Somewhere Real Good
about origins, both of my marriage and of what might be my most important story
Over a decade ago, when my husband and I became friends (and then some), we discovered that we both loved to write stories. He calls me the writer, but the truth is he is the real genius. In all things, whether it’s writing or chores or planning a trip, he is the big picture man and I am the details woman. He has the grand vision; he can see the story in all of its vague grandeur. I see all the little things. Any book I write will also have his name on it because there’s little chance it would come about without his serious contributions.
We wrote our first story together while we were dating. Or, I should say, we started writing it. On the shores of the Great Salt Lake, there are lots of marshlands. There is a place we would go, a Nature Conservancy site. There is a boardwalk over the marsh and a two-story observation tower. In the summer, cattails and marsh grass grow high overhead and the air is thick with birds and bugs and sunshine. It’s just far enough from the surrounding neighborhoods that if you look west, all you’ll see is marsh, then dry lake bed, then lake, then Antelope Island. We would sometimes meet there when he finished work. One evening in the fall, we’d gone out to the tower on a foggy night. Standing on the tower, all we could see was that structure and a little bit of marsh around us. Everything else was swallowed up. Everything else was gone. And one of us, I don’t remember which now, said, “What if this is all there was? What if it was all actually gone? What if this was just a little island ship floating in space?” I think that was me, because I remember Tanner, my husband, asked me “Where would we go?” I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. Somewhere real good.” And thus was born our first story, Somewhere Real Good. It’s a beautiful, allegorical story about a girl named Grace and a boy named Dima and their journey through the Spocean (space ocean) on their island ship named Percy (short for Persistence).
I love this story so much. We’ve written some on paper, typed a little on the computer, and explored the vast expanse of the Spocean and everything that it represents over and over again in conversation. We started by taking turns in an empty journal. I’d write a few pages and then he’d write a few. Then we had a baby. And another. And another. And another. And–you guessed it–another. We talk about it often, but we haven’t been able to write the whole thing yet. I’m anxious, in an excited way because I love it so much, and in a nervous way because I’m not sure I’m equal to the task of doing it justice. If we’re able to write it the way we imagine it, hearts will be stirred. Soul sparks will be stoked. Tears will fall. It’s a story about grief and sacrifice, about love and courage, about shadows and fire. About facing fears and letting go of dreams. About healing and growing and believing. It’s about faith. It might feel familiar, and I hope it will also feel new.
As is the case with all of my stories, I have no idea when it will be written. In the meantime, here is the first chapter for you. It’s transcribed from the original written version from 11 years ago, and only lightly edited, so, as usual, don’t expect perfection. (P.S. Tanner proposed to me at this nature conservancy. It was the middle of winter, so he stuck flowers in the snow leading all the way to the tower where he waited for me with the ring. Be still my heart!!)
Somewhere Real Good Chapter One
Dima climbed out his bedroom window and dashed across the ratty backyard, past the broken swing set, around the dilapidated old shed, and over the rusted, barbed wire fence. Last summer he had wrapped a couple of old tee-shirts around the wicked spikes on a small section in the back corner, a spot where no one ever went so no one would ever see. This was where he made his escape.
Once over the flimsy barrier, he made his way through the slimy, muddy marsh beyond it. The muck was hidden by the tall, stiff grasses, cattails, and reeds that went on for at least a mile or so before ending in the expansive and barren shore of the Great Salt Lake. The air was laced with the pungent scent of salt and brine shrimp, which, during the heat of the day, was almost enough to make one’s eyes water. The cooler evening air and a light breeze made it somewhat more breathable.
As he trudged through the mud, he muttered under his breath.
“...not my real dad...if I was a little bigger, I could show him…”
He knew where he was heading, even though he couldn’t see it over the tall, woody foliage. It was a nature conservancy site–a vast, open space with an observation tower and a covered pavilion. There was, of course, an easier way to get there than Dima’s chosen path. A bumpy dirt road led straight out to a small, dusty parking lot a short distance from the mire. Dima had noticed that the lot was empty today. He always checked as he left the house, curious to know if he would have to dodge any nosy do-gooders wondering where his parents were while he was out there.
The two structures, the pavilion and the tower, were connected by a mile-long loop of winding, creaking boardwalk. Here and there along the path were benches and informational plaques, detailing the habits of the migratory birds that depended on the preserve.
Dima, still wrestling his way through the marsh, swung his leg for another step and let out a yelp of pain for having hit the raised boardwalk with his shin.
“Gosh darn it. Stupid thing,” he muttered, sitting down on the path. He pulled his muddy feet up onto it and rubbed the injured shin. A few feet further down there was a bench—just a few planks nailed onto a couple of stumps. He didn’t bother getting up to sit on it, but scooted over and leaned against it, inhaling deeply. His eyes closed and he reveled in the quiet music of the dusky wetlands; birds trilled, mice bustled about in the reeds and grasses, and bees and flies hummed as they busily made their way about the marsh. It was much better than the shouting that was going on at home. He had been lucky to slip away this evening; for once, he wasn’t the subject of the argument. A rare smile cracked on his sullen face as, having recovered from their fear of Dima’s noisy arrival, the frogs began their chorus anew.
When he opened his eyes, Dima was alarmed to find himself in the middle of a thick fog. It wasn’t unusual for clouds to settle on the shorelands, but it generally came on slowly, gradually. His heart jumped and he felt exposed, vulnerable, and blind. Had he fallen asleep without realizing it? Hadn’t he only closed his eyes for a few minutes? How long had he been out there? He thought he could maybe find his way back, but he wasn’t so sure he wanted to be home just yet. After chewing his lower lip for a minute as he considered his options, he decided he might as well wait for the fog to pass. He picked up a stick lying on the ground next to him and began scratching the wood of the boardwalk to distract his wandering mind. He had already begun to imagine all sorts of frightening things that might appear out of the fog; giant bugs, dinosaurs, mutant frogs, aliens. Still, he preferred any of those to going home. He scratched harder and harder, etching a wobbly letter D, as tears threatened his stubborn eyes.
“Ouch!” he yelped as his tool slipped, sending a sliver into his palm. Frustrated, he threw the stick into the fog before pulling the sliver out with his teeth. He sighed, sniffled, and wiped his nose on his shirt. Anxiously, he looked around him as he rubbed his sore hand on his knee. Nothing. Nothing but fog. He drew in a long, shuddering breath and closed his eyes. If anything, the cloud around him was thicker than before.
His eyes opened as his ears picked up irregular footsteps. He caught his breath -- someone was coming. He knew wouldn’t be able to see them until they were practically on top of him. Despite his efforts to quell his imagination, upon hearing the approach, his mind went wild, his heart careened about in his chest, his stomach churned with fear. He was rooted to the spot, unable to move or take any sort of defensive position. Whatever it was, it didn’t sound big enough to be dinosaurs...mutant frogs, then?
A girl skipped lightly through the heavy cloud and into view. As she approached, she waved to him, then stopped in front of him, as if she had been looking for him.
“Hi,” she chirped with a grin, her eyes wandering from his dirt-streaked face to his muddy feet, and then to the letter carved on the boardwalk. He didn’t respond with anything more than a quizzical expression.
“What does D stand for?” she asked,a little breathless and still smiling as she smoothed her shabby yellow sundress.
He didn’t respond immediately; he was still trying to calm himself down and hide his relief—it wasn’t a mutant frog, just some weird girl. She pointed at his handiwork.
“What does the D stand for?” she asked again.
“My name,” he answered, rolling his eyes. She irritated him, despite—or perhaps because of—her friendliness. She had just caused him a massive amount of undue stress, and she didn’t even apologize or explain herself. She just...appeared.
The girl, who was about his same size, scrunched up her face. He couldn’t help but think she was a little bit pretty, despite her wild looking blond hair, tamed unsuccessfully with a sky blue ribbon.
“Dragonslayer,” she said suddenly, eyes wide, expression serious.
“What?” he spat, annoyed that she was so cheerful and so befuddling.
“No? Huh. Destructor?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Devil—no, no. Donald? Derek? Delores?”
“It’s Dimitri!” he bellowed, exasperated. “That’s my name. DUH-MEE-TREE. Nothing else!” Dima grumbled as he jumped to his feet. He glared his brilliant green eyes at her as he planted himself on the bench.
“And WHO—” He paused, sighed, and started again, a little calmer. “And who are you, anyhow?” His demeanor shifted as he remembered what his–his real dad–had ingrained in him—it’s always best to be nice to girls.
The grin that had begun to fade from the face of this flyaway girl returned in full brilliance.
“I’m Grace,” she said, as if he should have known that already. “Sometimes Mom calls me ‘Grace from Outer Space.’”
Dima regarded her as though she really had come from outer space.
“I’m eight, how about you?” she asked.
“I’m nine. Where is your mom? Why are you here all by yourself?”
The smile flickered momentarily, but resiliently held its ground on Grace’s face.
“Mom’s on an adventure. She’ll be back soon, and then we’ll go together.”
“Uh huh. So why are you out here?”
Grace stared at him as though he had just asked the silliest question imaginable.
“Well, because it’s all that’s left. There’s nowhere else to go.”
Dima’s brow furrowed deeper, and Grace’s smile grew broader.
“Don’t be stupid,” he chided, but for some reason, his heart sank as he briefly entertained the thought that she might be right. “I just barely got here, my house is that way. The parking lot is the other way. They’re still there. It’s just because of the fog that you can’t see them. Girls are so dumb.”
Grace sighed before skipping off.
“Better hurry,” she called back as she began to fade into the fog, leaving Dima with nothing but the sound of her bare feet gently slapping the walkway.
“Wait!” Dima shouted, scared to be alone in the fog again. “Where are you going?”
“Somewhere Real Good!” came the immediate and clear response floating back to him.
Tingling, invisible tendrils that seemed to be part of the fog itself tugged at him to follow after Grace, but defiance won out over curiosity. Rolling his eyes in her direction, he turned and started to run down the boardwalk towards the parking lot. It would take longer, but he was sure he wouldn’t get lost. He ran, his ragged tennis shoes sounding much louder on the wood than Grace’s little patter.
Suddenly, there was nothing but air under his flailing feet. He let out a scream that was a bit more shrill than he expected from himself as he fell straight down into empty fog. Then, almost immediately, something grabbed him from behind and began lifting him up. All he could see was a wall of rock and crumbling dirt and lots of fog until whatever had a hold of him dropped him on the boardwalk where he fell back onto his rear. As he was sitting there, frozen into place by the extraordinary event, he caught a glimpse of his rescuer—a huge set of white wings with some sort of dark design in the feathers swirled the fog around as they flapped away into the unseen.
“Huh-holy SMOKES!” Dima shouted at the top of his lungs. Scrambling away from the new cliff, he paused for a moment to hold on to the bench where he had just been sitting. He stared at the broken, splintered edge of the boardwalk—gone. Just gone. What had once been his path home was now an abyss. Another pair of wings sent a breeze down the back of his neck as a second magnificent bird flew over him, heading in the same direction Grace had run.
“Nope, nuh-uh, no way!” Dima hugged the bench with more might than he knew he had. That is, until the cliffside began to fall apart, the sound of the tumbling earth muffled by the fog.
“What is happening?!” cried Dima. Panic erupted in his chest—the edge drew closer and closer as more rocks fell from underneath. He hesitated a moment, his mind scrambling to understand, and then launched himself to his feet and sprinted down the boardwalk in the direction Grace had gone. .
He ran until he reached a point where the path forked. He paused, unsure of which way to go. He couldn’t think—he’d been here a thousand times, he should know which way to go, but this fog had him turned around and lost. Then, to his right he heard the sparkle of Grace’s laughter. He turned towards it when he was suddenly struck by a feeling of overwhelming awe, which so far was justified by no perceptible stimuli. He slowed to a stop. He glanced behind him to be sure the crumbling of the earth wasn’t catching up, then tried harder to see through the fog. Unsuccessful, he inhaled deeply, then placed one foot carefully in front of the other. Half of him was afraid the ground would disappear out from under him again, half was desperate to know what was just through the fog that was so magnificent to cause such a feeling in him before he could even see it. Something was pulling at him. Something was definitely there. Gradually, a huge form began to emerge from the fog.
It was the observation tower. He was surprised; he had seen this tower from his bedroom window just about every day of his life. He had spent hours and hours hiding out here on this huge structure. It was made of tree-sized wooden poles wrapped around two circular platforms, the lower about twenty paces across, the upper a few feet smaller. But something was different. As the evening faded around him, a sensation not unlike the chills, but warm and thrilling, ran up his spine.
In the gloom he saw a small figure that could only be Grace, standing, arms spread wide, on the railing that circumferenced the upper platform.
“Hurry up, slowpoke!” came her shout, muffled by the clouded air. “We’ve been waiting for you!”
Dima hesitated only for a moment. His curiosity exploded within him, raging around his heart and starving for more of this mysterious adventure. Bolting up the ramp, the tower itself seemed to creak and groan for joy as he darted around its beams and up the staircase that wound its way to the upper deck.
“What’s going on?” He wasn’t cranky anymore, he genuinely wanted in on the secret of this place. He circled the deck. “And how did you get here? There were no cars in the parking lot.”
Grace hopped down from the railing and skipped to the top of the stairs. “Come here, I’ll show you,” she said.
Before his mind could grasp her response, it was once again chasing the barely-out-of-reach explanation for why this familiar spot felt so new, so exciting. There wasn’t much to see; a couple of plaques, the canvas shade stretched out over about half of the deck, the center beam reaching up to the sky...he kept searching for...something. What was it?
She waited for a moment, but her impatience won out over her manners.
“Dimimi, come here!” she demanded.
Repulsed by the misnomer, Dima was successfully distracted from his exploration of the tower.
“It’s DimiTRI,” he corrected her.
“Dimtrimi,” she tried, her face scrunching up with the effort.
“No! Ugh. Dimit—look, just call me Dima.”
“Dima.”
“There you go.”
“Dima, come here and I’ll show you,” she offered.
“Show me what?” he asked absently, his attention being pulled back to the new and nourishing environment in which he found himself. There was something alive about this place, this empty tower, this foggy, blank space. Just moments ago he had been sulking, wishing he could be anywhere else as long as it was far away from here. He didn’t even want to be at his dad’s house—he just wanted to be away. Somewhere new, somewhere fresh. This place was anything but new, but somehow...something was happening. Something was waking.
Grace huffed with annoyance. She went to him, took him by the arm and dragged him down the stairs to the lower platform. He protested loudly as he struggled not to fall. Twisting out of her grasp, he stumbled around before catching his balance. And there it was again! That feeling! That pull, that light, that inaudible voice taunting the edge of his consciousness. Grace grabbed his hand before he became engrossed in exploring this level and dragged him over to a spot under the stairs. She pointed.
“Whoa…”
“Yeah.”
There was a huge nest tucked between the beams, made of twigs and branches, some normal, some with deep hues of crimson and violet. It was decorated lovingly with a garland of thistle flowers and cattail fluff.
“That’s where Belle and Toro live,” Grace explained. “They brought me here.”
Dima knew exactly who she meant—the two magnificent birds that had rescued him from the cliff.
“How do you know their names?”
She pointed just below the nest to a heart that had been carved into one of the huge, vertical beams. There were names inside. Belle + Toro.
Dima stepped closer, reached up and felt the heart, scratched deeply into the tough wooden beam.
“Belle and Toro...They just saved my life, you know. I really like them. I almost fell off the edge, but they caught me.”
By saying it outloud, Dima jogged his memory of what had just taken place outside the tower. His eyes widened.
“Grace! We’re in trouble! The ground, it was gone! I thought the fog was just covering it up, but I swear it’s all falling! This tower is…” realization struck him like lightning. “It’s all that’s left. How did you know that was going to happen?”
Questions burst like fireworks in his brain. He pulled her arm and sat her down on the floor next to him. As he opened his mouth to ask question number one of a million, Grace wiped her hair from her eyes and began to talk, very calm and nonchalant.
“I guess I should tell you what’s going on here.”
“I’ll say, you better!” he burst, his eyes rolling around in his head as he tried to make sense of it all.
“I mean, it seems pretty obvious, but I guess if you’ve never been to the Spocean before it might not make—”
“The what now?”
“The Spocean, Dima. Are you paying attention?”
“What the heck is a Spocean?” he demanded, his voice rising in pitch with every word. Grace sighed and rolled her eyes.
“It’s like space, but like the ocean. It’s like both, so it’s called the Spocean.” She paused to make sure he was listening carefully. “The fog makes everything but Percy fall away—”
“What’s Percy?!” Dima cried. His panic was increasing the more she talked and the less he understood. He hadn’t blinked in quite a while and his eyes were stinging now. He couldn't close them, though, afraid that something else might change without him seeing it.
“Not what, who. Percy is our ship. Our Spocean ship.”
“Our ship?”
“Yep. You’re here now, so I’ll share him with you,” said Grace matter-of-factly, lovingly patting the planks beneath her. Dima, who’s wonder had transformed back into terror and confusion, suddenly and inexplicably felt it all melt away, leaving a warm, happy glow. It seemed to emanate from the planks he was sitting on. He still had no real inkling of what was happening, but as the glow flowed up through his body, all the way to the crown of his head, he understood that he was where he needed to be.
“Somewhere real good, huh?” he asked, his shoulders relaxing and calm returning. Grace gave him a huge grin.
“Somewhere Real Good.”
Oh, Hannah! This is just...I’m struggling for the right words, charming doesn’t cover it, though it is charming, it’s wonderful--in the truest sense of the word. And the photo at the end! I’m so grateful for the inclusion of that!
What a joy, to be introduced to this world, part real, part imagination, all love, and a beautiful coming together of minds and dreams. I do hope there’s more to come 💛 thank you, friend.
That is captivating, Hannah! I was rushing, then slowing. I'm in!