A Dangerous Man

A couple of pages from  the work I am doing now. … This is the kind of thing that makes writing a lot of fun ! … TEH

A Dangerous Man

Newport News                                                                                                                  June 1942

 The establishment was a holdover from Prohibition days, a speakeasy. The bar ran along one wall. Half-a-dozen or eight stools and three tables. There were two pool tables. Poker was upstairs.

“Any place a fellow can find a game?” Celo asked the bar keep.

The man pointed to the two pool tables just past the half-wall. A couple of twenty year olds had a game going. Neither of them was very good. They were just bouncing the balls around.

“Cards,” Celo told him. “Something with a deck ‘a cards.”

“You a high roller?”

“Just a fellow likes a friendly game.” Then: “Maybe enough money to make it interesting.”

                                                           

“Ha,” the bar keep snorted. “You don’t exactly look like the friendly type.”

Celo laughed to show he wasn’t offended. He was not as big as people remembered him, thought he was. What they really recalled later was his eyes and his hands. The eyes were dark without being either brown or black. They never looked away.

His hands and fingers never stopped moving. It wasn’t a quick, nervous movement. It just never stopped: finger tips across the tabletop, brushing across the buttons of his shirt. If he had a beef with you he didn’t think about was he gonna hit you in the mouth. Other men thought about it first. Celo didn’t think about it, he just hit you in the mouth. The fact that you might strike back wasn’t a part of it. If you did, that was okay too. Most men didn’t. Strike back.

 He followed  two shipyard workers up the set of inside stairs, the poker game. Twenty minutes later he took the first available chair. He laid a stack of bills on the table, covered them with his elbow.

Somewhere around midnight he realized there ain’t been a queen-‘a-hearts played all night. Somebody’s holdin’ a queen. His blood pressure went up a notch. He breathed deep.

“Bring me a Scotch whisky,” he told the cigarette girl.

The dealer and another player folded early. Three men pushed money onto the table. “Hit me,” they said, asked for another card. The man to Celo’s left doled out cards, one at a time. The pot grew. The only sound was from the jukebox in the bar below and the occasional scrape of a chair leg.

It’s gonna happen now, Celo thought. And it did.

Which one of ‘em ‘s got that queen?

Across the table the uniformed soldier laid his cards down on the table, took out a railroad bandanna, wiped his face.

“I don’t know why I play with you fellows,” he said. He folded the handkerchief, put it back in his pocket. “If I wasn’t shippin’ out I’d just take my money and go home. … Wake mama up and fool around a little.”

He wiped his face again. “I’ll raise you one,” he said. Pushed more money onto the table.

That army dude’s got it. I know a Dago in Ponchatoula can pull this off, Celo thought. This hillbilly asshole ain’t got a clue.

Celo checked his hand, knew he didn’t have the cards to see it through. He added bills to the pot. “Raise you one,” he said.

The third player matched.

The sergeant threw a five onto the pile of money. He had not looked again at the cards he held.

“Shit,” the third player cursed. Threw his cards down.

“What you got?” Celo asked. Looked straight at the soldier. “I wantta see what you got.” He matched the five. Laid his cards on the green felt. Kings over eights.

“Maybe I can play with you fellers,” the sergeant said. He laughed.

He reached out to rake in the pile of money in the middle of the table. The ice pick flashed out like the strike of a snake. Drove through the sergeant’s hand between the index and middle metacarpal bones, through the assorted bills, and into the cheap wooden table.

“Don’t touch that money, soldier boy,” Celo said.

The sergeant stared wide-eyed at the still quivering pick penning his hand down to the table. The blood beginning to flow from underneath his palm onto the money, the green felt. The pain had not yet registered.

Celo turned over the soldier’s cards. Three queens and a pair of fives. “Looks like you got a extra queen there,” he said. “Been savin’ it all night.”

He pulled the pick from the man’s hand, wiped it twice across the sergeant’s uniform blouse, wiped the blood away.

“”You might want to pour some whiskey on that hand,” Celo said. “I ain’t sure where that pick’s been lately.”

He swept the pile of money from the table, left the loose change, stuffed the bills into his pocket. He walked down the stairs, through the bar and out onto the late night street. The lights reflecting off the rain-wet pavement. Celo lite a cigarette, blew smoke into the damp night air.

A Pig Pickin’ …

Word just came in last night, via email, that Belle Bridge Books wants to use one of my short stories in their upcoming Sweet Tea Anthology, May 2012!

The only guide lines were:  twenty or so pages, Southern, and food oriented. Easy enough, right? I  pulled out an old unfinished piece, Funeral Food, which is good … the story, the concept. But I couldn’t get the humor to work right.

I wound up going back to one of the early chapters in A Confluence of Rivers, my finished novel.  It needed editing to make it work as a stand-alone short story, and to build up the food aspect. Three day later, lord help us all, we are having a pig-picking!

Here is a sample:  

                                                                                 

By noon there was a crowd. All of Cut Bank came. The cooked boar hog was moved to just off the veranda at the store, set on a hastily built plank table. The keg of beer on the shaded end of the veranda.

“Has this food been blessed?” the young preacher asked.

“No,” Papa Thomas said. “Would you do the honors, reverend.”

“Let’s read some verses from the gospel of St. Matthew,” the preacher said, opened his bible.

There was an uneasy silence.

 When Jesus heard it, He departed from there by boat to a deserted place by Himself. But when the multitudes heard it, they followed Him on foot from the cities.

he read …

 And when Jesus went out He saw a great multitude; and He was moved with compassion for them, and healed their sick.  When it was evening, His disciples came to Him, saying, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is already late. Send the multitudes away, that they may go into the villages and buy themselves food.”

 But Jesus said to them, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”

 And they said to Him, “We have here only five loaves and two fish.”

He said, “Bring them here to Me.”  Then He commanded the multitudes to sit down on the grass. And He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples; and the disciples gave to the multitudes.

So they all ate and were filled, and they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments that remained. Now those who had eaten were about five thousand men, besides women and children

The roasted pig were carved up. Francis sliced off slabs of ham and  shoulder. A ring of people three deep circled the table. Food seemed to materialize from wagons and buggies, from canvas sacks hooked over saddle horns. Roasted potatoes, pots of cooked greens, corn bread, whole bake yams … a cauldron of baked beans.

“I’ve had beef jerky was easier to chew,” Otis Butterbaugh announced to the gathered crowd. He held a carrot sized chunk of pork shoulder in his left hand, filled his mug from the keg. He glanced to be sure the young preacher wasn’t watching too closely.

There were pies, a pound cake with the requisite pound each of butter and sugar, and a dozen fresh eggs. The four cups of flour seemed almost superfluous.

“We better cook us up another batch ‘a these peanuts,” Mr. Otis told JJ in the deepening afternoon. There was a steady line of takers for boiled peanuts. When the second round was dumped onto the plank floor, Torie, standing in the doorway, straw broom in hand, asked, “All right, now, who’s gonna sweep up these hulls?” There was no shortage of volunteers.

Earl Dupree’s seventy-seven year old mama, down on the Row, said, “Toughest meat I ever eit.” She stripped another thumb sized piece off the hanging hind quarter, worked it into her nearly toothless mouth. They would ate pit roasted pork for the better part of a week.

Chicken Wire Juke Joint

Hello, all …

haven’t posted anything in a bit. … this is the first couple of pages of a short story i’m working on. i like it so far …

A Chicken Wire Juke Joint

It was a chicken  wire junk joint alright.

“You  furnish the towels?” Leonard asked the man, looking at the chicken wire,  knowing we was gonna need ‘em. “We gotta have our own?”

“Folks  don’t throw bottles much they still got beer in ‘em,” the man said.  “Mostly it’s just empty bottles.”

“Anybody  messes up my guitar I’m gonna bust ‘im,” I said.

The man looked  at me. “We heard you was a real bad ass,” he said.

He looked at  Leonard. “How come you put up with a man’s gonna bust payin’ customers?”

Leonard laughed. ”Ain’t nobody else picks like Jimmy,” he said. Then: “I recon we
got to have our own towels?”

“I’ll round you up some bar towels,” the man told Leonard. “Park around back. Close  up against the door. We git a crowd, we ain’t got enough spaces.”

We watched the crown start gathering. Pick-ups with rifle racks. Arkansas plates, come over from West Memphis. Some from Mississippi, Olive Branch and Senatobia. Red
necks, all of ‘em. But that was okay, we was too: red necks.

“Goddamn, it’s gonna be a show tonight,” I said. Took a deep drag on a Chesterfield.
“Look at all them farmers, them truck drivers.”

“Long as they got real money,” Leonard said.

The man had sent out for some burgers. Real burgers, not that Daisy Queen shit. I’ll say that  for him. Real burger with fries, washed it all down with some Dixie Beer he had in the back.

“And it’s some lookers too. … That redhead yonder.” I pointed the Chesterfield  toward a Crown Vic convertible just pulled up, hadn’t even parked yet. “I might try her on for size.”

The dance floor was built up a step higher than where the tables were. Would hold, I figured, thirty couples. Thirty-five, thirty-eight for a slow dance. We didn’t plan on  playin’ much slow stuff, just one at the end of each set. Maybe two some time around one-thirty.

The little stage for the band was another step higher, the chicken wire stretched between the front of the stage and the dance floor.

Leonard started plinking on the piano around 8:45, just dark. Two guys all the way in the back corner threw a couple of Miller bottles against the wire, laughed. Hell, they weren’t even drunk, pissed yet. Just part of the goings-on, getting in the mood.

The fellow with the Crown Vic and the red head pushed his way up front, dropped a couple ’a  twenties on an occupied table against the wall. Suggested to the early arrivers
already sitting there that they consider giving up their spot. The guy at the table suggested that the fellow with the twenties go fuck himself, stood up, took off his Razorback cap.

His wife, however, grabbed the Andrew Jackson’s, grabbed the Razorback’s arm. “This
is four football tickets,” she said. “A week’s groceries.”

“Goddammit, Rose. You the one wanted to git here early. A seat up front.”

“I know,” Rose said. “I know …” She pulled him through the growing crowd.

I played the first line of Move It On Over … Hank Williams. Move over little
dog, the big dog’s moving in. The red head winked at me. Sat down, touched
her hair, swayed her shoulders side to side. Set of nice boobs moving underneath a buttoned up white blouse.

“This is  gonna be fun,” I told Leonard. “What you wantta play first?”

We gave them a twelve minute version of What’d I Say. Heavy on music, light on lyrics.
Ray Charles would have been proud. I could smell the sweat. It was gonna be a hot night, more ways than one.

At about minute number 10 into What’d I Say the red head caught my eye. She was dancing, facing the bandstand, looking across the Crown Vic guy’s shoulder. Looking
straight at me. I gave  her a look, held that Martin guitar out at arms length, pointed the neck straight at her, played a riff. She licked the sweat off her upper lip. That set ‘a boobs was lookin’ nicer all the time.

A Conversation with Bob: Mormons

This is a bit different from my normal post. .. an exchange of emails with my friend \Bob Tuttle.   http://foundationforevangelism.org/2010/07/dr-robert-tuttle-jr-retires-after-25-years-as-professor/

    bob is my friend, my neighbor, my running buddy. he has spent the past couple of decades teaching world evangalical religions and world comparative religions.  he is professor emeritus at Asbury Methodist Semenary, Louisville, KY and Orlando, FL.

tuttle …                   ( 1:25 PM monday … 10 october ) 

                what is your take on the debate re: is mormonism christanity or a cult ? … my phone is not working … you can call me, but i can’t call you.  they are sending me a new one, but it may be next monday before it gets here.           TEH

2:54 PM  Monday   10 october …                          I’m just off another airplane.  Delta (probably stands for: Doesn’t Ever Leave The Airport).   My flight was late going to Pittsburgh and arriving from Pittsburgh so I missed my connection last night and had to spend another night in Atlanta.  I’m tired. … …  As for your Mormon question, if I am correct (and I believe I am with all my heart but there is still no guarantee.  Ultimately we will let God be the Judge) Mormonism is a cult as they deny that which I consider most critical to my understanding of the Christian faith.  Our Mormon friends have Jesus Christ as the brother of Adam and not the incarnate Son of God (which, of course, he claims to be and all those who knew him best claimed him to be).  The Book of Mormon is an interpretation of the Old Testament as our New Testament is an interpretation of the Old Testament (as is the Qur’an for that matter).  They simply disagree as to the person of Jesus.  By the way, Mormonism is closer to Islam than Christianity or Judaism (I gave you that for nothing because it is probably worth nothing). 
Dianne’s mom is now on hospice as she has a new case of pneumonia.  We will be driving down in the next day or two so I may not be there on Thursday.  Run on pal.  You are looking great.  I wish I could get back at it now that my gardens have been put to bed.    Bob

3:08 PM     Monday    10 october           thanks …   try to get a day’s rest before you head   off-down-east. … i wanted to be able to tell an online “friend”  ( christian conservative …  pro-life, young earth creationist, presbyterian ) that Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney are as “christian” as is she. … that Robert Jeffries, Dallas, is way out of bounds. .. but maybe not. )                                TEH

3:22 PM … Monday … 10 October        Christian is not simply what we believe.  It is who we are.  If you have accessed the power of the Holy Spirit by virtue of your faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of the living God then that should manifest itself in love and forgiveness.  Romney may be more Christian in his actions than your on line friend.  In my opinion Jesus would be heart broken by what the right wing is doing.  They do NOT manifest the mind nor character nor spirit of Christ.  God help us all.                    BT

This post is in no way intended to offend or to force my point of view on anyone. It does, I think, point out the need for all of us to take an honest look at and to respect the beliefs of other honest and honorable Americans.

The Mormons that I know are good and honest and honorable people. … Who am I, for that matter, who is Dr. Robert Jeffries, First Baptist Church, Dallas to say that Mormons are not Christians, that their religion is a cult.  I offer to you that he, Dr. Jeffries, is far move devisive and inflamatory than either Jon Huntsman or Mitt Romney.

 

Tom Honea

A Conversation With Danny

We were lucky enough to get a few minutes with Danny just after he got home from the vet the other afternoon.  ( See A Yellow Lab & 40 Hours … posted on 1 August.)

“How did this start?” the visitor asked. “How did you get in this mess?”

Well, before the big guy threw us out to go and pee in the yard I had lifted a couple of beers from the frig, stashed ‘em out by the gate. Of course, it’s his fault. He taught me several years ago to open the frig and bring him a beer. Lately, though, he and The Lady have been putting a lock on the door. From time to time  the left-over lasagna or deviled eggs were just too tempting. I keep looking for a pork tenderloin, but there is never one there! Even when the lock is not on the door.

You heisted a couple of beers? 

I did. Do it all the time. The Big Guy never misses it. Just keeps it there for when the neighbors come by. Especially that old, grey fellow … they don’t talk about nothing but football, drink beer!

Anyway, when he sent us outside to do our business at  just dark I collected the beers and headed off into the edge of the woods. Settle down for a drink and keep an eye on the night critters: raccoons, those little spotted skunks, and the occasional bear. … The Big Guy and The Lady get all upset, hate it, when those two yearling bears from up the road get the bird feeders. B G and the  Lady just stomp around most of the day, make twelve phone calls telling all the neighbors how awful it is. Damn bears! I suggested that they bring the feeders in at night, but I don’t think they paid much attention.

So you’re just there in the dark? … Having a beer?

Just minding my own business. …  It gets kind of fuzzy here, but most likely what happened is I went to sleep after that second beer, didn’t wake up until sometime in the middle of the night. What woke me up was a bit of a ruckus down in the hododendron  thicket that seemed like needed investigating. Turned out to be an owl in pursuit of a black snake, crashing around down in the middle of the limbs and leaves. I left them to sort it out. Decided I didn’t have a dog in that fight.

You realize it was the dark of the moon. Darker than a well-digger’s —- . Well, you get the picture. But even at that, if it
hadn’t been for that second beer I would have never gotten turned around. But I did, took the wrong trail, got on the wrong side of the ravine. I sat down for a while to think about it: go around the long way, or cut across?

What the heck, I decided. Just walk that log down to the lower end. It’ll save a couple ‘a minutes. Everything was fine until that mama possum started fussing at her little ones. Right under my feet, it sounded like.  Scared the bejesus out of me. In the dark I  missed that next step, slipped half off the log.

You slipped off the log?

I did. But even then it would have been okay except that the limb I could reach with my back feet was rotten, broke. So, there I am draped across this half rotten log, four feet off the ground. Rear end hanging out in the breeze, so to speak. Every time I tried to pull myself back up, I just slipped farther.

Is that when you fell?

It was. Didn’t even hurt. Just suddenly I’m on the ground. Surrounded by all these broken, rotten limbs. Every direction I turned I kept jabbing myself against something. Finally decided I would just wait until daylight, figure out then how to get out of there.

But, boy, it was a long night. Longest night I ever spent … up to then! Bet I went to sleep twenty times, woke up with a start thinking it was dawn. But it wasn’t, still no daylight.

But it did come eventually. What did you do then?

Well, I discovered I was in a kind of a hole. And my rear end and legs were curled up sort of under and behind me, beginning to go numb. I could tell already I was gonna need some help getting out ‘a there. I barked like crazy.

Nobody heard you? … Bark?

No. I guess not. You know the house and all is on the other side of the ridge from there … and I was down in that ravine, and under all that brush and stuff.

After a while I heard the Big Guy come walking through. I knew he would be mad at me about the beer and staying out all night, so I studied on it instead of barking when he was close by. Then he was on down the trail and didn’t hear me.

That must have been discouraging.

Boy, I’m telling you! … And I was starting to get really thirsty. It wasn’t too hot. Being down on the ground, and under all that stuff. But it sure was thirsty.

Were you scared? … Ever scared? Snakes and things.

No. Not from that standpoint. Snakes don’t bother you much as long as you’re too big to eat. (chuckle) … I did hear some coyotes the second night, up on the mountain.  But they didn’t ever come  close.

Did you try again to get yourself out of the hole?

I did. Tried to use just my front legs, pull myself up. But there wasn’t any direction I could go that wasn’t blocked.

People came by once a while. That nice lady from next door, the one with the little black and red dog. I barked, but they didn’t hear me. Them being up on the trail and me in the bottom of that ravine. Nobody ever got off the trail, came down in the rough stuff, the ravine.

What was the worst of it? When you got really worried.

When it got dark again and there wasn’t anybody still coming by to check. That was the worst. And, by then I needed water bad.
Even another beer!

I don’t remember much of that night and the next day. I think a must have passed out from time to  time. Then I would come  to and know that it was getting hotter and how thirsty I was.

Did anybody coming looking that day?

Maybe. Truth is, I didn’t know what was a dream and what was real. The Big Guy might have been calling. But, hell, I don’t know. I might have been making it up. Things were getting pretty fuzzy about then. I thought somebody was there, or maybe another dog. Ester maybe. Then I would look and nothing. Just those damn  limbs and sticks. The sun getting higher in the sky.

When did they find you? … How?

There was a howl. I sort of remember that. A howl, and three or four yelps. It wasn’t me, I know that. I knew it was from right  where I was, but it wasn’t me howling. Do angels howl? I don’t know. I never heard one howl. I tried to look around, see who it might ‘a been. I didn’t see anybody. But … I might ‘a been dreaming, or even hallucinating.

Anyway, there was a howl. If I heard it, somebody else must have, figured out where to look.

What’s the first you remember? First time you knew somebody was there?

Somebody breaking away the limbs, the snapping sound. Then pulling on my collar. I think I just looked at them, couldn’t help.  I tried to help. Think my front legs just quivered. I couldn’t help.  … Then the water came. I’m still in the hole, and the water came.

I knew then it would be okay.

The Lady came in with a tray of peanuts, celery
and pimento cheese and such. Danny ambled off looking for a treat … or three.

The Yellow Lab & Forty Hours

Dog stories are always good, especially when they have a happy ending.

On Friday morning there was a call from one of the Sugar Hollow neighbors, good friends, thirty year friends.

“Danny is missing, didn’t come home last night. Keep an eye out for ‘im.”

Danny is a twelve year old Yellow Lab. A lover, a great dog; a bit down in the hips. Not as quick and agile as he once was. Still, he has a reputation as an escape artist. Not that he wants to run away from home, you understand. He has a great home, and he knows it! He does, however, like to make the rounds in the neighborhood, there might be treats out there somewhere. When supper time approaches, Danny comes home.

His  domain comes complete with a fenced-in five plus acres that feature a network of trails. (Plus other assorted lawns and gardens.) Don and Martha both walked the trails,
several people walked the trails. Walked the road ( gravel ) in the immediate neighborhood.

Friday evening: no Danny.

This is serious. Had somebody picked him up? We don’t have much traffic on our part
of the road. But still, that nagging thought is there. Did coyotes get him? That has happened more than once in our little haven. Did he go into the underbrush and make himself a bed in which to die?  Animals do that, you know. We once had a Dachshund  who did that.

Saturday morning I ran a road race, the Bele Chere 5K; didn’t check in with Don and Martha until the middle of the day. Still no Danny. They were resigned to the worst, and still wanted to know what had happened and where he was.

“Can I come and do a walk-through?” I asked. “Put a fresh pair of eyes on the underbrush.”

The first part of the search was on the well kept paths: nothing. Now it was down to bush-whacking, getting off into the briar tangles and Rhododendron thickets, along the fence lines. Nothing.

Danny had been missing for some forty hours now. There was one last area to search. A deep ravine filled with downed trees and limbs left from the Christmas day ice storms two years ago.

Then: from half-a-football-field distance, up the ravine came a howl, a big dog howl, followed by three diminishing yelps. We called. No response. Whistled. Nothing.

We worked our way up the draw, circled the worst of the tangled mass of fallen debris. No barks, no howls, no yelps. But, was that heavy labored breathing, panting. Or was it wistful thinking?

We called Martha. “Maybe we’ve found him. Tell Don to come and help us call. Maybe he ‘ll answer Don’s call.”

We lost the phone signal before she could get Don on the line.

By the time we had worked our way partially down into the tangle, help began arriving. A couple of landscaper guys were next door working for Diana. She sent them over in response to Martha’s frantic call. Still, it was a full minute or so narrowing down the source of the now evident panting. In the midst of the effort to get Gene, the landscaper, to quit running about and shouting, what? … where?  we spotted the bright yellow of Danny’s shoulders and back in the deepest part of the pile of logs and limbs.

How he had ever gotten there is hard to imagine. But, I think, he tried to turn to get back out and his hip dysplasia reached out and grabbed him. He lost his footing on the big log and fell into the depths of the tangle. Probably his efforts to extricate himself just resulted into his slipping deeper and deeper into the mass of rotten limbs.

Diana brought water. The big yellow dog drank two 16 oz bottles straight-away, before we even tried to move him. The first efforts to get Danny up and out weren’t successful. He made feeble efforts to help with his front legs. They only trembled, quivered. Finally it was just pick him up and carry him out. Even then, it was one person on the rear-end, another
at the front, move the him two feet up the steep incline, get a new foot-hold and move him another two feet. Maybe twenty of those lifts getting him up to the trail.

Shawn (landscaper) was sent to fetch a canvas tarp from which we fashioned a stretcher. With one person on each corner, we carried him the two hundred yards back home. More water, Gatorade!!, and high protein food (a little at a time.) Within an hour the vet ( a friend ) was there with intravenous fluids.  Refusing to pee in the house, by
4:00 PM he was asking to get outside!

Did he hear us prior to that howl in the early afternoon? Did he know that one of the little Australian Terriers was close by, did he hear her? Was it luck, fate, did the Gods smile on him? Were his angels in the neighborhood just then? Whatever, that howl saved him. Don and Martha will not forever be left wondering.

And Danny? … The last I heard, his next get-away was thwarted just this morning even as he was being led to the car for a trip to the vet and a complete check-up!

Writers on Writing

One of the neat things I have come across in this writing business is a series that the  NY Times did in their Monday Arts Section a decade or so ago: Writers on Writing.
There are essays from Andre’ Aciman and from Hilma Wolitzer. (A to Z: well, almost.) In between, fortunately, we find William Saroyan, Joyce Carol Oats, Elmore Leonard, Barbara Kingsolver, and Annie Proulx. And a full measure of other folks, writers all.

The topics cover everything from alter egos to zina. Elmore Leonard discusses the
use  of adverbs. Barbara Kingsolver confesses that sex scenes need to be more than just a space-break, fade to black. Andre’ Aciman ( Out of Egypt, Eight White Nights ) talks about a place, a setting, and it’s importance to the whole of a work of fiction. Hilma Wolitzer ( The Doctor’s Daughter, Hearts ) raises the question: Can creative writing be taught?

One of my favorites is the Thomas Fleming piece from January 2000, in which he discusses plot and character inspiration. From where does it comes? In one case,  Loyalties, his dream is peopled by a young German woman, who, in her own dream/nightmare she sees her husband’s U-Boat sinking into the Atlantic Ocean.  … Officer’s Wives came from a song that would not leave his head:

The officers’ wives
The officers’ wives
That’s what we’ll be
For the rest of our lives.

At the time he was doing a history of West Point. Ten years later those four lines developed into three women characters and a plot.

My own completed work, A Confluence of Rivers, came the lines: Wiley Jennings flagged down the milk truck at the end of the lane, caught a ride into town. Why those words came to me is lost in the fog of war, as they say. Anyway, at that point I had to know why Wiley needed to get to town, what happened after he got there.  … Hampton Roads ’44, my work in progress, grew out of a Christmas morning run in Newport News, VA. some number of years ago. The pre-WWII neighborhoods adjacent to the James River and the shipyards. There are a million stories in these old houses, I told myself. It turns out that
there are.

Annie Proulx and I share a passion for road trips on two lane roads (paved or gravel ) in the west. Listening to old country music: Don Walser and Ray Price. There is  research to be done in every crossroad diner and feed & seed store. Her essay from May 1999 points out the random and endless possibilities for inspiration.

I have said before, when I forget how to write I just pull out some Elmore Leonard from the ’70s and early ’80s: Glitz, Hombre, Swag, the western short stories. He, Leonard, is the best exception of the genre writer who is widely respected in literary circles. His ten rules  (July 2001) for writing should, in my opinion, be the first thing students of creative writing ever take a look at.

1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said”…he admonished gravely.
4. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two    or three per 100,000 words of prose.
5. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”
6. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
7. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
8. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.
9. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10. … If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Leonard said, somewhere else: Readers like a lot of white on the page. Meaning more dialogue,  less narrative, which he called  hooptedoodle. …  When you write, he said,
leave a lot of white on the page. I tend to write that way.

Put this on your favorites icon button: http://www.nytimes.com/books/specials/writers.html?_r=1
… Or just Google Writers on Writing.

If you are a writer, you will go there from time and again.