dreams

Pub Day: Steal Away Home

January 2, 2018 by Billy Coffey 2 Comments

Steal Away Home

The first gift I remember getting was a baseball bat,

one of those giant hollow ones made out of bright blue plastic from down at the Family Dollar. The kind of bat you can’t help but swing and hit something, anything. Dad bought it for me. A single plastic ball, bright white and roughly the size of a coconut, came taped to the handle like an afterthought. Summertime, that’s when it was. Hot sun and a warm breeze. Me with a Spiderman T-shirt and Dad wearing a pair of cut-off shorts, a wad of tobacco in his jaw. Sometime in the mid-70s. Had to have been, because I can still see Dad’s old truck parked in the driveway beside Mom’s yellow Camaro.

And I can see the two of us out on the sidewalk in front of the house, Dad’s hand on my shoulder as he points to a splotch of gray paint on the sidewalk. Him telling me to put my foot right there, hold that bat up behind my shoulder. Get ready. Watch the ball. That pitch coming in slow and easy—“I’m rainbowin’ it,” Dad says—and me shutting my eyes to swing.

I can see all of it, every detail even these many years later.

The memory stands as fresh and clear as the one of me sitting down to my computer just a few minutes ago. Isn’t that strange? We’ve all lived so many moments, each of them recorded on some bit of gray matter in some fold of our brains, yet we’ve forgotten much more of our lives than we can recall. I can’t tell you what I did last Thursday, but I can relive that moment of taking my first swings of a baseball bat forty years ago with such clarity that I may just as well be five years old again.

I’m not sure why some memories are like that, so precise when so many others are subject to fading. But I do have a theory. Those first meetings with people and things which will come to help define our lives are ones we never forget. Those memories shine no matter the distance between when we are and when they happened because we continually return to them, keeping them strong, keeping them shiny.

That’s baseball to me. Always has been.

And I get it if baseball isn’t your thing. Really, I do. The days of every person in the country huddling around the radios in their living rooms to hear a nightly game are gone. It’s all too slow for our fast-paced lives. So much standing around and spitting, so little action. Weird rules. Steroids.

Sure.

But for me baseball was always more. Not merely a game, but my first lessons in everything from poetry to physics, history to religion.

For instance:

The only specifications for a baseball field is the distance between the bases and from the pitcher’s mound to home plate. Meaning the size of a field is limited only to one’s imagination. Meaning, I guess, that a baseball field could technically stretch on into infinity.

And there is no clock to a baseball game, no threat of time expiring. It takes as long as it takes. There must be a winner and a loser. A game perfectly played would last for eternity.

But here’s my favorite: scientifically speaking, hitting a major league fastball is impossible. The time it takes for a 95 mph pitch to reach home plate is shorter than the time it takes for the human eye to register it, much less for the human eye to then coordinate the rest of the body to swing a rounded bat in the correct plane and degree to meet a rounded ball. Meaning that game you might believe is boring really isn’t at all, it is a succession of small miracles unfolding before your very eyes.

Infinity. Eternity. Miracles. Sounds like my kind of thing.

I played baseball all through high school and had designs on playing much longer before life got in the way. That’s a story for later, though. But I still love the game and will upon occasion still wake myself in the night from swinging a bat in my dreams. It seemed inevitable, then, that the day would come when I would write a baseball book. That day is today.

Steal Away Home is my ninth novel (NINE. No wonder I’m so tired) and is out today.

You can learn more about it here.

If you’re a baseball fan, rejoice. You’ll find plenty there to nourish your love of the game. But don’t despair if you don’t know a fielder’s choice from a fungo, because it isn’t about baseball at all deep down, it’s about the things we love and come to depend upon to give our lives meaning, and how all of those things will eventually lead us to ruin unless our love is placed first in the one person who will never let us down.

Go grab you a copy. I promise you’ll love it.

A letter to me

July 6, 2015 by Billy Coffey 2 Comments

When helping your parents clean out their attic, it helps if you approach the task as a recovery mission. You aren’t discarding, you’re salvaging. I know this from experience. I did it three weeks ago.

We found the normal things—Christmas decorations long forgotten, toys long neglected, and several items of which no one can remember using, much less purchasing. We found not-so-normal things as well. Like the box of notebooks.

You could say I caught the writing bug early; I was filling notebooks before I understood what words were, drawing pictures of the sun and trees and describing them with an jumble of mismatched and incoherent letters. These, sadly, were not in the box.

The high school stuff was.

Lyrics mostly, as if the words to Skid Row’s “18 and Life” and Cinderella’s “Coming Home” were so moving, so utterly profound, that they warranted preservation for the ages.

There were thoughts as well. Plenty of them, all sopping with the angst and shallowness that define the teenage years. Some were laughable in their naivety—“The suddenness of life is a guarantee the soul is eternal.” Others, to my surprise, weren’t so bad at all—“We have lost much of the language of religion, but little of our longing for a faith in something larger than ourselves.”

Memories, all. Not the false ones either, the ones that are saccharine in the remembering. These were more a mixture of sweet and salty, proof that my recollections were true. Regardless, the decision of whether the box was to be discarded or salvaged was an easy one.

It all went to the junk pile save for a single sheet of paper torn from the notebook on top. The last page, as a matter of fact. Written two days before I graduated.

It was a letter. Not to the me I was then, but to the me I am now.

A portion:

“I don’t know who you are (hard to do that, especially since it’s tough enough knowing who I am). I don’t know what you’re doing, either. But I can make the sort of guess with both that people do when they see a falling star or a discarded eyelash, the sort of guess that has a wish at the end. So I’m guessing you’ve made it. I’m guessing you’re rich and famous and happy, and I’m guessing you’re far away. And I figure as long as I guess and wish those things, I’m going to be okay. Because that means I’ll eventually be you.”

I remembered writing that. It was late at night. I was outside, scribbling in my notebook while watching the stars and sneaking a Marlboro red. I remembered how I felt then—sweet and salty, so it must be true—knowing that part of my life was about to fall away and another was ready to begin.

I was afraid. Afraid of the world and my place in it. And in that fear I wrote that night with a sense of purity and honesty that even now I try to capture each time I reach for pen and paper.

I wrote those words in secrecy, and now, all these years later, I snatched them away in secrecy as well. No one saw me stash that letter into my pocket. I’ve kept it since on the top of my office desk, there and not there, like a sickness hidden from a doctor for fear it is a symptom of something more serious.

“So I’m guessing you’ve made it. I’m guessing you’re rich and famous and happy, and I’m guessing you’re far away. And I figure as long as I guess and wish those things, I’m going to be okay. Because that means I’ll eventually be you.”

I couldn’t let those four sentences go. They weren’t supposed to be disposed. They were supposed to be salvaged. I needed to answer myself.

Today is my birthday. I suppose by some sort of twisted logic, that’s why I waited until now to send a note of my own back in time. After all, birthdays are much like graduations. They are a falling away and a beginning.

So on my porch this morning in front of the mountains and the birds and the rising sun, I wrote this:

“I’m not rich. I’m not famous. And though twenty-five years separate us in time, only five miles separate us in distance. But I’ve found things greater than those, and I’ve become happy in the finding. Because the things you search for as a child are not the things you stumble upon as an adult, and thank God for that.”

2015: Anywhere but here

May 28, 2015 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

Class of 2015 These days it’s not only the bright colors and long sunshine that tells me summer is close; the cars and trucks tell me, too. Specifically, the back windows on the rusting hoopties the neighborhood teens drive. That’s where the messages go, whether in soap or, more often, traced through a layer of dirt and pollen with a finger.

SDHS 2015, they say.

GRADUATE!!

And this one, seen often from my porch in the last evenings, which sums up the general thinking of anyone between the ages of sixteen and eighteen—

ANYWHERE BUT HERE

I get that, I really do, at least in some way. I was eighteen once. Yet while my friends for the most part succumbed early on to the virulent strain of wanderlust that infects the young, I remained largely unaffected. The talents I’d grown up believing would carry me away from the valley and into the wide world were gone by the time I became a senior, and I had made peace with that long before I walked off the stage a high school graduate. By then, I no longer wanted to leave the mountains, had no desire to go off in search of anything. I’d already found what I needed right here. Here was—is—home, this speck sunk deep into the Blue Ridge that I share with deer and bear and coyote, rivers as clear and smooth as glass, fields golden and peaceful in the sun, and where the bones of my kin are buried, their souls sung to heaven.

Why would I ever want to leave such a place, if only for a while?

But as I said, I get it: the wanderlust. Though much larger now than the summer I graduated, ours is still a small town. Little happens here. In face, outside of a skirmish in the early spring of 1865 and an Indian war in some dim part of time (the evidence of both still here if you know where to look), nothing much has ever happened here. We are generally lower-middle class, blue collar, and Christian—farmers and factory workers and teachers who slog through five days so we can catch our breath for two. Sounds fine if you’re forty-something and want a peaceful place to roost your family. Not so much when you’re eighteen and suddenly, wonderfully, free. When you’re that age, wherever you are isn’t good enough. What you crave is adventure. What you dream is ANYWHERE BUT HERE.

Sometimes I think that describes us all to some extent. We’re all searching for a way to get ourselves over the hump, that one special thing that would bring a sparkle to the dullness that seeps into every life. I guess in that respect we could all be said to wander, even if we never venture beyond our doors.

I’m not the only member of the class of 1990 who’s stayed and carved out a life in this quiet corner of the world. Plenty more stayed, too. Those who went on to college and career have been flung not only across the country but also across the globe. I talk to some of them upon occasion, catching up. And each time, no matter what great things they’ve done or what magical places they’ve seen, I’m always asked the same question:

“How’s home?”

Because in the end it doesn’t matter where they all have gone or what they’re doing, this little town of field and mountain and holler remains that. Home. This place they once could not wait to flee and forget is now the place they know they can run back to if the world ever bared its teeth, and what dark memories remain of their former lives here have gone soft at the edges.

If I could say one thing to all those pending graduates, I think it would be that. I would tell them to go, light out into the territory, seek what treasures wait just over the horizon. But as you leave, know that the traveling is lighter if you carry home in your heart.

And know that should your eyes ever turn this way again, we’ll be waiting.

Your mama lied to you

May 7, 2015 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

I was nineteen when I realized my mother had lied to me. It was a difficult thing to accept.

She’d lied to me before, but those were small lies—stuff like Santa and the Easter bunny. Things that seemed pretty darn big at the time but not later on, after the sting of their truth had been replaced by the knowing that I would still be getting presents and candy every year. Those are the sorts of falsehoods most parents tell their children, and I think that’s okay. You don’t get sent to hell for lies like that.

You don’t get sent to hell for lies like the one my mother told me, either. Still, that one stung more than when I found out her and Dad were really Santa and the Easter bunny. Maybe it was my age. People tend to hold on to things tighter as they grow older.

As far as I can remember, the lie started when I got a telescope for my eighth birthday. I’d sit outside for hours every night pointing it at every star and planet I could see. I saw seas on the Moon and rings around Saturn, the spooky redness of Mars and the calming whites of Venus. I was enraptured. To know that there were other worlds aside from my own? That what I saw was only a grain of sand upon the shores of All There Is? Amazing.

I looked at the night sky and saw wonder and mystery and possibility, and I knew my calling in life.

So I told Mom I was going to be an astronaut one day. And she looked at me and smiled and said, “You can be anything you want to be.”

That’s when the lie started.

I believed her. When you’re eight years old, you believe your parents hold the keys to the gates of wisdom. They know everything you’ve done, everything you’re doing, and in many cases everything you’re going to do. So if she said, “You can be anything you want to be,” that meant I was going to be an astronaut. No doubt about it.

I’ve told you where her lie began. Now I’ll tell you where it ended.

It was a year after I’d graduated from high school, and I’d drifted into a job at a local gas station. I was filling up Betsy Blackwell’s car (nice lady, Betsy, though every time I’d wash her windshield she’d turn the wipers on and nearly take off my hand), and up to the pump in front of me pulls a nice SUV. Government tags, with a NASA sticker on the back window.

That’s when I knew.

I was never going to be an astronaut. I’d never have the privilege of riding around in a nice Chevrolet Tahoe with a NASA sticker on the back window, much less seeing the stars up close. I wasn’t smart enough or talented enough. I didn’t catch the breaks. No sir, the only sky Billy Coffey would ever be under was the sky out on Pump 1 at the gas station. And he couldn’t even really enjoy that one because he was too busy trying to make sure Betsy Blackwell didn’t take off his hand with her dang windshield wipers.

I kept all of that to myself until two weeks ago. My family had joined my parents for pizza. One thing led to another and then another, and I mentioned that day at the gas station.

Mom smiled and said, “I figured if I said you could do anything, you’d end up being something.”

Ah. I understood then.

Odds are your mama lied to you, too. She said you could grow up to become a scientist or a baseball player or a musician or President. And in the spirit of transparency, I’ll admit plenty of fathers say the same thing. I know I do.

My daughter wants to be a writer/teacher/archaeologist/scientist/doctor. I tell her she’s aiming a bit too low.

My son’s aspirations are a bit more basic but no less high—he wants to work at Legoland. Yes! I tell him. Why not?

Because they might not be able to do anything, but they can certainly be something.

The game of life

April 20, 2015 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

Work at a college around a bunch of teens and twenty-somethings long enough, and you will begin to ask yourself some questions. “How can anyone wear flip-flops in December?” is one. “They actually call that music?” is another. And then there is the biggie:

“Was I really that stupid when I was their age?”

The answer, of course, is yes. Absolutely.

For instance. When I was twenty, I believed:

That life was simple.

That the future was set in stone.

That love was all I needed.

That there is good and there is bad and there is nothing else.

That faith would make everything better.

That the young had more to offer than the old.

That the new held more promise than the tried and true.

Twenty-two years have passed since then. Twenty-two very long, very frantic, and at times very painful years. Whichever of the above beliefs were not proven ill-conceived through marriage and children have certainly been proven so through experience. I know better now. Much, much better.

For instance.

I know that life is not simple. It is hard and scary and tiresome, but it is not simple. If you think it is, then you’re not really living it.

I know that the future may well be set in God’s eyes, but it certainly isn’t in mine. What happens tomorrow is most often a direct result of what I do today, which is most often a direct result of what I did yesterday. The choices I make this day, this second, reach further and deeper than I can possibly realize. Every moment is a defining moment. Every moment is a moment of truth.

I know that love is not all I need. I know that without such things as grace and forgiveness and effort love will crumble upon itself. Love is not the all-powerful cure that poets and dreamers have crafted it to be. It must be nurtured and fed and tended to. Love is not a firm rock that can withstand anything. It is a delicate rose that can wither without attention.

I know that there is good and bad. But I also know that there is more, and I need to look no further than my own heart for proof. For there resides the good man I could be, the flawed man that I am, and the man who must choose daily which he will become.

I know that faith alone is feeble, that only when it is polished with action does it truly shine. Too many times I have prayed for things to get better but did nothing to make them so. God may move mountains, but that’s because mountains can’t move themselves.

I know that the vigor and strength of youth may power society, but it’s experience that drives it. Life has rules, and unfortunately they are not given all at once, but bit by bit as we go. That’s why parents and grandparents are so important. They’ve been there. And because they have, they know a lot more than we do. Time changes. The times do not.

And lastly, I know the new may be exciting, may be revolutionary, may even be promising, but I also know they may not be that way for long. The very things that have sustained us in the past are the things that guarantee us a bright future, things like the importance of family and God, things like the virtues of kindness and loyalty and forgiveness. Such things are woven into us. They are the foundation of who we are and who we will become.

That’s what I know now. Will those beliefs change? Maybe. Check back in twenty years and I’ll let you know.

The value of our art

March 31, 2015 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

image courtesy of google images. Spangled Blengins, Boy King Islands. One is a young Tuskorhorian, the other a human headed Dortherean by Henry Darger

Let me tell you about Henry Darger, the man who wrote one of the most detailed and bizarre books in history.

Never heard of him? Me neither. At least, not until I happened to stumble upon his story a few weeks ago. Seems strange that someone who did something so grand could be so unknown, doesn’t it? But it’s true. In fact, you could even say that’s why Henry was so extraordinary.

He was a janitor. Nothing so special about that, but nothing so wrong with it, either. There is no correlation between who a person is and what that person does for a living. Einstein was a patent clerk. Faulkner a mailman. Henry Darger mopped floors.

An unassuming man. A quiet man. He never married, never really had friends. Just a regular guy living a regular life, one of the faceless masses that occupy so much of the world who are here for a short while and then gone forever.

Henry left in 1973.

There are no accounts of his funeral. I don’t know if anyone attended at all, though I like to think they did. I like to think there was a crowd huddled around his casket that day to bid him farewell.

It is an unfortunate fact of life that so many people are discovered to have been truly extraordinary only after their passing. Such was the case with Henry. A few days after his passing, his landlord went through his apartment to ready it for rent. What he found was astonishing.

What he found hidden among Henry’s possessions was a manuscript. Its title may give you a clue as to the story’s scope and magnitude:

THE STORY OF THE VIVIAN GIRLS, IN WHAT IS KNOWN AS THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL, OF THE GLANDECO-ANGELINIAN WAR STORM, CAUSED BY THE CHILD SLAVE REBELLION

Did you get that? If not, I can’t blame you. I had to read the title three times to even understand a little of it, and that doesn’t count the time I actually wrote it out.

The breadth and scope of Henry’s book went well beyond epic. The manuscript itself contained 15,000 pages. Over nine million words. Over 300 watercolor pictures coinciding with the story. Some of the illustrations were so large they measured ten feet wide.

A lifetime’s worth of work. Years upon years of solitary effort, hundreds of thousands of hours spent writing and painting, creating an entire saga of another world.

And all for no apparent reason. Not only did Henry Darger never seek any sort of publication for his work, he never told a soul about it. His book was his dream and his secret alone.

I’ve thought about Henry Darger a lot since I first read about him. Which, as change or fate would have it, just to happened to be the very week my newest novel released. A tough thing, that. You’d think it wouldn’t be, perhaps, but it is. No matter who an author is or how successful he or she may be or how many books or under his or her belt, the most important thing to us all is that our words matter. Matter to others, matter to the world. We want what we say and think and feel to count for something.

But Henry Darger reminds me that none of those things mean anything. In the end, we cannot account for how the world will judge our work, and so, in the end, the world’s opinion really doesn’t matter. Simple as that.

What matters—what counts—is that our words stir not the world, but ourselves. That they conjure in our own hearts and minds a kind of magic that neither the years nor the work can dull. The kind of magic that sustains us in our lonely times and gives our own private worlds meaning. The kind of magic that tinges even the life of a simple janitor with greatness.