Grit Feldman: Candy Detective P4

This is the last installment of Grit Feldman where he begins his first case. It's national novel writing month (NANO) and I thought it be fun to post these four parts of a kids book I started a long time ago.

Check out parts 1-3

Read Part 1
Read Part 2
Read Part 3



  Normally my dad was a patient man, but after hosing me off in the backyard for almost an hour, he’d gone redder than a Hot Tamale melting in the fire. “Greyton,” he said soft and slow, “where did you get the hats for your little experiment.”
    I sat silent for a while and then looked behind me. “I’m sorry,” I said, “are you talking to me?”
    “Yes. I’m talking to you Greyton.”
    “I’m not sure who Greyton is. My name is Grit,” I corrected him. I was surprised to see how quickly he’d forgotten.
    My mom snapped her hand up over her mouth to quiet her whip crack laugh. “Remember dear,” she said with her lips peeking over the palm of her hand, “he just creative.”
    “Greyt-” my dad stopped to correct himself, “Grit?”
    “Yes?” I replied right away.
    “Where did you get the hats?”
    “Don’t worry dad, I used the old ones on the bookshelf in your office. The old ones next to the baseballs with all the scribbling on them.”
    My mom gasped. It looked like she was trying to keep something from getting out. My dad put his hand onto his temples and rubbed  in circles. “Why don’t you go outside while I talk to your mom? Okay?”
    “No problem. I’ll be back for dinner,” I said. From the front stoop I could hear the conversation, but I’m sure why they asked me to leave. They weren’t talking about me, they just kept going on about and asking themselves what in the world was wrong with some kid named Greyton.
    Down the road from our house it hit me like a ton of  Lego bricks.  Standing on the edge of his lawn, staring at me with those big  wet eyes of his was Jimmy the Flute.

Jimmy the Flute was a sad sack of a kid. His eyes always had crust in the corner and he got his name because his nose was so packed full of boogers he whistled when he talked. He was a year younger than me and about to dive into the empty swimming pool known as the fourth grade. It didn’t treat me very well and I sure hoped Jimmy would have a better run at it than I did.

He didn’t know it yet, but Jimmy was about to launch my detective agency with its first case.

Grit Feldman: Candy Detective P3

As part of November write a novel month, I'm posting four parts of Grit Feldman beginning.


Read part 1
Read part 2

When I worked on this chapter I had just spend an afternoon in my garage seperating old caulk tubes into piles of useless, dried out old tubes and unused tubes that I'm sure I'll use someday.

Every good detective needs a hat and all my dad had around the house were Sheffy City Baller hats. Sheffy City had the worst team in all of baseball. Whenever I reminded my dad that the Ballers had never won any championship he’d always say without taking his eyes off the game, “Then we’re bound to win soon.” Some of the Baller hats he wore on his walks hung from our entryway coat hangers. A few others he kept with his golf bag out in our garage. Since he wore those ones so much I thought I’d use the old, beat up ones with some messy scribbling on them that he kept out of the way next to a book end shaped like a baseball mit on the shelf in his office.

It took nearly all day to make a cool looking detective hat. First I stacked the hats on top of one another with one bill going forward and the other pointing backwards. Next I glued the two together, and finally I got some black spray paint out of the garage and emptied out the entire can all over the hat. If I say so - it didn’t look half bad. But apparently you need to let spray paint dry for a few hours because when I put it on my head the sloppy wet paint oozed down my face thicker than molasses and stickier than syrup. At first I didn’t think it was too bad. I just thought I’d take off the hat and get cleaned up, but the gooey plumber’s glue I used to attach the hats to each other seeped into my hair and pulled at my scalp like a thousand little needles. With my eyes closed I started to pull back the front of the hat and heard the garage door open. Over the rumble of the garage door I’m pretty sure I could hear long, low grumble of my dad sighing.

Grit Feldman: Candy Detective P2

    Grit Feldman: Candy Detective P1
I got really into creating a child misfit who wants to turn his life around by starting a Candy Detective Agency about a year ago, but writing for kids is hard. After about 3000 words into Grit's storyline I thought I'd read it to my son right off the bat the fact that Grit went to Juvenile Hall really freaked him out.  He didn't know there was a jail for children.


 I knew starting my own detective agency was going to be a lot of work, but I had a lot of time to think about it during my community service putting together puzzles at the Goodwill. As I placed the last black and grey piece on the snout of a puppy in a basket on a 440 piece puzzle, I knew life was about to take a turn for the better and I knew it was time to take the first step - telling my mom.
    On the way home from my last day of community service at the Goodwill, I broke the news. “Mom,” I said. She sighed. She sighs a lot. My teachers sigh a lot. Once when I flooded the bathroom at my school with a soda and Mentos bomb spraying everywhere, I heard the school custodian sigh deep and long.
    “Yeah dear,” she answered after taking a silent breath.
    “I’ve decided I’m not going to be bad anymore. It’s time to change.”
    “I certainly hope Greyton.”
    “Now mom,” I said. “part of the new me is gonna be a new name.”
    She sighed again, deep and long.
    “From now on you’ll have to call me: Grit Feldman,” I stopped talking and stared out the minivan window for effect so she’d know I was serious. Then I whispered, “Candy Detective.”
    She sighed again. I’ve seen my mom cry plenty of times. When I was five years old I made a wig for her out of bubblegum and chewed up Payday candy bars. I put it on her when she was sleeping. Believe me - that woman can cry! But this was the first time I ever saw her cry from being so happy. But she still had a lot of questions. Mainly she just kept asking “Why?” over and over.
    As happy as she was she still needed a push to let me open up my own private detective agency, and that’s where my dad comes in. He’s not the kind of dad who yells and screams and pounds his fist. He’s more of the quiet type who whenever he’s mad just shakes his head then finds a reason to go for a walk. I’ll give him credit though - he knows a good idea when he hears one. After I told him about the detective agency they put me to bed and I snuck out to listen to him convince my mom.
    “Dear,” he said, “I think we should support him. I think it’s good he wants to help other kids. Maybe,” he started waving his long arms, “maybe this candy detective phase is what he needs to stop lashing out.”
    I hear my dad use these words all the time. He says I’m “going through a phase,” or “lashing out,” or “acting up.” It makes me feel sorry for him. He doesn’t seem to understand it’s in my nature. My sweet tooth has made me rotten. Being a candy detective isn’t some kind of phase - it’s my new way of life.
    “But do we have to call him Grit?” My mom asked.
    “I don’t see the harm in it,” my dad wrapped his long skinny arms around my mom and patted her back. “It’s okay - he’s just...creative.”
    When my mom let out a long, low sigh for the third time that day I knew my future was sealed and it only be a matter of time before The Grit Feldman Candy Detective Agency would be fully operational.

The Boxer

In the process of editing my unpublishable novel, Freedom Weed, I gave myself the awful assignment of completely eliminating a character. It was necessary, but due to the fact she was a character I based very much on my own experiences as a small town reporter, it was a bummer to eliminate the character. The below is a fictionalized account of an interview I did with a one legged diabetic senior citizen who got a DUI in the parking lot of a high school. 

“They shouldn’t a put me in the drunk tank. They shoulda’ put me in the hospital. I wadn’t drunk—I’m a diabetic senior citizen with one leg ‘fer Christ Sake!” the old ex-boxer screamed, shifting around in his wheelchair, spraying spittle onto Shawna Finnin’s notepad. She should have known this was going to be a pain in the ass when a shit-ass grin slimed its way onto her publisher’s face as he handed over note with the story lead: Randy Pullzman: sited with a DUI last night driving a motorized wheelchair at 3am.

            Randy was a lonely ex-boxer long out of the limelight and happy to talk to Shawna, he was desperate for new company and happy to have the attention of some pretty young thing. He tried to get her to look up from the yellow notepad, but Shawna’s long brown hair slid in front of her face and she unsuccessfully pushed it back behind her ear.

            Randy Pullzman was another typical lead generated by her publisher Brick Martinez. A while back he’d sent her off to visit a sweet old widow who’d garnered some attention making money at local festivals with homemade lotion. “Did I tell you I use horse semen?” The thin, secluded women had said in a shaky voice while sitting with Shawna sipping a cup of Earl Grey tea.

            “You know what else?” Mr. Pullzman continued, pulling Shawna’s gaze from the pictures of him as a young, fit boxer in the ring posed with two gloved fists—a body of fleshy steel. “They didn’t even give me one of those umm …one of those breathalyzer things. They didn’t do that at all. Just threw me in a room and you know what?” Randy’s swollen, purplish hands pushed down on the handles of his Medicaid wheelchair to lean his drooping potato sack of a body a little closer. “When the nurse came in,” he whispered, “I had a blood sugar level of 312.” He shifted back a bit and yelled now, “I wadn’t drunk, I was in a diabetic coma.”

            “The police report said you were in the parking lot of Colfax High School. Is that true?” Shawna asked with her head in her notepad. Randy sighed deeply.

            “You know,” Randy paused to sigh, “I don’t remember a damn thing.”

            “I’m sorry...,” Shawna looked up quickly, then back at her notes. “Then how do you know they didn’t give you a breathalyzer?” Two wet, bloodshot eyes stared back, confused. Shawna thought better than to push. “What do you remember Mr. Pullzman?”

            “Well I was here and I did have one or two drinks after dinner. And from there I woke up in a jail cell with a county nurse telling me I was in a diabetic coma.”

            “Do you have the nurse’s name?”

            “You know…I don’t.” Those old-dog eyes of his looked lost.

            “Okay,” Shawna said. If she was to tell this man’s story she’d have to get people to like him somewhat. Who’s going to finish an article about an old diabetic drunk, killing himself one carbohydrate at a time? “What do you do for living Mr. Pullzman?”

            “Randy. Call me Randy sweetie.”

            “Okay…Randy, what is your job?” He looked back, confused again. “Do you work Randy?”

            “Oh. Yah, okay,” Randy nodded, finally understanding. “No I don’t work. I’ve been on the disability for a long time.”

            “What did you do before that?”

            “How the hell am I supposed to work?” Randy shouted. He matted down some of the dark grey strands of hair onto his scalp. Shawna thought she started to smell the faint whiff of urine. “I only got one leg.”

            “All right fair enough. If you don’t mind: How did you lose your leg?”

            “Diabetes. Doctors had to take it.” For a moment Shawna thought Randy was going to continue, instead he silently sat in front of her, staring.

            “Are those pictures on the wall of you? The boxer?”

            “Yah. I used to be a fighter. Ranked eighth in the country, welterweight. I never got any real big fights though.”

            “Show her the medals,” said a voice from the kitchen. Shawna knew Randy’s caretaker was in the kitchen, but she hadn’t processed the woman washing dishes in the background as a real human being. Much like the mushrooms sprouting out of the floorboards near the door, or the empty dog bowls on the porch covered in grime, or the blankets covering the windows, or the smell of mildew hanging like a sad fog everywhere—the caretaker was just another prop in this trailer home house of horrors. “Show her the medals,” the woman repeated. Shawna was surprised to see what seemed like a young woman in the kitchen with the body of a dancer. After six months in town, Shawna thought she’d met everyone even close to her age, but when the caretaker turned, Shawna struggled not to react. The woman’s face was deeply wrinkled, hiding a past she’d more than likely wish to forget in the deep crevasses criss-crossing her entire face.

            Holding a dish at her side, the woman spoke again. “The medals Randy. Get ‘em out and show ‘em off,” the woman insisted. Her teeth were jagged little rotting rocks.

            “I will,” Randy obeyed as the woman went back to washing dishes. Using his one leg he pulled himself over to some drawers next to a sunken couch and dug out two metals—one bronze and one silver. “There you are,” he said forcing them in Shawna’s hand. “Won ‘em back to back.”

            “How old are these?” Shawna asked slowly.

            “God. I don’t know. Must be just over forty years.”

            Each medal was shiny and polished from constant handling. Randy quickly became lost in the shine of the two metals. The interview was over. It was time to say good bye.

“Bye now,” Shawna heard the caretaker crackle as she stepped over a stray cat playing with a dead mouse on the porch.