Why Steve Howard Writes

Now this is a true story. Steve Howard Writes because of a fish. Now it wasn't just the fish. There were other influencing factors, such as learning to read and finding the power of language very intoxicating in a refreshing way. Writing, as for many, is a way to purge. Fight without blood. Instead of a sword, a pen. And perhaps the pen is our modern sword.

But never mind all that. Shortly after learning to read, am I in first person here or third, let's go with third; it is more objective, Steve Howard and a friend, we will call Brian Hach, or just Bri, or Bing, or friend, depending on how long the story is, were studying Architecture at the time of the recession in 1982. That's a real date for young people that don't know about pre computer times. So they said 'Fa Kit', something they failed to patten and get rich selling the product everyone actually needed not just thought they wanted, and decided to go to the mountains.

From where they were it was a three day non stop Greyhound bus trip to start the trip. And since this is a short story we have to skip all the getting to the mountains and the first days in the mountains and the first amazing adventure up the mountain too late in the day and finding a place for the tent just as the sun was going down and there were no other places anywhere forever then it was the next morning and then eventually a couple weeks later.

Wait, the next morning was the day Steve Howard said, 'I'm going to write.' And Bing, his friend who was very good at being honest said, 'It is going to take you 20 years.'

Well that didn't discourage Steve Howard on account it was nice to have come to a decision that was completely juxtaposed to everything he had done up till then, like hockey and music and architecture and stuff.

Okay, we are two weeks or so later and Steve Howard had tried to catch fish in a lake or two with no luck. And here they were at yet another mountain lake and in it were fish. Little speckled trout.

Bri sat smiling, reading the adventures of Job, while he looked up to see his apparently mad friend pacing around the brook that met the lake that had the fish. Steve Howard was not deterred by any mild mockery. He wanted to eat fish and there was nothing that day that was looking to be done so the only thing he wanted to do was to extract a few fish out of their world to bring them into the land of their death and his and his friend's tummies.

So he did. He took his hunting knife and hacked off a couple branches of big trees and found a wire the loggers had discarded on the other side of the lake, took a piece of their old ground sheet and built a little net for the little brook and scared the little fish up the little brook with his big stick and stuck the net in the brook when they had to return for lack of anywhere to go.

Now that was a fine success but hardly a reason to write against some of the biggest and strongest perpetuated lies on the planet.

So there was the other fish. The fish that had something to prove to Steve Howard the fisher of fish. And the other fish did not move. The other fish did not escape to the lake or take the death trap up the little brook. No.

"What did the other fish do."

The other fish stayed where it was. As much as Steve Howard the fisher of fish poked and prodded this other fish, it stayed in the spot it had chosen to stay. The other fish defied the fisher and refused to be controlled by fear. And this was a fish. A real live hardly any bigger than all the other little trout fish, fish.

Well, had it ended there with Steve Howard saying Fa Kit, we have enough fish for a good meal, then perhaps the fish would have gone on being a fish and faded from Steve Howard's memory. But that wasn't the case. Steve Howard did say Fa Kit. But it was a Fa Kit at the exact moment he felt the weight of the fish on the stick he was probing in the water. And he knew without taking time to think that the time was right to change tactics. He whipped the stick out of the water under the belly of the fish and the fish, the other fish, flew into the sky and failing to sprout wings came with a flop down on the ground.

Steve Howard ran to the fish, the other fish, smacked it on the back of its head with the back of his knife, to kill it, and Bing and Steve Howard ate the fish and the other fish.

But the fish, the other fish, had embedded its message into the head of Steve Howard. And the message at that time was something like, the enemy may be much bigger than you, they may have been murdering anyone who questioned them for the last several thousand years, but you have no chance now, after eating me, you big bastard, to not do what you have set out to do for you know that if anyone can do it, than it must be attempted to be done.

And that is a true story.

Steve Howard Writes