Sometimes The Big Sleep Comes Too Soon

by Paul D. Marks

This post will be a little different than the normal post for me.

Anne

My friend Anne Adams died in February, from breast cancer that had metastasized and for which the treatments had become ineffective. This is what she said in one of her last e-mails to me: “I’m feeling OK, but not doing well in terms of treatment. I’ve pretty much gotten to the end of anything that works for me. My doctor is looking for some trials, but unless something like that turns up, I’m looking at about 2 to 3 months before I’ll be doing The Big Sleep.”

Unfortunately, both she and the doctors turned out to be right.

She had been fighting this for years, and had better times and worse times. So it wasn’t a total shock on the one hand, but on the other it was. She was relatively young – not old enough for Medicare. I’ve known her for decades and at one time we were very close, though not as much lately. But we still kept in touch.

We initially got together through a buddy of mine she was seeing and when they came into town (L.A.) one time I met her. Then, when she moved here on her own and wanted to get into the film biz, I was one of the few people she “knew,” so we got together and became fast friends, initially bonding over our love of movies, both classic and contemporary (at least contemporary for when we met, not so much movies today). Since our schedules were fluid we often got together to go to screenings and for the movies we missed in the screenings we’d often go see at a matinee the day they opened. We loved movies, as well as Hollywood history. But our friendship expanded to much deeper levels as we got to know each other over time.

She encouraged my writing in the dark days before I’d had any success and she brought me up short if I whined too much about the business. She didn’t have any trouble getting established in the business, working mostly in post-production or as a producer. We saw a lot of each other in those days, traveled together, and just had a very close relationship that withstood the test of time, even if it wasn’t as close as it once was. So she was very intrinsically involved in my life.

In fact, without a push from Anne I might not have gotten together with my wife, Amy. I met Amy when another friend “roped” me into helping produce a live old time radio benefit for UNICEF (that’s a whole ’nother story…). A friend of Amy’s had also volunteered her to work on it. And we met there, but I didn’t think Amy would remember me after our brief encounter that first night. And I only knew her first name and sort of where she worked. So I was a little hesitant to call her. But Anne said, “Well, what do you have to lose? All she can do is say ‘no’.” So I called Amy and the rest – to make a long story short – is history. But I might not have followed through if not for Anne giving me that little prod, so I owe her much for that.

Anne was at my wedding and my bachelor party (which was not limited to guys, though Amy wasn’t there). In fact, she also sort of MC’d and “produced” our wedding.

Anne also did something else for me/us that I will always be grateful for – besides pushing me to call Amy – though it might seem superficial on the surface. Once she got established here she knew a lot of people. And one of them is one of the band members in Paul McCartney’s band. I am and forever will be the Ultimate Beatles Fan. And Anne got Amy and me backstage to see him. It was an amazing moment.

Amy, Anne, Paul

We had recently talked about getting together but it never happened as the disease progressed rapidly.

In one of our last correspondences, she said, “I’m getting tons of emails (but nobody wanting the stove, [an antique stove she was trying to place before she died] of course), so this text will be short. Let’s plan to talk after the holidays.” Well, we never did talk after the holidays. We never saw each other again. Her disease progressed and she passed on on 2/16/19. Here’s a link to her obit on Legacy . com: https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/anne-adams-obituary?pid=191640884

Anne, McCartney drummer Abe Laboriel, Jr., Paul,
former Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda in blue shirt in background 

I’ll just finish that off by saying I miss her and will continue to do so.

~~~

Clyde

Clyde Williams is another friend who died of cancer recently. I met him when I was looking for someone to do a voiceover for a promotional video. He had a great voice, very expressive. After we met on that project we became friends.in b

Clyde led an adventurous and exciting life. He served in Viet Nam. And said he had once been on a security detail or honor guard for JFK. He was even scouted by the Dodgers. But his true love was art and painting.

You would have thought we didn’t have all that much in common, but we really did. He was from Loosiana. A cowboy. An artist

I am none of those things. And if I could draw a decent stick figure it would be a major feat. Though I do live in cowboy country now, so we had that in common. And Clyde liked it up here, kept saying how much he’d like to move here.

In an article from the LA Times (“Black Cowboys Honored for Reel Contributions, 8/1/2000-LA Times: http://articles.latimes.com/2000/aug/01/news/cl-62235 ), he said, “‘My grandfather had me herding cattle as a kid,’ Williams said. ‘I understand the cowboy and the body of the horse. I started sketching them when I was 6. It's a passion. That's why I'll always be a cowboy in my heart.’”

He painted western and cowboy art, black cowboys and Buffalo soldiers, African-Americans in the military, as well as Indians and other western scenes. His work was exhibited at the Autry Museum of the American West. He loved the whole cowboy culture and he loved to read western novels, particularly Louis L’Amour. He had almost every if not every one of his books in hardback and was very proud of that. I helped to fill out his collection and that made us both happy. He also liked all stripe of western/cowboy movies.

Clyde and I could and would talk for hours, about anything and everything. He liked to talk about the changing nature of his neighbored. About wanting to do more acting or voiceovers. And he’d always ask about my wife Amy, whom he was very fond of.

He’d also talk about the red tape and hassles at the VA. And in the last year or two that kind of talk and talk of his disease featured more and more in our conversations. And there’s certain things I’d like to add here but feel that I can’t for personal reasons.

I also hadn’t talked to him for a while. No particular reasons. That’s just how things go, as I’m sure you know. I found out he’d died when I sent him a Christmas card and it came back marked “Deceased.” That was quite a shock.

I didn’t know him as well nor as long as I’d known Anne, but we bonded quickly and became friends. Sometimes you just click with someone. He gave me several prints of his works and I treasure them, both for what they are and as a symbol of our friendship.

And I miss him, too.

~~~

As writers, I think a lot of us strive for some kind of immortality through our writing. We hope to be remembered after we’re gone. Some achieve that, most do not. The way most people remain “alive” is in our memories, as we think about them, reminisce, deal with our regrets. Anne and Clyde will remain alive as long as I’m living – I know I’ll think of them often.

So the moral of this piece is – if I can get a little preachy – every time something like this happens I vow to not let things go so long, vow to get together, go to dinner, etc. But they often don’t get acted on, because we’re human. So don’t put things off. You’ll regret it as I do now. And I’m telling that to myself again now – don’t put things off. And I know I’ll do it again as others will do it with me. That said, I have a date next week to see a friend I haven’t seen in ages, but someone I’ve known since forever, a friend and former writing partner. And I hope that nothing happens to get in the way of our connecting so I won’t have anymore regrets, at least not for a while.

~.~.~

And now for the usual BSP:

The third story in my Ghosts of Bunker Hill series, Fade Out on Bunker Hill, appears in the March/April 2019 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. If you like the movie Sunset Boulevard, I think you'll enjoy this story. In bookstores and on newstands now:

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Entering the Mainstream

In the many years I’ve been collecting them, I’ve come across only three anthologies of crime short stories by black writers. The first two are Spooks, Spies, and Private Eyes: Black Mystery, Crime, and Suspense Fiction of the 20th Century edited by Paula L. Woods in 1995, and Shades of Black: Crime and Mystery Stories by African-American Writers edited by Eleanor Taylor Bland 2004. 

Black Noir: Mystery, Crime, and Suspense Fiction by African American Writers, edited by renowned editor Otto Penzler in 2009, is the third and probably the most important because Mr. Penzler’s recognition brings African American writers of crime fiction solidly into the mainstream. 

In the introduction Mr. Penzler observes that as society changed in the 20th century “modest numbers of blacks entered such mainstream elements of the culture as academia, law, medicine, science, and the arts.” However, “very few…detective novels” were written by African American writers, and it was not until “the past twenty years or so that there has been a regular flow of detective stories by black writers.” He concludes that their “stories... transcend race and genre to fulfill their primary purpose—to inform and entertain” (emphasis added). 

One author in the late 1800s and one in the early 1990s used the crime genre to tell stories about the relationship between white fathers and their mulatto children. 

The subject of Charles W. Chesnutt’s “The Sheriff’s Children,” published in 1889 in the New York Independent, is the relationship between white masters and their black female slaves and the harmful psychological effects on the children of such relationships. After the Civil War in the village of Troy, NC a mulatto stranger is arrest and accused of murdering Old Captain Walker. To protect his prisoner from a mob, Sheriff Campbell unlocks the cell door so he can escape if the mob breaks in. When Campbell turns from the window after encouraging the mob to disperse, the mulatto is pointing a pistol at him. He says he didn’t kill Walker and that he came to town to kill the Sheriff. He is Tom, the son whom the Sheriff sold before the war along with his mother, Cicely, to pay his debts. Sorry for the spoiler.  

Published in 1900 in the Colored American Magazine, Pauline E. Hopkins’s “Talma Gordon,” a locked room mystery, is “one of the first ’impossible crime stories’...by an American and the very first…by an African American.” Talma and her sister Jeannette are the daughters of Jonathan Gordon by his first wife. After Jonathan, his second wife, and their son are pulled from the fire that burned down their house, and it’s discovered that their throats were cut, Talma is accused of murdering them because her father was going to leave everything to his son while leaving her and Jeanette only $600.00 each because they are half Negro. The ending is disappointing because it smacks too much of a deus ex machina.

In the years before 1980, black writers, if they used the crime fiction genre, did so to deal with the problem of racial prejudice. The change in social conditions due to laws passed in 1950s and 1960s caused the flowering of crime stories by black writers in the 1980s. To enter the mainstream, the writers had to create characters of different ethnic groups, and the stories did not and do not always deal with the “problem.”

However, before the 1980s, Chester Himes and Hugh Allison each wrote a story featuring black and white characters that were published in two mainstream magazines, indicating some editors recognized their talent and took a chance that their readers would also.

In February 1942, Esquire published Himes’s “Strictly Business,” about a hitman nicknamed “Sure” who works on salary for a mobster. Aside from Himes’s storytelling talent, what is interesting about the story is the main character is white. I wonder if Esquire would have published the story if he had been black?

In July 1948, after Hugh Allison challenged the claim of EQMM’S editor that no subject matter was taboo, the magazine published his story “Corollary” in which black detective Joe Hill, while questioning a black chauffeur about his part in a series of robberies and the murder of five people by his white partners, realizes something the chauffeur says might help solve an unrelated kidnapping case that began with a finger a small black girl delivered to Joe. EQMM to me was more courageous than Esquire, taking a chance on readers accepting a black main character. (no photo available)

The two stories above show gradual acceptance before 1980s of black writers by mainstream magazines. As white readers began to read them in the 1980s, boatloads of novels and short stories by black writers of crime and mystery fiction flooded into the mainstream.