rayaso

I blame my grandfather and Mark Twain for my current predicament. Still, the Macon County Jail isn't bad. I’ll be out in a few months.

My grandfather started it all. His life was one big lie. When my grandfather emigrated from Scotland around 1890, he adopted a new name and completely cut himself off from his former life. My father never knew his father’s real name.

My grandmother was Martha M. Grande (“of the Leesburg Grandes”). We never learned what the "M" stood for. Around 1899, my grandmother moved from Georgia to the port city of Skagway, Alaska to work as a teacher during the Klondike Gold Rush. It was a rough time, but she was a very determined woman, and a job was a job.

According to my grandmother, she was once invited to dine aboard a ship by its captain. Let’s call the ship “Fate” just for fun, and because my grandmother “forgot” its name, too. During dinner, the Fate left the dock and headed toward the open sea. My grandmother was being kidnapped to be forced into prostitution! Or so she said. At the last minute, the U.S. Navy intervened, stopped the Fate, and she was rescued by Captain Bruce Rodric Haver of the U.S. Marines.

He wound up courting her, and they married. The Captain never revealed his true name, not even to his wife. He told her that he was from Scotland (true) and that he was the younger son of a Laird. As was the custom for such extra sons, he had joined the British cavalry, where he became a captain.

Captain Haver claimed he was expelled from the military in disgrace because he disagreed with Britain’s imperial policies in India. He then did what anyone would do: he left for Argentina to start a peacock farm. Several years later, he took the next logical step, giving up bird farming and moving to America for the Marines and my grandmother. Along the way, he shaved ten years off his age for unknown reasons. He also liked to boast that he played chess with Czar Nicholas II of Russia, but that’s another story.

My father grew up surprisingly normal and, for this family, demonstrated a remarkable ability to remain in one place all his life while holding only two actual professions. The Captain died at age 60 (70?), so I never met him. I did, however, inherit his lack of respect for the truth. I grew up wanting to be, no, having to be, a writer.

I launched my writing career shortly after college; fame and fortune would soon be mine. Writers frequently need talent, but I quickly found that I didn't have any. I tried writing short stories, poetry, articles, and even a novel; you name it and I stunk at it. My only attempt at a novel was a thriller, but the unfortunate hero committed suicide at the end of the first chapter. If it were me, I would have done it sooner. It took me six months just to write that much.

I did one smart thing, though. I turned to Mark Twain for advice: “Write without pay until somebody offers pay. If nobody offers within three years, the candidate may look upon this circumstance with the most implicit confidence as the sign that sawing wood is what he was intended for.”

For three years, I desperately tried everything to write: drinking, growing a beard, brooding, and even frequenting coffeehouses. I was unpaid, unpublished, and eventually defeated; according to Mr. Twain, it was time to start sawing wood.

Writers, especially failures, still needed money, however. I had sometimes supported myself by engaging in extra-legal wealth re-distribution. To be blunt, I was a small-time con man. For that, I thank my grandfather. Anyone who could make that collection of stories stick deserved my respect.

Writing and cons have one thing in common: both involve selling a story. I had no trouble making up tales, but I just couldn't figure out how to write them. Instead, I found a way to become them.

I used all the classic cons: Three-Card Monte, Pig in a Poke, the Embarrassing Check, the Spanish Prisoner, plus a few of my own. I generally worked alone, and for a while, I did pretty well.

I should have known Maureen would be trouble when I first met her. Gorgeous and a grifter, I found her completely irresistible. Our first job was going to be the Badger Game, a form of blackmail. A beautiful woman (Maureen) lures a married mark to her hotel room where her hidden partner takes compromising pictures, and then the mark pays the blackmail. It’s pretty safe, if you don’t demand too much.

Our first con together was also my last. It turned out that I was the real mark. Maureen worked for the Macon County Sheriff’s Department as a plant, and I was just another small-time crook who fell into her trap.

There was nothing I could do. I was sentenced to six months, and I'm still here, with three months to go. I've been putting my time to good use, however. I've been writing a novel, and the hero’s still alive! I'm four chapters in, with at least a vague idea of a plot. Who knows what could happen? I might even finish it.

And after that, it will definitely be time for a change. I've been thinking about going to Scotland and finding my relatives, or perhaps inventing some new ones. That seems like an interesting opportunity.

I just wonder, what name should I use?