Sketch
I try to write fiction and I just sputter and quit. I don't know what it is about fiction that hangs me up. I mean, I love making up stories but I feel like I grew up writing songs where you have to get right to the meat of the thing and avoid extra words. Not that I think fiction requires extra words in the sense of extraneous words, but I certainly enjoy thorough, descriptive passages about a place or person in the story. It boggles my mind how someone becomes proficient at fiction. If I'm really honest I guess any kind of storytelling writing really sort of goes over my head. The way a good writer can hold you in the palm of their hand with words on a page. That is impressive.
This blog post was actually supposed to be a foray into a character sketch but I gave up about 3 paragraphs in because I started trying to make it a story. There's my problem, I think. I sat out to do a character sketch and tried to force it into a story. Maybe I could just tell you about the driver and let that be the end of it.
The driver looks as though he's in his mid fifties but I get the feeling when I study his face that he could easily be as much as twenty years past that. His broad shoulders and full head of dirty silver hair give him a sense of agelessness. He looks straight ahead with blue, flecked eyes that miss no detail in sight. His head cocks slightly from time to time as though picking up some supersonic frequency the rest of us are deaf to. When I first met the driver....can I say met? No one really meets the driver, after all. I don't even think I've heard him speak more than a word or grunt to anyone in the months I've known him. Our first meeting was me bumbling my way through a cheerful "how do you do" and him giving me a cursory up-and-down glance in which I felt I had been laid bare to my core and cataloged in his steel trap of a brain. No...to say I encountered the driver would be more accurate.
When I first encountered the driver he made me think of an eagle because of the way he ruthlessly and undiscriminatingly took in his surroundings. It's silly, I know, to think of a person as an eagle but my brain seems to turn first to animal personifications. Now I know that he is a purebred hound. He is pure instinct. A raw nerve turned outward to the world to soak up what the rest of us are missing. He wears a snugly fitting black tshirt and has arms like pillars. I think he could probably crush a man's head in one of his massive hands. I wouldn't be surprised if he has but I've never see him lay a violent hand on anyone. Not even Gene, which is uncanny.
If there were anyone in our posse for the driver to crush it would be Gene. I knew there was some deep history between them but the driver never talked at all and Gene never stopped talking. The problem with Gene was that pretty much everything that came out of that toothy mouth of his was most likely a lie or an exaggeration so huge it might as well be a lie.
The driver hated Gene and that was no lie. Whenever Gene walked into a previously Gene-less room, the driver's thick, silver eyebrows curled downward at a barely-noticeable slant. The last barely-noticeable slant you might see in your life. I was already terrified of the driver but that barely-notiecable slant of the eyebrows made him a truly frightening hulk of a man. If Gene ever noticed this he never let on. He'd march right over and slap the driver with one of his greasy little hands and pipe in with his usual "Cat got'cher balls there Bert?" and chortle that sqeaky little laugh that almost seemed caught somewhere in his throat like a bit of supper that wouldn't quite make it down. Bert was, of course, not the driver's name. Nobody knew the driver's name. Probably nobody had ever known the driver's name. That didn't seem to worry Gene at all because he never called anyone by their real name anyway.
This blog post was actually supposed to be a foray into a character sketch but I gave up about 3 paragraphs in because I started trying to make it a story. There's my problem, I think. I sat out to do a character sketch and tried to force it into a story. Maybe I could just tell you about the driver and let that be the end of it.
The driver looks as though he's in his mid fifties but I get the feeling when I study his face that he could easily be as much as twenty years past that. His broad shoulders and full head of dirty silver hair give him a sense of agelessness. He looks straight ahead with blue, flecked eyes that miss no detail in sight. His head cocks slightly from time to time as though picking up some supersonic frequency the rest of us are deaf to. When I first met the driver....can I say met? No one really meets the driver, after all. I don't even think I've heard him speak more than a word or grunt to anyone in the months I've known him. Our first meeting was me bumbling my way through a cheerful "how do you do" and him giving me a cursory up-and-down glance in which I felt I had been laid bare to my core and cataloged in his steel trap of a brain. No...to say I encountered the driver would be more accurate.
When I first encountered the driver he made me think of an eagle because of the way he ruthlessly and undiscriminatingly took in his surroundings. It's silly, I know, to think of a person as an eagle but my brain seems to turn first to animal personifications. Now I know that he is a purebred hound. He is pure instinct. A raw nerve turned outward to the world to soak up what the rest of us are missing. He wears a snugly fitting black tshirt and has arms like pillars. I think he could probably crush a man's head in one of his massive hands. I wouldn't be surprised if he has but I've never see him lay a violent hand on anyone. Not even Gene, which is uncanny.
If there were anyone in our posse for the driver to crush it would be Gene. I knew there was some deep history between them but the driver never talked at all and Gene never stopped talking. The problem with Gene was that pretty much everything that came out of that toothy mouth of his was most likely a lie or an exaggeration so huge it might as well be a lie.
The driver hated Gene and that was no lie. Whenever Gene walked into a previously Gene-less room, the driver's thick, silver eyebrows curled downward at a barely-noticeable slant. The last barely-noticeable slant you might see in your life. I was already terrified of the driver but that barely-notiecable slant of the eyebrows made him a truly frightening hulk of a man. If Gene ever noticed this he never let on. He'd march right over and slap the driver with one of his greasy little hands and pipe in with his usual "Cat got'cher balls there Bert?" and chortle that sqeaky little laugh that almost seemed caught somewhere in his throat like a bit of supper that wouldn't quite make it down. Bert was, of course, not the driver's name. Nobody knew the driver's name. Probably nobody had ever known the driver's name. That didn't seem to worry Gene at all because he never called anyone by their real name anyway.
Comments
Post a Comment