“Animals with Nowhere to Go” — a short story by David Biddle

January 11th, 2021

.

.

 

“Animals with Nowhere to Go,” a story by David Biddle, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 55th Short Fiction Contest. It is published with the permission of the author.

.

.

.

photo by Pexels/Pixabay

.

Animals with Nowhere to Go

by David Biddle

.

 

…..He told us we were required to freeze everything in our lives and find the nearest house or store or restaurant or motor lodge. Don’t knock. Go in. Get comfortable. Wait for further instructions.

…..I ran as fast as I could to the Wyndham Super 8 in the same parking lot as the Denny’s where I used to take my children for special times on Saturdays. I could have run to any number of buildings in that neighborhood. People in a few of the houses nearby had at one time been friends. But I used to fantasize a lot about the Eight from the windows of that Denny’s. What a wonderful opportunity.

…..I would rise early, prepare breakfast for everyone, clean up the kitchen, make sure the cast-iron frying pans didn’t lose their seasoning, then go out to the room off the lobby with the TV on and sit with others most of the day. I loved those people. We were every kind: Asian, Black, Puerto Rican, Irish, Italian, Gay, Jewish, Vegan, Left-Wing, Conservative, Rich, even Unassuming Basic. More than a few of us had special personality issues. I for one was adopted when I was only two weeks old and never learned my heritage. Not a shred or a flake. As a result, I have fought a sense of separation from everyone and everything throughout my entire life. I suffer from fear of abandonment as well. I am dark-featured with caramel-toned skin. People assume far too much about me. My eyes could possibly have come from an Asian type of DNA or Nigerian, maybe a Mestizo combination from Spain and Mexico. But I am beyond the approximation of saliva analysis and fancy genetic mythologies. I’ve spent my life worrying too much about whether people legitimately love me. People too often make poor assumptions about each other out of ignorance and misunderstanding. These people, here, though, living at the Eight, they’re different. We’re different. Everybody understands the problem of difference.

…..Only two legitimate couples were part of our motel group. Most of us were either divorced, abandoned, or happy alone. We had a basement filled with all sorts of motel items including piles of continental breakfast cereals, powdered eggs, juice boxes, and tiny donut and cinnamon roll packages. Also, there was a pallet-and-a-half of cigarette cartons to stock the auto-dispensing machine near the check-in desk. The majority of us began smoking again, if we’d ever quit. We did a pretty good job keeping each other from becoming crazy-addicted like we all knew you could get. I chain smoked a lot back in my thirties. That goes along with drinking too much, of course, and everything else that requires turmoil then learning.

…..Around four o’clock, we would have tea and sweet crackers someone kept making out of a sourdough sponge mixed with a bit of brown sugar, salt-butter, and dried herbs they’d found in what had been a little garden behind the back building. Six was our cocktail hour. Some of us started to make dinner then. We drank while we cooked.

…..After dark we’d go up on the roof and talk quietly while down a small hill a guy named Pedro that everyone seemed to know played guitar and sang sad songs. Sometimes he would be accompanied by a woman on trumpet and another person no one ever saw on violin. Those two played from separate buildings nearby. I asked once why we were hearing so many sad songs. In the dark, no one answered me. Maybe a week later I slept with this Black-Asian guy who told me it was surprising I didn’t understand the blues.

…..That music they were playing, I replied, did not seem like the blues that I know. It was truly sad. I couldn’t hear if it was able to find a way forward. The blues has to be able to find its way.

…..He laughed at me and said that only certain people really hear what’s going on with that music. There’s particular notes. Combinations. But also something more. It has to do with how folks think when they realize there’s only one way out.

…..I said that the music Pedro was playing on his guitar in the dark was like a dirge – sadness at what we are all dealing with everywhere in the world all at once and people dying. There’s no anywhere anymore.  Does this even ever end?

…..After a few weeks, I generally stopped drinking at night and made sure I found an out-of-the-way room for myself to sleep with a window to crawl out. I also needed it to be difficult for anyone to find me because quietly looking out across the backside of the parking lot at the woods off in the distance was calming, and also extremely enticing. You don’t want to be interrupted if you find that kind of awareness. When I needed to eat or have sex or talk to people, I would head out to the lobby and make myself available, or ask someone for a cigarette or just enter the kitchen and take over.

…..On rainy mornings the woods could become soaked in a jade light, with emerald leaf nipplings popping out everywhere, glow-pulsing despite the watery mist and fog and slow-motion wet. I saw remnants sometimes of an old hidden railroad through the trees.

…..When I opened my window, I could hear and smell and even taste everything out there trying to return to the wild fueled by confusion. It made me want to dig a hole and get under all of that change, maybe find something new beneath things that could help the whole world. I understood it might mean long pieces of days out there and that the weather could change up and down, but I felt ready. Someone else could take control of making breakfast. I would still do supper and clean up after.

.

#

.

…..He kept popping up on TV. He talked too much about himself, but eventually got around to giving us instructions. It was quite obvious that he didn’t know what effect he was having on his listeners and that he had no idea anything we naturally expected of him could be so difficult.

…..At night we had Pedro and his guitar and sometimes violin and horn joining from nearby. You could hear people all over the neighborhood in the dark. Fires would be lit on the ground in some places. Up on the Denny’s roof across the parking lot, people wore all-white, moving in streetlight glow like soft, low animal clouds. Someone near me one night asked whether when you dress in all-white and dance on a rooftop you can make special breezes that go around the world and come back.

.

#

.

…..I needed to dig a hole out there because I knew eventually something would be revealed. The earth is an engrossing cross-sectional phenomenon. Besides all the normal stratifications you get with geology and plant life and layered water-shaped distortions, for all of humankind’s presence here people have buried secrets and their dead below the surface.  You never know how far you will be required to dig until you have actually found what you need. Someone said that once. Maybe the genius Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector.  It could have been Madonna, too, in her Kabbalah phase.

…..I could see the motel from the woods, birds tinkling and chiming everywhere in early light, flashing through the air, a constant fluttering sound in the trees and bushes. It had rained the night before, so the soil was soft and loose. I might have thought to bring a shovel maybe. They had several in a shed on the side of the building. I used my hands instead and a few flat stones. In the beginning, I worried a good deal about the tips of my fingers and for that matter my nails. Also, I didn’t want to cut my hands in the dirt. There are billions of different types of organisms underground, some poisonous. Everyone knows certain bacteria can eat human flesh once it gets inside. I dug carefully, then, and slowly. Small, incremental quantities. Nothing mattered anyway except waiting for an end to our shutdown. Maybe a solution mattered as well to being no one connected to nowhere, a selfish hope indeed, but it mattered.

…..I began to wonder as my hole grew bigger whether I intended to find something special like ancient artifacts, or whether I thought I might discover a new world through a gap that had always been buried there – an opening into another sky. Or, perhaps, an aperture view rising through another ground with young trees and new shrubs exploding into the sky and someone staring at me while I watched them.

.

#

.

…..He ordered up a debate format between networks to pre-empt prime time TV scheduling. He was the moderator flanked by women in bikinis and sometimes men in small organ hammock briefs. These were mostly beautiful and quite sexually bodied young people. Besides this odd form of near pornography, teams of cable news commentators sat at facing game show desks arguing in detail about vaccine engineering and disease mitigation techniques. At first, we all found it entertaining and even a bit salacious. But after a few days we ignored him and headed back up to our roof for smokes and to watch the stars while Pedro and the other musicians played their new form of music. Someone in our group pointed out that we hadn’t heard music with percussion for weeks. Someone else wondered if that was a good sign and that even piano is a percussion instrument. It seemed to me that without percussion and beat it was easier to have feelings that were my own. I didn’t want to say anything, though, because sharing insights like that always seems anti-social. One of the two married women stood up and went to the edge of the roof in front of everyone and declared that she was glad we hadn’t heard any percussion, rhythm, and beat. It was important, she said dramatically, for all of us to stay as far away from time and expectation as we could.

.

#

.

…..Some mornings when I arrived fragrances like wet colors preparing to heat up would be rising off of everything. I discovered new living organisms every day trying to make a home for themselves. Liquids tended to merge and blend because I was making such a low spot. Mostly, these liquids were from various forms of dew and condensing fog and whatever rain may have fallen in the night. I found young cave crickets under buried stones, and small rodents the size of my toes.

…..I began to arrive most mornings in near darkness. I used my phone screen to see what needed to be seen. It’s true that I could have swiped up for the special flashlight option that comes with phones, but that was far too harsh and bright. In this era now, simple photo light is the best way to see because then everything is comforting and warm.

…..At the Eight I spoke with people over dinner in vague and general terms about making depressions in secret places. Sometimes they just wanted to go back to their rooms with me. It depended on how I was feeling. I needed to talk about digging pits in the woods and finding things that may matter under the surface, but it also made sense to help deal with hunger and desire and to discuss abstract ideas later. As always, I felt different and separate from everyone I lived with. Sometimes they talked to me about that. It was one reason so many people enjoyed pleasure with me. And, of course, there was somehow always love – odd as that may seem.

…..What would happen if a person dug a hole kind of like a room in the ground and decided to stay there? Would you cover a person up if they asked you to?  Does it make sense to take naps in a hole you’ve made lying facedown so that you can’t see anything?  You’d get to smell so much of the earth and feel the variety of what is living there smaller and less fearless than anything on the surface.

.

#

.

…..After a few months he began to only show up on Sunday nights.  Plans for your week, he told the cameras. My way or the highway.  He liked to make things sound comforting and rhyme a lot.  News you can’t use.  We were smart enough to understand that he was incompetent and kind of mean. It seemed like he had started getting frustrated with everyone.  He spoke a lot about staying inside, keeping to your own group.  Don’t complain, just abstain.

…..I personally did not like what was being said to us. He was implying that everyone needed to stay out of the wilderness and that we should let him do what he wanted and that we needed to stop having our own expectations. The implication was that nothing is better anywhere other than right where you are, so stay put. Don’t move. They didn’t want us to think for ourselves.

.

#

.

…..The woods are filling in nicely now. I bring a bottle of water and a few packages of vending machine crackers most days. Sometimes I wonder if I should stop digging and try something else to fill the time. On rainy days I do a little work on the walls in order to keep them from crumbling, but head back to the Eight early. I’ve created my own form of motel meditation yoga. I feel partially fulfilled using the bathroom counter, the tub, my mini-fridge and, of course, the double that I don’t sleep in. Still, generally speaking, once you’ve constructed something as deep and meaningful as a pit in the woods anywhere, you really don’t feel comfortable leaving it to the elements in the middle of the day. Besides, the cool of a hole in the ground like mine in August is a luxury and a balm if ever that word had meaning on this earth when up top people must live with humidity and gray heat so incessant the air has become a form of learned helplessness.

…..Yellowjackets have formed a nest in the ground about twenty yards deeper into the trees. I consider digging a tunnel from the bottom of my pit towards their nest. I’ve heard they glow underground and their hum in the dark is soothing to certain mammals. I’m not stupid, though. Those stories are likely mistaken or made up.

…..The hole is so deep now I have started carving steps into one corner.  It’s got the same basic dimensions as my bathroom at the Eight. The stones I’ve been using fit in my hand like they’re a part of me. Or, perhaps, all along the stones needed me to become part of them so that they could dig themselves this imprint in the earth. When you’re an animal with nowhere to go, sometimes you make your own places. Sometimes you find others in the same predicament. And sometimes places turn you into something that you never thought possible.

.

#

.

…..On the roof most nights it’s always the best feeling. Everyone agrees now. The sound of guitar, horn, and violin along with voices coming up our slight hill, music that is obviously becoming a new form of the blues, the smell of smoke in the air and the taste of beer and wine – it all feels like there is a secret in the sound of people speaking to each other softly on a roof at night with so much nearby and everything at stake. Some of us are trying to learn as much as we can about that secret, others seem to think it’s better not to try anything that’s so difficult. I guess they figure things will just come to them the way they will.

…..I’m surprised anyway by what this new music helps me think about. There are clearly correct answers and solutions to our dilemma even though we’re all stuck together here. We have enough strength and courage and smarts to make sure the rest of life is going to happen. I keep wanting to say that to everyone when we’re together up on the roof. But how does one say something like that with the right tone of voice, especially someone like me who has no idea at all where they came from or where they’re going next, or when what is happening will finally finish?

.

.

___

.

.

David Biddle is a mixed race Quaker American author who lives in Philadelphia, PA. His novel Old Music for New People will be published in December of 2021. 

 

.

.

Listen to the violinist Nigel Kennedy play “Dusk”

.

.

.

 

Share this:

3 comments on ““Animals with Nowhere to Go” — a short story by David Biddle”

Comment on this article:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Site Archive

Your Support is Appreciated

Jerry Jazz Musician has been commercial-free since its inception in 1999. Your generous donation helps it remain that way. Thanks very much for your kind consideration.

Publisher’s Notes

Creatives – “This is our time!“…A Letter from the Publisher...A call to action to take on political turmoil through the use of our creativity as a way to help our fellow citizens “pierce the mundane to find the marvelous.”

In This Issue

Announcing the book publication of Kinds of Cool: An Interactive Collection of Jazz Poetry...The first Jerry Jazz Musician poetry anthology published in book form includes 90 poems by 47 poets from all over the world, and features the brilliant artwork of Marsha Hammel and a foreword by Jack Kerouac’s musical collaborator David Amram. The collection is “interactive” (and quite unique) because it invites readers – through the use of QR codes printed on many of the book’s pages – to link to selected readings by the poets themselves, as well as to historic audio and video recordings (via YouTube) relevant to many of the poems, offering a holistic experience with the culture of jazz.

Interview

photo Louis Armstrong House Museum
Interview with Ricky Riccardi, author of Stomp Off, Let’s Go: The Early Years of Louis Armstrong...The author discusses the third volume of his trilogy, which includes the formation of the Armstrong-led ensembles known as the Hot Five and Hot Seven that modernized music, the way artists play it, and how audiences interact with it and respond to it.

The Sunday Poem


“The Köln Concert,” by Martin Agee


The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work....

Martin Agee reads his poem at its conclusion


Click here to read previous editions of The Sunday Poem

Feature

“What one song best represents your expectations for 2025?” Readers respond...When asked to name the song that best represents their expectations for 2025, respondents often cited songs of protest and of the civil rights era, but so were songs of optimism and appreciation, including Bob Thiele and George David Weiss’ composition “What a Wonderful World,” made famous by Louis Armstrong, who first performed it live in 1959. The result is a fascinating and extensive outlook on the upcoming year.

Poetry

Sax in a Blue Suit by Samuel Dixon
21 jazz poems on the 21st of March, 2025...An ongoing series designed to share the quality of jazz poetry continuously submitted to Jerry Jazz Musician by poets sharing their relationship to the music, and with the musicians who perform it.

Interview

photo by Brian McMillen
Interview with Phillip Freeman, author of In the Brewing Luminous: The Life and Music of Cecil Taylor...The author discusses Cecil Taylor – the most eminent free jazz musician of his era, whose music marked the farthest boundary of avant-garde jazz.

Feature

photo of Rudy Van Gelder via Blue Note Records
“Rudy Van Gelder: Jazz Music’s Recording Angel” – by Joel Lewis...For over 60 years, the legendary recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder devoted himself to the language of sound. And although he recorded everything from glee clubs to classical music, he was best known for recording jazz – specifically the musicians associated with Blue Note and Prestige records. Joel Lewis writes about his impact on the sound of jazz, and what has become of his Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey studio.

Poetry

photo of Charlie Parker by William Gottlieb/Library of Congress; Design by Rhonda R. Dorsett
Jerrice J. Baptiste’s 2025 Jazz Poetry Calendar...Jerrice J. Baptiste’s 12-month 2025 calendar of jazz poetry winds through the upcoming year with her poetic grace while inviting us to wander through music by the likes of Hoagy Carmichael, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Sarah Vaughan, Melody Gardot and Charlie Parker.

Playlist

“Sextets: The Joy of Six” – a playlist by Bob Hecht...The cover of the 1960 debut album by the Jazztet, co-founded by the trumpeter Art Farmer and the tenor saxophonist Benny Golson, and which always featured a trombonist and a piano-bass-drums rhythm section. Golson wrote much of the music, but “Hi-Fly” – a tune featured on Bob Hecht’s two-hour playlist devoted to sextets – was written by pianist Randy Weston, and appears on the 1960 album Big City Sounds.

Interview

Interview with Jonathon Grasse: author of Jazz Revolutionary: The Life and Music of Eric Dolphy....The multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy was a pioneer of avant-garde technique. His life cut short in 1964 at the age of 36, his brilliant career touched fellow musical artists, critics, and fans through his innovative work as a composer, sideman and bandleader. Jonathon Grasse’s Jazz Revolutionary is a significant exploration of Dolphy’s historic recorded works, and reminds readers of the complexity of his biography along the way. Grasse discusses his book in a December, 2024 interview.

Feature

Dmitry Rozhkov, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
“Thoughts on Matthew Shipp’s Improvisational Style” – an essay by Jim Feast..Short of all the musicians being mind readers, what accounts for free jazz musicians’ – in this instance those playing with the pianist Matthew Shipp – incredible ability for mutual attunement as they play?

Art

Photo of Joe Lovano by Giovanni Piesco
The Photographs of Giovanni Piesco: Joe Lovano...Beginning in 1990, the noted photographer Giovanni Piesco began taking backstage photographs of many of the great musicians who played in Amsterdam’s Bimhuis, that city’s main jazz venue which is considered one of the finest in the world. Jerry Jazz Musician will occasionally publish portraits of jazz musicians that Giovanni has taken over the years. This edition features 1999 photographs of the saxophonist Joe Lovano.

Feature

Excerpts from David Rife’s Jazz Fiction: Take Two – Vol. 11: “Chick” and “Hen” Lit...A substantial number of novels and stories with jazz music as a component of the story have been published over the years, and the scholar David J. Rife has written short essay/reviews of them. In this 11th edition, Rife writes about the “chicks” (energetic women, attractive, and open to experience) and “hens” (older women who have either buried or lost a loved one, and who seem content with their lives) who are at the center of stories with jazz within its theme.

Interview

photo by Carl Van Vechten, Library of Congress
A Black History Month Profile: The legendary author Richard Wright...In a 2002 Jerry Jazz Musician interview, Richard Wright biographer Hazel Rowley discusses the life and times of legendary author Richard Wright, whose work included the novels Native Son andBlack Boy

Feature

On the Turntable — The “Best Of the ‘Best Of’” in 2024 jazz recordings...Our annual year-end compilation of jazz albums oft mentioned by a wide range of critics as being the best of 2024

In Memoriam

photo via Pexels.com
“Departures to the Final Arms Hotel in 2024” – poetic tributes, by Terrance Underwood...2024 produced its share of losses of legendary jazz musicians. Terrance Underwood pays poetic homage to a handful who have touched his life, imagining their admittance to the Final Arms Hotel, a destination he introduces in his prelude.

Community

Stewart Butterfield, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Community Bookshelf #4...“Community Bookshelf” is a twice-yearly space where writers who have been published on Jerry Jazz Musician can share news about their recently authored books and/or recordings. This edition includes information about books published within the last six months or so (September, 2024 – March, 2025)

Feature

Trading Fours, with Douglas Cole, No. 23: “The Wave”...In this edition of an occasional series of the writer’s poetic interpretations of jazz recordings and film, Douglas’ poem is written partly as a reference to the Antonio Carlos Jobin song “Wave,” but mostly to get in the famed Japanese artist Hokusai’s idea of the wave as being a huge, threatening thing. (The poem initially sprang from listening to Cal Tjader’s “Along Came Mary”).

Short Fiction

Stan Shebs, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons/blur effect added
Short Fiction Contest-winning story #67 — “Bluesette,” by Salvatore Difalco...The author’s award-winning story is a semi-satirical mood piece about a heartbroken man in Europe listening to a recording by the harmonica player Toots Thielemans while under the influence of a mind-altering substance.

Interview

Interview with James Kaplan, author of 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans and the Lost Empire of Cool...The esteemed writer tells a vibrant story about the jazz world before, during, and after the 1959 recording of Kind of Blue, and how the album’s three genius musicians came together, played together, and grew together (and often apart) throughout the experience.

Feature

photo of Lester Young by William Gottlieb/Library of Congress
Jazz History Quiz #179...Throughout his career, this saxophonist was known as the “Vice Prez” because he sounded so similar to “Prez,” Lester Young (pictured). Who was he?

Community

Nominations for the Pushcart Prize XLIX...Announcing the six writers nominated for the Pushcart Prize v. XLIX, whose work was published in Jerry Jazz Musician during 2024.

Publisher’s Notes

photo by Rhonda Dorsett
On turning 70, and contemplating the future of Jerry Jazz Musician...

Feature

“Are Jazz-Hop Instrumentals Jazz?” – an observation (and playlist) by Anthony David Vernon...Google “what is jazz-hop?” and the AI overview describes it is “a subgenre of hip-hop that combines jazz and hip-hop music. It developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s.” In Mr. Vernon’s observation, he makes the case that it is also a subgenre of jazz.

Community

Notes on Bob Hecht’s book, Stolen Moments: A Photographer’s Personal Journey...Some thoughts on a new book of photography by frequent Jerry Jazz Musician contributing writer Bob Hecht

Art

“The Jazz Dive” – the art of Allen Mezquida...The artist's work is inspired by the counterculture music from the 1950s and 60s, resulting in art “that resonates with both eyes and ears.” It is unique and creative and worth a look…

True Jazz Stories

Columbia Records; via Wikimedia Commons
“An Evening with Michael Bloomfield” – a true blues story by David Eugene Everard...The author recounts his experience meeting and interviewing the great blues guitarist Mike Bloomfield in 1974…

Short Fiction

photo via PxHere
“The Magic” – a story by Mark Bruce...Most bands know how to make music. They learn to play together so that it sounds good and maybe even get some gigs. Most bands know that you have your chord progressions and your 4/4 beat and your verses and bridges. Some bands even have a guy (or a woman, like Chrissy Hynde) who writes songs. So what gives some bands the leg up into the Top 40?

Contributing Writers

Click the image to view the writers, poets and artists whose work has been published on Jerry Jazz Musician, and find links to their work

Coming Soon

An interview with Sascha Feinstein, author of Writing Jazz: Conversations with Critics and Biographers;, Also, a new Jazz History Quiz, and lots of short fiction; poetry; photography; interviews; playlists; and much more in the works...

Interview Archive

Ella Fitzgerald/IISG, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Click to view the complete 25-year archive of Jerry Jazz Musician interviews, including those recently published with Judith Tick on Ella Fitzgerald (pictured),; Laura Flam and Emily Sieu Liebowitz on the Girl Groups of the 60's; Tad Richards on Small Group Swing; Stephanie Stein Crease on Chick Webb; Brent Hayes Edwards on Henry Threadgill; Richard Koloda on Albert Ayler; Glenn Mott on Stanley Crouch; Richard Carlin and Ken Bloom on Eubie Blake; Richard Brent Turner on jazz and Islam; Alyn Shipton on the art of jazz; Shawn Levy on the original queens of standup comedy; Travis Atria on the expatriate trumpeter Arthur Briggs; Kitt Shapiro on her life with her mother, Eartha Kitt; Will Friedwald on Nat King Cole; Wayne Enstice on the drummer Dottie Dodgion; the drummer Joe La Barbera on Bill Evans; Philip Clark on Dave Brubeck; Nicholas Buccola on James Baldwin and William F. Buckley; Ricky Riccardi on Louis Armstrong; Dan Morgenstern and Christian Sands on Erroll Garner; Maria Golia on Ornette Coleman.