THE SILENT BOOMER FINISHES A MAJOR PROJECT!

 Wahoo! It's nearly one o'clock in the morning and I just finished translating all 606 manuscript pages of my novel, Delinquent Lives, into editable files. Months and months of work. Now, all I gotta do is rewrite it. I hope it's interesting enough not to bore me. If it bores me, I'm sure it'll bore a reader. The following is a section of a scene right near the end when Jimmy, the youth, makes an important decision for his own well-being.

A smiling Happy Silent Boomer!

 “All right, Smally. You don’t remember. But I want to tell you something anyway.” Jimmy poked his forefinger into Smally’s chest, lightly.

Smally backed from the pointing, touching finger. “Well go ahead. Tell me. Don’t just keep talking stupid things.”

The flakes fell softly in the sunlight. They touched Jimmy with sharp, cold touches. One glanced from his nose. The barn down there stuck out really red. Then he began to notice the sparrows. Here one. Over there, another one under an evergreen, hopping and pecking the ground. He watched a third one flutter about at the edge of the road, not flying much.

Jimmy slid his hands into his Levi pockets again. “Look,” he said, “it won’t do no good if someone else does it for you. You got to do it yourself. I can’t do it, man. You can’t ask Norm or Meechum or anyone else to do it for you. It won’t do you no good, man.”

The sparrow near the road hopped, pecked, hopped and hopped, pecked twice again, three times rapidly.

“So what?” Smally said.

“Set it right between you and Leroy. Get him off your back.”

“Leroy’s my friend.”

“You dumb ass, Smally. Quit your fucking lying!”

“I ain’t lying,” Smally said. “Fuck you.”

Another sparrow moved along the edge of the road, hopping toward them.

“Shut up, Smally. I know and I saw, and you been trying to get someone to stop them for over a year, man.”

Smally pouted silently.

“Look. Like I say. It ain’t no good if someone does it for you. You got to take responsibility for yourself. You got to do it yourself. You got to get it together and go to staff yourself and tell them. You can’t go around and ask all these other dudes to do it for you. Staff is supposed to help you, but you got to go to them. I’m not going to go to them for you. No one else can do it for you. Everything will just get worse for you if you ask others to do it for you. You got to do it for yourself. Okay?”

Jimmy bent closer to see into Smally’s face, to see if anything was sinking in. Smally glanced at him. His forehead wrinkled. His thumb came up and slid between his wet, slobbery lips. Jimmy thought Smally was going to cry.

He judged that he was watching Smally calmly. He realized if Smally cried, that would be okay, and if he didn’t cry, that would be okay too. Anything was okay. Smally was his own man. Jimmy knew he was going to let Smally go. Then, looking away from Smally’s twisted face, looking around himself, he felt the snowflakes still brilliantly touching his exposed skin and realized that the sky, the grass, the trees, the bushes, everything was lit by this clear winter light and that everywhere he looked was alive with the small, grey flutterers.