To John Glenn and Mrs. Slocum

Today was the 50^th anniversary of John Glenn’s orbit of the earth, the first by an American. It was also the 50^th anniversary of the first story I recall ever writing. Mrs. Slocum, my fifth grade teacher at Mt. Tabor School, gave us the assignment to write an essay about Glenn’s historic spaceflight on that day. She wasn’t more specific than that—it just had to be about Glenn’s spaceflight. I remember pondering over what to write for a while without coming up with an idea, then started writing when Mrs. Slocum said we had 15 minutes left, putting down the only thing that came to mind.

It was a story about seeing Glenn sitting on the steps of the Mercury capsule, looking dejected (I’m sure I didn’t use that word). I asked him what was wrong and he told me he’d locked himself out of the space capsule and had no way to get back in, and no way to get home again. I told him not to worry and tossed him a skeleton key. He thanked me, unlocked the door to the capsule and went in. He waved to me through the window as he continued on his way, orbiting the earth and finally splashing down safely.

I remember walking home that afternoon with second thoughts about my “essay,” afraid I’d get in trouble. The Glenn flight seemed to be the only thing anybody talked about on the way home from school, all we talked about at dinner and the only thing on television that evening. I couldn’t get away from it, and kept thinking about Mrs. Slocum sitting in front of the TV watching Glenn on the news, reading our essays, getting to mine and saying to herself, “What’s this? This isn’t an essay.” I had visions of getting my story back the next day with a “C” (that was the worst I could imagine, never having gotten one that I can recall up to that point). I went to sleep thinking, “Oh, man. A ‘C,’ Mom and Dad are going to be mad.”

When I got to school the next day I was still anxious.  Mrs. Slocum went about our lessons the usual way, never referring to the essay on Glenn.  It wasn’t until after lunch that she handed them out.  I sat about halfway back in my row, and the wait was excruciating as the kids in front of me passed them back. When it arrived I was thrilled: an ‘A.’ Mrs. Slocum even mentioned my story to the class, saying she thought it was a clever approach or something like that. I took it home and proudly showed it to my Mom, who also thought it was great.

Mom saved it for years, every once in a while showing it to a neighbor.  Mrs. Hutchinson, as I recall, pretended not to have read the story when Mom showed it to her the second time. It got to the point that I started to cringe whenever Mom brought it up with one of the neighbors around. Even so, as I write this I remember thinking back to that story many times over the years as the first evidence that I might have the inclination to be a writer one day.

Napping

Now that I’ve sent my edits back to Richard on Vaccine Nation, I’ve been catching up on my sleep, napping a lot, while I wait for him to send it back.  Yesterday, the day after Cindy’s birthday, I awakened from one and we went to Jack and Cindy’s to deliver her gifts and watch her open them.  It was about an hour before Styles' dinner time so I knew it would be a short visit, and I could get back to napping.   Styles’ dinner time didn’t matter.  I let Styles in their house and before I got one leg inside the door I heard his license and name tag clanging against Pita’s food bowls.  I forgot that Styles’ first objective on entering their house is always to ravage Pita’s food.  I’m sure he can’t understand why cats never finish their meals in one sitting, although he’s thrilled about it.  Both wet and dry bowls were almost gone by the time Manette rushed past me, grabbed him and placed the bowls on the counter. 

After Jack finished throwing treats to Styles—fifteen minutes or so, because Jack likes to make a game out of it and scatters them all over the living room so it takes Styles a while to sniff them all out—Cindy opened her gifts.  “Does it make me look fat?” she asked.  I thought of the Geico commercial in which Abraham Lincoln admits to Mary Todd that her dress does.  Cindy’s coat didn’t.  In my state of near narcolepsy—I was overcome with drowsiness and would have done anything for a snooze—I was tempted to tell her it did, just to see how she’d react.  I looked at Manette and smiled.  She gave me the partial juice for picking it out, but in truth I’d dozed at home while she and Zac had gone to Nordstrom’s. 

After Styles finished foraging the living room for treats, then wandered in and licked the kitchen floor, he settled on the sofa next to Manette, head in her lap.  She stroked his head between comments to Cindy about how to adjust the collar on the coat, then slid herself out from under him to help Cindy tie the belt.  Styles watched, then got comfortable again and dozed.

He doesn’t fidget at their house like he did when a puppy, and he and Pita have even learned to pass like ships on a calm sea.  He waited for Manette to sit back down and reassume her position as headrest.  Sometimes it about breaks Manny’s heart that he’s so loving with her.

Vaccine Nation's Characters

I had a dream the other night about a Martian easing the door to our bedroom open from the adjoining guest bedroom. It got to the point I felt I had no choice but to go in there and confront him before he entered. I had to protect Manette; as I started to pull the door open I also realized that Superman was off dealing with some other emergency, so it was all up to me. I don't remember whether Styles was there, and I don't know if Martians are afraid of pitbulls. Styles isn't much of a watchdog anyhow, and we've never seen him attack anyone or anything (he chases squirrels, but we're convinced he wouldn't know what to do with one if he caught up to it), although I like to think that if he saw Poppy in hand-to-hand combat with a Martian that he'd rise to the occasion and help me out. As I stepped around the moving door, my heart pounded. I awoke, gasping, to Manette shaking me and calling my name.

In a way it was refreshing, because I've been living--and sleeping--with the characters from Vaccine Nation, my upcoming thriller, all summer. I conked out on the sofa in the library the other day, and, half asleep, told Manette, "I need to get some drackume from Dani's ducks." She thought it was so funny she wrote it down on a blue post-it and stuck it to the top of the kitchen island. I saw it when I came down the next morning for my run, vaguely remembering it, and certain Manette didn't understand the profound significance of the words. Whatever.

Now it's fall and Dani North, Grover Madsen, Hunter Stark and Richard Blum are still inhabiting my brain. I've spent the last three days grinding through my editor's line-edits on Vaccine Nation. Now the hard part comes, muscling through his broader comments. That will involve reworking or completely rewriting key scenes, manipulating some plot elements, and, most importantly, pulling things out of the characters. I say pulling things out, because at this point I can't make anything up about them, or change them, because they are who they are, as evidenced by their visitations--waking and sleeping--throughout the summer. Tomorrow I'm heading up to the weekend house in Milford to isolate myself with them for 12 to 16 hour workdays. I still have things to record about their pasts. They need to tell me more about their passions. They need to reveal more of what their souls ache for and why. They have to show me why you should care about them as much as I do.

I'll be back when I'm done.

Read a sample of Vaccine Nation