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****Mark Wisniewski’s Watch Me Go is the thirty-sixth in a never-ending series called INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION where the Chris
Rice Cooper Blog (CRC) focuses on one specific excerpt from a fiction
genre and how that fiction writer wrote that specific excerpt. All INSIDE
THE EMOTION OF FICTION links are at the
end of this piece.
Name of fiction work?
And were there other names you considered that you would like to share with us?
WATCH
ME GO. Once considered titling it STRAIGHTAWAY. Big
mistake, I think now, not to stick to my guns. (Publisher asked me to change
title--still not sure why.)
Fiction
genre? Ex science fiction, short story, fantasy novella, romance,
drama, crime, plays, flash fiction, historical,
comedy, etc. And how many pages long? Literary
fiction. 308 pages long published.
Has this been
published? And it is totally fine if the answer is no. If yes,
what publisher and what publication date? Yes. Penguin Putnam (https://www.penguin.com) ,
January 2015.
What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? Started writing it in 1989. Finished proofing it for the publisher in 2014. A lot of revision in between, including many drafts at the behest of two agents. (Below: Mark's writing space in August of 2014)
Where did you do most
of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in
detail. And can you please include a photo? Wrote
most of this book in the lake house my wife Elizabeth and I owned in Lake
Peekskill, NY (about 50 miles north of Manhattan). My office there overlooked
the lake and a huge oak tree squirrels would climb up and into. I miss the view
I had in that office in that house. (See photo Above Right)
What were your
writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote,
listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of
day? Drank a lot of coffee. Listened to a lot of music, quite
often Mark Knopfler (Above Left)
(https://www.markknopfler.com/)
Wrote on a pc, often in the morning and into the afternoon. Towards the end of
revising I would get up at 3 or 4 a.m. and revise and rewrite for hours on
end.
What is the summary
of this specific fiction work? Black man from the
Bronx and white woman from Arkansas realize, thanks to horrible twists of fate
in both of their lives, that they can help each other--but only if they listen
to each other's stories.
Can you give the
reader just enough information
for them to understand what is going on in the excerpt? This
opening-pages excerpt shows how and why Douglas "Deesh" Sharp, from
the Bronx, makes the first choice that ends up landing him in jail.
Please include the
excerpt and include page numbers as reference. The excerpt can be as
short or as long as you prefer.
Opening
pages of Deesh's narrative:
Nine times
out of ten it’s a woman who calls Bark to answer his ad in the
Westchester Pennysaver,
and sometimes when we pull up to her yard in his pickup, she’s outside waiting
for us. Sometimes she even has something inside for us to eat, which, besides
needing money, is why James and I never ask Bark if he wants our help. We just
get in his truck and hope he lets us go.
On the
morning he drives us north of Poughkeepsie, though, no woman, or anyone, is
waiting outside. Maybe this has to do with the $500 this woman offered—she
doesn’t feel the need to be friendly beyond that. Or maybe she’s with the junk
that needs to be hauled. Anyway Bark pulls off the country road into her
driveway, which drops through her uncut lawn toward her shabby yellow house,
and we all get out, Bark headed to knock on her front door.
“Hey,”
I hear from the left-hand side of the house, and I turn but see no one. “Down
here,” the voice calls, and there, crouched near an open crawlspace hole, is a
woman about as dark as me, maybe five years older.
“Over here,
Bark,” I shout, and Bark makes his way down the porch, then over to her, James
and I lagging behind to let her know he’s boss.
“I took care
of the rest myself,” she says, and Bark kneels beside her, then pokes his head
and a good half of him into the crawlspace. He stays in there for a while,
making sure, I figure, that we can do what needs doing. Then he’s back out, and
he stands, slapping dirt off his knees.
“Just that
oil drum?” he says.
“Yeah,” she
says.
“I thought
you said there was a bunch of stuff,” he says.
“No,” she
says. “Just that.”
“What’s in
it?” he asks.
“I have no
idea,” she says, but she’s scratching her arm and keeps scratching it; if she’s
not flat-out lying, she’s more than a little nervous.
“Because the
thing is,” Bark says. “I can’t just take a drum like that to a dump without
them asking what’s inside.”
“Then don’t
take it to a dump,” she says. “Just, you know, get rid of
it.”
Bark grabs
his unshaven jaw, considering. Probably he’s stumped by why a sister is living
this far upstate; plus it doesn’t make much sense that any woman living in a house this
shabby could have $500,
let alone give it to us to haul off a drum with nothing bad in it. It crosses
my mind this woman loves some guy who’s given her five hundred to get rid of
the drum, some dude, maybe a white one, that she has it bad for and cheated
with—and that inside the drum is this man’s wife. But all kinds of things are
crossing my mind, including how I could use $500 divided by three.
“How bout a
thousand?” the woman says.
Here’s where
all of us, including her, gaze off at her uncut lawn, the dandelions and weeds
in it, some of them pretty enough to call flowers. We gaze our separate ways
for a long time, letting whatever truth of what’s going on sink into us while
we play as if it isn’t, and I feel my guts work their way higher toward my
lungs, threatening to stay there if Bark agrees. But there’s a lot I could do
with my share of a thousand, especially since I’m used to walking away from
these jobs with fifty at most. I could eat more than apples and white bread and
ham. I could start saving for a truck of my own—to haul things for pay myself.
Then, to the
woman, Bark says, “In cash?”
“As soon as
that drum’s in your truck,” she says.
Bark glances
at James, who nods.
“Deesh?”
Bark asks me, and I know he’s working me over with his eyes, using them to try
to convince me in their I-don’t-care-either-way manner, but what I’m watching
is the woman’s feet, which are the tiniest bit pigeon-toed. They are also
perfectly still, which could mean she’s no longer nervous, but my eyes, I know,
are avoiding her fingers and arms. Still, the sight of those pigeon-toed feet
coax me to trust her. I could marry a woman who stands like that.
“Why not?” I
answer. I haven’t, I tell myself, actually said yes, but when I look up, James
is following Bark into the crawlspace, the woman checking me out.
“Sure
appreciate it,” she says, in the flat way of someone who could do two men on
the same day yet allow none of it to show on her face. But now she’s scratching
her collarbone—over and over she’s scratching it, without one bug bite on her.
There’s death in that drum, I think, but with her pigeon-toed feet aimed at me,
I fall even more in love.
Then she
walks off, toward a creek behind her house, and it hits me that if I want my
share of the thousand, I should get my ass in that crawlspace, since the actual
removal of the drum might take but five minutes—and the last thing I need is
Bark and James saying I don’t deserve a cent. Then I realize that if I don’t
take a cent, I might not be guilty of any crime that’s going on here, but
thoughts like that only help if you can afford a lawyer who cares more than a
public defender does, plus I need to be in Bark’s truck to get home, and even
before I’m done thinking all this I’m on my hands and knees, my head brushing
morning glory vines, then on its way through the square opening in the
foundation of the woman’s house.
It’s quiet
in there, and it stinks. James and Bark are on their bellies, snaking their way
over damp dirt and rocks toward the drum, which lies on its side in the far
corner. With the thousand in mind, I work myself toward them, trying to get a
hand on the drum when they do—but Bark yells, “We got it, Deesh.”
“What are
you saying?” I ask.
“I’m saying
this is a two-man job, so back off.”
“You trying
to cut me out of my share.”
“No. It’s
just there ain’t enough room for all three of us if we want to get this thing
past us.”
“So what do
you want me to do?”
Bark humps
up his backside, reaches into a front pocket, pulls out his keys, tosses them
toward me. “Pull the truck down the driveway,” he says. His hands dig dirt away
from the drum. “As close to the house as you can,” he says.
“Bark,” I
say. “I haven’t driven in fifteen years.”
“You’ll
remember,” he says. “Just start it, put it in gear, and steer so you don’t hit
nothing.”
“Okay,” I
say, though Bark’s confidence in me has taken away the little I have in myself.
I used to have confidence—gold confidence—but the older I get, I have less.
Still, I back myself out of the crawlspace, pretend the woman isn’t watching as
I jog up the driveway to Bark’s truck, hop inside it, start it, put it in drive
and let it roll down there. Steering is easy, but when I put on the brake, I
about fly through the windshield. The woman, still near the creek, has her arms
folded now, checking me out. There’s that kind of thing between us, that
curiosity about each other we’d ruin with conversation, and I want to make love
to her bad.
Now Bark and
James are yanking the drum top-first through the hole in her foundation; the
drum is too wide to roll out. They struggle like hungry playground
kids—whatever’s in that thing is dumb-heavy. Wind blows past my face, the woman
now picking a weed’s blue flower from between pebbles beside the creek. It’s
her husband in the drum, I think. She got carried away in an argument over
nothing and the thousand is all they ever saved.
“Deesh,”
Bark calls to me. “Gonna help us or not?”
I nod, toss
him his keys, which he catches like it’s the old days. I walk toward him and
James, and all three of us roll the drum to the driveway, flattening a strip of
knee-high grass, acting like we haul mystery drums every day. This one is the
rusted old orange you’d expect, but its new yellow lid has barely a scratch or
a smudge on it, and as we team up near Bark’s tailgate and lift on the count of
three, we take extra care to keep the lid on. Dead weight, I think as we lower
the works onto the bed. If this isn’t a corpse, she would have said so.
Why is this excerpt so
emotional for you? And can you describe your own emotional
experience of writing this specific excerpt? I grew up poor, and
when I wanted to teach on the college level, pretty much the only jobs I was
given were to teach poor students. So I knew about people like Deesh, and I
felt for them.
Were there any
deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please
include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. No
deletions. This part sort of came right out.
Other works you have
published? The novels CONFESSIONS
OF A POLISH USED CAR SALESMAN and SHOW
UP, LOOK GOOD. 125+ short stories in print magazines. 300+ poems in
print magazines.
Anything you would
like to add? To anyone who wants to
write novels: Good luck.
INSIDE THE EMOTION OF
FICTION links
001 11 15 2018 Nathaniel
Kaine’s
Thriller Novel
John
Hunter – The Veteran
002 11 18 2018 Ed
Protzzel’s
Futuristic/Mystery/Thriller
The
Antiquities Dealer
003 11 23 2018 Janice
Seagraves’s
Science
Fiction Romance
Exodus
Arcon
004 11 29 2018
Christian Fennell’s
Literary
Fiction Novel
The Fiddler
in the Night
005 12 02 2018 Jessica
Mathews’s
Adult
Paranormal Romance
Death
Adjacent
006 12 04 2018 Robin Jansen’s
Literary
Fiction Novel
Ruby the
Indomitable
007 12 12 2018 Adair Valerez’s
Literary
Fiction Novel
Scrim
008 12 17 218
Kit Frazier’s
Mystery Novel
Dead Copy
009 12 21 2019 Robert Craven’s
Noir/Spy Novel
The Road
of a Thousand Tigers
010 01 13 2019 Kristine Goodfellow’s
Contemporary
Romantic Fiction
The Other
Twin
011 01 17 2019 Nancy J Cohen’s
Cozy Mystery
Trimmed To
Death
012 01 20 2019 Charles Salzberg’s
Crime Novel
Second
Story Man
013 01 23 2019 Alexis Fancher’s
Flash Fiction
His Full
Attention
014 01 27 2019 Brian L Tucker’s
Young Adult/Historical
POKEWEED: AN ILLUSTRATED NOVELLA
015 01 31 2019 Robin Tidwell’s
Dystopian
Reduced
016 02 07 2019 J.D. Trafford’s
Legal
Fiction/Mystery
Little Boy
Lost
017 02 08 2019 Paula Shene’s
Young Adult
ScieFi/Fantasy/Romance/Adventure
My Quest
Begins
018 02 13 2019 Talia Carner’s
Mainstream
Fiction/ Suspense/ Historical
Hotel
Moscow
019 02 15 2019 Rick Robinson’s
Multidimensional
Fiction
Alligator
Alley
020 02 21 2019 LaVerne Thompson’s
Urban Fantasy
The Soul
Collectors
021 02 27 2019 Marlon L Fick’s
Post-Colonialist
Novel
The
Nowhere Man
022 03 02 2019 Carol Johnson’s
Mainstream
Novel
Silk And
Ashes
023 03 06 2019 Samuel Snoek-Brown’s
Short Story
Collection
There Is
No Other Way to Worship Them
024 03 08 2019 Marlin Barton’s
Short Story
Collection
Pasture
Art
025 03 18 2019 Laura Hunter’s
Historical
Fiction
Beloved
Mother
026 03 21 2019 Maggie Rivers’s
Romance
Magical
Mistletoe
027 03 25 2019 Faith
Gibson’s
Paranormal
Romance
Rafael
028 03 27 2019 Valerie Nieman’s
Tall Tale
To The
Bones
029 04 04 2019 Betty Bolte’s
Paranormal
Romance
Veiled
Visions of Love
030 04 05 2019 Marianne
Maili’s
Tragicomedy
Lucy, go
see
031 04 10 2019 Gregory Erich Phillips’s
Mainstream
Fiction
The Exile
032 04 15 2019 Jason Ament’s
Speculative
Fiction
Rabid Dogs
033 04 24 2019 Stephen P. Keirnan’s
Historical
Novel
The
Baker’s Secret
034 05 01 2019 George Kramer’s
Fantasy
Arcadis:
Prophecy Book
035 05 05 2019 Erika Sams’s
Adventure/Fantasy/Romance
Rose of Dance
036 05 07 2019 Mark Wisniewski’s
Literary Fiction
Watch Me Go
https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2019/05/36-inside-emotion-of-fictions-watch-me.html
Literary Fiction
Watch Me Go
https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2019/05/36-inside-emotion-of-fictions-watch-me.html
