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Midheaven
Di Ken Kuhlken
Azioni libro
Inizia a leggere- Editore:
- Ken Kuhlken, Publisher Hickey & McGee
- Pubblicato:
- Nov 10, 2010
- ISBN:
- 9781466090637
- Formato:
- Libro
Descrizione
Midheaven, Ken Kuhlken’s first novel, was originally published by Viking Press and honored as a finalist for PEN's Ernest Hemingway Award for Best First Fiction Book. The haunting story, set in and around the exquisite Lake Tahoe basin, is told through the mind of a precocious seventeen-year-old torn between her quest for God and her love for a man.
In the early 1970's, high school senior Jodi McGee turns from drugs and boys to Christ, but soon thereafter falls for her English teacher. As a result, tragedies test her will, her faith, and her sanity.
Anne Tyler, as Chair of the Hemingway Award selection committee, wrote, "The pace, clarity and assurance of Midheaven made it a pleasure to read."
From Kirkus Reviews: "Kuhlken has, with Jodi, created a character new to us--the born again adolescent who’s in-the-know--and he provides her with grit and honesty."
Novelist Andy Straka commented, "Midheaven is one of those rare gems of a novel that sneaks up on you and nestles in your soul. I especially enjoyed the setting and character development. The sun-dappled mountains and cold water beauty of Lake Tahoe hold too many secrets for a teenage girl to bear. Jodi is a character you won't soon forget."
Informazioni sul libro
Midheaven
Di Ken Kuhlken
Descrizione
Midheaven, Ken Kuhlken’s first novel, was originally published by Viking Press and honored as a finalist for PEN's Ernest Hemingway Award for Best First Fiction Book. The haunting story, set in and around the exquisite Lake Tahoe basin, is told through the mind of a precocious seventeen-year-old torn between her quest for God and her love for a man.
In the early 1970's, high school senior Jodi McGee turns from drugs and boys to Christ, but soon thereafter falls for her English teacher. As a result, tragedies test her will, her faith, and her sanity.
Anne Tyler, as Chair of the Hemingway Award selection committee, wrote, "The pace, clarity and assurance of Midheaven made it a pleasure to read."
From Kirkus Reviews: "Kuhlken has, with Jodi, created a character new to us--the born again adolescent who’s in-the-know--and he provides her with grit and honesty."
Novelist Andy Straka commented, "Midheaven is one of those rare gems of a novel that sneaks up on you and nestles in your soul. I especially enjoyed the setting and character development. The sun-dappled mountains and cold water beauty of Lake Tahoe hold too many secrets for a teenage girl to bear. Jodi is a character you won't soon forget."
- Editore:
- Ken Kuhlken, Publisher Hickey & McGee
- Pubblicato:
- Nov 10, 2010
- ISBN:
- 9781466090637
- Formato:
- Libro
Informazioni sull'autore
Correlati a Midheaven
Anteprima del libro
Midheaven - Ken Kuhlken
MIDHEAVEN
Ken Kuhlken
Hickey and McGee
hickeybooks.com
Also by Ken Kuhlken
Hickey Family Crime Novels
The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles
The Good Know Nothing
The Venus Deal
The Loud Adiós
The Angel Gang
The Do-Re-Mi
The Vagabond Virgins
The Very Least
the Answer to Everything
Praise for Ken Kuhlken and his Novels
Ken Kuhlken writes about characters most authors wouldn't touch.
Author Raymond Carver
... brings a great new character — and a fresh voice — into the mystery field.
Novelist Tony Hillerman
Kuhlken is an original, and in these days of cookie-cutter fiction, originality is something to be prized.
San Diego Union Tribune
... brings the social and cultural scene of the period vividly to life.
Publisher's Weekly
... as sensitive and heartfelt as it is action-packed..
Kirkus Reviews
... takes readers into dark experiences and deep understandings that can't help but leave them changed.
Novelist Michael Collins
... entertains in a grand and thrilling manner.
The Drood Review of Mystery
Kuhlken weaves a complex plot around a complex man
. Publisher's Weekly
... a stunning combination of bad guys and angels, of fast-moving action and poignant, heartbreaking encounters.
Novelist Wendy Hornsby
... a tale as sensitive and heartfelt as it is action-packed ... Crime, punishment and redemption.
Kirkus Reviews
"... fast-moving adventure, effectively combines mainstream historical fiction with the conventions of the hard-boiled
detective novel." Booklist
A wonderful, literate, and very ambitious novel that does everything a good story should do.
Novelist T. Jefferson Parker
... a pleasure to read.
Novelist Anne Tyler
Elegant, eloquent, and elegiac, Kuhlken's novels sing an old melody, at the same time haunting and beautiful.
Novelist Don Winslow
Copyright 1980, 2018 by Ken Kuhlken
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.
BISAC: FIC050000 Fiction – Crime; FIC019000 Fiction –
Literary; FIC042060 Fiction - Christian/ Suspense
Hickey and McGee
c/o Perelandra College
8697-C La Mesa Boulevard
La Mesa, CA 91942
hickeybooks.com
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, events, institutions, or locales is completely
coincidental.
Book Layout © 2016 BookDesignTemplates.com
Midheaven — Smashwords Edition. September 2018
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author
A note to music lovers
A few songs Jodi loved the year she experienced and wrote Midheaven:
Carey
, Joni Mitchell
Big Yellow Taxi
, Joni Mitchell
Soon and Very Soon
, Andre Crouch
Morning Has Broken
, Cat Stevens
To my beloved mother, Ada Gene Garfield Kuhlken, the English teacher who corrected me so very many times.
Contents
Also by Ken Kuhlken
Praise for the Hickey Family Novels
A note to music lovers
Dedication
My name is Jodi
October
November
The trees look human
December
January
February
March
The Aspen leaves
April
Should a Wise Man Answer
May
Snow is up to the windows
June
Most of the snow is gone
From The Very Least
From the Answer to Everything
All Ken’s books
About the author
MIDHEAVEN
My name is Jodi. I live alone on the western slope of the Carson Range, five miles up the mountain from the highway between Incline and South Tahoe. Each morning I climb the hill and watch the tour boat make its turn toward Emerald Bay. It cuts a wake through the choppy water, surrounds itself in foam and sets a straight course southwest toward the peaks called Desolation. There the snow has stayed all summer, a dozen shades of red when sunset meets the fog from the lake. It will be there in the last days, when the earth is scorched and the rivers boil. And halfway up Mount Tallac is a cross of snow all through the year.
Charley's dad built this cabin where I'm hiding. It lies pinched between a hill and two mossy boulders and a row of second growth fir with a meadow beyond. Vines that begin on the hillside cover the roof and drape the southern window, which looks out on the meadow, and take second root between the granite stones in the path around the cabin.
The cabin is split pine and fir logs and scrap boards and windows Charley's dad salvaged and dragged up the mountain. It has a loft in one end where I sleep. The land is Toiyabe National Forest, but loggers have been here; they cut down the big trees years ago, all the way up to Marlette Lake, and the road has washes and fallen stumps only hikers can cross. In daylight I draw a tarp over the window so no one who might pass on the creek road can see the glass reflecting.
No one besides Charley will find me here.
A cast-iron stove and a mat on crates and plywood fill the end of the cabin near the door, opposite the loft. It's a small room, about fifteen feet long and ten feet wide. The floor is bare split pine with splinters, and the cracks in the wall have never been caulked. I fill them with rags and socks and cardboard but the wind always finds more entries.
Charley brought me a little girl's mirror with a pink frame and handle. Sometimes at nights I sit by the fire and stare at myself. Once boys thought I was pretty. My legs are long and my eyes are large and nearly black, so people used to notice them and not see that my nose is too thin and curls up too much at the end and that my lips are flat and wide and there is a gap between my two front teeth, which always made me slow to smile. I used to be tan but now I'm just dark; my skin is cracked and dirty and I never comb my hair. I should cut it off. I'm very ugly, but I don't care. No one will come up to see me but Charley, unless it's to capture me and lock me away wherever they put killers.
The day I came here, in June, I hitched a ride out of King's Beach with a man who said I seemed disturbed because I couldn't sit still or keep my hands from my watery eyes. He offered to take me home with him. I screamed. He dropped me at Sand Harbor.
On the first ridge I stopped because I thought I heard Charley calling. But when I looked, he was nowhere. I hid behind a cedar and stared across the road at the campground and watched children hopping from camper vans and dashing to the beach and I cried. Because I was grown up, and because I had no family anymore, and no faith, and because of all the evil I had done.
Up the logging road I busied myself with remembering other days I had made the same climb, but whenever a deer or fox disturbed a bush, I wondered if the rustling might be Charley. I cursed him and threw stones till I felt foolish, as if a crowd were watching.
It was one of those times I first heard a screech from far up the mountain, then a whine like the wind through a tunnel only quivery, like an old woman's falsetto. I watched for a squirrel to perk up its ears or for birds to stop flying and look back, but only I seemed to hear it. I scrambled up toward the voice as if it came from the end of a rainbow, so I tripped in ruts and scraped my arms and hands and wiped the blood and sweat into my eyes. A motor sputtered. I slid down a bank to hide. A trail bike skidded around a bend, spun then righted and blasted back down the road.
At the edge of a stream where I stopped to drink was a bird with one wing unhinged and in the water. I had never seen such a bird before, the size of a large hawk, with white wings and a golden belly. A bloody groove parted its head, its eyes were crossed and its beak spread as if in a gasp. It horrified me so, I ran and buried myself in high grass and pounded my fists in the mud. Charley,
I screamed, please come here and kill me.
I waited, so tensed and silent I heard insects splash in the stream, but Charley wasn't there. No Charley, no Philip, no Jesus. Only horror and evil that circled above me like vultures and turned the dirt beneath me to stone, so I prayed to the God I didn't believe in anymore, maybe for hours, till the sun was straight above. Then I climbed, dizzy and giddy, and by instinct I made the right turns. I dashed into the cabin, powered by a deep relief because I was alone, really alone for the first time. And I promised myself to cast everyone out of my life forever. Feeling heartless and proud, I swept the floor and shook out the blankets, dragged the mattress outside to air, and scraped the windows and washed them with a bucket of water from the creek.
Then Charley came. Just before dark.
He found me in a corner of the loft, curled up and facing the wall. Go away, go away,
" I whispered.
He climbed up and reached for my hand but I jerked it back. I looked all over for you,
he said. Down at the pier, your folks’ place, Hidden Beach, the hot springs, at your church. I knew you'd be up here but I hoped you wouldn't. It's not good for you.
I knew you'd be right behind me, Charley. I can't ever get rid of you, or Geoff or my dad. Poor Jodi needs a man, you think, so you hang on like ticks but you can't change a thing.
He sat and hung his legs off the loft, unlaced his boots and tossed them below. I can go back if that's what you want. I just brought food and some of your clothes.
Well you didn't have to. I can do all right by myself.
Sure,
he said. You can sit up here and think all summer. That's just what you need, lots of time to think. And you can run around in those same jeans, forage, and sneak up on deer, slit their throats and eat them. If that's what you want.
Charley stayed on. He hung shelves, cleared brush for a path to the dam he built upstream. He gathered and chopped logs and kindling, transplanted wild bulbs to a garden by the door where he said they would bloom next spring. Every few days he went down the mountain, to Incline where he slipped into my folks' house when they were gone, snuck out with sweaters and jeans, pajamas and ski caps and warm socks. He sold things for money to buy me books and writing tablets and tubes of oil paints and canvases and canned food, corn meal, peanut butter and dried everything. I didn't thank him. I snubbed and ignored him and pouted, moped in the cabin while he tried to talk me into climbing trees so we could sit on branches like we used to do, squealing noises we pretended would call bears or elephants or whatever I wanted. Some days I walked off alone, but never far from the cabin, not to explore or think, not even to cry, just to remember Philip, so I could keep on hating.
Charley built a platform in a fir on the ridge from where we could see the lake. He sat there at dusk picking off pinecones with a slingshot and inviting me to come up, but I never would.
He said he told my folks I had gone to Mexico with the Children of God. When he asked me to write a letter to tell them I was okay, I screamed like a crazy person.
Now the aspens in the grove upstream have begun to turn, and the last wildflowers, mouse-ears and monks-hood, have wilted. The hummingbirds left the creek in the meadow a few days ago and only a few butterflies stay on. A chipmunk with a broken and dragging tail, who used to follow behind and nibble while I picked wild mint, left or died. The flies and mosquitoes are dying, the crickets sing softer and farther down the mountain and the wind wakes me in the mornings. Nightfall comes earlier, I sleep later, the mountain prepares for winter and I get lonelier every day.
I drop the tarp over the window each morning, then I make oatmeal or millet and coffee and sit on the bank to eat before I go down to the creek. I wash my face in the creek and clean dishes or draw faces in the mud, then I turn back to the cabin and try to read books but the words jump out and dive away and none of them mean anything. I make tea and climb the hill past the outhouse, sit on a rock or log and watch sailboats tack along the shore around Dollar's Point, leaning toward the public beach and the pier. If I could stand to, I might stare at the pier from dawn to dark till memory drove me so mad I couldn't remember anything.
In the afternoons I stay in the cabin and sketch landscapes in charcoals, always of the lake and the south shore hotels and the far peaks shaded by faces in the clouds. Or I hike up the mountain and shout for echoes. At night I sweat by the stove and read the journals I started writing last year for Philip's class, if the words will stay still, till the effort exhausts me. In my sleep I'm plagued by nightmares, and sometimes I wake up in the meadow.
Charley lives in King's Beach again. All week he works with Pancho building cinder block walls for rich Incline people, and on Saturdays he always comes up, brings what I need and asks what I've been doing. I tell him what I can remember, which isn't much, because most every day is the same. I'm not angry with him anymore. I've decided to forgive the one person who has proven that he cares for me, no matter what I have done. But whenever he asks me to go back down the mountain, I scream at him to leave and call him names.
I'm only eighteen years old. Six months ago I was still a girl. If I could turn time around, I would run back home before the snows come. My dad would pet my hair and hold me tight. Then I'd dress up warm and run down to the beach by the marina, skip stones on the lake and dig channels for the wavelets to go up. At dark I'd climb the road and my dad, my brothers and I would play cards while my mom painted. At bedtime I'd kiss my folks and my brothers good night, and Charley too, if he was over, then curl up in clean sheets with flowers on them, watch the moon shadows of branches on the ceiling and wait for tomorrow when I could take my dog Sherlock on a picnic by a fishing stream above Emerald Bay.
When I wake up at nights I try to remember my dreams so I can guess what they mean and decide what to do, how and what to think about to keep myself from turning to stone. But usually all I can remember are feelings of revulsion and nausea. Winter is coming. I don't believe I'll live through the winter.
September 26, 1971
I'm Mr. Oswald's office assistant first period. Sixth period he teaches my senior English class in British literature. Already he has lent me two books, poetry of Walt Whitman and William Blake. He's friendly to me, very kind. He has asked me to call him Philip, but I don't, because it feels impertinent.
Last year in Miss Welch's class we were reading Moby Dick aloud, taking turns around the room, but Miss Welch took all Ahab's parts. She paced the floor while she read. She's older, maybe fifty, pale with tight reddish red curls and long flowery dresses. She made a preposterous Ahab peering over the railings and tugging her hair.
Early that period, she had taken Jerry Zelinski's Flying Furry Freak Brothers comic book away and made him sit in the front row. Now he got even by scooting his backpack into her way. She tripped over while she paced and quoted Ahab. She then slammed the book on the table beside the podium and grabbed Jerry by the wrist and pulled him outside, as she often had before, but this time they didn't come back. Mr. Oswald from next door came instead. He picked up the book and asked us what page. A dozen kids shouted different numbers. He sat on the table and smiled. He looked frail and worried, the way his shoulders slumped and his forehead wrinkled, but I admired the gentle humor in his eyes and the thoughtful way he browsed through the pages till he found a favorite passage.
’There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that alike can dive into the blackest gorges and soar out of them again and become visible in the sunny spaces. And even if he forever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.’
Mr. Oswald told us to write this journal, not like a diary to be stashed away, but as though we were writing it for the world, with things we think important though we might not know why, so if we share them we'll realize that our problems aren't only ours and we aren't alone in our troubles or questions, or in our joy. And he said we should use it to record stories we've heard that might otherwise be lost, and write it as if we're telling our story to someone who lives in the future and far away. I'll use it like a map, to chart where I came from so I'll know where to go from here.
He is a wise man, Mr. Oswald, though he only just turned twenty-four, and it's only his second year teaching. Taking his class and being his assistant is all I truly like about school this year, even though I have art again with Mr. Lopez who sends me to the faculty lounge for his coffee and then lets me come and go to sketch outside on the grounds. But I resent having to come every morning and be where they say when bells ring. I don't quite know why, but I have lost all respect for authority, which my dad says is healthy to a point.
Mount Rose is a small school and most of the teachers and counselors know us by name and reputation. Our senior class is just eighty-five kids, a quarter the size of my freshman class in Reno, where they used to bus all of us who lived around the lake and in Truckee. Mount Rose is landscaped with birch trees, rock gardens and Japanese grass. From places on the grounds we can see past Incline Village to the lake. But the flat modern buildings, all mauve and puce and squashed between a grove of Jeffrey pine and a row of chalet town-homes, are like zits on a pretty face. Mount Rose is Incline in miniature. I guess most rich people prefer concrete, asphalt and brick to nature, gaudy to beautiful.
On our way to the assembly the first day of school, Coach Vitale handed out copies of the dress code. Two years ago we girls had to wear skirts or dresses except on Fridays in May and June, and we couldn't wear backless dresses, spaghetti straps or see-through tops. Last year we could wear hemmed shorts but no T-shirts or anything without bras. This year no halters or tank tops or patched jeans. Next year they might decide girls can't show more than one bare breast, and panties must be worn with short skirts except on the Fridays of football games. I think they make rules just because they can.
Mr. Furby introduced the coaches and teachers while the kids shared stories about them. Mr. Krinke's daughter went to Mexico for an abortion, kids whispered, and Mrs. Reed got caught in the boiler room with Lloyd the custodian. Miss Welch was actually divorced. Mr. Oswald never flunked anybody and was too friendly with Coach Boyd.
Aaron left the benches where all the lettermen sat and came and squeezed himself between Jill and me. He started to ease his hand down the back of my jeans. I jabbed him with my elbow and ran out the aisle and down the steps and back to the halls, where I got my first referral this year for being where I wasn't supposed to be.
Till last week Aaron was my boyfriend. His father is a corporate attorney who flies his own airplane. When Aaron came to Incline last year with his haughty eyes and slick New Jersey talk, most every pretty girl in school ran after him. His folks bought a place above the country club. It has a circular stairway, sunken bathtubs and so many rooms I forget half of them. They have another place in San Francisco. His mom and dad don't get along. They switch houses every month or so; one comes here and the other goes there.
Last spring Aaron was in three classes with me. He threw the javelin on the track team and the coaches stopped him in the halls and struck up friendly talk because they'd heard he was a tough fullback. With his suede coats, turtlenecks, and alpaca sweaters, he stood out like a prince against the western boys in sweatshirts and ski parkas. His dad bought into a restaurant called Lola's in South Lake and they let Aaron drink there, and also his guests, so we'd start out our nights at Lola's with candlelight and lobster and wine. Then we'd take his M.G. up the highway toward Monitor Pass, pull off and fool around and drink more and he'd impress me with stories about his uncle who fought for Israel’s independence and with astronomy theories about black holes and the expanding universe. Then one night he raced down the mountain and pulled up in front of King's Castle, Incline's lakeshore resort and casino.
He was the first boy I slept with. I hadn't been cold to boys before, but I drew the line since taking the pill would've made me feel like a slut and also I imagined they called it going all the way because there was no place farther to go, which seemed a bit like dying. And besides, for so long I had imagined sleeping first with Charley. But Aaron didn't even question that we would, so we did, and when he offered to take me home I said no. I would've felt like a liar, just acting like nothing had happened. I drank the whiskey sours he gave me till I fell asleep. In the morning I was sick and bruised.
At home I saw my dad in the upstairs window. He stomped through the front doorway while Aaron drove off. He yelled, You slept with the snob?
I didn't answer. He grabbed my arm. So you're no better than your hooker friend?
My mom ran out. You don't know what happened, Ronald. They might've been in a wreck, or anything.
Jill's not a hooker,
I said.
My dad mumbled and turned away.
I followed my mom inside. He stayed awake all night,
she said. But he shouldn't blame it on Aaron. Your father's jealous of anyone with money. You know I don't mean to sound crass, but there are worse things than money when you want to become an artist.
Jill's not a hooker, mom,
I said. She only asked the man for a place to stay, and she didn't ask for money, but when he handed it to her, she took it.
I won't ask what you did last night, because I don't think I'd be proud of you.
When my dad's car squealed out of the driveway, Mom made an ogre face. This upset, he might start gambling again.
From then on, when Aaron came over my dad ignored him, because Mom got his promise not to hit the boy.Aaron tried to tell sports jokes and ask questions about the construction business, but my dad didn't laugh or answer. Aaron told my mom about art museums in London and Amsterdam, and about his ambition to make films. She served him herbal tea. When he brought me home, always past midnight, my folks would both be waiting, Mom to ask where we'd gone, Dad for the night I'd tell him I had dumped the snob.
Yesterday was the first warm Saturday since school started. Jill picked me up about one. We drove to Charley's house and his friend Pancho sold us hashish oil he had brought from Mexico. We smoked some and back in the car we giggled about tourists hiking alongside the road in funny hats and a boy crashing his bicycle into a stop sign and so on, all the way to Hidden Beach.
We pretended this place was the Garden of Eden. Jill loved skinny-dipping, so she did. We were alone. I just went topless and told myself I was preparing for France, where I dreamed of going to study art. The boulder toasted my bottom. Sailboats glided by and the wind stormed through the pines behind us. A patchy mist blanketed the lake. When I spat on the water it steamed. Jill jumped in first and screamed from the cold. I just stood and watched, she was so lovely, still brown from summer and graceful, kicking with ease and magnified through the water. She stayed under for minutes, it seemed, and when I helped her out, I squealed, God, look how blue you are.
"It's so cold. C'mon." She tugged at my arm and I cannonballed in behind her, swam out past the first shelf where the currents welled up even colder from black water, then back-paddled and watched the fast clouds and felt as if I were floating on air, free as an angel
We stayed too late, nearly till sundown. In the car I told Jill about the country club dance Aaron was taking me to that night, about how the young people rubbed elbows with the middle-aged folks and racked their brains for something to say, and how the old folks danced stiff as zombies.
At home I asked my mom to tell Aaron, who was already late for picking me up, to go on ahead and that I could walk over as soon as I had a bath and all. Aaron knew I
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