Author Archives: sydlogsdon

712. God, Trump, and the Devil

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I originally wrote this post before Christmas. That’s not unusual; I always write posts early and revise them several times before they appear. In this case, you might expect that all the horrors visited on the world by Trump in Venezuela, Greenland, and Minneapolis would make my position harsher. It doesn’t, but only because this post is about the situation at the time of the last presidential election.

If those same voters still support Trump, that is a different matter.

— << >> —

The people who follow Trump are not necessarily evil. They also aren’t fools. If you disagree with them philosophically, it is all too easy to paint them blacker than they deserve.

I don’t feel that negatively about them. I understand why conservatives hate abortion. I understand why the more extreme conservatives consider it murder. It isn’t a crazy position. I would argue with them, but that doesn’t mean their positions are crazy — not even extreme.

It’s a Christian thing and I used to be a Christian. I understand it.

I hear complaints about transgender people reading to children in libraries. I understand that too, even though I don’t agree.

If God made men and women, separate and different, in the manner He saw fit, then there is no middle ground — no blurring of the genders. I disagree with that philosophy (or more properly, religious interpretation) but that doesn’t make it crazy. It doesn’t even make it extreme.

I understand why Christian conservatives would support someone who claims to oppose abortion. I can understand why Christian conservatives would support someone who tells them that there are only two sexes, so homosexuality is wrong. I don’t agree, but I understand their viewpoint.

Here is what I don’t understand.

How can Christian conservatives support Trump when he only plays lip service to what they cherish. They have deep beliefs about morality and religion. He has deep beliefs in money and power. Trump has no empathy, no sexual morality, no sense of justice, and no respect for the law.

Christian conservatives, you should consider this question — do you like him? He doesn’t like you, or anyone else but himself.

I have even heard it said that Christians should support Trump because he is doing God’s work.

Really?

Does God need the Devil to do his work for him. Don’t you think He could save the world without employing a lying, cheating, heartless, arrogant, self-serving buffoon like Trump?

That’s the Christian position I don’t understand.

Here’s what I would think, if I were still a Christian. My mind would stray from contemporary issues to the Revelation of St. John. I would think about the Beast. I would think about the Antichrist — that charismatic world leader from the final days whom everyone worships and everyone follows, but whose coming signals Armageddon.

Trump as the Antichrist? I don’t believe it — now.

But if Trump had been around when I was a Christian, it would have been the first explanation that came to mind. It makes a lot more sense than the idea of Trump doing God’s work.

711. Backstory, Cyan

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Backstory — these are the things a writer has to know about his fictional universe, most of which will have happened before his actual story begins. Some is dribbled out to the reader as the story progresses. Much is never known to the reader, but remains essential nonetheless.

The novel Cyan takes place in the late twenty-first century, but it was written during the last decades of the twentieth and first decades of the twenty-first century. A lot of things changed during those decades, and so did the backstory.

When I started Cyan, the expedition to Procyon was to be mounted by an international body as a cooperative effort. As the story matured in my mind, the notion of cooperation that was so important to the creation of the International Space Station began to fade in the real world. Things got grittier on Real Earth and also on the Earth of the novel.

In that changing backstory, some joker nuked Washington, which ushered in an America First period worse than the Trump era. That wasn’t a prediction. It’s just that the Open Hand and the Closed Fist have alternated throughout American history, and I needed a dystopian, overcrowded Earth to motivate extra-solar exploration.

Cooperation was no longer an option in Cyan; an all-American crew was required. Well, almost all-American, since the new America had gobbled up some of its neighbors as I watched the backstory change.

Due in large part to a disastrous economic downturn in the mid twenty-first century, Canada allowed itself to be swallowed up by the U.S.. Mexico and most of the Caribbean were given no choice. The result was the U.S.N.A., the United States of North America, twice as big with its new capital in Chicago.

Was the downturn due to tariffs? Beats me; all this reorganization of the backstory was finished long before I had ever heard of Trump, and I thought tariffs were a dead issue. After all, they had almost destroyed the American economy during the Jefferson administration, and that was a long time ago,

If this makes Cyan sound depressing, don’t worry. All this has already happened by the time the novel opens. Our ten explorers are half way to Procyon, where none of their problems will be political — at least until their year of exploration is over and they return to Earth.

— << >> —

In the beginning, when the explorers were to be from many countries, I chose their names accordingly. By the time I started reorganizing the backstory, they had already become people to me. I wasn’t going to give up anyone, and I wasn’t going to rename anyone.

Originally Stephan Andrax was Danish, Debra Bruner was American, Petra Crowley was Greek, Keir Delacroix was French, Viki Johanssen was Swedish, Gus Leinhoff was German, Leia Polanyi was from somewhere in the South Pacific, Ramananda and Tasmeen Rao were from India, and Uke Tomiki was Japanese.

Once they all had to be citizens of the U.S.N.A., this might have posed a problem. However, we are a nation of immigrants. Even in 2026, every one of them could have reasonably come from Topeka.

Just for fun — just because I could — and just because it was one of the places I had studied, I chose to let Tasmeen and Ramananda come from Trinidad, the newly admitted seventy-first state.

Yes this is an ongoing advertisement for Cyan,

available from Amazon.

710. Star Gates and Menhirs

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Stonehenge: the most famous menhir.

Star gates have been around a long time, often under other names. They have given us passage to elsewhere in science fiction and in fantasy for decades. They seem to work equally well in either genre.

Is a star gate science fiction or fantasy? The term seems to imply science fiction and looks a bit like a wormhole. The concept of a gate to elsewhere, however, could be either or both.

The first time I saw the term was in the title of Andre Norton’s 1958 novel called Star Gate. It was science fiction, but with some magic thrown in. I saw it next as the title of a theatrical movie Stargate in 1994, which had nothing in common with the Norton novel but the title. That movie spun off the television series which everybody remembers. It ran from 1997 to 2007, then spawned numerous additional spinoffs. You can find it on re-run channels any week.

I can’t speak authoritatively of the TV series. Military fiction isn’t in my wheelhouse so I rarely watched it, but I assume the places they were sent to were in our physical universe. That would make it science fiction.

Let’s drop the prefix star and continue.

Heinlein used a teleportation gate to other planets as the basis for his novel Tunnel in the Sky. Gordon Dickson used such a gate in Time to Teleport (a pretty good novel with a lousy title). It’s a fairly common device for authors who don’t feel like inventing a faster than light drive to get their characters to some extrasolar planet.

Also still within science fiction are alternate universes. Sometimes a whole novel takes place in one such alternate without any travel between them. More often, characters from one universe travel to one or more other alternate universes. Sometimes they go in time-space vehicles (example: Heinlein’s Number of the Beast). Sometimes they travel via a gate-like device that sends them directly to their destination.

Andre Norton used such a device in her 1963 novel Witch World to get Simon Tregarth from prosaic Earth to a magical world. Norton would preside over her Witch World as she and a few others spun off novels and short stories for forty years. She referred to the device that transported Tregarth as the Siege Perilous, referring to Arthurian legend, but essentially it was just another gate.

Was Norton’s Siege Perilous scientific or magical? Who knows? Who cares? If you are going in a book to a wonderful place, what difference if you get there by a space ship or you step through a magical wardrobe?

— << >> —

Now, a slight detour. Some time in the mid-sixties I stumbled upon a book. I can’t tell you the title or the author, but if you are a reader you will understand why I can’t remember them all. It explained that for thousands of years there was a culture of menhir builders who left megalithic monuments across Europe and the Middle East. No one knows why these menhirs were built. We now have some notion of by whom, but that wasn’t known when the book was written. It was all a big mystery.

I was intrigued by what I had read. I fantasized about the menhir builders. I wrote an unremarkable short story, then tossed it. Then I more or less forgot about menhirs for a decade, but they didn’t go away.

Years later, I dreamed up this medieval kid whose father was killed, but who didn’t want to seek revenge. I told you about his origin last October fifth.

In 1976 I began to tell his story, and that led me to build a world for him to occupy. Those fascinating menhirs came crawling up from memory and insisted that they become the center of his world. In fact, his world came to be called the World of the Menhir, and I plan to publish the first five novels this year.

The boy’s name was Tidac. I already knew that five minutes after he crawled into my brain in 1972. He had been introduced to me during a seance with a Ouija board in Oklahoma City in 1965. The board (or the lovely and imaginative young lady who seemed to be the one manipulating it) said that I was reincarnated from a Norman prince named Tidac. Who was I to argue with a lovely young lady?

When Tidac crawled out of Beowulf in 1972, I knew him immediately and I knew why he didn’t want to take revenge for his father’s death. He wanted freedom from his father’s shadow. I had wanted my freedom for similar reasons, only a few years earlier.

That’s not coincidence; that’s how a writer’s mind works.

709. Redneck Granny

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Here is my redneck Granny, who died long before the original of this was posted. I’m sure she would hate everything I have said here, but I love her anyway.

Redneck Granny

I started this blog late in 2015. When Black History Month rolled around in 2016, I had a lot to say — enough to fill the month with posts. This, somewhat modified, was one of them.

— << >> —

The first African slaves arrived in America about 400 years ago. If we count twenty-five years as a generation, that’s 16 generations.

Let’s look at the typical American today. He or she had two parents and they had four parents between them, and their parents had eight parents between them. And so forth. Up the line sixteen generations, that’s 32,768 direct ancestors. If you don’t believe me, do the math.

All those ancestors sent DNA down the line to make our average American. What are the chances that not one packet of DNA was out of Africa? What are the chances that there weren’t a lot more than one out of Africa in his/her lineage?

You might think whites didn’t mix with blacks in the olden days, but are you sure? Are you counting all the times when a white man was in charge, and a black woman didn’t have any say in the matter? They wouldn’t even have called it rape in 1619. Nor 1719. Nor 1819. In a lot of places they wouldn’t have called it rape in 1919. 2019 — maybe.

So much for black purity, but that isn’t any big secret. What about white purity?

How white do you have to look to pass for white? Three quarters? Seven eighths? How many generations does that take? Not many.

Now what are the chances that a whitish, black female would claim to be white if she could? Or a whitish, black male? Forget the twenty-first century when African-Americans are proud of what they are. Project your thinking back to when being white meant being free, and being black meant being a slave. Wouldn’t you pass for white, if you could get away with it?

I would. Some of my (and your) ancestors probably did.

More math. Lets say that by 1700 (eighty years into the era of American slavery, thirteen generations ago), one hundred partially negro girls could and did pass for white. That’s not a big number to surmise. In fact, it’s ridiculously small.

Let’s give doubters no excuse for their doubts. Let’s say that these passing girls only averaged two children who went on to have children. That’s certainly a minimal estimation. Their descendants are boys and girls who would disappear into the white gene pool.

That’s 408,000 offspring after 13 generations. Which is to say, in 2025.

Wow. And after a couple of generations, if Mom kept her mouth shut, none of them would know they were passing. They would believe they were white.

That doesn’t cover all the other blacks, male and female, who passed in the last four hundred years. That is only one hundred, starting in 1700. But there weren’t just a hundred, they didn’t start in 1700, and they haven’t stopped to this day.

There is one big change in the twenty-first century. People who are light skinned and could call themselves white, now often identify as black. It’s probably confusing for “white” folks who haven’t thought it through.

I don’t think it confuses “black” folks at all.

If math doesn’t impress you, if you think numbers lie, then let’s make it personal.

Rhett Butler was partly black. Scarlet O’Hara was partly black. Simon Legree was partly black.

You’re partly black. I’m partly black. And my Oklahoma relatives just disowned me.

That’s mighty white of them.

— << >> —

This was a modified version of a post from February 3, 2016. If you are wondering why this old “white” guy is so concerned with black identity, it is all a matter of upbringing. In my case, that means being raised on the edge of the South in the fifties in a culture that didn’t exactly hate blacks, but didn’t much like them either. My people fully believed in the separation of the races; the only good black was somebody who lived someplace else.

The problem with the community viewpoint was television. On the six o’clock news I saw black people being washed down the sidewalk by firehoses because they were marching for the right to be human.

They were right. We were wrong. Hardly anybody in my town got that message, but I did.

I escaped to college, where I studied Anthropology and got an extended view of what British imperialism had done to the black and brown people of the world.

Then I studied History, where I found out that English imperialism had been just as harmful to the ruddy-faced and red-haired poor in Scotland and Ireland. I also found out what white America had done to the Native Americans, the Chinese and Japanese immigrants, and even the Irish.

In California, where I now live, white incomers from the east now discriminate against the Latinos, who owned California after they took it away from the California Indians, and before the white east-coast Americans took it away from them.

Over the years I wrote about all of those displaced and disadvantage peoples in my blog and now that has all been gathered together for publication.

Originally I planned to call the book . . .

Your Redneck Granny is a Black Woman, and she doesn’t even know it

I had kept that provocative phrase in my back pocket for years, but when it came to reality, the title . . .

Your Redneck Granny has a secret

. . . seemed more likely to make a prospective reader curious enough to pick up the book.

I originally wanted to publish it early in 2026, but the five novels of the Menhir Series will take the whole year to release. Instead Redneck Granny is planned for release on January 20, 2027, just about a year from today. Keep it in mind and tell your friends.

708. Pardons

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Five years and two weeks ago, on January 6th, 2021, Donald Trump caused an attack on the United States Capitol after refusing to admit that he lost the election.

One year ago, on January 20, 2025, as he returned to the Presidency, Trump commuted the sentences or pardoned outright nearly 1600 persons, either already convicted of crimes related to that attack or awaiting trial for their parts in the attack.

Please remember these facts when you vote in 2026.

707. A New Start

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A New Start

It is already January fourteenth, but the year is still new and the re-start of A Writing Life is still fairly new. It’s time to present something special.

On April 17, 2019 I was trying to write a review of a novel. I remembered the book clearly but didn’t remember enough details, and I needed to explain why I was going to postpone writing about it. What I wrote then does more to tell why I created this blog than anything else I have written.

— << >> —

I have written quite a few books over the years, but it is never enough. Writing books is just too much fun.

The fact is, reading a book is ten times better than watching a movie, but writing a book is fifty times better than reading one. And takes fifty times as long.

Besides the hundred thousand words a modern novel demands, there are the other hundreds of thousands of words you have to go through while getting to the right ones. And there are all those books you have to burrow through looking for just the right bit of information or inspiration to help you understand how that next chapter is supposed to come out.

Just reading a book for fun gets lost somewhere. I read the things I need to read, and late in the evening I read comfort books, like the thirtieth Nero Wolfe, which isn’t that different from the other twenty-nine.

It wasn’t always that way.

— << >> —

I was an only child on a farm in the fifties. We had one black and white TV that got two channels, which my parents watched in the evenings while I read. Of course I became a reader; what else was there to do? From the time I discovered the county library, there was no time I didn’t have a stack of books waiting for my attention.

But I didn’t talk about it.

My mother read occasional romance novels but she didn’t talk about it. My dad read the Bible, but he didn’t talk about it. The habit started early.

I read books about hunting and outdoor life. I already lived outdoors, but on a tractor. I never hunted, barely fished, and I had never seen a tent. My outdoors wasn’t for play, it was for work, and that wasn’t enough to satisfy me.

Looking back, I know that the place I lived as a boy was rather lovely, in a muted sort of way. It was farm country, lightly populated by humans, but with plenty of birds, and occasional coyotes and possums.

Nevertheless, every patch of ground was either under the plow or turned into grazing land. There was nothing wild. I wanted forests and streams, fish and game, and real snow, along with the freedom to wander through them.

That was all available in books, along with a thousand other adventures to be found all over the globe.

My fellow students in my little school read what they had to read — but nobody talked about it. Nobody read science fiction. Nobody wanted to know any more about science than they were required to know. I was reading and studying continuously, preparing to head for college to be a scientist — but I didn’t talk about it, because no one wanted to know.

When I got to college, one of my roommates was a science fiction fan. We talked about it, but only a little. By then, my habit of silence was pretty well set.

A lifetime later I started this blog. For the first time I got to really talk about the books I love and why I love them. Like right here, right now, talking to you, telling you why I had to postpone a review.

Hi. You see, there was this book called The Road to Corlay . . .

— << >> —

I began A Writing Life in support of an upcoming novel, but it quickly evolved into something larger. It became a how-to, and a “How I did it”, and a “What I’ve learned about how others did it.”

Many of those posts, somewhat modified, are gathered together now in a pair of books for writers called Learning from the Masters (that would be Heinlein, Clarke, et al, not me bragging about myself) and So You Want to Write Science Fiction. Because 2026 will be fully occupied with the Menhir series, they are scheduled for release in 2027. Tentative dates are:

Learning from the Masters

March 17, 2027

and

So You Want to Write Science Fiction

July 7, 2027

706. Five Years Ago

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Even though Trump just “took over” Venezuela, that isn’t what I want to talk about. That story is still unfolding and full of unknowns, but there is no confusion about what happened five years ago.

January sixth — you can’t say that any more without special meaning. It has become a time-bound phrase, as specific as 9/11.

January sixth came five years ago. No doubt every newspaper and television journalist will have something to say today. Me, too. It’s personal; it should be personal to every American.

I saw it all on television, starting at nine on the west coast. This posting will match that time. At first it seemed to be only another address by the outgoing crazy. Then Trump called on the crowd to “fight like hell”, and they did.

I saw it all as it happened. From the moment it became apparent that there was going to be trouble, continuing until the crowd dispersed, I never left the broadcast.

Even if you were elsewhere that day, everybody knows about the attack. Unfortunately, not everybody understands that the attack happened entirely because Trump lied.

Trump had lost the 2020 election. He refused to acknowledge that fact. He instituted multiple lawsuits against the result, and lost them all.

He called for a rally. He stoked the crowd. He sent them to march and told them to fight in order to keep the Congress from ratifying the vote.

Trump orchestrated and authorized the horrors that followed. There is only one word to describe his actions.

Treason.

Trump is responsible for his words and his deeds, despite the subsequent findings of the Supreme Court which ended attempts to bring him to justice.

Trump ran again four years later, and won a second term. He continued to lie and continued to be believed, but he did not win without help.

The gatekeepers who kept the American people from knowing of Biden’s decline have to share the blame for Trump’s return. When Biden came on stage at the June 24, 2024 Presidential debate, clearly inadequate to his task, the election was already lost before he ever opened his mouth.

And now Trump is back with a vengeance.

These are dark days. They must not continue. 2026 is our best chance to return to reason. It may be our last chance.

705. The Year That Never Ends

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The Year That Never Ends

Once upon a time, in tenth grade, they force-fed me Dickens in the form of Great Expectations. No one should do that to a teenager. It put me off of Dickens for thirty years.

Then I discovered A Christmas Carol, and Dickens rose to the top of my pantheon. I loved the book. I loved the other four Christmas books he wrote in subsequent years. I loved the movies made from the book.

I wanted to write the next great Christmas tale. (Don’t we all?) Instead I wrote a novel that was half Dickensian and half dystopian. It centered around the Clock That Ate Time and the Great Babbage, but it did take place in a variant Dickensian London.

The immediate call to write was both visual and visceral. It was a scene from the musical Scrooge, drawn from the book and repeated in most movie adaptations. Bob Cratchit’s children are waiting for him to finish work on Christmas Eve while staring through the window of a toy shop. And what a toy shop, filled to the rafters with all the kinds of toys that rich Victorian children might be given, but which were forever out of reach of poor children like Tiny Tim and his sister. There were even mechanical wonders like the clockwork strongman who suspends himself horizontally using only one hand.

Who was the man who ran the shop? He was nothing in the story that Dickens told, but I wanted to know. Who built the mechanical man? I wanted to know. What possessed the owner to set up a shop in the poorest part of London, where none of the children staring into his windows would ever have a chance to buy his wares? I wanted to know that, too.

Yes, writers are like that. They are likely to stare at a potted rose and wonder what kind of soil is in the pot.

The novel I wrote is called Like Clockwork. The toyshop is there. It is also called Like Clockwork, and it is overfilled with mechanical wonders all created by the man who runs it. His name is Snap. He is the man who built the Clock That Killed Time, although he has lost all memory of building it. He, and everyone else in his pocket London, will live forever — but at a cost. Every Midwinter Midnight, the citizens gather around the Great Clock to watch the year 1850 end — then begin again, invariant forever.

What follows is the Prolog to Like Clockwork, in the form of a note written by Snap’s wife, Pilar of the Sorrows, as the old year closes.

— << >> —

Prolog. (Or is it an epilog?)

“Tonight Snap has gone down to the Clock for Midwinter Midnight. In just a few minutes, the reversion will occur and I will forget writing this note. It will be midnight of January first, 1850. Not next year, nor last year, but the only year there is.

“It isn’t a bad year and it isn’t a particularly good year, but if it is to be my only year, I want more.”

Pilar laid down her pen and listened, straining to hear the song they always sang at midnight:

The year that ends, but never ends,

That ‘ere again unfolds,

We live that year forever and

We never shall grow old

It was probably her imagination. Surely voices could not be heard over such a distance. She rose to move closer to a window and as she did the note she had written ceased to be. All her memories of the past twelve months ceased to be. Her body sloughed off a year of age and it was January first of the last-this-next-only year.

Again.

— << >> —

You’ll get a chance to read Like Clockwork, but not for a while. There is strategy and pacing in how I intend to release my novels, and that grand plan calls for Like Clockwork to be published no sooner than 2028.

This isn’t intended as a mean tease; its just that I wanted to acknowledge Midwinter Midnight as, unlike Snap’s world, 2025 rolls over into 2026.

704. No Room in the Inn

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No Room in the Inn

[Don’t even expect even-handedness here.]

In English we call him Joseph, in Italian he is Giuseppe, in Basque he is Joseba, in Spanish he is just plain Jose.

In English we call her Mary, in Hebrew she is Miryam, in German she is Maria, and also in Spanish.

In English he is Jesus, in Cornish he is Jesu, in Italian he is Gesu, and in Spanish he is Jesus again, but pronounced Hey-sous.

We are going to walk with these three this Christmas season.

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. And all went, every one into his own city. And Jose also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, to be taxed with Maria his espoused wife, being great with child.

Of course that could be written as Joseph and Mary, but surely they are the same couple, in any language. Jose was a carpenter. He built things out of wood to feed his family, and he paid his taxes like everybody else. All the world was to be taxed, and he had to go back to the place from which his people came.

Where would that be today? Perhaps a land with cities named Sacramento for the Holy Sacrament, or maybe Atascadero, Alameda, Camarillo, El Segundo, or Escondido. Perhaps cities like Fresno, La Mesa, Madera, or Mariposa show where his people once lived. Certainly they must have lived in cities like Los Angeles, Merced, Paso Robles, Salinas, or San Francisco. Even if his people no longer own the land, certainly the city named after him, San Jose, must once have belonged to his people.

And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

I think Luke shortened this a bit. Was there only one inn in Bethlehem? We can see the young couple, going from place to place, Jose leading, Maria on a burro since she cannot walk so late in her pregnancy. Everywhere they are turned away. Are all the sleeping places truly full? It may be. Or perhaps something about the two of them, perhaps the color of their skin, makes the innkeepers turn them away. Luke does not tell us.

I see migrant housing everywhere I go in California and I think, perhaps, a manger was preferable.

Now they are in a place where their people once lived, but to which they are no longer welcome. And here, their son is born.

Donald Trump would call Him an anchor baby. I wonder what He will call Trump, when they finally meet.

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

To all people. ALL people. Imagine that!

703. No More Little House

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No More Little House

I wrote the story of Lupe after Donald Trump won in 2016, but before he took office. I presented it in fear of what might happen. I present it again knowing what is happening, now that he is back for a second term.

Ramon came in, stamping the snow from his feet, and shook the snow from his jacket before closing the door. The sun was low in the eastern sky behind him as Lupe moved up and hugged his leg. He smelled of sweat and manure and soured milk, but she didn’t mind. She had hugged him this way every morning for as long as she could remember, and he always smelled the same. For Lupe, the smell was as familiar and welcome as his cold fingers on the top of her head.

Every morning Ramon rose before the sun was up, and left the house. His daughter greeted him when he returned hours later, and saw him off again in the afternoon. She was usually asleep when he came home at night.

It is hard work milking cattle twice a day, and the pay is low. The cattle march in from the muddy lots to take their turns in the stalls, where fast moving men attach the milking machines. The cattle resent the process and the workers have to move quickly to avoid having their hands caught against he stanchions. It goes on for hours, in heat or cold, beginning every morning before daylight, and continuing again every evening until after dark.

Lupe stepped aside to make room for her mother. Today she seemed worried; her voice was unusually sharp as she asked, “What did he say?”

Ramon replied, “I didn’t tell him.”

I translate, of course. Every word was in Spanish.

“You got your money for the week?”

Lupe’s father nodded, “I told him I needed it today, to buy things for Christmas. I was afraid to tell him the truth. He is a good man, but it seemed best that he should not know.”

Lupe’s sister came out of the single bedroom with a cardboard box in her arms, tied up with twine. Lupe looked up with interest. It was not wrapped in paper, but any box is interesting so close to Christmas. Carmella put the box down on the floor and returned a moment later with blankets and bedding, also rolled up and also tied up with twine. Lupe asked what she was doing, but Carmella ignored her.

Her father carried the box and roll of bedding outside. Her mother came out of kitchen with a box of food, and that began a procession of boxes, coming from various parts of the house and out to the car. Lupe’s mother and sister had gathered up their possessions during the pre-dawn, while Lupe slept.

Now Lupe dragged at her mothers leg asking questions, but she was ignored until Carmella pulled her aside and said, “We are going away.”

“Where?”

“I wish I knew Lupita. I wish I knew.”

“But why?”

“It’s only a month until he becomes President. Everyone here knows who we are. We have to go away, somewhere where people don’t know us.”

“But why? I was born here. This is home.”

“So was I, Lupe, but mother and father were not.”

When they pulled out an hour later, Lupe stared back at the little house where she had spent her whole, short life, until it disappeared around a bend. Then she looked out the windshield, past her mother and father’s silent heads. It was a long road, wet with melted snow. Her father would not leave the house tonight before the sun went down and go to the cows. There would be no more money, no more warmth, no more little house. It would be again as it had been, before the job at the cows, before she was born. Lupe knew what that was like from hearing her parents talk. Now it would be like that again.

— << >> —

Is Lupe real? She was born from the hundreds of little Mexican-American girls I taught over twenty-seven years. How many were undocumented? I never knew. I never asked. I didn’t need to know.

Is she real? She is as real as heartache. She is as real as fear. She is as real as dislocation, cold, hunger, and injustice.