Susie Richards was too young to be swimming that far out. Her parents were too busy bickering over whose fault the mortgage was. She churned her little feet through the lake water, unable to find the muddy bottom. Only Bernie saw her sinking. He dove in the water with his sweats still on. He was the only reason that little white girl came out breathing.
He was actually at the shore looking for recyclables. Bernie had no last name. Maybe he was too ashamed to tell anyone. They never saw him with a family. The closest thing he had to a home were the big drainage pipes on the outskirts of the city. There were winter nights when half his clothes were frozen solid with ice, crackling as Charlotte stripped him down and got blankets over him. At least four winter nights he slept in her shed. Those were four nights when he would have died, contrasted to a couple hundred nights when he thanked her for dinner at the soup kitchen. She was a smart lady. The church had never seen someone who knew so many ways to find a dollar or bend it.
Charlotte Osnos never would have graduated from high school if not for the encouragement of her Creative Writing teacher, Mr. Parker. With the exuberant attitude he brought to the classroom, she was inspired to actually listen and try. Even though she switched to a Business major in college, she always remembered him. She wrote him every Christmas.
Mr. Robert Parker was haunted by the hundreds of kids he failed and couldn't bring up to speed. They were dragged along by a system he couldn’t make work, failing to grasp core concepts in the first months of school, and then doomed to fail comprehension the rest of the year as the curriculum chugged on. Some late nights grading papers he questioned if he made a difference at all.
He went into English early in life. He brought a book everywhere, even when his brothers went to the arcade. He still didn’t grasp how much literature could offer you until he got through Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. He kept his dog-eared, underlined copy for all the decades of his life. Sometimes all he needed to do was smell its yellowed pages.
Virginia Woolf drowned herself.
Thank goodness for her.
Very nice circle you got there, beginning and ending with a drowning. And the book saved at least 4 lives, maybe more.
ReplyDeleteYou never know how one chance decision will effect so many. I'll never forget the English teacher who encouraged my creative writing in high school. I wonder who inspired her.
ReplyDeleteAnother uplifting story - made me think about how we are all connected. Thought you used the passive more than usual and did see a typo: He dove in the [water] with his sweats still on.
ReplyDeleteBut overall this didn't matter so much because it was a really sweet Friday Flash with a great pace.
I pondered the title for a while. Why descent of failure? The threads of life are fascinating things, but I saw no failure in the threads you tied together. I too liked how it came back to the drowning theme.
ReplyDeletethis is a style from you i don't recall seeing - very effective and built nicely - you should play around with this form more often
ReplyDeleteThanks for writing this, John.
ReplyDeleteLove the progression and the implication of everyone'attitudes toward themselves and others. Lovely.
ReplyDeleteThis had a very unique structure and I think you pulled it off well.
ReplyDeleteI guess even in our percieved failures, we can have a ton of success.
Toss a stone into a pond and watch the ripples. Wonderful way to illustrate the knock-on effect one person can have through space/time.
ReplyDeleteSonia, possibly quite a few lives indeed.
ReplyDeleteDanielle, I also had three English and one Writing teachers in middle and high school who wound up meaning the world to me. None perfect, but all helpful in unique ways. And you do have to wonder what they think of themselves.
Henrietta, thank you for catching that typo! An entire omitted word, how embarassing. On the passive voice front, the entire narrative is pretty removed. Did that hurt the reading experience for you?
Reality, I'm sorely tempted to answer your question, but it requires a kind of artist-statement exposition I don't think I can abide right now. I don't want to tell you what to think about it. If you disliked the 'Failure' part, I'll honor it, though I wouldn't take that title as actual condemnation.
Michael, I don't know what else to do with this format immediately. If other ideas pop up, I'll be sure to try. Was anything particularly effective on you?
Ross, you're quite welcome. I'd love to know what you read into it, though I suspect you got what I intended.
Ganymeder, thanks! And thank you for the RT, your enthusiasm brightened my morning.
Michael, glad the format worked for you. It's not like I'll pull this out every week hereafter, but I really wanted to experiment with it today.
Icy, it's especially interesting to regard the influences people don't realize they have. Glad you liked my structure.
I love this - feels very non-fic and personal...nicely done, John:)
ReplyDeleteThis is an awesome piece, John. Very creative and pulled off superbly. I'll be reading this one a few times today, I can tell. It's just that good.
ReplyDeleteOne well-crafted circle there, John. Like Forgoreality, I'm not sure where the failure comes in, or perhaps that it descends as the minor victories of each character display a rise of success.
ReplyDeleteBickering about the mortgage — been there, but never at the beach!
Wow, this is a little different style, and works great. Brilliant and touching.
ReplyDeleteLove the circular nature of this, and how you threaded it so tightly. Very nicely done, John.
ReplyDeleteBravo, Bravo! *golf clap* (in the office).
ReplyDeleteThis is why I like the friday flash, the ability to experiment with new things and see if they work. This certainly did and brightened my day considerably.
However I was disappointed at the lack of squirrels.
You've made these seperate stories cohesive with their symbolism. Heartfelt and inspirational. I would like to read more of Bernie's story.
ReplyDeleteGreat work John. My dog's name is Bernie, and I have a feeling, like your Bernie he would have gone and saved that girl if he could.
ReplyDeleteAnne, certainly for Woolf it was non-fiction. Did the pseudo-realism add much for you?
ReplyDeleteChuck, thank you so much! Please let me know when you re-read it and if you get anything new out of it.
Mr. FAR, wise man to leave mortgage issues away from the beach. I'm still not comfortable explaining the title. I am keenly interested in what people read into it, though.
David and Laurita, so the experiment worked for you? Great! Thank you for the kind words.
Anthony, I'm not used to unironic golf claps. I got a little nervous there. I agree with you - the experimentation available in flash fiction is wonderful.
Lara, Bernie may appear in a few more stories. He may have cameod in one already, though I don't want to spoil it.
Craig, there are plenty of life saving dogs. Are you raising Bernie to be helpful?
Ah, the bittersweet circle of life... Always love reading your work and your insights.
ReplyDeleteReally liked this as a whole john, not going to pick at any of the threads. It made me wistful, but in a good way.
ReplyDeleteI'd think the way it didn't really have a protag overall, but each mini-story had one worked. I also liked how we kept going back in time. Worked well (although I don't suggest this structure for a novel)
ReplyDeleteLee-Ann, if only all our circles were so helpful to people, really.
ReplyDeleteKaren, what turned you wistful? And what threads do you see sticking out?
Michael, I wouldn't use this in a novel. The structure is distinctly for flash - even a short story would wear out the gimmick. The themes, though, definitely occur in my longer fiction.
Nicely woven John, I like the way the ripples of peoples lives touch others' lives.
ReplyDeletedidn't see anything flapping loose, that's what I meant, it held together so much as a whole for me that I didn't want to pick out any one part to talk about.
ReplyDeleteI've been wistful in general of late. Watched "It's a Wonderful Life" about a week ago.... hee...that'll tell you a bit about my summer. Too many funerals, too many losses.
[boy, way to bring down a comment thread karen]
reiterating, really liked the piece. :0)
Having spent many years in classrooms I can relate to wondering whether I made any difference at all.
ReplyDeleteNice work on this.
I liked how this piece showed that one person can indeed affect many.
ReplyDeletehelen-scribbles.com
Ok, so the amount of comments you already have should tell you that this is a great piece of writing, which gives your readers something to think about. I too liked the circular nature of this and esp. liked Bernie and the fact that he makes a difference in someone's life despite everything. Virginia Woolf makes me want to cry;I blame 'The Hours' for this. The only time I have been unable to leave the cinema for crying.
ReplyDeleteThis is a powerful theme and yes, this format is appropriate for a flash and the theme would be great for a novel but you would have bury or make less obvious the connections so that they would rise up thorough the consciousness of the reader as the novel progressed. Your characterisation is strong even though people are described in just a few lines and we are drawn to them and want to hear more in the future. The drowning elements at start and end very effective and such a true premise that some of those that have powerful positive effects on others can still struggle with their own hold on life. Inspiring piece John.
ReplyDeleteI like how as the parents bickered about the mortgage, a homeless man rescued their daughter. Bernie probably wishes he owned a home with a mortgage over which he could fret. The influence of a teacher, and how it indirectly helped to save Susie's life, is a beautiful and telling inclusion.
ReplyDeleteSteve and Helen, glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for stopping by!
ReplyDeleteKaren, I'm relieved! Thought I'd left this a mess, and that would ruin it. Sorry for the funerals, though.
Tim, I know some other teachers personally who wonder things like that. Was certainly on my mind as he entered the tale.
Scribbler, the mention of Woolf made you want to cry, her life did, or her work did?
Alison, the execution would have to change radically for a novel. I don't think I'd want to pursue it - much easier to make the points and stick to the character constraints here. I could imagine something larger than this, but hardly several hundred pages. At that point it would be its own work.
Liminal, that's a good point. I hadn't even thought of their home against his homelessnes.
He went into English early in life. Sublime line, matches the overall tone of this piece which has a dash of wistful in it.
ReplyDeleteMaybe his life will inspire one more soul to rise above the norm. The ending was well done, John, how you told the ending without directly telling it.
ReplyDeleteGod damn, you got pretty dark on this one. The six degrees of separation here is great.
ReplyDeleteReminds me of the old TV series "Connections". Thank God for Virginia Woolf indeed. Well done.
ReplyDelete~jon
I got a few shivers from this. And to have turned Woolf's suicide around, it kind of... I don't know, but I like it. I want to think about it further.
ReplyDeleteBrilliantly done, John.
As an experiment this completely succeeded. I had sort-of an amazing experience the other day of seeing the CEO of our company give his farewell “give back.” He’d come to this rehab as a patient back in 1972 and recalled the early weeks of his stay and how many times he almost didn’t make it. But the doctor who admitted him, the therapist who treated him, a couple of rehab buddies who also made it, the many mental health techs, nurses, etc. that came here as patients and then went on to get their degree and come back and work here because of their relationship with him, not to mention his children and grandchildren were all there listening to how he almost didn’t make it and how if any one of those people hadn’t been there he probably would have left AMA and died along with another friend of his while here who did just that. Your story illustrates that- the people who wouldn’t be alive if not for acts of others. Very powerful. My one… desire, I guess, was that I wanted to see it come full circle. How is little Susie Richards going to touch the next life because her savior was there?
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing how way leads onto way. Beautiful cycle.
ReplyDeleteAdam B @revhappiness