The Plant

I'm trying to continue to put some good effort into my Fiction Writer's Workshop project and not avoid dealing with "Settings," which is the focus of the second chapter.

I don't think I'll address all or even most of the exercises, and of those I do, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be adapting them for my own use. A lot of what Novakovich suggests just doesn't seem like anything I'd write. I can't explain it, but you wouldn't expect Larry Niven to write woman's romance novels or Dashiell Hammett to write haiku.

Something in a few of the exercises suggests defining the protagonist by his or her environment, as if the person's setting is an extension of the individual's identity or the setting shapes and molds the person...or a little of both.

He was surrounded by a vastness of space and light and sound. "The Plant," as it was traditionally called (United States Postal Service Mail Processing Center, really), could be viewed as one enormous room, like a warehouse, but it was perpetually flooded with light. You could never tell the time of day, which was important since the Plant was in operation all the time.

This is what I used to do for the machine

The machines were always running, and clattering, and screeching (mainly when they were in the process of a high speed malfunction), and hammering, and whistling, and ringing. Some of the workers wore earplugs as a defense, but then that made it hard for them to hear the yelling of their supervisors when something (like the high speed malfunction of a mail processing machine as it turned several hundred first class letters into unintelligible confetti) went wrong.

The space of a football field (he didn't really know it was that size, but it seemed like a good analogy) was consumed with different machines processing different kinds of mail, requiring differently skilled personnel for the tasks, being replaced every eight, to ten, to twelve hours by the next shift in an endless ballet of blue collar precision.

He was where they always put him. As low man on the team, he got stuck with sweeping the mail out of the machine. There were always two people on the machines that processed letter mail, preparing it for delivery the next day, the feeder and the sweeper.

The feeder stood in one spot, pulling stacks of envelopes from bins, neatly and evenly stacking them on the feeder belt, and guiding one stack after another into the machine. The machine was programmed to read the zebra code that had been previously sprayed on the envelopes by another machine and order them in delivery point sequence (DPS). Then, this impossibly long device spit hundreds and hundreds of envelopes a minute into 100 or so slots (he never actually counted them, but they went on forever) up and down the device, and the second person on the team, me, had to quickly walk back and forth across the length of the mechanism, sweeping the slots becoming full into plastic trays stacked on metal wire racks, all containing the zip codes corresponding to the mail.

No wonder he was losing weight. Except for two 15-minute breaks and a 30-minute lunch, he was always in motion.

Mail is dry, incredibly dry. His hands were always chapped, cracked, and occasionally bleeding because the paper he was constantly moving from one place to another absorbed the water and oil from his skin like an alcoholic lapping the last ounces of vodka from a bottle. He once tried wearing gloves, but when he couldn't feel the mail, he dropped it, and dropping already sequenced mail is a bad thing.

He arrived at work at 11 p.m. usually, but sometimes sooner if they needed him. They could make him work up to twelve hours a shift, so if he couldn't see a clock (he stopped wearing his watch because he kept breaking it against the metal shelves of the machine or the wheeled wire cages where he stacked the mail trays when they were ready to be loaded onto trucks), the only way he knew it was morning or not was to look up at a skylight fifty feet above his head to see if it was black or blue.

Except for lunch, breaks, or, when the mail was finished being processed and he stacked all the mail in wheeled containers, he never saw anything but the hind end of the machine regurgitating its seemingly unending stream of letters, the racks and trays staged and ready to receive that mail, or the catwalks, support frames, metal ceiling (all white, making the lighting seem even brighter), and the occasional ceiling skylight in those few moments when he dared look up away from the mail, just so he could get a sense of distance.

In spite of the speed at which letters were launched like rectangular projectiles out of the slots and swept into the trays, he had learned to read addresses, recognize locations, and get a sense even of the order in which the mail was to be delivered. When the mail for each zone was trucked from the Plant to their respective local post offices, each carrier could retrieve the mail trays for his or her route and they would be (ideally...occasionally mistakes were made either by people or computers) in the exact order in which each tray and each letter in each tray, would be delivered. All the carrier had to do was "follow the mail."

All the sweeper had to do was run up and down the machine for hour upon hour, moving the mail from slots to trays from slots to trays, back and forth back and forth, ignoring the splitting flesh of his fingers, the maddening clatter of the machine, the paper dust, the dust of unknown origin he sucked into his lungs, the faint small of oil and ozone, and the always too bright flood of lights (light flare generators from every conceivable direction) that made it eternally day in the Plant, regardless of how much his body told him it was night and he should be in bed like normal human beings.

Ready to be loaded onto trucks at the dock

The last envelope was now in the last tray. The machine was silent as a man in a blue coat did something to it at a keyboard. Gangs of people descended upon his racks and he helped them load the trays into the wheeled containers, zone by zone, so they could be pulled out onto the dock and loaded into different trucks destined for different postal stations.

He never saw the docks. The dock people pulled the wheeled racks out to the trucks. His job was done when these containers were loaded. If he was lucky, that would be it and he could clock out and go home. If not, some other job would be waiting, either at a different machine, or maybe some manual sorting of mail the optical character reader (OCR) machines couldn't read well enough to spray paint a zebra code on (he always remembered the one a little girl addressed to her grandpa using different colored crayons).

But today there was silence. Well, not really silence. There were other machines churning, humming, and shuffling. There were people at end of shift shuffling out toward the time clocks, and then the bathrooms, and then out the door to go home. But at least his machine had stopped.

His supervisor gave him "the nod," it was his turn to leave. He looked up. The light from the distant skylight was blue. Someday he would be free. Someday he would walk out into the blue and never have to come back to through the darkness into the hideous bright light. For today, he could at least pretend.

The Fifth Chapter of the Book of Jonah

I was more than interested to find one of the exercises in the "Sources of Fiction" chapter in Josip Novakovich's book Fiction Writer's Workshop suggested reading the Bible and taking a tale, such as the story of Jacob and Esau (which I already did, sort of) or of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, and expanding on it. I especially appreciated Novakovich's mention of midrash, or as he puts it, the "Hebrew tradition of interpreting Biblical stories through filling in the gaps," since my wife is Jewish and I've read midrashim before.

One of the stories in the Bible that's always bothered me is the story of Jonah. The whole book is only four chapters long and it ends on a cliffhanger.

Jonah is tasked by God to travel from Israel to the great (non-Israelite) city of Nineveh and prophesy that if they did not repent of their sins, every living thing in the great city would die. Well, Jonah didn't want to do that because he really wanted Nineveh to be destroyed for its sins, and he was afraid that if he obeyed God, Nineveh might actually repent and be saved from destruction.

So like a petulant teenager, Jonah runs away, hops on the first ship heading out of town, and is soon out to sea.

God is not that easy to get away from though, and Jonah's adventures (you may recall he ended up spending a little time inside the innards of some sea creature) were just getting started.

To get the background for my small missive, read the Book of Jonah first. You can find it online at such places as BibleGateway.com or Chabad.org, depending on whether you prefer Christian or Jewish tradition.

After you're finished reading the fourth and (formerly) last chapter, read my "chapter five" and let me know what you think.

Now it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was grieved.

And he prayed to the Lord and said, "Please, O Lord, was this not my contention while I was still on my land? For this reason I had hastened to flee to Tarshish, for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, with much kindness, and relenting of evil.

And now, O Lord, take now my soul from me, for my death is better than my life." And the Lord said: Are you deeply grieved?

And Jonah had gone out of the city, and had stationed himself on the east of the city, and there he made himself a hut and sat under it in the shade until he would see what would happen in the city.

Now the Lord God appointed a kikayon, and it grew up over Jonah to be shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort, and Jonah was overjoyed with the kikayon.

Now God appointed a worm at the rise of dawn on the morrow, and the worm attacked the kikayon, and it withered.

Now it came to pass when the sun shone, that God appointed a stilling east wind, and the sun beat on Jonah's head, and he fainted, and he begged to die, and he said, "My death is better than my life."

And God said to Jonah; Are you very grieved about the kikayon? And he said, "I am very grieved even to death."

And the Lord said: You took pity on the kikayon, for which you did not toil nor did you make it grow, which one night came into being and the next night perished.

Now should I not take pity on Nineveh, the great city, in which there are many more than one hundred twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and many beasts as well?

-from Jonah chapter 4

Chapter 5

And Jonah replied to the Lord, "Did the kikayon sin against you and against your people Israel as did the people of Nineveh? Their sin was very great and yet you forgave them and they live. What did the kikayon do to live one day and then die?"

And God said to Jonah; "Consider the words of my servant Job: 'Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.' Are you greater than my servant Job who suffered severely at the hands of the Satan and yet did not lose his trust in Me?"

Jonah replied to the Lord, "Did not your servant Job also say, 'I would set out my case before Him, and I would fill my mouth with arguments?' Hear me and I will speak. If you grant life to the people of Nineveh and yet death to the innocent kikayon, please allow me to die as well, for my life has turned to ashes and my tongue to wormwood."

And the Lord spoke to Jonah saying, "My servant Elijah was one such as you, desiring death in the face of adversity and believing himself the only righteous one of my servants. An angel guided Elijah to Horeb where my servant Elijah found me, not in the wind, not in an earthquake, not in a fire, but in a gently blowing breeze. And while Elijah thought himself alone, I had indeed saved for Myself seven-thousand in Israel whose knees did not bow to the Ba'al nor did their lips kiss him."

And the Lord continued to speak to Jonah saying, "You speak of Hashem, Master of Legions as slow to anger, as having much kindness, and relenting of evil. Do you believe that I in My mercy only forgive the people of Israel? Is not the whole world Mine? Did I Myself not create it? Did I not breathe life into the mouth of every soul? If the people of Nineveh would sincerely repent of their sins, even great sins, should I, the Lord, not forgive them, even as I forgive the repentant of My people Israel?"

And the Lord said to Jonah, "My servant Elijah did not die, and he found Me in the stillness of a gentle breeze, and he left Horab and found Elisha, the son of Shaphat. And behold, I took Elijah up to Heaven in a great whirlwind and Elisha succeeded him, even as Joshua succeeded my servant Moses when the soul of Moses departed him on the other side of the Jordan."

"So what should my servant Jonah do?" the Almighty inquired.

Jonah's chest heaved with a sigh. "What can I do, O' Lord? Though the kikayon is dead, the people of the great city Nineveh live just I live. They have repented my God, just as I repent."

God had said to Jonah, "Now should I not take pity on Nineveh, the great city, in which there are many more than one hundred twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and many beasts as well?"

The people of Nineveh, more than one hundred twenty thousand of them, though they repented, though they were forgiven by God and they lived, still did not know their right hand from their left. They still did not know God, for there was only one prophet sent to be among them, and that was Jonah, who had not desired that Nineveh should be spared, at least not until now.

One day, long after the time of Jonah, another servant of the Lord's named Simon who is also called Peter, will witness a great miracle and say, "I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him."

So Jonah got up and left his hut east of Nineveh and returned to the great city as a prophet of God, and he spoke of the Lord to all who would listen, from the very least of the citizens to the mighty King of Nineveh, and he ministered to the people of Nineveh for many days.

One Afternoon in Sodom

Continuing with the exercises in the "Sources of Fiction" chapter in Novakovich's book, the assignment is to remember a verbal or physical fight and write a fictionalized version of it. It's supposed to be an easy assignment, particularly the dialog.

When I wrote Jacob and the Angel's Curse, I based it very loosely on a fight between two girls I witnessed in high school (a very long time ago). When I read this assignment, the first thing I thought of was the time I was attacked and beaten by a group of men when I was 16 years old.

In the early 1970s, racial tension was running high all over the United States. I had gone to the Homecoming football game at my high school with some friends and after the game, I became separated from them and attacked, pretty much the same way I describe below. Not much dialog in the story because what I remember most is feelings of panic and helplessness.

Unlike the fictionalized version I've rendered, I've long since gotten past the feelings of being afraid of people all the time, but for a year after the attack, I was very afraid of people of color. I changed the situation from racial gangs to rape gangs below because I wanted to use a somewhat more "generic" group of attackers. Most everything else is pretty much the same. I used Biblical place names just because they were handy. Oh, and I've cast myself as an adult in the story below.

The rape gangs were roaming all over Sodom that afternoon. Rumors had it that affiliate gangs had been shipped in from as far away as Gomorrah and Zoar. The police were everywhere, except, of course, they couldn't be everywhere. That's where my problems started.

A group of us had just left the stadium after the football game and were walking back to the parking garage. It was pretty ballsy to not cancel the game and even more ballsy for the fans to go watch it, but the Mayor was putting pressure on the team owners and stadium managers to keep things running as normally as possible. I stupidly thought that if the Wildcats and Cowboys were playing, it was safe to go with my mates and watch these two rivals clobber each other.

Frankly, I think someone should have declared martial law. I wouldn't have gone to the game that day with my mates, but I also would have avoided what came next and the lifetime of terror that followed.

I don't remember how I got separated from my group. All I remember is that I'd been lagging. Half a block behind us at the intersection were five or six cop cars and a bunch of officers trying to keep the peace. Crowds of people were milling everywhere, and the rape gangs were mixed in with the rest of us, attacking innocents at will.

I was scared and confused by everything happening around me but figured with the police so close, I'd be OK.

About six or seven guys moved in front of me, blocking me so I had to stop. I was still hoping they just wanted to threaten me. I was still hoping the police were looking up the street at us.

One of the guys in front of me very gently touched my right hand and softly said, "Hey."

That's when the sky fell in. I don't remember any pain, just a feeling of helplessness and almost weightlessness, as if I had been wading in the ocean, been caught by a wave and pulled underwater.

My glasses sailed into the air and were gone. It was the last thing I saw. I tried to curl up into a fetal ball with my eyes closed and my arms crossed over my head.

Then everything stopped and a new crowd surrounded me, police and ambulance attendants. Another guy with a camera ran in front of me, stopped briefly to snap a shot of me being scooped up out of the gutter, and ran off (my bloody face would be plastered all over the front page of the morning and evening editions of the local newspaper the next day).

A steady stream of blood poured out of my nose. As the ambulance guy tried to lift me out of the gutter, I felt a sharp stab of pain in my lower right back. Later, I found out one of the gangsters whipped me with a bicycle chain.

The gang bangers didn't have time to get my pants off, so they didn't get to live out their name as a rape gang, not with me anyway.

It doesn't even make sense to me why there are rape gangs and why they're so open about it. They used to only roam at night in bad neighborhoods, or that's the way I naively thought about certain parts of town. Now, they want to take over whole cities, making their own law or just taking apart the ones we're supposed to live by. Chaotic anarchists who want to run the world.

For the next week or so, I was in a lot of pain (well, the drugs helped). I couldn't bend at the waist and either had to stand straight up and walk very gingerly, or lay flat on my belly. My mates came over to say hi but they didn't want to stick around much. Maybe they felt guilty that I got hurt and they got away.

The police interviewed me while I was being put back together at the hospital, but I couldn't remember what any of the gang members looked like. I really wanted to identify them, too. I wasn't scared to say who they were, not then. But it all happened so fast. I didn't remember seeing any faces. I didn't feel any of the individual punches or being whipped by a chain. I didn't even remember being afraid.

I just knew I had the results of being beaten all over my back and face and the pain to go along with it.

I suppose if it had happened today, someone would have recommended counseling but back then, psychological treatment for assault and trauma victims wasn't common.

Eventually, the police rounded up the gangs and they either ended up in prison or deported. The streets were "safe" again, but not for me.

I'm not just terrified of groups of people but even of being alone with stranger. I remember I was riding on a bus to my job across town a month after I was attacked. There was only one other passenger so I wasn't too scared. Then the bus driver stopped at a transfer point and left to use the bathroom.

I can't really describe what it's like to be that afraid. I wasn't trembling or sweating, but every muscle in my back and shoulders was stiff and painful. I kept watching and waiting and planning how I'd curl up into a ball and hope I didn't get hurt too bad. The four or five minutes the driver was gone and I was alone with this guy seemed like an hour.

But nothing happened. The other guy probably didn't notice me. In fact, he completely ignored me and kept reading his newspaper. But being alone with him for even a tiny march of minutes was a nightmare. I have a lot of nightmares, especially when I'm awake.

I don't go out much anymore. I go to work because I have to, because I have to live, but that's about it. Shopping for food and a few other things I need. I watch TV now instead of going to the movies. My mates have lost interest in visiting me since all I want to do is stay in and play cards.

A lot of time has passed but I still think about the others like me, the other victims. I wonder if they're still as afraid and alone as I am. I wonder if they still hate their attackers and rapists as much as I do. I have violent fantasies of what I want to do with each of them, but they're just fantasies. If I were alone with even one of them, I'd be too paralyzed to do anything.

Nothing will be normal for me again. Sodom will never feel safe. Sometimes I wish the whole place would be wiped from the face of the earth.