Themes and Storytelling.

Incubating an idea for a story is an interesting process. As a novelist my inspiration most often comes from a theme. It might be the rights of women, the importance of family or equality and fairness. At other times the theme emerges as I write.

When I reflect on the themes that are important to me as a writer I can trace the influences on my life. My mother was a strong feminist even before it was a movement. Her actions in life were all about doing things her way, standing up for those less fortunate and being a strong advocate for what she considered right for her family.

My education as a Social Worker strengthened my principles of feminism, justice, equality and being non-judgemental. I learned to respect a person’s self-determination, even if it was outside the norm. I’m also a pacifist and abhor violence and war.

Stop Pushing was a story where the themes emerged without pre-planning.  At a writers’ group we were given a ten-minute exercise to complete a piece of writing inspired by a sentence that contained the words stop pushing. I just wrote. Top of my head the story just emerged with flow of consciousness. It wrote itself. I liked the original and took it home to refine. “Stop Pushing” is the final short story and I like to think it is one of my best pieces of writing. I hope readers enjoy it and also look for the themes that are entrenched in the story.

Stop Pushing

It was a peculiar name. Who would ever call a bloke Stop Pushing? Snowy Jones reckoned it was him that got it wrong. Said he had asked the new bloke for his name and got told it was Pushenko, or something foreign like that. Now Snowy was ‘bout eighty-five at the time, deaf as a post and with a few wallabies loose in the top paddock, so it makes sense he got it wrong. Snowy decided it must be Pushing, and that was that.

I never found out where the Stop came from; but it is Australia, and everyone gets called something short that’s fitting. Stop Pushing sort of emerged, settled and became part of the lingo, and that was that.

Stop arrived in the early fifties. Bought Warren, the goat’s old place on the edge of town. The sheila’s tried to do the neighbourly thing and get him to the RSL chook night, but Stop wouldn’t have any of it. But he turned up in the front bar every Friday, have two beers and then go home at closing time, did that all of his life. And he always fronted at the dawn service on Anzac Day, stood at the back, then drifted away like a drizzle on a breeze.

Stop was a funny bloke. You wouldn’t believe he had a sense of humour; and he didn’t! Never smiled or laughed. Ordered his beers with a nod to the barman and said nothing else; to anyone. There were no laughter lines on Stop’s dial. He had deep gauges around his mouth, sunken cheeks and eyes that emerged from the black pits of hell. He was thin as a long dead cadaver and looked no different in forty-odd years.

What Stop did on the small holding we never knew. He kept himself to himself, and we were alright with that. He was quiet, clean, and took up very little room at the bar. After, a few years, his bar stool became a protected zone on Friday nights. “Oi, you can’t sit there, that’s Stops’ corner.”

It was in the nineties and the local fire crew had just mopped up after a blaze that grazed right up to the edge of town. The pub put a couple of hundred on the tab and everyone got plastered, really plastered. A few of the younger fella’s got a bit out of hand; as you do when you face off a fire for the first time. A kerfuffle broke out over some bloke’s missis, and the two Romeos took to some shoving, right into Stops’ corner of the bar.

Stop was jostled, he swayed, then toppled sideways, fell to the floor. The fire chief rushed over and tried for a pulse, but then shook his head sadly. They propped the poor old bastard back up on his stool and raised their glasses in remembrance. Stop Pushing was no more.

Now Stop Pushing could have just faded into obscurity, but a couple of months after the funeral, a bloke in a suit called a meeting in the front bar of the pub. The suit said he was a “lawyer for the deceased known as Stop Pushing.” Turns out Stop was worth a bob or two and left all his money to the town. He was some sort of fancy writer. Not a Steven King type writer, but he did history books which he sold to schools and universities, for a fair bit of money.

Well, the CFS got a new fire truck, the oval got a new stand with change rooms underneath and Warren, the goat’s place, got turned into a community library with meeting rooms and even computers.

He also donated a new park bench at the war memorial. The plaque was short and to the point, “In memory of Stephan Pushenko”

There was a lot of talk about Stop for a few years after his passing. One of the teachers did a bit of digging and found out the poor bloke had come from Poland and done time in Auschwitz. There was some speculation that he was from some rich Jewish family, or he was a Romany or even a poof, but I don’t think that mattered to anyone in the pub.

I reckon Stop found his way to our small place in Australia. He was taken in, given a new name, and left to be himself. He never did anybody any harm and ended up doing everyone a lot of good. Whatever ghosts he needed to bed, he did it quietly.

I like to believe Stop found serenity here. He took in the ordinary life; the fires battled, the footy games won, the cricket games lost, the jokes, the gossip and the yarns. We gave him back a life, and he took what he needed, then gave back in spades.

Visitors to the pub may find it a bit strange but at closing time every Friday, to this day, some joker will raise his glass and shout, “Stop Pushing” and everyone will raise a glass and repeat “Stop Pushing” and have a laugh. For a memorial, you can’t get better than that.

© L.C. Wong 2020 (now writes as Elsie King)

Photo © L.C. Wong 2019

Previously submitted to Positive Words 24/11/20 but all rights retained by the author.