The Story Behind Lodge
I was fourteen or fifteen, sitting on a case of beer in the stockroom behind the bar where my mother worked. From the corner of my eye, I saw her reach into the quilted purse with the leather strap that she carried and pull out an iron skillet.
A man had been harassing one of the women at the bar. My mother walked around the end of the bar, struck him with the skillet, and dragged him out through the side door. Then she returned, slipped the skillet back into her purse, picked up her ginger ale and cigarette, and went back to work. As I remember it, nobody in the place so much as flinched.
This happened in the mid-1980s. I don’t tell the story as an example of how people ought to settle trouble. It is simply what I witnessed in a time and place where people were often expected to take care of themselves and use whatever was at hand. It also captures something essential about my mother. When she believed someone needed protecting, she acted.
The Other Life of the Skillet
The iron skillet in that memory was not only an improvised means of protection. Cast iron was part of our household for as long as I can remember. My mother cooked with it. She fed us with it. Like many family objects, it gathered meaning through ordinary use long before it ever entered one of my stories.
My mother was named Wanda. She was a strong woman, but strength alone does not adequately describe her. She would go to battle for someone she cared about. She would freely give away her last meal rather than let somebody else go without. Somehow something was provided, and she knew she could always find another meal. Her toughness and generosity were not separate qualities. They came from the same instinct to take care of people.
The fictional Wanda is inspired by her. Some of the events in the collection came from things I witnessed, while others grew from stories people told me. Fiction changed names, circumstances, and outcomes, but the emotional foundation remained rooted in the woman I knew and in the way I understood her.
Writing from Memory and Grief
After my mother died from cancer, I began writing these stories as a way of working through grief. I did not begin with an elaborate supernatural premise. I began with events that had actually happened, or at least with the versions of them preserved by memory and family retelling. Writing allowed me to return to those moments, look at them from another angle, and give them a life beyond recollection.
When I reached the stories involving the iron skillet, I began to see what fiction could make of it. The skillet already carried associations with food, family, endurance, and protection. Turning it into a character did not feel like replacing those meanings. It felt like giving them a voice.
That was the beginning of Lodge.
The Companion Wanda Deserved
My mother knew many people and had people around her throughout her life. Even so, I believe very few people truly knew the depths of her. There is a difference between being known by many people and being completely understood by someone. As I developed the fictional Wanda, I felt that she deserved that kind of companion.
Lodge became the companion I would have wanted for her. He knows every part of Wanda, including the things she does not show other people. He anticipates what she is about to do, alerts her to dangers she may be missing, and protects her when protection is needed. He is her friend, her confidant, and her compatriot-in-arms.
Because Lodge is a sentient iron skillet, their conversations do not take place like ordinary dialogue across a table. His voice reaches her internally. Their relationship is often revealed through understanding, warning, action, and the simple fact that he remains beside her. He is not there merely to supply a supernatural weapon or a bit of comic novelty. He is there so Wanda does not have to face everything alone.
More Than an Iron Skillet
Lodge represents loyalty, family, endurance, and protection. He also reflects the way a familiar object can hold memories long after the person connected to it is gone. Cast iron is particularly suited to that idea. It lasts. It carries marks from use. It can pass from one generation to another, gathering stories along the way.
In Wanda & Lodge, those associations become supernatural, but they begin with something real. An iron skillet, a strong woman, and the memories of the people who knew her. The collection takes actual experiences and carries them into circumstances that are anything but ordinary. Beneath the darkness and supernatural danger, however, the bond between Wanda and Lodge remains grounded in loyalty and companionship.
Lodge is considerably more than an ordinary skillet, but I will leave the truth of what he is, how his story began, and how he became known as Lodge for readers to discover. Those answers belong to the origin story.
You can read Lodge: Origin of a Skillet free in EPUB or PDF and discover where his long struggle began. You can also learn more about Wanda & Lodge: Supernatural Stories of Grit and Grace, the collection that brought Wanda and her steadfast companion together.