to mother’s depredations, but she thought I was too stupid to see anything, to know anything. From the time I was eight years old, I began writing everything down: names and ages of the people who ended up in the hog yard, where they came from, physical characteristics (bald, wears glasses, speaks with a stutter, speaks with an accent, missing fingers on right hand), how much money they brought to the “enterprise” and anything else I could see that set each one apart from the others. I also added to the record the details of how she sold Sobriety to a traveling freak show for fifty dollars and how she pushed Claxon down the stairs and broke his neck. I spared none of the distasteful details.

By the time I was a grown man, I had filled an entire notebook with these observations. If mother killed me, as I was certain she would one day, I hoped that my notebook would end up in the proper hands and justice would be served.  

She was gone for three days and didn’t tell me where she was going. When she came back, she had a new husband, a man named Jules DuFray. He was slick, well-dressed, the opposite of a farming man; he wore suits instead of overalls, even all the way out here where nobody ever saw him. I don’t know whatever possessed him to want to marry a pizzle-faced old harridan like my mother, but there you have it. She had always had a way with men. There’s no accounting for tastes, I suppose.

For several days I stayed out of mother’s way, keeping to myself in my room or in the woods. She and her new husband spent most of their time in mother’s bedroom with the door closed. When I passed by in the hallway, I could hear them grunting, breathing,  groaning. When we all sat down to dinner (cooked by a moronic “serving girl” that mother hired with one of her newspaper ads), mother was polite and subdued, almost as if she had been drugged. I knew she was putting on an act for her new husband, while all the time hatching some scheme in her head that would bring her enough money to live like the queen she imagined herself to be.

When I saw the cans of kerosene she had stored under the stairs, I knew that her plans involved burning the house—with me in it, of course—and then collecting on the insurance. She would make it look so convincingly like an accident that she would fool anybody who needed fooling.

I was afraid to go to bed and go to sleep, afraid that I would wake up and the house would be burning and it would be too late for me to get out. I sat in a chair in my room, fully clothed, dozing lightly, clutching my notebook, ready to escape the house at the first sign of smoke or fire.

Finally I could stand it no longer, this waiting for mother to kill me, waiting for the house to go up in flames. One morning I set out on the road for the nearest town, over ten miles away, to deliver my notebook to a man of the law, a person of authority who could set about bringing mother’s killing to an end.

I hitched rides part of the way, so I came to the town of Wadsworth by noontime. I asked an old man sweeping the sidewalk in front of a store where I might find the sheriff. He told me what I needed to know and in a half-hour I was sitting across a desk from an old man wearing a badge. I gave him my notebook and told him my fantastic story, or as much of it as I could get out without crying. He listened to me with unremitting seriousness and told me he would read every word of what I had written and look into my allegations as soon as time permitted. He gave me some water and some jailhouse food and, after I had rested for a while, I began the long walk back home.

Mother was waiting for me. She somehow knew where I had been and who I had been talking to. Without a word, she split my head with an ax and then hit me with a cane until I was dead as I lay on the floor. I felt my spirit leave my body and go up through the ceilings and floors of the house to the attic. It is here I have been ever since.

Mother and her new husband Jules DuFray got away before the sheriff and his men arrived. I don’t know where they went, but my mother, true to her fashion, disappeared as completely as if she had never existed. I’d like to think that she somehow, somewhere, met justice, but I’m more inclined to believe she just transferred her activities to another location.

I stood at the attic window and watched the men exhume the thirty or so bodies from the hog yard. When they were all finished collecting bodies and collecting evidence from the house, they put a heavy padlock on the front door and left. They didn’t know I was still here, and if they had known they wouldn’t have cared. I was as nothing, a tiny puff of air that disappears as soon as you see it.  

Copyright © 2020 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Postman Always Rings Twice ~ A Capsule Book Review

The Postman Always Rings Twice ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

James M. Cain was an American author who lived from 1892 to 1977. His 1934 crime novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, is an ironic and steamy (for its time) story of adultery and murder set in a California roadside restaurant. Even though it’s a “genre” novel, it’s ranked number 98 on the Modern Library’s list of the hundred greatest books in English of the twentieth century.

Cora Smith is a self-described “cheap trollop from Des Moines.” She goes to California seeking movie stardom, but when the movies don’t quite work out for her, she marries an older man, an unattractive Greek named Nick Papadakis, who she describes as “smelly and greasy.” Even though Nick doesn’t make Cora’s pulse race, he can provide her with some security, a job and a home. He owns his own business, a thriving roadside diner called Twin Oaks. Cora can work out her life slaving away there, cooking and slinging hash.

Along comes a drifter by the name of Frank Chambers. He is narrating the story in his first-person voice. Frank sees right away that Cora is unhappy; the two of them begin a clandestine love affair. Cora tells Nick she is desperate; she wants out of her marriage with Nick, but if she leaves, where will she go? They decide they will kill Nick and make it look like an accident. With Nick dead, the two of them will be free to sell Twin Oaks and take the money and go away together somewhere.

Frank and Cora plot to kill Nick in the bathtub. Frank will hit him in the head while he’s taking a bath; he’ll go under and drown; it will look like an accident, except that when the time comes it doesn’t go off as planned and Nick is injured. Frank and Cora are badly shaken, spooked at how close they came to committing the crime of murder and being found out. They are relieved that Nick will live and happy that he has to spend a week convalescing in the hospital, giving the two of them the chance to sleep together in the same bed while he’s away.

When Nick returns to Twin Oaks from the hospital, he realizes he has had a brush with death and is once again ready to embrace life to the fullest. He wants Cora to have to baby. In the funniest line in the book, Cora says: “I can’t have no greasy Greek child, Frank.” Murder is back on the table.

The second attempt to kill Nick is successful. This time, it’s an elaborately staged auto accident on a mountain road. Nick dies, but Frank is (unexpectedly) severely injured. When a canny prosecutor learns the facts of the case, he sees through Frank and Cora’s story that it was all an accident and knows that they killed the Greek. He makes Frank and Cora turn on each other.

There are a couple more ingenious plot twists but, suffice it to say, things do not go well for Frank and Cora. There is no happy ending in the noir world they inhabit.

The Postman Always Rings Twice is a slice of Americana, a small literary gem from the 1930s. (Never mind that it was naughty enough to be banned in Boston.) The book translated well to the screen in a movie adaption from 1946, with Lana Turner and John Garfield thoroughly believable as murderous lovers.

Copyright © 2020 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Brideshead Revisited ~ A Capsule Book Review

Brideshead Revisited ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) was one of the most celebrated English novelists of the twentieth century. His (yes, he was a man) 1945 novel, Brideshead Revisited, is number 80 on the Modern Library’s list of the hundred greatest books in English of the twentieth century.

The novel is narrated in the first-person voice of the fictional Captain Charles Ryder. (The subtitle is The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder.) The action extends over a period of about twenty years, from the early 1920s to the early 1940s. As a college student at Oxford in the 1920s, Charles meets fellow student Lord Sebastian Flyte. The two of them become inseparable friends and Charles’s life is changed forever. (It’s always convenient to have a wealthy friend when you yourself come from a family of modest means.)

Charles eventually goes to Sebastian’s home with him, a palatial mansion called Brideshead Castle, and meets his aristocratic family: two sisters, Julia and Cordelia, and an odd older brother named Brideshead, whom they call “Bridey” for short. Charles sees at once that Sebastian and his sister Julia are very much alike, to the point that she almost seems a “female Sebastian.” (This sets up an interesting dynamic with the three of them, especially later in the book when Charles believes he is in love with Julia.)

Sebastian’s mother, Lady Marchmain, lives at Brideshead Castle, but his father, Lord Marchmain, lives elsewhere with a mistress named Cara. Everybody knows that Lord Marchmain despises his wife, but there will be no divorce because they are Catholic. (The question of religion, being a devout Catholic versus being a non-believer, becomes a prominent theme throughout the novel.)

Sebastian’s family, in effect, becomes Charles’s family. Sebastian becomes more and more estranged from his family and descends into alcoholism, while his family members, especially his two sisters and his mother, come to rely on Charles and confide in him. They all do everything they can to curb Sebastian’s drinking, but he is a dedicated alcoholic and nothing they can do will help. He goes to Morocco or some such exotic locale and lives the life of a bum with a male German friend who has a “wound that won’t heal.”

Charles, meanwhile, drifts away from the Flyte family. He marries a woman he doesn’t much like—she cheats on him, he cheats on her—they have two children, and he becomes an architectural painter. He spends several years in South America, painting and documenting the architectural splendors there, and when he comes back, it’s ten years later and he is he is now twenty-nine years old. He has a reunion with the Flyte family and, because he has an unhappy marriage, believes he wants to marry Julia, Sebastian’s sister, whereas before he didn’t like her very much. The insurmountable obstacle to their happiness is religion: Julia is a devout Catholic and Charles a non-believer. They decide they won’t marry after all.

So, ten years farther along, Charles is thirty-nine years old, alone (no wife), lonely, disillusioned and unhappy. It’s the early 1940s, and World War II is raging. As a captain in the British army, he once again finds himself back at Brideshead Castle. The army has requisitioned it as a base of operations for fighting the Germans. When he sees Brideshead Castle again, in altogether different circumstances from when he was a younger man, the happy and bitter memories of the past come flooding back to him.

Copyright © 2020 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Don’t Wait Up

Don’t Wait Up ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

On a beautiful Friday evening in October, nobody under the age of twenty wanted to stay at home and listen to Jack Benny on the radio. Ruby Leftridge arranged to meet her friend Marcella Rogers on the corner by the cemetery. They were going to walk downtown to see the horror double feature at the Odeon Theatre.

“I don’t want you to go!” Ruby’s mother said. “There’s a crazed killer on the loose killing people! He strangles women!”

“Nobody’s going to strangle me, mother!” Ruby said. “You can’t let your life be ruled by fear. I’ll be fine. I won’t be alone. I’ll be with Marcella the whole time.”

“And what could she do for you?”

“She can scream really loud!”

“You always have to make a joke out of everything, don’t you?”

“Not always, but usually.”

“I don’t want two uniformed officers to wake me up late tonight with the sad news that my daughter has been murdered!”

“You won’t! I’ll be home about eleven. Don’t wait up!”

Ruby had known Marcella Rogers since sixth grade. She was a tall girl who sometimes seemed all knees and elbows. She saw herself as a great beauty. She had a receding chin and an unflattering mane of hair that she barely kept clean. She was twenty years old and worked as a typist in a real estate office full of men. She was always imagining the men in her office were in love with her and would leave their wives if only she gave them a little encouragement.

“Did you hear about the killer on the loose?” Marcella asked.

“Yes,” Ruby said.

“Isn’t it thrilling?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It scares all the old ladies, including my mother.”

“I think it’s tremendously exciting to have a maniac on the loose,” Marcella said.

“I hope they catch him soon,” Ruby said.

“Why? Are you afraid?”

“No. I don’t think it’s my destiny to die at the hands of a strangler.”

“Well, you never know. I wonder if he’s good-looking!”

“Who?”

“The strangler, silly!

“As long as he’s killing people, I don’t think it matters whether he’s good-looking or not. He can be an absolute perfect specimen of manhood and they’ll still fry his carcass in the electric chair. He’ll make a handsome corpse, as if anybody will be paying attention to the way he looks.”

“Oh, Ruby! You have no romance in your soul!”

“Not when it comes to cold, sadistic killers, I don’t.”

“You don’t know anything about him. Maybe he’s just misunderstood.”

“We’re all misunderstood but we don’t go around murdering people.”

“Say, I want to tell you about this new man in our office,” Marcella said. “His name is Jake something or other. I haven’t spoken one word to him yet, but I feel a sort of connection with him. I’ll be sitting at my desk working and I’ll look up and he’ll be looking at me from across the room. He can’t seem to take his eyes off me.”

“He’s probably the strangler and he’s planning on making you his next victim,” Ruby said.

“He is so good-looking and he has the most beautiful eyes! I’m hoping he’ll ask me out on a date.”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“Oh, Ruby! I could never do anything so forward!”

“Send him a love note the way we used to do in junior high school.”

“Now you’re being silly.”

In two more blocks they came to the Odeon, its marquee of a thousand lights that welcomed all comers to step in out of the darkness and escape in a cinematographic dream.

“I wonder if I’ll see anybody here tonight I know,” Marcella said, as they took their place in line.

“You’d better not go off with one of your cute boys and leave me to walk home by myself at eleven o’clock. If you do that, our friendship is over!”

“Oh, honey, I would never do that!

After they bought their tickets, they went inside and stood in line at the refreshment stand to buy popcorn and sodas.

“It’s really crowded tonight!” Marcella said. “Hey, you! I want a large popcorn with extra butter and a large Coke!”

Most of the good seats were taken, so they sat close to the screen to get away from the rowdy high-schoolers who whistled and stamped their feet and threw popcorn.

The lights went down and the audience grew quiet. For the next three hours they would be drawn into the fabulous black-and-white fantasy world so far removed from real life. The first feature cast its spell and when it finished the second feature began after a five-minute interval.

When the show was over and Ruby and Marcella were filing out with the crowd, Marcella said, “There wasn’t a single person here I knew tonight.”

“You knew me,” Ruby said.

“Of course, dear,” Marcella said. “I wasn’t talking about you.”

“Well, after that horror extravaganza, are you ready to go home?”

“Let’s walk slow. The wind is blowing the leaves so beautifully.”

Three blocks past the movie theatre, the streetlights were farther apart; the streets were dark and deserted. They met a dark figure walking toward them, but he walked past without seeming to notice them.

“That might have been the strangler,” Marcella said.

“If it was, he wasn’t interested in us,” Ruby said.

“Don’t horror movies make you a little afraid to go upstairs by yourself with no lights on?” Marcella asked.

“Horror movies are just make-believe.”

“Well, I guess it’s kind of fun to be scared,” Marcella said, “as long as you know it’s not going to hurt you. In ninth grade, we used go into the cemetery at midnight without a flashlight and try not to scream. The first person to scream had to buy the next pack of ciggies.”

“My mother would never let me go out at midnight,” Ruby said.

“Mine, either, but I did anyway. I climbed out the window after she went to bed.”

“If my mother thought I was smoking, she would have killed me.”

“Mine too. Ever hear of Sen-Sen?”

“Yeah, it tastes worse than the cigarettes.”

“You’ve smoked?”

“Once or twice. I’d never take it up as a regular habit.”

“Well, I think it’s fun to smoke,” Marcella said. “It makes you feel sophisticated. Do you have any cigarettes on you?”

“No, do you?”

“No, I smoked my last one at the office this afternoon.”

“When did you take up smoking?”

“Oh, ages ago! I smoked all the way back in high school.”

“I never knew it.”

“Say, did you notice that boy taking the tickets when we went in tonight? He was awfully good-looking. I’ve seen him before. When I handed him my ticket, his hand touched mine and I felt an electric current pass between us.”

“He might be the strangler.”

“Oh, honey! You can’t believe that every man you see is the strangler!”

“Isn’t that what we’re supposed to think to protect ourselves?”

“The strangler is probably far away from here by now, in another state. Maybe ‘he’ is a ‘she’.”

“Did you ever hear of a woman strangling other women?”

“No, but I’ll bet it’s happened before.”

“That would really surprise people!”

“Yeah, what fun!”

They came to the corner by the cemetery.

“Well, I guess it’s time to go home,” Marcella said. “I hope my mother has gone to bed so I don’t have to listen to any more of her nagging.”

“It’s been fun,” Ruby said. “We’ll have to do it again sometime.”

“Surest thing you know!”

“Don’t let the strangler get you!”

“Not a chance!”

They parted there, Ruby going in one direction and Marcella in another.

In the three blocks she had to walk to get home, Ruby saw no one. A dog barked at her and a car passed, blinding her with its headlights, but all was quiet except for the wind in the trees.

Her mother had left a light on for her downstairs and gone to bed. She went into the kitchen and made sure the back door was locked and then she went upstairs and went to bed.

She went to sleep right away and slept soundly. She was in a deep sleep when her mother came into her bedroom and woke her up after three o’clock.

“Marcella’s mother is on the phone,” she said. “She wants to talk to you.”

The voice sounded remote and far away when it said, “Marcella didn’t come home last night.”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Eunice Rogers, Marcella’s mother. I thought maybe she decided to spend the night at your house.”

“No, she’s not here. I left her on the corner about eleven o’clock and came home. That was the last I saw of her.”

“Did she say where she was going after you left her?”

“She didn’t say, but I’m sure she meant to go home.”

“I’m worried.”

“Have you called the police?”

“No, I wanted to check with you first.”

“I’m sure she’s all right.”

“I’m not sure. This is so unlike her.”

“If I can do anything to help, let me know.”

“Thank you, dear, and if you hear from Marcella, will you call me?”

“Of course I will!”

Ruby didn’t sleep any more that night. She was sure something terrible had happened. If Marcella had been going someplace else after they parted, she would have mentioned it.

Two grim-faced police officers came in the morning and questioned Ruby in her bathrobe. She told them everything, about the two of them walking to the movies and then walking home, but she knew she wasn’t able to add anything they didn’t already know.

Marcella’s body was found in a ditch alongside the highway a mile or so out of town late the next day. She had been strangled with a two-foot length of rope. Police were investigating but had few leads.

After Marcella, everybody was waiting for the next strangulation. If it could happen to a girl like her, who would be next? People were afraid to go out at night and talked of little else. There were neighborhood watches and vigilantes roaming the streets with guns.

The strangler never struck again and was never apprehended. People speculated about what happened to him. Did he go away to continue his killing in some other location? Did he decide he had killed enough and didn’t need to do it anymore? Was he alive or was he dead? Was he somebody who people saw everyday shopping and paying his bills and going about his business in town? The possibilities were almost limitless.

Copyright © 2020 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

A Passage to India ~ A Capsule Book Review

A Passage to India ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

E. M. Forster’s 1925 novel, A Passage to India, is number 25 on the Modern Library’s list of the hundred greatest fiction books in English of the twentieth century. It is set in Chandrapour, India, in the 1920s, during the English occupation of India. As one might expect, India was eager to be free of English domination and declare its independence, which it eventually did.

Adela Quested is an English lady in her thirties who travels to India with an older woman, a widow named Mrs. Moore. Miss Quested is described as plain and physically unattractive. She is the nervous type, inclined to hysteria. She goes to India with the intention of marrying (maybe not) Mrs. Moore’s son, a British government official named Ronny Heaslop. Ronny is very British, lacking in warmth and spontaneity. He follows all the rules assiduously and is overly concerned with “appearances.” (A union between Adela and Ronny sounds like a recipe for misery.)

In India, Adela and Mrs. Moore meet Cyril Fielding and Dr. Aziz. Cyril Fielding is principal at a government-run English school. He is 45 years old and is cynical about the world, but especially cynical about the English occupation of India; he doesn’t like the way most English people treat the native Indians. Dr. Aziz is a young Moslem doctor (most Indians are Hindu), a widower with three small children. He lives modestly in a rundown bungalow because he sends most of his money home for the care of his children (they live with their grandmother). He and Cyril Fielding are good friends.

Having made the acquaintance of this small group of English people, Dr. Aziz wants to treat them to a picnic at the famous Marabar caves. At great expense, he arranges the food and train transport, and sees to all the details of the outing, including elephant transport from the train to the site of the picnic. After seeing one of the caves, Mrs. Moore becomes tired and decides to rest in the shade while the others see the other caves. That leaves Adela and Dr. Aziz alone in the caves, along with the guide.

A little while later, Adela runs out of the caves, disheveled and hysterical. She claims that Dr. Aziz assaulted and attacked (insulted or violated her) her in the caves, the details of which remain vague (not exactly attempted rape, but something less). This sets the stage for an ugly legal battle between the British and the native Indians, bringing to a boil all the ugly racial tensions that exist between the races. The English naturally believe in Dr. Aziz’s guilt, while his Indian friends all stand beside him and maintain his innocence. Alone among the English, Cyril Fielding believes in Dr. Aziz’s innocence.

A sensational trial follows, during which conflicting testimony is given. The question becomes one, not of guilt or innocence, but of racial allegiance: Who are you going to believe, based, not on the evidence brought out in the trial, but on the race of the two principal parties involved?

A Passage to India is a great classic novel that has stood the test of time. It is still relevant today, not at all dated or stale, nearly a hundred years after its publication. It’s a book I first read many years ago and find it well worth another look. The excellent 1985 movie version directed by David Lean captures the essence and the nuances of the novel.

Copyright © 2020 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997