One day
in the early millennium, I happened upon a library bookshelf where I noticed a worn,
frayed and terribly bent paperback copy of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.
I had
read it decades ago, as had all the world, but having an urge to wander down
literary lanes once tread, once more, I checked it out, and within a weekend
re-read that engrossing tale. I again experienced Truman's simple but heralding
voice, talking to me through those pages, figuratively holding my hand as he
walked me through those gruesome mid-November, 1959 Kansas Clutter family
murders.
The story
was still as I had remembered it, so pitifully sad, so disturbing in so many
ways, but this time, it wasn't the tale so much as the man who caught me in his
web, and not until 7 years later would he let me go.
The
difference in reading this work, this time: I, myself, was on the verge of
becoming a novelist, so now his journey felt like mine. Truman and I, via an ethereal
bridge through time and space, had mind-melded, and I was transported from the
tale to the teller, and he was in me.
Beyond my
career in public relations, beyond the corporate pieces I had penned, and beyond
the many people who had tried their very best to convince me to take on longer
works, it was Truman - a man I had never met, and who never knew I existed -
who latched onto me and wouldn't let go until I wrote the final chapter of his
life, the one he said he knew I could write, having had a cop for a father who
knew crime and criminals, and who happened to have also died from addiction -
alcoholism.
So,
despite every effort to ignore his voice, his life and that Clutter tale washed
in and out of my consciousness for over two years, as I began to watch interviews
and films and documentaries, everything I could get my hands on, on his life, -
memorizing his demeanour, listening ad nauseum to that Gore Vidal ascribed
"Brussel sprout" voice, watching the way he walked, talked, sat, the
way he held a cocktail glass or a cigarette or how he flashed a smile, what
materials he liked best in clothing, what he found funny and what he found sad,
or what seemed to frustrate him or un-nerved him - every nuance, witnessed,
digested, inhaled, and never exhaled, for two very long, agonizing,
going-nowhere years.
Then one
day, a vision appeared in my mind's eye, that of a singular girl walking a
lonely stretch of gravel road dissecting wheat fields somewhere in Kansas - the
place, and the girl, a mystery.
It
obviously was not Truman, as one would assume it should have been if I was
supposedly obsessing on the man, but a young girl, who never uttered a word,
who had me follow her every step. I never saw her face, my eye was to her back
left, as if I were right behind her, maybe hovering just over her shoulder,
accompanying her on this unknown journey.
Well,
that unknown girl and that unknown quest stayed with me as a video clip would
stay with you if you hit Play, Stop, Reverse, and hit Play again, the same
girl, the same view, the same walking scene and unidentifiable road going
nowhere...for SIX LONG MONTHS, inside my head, playing over and over and over
again, seeing, hearing, sensing nothing more except for a soft cross-breeze
kissing my cheek and a kind of hissing noise snaking through the stands of
wheat. I thought I was losing my mind!
For the
longest time, I assumed that girl was ME. It had to be me, right? Because I'm the
one who has Truman talking in my ear from the moment I wake up 'til the moment
I fall asleep, every freaking day for these last two years!
But it
wasn't me. It was never me.
The
epiphany finally came to me in bed one night, in that semi-conscious state you
find yourself just before the sandman takes you away for that temporary death.
At that moment, I knew who it was and why she was so important to Truman's
finale.
And with
that realization, the story, my story, of Truman's end was born; and although
the entire plot was not yet known to me, the title, well, I think Truman gave
it to me himself - No More Blood - was as real and as certain as the ruler
straight wheat fields wafting back and forth in that Kansas breeze.
I finally
had "my" ending to In Cold Blood and closure on a life that seemed to
spiral out of control as soon as the champagne was drunk and the confetti
flitted to the dance floor at Truman's 1966 Black & White gala celebration
at The Plaza in New York City.
Truman
got what every writer dreams - astronomical fame and fortune - seemingly
overnight (although this was his 7th book and two movie screen plays were
already under his belt).
But
Truman whispered otherwise to me. In Cold Blood was his death sentence.
I invite
you to read my tale, told from my heart, and from personal experience watching
a similar exceptional man wrestle with his own demons that in the end would
cost him everything he had - "The End" to his own life.
Can there
be justice, closure, peace, of a kind?
Can there
be at least a literary end to all tortured souls?
Can there
be, in fact, No More Blood?
