Unfinished Stories (Part 7)

SHORT STORY MONDAY

This is the completion of the first dialogue between Gary Spencer and Joe Urban, our narrator. Spencer, the last man alive who had read all of Richard Allen Garston's works, changed his name to Father William and now resides at a Trappist monastery in Kentucky. Father William had agreed to open up a little regarding Garston's writings and life.

Unfinished Stories of Richard Allen Garston

(Part 7)

Dialogue One, continued

"Listen, John," and this was the first time he had called me by name, "there are some things better left unsaid. Otherwise I shall be as open as I feel my conscience will permit." But he flinched when he said this, and I was left with a curious impression that there was some kind of concealment going on here.

Father William abruptly turned from me and began walking slowly back toward the Abbey.

"Here is how it was," he said . "When Richard was a young man he had a tremendous facility for language and a lot of natural ability. What he lacked was original ideas. He had a strong desire to write, to achieve significance as a writer. He believed that his stories, however, while well crafted were continually lacking in depth, were underdeveloped. His skills were adequate, but his well was dry. You might say he felt out of touch with his soul."

"I understand." I knew that feeling only too well.

"He'd gotten the notion that there was an inner spring from which eternal waters might flow. I'm not sure where this notion came from. Perhaps that verse, 'The Kingdom of God is within you,' was playing around inside him. In various ways he attempted to dig down within himself to make contact with those vast reserves, but it was all exploration. He was never able to tap that inner pool."

"Then you're saying his problem was a lack of authentic ideas."

"Yes, that's right. Ideas are an easy thing really. Look around. Ideas are everywhere. Places, people, books -- each has a history, an essence, ten thousand seeds each capable of reproducing ten thousand more. Ideas were not what Richard Allen Garston lacked per se. Ideas were as easy for him as picking ripe berries from a berry bush. His problem was the perpetual feeling of arbitrariness in it all. If he occupied himself picking berries from this tree, why not that tree? Perhaps this branch yielded good fruit, yet why was it better than that branch?"

"His problem, ultimately, became an issue of meaning," I said. "His stories were good, but they felt meaningless."

"Exactly. So much so that it became unbearable for him. He could not begin another sentence without knowing it was authentically his own and simultaneously part of a larger whole."

"He was an idealist. What's the big deal? Most young artists are idealists."

"And most of them ultimately compromise their ideals. Richard couldn't do that."

I thought about my own compromises. At a certain point in time I compromised my dreams and chose a career. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but I gave up certain dreams that had profoundly stirred me when a younger man. The past two years my wife has allowed me to take some of that back again, but I'm more tentative now. It is easier to risk everything when you have nothing to lose. "So, he made a deal with the devil," I said dismissively.

"You're still mocking, but yes, he did this terrible thing."

"But why?"

"Why do birds sing? Why do writers write? Why do people ask questions that have no answers?"

"Come off it now. It’s a perfectly good question."

"I don't really think people go off looking to make deals with the devil. It's just that when people want something badly enough, badly enough that they are willing to pay any price to get it... well, let's just say we don't always recognize the devil's face when we see it at first." Father William looked at me with a stern eye. "It was late spring and he had gone off into the mountains alone, vowing not to return until he had found what he was looking for. When he came back he was a changed man. He somehow seemed as if he had been wounded, like something had been cut out of him, though there were no scars as far as I could tell. He wouldn't talk about it at first. Eventually, when I learned he was writing again I asked what had happened. He had found his Voice, he said, though it seemed a joyless declaration."

During the course of our discussion a curtain of clouds consumed the sun which had been slowly descending to the west. Little eddies of cool evening air swept through the garden and I suddenly realized how swiftly the day was passing.

"We're not making much progress it seems to me," I said.

Without looking at me he replied, "What is it you really want to learn?"

"I'm not sure. I had hoped that by meeting you I would have some inkling of that myself. Perhaps we should talk about the stories he wrote."

"We can do that. How many days will you be here?"

"I leave Thursday. So that leaves us Tuesday and Wednesday," I said.

Father William then turned things around on me and began asking questions about myself, my writing, and eventually about the writer's group. He seemed genuinely interested in my novel, asking questions about the motivations of my characters, how I stayed motivated to keep writing when things didn't flow, and things like that. He wasn't surprised that I had difficulty marketing it to a publisher, seeing that my topic was neither trendy nor popular. He said he remembered Willson Willis as a young writer and seemed delighted that he had become successful, even famous. "He wrote the kinds of things people wanted to read. It didn't hurt any that his family was well connected, if you know what I mean."

"So you have followed his career," I asserted. "Have you been staying in touch then?"

"No, no. Just see a write up now and then."

"You almost sound jealous," I laughed.

He didn't laugh and I returned to the primary subject of my inquiry. "Here’s how it was," he said. "Richard was promised an endless flow of ideas, on the condition that he would never complete anything. If he attempted to finish a story, everything he wrote up to that point in time would be destroyed."

"That's it?"

"More or less."

"And just like that, he had an endless stream of stories to write," I said.

"Oh yes," Father William said. "Just like that. He began to hear voices. He began to see visions. He began to dream dreams. And he began to write. He became a conduit of inspiration."

"But why couldn't he complete anything? Was it that the ideas had no endings? Or that he was unable to finish a piece? How did that work?"

"If he wanted to write a complete story, to finish something, he could have done that. What happened was this. He wrote like a madman for nearly three days, an intense complicated story about who knows what. Probably passion. He wrote like a man possessed, and when the story was finished he was literally in awe at what he had produced. He was amazed not only at what he had produced, but by the reality that he had been able to complete it. He had thought the devil would keep him from finishing his work.

"Then, the next day, when he re-read it he was filled with revulsion, tore the manuscript to shreds and burned it. As soon as the story was destroyed, his memory of his compact was triggered. If he finished anything, all his work would be destroyed. He finished one thing and it was gone."

"Interesting," I said.

"While trying to sleep his thoughts were crammed with seeds for new stories which kept him from finding the rest he craved. He rose from his bed to write notes, jot down images, phrases, names, and a host of details from the parade of ideas that marched through his mind. The morning sun found him assembling all these pieces together into a multi-layered story of such remarkable density of meanings that he could not cease lest he lose the vision. Within days he completed his second story."

"And?"

Father William winced. "He made two copies of the story intending to send the story to two magazines while keeping the original. The one was placed in the mail that same day, but the original and second copy were stolen before he could do anything else with them."

"Stolen from his apartment?"

"No. He had them in his book bag on the bus. As he was returning from the library someone grabbed it and jumped off the bus before he could say boo. New story ideas flowed out of the incident and he pursued the next story and the next, all the while comforted that at least one story of his had survived. Within the week a corner of the manuscript was returned from the post office in a plastic bag with an apology. The envelope had gotten caught in a machine and the contents shredded. This portion was all that remained. Richard began to sense the way things were now going to be.

"For a long time he determined not to finish any of his stories, out of fear. But at last there came a story that demanded an ending, and Richard dared to complete it." Father William's arms dropped to his sides in a gesture similar to resignation. "That night a series of thunderheads swept across Central Jersey, hurling lightning bolts from on high, one of them striking Richard Garston's apartment building, turning it into a flaming tinderbox. Everything he had ever written in his whole life was burned. Then he began to be afraid."

"So it looked like this was no coincidence," I said."It was no coincidence."

"Yet, it could have been a coincidence, couldn't it? It could have been, right?"

"He knew what it meant. For Richard, these were not coincidences."

For a short time there were no more words. Then finally I asked, "And you? Do you still write?"

"It's time to go in. We can talk about Gary Spencer Wednesday."

After a few peripheral pieties we parted for the night.

CONTINUED