~ Wishing Will Make It So, Part 2 ~
(A Short Story by Allen Kopp)
Part 2 of my short story “Wishing Will Make It So” published in the current issue of Circus Book. Click on this link:
https://circusbook.org/2015/allen-kopp-wishing-will-make-it-so-2/
~ Wishing Will Make It So, Part 1 ~
(A Short Story by Allen Kopp)
Part 1 of my short story “Wishing Will Make It So” published in the current issue of Circus Book. Click on this link:
https://circusbook.org/2015/allen-kopp-wishing-will-make-it-so-1/
The Yack-Yack Club ~ by Allen Kopp
When you’re making your way home in rush-hour traffic after a demoralizing day at the office, it’s scary to think that as many as twenty to thirty percent of drivers on the road are yapping or texting on cell phones. They don’t signal when they should and their driving is erratic, at best. Not only are they jeopardizing their own life and limb, but they are also jeopardizing yours. There are statistics about traffic accidents caused by driver inattention, but how many of those are caused by driver inattention due to cell phone use?
People like me who are not addicted to cell phones don’t understand the attraction. I have a cell phone that I use only for emergencies, and I hate it. I have never sent or received a text message because I have no desire to do so. I can be reached on the phone when I’m at home, but when I’m out somewhere there is nobody in the world I care to talk to. Being away from home means I cannot be reached by phone and I don’t want to be bothered. Leave a message and I’ll call you back when I get home if I feel like it.
Like it or not, I’ve seen advanced cases of cell phone addiction. On the first day of a new job, when I was introduced to a woman who was to be my co-worker, she was yacking on the cell phone and couldn’t put it down long enough to meet me. She yacked on her cell phone almost the entire time I knew her. She told me she never turned her cell phone off, even when she was sleeping, meaning that she was available to receive callers, not only during the day, but also all night long. When we flew on a business trip, she was indignant that airline safety regulations required that her cell phone be turned off. She turned it back on the first second she was allowed to—you could see the relief written all over her. Just think of the important calls that came in when she was thirty-five thousand feet in the air!
And then there are the people who wear the cell phone in their ear all the time, without having to hold it in their hands. When you’re at the mall or in some other public place and someone comes near you and says something, you think, wrongly, that they are talking to you. What they are doing is merrily pretending you don’t exist while regaling you with their idiotic cell phone banter in a very loud voice. (“Well, I’m at the mall. Where the f**k do you think I’m at? Don’t you remember I said I was going to the f**kin’ mall? Well, where the f**k are you at? Well, what the f**k are you doing there? Don’t you remember you were supposed to…”) Did they forget their manners, or did they just not have any manners to begin with?
Speaking of bad manners, what about the person you’re having lunch with who drags out his cell phone and gets or receives a call right after placing the order with the waiter? Does he think I came out to lunch with him to sit silently while I listen to his inane conversation with his ex-wife or his teenage son? I might as well be back at my desk listening to the fluorescent light hum above my head.
I’ve heard people yapping into cell phones in public places in Chinese or other foreign languages. I’ve heard people yapping into cell phones at five-thirty in the morning when I’m lucky to be able to put one foot in front of the other. I’ve seen a woman bring out a cell phone at the movie theatre during a very loud movie and talk over the movie. I’ve seen people who can’t leave their cell phones alone long enough to have their kidney stones irradiated, vote, or renew their driver’s license. I’ve seen a woman talking into a cell phone while eating a salad and nursing a baby at the same time. I’ve seen people on roller skates talking on cell phones. (If alien intelligences are picking up all the cell phone jibber-jabber from earth, they will conclude that the planet does not have intelligent life on it as previously thought.) I sometimes wonder what all those people are saying and who they are talking to. All I know for sure is they are not talking to me.
Copyright © 2015 by Allen Kopp
Funeral Rites ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp
Funeral Rites by Jean Genet (1910-1986) is set in France at the end of World War II when France was ridding itself of German occupation. There were some French people, mostly teen boys and men in their early twenties, who collaborated with the Germans against their own country. They positioned themselves on rooftops and functioned as snipers, shooting at Frenchman who were fighting for, or loyal to, France. These collaborators were naturally hated by the French.
Jean G. is narrating Funeral Rites. He confusedly switches from third person to first person and back again, so we don’t always know who’s who. He also switches back and forth in time, so he eschews the structure of the “traditional” novel. His twenty-year-old lover, Jean Decarnin, has been killed by one of the Frenchman who was acting as a German collaborator. Jean G.’s grief at the loss of Jean Decarnin drives the narrative. He sees a newsreel that shows a young French collaborator who is caught and the punishment that is meted out to him. Jean G. “imagines” the collaborator’s name is Riton. He is seventeen years old and, in Jean G.’s words, he is “beautiful.” Thereupon, the story (what there is of it) is about Riton and the young German invader, Erik Seiler, with whom Riton becomes infatuated. It seems at times that Riton and Jean G. are one and the same.) Riton claims to love Erik, even though Erik is the invader, the rapist, the occupier, the oppressor. (Genet constantly reverts to the theme of how sex and death are intertwined.) Erik is also the lover of Jean Decarnin’s mother, a silly Frenchwoman who doesn’t seem to care that she is consorting with the enemy. She doesn’t care very much that her son has been killed, either.
Jean Genet was born without a father to a prostitute, who gave him up for adoption when he was a few months old. Early in his life, until he turned to writing, he was a vagrant and petty criminal and spent much of his time behind bars. Funeral Rites is partly autobiographical and reflects Genet’s nontraditional approach to life. He is now considered a giant of twentieth century French literature. His other important works include Our Lady of the Flowers, Querelle and The Thief’s Journal.
Funeral Rites was first published in 1947 and wasn’t translated into English until 1953. At 256 pages, it’s challenging to read but not overly difficult, as long as you’re not bothered too much by the nonlinear structure. It’s often distasteful, as in the episode with the cat, but also has some flashes of humor, as when Jean Decarnin’s “stout” mother releases her bodily “wind” into the air of her boudoir. Most readers will find the sexual content (between men) mild by today’s standards. If you were going to be offended by that, you wouldn’t be reading this book anyway.
Copyright © 2015 by Allen Kopp
In the Fullness of His Years ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp
A man named Cyril Johns, age seventy-eight, lived in the basement apartment of an eighteen-story apartment building. He once was the janitor of the building but had been forced to stop working because of his age. Upon his retirement, the owner of the building gave him a deluxe television set and allowed him to keep his basement apartment for a nominal rent. He had, of course, to turn over all his tools and keys to the man hired to replace him.
He used to have lots of friends, people to help pass the time and make the day brighter, but just about everybody he knew had died or moved out of the neighborhood. He no longer had anybody to play cards with or talk over the baseball scores or how the fools in Washington were messing up the country. The TV droned on, but he ignored it.
The new people were a speeded-up version of the old ones. They were mostly young, with lots of small children. They would sooner knock a person down than wait for him to get out of the way. The young mothers eyed him in a funny way, he thought, as if he had it in mind to grab one of their screaming brats and gut it like a catfish. They had never been taught to show respect for an old person.
Patsy Ruth was different. She smiled at him, spoke to him, asked him how he was. She didn’t mind when he touched her frail-looking little boy, named Frankie, on the face or picked him up and held him in his arms. She didn’t have a dirty mind like the others. She knew he meant no harm.
When they finally had a chance to speak, Patsy Ruth told him she had grown up on a farm.
“That’s why you’re not like the others,” he said.
“I’m having a hard time adjusting to this place,” she said. “I’ve never lived in the city before.”
“If I can ever be of any help,” he said. “I’ve lived here my whole life.”
She was afraid to ride downtown on the bus with Frankie alone. She asked Cyril if he would go with them the first time and then afterward she wouldn’t be afraid.
“I’ll pay you for your time,” she said.
“You’ll do nothing of the kind.”
They took Frankie for his doctor’s appointment and afterwards had lunch at a nearby café.
“It was good of you to come with me,” Patsy Ruth said. “I hate being such a baby.”
“What’s wrong with the little fellow, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“He was born at seven months. He’s always had weak lungs.”
“Won’t he outgrow it?”
“That’s my hope, but we don’t know yet. He might be sick his whole life.”
Knowing his mother was talking about him, Frankie looked at her with his bright, inquisitive eyes. “When I’m five I can go to school,” he said solemnly.
“So, you want to go to school?” Cyril asked.
“Sure,” Frankie said. “I want to learn how to read.”
“He sees the other kids playing,” Patsy Ruth said. “He wants to join in but they’re twice his size and I’m afraid they’d hurt him.”
“They wouldn’t hurt me, mother.”
“When you’re older, you can play with the bigger kids.”
“Because I’ll be bigger myself.”
When they left the café, Cyril insisted on picking up the tab.
“I should be buying your lunch,” Patsy Ruth said.
“I get a check in the mail every month that I don’t have to work for,” he said. “I have more than I need.”
For five days after the doctor’s visit he didn’t see Patsy Ruth or Frankie in the courtyard and began to be worried that something was wrong. He coaxed the manager with a five-dollar-bill to give him Patsy Ruth’s apartment number.
He took the creaking elevator up to the fourteenth floor and found the apartment. He knocked and Patsy Ruth opened the door only as far as the chain would allow. When she saw it was him, she unfastened the chain.
“I thought it might be you,” she said, smiling.
“I didn’t think you’d mind if I came by to see how you were doing.”
“Of course not. Come in.”
She moved some stuff off the couch to make a place for him to sit. “Sorry the place is still such a mess,” she said. “We’re still getting settled, deciding where to put things.”
“When I didn’t see you for a few days, I thought maybe the tyke wasn’t doing very well.”
“No, the tyke is fine. We’ve been staying indoors because of the rain and cold wind.”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s taking his nap.”
“I wanted to tell you if you want me to go downtown with you and Frankie on the bus again, I’d be happy to.”
“I might take you up on that.”
“I hope you do.”
“Would you like a cup of tea?”
“Sure.”
He followed her into the kitchen and sat at the Formica-topped table next to the window while she boiled the water.
“You’re living among the clouds,” he said, looking out.
“I know. I can’t get over the feeling I’m going to be sucked out the window into the void.”
“If there’s a bad enough storm, you’ll want to go down to the bottom floor. That’s what people usually do. Until the storm passes. Of course, you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
“I’d rather not even think about storms.”
“When it comes, it’ll seem worse than it is.”
“My husband will be home in a couple of hours and I need to start my dinner.”
“Oh, okay. I’ll go.”
“No, stay a while.”
When the tea was ready she brought it to the table and sat down across from him.
“Of course, I don’t have to worry about storms,” he said, “living in the basement apartment as I do.”
“Must be pretty lonely down there for you.”
“I’m used to being on my own. My wife has been gone for fifteen years. It’s probably a terrible thing to say, but she’s not the one I miss the most. It’s friends I miss. You know, my pals. They’ve all either died or moved to a better place.”
“You could move to a better place, too.”
“I don’t know where I’d go. I’ve lived here for so long I’d feel like a fish out of water. You stay where you feel at home.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever feel at home here,” she said. “This place scares me.”
“Why?”
“Too many people. Too impersonal. Too much crime, dirt and noise. And then there’s Frankie.”
“What about him?”
“If he’s ever going to have a chance to get better and live a normal life, it won’t be in a place like this. He needs clean air and wide-open spaces where people aren’t so crowded up together. And then, when he’s older, I worry about the kind of influences he’ll have here.”
“Why don’t you move back to the place where you grew up?”
“My husband would never agree to that.”
He had been going to suggest that she leave her husband and take Frankie and go live in the country, but he knew that wasn’t the right thing to say. You don’t go around giving married women that kind of advice.
“You can always hope for something better,” he said.
“Ever since we came here, my husband and I have been fighting. We’ve been married for eight years. It never has been what I would call a happy marriage, but since we came here it’s been worse. You reach a point where you can’t fight and argue any more and then there’s silence, which, I suppose is not as bad as the fighting. He sometimes doesn’t even come home at night. When I ask him where he’s been, he gives me a threatening look and tells me he’s been working so Frankie and I will have a home and food to eat.”
“I’m sorry for you.”
“Don’t be. We all choose our own path in life. Or it chooses us.”
“Well, listen, I have to go,” he said. “I have some phone calls to make. Thanks for the tea.”
He lied, of course. He didn’t have any phone calls to make, but it was a lie that allowed him to make a graceful exit. He was hurt by talk of how bad her marriage was.
He began seeing Patsy Ruth every day and, if for some reason he didn’t, he was disappointed. He began spending more time on his personal grooming, getting more frequent haircuts, cleaning his nails, making sure the collar of his shirt looked clean and, if it didn’t, putting on a fresh one. He didn’t think about what he was doing. He just did it because he wanted to.
He went downtown on the bus with Patsy Ruth and Frankie a couple more times and had lunch at the same place. They went to an afternoon movie and stood in line in the rain to buy their tickets, he holding out the tail of his coat to keep Frankie dry. Most often, though, they sat on a bench in the sun and talked. She told him about her past life, growing up with six brothers and sisters in a small farmhouse. Her older sister drowned when she was seven and one of her brothers spent time in prison. For his part, he told her about getting married when he was too young, getting divorced, and a few years later getting married again. After his wife died, he was through with women.
“I guess I’m a born bachelor,” he said. “I never minded being alone.”
When Patsy Ruth had him to dinner one night so he could meet her husband, he felt strained and awkward. He couldn’t speak to Patsy Ruth as freely as he was used to doing with her husband looking on. He was afraid, with a movement or a word, that he would betray what he was thinking, and what he was thinking was how mismatched they were and how tragic that they were married. He left the first chance he got and went to a bar and drank.
And then he became sick. It was a reoccurrence of an old problem with his liver. The day before he went into the hospital, he met Patsy Ruth and Frankie in the park. He told her he was going in for some tests, not letting on how sick he was. He gave her the key to his apartment, asked her to keep an eye on things for him and water his plants.
“I’ll be home in a few days,” he said.
“I’ll miss you,” she said.
“Me, too,” Frankie said.
“If I die,” Cyril said.
“You’re not going to die!”
“I know, but if I do, I want you to know something.”
“What is it?”
“In the closet is an old suitcase with your name on it. If I die, I want you to go immediately to my apartment and take it before somebody else gets it.”
“What’s in it?”
“Never mind. You don’t need to know that now, but you’ll find out soon enough.”
“All right, but I wish you’d tell me what this is all about.”
“I just want you to know that I’ve had the best time with you and Frankie that I’ve had in years.”
Those were the last words he ever spoke to her.
As he lay in his hospital bed looking at the ceiling, he knew he was dying and he didn’t mind so much. Almost everybody he had ever known was dead and now it was his turn.
He dozed and when he woke, a nurse stood beside his bed.
“I used to gamble,” he said.
“Uh-huh,” she said.
“I used to place bets on horses and sporting events. I had an instinct for it. I won a lot more than I lost.”
She smiled and looked at her clipboard.
“Every time I got an extra twenty or fifty or hundred-dollar bill, I’d stash it in an old suitcase in my closet. Last time I counted, I had over two hundred thousand dollars.”
“My goodness!” she said. “You should have invested it. You could have been drawing interest.”
“No. That isn’t my way of doing things. If I can’t see my money and hold it in my hands, it doesn’t seem like it’s mine.”
“Somebody might have robbed you.”
“I was never worried about that.”
“Is your wife keeping an eye on it for you while you’re away?”
“My wife died many years ago.”
“Oh.”
“I believe people meet for a reason, don’t you?”
“I’ve never really thought about it. I suppose so.”
“The money is for my daughter and grandson after I’m gone. My grandson is only four and he isn’t well. My daughter needs to take him away so he can breathe the air and have a chance to grow up. That’s what the money is for. I believe people meet for a reason, don’t you?”
“You rest now, Mr. Johns,” the nurse said and then she was gone.
He turned his head toward the window. He could see a patch of blue sky and white clouds. Two pigeons lighted on the window sill and seemed to look in at him. He smiled. He knew he was dying and he didn’t mind it so much.
Copyright © 2015 by Allen Kopp
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) is about a group of British retirees (or, let us say, “older people”), including Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, etc., who go to live in a broken-down hotel in Jaipur, India, for different reasons. (Maggie needs a hip replacement, Judi is an impoverished widow looking for a way to live more economically, Tom wants to reconnect with a lost love.) It’s based on a novel called These Foolish Things and was successful enough that it has spawned a sequel named, appropriately, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
All the same characters are back (except, of course, Tom Wilkinson, who died in the first movie). The Evelyn Greenslade character (Judi Dench) is still the love interest of Douglas Ainslie (Bill Nighy), even though she is seventy-nine and he looks about fourteen years younger. Douglas’ wife, Jean (Penelope Wilton), witnessing the burgeoning dalliance between Evelyn and her husband, departed in a huff (or maybe it was a minute and a huff) in the first movie. She returns in the sequel, briefly, to ask Douglas for a divorce because, she says, men won’t want to date her if she’s a married woman. (This is a bit of self-delusion—men wouldn’t want to date her anyway.) Muriel Donnelly (Maggie Smith) had just about given up on life, feeling cast out after her employer no longer needed her. She finds a new life, however, helping feckless Sonny Kapoor (Dev Patel) manage the hotel. She has the business sense (that he is lacking) that makes the hotel a going concern.
And then there’s the hotel itself. They (the British retirees) wouldn’t have gone there in the first place if they hadn’t been made to believe it was something it wasn’t. Hotel owner Sonny Kapoor makes up in enthusiasm what he lacks in competence. After he (with a strong assist from Muriel Donnelly) makes the hotel a success, he wants to expand the operation to a second hotel. He is undercut by a rival, though, who buys the building out from under him and also tries to steal his fiancée. (Once again, Muriel Donnelly steps in with her working-class, no-nonsense approach.) To compound Sonny’s problems, there’s an American guest at the hotel (Richard Gere), who might or might not be a hotel inspector who could cause a lot of trouble if he wanted to. But—wait a minute!—there’s romance in the air for the would-be inspector, so maybe he won’t be so terrible after all!
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel isn’t quite up to the original, as far as story goes. That’s because the original was based on a novel and the sequel is based on the original. It is, however, a pleasant couple of hours, pretty to look at with a beautiful music score by Thomas Newman. The best thing about this movie, though, is that Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, or Will Ferrell are nowhere to be found.
Copyright © 2015 by Allen Kopp
Pink Eye ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp
Alvin Fritchie lived on a farm a few miles outside of town. He had so many brothers and sisters that nobody knew exactly how many. He missed a lot of school because he had to depend on his mother or some other family member to drive him in and sometimes their car was broken down or the creek was up and they couldn’t get across the little bridge that separated their property from the highway. I thought Alvin was lucky that he got so much time off.
One day in our fourth grade class we noticed that Alvin kept rubbing his eye, first one eye and then the other. When you looked right at him and he looked back, he looked “sick out of his eyes,” as my grandmother would have said. Finally our teacher, Miss Meeks, called him out into the hallway to have a word with him. When Miss Meeks came back in and Alvin wasn’t with her, we knew she had sent him to the nurse’s office.
In a little while the nurse, Miss Bullard, knocked on the door. Miss Meeks stopped what she was doing and went to the door and the two of them talked for a couple of minutes in voices too low for us to hear. We were sure it had something to do with Alvin, but, of course, Miss Meeks didn’t tell us what it was. She was too good at keeping secrets.
The next day two other people had eye trouble and were sent home. The day after that, there were three others. After conferring with the nurse, Miss Meeks informed us that it was an epidemic (or starting to become an epidemic) of something called the pink eye (the very mention of which reminded me of white rabbits). Not exactly the plague but something you didn’t want to catch, no matter how bad you wanted to miss school.
Miss Bullard wanted us to believe she was on top of the situation. She had the janitor bring in scrub brushes, rags and disinfectants and watched him as he went over every inch of Alvin’s desk and the desks on either side. She showed us a film on the proper way to wash one’s hands by using plenty of soap and hot water, frequently throughout the day, but especially after using the toilet. She sent a letter home with each of us, informing our parents of the existence of pink eye in our school but assuring them it wouldn’t be a problem as long as proper sanitation was observed.
“Above all,” Miss Bullard said, her enormous breasts jutting out in front of her like guided missiles, “if your eyes itch and start to get red, don’t scratch them! Don’t even touch them!”
“Roo-roo-roo!” a boy named Leonard Scallion said from the back of the room, but everybody ignored him.
That evening at the dinner table, my mother examined my eyes with a magnifying glass until I was squirming in the chair to get away from her.
“Leave me alone!” I said.
“I don’t see any sign that he has the disease,” she said to my father. “As far as I can tell.”
“Do your eyes itch?” he asked me.
“Not yet.”
“But you think they will?”
“Just about everybody in my class has it,” I said. This was an exaggeration, of course, but, like everybody else in my family, I was prone to exaggeration.
“What do you want to do?” my father asked my mother. “Keep him at home until this passes?”
“That sounds like a good idea to me!” I said.
“No,” she said. “We’ll just let him go to school and check his eyes every day.”
“Thanks a lot!” I said.
I didn’t get the pink eye, but the next Monday morning when I woke up and started to get dressed for school, I had spots on my chest that extended up to my neck and shoulders. When I showed my mother, she took my temperature and, finding I had a fever of a little over a hundred, called the doctor. He said it sounded like the three-day measles. I was to stay in bed and rest and keep away from other people because it was contagious.
“How on earth did you get the measles?” she asked.
“How should I know?” I said.
Having the measles wasn’t as bad as having a cold or the flu. I could have anything I wanted to eat and everybody left me alone to do as I pleased. The only thing I didn’t like about the measles was that I had to stay away from the TV.
My spots (or my fever) didn’t go away after three days, so I ended up getting the whole week off from school. When I went back on the following Monday, a few people were still out with the pink eye (taking full advantage, I knew). I learned that two others besides me (so far) had the three-day measles. One had returned and the other was still out.
I noticed that Alvin Fritchie, the one who started the whole pink eye thing, hadn’t returned to school yet. I asked several people what happened to him, but nobody knew. I figured he got the three-day measles on top of the pink eye. He might have died and nobody would even know or care. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had given his desk to somebody else.
Finally Alvin returned without fanfare after more than two weeks. I looked for him at recess and found him standing by himself, as usual, over by the fence.
“How do you feel, Alvin?” I asked.
“I feel all right.”
“Get over the pink eye?”
“Yeah.”
“Why were you gone for so long?”
“My mother died.”
“Oh? Did she have the pink eye, too?”
“I came back just for today to tell everybody I’m leaving and I won’t be back.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to live with my aunt in Kansas. I guess I’ll be going to school there.”
Those were the last words I ever heard him say. He left at the end of the day without saying a word to anybody. No goodbyes or anything else. Nobody ever mentioned him again. He just faded away like something you thought was there that really wasn’t.
Copyright © 2015 by Allen Kopp
~ Their Thousand Friends, Part 2 ~
(A Short Story by Allen Kopp)
Part 2 of my short story “Their Thousand Friends” published in the current issue of Circus Book. Click on this link:
https://circusbook.org/2015/allen-kopp-their-thousand-friends-2/
Chappie ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp
If Chappie has the same look and feel as District 9, it’s because both movies have the same director (Neill Blomkamp) and same creative team. Both are science fiction stories set in and around Johannesburg, South Africa. Both have a gritty, grungy look to them (unlike similar American movies that have a slick, over-produced look). Some of the same actors (with difficult-to-understand accents) appear in both movies. The non-American actor Sharlto Copley, who played the lead in District 9, also plays the lead in Chappie, but he’s unidentifiable because he’s a robot.
In Chappie, the robot officers used by the Johannesburg police force are highly effective in fighting crime. The whiz who developed the robots, Deon Wilson (played by Dev Patel), believes he can take the robots another step—he can make them think and feel, just like humans, but without human failings. It’s a no-go, though. His employers won’t let him do it.
When a group of thugs (led by the ultra-strange Ninja and Yolandi, with the most exotic hairdos you’ve ever seen) hear about the robot technology, they hatch a plot to use it to their own evil ends. When Deon Wilson is on his way home with one of the robots in his van that’s damaged beyond repair, the thugs intercept him, take him to their lair, beat him up, and force him to work on the damaged robot so they can use it to commit crimes. The result is Chappie, a shy (at first) machine with human thoughts, feelings and emotions. It seems that Yolandi isn’t quite as creepy as we first thought. She becomes a sort of mother figure to Chappie and helps him adapt to the world. Ninja, though, is all bad (not to mention gross and despicable). He mistreats Chappie and forces him to be a criminal like himself, much to the dismay of Chappie’s maker, Deon Wilson.
The emotional core of the movie is Chappie’s relationship with Deon Wilson and with Yolandi, whom he calls “mommy.” She is protective of him (he needs to be protected from the evils of the world) and decides at some point that he is more important as a being that she can love than as an instrument for perpetrating criminal acts. I suppose it could be said that Chappie brings out the mother instinct in her.
Of course, there always has to be villain (as if Ninja isn’t enough of one). The villain here is Hugh Jackman (speaking in his native Australian accent). He is bent on destroying Chappie and making sure the “thinking/feeling” technology of robots doesn’t go any farther. (I think I must have missed what is motivation is.) The Hugh Jackman character seems unnecessary and adds to the cluttered feel of the movie. But, then, if it hadn’t been for him, there wouldn’t have been the dramatic conclusion that opens the way for a possible sequel.
Copyright © 2015 by Allen Kopp
Deep in the Arms of Love ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp
(This is a story I posted earlier.)
We were lost again. We had a roadmap but didn’t seem to know how to use it. I had been driving earlier but now Drusus was driving. His wife, Pearline, sat between us, and I sat next to the window. Mama and Adele were in the back.
The seat wasn’t long enough for mama to stretch out all the way so when she needed to lie down she used Adele’s lap as a pillow. We were all a little worried about mama. We had to stop every now and then for her to get out and walk around. She was carsick and sometimes she vomited. I couldn’t help but notice there was some blood coming up. I had to look away.
We were on our way to the city, which was a lot farther away than we had thought. Adele was going to sing in a radio contest and mama was going to see a specialist.
Mama had been asleep and when she woke up, she said, “Sing me a song, honey.”
“I don’t feel like singing,” Adele said. “I feel like throwing up.”
“Give us just one song,” I said. “You can entertain us while you practice up for the contest.”
“I don’t need any practice. I know those songs backwards and forwards. I sing them in my sleep all night long.”
“I know you’re going to win,” Pearline said. “It’s a feeling I have, deep down.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of it,” Drusus said. “There’s hundreds of other people with that same deep-down feeling.”
“I have as much chance as anybody,” Adele said.
“We leave it in the hands of the Lord,” mama said.
The hick singing teacher giving Adele lessons thought she had great promise. She could sing any kind of music—opera, even—but she was best at popular tunes like “Makin’ Faces at the Man in the Moon” and “Love, You Funny Thing.” She was as good as anybody on the radio or in the movies.
“And I have a good feeling about the new doctor you’re going to see, Mrs. McCreary,” Pearline said. (She and Drusus were so newly married that she still couldn’t bring herself to call her mother-in-law Hazel.)
“You and your feelings,” Drusus scoffed.
“She has a positive attitude,” I said.
“I try not to fret about it,” mama said. “It’s in the hands of the Lord. He has already ordained what will be.”
We didn’t like to talk about it, but mama’s doctor at home had just about given up on her. We called him a horse doctor because he didn’t seem to know very much. If you went to him with anything more serious than a cold or a sore toe, he was in over his head. The specialist in the city was just about her last chance to be well again.
Mama groaned a couple of times and when she was finished groaning, she said to Adele, “You still got the name and address of that doctor I’ve got the appointment with on Friday, don’t you, baby?”
“It’s in my bag,” Adele said. “You saw me put it in there.”
“Don’t you lose it.”
“I won’t.”
“Dr. Ficke says he’s one of the best doctors in the state and you don’t have to be rich to get in to see him.”
“I bet it helps, though,” I said.
We came to a tiny town with a cutoff to a different highway. Drusus took the cutoff going a little too fast. Mama almost fell onto the floor and let out a little yelp. Pearline fell over against me and righted herself as if I was poison to the touch.
“Be careful, honey!” Pearline said.
“Well, this is it!” Drusus said. “This is the right way now. I just know it. We are officially not lost anymore.”
“Happy days are here again,” sang Adele. “The skies above are clear again. So, let us sing a song of cheer again. Happy days are here again!”
As if to confirm that we were finally going in the right direction, we passed a sign that you couldn’t miss if you were alive. “Only two hundred and thirty-seven more miles,” I said.
“Seems like we already came about a thousand miles,” Adele said.
“How about you, Wynn?” Drusus asked me. “Do you want to drive for a while?”
“No thanks,” I said. “You’re doing fine.”
I went to sleep with my head against the door and woke up when we had a blowout and Drusus pulled off the highway to change the tire.
We all got out of the car, including mama. She took a few wobbly steps and smoked a cigarette and said she was feeling a little better. She wanted to know what state we were in. When we told her, she laughed for some reason.
We took advantage of the unscheduled stop to have a drink of water and a bite to eat. We still had some bread left over, Vienna sausages, fruit, and other stuff. Mama didn’t want anything to eat but she drank a little bit of water and some coffee. Pearline spread a blanket on the ground for her and Adele to sit on. Mama sat for a while and then lay down and looked up into the trees.
“This is nice,” she said, “lying still on the ground and not having tires turning underneath me.”
“I think mama’s sicker than she lets on,” I said to Drusus when we were changing the tire.
“That doctor in the city will fix her up,” he said.
“She’s trying to put a good face on it for Adele’s sake. She doesn’t want to spoil her chance of singing on the radio.”
“Everything will be all right,” he said, as if trying to convince himself as much as me.
Mama went to sleep on the blanket and we had to wake her up to get her back in the car. I took over driving from there, even though I liked it better when Drusus drove and I could just sit and think.
We were all tired and we knew we were going to have to stop someplace for the night. We hadn’t made very good time, what with our getting lost and mama being sick and all.
At dusk we stopped at an auto court where, according to their sign, they had clean cabins and cheap. I went inside and engaged the room and then we drove around to our cabin, which was cabin number twelve in the back. With the shade trees, the two rows of trim white cabins, and the azalea bushes everywhere, it was a pretty place and plenty inviting.
We tried to get mama to eat something, but she just wanted to go to bed. Pearline and Adele helped to get her out of her clothes and into bed while Drusus and I sat on the front step and smoked.
“If Adele wins that prize money,” he said, “we can pay back Uncle Beezer the money he advanced us for this trip.”
“We can’t expect her to give up the prize money for that,” I said. “If she wins, the money is hers to do with as she pleases.”
“And what would she do with it, anyhow?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe it would be her one chance to get away from home, out into the real world. She might get a real singing career going for herself.”
“Do you really think she has a chance?”
“You’ve heard her sing,” I said. “Isn’t she as good as anybody you’ve ever heard?”
“Yeah, she’s good,” he said.
“If she wins the money, it’s hers. We can’t touch it.”
“Maybe she’ll offer it. At least part of it.”
“We can’t ask her for it, though.”
After a couple of minutes in which neither of us spoke, Drusus said, “Pearline thinks she’s going to have a baby.”
“A baby!” I said. “That was fast work. You’ve only been married a month.”
“The curse of the married man,” he said.
“What do you mean? Don’t you want it?”
“We’re poor,” he said. “We don’t have anything. Even the car I’m driving belongs to somebody else.”
I laughed. “How do you think other people manage?” I asked. “How do you think mama and daddy managed? They were dirt poor and they had eight kids.”
“The poorer they are the more kids they have, and the more kids they have the poorer they are.”
“You’re not sorry you married Pearline, are you?” I asked.
“Well, no. Not exactly. I probably wouldn’t do it again, though, if I had it to do over.”
“I’ll be sure and tell Pearline you said that.”
“Don’t tell anybody any of this,” he said. “She doesn’t want anybody to know about the baby just yet, because it makes it look like we had a shotgun wedding. I swear the baby wasn’t on the way yet when we got married.”
“You don’t have to convince me of anything,” I said.
“Not a word to mama or Adele yet. Pearline wants to make sure about the baby before she tells anybody.”
“Mum’s the word,” I said.
Drusus and I had to sleep on the floor in the cabin but I didn’t mind. I was just glad to be able to stretch out and rest my weary bones. I laid down near the screen door where I could feel a cool breeze and hear the trees rustling. After being on the dusty road all day, it felt like heaven.
As I drifted off to sleep, I could hear Adele softly singing mama’s favorite song: “Deep night, stars in the sky above. Moonlight, lighting our place of love. Night winds seem to have gone to rest. Two eyes, brightly with love are gleaming. Come to my arms, my darling, my sweetheart, my own. Vow that you’ll love me always, be mine alone. Deep night, whispering trees above. Kind night, bringing you nearer, dearer and dearer. Deep night, deep in the arms of love...”
I woke up in the morning to the sound of the birds singing. I stood up to slip into my shirt and pants and that’s when I saw Adele and Pearline sitting quietly in chairs at the foot of the bed. Pearline was smoking a cigarette.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“We can’t wake mama,” Adele said.
“Is she breathing?”
“I don’t think so.”
“We’d better get a doctor,” I said.
Pearline looked at me and shook her head and that’s when I knew that mama was dead.
I shook Drusus gently by the shoulder to wake him up. When I told him what had happened, he, of course, had to see for himself. He went over to the bed and put his ear to mama’s chest. Hearing nothing but silence, he then held a mirror to her nose. He looked at the mirror and threw it down on the bed like a little boy with a toy gun that no longer works.
“What should we do?” I asked.
“I don’t want to go another mile farther from home,” Adele said.
“We’d better call somebody and tell them what happened,” Pearline said.
“No,” Drusus said. “We’re not calling anybody. They’ll ask us a lot of questions. They’ll hold us here until they know what happened. They’ll make Adele miss her chance to sing on the radio.”
“We can’t go off and leave mama here,” I said.
“Of course not,” he said. “We’re taking her with us.”
After Adele and Pearline got mama into her clothes, Drusus carried her out to the car in his arms. I opened the door for him and he slid mama into the corner of the back seat where she was propped up and her head was not lolling to the side. He then took a length of rope and tied it around mama’s chest so she would stay upright and not fall over from the movement of the car. Adele gave mama’s dark glasses to Drusus to put on her and we found a straw hat that belonged to Uncle Beezer in the trunk and put it on her head. With the hat and the glasses and in her regular clothes, she didn’t look like a dead person.
“I’m glad she died in a pretty place like this instead of on the road,” I said.
“We’ve come this far,” Drusus said. “She would want us to keep going as far as we can. She wouldn’t want Adele to miss her chance to sing on the radio because of her.”
We all got into the car and Drusus started her up. As we were pulling out of the place, the manager stopped us and leaned into the window and looked at all of us, including mama. He smiled in a friendly way and said he hoped we enjoyed our stay and God grant that we should come back that way again.
When we were on the highway again and going at full speed, Adele began singing mama’s favorite hymn: Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine! Heir of salvation, purchase of God, born of his Spirit, washed in His blood. This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long; this is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long. Perfect submission, perfect delight, visions of rapture now burst on my sight; angels descending bring from above echoes of mercy, whispers of love…”
Nobody said anything for a long time after Adele finished singing. We all had the feeling, though, that nothing was going to stop us now. That old car of ours was sure burning up the miles.
Copyright © 2015 by Allen Kopp
Literary Fictions 