No Birds Sing Here E-Book

Daniel V. Meier Jr.

• Herausgeber: BQB Publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

The search for the literary life. Satire at its Best!

In this indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time, two young people, Beckman and Malany set out on an odyssey to find meaning and reality in the artistic life, and in doing so unleash a barrage of humorous, unintended consequences.

Beckman and Malany's journey reflects the allegorical evolution of humanity from its primal state, represented by Beckman's dismal life as a dishwasher to the crude, medieval development of mankind in a pool hall, and then to the false but erudite veneer of sophistication of the academic world.

The world these protagonists live in is a world without love. It has every other variety of drive and emotion, but not love. Do they know it? Not yet. And they won't until they figure out why no birds sing here.

Meier's writing is precise and detailed, whether the situation he describes is clear or ambiguous.

Fans of Franzen and Salinger will find Meier to be another sharp, provocative writer of our time.

Leseprobe

No Birds Sing Here

© 2021 Daniel V. Meier, Jr. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopying, or recording, except for the inclusion in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Published in the United States by BQB Publishing

(an imprint of Boutique of Quality Books Publishing, Inc.)

www.bqbpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

978-1-945448-95-9 (p)

978-1-945448-96-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021930148

Book design by Robin Krauss, www.bookformatters.com

Cover design by Rebecca Lown, www.rebeccalowndesign.com

First editor: Caleb Guard

Second editor: Andrea Vande Vorde

PRAISE FOR DANIEL V. MEIER, JR. AND NO BIRDS SING HERE

People don’t want poetry or literature. They want celebrities, half-crazy celebrities.

Mix a dram of Hunter Thompson, a dash of Kerouac, a pinch of Tom Wolfe, a sprinkle of Palahniuk, a dab of Salinger, and a heaping spoonful of Scott Fitzgerald. Shake liberally, and what emerges is an urban literary concoction that rises to the level of the best road trip stories ever told. At turns ribald and violent, at others tender and thoughtful, this tale starts mildly enough when Beckman, a disenchanted dishwasher with literary aspirations, flees his dead-end job and his writer’s block to hit the road with Malany, a remarkable poet he encounters at a used book store. He concocts his theatrical plan after they jump out of his dive apartment window and head through the Southeast in her rickety Oldsmobile.

Malany is not impressed with Beckman’s dishonest PR games. But in the interest of selling her stash of vanity-published poetry volumes, she goes along for the ride anyway, funding the trip with her mysterious, cash-filled envelopes. As the mismatched pair travel deeper into Southern literary territory, they cross paths with an assorted cast of clichéd and yet not so clichéd characters, from a tattooed redneck biker to a wealthy sexual predator with pretentious literary fantasies.

Meier’s storytelling hits the ground running with every aspect of literary skill inherent from the first page onward: memorable prose, vivid characterizations, and scenes that move incessantly forward with much rumination about the meaning of life and letters, whether from the viewpoint of gritty pool halls and rancid jail cells or between perfumed sheets in the rarified world of academia. Readers in the mood for a loveless, sexy road trip tale should enjoy this one.

— Kate Robinson, US Review of Books

No Birds Sing Here by Daniel V. Meier Jr. is the story of a road trip taken by Beckman and a lady he meets by the name of Malany. Both are running from a life they no longer want to lead, and both are frustrated artists. Malany has paid a vanity press to publish her poetry book while her traveling companion is intending to begin writing his first novel, as soon as he receives the inspiration and possibly the experience. Anything has to be better than working in a restaurant with a very strange co-worker and a clutter of yowling cats beneath his window. The journey begins with the premise that if you appear successful, others will believe you are. But plans go awry as the pair meets a cast of unsavory characters who have no affinity for culture, preferring to whore, drink and take drugs. While some passers-by are left behind, others take their place. Beckman is forced to flee on more than one occasion.

My overall impression of No Birds Sing Here by Daniel V. Meier Jr. is a cross between Thelma and Louise and Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. No one is quite who they appear, all the characters wear masks, hide their history, and play make-believe with abandon. They also have several brushes with the law, and at times it leaves you wondering if the consequences of their antics will catch up with them. This book falls firmly in the literary category with characters that come to life but behave outside the boundaries followed by the majority of society. There are some real gems here and there, my favorite was ‘. . . the angry glances of Hispanic maids pushing baby strollers which held the inheritors of vast fortunes.’ I liked the excellent descriptions of small-town America and the story unfolds at a satisfying pace. It’s impossible not to keep reading to find out what will happen to them all in the end. A very different book from Meier’s first novel and an unexpected scenario that lovers of books that dive beneath the perceived surface of society will enjoy.

— Lucinda E. Clark for Reader’s Favorite

This book is dedicated to Elizabeth.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Caleb Guard, my editor, for his professionalism and assistance.

Jane Knuth, of the Knuth Agency, for reading the typescript, and for her encouragement and invaluable advice.

Teeja Meier for her faith, patience, endurance, suggestions, hard work, and love.

“Quiet!” Beckman projected through the cloudy, dirt-streaked window glass to the cats in the alley below. Almost every day now for the past month they had met at the same time, at the same spot, to square off and defend their strand of dented, slime-lined garbage cans. At first, he had watched the cats, fascinated with their determination, their pure jungle ferocity. They didn’t waste time yowling in those days. It was a quick warning scream, almost inaudible, then the thumping of tightly muscled flesh on the ground, the rattling of old newspapers, and garbage can clanging against garbage can. Two grown men could not have made as much noise tearing one another’s throats out. But now, after many battles, after they had shredded each other’s ears and streaked their faces with Frankenstein scars, the cats had settled down to a wary truce, content to face each other on diplomatic haunches and scream defiance, yet realizing that further struggle was useless.

Beckman thought that this would be an excellent metaphor for his first novel, just the thing he had been looking for. Often during that month, the screaming cats got to him. The very first notes would send him raging to the window to fling it open and shout down, “Quiet!” The cats hardly glanced up. It was apparent that they were somewhere outside of his control. He could have used violence, but the thought sickened him. At times he had wished for some unseen demon to take charge of his body, only for a few minutes, so that he could send down a deterring ball of water. Nothing like that happened. No demons, or angels for that matter, came and he grew tired and bored with shouting the same ineffectual plea every morning.

By channeling the energy of his rage into thought projection, Beckman believed he could develop his mind this way, and possibly take the next step in human evolution. Ignoring time and trying to ignore the pain in his legs, he continued standing at the window, mentally projecting Quiet! until the cats gradually ambled away.

Beckman was pleased, even happy. He was sure that those thumping knots of cells and tissue in the center of their skulls had been made slightly feverish by his effort. The cats did seem a little disoriented as they left. He went back to his old, portable Remington typewriter that he had bought for $40 at a thrift store. He could not afford one of those new home computers put out by IBM, and he would need a printer, which he also could not afford. Nevertheless, he fully intended to start his first novel if he had to do it by hand. He had what he believed to be his best idea yet, but it had been interrupted yesterday by his co-worker, Herschel.

It had taken Beckman weeks to teach Herschel that dishes must be cleaned in more than one spot, or that the entire floor must be cleaned and not just where he stood. It wasn’t until Beckman honestly thought that Herschel could be trusted to do his work alone, that he caught him urinating on the dishwashing sink. Beckman lost control and inadvertently contributed to Herschel’s vocabulary.

Herschel even repeated the words for an hour afterward: “Stupid bassard, ton bitch, imacel.”

The next morning, Beckman caught Herschel standing in the middle of the small kitchen, spraying a circle of urine around the room. Beckman backed away, staying out of sight. There was something ceremonial about the way he was doing it; a solitary ritual, as though some primitive declaration moved without restraint in his mind. Beckman peeked through the cracked door. Herschel was doing a strange dance on his toes, arms raised above his head.

When the ritual was complete, he walked to his stool in the corner where he waited between chores. Beckman thought it was time. He entered the kitchen sonorously and with some exaggeration, appeared shocked at the ring of urine on the floor, which was now starting to run in converging streams toward the floor drain. He pretended anger, but Herschel, with omnificent impenetrability, looked as insular as a priest who had just performed Mass. Beckman decided to use cold water to keep down the smell. He attached the rubber hose to a wall faucet, then pointed out every act of the cleansing process to Herschel. He warned him, in what he knew to be wasted effort, not to do it again.

“It’s a no-no,” he said, adding a mock demonstration of urinating. “A no-no!”

Herschel shook his head vigorously and gazed at Beckman, dull-eyed, flashing inscrutable grins that exposed his rotting and missing teeth.

Later, after closing, when the boss and customers had gone, Beckman, finishing his work, looked up into the soft, waxy face of Herschel, then down at the twisted, underdeveloped penis Herschel held lovingly in his hand. He continued to stare incredulously at the stream of hot liquid spurting forth with all the force of religious zeal, dashing against his leg, bathing and baptizing.

Beckman leapt back in horror. The liquid soaking through his pants seemed to scald the raw and repelled flesh of his leg. He ran from Herschel and up the stairs to his room, slammed the door, locked it, and continued running, tears streaming down his cheeks, to the closet-like bathroom near his writing desk. He peeled off his pants, thrust them into the shower, turned the water on full blast, and leapt in after them. He thought of throwing the pants away, but that would leave him with only two pair, one of which he saved for those few times when he could afford a movie. He stomped on the pants like a sumo wrestler until he had pounded them flat against the contours of the shower floor. He picked them up with his fingers, letting the shower spray bludgeon them into melting shapes. He wrung them until the fabric paled, ground them between his hands, dropped them back down on the shower floor, stomped them again, yelled, cursed, and wished with all his heart that Herschel would find a high voltage electric socket to urinate in.

Beckman turned the shower off when the water started to get cold. He had stomped and brutalized his pants until they lay at his feet as grotesque as a mutilated accident victim. He realized then that he had forgotten to take the rest of his clothes off, and his shirt, clinging and dripping, was beginning to cool with the rapidity of a switched-on deep freezer.

He pulled off his sodden woolen socks along with the rest of his clothes and lay them all next to the pants. He patted his body with a damp, sour towel and walked, half dazed, to his cot. He sat on the edge, shivering for a long time, steeped in wordless disgust at his present condition in life, and especially with his own body. He looked at his own penis and wondered how such a thing could have become the symbolic representation of half the world’s obsessions; and now Herschel, stumbling around in the murky world of the mentally defective, had discovered his own symbolic, as well as ritual use for it.

Beckman wrapped himself in the covers of his cot. Waves of uncontrollable shuddering passed through his body like electrical currents. He had really never thought about leaving Baltimore, or of leaving the restaurant since he got the job a month before. In fact, he had come to regard it as a kind of sanctuary. He did his work uncomplainingly, even, at times, happily scraping the residue left in plates, on floors, commodes, everything left or abandoned at the end of its usefulness. He did this work joyfully, feeling that it was the most necessary practical work to be done, underrated and undervalued.

At moments, when feelings of revulsion swept over him, he deliberately, with eyes open, reached into the nearest full garbage can and squeezed between his fingers the raw materials of his livelihood. But now there was Herschel, completely mystifying, possessing some other worldly power beyond his touch, and approaching, irresistibly, the sacristy of his room.

He remained at the typewriter until past noon without typing a single word. The idea of the cats fighting over worthless territory seemed tired and stale. He put the idea aside. There would be time later. He was hungry after breakfasting on the last of his bread, and coffee made from yesterday’s grounds. It was Monday, his only day off in the week. A trip to the grocery store was necessary, and he would stop by the used bookstore to see what he could find on psychokinesis.

The bookstore was wedged inconspicuously between a small grocery store and an expensive-looking dress shop advertising a special sale on zebra-striped nightwear. Beckman had a nodding acquaintance with the proprietor of the bookstore, an acrid smelling septuagenarian dressed like a caricature of James Joyce. The proprietor watched him suspiciously, following him with his old, hysterical eyes. Beckman, as usual, felt like a street thug and was tempted, this time, to stuff one of the ragged and stained used paperbacks under his own shirt but decided against it. The old man did have periods, in the year that Beckman had known him, where he seemed to have a past with remembered hopes and regrets; and for this, Beckman felt sorry for him and would not add to his cumulative torments.

There was a new addition to the used bookstore, and Beckman stared at her before he realized that she was truly a woman, covered as if she were in nun’s black. But she wasn’t a nun. Nuns wore street clothes now, and if they did wear their medieval habits, they would wear sneakers with them. The woman was reading from a thin black volume, selected, presumably, from the two-foot high stack of identical copies in front of her. Above her, a sign tacked to the bookshelves announced an autograph sale of poems by “Malany”. Beckman picked up one of the volumes.

“Free verse, experimental stuff, of course,” Beckman said.

The poetess seemed puzzled.

“Will you be here later tomorrow? I don’t have the money now.”

“How late?” she asked.

“After seven.”

“No,” she said, taking the volume out of his hands.

Beckman wasn’t the slightest bit offended—the depersonalizing aspect of recent poverty and dissociation.

“I’m a writer also.”

“Oh?” Her nose wrinkled from the sudden whiff of onions and old grease drifting across the three feet of space between them.

“Bullshit,” she said.

“I love it.”

“What, bullshit?”

“Uninhibitedness. Writers should be uninhibited. We are the only free people left. The last endangered species not on the endangered list, but that’s where they want us, isn’t it?”

“More bullshit,” she said.

“Yeah, but . . . ” Beckman sensed something terrible and turned to face the proprietor. He momentarily retched from the old man’s hot dog-breath.

“I’m looking for a book on psychokinesis.”

The old man backed away, repeating in what sounded like Gregorian chant, “Psychokinesis, Psychokinesis.”

“When you find it, save it for me.” And Beckman left.

He was more than disappointed when the cats didn’t show up the next morning, but he had to expand. At some point he had to branch out, tackle new and more difficult problems. Herschel would be his next project, the practical application of psychokinesis: no more experimentation, no more abstraction.

Beckman waited until he thought it was time, then slightly opened the kitchen door, forming a door-length slit with Herschel in the center. There Herschel was, forming a circle of urine on the kitchen floor, obedient as a hypnosis victim to whatever biological urges that raced freely in his mind.

Beckman thought of projecting a whole sentence, a command like he had done with the cats, but a single, emphatic, easy to understand word might have more effect. So, he projected the word Stop! over and over again until his pulse throbbed and beads of sweat oozed from his forehead. The boss came in, slamming the front door, and the noise startled him. The boss didn’t own the place. He simply managed it for an absentee owner. He was a man well over six feet tall who walked with a slight stoop like a wrestler ready to lunge at his opponent. He had thick legs, a distended midsection, a thick neck, and a roll of fat around the base of his skull. Beckman knew that any further projections would be fruitless. He eased the door closed and waited for the next opportunity.

It came, as before, with Herschel, walking up to him while smiling sweetly, twisted penis in hand. Beckman had all the force and energy of his panic to help him now. It took every drop of discipline he could muster to keep from crying out, to remain steadfast. He looked straight into Herschel’s depthless eyes and, with undiluted adrenaline filling his body and with the harnessed power of a fusion bomb, projected, Stop, stop, stop straight at Herschel’s forehead. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop until he felt the warm organic solution lovingly dash against his leg.

“Psychokinesis,” the used bookstore proprietor blurted out upon Beckman’s entry. “I spent most of the day looking. I knew I’d seen it somewhere.”

The old man shook his gray, fleshy jowls. The skin seemed to be running off him in great, highly viscous drops.

“Is it important, young man?”

“Very important.”

The old man smiled, and Beckman had to momentarily turn away to keep from looking into the primeval cave of his mouth.

“I thought it might be. Is there a number I can call if I find it?”

Beckman gave him the public library’s number. The old man snorted with joy.

“Don’t worry, son. I’ll find it if it’s the last thing I do.”

Beckman thanked him and moved to the back corner where Malany sat among her books, talking quietly with a tall, broad-shouldered man. Beckman leafed through a shelf of mysteries and watched the man with a cyclopoid eye. The two seemed previously acquainted. The man was considerably older than her and enveloped in an aura of wealth and power. Beckman could not understand the conversation, but he concentrated, leaving his mind open for stray thoughts. The man handed her a white envelope, bulging at the sides, then reached down and picked up one of the books. Beckman focused both eyes on the mystery titles in front of him. The man passed, trailing an atmosphere of sweet cigars.

“Big sale?” Beckman asked.

Malany grimaced, then in jolted transfiguration asked, “Have you got a place I can stay? I’m not from around here.” She asked Beckman with a tone of mild desperation.

Beckman, taken off his feet for a moment, felt his chin drop as his mind went temporarily blank. It took a few seconds for his mind to recycle. He rationally suspected that Malany’s sudden and impulsive request had something to do with the older man. The poetry books filled up only one whiskey box, and he was unexpectedly pleased to discover that Malany owned a car which, thankfully, she had parked close to the bookstore.

The car, a 1970 Oldsmobile, was pockmarked from inestimable collisions, each victim having left a smear of its own body paint at the point of impact, but that wasn’t what worried Beckman. Actually, Beckman wasn’t sure what the source was of his mushrooming fear. Malany sensed the tension immediately.

“I just want to stay low for a few days, and don’t think it’s because I want that wasted carcass you use for a body,” she said. “I haven’t had physical sex in years, and I don’t anticipate having any in the foreseeable future.”

“I would not have thought that, judging from your poetry. Don’t you ever get lonely?” Beckman asked, feeling a bit ridiculous by the question.

“My poetry is the only satisfactory cycle of emotion I need.”

“What about the man I saw you talking to?”

“He’s just a man, that’s all. He’s nothing, really, and he’s in the ludicrous condition of not even knowing it.”

“Is that why you asked me if you could stay with me?”

“Look, whoever you are. I . . . ”

Beckman sensed that she, too, was projecting. He blanked his mind quickly, but not before he thought he saw a warning arc of electric energy pass through the darkness.

“All right. I won’t pry,” he interrupted. “You’re welcome to stay, but you’ll have to sleep on the floor.”

“I prefer it, actually.”

“But there are other things,” Beckman said.

“What other things?”

“I get up early to write before I go to work. It isn’t a pleasant job.”

“No job is,” she said. “Now, let’s get out of here.” She started throwing her stack of poetry books into the whiskey box. “I’m not going to sell any books here. Nobody comes in here. It’s a crypt. Everything’s old and crumbling and useless.”

She motioned for Beckman to pick up the box of books and follow her out. He did, although wondering all the while why he did it. Did she have some mystical power of authority? Did everyone obey her will? He gently placed the box in the trunk of her car and noticed that everything in her trunk was somehow broken or torn including her spare tire, which was flat. She handed him the keys.

“You drive,” she said.

“I haven’t driven a car in years. I don’t even have a license, and besides, the diner is within walking distance.”

“Can you carry my books that far?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” Beckman said.

“I’m not letting my books out of my sight,” she said, taking the keys away from Beckman.

It only took five or six minutes to reach the diner. Malany parked her car in the alleyway, which frightened the cats away from their domain. She shut the engine down and looked at him with a mild expression of disgust. They got out of Malany’s car and walked up the back stairway to Beckman’s apartment.

Once inside, Beckman went over to a stack of wooden crates in a corner of the room and unpacked a loaf of crumbly bread, four potatoes, an onion, and a can of corned beef. “I’m relieved to hear that you don’t rely on food to fuel your imagination.”

“What is your job here?” she asked.

Beckman hesitated then said, “I clean up, pretty much everything. What I mean to say is, it’s dirty and smelly.” At that moment he decided not to tell her about Herschel. Chances were, she would never meet him, and if she did, Herschel would probably run, screaming.

“I may have to come in sometimes in a hurry and take a shower.” Beckman continued.

She looked out of the dirty window, bored and disinterested. “What time?” She asked.

“Usually around seven. Will you go out at all?” Beckman asked.

“Probably not. I have some things I want to write, and I don’t like to eat.”

She appeared not to have heard a word. Beckman had only meant it as a harmless touch of conventional humor, something banal and standardized.

“But conventionality is meaningless and irrelevant,” she said. She immediately left the window where she had been standing, gazing down at the ally, and went over to his books, which he had stacked against the wall next to the window.

“Paperbacks from the used bookstore, a few college textbooks, nothing very highbrow,” he said.

But she was looking at the titles intently, weighing and sifting each for meaning, even the mysteries. Beckman left her for his two-burner hot plate to boil two potatoes and warm half the can of meat. He was beginning to realize, already, the shadowy complexities of two people sharing the same things. It was understandable that food and space had to be drawn in half, but there were other problems, considerations, or demons as he instantly labeled them.

“You strike me as a privileged little rich kid running away from Mama,” Malany said.

“Almost correct,” Beckman said. “Well-to-do rather than rich, and I’m running away from my father. He’s a partner in a Washington law firm. He wants me to go to law school and join his firm.”

“And you want to show him that you don’t need him?” Malany said.

“I want to be a successful writer. I believe I have something to say.” Beckman offered her his sleeping bag. She accepted, immediately laying it beside his books. The act unexpectedly challenged Beckman’s sense of territory. He felt in some primeval way dispossessed in one important corner of his room.