Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

An editor can make or break an author. That's why authors try so hard to please them. I'm no different. For a long time my editor was Carol. She lived and worked in Boston, only an hour's drive from Providence, but far enough to prevent being recognized if she came to visit her favorite author with her briefcase in one hand and an overnight bag in the other. We broke into the big league together. Deep Shadows was my first novel to get published, and the first novel she edited on her own. It was a heady experience for both of us, and when it went to press we shared our triumph together, first with dinner at a fancy restaurant, then a tour of upscale lounges where smooth jazz honed our euphoria, and finally a weekend in my king size bed. We went on as a team to make the New York Times top ten list five times in a row, and I guess we must have thought we were invincible. Somehow, we associated working together with selling books with being lovers, so when the sixth novel stumbled, our neat little world just fell apart. Suddenly everything was wrong. The only things we shared then were angry recriminations, and to balance the scales we withheld sex, withheld tenderness, withheld affection, withheld support, and finally withheld ourselves. Carol quit her job and moved to Los Angeles. I went through a dry spell when nothing I wrote was any good. Then I spent some time with a shrink who helped me see that I had expected to score a touchdown every time I got my hands on the ball, which was unrealistic, especially for a beginning writer. After that I managed to settle down and pump out some reasonably good stories, one of which made it into print and had the critics rejoicing that I had found my way back. This time I maintained a cool, professional association with Grace, my new editor. Grace was old enough to be my mother, and had enough novels behind her to fill a library wing. If she said to rewrite a chapter, I rewrote it. When she said to cut out a twenty thousand word digression and streamline the plot, it hurt like cutting off my arm but I did what she said without a whimper. I learned to let myself loosen up a little, knowing that I didn't have to be so severely critical of my own work because she was there to polish what was good and cut out what wasn't. Gradually my old quality came back, which made Grace's job easier, brought us good reviews, and sold a lot of books.

But I missed Carol. I know now that I started missing her as soon as our relationship went sour, but my anger kept me from feeling it. As the hurt and disappointment faded I was no longer angry, just lonely. So after publishing three novels edited by Grace, I hit a dry spell. A novelist has to be brash and brave to face the blank page and make it meaningful, but as my anger faded, so did my cockiness. Without an intimate relationship to fall back on for reassurance, my old confidence in the universal appeal of my stories evaporated and I could barely write.

Suzy came into my life at exactly the right moment. She might be a little weird, but she certainly restored my self image. To get right down to basics, she was a hot little sexpot, and if I could keep her satisfied I must be one hell of a man! And yet underneath her slick, sexy veneer lurked a little girl, wanting to love and be loved, but afraid she wouldn't do it right. I could see that we could help each other, like a couple of cripples who can stand up and walk as long as they lean on each other. It didn't matter to me that I wasn't all that sure of her name; I didn't care whether her yarn about the Confederate gold was true or not; I wasn't even excited about the prospect of digging my way to a fortune. What mattered was that she had become my muse, and she was making me whole so I could write again!

I settled myself at the keyboard, feeling good about the world. My moment of introspective clarity showed that I was ready to forgive the world, Carol, even myself. The past was past, and the present was a blank screen. Come on, Jack, fill it with words! And remember to cancel your standing appointments with your shrink.

Chapter eight

Henry was having a hell of a time. Fern, the redhead, was really having her way with him. Not that he was complaining.

Henry rolled over to ease the cramp in his lower back, and Fern was right there with him. She sat up and straddled his hips and they reconnected. Leaning over almost far enough to fall out of bed, she picked up his hat off the floor and clapped it onto her red hair, which was looking a little wind blown. Leaning back, she gave out a big "Yee-haw!" and picked up where they had left off.

"What do you call this?" Henry asked.

"This is the cowgirl position. Like it? It's one of my favorites."

"Seems to me they're all your favorites," answered Henry. "Are there any that you don't like?"

"Well, there are some things that I'd have to be pretty drunk to try, but with a whole saloon full of booze, even that shouldn't be a problem."

Looked to me as if Henry would hang around Cactus Canyon for a while. This was fun stuff to write and it went pretty fast. But Henry was having too good a time. I needed some lingering suggestion of evil to get the readers muttering, "Henry, you idiot, put your pants on and get downstairs before somebody sets fire to the building with you and your piece of redheaded fluff in it!"

Her breasts bounced up and down in unison, a fascinating sight to behold, and the more Henry watched them the more hypnotic they seemed. He remembered his father telling him about a truck driver getting hypnotized from his windshield wipers on a rainy night, and driving right off the road and across a cornfield before he snapped out of it. But these were a lot better than wiper blades. Fern watched his eyes and added some visual interest by giving the nipples a little twirl every time they went up in the air. That was too much, and Henry reached for them with both hands, only to have Fern lean back and take his hands in hers, just like the reins of a horse, and yell as if she were riding a saddle bronc.

I didn't know how much more of this Henry could take. I got up, stretched, and went to the kitchen for a beer. I had just taken my first sip when the door opened and Suzy came in., carrying her briefcase with the laptop in it. "Hey, handsome, what's that you've got? Can I have a mouthful of that?"

"It's called beer. Here, have some, or I'll get you a can of your own if you want."

"I didn't mean what's in the can. I meant what's in your pants."

I looked down and was surprised to find that Fern's antics had been as exciting for the author as they were for the hero, to judge from a bulge I didn't even know was there. We met in the middle of the living room. I set my beer on the coffee table and she dropped her stuff on the floor and started that business with my belt and the top button of my pants. All the while she was licking her lips, and I reached forward to give her a big hug and kiss but caught only an armful of air. She had ducked down to wrap me in a hug, but it was aimed so low that her hands were holding onto my bare buns. Then she kissed me, wet and deep. But not on my mouth. Oh, Fern, you've got nothing on my Suzy!

Later, much later in fact, we were lying in the bed when I decided to get serious. "Suzy, we can't keep this up. Pretty soon it's going to slow down, and how will you feel about me then?"

"I'm way ahead of you. You're right in thinking that this hypersexuality can't last forever. But until then, it's a life saver for both of us. You were depressed, and I was so screwed up that I was getting desperate. Now we're satisfying our need for sex and along with it we're getting the deep, satisfying intellectual and emotional intimacy that we were crying out for. Trouble was that we didn't even know that's what we needed. We shouldn't be worried about what will happen to us when the sex runs out. We need to give more thought to what else we can do for each other right now that will enrich our relationship and give us something to build on later."

"Wow. Where'd that come from? Your train of thought is actually on the same track as mine, but a few miles ahead. And with the big words, yet. So what do we do about this, doctor?"

"We each have an interest that is so strong that it tends to crowd out everything else in our lives. For you it's writing. For me it's my treasure hunt. I need to take some time away from my quest to learn more about your writing, how you go about it, how it's going now, what direction your new novel is going to go, your dealings with your publisher, what got you interested in writing in the first place, what you've written, how you deal with the stress of working to a deadline, all that stuff. You need to take a similar interest in my historical studies, the frustrating search for more information about Hempstead, where his shipyard was located, what we know about his wife and her family, and so on. We have a lot to talk about. It's okay to do it in an intimate setting, just as we're doing now, and we can always have sex afterward, like dessert."

"You really do know how to steer this fire truck, don't you?"

"I can handle my end. Why don't you let me drive for a few blocks?"

"Go ahead. I've got the tiller."

"Suppose you tell me how old you were when you first got interested in writing. Was there one event that started it off, or what?"

"That's easy. I was six years old. My mother was a teacher at an elementary school, and she brought books home that they were using in the primary grades so I'd have something to read. I was good at sounding out unfamiliar words, and it was like a game for me, a challenge. So I found it was fun to read. I remember asking my mother why they didn't use pronouns. Well, I didn't know they were pronouns, I'd never heard the word, but the writing seemed stilted to me, not the way that people really talked. It was always Mother this and Mother that, never she or her. I didn't know it, of course, but I was already developing in interest in style.

"Then there was a sausage contest. It happened on summer vacation, when my mother was around the house all day. Some meat packing outfit was offering a prize for testimonials for their link sausage with pancakes for breakfast, in twenty-five words or less. I asked her whether I could write one, expecting to hear that I was too little. Instead, she said, "Well, I don't know why not." Those were her exact words; the whole episode had such an impact on me that I've never forgotten how she said it. We worked on that contest all one afternoon. She led with questions, drawing out what I wanted to say, what was the most important idea to lead off with, and all that. I put the words together in my head and recited them to her, one sentence at a time. Then she recited it back to me as I wrote it all down on the contest form. Later we walked to the mailbox together to send it in, and she explained to me that a whole lot of kids would be doing just what I was doing, and that the chance of winning the five dollar prize was very remote. I remember how she explained that the contestants would be more kids than I had ever seen together, a huge crowd bigger than all the people in my school. But she kept the emphasis on how well I had written my entry and what a lot of fun it was. So I guess I was already on the way to being hooked on writing when a white car with a picture of sausages on the side drove up and parked in front of our house a few weeks later. A man came up to the door, wearing a suit and white shirt and necktie, and talked with my mother. Then he talked to me and handed me a brand new five dollar bill! I had beaten all the other six year olds! That settled it right there. Writing was fun, and it was profitable, too."

"You must have been a cute little kid. I can just picture a little boy holding a five dollar bill and trying to take it all in: the thrill of being surprised, satisfaction that the sausage company had liked your little essay so much, and the pure joy of doing something and having it turn out well. I can imagine your parents talking that night after you were in bed, about how to get across to you the fact that you can't win every contest you enter so you shouldn't be disappointed if there aren't any more five dollar bills walking up the front walk."

"Yeah, I'm sure they must have wanted to encourage me but shield me from disappointment. Hard to do. However they did it, it worked. Okay, my turn in the driver's seat. Tell me about growing up as an Indian girl. What was it like, what were your parents like, and your siblings, where did you live, how did you get interested in history, all that."

"That's a whole lot for one fire. I grew up in Virginia, not where you might have driven down Interstate 95, but off to the east, down toward Williamsburg. I told you I was Chickahominy, which was different from being in one of the bigger tribes that were moved all over the map by the white men. Our people live today right about where they lived when the white men first came here from England. If you want to think of an awful ordeal, just think of the poor Seminoles having to walk all the way from Florida to Oklahoma, and then as soon as they could sneak away, walking all the way home again. Our people never had to do any of that, and I'm sure that's why we survive as a tribe today.

"But about our family. My father was an automobile mechanic. We lived in a house out in the country, just a little two bedroom house like anybody else. My mother died when I was little, and we moved in

with my father's cousin, a widow who was just like a mother to me from then on. She had five kids of her own, so one more didn't make much difference. She stayed at home when we kids were little, and then worked in the school cafeteria after we got bigger. It was a good job because she was off on vacation when we were. Now when I think back I wonder how she handled us all, but at the time we didn't think of ourselves as a big family because a lot of the families had more kids than we did. I suppose that having big families is what kept the tribe afloat, because so many Indians move away as soon as they're out of high school.

"The school we went to was a regular public school, but most of the kids were Chickahominy, so it was almost like a tribal school. About half the teachers were Indians, but not all from our tribe. It seems funny to me now to think about being part of the tribe, because the plight of the poor, downtrodden Indians on the reservations has become one of the things for big city liberals to emote over, even though they probably never met an Indian in their lives. Oh, I keep forgetting, we're not supposed to be Indians any more, we're now Native Americans. What a bunch of shit! Anyway, even though our tribe is and always was very small, we're doing pretty well now, compared to the Hopis and Navajos and some of the other big tribes out west.

"I'm number four in the kids of our combined family. The oldest two were boys, then three girls in a row, and then one last boy. Like a lot of the kids I grew up with, I had a White first name and an Indian middle name. So I'm Susan Birdsong Brewster, which gives me a sense of belonging in both worlds. But aside from an emotional connection, there's not much about being Chickahominy that enters into my life. I'm just a person, not Indian, not White, just me. What you see is what you get.

"Even though we lived out in the country we never lacked for other kids to play with. My cousins, I thought of them as my brothers and sisters, were there, and they often had friends come over to visit, so we weren't isolated."

"Were your friends all Indians, too?"

"No, although there were more Indians living around there than Whites. We weren't brought up to discriminate. We had some Colored families living near us, too, and we played with those kids without thinking twice about it. Oh, I guess they would be African Americans now. Another bunch of shit. Changing the name of a racial or ethnic group doesn't do anything for the people, but the city people who hand out these stupid names must think they're doing us an enormous favor. Why don't they think about improving the Indian Medical Service and forget about finding a cutesy name to hang on us?

"Some Indian families are still immersed in self pity, and raise their kids to hate or look down on Whites. I guess some Colored families do the same. I think that just perpetuates the misery of past abuse, without doing anything to heal the old wounds. There's no way that the sins of the past can be erased from our history, so all we can do is decide that after a hundred and fifty years it's time to forget about it and move on."

"Did you watch television?"

"Sure. We were big on police shows. And when we'd play we'd be detectives, or crime reporters. 'Bang, you're dead!' And the thing that was the most fun was dying. Oh, how we'd drag that out, gasping and moaning, flopping all over, and trying to tell the policeman something important but dying just before we could get it out. What a bunch of ham actors."

"I bet you were a cute little girl. Did you have pigtails?"

"Most of the time, until I got old enough to make a big deal out of brushing my hair. That was about at puberty, along with getting my period and sprouting tits. I think I was probably a real pain in the ass around that time, but with all of us kids, at least one was usually going through some dramatic crisis or other so we were inclined to forgive a lot."

"I've noticed that you always refer to them as tits, not breasts. Any reason for that?"

"Look, with six kids to feed and clothe and discipline, my aunt had her hands full and she couldn't take an adolescent girl aside and sit down with her to say, 'Sweetie, you're about to become a young woman now. This is an exciting time in the life of a girl, and you will notice some changes in your body as you put childhood behind you and take on the role of . . .' You get the picture. That happens in women's magazines and on the Donna Reed show, but never in real life. What really happened is that I had seen my older cousin bleeding at her crotch once a month, and I knew from her about tampons and napkins. We always had them in the bathroom, so when I woke up one morning and I was bleeding a little, I dug around under the bathroom sink and found some tampons. I remember ruining two before I got one in properly, but from then on that's all there was to it. My cousin confided to me that after that, if I got fucked without a rubber I could get pregnant. I tucked that away as a good thing to know, but I wasn't really interested in sex so it didn't matter much. One day that summer my oldest cousin, he was always our leader, sort of the head kid, he said to me, 'Hey, sis, I see that you're getting tits now.' My older girl cousin got out some bras that she'd outgrown and from then on they were mine, and I was officially regarded as a big girl. That's all there was to it, except that my tits kept growing and growing and I was starting to get alarmed. I realize now that I took after my mother, and in pictures I've seen she looked pretty big busted. I outgrew my cousin's bras and had to start buying some of my own, but that wasn't a big deal either because we were always outgrowing something, jeans or shoes or whatever. Of course, when the fall term started the whole school could see that I was blossoming forth. I remember one of the boys yelling, 'Hey guys, get a load of Suzy's new tits!' So I always thought of them as my tits, and to call them anything else now would feel stilted.

"If there's one thing that I can tell you about being an Indian, it's that we were expected to live in the real world. 'It is what it is.' We don't sugar coat things, and we don't get all worked up about things that can't be changed and must simply be accepted. But other than that, Indians are as different from each other as anybody else. We're just people."