Editorial Note

Part II, chapter 7 is on the way...

Part II - six

". . The hills, of course, were a paler shade in those days. . ." Aunt Maggie smiled a distant smile and rested her hands on the smooth veranda.

I gazed at her long nails and lost myself in the lines of her curved fingers. Those hands, I knew, had once been capable of marvelous things. I recalled from my youth the first time I heard about Maggie's hands. She had revived a litter of spaniel pups smothered blue by a jealous breeder simply by touching them, one after the other, with a single outstretched finger. According to mother, the air sizzled where puppy and finger met. There were other stories, of course, and more dramatic, but this one lodges in my mind. I had never seen the magic myself and I wondered. . .

"Also," Maggie continued, "there were more trees. . ."

I followed her gaze to the hills that rolled away from us beyond the veranda. The sun was lowering and long shadows were stirring there.

"When the sun goes down" Maggie closed her eyes, "you can't see anything."

She brought her hands to her face, slowly, and in the gathering gloom I thought I saw a faint glimmer pulsing near her fingertips…

Rebecca sighed and lowered the notebook. “Wow, Gin, I feel like I know your aunt after reading this.” She placed the Journal on the bedside table, noted again the title, penned in straight black lines on the cover:

Memories of Maggie

1995- 1998

Virginia Jason

Beside her on the bed, Ginny smiled. “You’d know her as well as anyone after reading that stuff… She was a difficult woman to know.”

Rebecca rolled onto her side, snuggling up to Ginny, her new and always best friend, her cosmic lover and, she was learning, one hell of a writer. “You make her live and breathe on those pages,” she whispered through dark hair into Ginny’s ear.

“I try,” Ginny said, rolling onto her side now, facing Rebecca, the golden child who had stolen her heart. “I think of these… fragments I’ve written as a kind of gift for her.”

Stroking Ginny’s dark head, Rebecca asked, “Where is she now?”

Ginny savored the sweet scent of Rebecca’s breath, warm on her face. “I don’t know,” she said. “The last I heard she was in Eastern Europe somewhere…”

Rebecca touched her lips to Ginny’s; a blue spark flashed, illuminating their open mouths and tingling across their lips and tongues a moment. “Have I ever told you,” Rebecca whispered, “that I…”

A sudden knocking at the door filled the room, pounding into their consciousness and destroying the moment.

Ginny rolled onto her back, wincing at the continuous pounding on the front door. “Maybe I shouldn’t have covered the door bell,” she mused.

“I have a feeling I know that knock,” Said Rebecca, rising from the bed. She looked at Ginny, still on her back atop the rumpled bedspread, and Ginny gazed up at her.

“James,” they pronounced simultaneously.

Rebecca sighed and made for the door. She hoped James had given up on her. But that knocking was insistent.

Opening the door, she found him standing there. He was tall and blonde and well built in his blue jeans and boots. Beneath the long sleeved flannel shirt he wore, a rather tight t-shirt strained against his flexing pectorals. His right hand was raised, poised to continue knocking. In his left hand was gripped what appeared to be a large envelope, or maybe a booklet.

“Hello, James,” she said.

He lowered his right hand, smiling sheepishly, and raised his left.

Rebecca saw that it was, indeed, a booklet of some kind that he held.

“I brought this for you.” he said, extending his hand and, she now saw, the thickish saddle stitched magazine that he held.

Taking the offered item, she held it in her hands and studied the cover. Above a realistic line drawing of a typewriter, the keys of which were hearts in various states of injury and malformation, a bold font proclaimed:

The Broken Heart Review

All but the third word of the title were black - Heart leaped from the otherwise black and white cover in a loud and almost garish red.

“There’s a poem for you on page 42,” he said.

Resisting the urge to flip through the magazine to the named page, Rebecca looked up and smiled. “Thank you, James. I’ll read it later.”

“I guess that’s all I can ask,” he said with a wan smile. “So, you guys all moved in?”

Rebecca shifted the magazine from one hand to the other, and back again. “Pretty much,” she answered. “Thanks again for letting us use your truck.”

“Any time,” he said. “But you know that all you have to do is ask. I’ll do whatever I can for you.”

Since meeting Ginny, Rebecca had begun to feel guilty about the way she’d treated James the last year and a half or so. She realized with a new and growing sense of shame that the way she had led him on, and used his feelings for her to satisfy her own needs, were among the worst things she’d done in her short life.  She hoped she would never do anything worse. “I appreciate that,” she replied.

Their eyes met and Rebecca could read all that went unsaid behind his blue gaze. That he loved her. That she was the only one for him. That he would always be there for her. That he would die before he loved another woman. She could read it all, and clearly, because she’d heard it all before. She was glad that he kept it all inside his head this time.

Holding The Broken Heart Review up before her, Rebecca smiled. “I’ll read this tonight,” she promised.

James leaned slightly forward a moment, as if contemplating or yearning for a kiss, and then retreated a step or two. “Enjoy,” he said.

As she closed the door, Rebecca clutched the magazine to her breast and sighed. She’d created some kind of monster in James, she was sure. In her mind she saw him lumbering in black and white through starkly lit fields and damp dungeon corridors, seven feet tall with arms outstretched and bolts in his neck. As a child, she had loved the old Universal Frankenstein films. Unlike the creature in most of those old movies, she hoped her monster might have a happy ending.

Editorial Note

Part II, number six is now underway...

While I work it out with Rebecca, Ginny and my sometimes fickle Muse , why don't you enjoy this critcal analysis of George Herriman's Klassic Komic, Krazy Kat:

Some Say it With A Brick

Editorial Note

The next chapter of The Blue Dog Journal is always imminent. Until the next chapter - in this case Part II, chapter 6 - is written and posted, why not start at the beginning with Part I, chapter one (recently revised)?

http://bluedogjournal.blogspot.com/2005/05/one.html

Part II -five

It was after five when Ginny and Rebecca reached the top of Mt. Tanner (also known as Spirit or Holy Mountain, depending upon whom one asked). They’d left Ginny’s Malibu parked under a great old oak tree at the end of Coulson Road about two miles and an hour or so down the mountain. The trail that began at the end of the road had taken them through a forest of mixed oak and conifers. Now, at the end of that trail, they stepped into a clearing golden with summer grasses and ringed by pine and oak trees. In the center of this clearing a single black oak stood, as if holding court.

“Here we are,” said Ginny, readjusting the black backpack which rode her shoulders.

Rebecca stood beside her, her own backpack sagging from her bare shoulders. “You didn’t tell me it would be so beautiful.” She took in the pastoral scene, smiling.

“I think I did,” replied Ginny. “Or, at least, I think I tried.”

“Yeah, maybe…” Rebecca agreed dreamily. Taking Ginny’s hand, she stepped into the long grass.

Ginny followed more than willingly. Watching Rebecca, she saw that the mountain (which she called by all its names) was working its magic on the girl. She remembered the first time she had come here as a child. On her tenth birthday her mother brought her to Tanner Mountain for a picnic, not unlike the one she and Rebecca were planning now; she’d only found out later that her mother had planned that trip quite deliberately. At once curious and afraid of the effect the mountain might have on her little girl, she’d prevented Ginny from ascending Tanner Mountain until the child was at least ten years old. Then she’d brought her young daughter to this very clearing with no more intention than to see what might happen.

 “The energies of that mountain might be too traumatic for any child,” Ginny remembered her mother explaining, “but I sensed you were ready at 10.”

Feeling angry and more than a little used on behalf of her younger self, Ginny did not speak to her mother for a month after learning these things. But that was her mother, Emma Jason; cautious and careless, loving and emotionally unavailable, usually placing her pursuit of esoteric knowledge above all else, including family.

Ginny smiled despite herself. She loved her mother, after all; and things had turned out well enough, on that occasion at least. It had been a lovely picnic and, her smile brightened, she did see the angel.

In appearance a mixture of her father, as depicted in the few, scattered photos which constituted her only memories of him, and that b-movie character actor she liked but whose name she could never remember, the angel hovered in her memory somewhere over Mt. Tanner and Lake Haven; his enormous and whitely luminous wings, gently fanning the air, not incongruous with the pinstripe suit and shiny black shoes he wore. The halo shining brightly above his head cast him in a golden glow.

As her mother, seemingly oblivious to the presence of the angel, related some obscure fact about Lake Haven, visible from this clearing atop Mt. Tanner to the west, the angel, his arms folded across his chest, met Ginny’s ten year old gaze, smiled mischievously, and winked his eye.

When Ginny winked back, her mother, perceiving only the child, started and believed herself mocked. It took Ginny several minutes, during which time the angel faded from the sky, to convince her mother that she was not making fun of her but communicating with an angel. And it took her several more minutes after she described what the angel had been wearing.

“What time is sunset?”

Rebecca’s question brought Ginny back to the present, where she and Rebecca stood beneath the gray-green canopy of the old black oak in the center of the clearing. She took in the expanse of blue sky and Lake Haven shining to the west. The math, figuring the time of month (mid-July) and day (5ish), was done more or less automatically in her head. “Around 8:30,” she said, gazing now at Rebecca, golden in the sun beside her. “But I doubt it ever gets dark around you.”

Nearly two hours later, they sat at the edge of the gingham blanket they’d spread beneath the old tree, a bottle of wine (mostly empty) and the rest of their picnic supper scattered behind them. The sun, still bright here atop the mountain, descended slowly westward. Lake Haven shone like a blue jewel in the woods below.

“I was lost when I found you,” Rebecca, stroking Ginny’s dark head, mused. “Or did you find me?”

Ginny sighed. “I was lost myself, Rebecca. We found each other.”

“It seems so unlikely, doesn’t it?” Rebecca’s face shone a moment in the rays of the westering sun.

Ginny leaned slightly and kissed Rebecca’s lips.

Somewhere above them an Angel whispered, “I love you”, in a voice, as Ginny later recalled, “Like a million golden bells chiming in a mansion big as the sky.” 

Editorial Note

Part II, Chapter 5 will be posted soonish. It is already several hundred words underway.

Technical difficulties on the home front may (or may not) delay posting.

Part II - four

“Well, that went better than expected…” Ginny clambered into the cab of the big white truck and plopped into the driver’s seat with a sigh.

Beside her, Rebecca said, “Oh my god, Ginny, I flirted with him at the café! A couple of days before you came in. I’m not even sure he noticed.”

Ginny fished the keys from the pocket of her green army surplus coat; the sleeves had been removed so it was now, more properly speaking, an army surplus vest. She looked over her shoulder, through the small rear window and over the packed bed of the truck to the patio, where Darby stood with his hands in his pockets, regarding them. He had, quite unexpectedly, spent the better part of an hour helping them load the truck. More surprising than the physical labor Darby had volunteered was the uncharacteristic, at least in Ginny’s experience, good cheer with which he worked. She nodded and waved at him through the window, “Who?” she asked Rebecca. “Darby?”

From the porch, Darby returned Ginny’s wave. She inserted the key in the ignition and twisted. The engine turned and started.

           

“No!” Rebecca protested. “Gordon!”

Ginny had been dismayed to find Gordon not only home when she arrived at 11:00, as promised, to pick up her stuff, but opening the door to her gentle knock. Seeing her and Rebecca standing there, he had put it together at once. She watched him figure out, despite never being told the name or gender of the person he had been dumped for, that this golden cutie beside her was the one.   She’d dreaded bringing Rebecca, and had only done so because she had nobody else to help her with the move. After brief and awkward introductions, Gordon slunk away and they didn’t see him again.

Turning the truck around in the street now, she felt certain he was watching, probably from the upstairs bathroom window. She stole a glance in that direction and, sure enough, there was the shape of a dark head bobbing just below the window. This meant, of course, that he was spying on them from the shower. Thinking of Gordon naked, she recalled why she’d first been attracted to him. “Yeah, well…” she said, smiling at Rebecca. “He’s a cutie in his way, isn’t he?”

“I suppose so,” said Rebecca, “though he’s not exactly my type.”

Ginny laughed. “Then why were you flirting with him?”

“Well,” Rebecca grinned, “it wasn’t exactly serious flirting.”

Hitting the gas, Ginny laughed again. “God, I love you,” she said.

Rebecca giggled as they left the house at 61 Euclid behind. “Speaking of old boyfriends, maybe I can get James to help us unload this stuff.” She nodded in the general direction of the truck bed.

Ginny frowned. “I don’t know,” she said. “It seems like it was hard enough on him lending us the truck.”

Now Rebecca frowned. “You think it would be too exploitive to ask him?”

“He’s awful sprung on you,” Ginny observed.

“Which is why he’ll do pretty much anything I ask,” mused Rebecca, twirling a lock of golden hair between her fingers.

Ginny frowned again and cast a glance at the girl beside her. “Which is why,” she began…

And Rebecca jumped in to complete the thought, “It’s wrong of me,” she said, “to take advantage of him the way I do.”

Ginny shrugged, turning the truck down Barbados Street. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Something like that.”

Rebecca leaned over and kissed Ginny on the cheek. “You’re making me a better person already,” she said. “And I love you for it.”

Ginny looked at Rebecca, a golden radiance beside her, removing her eyes from the road longer than safety dictated, perhaps. When she returned her attention to driving, she found that she had passed Donner Street, where she had intended to turn. Rebecca’s kiss tingling on her cheek, she braked and executed a masterful u-turn, unhindered by traffic as the streets were unusually quiet.

“Who needs men, anyway?” Rebecca continued. “As long as we’ve got each other.”

Ginny considered for a moment the way such a “you and me against the world” kind of sentiment might have seemed sappy and trite to her before Rebecca. Now, she didn’t even have to consider it for more than a moment. She knew it was true. Whether that made her a better person, or just a sappier one, she didn’t know. And, as she drove the two of them home, she didn’t care.

Coming Soon!

Part II, number 4 coming soon!

Ginny's note to Gordon

This is the note, pulled directly from his memory, that Gordon found on his door in chapter 3, part I.

Part II - three

                  Ginny wished again that there was an easy way to do this. But there wasn’t. Especially for a person such as herself, who tried to live a life that she felt was good, to do the right thing when things needed doing. It was this philosophy of honest living that was responsible for her misery these past few months. She’d woken up one morning and realized that she no longer loved Gordon, probably never had loved him, in fact. It surprised her because she’d thought that she was smarter, more than capable of discerning between love and infatuation. From that morning until meeting Rebecca a few days ago, she’d been living a lie, carrying on with Gordon as if nothing had changed. That, she realized, suddenly reframing her perspective, had been the hard part; breaking up with him, because it was the right thing to do, would be easy.

            Or so she fervently hoped. In any case, she’d cushioned things a bit for herself by securing a spacious duplex over on Geometry Street. The thought of Rebecca waiting for her there, moving in and setting up house, gave her strength. It was Saturday night and she entered the house on Euclid Street for the penultimate time.

            Gordon, in the kitchen, turned from the stove and smiled as she entered. “Where you been all day?” he asked.

            Ginny paused just inside the door. The look on her face scared the smile from Gordon’s. “We need to talk,” she said.

            “Uh oh,” said Gordon.

            Though there was a hopeful, almost playful tone in his voice, Ginny could tell by the troubled knit of his brow that he was worried. She wondered about her choice of opening line. It was so cliché, but it seemed the natural thing to say. She’d think about what that might say about her later. “I met somebody the other day, Gordon…”

           

            His hand moved slowly up and gripped his forehead.

           

            “At the Rolling Bear,” she continued. “I went in for lunch and came out in love.”

            Gordon’s eyes grew wider. His hand remained on his forehead. “You’re breaking up with me…” he muttered.

            After he said it, a great weight was lifted from Ginny’s mind and the situation became much easier, for her at least. “Yes,” she said. “In fact, I’m moving out tomorrow. I’ve already got another place.”

            “You’re breaking up with me,” he repeated, unmoving.

            “Yes,” she repeated. “I’m sorry, Gordon. I don’t want to hurt you but… I’m in love with somebody new.”

            The hand dropped from his forehead and hung limp at his side. “I guess it doesn’t matter that I’m still in love with you…” It was not quite a question, not quite a statement.

            Ginny shook her head and approached him from across the room. “Of course it matters,” she said. Only a couple of inches shorter than him, she looked up into his eyes. “But it also matters that I’m not in love with you. Not anymore.” Though the thought crossed her mind, she avoided the cruelty of adding, “If I ever was”. Instead, she apologized again. “I’m sorry,” she said.

            Gordon just stared at her wide eyed and wounded. He didn’t say much else as she moved about the house, gathering up her toothbrush, a small brown journal, a pack of post-its, a ball of extra clothes, and stuffing it all into a green knapsack. When she stood at the door again, looking at him from the threshold, her bag slung almost carelessly over her shoulder, he said, “Oh, Ginny, I love you.”

            She turned her eyes from his a moment. “I know,” she whispered. Meeting his gaze again, she said, “I’ll be back tomorrow for the rest of my stuff, around 11.”

           He nodded his head, rather vacantly Ginny thought. She was relieved that he had not cried, and did not appear about to do so. She pushed the door open before her. “Take care, Gordon.”

            She was glad to see him summon a smile up from somewhere. “You too…” he said.

            Then she exited the house, leaving it completely empty.

Part II - two

While Ginny ate her lunch (grilled cheese sandwich with fries on the side and, of course, a Coca-Cola), Rebecca cornered Melinda in the kitchen and begged her for information about the customer in booth four, the bright girl with the dark hair and eyes who called herself Ginny, short for Virginia.

“You’re acting like you’re in love, little girl,” Mel observed.

Rebecca laughed. “I think I might be. Please, Mel, what can you tell me?”

As it turned out, Melinda could tell her quite a lot. With the possible exception of Ginny’s own mother, the proprietor of The Rolling Bear Café knew Ginny better than anyone in town; maybe even better than Ginny knew herself. She gave Rebecca the details the love struck girl needed.

Virginia Jason was a local girl, in her mid to late twenties (Mel wouldn’t get any more specific than that), the daughter of Emma Jason. Emma owned and operated The Stall, where the guy Ginny had been living with for some months was employed.

“But don’t worry,” Mel reassured Rebecca, much as it pained her on behalf of Gordon, “Ginny hasn’t considered that relationship serious for a while.”

“So, she’s kind of single?”Rebecca laughed.

Mel nodded, “Exactly.”

Rebecca’s head and stomach were abuzz. It was a feeling she associated with guys, usually. She’d felt like this the few times she thought she was in love – darling Ricky, incorrigible Tony and, of course, poor, poor James. But it was much stronger now, a constant silver –blue thrill right through the middle of her at the thought of Ginny, dark and bright, currently eating a grilled cheese sandwich in booth 4.

 “Is everything ok?” Rebecca approached the table with a question, using her duty as a good waitress to get another look at Virginia Jason, the girl who had, apparently, stolen her heart without even trying.

Ginny swallowed a mouthful of sandwich. “Best grilled cheese sandwich ever,” she said. And she meant it! In fact, she couldn’t remember anything ever tasting as good as this perfectly grilled sandwich, these fries crisped just the way she liked, this cola so cool and refreshing. “Really,” she continued. “This may be the best meal I’ve ever had.”

“Wow,” said Rebecca, and, “Great!” She was feeling so good at the moment that she had no reason to think Ginny might be exaggerating, which, of course, she wasn’t. “Let me know if you need anything else!”

They both smiled.

Ginny couldn’t resist the opening this beautiful blonde creature had provided. “Just to see you again,” she said.

Rebecca laughed, her cheeks flushing, that silver-blue thrill pulsing through her anew. “That’s easy,” she said, “but how about a refill on your Coke?”

Ginny placed a hand over her glass. “No thanks,” she said. “I’ve gotta’ pee as it is.”

Returning to the kitchen, Rebecca paused behind the door to catch her breath and collect her thoughts. She was smitten, without a doubt. Seriously. And with a woman! What would her uncle say!? Well, she reflected with a grin, he’d probably give his blessing! She decided to go with it, as if she wasn’t already racing along on the rushing waters of this strange new feeling. Alone there in the kitchen, she smiled. She wanted to know what came next.

Eleven minutes later she slipped the bill, face down, onto Ginny’s table. “I’ll see you at eight,” she said.

“I can only hope you’re looking forward to it as much as I am.” Ginny smiled.

Rebecca tingled. She felt electric, certain that Ginny must see the sparks of light popping from her hands and face. “Maybe more,” she replied. Smiling shyly now, she slipped away from the table with Ginny’s empty plate.

Turning the bill over, Ginny found a small yellow Post-it stuck to the bottom. She laughed even before she read the words, printed in a neat and tiny hand on the small yellow rectangle, for she had a pack just this size in her pocket. The note, short and sweet, read:

I think I love you.

You’re beautiful.

Her heart fluttering, Ginny removed the note, read it again. She felt the Earth spinning beneath her, just as it always had but different. Now she sensed a purpose in that mad rotation, a meaning previously unguessed. Reaching into her pack, a green army surplus bag with a couple of large pockets, she withdrew her journal. She flipped the brown, vellum bound book open and placed the note, now a precious thing, on the inside front cover, pressing firmly down upon the adhesive strip. She had no doubt that she was in love.

At the register, Melinda rang her up. Glimpsing Rebecca at work in the kitchen, Ginny asked, “So, who’s the new girl?”

Melinda smiled, knowing that she was witnessing the beginning of something beautiful and true. By the time Ginny had figured the tip (a little extra to be sure!), signed her name, and returned her debit card to her wallet, she knew as much about Mel’s new waitress as Mel did.

Her name was Rebecca Raine, 21 years old. She’d been in town less than a week, visiting from San Pia down south. She was staying with her “occasional boyfriend”, as Mel put it, James Hollowbroook. James, something of a loner, was a poet and musician. He sometimes played around town, on street corners or on stage at The Blue Room, just a few doors down from The Rolling Bear.

Rebecca seemed to be in a kind of in between state at the moment, Mel observed; unsure if she wanted to remain in town here with James, maybe even get her own place, or go back to her uncle in San Pia. Mel had given the girl a job on a temporary basis because she needed help, sure, but she’d fallen in love herself with Rebecca’s bright smile and flashing golden curls.

“Anyway,” Mel finished, “she’s off at eight, officially, but why don’t you come by a little early?”

“Bless you, Mel, I’ll be here at six!”

Melinda laughed softly. “How about 7:30,” she suggested. “And please, Gin, let Gordon down easy.” She looked into Ginny’s dark eyes. “You know he’s crazy about you.”

Ginny frowned, but only a moment. This new elation which moved her would not allow any sadness to linger. “I know,” she said. “And that’s gonna make letting him down easy impossible…”

Blue Dog Journal by George-Rodrigue

This product is not associated with my narrative of the same name.

Or is it?

Many years ago in New Orleans I saw, in a gallery, Rodrigue's art, including I am sure the blue dog pictured above. I did not know the artist's name, or how popular his blue dogs were, until recently.

Though I cannot credit Rodrigue's art as a direct influence on my open ended narrative about life on the border of California and possibility, I will admit my glimpse of Rodrigue's blue dog may have influenced me somewhere below memory as The Blue Dog Journal, the characters and their stories, began to take shape in my mind. Especially as my blue dog - read chapter 4 for his first appearance - looks not unlike Rodrigue's! Though height is difficult to judge in the picture above, I think my hound is bigger, if scrawnier, and  maybe a little rougher around the edges but a similar shade of blue.

Now that I am aware of Rodrigue and his blue dog on a conscious level, it is only a matter of time before they appear somewhere in my open ended narrative. And maybe I should start using Rodrigue's journal to write The Blue Dog Journal. A nice idea but I am composing more and more on the laptop these days. 

Part II - one

The relationship was serious almost immediately, both Ginny and Rebecca would agree. If it wasn’t quite love at first sight, it was at least love at second sight. Ginny, who’d been unhappy with Gordon for a while, wasn’t actively seeking another lover. Not consciously, at least; and certainly not at The Rolling Bear Café on some off Tuesday afternoon. Rebecca, for her part, thought that she preferred men. Then their eyes met.

“Hi!” said Rebecca, still practicing her waitress smile after only a few days on the job as she offered a menu down to Ginny, who sat looking up from the corner of her usual booth.

Ginny blinked, noted the plastic name tag on the girl’s blouse. “Hello, Rebecca.”

At the sound of her name pronounced in the breathy voice of this dark and beautiful woman, Rebecca’s real smile shone through her practiced expression. Ginny returned the smile and it was then that each of them knew the world had changed.

“Can I start you off with something to drink?” Rebecca, not knowing what else to say, bravely pressed forward with routine.

Ginny knew just what to say and said it, “What time do you get outta’ here?”

Rebecca laughed, a sound like wind chimes to Ginny’s ears. “About 8…”

“Can I see you then?”

“Yes, please.” Rebecca could hardly believe what she was saying. “I’ll wait for you.”

Except for Mel in the back, they had been alone in the café until that moment when the bell tinkled on the door and old Doc Grimes entered. Nobody was sure just what kind of doctor Grimes was, but most agreed his field of knowledge seemed wide and deep enough that he might have been any kind. Rebecca turned her waitress smile on the old man as he took a seat at the counter. “Be right with you, Doctor!”

Grimes waved a hand. “No hurry!”

Turning back to Ginny, Rebecca’s real smile returned.

Ginny had not removed her eyes from the young waitress and was now even deeper in love. “Wonderful,” she said. “My name’s Virginia, by the way, but you can call me Ginny. And yes, please, can I get a Coke?”

Rebecca felt somehow that she knew the answer, but she asked the question anyway, “Diet or regular?”

“Fulla’ sugar and caffeine!” Ginny laughed.

Regular, just as Rebecca had known.

eleven

Wiping his just washed hands together, Gordon emerged from The Rolling Bears tidy restroom and saw Melinda gazing out at the street and shaking her head in apparent disbelief.

“Did I miss something?” he asked, approaching her where she stood on the customer side of the counter, one hand atop the register.

“Some insane woman,” she said, still shaking her head and regarding the street, “just went speeding like the proverbial bat out of hell down the wrong side of the street.” She looked at him. “I thought for a second she was gonna’ end up in here!”

Gordon peered out at the street, now calm and empty. “You think it’s safe for me to leave?”

“You going home?” She asked.

He nodded through the glass door in the direction from which he’d come. “Yeah.”

“Well,” she said, “that’s the way she was going. If she continued at that speed, she’s either piled it up somewhere by now or gotten well out of town.”

They stood silently for a moment, considering. “Well,” said Gordon, “I guess I’ll take my chances.”

Melinda placed a hand on his shoulder and locked her eyes on his. “You’ll be OK,” she said, suddenly serious. “Just be careful.”

Gordon returned her steady, earnest gaze, feeling that she was referring with her admonition to something more than a mere walk home. “Always,” he replied, the usual flippant confidence that might have informed such a riposte deflated by the sense of foreboding, vague though it was, that her words had evoked.

“You know that I mean it, don’t you?” she asked, gripping his shoulder now. “About being careful, I mean?”

Gordon nodded. “Yeah,” he said, a bit shaken by her intensity. “And I hope you’re serious about me being all right, too.”

He hoped she might laugh, or at least smile, but she did neither. “Yeah,” she said, nodding her head, “I think you will be. Just be careful.”

“Listen, Mel,” exclaimed Gordon, unable to stand the vague intimations of menace any longer, “what the hell are you talking about?”

She gazed at him blankly for a moment, then blinked her eyes. “I wish I could tell you, Gord.” She shook her head. “Just one of my feelings, you know?”

One of Melinda’s “feelings” meant vague intimations, shadowed glimpses of indefinite possibilities, a 50/70 chance that something specific, if unspecified, might transpire.

“Uh huh,” he said. “Like the feeling that I’d be in earlier than usual today?”

“Like that,” she agreed, “only stronger and less. . .specific.”

Gordon sighed, a sudden sinking feeling taking the few high spirits he had fluttering about inside him straight down to the murky basement of his heart. “OK,” he said. “Anything at all that I might look out for?”

Melinda closed her eyes a moment, a small frown curling her lips. “No,” she said, “just darkness.” She opened her eyes, but the frown remained. “And something, possibly unpleasant, coming out of the darkness.”

Gordon’s already subterranean spirits sank farther still. When Melinda leaned forward and placed a shining kiss on his cheek, they rallied and ascended slightly, rising toward the spot where the kiss shone on his face. “And also,” she continued, “that you’re gonna’ be OK, maybe even better than OK, whatever happens.”

“Better than OK?” he mused, “that would be an improvement.”

Melinda laughed. “Really,” she said, “remember that whatever happens, you’ll be better for it.”

“That’s reassuring.” Gordon offered her a pale smile. “Assuming you’re not bullshitting me about that last bit.”

He knew she wouldn’t and wasn’t, and Melinda, with a dramatic roll of her eyes, illustrated that she was aware of this. “I expect to see you in here next weekend,” she said.

Ironically, she was not so confident, or truthful, about this last bit as she had been about all the rest. Though it was not her nature to deceive, she let it stand because the firm date seemed to offer Gordon something that he needed at that particular moment. Something tangible to move toward, past the fear she had stirred into slithering life inside him.

As it transpired, many weeks passed before they saw one another again. When they did meet once more, Gordon would find himself pleased to report that not only was he all right, he was a better and stronger person.

R. Cody '06

Distractions, like the months between this post and the last, come and go. The Blue Dog Journal remains.

Part eleven coming soon.

Part eleven of The Blue Dog Journal is currently under construction.

ten

The Rolling Bear Café served, Gordon was sure, the finest pancakes in California. Possibly, the best in all of North America. The entire western hemisphere, perhaps. It was this enthusiasm which led him more Saturdays than not to the popular café on the respective corners of Bonner Ave. and Pineyoak Street – even these past few weeks, even though it was this very place where Ginny and Rebecca had met. The younger of the two, Rebecca, had been waitressing at the café for a few days before Ginny showed up one afternoon for lunch. After that, Rebecca offered Ginny much more than was on the menu, and Ginny in turn tipped Rebecca straight from the heart of love. Rebecca ended up quitting her job at the café the same day that Ginny left him.

“Gordon Alan Pruitt, I had a feeling I’d be seeing you earlier than usual today!” Melinda Barbado, proprietor of The Rolling Bear for fourteen of its thirty-six year history, knew not only the habits but the full names of her regulars, as well as many of the less frequent locals and most of the out-of-towners and passers through in from the road for a quick bite. It was, as her kid sister Belinda said, a “psychic thing”.

Melinda served breakfast at The Rolling Bear between the hours of seven and eleven o’ clock a.m, (everyday except Sunday). Most Saturday mornings, Gordon was ordering his pancakes at just about 10:58. She’d been thinking about him and Ginny and Rebecca – but mostly about him for some reason - this morning when she woke up. As she’d already indicated, she had a feeling about him today.

“Why am I not surprised?” said Gordon, smiling as the café door sighed shut behind him.

“Because you know me too well,” Melinda replied. “Or, at least, well enough.” She stepped from behind the counter and stretched her long limbs. “Now,” she continued at the tail end of a contagious yawn, “are you gonna’ surprise me with an order of something besides your usual this bright and early July morning?”

Catching her yawn and returning it through his lightly curled fist, Gordon shook his head. “Nah,” he said, making his way across the empty café to his accustomed place beside the jukebox (kept unplugged by Melinda, most days, until the lunch menu was circulating). “Just the same old lighter than air pancakes please, Mel. And a glass of milk?”

She smiled. “You got it.”

And so he did just a few minutes later. They were, as always, delicious. Better even than last week, perhaps, fluffier and richer in flavor – not necessarily an objective fact concerning any actual quality of the food itself, but a matter of personal experience on Gordon’s part and therefore, as he viewed it, a possible indication that the pall he had been living under since Ginny left him was thinning. Or, at least, that it was capable of thinning.

In any case, it was after Gordon finished his breakfast that things really got interesting.

- Richard Cody, 2006 -

Editorial Note

Part ten of The Blue Dog Journal is currently under construction.

In the meantime, please enjoy a sampling of links found while conducting a random search on Google using the key words vampires and fungus:

"Cannibal" fungus helps treat skin diseases, including psoriasis

Bioarcheological and Biocultural Evidence for the New England Vampire Folk Belief

PLANTS OF THE RAINFOREST

50's and 60's Horror Movies MAT

ERGOT AND ERGOTISM

Cthulhoid entities: How to spot them and what to do when you've been spotted

NASA Satellites Watching Out For Invasive Plants

Candida Albicans

nine

Returning indoors, Gordon debated a moment climbing back into bed or venturing forward into the day. Realizing that he was wide awake after the incident with Rebecca, he decided on the latter. After showering and sliding into the t-shirt and worn blue jeans that Ginny had once referred to as his “slacker uniform”, he headed to the kitchen – where he found Darby hunched over the table reading a pornographic comic book and munching from a saucer piled with graham crackers. Stairway to Heaven blared from a cheap clock radio on the counter.

Darby, sensing Gordon in the doorway, glanced up from his reading. “Morning,” he mumbled through a mouthful of graham cracker.

Gordon nodded, saw by the pale digital display of the noisy clock radio that it was 6:56 am. He had been surprised by the unexpected clamor of his clock 41 minutes before, and again to see Rebecca in the back yard, but to find Darby not only conscious but speaking before ten o‘clock on a Saturday morning was really something. “What’s the special occasion?” he asked.

Darby raised his eyebrows. “Car out front idling for fucking ever,” he complained. “Woke me up. I hate to be the one to tell you, Gord, but I think it was Gin.”

Ginny tolerated only a select few calling her by three letters and Darby, as she was fond of reminding him whenever he called her Gin, was not among them.

“Yeah,” Gordon said, “that makes sense. I had a visitor ‘round back myself.”

Darby snorted noncommittally. “hey,” he said, “is it just me or does this song blow?”

Gordon became aware of Stairway to Heaven unfolding epically from the tin can radio. “If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now,” he found himself chanting along, “it’s just a spring clean for The May Queen!”

And there was Rebecca emerging from the hedge in his memory: pretty, bright as day and a little the worse for wear. A bit of a bruised may queen, he mused.

“I mean what bombastic shite! “The whispering wind?!” I don’t know what you hear in this stuff, Gord.”

The debate regarding the merits and absurdities of Stairway to Heaven was not a new one between them. Gordon, an enthusiast of what had become known, tragically perhaps, as classic rock, maintained that the song was an intricate tone poem equal in theme and scale to works with such heavy names upon them as Milton, Blake, Alighieri! Darby, who described himself as a “musical purist”, disagreed eternally and often vociferously with anyone who thought the song more than, in his words, “a fucking ego bloated parody of itself.”

Gordon ignored the bait Darby had thrown him in the apparent hope of beginning a new chapter in the discussion. “Have you seen my keys around here?” he thought he had left them in the kitchen the night before, after finding Ginny’s note on the door.

“Over by the ‘phone.” Darby offered, returning to his crackers and adults only comic.

Gordon moved to the telephone, found his keys. “Thanks”, he said. “I’m going to The Rolling Bear for breakfast, if anybody asks.” Exiting the room, Gordon paused a moment in the doorway, Stairway to Heaven spinning toward its a-cappella climax behind him. “And, Darby,” he said over his shoulder, “you can always change the channel.”

R. Cody, 2005

Editorial Note

I don't write on a deadline. Which is why I am typing and you are reading this Editorial Note rather than part nine. I know the lack of new material here at The Blue Dog Journal is a bitter disappointment for my many and varied readers (all -400,012 of you) but I think you will agree that quality trumps quantity in original fiction as it does in game shows.

And one thing you can certainly bet on, if you're given the opportunity, is that The Blue Dog Journal strives for as much quality as a magical-realist meta-fiction experiment can possess. In that spirit, please find below a snapshot from the real world - an original draft of the turtle dream chant which appeared in part six:

click image to enlarge