I’ve just reset my password and gotten back into this blog.  Maybe I’ll use it.

2. Read more

3. Write some more

4. Get back into some sort of shape – lose 10lbs of fat and put on some muscle

5. Get up earlier

6. Spend more time with the kids

7. Spend less time goofing off on the web

8. Write more

I just mistyped dream as dread.  Funny how they are one letter apart.

Life hasnt thrown up walls so much as slowed the dream down.  I steal a moment here or there.  Fleeting ones.  Sometimes, well, usually only enough to read read what Ive done.  Make a note or two.

Soon, he realized that he had come to the place where the line of trees on either side angled away, and the path ran through a series of cleared fields separated by loose stone walls. He had come this far on his last visit, and had stopped here, unwilling to tempt fate and whatever or whomever might live on the farms.

Now, from the overgrown dirt road, looking down to the cluster of farm houses, he could see light in only one building. If it all worked the way it had before, he was here until dawn, and needed someplace to sleep, so he continued on, pushing his bike until he got to the house with the light in the window. Leaving his motorcycle on the side of the dirt path, he put the short antique sword in one saddlebag, which he then detached and swung from a strap over his shoulder. He unlatched the safety strap on the shoulder holster and slid the gun in and out a few times, just to be sure, and then stepped up to the house.

He knocked on the wooden door and called “Hello?”

In the darkness, he could hear a chair scraping back, and footsteps. They came near to the door. The biker stepped back and to the side of the door. An old man’s voice came loudly through the door. “Kto sa wy?”

“I’m looking for a place to stay tonight” the biker said. “I’m stuck here until dawn.”

The voice on the other side of the door said “Jack? Sa wy Jack? Are you Jack?”

“No, my name is Mike. I run Mike’s Bikes up seventeen in Mt Olive. North of Charleston. On the other side of, um.” He faultered. “In America.”

“Czy mówisz po polsku?”

“What?”

Mike heard the latch being thrown and the door opened. The old man was silhouetted in the door way, two candles on the kitchen table behind him. He was holding a pitchfork. “My angielski is terrible. My English. I have it for speaking with Jack only, and for the bar. And Jack has not been to visit in some time, and I do not go to bar anymore.” He leaned the pitchfork against the wall inside. “No one has been to visit in long time but czarny duch. Black spirits.”

“I know the black spirits,” Mike said. “I killed one back there just before it got dark. And if you mean Jack Frost, a biker with white hair and a brown 1969 Harley Davidson Shovelhead motorcycle, then I knew him, too”

The old man looked at Mike appraisingly for a moment, then offered his hand. “I did not know that black spirits could be killed,” he said. “I am Henryk Pavlak. I would very much like to hear how you kill this czarny duch.”

Mike stepped forward and took his hand. “I’m Mike Knapp. I’ll tell you about it.”

“Milo mi, Mike Knapp. Come in.” He turned and Mike followed, closing the door behind him. “I have coffee, tea and some very bad whisky. If you are like Jack, you want the bad whisky, nie?”

Mike had to duck to avoid smacking his head on the low beams of the dim room. “Bad whisky sounds very very good tonight, Henryk,” he told the old man as he deciphered his almost incomprehensible accent. “Thank you.”

Henryk went to a cupboard. “You sit at table, I will get butelka whisky, and you will be ready to tell me how you kill czarny duch, and how you know my friend Jack Frost.”

The kitchen, all wood cabinets and butcher’s block counters, was lit only by the two short candles in puddles of hard wax on the heavy table. There was a basin on one counter, but no faucet. Antique looking iron pots and pans mixed with more modern looking, but still old, aluminum cookery, hung from low rafters and piled on most surfaces. More than a dozen dirty stoneware and tin coffee mugs littered the counters, table and shelves. A great big cast iron stove squatted in one dark corner radiating heat. The warm room smelled of coffee and smoke.

There were three chairs at the table. Two were simple straight backed wooden chairs that Mike guessed Henryk might have made himself. The third was a yellow plastic thing with metal tubing legs that reminded him of junior high assemblies. He sat himself on one handmade chair, put his saddlebag on the floor, and watched Henryk as he stretched to pull a quarter-full bottle with a Polish label out of a high cabinet and set it on the table. Henryk was short and thin, his old bones clothed in mended farmer’s overalls over a once-white long john shirt. His face was generously and deeply lined, and his nose was large and pointed, as was his thinly bearded chin. He had sparse white hair, nearly gone on the top of his age spotted head. He was maybe seventy-five, and Mike wouldn’t have blinked if someone had told him that he was older than that. He was spry enough, however, darting about the kitchen, obviously eager to finish arranging their drinks so he could hear Mike’s story. He dipped a mug into a steaming bowl of water on the stove and wiped it with a rag, brought it back to the table and poured for Mike, then poured black coffee for himself from an old metal coffee pot like something from a western movie.

He put the coffee pot back, seated himself at the head of the table in the other wooden chair, and asked “So what brings you to Bor?”

“Bor? Is this village called ‘Bor?’ Mike asked.

Henryk laughed sarcastically. “Village. Ha! Three empty houses, and one for Henryk and Bibiana, my wife. Three eh, stodoły, eh, um, barns? Tak, barns! Three barns falling down because only Henryk is left and is too old to make good again. All are gone. There is no village.” He waved his hand vaguely around to indicated their surroundings “Bor. Bor. Jezyk polski word for woods. Forest, Nie? I call this place, this woods, eh, this otherplace-place with its gold flash of light when the sun sets. It is Bor. The Forest.”

Mike nodded. “So what are these places? Do you know?”

“Heh. Jack knows, I think. He does not tell you this thing?” Henryk eyed Mike over his coffee cup.

“He told me some stuff,” Mike said. “But when I met him, he was hurt from one of those ghost things, you know, a, um, czarny duch. He died in the night. He wouldn’t let me take him back… back home to get him help.”

Henryk bowed and shook his head. “Niech Bóg świeć nad jego duszą.” He crossed himself. “I liked him, Jack Frost.” He sighed, then slapped the top of the table. “Jest to zły pomysł, a bad idea, to be travelling like he did. Gowno! There are too many places like this, I think, where there are more than fields and short roads between America and Poland. Did you know that? You go beyond here jeden mila and there jesteś w Polska. Four or maybe five miles, this path.

“I don’t understand.”

“One mile beyond here, go past here. You go through one of Jack’s Turns. You will be in Poland.”

Mike sat and looked at him.

“It is true! Przysięgam! I swear! You ride your motorbike from one Turn to the other, it is maybe 5 miles. At one end is America, route seventeen, and bar called Kicking Hog. My Bibi, she does not like me to go there. At other end is Poland, town of Sobribor, with no bar. I tell Bibi I go there when I really go to Kicking Mule. You ride on past here tomorrow and you will see Polska. You will see.”

Mike rubbed his face with the hand not holding his whisky and said “It’s no stranger than anything else I’ve seen, so yeah, I believe you.”

“There are other places, not as nice as Henryk’s broken farm. Where czarny duch come from, maybe. Jack told me this much.”

“Yeah, he told me, too. And I’ve seen them.”

“Tell me, Mike Knapp. How did you come to meet my friend Jack Frost before he died?”

Mike took a sip from his mug. The whisky was bad, alright. Like moonshine and boot polish. He made a face, took another sip, couldn’t help but make the face again. He looked into the clay mug a moment until the burn subsided. He’d start at the beginning, he thought. He felt that he needed to talk it through now. He could feel it filling him up, pushing its way out. He looked back up at Henryk Pavlak.

“A black spirit killed my daughter. Her name was Abby. She was four years old.”

Henryk nodded solemnly, uncorked the bottle and topped off Mike’s mug. “This night we become friends, you and Henryk. Like Jack and me.” He got up and grabbed another coffee mug and set in down at the school assembly chair. He splashed a bit of whisky into the cup. “For Jack, and for Abby, and for Bibiana, my wife, who died six days ago. Then raising it in toast, he said “Za dobrzy przyjaciele,” and slammed it down on the table. The two tall candles jumped and sputtered when he did so.

Mike lifted his mug in toast, and took another burning sip. “I am sorry for your loss, Henryk, your wife.”

“Ah, as I am. As I am, too. But, we wait to talk about Bibi. I think she is still here sometimes, anyway. I hear her. Sometimes I smell her. I find the coffee already hot and the dishes clean. Sometimes, her side of bed is warm, maybe she just got up. Time, it does not work here like out there, and sometimes I think maybe it is before she died, for a little bit.” He paused and looked around the room, tapping two fingers against his pursed lips, Mike thought he might be trying not to tear up. Finally, he took a deep breath, exhaled heavily, and looked at Mike.

“Now, friend,” said Henryk, “tell me your story.”

Mike stared into the brightness of one of the long candles. Hadn’t he noticed that they were nearly just stubs when he walked in? “Time,” Henryk had said, “it does not work here like out there.”

Time. He had had so little time with her. It doesn’t work in here like out there, and out there it doesn’t work the way you want it to.

He told his story. The candles burned, sometimes short, sometimes tall, measuring no time at all.

We went to the library today.  It has a GREAT selection of DVDs.  Sammy and I got library cards.  I took out 3 books on writing and plotting.  I still need help with the plot of this story.  I seem to be a “discovery writer” as in, I write to discover what Im writing about, and much of it comes as a surprise, but I still feel like I should have some sort of scaffolding or outline.  I dunno, I’ll read the books.