Snapshot
"Aretha Holtence" the boy in the com said proudly, "Aretha Holtence... what a beautiful name, so damn sexy."
"You talk too much," the boy in the tree yelled down. "Aretha Holtence, Judy Smith, Jane Doe. It’s a boring name, and you know she isn't that pretty."
"Shut up, Spider." Alex was lying down on the warm September earth. The view was com and green leaves outlining a bright sky, the sky creating a blue hue on Alex's wet lips. He tilted his head up and back to frown at Spider in the tree. He could see the outstretch of the corn rows for a quarter of mile beyond himself. Spider was paying no attention. "What you got today?" Alex yelled up to him, one eye closed. The sun was bright. “Hello? Spider?"
"What?!" Spider went digging into his pocket with one hand. Placing a cigar in his mouth with his other. "Let me see, I know I brought them."
"What’s taking you so long?" Alex demanded, folding a piece of paper back to a clean one from the white pad he had in his hands. He looked up at the cornstalks above him. From root to tip where it tickled the sky, the com danced in the wind. Eyes watering from the sunlight, Alex studied the stalks. "I hope you brought green or red this time."
"I brought a seafoam green and a blue-green I think." Spider grabbed on to the crayons in his pocket and tried to pull them out. "But no red this time, sorry Al." Pulling the lint from them, Spider counted the six crayons in his Imd. "Look out," Spider yelled at Alex, throwing the six down, "There are six down there by your head. Sorry, it was all I could get this time. You know how my sister is."
Alex got upon his knees and gathered the crayons as he saw them. "I only count five.”
"What? There should be six. Two greenish ones, an orange one, a brown one, and two yellow ones. I threw them all down" Spider leaned over from the sitting branch and looked down into the corn.
"Wait, I must have missed the brown one with all the dirt."
“Yeah, you must have."
Alex looked at all the colors in his hand, choosing a golden-yellow one and began to draw. The days were getting shorter and the nights longer. Yellow sun, green earth, blue-green leaves, brown shadows, twisting, melting into a landscape derived from the soul of a boy in the fading green splendor of the earth. Orange was beginning to invade the lemon skyline when the sickeningly sweet smoke floated over Alex’s head. "What are you doing Spider?"
"What does it look like boy?" Spider asked mid-puff. "It’s a cigar, a fine-ass man's cigar for a fine-ass man. "
"Then you better give it back to your father, you fool." Alex turned back around and began creating again. The word "fool" chuckled in his shaking head while he re-examined the world in his hands.
"Summer's gone." Spider smiled down at his friend, trying to sprinkle some of the ashes on his head below.
"Yeah... but winter's nice too." Alex decided to add a bird here and there. "And... god, are you still smoking that thing?!" One bird was just half finished.
"It's cool man. My dad will never miss it, trust me."
"You freak out when you have to borrow crayons from your sister, but you'll take a cigar from your dad? That is so screwed up."
"Yeah, well. So is your dad still freaking about your drawings?" Alex stopped. A crayon snapped. The cool wind blew through the stalks of corn, confirming the end of summer. Alex picked up the remaining crayon stub and started back again.
"Stupid sports." the wind just barely allowed Spider to hear the word carried through it.
"What?" Spider knew what but pushed the topic. This topic was rarely ever talked about between the two.
"Sports. You know, the man and his sports. 'No time for games boy, no time for pussy toys, concentrate, push, play until it hurts.’ If I have any paper in my hand it better be the sports page, or baseball stats, or... Whatever. He’s an asshole."
"Yeah, but,"
"But what?!" Alex snapped.
“I don’t know man. I think someday you’ll just lift off and fly. Just fly away. And then none of this will ever matter." Spider looked closely at the red rim below the grey ash.
"What the hell are you talking about?!" Alex was adding brown to the orange, brown to the lemon, brown to the white.
"I mean, when you’re doing what you love, the have to reach real hard, really reach. Because all of your dreams are all up here just waiting for you to grab them. You know?" Spider was waving his cigar up in the air like a submarine at sea. "So, you have to reach, you know, like jump over and over until you get to them." A smooth smile washed over Spider's face. "And then, my man, then you fly. When you have your dream, finally in your hands, you are flying. Anywhere you want you fly, your choice, your rules. That’s how it works.”
"Yeah, ok, flying. I get it." Alex returned to the lemon yellow.
"Yeah man, flying, and then when you're up in the air, just being you, you can fly over your father's house and just draw. Nothing—not even your father—can stop you, but you have to jump and reach, man." Spider continued to puff off his manly cigar.
Alex could not pry his fingers from his drawing, nor remove the smile from his face.
1995, Ben Bisbee
This assignment was about writing dialogue. It was based off an actual experience I had with a friend with a bunch of other nonsense thrown in to make it about two very different kids. I think about this piece a lot actually because early on, I was super proud of it, it struck a tone, it had—in my mind—rich characters and a bit of a payoff in just a page and a half. Looking back 25 years later? I’m still fairly proud of what it actually does in so little words, even if it’s a bit trite in some ways. But I do recall that I really loved writing dialogue, that it made sense to me. That I enjoyed working on characters through the lens of the language they used or didn’t use. And that’s never changed.