Work in Progress: John Dan Nanda
Ma’s Downstairs. John’s in Bed. Pop’s Beyond the Business Parlor. BAM’s the Bell.
I’m working on a novel and will post how that works here. The story involves plagarism, death, and phony-baloneys.1 I found a voice I think works for one of the characters.
I’ve found a prompt that helps figure out a character to think of them in a mundane situation. Does the character charge it in some way? I had a core sense of his voice and how that will work in the story and could write him in scenes with other main characters.
This scene didn’t add to my character’s voice but gave me a sense of his family who will be characters in the novel.
Ma, almost every morning, stomped around and hollered his name downstairs. She made his name so loud they heard it across the cul du sac: John2 (stomp or door slam) Dan (stomp or a wild series of claps) Nan-(pause for more noise before she finished their last name)-do! Like a kid having a tantrum at Hazelton Gardens Mall.
In bed, he wondered about Ma’s thought process. It was twelve stairs up and six or so feet down the hall to just bang on his bedroom door. In fact, instead of this show, just flipping bang on his door or slam it open and scare him screaming awake. Say “get up. Breakfast’s downstairs.” Humiliation had taught him not to swim after eating. Not to pocket gum at the checkout line. He covered his head with a pillow. Who’s this for? Gotta be bad for her throat.
Shouting his name in a roundabout path through the house for ten minutes: banging pans in the kitchen then into the living room, dining room or den. Sometimes even into the business parlor. At dinner Ma said “the Wexleys heard,” pointing at their house, “doing their science work for State.” Then pointing the other way, “and Sally Houra. Every time, she’s back from bringing her little girls to the bus.” Ma clapped her hands. “What do they hear?” Pop asked. If they heard anything it sounded like a woman going batshit screaming a college kid’s name over and over for ten minutes.
Ma always stopped shouting once her path got back around to the kitchen and the BAM! bell hanging over the counter. Pop watched what he called horseshit TV, and probably laughed his ass off because he spent all day around death.
Pop, for a while, roared at Emeril Live. The chef lurching away and close to the stove like a riled up animal; asserting dominance with shouts of “BAM!”
Ma took pride in her cooking and objected to Emeril’s existence. She left the room as soon as she heard his voice or Pop haw-hawing. She wouldn’t answer when he asked her to watch with him. It was unusual.
One morning the kind of massive bronze dinner bell, a farmer’s wife used to clang to bring a dozen sons in from the fields hung from the kitchen ceiling on a silver chain. A large silver plate was screwed into the bell with “B-A-M” engraved in black letters.
Something had happened that John and his siblings didn’t understand. Mackenzie had heard them whisper-fight in the hall: “Aileen, c’mon”… “clowning around” … “human garbage.”
He stopped watching Emeril and Ma never acknowledged the bell. John, Mackenzie, and Hector assumed a truce had been reached.
Until John started college. She went at the bell every morning; shouting his name out. Staggering it, like she was spanking him. John. Dan. Nan-da!
She’d find, who knows. Her book? Maybe. Or whatever she had used to cook breakfast with: the milk gallon still on the counter. Whatever. She swung it at the “bam!” bell.
Just before hitting it the second time she shouted, “John!” Top a her lungs, like he was either across the Lake or dead.
It was an outdoor bell hung inside and shook the house.
“Dan!”
She hit it again before the bell finished ringing off her first hit.
He threw the sheets off the bed and thought about climbing out the window.
But why was his middle name shortened? His friends had Joseph and Michael as middle names. What was wrong with Daniel? “John Dan” sounded like a hillbilly designated driver. He thought “John with D. as an initial” sounded—
She hit the bell again and split their last name in two; shouting only “Nan—!” before a final, fifth hit. The grand finale.
“—da!”
The chain vibrated loose as it swung wildly and flew from where it had hung for years.
_pmc
Why I’ve been writing about Heat and Glengarry Glen Ross in recent Blabs.
Tip:
He’s “John N.” This is a first draft and this name might change. I type JDN for him. Docs and Word will search/replace the text when I’ll share a draft or if a better name fits later. Oddly, apps designed for writing novels (eg. NovelPad and Scrivener) may not be .