Inspiration/Competition: that’s the poles from which we write.

One discussion I joined today, I think on LinkedIn, covered “inspiration.” I commented that a threat from my environment came first (flood, lots of sirens, things like that), and then some person I’ve met whom I don’t get. The implication was that, through writing, I come to understand that person, or come closer to it.

On second thought, that’s not true. What inspires me to write is that universal goad, competition. I read a book and decide I can do a better job of building suspense, of characterization, description, or whatever. I suspect that’s true for a lot of us.

The first time I recognized I’m competitive, I was editing a newspaper and researching “Dead on Dutcher’s Mountain.” I joined an inter-media crab-racing contest, print versus television news. The object of the race was to place a live crab atop a slanted chute and bang on the chute so the crab hurry downhill. I won and got a trophy.

And blood blisters and a sprained wrist. But by God…

Here’s Chapter Five from that book:

Five

It was nearly dawn.  Gunderson and McCoy trudged toward the sheriff’s car in the parking lot.  Gunderson wiped his face with his good hand, then made a conscious effort to focus on the subject.  Music from the fading party tinkled uphill, reminding him of Jessica. 

“Sorry, Gunderson,” McCoy said,  “Where did you say you found the trail?”
Gunderson repeated himself.  “Just inside the woods at the top of the slide, behind the meadow.  It’s not a trail; it’s flat level, like a relief contour on a map.”  McCoy grunted.  “It’s a flat-bottomed depression,” Gunderson insisted, “wide as my two hands and no more than an inch deep in the center.  Runs right across the slope.  Can’t be natural.”

“That’s all climax forest up there,” McCoy objected.  “There’s no place to grow anything, much less irrigate it.  Besides, how do you find a one-inch depression on a forest floor?”

They had reached McCoy’s car.  An orange yard light glared from a tall pole.

“Look,” Gunderson said with lessening patience, “I thought you’d want to be in on this federal thing because it’s in your territory, so I told you about it.”

“I do,” McCoy snapped.

“All right.  I didn’t call it a trail, and I didn’t say it’s for irrigation.  It’s just a deliberately made something, about ten inches wide, covered over with pine needles and forest trash.  I followed this trough for it must have been a couple of hours.  If it comes to a smallish tree, it stops, then resumes on the other side without deviating from the level.  It crosses the slope and follows the contours.  Might be miles long, but it’s only on that one slope above the adit to the old mine.  It‘s like it was a maze or something, so compact.  I’m reporting it to Commerce.  It’s suspicious.  With regard to the old mine, which as I say is right below it.”  McCoy grunted again, no longer resisting.  Gunderson fished into his jacket pocket with his good hand and pulled out a rough map.  “Here; I made you a copy.”

McCoy halted a move to get into his car.  He spread the paper on the hood and, squinting, bent over it.  Even in the weak light the details were sharp.  “How did you say you found it?” he asked.

Gunderson had begun to dislike the little sheriff; now he waited.  “You know what a desert intaglio is?”  McCoy shook his head, fingering a spot on the map and looking up.  “The desert Indians used to clear the rocks off a stretch of pavement--that’s what they call the desert soil, it’s baked dark by the sun.  They’d clear off the rocks along a line, and the soil underneath is a different color, so they’d use the cleaned-off line to make a big picture, yards and yards across, light on the dark pavement.  That’s what this grid I’m telling you about is like, with all the original stones and twigs to the down-slope side, then needles and leaves fallen on the shallow trough.  It’s been there for some time; there are windfalls all over it.  But I used to hunt for intaglios in the desert, so I recognized this line.”  Holding a peanut between thumb and forefinger Gunderson precisely, almost daintily, placed it on his tongue and squinted across the compound.  “You and your men wouldn’t notice it, so if you want, I’ll show you.  Or I can survey it, but that’ll take time.”

“And you don’t think it’s some pot grower’s irrigation ditch?”

“No.  Because as you say, that’s all climax vegetation up there, too close together to grow anything, and none of it’s been disturbed except along this cleared-off line.  My hunch is,” he checked that McCoy was listening, “it has something to do with the slide.”

“Uh-huh.”  Thoughtfully McCoy kicked a tire.  He pocketed the map.

“Not that I’d tell you how to do your job, McCoy.  And I appreciate you listening to me on that Voerst thing.”

“No problem; you can’t investigate him without some kind of probable cause, but I can.  And I had suspicions, just from Rosalie’s report.”  McCoy straightened and shoved his fingers into his waistband as if they were cold.  He said, “I’d be glad to go into this thing right away, but just now I’m pretty busy.  I have to deal with this dope, a couple of suspicious drownings, and now liaze with overseas agencies about Voerst.  I wouldn’t be up here tonight at all, except this two-bit farmer tried to kill me the other night and drowned an innocent man.”

Gunderson was unimpressed by the sheriff’s heavy load; his suspended judgment clanked down on the side of irritation.  “Overseas people?  No shit?”

“No shit,” McCoy repeated evenly.  “Foreign police for a foreign suspect.  Got a problem with that?  Cutting into Commerce‘s territory?”

The sheriff’s tone would have etched steel.  He was a good four inches shorter and eighty pounds lighter than Gunderson, and for the big man, temptation reared its beguiling head.  But, “Perhaps I can expedite your search for knowledge,” Gunderson ground out.  “For example; newly-released files reveal to my people a certain agent, a mining engineer, at work in both Johannesburg and Riga during the late nineties.”
McCoy folded his arms across his chest and exaggerated his look of patience.  Gunderson continued.  “This agent, according to collated records from Russia, Interpol and South Africa’s Internal Affairs, was also placed for work in the western USA.  That was during the mid- to late-nineties, during the Dutcher’s Mine activities.”  McCoy’s arms came uncrossed.  Gunderson continued, “I thought that would interest you.  This man’s sole responsibility in this country was sabotage.”

Despite himself, McCoy’s eagerness could be heard in a single syllable: “Yes?”

“And all the mining world knew, even ‘way back then in the antideluvian Twentieth century, McCoy, that nickel ore is found in association with chromite.”

Reluctantly, “Yes.”  McCoy studied the light pole, the striping on the pavement, the darkness.  He glanced at Gunderson and sighed.  “And your people, think this man will try something here.  Your job is to find him.”

Gunderson nodded.  “In the act.  Of sabotage.  They want evidence.”

“Hunh.”  McCoy turned again to the chart.  “Too bad.  If this line you’re describing were laid out on a topo map, I’d be ready to talk about it right away.”

“I’ll relay your problems to Commerce.”

McCoy paused.  He changed his tone.  “Gunderson, I appreciate your help tonight; I do.  You got one of our radios, didn’t you?”  He opened his car door.

“Yes.  I’ll rotate the volunteers until you call them off.”

“Let me know if anything happens.”

“Right.”

Gunderson headed for his rooms in the big house, irked at the small-time sheriff, irritated at the silly late partiers, and mad yes, mostly mad at Jessica, who danced with Altstock and looked like she wanted to cry.  Scowling, he nearly walked into McCoy’s departing vehicle.

It wasn’t much better in the guest suite, once he snuck through the party and got upstairs.  Jessica, who usually waited for him and at least listened, was in the dressing room with the door closed.  He sighed and shucked his jacket onto a little chair by the windows.  There was a table adjacent, with a carafe.  He tried it and found enough coffee for a taste, sat and stared into the parking lot.  The little sheriff might be a help or he might not.  Either way, his territorial posturing was a pain in the ass.  He didn’t need that aggravation.  And Altstock; wasn’t he supposed to be an old friend?  Once his best friend?  Christ.  It’d be different, only Jess and Altstock both knew how hard it was for him to say things.  To say things that were important.  When he was mad, or upset, that is.

Jessica’s robe rustled beside the bed.  He tensed and turned.  She was wrapped in deep red wool, her black hair loose on her shoulders and tousled.  She didn’t greet him or come near.  “Is there any coffee left?” she asked.  She stood with her hands clasped low, easy and pure as an icon.

“A little.”

He watched the movement of her hips as she walked, then her slender arms as her sleeves slid back when she reached.  He was still watching as she turned back to him.  She opened her eyes wide, a question.

“Nothing.”

She sipped the coffee where she stood.  “Are things going better with the sheriff?”

“Not very.  He resents me.”

She studied him.  “What’s wrong, Joshua?”  Gunderson said nothing.  “Have I done something?”

“No.”

She set her cup on the table and added cream.  Her good smell reached his stomach, which lurched.  “Joshua,” she said, “Say it.  Something bad is wrong.  You won’t talk to me, and I’m jabbering to strangers because I can’t reach you.”

Gunderson rubbed his face.  “Jess, does it have to be tonight?”

She ignored him.  “You’ve been angry ever since we got here.  Sometimes you look almost crazy.  I don’t even want to be with you when you’re like that.”

“Not now.”  He meant ‘not yet,’ because he would have to face this.  The Voerst thing; after all this time, and it had to come right on top of the news about Altstock and her. 

Jessica insisted.  “It is me, isn’t it?” she pressed.  “Something I’ve done.”

“No.  It’s nothing you’ve done,” he lied.  “It’s just real late.  Nearly four in the morning.”  He looked at her again, the low vee where her robe lapped and tied.  “McCoy dislikes Voerst’s looks too, by the way.  He calls him  psychotic.”

Jessica sighed and obliged by making the switch in focus.  Gunderson saw pity and resented it.  She said, “Mr. Voerst is competing with the sheriff for Ms. Webster’s attention.  Could that be part of McCoy’s dislike?”

“You think so?  That McCoy is interested in her?”

“I’m sure of it.  There’s an unspoken atmosphere between them.  It’s nice; watch for it.” 

“I will.  But I don’t think that’s what McCoy has against Voerst.” 

She went back to her coffee, lifting the cup until the top of her robe gaped perhaps an inch.  Suddenly the room was too small, the air too close.  Gunderson picked up his jacket and the radio.  “I’ll check on that stakeout.”

“Joshua?”

“Don’t wait up.”

“Oh, I’ll wait.  Maybe with Gordon.”

He stopped, wheeled, and for a minute thought he would hit her.  “Cheap shot,” he managed 

“No, Joshua.” 

Almost casually she shattered her cup into a thousand fragments against the bedstead.  Gunderson stopped by the door.  She had said it so simply, at such variance with the destruction of the cup, that he could not leave.  He braced himself to hear her out.  But she did not speak.  Her hands were again loosely clasped low against her belly, her small face was controlled.

“All right,” he told her, and took a step back into the room.  He breathed deep.  “I’ve been thinking that it didn’t used to cost you any grief at all to be associated with Gordon Altstock.  Before you and I met.”

Jessica seemed to lose some stiffening agent inside her flesh.  She still stood, but barely, and her wavering eyes sought the rug.  She said, “Oh.”

“Yes, ‘oh.’  Why in hell didn’t you two tell me you lived together before?”

“How did you learn?”

“How do you think?  I got Gordon’s background with all the others up here.”

“I see.”

“And it’s a hell of a way to learn.”

“I believe you.”

“Three years of your goddamn life, with a guy who was my best friend, and you never said a word.”

“I understand.”

“Neither of you.”

“I know.”

“And I’m mad as hell.”

“I know.  I understand.”  She was crying silently.

“Well?” he asked.

“You want an explanation.”

“You’re goddamned right I do.” 

“I can’t explain it.”

He paused.  “I thought I knew you.  Hell, Jess, I never loved another woman, much less trusted one, in my life.”

“I’m sorry.”

She said nothing more.  Disgusted, Gunderson left.