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Short Story: "All the Way Down" · The Daily Writer

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Writer.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Each weekday, we bring you a short lesson that helps you live out the four practices of a great writer: creativity, consistency, courage, and connection.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Here on the weekend edition, we take a deeper dive into those topics through conversations with notable writers, as well as teaching that helps us apply what we're learning and also prepare for the week ahead.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: For more, you can visit us at dailywriterlife.com.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Today I want to do something a little bit different here on the podcast.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I'm going to do something I've never done before, and that is share a short story that I've written.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you've been listening for any length of time to this podcast, you know that I encourage you to do things that are scary or that seem overwhelming.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've been getting into short story writing the last two or three years, and I recently dug this one out of the archives and dusted it off a bit.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: I know we have a lot of fiction writers who listen to the show, so I not only want to encourage you to keep writing fiction, but I also want to lead by example.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now before I share the story, let me give you a little bit of context for where this came from.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: One evening a couple of years ago, I was reading a book on how to write fiction.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember what the name of the book was, unfortunately, but it was talking about how to use objects in your everyday life as inspiration for short stories.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: So on my desk that particular evening was a bottle of Lipton half and half, which is half lemonade and half iced tea.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought, I wonder what would happen if I used that as the basis for a short story.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well I sat down to write, and here's what happened.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoy it.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: I never thought much about mom's son tea until the day my life depended on it.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up in a home where abuse was a fact of life.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: My father was a drunk who could never hold down a real job, and sometimes he abused my mother.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: He would leave work around dinner time and go straight to the bar with his friends.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: He would stay there, drinking with his friends for a couple of hours.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: This ritual happened at least a couple times a week, many times more often.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: When Dad came home he would be angry and unpredictable.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: I always got the feeling that he was an intensely unhappy man who felt as if life had handed him one raw deal after another.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: He took out his anger on his family because he had no other outlet.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Dad would sometimes get abusive with mom.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: He would hit her, and she would have to hide the bruises on her arm with a long sleeve shirt, or hide her black eye with lots of makeup or sunglasses.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: I knew she wanted us to escape, but we didn't know how.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: And where would we go?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: We had no family that lived close by.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Life was a constant downward spiral of fear.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I wondered how far down it could go.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: One day someone would end up getting killed.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Would it be mom?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Dad?
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Or even me?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Anything was possible.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: The abuse had been going on a long time.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, mom told me that Dad started being abusive right after they got married, several years before I came along.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: She told me that one time she tried to hide from Dad because he was in a drunken rage and she was afraid for her life.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: She had to hide until he fell asleep or passed out.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: She used a key to get into the secret cellar in the barn that was in the backyard.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Dad never knew where she hid the key, and in fact he didn't even know she had a key.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: I always wondered about that key and what happened to it.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: The only light in our very dark existence was Mom's constant love and warmth.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: One of the ways she showed it was by making her special lemon tea.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what she put in it besides lemon, but it seemed to have that magical quality that only a mother's tea can have.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: She would put a big jar of sun tea out on the back porch every morning, and by the afternoon it was ready to drink.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: I remember one Christmas when I got very sick with strep throat, and Mom took great care of me.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: During the whole week when I was sick, she would make me hot lemon tea every night.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Even when I didn't want to finish it, she would say, Drink it, Tommy, drink it all the way down to the bottom.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: I wish that Mom would have always been around to protect me from the things in this world that would hurt me.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, we found out that she had stage four cancer when I was nine.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: She went downhill pretty quickly, and when she started to decline, Dad stopped being abusive.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I guess it was too much for him to take, so he decided that he'd be better off without the burden of caring for a sick wife along with a kid.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Dad left under the pretenses of taking a job in another city, but we knew the truth.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: He just didn't want to be around.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Mom was declining fast.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: One day she called me into her bedroom.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: She was so thin, so frail.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: She made me sit down and had a very serious look on her face.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: She said, Tommy, you know that things didn't go well with your dad and me.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: He had a temper and things could get very bad.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: In case he comes back and he's drunk or inner rage, I want you to run to the neighbor's house.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Even when she was sick, mom was always looking out for me, making sure that I'd be alright.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Mom died two months later.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Even though I knew it was coming, it still felt like I'd been emotionally hit by a freight train.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: You can see it coming from a mile away, but it doesn't make it hurt any less.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: My grandma, my mom's mom, came to live with me.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Grandpa had died many years before, and she wanted to keep as much stability in my life as possible.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: With both parents now gone, I needed all the stability I could get.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Life was so much different than I had imagined.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: I had no parents, and I lived in constant fear of my dad coming back.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: How much further could life spiral down?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: When would it hit bottom?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I would close my bedroom door, lay on the bed, and imagine what mom would say.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'd think back to her magical lemon tea and how it would always make me feel better, and all the cares of the world would vanish.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Drink it, Tommy, she would say, all the way down to the bottom.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: To keep Mom's memory alive, I kept the very last jar of sun tea she brewed right before she died.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: It had been several months since she passed away, and I knew it was crazy to keep a great big jar of tea, but I couldn't help it.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: It reminded me of how she was always looking out for me.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Grandma would occasionally leave me alone while she went to the store or to run a quick errand.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Dad had been gone for well over a year, and I figured at this point he was probably never coming back.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I was wrong.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Very wrong.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: One day when I was home alone, I was in my room doing my homework.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden I heard the front door burst open, and for the first time in well over a year I heard my father's voice.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: He was calling for me and he sounded gruff and angry.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: I knew he was drunk and in a rage.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: I froze.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: What should I do?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I gathered my wits and I knew I had to hide.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: But where?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Then it came to me.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: The cellar.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: But where was the key?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: I jumped up from my desk and knocked over my chair.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: I knew that Dad heard it.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Tommy, is that you?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Come here, boy.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: He kept raising his voice and I knew it spelled trouble.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want him to see me because who knew what might happen?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Where was the cellar key?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: I had to find it fast or Dad would find me.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: I desperately wondered what would mom do?
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Then I heard her voice almost audibly in my head.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Drink it, Tommy.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Drink it all the way down to the bottom.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Then I knew.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: I rushed into the pantry where I kept the jar of tea that had been sitting there for months.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: I went to the back porch and then ran across the yard.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: I unscrewed the lid of the top of the sun tea jar and began pouring it out onto the ground.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Clink, there it was, the key to the cellar.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: I ran into the barn and slid onto the floor by the opening of the cellar door.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: I heard the back screen door slam and my father yelling for me.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: He stood there yelling on the porch but didn't know I had gone into the barn.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: I fumbled with the key and opened the lock to the cellar door.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: It was almost too heavy for me to lift, and the ancient rusted hinges creaked as I opened it.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: I saw a ladder going down about six feet, and I started climbing.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Down, Tommy, all the way down to the bottom.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: I skipped the last rung and jumped to the floor, which to my nine year old self seemed like a skyscraper away from the top.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Then I grabbed the rope and with a loud thud, I shut the door over my head.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Dad was still yelling for me, but I heard his voice coming closer.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: The barn door opened with a slam, and then all of a sudden I heard grandma's voice.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: She was yelling at Dad, telling him to get out of here or she would call the police.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: She had come back just in time to catch him before he figured out where I was.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: She finally got Dad to leave, only because he knew the police would be trouble if she called him.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: After he left, grandma started calling my name Tommy, Tommy, it's okay to come out now.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: I struggled to lift the heavy cellar door, then crawled out, running into her arms.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: The nightmare was over.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's been twenty three years since that happened, and rarely a day goes by that I don't think about it.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: My dad never came around again, and I don't even know if he's alive or not.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Grandma died when I was in college, and the house was sold shortly thereafter.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Every once in a while, when I'm back in my hometown, I drive by the old place.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Another family lives in that house now, and the hedges have grown so high that I can no longer see in the backyard.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Somewhere beyond those hedges, there is still a lost little boy who's afraid to come out of the cellar.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Some things can never be mended, but other things can never be broken.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing can break a mother's love for her child.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Even though she's been gone many years, mom's love for me has always been there.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was there when life was going great and I was up, and it was there when I've been down.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Mom's love went all the way down, down to the bottom.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoyed that story and I share it in the hopes that it reminds us to remember the people who have loved us and never to forget the people who have helped us along the way.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Writer Podcast.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you know of anyone who would enjoy these episodes, please share it with them.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Your one act of generosity might just change their life.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: As always, remember that your writing has the power to change the world.