Who Says There Ain’t No God?

 

 

 

“Miracles appear in the strangest of places” brother Willie tells us in the song, ‘Yesterday’s Wine.’ And I saw one appear this morning at 5:00. The Witt & Wittier film, “Kielia” went up on Amazon Prime! And if that’s not a miracle I’m not a white boy from Austin. Austin! Let that soak in. While Austin has a reputation for innovation and entertainment it’s always an uphill battle.

 

In 2012 when I woke at 3:00 AM after a party I poured a whiskey to placate the effects of yet another night in the garage apartment I called home. The screen on my eMac came alive and I began to look through my directory of the hundreds of stories, articles, and books I’d written down through the years, all selling well under a million sales. To say I was uninspired at this point is an understatement. So, in true Texas fashion I poured another drink.

 

In a pallet on the floor a girl was sleeping. She’d been at the party and was so well connected in town that she had asked if she could borrow space on my floor to sleep it off. Typical run away. Young, pretty, and clueless, willing to make a deal, any deal for a sandwich and a night’s sleep. Beautiful kid. Had a mother somewhere who missed her, and a stepfather who hoped the law never found out what he’d done. Sleeping on a rug with my London Fog desert windbreaker for a blanket.

 

I watched her breathe. And as her back rose and fell I wondered if she would ever get a better life? Or would they find her some day in some alley or river, the unidentified remains not beautiful anymore. And I turned to my Mac. I composed a short story that night. In six sections. About a linguistics professor from the future arriving in Austin through a time portal looking for the definition of a word those in her time had discovered on the walls of an ancient tomb. Love! A word that had been erased from the consciousness of man. A word no longer needed. The world of the descendants of the hapless urchin sleeping on my floor that night.

 

And I tucked the story away. Where it remained for over ten years. As luck would have it I got older. Without boring you with the details I will tell you that I ended up on a porch in Dover Tennessee waiting to die. Not because I was ill. Just because. It would be one of those “About Time” deaths where people who knew you would notice your obituary and say, “Well, it’s about time!”  But I received a call from an old friend in Austin, Vic Quinton. Remember that name. You’ll be screaming it later. We talked of old times in the music business, and he briefly told me about his efforts to make a movie. Like everything else in Austin, uphill all the way. I sent him a story I’d penned while confined to a nursing home by my family doing the “right” thing. They said I had Alzheimer’s and I didn’t argue because I was feeling pretty stupid at the time. But while I was drooling on my shirt I wrote a piece I called “Someday.” Vic liked it and at once began to do a screenplay. I didn’t expect to live long enough to see the outcome of this. I just wanted to help my friend. One of my ex-wives had sprung me out of the Wellington Institute for Assisted Dying and let me live in her basement in Dover and I was working on plans to jump off the Mississippi River Bridge in Memphis. Hey! Couldn’t sell a story, at least make the papers, right?

 

Vic began to involve me in various aspects of the film industry. Screenplays, posters, theory and I listened because I had no way to get to Memphis . . . Yet! “Someday” morphed into a movie called “Gabe” and Vic began to put a project together. He formed an LLC called Witt & Wittier Films and we actively began producing an idea. An idea, not a movie. Job one for Vic at this time was keeping me out of the river.

 

Then, one night I came upon the remains of that five-page short story I’d penned back in 2012. Vic was working on Gabe so hard I thought I’d cheer him up so I sent it to him. Basically, a five-page comic routine that Vic turned into a SIXTY-five page epic! I didn’t do that folks. I was trying to find an Uber to take me to Memphis. Cancel Gabe, we moved on to this project. Gabe is still out there somewhere but before it was over there was a new sheriff in town and her name was Kielia. Vic leaped immediately to “Blue Moon Rising,” which is in post production now but the Movie “Kielia” was completed and shopped. I don’t know the number of national and international awards this film has garnered. I do know that Vic and I won one for the script. The freaking SCRIPT!

 

Today I got a text message from Vic. Our film was on Amazon Prime. I sat there staring at my iPhone in utter disbelief. Not long ago I was going through Taco Bell and as the girl handed me my order she said, “Pops?”

 

I looked at her, and honestly didn’t recognize her. Pretty, blonde, petite, but not an ex-wife. I would have remembered that!

 

“I’m Brianna,” she said. “I’m married now. I have a baby?”

 

You let me sleep on your floor and gave me breakfast!

 

Who says there ain’t no God? She had found the meaning of love.