The Day I Stole a Bible from Wal-Mart

It all started so innocently……

Jack and I had moved to Big Stone Gap and were settling in preparing to run our used bookstore. Of course there were a dozen little household items we needed, that we either left behind at the old place or couldn’t find in the boxes festooned across our new home. Among these was my daily devotional Bible.

And some clean underwear, in case you’re interested.

We avoid Wal-Mart as a rule, but when you need a lot of detritus fast, and you’ve just spent all your money moving house, well, sometimes the runner stumbles. Up and down the aisles we trundled, filling the hand basket with dishrags (which I now crochet for us out of cotton thread purchased at BSG’s own craft store, Mendoo’s) cleaning products (which we buy at the locally owned drug store across the street) and my new devotional Bible–except the basket was pretty full so I carried the Bible and a six-pack of Hanes for ladies clutched against my chest. I didn’t mind if people saw me buy white cotton briefs, but I didn’t want anyone seeing what size they were…

As Jack unloaded the basket, I said, “Look, they have a McDonald’s at the front; shall I go ahead and pick up lunch so we can save time eating while we drive back?” (For those of you who have ever moved, you know that time slides away like the proverbial greased pig–which we were about to eat.)

Judge us freely, but there it is; we not only shopped at Wal-Mart, we purchased food at the conveniently located Mickey D’s inside it. We are going to Hell.

Leaving Jack unloading all those tiny items, I walked out of the store–straight through those little shoplifter-sensing beepy things. Apparently Wally-world doesn’t put sensors on Bibles or Granny panties.

I joined the long queue at the McDonald’s counter still clutching these now-stolen goods to my chest. It wasn’t until I set them unthinkingly on the counter to pay for the food that realization dawned.

The blood drained from my face; no doubt “THIEF” appeared in letters of fire across my forehead. The harassed burger flipper looked from my stricken expression to the undies and sacred text on her counter, then back at me. Without missing a beat, she reached under the counter and produced a burger bag.

“Here,” she said. “If it was me, I could just about explain taking them out of the store, but not trying to sneak them back in.” She glanced at the long line of impatient patrons behind me, then smiled. Leaning in, she beckoned me closer, and whispered, “Besides, I don’t really think God minds if you steal a Bible; just don’t tell Him about the underwear.”

The Fruit Roll-up Birds of Happiness

Some friends and I got together because the month of May hosted all our birthdays. So we threw onto the bookstore’s table a bag of marshmallows, a box of fruit roll-ups, some cereal, assorted candies, and bits of yarn and string and household detritus. We consumed vast quantities of good red wine, and came to the somewhat alcohol-assisted conclusion that making finger people would be fun–as viewed on Facebook and other staples of Internet time-wasting during working hours.

It went rather badly wrong, as you can see, but we did have ever such a good time. That’s the cover of my forthcoming book in the nest.

Did I mention that we’d had quite a lot of wine?

This Town Ain’t Big Enough for two Single Malts….

Okay, so yesterday was an angst-wallow. Today, we are back on the happy upbeat track–not least because my husband and I are caught up in yet another “only happens in small towns” funny story.

Most of you know that Jack recently became an American citizen. And of course a lot of people wanted to congratulate him. He’s one of those charismatic individuals.

And he’s pretty easy to buy for: just get him whiskey.

But here’s where the small town bit comes in. We have one liquor store in Big Stone Gap–conveniently located across the street from our bookstore. On sunny afternoons we amuse ourselves by sitting on the porch with a tally sheet, marking down Baptist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, Catholic, Baptist, Baptist….

Jack and the ABC store manager are on a first-name, how’s-the-family, dude basis. They exchange Christmas and birthday cards. Jeff calls to see if Jack’s okay should he miss that weekly visit.

And Jeff orders a particular favorite for Jack, not a blend, but a single malt that is Scottish in make, expensive in price. I don’t complain; my husband doesn’t chase other women, like televised sports, or expect me to do all the laundry.

It’s an unusual whiskey, and Jeff had never even heard of it before Jack introduced him to its finer qualities. So it’s the only single malt in town–not to mention the only ABC store. Jeff started ordering one case per year, 12 bottles which Jack purchases once a month, interspersed between his cheaper weekly stock-ups.

Jack hauls out the single malt for special occasions–like rainy Monday evenings when a friend drops by unexpectedly, or Saturday jam sessions,  or days ending in “y”–and he’s introduced several people about town to his favorite.In fact, he became quite the evangelist for this particular brew.

Which means he now has competition.

Jack discovered what a good salesman he was about three months ago, when he went across for his monthly treat and Jeff said, “Oh, sorry, Jack! Your friend Bill was in here and bought four bottles. Said he loved it at your house. The case is empty. I’ll order more. Be here in about a week.”

Galumphing home, Jack thought dark thoughts about Bill.

But when that case came in,  Jack got only three bottles. (He figured maybe it was time to stock up.) The other nine had already been purchased by friends and bookstore customers who had heard Jack, over the course of his single-malt-less week, extol its virtues and lament its rarity.

Again, Jeff ordered more–and suggested Jack write the company explaining the circumstances and requesting a commission.

This time the whole case was empty before Jack even darkened the ABC store’s door. But the funniest part was yet to come. That was about the time that people knew Jack would soon become an American citizen. Over the next two weeks, friends dropped by, bearing gifts. Tall, thin gifts that sloshed. Jack racked up eight bottles of his favorite elixir, none of which he bought for himself, because his friends had beaten him to it.

We don’t know who’s got the other four bottles.

Jack figures, the next time he heads over to see Jeff, there will be less competition for the water of life. But then, you never know. We have an anniversary coming up.

The Post-writing Cleaning Spree

So it’s in. All the way in. 80, 567 words: funny words, silly words, sweet words, angry words.

Final words.

The book has gone to be turned into a bound thing that will be passed to other people for comment–and judgement. And now I’m talking to the marketing people, and the publicity people (Those are pretty different; who knew?) and even the legal team. Memoirs get reviewed by the “anything in here we could get sued for?” watchgang. That’s one way I knew all of the sudden this was different from other writing projects.

Actually, you know the thing that made me think, “*&^%! This is real!”? It was reviewing the final edits where the front page of the pages on the computer screen were all set up with codes and ISBN numbers and such.

That’s not a manuscript; that’s a book.

How many times have I opened to just that page to decide where to place a book on our shop’s shelves–as in, is this a memoir or political commentary or humor? (Curse you, Hunter S. Thompson!)–or to find out if someone has a first edition, or otherwise decode some inside info from the book world.

And now I’m coded. I’m a book. I’m gonna get shelved. I’m gonna get ignored. 100,000 books are published each year in the U.S. alone. Who’s gonna notice this one? I have to learn to Tweet and use social media for display and awareness. I need a Pinterest presence. I need an author page on Goodreads.

I can barely set the date on my bedside clock, y’all.

Oddly enough, in the middle of all this stuff I need to learn to do, my overwhelming urge is to clean the house, top to bottom, and weed the front garden. Alles muss in Ordnung sein.

It probably didn’t help that finals week–spent grading my students’ term papers and exams by day–coincided with the final edits. There wasn’t a lot of sleep, last week.

By the end of May, I’ll go back to being an energetic bookstore owner who loves life in general and hers in particular. But this week, maybe we can just admit that the post-writing blahs are really exhaustion mixed with fear, masquerading as a desire to impose order because chaos is descending with unnerving swiftness.

Then again, as my friend Jenny says, “Oh, get over yourself! You’re getting published! Stop acting like a sad little mopey artist and get your butt into high gear, or I’ll kickstart you myself!”

She has a point … anybody out there know how to get a wine glass stain out of hardwood? Or use Twitter?

THE DAY AFTER

So the blog was quiet this week because it was the Final Push. St. Martin’s Press wanted the manuscript “as close to finished as possible” by the Friday just past. My friend Cami Ostman (author of the running memoir Second Wind) comes out from Seattle every year for a writing retreat, and this visit coincided with the big editing job.

Just so we’re clear, this isn’t the last time I’ll see the ms. before it’s published, just the last time any big edits can be done. From here on out, it’s tweaking, typos and punctuation debates. The galleys will arrive soon.

Knowing it was the last time to make anything creative in a big way,  Cami and I disappeared to my cabin in the woods (it’s where I lived while in graduate school, and I managed to buy it once I graduated) and wrote our little asses off, our hearts out, and our fingers to numb stumps. (Insert additional cliches here.) Cami, my friend since high school, was working on a novel, and very kindly told me, “Stop me at any point you need a reader.” I wrote two additional chapters and edited one that was a dog’s breakfast, plus read the entire work through again for flow, continuity, timeline, and–yes–the dreaded Narrative Arc.

It’s funny to read something for the last time before you can’t change it. I’ve enjoyed every minute of the editing process–well, okay, except for that horrible week with chapter five that my friends had to basically haul me out of. (Thanks, Elissa, Pamela, Nichole, Jodi, Cami, Kathy, Heather and anyone else I am momentarily forgetting.) I’m not the kind of writer who gets writer’s block so much as writer’s box.

In my attempt to explain everything clearly but in a pithy way and without pissing anyone off, I create walls of words that climb ever higher; ignoring every writer’s good advice about brevity and simplicity, I keep trundling down the canyon until I reach the death-trap end, have to admit the whole thing is a wash, and call in the ‘dozers to tear down the walls and dig me out. I wind up ripping the whole thing out. It wastes time in terms of actual production, but even those blind canyons are kind of fun–and useful–in the writing process.

If you have time.

But that’s what we no longer had, that week in the cabin. Instead, a deadline loomed. A dead line. A marker in the chronological pattern after which “this” could no longer be “that.” What was written would stay written. No more “I could just revamp Chapter 12 a little…”

And for the first time in my writing life, I panicked. After this, nothing could change! After this, it HAD to be perfect! After this, the sky would turn green and the grass would grow purple and fish would carry hand guns ….

Not. After this, life would go on as normal. I would need to do the dishes and catch up on the week of work waiting at my day job while I was on “holiday.” After this, friends would call and we would go out to eat, or keep each other company doing household chores.

Life doesn’t change that much, the day after “this” becomes “that” permanently. As Anne Lamott says (paraphrased here) whatever you’re expecting after you write what you meant to say and turn it in, don’t. Just move on.

We write what we mean to say, as well as we can, with sincerity and adjectives and perhaps a sense of humor, and then we go on living. I’ve got a bookstore to run, and a bunch of friends to hang with, and some laundry that is long overdue. My husband is still a sweetheart and our upstairs kitchen is still overrun with foster kittens waiting to be adopted. I can go back to practicing my harp, which I’ve missed.

79,116 words and two loads of towels later, life still looks sweet.

THIS STORY IS NOT GOING IN THE BOOK!!!

My husband became an American citizen this past week, a moment of pride and pleasure for us both–and for the 12 friends who attended the ceremony with us. Wearing his kilt and a broad smile, my beloved took the oath, renounced all foreign potentates, and became a vote-wielding US of A-er.

Meanwhile, my editor and I are racing toward the finish line of delivering my manuscript on time. And in trying to get that narrative to arc its back without hissing, we took out a couple of stories. One of them is so gosh-darn funny AND so timely to Jack’s new status, that we thought it would make a good blog post instead.

Here is the (typical small town) story of “Flaggate,” which will not be appearing anywhere else this season. I should add that Jack and I AND the attendees of the ceremony find this is a sweet and funny story, not a chance to make fun of anyone or anything. Basking as we are in the glow of our newest American, we love to retell this tale. Enjoy!

FLAGGATE

My husband is a laid-back, mellow person, embodying the gentle-soul-in-a-baggy-sweater image of the wise old bookseller. It takes a lot to rile him. So when our town exploded over the simple issue of whether or not to have a farmers market, Jack watched the whole thing with silent bemusement.

Such shenanigans for so little! Henry Kissenger correctly suggested that people fight harder when the stakes are smaller. The town factions pulling at each other (about  local farmers selling healthy foods to people who wanted to buy them) resembled nothing so much as parents of kindergarteners arguing over which team would bat first in the Little League Goodwill Games.

One fine day Jack closed the newspaper on an article ridiculing the “Market Master” plan, and said he was going to the town council to voice his support, along with others in favor of the idea. And off he went.

The town council had never met anybody like Jack—literally. As with many small towns, Big Stone tends to be a place where those who are different—like, say, the man who lives with his mother past the age of 30 and vacations annually at Fire Island—fly below the radar until the glorious day someone says, “Yeah, they’re weird, but they’re ours.”

Visitors to Big Stone still have the local Jewish family pointed out to them. A minister caught in a compromising position prompted folk to drive by his house throwing underwear onto his lawn until he left town. (Likely the poo-pants flingers later rounded up their offerings and donated them to the poor, being caring Christian souls.) Europeans and Asians use our bookshop as an informal support group, a place to talk about that “y’all ain’t from here” wall that foreigners—a group encompassing those from India to Kentucky—each hit at some point.

So as Jack spoke his support for the market, the council listened with quizzical looks on their faces. He repeated his words, slower this time, trying to flatten his Scottish accent for untuned ears. Other Friends of the Market members echoed him with fewer glottal stops. It worked; the town agreed to relinquish a centrally-located parking lot as a location, and offered a small stipend for getting the market going. No mess, no fuss, no bother.

Except, in the aftermath, a campaign started to undo all that. Jack,  who by then had joined the market’s Board of Directors, received a letter from a local merchant, calling him an illegal alien and swearing the writer “would see your green card revoked and you in Hell, Mr. Big Shot Irish Man.”

Back Jack had to go as the market board’s president, and re-request the council’s assistance, since the decision had become “disputed.” If he had any doubts as to how deep feelings ran, they ended when Garth (a benevolent council member) pulled him aside just before the meeting and asked, “Jack, would you mind putting your hand over your heart during the Pledge of Allegiance?”

Jack became momentarily befuddled. In our tiny town, Quakers (which Jack and I are) were just weird enough to sometimes be confused with religious groups who object to pledging the flag. But his council friend clarified. “Two of the other councilors said it was ‘disrespectful’ of you as a foreigner to stand with your hands at your side during Pledge.”

Ours is a patriotic town.

Jack put his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance, and two of the council members looked over their shoulders at my husband–twice. Standing next to him, I couldn’t help myself. My own hand had up to this point maintained a correctly American position—although it probably should have been over my mouth. The second time they looked back, I took my hand from my heart to twirl my fingers in a wave, smiling brightly.

Neither of them looked again.

Jack laughed it off, but I seethed for days. Big-hearted and easy-going, my husband had never disrespected anyone in his life; he just wanted to help build something good for the town, namely this farmers market so many people had asked for. So I researched what foreigners were supposed to do during the American Pledge of Allegiance, and brought Jack my findings.

“According to the U.S. Code of Conduct, non-Americans should stand quietly with their hands at their sides, facing the flag.”

Jack smiled and took the printout from my hands. “Let it go, Wendy.”

I tried, I really did, but using patriotism as a shield for flat out being meaner than a rattlesnake in the rain irked. Of course, I had underestimated my husband—as had the councilors. Without telling me, he went to their meeting a third time, to thank them for finally agreeing to support the market.

And apologized.

Standing in front of the chamber’s long curved table on its raised dais, Jack said, “It appears that I behaved disrespectfully to you on a previous visit. I am not from this country, and when you pledged allegiance, your flag’s Code of Conduct states that I should have stood facing the flag with my hands at my side, silent and respectful. Instead, I put my hand over my heart. I most sincerely apologize for this, and hope that no one has taken offense. Please be assured I will properly show respect at all future salutes in the way your United States Code of Conduct stipulates.”

One of the councilors who had been checking Jack’s hand position couldn’t find anywhere to put his eyes; his partner reshuffled papers with deep concentration.  The rest of the panel looked either baffled or amused. Garth hid a grin behind his coffee mug. The mayor, a cheerful woman who would have liked people to believe our region less bigoted than circumstances sometimes suggested, let her smile reach her eyes as she thanked Jack for coming, culminating with, “We are lucky to have the diversity you add to our town.”

A murmur of assent rippled around the assembly, while councilor number two still couldn’t get his papers in order.

Keith Fowlkes, one of my friends from the nearby college, often quotes his favorite Chinese proverb: “Ma ma, hoo hoo.” This translates idiomatically two ways: put simply, it is a nice expression for “mediocre at best,” but its more complex etymology suggests that, in life, some days one is the horse, some days the tiger.

I think my husband must be the gentlest tiger in the world.

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THE HUNGER GAMES WE PLAY WITH BOOKS

So on Tuesday of this past week, Amazon lost (for less than six hours) its ability to sell Kindle editions in the United States because of a technical glitch. What caused it? Those On The Inside suspect it was Harry Potter’s fault. (The fact that he’s not a real person doesn’t matter. This is cyberspace we’re talking about.)

All 7 of the Potter Books became available on March 27 (Tuesday) through Potterworld, and the uploading…. well, it wasn’t  a straw that broke the cybercamel’s back so much as a magic wand.

About a million e-reading people–what is the collective noun for e-readers anyway? An exaltation of larks, a kindle of kittens…. okay, best collective noun response gets a free book from our bookstore, postage included. Title to be negotiated, but we’ll try to accommodate your request–

{Ahem} Back to the blog. About a million e-reading people in downloading frenzy crashed the Kindle sales. The breakdown occurred at 11:55 am PDT, and by 11:58 the news was going viral. How’s THAT for market share?

One of the ironies is that the crash may have been precipitated by Potter, but it was aided by a duel of duelers. The Hunger Games had hit the theatres just a few days before, and loads of people were trying to download that trilogy as well. (Hmm, I’m getting an idea for a plot. Teens dueling to the death over … oh, wait a minute.)

So, as people attempted to download the next teen megahit the previous wunderkind thrust Voldermort’s wand into the clockworks and KABLOOEY!

(Perhaps it was revenge?)

The big question in the industry is, in the six hours before it was fixed, how much money did not change hands?

But in all honesty, what I want to know is, did anyone, in desperation to lay hands to The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, or Mockingjay, call his or her local bookstore? Because then something very good could have come out of this silver e-cloud’s lining.

Perhaps Amazon’s breakdown can be measured not in market lost but in markets gained, reopened, rediscovered. Remember walking downtown to your local bookstore? Remember bookstores? Yeah, we’re still here, and oddly enough, when we “crash” it’s called closing. As in closing down. Which bookstores do when customers don’t come in.

Why visit a bookstore instead of Amazon? Well, aside from that little crashing thing, how about fresh coffee, pleasant and witty conversation, exercise (physical AND mental), a chance to see who’s reading what, a chance to see who’s written what, a chance to find out about other authors besides Patterson, Collins and Rowling (not that they’re not great; they’re just not everybody), a chance to pet the store cat or dog, and did I mention pleasant and witty conversation?

Bookstores, greenhouses, yarn stores, hobby shops run by independent people are fun. They are sweet. They are little watering holes where like calls to like and knows it will get an answer, rather than a “we are unable to assist you; please try your call again later” or even “you are order number 765843; thank you.”

I’m not against e-readers, but I am aware of the effect they have on bricks-and-mortar bookstores, and of the tertiary effects if all our third places–those tucked-away shops and pubs and gardens that are neither home nor work, where we sit and smile and be ourselves for fifteen minutes–go away. We need them for balance. We need them to be in right relation to each other.

I don’t hate Amazon; as a first-time author, I’m forced to use it as one of the ways I sell my own book. But Amazon is one of six ways one can order a book in America. Six. Count ‘em: six. (To see the list, visit the section on pre-ordering my book. You can get any book via those methods. ANY book…..)

So huzzah to Amazon for crashing, and here’s hoping that six-hour window launched at least one reader on a voyage of discovery about the battles for life that really matter.