Chacter Bio for Luke Goodall

            Luke Goodall is twenty-four years old and in his senior year at Northwest as a Music Performance Major.  He has been in show choir, tower choir, and has functioned as an accompanist for the university for five years now.  He and his friend Bobby Charmichael are like two peas in a pod—they came in to the music department together and rushed Phi Mu Alpha at the same time.  As two participants in the same men’s quartet, they tend to make their music where-ever they are, whether it’s during a practice for a performance or simply waiting in a lunch line.  Hence, they tend to burst out into song (literally) quite often.  It is a colorful life for Luke, the fourth generation in a long line of hawkeyed lawyers from Iowa, but his older brother Robert has taken up the family tradition, so as far as he’s concerned, his life is a mountain of possibilities.  He hopes to take his talent on the road with a musical theatre troupe, or perhaps even on the water by way of one of the summer cruise ships that are always looking for young performing interns fresh from the graduation gown.  Last year, he went to Italy on a show choir tour for thirty-six days, but the performances scheduled by their group’s instructor left little time for a cultural experience.  He wishes to return to Italy someday for a more relaxed view of the world.  Red-headed women fascinate Luke and despite his efforts to make a series of relationships work with his ex-girlfriends (all of which were either brunettes or blondes), he has always secretly wanted to date a red-headed girl.  His favorite meal is late night macaroni and cheese with ketchup and his favorite desert is a chocolate-strawberry micro-blast.  His favorite song is “Luck be a Lady Tonight” from the musical Guys and Dolls.

Luke and Laima

            Two guys are chatting on their way to music class at the Fine Arts.  They have gel-styled hair and are wearing dress-shirts, ties, black pants, and shiny black shoes.  They periodically burst into little bits of song duets and stuttered dance steps as they walk down the flag path.  A girl with red, wavy hair, wearing black leggings, a pair of black flat suede boots, a navy blue and white striped shirt-dress, and a thin strap black shiny purse crosses their path whilst making a video with a pocket digital camera.  One of the guys stops and watches her with fascination.  She points the camera at herself and speaks something very fast in a chatty sort of tone that it is hard to make out.  During her speedy dialogue, she points the camera up at the second to last flag for a while, then back at herself, then at the clock memorial pausing for a close-up of the clocks for Maryville and Turkey.  She points the camera back at herself, her tone of voice obviously brining the presentation to a close, and with a smile, shuts it off.  The young man approaches her while she is busy stashing the camera in her purse.

                “Wow, what were you doing just now?”

                “I was making a video from my camera for my friends and family back home.”

                “I see, where is home?”

                “Lithuania.”

                “Ah, where is that?”

                “In Europe.  That over there is my country’s flag and then I came over here to show the time difference between Maryville and Istanbul since Istanbul is close to Lithuania.”

                “That’s great.  How did you end up here in the Midwest?”

                “I was studying in a college in Denmark, then I decided to come to America—so I guess I’m studying abroad…not abroad but abroad-abroad.”  She giggles.  “Northwest was my second of three choices.”

                “Wow, that’s really cool.  By the way, I’m Luke.”  He shakes her hand.

                “Hi Luke, I’m Laima.  What were you doing?”

                “OH, I was just…walking to class and I saw you talking and I was like, that’s interesting and it doesn’t sound like English so I wondered if you were an international student which I guess you are.  I like your hair.”

                “Thanks.  Are you going to study abroad?”

                “I did already; I went to Italy summer before last.  I really enjoyed it.  Are you enjoying yourself here at Northwest?”

                “Yes, very much!  It’s so great that people stop to talk to international students here.  Everyone seems very nice.”

                “Yeah, I guess they are.  Well, good luck with your video for your family and have a nice semester.”

                “Thanks, you too!”

                Luke walks up the steps to the Fine Arts, then stops and turns back to look, but Laima is already halfway to Colden Hall, strolling lightly across the grass beside the pond. 

Dark Circumstances

     Young Officer Rays was oblivious to so many details that night—things hidden by darkness and circumstance.  His mind registered that the building he was standing in front of at the time was made out of brick; however, he didn’t remember the number or the fact that there were actually two kinds of brick to be seen.  There was the rough, brilliantly red façade that covered the majority of the building, giving it a new, edgy feel that greatly attracted college kids, whose temporary existence in such a small town required little more than a stylish apartment.  Behind the untrimmed hedges lay the history of the building, its 100 year history told in ten registers of the foundation, each dusky-colored brick smoothed under the stripes of rain-worn paths.


     All of this poetic, soul-riveting experience was lost upon the twenty-eight year-old that night.  He was unmindful of the cracks in the walls, the pealing of white paint, the mismatched species of untrimmed hedges.  He remembered his senses, exposed to the chill and excitement of the night air, were unfamiliar to him.  So was the lingering feeling of soft skin under his hands.  It—she had escaped from his car only moments before, laughing,  his LED flashlight in hand, and a mop of brown hair bouncing behind her.
     
     With slow, deliberate footfalls, Officer Rays made his way after her, up the wide concrete steps, tracing his hand along the coolness of the black iron railing. He paused at the screen door to sigh and hang his head in mock frustration before pulling it open and pushing past the old glass door to the stairwell beyond.
    
     The smell of beef stew and brownies lingered in the air.  To the left there were four, open-top mailboxes with names scribbled upon them.  Officer Rays reached beyond the old push-button door buzzers for the light switch.  A beam of light from a street lamp caught the glint of a ring on his finger.  He paused, wondering if a flashlight was worth the trouble he was libel to get into.


     The officer was startled from his thoughts by a giggle and the creak of a door closing at the top of the steps.  He smiled slyly in the shadows, and began feeling his way up the steps like a kid sneaking up on one of his playmates in a game of Hide and Seek.  The stairs creaked, complaining that his tall but nimble frame was asking too much of them at one o’clock in the morning, but he continued noisily up to the top of the steps until he arrived at the old wooden door with a brass number four tacked onto it.


     “I really shouldn’t be here,” he murmured to himself.  Then he smiled at his own boldness.  “But then again, I guess Marcy was right about me playing with hand cuffs leading to all kinds of trouble...”


     With that, he slipped into the apartment and gently shut the door, disappearing into the dark circumstances behind it.

Of Justice and Jackrabbits

           When I was 17 years old I was called upon by woman to answer a question that shamed me to answer and brought her a great deal of pain.  The answer caused her and the man she was living with to quarrel and eventually separate.  I remember being afraid of what would happen to me—after all guy was a con man of sorts and had been in prison before. There was no telling what he might do.  Even the woman was not entirely to be trusted—she received a restraining order from the man’s new girlfriend a few months later.

For years, I could not return to my home without remembering the situation because the woman’s house could easily be seen from both my mother’s living room and her back porch.  Then I learned that the con man was living half a block away from us with friends from our home-town church.

At first, I was very ill at ease.  Should I say something?  Should I let it go?  The people that the con man lived with were sweet and elderly.

I would hate to see them get taken advantage of.

On the other hand, the con man was going to church.  He’d been down to the prayer bench to ask forgiveness for his sins.  He was working a steady job.  Maybe this was the break he needed to turn his life around.  I kept my silence.  I cannot judge for myself, I thought.  Leave it in God’s hands, See what comes of it…

                Last year I visited my grandmother.  She talked of the many changes in the church since I was away.  When the conversation turned to the con-man, I kept my mouth shut and listened.  She said he’d been arrested for stealing from the place where he worked.

                “That man,” she said.  “He never was very sincere.  Sure, he went down to the prayer bench that one time.  But then he kept going down there.  That’s a sure sign that either someone’s not sincere about their prayer, or else they’re just doing it for show.”

                I didn’t know if he was sincere or not, but there for a while my heart had hoped that he was.  In a way, I still hope.  I’d like to believe that none of us alive are past the point of receiving grace.  In the place of insincerity though, it’s nice to know that justice can be a jackrabbit.

Haunting of a Small-town Life

            When I worked at the wonderful fast-food franchise of Taco-chicken, I received a phone call from a woman whom I had never met. This woman asked a very specific question that I cannot at this time bring myself to repeat.  I cannot tell you this story.  But I can tell you the jist of it.  Please pardon the air of mystery, as there is really nothing mysterious about it, only regretful.

When this question was asked, I told the truth.  This truth caused her to cry and shout and carry on.  She hung up.  She called back.  She hung up.  She called again, but this time there was only the sound of her and another man shouting.  When she called back again, it was to inform me that she was coming to talk to me.  I remember kneeling at a chair and praying for grace.  I remember being calm.

When she came, I was shocked that she was my mom’s age.  She sat there with all her grey hairs and asked me more questions which were like the first.  All of my answers gave her the same conclusion, the same hard truth.  She asked me to drop by her home later that day to talk some more then left.

Later, the man I had told the truth about came in his black truck and and dropped a napkin on the counter.

“That’s all you need to know.”  He said, and walked out.  The scribbled, badly spelled words on the napkin expressed how much he hated me.

After work, I went to the woman’s house, which was a block from my own.  There she, the man and I talked.  I told the truth they shouted at each other.  I remember crying, feeling like a child being torn apart in a family feud.  For the first time in my life I was thinking I’m glad my parents divorced.

They asked me to come in to talk some more because their discussion was getting too loud.  One of the neighbors might call the cops they said.

“I can’t talk anymore,” I said “I’m sorry, I have to go home.  My mom will worry.”

I was seventeen.  These people scared me.  The situation scared me.  So I left.  I told my mom everything when I got home and cried in her lap.

From then on, I was scared.  The house where all of this had happened was easily visible from the both the living room and the back porch of my mom’s house.  It served as a constant reminder to me of what had happened.  Every once in a while when I was running errands about town, I would glance at my rear-view mirror and notice a black truck following close behind me.  I stopped walking at night.  Eventually I moved away.  Even now though, when I return home once or twice every few months, it haunts me—the ghost of a small-town life.

An Introcution of Sorts

Hello there!  Welcome to Pieces of Ember.  Please, make yourself at home on the floor.  Let me get you some tea and tell you a bit about myself.

When I was six, I wrote a non-fiction story about chasing (and being chased by) chickens at my Aunt Linda’s home in Washington State.  The words were carefully written out on school standard-line alphabet paper below the crayon-illustrations depicting the event.  These pages were then mounted to various colors of construction paper and bound together with yarn—my first book.

Since then I have written a few stories here and there, some of them finished, most of the not, and various poems.  Now I am in my senior year of college seeking to acquire my B.A. in English and before you ask, no, I’m not going to teach.

The next question that always seems to follow in the conversation is, “Well, then what are you going to do?”  For five years my answer has more or less been the same:  I’d like to write and illustrate my own children’s books.  Plain and simple.

Execution is not always so plain and simple though, which is why I find myself in Ms. Brenda Lewis’s class and therefore writing this blog.  I’ve never had much consistency when it comes to journal writing so this project should be interesting.  But blogging is just another form of writing, yes?  And writing tends to be half of a conversation—one I hope you will be interested in joining.

So, if your all done with you tea, please feel free to leave your side of our little chat in the comment section.  Thank you so much for stopping by to visit!  I hope you return soon to enjoy the rest of the furniture (once it’s been constructed).