The Blacksmith and the Sample

The Blacksmith

When the inspiration hits I love to write; I need to write. My preferred genre is short fiction. I write for my own pleasure and, if a story is written with a particular person in mind, for the subject. I’ve been collecting stories for over a decade and have decided to make 13 available in book form.

I thought that the stories were pretty good. I knew that I enjoyed writing them, and rereading them, but I also knew that they had structural and mechanical flaws. I could proof read a story six times and still find errors. I realized that before I let these things out to the general public that they needed an expert editor.

I found one such editor in a friend from Peace Corps service. I call her my blacksmith. Alecia has taken the stories, heated them in the fire of dispassionate analysis then pounded out the rough spots and the blemishes. She has made the mechanics more reliable and the structure much more durable. It has, though, been a painful process.

These are my stories, and like the character in the title story of the forthcoming book, Sparky and the Cowboy and other Stories I love them for themselves, not for whatever competitive advantage or success they may have. To see them red-lined and yellow highlighted was painful. It got to be that if I could manage two paragraphs in a row without the blacksmith pounding on her anvil, I felt victorious. While I accepted 85% of Alecia’s suggested changes, every time I saw a red mark, it created a thoughtful internal debate. ‘Did I wish to leave it in the original or should I accept her modifications.’ That debate and her suggestions have much improved the stories and them more readable.

It is still months away before the self-published book will be ready, but thirteen stories have been selected, edited, and reviewed. The printing contract has been signed. I’m excited and you’ll find a section of one of the stories in the blog entry directly below. Your comments would be very much appreciated.

The Lake in Parcul Centru

The Sample

Parcul Centru
II

The lake is in the southwest corner of the park. Separate from the lake the main pedestrian walk runs from west end to east, broad and gravelly. It is flat and a perfect surface for joggers. On weekends a fellow guides a pony wagon and sells rides to children. On each side of the walkway chestnut trees grow.

I wonder at these trees. In America the chestnut has disappeared from our forests, felled by the blight. When I was young there was a mighty horse chestnut that grew outside the north porch of our house. Scientists used to come and poke around the tree, wondering why it hadn’t succumbed to the disease. We moved, and I’m not sure what became of the tree, if it died from natural causes or destroyed in building an office park. Perhaps it is a different variety, but here in Romania, the chestnuts flourish. During the first days of school the nuts burst from their protective, spiky husks and fall to the ground, bright pebbles for school children to collect and examine.

A British gentleman comes often to the park on sunny days. He takes a spot on one of the benches flanking the walking path. I say he is British, but that is an assumption. He strolls from the British library at the consulate office, located across the street from the park. He has the air of an Englishman, the way he carries his umbrella, his suit of clothes and his book. He prefers the mysteries. If it is a warm day he sits in the shade and reads, if it is cool, he finds a bench in the sunlight. He reads for roughly half an hour, then marks his page with a bookmark and heads, I presume, home.

I have heard him say “Buna Ziua” on occasion, but I have not noticed that he has ever engaged in conversation with passers-by. He is content to read his book and enjoy the weather.

No one ever gave the dog a name. He was a stray, living on the edge of society. Romania has a million stray dogs, and though the city of Cluj has done a fair job in clearing the streets, there remain a few. This dog without a name was one. He had bright eyes and an easy manner. He was a medium sized animal, and slim, like all the strays. He was black and had inherited no sign of breed or distinction except for his intelligence. He liked the park. He had lived here all summer, alone, finding sustenance from the ice cream wrappers and other debris. Because he had the wisdom to stay out of people’s way, keeping just beyond their circle of rejection, they left him alone, sometimes tossing him their unwanted tidbits.

What it was that attracted the dog to the Englishman, I cannot say. The man never had food, so had nothing to offer him. I never saw the man coax the dog, or speak to it either in Romanian or in English. As the end of summer approached, the dog perhaps sensed that he’d need to find other arraignments for surviving the Transylvanian winter. Perhaps the Englishman had a particular scent that attracted the dog, I cannot say, but I do know that the dog adopted the man.

It was a slow adoption. On the days the gentleman came for his read, the dog would appear and either sit or lie close by the bench the man chose for his leisure. On each succeeding day the dog moved closer to the man. At first the gentleman paid little heed, only to interrupt his reading to be sure that the dog was no threat. He had never been attacked by a stray but he had heard stories.

It wasn’t until the third or fourth afternoon that he took full account of the dog. I suspect he wondered why the same dog seemed to hang around. I saw him put aside his novel and sit and contemplate the animal for some minutes. He said nothing. The dog said nothing. The man picked up his book again, read to the appointed time, and got up to leave. In doing so, he looked back at the dog. I could see the dog return the gaze. I’ve known enough dogs to imagine the mournful look the beast gave the man. Finally, the man retreated from the park. The dog stayed put for some time as if waiting for the man’s return.

The gentleman did not have a pattern of reading every day. Often there were gaps of two or three days. I never saw him at all on the weekends. I saw the dog but I did not see the man.
It was a day following the night rains when the Englishman next showed. The earth smelled clean and new. The rain had brought down more of the chestnuts and dried leaves. The man had picked an all-together splendid day to enjoy the last sparse shade of the trees. He pulled out a napkin to wipe the droplets of water from the bench before sitting. I watched him and I watched the dog.

The dog moved closer than it had in previous days. It sat directly next to the bench in such a manner that its head made a near perfect arm rest. He looked straight ahead, almost as if he too were reading some imaginary book.

The man tried reading but found that the quality of his concentration was affected by his guest. He put the book in his lap. He turned to look down at the dog. The dog turned to look up at him.
“I used to have a dog, you know.”

Dogs can’t answer directly, their conversation takes a more roundabout form, but it was clear that the animal was listening.

“When I was a lad I had a dog.”

I wondered if the dog had ever had such a discussion with a non-dog before. He seemed perfectly at ease, all rapt attention. The conversation was in English. Perhaps the dog would have preferred Romanian or Hungarian but it seemed content enough to listen.

The gentleman must have found his audience agreeable as well for he continued. “We shared many fond times, Kanga and I. I named him after my favorite character in Winnie-the-Pooh.”

The man said everything slowly to the dog. I doubt that it was because he felt the dog slow to understand; rather it was the way the memories awakened in his mind, slowly.

“He was a good dog and the day that he was hit by a neighbor’s auto was one of the saddest of my childhood.”

The man paused for a long time. The dog sat waiting for the rest of the story. It did not come, at least, not that day. The man picked up his reading, lasted only a few more lines, closed his book and departed.

I looked over at the dog sitting still after the man had left. I wondered if the canine thought that he was making progress or if he was wasting his time with this gent that spoke a foreign language that the dog didn’t understand at all.

The next day the Englishman came back, but not with a book in his hands, but rather a paper bag. He looked around as he walked, searching for his dog. It was his dog now, that’s what the bag signified. He sat upon the same bench as he had the day before, but there was no sign of the dog. I could see from the slightest slump in an otherwise straight shoulder that the man was disappointed not to find his dog. He sat there for a while, considering whether to walk the park searching or not.

I’m sure the dog was testing him. After all these days of gradually gaining the trust of the man, he wanted to test that trust. I imagine the dog had a motto, “Easily adopted, as easily dismissed.” I don’t know how to say that in Romanian. I believe that the dog did though.
The man sat a full fifteen minutes with no dog. He had given up the idea of strolling through the park, I believe because it would have seemed undignified to be searching for a stray. As I watched him I saw his countenance brighten. He had seen his dog, and his dog, as if to make up for his tardy arrival, came bounding towards the man.

As he got closer to the bench, the dog slowed, then stopped and stood. The gentleman patted his black head.

“I shall have a name for you. You are not a Kanga, there was only one, besides you don’t look anything like a Kanga.”

He leaned and scratched behind the dog’s ears. The dog closed his eyes and I imagine he said to himself, “So this is how it feels.”


The man continued, “My favorite character from the mysteries is Constable Perkins. He is a wily and intelligent fellow. I shall call you Perkins, if you don’t mind.”

The dog hadn’t ever been called a name before. He’d been yelled at and called unpleasant things, but those aren’t names. “Perkins,” the dog said to himself.

The gentleman reached into his bag, produced a dog biscuit and held it for Perkins. The dog hesitated. He’d never been offered anything like this before and wasn’t sure what he was suppose to do with it.

“Go ahead. It’s good. You’ll like it.”

Perkins looked up at the man, then took a deeper smell of the treat. He opened his mouth and grabbed the bone but made no attempt to eat it. He simply held it in his mouth. His saliva must have dripped the taste of it onto his tongue, yet still he held it.

Reaching again into the bag the man pulled out an aerosol can.

“This is for the fleas. We mustn’t bring any of the fleas home with us. Once we get home we’ll have a proper bath in the tub, but now we’ll use this so that none of the buggers will follow us.”

This was all foreign to the dog. Even if it had all been spoken in Romanian or even in dog talk, the meaning would have been lost for lack of experience. The dog stood there, his biscuit in his mouth. The man took the aerosol and sprayed up and down and around Perkins, careful not to get any near his eyes or biscuit filled mouth. When he was done he reached again into the bag and withdrew a slip collar and a leash.

The dog remained still as the man slid the collar around the treat and over his head. When the collar was properly around the neck, the man snapped the clasp of the leash to the collar. “Come along, Perkins. Let’s go get a proper bath.”

As they departed the park they walked past me. I could swear I heard the dog say proudly to himself as they passed, his words mumbled around his still uneaten treat, “Perkins. Sunt Perkins.” I smiled for he said ‘Perkins’ with a Romanian accent.

Rain Tree with Yellow Blossoms

The Rain Tree

The Rain Tree

Many of the trees that Nancy and I have planted in the eighteen years we’ve been on our small farm have a connection, a history. Some came from the back lot of Cooke’s Greenhouse and Garden Center in Williamsburg. Jeff Schell, the owner of Cooke’s is a cousin and his back lot was where he stored not dead yet not saleable trees and shrubs. The stately aspen that is a symbol of our entrance came from Jeff.

Five graceful white dogwoods are transplants from the five-acre woods on the back of our property. They started out as twigs but have now filled in.

We have a magnolia that was planted on Nancy’s birthday. She loves magnolias. I’m not sure why, but she does. It’s setting is a little odd, for I planted it next to a Colorado Blue Spruce that son Steve gave us one Christmas. Magnolias and Blue Spruces are not normally found growing side-by-side but they both seem happy and have become accustomed to one another.

Three Japanese cherry trees came from a nurseryman that owed me a sum of money. They were payment for a month’s loan payment. The apple trees were purchased to provide treats for the horses. Four evergreens were formally live Christmas trees. One of those was my mother’s little tree for her last Christmas. That one is now growing faster and more uniform than any of the other plantings. I have no idea exactly what breed or species it is, for it is very unusual with soft, pale needles.

We’ve two burr oaks that came from acorns dropped by Virginia’s largest burr oak specimen that stands in front of the Elkton Town Hall. I gathered, stored, germinated and sold the seedlings one year as a community fundraiser. There’s a ginkgo that came from a seed from the tree that was in the yard where I grew up in Virginia Beach.

One of my favorites, though, is the rain tree. It too came from a seed of a tree that my mother had planted back in 1960. Rain trees are not large trees, and they have a spreading, well-rounded form. There’s a birdbath beneath the one that sits in our front yard. It’s eighteen years old now and the trunk is sturdy. Unlike most trees that bloom in the spring and then simply turn green, the rain tree creates interest spring, summer and fall.

In late spring, bourn above the foliage, yellow flowers nearly obscure the green leaves. After several weeks of yellow, the flowers turn to pale green pods. These pale lanterns are in contrast to the much darker green of the leaves. Finally, as summer heads into August and September the pods turn from green to brown.

The rain tree does have one fault. It is a fault of fertility. The flowers turn to pods. The pods shield the seeds waiting until the proper time to burst. Every seed that finds the ground sprouts the next spring. Along with all our other weeds, we are constantly pulling rain tree starts from the flowerbeds. We’ve planted two more rain trees along the lane, grandchildren of the tree my mother first planted. If you’re interested in one for yourself, come and pull weeds with us. I’m sure that we can get you one.

The Cat Bird seat is atop the telephone pole

Red Barber and the Cat Bird Seat

Red Barber and the Cat Bird Seat


I spent the first half of my youth in Westchester County, a little outside of New York City. That was back in the fifties and one of my memories was listening to baseball games on the radio. We had a TV, it was big but the screen was little and often the sound didn’t come through, so the family would watch a ball game in black and white, but listen to the color commentary.

Our family was about equally divided in loyalties. One third supported the New York Giants, another third were Red Sox fans and third I was counted with rooted for the Yankees. About once a year we make a family outing to the stadium to see a game in person, usually, when the Red Sox were in town, but mostly our contact with professional baseball came through the radio.

Even the two thirds of the household that weren’t Yankee fans, knew that the Yankees had the best organist and the best announcers: Mel Allen on the TV and Red Barber on the radio. Red had a distinctive voice and a delightful sense of humor and humility. Somewhere during his career he came up with phrase that no one else had ever heard, but once uttered, everyone understood, and that was “Sitting in the Cat Bird Seat.”

Cat birds are not normally native to New York State, but every New Yorker, knew that if someone was sitting where the cat bird would sit, he was sitting pretty, on top of things, overlooking all things beneath him.

Moving to Virginia at the age of ten, I discovered Mocking Birds. For many years I thought cat bird was simply another name for the mocking bird, but they are distinctive species. Though similar in size and general coloration, their markings are quite different. They share the habit though, of finding a perch overlooking their domain. The other day I confirmed a pair of cat birds here on the farm. There are probably eight or ten pair of mocking birds and at least two pair of brown thrashers – also very closely related -, but this was the first sighting of nesting cat birds.

More rare than either thrasher or cat bird, there is a mocking bird down the lane that thinks it’s a duck. Mocking birds are wonderful mimics. They’ll sit on their high perches and blast away for twenty minutes at a time, going through a repertoire of original and borrowed birdcalls. I was told once that they’ve even been known to mimic a human’s whistle. At the age of twelve I remember whistling the same tune every morning to the birds hoping that I’d hear an answering whistle, but I never did. Nor, until this summer, have I ever heard the impersonation of the quack of a duck.

Actually, it took me several times of hearing the call before I realized it wasn’t a duck. I couldn’t figure what a duck was doing at the entrance to our lane, but I thought perhaps the neighbors had gotten a tame duck to walk around their yard. It turned out to be the mocking bird. After a couple of quacks, he or she continues with a more normal call list. I think though, it’s spreading for I’ve heard what seems to be a second bird in a different location quacking. So there seems to be two mocking birds, sitting in Red Barber's cat bird seat pretending to be a duck.