Page 26 of The Sunday Brothers Novellas

He nodded. “You got it in one. There are over a hundred thousand private foundations in this country alone. How do you get one to care about your program more than the others they get bombarded with? What makes the Hub special?”

“ Pfft . I think that’s pretty obvious. The Hub takes care of a really vulnerable, underserved population.

It gives children a safe place to play after school, access to tutoring and mental health services.

” I tried to think of the other kinds of information charitable foundations might find critical.

“You know, this year alone, the Hub will serve two hundred thirty-six children aged four to fourteen, from Hannabury and surrounding towns in Averill County, which has an average per capita income that’s below the?— ”

Theo held up his hand. “Stop. You’re telling me about the soil properties again, Porter. Dry facts.”

I grit my teeth in annoyance. “Facts are important.”

“Sometimes,” he allowed. “But tell me the facts from here .” He poked the center of my chest. “Like I’m sitting next to you having a snack, and you just found out I have fifty grand burning a hole in my pocket.

Make it specific. Make it personal. Make me feel something. Tell me a story and convince me.”

I struggled to come up with the kind of proposal concept he was looking for. “But… it’s non-fiction,” I said. “Facts aren’t the same as a story.”

He nodded excitedly. “Okay, see, now I think I understand what you don’t understand.”

I opened my mouth to say, Good for you, I’m still lost , when Theo cleared his throat and removed his glasses so he could buff the lenses on the softness of his shirt.

“There’s a display of approximately one hundred seventeen old fishing lures that hangs at the Hannabury Courthouse.

The lures were amateur construction, tied over a period of approximately thirty years.

Some are quite intricately tied. Many appear to never have been used.

” He put his glasses back on. “You can go and check them out anytime the courthouse is open if you’d like to see them. ”

“What?” I wrinkled my nose in confusion. “I mean, I’m sure they’re great if you’re into fishing, but…”

“But you’re not convinced? No. I’m not surprised.

Okay, how about this.” Theo cleared his throat and focused on nothing again.

“When I was young, my grandfather made fishing lures out of dental floss and old bracelet beads from the thrift booth at the town’s open-air market in summer.

We would go into town every Saturday morning without fail and get two things: Hildie Upton’s pumpkin spice muffins and any cheap broken beaded jewelry Morris Newton had in his stall that week.

Then we would come back here and sit on the front porch, eating muffins and tying up flies, over and over again.

Gramps made so many that after he died, I put together a display panel of intricate, hand-tied lures and donated them to the Hannabury Courthouse.

They’re currently hanging outside the judge’s chamber because Judge Farino spent hours fishing with Gramps, and they remind him of good times on the river, but I like to think they’re a part of the history of this town, too.

Of how one person’s castoffs became something more.

” Theo looked back at me. “Now, would you like to see them?”

I opened my mouth, then shut it again. Yes. Yes, I really would. But he already knew that.

Theo tapped his pointer finger on the table. “Every word of both stories was non-fiction, Porter. Every single thing I said was a fact. It’s not about what you tell; it’s about how you tell it.”

I wanted to argue with him. “It can’t be that simple,” I insisted. “No one will give fifty grand to someone because I tell them a story.”

“The movie adaptation of Sully , about the plane that landed in the Hudson River, grossed over $125 million dollars.”

“That’s…” We both knew I wanted to say it was different, but it wasn’t.

“Tell me a story,” Theo said in a gentle voice. “Just me. Right here. Don’t think about it, just give me one story of how the Hub has helped someone, even if that someone is you.”

The program had helped me, but it had helped many others way more than that.

I opened my mouth and began telling Theo story after story of kids and parents I’d met through the program.

One story became two, until I was telling him stories of people we’d changed for the better and far sadder stories of families we hadn’t been able to help.

Success stories and stories of heartbreaking failure where lack of resources had become a true impediment to getting kids onto a healthy path toward a thriving future.

We—or mostly I— talked for more than two hours, with Theo only interjecting here and there to point out how my stories could be adapted or crafted into clearer, more powerful expressions of the truth I wanted to convey—that a program like the Hub could do so much good if given enough funding for capable, consistent leadership.

He took off his glasses and made us a snack of coffee and cookies. I twisted in my chair, bringing one foot up on my seat and wrapping my arm around my knee. We were Theo and Porter. Equals. Almost, sort of, friends.

Those hours with him were eye-opening. Life-changing.

Years ago, Theo had been the one to show me that words were powerful—that was why I’d become an English major in the first place.

Figured that now, he was the one to show me how and why they were powerful, by reminding me that the key was tying facts to emotions, even (or maybe especially) in creative non-fiction.

As the light began to fade outside, our discussion changed from grant proposals to true crime podcasts, biased journalism, and the fine lines involved in using non-fiction as entertainment.

After deciding to set my ego aside, I asked him a million questions about how he’d learned so much about creative non-fiction when his specialty was Renaissance poetry.

“Milton wrote a sonnet about the Duke of Savoy slaughtering the Waldensians in 1655.” He gave me a wry smile. “I know… Poetry nerd much, Theo?”

I grinned. I’d been thinking more like sexy poetry nerd, but he wasn’t wrong. “Go on.”

“The poem is written like a prayer for vengeance, but it also serves as a historical record of the massacre. It’s emotional, heart-wrenching.

In it, he describes the Piedmontese throwing mothers with babies down the mountainside to their deaths, but it’s done with this…

” He searched for the right word. “This anger and impotent rage at the injustice. You can’t help but feel very differently than if you’d simply heard a list of the historical facts in a bullet-point sidebar of a history book. ”

He met my eyes. “If I tell you there was a battle at Piedmont with two fatalities, you will shrug and move on. It happened so long ago, who really cares? But what if I tell you, ‘ Forget not: in thy book record their groans / Who were thy sheep and in their ancient fold / Slain by the bloody Piemontese that roll’d / Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans / The vales redoubl’d to the hills, and they / To Heav’n.

Their martyr’d blood and ashes sow / O’er all th’ Italian fields where still doth sway / The triple tyrant; that from these may grow / A hundred-fold, who having learnt thy way /Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

’? And now what if I add that the triple tyrant refers to the pope? ”

Hearing him recite poetry always fired me up, but this… when he was making such a strong point… reached into my gut and squeezed it tight.

“Yeah,” I breathed. Better words failed me.

“William Hazlitt called it ‘prophetic fury.’ Prophetic fury in iambic pentameter. It’s… seductive. And it has the power to reach deep into the heart and soul of humanity and change the course of events. Do you see what I mean?”

I did. And now I could see so clearly why he’d been frustrated with me last semester. I’d tried so hard to make my assignments “perfect” that I’d completely missed the point of making them impactful .

“Yeah,” I said again. “I really do. That’s… that’s amazing. Thank you, Theo. I, uh… It’s possible that I might have gone into last semester with a bit of a chip on my shoulder.”

Theo nodded and stretched his arms up high so that his shirt rode up over his abs, and the sight made my mouth dry. “Yeah? Well. Happens to the best of us. But let that be a lesson. ”

“I kinda wish I could take the class with you again instead of Professor Burton.” I grinned. “Not enough to stick around for another semester, mind you…”

“Eh.” He shrugged and reached for his half-empty coffee mug.

His long fingers wrapped firmly around the ceramic, and the muscles in his throat worked as he swallowed.

“Now that you know, you’ll do better. And Burton wouldn’t fail you right now if you turned in ten pages of lorum ipsum, so it’ll all work out fine. ”

“I’m not really happy with fine,” I admitted. “I want to be the best.”

“Is that so?” He leaned forward again, resting his chin on his hand.

The entire force of his attention was centered on me, and it was heady as fuck.

“Then pick a topic I might disagree with you on. Spin me a passionate tale using only facts. Win me over with the heat of your argument, Porter. Make it personal.”

I frowned, trying to think of a topic we disagreed about… and just like that, his earlier disgust at the idea of kissing me came roaring back to life in my mind.

I couldn’t help but grin as I looked at Theo across the table. What better way to prove my words had power than to convince Professor Hot-Cock to kiss me against his better judgment?

Game. On.