Suzanne Beecher

Dear Reader,

Let me say right up front, there are a lot of reasons to go to college, and I highly recommend it for most people--but I'm really glad I spent those four years doing something else.

Sometimes it's fun not knowing any better. There are always surprises in store for me because I'm still learning things that other people learned in college. But I'm a quick study, so it's never a problem when someone starts talking about "that famous textbook experiment." I just nod my head, smile, and listen like I'm "not" hearing it for the first time.

And after last night, I'm extremely thankful that I've never had any college writing classes, either--I think they might have ruined me. I was reading a book about how to write nonfiction, and it was great in the beginning. The author talked about the struggles of writing and I identified with many of his observations and woes. 'That's me. That's me,' I kept thinking. 'Thank heavens I'm not the only writing nut case out there.' But then, when I was reading Chapter Seven--"Usage: The Dos and Don'ts"--I started conducting a self-evaluation...'Do I do that? Should I be doing that?'

Now I can really identify with medical students who are convinced they've contracted whatever disease they're studying about that week, because today when I was working on my column, I started questioning every word I wrote. Can I say "mighty fine?" Can I use the word "bummer" or should I be "disappointed" instead? Do you feel any "discomfort" or does it "hurt?" Maybe I should find a more impressive word for "important?" Where's my thesaurus? On second thought, what's another word for "pain-in-the-butt?"

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends. 

Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@firstlookbookclub.com

P. S. This week we're giving away 10 copies of the book People Like Us: A Novel by Jason Mott. Click here to enter for your chance to win. 

To the Ones Like You:

You sing.

You dance.

You bleed like the sunrise sky.

RIGHT OFF THE BAT

Whole fistfuls of this actually happened, sister!

So, to keep the lawyers cooling their heels instead of kicking down the front door with those high-priced Italian loafers of theirs, some names and places have been given the three-card monte treatment and this whole damned thing has been fitted with a fiction overcoat. Some people—and even entire sauce-reducing countries—have been punched up a bit for the sake of laughs and the inevitable hard-sell gut punch, but, just for the record, the Frenchies are actually pretty aces once you get to know them. Really.

Now, if you read this and you think you're not one to be taken in by a con job—I mean, you feel like you know who's really on the chopping block here—and if that particular You-Know-Who that you've got all figured out has enough cash on hand to send the aforementioned loaferwearing sharks after me because I said something ol' Daddy Warbucks wouldn't like said in public, well, then that part of the story was just coincidence and parody. Straight for laughs.

Lastly, if I ever get backed into a corner about some detail I don't want to go into, I'll just offer up a five-star smile and swear on a stack of 'Raising Arizona' DVDs that I made it all up. Even if it really happened. So don't even bother.

And if I'm ever asked about whether or not we're all going to be okay in the end?

. . . Well . . . cynicism is the refuge of a world-weary heart.

—THE AUTHOR

(WITH LEGAL BREATHING DOWN HIS NECK)

PEOPLE LIKE US

Behold. Forty-four-year-old him. A low-budget, Black Jack

London shivering in the frozen north called Minnesota.

Not a bad place to be—all points on the timeline considered.

He's at the age of early evening bedtimes and early morning ibuprofen. The muffin top that stalked him for the last couple of decades is finally here to stay but, depending on who you ask, he carries it well enough. This is officially midlife. Gray hair. Gentle whiffs of arthritis. Nothing really heals anymore. Every year on his birthday his doctor sticks her finger up his ass, digging for cancer like it's the last corner of peanut butter in the jar, without so much as a kiss on the cheek or a high five when she's done. Usually, she's out of the room before he can pull his pants up.

Middle age ain't for the faint of heart. But, it's a decent life.

Outside the Minneapolis airport, he's escorted through the cold of the parking deck to a black SUV, caked with road salt and ice, by a thin-framed man with one of the best Afros he's ever seen who, from what Soot understands, was the driving force behind bringing him here to speak in the wake of the dead.

"We're so glad you could make it," the man says. "I mean, you really just don't know how much this means to us. Especially after . . . well, after everything."

Soot nods and smiles. Plays it solemn, because solemn is what it is.

In his defense, the dead weren't dead a year ago, back when he agreed to come. The living only became the dead last week. Unlucky weather. It's under thirty degrees and dropping. There's a cold blow on the way. Billowing frost. Snow the size of horseflies. Wind that makes you regret life choices. Usual fare around these parts. Foreign landscape for him. "You all get this kind of cold often?" he asks, realizing, as his teeth chatter, that the jacket he brought from home isn't going to cut it. "It's always on its way," the man says.

"I'm a Southern boy," Soot replies. "To me, dressing for the cold just means Add sleeves and pray on it."

Laughter.

College has paid him—in advance—to come here and talk about his book, because that's what he's done for over a decade now. It's simple enough, or at least it's become so: talk about America through the lens of his Black skin, his fear of police, and his loss.

"So, how are people?" he asks the man behind the wheel. The guy holds a phone in each hand as he drives, steering with forearms and knees over the slick roads, both phones chanting different directions at him. The car drifts, only for the guy to snatch it back after a few seconds. For sure, Soot's making conversation in part so that the man will put the phones down and keep the two of them alive.

"So, how are people?" he asks a second time.

This time, the man answers, finally looking away from the two phones and yanking the car back into its lane yet again. "People?" he says slowly, like he forgot what the word means. "People are . . . you know . . . we're . . . we're resilient." Soot hates that word. "People are doing the best they can, all things considered," the guy continues. He grins as he says the words, as if he's trying to smile to fix something that can't be fixed, but he's trying anyway. "I won't pretend like people are okay. They're definitely not okay. But what can you do? Things are the way they are." His voice trembles at the end. He clears his throat. "I'm really glad you decided to come," he says. "I mean, I don't think you understand just how much this means to all of us. I don't think you get just how much we need you."

"Just trying to help," Soot says. He still hasn't recovered from the cold, so he fidgets with the car's air-conditioning vents and the thermostat. Plenty of heat rolls out, but no warmth.

"You're definitely going to help," the man says. "I had some friends who were at Mississippi when those students got shot and you showed up there. They said you really helped out. They said you told them all the things they didn't know they needed to hear. Like about what happened to your dad, and your daughter. I respect how you can go back to wounds like that and open them up. I could never do it."

It's hard for the guy to talk and listen to his two cell phones and steer/slide over the ice and be resilient all at the same time. The car is all over all three lanes of highway and Soot starts to think it might be better to just shut up and let the guy get him there alive.

"Good to know," Soot says, deciding not to say any more for a while. "It's all going to be okay, now that you're here," the man says.

For the rest of the drive the two of them ride in silence. Soot focuses on staying warm and on trying not to get overwhelmed by the thought that the SUV might suddenly wind up in a ditch.

The cold blow moves in as promised. It's not just the ice sliding the SUV around anymore. The wind has signed on, giving more than a gentle nudge and covering the windshield with snow. The road is crowded with cars, even as the night turns white and the windows begin to freeze over around the edges, and the pit of Soot's stomach starts to flutter as he stares out the window and imagines what might happen to someone alone in this type of world.

Eventually, Soot and the man arrive at the hotel. It's just off campus and, if it weren't covered in snow, he would see the school colors decorating the outside of the building and he would be impressed.

"Here we go," the guy says as Soot opens the SUV door. The cold grabs him by the leg. "I'll be by tomorrow evening to pick you up for the dinner with the faculty. They're eager to hear what you have to say about all this, you know?"

They shake hands.

"I'll try to do what I can," Soot says. "Speak truth to power?" the man says. "What?"

"I was thinking about that. That's what writers do, right? They speak truth to power. But that's not really your gig, though, is it? You sorta speak to grief. So what do you say? To grief, I mean. Something about hope?"

Soot sighs. He knows what the man wants. He doesn't want to wait until tomorrow evening, when he and the others are all together, grieving over the deaths of their students and trying to understand how this thing finally really happened to their school. He needs to start feeling something other than loss. Something other than grief and pain.

The cold keeps moving in. Everything tightens up. Hardens. But he knows he can't get out without giving the man something.

Soot steps out onto the icy ground, grabs his luggage from the back seat, and stands in the door of the black SUV with his hands in his pockets, shivering just a little already, and says, "It all comes out okay."

"You say it like you know for sure," the man says.

"Imagine that I can travel through time. And I know, for a fact, that you'll get through this," Soot says. "And imagine I tell you 'It all comes out okay.'"

The man offers a nervous smile. The kind of smile you give to a bully when you can't tell if they're being sincere or just walking you up to the moment when they punch your teeth in. "You're different" is all the man says.

"It helps though, doesn't it?"

Then he closes the vehicle door and hustles toward the hotel, losing body heat with each step, while the storm blows harder and the snow comes down fatter, and he can barely see his hand in front of his face, and everything behind him and ahead of him disappears. He stops, freezing as he is, and turns and looks back. The light shines in his eyes, centered somewhere ahead of him now, with snow dancing around it like a swarm of moths, and, somehow, Soot swears he hears a type of music buried in the wind, a gentle, delicate song, like wind chimes trying to speak.

(continued on Tuesday)

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