Speaker 1: Lay Your Armor Down, a novel by Michael Ferris Smith,
Speaker 1: Chapter one. She moved in the solemn lamplight of the
Speaker 1: cluttered house, like a vague figure of a troubled dream.
Speaker 1: She shuffled from room to room, opening drawers and closet doors,
Speaker 1: and picking up things and putting them into the grocery sack,
Speaker 1: no sense or order to the gathering. A random ring
Speaker 1: and a broken bracelet from a spilled jewelry box, one shoe,
Speaker 1: a ragged notebook from the bottom of a stack of
Speaker 1: other ragged notebooks, two postcards from a long dead sister,
Speaker 1: a handful of hair clips, a small wooden picture frame
Speaker 1: that held the rudimentary drawing of an angel that had
Speaker 1: been created by her child decades before. She wore a
Speaker 1: thin housecoat that hung on her aged and slender figure,
Speaker 1: her gray hair, and a matted mess. She talked to
Speaker 1: herself as she moved throughout the house, reminding herself of
Speaker 1: errands that had been years ago completed, and gossiping about
Speaker 1: people she no longer knew, and singing fragments of songs
Speaker 1: that had once played on the radio during the summer
Speaker 1: days of her small down ut. In doorways, she would
Speaker 1: stop and look into the shadows and touch the tip
Speaker 1: of her index finger to her chin and hold it
Speaker 1: there in trouble fault, and then she would begin again
Speaker 1: to fill the sack with random fragments of time gone by.
Speaker 1: At the end of the hallway, the closet door was open,
Speaker 1: and the contents overflowed and spilled out onto the floor,
Speaker 1: as if the house were regurgitating its own clutter. The
Speaker 1: pace of her rambling quickened as she dropped to her
Speaker 1: knees and began to dig into the closet as if
Speaker 1: just remembering something essential, her arms thin and weak but
Speaker 1: working in a sudden fever as she pushed away dirty
Speaker 1: towels and newspapers and shoe boxes. As she burrowed into
Speaker 1: the closet. At the bottom of the pile, she found
Speaker 1: a thin red coffee can, and she opened the top
Speaker 1: and felt inside and touched the roll of cash. She
Speaker 1: kept digging, and she pulled out three more coffee cans
Speaker 1: from beneath the rubble, and each one held a roll
Speaker 1: of cash of various size, a savings hidden away and
Speaker 1: then forgotten, and then remembered again in the swirling winds
Speaker 1: of her mind. She dropped the rolls of money into
Speaker 1: a grocery sack. With the random gathering, ran her fingers
Speaker 1: across her pallid face, her eyes like deepest windows into
Speaker 1: the sprawling world. She seemed to gather herself and let
Speaker 1: out a great exhale, as if arriving at a moment
Speaker 1: of resignation. She stood and straightened her house coat, and
Speaker 1: stepped out of her slippers and brushed off her ashy feet,
Speaker 1: and then she stepped back into them, and she took
Speaker 1: the grocery sack under her arm, and she made for
Speaker 1: the front door. She opened it, and the night wind
Speaker 1: greeted her, and she gazed out into the darkness, a
Speaker 1: traveler ready for some journey, a star blown sky above
Speaker 1: the winding road that led from the house, and the
Speaker 1: road badly patched and bumpy as she stumbled twice, but
Speaker 1: caught herself both times, cursing the uneven ground in a
Speaker 1: quick insult, before returning again to the harried conversations of
Speaker 1: her lost world. She wandered from the road and into
Speaker 1: the field, where she pushed through the knee high grass.
Speaker 1: Were searching eyes busied with the hunt stop stared in
Speaker 1: the direction of her shuffling, and the wind pushed at
Speaker 1: her wild hair and slushed through the wild grass, and
Speaker 1: on the other side of the field, she entered into
Speaker 1: the woods, where the moon glow gave shadows through the trees,
Speaker 1: and where she held out her hands and touched the
Speaker 1: trunks as she moved through the forest, the dark guardians
Speaker 1: willing to give her pass, and the wind shook leaves
Speaker 1: from the limbs and they fell around her in swirls
Speaker 1: of decay. As she stepped across the leaf strewn earth,
Speaker 1: the small crunches of aged and careful steps. She was
Speaker 1: not afraid until she was deep into the woods, and
Speaker 1: she stopped and looked around, and whatever confused purpose had
Speaker 1: been there to guide her slipped off into the dark
Speaker 1: and left her alone. There was wind, and there were
Speaker 1: the calls of the night, and between the black tree
Speaker 1: limbs there were stars and moon the heaven's infinite. She
Speaker 1: leaned her back against a tree and hugged herself as
Speaker 1: if suddenly cold, and she began to cry. She cried
Speaker 1: and began walking again, in no direction, moving through the
Speaker 1: woods in a confused and careful gait, and beginning to
Speaker 1: call out the names of people who passed through her mind,
Speaker 1: names that both meant something and meant nothing. Her father
Speaker 1: and a woman she once sat next to on an airplane,
Speaker 1: and a pigtail friend from childhood, and the old man
Speaker 1: who taught her to ride a horse, and the boy
Speaker 1: who sacked her groceries. Once upon a time, the wind
Speaker 1: gained strength, and the limbs swayed and bent, and her
Speaker 1: hair whipped on her head, and she clutched the sack
Speaker 1: with both hands and called out to anyone who might
Speaker 1: be listening. And she lost a slipper and moved with
Speaker 1: one bare foot and panicked eyes and a deepening fear
Speaker 1: that something in the dark was going to devour her.
Speaker 1: She was lost in head and heart and soul. And
Speaker 1: she stopped and stared up at the moon, and she
Speaker 1: began to question it, as if it had the answers
Speaker 1: to the universe. Who are you? And where am I?
Speaker 1: What are we? And the questions continue and carried her
Speaker 1: as she meandered through the dark, walking into branches that
Speaker 1: scratched her face, and bits of leaf and limb getting
Speaker 1: stuck in her hair, and she lost her other slipper.
Speaker 1: She was no longer crying and no longer questioning the moon,
Speaker 1: but now transformed into something ancient and mindless and driven
Speaker 1: by some ordained task, as if she was no longer
Speaker 1: of grat flesh and bone, but instead a shapeless spirit
Speaker 1: of the wood that drifted timelessly. She moved through the
Speaker 1: night in a random pattern of wind, and then through
Speaker 1: the trees she saw the firelight. She fixed her eyes
Speaker 1: on the flames, and she pushed away low hanging limbs
Speaker 1: and crunched across the leaves, and her mouth moved as
Speaker 1: if speaking, but she was soundless. As she came into
Speaker 1: the clearing, two crouching silhouettes next to the fire, two
Speaker 1: figures rising when they looked up at the old woman
Speaker 1: who emerged from the wood, Twigs in her hair and
Speaker 1: a torn housecoat and bare feet and stick like legs,
Speaker 1: and the distant gaze She regarded the dark figures, and
Speaker 1: then she looked again into the starstruck night, at the
Speaker 1: marble white moon. She let her arms fall to her sides,
Speaker 1: and a great release, and she spoke in some language
Speaker 1: they did not understand. She then fell silent, and the
Speaker 1: sack dropped from her hand and spilled onto the ground.
Speaker 1: A spindle of cash rolled forward and settled in the firelight,
Speaker 1: and there was no judgment among them, but for the
Speaker 1: emptiness in which they all stood. Chapter two. They left
Speaker 1: the dying fire and walked out of the clearing, the
Speaker 1: tawny light on their backs and darkness before them. Their
Speaker 1: car parked on the roadside, a big four door thing
Speaker 1: long as a boat, two hubcaps missing, the antenna snapped off.
Speaker 1: Each man lit a cigarette before climbing in and closing
Speaker 1: the doors, and then they sat there, smoking and staring
Speaker 1: through the bulk smeared windshield. Something small and bright eyed
Speaker 1: crossed the road, and it stopped and looked at the car,
Speaker 1: and then continued on its journey and disappeared into the brush.
Speaker 1: Falling leaves swirled in the wind and fell in the
Speaker 1: moonlight like flakes of rust. One man sniffed and the
Speaker 1: other coughed as the car filled with smoke, and the
Speaker 1: driver rolled down the window and he smoked and scratched
Speaker 1: at his beard before flicking out the cigarette a little
Speaker 1: red spray as the butt bounced on the road. The
Speaker 1: man in the passenger seat smoked more methodically and was
Speaker 1: still at it when the car cranked and the headlight
Speaker 1: split the dark. The big car moved in a great
Speaker 1: lurch and began its descent from the hillside, filling the
Speaker 1: night with a low rumble. They drove through the darkness,
Speaker 1: past rolling pastures lying by leaning fence posts held erect
Speaker 1: by strands of barbed wire, pass gatherings of hard woods,
Speaker 1: and over skinny bridges with rotted rails, where the moon
Speaker 1: reflected in the wabbled creek water. The big car crews
Speaker 1: through the bends in the road where deer stood, backed
Speaker 1: away and still and waiting. It rolled through the desolate
Speaker 1: four way stops where there was nothing and no one,
Speaker 1: and they drove on with their red tipped cigarettes across
Speaker 1: the fallen landscape of the autumn, where the fields had
Speaker 1: turned the color of sand, and the stars stabbed the
Speaker 1: sky and darts of silver. Neither man spoke. They emerged
Speaker 1: from the unmarked country roads and turned onto a two
Speaker 1: lane highway. Mailboxes stood on the roadside at the end
Speaker 1: of the gravel driveways, and sleeping houses sat quiet and peaceful.
Speaker 1: Back in the gloom. Dogs slept on porches and raised
Speaker 1: their heads to regard the loud thing moving through the night,
Speaker 1: and then returned to slumber. As the growl of the
Speaker 1: engine disappeared, the lights of the world appeared in the
Speaker 1: fluorescence of gas stations and in flashing red signals and
Speaker 1: yellow street lamps, and then disappeared in the rear view
Speaker 1: mirror as the car followed the highway right through the
Speaker 1: meager town and entered a new dark thirteen more miles
Speaker 1: of silence between them and pine trees and the rise
Speaker 1: and dip of the hills, And then, as if leaving
Speaker 1: one country and crossing into another, the landscape bottomed out.
Speaker 1: The car now traveled a flat terrain in a rhythmic glide,
Speaker 1: as if rolling across the serenity of lake water. Spanish
Speaker 1: moss hung from tree limbs in gray and gathered clumps,
Speaker 1: and the long and drooping limbs of the willows swayed
Speaker 1: in the wind, and the swamp slurped up against the roadside,
Speaker 1: as if only waiting for the command from some weather
Speaker 1: god to swallow what was left of the raised earth.
Speaker 1: The frame that held the child's drawing of the angel
Speaker 1: sat between them on the bench seat. The man in
Speaker 1: the passenger seat picked it up. He flicked a cigarette
Speaker 1: lighter and looked at it in the solitary light of
Speaker 1: the flame, and he ran his thumb across an angel
Speaker 1: wing then he set the frame back on the seat
Speaker 1: and gazed out into the night. The driver looked over
Speaker 1: at him and wanted to ask why they had bothered
Speaker 1: to bring it along, but he only gave a silent
Speaker 1: look of disgust and his eyes returned to the road.
Speaker 1: Then there it was, the all night truck stop, sat
Speaker 1: in isolation, as if it had long ago been misplaced
Speaker 1: and forgotten. The car bumped across the potholed parking lot
Speaker 1: and stopped in front of the glass doors of the diner.
Speaker 1: A handful of cats hunted around the dumpster. Two eighteen
Speaker 1: wheelers parked off behind the gas pumps. Darkness closed around,
Speaker 1: as if the place had been created as a sojourn
Speaker 1: for some final plummet. The neon sign read open in
Speaker 1: the front window, and the bugs danced around it in
Speaker 1: the cotton candy glow. From behind bent and twisted blinds.
Speaker 1: The lights of the diner cut into the night in
Speaker 1: awkward slants. The two men sat there and stared until
Speaker 1: the man in the passenger seat coughed and shifted in
Speaker 1: his seat. Well, ain't you going to say something? The
Speaker 1: driver grabbed a cigarette pack from the dashboard. About what
Speaker 1: The driver then looked at himself in the rear view
Speaker 1: mirror and rubbed at his bloodshot eyes before climbing out
Speaker 1: of the car. The passenger watched as the bearded man
Speaker 1: pulled open the door to the dinner and disappeared inside.
Speaker 1: About what he muttered, and then got out and followed. Okay,
Speaker 1: that was a couple of chapters from a recently released
Speaker 1: novel by Michael Ferris Smith. The title of the novel
Speaker 1: is Lay Your Armor Down. I ordered a hard copy
Speaker 1: of this book. Smith has become one of my favorite authors.
Speaker 1: The stories are great and the way he writes them
Speaker 1: as just spectacular as you could as you just heard.
Speaker 1: He has several novels available on Amazon. I'll link his
Speaker 1: author page and a link to this particular novel in
Speaker 1: the description below. You can click on it and go
Speaker 1: straight to it and buy the Kendall copy a hard copy.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's out in paperback yet, but
Speaker 1: this book has met with great reviews, great sales. I
Speaker 1: read it and covered from cover to cover. I pre
Speaker 1: ordered it and it came to me like the first
Speaker 1: day that it was released. It showed up in my
Speaker 1: mailbox and I read it in like two nights. It's
Speaker 1: just so good. Like all of his work, it's really good,
Speaker 1: so wanted to share that with y'all. Check him out.
Speaker 1: Michael Ferris myth fantastic author. If you haven't heard me
Speaker 1: talk about him before. He's got two of his novels
Speaker 1: have been made into major motion pictures. He's a good
Speaker 1: screenplay writer, and he's a very talented musician as well.
Speaker 1: He's got a band in Oxford and they do a
Speaker 1: few gigs here and there, so he's a real creative person.
Speaker 1: And hope you guys enjoyed chapter one and two of
Speaker 1: that novel. There's a lot more to it. It's a
Speaker 1: I don't know, thirty chapter book, but it's a great story,
Speaker 1: so you guys pick it up. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: the podcast, and we'll see you guys on the next one.