J. Matthew McKern's Blog
July 14, 2013
Excerpt—I Didn't Go Looking for Trouble
An excerpt from "I Didn't Go Looking for Trouble". Told from the point of view of Willy Storey, a young girl out on her own trying to save her family's antique business after her dad was injured on the job.
<<<>>>
The ancient Chevy’s engine roared to life. The gears ground as I slammed it into drive and pulled slowly away from the curb, chagrined by my utter failure as a picker.
The only time I bought stuff before was when my dad gave me a little ‘play money’ to purchase smalls. Folks usually laughed and took whatever I offered.
That’s why this missed opportunity was so frustrating to me. I’d really wanted to prove myself to Uncle Marty, my dad and most importantly, myself. I figured I could sweep right in and save the day.
“Willy, you’re so stupid!” I grouched at myself, slamming my hand against the steering wheel.
“What a joke. I can’t wait to get out of here.” In frustration, I glanced over at my most recent acquisitions sitting beside me on the cracked vinyl seat. There was no way I’d even be able to make back all the gas money it took to drive all this way. The whole trip was shaping up to be a loosing proposition. My college fund was dwindling and it looked like there was no way I’d make the money back, let alone make a profit.
“I should have just stayed home.”
I pulled a roadmap and a flashlight from the jockey box, looking for the quickest route out of town. Holding the flashlight in my teeth, I spread the map out on the steering wheel.
I was just pulling up to a stop sign when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw what I thought was a firefly inside the bell jar. A warm glow moving this way and that had appeared between the strips of masking tape.
I took my eyes off the road for just a second, my mouth falling open. The flashlight fell into my lap. A horn sounded. Without realizing it, I had rolled through the stop sign, drifting out into oncoming traffic. I stood on the brake as tires screeched. The Chevy lurched as the weight of the trailer pushed me even further out into the intersection.
I quickly levered the gearshift back into reverse. Another horn erupted behind me. I figured out that I’d failed to look in the rear view mirror. I inhaled sharply when I realized that I would have backed right over the car behind me if the driver hadn’t alertly thrown his own car into reverse to get the heck out of the way.
Ignoring the pandemonium I’d created, I leaped out of the driver’s side door like there was a snake in the cab, ready to strike. The driver of the car behind me kept pounding on his horn.
“Stuff a sock in it,” I yelled, waving him around, trying to ignore the stream of angry obscenities emitting from the open window.
Finally a moment of silence provided an opportunity for me to figure out what in the world was going on. Looking in the driver’s side window of the truck, I stared at the bell jar sitting there innocently. The triangular spaces between the swaths of masking tape were glowing brightly from within as the source of the light spun little figure eights inside.
“What is this?”
I leaned in to get a better look. Clearly it wasn’t a firefly. The light was way too bright and whatever was making it was too big and the figure eights were far too regular to be coming from a simple bug. The rounded glass top of the bell jar was still taped to the wooden base, just the way it was when the crazy lady sold it to me. There was no way something had slipped inside. I was perplexed.
I ran the back of my hand across my mouth and got back inside the ancient Chevy, sliding in very slowly like whatever it was inside the jar wouldn’t notice if I didn’t move too fast. I turned over the engine and pulled out into traffic. Finding a grocery store parking lot, I pulled in and cut the engine, my legs still shaking.
Planning to release this mysterious orb of glowing light into the night air, I pulled the bell jar out of the cab of the pickup and set it on the hood of the truck. Very carefully, I peeled back the tape holding the jar closed and lifted the lid.
“Fly, be free,” I said in a shaky voice, trying to make a joke of it.
Happily, the whatever-it-was flew slowly out from under the jar, glancing up at me before drifting up to hover just in front of my nose. I backed away. The first thing that popped into my head was Tinkerbell from Peter Pan. It looked like a tiny little transparent person with dragonfly wings. The glow of it illuminated the cab of the pickup. My heart pounding intensely, I looked around to see if anyone besides me was seeing this.
“Am I supposed to be with you now?” it asked in a gentle voice. The glow grew in intensity with the sound of the words as it spoke.
<<<>>>
The ancient Chevy’s engine roared to life. The gears ground as I slammed it into drive and pulled slowly away from the curb, chagrined by my utter failure as a picker.
The only time I bought stuff before was when my dad gave me a little ‘play money’ to purchase smalls. Folks usually laughed and took whatever I offered.
That’s why this missed opportunity was so frustrating to me. I’d really wanted to prove myself to Uncle Marty, my dad and most importantly, myself. I figured I could sweep right in and save the day.
“Willy, you’re so stupid!” I grouched at myself, slamming my hand against the steering wheel.
“What a joke. I can’t wait to get out of here.” In frustration, I glanced over at my most recent acquisitions sitting beside me on the cracked vinyl seat. There was no way I’d even be able to make back all the gas money it took to drive all this way. The whole trip was shaping up to be a loosing proposition. My college fund was dwindling and it looked like there was no way I’d make the money back, let alone make a profit.
“I should have just stayed home.”
I pulled a roadmap and a flashlight from the jockey box, looking for the quickest route out of town. Holding the flashlight in my teeth, I spread the map out on the steering wheel.
I was just pulling up to a stop sign when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw what I thought was a firefly inside the bell jar. A warm glow moving this way and that had appeared between the strips of masking tape.
I took my eyes off the road for just a second, my mouth falling open. The flashlight fell into my lap. A horn sounded. Without realizing it, I had rolled through the stop sign, drifting out into oncoming traffic. I stood on the brake as tires screeched. The Chevy lurched as the weight of the trailer pushed me even further out into the intersection.
I quickly levered the gearshift back into reverse. Another horn erupted behind me. I figured out that I’d failed to look in the rear view mirror. I inhaled sharply when I realized that I would have backed right over the car behind me if the driver hadn’t alertly thrown his own car into reverse to get the heck out of the way.
Ignoring the pandemonium I’d created, I leaped out of the driver’s side door like there was a snake in the cab, ready to strike. The driver of the car behind me kept pounding on his horn.
“Stuff a sock in it,” I yelled, waving him around, trying to ignore the stream of angry obscenities emitting from the open window.
Finally a moment of silence provided an opportunity for me to figure out what in the world was going on. Looking in the driver’s side window of the truck, I stared at the bell jar sitting there innocently. The triangular spaces between the swaths of masking tape were glowing brightly from within as the source of the light spun little figure eights inside.
“What is this?”
I leaned in to get a better look. Clearly it wasn’t a firefly. The light was way too bright and whatever was making it was too big and the figure eights were far too regular to be coming from a simple bug. The rounded glass top of the bell jar was still taped to the wooden base, just the way it was when the crazy lady sold it to me. There was no way something had slipped inside. I was perplexed.
I ran the back of my hand across my mouth and got back inside the ancient Chevy, sliding in very slowly like whatever it was inside the jar wouldn’t notice if I didn’t move too fast. I turned over the engine and pulled out into traffic. Finding a grocery store parking lot, I pulled in and cut the engine, my legs still shaking.
Planning to release this mysterious orb of glowing light into the night air, I pulled the bell jar out of the cab of the pickup and set it on the hood of the truck. Very carefully, I peeled back the tape holding the jar closed and lifted the lid.
“Fly, be free,” I said in a shaky voice, trying to make a joke of it.
Happily, the whatever-it-was flew slowly out from under the jar, glancing up at me before drifting up to hover just in front of my nose. I backed away. The first thing that popped into my head was Tinkerbell from Peter Pan. It looked like a tiny little transparent person with dragonfly wings. The glow of it illuminated the cab of the pickup. My heart pounding intensely, I looked around to see if anyone besides me was seeing this.
“Am I supposed to be with you now?” it asked in a gentle voice. The glow grew in intensity with the sound of the words as it spoke.
July 10, 2013
Before They Get Called Up to Heaven
When my aging in-laws asked for someone to help with the driving on a road trip tour of the upper Midwest, I surprised my wife by stepping forward. My father-in-law, Bob, had grown-up in Chicago, spending summers on a farm in Wisconsin. He'd been invited to a pair of family reunions by cousins he hadn't seen in decades. Bob wanted a chance to see them before they got called up to Heaven. In my mind the trip instantly became “The Before They Get Called Up To Heaven Tour” and I immediately printing-up t-shirts in my mind.
The character of the various landscapes left a distinct impression. The meandering roads of Southern Wisconsin seemed perfect for getting lost but the checkerboard maze of Iowa had a different sort of potential. One could easily get disoriented in the endless maze of cornfields were cut through with any number of dusty white roads with little to distinguish them from one another.
The first true hint of inspiration for I Didn’t Go Looking for Trouble came from my daughter and this tiny firefly with an outsized personality that my daughter named Glowie. There’s a certain magic that comes at nightfall in a city park in a small town like Waverly, Iowa that might have lost its luster for the local crowd. Seeing the fireflies rising from the grass just that once preserved the magic for me.
Another source of inspiration came in the form of a corner store in Klinger, my mother-in-law Arleen’s home town. The store was of the type that requires isolation to survive. There were pipe fittings, canned foods, overalls, boots, buttons all in a narrow space with a hardwood floor that just dared you to even think about going barefoot. We visited the graves of my wife’s grandparents and found confirmation photos of Arleen taken some fifty years earlier. We didn’t have to hunt for them. They were bound-up in books displayed in the lobby.
There are other ingredients that helped add body to the stew of my novel including a legendary yard sale find that I can’t go into with any specificity—let me just say that finding a priceless treasure hidden a picture frame behind a worthless print wasn’t something I just cooked up on my own. But the heart of the story started beating in Waverly—the old storefronts struggling to maintain relevance when there’s a WalMart just up the road, fishing in the Cedar River in a rented canoe with borrowed gear, seeing the combines driving into town for the demolition derby, white Amish country road dust, this is the glue that holds the story together.
But the spirit of the story comes from watching my daughter gaining a taste for a bit of adventure. Thankfully, she’ll never make the same kind of mistakes that the protagonist of I Didn’t Go Looking for Trouble, Willy Storey falls into. Willy doesn’t necessarily feel rules were always made with her in mind. So far, my daughter is quite the opposite, knock on wood.
I started writing when she was a tiny baby on a schedule all her own. When she woke at 4:30, I would often take her for a drive in the country so she could get a nap before daycare, which started at about 7:30. In these quiet times behind the wheel, I would often write entire chapters in my mind that might not be written down for hours, days or maybe even weeks. I Didn’t Go Looking for Trouble was also born of the road, but these particular roads are halfway across the country, a stop on the “Before They Get Called Up to Heaven Tour”, leading to a tiny store in an even tinier town where two roads just happen to run into one another.
The character of the various landscapes left a distinct impression. The meandering roads of Southern Wisconsin seemed perfect for getting lost but the checkerboard maze of Iowa had a different sort of potential. One could easily get disoriented in the endless maze of cornfields were cut through with any number of dusty white roads with little to distinguish them from one another.
The first true hint of inspiration for I Didn’t Go Looking for Trouble came from my daughter and this tiny firefly with an outsized personality that my daughter named Glowie. There’s a certain magic that comes at nightfall in a city park in a small town like Waverly, Iowa that might have lost its luster for the local crowd. Seeing the fireflies rising from the grass just that once preserved the magic for me.
Another source of inspiration came in the form of a corner store in Klinger, my mother-in-law Arleen’s home town. The store was of the type that requires isolation to survive. There were pipe fittings, canned foods, overalls, boots, buttons all in a narrow space with a hardwood floor that just dared you to even think about going barefoot. We visited the graves of my wife’s grandparents and found confirmation photos of Arleen taken some fifty years earlier. We didn’t have to hunt for them. They were bound-up in books displayed in the lobby.
There are other ingredients that helped add body to the stew of my novel including a legendary yard sale find that I can’t go into with any specificity—let me just say that finding a priceless treasure hidden a picture frame behind a worthless print wasn’t something I just cooked up on my own. But the heart of the story started beating in Waverly—the old storefronts struggling to maintain relevance when there’s a WalMart just up the road, fishing in the Cedar River in a rented canoe with borrowed gear, seeing the combines driving into town for the demolition derby, white Amish country road dust, this is the glue that holds the story together.
But the spirit of the story comes from watching my daughter gaining a taste for a bit of adventure. Thankfully, she’ll never make the same kind of mistakes that the protagonist of I Didn’t Go Looking for Trouble, Willy Storey falls into. Willy doesn’t necessarily feel rules were always made with her in mind. So far, my daughter is quite the opposite, knock on wood.
I started writing when she was a tiny baby on a schedule all her own. When she woke at 4:30, I would often take her for a drive in the country so she could get a nap before daycare, which started at about 7:30. In these quiet times behind the wheel, I would often write entire chapters in my mind that might not be written down for hours, days or maybe even weeks. I Didn’t Go Looking for Trouble was also born of the road, but these particular roads are halfway across the country, a stop on the “Before They Get Called Up to Heaven Tour”, leading to a tiny store in an even tinier town where two roads just happen to run into one another.
