https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/episode/B0BMLTB9NM
ON THE ROAD WITH AL & IVY: THE NOVEL (BOOK 1)
Episode One: Prelude: March 2016
It's a crisp, clear night in the coffee house parking lot. Ivy and I finish our walk, and since there's no hurry to get back to the car, we sit on a curb and look up at the stars.
It's time for Ivy's astronomy lesson. She loves hearing my descriptions of celestial formations with names like steak, macaroni, and cheese and her favorite, baked chicken. The textbook names are gone now, along with my old life that died on a cold February night when we hit the road with whatever would fit into an old Cadillac.
"See where the big steak is, Ivy?" I'd say, "Off to the right of the Big Chili Cheese Dog (formally known as the North Star), you'll probably get there before me."
I put my hand on her furry head and add, "Wait for me up there, and I'll join you soon; my time on earth will be a blink of an eye where you'll be." Ivy nods, still looking up at the steak and hamburgers in the sky, and begins to hum, her sound for agreement, and I say, "I'll look forward to telling you how the rest of my life went."
Ivy wags her tail, her biggest smile, and as we head back to the car, I pray that I'll be around for the rest of her life... don't want to miss that.
Our friendship is no longer a world of man-made constructs and roles; to obey commands, do tricks, and amuse. Instead, I realized that we both peer into the same life and give her the same right to live it as any human. We navigate as a pack, a family, and give each other the love we lost when the past turned dark and died. As Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, "Home is where you love."
An Opening Similitude...
The kind night beckons, and I enter until the morning sun melts away the dark sea I drift in.
- Jook Manuscript Excerpt (June 1986)
Arrival: June 2016
Gilroy in July is a hot, dusty rural town full of summer trouble, a homeless paradise full of blind spots from the police who have their hands full dealing with illegal fireworks, tweakers, parking lot parties, and overheated tourists.
It's the summer of 2016. I arrive around nine, well after dark, but the day's heat hasn't fully faded. It's still 80 degrees and very humid. I usually don't think in terms of names or places. "Here" is just this or that parking lot or Street. I'm part of the homeless herd, who could care less if the people are friendly or if there's a history. We look for fleeting seams that open up in the fabric of society to hide in and move on when it closes. The feeling of movement, of wandering, soothes the sting of being homeless, which is felt at every stop.
But tonight, I know where I am, in Gilroy, the "Garlic Capitol Of The World," a town I hadn't seen in decades and barely recognize because of the new shopping centers and business parks that cover what used to be farmland. This place, if it were a living, breathing thing, would hardly recognize me either. Part of my childhood was spent next door in San Martin, a farm town full of talking animals and brave toy soldiers who protected fearful little babes like me and told me that the future was full of possibilities and adventure.
I'm now an old man of sixty-four, one year from retirement. There are no toy soldiers to protect me, and the future I was told about, well, it came and went and left me in an uncertain present. At least fate left me a talking animal, Ivy, who must be wondering now what kind of man she's hitched her star to.
I know what I see here, though, even in the dark. It's a side road called Gleemon. There are two areas to be aware of; the Street and adjacent lots and the chain link fence that runs along the levee road for Miller Slough and the back area of the Big Dupermart store. That's the border of the known world. Once past it, there's the pitch-black void inhabited by druggies, runaways, and "backpackers," who have camps and open-air crash pads along the dirt road that connects with the south fork of a river, orchards and the water pumping station next to a Highway.
The Street has a secret. It's technically a court, but it's also the main delivery entrance for SuperMart. The store and the city claim it belongs to the other, so neither will kick the homeless off it because whoever does will own the Street and all its problems. Also, truckers who arrive ahead of schedule park and sleep there unless they prefer to go to the truck stop-motel a couple of miles to the north. Most don't because the services for out-of-towers will gladly come to them.
So there's plenty of vehicles parked here, twenty-four hours a day. That makes it a seam to hide in. The old timers in RVs only stay for short periods; they prefer the frontage road on the other side of the freeway, away from streetlights, generator noise, and sounds of fights, or to go to a private place to chew each other up after being cooped up for years in small, crowded boxes on wheels.
It's good manners not to stay in one place too long anyway. So most move along a circuit of four, maybe five locations, which keeps them out of the cop's hair and away from the idiots who camp in a place until kicked out for doing some silly-ass thing or another.
My own list of havens are identified by geographic features; the parking lot of the Hispanic grocery, the south end of the Big Dupermart lot, and Gleemon Street. That's only three; if I have to keep moving, I head south down Highway 101 to Salinas or north up 280 to the Crystal Springs rest stop.
I haven't bothered to learn any other street names, but I know the terrain better than any resident. This area averages 90 degrees during the summer. I know where the best shade is and at what time. It's like reading a sundial. I know the free wifi coverage of every parking lot as if it were marked out with spray paint, how to tell when it's safe for the homeless to park, and where each subculture that lives here is centered. Each group has transit routes as busy as any street, and it's best to park well away from those unmarked paths.
Ivy, my little white shitzu friend, and I sit in the car and just watch. We function as one person. Ivy handles hearing and smell, and I've learned to trust her, particularly at night when trouble seems to come out of nowhere.
It's still too hot, but open windows draw attention and turn me into a "face," someone to approach. Since my anxiety meds ran out, I keep the boogieman at bay with tried and true remedies like nervous tics, pulling an earlobe, or twisting hair into string. It helps me to sit still, able to wait until the night reveals what's going on. You never go right to sleep, ever.
In nature, the night is the most dangerous time, when half of the world sleeps, and the rest hunts. The night is an ageless God like the sea, an elemental force that's merciless if you don't respect it, yet it shelters and protects the lost, rejected, and trapped from everything but themselves.
If a night hunter has a beef with you, there's no fuss or fight. They just wait until you go to sleep to kick ass. That's why there's so much activity at night; for many of the homeless, particularly the elderly and loners, it's safer to wait until early morning to shelter and sleep, so they keep moving aimlessly like sleepwalkers with their packs or shopping carts until the safe stillness comes around 4 am.
I can't do that with a car; it's not practical to drive all night. I have to try and get some rest. You can't sleep in the 90-degree heat that starts at nine in the morning. I'll risk a short nap parked under shade, but if I get careless and sleep too long, the shade moves, and I can wake up to a dead dog. It's better not to nap at all, but after five months of lousy sleep, I either steal a snooze now and then or risk hallucinating due to sleep deprivation.
That happened up north a month ago. I came to a dead stop at two in the morning on Interstate 280 because I thought a bunch of trees had come down and blocked the freeway, and I was nearly rear-ended by several cars. I had to force myself to keep driving even though the road appeared to end at the edge of a cliff. Oddly enough, the headlong charge into the void was a peaceful moment, like I welcomed death. After that, I quit screwing around with trying to stay in motion all night.
I study the people who walk along the fence and duck into some bushes next to a small grove of trees. That's where the hole is, the north entrance into the levee. Three young men arrive, pushing mountain bikes, part of a gang of feral Droogs that makes most of its money as low-level drug runners. That gets my full attention, as they'll attack and rob other homeless unless the dealer is there to hold them off. If those sociopaths were hopped up and coming out to hunt instead of going in, it'd be time to scoot.
Two young women arrive next, pausing a moment before going in. One is a redhead I call "Sign Girl" and a skinny blond in a long hippie-type dress called "Raspberry." They stop talking and enter with their flashlights turned off, a smart move when chemically impaired men are around.
The unwritten rule is to avoid using any lights or lighting open fires on that side of the fence. The city owns the area, and any sign of a camp will be checked out by the cops, not to mention attracting the attention of everyone around. How they know it's safe to enter is an instinct that develops quickly after the first assault, or if they're lucky, attempted assault.
A patrol car approaches, and a blinding white light suddenly turns night into day. I close my eyes, slowly put my hands on the steering wheel and wait for the searchlight beam to move on to the next car. It doesn't, and now enough sirens are wailing to drown out the RV and truck generators. Cops rarely hold a beam in your face. There's a hot flash of fear as I realize they're checking faces.
They're looking for somebody!
- Al HANDA
Here's an update on each of my Vella books:
The Quitters
https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B09PC3L6PC
It's the first book, and after ten months, it's finally developing an audience, and the stats are trending upward this month. I think it's due to the blog and the new book/music video short format I'm using for its promotion. I’ve moved the plot lines away from potentially over technical descriptions of playing live to more emphasis on the personalities and in particular, the main character Nym. Also, some of the romance elements are now coming into play.
It's at 31 episodes, though as an ebook, we're talking maybe 15 traditional-length chapters. I'm keeping the format episodic and short, kind of like a weekly TV show, which works for Vella but will need to be restructured for the ebook.
I, Ivy
https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0B3RCBT4D
The story got off to a decent start, but I didn't notice that as it's obvious now that the daily totals on the Vella dashboard can differ or not jibe with the monthly or overall total, which have to be accurate as those numbers determine the royalty and bonus payouts. I'll be paying more attention to this one in November, as it’s being read more than I thought. The latest chapter, Ivy’s view of the efforts by a human to give her a pill should strike a familiar chord.
The Forbidden Lost Gospels Of Murgatroyde
https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0BJ2TW4P1
This is a new one, though it'll be the most familiar to blog readers. I'll be changing the format of the blog in November, and putting the Lost Gospels here will allow me to fully expand that line of humor and satire in a way that simply being a blog feature doesn't permit.
The Boogie Underground Think Tank: How To Survive The End Of Civilization
https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0BG6LNXTG
This one is a revival of an old humor column I ran in my old "Delta Snake Blues News" publication in the 90s and 2000s. The slant is about survival in the upcoming hard times, but it really will be topical and cover subjects that are offbeat but relevant. The next one coming in a few days will be "How To Shop For The Perfect Expert," which obviously will be a humorous commentary on the use of experts in general.
The Adventures Of Queen Khleopahtra: Ruler Of Egypt, Time Traveler, and Literary Detective
https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0BJC122G7
This is another new one and will be a fun fusion of the old "Peabody and Sherman" cartoon, which was about a time-traveling dog and boy, Robert Graves' often satirical take on history, and the old "Fractured Fairy Tales" cartoon that used to be featured on the "Rocky And Bullwinkle Show."
I chose Khleopahtra as the main character because it will offer the widest range of literary situations to explore, and I happened to have a cool drawing of her and liked the idea of expanding the character. After reading the first episode, you'll agree that the possibilities are endless.
In the latest episodes, we meet Achilles and the poet Homer, who will become recurring characters!
I Can Make It To Christmas by Mark McGraw (of Handa-McGraw International). F IPlease check out and listen to Mark McGraw’s Christmas single from his album on Bandcamp,Can
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