On Real Life Fiction
Thank you, Elizabeth, for inviting me onto your site and allowing me to introduce myself to your audience.
I’m still relatively new at this (writing fiction I mean) with just two novels published and another on the way. And as a new writer, it’s difficult for me to pontificate or even offer solid advice about the writing process. What I can tell you is that sometimes it’s fun, and other times it’s downright grueling. And every once in while, it can actually be cathartic. Sometimes a memory is stuffed away in your subconscious and it seems to just dribble out your head and into your typing fingers. You re-read what you’ve just written and are actually surprised to see what’s there on the page.
I thought I’d relate one of those experiences I had while writing The Dead Don’t Sleep, my second novel. I never served in the armed forces and so never experienced combat. I always worry that a true veteran will read my book and think “bullshit” instead of “fiction.”
I wanted to get the reader inside the head of the main character, Frank Thompson, an aging widower and Vietnam vet who is being drawn back to his tortured past.
There is a scene near the beginning of the novel where Frank is relating to his nephew a story about getting drunk with his old man and hearing his father’s WWII war stories, which usually involved drinking beer with his buddies and chasing girls in his dress uniform. But as he gets more inebriated, the stories move away from the fun he had to the horror of combat.
My dad served in the Korean War, and he and I got drunk together one night when I was about 19. What Frank experiences in the book is what I experienced with my dad. My father wasn’t a drinker and as the night progressed, these horrible, repressed memories kept coming out. It was perhaps one of the most shocking and upsetting experiences of my life. I never brought it up again with my dad and actually hadn’t thought about that night in years—until I re-read what I had just written.
I think the scene works well. What was also very gratifying was when a talented and successful author who was kind enough to blurb the book told me that he had the same type of experience with his father who had served in Vietnam. He told me he could actually hear his own father’s voice as he read the words.
That is one of the comments on my writing that I treasure most.
Anyway, I thought I’d share that scene to give you all a flavor for my writing.
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy.
Frank turned away from the man and walked to the passenger side door, opened it, and got in. Bill looked at the stranger for a second more, but the man just stared at where Frank had disappeared into the Jeep, that same strange smile on his face. Then Bill checked the tailgate to make sure that it was shut properly and walked around to the driver’s side door, opened it, and got in.
“What the hell is with that guy?” he asked his uncle as he turned the key and started the engine. “I thought you two were gonna start brawling right there in the parking lot.”
Frank patted his nephew on the thigh gently, looking straight ahead. “Why don’t you get us out of here?”
As Bill put the transmission into reverse, the man with the mirrored sunglasses and the weird, scary smile stepped around to the passenger side window. He peered in, his face inches from the glass. Uncle Frank did nothing for a second, then pushed the button on the door’s armrest and the window lowered. He turned his head slowly and looked at the stranger but didn’t say anything.
“It’s starting to come to me, out of the haze of the past. I know your face. You were in the shit, man, I know you were. You were in the shit. Am I right? Am I right?”
Uncle Frank sighed, and then said, “It’s all shit, partner, isn’t it?” He pressed the button again, and the window rose slowly. He looked at his nephew and said, “Drive, Billy Boy, drive.”
Bill backed out of the spot carefully, turned the wheel and headed out of the parking lot toward the road. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw the man staring after them. As he watched, the man reached into his vest pocket and pulled out what looked to be a small pad and a pen and began writing something down. Bill continued watching, keeping one eye on the road in front and one eye on the mirror as the Jeep reached the end of the lot, and then the road. He stopped and looked both ways preparing to exit the parking lot onto the roadway, but before he did, he stole one last look in the mirror. The strange man was gone. He turned the wheel to the left, hit the gas, and they began the drive back to his house in Hackensack.
After a few minutes of driving in silence, Bill said, “You gonna tell me what that was all about back there?”
Uncle Frank looked out the window as they drove east along Route 46. The road was lined on both sides with an endless succession of strip malls.
“I’m not really sure. Didn’t have a real good feeling about that one, you know? He was watching me, it seems, right from when we first got there. Guess he thinks he knows me from somewhere. But he’s mistaken.”
“What’d he mean when he said that you were in the shit?”
“I believe he meant the war. I can’t stand it when those old guys go all Hollywood. Lots of them never even fired a shot in the war. Not every Vietnam veteran was out there in the jungle with a rifle. Leastwise, I bet most of them Hollywood types weren’t.”
“So, he thinks he knows you from the war?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Uncle Frank turned away from the side window and looked straight ahead.
“Does he?”
“Does he what?” Now Frank turned and looked at his nephew.
“Does he know you from the war?”
Frank shook his head and looked down at his lap. “Hell, I don’t know. I served two tours. Ran across a lot of people. I sure as hell don’t remember him. I didn’t like him much, though. Something about him made me real uneasy. It was something he gave off, an aura, like bad body odor. That was why I wanted to get out of there. He was trouble for sure.”
“Was he really a Vietnam veteran? I mean, could you tell? Maybe he was just some guy acting out. He seemed pretty strange to me. Actually, I thought he seemed crazy. I mean like insane crazy. He had that weird smile, not happy at all, more menacing than anything, like a psycho smile, you know? And he kept getting in your face. I thought you were going to hit him, I really did.”
“Well, I come pretty close to taking a swing, that’s no lie. Seems a bit irrational now that I think about it from a distance. Still, you get some crazies, it’s best to leave them be and get on your way. Guy like that hanging out at a gun range, and you ask me why I never put down my weapon. But to answer your question, I’d say probably yes. Was about the right age anyway.”
“Were you in the, uh, field, Uncle Frank? In Vietnam I mean.”
“You mean was I in the shit?” Both men smiled. “Well, I was for a while. I guess you know I don’t like to talk about it much. I know you and your brothers, and your cousins too, all heard stories about me, mostly speculation about what I did in the war. Figure I’m some kind of Rambo or secret agent or some such nonsense. But I was just a grunt, a regular soldier. Did a stint in intelligence, so I guess that’s where all those stories and speculation come from. But it was mostly reading maps, trying to guess what the enemy was up to and where they’d be heading next.”
“But you did two tours. My dad told me you won some medals. Said you were wounded in action. More than once. That true?”
Frank turned his gaze back out the passenger-side window.
“If you don’t want to talk about it Uncle Frank, I understand. It’s none of my business. I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. I was just curious, you know? That’s all.”
“Yeah, I know, Bill. It’s just that it was a long time ago. I was a young man then, a boy really. I’ve got scars, but it’s not the ones on my body that pain me the most. Every generation is the same, I guess. My dad fought in World War II. I heard a hundred stories from him when I was growing up, about him and his buddies in boot camp and being on leave and traveling in the troop ships and about the food and the girls and the beer. Hell, how many times you hear your Grandpa tell those stories? But you never once heard him tell a war story, you know, like what you’re asking around right now. My dad, he wasn’t a drinking man, but one time when I was about nineteen or so, him and me started in on a bottle of scotch. Just that once I saw him drunk, and I mean shit-faced drunk. He told me some stories that night, not those fun stories about him in his tailored uniform chasing English ladies around. He told me about actually pissing his pants in fear lying in the mud and crying for his mommy like a child, about the sound that them old Panzer tanks made as they rumbled across a field that was different and more frightening than anything he’d ever heard before or since, said he often heard those Panzers in the middle of the night even there in bed with your grandmother and could actually feel the bed shaking. He told me about seeing his buddy, a guy from New Milford name of Al Kaspazack— Geez, I can’t believe I still remember that poor soul’s name— vaporized after taking a direct hit from a German 88. Said he saw him standing there one second, an instant later there was nothing left but two charred combat boots, each with a small, bloody stump sticking out of it.”
“Jesus!” Bill was taken aback by the image. He knew that people died in war, but hearing this story about what his grandfather, the gentle, loving old man that he remembered from his youth, had gone through utterly shocked him.
“I saw your grandfather cry that night as he remembered those stories. I don’t think it was so much that he couldn’t hold his liquor, though that was certainly part of it. I think it was that those stories were suppressed for so long that all it took was a little booze to loosen his inhibitions enough to let all those memories and emotions come pouring out. And I mean, that’s what happened. It was like he couldn’t stop talking, one terrible memory after another. I was holding him in my arms, my own father, like he was a little baby. At the time, I’d never seen anything like it, a grown man crying like that. I’ve seen a lot more of it since then, but at the time I didn’t know what to do. So, I made him stop after a while, dragged him off to bed. I stayed with him, watched him cry himself out and fall asleep. We never spoke about that night again. I never asked him to tell me another story about his time in the service. Not even about the girls in England. And he never asked me anything either after I came home. Just held me tight like I did him.”
“Geez, Uncle Frank, I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s okay, Billy. Truth is, I’ve seen some things and done some things I don’t care to remember. Drank another bottle of scotch one night with your Aunt Sadie. That was shortly after I got back the second time. Wish I’d stayed away from it that night. I guess I blacked out because I don’t remember much, just bits and pieces. But the little I do remember, I wish to God I had kept to myself. I asked her about it the next day, sort of casual, hoping I was mistaken, but she wouldn’t say anything. So, I asked again the day after that. She wouldn’t talk about it. We never spoke of it again. It’s sort of like what happened between my dad and me. But after that night, for a few weeks at least, I could feel that something had come between us, something that wasn’t there before. It was like she was afraid of me somehow, though I swear I never gave her cause to be. She never said so, you understand, but I could sense it. Believe me, I stayed away from the drink after that. Gave her some space, too.”
“I guess she eventually got over it, whatever it was you told her.”
“Well, I’m not sure I’d put it that way. She was young in age at that time, your Aunt Sadie, but she was wise beyond her years. I always believed she could see right inside my heart. I think she understood.”
“Understood what?”
Uncle Frank didn’t answer. He just turned away from Bill and stared out the window. After a minute or so he said so softly that Bill could hardly hear, “Lord, I miss that woman.”
Neither Bill nor Frank said anything more for the rest of the drive home.
Excerpted from The Dead Don’t Sleep Copyright © 2019 by Steven Max Russo. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
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