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Category:
Literary Fiction
Type: Fiction
Pages: 208
Copyright: June 21, 2020
ISBN-13: 9798655998834
Price: $6.99 (eBook)
Strange actions. Strange outcomes. Taking you along. Returning you safely to yourself; never to regret journeying through this tale set in places near and far, places lived in, places abandoned, places escaped from, places returned to.
Come along.
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Ever stayed then wished you’d left?
Ever left then knew you should have stayed?
What’s gained by leaving? What's lost by staying?
When is it right to leave? When is it wrong to stay?
Camden Parker left home, always wanted to return, but never could arrive at the right time to do so.
Then he was delivered back home in a condition worse than any bad dream.
Only that it was just a dream.
Or was it?
Living a dream could sometimes be the worst wish that ever came true, and falling asleep could change a life in ways more drastic than offered in any nightmare.
And the only hope would be that waking up wouldn’t take too long.
Excerpt
Chapter 3
An applause not yet earned is more a courtesy than a reward. The candidate accepted the extravagant greeting, basking in the welcome, looking at the faces before him as if learning them. The end of the short applause was his time to deliver, and he started by raising a hand as if to take an oath.
“I’m here at this time and place to let you know who I am. You obviously already know why I want you to know who I am. And after meeting each other tonight, I hope you will accept what I’m about and that it’s all on your behalf that I’m doing what I’m doing. I am grateful to all of you for being at this milestone event, in this fabulous city of ours that embraces all who make it our hometown. I could address this gathering in maybe three languages, and in any of those languages everyone here would quite likely be reached. I just now met Naomi Troy of Welcome Galleries, and although my Japanese consists of a mere few phrases, I could still attempt enough words of it and claim four languages in which to communicate and demonstrate Miami’s broad embrace. That’s the quality of the city we call home, a city that is not only an example for our country and the world but a blueprint that our country and the entire world would do well to emulate. An old proverb says, ‘You live a new life for every language you speak. Speak one language and you live only once.’ Here in Miami, a city well-positioned and prepared for the future, we live and enjoy many lives, and we are better for doing so.”
The opening remarks drew earned applause. The candidate raised a hand. The cheering rose. He lowered the hand. The cheering subsided. White spotlight followed his gestures. He complimented Derick Warren on the reopening of Nadine’s. The mention sent applauses and nods in Derick Warren’s direction. Derick Warren raised a hand and acknowledged the attention. Seizing opportunity, the candidate made the moment tender by referencing Derick Warren’s wife, the injuries that had damaged their lives, and the distress brought to a reputable place of commerce. He lamented over the city being blighted by too many such bloodstained places, by too many such callous incidents, too many good people reduced to being casualties and victims, and that any of us could be next.
A hush descended. The crowd fell reverent.
Young, good looking, self-assured, the candidate glowed outward from the centre of it all. Purposed on being a political star, being winsome at it, he worked necessary limbs and facial muscles, displaying his physical and theatrical best, every posture and move choreographed to present him as incapable of an awkward gesture. Stirring the mixture, he dished out more of it.
“I do not yet have a wife,” declared the good-looking political newcomer. “But if I had a wife and I lost her participation in my day-to-day activities, there goes half of my life. While Derick Warren did not lose his Nadine, her absence on this special night speaks loudly as a loss, a loss to him, definitely a loss to her, and a loss to us all. For such losses, some ineffective politician should be facing the loss of his or her job. The people we have been electing have allowed too many evildoers to build a career of adding victims to their blood-soaked list of cowardly acts. I promise you this, and I promise those evildoers this: I as mayor of our city, I as your mayor, I have a list as well. All evildoers are on that list, and I will be their worst nightmare. That’s a guarantee.”
The crowd rewarded his promise with deafening applause.
He raised a hand in acceptance. The same hand requested silence. He continued, added other promises, cited statistics, shared anecdotes, graded the city’s current and past management, pointed out how and where and why he could and will do more and better than all others who have not done enough.
“I heard this the other day. It touched a nerve. And the nerve it touched is the one nerve that bulges with righteous rage when something touches me the wrong way. Someone characterized my city, Miami, our city, as one of those cities where you’re most likely to get ambushed, assaulted, attacked, just after getting paid. Is that so!” He squinted around the room, serious, primed for battle. “Well, those cowards allowed to run loose on our streets have inflicted us with that ugly scar. They have earned us that revolting reputation. I give you my word, that ugly scar gets erased and that revolting reputation ends on the very first day I begin work as your mayor. There will be no mercy in my vengeance against these evil cowards. Every new day for them will be worst than the day before. There will be no leniency on how miserable I make their lives. That’s why I am here tonight, beginning the fight to re-claim and re-take and re-make our city.”
Applause drowned him out.
“You got our attention!” a voice called out.
“We accept your promise!” agreed another.
The candidate raised a hand in response, pledging, taking a vow.
He continued. “I ask you to keep track of my promises. Watch me fulfill all of them. I won’t let you down. I’m submitting to you my application for employment, to be hired as your mayor. It’s in your hands. I need your support. I ask for your support. Tonight, my good friend Derick Warren is also man of the hour. This is his night as well. This applause is for you, Derick. Welcome back.” The candidate pointed at Derick Warren and started clapping, his cupped palms loud against each other. The crowd joined in. Found again by spotlight, Derick Warren waved again in acknowledgement. The candidate addressed him. “This is hallowed ground, Derick, and I promise you that we will never forget what was done to you and Nadine and this place, how this place has been changed forever, how your lives have been changed forever. What this place means to you, it means the same to all of us. Welcome back, my friend.”
The candidate took the clapping higher, his palms busy at work above his head, rousing the crowd. Hands lifted from laps and from tabletops in thunderous applause. The candidate gestured higher, the way a band conductor advances his music to a crescendo. He reveled in the moment, in what he was orchestrating, and he kept it alive until time for the moment to move on. Then with a signal, same as he started it, he did the same now, holding up a commanding finger and signaling for quiet. The thundering lowered. The crowd settled into silence. The candidate’s finger remained rigidly upward.
“Again,” he continued, “my thanks to all of you for joining me tonight in this first step. The journey has begun. The fight is on. We will go all the way and win this victory. I am confident of that. Be onboard with me is all I ask of you.”
Again, the thunder-roll of clapping. Again, the candidate signaled to be heard.
“One last thing. I must say this. Tonight I edged another step forward to what this night is all about. One step onward and upward, one step closer.” His hand at his brow shielded his eyes from the spotlights. The other hand reached into his shirt pocket. He studied what he withdrew, as if contemplating a treat earlier tucked away for this moment. Scanning the crowd, squinting, he inquired, “Where is Mr. Camden Parker?”
The sound of my name stunned me. I raised my head, my stare as if caught and frozen forever in a photograph. I felt as if blinded by a harsh light, as if hit, thrown off balance and trying to not fall. I felt all of that all at once. In that instant, to me, who I was and why I was where I was, suddenly seemed a riddle.
I was being singled out for attention. The reason unknown. If this was a riddle, I had no answer nor any knowing how or where to search for one. And the answer itself may also be a riddle for the boy from Carib Park, the man from St. Vincent, where Kingstown, the relaxed capital, once was the only bustling and worldly place I knew, a place to go to even to just walk around for the feeling of having gone somewhere, with being out and about in town seeming to be one way of getting a lot out of life. I was now some distance from then and there. To hear my name called out like this, at a political event, by a politician I did not know, meant I had become a lot more than who I was back there and what I used to be back then. The boy from the small village, a man now in a larger world, I heard my name, amplified, and I stood there startled. None of my village experiences acquainted me with times and occasions such as this. Not that to be present at such an event required status, or bestowed any; there was no privilege to it; yet I felt like a stowaway holding to overlooked spaces, keeping a distance, wanting to remain hidden onboard and unseen.
Working at a daily newspaper, not a journalist, but I knew the newspaper employee principle: Collect, compile, package, deliver, profit from, but never be in the news. Now, at this very public place, with news-gatherers collecting every nuance of news, I preferred that the candidate did not select me for mention.
My work had acquainted me with many in that festive gathering. No one there or at my place of employment knew me outside of however we associated through work. The two known sides of me were simple: Here I come, there I go. When first trying to settle in with newly-met people, I had once adopted openness, getting along with that inclusive embracing the candidate had just praised. Then I rediscovered being closed was more what I was about, of more worth to my person, than the opposite. After all, ‘a wise old owl sat on an oak. The more it saw the less it spoke. The less it spoke the more it heard. So why can’t we be like that bird?’ So I got to being that. Or the perfectly still fool on the hill.
At that earlier talkative time, new to Miami, I had shared with new friends occasional details about how I once lived in an out-of-reach mountain environment. And someone asked, jokingly, if I also carried a club and only wore and ate what I killed and how come I no longer had caveman muscles. I answered, seriously, saying I didn’t even know at the time that there were well-to-do people taking steps towards experimenting with living the way I once did, and how I held out and remained isolated and self-dependent until my needs and hunger remade me into something better, much like a snake slipping into the bushes and after a while re-emerging, renewed, with a new skin. And someone giggled at my answer. And someone else said, not jokingly as much as dismissively, “We get it, Cam. I had an uncle who liked being weird as if he wanted people to believe he lived hiding out in a cemetery, burying himself each night, digging himself out in the daytime, and eventually managing to return to being human and finding a way to get along and be among normal people. Like you here with us now.” Even I laughed at the outlandish portrayal.
At another time, the same Naomi Troy, now a guest as well in this merry crowd at this grand reopening, back during one of our earliest business conversations, she asked where I was from. I told a little of my history and may have over-dramatized. And her reaction immediately changed me from talking to anyone about myself. Her comment was, “Hearing about your village and mountain life doesn’t make me imagine pleasant forest-like living. Maybe jungle living. And not the parts of a jungle anyone wants to go to or know about.” It was the way she said it as much as what she said. Telling about myself was obviously mistaken as being absorbed in myself. From then on, I said nothing about background or origins or history, no more about why I was where I was or where from. Nothing more to make known. Close the deal, get the sale; but the lower the profile, the better.
Now came this moment at this political speech, this riddle looking for an answer, with my name as the question. Replace a step or two with a misstep or two, undo one or the other, and I might not be where I was; not at that event; not employed at The Chronicle; not in Miami. I would be in Carib Park, out of work, maybe, but getting by and every so often reconsidering a return to public school teaching; meanwhile getting in deeper and over my head with resurrecting my ancestral house, piecing it back to living standards, and looking towards moving into it.
I had left Carib Park to visit Florida, a tourist on a low budget, see a few places, be able to say I’ve been somewhere, run out of money, turn around and go home. But the lure of Miami, this new and larger place, was irresistible. I extended my stay without concerns as to what next. And when my visitor’s visa was expiring, I had to crawl into yet another skin. In that other skin, I enrolled at the community college. And I stayed.
An upgraded visa allowed me, now a documented student, to find work. I put off returning to Carib Park, concentrating instead on classes each day and working when away from classes, month after month, year in and out. Focused always on the next step, I applied for permanent resident status. Uncertain of the outcome, yet optimistic, I filled out the paperwork and waited. By luck, and with dogged desire, I made it through the back and forth of becoming a permanent United States resident. And I stayed.
It is said that the older and wiser we grow, the less we should struggle while getting more. And so it was. Equipped with new wisdom from the community college, my curiosity as to my marketable worth widened. I applied for work I never knew I could do or thought I could get.
Before newspaper advertising selected me, I came from a background and a place and a time where goods and services lived or died, flourished or failed, by word-of-mouth, nothing more, nothing less. Paid advertising was regarded - or disregarded - as either desperate self-flattery or frantic exaggeration, or both. Advertising was a last resort for unloading whatever was unwanted, whatever wasn’t selling on its own, whatever was stale and languishing; no one cared that it was available, so only the trickery of advertising could get rid of it.
In Miami, though, ignoring all doubts, I showed up through the doors of a newspaper and interviewed for a career in advertising, a job most distant from what or who I was. Just before my scheduled interview, a combination of luck and timing provoked the prior applicant into being upset at the interview process. In a skills-testing exercise, the interviewer had handed the applicant a Cross pen and said, “Here, take this item and convince me to buy it.” The applicant took the pen and responded, “I’m not applying for a job to sell pens. Not selling you this one either. So here’s what I’ll do...” He got up and left the room. The interviewer waited. But the candidate did not return.
My interview was next. For unexplained reasons, the interviewer rescheduled my appointment for the following day. A few streets away from the building, I recognized the applicant who had just left. I stopped to talk and he grumbled and griped about the interview, how he walked away with the interviewer’s pen, and why. He said he simply refused to work for an employer who uses stupid pen games in selecting employees. He preferred radio or television advertising, and already had a radio station job interview lined up. He showed me the pen he had taken. It was an obviously treasured item; black, gold-tipped, gold-embossed with the owner’s initials, and therefore not quite desirable to anyone with different first letters to their name. I asked what he intended to do with it and he cocked his arm to toss it away.
I talked him out of it, telling him, “No, man, they could have you charged with petty theft. You don’t want that. I have a follow-up interview. Why not let me return it to them.”
He handed me the pen, “Here. Do whatever you want with it. And good luck trying to work for those people.”
At my follow-up appointment, my interviewer was same as before. I had the pen, took it out, said, “You’re likely looking for this.” And I sat down.
I told about encountering the applicant who had walked away with the pen, and how I convinced him to let me return it. I said to the interviewer, “You’re looking for someone who could persuade, turn complications into successful transactions and deliver results. That’s what I do.” I passed the pen to him and added, “You wouldn’t find anyone better at this.”
A brief interview followed. The interview said, “Tell me about yourself;” as if from my answer he could then add, “And I’ll tell you your future.” I was being asked to validate my worth, sell a story about me, allow the interviewer to justify his job.
The formalities ended. Whether or not I sufficiently satisfied what was asked, there could be only one of two outcomes.
I was hired.
I went from knowing nothing about making money in advertising to progressing at it, doing fairly well at it, and it doing fairly well for me.
The initial visit to Miami had lengthened and moved beyond all planning or plotting; to a job choosing me; to navigating towards a promising future; being charismatic, sociable, self-assured and competent; selling by acting that way; and a few times a year attend a few festive events. As now. And here I was, among the glitter of grand-reopening combined with the fanfare launching of a newcomer’s mayoral candidacy.
Hearing my name publicly addressed, the boy from Carib Park, a man in a different place now, stood there caught off guard. Never otherwise drawn to such pageantry, I was drawn now to the center of attention, whether I wanted it or not, be it blight or blessing.
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