Going Home Excerpt

In the third Oregon historical, Going Home, which will be published September 21st, the story begins in Portland, Oregon, before heading east of the Cascades. It is a love story but also about Oregon right after the Civil War. This was a particularly turbulent time in the United States and Oregon was no exception.

When I wrote Going Home, the Civil War was seemingly in my country's past, but several months ago, after a mass killing, it and the Confederate flag rushed right into the front pages. It became an issue that not only surprised me but gave me some concern about this book's reception-- where the hero fought for the South. Not a thing I can do about that though as the story is what it is-- whether it's politically correct at the moment or not. He had his reasons and I think those who read the story will understand that.

This is an excerpt from when Jed Hardman first got back to Portland.

~~~~~

   From the looks of how she was dressed, the play in which she’d starred, she had grown even more successful in the years he’d been gone. She’d be even more unlikely to agree to go to a ranch in the middle of nowhere. Moreover, who was that man who put his arm around her? Was she married? Maybe with children?

   Josh, his dark skin making his teeth show up even more as he grinned, said, “Argue it all out as much as you want, you won’t let this one go. We both know it.”

   “Maybe or maybe not.” He took another long drag on the cigarette, finding no pleasure in it.

   “Let’s get a drink,” Josh suggested.

   Jed nodded, even though whiskey wasn’t going to do anything to make him happy. Josh was right also that he needed to settle it with Raine. If she was happy with someone else, he’d wish her well. Well, he’d do his damnedest to wish her well.

   As they walked into a smoky bar, Jed wondered, not for the first time, what the attitude in Oregon was toward mulattoes, which would be his brother’s legal definition for those who needed such boxes for human differences. Not that it mattered much what anyone thought, considering he and Josh were armed and a head taller than most of the men in the room.

They leaned on the bar until the bartender came over. “Two whiskeys,” Jed drawled putting the money on the bar. The bartender looked at Josh a little curiously, but he and his brother were used to that. The drinks were poured with no questions.

   “You boys are new around here,” a bald man with a wide girth said as he moved closer to them. Jed took a sip of his whiskey without answering. “Back from the war?”

   “And that would be your business?”

   The man smiled. “Just trying to be friendly.”

   “Snooping into the business of other folks considered friendly these days?” Jed asked. He motioned to Josh for them to take their drinks to a table. The man followed and sat without an invitation.

   “Just thought you might not know Oregon was in favor of freeing slaves.”

   “That so?” Josh asked with a cynical smile as he sipped his whiskey.

   “They set this to being a free state before we went into the Union. Way ahead, then had to redo it. Of course, can’t legally own land here.”

   “Who can’t?” Jed asked.

   “No colored folk.” The man grinned slyly. “We’re a real free state kind of folk.”

   “What’s your game here, mister?” Jed asked.

   “Friends call me Toddy. Todd Coen if you want to be formal and my game? Well let me think a minute on that one. It might be many things. You boys are new here, aren’t you?” Jed took a long draw on his cigarette instead of answering. “Just curious. Always curious about folks… Uh what are your names so we can keep this more sociable?”

   “Not saying we want to be sociable, but Jed and Josh.”

   “Guess you two are figuring I’d be one of those narrow minded types who’d block colored folk from their rights but no, I am not. What I am is a realist. I see the irony of life and can’t help but observe it. Like the two of you.”

   “There’s an irony to us?” Jed asked as Josh headed over to the bar and paid for a bottle of whiskey, bringing back an extra glass.

   Coen said his thanks before he took a sip. “You two have Southern accents, strong ones. Georgia maybe?”

   “Asking a lot of questions can prove dangerous—in some places,” Jed said eyeing him coldly.

   Coen grinned with real humor. Obviously, he didn’t easily take offense. “Guessing since you just showed up, war just ended, likely you fought in it, and wanted out of the South after it lost?”

   Jed contemplated punching him. It would actually feel good to hit someone... for a moment anyway.

   Coen looked curiously at Josh and then back at Jed. “So you came north and brought your freed slave.”

   Josh laughed.

   “Josh has never been a slave, Mr. Coen. He was a freeman from birth. And to stop more questions. He’s my brother.”

   Coen laughed. “Well bless my soul. That’s something else. So you fought for the north?”

   Jed shook his head. “No.”

   “To keep slavery?”

   “You are looking for a fight.”

   Coen laughed. “Not with a man your size. No siree. Just wondered is all.”

   “Well to satisfy your curiosity. I fought for the South. Josh and I were both in the war, in Jeb Stuart’s cavalry until he was killed at Yellow Tavern. then under Wade Hampton until the surrender and our parole.”

   “You both fought for the South?” Now their new want-to-be friend sounded mystified.

   “We fought for family and state.”

   “I didn’t mean to offend by asking.”

   “War is hell, stranger. It’s even worse when you go into it knowing it’s a lost cause, but I had family in it. Now all that’s left of that is Josh.”

   “I still can’t get over you fighting though for slavery given...” Coen’s tone reflected his disbelief as he looked from Jed to Josh.

   “Fought for a state’s right to leave the union. Fought to protect our neighbors and friends from an invading army. My father, my family, never believed in slavery and paid a salary with all workers free to leave. As soon as he bought it, my grandfather had freed all of the slaves working on his cotton plantation. Oh, how the hell is it worth talking about this? It’s over.”

   “Not hardly. The bad feelings still here. Hate is strong, son. People are strange; how one day they’ll say one thing and then boom, the other side comes out. Dark and light. A lot of folks here won’t take kindly if they find you fought for the South.” His smile was wry. “Even more that you got a darkie with you.”

   Jed smile was glacial. “You are betting on the wrong cards if you think I give a damn.”

   Coen chuckled. “Nah, just figured you might need to know what you’re up against back here.”

   “What’s your work, Coen?” Jed smoked studying the man and wondering at his angle.

   “Make it Toddy. Coen sounds too much like my father. I’ve done a bit of this and that. You name it. I’ve done it probably. Sometimes I write pieces for the paper.”

   “Hope this won’t be one of them,” Josh said with a grin as he sipped his whiskey.

   “No, just was curious. Two big men like yourselves and now that you say it, I can see the resemblance, well it makes a man wonder about the story behind it—if the man’s a writer anyway. What brings you to Portland then?”

   “Business,” Jed answered.

   “And then you’re moving on?”

   “You do sound like a journalist,” Jed said with a cold smile making it clear that’d be less than welcome.

   “I’m not. I’m more a poet.”

   “Well, Toddy, who pries into stranger’s business, I own a ranch, east of the Cascades, on the North Fork of the John Day River. We’re heading there next.”

   “You didn’t stop by there first though? Something more important here than there? Whole thing makes a body wonder.”

   “It’s nothing for a poem.” Jed’s smile was the one some had said looked mean. He felt mean.

   “Never know what might be. Poetry is nothing but painting pictures with words. Might be there is a poem or a lot of them in you two boys,” Toddy said not looking intimidated.

   “Well, you been giving me advice,” Jed drawled, “now I’ll give you some. Don’t ask too many questions or you’ll find yourself booted out of here.”

   Toddy grinned. “I’ll remember that. So you going back soon?”

  Jed put up one finger. “I had my reasons for coming here first. Among them, a need to go back there with supplies. I am not sure what will be left. Four years is a long time to leave a ranch.”

   “I suppose it is nosy, but how’s it happen you have a place out there? Kind of unusual. That’s pretty remote country as best I know. Not a place a man would find by accident.”

   Jed surprised himself by deciding to answer. Despite his nosiness, there was something likable about Coen’s persistence. “I came out in ‘59, bought it from a Frenchman.” He didn’t need to reveal the story of how that had come about. “He had been allowed to buy it as a reward for service, plus the fact it was wilderness. Not many wanted land out there. The deed is firm if that was your next question. He had built cabin and barns. I added onto the house, built corrals, stocked it with cattle. It was a good plan right up until the war interfered.”

   “You read about all the Indian trouble over there?”

   “You are just a fount of good news.”

   “What Indian trouble,” Josh interrupted giving Jed a look, which was answered with a shrug.

   “Paiutes, Shoshoni, some others been attacking and hitting settlers, anywhere they can. Military being all back east, fighting the War, left an opening. Oregon formed what they call the First Oregon Calvary, but I look to see that disbanded now with real warriors back. When we get some professional troops over there, those honed in battle, it should straighten itself out.”

   “Oh yeah, professional killers, just what everybody needs,” Jed said with a grimace.

   “Hey, boy, that’s what it takes sometimes.”

   Jed had known about the problems with Paiutes and Shoshoni before he left, but he’d hoped for the best. The Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs were peaceable with their own reservation. He hoped that was still the case. He was counting on it.

   If Coen was right and there’d been a lot of trouble in his region, he’d be lucky to find anything standing when he got home. He wasn’t even sure Grimes and Jessup would still be where he’d left them, supposedly looking after the property and cattle. If he was lucky, the cattle would’ve spread to the brush and be there to be rounded up-- instead of in a grizzly, wolf or Paiute’s belly. At least, he had not assumed he’d be back quickly and had left money with a reputable lawyer to keep the property free of taxes or liens.

   “You didn’t get much news about out here then?”

   “Not a lot.” A war is all about it.

   “Hear about the gold rush over your way?”

   Jed shook his head, wondering what else could go wrong. The woman he had hoped would be waiting, even though he’d never asked her, looked to be taken. The cabin likely was burnt to the ground, cattle gone, and he’d have to start over. Now gold fever to take away any possible hired help. Perfect.

Bannister's Way

When writing, secondary characters sometimes interest the author enough to find themselves in their own book. This happened to me when I wrote Desert Inferno. David Bannister was an agent sent to Arizona to find evidence and arrest a dangerous man. He was slick, handsome, and dangerous. He and the hero of Inferno, Jake Donovan, became friends. I began to wonder about David's background. When I figured it out, Bannister's Way was on its way. 

The heroine was a sculptress, teacher, and David's ex-wife. To catch a murderer, David was going undercover but didn't have in mind what his partner set up for him.

Having been in a lot of art classes, some with nude models, having painted and sculpted nudes, Raven was a fun heroine for me

 

David only half listened as he heard her tell them about the value there was to be had from taking seriously a study of fine art, how throughout the ages great artists have seen the study of the body--the musculature, the bone structure, in short the anatomy--was important to make their work come alive. They must take seriously the study of the nude--

Whoa! What had she just said? Nude! Who said anything about... nude? And then he knew and wished nothing so much as that Vance was nearby where he could get his hands around his throat. A good dodge, a natural way in, his friend had said. Friend, hah! He'd kill him!

He barely heard the rest of Raven's instructions. It was impossible. No way under this earth or above it could he take off his clothes in front of all these people! He looked at the students, at their interested gazes in a new way. They must know he was the model, the guinea pig, the sacrificial lamb, the... No!  He would not strip. It was out of the question. No way could he do it.

Raven's voice broke through his thoughts. "At one time, I wouldn't have had to say what I am going to next, but times have changed and so have people. There will be no commenting about the model, nor any jokes." One of the girls giggled in what to David seemed a nasty way. He stared at her, wondering how such an innocent looking young woman could have such a perverted giggle. He looked back at Raven, who was looking over the students. "You will at no time treat the model with less than respect. You will not touch him. This is a serious class. If you behave as though your time here is a joke or an opportunity for voyeurism, you will be kicked out of the class. If it happens soon enough, you might be able to just drop it. If it’s too late, you will get a failing grade.”

He felt angry at her for the position in which he found himself, then he remembered her uncertainty, the many opportunities she had extended, trying to give him a graceful way out of it. Except he hadn't known what it was. He remembered her question--are you sure you know what you're doing? His own confident answer--of course.

  He stared down at his scarred boot and thought again of Vance--the man who called himself friend, who had to be somewhere snickering, laughing at the ultimate stunt. This was the worst of the tricks to which Rich had ever subjected him. David's breathing wasn't coming easily as he considered how it would feel to be nude in a room where everyone else was clothed, of being stared at--intimately.

 It is for art, he reminded himself. Everyone knew about the old masters, their works. Michelangelo’s David. Rodin’s Age of Bronze. He'd seen nude paintings on museum walls but never thought about the flesh and blood models who had posed for those works. The thought of being one of those models had never entered his head.

He’d almost turned down the assignment just on it being as a model--a fully clothed model. Only his interest, in what had appeared to be an unsolvable case and the knowledge that his ex-wife taught the class, had persuaded him. Now what was he going to do?

A piece of 'From Here to There'

In From Here to There, a contemporary western set in Montana, a question is asked. In today's world, what makes it The West? What is it that western communities hope to protect for themselves from the encroaching world? The book asks what makes a hero as well.

digital painting from a photo I took in Eastern Oregon of a cattle drive-- 

yes, they still have them

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 "I should apologize to you, Phil," Nancy said as soon as everyone was seated again. "It must have sounded like an accusation the way I put my question. I didn't mean it that way." She smiled a gamine grin that Phillip thought would have made it nearly impossible for anyone to take offense at what she'd said.

 "We are defensive though," Emile said, leaning forward, his voice intense. "Outsiders come here, buy up the land, move into the valleys and hills, and they don't understand our ways, share our values. They don’t understand the problems we face with say wolf or grizzly predations. They want us gone is the honest truth and leave this place for vacation homes and the wolves and grizzlies.”

“I have read about the conflicts,” Phillip agreed, “and see how it seems confrontive.”

“It causes a lot of trouble when newcomers or worse outsiders expect to change everything to meet their goals-- often nothing to do with what this place has been. If they didn’t like how this was, why’d they bother to come?"

“Everybody came sometime,” Phillip argued.

“Outsiders cause us a lot of grief.”

"Outsiders. That's a good word for the way you people treat anybody who wasn't born on your land."

 "Oh my, I'm sorry I ever brought any of this up," Nancy said.

 Phillip made his own tone conciliatory. "I'll concede the evils of the big cities with high taxes, crime, pollution, and overcrowding, but how about if we keep this discussion to the thing I really don't understand. What is the philosophy that you people see as being Western, that separates a Westerner from what you would call an outsider?" He had no desire to get into an argument with Emile. On the other hand, fighting with Wes might have a certain appeal. His eyes narrowed as he looked toward Wes, who had settled next to Helene on the gingham covered sofa. What were that guy's intentions?

 Emile subsided back, as Nancy, who had moved to sit on the arm of his chair, began soothingly kneading his shoulder muscle.

 There was a silence "A lot of the ways around here have changed, even since I was a kid," Amos said finally. "There was a time when a man was judged by what he did not just what he owned. There wasn't so much concern with how much money you had, but more how you did your work, what your word was worth. You know, even now with some of the old timers, a handshake is as good or better than a paper contract would be somewhere else. In fact, with a lot of men, you never get a signed contract. A man's word, that's everything. Know what I mean?"

 "Maybe. I deal with people a lot on the look in their eye," Phillip said thoughtfully. "It doesn't always work out though when you don't have the expectations written down. People remember their promises differently."

 Amos grinned. "Well, that's true most everywhere, I expect, but if a man's worked the winter at your side, you've watched his kids grow up, seen how he keeps his stock, how he maintains his fences, you get a feeling for him and the kind of fella he is. A man who can do does. A man who can't brags.”

“I’ve noticed that last one too.” Phillip smiled but didn’t look at Wes as he had been tempted.

 "We do come out here from other places, heck, if we count our families, all of us came from someplace else, but there’s always been those who weren’t born here. They come in and that’s where the grain gets separated from the chaff.

“Some overgraze their land, don’t treat their cattle right, and then go belly up. Gone and good riddance. Now we got those what don’t come to make money or ranch. It’s an investment to them. The place goes out of production. They don’t care about the schools, the socials, none of it.”

“And that relates to being a cowboy?” Phillip asked.

“We got a saying out here--the bigger the hat, the littler the outfit.” Amos chuckled.

“I think though,” Nancy said, “you're not so much asking what makes the West what it is, but more what is we out here are trying so hard to hold onto and that we feel is threatened by newcomers."

 Phillip nodded. "It is something of what I have wondered."

"Some of it's a feeling of self-sufficiency in the community,” Emile answered. “It’s a caring for each other. A man takes care of himself but also helps out those around him. There’s knowing you can leave your door unlocked and if your neighbor comes by the only thing he'll be going into your house for is to leave you a pie or loaf of bread his wife baked."

 "It sounds Edenic," Phillip said, remembering the neighborhoods he'd grown up in. If you left your door unlocked there, you'd find the place trashed and emptied out when you got home. If you were lucky, the burglar was gone and was not waiting to bash your head in.

 "I suppose it is, and a lot of it's already gone,” Emile agreed. “When I was a kid, everybody used to get together at the county grange on Saturday nights for potlucks and at each other's barns for dances. Us kids would watch them dance all night, and the worst thing that would happen might be a couple of hotheads fighting over some pretty little thing down behind the barn. Then when they worked it out, they’d be shaking each other’s hand.”

Amos chuckled. “Yep, if a man's barn or house burned, the whole valley'd show up to put up a new one. You saw a fellow driving his rig down the road, and you not only knew who he was but who his people had been. Nowadays, I don't hardly know half the people three miles from my road in here, let alone all the way into town."

 "You can't blame that totally on city people who moved in though," Phillip said. "Change happens. Nobody can hold onto anything forever."

 "We can damn well try," Emile retorted argumentatively.

 Amos shook his head. "No, he's right. We can't hold onto what was, and we probably do glamorize the old West too much, make more out of it than it was, like it really was John Wayne running things back then."

He stopped for a moment and then, as though thinking aloud, mused, "It's a funny thing about the Western way of thinking. On the one hand, it's a man helping another man by choice, but on the other hand, it's a man being independent, doing for himself. I think that's what we don't want to lose the most... independence."

 "You don't think people from the city can be independent?" Phillip asked, knowing what the answer would be.

 "City folks want somebody else to do everything for them," Wes said. "Get the government into every part of life. Raise taxes, ask for services. They want to butt into everybody else's business and tell them how to run it. You get a man from the city out here and the first thing you know he wants sidewalks, street lights and expects you to help pay for them."