Wolf DeVoon

Physical work saves me. A tall dead red elm crashed in the last storm, crumpled a cow panel and wrecked the gate I built. Yesterday the trunk and big limbs got bucked with a chain saw, enough to clear the wreckage, so I could repair the gate. Hauled four wheelbarrows of dry wood rounds to the concrete pad behind the wood barn, piled them high on top of another cord of windfall, two thirds of which was a huge oak struck by lightning and felled by the power utility, because it might hit a pole if it fell uncontrolled. Just now I gathered brush, hauled it to the burn pile, six trips like the huntsman in Snow White, armloads of twisted branches. My women flip out in a panic whenever I light a burn pile, eight feet around and almost as high, the flames shooting up 40 feet for a few minutes, then a long hot burn as it collapses. I get yelled at and I patiently point to the evidence. See? Didn't get away from me. I stood by with jugs of water and a shovel. Nothing but flat cold ashes on a calm green day.

Last week, I installed sheetrock on the ceilings of an old farmhouse bathroom and front porch with room dimensions and rafters that were wacky, nothing square or uniformly spaced. The rock weighed a ton, had to keep it braced with one hand and the top of my head, fumble for a screw gun on the ladder, dropped dozens of screws. Exhausting work for hire, sore for days.

It saves me, like the sound of thunder and hailstones battering my writing office, doing fun notes like this one. Whenever I complete a chapter of 'Partners' I'm so upset with a dramatic finish that I have to go out and do physical work, split wood with a mawl, pick up the string trimmer and whack an acre or two, take a hand saw to the sycamore and stop it from growing into a 7000 volt high line. Insistent nature is always victorious, unless you fight it. We have bears, coyotes, cougars, and meth head trailer trash in beat up wrecks on the county road that bisects our property. There's a rifle with a scope next to the front door.

Anything is good, an excuse to get up from the keyboard, forget if I can. The story follows me wherever I go, scanning the ground for rattlesnake and copperhead, worn work gloves on my hands. I forgive myself, try to focus on physical reality, avoid injuries. Small and old, I have to work slowly. The wild calm grandeur of nature is sedative.

To begin a new chapter is so daunting a task that it takes days to conceive, test driving ideas. It takes forever to see the solution, always a notch higher and deeper. Stories cannot go in reverse or tread water. Characters do not become simpler, unless they die. I'm in the habit now of quoting an epigram from a literary source on the title page. In 'Finding Flopsie' I recited Scott Fitzgerald to introduce Chris's story, O. Henry for The Way Peachy Saw It. The venerated opener for 'Partners' was Jim Morrison: "The future's uncertain, and the end is always near." Oh, but not near enough, miles to go before I finish. Tense miles uphill.

Not just the present business of writing 'Partners,' a particularly challenging endeavor, but writing as such, each page a little more difficult because I keep aiming higher. Whether that succeeds or fails is less important. Novelists do not become simpler unless they die.

The dog helps. Always something to do, food, water, trim endlessly with a scissors, flea baths and tick removal. He's hilarious, too old and shrewd to be tricked. Doesn't even look up when I call him. He has general store privileges, lays on the floor on Wednesdays when folks come to sit and swap gossip at the tables in back. I throw horseshoes in the shade of a walnut tree outside, try to hold my own with a crew of old faces, ignore their protestations of frustration and watch them toss double ringers. Three or four hours away from writing, a lifeline.

If all else fails, there's Solitaire, a 3% chance of winning. I play from 5 to 7 in the evening, eat something and listen to vain asshole Mark Levin pat himself on the back. After eight hours of writing, I need to quit, wrung out and creatively drained. Talented people don't have these problems.

addendum, profuse apologies: "tales of brave Ulysses" was sung by Jack Bruce/Cream

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8hLc_nqx8g

2 hours ago, Peter said:

not enough "hero." 

First, I thank all for replying. It helps more than you know. WRT to heroes, the ancients cast a long shadow, tales of brave Ulysses, as Page and Plant put it In song. Then the Vikings, more Led Zep. What's funny, of course, is that modern Danes still think of themselves as Vikings, conquerors of Britain, rulers of Greenland, which used to be green in the Medieval Warm Period. Sorry, I digress. It's embarrassing to talk about heroism. All of my work for the past 20 years addressed the question, and what I found is that heroes do wrong. It is always a gamble in the absence of foreknowledge, and the most surprising discovery of all is a romantic partner who shares the risk of losing everything, doesn't flinch from the heartless, reckless business of action. My women are always stronger than the men they love.

2 hours ago, Peter said:

not enough "hero." 

First, I thank all for replying. It helps more than you know. WRT to heroes, the ancients cast a long shadow, tales of brave Ulysses, as Page and Plant put it In song. Then the Vikings, more Led Zep. What's funny, of course, is that modern Danes still think of themselves as Vikings, conquerors of Britain, rulers of Greenland, which used to be green in the Medieval Warm Period. Sorry, I digress. It's embarrassing to talk about heroism. All of my work for the past 20 years addressed the question, and what I found is that heroes do wrong. It is always a gamble in the absence of foreknowledge, and the most surprising discovery of all is a romantic partner who shares the risk of losing everything, doesn't flinch from the heartless, reckless business of action. My women are always stronger than the men they love.

10 hours ago, anthony said:

 Independence of one's mind and one's resources, is the antidote to altruism, sacrifice, self-sacrifice, and all that.

Right. Presupposes that one has a mind.

On 6/21/2018 at 5:00 PM, KorbenDallas said:

What a totally wonderful gal.

What if men don't read? -- what do I do then?

I don't mean girlie men, or gays, or thoughtful students of literature and science. Certainly not sport fans, glued to the tube. Fathers of small children are too busy. No expectation of being read by women, young or old, that's for certain.

I need to write the third act of 'Partners.' I resolved to make it a passion play, christlike Kyle betrayed and punished, full of love for his fellow man while he kills. See? About a million miles from Earth, where cosy mysteries and factual accounts of combat in Iraq entertain the few grown-ups who buy books. I don't think young people read any more, and what I do is unsuitable for innocent hearts of any age.

It's not a marketing problem, and if it were I can't afford to plunk down thousands for Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, reaching for a lone nut in a haystack of hooey. The traditional method of kicking doors open is to woo an established author, hitchhike on someone else's coat tails. That involves schmoozing and telling lies. I'm not qualified to do that. Not that I'm incapable of lying, but there's something wrong with the way I'm wired, a Frankenstein monster. I can't feign admiration for crap. Probably why I'm so isolated, writing for myself, daring myself to do better in a solo Category of One that no publisher or bookstore needs or wants.

The cost in cigarettes and coffee doesn't matter. No matter what I do, the years click along as they always have. Almost impossible to find "friends" on Facebook or Reddit. I tried Twitter,  revolted and disgusted by minds (?) that I couldn't delete, flooded like a river overflowing its banks with bullshit. I tried the Alt Right and white supremacists. They don't read fiction.

I missed the thriller category by a wide margin, no talent for it. Ah. That must be it, obviously incompetent. Authors should triangulate a known form, play pattycake with plot "beats." If I was serious about being successful, I would attend writers conferences, offer myself as an imbecile, humbly grateful to praise others at random, an interchangeable member of the wannabe collective, learner's permit in the back row. There's a writers group an hour away, meets every month. It chokes me to consider it. I have nothing in common with advertising copywriters, newspaper columnists, history buffs, bible thumpers, and visiting dignitaries, respectable by virtue of selling books -- any kind of anything that has a dust jacket.

I should have listened to erstwhile friends in the 1980s, when I was young and fine, making my first few leaps as a director. They logically urged me to change my name, marry a Jewess and convert. But I had been Roarked, no longer part of the world owned and operated by others. Bad enough that directing assignments were projects that someone else conceived. We all start by playing second fiddle in someone else's orchestra, doing old standards and shooting cliches in a barrel. No one else to blame for my aborted first feature. I had a lot to learn about filmmaking, seven eighths of which is playing well with others, hale fellow well met, smiles of pleasure from all concerned, none of which was natural to me.

I think back to innocent Janet, the girl who loved me. It was already too late for me at age 14, incapable of ordinary, respectable, sane, sensible life. I yearned for freedom, and I was ready to commit any crime to obtain it. Movies are made with OPM -- Other People's Money, a fact of life -- and dozens of years of experiments with cameras, lighting, microphones and editing benches. My first film was funded by a Catholic priest, Father Ed, who scolded me that the money he gave me was saved from a bicycle newspaper route. Twenty years later, it was a multi-millionaire who scolded me that I cast too many black people. "Are there no whites in London?" he railed, the head of a Dutch eugenics charity worried about gene drift. I didn't care whose money it was. I made shows I liked.

I wrote books I liked, after my film career died in a Disney cubicle. I don't expect anyone to agree with my ideas about liberty and justice. No one ever has. Nothing else to do, I returned to a pair of characters that I created as an object lesson for others, a group of 50 screenwriters who thought I was an interesting guru at Zoetrope. Some of them became successful writers; many gave it up after a few seasons, too talented to succeed. I blew a diplomatic fuse, unable to stomach Main Board dominance by villains and LGBT horror producers, literally gay people who made amateur horror movies on a shoestring that were guaranteed to win a festival award, every clumsy child a winner in that category. I couldn't do it, despised horror.

Harry and Laura, Janet and Archie, Chris and Peachy, and now, Kyle and Karen. See a pattern? Cis-het adult romance, graphically told, renegades in each other's arms, inseparable after the miracle of finding each other. Not normal. Nothing warm and fuzzy about men who kill. If I added up all the officials and innocent civilians I've killed over the years, it would be equal to every face seen on television, whole stadiums of NFL and college football fans, not quite as many tortured and starved to death by Galt, but a good effort anyway.

Being an Objectivist is a serious handicap in creative work. Helpful in every other industry, particularly banking and politics. BB&T, Saxo Bank, Speaker of The House, and Israelis by the boatload. With only a tiny bit of vice, I could have joined the libertarian Lew Rockwell cabal or the Antiwar pooftahs. What would Roark do? More importantly, what did l want to do? For a while it was okay to rant. I had a platform for a couple years. But I couldn't even stick to that script. Instead of making progress as a virtuoso attack dog, I told stories about men beaten by beautiful interesting women, argued that women should be exempt from the criminal law, given an exclusive prerogative of life and death. Men naturally resist such ideas.

I like Objectivist Living, however dull it seems. Benevolent MSK ought to be sainted, and I'm fond of his flattering Rand photograph on the masthead. I saw it in Andrea Millen Rich's office when Laissez Faire Books had a floor of operations in midtown Manhattan, 30 years ago.  Life is measured in decades. It's been two since I started writing fiction full-time, interrupted by as few day jobs and family duties as possible.

If I had pissed away twenty years as a drunk or a drug addict, I might be in better shape. There is no rehab for hundreds of thousands of words, nearing a million, every one of them a crime against humanity. A long time ago, '94 if memory serves, I explained that artistic achievement was more important to me than survival. Soon it will be put to the test. No one lives forever. Assuming that the blockade holds -- 250,000 independent authors on Goodreads, all of them more successful and less dangerous than I am -- my works will evaporate when I die, unread and ignored. Ayn Rand stopped writing fiction when she was my age, too busy with celebrity to create anything more. It happens to all of us, famous or not. We stop.

So, as long as my brain and body still function, I'll putter along, do a nice third act of 'Partners' that I cannot rush into from a pat outline. My characters dictate what happens as it unfolds, a chemistry of living, real people who cannot be forced to dance like wooden puppets. All I do is write about it, witness to their bitterness, vulnerability, love and compassion in the face of voluntarily chosen disaster, almost certain death by violence. I write about such things and the women who know and flee from that knowledge, not in fear, but to free their loved ones to fight effectively. The men who went to rescue Galt were willing to fight and die, leaving widows and orphans to mourn them in a remote mountain valley with a gold dollar sign.

I like it that Rand's stories are discussed on OL, the only legacy that matters. When I was 22 years old, I met a real life Dominque Francon and laid her, gave her little choice in the matter. She retaliated with all the dismissive hell that one should logically expect. It would take me another thirty years to be worthy of her, and I was married to someone else less challenging by then. I often think of Dominique, both of us nearing 70 now, far too late to dance again. I hope and trust that she found a rock hearted Roark to tame her exquisite beauty.

Can you imagine Howard Roark reading a novel? -- naw. Wouldn't need it.

2 hours ago, caroljane said:

Very breezy dismissal  of the other major variables in the arms buildup to WWI.

Not what I had in mind. Formation of the Federal Reserve and suspension of gold standard caused a global crisis before, during, and after WWI.

Two little excerpts from Wikipedia:

Quote

By the end of 1913, the classical gold standard was at its peak but World War I caused many countries to suspend or abandon it.^[17] According to Lawrence Officer the main cause of the gold standard’s failure to resume its previous position after World War 1 was “the Bank of England's precarious liquidity position and the gold-exchange standard.” A run on sterling caused Britain to impose exchange controls that fatally weakened the standard; convertibility was not legally suspended, but gold prices no longer played the role that they did before.^[18] In financing the war and abandoning gold, many of the belligerents suffered drastic inflations. Price levels doubled in the US and Britain, tripled in France and quadrupled in Italy.

Quote

Alan Greenspan wrote that the bank failures of the 1930s were sparked by Great Britain dropping the gold standard in 1931. This act "tore asunder" any remaining confidence in the banking system.^[47] Financial historian Niall Ferguson wrote that what made the Great Depression truly 'great' was the European banking crisis of 1931.^[48] According to Fed Chairman Marriner Eccles, the root cause was the concentration of wealth resulting in a stagnating or decreasing standard of living for the poor and middle class. These classes went into debt, producing the credit explosion of the 1920s. Eventually the debt load grew too heavy, resulting in the massive defaults and financial panics of the 1930s.

19 minutes ago, caroljane said:

OK, I'll bite, in what sense is it an illusion? Do you mean that if at any given moment, the populace devolved into resistance and riot, the mechanisms of government would cease, proving that they never had the power to govern? Or what?

Hogeye was kind enough to archive it. http://www.ozarkia.net/bill/anarchism/library/GovernmentQuack-DeVoon.html

This excerpt was quoted about a thousand times: "Government does not exist of necessity, but rather by virtue of a tragic, almost comical combination of klutzy, opportunistic terrorism against sitting ducks whom it pretends to shelter, plus our childish phobia of responsibility, praying to be exempted from the hard reality of life on life's terms."

I nominate this thread for deletion.

3 hours ago, Peter said:

George H. Smith wrote: First, the 1936 Supreme Court decision "United States v. Butler" would need to be overturned. This is where Alexander Hamilton's broad interpretation of the "general welfare" clause was explicitly adopted

An excellent reason never to listen to George. U.S. v Butler struck down FDR's Agricultural Adjustment Act. Reversing Butler would grant Congress infinite power.

Treasury Secretary Hamilton never said anything about general welfare. He advanced the doctrine of implied powers for a government to sustain itself. Secretary of State Jefferson argued there was no explicit power to charter a bank, and the matter was settled by George Washington. "General welfare" never existed as a grant of power because the Preamble was held not to be law (overbroad and undefinable) until Helvering v Davis, 301 U.S. 619, reversed a previous decision and upheld Social Security as a broad constitutional prerogative of Congress to spend money. The most horrible and lasting damage was done in U.S. v Carolene Products.

Moving on to Altantis, there is no God given or logical reason to constitute a government. I've argued that government is an illusion.

It would be nice if occasionally there was a thread I could participate in.

On 6/16/2018 at 6:18 PM, Robert_Bumbalough said:

Merely bugging out to the valley did not form a new country. Countries can only be formed by express declaration.

It always surprises me, the ideas people hold.

32 minutes ago, caroljane said:

I usually skip sex scenes in novels, unless one is bad enough to earn a Bad Sex Award.

Puts hand up, claims award.

56 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

One of her favorite adjective categories in her nonfiction for bad guys was "subhuman" and similar.

It provoked P.C. righteous indignation when Pres. Trump referred to MS-13 as subhuman animals.

6 hours ago, anthony said:

one can simply read her as a fine story and good entertainment also.

Fountainhead, yes. Atlas, no.

1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

check out Rand's biography.  She was raised in a Jewish family.  The first generation objs   Branden (Jewish), LP (Jewish)

Karl and Groucho, too. Hard to think of anyone in show business or publishing who isn't Jewish.

Bidinotto The Wonderful has a self-imposed embargo on cursing. I'm less fussy -- or rather, committed to plain speaking. 'Partners' is coming along swimmingly. Set in 1975, it's the story of a young renegade and his slightly older mentor. Here's a passage from the second act. Critiques and complaints are always welcome. Adult content.

Quote

 

There was a gust of cold air when his sister entered, covered in snow. Under a bulky ski jacket, hat, hooded sweatshirt, thick snow pants and boots, she was quite a beauty, late 20's, dark haired and pretty. “Jimmy, you bum! — you said you were going to help me,” she griped. “The chains weigh a fucking ton.”

“No swearing,” her mother ordered sharply, but she went to help extract her daughter from the ice and snow and offered her a towel to dry off, hung up the frozen jacket and pants to drip new puddles at the door.

Jimmy's eyes were staring at my wedding ring. “Is that a gag?”

I shook my head. “Got married a couple days ago. Karen.”

“How much sense does that make?”

“She's a war bride. It'll take time for my leg to heal. We're in a little cabin in town. Don't sweat it. She knows the score. She'll lighten your hair and change your face, like you wanted.”

“You're a damn fool.”

“Hi, who're you?” his sister puzzled, as she pulled out a chair to join us.

“A damn fool,” I smiled and batted my eyes to flirt with her. Very attractive girl, low v-neck blouse, fresh faced, short dark hair wild from being toweled.

“He's my partner,” Jimmy said bitterly — and his sister scowled at him with a vicious reproach that wrecked any chance we had of a pleasant lunch.

“Put your cigarette out, asshole,” she seethed.

“Joanne!” her mother barked angrily from the kitchen. “Come in here! Help me with the salad!”

“Sorry, Jim,” I offered quietly.

“Nothing to be sorry about,” he said. “My sister's a peacenik. Went to college in Ann Arbor, thinks what I do is immoral.”

She was right. War is always wrong, but that doesn't make war go away.

Becker's father made the issue crystal clear when he came to sit at the table, took time to settle uncomfortably, some kind of physical disability.

“Dad, this is my new partner, Kyle Marshall. He took a bullet for me.”

The old man glanced at me and said nothing. Everybody in this house had a sour attitude, a family of hardened faces and bad blood. I didn't want Karen to meet these people.

 

*** ** ***

 

We were bundled up and the afternoon sun was warm, little daggers of ice dripping on the roof of the barn. My Impala had been towed to a concrete pad. Jimmy had a floor jack, compressed air and an impact wrench. I pried off wheel covers and rolled mounted tires around.

“How's Connie?”

“I told you, she's fine.”

“When did you see her last?”

“Get out the fuck out of the way! I'm gonna let the front down.”

Becker was in a foul mood. I was needling a sore spot. He dragged the floor jack to the back of the car angrily, screwed with it until it was positioned under the differential, pumped like a madman and lifted the rear, then stopped and twisted the jack handle, let the ass end thump down. I pried the wheel covers. Becker loosened the lug nuts, threw down the air ratchet, and went back to lift the back end again.

“There's nothing to be pissed off about, Jim,” I said peaceably, rolling Dodge wheels over and flopping them into position.

“You're a fucking idiot,” he fumed. “I told you it never works out.”

The ratchet spun lug nuts off, wheels were swapped, nuts tightened, floor jack pulled, and the air hose coiled back in the barn.

“Thanks for lunch,” I said cheerfully, offered to shake his hand.

He ignored the gesture, advanced threateningly until he was ten inches from my face. “Lay off about Connie, understand? I don't want to know how she is. I don't give a fuck how she is, or where she is, or whether she went back to Joey, doing dope again — and you're a fucking idiot! We'll be in a rough spot, kill or be killed, and all of a sudden you'll chicken, or go stupid, thinking about your wife. That's how Upshaw bought it — heartsick about Connie!”

“How did he meet her? At your apartment or the office?”

Becker staggered like I had punched him in the nose.

I opened my car door, got in, started it, and rolled down my window.

“Pick you up tomorrow morning around 10:30,” I reminded him. “There's a costume shop in Oshkosh that has latex and a limited selection of fake ears and noses. She also has to shop for supplies, depending on what she thinks might work with your natural color. It's a big deal coloring dark hair. Be at the gate ready to go at 10:30 — unless you chicken or go stupid.”

 

*** ** ***

 

Karen was mystified and worried. “Why did you lie to him?”

“Because I'm sick of his shit, throwing his weight around, with an emotional glass jaw I could shatter if I felt like it.”

She snuggled closer in the car and shook her head imperceptibly in a gentle rhythm with a frown of puzzlement. “I don't get it. He loves a stripper, risked his life to rescue her, and doesn't visit her, doesn't want anything to do with her any more?”

I shrugged it off. “He thinks he's a dead man, which is impossible if you love someone, open your heart, love being alive. I don't blame him, but if I can do it, he can do it. Lots of men have gone to war, had sweethearts and wives at home waiting for them to come back shot up, crippled, or in a pine box.”

Karen looked down. “I don't like to think about that.”

“What normal person could? — except that Becker's family isn't normal. His dad was a judge who survived a bomb attack. Mom was a cop. His twin brother OD'ed on heroin while Jimmy was serving in Germany. The whole family wants revenge, spend as much money as necessary to kick the Milwaukee mob in the balls, because the cops and the feds can't stop them, won't fight fire with fire.”

“Kyle?”

“Yes, dear?”

“How is this your fight?”

I flopped my hands on the wheel, baffled. “What else could I have done? — mope and pine for an airhead who dumped me? Drive a Frito-Lay truck, come home to an empty apartment, watch TV, and get stoned? I'd rather go down fighting — fighting for us, me and you — a girl who ran away from Dartmouth and bluffed her way into a false identity, a fake social security number, a girl with a pistol in her purse, because we're like two peas in a pod. And I'll fight side by side with Jim, right wrong or blue, because he rescued Connie Langer, the girl he loves. So screw him. Just like we're screwed. Make sense?”

“I don't like it, but I don't have to like it. Nothing holy is easy.”

“You said you weren't religious.”

“I am about us. Wouldn't trade a second of our time together, however long or short that might be. My writing has taken off like a rocket.”

I nodded with satisfaction. I married the right woman.

 

A warming spell had softened some of the snow, and Becker was waiting for us at the gate. He was wearing the old leather cowboy hat and a brown suede jacket, looked like the Marlboro Man, no bulge under his arm, probably felt as naked as a baby.

“Good morning,” I said cheerfully when he got in the car with us. “This is my wife, Karen.”

He squeezed as far away as possible, jammed against the door, looked away. “How do you do,” Jim mumbled indistinctly and twisted awkwardly to crack his car window, fumbled for cigarettes in his right pocket, avoiding contact with Karen. Becker's discomfort made me grin in devilment. I told Karen to put on a pleated skirt, sexy sheer stockings and tall high heels, to perch on one hip that extended her legs in parallel across the floor hump for maximum distraction.

“How long is this going to take?” Becker frowned.

I got us pointed the other way leisurely. “A couple hours,” I said airily. “While we're riding to Oshkosh, let Karen look you over, Jim.”

She sat up and parked her heels together on the hump, revealing the tops of her stockings, clipped with thin frilly black silk straps. “Um, Mister Becker? I need to see your face, please.” He complied, mouth pinched together like a visit to the dentist. Karen cocked her head and examined his scars, the shape of his jaw, and Jim's nice straight nose.

I tried not to smile, got us off the snowy gravel onto the wet side streets of Winneconne, headed for the main avenue.

“Well,” Karen said brightly. “I think I can cover your scars easy enough. What kind of a nose would you like? Fatter nostrils? A bigger bridge?”

“I dunno,” Becker growled and looked away, took a deep drag on his smoke and blew it out his cracked window. “Whatever you can do.”

“It'll be easy to change the shape of your ears,” she said thoughtfully. “I'd like to have a lock of your hair.” Karen reached for her purse on the floor, brushed Becker's leg, made him cringe and shift uncomfortably.

He watched her dig around in her bag, pull out her gun and stick it between her knees temporarily to find a roll of Scotch Tape and a sharp little scissors. I coughed to avoid laughing, wheeled us onto the highway. She hummed a little lilt and pulled a section of tape, stuck the end of it on the dash.

“What's that for?” Becker fretted nervously.

“You have to take off your hat. Hold still, please. I want to try coloring a little sample of your hair, before I screw up your whole head.”

She fluffed and lifted a clump of Jim's dark forelock with her fingers like a barber and clipped it diagonally, so the missing hair wouldn't change his look. “Can you hold my scissors? — thank you.”

Karen confidently wrapped the hair with her tape, and smiled at the result, showed it to him. “You have some red shades in the very dark brown, almost black, but it's not. I don't want to damage your hair with something as awful as peroxide, so I'll try the Loreal Pro precolor wash, see what it looks like. I can't promise to make you blonde. I might be able to do a sort of deep auburn that'll look natural, easy to touch up the roots once a month.”

Becker handed the scissors back and tried to busy himself with smoking.

“Darn it, I left my cigarettes in the cabin,” I lied. “Can I have one yours?”

That necessitated reaching past Karen's big tits. She smiled coyly, put her gun back in her purse and moved at the right moment to brush against Jimmy's outstretched arm. Brilliant gal, giving him as much hell as possible.

After a sweet interlude of scratching my thigh gently with her fingernails, Karen turned on her hip to smile at Jimmy again, letting her skirt slide up with natural ease. “How about a different part?” she pondered thoughtfully. “Do you mind? Let me try combing it.” Another excuse to reach for her purse down near his feet, walloping him with the scent of her beautiful wavy hair.

Jimmy had to endure the pleasure she inflicted with hard nails and comb. It took a long time, trying a couple of different styles. “Hmm,” she pondered. “It's good that it's a little long. I can give you a new cut when the time comes. First, let's get the color right, then a new hair style, something easy to comb.”

Becker apologized in body language to roll his window down and get rid of his spent cigarette. Karen smiled at him happily. “You're a very handsome guy, Mister Becker.”

We cruised through Butte des Mortes on the highway to Oshkosh, bright sun and blue sky, heater on low. Karen asked Jim to help her take off her jacket.

Poor guy. She was wearing a scooped blouse, had to stretch her arms and arch to get out of the nice sequined jacket we bought for this enterprise. Jimmy was hot, too, reluctantly unbuttoned his heavy suede, already lost his hat miles ago. Karen talked about the astounding luck she had catching the muskie, how much she appreciated having a gun she could fire easily and accurately.

Becker was suddenly alarmed. “Where are you going?” he growled.

“Relax,” I said. “The costume shop is down this way, couple more blocks.”

The jig was up but too bad. I slowed and honked the horn twice at a frame house in the middle of a residential block. The front door opened and Connie came down the porch steps, as pretty and cheery as a happy girl could be.

“Get out and open the door for her, Jim,” I ordered.

Becker probably didn't hear me. He was already out of the car, gently closing the front passenger door, walking up the front steps. She ran to him, slammed her pretty blonde head against his chest, wrapped her arms around him.

I reflected solemnly, put the car in park, and Karen dabbed her eyes, fussed with tissue and a compact.

 

*** ** ***

 

The four of us gathered at Connie's mother's home on Christmas Eve.

Connie had a diamond engagement ring. She cuddled at Jimmy's side on the sofa in the living room, while Karen and I helped chubby Mrs. Langer prepare dinner. She wanted to hear a Lawrence Welk Christmas Special, so there were schmaltzy carols on an old Zenith TV that made me feel young again, a little kid in Oconomowoc excited about a model train set that was totally unexpected, an engine that puffed smoke pellets, three box cars and a red caboose that clacked on a circular track, powered by a heavy transformer with wires.

Karen tentatively opened the hot oven with big padded mittens, carefully sucked up and squirted drippings to baste the ham. When I asked if it was okay for her to eat ham, she snorted. “Are you kidding? This is going to be absolutely wonderful!”

Jim and I donned jackets and stepped outside to smoke.

He had settled, no longer angry about life. We stood shoulder to shoulder in spirit, standing next to one another peacefully, almost physically touching. The snow was quite beautiful, untrammeled, like a benevolent blanket over civilian middle class life in a small city. It was very quiet. A passing car crunched softly on the unplowed street, four more folks on their way to grandma's.

“How did you know where Gloria lived?” Jim inquired.

“There was a phone number and the name 'Langer' on your legal pad. There aren't that many Langers in Oshkosh.”

“Oh.”

There was nothing to say to each other for a while.

“We have to go back to work,” I noted.

Jim nodded, and I used the new clean round snow on a wrought iron railing to extinguish my cigarette, went back inside to make a bowl of punch.

It was a simple recipe: champagne, ice, cranberry juice and Cointreau, with sprigs of mint floating on top for color. Dinner would be ready soon. I dipped a steel ladle to fill five old fashioned glasses, served one to each of the women, offered one to my partner, and raised mine to toast with deep feeling.

“Merry Christmas.”

 

 

 

Our second fight

 

“Kyle!”

She held me so tightly that I couldn't get free without injuring her.

“You have to let me go, honey.”

Tears were streaming from her eyes, and I lifted her chin gently to kiss her forehead. My lips lingered tenderly. I spoke by telepathy to the brain behind Karen's anguished eyes: I'll come back, I promise. You just have to trust me.

Becker was waiting for me in the car, headlights off, freezing cold night air penetrating every inch of our exposed skin on Connie's front porch. I was armored in a woodsman's thick flannel shirt, insulated vest, and a leather top coat offered by Jimmy's father when I went to pick up my partner, visit the lake house once last time. Karen's nightgown and housecoat were flimsy.

I quickly opened the storm door and pushed her inside, marched down the steps to the concrete walkway I shoveled this afternoon. Ice crystals squealed under my boots. My thin driving gloves were nothing, and the handle of my car door was frozen shut, had to yank with power to make it work.

Putting Jimmy behind the wheel was a diplomatic gesture. He promised not to drive like a lunatic. He watched me slam the passenger door shut, shiver and huddle in the warm Impala, its heater and defroster whirring full blast.

“You okay?”

I shuddered once, relaxed in the warmth. “Yep,” I answered.

“Karen okay?”

“She'll be fine. Connie and her mom will make her eat. Then she'll sit at her typewriter and write. Let's go. She's watching us from the window.”

Jim switched on the headlights and put it in gear, slowly rolled over a hard ridge that had been pushed up by a loud dump truck's snowplow when we sat with our women around a bright, warm family table for dinner. We were calm and happy, no big deal, two harmless salesmen going on a long weekend trip to a convention of Commercial Travelers of America. They scolded us not to drink and drive.

And that was the end of that.

Humor was another sort of weakness, keeping alive the image of a wife who loved me and laughed easily. Nothing funny about me and Jim. We had a heavy H&K machine gun in the trunk with a case of ammunition. Jimmy's hair and face had been altered dramatically. I had a comfortable brown mustache.

“Should have put side mirrors on this thing,” Jim griped.

The car rolled quietly over slippery streets and I took off my deerstalker, put it on the seat next to his leather cowboy hat, got out a Marlboro and leaned to fish for my Zippo, felt the big solid butt of my holstered gun, clean as a whistle, ready to be scorched with hot gases any moment.

It's a tense posture, expecting a gunfight. The front line was everywhere.

Oshkosh was no exception. We had to be careful to avoid downtown, a little strip of night joints that were mob owned. I felt better when we finally hit the highway to Milwaukee, a couple hours of relative relaxation, unless there was a skid and slide that put us in a ditch.

“Slow down, partner,” I reminded him politely.

“Don't be a pussy,” he bitched and fumbled for his cigarettes, showed me the kind of evil focus that men are capable of — perfectly competent to juggle little fussy objects while racing across patches of black ice at 60 miles an hour.

I glanced around and found the ends of my seat belt.

“You told me you got rid of this car!” he grouched. “Lepsky knows the plate number, saw it on the docks, and there was a witness who saw it in Shorewood because you decided to shoot up the fucking house!”

I frowned at him. I did not want to revisit old business.

The thought crossed my mind that Jim was nervous, disturbed about leaving Connie, and steeling himself to face death again. He was always grouchy about the job of ruthless crime for hire.

“Any phone calls we need to take care of?” I inquired.

Becker scoffed. “Fifteen.”

“What's the plan when we get to town?”

“There's twenty thousand in the wall safe at my apartment, and I want my fucking Mercedes!”

I studied him sideways. The smoke from his cigarette caused him to crack a window, annoying Jim with a swirl of icy air on the back of his head. Maybe if I cracked my window, too, it would moderate a lopsided airflow.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Becker fumed, blaming me for more cold air.

He stabbed his cigarette in a full ashtray and cranked his window shut. I did likewise, rolled up my window to stop a whistling chill, then reached over to extinguish Jim's smoldering Camel Filter.

“Let's stop somewhere for coffee,” I suggested. “Empty the ashtray.”

Becker ignored me and slewed through a tight curve in the road that wasn't plowed or salted. When his highbeams painted a straightaway, he punched it.

“Slow down,” I growled.

When he ignored me again, I opened my car door and pushed against a wall of freezing air that flooded the car like a whirlwind.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” he cried in bewilderment.

I slammed the car door shut and shouted angrily. “Slow! Down! Whatever's bugging you, Becker, it has to stop. Either that or pull over and let me drive.”

He extended his jaw in a fury, took his foot off the gas pedal briefly, kept the center of the highway and slowed to a reasonable speed. If I had infrared film, I could have captured a white hot plume of resentment rising from his dark red head. Karen had done an excellent job of making Becker into a new man on the outside, but he was the same vicious commando with a death wish, made ten times worse by ten tender days with Connie.

I wasn't smart enough to help him, let him grieve and resolve a complicated mess of family pain and John Upshaw's death in a fusillade of gunfire. Jim was hurt so deeply that my frown meant nothing, an annoying fleabite.

“You're a fucking idiot,” he snarled at me.

I cranked my window quickly and threw my cigarette out, sighed like a man with a headache and massaged my brow.

On the outskirts of Fond du Lac he pulled into a sloppily plowed truck stop and slid to a stop under a Greyhound sign. “Get out,” he barked.

“Why?”

“Go back to Oshkosh, where you belong. Smooch your stupid wife and hold her, find a place to live, get a job! She's pregnant. You're fired. Get out.”

“Cut it out, Jim. Stop and think.”

“Fuck you. Get out!”

I sagged. “Here we go again. All right, tough guy, pull your gun and shoot me. I'm a loose end, a witness who might squeal under pressure, put you in prison for the rest of your life. I know your true name: Verhoeven. How many times do we have to do this?”

Becker scowled at the steering wheel, tightened his hands on it.

“Dad, this is my partner Kyle Marshall,” I quoted. “He took a bullet for me.”

I was astonished. Becker's eyes were suddenly wet with emotion.

“Go home, Kyle,” he said rigidly. “This isn't your fight. You're a good man and she needs you.”

I nodded peaceably. I didn't want to state the obvious. Jimmy would have to be a man, face the truth, and say it himself.

“I wish...” he gulped and brushed wetness from eyes that weren't doing what Jim wanted them to do, remain bulletproof and impersonal, the empty orbs of a dead man.

“I know,” I said quietly. “Connie's beautiful.”

Becker had trouble breathing.

“You want me to drive?”

He nodded and opened his car door.

 

9 hours ago, Peter said:

Under anarchy, there is no final determiner of the law.

Dear Peter and other interested parties,

Without much scholarship you will discover that U.S. constitutional principles have morphed repeatedly. I don't want to be didactic, but I'll mention three constitutional changes that everyone should study and understand. (1) Congress ceded power to an administrative state insulated from review by civil service protections. (2) The Supreme Court ring-fenced a handful of vague "personal freedoms" that afford little protection, subject to cultural and judicial whimsy, while abolishing all "economic freedom" of every kind. (3) Our military has been wasted, bureaucratized, outsourced, and hamstrung. Compared to entitlement spending and debt service, national defense will soon become a very small fraction of government spending. The U.S. Constitution became a dead letter determining nothing fixed or final. There was no effective opposition to Barack Obama concluding an "executive agreement" with Iran and EU heads of state that, formerly, would have been deemed a treaty subject to ratification by the Senate. Executive orders are an obscenity, winner take all, and it is a certainty that socialized medicine will deepen and metastacize, no different than defacto monopoly public education K-12, state universities, and student payola. I trust you know that commercial and community banks do not hold mortgage paper, that everything they originate is sold to Federal agencies led by political appointees who issue junk debt -- the specific, exclusive cause of the 2008-09 crash. If one were to describe anarchy as feckless, irresponsible and brutish, that would be Uncle Sam and the big metropolitan cities owned and operated by a corrupt Democrat feeding machine, with zero interest in or concern for justice, due process, or common law as the Founders understood it.

Ancap is a simple proposition. Historically, it was known as liberty.

20 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

[Yaron Brook] screws up while representing Ayn Rand

So sad. Like I always said about Cousin Leonard, ARI minus Rand = zero.

2 hours ago, Robert_Bumbalough said:

If my wife did me that way, I'd walk.

This loops back to Page 1, the initial post, where Randy argued that sex is appropriate only between lifelong monogamous partners, kicking off a discussion of how men and women are sexually different (forgive me, much condensed). I liked MSK's observation that Rand was true to herself artistically and personally. My own way of explaining it is that Rand the seeker was an immoral anarchist to the very roots of her hair, top and bottom. WRT to the quoted fragment by Bumbalough (can I use that as a fictional character name, please?) it was not the case that Dagny "bed hopped" in fiction nor Alice in her personal life. Not sure I want to discuss this in detail. The major premise is that lifelong monogamy is more a religious notion than a rational idea, sort of equivalent to not coveting your neighbor lady's ass.

Ayn Rand smashed the rule of received wisdom, uniquely so, in the modern context. She liked Mickey Spillane and Ian Fleming for a reason. The idea of an alpha male was important to Ayn Rand, central to everything she wrote.

It became thematic in my own work.

Dear God, please let this snakepit of second-handers vanish. Thank you.

16 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

The affair with Nathaniel was part of Rand's all-too-human reality.

It's all so ordinary and dull, if we call them Nathan and Alice.

11 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Was she consciously aware of what she was doing when forging her legend with the good, the bad and the ugly? In my opinion, yes.

"She carried on an increasingly toxic sexual affair with a married disciple 25 years her junior; when he had his own affair with a younger woman, Rand slapped him, excommunicated him, and falsely accused him of embezzlement."  http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/60120/index1.html

6 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Villains are not important since real drama involves a struggle of the good against the good. This comes directly from Rand's idea that evil has no efficacy. I recall her saying somewhere that the reason the dramatic interest in her own works was a struggle of hero against hero and the villains were minor characters was precisely to illustrate this principle.

That's quite wonderful. Thanks.