Adventure

The Hero’s Journey (aka If I would have spoken)

May 25, 2020 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

Our daughter would have celebrated her high school graduation last week.

Instead, what formal ceremonies to mark the occasion will be limited to a small service next week with family at the high school, and this past Sunday, when she donned her cap and gown to walk across the church parking lot during an outdoor service. There were horn honks instead of applause.

She is fine with all of this. Our little girl has been through quite a lot in her short life, resulting in a heart that is ever bent toward the hurts and needs of others. A pandemic? Doesn’t phase her.

But even as our daughter doesn’t considered herself cheated in any way by what’s taken place in the past two months, I can’t say the same for her father. Last year, the high school principal asked if I would be available to speak at their 2020 graduation. I told him the honor would be mine. Whether things would have worked out that way is something I’ll never know, but I like to think they would. After all, who wouldn’t jump at the chance to speak on one of their child’s biggest days?

Since that day has come and gone in a way that’s wholly different than anyone imagined, I thought I’d post something here. Whether these would have been the words I gave to my daughter and her graduating class, I don’t know. Likely it would have been something completely different. Regardless, this is what I’m thinking about on this warm but cloudy May morning with the dog snoozing beside me and the creek singing past my upstairs window:

I had to wonder why when I was asked to give this speech.

Why me, considering that in my time here, I was little more than a jock with a C average. What could someone like me offer in the way of wisdom to the class of 2020?

I’ll admit that I don’t know that answer. I don’t know much, actually. But I do know what makes a good story, and I think that sort of knowledge is well-suited for the few minutes I have with each of you today. Because whether you believe it or not, whether you accept it or not, right now you are all living out your own story.

And my advice to you is simple: make your story a good one.

But how? I’ll tell you how.

Many novelists, myself included, hold to a theory called the hero’s journey, which was conceived in 1949 by a mythologist and literature professor named Joseph Campbell. The idea is a simple one on the surface: every great myth and every great hero, from Gilgamesh to Moses to Bilbo Baggins, no matter how different they are, follow the same steps along the same path of life.

Campbell named 17 stages of the hero’s journey. For the sake of time and your attention, I’m going to limit those to the high points. I want to give you a guide of sorts to go by, because your lives have changed dramatically over the past few months. In many ways, they’re going to change even more over the next few years. It’s going to be easy to get lost along the way. Easy to start doubting, whether it’s yourself or your place in the world. It’s important to know the dangers waiting for you out there, and the hurts that are coming. Most important of all, you have to know the rewards waiting if you endure.

The hero begins in what Campbell called the Ordinary World. It’s the world you’ve always known, the world of your everyday. You’re in that world right now, but you won’t be for long, because you are about to start your own journey by moving to the next step — the Call to Adventure.

That step for you begins right now. The diploma in your hand is a key to unlock a door moving you deeper into a world filled with as much fear as possibility. There are wonders out there beyond any you realize, and there are also terrors you cannot fathom.

These first two stages, the ordinary world and the call to adventure, are the same for everyone. Hero and coward, victor and vanquished, the remembered and the forgotten, all face these two phases of life. The difference between them begins at the next stage, which is the Refusal of the Call.

Along with the talents you possess and the dreams you have come worries that any of it matters in the end, and doubts that you can ever achieve the goals you’ve set. You think, “I can’t do this. It’ll never work. I’m nothing, and I’ll always be nothing.”

That inward battle between doubt and faith, despair and hope, is one you will fight for the rest of your life. And right here is where the hero’s journey ends for most.

But while the ordinary person allows him or herself to be consumed by doubt and fear, the hero understands that in order to do great things, doubt and fear must be fought with faith and courage.

The ordinary person refuses the call to adventure and remains forever an ordinary person. The hero, however, doesn’t let fear and doubt take hold. That means you have to answer the call to adventure laid out here this afternoon. It means you don’t take this piece of paper home and shove it into a drawer. Look at it. Cherish it. Understand what it means.

Do that, and you’ll enter the next stage, Crossing the Threshold. The hero moves from the ordinary world into a world that’s more beautiful but filled with more danger than anything known before.

You’ll find that world soon enough, when you trade high school for college. You’ll find that world again, when you trade college for adulthood. Like all heroes, what you do once you cross the threshold will determine the course of your life. It will not be

easy going. You’ve discovered that already. You will discover it again. The world has teeth, and those teeth will find you. But without that struggle, life turns meaningless and empty. Without that fight, the hero cannot be made into a hero.

You’ll meet people to help you along the way, the stage called Supernatural Aid, when you’ll find your own Gandalf and your own Obi-Wan. You’ll find friends. Enemies. You’ll find ordeals and trials so difficult that you don’t know how you’re going to come through it whole.

You’re going to want to turn back, give up. You’re going to discover that the greatest enemy you will ever meet is in the one living in your own thoughts, and you’re going to know just how weak you really are.

These, too, are all stages of the hero’s journey. These are the things you must struggle with in order to fulfill your destiny. The things that will nearly break you. The things that will become your own personal dragons.

But that act of becoming, of learning and growing and leading and suffering, leads to the stage called the Reward. The hero is transformed from an ordinary person into the person he or she is meant to become. It’s that degree you want. That job you dream of. It’s the climax, the final and harshest battle, the moment that defines a meaningful life and the worst death possible, the death of dreams, the death that leaves you alive but numb.

If you work hard, if you endure, you’ll find the very treasure that you left your ordinary world to discover.

I’m proof of that.

But then comes one of the most important steps of your hero’s journey: the Road Back. There will come a moment when you must make a choice between your own personal wants and a higher calling. And just like the refusal of the call, some will

choose selfishness and return to their lives as ordinary people. But the hero will always choose the higher calling of placing the good of others above the self.

The last stage is the Return, that day you finally present your changed self to the world. The day you step forward armed with all you’ve learned to bring hope to others. The day when you realize that nothing will ever be the same, when you understand that what is past does not have to define you, and that God put your eyes in front of you so you can see where you’re going, not where you’ve been.

That is the hero’s journey. That is your journey beginning right here. So embrace it. Take it seriously. You understand more than anyone that the world is a mess. The world has always been a mess. There has always been darkness crouching at the door. But in every generation, there have always been lights that shine outward to keep that darkness at bay.

Every one of you today has a decision to make. You can be one of those lights, or you can add to that darkness. Those are the only choices you have.

You can hold this diploma in your hands go back to your lives like nothing’s changed. You can refuse that call and let someone else do the hard work of making the world better. You can be ordinary. That’s fine. The world is filled with good, ordinary people.

Or you can start your own hero’s journey right here, right now. You can understand that you come this way only once. That you have a purpose no one else can fulfill.

There are dragons out there. Slay them. There are monsters in the dark. Stand up to them. There are hurts in the hearts of everyone you meet. Help heal them.

The world needs you. So shine your light. Starting right now.

Thank you.

A lifetime of stories

July 21, 2017 by Billy Coffey 4 Comments

I am lost among library stacks when I hear the voice—“Puh . . . puh . . . ”

—a deep and halting baritone of a man unsure. Two rows over, maybe three. It’s hard to tell with all the books. The beauty of a library is that sense of aloneness you find even when surrounded by so many people. There is no ruckus, little noise. You get to thinking there’s no one else anywhere around, and what can happen in that book you’re after, that author, can seep right out of your mind and across your lips in pieces, like this:

“Puh . . . puh.”

Me, I’m looking for a Ray Bradbury. Even I get into the act (“Brad . . . Brad . . .”) before I find it, there on the bottom shelf. I stoop when I hear, “Puh . . . pig.”

Pig?

Now another voice alongside the man’s, softer and almost grandmotherly: “Yes, very good. Keep going.”

So here I am, crouched in the Ba-Br aisle of the fiction section inside the county library, wondering what I’m going to do. Because I really should mind my own business. Get my book and be on my way. But now the man’s voice is going again—“Kah . . . kah . . . ”—and I don’t want to go on my way, I’ve even forgotten about Ray Bradbury, I only want to know what’s going on. My mother would call it sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong. I call it natural curiosity, which is a vital part of being a writer.

“Cow,” the man says.

And the other: “Excellent! Yes, now the next.”

I stand. Walk out of the aisle past Ba-Br and Ca-Do and all the way beyond Faulkner and O’Connor, where I stop to peek. Sitting at a carrel tucked away in the corner of the room is a white-haired woman in a floral print dress and a man wearing faded khakis and a plain white shirt. In front of the man is a picture book, a bright orange cover with blue letters that spell Let’s Go to the Farm!

The woman leans over, rattling the silver chain fastened to the frames of her glasses. She smiles and waits as what is happening here slowly dawns upon me. This man is learning to read.

You may be surprised. I’m not. Scattered all around these mountains are folks who manage roadways by the shapes of the signs they drive past rather than the letters printed on them. They run their mail over to the neighbors to get the bills read. They sign their receipts with a simple X.

“Huhh. Or . . . ”

This isn’t some hick over there. Not some rube from the holler. He looks like a dad fresh out of the suburbs, a guy who likes to putter around in the garden every weekend before playing eighteen at the country club.

“Orse,” he says. Then: “Horse?”

The way he looks up, it’s like a school kid begging his teacher to nod her head. Eyes wide as though questioning the hope he feels, desperate to know if it’s justified. If it’s real.

“That’s it exactly,” she says. “Well done.”

When the woman smiles, it is as if a dam bursts inside him. The man leans back, creaking the chair, grinning so wide that I grin myself. “Horse,” he says again, looking not at her but at the shelves upon shelves of books around him, a lifetime of stories waiting to be told. Whole worlds to explore. He does not say it, but the words are plain on his face: everything seems so BIG now. So . . . wonderful.

And I stand here peeking around the corner, thinking of everything this man is about to experience. All those characters he is about to meet, all those lands he is about to visit, all those lives he is about to live.

All found within pages of books.

Release Day: Some Small Magic

March 14, 2017 by Billy Coffey 3 Comments

Let me tell you about a kid I know, a boy named Abel.

In many ways he’s not unlike a lot of children around here, meaning Abel’s family is poor and he has only one parent at home. That would be Lisa, Abel’s momma. Lisa spends most of her time waiting tables down at the diner. The tips aren’t much but they provide. There’s groceries enough, along with the rent money for their little rundown house along a dead-end dirt road outside town. Abel stays home most times. He came into the world with a mild form of brittle bone disease. Any awkward step can leave Abel casted and laid up for weeks. He’s got to be careful in what he does. Lisa worries about her boy. There are times, many times, when Abel knows himself a burden his momma cannot bear.

But I don’t want you thinking everything in Abel’s life is bad.

Far from it. He doesn’t have much but believes that okay; very often the ones truly cursed in life are those who have more than they know what to do with. It’s hard for Abel to get around with those soft bones, but there isn’t much exercise involved in reading. That’s what he does mostly, Abel reads, which has turned him into maybe the smartest kid I’ve ever known. And you can say all you want about the way his classmates pick on him, Abel’s got someone who will do just about anything in the world for him. Dumb Willie Farmer might only be the janitor at the elementary school (and might only be Dumb, as the name implies), but you will find no better friend. Ask Abel, he’ll tell you.

And about that house: sure it’s nothing more than a rented little shack, but it’s set along the edge of a field where the trains pass three times a day. Abel loves his trains. He’ll limp out there every day to count the cars and wave at the conductor. His daddy’s gone, prayed into the sky before Abel was born, but some days Abel will wave at that train going by and imagine a daddy he never knew waving back.

I’m not sure how life would have turned out for Abel had he not gotten into trouble with his momma and cleaned their house as an apology. Have you ever noticed how quick things can change off one small decision? It happened to Abel that way. He even cleans up the spare bedroom in back of the house where Lisa says he should never go, and that’s where he finds his daddy’s letters—shoved into an old popcorn tin and addressed to Abel Shifflett of Mattingly, Virginia. Some of these letters are dated from years back, but the one on top? Sent three weeks ago. Abel can only sit and ponder it all. His daddy’s not dead. And more than that, one of those letters reveal where his not-dead daddy is: a place called Fairhope, North Carolina.

It’s one of those times when all of life’s murky darkness gets shot through with a beam of light.

Abel knows what he’s supposed to do. He’s going to find his daddy and bring him home. Because that will fix everything, you see? His momma won’t have to work so hard anymore. The two of them won’t have to struggle. If Abel can get his daddy home, they’ll all be a family. It’s all Abel has ever wanted.

The problem is how a ten-year-old boy with soft bones is supposed to make it all the way down to someplace in Carolina without getting found. It’s too long of a way, and there will surely be danger. But then Abel realizes he has a secret weapon in his friend Dumb Willie, and the two of them hatch a scheme to run away from home. They’ll hop one of the trains coming by Abel’s house and ride it as far as they need. It isn’t a terrible idea so far as ideas go, but one which doesn’t take long to go awry. Hopping a moving train at night is an act fraught with peril, especially with a broken little boy and his not-so-smart friend. Abel’s journey seems to end before it begins when he is crushed under the rails.

But this isn’t a tragic story—oh no. This is a tale of magic big and small, and Abel and Dumb Willie aren’t the only ones at the train that night. Death itself has come in the form of a young woman to take Abel on. One look at this broken boy is enough to convince her this is a thing she cannot do. Even Death carries a burden too great, having witnessed so many children having their lives ended in so many needless ways. And while both Death and Dumb Willie (who is not so Dumb after all) understand what has happened to Abel, Abel himself does not. He convinces the strange but pretty girl who saved them to join in their journey, after which he promises to let her take them home.

So it is that Death itself accompanies two boys along the rails through the wilds of West Virginia and eastern Tennessee, clear to the Carolina mountains. Looking for a father long thought dead. Looking for a little magic.

That is the story in short for my eighth novel, Some Small Magic, which is out today.

There’s more to Abel’s journey (trust me, a lot more), but the rest is for you to discover. Believe me when I say you won’t be disappointed.

It’s my favorite book so far, and you can pick it up by heading here.

In the meantime, should you find yourself at a railroad stop in central Appalachia, do yourself a favor. Scan those boxcars as they fly past. They might not be all empty. And if you see three faces peering out at the blue sky, send a little prayer their way.

Because those three are bound west, toward home.

Our inner Bam Bam

January 19, 2017 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

mountain bike pixbay

He is eighty-one pounds of pure energy, a spring wound tight and apt to blow at any point into any direction,

and he has lived across the street from me for the entirety of his nine years on this planet. His name isn’t near as important as the nickname he’s been given.

We call him Bam-Bam.

Pure boy, Bam-Bam. Blond haired and thick-chested, he has the eyes of one both enthralled with the world and eager to conquer it. I’m not sure how far he’ll get in that regard, but he’s done a fair job subjugating the neighborhood. Every house on our block is his domain, every bit of dirt his playpen. You’ll see him zipping down the street on his bike (complete with one of those electronic gizmos on the right handlebar he turns to make a motorcycle sound), or his scooter, or his Big Wheel. Very often he’ll be half-dressed. Bam-Bam doesn’t hold to shirts or shoes, preferring the feel of the wind at his stomach and the good earth between his toes.

His momma tries to dress him, I promise you. It doesn’t take. The other day I watched Bam-Bam come out the front door decked out in so many layers you would have thought he was embarking on an arctic expedition. Two minutes later I looked again, and all he had on was his jeans. I never knew what he did with those clothes until the mail lady came the next day and dug out a sweater, a scarf, and a heavy coat from the mailbox before putting in the mail. From what I heard, Bam-Bam had to answer for that one.

He is impervious. Cold doesn’t bother him, or snow.

Bam-Bam has a penchant for running around in the yard during thunderstorms and soaks up the heat like a lizard. Think of a mini-Jason Bourne.

Not that everyone on our street is always thrilled when he’s around. I can’t count how many times I’ve had to tell Bam-Bam not to shoot at our birds (not that he listens, and not that the birds are in any danger; Bam-Bam loves to hunt, but you can’t kill much with a Nerf gun) and to please-for-the-love-of-God don’t run out in the road when Harold Thompson races by in his souped-up Camaro. He’s loud: the only thing more ear piercing than Bam-Bam’s laugh (which is near constant) is his crying (which is just as often). And you have to be careful what you let him do. Bam-Bam is more than willing to help you with just about everything, so long as you realize what you’re trying to fix will likely end up more broken if he’s involved.

You have to love him, because he’s that way. But that won’t stop you from taking a peek out the window to make sure he’s not around before you step outside to do something. Bam-Bam’s daddy summed it up nicely last summer when he told me, “My boy’s a blessin’, no doubt. And he also must be punishment for some past sin I cannot reckon. Either way, I expect that boy’s gone drive me to drink.”

I could only agree.

And yet I will sit on our porch in the evenings after school and watch him try to shoot down a cloud or sneak up on a deer or spin himself in circles until he either yarks up his lunch or falls down giggling, and I can feel nothing but envy for my neighbor Bam-Bam.

Because I was once like him, once upon’a. I was that boy through and through, and so was my son (truth be told, my son still sometimes is). There was a time I treated life a gift to unwrap every day, and I looked upon it all with an unquenchable joy.

There are times I wonder where that boy I was went.

Maybe he’s gone, died away so the man I was bound to be could come. And maybe he’s still inside me somewhere, wanting out.

It’s funny how so much of our youth is spent wanting to be grown up, only to spend so much of our grown-up years wanting to be kids again.

I’ve heard that youth is wasted on the young. I think wonder is, too.

Where you belong

July 13, 2015 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

In January, 2010, satellite pictures of the Amazon rain forest revealed the presence of a hidden community living in three clearings in the Javari Valley, which lies near the Brazil/Peru border. Subsequent flight expeditions over the region confirmed about 200 people lived in the tiny village. Not a big deal, really. Despite notions to the contrary, the Amazon is home to many communities. What set this community apart, however, was that it had never been seen before. Scientists had stumbled upon a tribe of people unknown to the world.

I confess to a geeky side. News stories such as that one rock my world. Imagine that in an age of telescopes that can see into the farthest reaches of the universe and submarines that can reach the very depths of the ocean, there are still entire cultures that have somehow managed to remain hidden in the untrodden places of our fair planet. Cut off from civilization, blissfully ignorant of things like ISIS and presidential elections and Keeping Up with the Kardashians. It’s a storyline straight out of Indiana Jones.

It’s enough to make me giddy.

It’s also enough to make me wonder what happiness they must enjoy. Imagine being able to live life unfettered by nasty things like time and career. You rise with the sun, venture into the jungle to either kill or dig up some breakfast, and eat it in a hammock surrounded by your family and friends. Repeat again for lunch and dinner. Maybe weave a basket or have a dance. Watch the kids play with critters and pets. Make sure the fire has plenty of wood. Go check the crops, then maybe visit your buddy who lives in the next hut to shoot the breeze and engage in a bit of gossip. Watch the sun go down. Go to bed. Do it all again the next day.

No taxes to pay or commutes to endure. No 401k to watch as it shrinks into oblivion. And who cares about gas prices when you’ve never even seen a car? No, the busy world you’ve never seen simply passes you by and leaves you alone. No muss, no fuss, just a hammock and the jungle around you.

I’ll be honest, I envy those people. They don’t know how good they have it.

Regardless of how much I long to chuck it all, fly to the Amazon, and apply for admission into the tribe, it won’t happen. The Brazilian government has a strict policy regarding uncontacted tribes. They are not to be bothered.

But just in case I would get that chance, I could see myself trekking down some forgotten jungle path and coming across the tribal chief, who would invite me to his hut for a little food and a lot of talk. And more than likely, he’d look at me and laugh.

“What are you doing here?” he’d ask. “What, you think WE have it good? Really? Tell you what, you try growing all your food in the jungle. Doesn’t always work, you know. And it’s not like you can just run down to the Food Lion for some chips and dip if the animals and the weather take your crops. Which happens, like, ALL the time.

“You can go hunting. Lots of animals in the jungle to eat. Of course, most of them will just as soon eat YOU. Try stepping on a snake or a spider or running across a panther. Tell me how that goes for you. And you better hope you don’t run into anyone from the tribe down the river, because they’ll just as soon kill you as let you pass.

“Can’t go to the hospital, either. We don’t have one here. We have a doctor of course, and he’s a real smart guy, but in the end the only thing he can do is pray to the gods and give you some plants to eat. Plants don’t cure everything, you know. And the gods…well, let’s just say they do their thing and we do ours. We don’t understand them, we just try to keep them happy.

“Sure, you can stay. You’ll probably live a few more years, most of us make it to 50 or so before we’re so worn out that we drop. That’s assuming you don’t get bitten or eaten or killed, though. Actually, why don’t you just run on back home where you belong.”

At which point I probably would.

And I would take with me this lesson: Life is tough. Doesn’t matter who you are or where you are. We’re all looking for something better, we’re all stressed, we’re all struggling for a little hope.

In a world that seems determined to point out our differences, those are similarities we will always share.

The puddle

May 21, 2015 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

It was a hard rain, and fast—the sort of pour that early May is known for here. It came from clouds the color of dark smoke that rolled over town like a wave, here and then gone over the mountains. What was left in its wake was the grateful song of a robin from the oak in the backyard, and the sugary smell of wet grass and tilled earth.

And the puddle.

It was not a deep puddle, nor was it wide. Maybe three lengths of my boot and deep enough to reach the second knuckle of my index finger. It lay just beyond the mailbox at the end of the lane, a pothole the rain had converted into a passing mirror of liquid glass.

The mailman had delivered the day’s assortment of junk mail and bills just before the first cracks of thunder. Now that the sun had returned and the robin was singing and that sweetness was in the air, I decided to go check the box. A small boy riding a dirt-road-brown bicycle rounded the corner as I made my way down the lane. He tried a wheelie, barely managing to get the front tire off the ground, then uttered a Yes! as if what he’d just done was almost supernatural.

I gave the puddle a wide berth—I was in blue jeans and flip flops, and didn’t want to risk getting either wet. There are few things in life more irritating than wet cuffs on your blue jeans.

I’d just pulled the mail out of the box (a reminder of the upcoming Book Fair, a ten dollars off coupon for Bed, Bath & Beyond, and the cable bill) when the boy squeezed the brake levels on the handlebars. The bike skidded nearly ten feet on the wet pavement, the last four or five fishtailing, which produced another Yes!, this one whispered.

I looked up. The boy was staring at my feet, where the puddle lay. A soft breeze rippled the surface, and for a moment, however brief, my mind turned to something I’d once heard from an old relative—all mirrors have two sides, she’d said. One side you look at. The other side looks into you.

“That’s a pretty cool puddle,” the boy said to me.

I looked at it and then to him. “Sure is.”

He nodded, and I got the feeling it was the sort of nod that was more the punctuation on the end of a decision rather than an agreement with what I’d just said.

I thought he was going to ride through it. That’s what I would have done at his age. Plus, it would have the added benefit of turning his dirt-road-brown bike back into the red I suspected was underneath. But he didn’t. He threw down the kickstand and dismounted as if from a mighty steed in the Old West.

He walked to me and toed the edges of the puddle.

“You gonna use that?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Mind if I borry it?”

“You can borrow it all you want.”

He nodded and took three kid-sized steps back. Then he ran forward, leaped, and landed square in the middle of the puddle. Water billowed up over his legs, reaching his waist. He lands with a smile that to me is brighter than the rainbow over us.

“Thanks, mister,” he said. “You can have a go if you want.”

He rode off, a plume of road water trailing behind him. I held the mail in my hand and tried to remember the last time I jumped into a puddle in the road after a May rainstorm. Years, probably. Probably long ago, back when I had my own dirt-road-brown bike.

Puddles aren’t adult things. Adults avoid them. They splash and make a mess and get the cuffs of your jeans wet. It isn’t responsible or mature.

Maybe. But then there’s that mirror inside each of us. The one we look into that shows us who we are, and the one that looks into us and shows us who we should be.

I won’t tell you if I jumped or not. Some things need to stay secret. But I will say this—I can’t wait for it to rain again.