Bill Lindblad

It’s a tradition to post stories in the month of October.  Call me a sucker for tradition.

I have no rare stories to post… bookseller, remember?  Instead, for the second year running, I’ve written something for the site.  So, this is the second story I’ve written over the past two decades.   I’m aiming for the productivity level of T.E.D. Klein.

SIX MINUTES UNDER LAKE DONNEGAN

“We’re going to die,” she said.

“That’s obvious,” Joseph said.  “Do you have to waste time saying the obvious?”  She felt a little twinge of appreciation as he turned her own phrase against her, playing the game until the end.  Tears welled in her eyes, and she closed them to prevent herself from breaking down again.  With only a few minutes left on Earth, she didn’t want to spend her time bawling.

She tried to focus on her faith, but instead she flashed back to moments before: driving along the highway, the rabbit darting out onto the road, the sharp left to avoid it, the reservoir….  She shook her head and rolled her shoulders, thankful that they’d been able to get free of the seat belts after the crash, at least.  Nothing in the car had been capable of breaking the glass, not even the Cross pen in her purse.  They could see the surface through the windshield but they weren’t going to be able to reach it.  The doors were jammed shut by the water pressure, even just a few yards deep.  Eight feet away from life.

The water was up to her lap, and rising rapidly.  Dinah opened looked over at her husband of thirty years, seeing the handsome youth he’d once been and the distinguished man he’d grown into.  His head was still bowed, still praying.

Dinah thought of their years together.  They’d met at a post office, waiting in what seemed like an interminable line.  Joseph had been using a cane because of a broken foot, but he’d still offered to let her in front of him because of the number of her packages.  They’d gotten to talking, and when they ran into each other at the bowling alley the next day the conversations continued.

It had been magical to find someone who could keep up with her train of thought, who understood when she was being serious and when she was attempting to be witty.  On rare occasions, before she learned how to anticipate his debating methods, he’d even been able to win arguments with her.  The first time that happened, she knew she’d found a potential husband.

The wedding had been beautiful, the honeymoon a dream, and although they’d had their share of fights and troubles, for the most part they’d had a nearly ideal life together.  They both had a competitive nature, manifesting in everything from games to friendly debates, and when they paired up against other couples they were nearly always the ones to come out on top.

Two children had followed, a boy and a girl.  They’d been raised in a loving home, and although both Kyle and Judy had complained about the rules as they were growing, both had developed into successful adults.  Judy had two boys now… two rambunctious toddlers, their grandchildren, the grandchildren they were never going to see again.  It was hard to believe that life was coming to an end.

Jospeh looked so handsome, despite the changes time had worn into him.  He wasn’t particularly tall, but when he stood it was straight like Eastwood in his prime, and his grey eyes radiated a pleasant warmth that matched his impish, deceptively youthful smile.  She wished she could see his eyes right then.

“At least we’ll be together in Heaven,” she told him.

“I hope not.”

Dinah blinked, confused.  “What?”

“Look,” Joseph said, raising his head.  He hadn’t been praying, he had simply been hanging his head as if tired.  “I don’t know if there’s any sort of afterlife.  I just know that if there is, I don’t want to be anywhere near you.”

Even in the moist air she felt her breath catch.  “I don’t understand.  Did… did you hit your head?”

“No, I did not hit my head, Dinah.  And I don’t want to hurt you, so I didn’t want to say anything.  But damn it, if there is a heaven, if we do see each other on the other side, stay away from me.”

Dinah started to cry again.  The water was up to her chest.  ”You don’t mean that.”

“The hell I don’t.  You’ve been nagging me for thirty years, ever since before we got married.  At first I thought it was cute.  A little back and forth, a little pleasant debate, never a real argument.  But you can’t let it go.  Ever.  Yes, you’re smarter than me, I admit it.  But I’m not a damned idiot, and that’s how you’ve made me feel every minute of every day for the last three decades.”

“If-”  She stopped, unable to force out the words, stunned by the vehemence from the man she loved, the man who shared her bed, the man who’d shared her life.  “If it was so bad, why didn’t you say anything?”

“I did! I said it all the time, and you laughed it off, or you’d stop for a day and then start up again.  Or you’d really get pissy and start crying, and… damn it, Dinah, I said I don’t want to hurt you.”

“If you love me, this is a terrible way of showing it.”  Tears were streaming down her cheeks, blending with the water at her chin.

“I didn’t say I loved you.  I just don’t like hurting anyone.  You’ve lived with me thirty years, and you don’t know that?”

The water was at her lips.  She stood up a little, aided by the buoyancy of the water but with only a small space left between her and the roof.  Each of his words was like a little knife, stabbing her and paralyzing her muscles.  She needed time to deal with what she’d heard, but she had no time.  Pleading, she said, “Please, Joseph… I’m sorry.  Please.  Can’t you forgive me, now?”

There was a momentary pause, and then his response.  “I’m not going to let you win just because you want to.  You can’t….”  The rest was lost to her, not because he had stopped speaking, but because her ears had slipped under the waterline and all she could hear were lapping sounds as water displaced air.  The water drained out as her head lifted up.  ”…all this time.”  She could tell he was crying as well.

She heard him cough once, then cough again.  He didn’t want to be together.  Or did he?  Maybe he had accepted her apology when she couldn’t hear it.  Her hand trembled as she started to reach out to him through the water.  Then she hesitated.  If he rebuffed her now, there would be no denying it, no chance, no hope.  Hope was all she had.

Dinah remembered that she’d been a good swimmer once, although she hadn’t been near a pool in years.  Joseph might not want to be together in their death… but she did, even with his hurtful words.  She’d been with him for decades and she knew how he thought.

While Joseph fought for his last breaths, sputtering and coughing, she slowly inhaled, taking in what remained of the moist, stale air.  She kept quiet as her husband inhaled, then slipped under the water.  She watched and waited, and her lungs burned with the pain of holding in her last breath of air.  It seemed like minutes, but seconds after he slipped beneath the surface she saw his final spasm as air bubbles burst from his mouth.

Dinah reached over and clasped the hand of her husband, gripping tightly enough to claim him in death.  When the bodies were found, they’d be together.  And maybe in whatever came beyond.  Steeling herself against the pain of inhaling water, she let loose her final breath.

The pain was as bad as she thought it would be.  Her throat spasmed and it felt like needles were jabbing into her esophagus.  Worse was the unexpected, the pain that radiated from the front of her face as water compressed the air deep in her sinuses, bursting the mucous membranes.  She shuddered, and the pain started to ebb away, along with her awareness.

With her sight fading into black, Dinah heard her husband release the rest of the breath he’d been holding.  She realized that Joseph knew how she thought, too, as her hand was pushed away.

(Note from SU Land. Our regularly scheduled essayist, Justine Musk, is lodged in pitched battle with a novel deadline — her post will appear down the road, but in the meantime here is an extra slice of Mr. William Lindblad)

By William Lindblad

Okay, it doesn’t exist yet, but it should. Here’s why:

Awards mean something, in a way most authors don’t care to admit to themselves. They mean a continued interest in your work after you stop writing, and especially after you’ve passed away. They also mean something when you’re basking in the radiated warmth of praise from your colleagues, or cashing a check for 50 thousand pounds for winning the Booker prize, or being inspired by its presence on a shelf near your computer (typewriter for you hardcore traditionalists.) But they also mean that you’ve been grouped with an elite cadre of writers.

There is an ocean of available books to read. Most readers work their way through less than five books every year. Those two facts are fearsome in their juxtaposed message. Now take out the effects of promotion by a publisher and self-promotion by the author, and books become lost in history.

Think of the books you read as a teenager. Some of them undoubtedly were on school reading lists. Others were being heavily promoted by the publisher. Some others weren’t getting a big push, but looked interesting, so you picked them up off the shelves.

When the buzz is present, casual readers will read the new, hot book. When it’s gone, they’ll stop looking for it. It’s not pleasant to realize that the book of yours that everyone’s raving about will have a shelf life roughly equivalent to a chocolate bar, but it’s the truth.

An award is a permanent promotional effort, varying in its impact in accordance with the prominence of the award. In terms of lasting impact, beyond-the-grave impact, awards are on the same level as school reading lists, major movies, and amazing contemporary sales figures. They encourage those readers who consume more than a handful of books every year to focus their attentions on writers beyond whoever is currently benefitting from the industry buzz. That, in turn, encourages publishers to bring them back decade after decade, further increasing the interest in the authors.

And that is a significant reason for having them.

In the science fiction field a few years back, the children of Paul Linebarger started The Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award. It was designed to focus attention on a sf or fantasy authors whose works deserved attention they were not receiving. Winners so far have been Olaf Stapledon, R.A. Lafferty, Edgar Pangborn, Henry Kuttner & C.L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, and William Hope Hodgson.

People familiar with sf/f history will recognize all of those names. They were not people with minor acheivements; they all created impressive bodies of work, often including a book or three within the field which is rightfully considered a true classic. The award is named after a similar author, a writer whose work created ripples which continue through today.

Honestly, there are critical reasons to analyze the merits of the Cordwainer, and the work of all of the recipients, but I’m not concerned with them. While I am undeniably knowledgable about the science fiction field, at heart I am more of a reader than a scholar. I am thus interested far more in the fact that the Cordwainer, every year, brings some attention to an author who, despite having decades of industry buzz and impressive sales figures, has become relatively unread outside of the historian circles with the passing of years. It serves as, effectively, an independent promotional arm of an effort like the NESFA Press or Millipede Press reissues, or the legendary Ballantine Adult Fantasy series.

Dark Fantasy/Horror could use something of this sort, and I’m suggesting Karl Edward Wagner for the headliner. There are people who made a great impact on the field, but died before they could earn the Life Achievement for World Fantasy or Grandmaster for the Stokers. R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Seabury Quinn, Frederic Brown… and those are merely the older authors. When and if Richard Laymon’s posthumous sales figures dim and the next Big Thing steps up to take his place on the paperback racks, it would be nice to have something to encourage new readers to pick up his work. KEW was a talented writer, but he was also an anthologist who scoured fanzines and semi-prozines as well as the professional publications for promising work; he respected other’s work so much as to butt editorial heads with L. Sprague de Camp over the Conan work; and when it looked like August Derleth’s death was going to shut down Arkham House, he and a couple friends put together Carcosa as publishers. I think he’d been an appropriate choice for the award’s name.

This has been an exercise in speculation. This is the sort of thing I think about when I’m working at the computer keyboard, and this seems like an appropriate venue to share it with people. Please, let me know what you think.