Looking for Old Yeller

As I inch along writing the last McBee novel, Defiant Honor, I’m still worried that there’s not enough gut-wrenching emotion in the critical scenes. This is the final third of the long story, the  third book where the ongoing conflicts between the bad characters and John, Levi, and Faith must finally play out.

I know that somebody’s gotta die, and some characters are going to squeak through, bloodied and hurt, but surviving. I honestly don’t yet know who’s going to bite the dust, but it’s important to me as the author that some readers cry before they set down the book the last time.

To get that level of emotion, to open up the readers’ tear ducts, I need Old Yeller of the Fred Gibson book and Disney movie of the 1950’s. I need a faithful friend who will self-sacrificially throw himself into harm’s way to save someone he loves.

I need the firemen at the Twin Towers on 9-11. I need the school principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School the day the mad man started killing her kids. I need one of the many soldiers who have flung themselves onto hot grenades, mangling their own bodies to save their pards. I need an Old Yeller. (If you don’t know Old Yeller, find the little book and read it. You won’t be sorry.)

I’m not the only novelist to understand the need for an Old Yeller. I recently read the best-seller One Second After, and author William Forstchen has not one, but two beloved characters cast in the role of an Old Yeller. I won’t say more, but I will say I shed tears in both scenes.

We had a preacher years ago who once told the story of a little boy whose younger sister was deathly sick and would surely die without an immediate blood transfusion. But the ill child had a rare blood type and the only available donor who shared her blood type was her eight-year-old brother. Their parents quietly explained the situation to the little boy, that to live, his sister needed his blood, and after a long silence the brother nodded OK. During the transfusion, lying on a bed next to his sister, connected to her by a tube running red, the little boy fell asleep. When he woke up, he looked up at his dad and asked, “Is this Heaven?” He had thought he was giving all his life-blood to his little sister and his own life would end because of the transfusion. I need that giant little guy in my book.

I must have only been half-awake during the sermon that Sunday, because I didn’t see that obvious maudlin punch line coming, and I’ve never wholly forgiven the preacher for playing so on my emotions that day. But it worked.

So, in the weeks ahead, I’m going to sort out who will be my Old Yeller in the climatic action in Defiant Honor. My litmus test will be if I cry myself while writing the first draft of the scene.