Jeb Burt Writing

The evening of my 8th grade year was turning cold, but cold in a California way. Chilly in its 50 degree late-spring night.

My dad and I had two days before taken the ’78 Ford over Donner Pass through the Sierras pulling a red gooseneck trailer. The yellow pickup protested by Lovelock and we turned around.

The decision was easy. Replace one Ford truck with another. The truck that comes into play as “Old Blue” in my novel came home with us in that summer of 1990. One truck crapped out, so you buy a new one. A trip had to be taken. It’s the way it had to be.

I stretched out in the Supercab, at that time just long enough for my 14-year-old frame to fit on a sleeping bag and look up at the stars through the big back window as we ascend to Truckee. My dad had the wheel and everything was safe as a man can make it for his son.

I drive Old Blue now. It sits in my garage and I start it from time to time to get the quirks out, and it hauls deer and leaves for me in the fall. But sometimes I have to take it out just because. The wheel begs to be turned and, despite the white smoke blowing out of the maltuned motor, it’s mine and has been ours. Mine and my dad’s.

It’s telepathy.

People make connections with the strangest things. But they’re real.

The streamsides of Southeast Minnesota will never match the stone-floored western rivers of my youth. But they make the connection.

The two times I most strongly remember my dad working the fly rod were in Colorado and the Black Hills. In South Dakota we were catching suckers all day long with not a trout in sight. We were in a farmer’s field with cows around, land that our fishing friend had used since he was a kid.

In the Rockies we pulled to the side of the road to fish, which can be done there, and watched the air-clear water rush through tall reeds with Rainbows darting in and out. My dad took the Shakespeare and left me with a cheap Martin and a worm on the end. We still caught fish.

There was nothing as fresh as that Colorado stream. It was clean like the memory I have of it now every time I look outside and wonder how soon tippet will touch riffle.

Days like this slip the promise in my mind that it will be soon.

Appalachian Trail, 1999

As I wait the timeless void that publishers use to respond to authors, I offer to you the second chapter of my novel.

Everyone has a special place, inside or outside, that makes them alive again.

Chapter 2

“Is there a big moment you had when you thought you needed to do this?” Mara was on the loveseat with a glass of wine, and her legs were off to the side as she sat on her hip.

Don went to the place that conversations like this drove him to, where he allowed them to. He looked out the window of the living room in his house while he reclined on the couch and held a glass of beer.

His lips squeezed together and drew a grim line as his eyes held a sparkle. He never gave up on things even when they didn’t make sense and he knew that tenacity alone would get him somewhere. He never knew exactly where, but, if he got there by toughness, it would be worth going to. He heard Mara’s muffled talk in the room but he didn’t come back for a minute.

He needed that time to study the trees, high up where the thin twigs shot off the branches that should have been removed, but looked so good and finely articulate against the blue sky. The brighter the sky, the better those little branches looked, Don thought, even if they were dead up there and needed to be cut off. He admired how they looked right now, and every time he needed them to be there—when he had a drink and needed to stare at the trees in the sky outside.

“I can’t nail it down to one thought, or one time when I sat there and said, ‘yeah, okay, now I know everything.’ I’ve just been thinking about what the most important things are, and how well I know myself.”

Mara took a sip and looked at him.

“What kinds of things are you talking about?”

The sound of steady traffic on the highway made a dull whoosh that sounded like heavy gusts of wind before a rain shower. Don listened to this, and could hear the robins chirping when it was at its quietest.

In the near silence then, a rush of emotion and vision from his childhood came over him, mixed with an ache that had always been melancholy. It felt like purity now. Don saw in that moment that he had been having genuine dreams and his idea matched up with what he should do.

He knew that the attempt at describing the flood of thoughts would be useless. Some things only have meaning inside of themselves.

As if the explanation were right behind the door, Don twisted his neck to look at the closet, and said, “I think I left something in the West that I need to get back. I don’t know what, but I’ll know it when I see it.”

Don glanced at Mara. She was looking out the window.

“I want to start by going to places I remember my dad taking me to as a kid.” He turned his head again to look over the front porch and above the neighborhood houses. In his periphery he could see the pamphlet on the end table that Mara had printed for him a few months before, when his brother had been diagnosed. All the other colors of the living room seemed to melt now into the gleaming white of the top page, to which Don finally switched his eyes. In his head, he made out the bright crimson letters that read: Living a Fuller Life with ALS.

“I’ll trust the way to reveal itself to me when I get there. This is unreasonable, I know, but this thing is like a survival instinct. The deepest things in me tell me the truth, I think, and I do them. That’s what this is. I know I can get on some kicks. Do you get a feel for how this is hitting me?”

Mara smoothed down her hair and rested her hand in the crook of her arm. “Yes, I see it’s affecting you. I guess…I’m sorry. I’m not trying to ignore anything you’re going through, but you have to admit, Don, that you’ve gone through all sorts of phases before, and a lot of them seem to settle down after awhile.”

“If this were a phase I’d know what you’re talking about.”

She put her hand out and the corners of her brows dropped down. “I’m not saying that. And I’m not necessarily saying not to do a trip. But do you see what I’m saying? I think we both go through times where we get excited about something, something that sounds totally different, and something that will let us feel free for awhile.”

“That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m talking about. Freedom.”

“I know you’re talking about freedom but I’m talking about reality. Look, I understand what your idea is, and it’s a good one. This sounds like something you need. And to tell you the truth, I’m almost glad you feel it, because I know that thinking about a change of pace is helpful for you.”

“Right, but I’m saying not just thinking about a change of pace, but changing it, doing it. I’m so sick…”

“Will you let me finish?”

“Go ahead, finish.”

Mara tilted the empty glass with her wrist to accentuate her words. “If you’re set on doing it, and you really think it’s right, I support you.”

Don slowly stood up. He flicked the globe of his glass with his finger. “I don’t want to just run off. I don’t want to just dump all this stuff on you and go.”

“I’m not worried about anything being dumped on me.” She craned her neck forward and nodded. “I want to make sure it’s the right thing to do now.”

Don took a deep breath and chewed on the inside of his lip. “I believe it is.”

“Okay. Then do it.”

“I know you could flip out, and this is irresponsible, and we don’t need this right now. But it’s grabbing me. I don’t want to get all out there about it, but I feel like I’m touching the pulse of the world or something, the part of the world that’s for me—but there’s a blanket over it so I can barely feel it. There’s something heavy on me.  It’s faint, but I feel it and it’s real.”

Don sat down again, on the edge of the couch.

“In the Black Hills there’s this private property cow field where my dad and I fished when I was in high school. My dad’s old friend Bob was with us and he knew the area since he’s from there.” Don’s eyes were fixed on the wall as he told this, trance-like. He felt what it had felt like to be fifteen and there, and in high school, and to love books, and to not know many things yet.

“We went back to this little motel in Spearfish, and ate the trout. The rooms were like cabins, or my grandma’s house, with wood paneling and old linoleum. I remember Bob saying that his mother had always served white bread and butter with trout because, if you got a bone caught in your throat, the bread would help it go down, if you choked.”

Mara knew how Don was when he was telling a story. He leaned back into the couch as he spoke, and looked at the edge of the carpet where it met the wood floor. Mara watched Don and listened.

Don Burt, 1992

To say another year has gone by is an affront to what happens in a year of life. Even to measure life as a series of days isn’t quite right, but this has all been said before.

What life comes down to is taking a breath and feeling it come in, and knowing at the exhale that it was real, and still is. If the air brings a memory or conducts your movement inside of something that’s already moving, it has happened and always will be.

An old English teacher likes to ask: if it’s 11:59 p.m. today and the hand clicks midnight, what day is it? It’s always today.

This picture of my dad was taken today and every day. Holden Caulfield wants some things of our days to be frozen in time, to slow them down for close inspection. But even frozen things move. They move with us, no matter where they are.

I’m privileged to move through more than days.

My dad died when I was a senior in high school, fall of 1994.

A theme of my life is using the things he used and, in some cases, wearing the things he wore. In my novel Highway Bleeding, “Old Blue” is a kind of character. It’s the protagonist’s old Ford F-250 leftover from his father. Old Blue is real. It’s sitting in my garage, 100 feet from me now.

Another thing of my dad’s that I use is a particular flannel. Specifically at Thanksgiving and Christmas. The flannel is–realizing I have no grasp of color schemes or even remembrance of primary colors–plaid teal, fuchsia, maybe a little blue and perhaps some mustard. It coagulates to form a holiday spectacle, but I wear it every Christmas day. It is my dad’s.

The power of symbol will forever transcend utility. Those who say men are not sensitive do not understand that a man has a soft spot for meaning.

When all else is done–the wood-cutting, the bird hunting, the straight shaving and the lawn–a man will sit and weep in his den, remembering his father, alive or dead, and his father’s  power that still is or once was.

December 16th, 2006 sticks raw in my mind. I can’t remember if it’s the date we took possession of our home in Minnesota, or if it’s when I unloaded the truck halfway and slept on the empty, carpeted floor all day with my daughter as we waited for life to start here, or what.

But December 15th, 2011 will be forever-locked-in as the day I submitted my novel.

Many of you have encouraged me along my way of writing Highway Bleeding, the manuscript I’ve been working on for about a year and a half. For that I am thankful, especially to the few of you who have read it for me. I hit a point in my life where I needed to reflect or die, so I did-and I don’t know which one yet.

So my life-in-a-Word-document is flying through cyberspace to an independent publisher in the UK as I type this. In my mind’s eye I see the Great Brits print it out and pick it off the stack to be gleefully scrutinized, but ultimately exalted as the fresh work they’ve been looking for. In a way, I’m not guilty of writing the fabled “great American novel,” yet.

I will keep everyone posted on how the process goes, and in the meantime I hope to whip this site into the shape it should be to showcase the heart of the novel. Until then, thanks for all the “likes” and comments and support and I hope to someday soon announce here that you can buy it on Amazon or perhaps from some swanky cutting-edge publisher, directly. I literally poured my life into the pages and, you might ask, “Isn’t it weird to think of charging money for writing about life?” Yes. But when there is soul involved, somebody always has to pay.

The publisher indicates that writers get “bonus points” if they write their own blurb in the query, so, here it is:

“Highway Bleeding cuts open the part of all of us that wants the purity of youth to cleanse the pain of life, as Burt puts it, ‘so the blood can breathe.’”

“Indians scattered

On dawn’s highway, bleeding,

Ghosts crowd the young child’s

Fragile, eggshell mind.”

-Jim Morrison

Chapter 1

In the spring of the year that all the things had happened, Don knew he needed to return to somewhere inside, like all men do when they feel the pain of life.

The world around him pressed down and into him, forcing outward skill back into his mind to leach through his marrow and be swollen and throbbing there. His soul was convulsed by this so that his dreams, contracting, lying dormant inside of him burned his heart and evaporated back out to return to the acrid Western air from whence they came.

The fact that the things were true made him rage at the world. He could no longer see real beauty as he had seen it when he was young, but he didn’t want to stop believing that things could be beautiful. He looked for the sun each morning and, when he saw it, was able to believe again. When all the things were done, he understood that the sun had been the same one the whole time.

All of Don’s degrees amounted to expertise in making things up, which he valued deeply, but felt resentment toward when he could not make his dreams escape life.

He wondered if any wisdom during these times had crept in and inoculated to bring him to this moment, and if this were a moment of clarity. Don thought things out in little compartmentalized fragments of who he was. Despite the sharpness of each piece, they all overlapped and blurred when he tried to use any of them to figure something out.

Sitting in the recliner one morning, writing in his notebook and drinking the black coffee, Don had seen this about himself. He wondered if any of the fragments could work with each other to create one clear picture of how he should live another day. He thought of the short walks he had taken with his dad down the halls of the cancer wing at San Francisco. The short walks were now with his brother, leading their mom’s dog down the country road together, his illness ruthlessly suppressing life’s natural motion.

Don was determined to not make his own death obsolete, or for nothing. He had seen the many dreams of his father fade away in the tide of death. The dreams never died but they had been clouded by Fate. In the storm that came and caused disillusion, these dreams precipitated and had weight. Don considered doing what he saw in these dreams, for the power of the dreams were so strong to Don that he believed that their purity was stronger than what was real. But the only thing Don could understand of his father’s dreams was the need to see everything. It all weighed on Don and made his bones cold. But it woke him up and cleaned him off.

There was no reason for Don to live the way he had been, or the way he had always planned. The weight was a scourge that pulled away the shell from the bones so the blood could breathe. The day before Easter, Don decided to be alive.

Don tugged the last two straps of the pack tightly, just like he had envisioned. But instead of the heroic ascent up the stairs to meet his wife for an ambivalent farewell, with his Spartan supplies, Mara had heard him packing and knocking things off the shelves in the storeroom and came down to see what was up.

He was in the basement sorting through the camping gear as he thought about how he would approach Mara, and how he would explain what he had to do.

He pulled the old green frame backpack off the hook on the wall and thought of all the trips this pack had taken. Don unzipped all the pockets to rummage through them, and see if he could find anything in there from his past that would give him reassurance. All he could think about was how every other trip he had taken this green pack on had been rooted in innocence and a sense of naïve adventure—the kind of true wandering that grows from the ignorance of youth.

Mara stood in the doorway. “What are you doing?” Don looked down and blinked. He pretended to check the pack again, to make sure that everything was just so. Don sighed—he knew how not to hurt her, so he took the moment to give her the cue to know that he had already put a lot of thought into this.

“I need to do something.”

“Okay,” she said, leaning back.

It is said that opposites attract. At times, when they are too far away, the waves between them are too great to let them know each other. In the case of Don and Mara there was initial disdain in college when they became too close. It took time to see the way each other worked.

After being in the same places got them acclimated, Mara saw the deep feeling that Don had in everything and, when he saw her as a child and was there with her and could be in dreams together, both of them smelling the breezes that can only be kept safe in the hearts of people, and breathed again when the time was right, she loved him for it. For that, and the other things—the passion, the dreams, the knowledge, and the stark capacity for suffering.

“I can’t keep this up. I need to take a trip.”

Mara’s eyes were fixed on him. Her mouth opened a bit, but she didn’t say anything. She could tell Don had put some thought into this, so she let him finish.

“I’ve been trying to push through. You know that. My brother—all of it. I don’t want this to be one of those ‘I-just-need-to-be-alone-right-now’ things. I don’t think it is.”

Mara nodded. She had felt her husband’s soul through the years as it growled deeply, and slept at times, bled profusely at others.

It had taken awhile for Don to see what he must do, but he got his wish of seeing one thing clearly, and he did it. Two weeks prior, he had parked his truck in the driveway and walked inside. He stood in his bedroom and pulled the cord to the blinds. He looked outside and down the street. The decision had already been made under the surface of his thoughts and his cognizance of it was merely an assurance of what must be done.

Life before then for Don had been intermittent visions, dreams and memories of mountains and streams of his youth and the smell of alfalfa in the fields of his home, and the force behind it all was a god who gave and took away. His father had taken him to these places and died in the middle of showing him what they mean.

Looking at Mara now, he knew that he wasn’t a monster and that his wife understood him and loved him despite it. Knowing he had to tell her, he dreamed that the shock with which the idea had struck him would carry enough momentum so that she wouldn’t need to say a word. He had imagined coming up the stairs with his pack fully loaded, with her stoically following him to the truck for a tearless and knowing embrace. As he thought these things he saw that he was abusing her kindness already in his mind and knew the biggest deal was to not hurt her.

“I need perspective. I get a little here and there. We’ve been able to get away, and I’ve felt refreshed after. But there’s part of me that needs something specific. You know I work best when I can be alone, and cope that way. I feel like this is that, times a thousand. A capstone of all those times I needed to be by myself. I think this could change me. What do you think?”

Mara took a deep breath, and looked across the room where the green backpack had hung for six years. “Well,” she said as she finally walked in and sat on a stool, “There are some things to figure out first, like what you want to get out of this.” She cupped her hands between her knees and stared at the floor. “Or how you’ll know that it’s what you really need.” Don leaned against the freezer and sighed deeply. Mara pursed her lips. “I can tell this is important. I know this isn’t just a knee-jerk reaction. But, I have to be honest. I don’t know how this would work.”

This trip would be different. Don had a better idea of what he was running away from. Age had taught him by now that he could not outrun whatever was after him. Unlike his youthful days, he had to think of the irresponsibility of running.

There was no single place where the transformation had happened, but, one night a few weeks before, Don had stood at his kitchen sink and stared at the Guinness sign hanging over the faucet. As he stared at the yellow corner of that sign, the crimson paint covering the rest of the kitchen made a frozen piece of time where Don saw his present and future at once.

Don’s dreams had always left a residue of darkness that he couldn’t explain. People he secretly wanted to trust would confide in him. He would dream of dying but at the last minute survive and not know why. He could never understand the reason in his dreams for being kept alive or knowing what he did.

But in that piece of frozen time, he had felt a thing seep into him that would not be erased again.

The morning after that, Don had been resolute. He needed to figure out what change had taken place and how to use it. He always worried that he would never get the exhilaration back from adolescence.

In college he had found himself quickly. He had found the values of his childhood amplified in the religious life on campus. When he wrote his lecture notes on the three-holed, perforated paper, he convinced himself that the religious thinkers of history mostly agreed with how he was raised.

He got more sacramental than he would have guessed. Riding on the wake of his dad’s departure had drawn him to the crest where he thought he could see reasons for awhile. But when he came down the other side and saw that he was still human, he had lost momentum and saw for the first time that he had never seen the depths of life. Looking back, he had done it with passion and so would not flagellate himself for it.

I woke up this morning with the song “Lunatic Fringe” by Red Rider stuck in my head. As I pressed the snooze button several times, playing the mind games one does when trying to rise before dawn to write, the eerie intro coursed in and out of my consciousness, always in my subconscious.

This song is in my head for one reason: I’ve been watching “Vision Quest” a lot lately.

Vision Quest is a book written by Terry Davis, former Professor of Creative Writing at Mankato State University, and Spokane, WA native.

In 1985, Vision Quest was made into a movie starring Matthew Modine. It’s about high school wrestling. I was a wrestler in high school. It’s also about the parallels between a Native American vision quest–fasting for a particular period of time as a test of manhood and to find one’s true calling in life, one’s true name–and the near insanity of training and cutting weight to compete at a wrestling dual.
For a wrestler, they are the same. And sometimes the vision never ends.

The movie is inspiring, and led me to order the book, which I assimilated in about two days. Next thing I know, I’m looking up ways to order new Tokay High School Wrestling sweatshirts, cutting calories and getting up early to make the final push to finish what I think will be the last major edit of my novel, Highway Bleeding.

I got up in the near-light this morning to embrace the madness. I looked at the manuscript. I picked up my latest copy of Writers Digest. I flipped to the dog-eared page I had prepared for this morning’s reading. Title of the article: “On the fringe.”

This website is meager, at best. But if you’re interested in a peek at my novel, I plan to post some chapters soon. Perhaps within a week. So come back before too long to check out what I’ve been obsessed with for the past year. I know you’re out there.

-Jeb

Soon I will finish the final editing process of my upcoming novel, Highway Bleeding. It’s about a man trying to remember the men who have been important to him as he road trips through the American West revisiting all his childhood haunts, looking for redemption. Life can never be lived twice, but a metaphysical connection with memories can make it more real.

Check back soon for some sample pages and other related fiction.