I’ve decided to start a new category here on the ol’ blog called STARTS AND STOPS. It’s going to be a whole lot of writing samples from yours truly. These will be stories I started and never finished, or stories I wrote and decided to retire.

As a writer of fiction, I’m well versed in the phenomenon of the Start and Stop, as I’m sure most creative writers are. I’ve written four complete novels, for example, and for each one of those completed manuscripts, I’ve got two that never got finished. That’s eight (now more like ten) unfinished novels!

I figure rather than let all that good stuff rot in a drawer, I’ll share it with you. So here’s the first one! This is completely unedited, and untitled. Enjoy.

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Tyke Bellemaire  visited his daughter’s grave in the morning, then enlisted in the Army in the afternoon. No one was surprised when he didn’t come back to Waterbury; he was lazy and clumsy, and even his father called him “The Detonator” after he left that summer afternoon. “The Detonator’s gonna trip a mine, guaranteed,” he told his pals at Ginzi’s down on Central Ave. “My boy won’t even come home in a box. There’ll be nothin’ left of that clumsy fool.”

Nap Bellemaire, believe it or not, thought very highly of his son, even loved him, dammit all. But he knew Tyke had nothing but clumsiness mixed with good intentions, which made for a dangerous combination, especially in a war. Nap had tried briefly to talk Tyke out of enlisting after his little Girl Adelaine died, but it was no use. Tyke felt like he had nothing left, so he went off to find something.

He found a landmine outside of Khe Sanh, a full month before the battle even started. The Detonator lived up to his name.

That had been almost thirteen years ago, in 1967. In 1980, Nap was still sitting in the same barstool, drinking the same light beer, when all of downtown just fell apart. He sat in that barstool when Nixon gave his resignation speech, and he sat there when the Yanks won the series in ’77 and ’78. On December 8, 1980, thirteen years to the day after Tyke was blown to bits, Nap watched as the newsman told the world John Lennon had been shot and killed. Nap didn’t give a shit about John Lennon, but seeing that young man’s face on the television all night and all day was enough to get him thinking about his boy, his Detonator.

And the strange letter he’d received in the mail that very afternoon.

There was no return address on the envelope—Nap didn’t know you could do that, send a letter without a return address, but there it was. Just a name in the top left corner of the envelope: Bellemaire. A letter from family. It wasn’t until after he showered that Nap realized he had no family left. Tyke’s girl Joann had left right after Adelaine died, went clear across the country to Arizona, and no one had heard from her since. Nap’s wife Corinne had died in 1969 of a heart attack. All her family was gone. All Nap’s family was gone.

That’s what he thought, anyway. That’s what everyone thought. Well, Nap opened up that letter and found out he wasn’t alone in the world of Bellemaires at all. The writer of that letter was Florence Babbitt—Tyke Bellemaire’s second daughter, if you could believe it.

She explained in the letter that she’d been born outside of Annapolis, where they had shipped Tyke just before he left for Nam. Tyke had met Florence’s mother there, and they’d only had a few dates. Tyke left before he even knew Sarah Babbitt was pregnant, and by the time she’d sent her first letter to him, he was dead. Florence explained that she had known about Nap for about ten years, but she hadn’t thought it wise to contact him. What reason was there, after all? Then she wrote this:

“I live in Waterbury now, and I sure could use some help. It took me a long time to write this letter, even longer to decide to mail it. I could have just dropped it off, handed it right to you; I know who you are, what you look like. That’s probably unfair, isn’t it? Since you don’t know who I am? I see you at Ginzi’s a lot, but I have never dared to come in. Look, I could use some help, but if you don’t want to give it, I understand.”

The letter was tucked in Nap’s coat pocket. He could feel its rigidity every time he shifted in his seat. On the television, John Lennon’s face. In his own mind, Tyke’s. In his pocket, a girl asking for help.

Nap figured she meant financial help. Wasn’t that always how it went? Nap had no money, though, and if this girl was half as smart as she sounded, she would know it. At 70 years old, Nap had spent the better part of his life in the brass mills and whatever earnings he had went toward burying his wife and burying his face in a glass of beer. Men like Nap Bellemaire did not save money. They did not have bank accounts. They did not have help to give.

Yet he had tucked that letter in his coat pocket for a very specific reason, hadn’t he? Nap wanted to see this girl, this Florence Babbitt…this granddaughter of his.