Nothing Helps

Nothing helps. There is no magic amulet, no proven talisman that will bring words out of the air, filter them through me and out through my pen onto the page. There is nothing that will make me write better words, somehow, exactly-what-I’m-looking-for words, than those that I might eke, squeeze, power (oh please!) out of myself without help.

Then why is my desk so littered with stuff? What is it all doing there? Some of these objects have been there from when I was beginning my first novel nearly thirty years ago and some even longer. This rock, for example. Spheroid if not quite perfectly round, the size of a large lemon, smooth but with a pigskin’s pebblegrain texture, blackish, and heavy as iron. Originally lava from a volcano, or a meteoric fireball from outer space, hurled into the Guatemalan mountainside where I found it sometime in the early 1980s, hardened into cold stone. I hold it in my palm, lightly bouncing it, like a pitcher weighing his next pitch, staring in at the page. The trio of jaguar figurines, collected at different times over the years, word-hungry hunters who silently prowl my jungle of anxiety and nerves. The machine-gun bullet that a Sandinista soldier pulled from a bandolier draped around his torso and handed to me when we were on patrol along Nicaragua’s northern border is not something I attach a particular meaning to, though it has also stood atop my desk for many years. I like to see it there and also to hold it, jabbing my thumb against its lethal spire. A small photograph of my dad holding me in his arms, next to a small headshot of my late wife, Aura, when she was also three or so, a juxtaposition of photos I treasured when she was still alive because it showed how alike we looked at that age, chubby-cheeked, dark-eyed, smiley, assuring us that our child was also going to look like that, the adorable child we never had our chance to bring into the world. A toy soldier from my childhood, a medieval knight, actually, in silvery mail and helmet and yellow tunic. I remember the day I bought it—I was ten or so—in a Guatemala City toy store, its paint moist in the rainy-season humidity of the store, smudging my fingers. He came home to Massachusetts where, in epic battles waged in our basement den that went on for days or even weeks—my first novels, I like to think—despite being a medieval knight, he triumphed over warriors of all centuries, some also painted but the majority monochrome plastic peons, Revolutionary and Civil War soldiers, Nazis, World War II GIs, and so on. In one hand he held a shield, yellow with a blue cross, and in the other a sword. His sword-wielding arm is missing now, and the one that held the shield is severed at the elbow, because although in the basement I could direct his heroism and keep him safe, in outdoor battles in backyard loam piles or in nearby woods he was as vulnerable to flung rocks, firecrackers, and cherry bombs as all my troops. He was no ordinary soldier; even without visible arms and weapons, he was an even greater superhero than Thor. His name was Donny. I don’t know why, I guess I just liked the name. Go fight for me, Donny. Skewer some words with your invisible sword and bring them back, bloody and wriggly. Donny stoically stood his ground on quaking pine desktops as the old Olivetti typewriter rattled toward him like a slow tank, motored by my pounding, and witnessed succeeding generations of desktop computers and laptops; but mostly, from the start, he has observed me bent over the tablets of lined paper—usually yellow, sometimes light green or gray when I can find them—on which I write all my early drafts, until something, a finally achieved immersion that wants to gallop, propels me to the keyboard.