The Little Words Mean the Most

how I deal with editing

 

Belfast 1942 ~ Chapter 6, page 1

 

Chapter 6

 

 

 

Jimmy Scanlon and the other bored technical sergeants spaced themselves every few conscripts behind the firing line.

       The gunnery range was quiet enough. Distant artillery fired: boomp boomp boomp. Everyone conspicuously ignored the explosions: already jaded; at least so you'd pretend. Then maybe you'd recall that rifle training was just a first step. Learn how to use a saw? You cut wood. Learn how to use a powerful man-killing device like a rifle? Eventually, you did what you were trained by the army to do.

 

He shouted, "You love your rifle like you love your very own mother."

       "Yes, top sergeant!"

       He paced the red dirt of Camp Claiborne, Louisiana. He was the cock and this was his walk.

       "If you did not particularly love that bitch who pushed you without mercy into my god-forsaken world," he yelled down at them, because they were prone and he was upright, "then I pity you. But that is not the army's problem." This also sounded sincere, "I pity them, your mothers," top sergeant said. "Bless their hearts, I pity them. They had to push your empty, ungrateful heads out between their legs. The same road your da went in. And it hurt like hell. And you are all disappointments."

       He got louder. "For all the disappointment those good women, your sainted mothers, have already suffered at your hands...." He seemed to run out of contempt. "You all were children. Now you must put aside childish things. Get your head out of your ass." Sounding blind angry now, past any reasonable anger.

 

A series of tropical storms had swept through; one queued up behind the next, making the draftees miserable. The pinewoods smelled strong as a fresh-bloomed rose.

         It was one of the few things Jimmy truly liked about Louisiana, that

 

 

Belfast 1942 ~ Chapter 5, page 1

 

Chapter 5

 

 

 

He saw it coming.

       In the waiting room of a train station in a suburb of London.

       Everything about her.

       Her age said she'd mothered a soldier in the last war, the one that was going to end the rest.

       Had now become a crone who'd lost her one and only. He watched her change direction his way. Like she smelled him. The way her fine nose contracted and seized on his odor. Pointer genes in this one, he supposed.

       "Why aren't you in uniform, young man?" She wasn't buying what she saw in him. And just polite enough. He knew where this was headed because it wasn't the first time. He knew what she wanted to say for all the world to hear, her voice pitched one indignant level too loud. She fully intended to make a public, unavoidable accusation; fishing for supporters among the crowd packed in like stinking and uncomfortable sardines.

       He looked around.

       True enough. Every other man his age was in military dress. And several nearby were clearly curious how he would answer. Damn.

       "My orders just come up, madam." A little of the underclass never hurt.

       "For where?" she huffed, affronted that he had any kind of answer.

       "Can't tell you that, madam," he sighed. "Everything's a secret." Murmurs at that. Murmurs against her now. Maybe she was a meddling old crow. The important thing for him was she walked away, deflated, just as two bulky men struggled into the waiting room from the street carrying a steamer trunk.

       They saw him. He was looking for them.

         "Over here," his voice cracked like a whip above the crowd. Even the fading old bitch turned to look. He waved eagerly to the porters.

#WCFC2019 ~ Got this new PINBALL show

 

 

 

Belfast 1942 ~ Chapter 4, page 1

 

Chapter 4

 

 

 

The gulls complained. Major Amos Burke sympathized. It was a fucking cold day; not fit for shovels.

       His eyes swiveled. The VIPs had finally gathered. Black or navy coats were congressmen, he guessed. They stood with the bureaucrats in tweed. Birds of a feather. Some top brass in olive, too.

       Today, VIPs didn't matter to Major Burke. He was just here to observe "the demonstration." The science boys had a new shebang. They called it cyclonite. It looked like a half pound of gray lard wrapped in butcher's paper ... if your butcher was a very evil man.

 

Burke was a listener. He wanted to get the details right. The sergeant saw he had a good audience, so he turned a bit toward the major.

       "Cyclonite," he said; Burke nodded calm encouragement. "Also known as Nobel 808. Brits came up with it." Burke involuntarily snuffed, which the sergeant mistook as contempt for English bloodthirstiness. "Yeah," he said low, for Burke's hearing alone. "You wouldn't think they had it in them." Burke nodded companionably once more.

       But he knew full well, Americans had that wrong.

       Maybe it's the toff accent throws them off. The Brits were damn-well adept at slaughter. Dainty folk don't run empires, you know. Being of Irish parents who'd fled to Boston, Burke of course had no problem imagining the Brits as total pricks. He'd heard about that aspect all his life.

         The sergeant was none too gentle handling the cyclonite. And he saw worry flit over Burke's face. They were pals now. The sergeant rushed to reassure: "That's the beauty of cyclonite, Major: safe to handle. You can mold it like window putty." His hands did some taffy pulling. "Shape it around things. Locks and hinges. Keeps good, too; nice and stable. Won't sweat nitroglycerin like dynamite." The sergeant made a hand gesture. "Now there's a nasty habit." Burke's raised eyebrows....

Belfast 1942 ~ Chapter 3, page 1

 

Chapter 3

 

 

 

Fuck it is cold was the one thought occupying his full attention. Without warming up a goddamn thing. The major couldn't see the bay from here. Fucking feel it though, cold and fatal.

       It was brutal in March, standing out here in the wind, to watch a demonstration. Fuck! Phone me. I'll believe you.

       Fuck again! Thinking of bay waters brought the major back to Helen, his dead wife. And that, right there, was the express train to stupid. Helen died. Helen died. Helen died. Helen died.

       But, then, no: she couldn't have died. That was his problem at the moment. Amos, as an engineer, as a military officer, a college man ... he had to accept it. Helen's death was a fact. It was true enough. He'd seen and touched one last time her body. Seen the burial. Heard the priest. Felt the absence.

       Yet he kept expecting Helen to show up any minute. Right now, on this desolate blasted military explosives proving ground, he wouldn't be surprised to see her turn the corner. Come deliberately, encouragingly, in his direction, a Broadway smile spreading up her ruddy cheeks (especially in this frigid weather) as her eyes locked on his.

 

It was the best time of his life ever: his time with Helen.

       She was a cat; she didn't much like being in the water. But, on vacation, she'd gladly sit all day atop a blanket, reading and toasting while Amos went swimming. The Chesapeake was so fine in the summer, like Greek-god water. They'd make a day of it. Iced beer, shucked oysters, steamed crabs. And after: because she was toasty and he was salty and baths beckoned.

         Fuck it is cold. The major climbed a few steps up the path, so he could actually see the bay. He saw that the service boat from the yacht club was already a half-mile off. Even facing a razor-sharp wind, Amos paused to admire the boat's lines. It was a Herreshoff launch outfitted for....

 

 

Belfast 1942 ~ Chapter 2, page 1

Chapter 2

 

 

 

Shades drawn. Lights off.

       "Corporal?"

       The projector clattered to life. On the screen, a training film wobbled. Counted down. Green and white numbers and symbols.

       Marching band music flares from the rinky-dink speaker.

       Title comes up: The U.S. Army Wants YOU To Know YOUR Duty in Northern Ireland.

       Martial music fades.

       Onscreen, a bare office. Foreground: a metal desk. Posted on the wall is a map of Ireland. Like a cop with a question, the camera approaches the map, coming in tight on the country's name: EIRE.

       The map of Ireland divides into two unequal parts. Eire is the name on the largest part, the part the Brits gave up, against every imperial instinct. The rest, smallest by far, is labeled Northern Ireland. Six counties shaded pink in the upper right of the island. The northeast. The only part the Brits still hold. With an iron lion's claw.

       Onscreen, an officer comes into the frame. Earnest, white, muscular face. Trustworthy. The kind of face Hollywood loves. He perches on the desk's front edge. That's got to hurt over time someone in the room predicts.

       "Why are we in Northern Ireland?" he says onscreen.

       The scriptwriter knew what he was doing. Take your time with new information. Go in dribs and drabs. Get 20 million civilians to shoot in the right direction? That was harder than it looked. Take nothing for granted. Dribs and drabs.

       The deep voice again flared: "Because that's where you are needed most right now. To help fight Nazi aggression in Europe. And for those of you with Irish roots, expect a warm welcome home."

       Followed by almost a chuckle.

 

 

Hope YOU will come to our summer party, SOME August 2019 Saturday after 5 PM

 

Belfast 1942 ~ Chapter 1, page 1

Chapter 1

 

 

 

Belfast 1942.

 

Foggy night. Fat amphibian fog, slick everywhere Sean could see.

 

like you're pawing through a closet full of heavy coats, bumping past things that smell of others

 

about to die from frustration and suffocation, if you were out in it. A creeping state of air known to every northern Irishman plotting to be free.

 

Still, Sean could see the dog.

       A skinny white dog sniffed the gutters and the piss-stained corners of everything in the square below Sean's window watch post. Sean heard another noise, then a softer curse from the floor below. Working fast made mistakes, Sean's da always said.

       Not fast enough for Sean, though. Which is why he'd joined up to fight. Tonight he had the window. Tonight the window was the fight. Watching a tame, stupid square and the alleys intruding. Mother, they couldn't have picked a worse person for the job, I'm sure, because Sean never could sit still an hour his entire short life. And now was not the exception. Sixteen years so far you're counting. His short life.

       The last few weeks had been more interesting than the earlier stuff, the rest though. Had to be said.

       His hand drummed his trousers, so quiet only he could hear it. Inside his heavy right work shoe, toes tapped to the fiddle music he still heard from the night before. At the hall. Fast. Ominous. Getting faster music. A drum beating urgently.

         Sean dutifully stopped his toes. Nothing for it: nought else he could do. Wait. Still. Wait. Quiet. Watch. Watch. Watch. He sure couldn't.......

 

 

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