Waiting of the Wind: A Buckey the Space Pirate story Read online

  The Waiting of the Wind

  A Buckey the Space Pirate Story

  Dean Wesley Smith

  The Waiting of the Wind

  Copyright © 2013 Dean Wesley Smith

  Published by WMG Publishing

  Cover design copyright © 2013 WMG Publishing

  Cover photo by Dl10n/Dreamstime.com

  Smashwords Edition

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  The Waiting of the Wind

  A Buckey the Space Pirate Story

  First Attempt

  “I knew the wind was waiting for me. The wind always did. It was my fault for falling in love with the wind. For letting the wind fall in love with me. If I had just worn panties that breezy day in April, this never would have happened. Or jeans instead of that light cotton dress. But it was such a beautiful spring day, the kind of day that makes a person want to feel free, and I wanted to feel completely free.

  “And the wind noticed.”

  “What do you think? Nifty opening to the story, huh?”

  Fred, the fifteen-foot oak tree, said, “You write well for a space pirate, Buckey.”

  Oh, oh, not a good sign when an oak tree damns with faint praise.

  I could feel the sweat dripping down my back from the heat. I was wearing cutoffs and a tee-shirt to stay cool against the eighty-five degree afternoon temperature and was using what little shade the oak tree gave me as well. But Fred was so darned skinny, I had to move the lawn chair and glass of lemonade every fifteen minutes just to try to stay in his shadow.

  And now he clearly didn’t like the story I was working on for class.

  I had had on my Buckey the Space Pirate science fiction convention costume (word, plumed hat, and black tights) the first time Fred talked to me.. Or at least the last incarnation of Fred talked to me. So he still called me a space pirate and Buckey, even though that wasn’t my name and he knew it.

  Fred is a talking oak tree and I’m sort of his dad. But since Fred can travel back along the lines of oak trees in his family for millions of years, I mostly feel like a kid in front of my own kid.

  A time-traveling and talking oak tree can make a person feel very small if he wants to.

  The previous Fred (who stood in the old park downtown and was cut down because they needed to widen the road) told me how he came to be able to actually talk to humans. On the night before his death he suggested I do the same thing to save him and give him the skill to once again talk to humans. It seemed he was the only oak tree in all of creation that could and if I didn’t help him, the skill would die with the chain saws.

  So after I was convinced that it just wasn’t someone playing a practical joke on me, I used a prophylactic for what it was supposed to be used for, then put a seed from the first Fred in the rubber and planted everything in my mother’s backyard.

  The new little Fred started talking about a year later and we’ve been best friends ever since. Which is why I spend so much time in my mother’s backyard. I know, weird for a college kid, but at least I don’t live in her basement anymore. And since I can’t seem to find a girlfriend at the moment, I don’t have much else to do.

  I took a drink from the lemonade my mom had made for me and glanced back at her house. I had told my mom that I needed to work on a summer school writing project for my creative writing class I was taking, so I might be talking out loud some. The creative writing class in the summer sounded like an easy way to get some credits and get part of the English credits I needed for my degree in history out of my way.

  And besides, with what I could learn about history from Fred, I was going to need to learn how to do the books I was going to get rich writing about little-known facts in history. Fred actually showing me history, real history, was why after three years I had switched my major to history from political science.

  Today Mom had just shrugged when I said I would be out back. She was getting used to me being in the back yard at all times of the year talking to a tree. I know she worried about me, but at least I wasn’t in jail, and as far as she was concerned, that was a victory in its own right.

  “Come, on Fred,” I said to the oak tree. “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “For a space pirate, I suppose not,” Fred said again, his voice sort of surrounding me as it always did. His voice was growing deeper with each month of growth. Pretty soon he would be back to the old depth of voice from the first Fred I met.

  I glanced at the spiral notebook in my hand. That first paragraph I had read to him wasn’t so bad. I was sort of proud of it to be honest.

  “So what’s wrong with it?”

  “I could illustrate with a limerick,” Fred said.

  “No limericks,” I said, being firm. “Just tell me what’s wrong.”

  Fred loved limericks and most of the time they were just flat rude. Over the last few years I had come to hate them, although I had to admit some of the ones Fred made up stayed with you. And if I let Fred get going on limericks, any real thought of conversation would end completely.

  “Besides the anthropomorphism of the wind and the overuse of passive voice, nothing.”

  “Coming from a talking baby oak tree,” I said, “that’s an amazing criticism.”

  “Everyone knows the wind can’t talk,” Fred said.

  “Everyone knows oak trees can’t talk either,” I said.

  But looking at the paper, I knew he had a point about the passive structure. My professor had spent an hour of her time talking on just that alone.

  So I turned the page and tried again.

  Second Attempt

  I knew the wind waited for me. The wind always did. My fault for falling in love with the wind and for letting the wind fall in love with me. I decided against wearing panties under my light dress that breezy day in April. A mistake. But the beautiful spring day opened my mind, made me mad for the desire to be free in all ways. I wanted to feel completely open to everything.

  And the wind noticed.

  I looked up at the tender green leaves of the young oak tree shading me from the hot afternoon sun. “Well?”

  Fred said nothing.

  “You have to admit, no passive verbs in that one. And it’s shorter as well.”

  “Less pain on the reader,” Fred said. “Always a good thing.”

  I knew this conversation wasn’t going to go anywhere. Fred seemed to know more about the human language than any human I had ever met. I had no idea why I thought I could write to meet his tastes. After all, I was just a beginner.

  But being a sucker for punishment I went on. “So, what’s wrong?”

  “Setting would be nice,” Fred said. “Right now you just have some woman jabbering about getting goosed by a gust of wind. Boring pretty much describes it. But I do have a limerick that might spice up the piece.”

  “No limericks,” I said. “I need to finish this for a grade in this writing class.”

  “You would be better served to spend you days in your Buckey The Space Pirate costume taking gratuities for saving young damsels in distress. But since you are not likely to take up such a noble occupation, try to write it again and I will listen again.”

  I nodded and went back to work on the third rewrite of the opening of my story.

  Third Attempt

  From the top of the rocky cliff of Lov
er’s Leap, I could see out over the green, deep valley below and the river that gave it life. I knew the wind waited for me. The wind always did. My fault for falling in love with the wind, for letting the wind fall in love with me. I decided against wearing panties under my light cotton dress that breezy day in April. A mistake. But the beautiful spring day opened my mind, made me mad for the desire to be free in all ways. I wanted to feel completely open.

  And the wind noticed.

  Now I stood naked waiting for the wind to take me to the sky so we could be together, drifting over the beautiful green valley and the winding blue river..

  “Brooke, no!” Rich shouted from behind me as he climbed the dusty trail toward me.

  I read it to him again.

  “Wow, characters, conflict, and a setting,” the little oak tree said. “I’m impressed.”

  I knew for a fact he wasn’t. Oak trees have a level of sarcasm that has few matches in the human race. I suppose that comes from standing in the same place for hundreds of years and letting their minds roam through time. If I had to do that I’d be sarcastic as well.

  And completely crazy.

  “Come on, Fred. Honestly, I need a grade here. Help me out.”

  “All right. First, how about better names. In all the fantastic names humans have taken through time, you pick an English woman’s name that means stream and a male’s name that implies money. Dull. Find names that add layered meaning to your story.”

  “Says a tree named Fred.”

  “Short for Friedrich, which means peaceful ruler.”

  I looked up at the young oak tree. “Why did you shorten it?”

  “There was a time in my early years in the downtown park when a German-sounding name was not a welcome thing, so I decided to change it.”

  “Oh, that’s right, you were around in the park for World War Two,” I said.

  “And The Great War,” Fred said. “Besides, would you have listened to me if I said my name was Friedrich?”

  “If I remember right, I couldn’t shut you up that first time we met.”

  “I was just trying to entertain your date in my last days.”

  “By calling one of her body parts, a part I was very interested in exploring, larger than a punt? You call that entertaining?”

  I was still mad at him for that.

  “I was enjoying myself,” the little oak tree said.

  The sun seemed to get hotter even though the thin shade from Fred’s leaves.

  I took a long drink from my lemonade. Most of the ice had melted, which meant I had been out here in the sun more than long enough.

  “So if I change the character names, will it pass?”

  “Oh, I would think so,” Fred said.

  “Thank you,” I said, closing my notebook and climbing out of my lawn chair.

  “But a nice limerick would help you so much more.”

  “I have to learn how to write on my own,” I said. “Not copy down your words. That won’t help me at all.”

  “A Space Pirate with morals,” Fred said. “Who would have known? I tell you, serving the fair damsels in distress would be a calling for you.”

  “Getting a degree in history and getting into a good graduate school is the only calling I care about at the moment.”

  “Suit yourself,” Fred said.

  “See you later.” I turned for the house.

  “Do come back and read me your finished story,” Fred said. “I so want to learn how the woman with no underwear used her private regions to fly with the wind like Dumbo. My kind of story.”

  I just shook my head. As I said, oak trees can be very, very sarcastic.

  Then behind me Fred started into a limerick.

  “There was a woman of Kings

  Who ate all three meals of beans…”

  “Don’t go there!” I said as I walked away. “I can still hear you.”

  For a moment the little oak tree remained silent. Then as I had almost reached the house, he started into a new limerick.

  “There was a woman quite stewed,

  whose clothing was found very strewed,

  and if I’m not mistaken,

  the wind did the takin’

  and left her on the rocks most screwed.”

  As I reached the back porch I shouted back at the young oak tree, “Passive construction, no characters, and setting would be nice.”

  For the first time in two years, I got the last word on the oak tree.

  About the Author

  Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith has written more than one hundred popular novels and hundreds of published short stories. His novels include the science fiction novel Laying the Music to Rest and the thriller The Hunted as D.W. Smith. With Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he is the coauthor of The Tenth Planet trilogy and The 10th Kingdom.

  He writes under many pen names and has also ghosted for a number of top bestselling writers.

  Dean has also written books and comics for all three major comic book companies, Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse, and has done scripts for Hollywood. One movie was actually made.

  Over his career he has also been an editor and publisher, first at Pulphouse Publishing, then for VB Tech Journal, then for Pocket Books. He is now an executive editor for Fiction River.

  Currently, he is writing thrillers and mystery novels under another name.

 

 

  Smith, Dean Wesley, Waiting of the Wind: A Buckey the Space Pirate story

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