I Have Seen the Elephant by Kenneth R. Lewis

Ken Lewis’ crime fiction thriller “Little Blue Whales” won the Public Safety Writers Association 2010 First Grand Prize for Fiction. His next novel, “The Sparrow’s Blade,” will be published this November by Krill Press. He lives with his wife, JaNell, and their black Lab, Sally, in a small town in Oregon where he is the chief of police.  You can read more here - http://www.kennethrlewis.com or find him at Facebook as Crime Fiction Author Kenneth R. Lewis

I Have Seen the Elephant

by Kenneth R. Lewis

In the middle of the 19th century, around the time following the civil war, the popular American phrase, "I have seen the elephant," referred to a person having overcome adversities and hardships in their life, or having experienced something completely extraordinary, and unexpected. It grew out of a country legend about a farmer who heard that the circus was coming to town. He had never seen an elephant and headed to town with his cart, filled to overflowing with produce, to see the elephant. Along the way, he encountered the elephant on the road and unfortunately for the farmer, his horse had never seen an elephant either. The horse spooked, and bolted, upset the cart, and ran off. This destroyed all the farmer's produce; much of his cash crop for the rest of the year. Even so, the farmer declared as he picked himself up from off of the ground, "I don't care, for I have seen the elephant.” This is how I’ve come to think about my writing every time something momentous has happened, good, or bad.

The first time I ever saw the elephant was when I was in the sixth grade. I wrote a story in my English class which I titled “The Forest Ranger.” I don’t remember if I was assigned to write it, but I do remember getting an “A” on it (my first ever in elementary school) so it must have been sanctioned by my teacher. It was about a handsome, brave, and rugged man who wore a green, whipcord uniform, lived in a log cabin in the mountains, and with his trusty Winchester .30-.30, he was the only thing that stood between a marauding mountain lion, and the certain destruction of the people in the small mountain town in the valley below. Today I live in a big house in the mountains, wear a dark blue uniform, and sometimes have mountain lions traverse the pine dotted open field across from my front lawn. Remember Ralphie from /A Christmas Story/? Yeah, I was that kid, growing up.

It was to be a very long time before I saw the elephant again, and this lingering interval would be the start of a pattern in my writing life, the far, and few between sightings of the elephant seeming to grow exponentially with the passing of the years from boyhood, to adolescence, to young manhood. But I still wrote. When I was twenty I sold a short story titled “The Willow Tree” to a magazine in Milwaukee, Wisconsin called Farm Wife News for which I was paid fifty dollars. The fact that anyone had paid me anything, for something I had written, was fantastical in its own right. But the enormity of knowing that I was not a wife, had never lived on a farm, and that “The Willow Tree” was the first professional short story I’d ever tried to write—and first piece of writing I’d ever sent anywhere to try and get published—was enough to bring the elephant looming into view once again. What an amazing sight he was! So, I wasn’t just a moody, angst ridden young man, with a seemingly terminal case of maudlin sensitivity, after all! I was a writer, that’s what I was, and now the entire world belonged to me. All I had to do, was reach out and write it.

Flash forward decades, the period in my life as a writer I used to refer to as “the wasted years.” After all, what had become of my great beginning? My great promise of a meaningful contribution to the world of literature? I had wanted to write about adventure, and danger, about great loves won, and lost, and won back again, and seemingly against all odds. But I didn’t have any reference point from which to start, I had no colored push pin to stick in the map of my life at point “A” in order to chart a course, and then proceed in the direction of “B.” At that time a young man seeking the experience of extreme adventure basically had two choices: a military war, or the war at home in our society. Viet Nam had not long ended, and had ended badly, and even though I knew another war would soon come along, I chose the sure thing; the never ending war within our own often violent culture. I joined the police force.

I didn’t see much of the elephant over the next long stretch of time, and what I did see of him left me wanting, left me feeling a little empty, and a lot disillusioned. Oh, I still wrote, and even sold some of my stuff. A freelance newspaper piece here, an outdoor magazine article there, the terrific short story that was almost...almost...bought by a big New York magazine, but instead was ultimately published by a small literary magazine that paid me in contributor’s copies. These were all sightings of the elephant, to be sure, but in my estimate, he looked a little dusty, a little broken down, and tired now. His swaying stride into the center ring of my life was more forlorn, than it was fabulous, and even though I knew he wished to trumpet proudly the major accomplishment of my life, the great novel I’d started a hundred times on paper, and a thousand times in my mind, he could not, because I hadn’t written it yet. He would make his brief appearance, and then turn his massive back to me and shuffle off, the only sound from him the derisive swishing of his tail.

The years slipped by. I married, and raised a family. My career in law enforcement progressed, my writing did not. It’s funny how you can sometimes cling to a dream for years and years, and then one day suddenly wake up and realize it was never a dream at all. That it was always a part of your reality; just the part you were most frightened of, and for whatever reasons, most ill equipped to face. My long marriage eventually ended, and I divorced, moved away to Oregon. My old life was at an end, as were all of my previous non-writing excuses and procrastinations. I started my novel, and a new life began.

For the next seven years, while I worked on, and finally finished “Little Blue Whales,” it was a virtual three ring circus which paraded past me, with many more acts than just the elephant alone. There were enough thrills and chills to give Barnum & Bailey a run for their money. Halfway into the writing of the book, it won an award at a regional writers conference for best fiction work in-progress, and when I was called up from the audience to accept my award, and asked to remain on the stage while a conference official read an excerpt from the manuscript, the audience of word lovers erupted into long, and loud applause. In 2006 I won over another audience, an audience of one, at the biggest yearly writers conference in Oregon, when literary agent Angela Rinaldi, in a mini-bidding war with another agent, signed me as her client. It was an intoxicating day, with the elephant so close by he felt as if he was sitting on my chest, joyously crushing me.

Then came the entire “un-writing” of the book after a favorable nod from St. Martin’s Press, who indicated they were interested in buying it, but it was seventy four thousand words beyond their editorial requirement of a maximum one hundred thousand words for a new, unpublished author. Would the author be willing to edit the book down for length? The author would…and did…in a grueling, eight month ordeal from which emerged, finally, the real  “Little Blue Whales.”

I had always wanted to write about adventure, and danger, about great loves won, and lost, and won back again, and seemingly against all odds. And now, I had done exactly that. When Angela, a normally very reserved lady, received the new manuscript, she called me at home and we both jumped for joy over the phone. I’d done it! The book was perfect! She would start sending it out again tomorrow, and we both knew, it was absolutely going to sell. We were, that night, both of us, staring the elephant square in his trunk.

But, like I said, it was thrills, and chills. It was The Fat Lady, The Lion Tamer, The Man On The Flying Trapeze, and the red nosed, flat footed clowns running in one door of their little clown car, and out the other, in an absurd, unbroken circle, all wrapped into one. Now, eight months later, St. Martin’s Press couldn’t buy the book after all. Their list was all filled up, two years out, but please send them the next one. Nine more major New York publishers said much the same thing, all the rejections very positive, but none of them substantive.

I started work on a sequel, “The Sparrow’s Blade,” and in 2008 over lunch with Angela at the same writers conference where we’d previously met for the first time, two years before, we discussed abandoning “Little Blue Whales,” in favor of concentrating on the new book. Instead, I announced to her that I was abandoning the perceived safety and comfort of the huge, ocean going, commercial publishing ship, and planned on putting myself adrift in a tiny lifeboat as an independent author. She was still my agent, if, and when, I might ever need one. But in the meantime, I was taking myself, and my pretty damned good first book, out into the storm. Alone.

I didn’t know if I would ever see my old friend the elephant again. Especially after I had turned down my agent’s gracious offer to submit “The Sparrow’s Blade” once it was ready. It was a tough decision, but I said no. What sense did it make for New York to want the sequel, first, and then the first book, second? What sense does New York publishing make at all these days? I have friends who’ve written really great books, received a modest advance and then waited almost two years for publication, only to watch a precious piece of their soul, their books, fade into obscurity and literally be out of print a few months, or a year later. That’s enough to stampede even the most stalwart herd of elephants, and send them trumpeting away in panic into the black of a jungle night.

So, you might ask. Have I ever seen the elephant again? Yes, as a matter of fact, I have. And recently.

On a hot July day this summer, a day I would normally have been off but had to work because of our town’s annual celebration, I came home for lunch and decided to check my email, something I hadn’t done for a few days…and there he was. He was sitting smack in the middle of an email from an official with the Public Safety Writers Association. “Little Blue Whales” had won a prize in Las Vegas at the association’s annual conference the weekend before, a prize in their annual writing contest, which I had entered in January, and nearly forgotten about. I had to read the email three times, before it all sunk in. “Little Blue Whales” hadn’t just won a prize, it was the First Grand Prize Winner in the competition. The prize of all prizes. I not only saw the elephant that day, he victoriously hoisted me aloft with his mighty trunk, deposited me on his leathery, scrabble board back, and took me for a few floor rumbling, wall shaking celebratory laps around my writing room!

As a writer in today’s world of overwhelming competition, shrinking publishing budgets, and the explosion of digital, small press, and self-publishing ventures, whether you are rich, or poor, famous, or unknown, mainstream, or independent, count yourself as one of the lucky ones, as I do, if you are ever fortunate enough to see the elephant yourself. He doesn’t appear for everyone, and when he does, he can sometimes look like something other than himself. Even so, if you do see him, never doubt him.

They say that an elephant never forgets, and as a writer, once you’ve seen the elephant, neither shall you. After all, when it comes right down to it, that’s the whole purpose of writing, or should be. To see the elephant. And hopefully, more than once.

Taste of Honey by Kenneth R. Lewis

Ken Lewis is a police chief, and writer, who lives in Oregon. He is the father of five grown sons, and also the proud grandfather of three granddaughters, and a grandson; Karissa, Isabelle, Keira, and Collin Kenneth Lewis. His debut crime
fiction novel, “Little Blue Whales,” has been nominated for both the 2009 Oregon Book Awards, and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Book Awards. He is at the moment finishing work on his second novel, “The Sparrow’s Blade,” the manuscript of which he will be delivering to his agent Angela Rinaldi at lunch in Portland, OR on August 7th. The book is the sequel to “Little Blue Whales” and is another work of dark crime fiction, written from the heart.

Website: www.kennethrlewis.com





Taste of Honey by Ken Lewis


Even though it’s quite desirable these days for many mystery authors to want to try and write “dark crime fiction,” when I first started writing I used to wonder, and worry about, why my own stories seemed to be just naturally filled with so much darkness…and pain. I assumed it was because the career I’d chosen early on in life, law enforcement, was mostly comprised of witnessing, and sometimes participating in, events that were filled with darkness and pain, and it had therefore skewed my vision of the world, leaking into my personal life like water from a chronically dripping faucet. But in 2006 in an incident of pure serendipity, I learned something from one of my sons that not only answered my question for me; it set my heart free both as a writer, and a father, forever.

From 1986 until 1998 I lived in the small town of Forks, WA (Yes, the same Forks, WA of Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” teen vampire series fame) with my then wife, our five young sons, and our dog “Honey Bunny.” I was the chief of police in the small community of La Push (another “Twilight” locale) 15 miles from Forks and I worked long hours, leaving home early every morning and usually getting home very late. When I say Honey was “our” dog, that’s somewhat of a misnomer. She was the boys’, and my wife’s dog from the very beginning. I wanted nothing to do with her. It wasn’t because I don’t like dogs. I love dogs. It was the fact that with five little mouths to feed, and adding the responsibility of taking care of a sixth, I believed she would only be trouble. An added burden that our already troubled family did not need.

She showed up early one September day as the school year started, a yellow Lab-Golden Retriever mix puppy, maybe six months old, who someone had dumped in our neighborhood on Trillium Avenue; for presumed reasons which would quickly reveal themselves. I happened to be home early for once, to greet my kids as they got off the bus after their first day of school, and witnessed Honey’s opening act. She was at the bus stop too, having spent the morning hanging around my wife and worming her way into her too soft heart, and when the pneumatic door of the school bus opened with a “whoosh” and the first child, our Matt, started to come off, Honey made her move. She leapt three feet into the air and clamped her sharp, needle like puppy teeth onto a sleeve of Matt’s new jacket we’d just bought the week before at Sears for forty dollars…and nearly ripped it off his arm. Then she went after another kid, and another, her excited, playful barks mixing with the screams of my boys; first in terror, and then a few moments later, delight, when they heard their mother say they could keep her, “just until we find out who her owners are.” You can probably guess the rest. We did, eventually, find out who Honey’s “owners” were, and in the end they turned out to be the Lewis’ who lived at 451 Trillium.

The dog was a complete maniac. She was the Energizer Bunny on steroids, powered by the world’s largest lithium ion battery. From dawn until dark, she jumped, barked, chewed, chased, crapped and peed her way into the hearts and minds of our family; everyone except me. And after a week long experiment to see how she might work out as an “inside dog,” and then another week of repairing all the damage she’d done, it was dear old dad who built a dog house for her in one corner of the backyard, and then went to ACE Hardware for a steel ground stake, and length of chain, to secure her there after she had chewed through three stout ropes in a row. She was what loggers around Forks in those days called “buck wild.”

We hadn’t had her a month, when playing a game of “catch the Frisbee” with the boys in our back yard, Honey boomeranged into the air wildly after the colorful spinning plastic disc, and then landed on the grass wrong, shattering one of her hind legs. I don’t know which sounded worse; her heart wrenching, pitiful cries from the excruciating pain she was in, or the heart wrenching, pitiful cries of all five of my sons who believed to a certainty that they knew what was about to happen next: a quick trip out to the city dump, and a merciful shot behind one ear with a .22 rifle to put an end to her suffering. Instead, I took one look at the suffering faces of my little boys, and then loaded Honey into the back of my patrol car and drove her sixty miles, with lights and siren on, to the nearest Veterinarian which was in Port Angeles, WA. The price the Vet quoted me for the surgery to repair her damaged leg was three hundred and eighty six dollars, the equivalent of a thousand dollars back then, and it was either surgery, or having her put down on the spot. I told him to go ahead and do the surgery, no matter what it cost. Honey had quickly become a huge part of my kids’ lives, and having her destroyed because of money would have been putting a price on their innocence and their right to happiness as children. And besides, she was a member of the family by then. An obnoxious member of our family, but family just the same.

Eventually, there were rules for the kids which my wife and I both agreed on; at least in the beginning. Honey was THEIR dog and therefore she was THEIR responsibility to care for; taking equal turns of course. The problem was that she had now grown so large, and was still so amped up all the time with sheer puppy exuberance; she was just physically too much for them to handle. It would take two boys to “walk” her around the neighborhood on her chain, and Honey would basically drag them all the way. One day Sam, who was, I think, nine or ten at the time, took Honey on a walk by himself and ended up being drug down the street half a block by her until he was rescued by two of his brothers.

Later at the house, as we were picking small bits of gravel from his face and applying band-aids and antiseptic cream to his road rash, he tearfully confessed that he hadn’t wanted to let go of Honey’s chain because he feared “she might run away from home.” Oh God. I could only hope.

But Honey Bunny was a survivor, eking out an existence inside her doghouse that first cold and rainy winter. Rarely was she taken for a walk, or even let off her chain. By spring she still seemed as happy as ever, wearing down and killing a huge area of new spring grass around her dog house the size of an alien crop circle, the circumference of which was the maximum reach of her chain. Another topic for my wife and I to fight over; just as we had done all winter long over a myriad of other small, domestic things, made larger than real life by the
significance of hurt we each attached to them. It had truly been our winter of discontent, and, as it turned out, it was the last winter we would ever spend together.

The next fall my wife got her own place in town and moved out, taking three of our sons with her, and I stayed in our home with the two boys who hadn’t wanted to go; Matt, the second to the oldest, and Dillon, the middle boy. And, because my wife’s new landlord didn’t allow pets, Honey Bunny. I hadn’t written “Little Blue Whales” yet and couldn’t have then, not even if you’d put a gun to my head, because I know now that I was busy living it; the darkness, and the pain. I cared for my two sons the best that I could. I threw myself into my work. I
planned my escape. I shot at Honey Bunny through my bedroom window nights with a BB gun.

I couldn’t sleep then. Not very often, and even when I did, not for very long. And I NEEDED to sleep. It was my only respite, the only relief from the never ending nightmare and agony of watching my family being torn apart in front of my very eyes; knowing that we had both let things go too far and that I was now powerless to save any of us, let alone myself. Poor Honey must have felt the same way, because in the middle of the night, every night, she would start to howl; a long, keening, mournful cry that seemed to go right through me. Racked by guilt, but burning with anger and frustration, I would throw open my bedroom window and yell at her to shut up. When she didn’t, I would fire a round or two at her in the dark in her direction until she did shut up, and then slink back inside her dog house. I’m sure I hit her sometimes, firing in the dark like that, because on occasion I would hear a sharp yelp; and then she would be quiet the rest of the night. After awhile though, it wasn’t even necessary to shoot.

All I had to do was stick the gun out the window and shake it. The sound of the BB’s rattling inside the magazine of the gun was enough to make her cower, and disappear into the shadows. But Honey never entirely stopped howling. Her emotional pain, like my own, seemed perpetual.

The day after Christmas that year I filed for divorce, and in early summer I found a new job as the chief of police in a small coastal town in southern Oregon. I went to court and fought for custody of all of my sons, and lost.

Fathers who seek sole custody of their children rarely win. Fathers who plan on moving out of state, and seek sole custody of their children, never win. But I was going anyhow. I believed, then, that was what I had to. Honey Bunny was still my responsibility, so I tried to find her a good home before I moved. But when I couldn’t, I called Animal Control to come and pick her up. The Animal Control officer came to our house with his van and put her in the cage in back.

My son Dillon was pleading with me and crying; begging me not to let him take her. And once he’d driven away with Honey to the animal shelter, to be euthanized in a week if nobody claimed her, every day for that next, longest week of my life, Dillon came to me with tears in his eyes, begging me to bring her back home. He even promised to get a paper route and turn all of his earnings over to me, so he could “pay for Honey’s fines.” He was only thirteen then. A little boy with a heart so big that it easily overshadowed my own adult one; like the moon does when it swallows up the sun in a solar eclipse.

I moved to Oregon. I cannot truly describe the loneliness, the feelings of utter despair, and regret, and loss I felt then over what had happened to all of us. Like my character, Kevin Kearnes, I sought to forget as much of it as I could, and at times I even prayed that the same black curtain of repressed memory which had fallen over Kevin in my novel would descend upon me also. But thank God I was never as unlucky as he was. Oddly, the one thing that stayed vividly in my mind, and became the iconic symbol of the failure of my marriage, and what it did to our children, was the wasted life, and ignoble death, of Honey Bunny. The memories I had of her; every unkind word I had cursed her with, every BB I had fired at her, and the ultimate death sentence I had handed down to her, turned in my gut for years like the blade of a twisted knife. I was tormented by that act, I suffered for it, I cried at times because of it. Finally, I began to write my novel, and there was plenty of darkness and pain in it to go around; a little too much for some editors, as it turned out. Kevin Kearnes, like me, had lost his children through divorce. And just like me, Kearnes had been forced to move on, ending up on the coast of Oregon. But you won’t find any scenes involving the family pet having to be sacrificed as a casualty of divorce in my book. I wanted to put Honey in it; but I just could not bring myself to write about her. It was all too real.

I started this blog piece by telling you about something one of my sons told me eight years later, that put an entirely new perspective on my personal feelings about writing darkly, and painfully, in fiction. I guess I should tell you now what that was. Ironically, it came about my through my own blog that I had for a short while, but took down from the internet because I was being stalked by a local mentally ill man, and I didn’t want to give him another five gallon can of gasoline to throw on the already raging fires inside his psyche in the form of intimate, and personal information about me. In 2006 I did a short confessional piece on my blog (can’t even remember the blog’s name now) about Honey Bunny; what had happened to her, and how guilty I still felt about it. I just couldn’t keep it inside any longer, so I thought, why not do it up right, and spill my guts to the world?

The following day I received an email from my oldest son, Shane, in Washington. He had read my blog and was writing to tell me that, in fact, Honey Bunny had only recently passed away a couple of months before. A girl he knew from his high school had adopted her. Their family lived on a little ranch in the woods a few miles outside Forks and had all kinds of farm animals as well as other dogs, and even some cats, too. This girl’s family was very involved in 4H activities, and Honey had been entered in several 4H contests over the years. She had been a
cherished, and much loved member of her second family when she passed away. She had lived a good life; a great life in fact. At first, I was stunned. Then bewildered. Then absolutely, joyously, elated! This wasn’t some fictional “happy ending.” This was real life. My life. And now this one painful part of it had not only been repaired, it had been restored to me. Not every terrible thing had befallen us after all, and to me, this truly was a miracle of redemption.

Now I don’t worry about my writing so much. I subscribe to the belief that a writer should write what they must; what is deep inside of them at the time they are engaged in the act of creating. Whether it’s darkness or light, pain or pleasure. Or something, or somewhere, in between. Because your writing, like your life, will someday all come into balance for you…if that’s what is meant to be. I don’t think that we write so much for the purpose of having an effect on others, as we do because we have already been affected by others ourselves. And that even goes for little stray dogs.