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Editor,
Oregon Literary Review

MFA, Playwriting, University of Oregon

Writing faculty, Portland State University (part-time)

Retired playwright and screenwriter.
Active novelist, librettist and teacher.

Email: cdeemer(at)yahoo(dot)com

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Finalist, Oregon Book Award

Practical Screenwriting

Love At Ground Zero

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Emmett was thinking about there being no children in his life. When Mary was alive, he’d never regretted their decision not to raise a family, nor had she as far as he knew, but more than once since her death, and especially after his own diagnosis, he became acutely aware of how alone he was, the termination of a branch of heredity, the end of the line. But his loss was more personal than this. There was so much of the experience of life he had missed by never being a father. Never had he watched a baby take its first step or utter its first miraculous word. He had read no bedtime stories, or been read to in return in the wondrous music of a child’s first mastery of language. There had been no school plays to see or sporting events at which to yell support. He never had the opportunity to show a young son or daughter how a sextant worked or how you could find your location by the stars. Emmett had walked no daughter down the aisle of matrimony and had rocked no grandchild on his knee.
...
Ahead he saw the shadow of the dummy hanging in effigy. This wasn’t exactly the way Emmett wanted to do it – he was leaving, after all, a mess more visible than he would have preferred – but his options were limited. He walked under the dummy into the barn and turned on the light. A horse whinnied and paced in its stall.

Emmett picked up the stepladder and set it up under the dummy. He climbed up and rested the dummy on the flat top area of the ladder, so that the rope became slack. His eyes followed the path of the rope from the dummy over a horizontal beam and down to where it was secured at a vertical beam. The beams were large and sturdy, surely they would support the weight of a dying old man. Emmett slid the knot until he could slip the noose free of the dummy. He let the dummy fall to the ground. Then he dropped the noose over his own head, tightening it and adjusting it so the knot rested at the back of his neck.

He stood very still on the ladder with the rope around his neck. An observer might have assumed he was having second thoughts but he wasn’t. Emmett was reflecting on his good fortune, his good life. He had enjoyed both of his careers and had been able to share them with a good woman, a wife who had been his best friend. When all seemed lost and his life was slipping away, Shandy had appeared, giving him not only intense pleasure, the memory of which still energized him, but renewed courage as well, courage to take control of his life again and to die with dignity, just as he was momentarily prepared to do. Emmett felt lucky for his life. He had experienced Eros, Fidelia and Agape. He had no regrets. Well, one. But in a way he was settling the score now, making up for his failure to put a bullet in Mary’s brain.

A horse whinnied. High in the barn an owl hooted. Somewhere far in the distance a truck shifted down its gears.

Emmett kicked away the ladder, feeling like the happiest man under the stars.

Carrying the Frisbee, Wes slowly walks toward her. Hayaam walks toward him. When they meet, they stop, standing close. Hayaam’s face is wet with perspiration. Without makeup, she has the face of a woman emerging from a shower.

Wes says, “You have beautiful hair.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know why you cover it up.”

“Because it’s my decision who gets to see it.”

“I’m glad I got to.”

“So am I.”

Perhaps you are too cynical to remember a moment like this: Wes can feel his heart pounding in his chest.

“Can I touch it?” he asks.

“If you like.”

Wes reaches out and gently touches her hair, letting his fingers rest lightly against the side of her head, just above an ear. Her hair is damp. Hayaam closes her eyes.

“I want to kiss you,” he says.

Without opening her eyes, Hayaam turns her head, offering him her cheek. He leans forward and gently kisses it.

No, he did not grab her breast. They did not suddenly collapse in a passionate embrace to make love on the grass. This is not a popular romance novel. This is not The Bridges of Madison County. This is not a Hollywood movie. This is the story of Wes and Hayaam.

Hayaam opens her eyes and looks at him.

“I have never kissed a man before,” she says.

As she bends forward toward him, Wes expects a kiss on the lips but at the last moment she swerves and her lips touch his cheek. Her kiss is as soft as the landing of an insect.