Welcome to the start of the world's most unpublishable novel
Under Cover of Darkness
The Adventures of Sin Cargo
by
Steven Hunley
The boy sat in the bed. It was where he usually sat. He was quite comfortable there and leaned over to pick up the book Treasure Island. Reading books was what he did best. He was nearly fifteen, sandy-haired, pale, and looked as normal as a boy could look who was a bleeder.
His mother came in with his Famous Amos cookies and chocolate milk.
(Famous Amos will want a piece of my royalties after this one for sure)
She sat next to him, and placed her slender fingers against his forehead to check. There was nothing this time, no heat. She sighed a sigh of relief.
“How you feeling, Squirt?”
“Fine,” he answered. He didn’t like her using that name. Only his father had called him that.
“Don’t call me Squirt,” he said, “he’s been gone two years now.”
“All right,” she said sharply, “I won’t.”
(ooh, tension between mother and child so early in a dime novel!)
She pulled her hand away, got up and left. Just thinking of her husband had turned her sour. It turned the boy sour too. A sour sickboy and a lemony mother. What a pair of pucker-mouths they made.
(that was a clever line, maybe too clever)
“I shouldn’t have called him that,” she said to herself as she entered her bedroom and approached her computer.
“What’s wrong with me?”
She already knew the answer.
“I didn’t think. I never seem to think.”
She was wrong. In fact she thought too much. But she was good at not thinking, it’s true.
Not thinking of her husband had become her specialty. Most memories she had of him weren’t good. She had other things to do than remember the savageness of his endless beatings, constant drunkenness seasoned with harsh words, and various and sundry crimes he’d committed upon her person measured out by the severity of his tortured soul. The dramatic bastard.
(I’m beginning to suspect this part is over-written)
The abuse had become too much and added up. The sum it had come to was too much for her to cipher. That’s why she threw him out and divorced his worthless ***. She had better things to do. She would look at some pretty pictures now, the ones on the computer screen and give herself a break if nothing else. She was tired of trying to make things right.
Some women can do better without men. But some women, after they’d had their first taste of a man, change in some subtle way, and feel they need one forever more. Good man or bad man it makes no difference. Although Cathy was certainly not the former, she was not the latter, but felt somewhere in the middle. Cathy hated being in the middle. Therefore her songs were not always of exaltation, but neither did she sing the blues. But you have to admit, singing the blues is sometimes better than not singing at all. Just ask Eric Clapton.
(now Eric is gonna get sore because I used his name, I just know it)
She scrolled down to her favorite website and began to search. Paintings of faraway places? No, that was yesterday. Today she felt artistic in a photographic sort of way. For her that wasn’t so hard, she knew a lot about art and had taken it in college. She took photographs too. Now she had a degree. Too bad the degree wouldn’t keep her warm. All the degrees in the world wouldn’t do that and she was reminded of it only too well by long winter nights when she slept alone. She was always sleeping alone and lonely or lonely alone as John Lennon once said.
Between photos and paintings she’d divided her time. In these she made her daily escape.
(This part is OK though, as John is quite dead. God bless him)
“Cathy you’ve got talent,” her photography teacher told her, “you should do something with it.”
Her photography teacher. Always trite as Perdition.
(what the hell does Trite as Perdition mean? I dunno, but it’s more artistic than trite as hell)
She’d always been reticent with her words, but with images she became articulate, through images she could express herself with perfection.
She sat in her room scrolling through the photos of warm faraway places. In his room her son did the same with his brain and the pictures Stevenson painted in his mind. The house remained quiet except for the sound of an occasional raindrop hitting the window pane with a pitter or a patter, either one, and the sound of her fingers tapping the keyboard or mouse, or a page being turned by the sick boy lying in bed. Besides those three sounds it remained as empty and quiet as a tomb.
(ooooh!)
The house the rain fell on was in Washington, was cold and wet. So when she looked at pictures, or when the boy read stories, it was usually of tropical climes. They didn’t know each other was doing it. They didn’t know they shared the same dreams. In dreaming they were mates, so close they could almost touch. In living, their memories of the father, different from each vantage point, had driven them miles apart.
(more tension!)
The next day began with a bang. Alex heard it and woke up. The screen door slamming shut. His aunt arrived in the early morning hours, as usual, from a hard night out. Or a Hard Days Night Out, either one.
(again, the Beatles, younger readers are going to peg me for the old codger I am. I dunno if that’s good or bad at this point)
“Alex, you up yet? Hurry up; we’ll be late for school.”
Mona was Cathy’s younger sister. She was shorter than Cathy in more ways than one and not nearly so pretty to her way of thinking. Her hair was a dirty blond color, and though her legs were short they were shapely and she made the best of them by wearing the shortest skirts allowed by law. You couldn’t blame the woman. She wouldn’t allow you to anyway.
When he was done dressing and washing his face she caught him running down the stairs.
“Don’t ever let your mother see you do that!” she warned as he jumped in the car.
“I never do.”
“You could take a fall and end up in the hospital again.”
“What’s new?”
“How many times has it been now Alex?”
“Eleven I think, maybe twelve, I forget.”
“Well,” she said, “that’s twelve too many for me. Here we are.”
He got out in front of the school.
“I forgot my lunch,” he said imploringly with his hand out.
“Here,” she said handing him a five-dollar bill, “lunch is on me.”
Generous Auntie could give so much but always wanted more. She made a U turn and went back to the house. She waved him a good-bye wave while looking in the rear-view mirror. She looked in it a bit to check her mascara. The eyes she saw were pretty. Not as pretty as her sister’s but pretty. Her hair was shiny and looked almost wet. Not as shiny as Cathy’s but shiny. She quickly tugged the steering wheel to the left when she almost hit a parked car. Snapping out of her reverie, she now gave attention to the road instead of herself.
“I’m a good driver,” she said aloud, though no one was there. “Not as good as Cathy but good.”
(I think there’s a plotline here that's showing like a fat lady’s slip.)
Then she pulled into an unidentified restaurant and ate the McGreasiest McBreakfast McSandwich she could find.
(the publisher’s will never let me use this one, they don’t like legal suits)
When Cathy went to work that morning she took her camera with her. She passed by an orchard where apples were being picked. They seemed a good subject for a photo. She liked the red roundness of the fruit against the green sharp leaves. She stopped, got out, took a few frames, then left and hurried to work.
A man picked one of the Galas and placed with others in a box. It was put in a truck and began a journey of a million miles down south where it eventually ended up in a market in San Diego mixed in a pile with its brothers and sisters.
(the papers for a suit from the Apple Growers association have already arrived in the mail)
A photographer wanted some fruit for a still life, saw its red roundness and imagined that sharp green leaves had once been behind it. He placed it in his basket and took it home. San Diego is far from Washington but in some ways so near, don’t you think? And life is stranger than fiction.
(I’m not sure what this means but it sounds good. That’s writing for ya)
After shopping he headed west and wound his way home.
When he got his long legs free of the small Triumph he slammed the door with a metallic click. He slung his old Nikon over his shoulder and stepped up to the curb, crossed the walk with very few strides, and entered the gate at the side. He lived in a garage in back. The rent was cheap, even though it was only two blocks from the Jetty. Ocean Beach is where all the poor white trash of San Diego live who can only afford a small taste of California coastline. That was alright with him.
(Now I’ve offended all the people of the City of San Diego, oops!)
Call him Dude. Everybody else does.
(personally I love this line. Sure, it’s ripping off Melville, (Call me Ishmael) but what the heck, Melville is long dead and I never liked Moby Dick anyway, it gave me an inferiority complex for some unmentionable reason)
A neighbor, Old Man, lived across the alleyway and saw he was home. He picked up his baggie and walked over, then knocked on the door.
“Hey Dude, you home? I got a surprise.”
It was a routine he enjoyed. Old men love their routines.
“Of course I am Old Man, just open the door and come in. I’m fresh out of ceremony.”
The first thing the old man said when he got inside was,
“Got papers?"
“Always, for you compadre.”
(Hispanic readers should enjoy the use of Espanol. Wish I could figure out on the damn computer how it use accent marks, but I’m too stupid for that)
Old man took a seat on the beat-up couch. Dusty too. Dusty beat up and falling apart. He caught the pack of Clubs that were thrown his direction. When Dude was on you-tube he couldn’t be bothered with formalities.
(Clubs are the finest smoking papers there are. When ya burn em alone they leave no ash. This part will entertain all the potheads. On the other hand it will reveal I’m a blazer myself. Oh well, an artist is expected to make sacrifices for his art I guess)
“Watch this,” Dude said. He was wiring you-tube to the TV.
On it appeared an image of ancient rock and roll. It was Steve Marriot of Small Faces back in The Day. They were singing Tin Soldier in a color clip from Belgium TV.
“Incredible voice,” said Old Man, who by now was taking a hit.
“Incredible musician,” said Dude, who took the next one after it was passed.
(Steve WAS the best, and would not be offended at all. I hope this part makes everyone watch this on you-tube!)
The afternoon was thus spent. They got cotton mouths, drank Stella Artois, which Dude pointed out was from Belgium as well.
(at this very moment the beer lawyers in Belgium are already licking the stamps to paste on the envelopes with my address)
“I knew a girl once liked Belgium chocolate,” he said, “the ones that look like seashells. She was so hot, this girl was, they melted in her mouth like butter.”
“How about the time I was stuck in the Brussels train station at three AM?” Old Man shot back with impeccable aim.
It went between them that way all afternoon. Ping-ponging thoughts back and forth was their amusement. That’s just how blazers are. Among weed smokers time-wasting and tale-telling is an occupational hazard.
( I gotta stop here, I’m already in too much trouble. Is this novel long enough yet? Doesn’t seem like it)
***
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Originally Posted by Steven Hunley
