In 1995, Joshua "Skip" Alexander, a friend of my brother 12 of 12's, gave me about 75 pages of a book he had written. He was 19 and it was his third book. Shortly after he wrote this, Skip became discouraged with the whole publishing process and gave up. The last I heard of him he was living in Virginia and working in a factory.

I know that Skip has never published this novel and it saddens me, because even at nineteen it was clear to me that Skip had a great deal of potential. I have had a number of friends and family members try writing, and at various times they have given me samples or bits of manuscripts. Usually, I give guarded and cautious comments, pointing out things that I liked, and saying things about how my own reading might be biased because I am so familiar with the person writing it. Watching the budding writers on Journalscape, I realize that most of the fiction I read, even that from supposed 'hacks', is written by a very rare and elite crowd, and I don't expect the fiction of friends to work the same way with me. Skip's writing was the rare exception. It was clearly about himself and about the world that I grew up in, but it was so captivating that I did not care. I've read better professional writing than Skip's novel, but it was clear to me that even as a teen, his writing was already in the professional caliber.

Yesterday, when I was cleaning up my apartment I discovered the old manuscript lying around. So anyway the next couple of posts will be portions of Skip's novel that I scanned into my computer. This first one introduces you to his main character: basically Skip himself. The next one is a bit longer but is really worth the effort. These materials are copyright 2004 Joshua "Skip" Alexander.

Nathan's Purgatory Chapter One - Intro

Sometimes it was nearly unbearable, but Nathan kept going anyway. He was exceptional at tolerating the waves of heat that difted up from the sizzling surfaces of the kitchen grills. After only a few minutes of exposure, sweat began to form in the lines and crevices of his face. After half an hour, they began to gather into tiny rivers, flowing along the skin of his cbeeks and neck until they were absorbed by the woolen collar of his t-shirt. After a few hours, his flesh literally began to bake, gradually transforming pigment from soft white to bright pink. Then of course there was the grease. Furious, hopping beads of boiling animal fat, they would pelt his hands and arms as he repositioned the cooking food, and on occasion even leapt high enough to scorch his arms. There was a small counter built into the wall about four feet behind the stove, which was used for slicing tomatoes and lettuce and other food stuffs. Jackson and the other cooks would just shove the little bowls of vegetables aside and make little seats for themselves. It was still hot back there, but with the help of a small ceiling fan and the ventilation grate in the ceiling, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the air next to the stoves could get.

Nathan was the only cook who refused to retreat to the comfort of the vegetable counter. Even Mitch, who had the blood of hundreds of great Cherokee warriors in his veins, saw the heat as an adversary too great to stand against. Jackson felt the same, and it wasn’t as if he had descended from cowards or weaklings; his ancestors had flourished under the merciless sun of the Sahara desert and the African veldt. Nathan was a mix of cultures from all over the world – a true American mutt – but none of his relatives had ever been warriors or nomads, and his heritage offered no explanation for his odd, stubborn behavior in the kitchen of Jerome Helio’s restaurant. For as long as there was even a single bit of food cooking, Nathan would be there at the stove watching over it. He gave a single steak the same attention as a rush order of 14 burgers, 3 steaks, and 4 fish fillets. He was always right there attending to it, ready to pat it or flip it or do whatever that single steak might require.

By the end of an eight-hour shift, Nathan’s shirt and apron would be soaked through with sweat, his hair would be dangling down into his face in tight, moist, greasy clumps, and his face would be the color of roses. He would always return to his pale-skinned, well-groomed self by the time he came back to work, but he never looked very healthy when he left.

The big question was this: what could he possibly have to gain? What did he experience while wrapped in that pocket of burning air that made the torture endurable? His co-workers had always understood that though there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with Nathan, there was definitely something that wasn’t right.

Nathan often wondered what other people thought of when they looked at him, but from the odd reactions with which he was generally received it was difficult to tell. When he was a boy, Nathan’s mother had taken him to a shopping Mall in (Burlington), and it was there that he saw an old man standing in the middle of an escalator that had broken down. He had asked himself this question: Is he going up or is he going down? That was the same sort of thing people asked themselves when they saw him.

And of course that is probably the question that many young men Skip's age ask themselves, and at 19 this was where Skip was, sitting on the escalator, not certain where he was going. It saddens me to think that this talent was wasted. This intro piece doesn't really show how good that talent was, but the next one does.