Chicken

It's 6:30 a.m. I ruffled the dog's fur, gave him a dog treat. He watched me make coffee and sweep the floor, put the laptop on my desk and plug it in. Four hours from now, it will be my day off, a Wednesday afternoon at the sunlit general store to chat with neighbors and play horseshoes. I do not want to finish the third act. It grieves me to kill Jimmy, the next thing to write. A second cup of coffee. I will tell myself to do nothing, wait until I know the first word of this awful chapter. I regret having begun the story, easily my best. Why oh why couldn't it be clever and comical like Chandler's 'Pearls Are A Nuisance'? Why do I have to be me?

3:07 p.m. I won one game and lost another, glad to cool off in the air conditioned store, listen to elderly friends play folk tunes and the Marine Corps Hymn on guitar and mandolin. I was too small and frail to be a leatherneck, get myself killed in Vietnam, but my fictional heroes are Marines, iron men of action, frontline infantrymen who know how to fight. I came back to the barn with a sack of supplies and a gallon of gas to attack overgrown weeds. There it was again, begging me to write the next chapter.

I re-read it this morning from Page One, moved the cursor where I left off, at Page 70. The damn thing is beautiful and right, every word. Blank page 155 beckons. Come on, you coward, no excuses tomorrow. Just do it, weep if you must, never write another book, but unconquerable jarhead JImmy Verhoeven must die.