White Fox--Chapter 4, Part 2

This is a short but poignant snippet of my latest novel, White Fox, which continues chapter four.

Renardo frowned.  He looked away from the mounts and grabbed a blue leash hanging from a nail in the wall.  The moment Sancho saw the leash, he barked and began to run laps around the front yard.  Renardo laughed at him and patted his thighs, and Sancho instantly dashed over to him.  After some struggle of hooking the leash onto the joyful dog’s collar, they left the property together and took a northwestern route down D Street.  Renardo purposely took his time, savoring the crisp air and time away from his mournful home.  Trees lined the sidewalks, their trunks dwarfed many times over by their lengthy branches which, loaded with the colors of autumn, extended yards above the road in the rough shape of an arch.  Houses in this part of Sacramento generally lacked driveways, so cars were parked in gutters in the most compact manner possible, almost as cluttered as (and far less beautiful than) the leaves dotting the street.  There were no voices to be heard at this time, but the eternal din of racing vehicles in the busy city reached Renardo’s ears.

Before long, the road curved southwest.  Sancho was insistent on sniffing every pole, mailbox, fire hydrant, and arbitrary inanimate object that came across his path.  Renardo looked up, beyond the bountiful trees overshadowing the road, and gazed at the endless, cloudless sky above.  He closed his eyes for a moment, and his thoughts turned to his inevitable flight to Philadelphia.  After four days of mulling over the situation, he knew that the journey could only help his case; if he caught Professor Wiles at the opportune time, he could extract every morsel of information from him.  It had occurred to him that he could simply send an email regarding the intelligence; after all, his last trip to the university had ended favorably, and the professor had no cause to mistrust him.  However, if Wiles was, as he presumed, more tangled in Malvin’s plots than he had let on—and (unsettling as the idea was) aware that Renardo was probing into the crime lord’s activities—then he knew that an email would not suffice.  Fortunately, he had discovered earlier in the morning that the professor’s contact information was still listed in the university’s faculty directory.  Unless their website was outdated, his trip to Philadelphia would be fruitful.

The few days away from Nate (and, save Corinne, every other person on earth) had given him clarity of thought and renewed purpose.  He recalled sitting in his small but comfortable Texas cottage five years earlier, watching as breaking news unfolded before him on his poor excuse for a TV.  The news was focused on Sacramento, California.  Beginning at 8:00 a.m., a bank robbery took place every hour for thirteen hours.  After the fourth bank was robbed, law enforcement fanned out to other banks in the city and managed to prevent multiple robberies; however, for each prevented robbery, another occurred elsewhere.  Furthermore, though the bank robberies received the greatest publicity, several other break-ins and murders arose in many of the city’s upscale homes.  Not a single common thread was discovered in the items stolen from these houses, and the victims of homicide were seemingly targeted at random.  Tears surfaced in Renardo’s eyes as he remembered a reporter standing some yards before a crime scene, explaining the situation at hand, when two officers guided a young child from the house to the sidewalk.  Her face was not visible, but she walked with a labored gait, and her body was hunched over as one in great emotional distress.  The scene had rent his heart, and his pain was exacerbated when he later discovered that seven children had lost at least one parent that day.

Malvin had arranged and instigated these crimes, but to this day, Renardo still did not know his motive.  He shook his head and muttered to himself, staring blankly at the road ahead of him.  As long as this crime lord was loose, there was always the possibility that Sacramento would one day face greater danger.

“I have to stop him, Sancho,” Renardo mumbled to his dog, who remained unresponsive.  “I have no choice in the matter.  He needs to be stopped, and soon.”

A Creative Response to Dante's Inferno

As an English major, I generally do not have a problem with works that are difficult to dissect.  However, even the most analytical reader will eventually grow weary of obscure passages and themes.  After reading the "Inferno" portion of Dante's The Divine Comedy, I decided I would respond creatively to a notorious passage--from Virgil's perspective.  This passage, copied from http://www.poetryintranslation.com, is detailed below:

Each one was tearing at her breast with her claws, beating with her hands, and crying out so loudly, that I pressed close to the poet, out of fear. ‘Let Medusa come,’ they all said, looking down on us, ‘so that we can turn him to stone: we did not fully revenge Theseus’s attack.’

      ‘Turn your back.’ said the Master, and he himself turned me round. ‘Keep your eyes closed, since there will be no return upwards, if she were to show herself, and you were to see her.’ Not leaving it to me, he covered them, also, with his own hands.

      O you, who have clear minds, take note of the meaning that conceals itself under the veil of clouded verse!

Here is my response to the passage:

Dear Dante the poet,

            My blessed ward, your God has granted me an unearned and brief opportunity to pen to you some fine words of admonishment and explication.  Minós made a rather random visit to the circle of the Virtuous Pagans yesterday, carrying a message from the Lord Himself: in your great work, which you label The Divine Comedy, there is an ambiguous scene in which I cover your eyes, so that you do not stare at Medusa and turn to stone.  With hazy, unclear words, you alert the reader that you have written something profound, and that is now his job to pull your text apart and glean from it your deep meaning.  My friend, this is far too difficult to comprehend as it is, and I highly suggest that you either rewrite the entire scene, or at least add some key words that will make it something that does not take hours to understand.  I do believe that every truth should be worked for, should be sought amidst layers of untruth through reasoning; but what you have here is a sparse collection of philosophical words, linked in such an obscure way that even the most astute scholar hundreds of years from now will have no simple time grasping the meaning of your verses.

I venture to say that you may not fully understand the implications of my action yourself, Dante; for whereas in other places you explain the reason for which you write something, in the currently addressed section you make the reader as blind as you were by my hands.  Here is what I had hoped to accomplish through my act.  Years from now, well-learned scholars will study your comedy and assign my character the role of human reason.  So, they will explicate the scene in which I cover your eyes thus: human reason blinds a man from looking upon something that will “turn him to stone.”  This is a good interpretation, for while “being blind” is generally seen as something negative, here it is a positive experience.  You may ask, “How can this in any way be a positive experience? Why would human reason blind someone?” The answer can be found by identifying the Christian idea of a hardened heart, which has its roots in the famous tale of Pharaoh and Moses.  No matter how many times Pharaoh witnessed the hand of God in his life, he hardened his own heart, and God also hardened his heart.  In other words, Pharaoh had a heart of stone.

Faith is a grounded, unshakeable belief in something, even if there is not enough hard evidence to prove that it is true.  Faith can be exercised by a person, and this belief will dispel a hardened heart.  Had Pharaoh had faith, his end would not have come in that manner that it did.  But having faith is not the argument of the passage in your comedy of which I speak; using human reason to avoid blindness and petrification is the theme.  Faith alone is not the only road one may take to believe in God initially; in fact, at times, some people follow a trail of logic and reason before discovering that there must be a God.  And so, here is the explication of your scene, using the ideas I have mentioned above.  Human reason covered your eyes when Medusa was near, so that you would not turn to stone.  Reason did not trust you to look upon her with the weak eyes of your flesh, for he knew that you would not understand.  For application in the world, this means that reason can actually be used, like faith, to avoid a hardened heart, to avoid turning to stone.  Using reason to shield one from a fleshly, illogical explanation of things will help the man of reason enjoy a soft, receptive heart.  But he who decides to look upon the world without faith and reason will have his heart hardened.  He will say to himself, “The stars, the trees, the sun, the animals, and man are not enough evidence to conclude that there is a God.” He is an illogical man, one who is not using logic to draw an accurate conclusion.  He trusts in his own weak understanding.  If only he were blind, as Oedipus was; then he would see!

This is what I, and likely God through me, desired to reveal to readers throughout the ages; but instead of making it clear, so that the common man can use it for edification, you have hidden the truth in a web of difficult words and phrases.  I now implore you to elucidate the passage of topic, for I believe that it is the will of God.  Of course, it is quite difficult to trust in a messenger who directs people to their eternal torment on a daily basis; perhaps he has an agenda of his own.  But altering some of the words and phrases in your passage, in a way that will clarify the deep meaning to the everyday reader, cannot damage your story.  Rather, it will edify others and make your comedy more accessible.  I do not argue that you should require absolutely no work on the reader’s part, for I find it brilliant that, as I have covered your eyes in the passage, the reader must uncover your meaning.  All I encourage you to do, my friend, with whom I have encountered various adventures, is make this essential part of your story somewhat clearer, so that any man may pick it up, and recognize that reason will bring him to the meaning behind your strange verses.

May your pen ever trail the ink of imagination,

                                                                           Virgil

White Fox--Chapter 4, Part 1

The story of Renardo continues in my novel, White Fox.  Enjoy!

Chapter 4

                                               Apologies

The following day, he sat on bench located on his front porch and peered out between two columns bearing the ceiling over his head.  People did not often walk the streets in this part of town, especially with the air so frigid.  And if he did manage to see some pedestrian beyond his fortress of property, he would not greet this person; his mood was far to gloomy to permit small talk.  He was presently dressed in a black, bloated jacket and dark grey sweats, effectively blending in with the dull tones of his house.  Little light reached him, blotted out by the leaves that were loath to fall from his yard’s ancient oak trees.  He sat deep in thought.  In fact, he forgot that he was well into a game of fetch with Sancho half the time.  The small dog would climb up the stair to the porch, drop the saliva-riddled tennis ball at his master’s feet, nearly fall over with excitement at the prospect of the ball being thrown soon, and then vanish from sight into the unmowed grass once it left Renardo’s hands.  But even amidst the fun and hilarity of such a game, Renardo felt alone.

After some time, he pried himself from the bench and attempted to get more actively involved in the sport.  At times he would sprint through the grass with the ball in hand, keeping it just out of Sancho’s reach as the dog bounced up like a kangaroo; at other times, he would throw the ball to the other side of the yard and then hide behind a tree.  Sancho would not be so easily duped.  He always returned to his master, prepared for the next round.  Renardo eventually grew weary of playing and again took his seat on the bench.  The dog came to him and dropped the ball at his feet, only to be disappointed by the young man’s nonchalance; he then began to wander about the property as Renardo cradled his head in his hands and stared at nothing in particular.  He released a long sigh.

“Sancho, why are women so difficult?” he asked.  “And why are all the good ones taken?”

The dog said nothing.  His ears perked up at his name, but he continued to sniff around and urinate in arbitrary areas when he realized that his master was not calling upon him for anything he considered fun.  Renardo looked at the empty spot on the bench beside him.  He shook his head as a pang of deep grief entered his heart.  Perhaps Nate would come by today.  Better yet, maybe Corinne would walk by his front yard, greet him, and tell him that she had changed her mind about the coffee.  He averted his attention from the bench and looked toward the black gate ahead of him.  Amusingly, Sancho pawed at the gate, looked at his master with a longing gaze, and spun in eager circles.  He repeated this for about a minute, until Renardo finally smiled and rose to his feet.

“You want to go for a walk, is that right, boy?”

The dog bristled with enthusiasm at the word “walk.”

“Yeah, a walk would be good for you.” Renardo turned to the front door and opened it.  “It’s not good for you to be cooped up all the time.  I’m sorry about that, boy.”

He walked into his house and passed by the family room and kitchen.  About ten feet from the spiraling staircase at the end of the first floor, a dining room opened up on the left.  He passed through the doorway and looked around.  An expansive, oval table stretched from one side of the room to the other, its deep brown wood emphasized by the pale light shining through the room’s two windows.  Two hutches filled with expensive china, matching the table in color, loomed on the room’s northern and eastern walls.  There were a few paintings scattered here and there, but the most prominent decorations were the mounted heads of various animals on the walls: deer, brown bears, wolves, and coyotes.  Renardo’s father was, for some time, a taxidermist, and quite a talented one.  He would often pay friends, or even total strangers, to hunt for specific game and bring him back a portion of their results.  Although taxidermy was not a living by any means, people paid huge sums of money for the apparently flawless quality of his work.  Most of his creations now served as ornamental background pieces in classy hotels and restaurants across California, but some of his later work was on display in Renardo’s dining room.  As the young man looked carefully at each mount, he recalled the time his father had given him a taxidermy piece as a gift.

“Hey Renardo,” the voice came to him, as clear as it had been many years ago.  “Hey, do you mind putting that on pause for a sec?”

“This game doesn’t really pause, Dad.” His eyes never left the television screen.  “They just kind of made it that way.  What’s up?”

“Well, I have a gift for you.  I mean, I don’t really think you’ll like it too much.  I know we don’t see eye to eye on…well, most things.  And I know you don’t like the idea of animals being killed to serve as decorations.  But I thought you might, I don’t know, find a spot for this somewhere.  Or at least keep it for memory’s sake.”

“What is it?” Sitting on the edge of his bed and holding his controller, he glanced toward the entrance of his room and noticed his father holding something white.

“It’s, um….Well, you know my friend Stan? His dad was running this taxidermy store over in San Francisco, but he passed away recently.  Now Stan loves hunting, but he doesn’t care much for taxidermy, so he didn’t continue his dad’s business.  They had a big closing sale over there, and I picked up a few things.  This right here is an arctic fox head, but according to Stan, it’s only a model—not the real thing.  And he said that if it was real, it was acquired a while before arctic foxes became endangered, as his father hadn’t been to Iceland for years.  Anyway, I thought it was fitting for you, with your name being what it is.”

Renardo finally wrenched his eyes from the screen and looked at the fox head.  It was hollowed out below the top portion of the snout, its eyes were a light grey color surrounded by black marble, its ears popped up from its tousled fur, and part of its coat reached down from the back of its head.  His father cleared his throat.  “Now obviously, it wasn’t really made for mounting or anything like that.  And I know you’re fifteen and all, so I don’t expect you to wear it like a hat, but—well, you could if you wanted to.”

“Yeah, cool, Dad,” Renardo said to him, trying to some degree to feign interest.  He continued to play his game.  “Um…thanks.”

His father smiled a warm, sad smile and set the fox head on his son’s bed.  Then, without another word, he left the room.