A boy encounters life and death on his grandmother's remote island ranch.
The boy stood at the fence line watching the ranch hand stack wood on the fire. He was burning the horse. A plume of black smoke drifted over the pasture into the clouds. The smell made the boy feel nauseous and alone. He thought about his flight and how his mother cried when he waved goodbye. It was just for the summer but they’d never been apart in all his four years.
He’d held up a kerosene lantern the first night for his grandmother. She had Sissy’s head in her lap while Dr. Lux ran his hands across the horse’s belly. The other horses had neighed from deep in the pasture. He’d felt like he was part of the lantern, an angel of light helping rescue the mare. There’d been a gasp and Sissy’s body shook violently. “Wot?” the grandmother’d asked. “She’s passed over Rainbow Bridge,” Dr. Lux had said.
This was the boy’s first visit. His grandmother had pointed out the Churches built by Father Damien on the way out to her ranch. The Churches were tiny with high steeples and cemeteries surrounding them. The boy wondered if the ghosts of the lepers walked the grounds after midnight and if, as ghosts, they carried leprosy into the next world.
The grandmother joined him at the fence line. Her face was brown and wrinkled like a paper bag. She wrapped her gnarled hands around the wire. “Whacha doin’, Peanut?” she asked.
“Nothing, Gramma.”
“Nothin’, my foot,” she snapped.
He finger combed his dark brown hair. “I’m watching the fire.”
“Wish Valdez’d finish up,” she said.
He thought she was speaking differently than she had the night before. Her lips were making a new smacking noise. She reminded him of a Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz. Gramma was most like the mayor with the top hat and the pear-shaped body. Maybe it was because she wore a blue-and-white checkered shirt, denims, and a lauhala hat. She was fat like the mayor too.
The grandmother stuck a cigarette between her lips, struck a wooden match to life against a fencepost, and lit it. She sucked on the cigarette like a baby sucking on a bottle. She blew smoke through her nose. “Won’t be long now befoah they’re burnin’ me up,” she told the boy.
“God wants us all buried with crosses over our graves,” he said.
“Who the hell says?”
He noticed she didn’t have teeth. But didn’t she have them at the airport? And weren’t teeth there when she woke him in the rooster light and told him to get up and put on his t-shirt and jeans?
“Asked you a question,” the grandmother said.
“Mummy says,” he blurted. “She told me if you get burnt your soul gets burnt too.”
“How she come to know that?”
“Father Keelan.”
“Wot yoah damn muthah says doesn’t mattah.”
“Why?”
“Christ, Peanut, she’s a million damn miles away.”
He liked it when she called him Peanut. He liked it too when she used swear words talking about his mother. He knew Gramma didn’t like her because she was a spoiled girl from the mainland. He was glad he took after his hapa haole father. He loved his mother but being away from her made him feel funny inside, as if she was really only an aunt or a baby sitter. This was his summer with Gramma while his father worked on a big case in Honolulu and his mother visited relatives in Boston.
The grandmother dropped her lit cigarette on the grass and stomped it out with the heel of her boot. “Whacha want fo’ breakfast, Peanut?”
“Sugar Pops.”
“Fo’ the luva Pete,” she said. “You’ll get eggs an’ be happy with ‘um.”
He trailed after her up the incline to the beach house. Gramma lived there alone. She’d told him she had the company of the ocean and all the fish in the sea. The waves broke 20 feet from the lanai. His bed was on the lanai and, during the night, the waves had sounded like thunder. He’d tried sleeping but the waves, the mosquitoes, and the calls of the geckos kept him awake.
He followed Gramma through the screen door into the kitchen. The walls were pale yellow. A carton of eggs rested on a stainless steel counter. She reached into a cupboard below the sink and pulled out a frying pan. “You like sunny side up?” she asked.
He nodded. He wasn’t sure what she meant. Was she talking about the sun coming out later in the day?
“Now go wash up befoah kaukau,” she told him.
The boy walked the hall to the bathroom and closed the door. He wanted to lock it but there was no lock. He wandered over to the sink. On the dresser beside the sink, two sets of teeth attached to pink gums bubbled in a glass of water. At first he thought the teeth were real, that his grandmother had the power to unlock body parts. He put his finger in the glass and tapped the gums—they felt like plastic.
He smiled big in the mirror so he could see his teeth—they were as white as the puka shells he’d found at dawn on the beach. He studied the glass on the counter. Gramma would go first. Then his father. Finally, it would be his mother’s time.
He was pretty sure he would live forever.
Dreamin’ Dreams is more than a collection of stories; it is a celebration of Irish life, adventure, and the unforgettable characters who make growing up in Ireland a journey worth remembering.
Soldier's Gap is a non-traditional mystery with literary elements. The high school principal is brutally murdered, but Deputy Sheriff Dave Jenkins's search for meaning and love is a much more significant theme.
"Murder isn't usually this fun
This is the trade paperback edition of the mythopoeic paranormal novel recounting the attempts of one Danny Blue and his friends to come to terms with a series of unusual events in his life. A Kindle eBook edition is also available.
The boy stood at the fence line watching the ranch hand stack wood on the fire. He was burning the horse. A plume of black smoke drifted over the pasture into the clouds. The smell made the boy feel nauseous and alone. He thought about his flight and how his mother cried when he waved goodbye. It was just for the summer but they’d never been apart in all his four years.
