Sarah Shell Teague's Blog, page 3

In Pursuit of Dolphins

Short summer fiction for this season of beach vacations-

This story originally appeared in the Summer 2014 issue of Cloud 9 magazine.                                                                   

In Pursuit of Dolphins

I’ve always heard that if dolphins are present, you don’t have to worry about sharks. I never thought much about sharks, but I always thought it would be great fun to swim with dolphins.

Ever since I was four, my family has vacationed on Anna Maria Island, a sliver of sand off the Gulf coast. As grade school children, my brother Jack and I spent hours shoulder deep in the Gulf. We would hop at the right moment to let the waves lift us and set us down again gently, like seagulls perched on the water’s surface. We’d strain our eyes for a glimpse of that first fin, when the dolphins would approach. They’d glide up or down the coast, in that transitional border between their sea and the shallow water man claimed as his territory, and we would fantasize about playing with them.

Jack and I would change into our suits in the station wagon before we arrived. I couldn’t wait to blast out of the car and smell that slightly unpleasant, oil-tinged beach scent. As our parents unpacked, we’d be jumping through the breakers. I’d lean over to scrub my face in the surf and taste the salt. It stung my eyes and drops of sea water trickled into the back of my nasal passages, burning out any leftover sinus.  Jack could venture shoulder deep immediately, but my belly button had to stay dry until my mother set up camp on the sand. Even after she arrived, to read her magazines and consolidate the freckles on her back, if she caught me beyond that halfway mark of the pier, I’d have to sit on the beach next to her for thirty minutes.

Now that I’m grown, my family still escapes to Anna Maria Island every other year. My husband Reese and I have to unpack as our son, Curt, splits for the pool. I gripe at him for choosing concrete over coast, then head for the beach, my shoulders soon tight from sun and salt. As I share my thrown-together sandwich with the seagulls, my eyes adjust to the vast distance. I stare hard for the familiar dark curved triangle that cuts through the surface of the water, and then slides under again.

Midway through our last vacation, we woke to drizzle. With rain in the forecast, we decided to blow the morning at a nearby aquarium. But while Reese was tying his sneakers, the balcony brightened.

”I have to take advantage of this,” I kicked off sandals and ran toward the bedroom.

“You’re staying?” Curt hadn’t pulled on a tee shirt yet.

“Sure.” I yelled through the closed door as I slipped into my suit. “You want to?”

He didn’t respond. I left the bedroom, started on him again. “You can’t pass this up. We might see dolphins. Give it a chance.”

The previous summer, before his tenth birthday, Curt’s soccer team reached the semi-finals of a city-wide tournament, largely due to his athleticism. He didn’t like shooting goals, but preferred to control the ball from mid-field. The young coach had no children, had never played soccer, but had read some books. On the field, the kids appeared to play without a game plan, even to the parents on the sidelines, who still struggled to understand an offside penalty.

The score was tied 1-1 at the end of the game, sending them into a shootout. The parents watched as coach and players huddled across the field. Then one of the smaller boys donned the jester-like goalie’s jersey.

“Why isn’t Curt playing goalie?” A teammate’s father threw up his hands as he paced the sidelines. I shrugged and we all stood there, stunned.

Our goalie did not stop a single kick. After Curt booted in the ball, the other team’s goalie caught every player’s attempt. On the sad ride home, I asked, “Why on earth did Coach Winfrey put in Micah as goalie?”

Curt looked out the window. “He asked me to and I said no.”

I almost hit the ditch. “Why?”

Curt looked down at his cleats. “I was afraid to.”

I was astounded at his reply, but let it drop. Now, with a glorious morning’s swim as prospect, maybe my son needed a little push to join me on the beach.

“Why stare at fish through glass when you can experience the real thing?”

Curt hesitated.

“We won’t go far,” I promised. “It’ll be fun.”

He slung a towel over his shoulder. He would swim in his black mesh shorts, the ones he wore day and night, letting them dry while eating hot dogs by the pool. Reese left to find a cup of coffee and a newspaper. I scooped up my flip-flops, and Curt and I scooted down the stairs.

When we reached the beach, the sun was already wavering. The shoreline was practically empty, and I couldn’t see any other swimmers. I stepped through the breaking waves and strode then stroked out to my favorite spot, shoulder deep. I didn’t wait for Curt, who was taking his time getting used to the water.

I turned to the shore, which looked far away, sixty yards or so, due to the minute grade of the slope. I was two-thirds of the way to the end of the pier to my right. Curt dog-paddled out. Usually he preferred boogie-boarding to wave riding, but I had hurried him out the door without his board, and he didn’t want to trek back up to the condo. He floated a little, easy in the salt.

“Don’t you love it here?” I looked at my son. He lifted his head out of the water and gazed as if he were thinking about something. Maybe he wished he’d gone to the aquarium to see the fish up close. If the rain returned, we’d be sorry we stayed, and Reese had the car. The wind blew, and thick clouds choked out the sun’s warmth.

Curt shivered and stared at the waves. “I’m thinking about sharks.”

We had never worried about sharks on this beach before, due to the regular dolphin sightings. However, last summer a boy had lost an arm to a four-foot shark less than five miles south of our beach, and an elderly man had been attacked off his private pier a few miles north of us. He died soon afterward. I tried to put the thought of it out of my mind.

“Miles of sand and sea surround us, tons of fish. Why would a shark come up to us?”

“Maybe that’s what that boy thought,” Curt replied, not looking at me.

“How many people have been in this water since then, though? We’re well inside the safe zone.”

He remained unconvinced.  And I couldn’t dispel the thought that, since we were alone in the water for as far as I could see, if one were lurking, we’d make a fine brunch.

“All right, I’ll head in some,” I sighed. Curt looked a little relieved, as much for me as for himself. I semi-backstroked, in a sitting position with my back to the shore, piddling really. We stood when I was rib-cage deep, half way to the end of the pier. The waves weren’t ready to break yet, were rolling into their head, still good for a lift. I spread out my arms and bent my knees, lowering my shoulders to the water level to get the full effect of the rise and dip. Then I caught sight of the fin far off to my left.

I squinted and focused hard before saying anything. Many times what seems to be a fin is merely a lapping wave.  A viewer has to gaze straight and hard, but in a general area, because the dolphin won’t surface again in the same place. But the fin rose again, and this time it was unmistakable. There were three of them, still far down to the south.

“Dolphins!” I turned to yell at the scant beachcombers who had braved the damp weather, none of whom were within earshot but who could recognize my gestures. They covered their eyebrows, salute fashion, and nodded in recognition.

Then I realized: for all the years we had spotted dolphins out in the Gulf, my parents would never have allowed me to swim that far past the pier. But if we hurried, Curt and I could intersect their path.

“Hey, we can reach them. Let’s go.”

Curt didn’t move. He had never mentioned an interest in touching or swimming with dolphins. Though very much in shape, he had never swum a lap at sprint pace, and swimming has its own cardio-respiratory demands. Besides, the dolphins’ track ranged out twice as far as the end of the pier.

How badly I wanted him to share this with me—something he could tell his grandchildren sixty years from now. The fins continued to arc, nearing ten o’clock. I lunged toward Curt and pulled on his arm.

“Come on; this is an unbelievable opportunity! You have to.”

He reluctantly joined me. We swam freestyle, the stroke for speed, another hundred yards. We were well past the pier, and I didn’t want to think about how deep the water was. Usually this beach drops into a trough after the gradual slope then rises onto a surprisingly shallow sand bar. In past years, during low tide, I have stood rib-cage-deep at the bar, near the end of the pier. While snorkeling, Reese has seen dozens of sand dollars on the outer edge of the bar. But this year we were unable to locate the incline. Two days earlier, we swam out just past the pier, occasionally dropping straight down to sound for the bottom. Reese is six feet tall, and when the surface was two yards beyond his arms stretched above his head, we quit trying. We were beyond the bar. Maybe the sand was not as shallow. Maybe the bar had shifted closer to shore than we guessed and we had passed it.

Curt had not matched my pace. I held up, listened for him, and gauged the progress of the dolphins. To my surprise, they reared up at about 11 o’clock to my left. A hot chill swept over me. First of all they were black. They didn’t look like Flipper at all. They were close enough for me to see their shiny flesh, which made me think of how a runner’s thighs would feel after a two-mile jog, slick with a slight give, but firm under the surface. They didn’t seem to be mammals. Because of their slow, clockwork-like movement, they appeared to be mechanical replicas. Their alarming progress seemed incongruent to their leisurely pace, perhaps because of their size. They were much larger than I’d expected, and I realized that I was afraid.

I could hear Curt splashing behind my splashing. He sputtered, “Are you sure those aren’t killer whales?”

“They’re dolphins.” I was so out of breath from swimming that my voice squeaked. What if they were friendly dolphins’ malevolent cousins? What if one were a nursing mother who thought we were trying to harm her young one? If a creature this size could crush my ribs with even a playful roll of its body, what could it do to Curt?

I forged ahead and tried to determine the length between me and the dolphins as they curved and slid under, unhurried but advancing markedly. When describing a fateful or heroic experience I always exaggerate distance to my benefit, thus I reckoned they were a little farther off than they seemed. Twenty feet? But in an area the size of the Gulf, distance is distorted. Knowing this, I reckoned it would be less than it seemed. Five feet? I considered body length, and guessed they were about two body lengths from me.

I was delirious with excitement. The middle one, the largest, puckered his blow hole and then the hole disappeared as his head cruised under the surface. I charged forward, slapped the water and yelled to get their attention. They ignored me. I tried to scream underwater, anything to reach them. They were practically straight in front of me, but how far?

Strangling wheezes shot out of my heavy breathing. I had to draw deeply, and I fought to avoid swallowing more salt water as the gray waves kept coming. I felt dizzy. My heart was hammering from the swim; I swam some more. I longed for Curt’s boogie board. They glided on. I was spent.

Or was I? I couldn’t possibly reach out and touch those huge beasts. Nothing could be holding back my arm from its maximum span. Surely my fear wasn’t slowing me down, constricting my bronchial tubes, convincing my brain I couldn’t make contact with the dolphins.

Years before, on a summer afternoon in the middle of a freshwater lake, while I was swimming off a rented pontoon with my friends,  a ski boat skimmed by, its wake so large that it rocked the pontoon and knocked its detachable ladder into the water. I was closest to where the ladder sank, and everyone called for me to save it. I bravely dove down, but the deeper I probed, the murkier the water became. Sunshine glinted off the aluminum as it floated down, just beyond my grasp. I tried to grab it, but the chill of the thermocline made me shudder, and I scurried to the surface.

To my friends’ hopeful faces I shook my head, coughing. Nobody questioned my effort. We’d all have to chip in on the $150 to replace it, so surely I had done everything possible to reach it. But I wasn’t sure then, and now I couldn’t tell either.

With these beautiful exotic creatures so close, I wanted to be able to say, “We swam with dolphins. “ To crow in front of my brother, and tell my friends at home. To be the one at the party to regale guests with this adventure, to share a lifelong memory with my son.

Runner-up, bridesmaid, also-ran: there’s no trophy for almost. Almost hit the ball over the fence. Almost crossed the finish line first. Almost cleared the tracks before the train.

Meanwhile the dolphins slipped by. They were simply faster, at home in their territory. I angled north, but couldn’t reach them. I treaded water while Curt caught up with me. We watched the fins rise and fall.

“We were so close,” I panted. “Maybe they’ll circle around. Sometimes they circle around.”

“We missed it,” Curt muttered.

“You want to stay a while? Isn’t it neat to be out this far?” I pulled up my legs, wrapped my arms around my shins to make a ball, but began to sink. I scrambled to the surface, hacking. At least Reese wasn’t around to see how far out I’d taken Curt.

His breathing was labored. “We’re out pretty deep, and you sound horrible.”

He seemed to spend as little energy as possible to keep his head above water. For the first time, I thought about how tired he was.

The sky had darkened more in our pursuit, and with the object of my focus gone, I realized the waves had grown more choppy, the wind more intent. I smelled the storm rolling toward us; saw the opaque gray wall at the horizon. We were a long way from the shore. Drops began to ping against my cheeks. I turned to watch and yearn for the diminishing dolphins. And I knew that sharks were the least of my worries.

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The Age of Reason

More Short Fiction about lessons from Childhood, this time about a boy who learns there’s more to shooting a gun than pulling the trigger.

The Age of Reason

At the base of the mimosa, a wooly caterpillar scaled a twig six inches from Mackey Jarrett’s sneaker. The husky boy lined up the creature between the BB-shaped ball at the end of the barrel and the notches near his nose. He held his breath. The blast spurted dirt and rolled pebbles. After the second shot, the black line curled into a furry circle.

Mackey’s first kill of the day.

The day before, Friday, Mackey’s family gathered at his house, three miles outside Poplar Bluff, to celebrate his birthday. He blew out all seven candles in one huff. He glanced at a coloring book and 64-crayon set from Grandma Jarrett. Mackey muttered “another old shirt” at the rectangular box from his mother Nedra, and refused to stand still long enough for her to hold it up to his shoulders. He peeked under the coffee table and behind the divan. Since his sixth birthday, he’d slept with the Sears catalog under his pillow, opened to the pellet and air gun page. He had expected a BB gun then, but his grandfather Ben Mercer had convinced his parents to wait a year.

This year, while Mackey searched, his father Glenn slipped in from the carport. Glenn’s beefy arms strained to hold the long, narrow box behind his back, so that the button holes of his garage uniform stretched to reveal his ribbed tank tee. Mackey ran to his father and threw his arms around him. The boy only ripped off enough of the cowboy-motif paper to free the box on one end. His stumpy fingers yanked at the heavy copper staples. He cavorted with his prize around the cramped den, as Nedra swerved her knees aside to protect her feet from his snub-nosed sneakers.

After every man there handled the shiny Daisy and voiced approval, Mackey tore through the remaining gifts: a carton of Number Six shot to shoot skeet with his father, ten cylinders of BBs, and a gun cleaning kit from Grandpa Mercer.

“Thanks,” Mackey gave Ben a one-arm hug, his eyes on the BB gun.

“Got to be responsible with it,” Ben glanced at his son-in-law for affirmation, but Glenn was describing the symptoms of one of his cows to his brother and did not catch his father-in-law’s remark. Ben turned back to his grandson.

“I’ll help you learn about guns. Anytime.”

But Mackey had already dropped the cleaning kit and picked up the Daisy. He banged the back screen door against the house on his way out and leaped off the porch. He skipped chocolate cake and ice cream, which his father consumed while he and Ben discussed the thirty head of breed cows Glenn had purchased last fall.

“You know that one, started dropping weight ‘bout as soon as I got her? I noticed Tuesday she’s missing.”

Ben had seen the cow in question by the fence earlier that spring, her head low. Her limp tail occasionally slapped her gaunt flanks. Her bag never looked full. Glenn had rigged a pen for her and her puny calf near the barn, and fed her liquid protein as well as sweet feed and hay daily since Easter, but she lost the calf.

“Maybe she swallowed some barbed wire,” Ben offered.

Glenn shrugged. “Might have.” When he stood up to get more ice cream, Ben walked out on the back porch and eased himself into a lawn chair. He pressed his fingers against each other prayer fashion and smiled at Mackey. As the boy walked deep into the pasture in the back yard, he began to shoot piles of manure. The new Daisy made a pouf sound.

Mackey’s fine-textured hair at his nape, as well as his bangs, the color of a dried magnolia leaf, consolidated into thin, inch-long cords in the heat. His fair forehead, cheeks, and thick neck flushed deep like sunburn. Mid-pasture, he stopped. He pointed the BB gun at one of the cows dozing in the cedar shade by the pond.

“Hey, b-boy, stop that!” Ben lumbered to the fence more quickly than a retired man should. He began to cough. Mackey whirled around, his face guilt-blanched. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled to his grandfather, “Just kidding. I wasn’t going to do nothing.”

Ben stood by the cattle guard and held his side. Mackey retreated to the woods southeast of the near pasture, where Ben couldn’t see him. He blasted white oaks, an abandoned hornets’ nest, and old fence posts. Though he dislodged raccoon-sized stones with his sneakers, no rattlers emerged. He knocked off a large crow feasting on poke berries. When he happened upon a table-wide ant colony, Mackey took random shots at the beige, grainy soil. Soon ants frothed out of the new exits. He fired away. Neither coming darkness nor natural appetite affected his decision to head home. He ran out of ammunition.

By the time he reached the porch, Ben had gone back inside. After minute steaks and mashed potatoes with gravy, Mackey carried a paper plate of cake out to the back porch. When he finished it, he trained his sights on fireflies from the porch steps.

Glenn sat on the divan inside, his feet propped on the coffee table. He played with the lid of a box of bird shot while Ben helped Nedra stuff wrapping paper and disposable plates in a trash bag. Ben stood up, crumpled an empty cup, and looked at Glenn.

“You mind if your son aims at the cows?”

Glenn bristled. “He’s seven.”

Ben leaned over and mashed the contents deeper into the bag. “Pretty young to be going into the woods with a gun on his own.”

Glenn sat up, slammed down the box of shot. Several shells spilled onto the coffee table. “A BB ain’t gonna hurt a cow. That’s just part of learning to shoot.”

As their voices rose, Mackey crept closer to the back door and listened. Ben calmly secured the twist tie on the trash bag. “He needs someone to make sure—“

“Make sure what?” Glenn broke in. “He don’t shoot something by mistake? Like Foreman mistaking that six-point for a doe last fall? You still don’t believe that was an accident. Well believe this: there ain’t nothing my son can’t handle on my property.”

Nedra began picking up the shells. “You two please. Dad just means to be helpful.”

Glenn leaned back, crossed his arms, and looked at the television. “If he wants to be so helpful, let him find the damn cow tomorrow, ‘cause I’m working on the Gaines transmission all morning.”

Ben carried the trash bag toward the back porch. As he opened the door, Mackey scrambled away from it. Ben set the bag outside. “Isn’t it your bedtime?”

“But I’m not tired!” Mackey’s hazel eyes glistened with fatigue.

After Ben left, Nedra plunked the shirt and coloring book on the army trunk at the foot of Mackey’s bed in his room. “Don’t forget your prayers,” she reminded Mackey, who had come inside and already gotten in bed. His hair, still damp from a quick and inadequate bath, moistened his pillow. He turned to the wall, flipped over his pillow, and murmured “Night, Mom.” As she left his room, she pulled the door almost closed. Mackey turned and reached under his bed for the Daisy. He cradled it at his side like a teddy bear. His father peered in the cracked door and smiled.

“There’s more BBs in the shed.”

The next morning, the Daisy at his feet, Mackey finished off a second bowl of Frosty Flakes then walked outside. He approached his father’s gun case in the storage shed out back. He located the BBs next to a minnow bucket so stuffed with yellow, green, and red shotgun shells that looked like a parlor compote filled with Christmas candy. He pocketed several packs of BBs and began his campaign on the insect population in the back yard.

From the mimosa after shooting the caterpillar, Mackey stalked a lady bug to his mother’s four o’clocks. The bug landed near a cluster of seeds, which were shaped like tiny grenades. Across the yard, in Mackey’s earlier hunting spot, a dusty red bird flitted. She whistled and dipped to the ground. She pecked at his trophy, the riddled caterpillar.

Mackey cocked his head into the stock in time with the slow raising of the gun, daydreaming he was a big game hunter. He assumed a sportsman’s stance, feet shoulder width apart, torso torqued to the left, weight divided equally. He watched his prey above the ball at the end of his barrel. He shriveled his left eye to keep the right one from blinking. Suddenly a fleshy tan barrier appeared between his eye and the end of the barrel, obstructing his view of his target. The bird fluttered over the cattle guard. Mackey leaned away from the barrel and looked up into the face of Grandpa Mercer. The man was not smiling.

“Grandpa!” Mackey attempted to pull away the gun, but Ben’s grip tightened.

“Female cardinal. Never shoot a cardinal. Illegal.” Benn looked toward the pasture. “And immoral.”

Mackey gulped. “I didn’t hear you drive up.” When he stopped pulling against his grandfather, Ben released the barrel. Mackey hugged the gun and looked beyond Ben. Ben slid his hands into his slate blue coverall pockets. The twill pulled across his shoulders, still sound from a lifetime of planting and plowing.

“You want to pluck that bird and have your mama fry it for supper?”

“No,” Mackey pushed his tongue against his front teeth, shook his head, grimaced, and wriggled.

“You need a reason to kill something, son. Make sure you have a reason.”

Mackey lowered the gun, his hand on the end of the barrel, the stock set in a clump of clover. He watched a cricket lurch from a fallen four o’clock leaf.

Ben scanned the tree line that bordered the pasture. “You seen that cow–”

“No.” Mackey cut off his grandfather, the way he’d watched his father do, before Ben had finished the question. Ben turned and shuffled toward the pasture.

“Seven years old.” A man of few words, he scratched the white and gray stubble on his cheek. In his seventy years, he had seen buried a big brother and little sister with polio in childhood and stood helpless as three of his platoon buddies fell to fire in Korea. He had witnessed a cutting horse stud worth a new pickup lie down and die from colic. As county agent, he had shoveled hundreds of dead broilers one August day from a chicken house whose overhead fans had failed. Ben had grown a truck patch every year since his return from military service, and raised ring neck pheasants and quail. Mackey was his only grandson.

As Ben stepped across the cattle guard and headed toward the woods on the other side of the pond, Mackey alternated between scoping the cricket and watching his grandfather. He made a sour face toward Ben’s back, and scoffed, “If I need help, I won’t ask you,” and zapped the cricket.

The boy left the yard, meandered through the meadow, and sidled into the southeast fringe of the woods, his Daisy barrel pointed down. A steady rustle stopped him. A dull black cord, speckled with yellow, curved through a patch of jewel-weed. The rustling stopped. His eyes followed the crook to the blunt, slightly rounded head. The mottled sunlight occasionally highlighted the shadow of a forked black string against one of last year’s oak leaves.

Mackey’s hands shook with adrenaline. He was so engrossed with his prey that he blocked out the sound of twigs snapping behind him. He took a deep breath. He had not yet cocked the air gun when he jumped from pressure on his shoulder. A pup-like yelp surged from his throat. The pressure remained. The snake he was aiming for slithered under a rotting tree trunk that had fallen across a segment of rusted barbed wire fence.

“King snake. Leave him alone.”

“Grandpa, you scared me.” Mackey dabbed at his eyes, his hands still quaking both from the excitement of seeing the snake and the surprise of being hindered by his grandfather.

“Son, you have got to have a reason to kill a creature. Long’s that snake’s around, we don’t worry about the bad ones.”

Mackey rammed the butt of his Daisy into the moss-clothed roots of a white oak. He tapped his foot and glowered into the woods, his “Yes, sir” shaded with sarcasm.

“You didn’t hear your daddy say where he’d looked for that cow?”

Mackey jerked his head back and forth in a manner that betrayed his impatience. Ben adjusted his cap and rubbed his forehead. “Listen to me. Don’t shoot a king snake. Ever.” He turned away without further comment.

Though Mackey peeped over his shoulder from time to time, he spent the next couple of hours without interruption. He backtracked to the near pasture where the cows grazed, and drilled grasshoppers there. He returned to the house to gather cola cans. He toted them in a tow sack to the far side of the big hay meadow where he arranged them on a log at the edge of the woods.

He popped twelve of the sixteen cans. He reloaded, reset the cans, counted off twenty paces, and turned to face them again. But two trees deep to the right of his target, something unnaturally bright flickered on a fallen branch. A bluebird conversed with an out-of-sight companion. After glancing back across the meadow to make sure his grandfather wasn’t nearby, Mackey inched closer to his mark, hands glued to stock and trigger, eyes settled on the pinkish upper breast of his cobalt blue target. He slowly cocked the gun and nestled his cheek into the stock. After a couple of deep breaths, he fired.

The dead weight rolled off the branch. Mackey did not move, the gun still aimed, his cheekbone crunched against it. He slowly lowered the Daisy, glanced over his shoulder again, and walked toward the brush. As he neared the dead bird, he recoiled.

Twenty yards deeper in the woods, the sick cow groaned on the ground. Her once curly sienna coat, now matted and dull, sunk into deep crevices between each of her curved, slender ribs. The hide over her pelvis stretched like canvas over a tent pole, as if the sharp bone might puncture the skin.

Her mud-caked tail flicked a couple of inches off the ground. Flies crawled on her nostrils and muzzle. She nodded her head faintly but could not raise it. A stench

pervaded the low area where she lay. Three feet in every direction beyond her frame, a swath of bare brown, where she had rubbed away every stub of vegetation to the powder below, resembled arcs like the snow angles children etch on the ground in winter. Her wild eye rolled. When she tried to moo, a distinct guttural grunt emerged from her throat. She made soft and short blowing noises as she gasped.

Mackey dropped his BB gun and streaked across the meadow. Dust flared into his throat and choked him. He hacked and stumbled, but stood and ran again. He tried to yell but could not because he was coughing. All he could utter was an intermittent wail. He tore through the fescue, first zigging toward the house, then zagging toward the lengthwise end of the field.

Ben strode out of the trees in a corner of the meadow, alarmed. When Mackey reached him, the child flung himself into his grandfather’s arms. The old man squatted in front of his grandson and took him by the shoulders. “What happened?”

“The cow,” Mackey panted.

Ben stood. “Alive?”

Mackey nodded. He thrust a quivering finger toward the cans on the log. They crossed the meadow. At the edge of the woods, Mackey huddled behind Ben as if the weak beast were a healthy crocodile. Ben took a few steps, looked down at the bluebird, and frowned. From there he saw the cow. He turned toward the house. Mackey sniffled, tagging behind his grandfather a couple of steps, but keeping pace. As they walked over the meadow through the strip of woods and across the near pasture to the yard, Mackey’s breathing resumed a more normal rate.

“Wait here.” Ben instructed him behind the storage shed. Ben returned with a twenty gauge. He dropped a single shell in his pocket. They retraced their path to the cool of the woods near the cow. Mackey dragged his feet, but Ben advanced toward her. He stopped five feet from the cow’s head, then turned and waited for his grandson.

Mackey hovered behind a pin oak. His grandfather pulled the slug from his pocket, loaded it in the chamber, and slammed the bolt shut. But instead of aiming at the brute, he lowered the shotgun and turned toward Mackey. He eyed his grandson for a moment.

“You want to kill something. Shoot her.”

Mackey began to blink. Fists at his side, he took small steps backward. “Aw Grandpa.”

Ben did not grin. He extended the firearm, barrel toward the treetops, to his grandson. Mackey backed into a tall white pine. He clasped its trunk with both hands behind him.

A clot of flies had drawn blood on the cow’s neck. They did not move when she swiveled her ear. She made an effort to paw the ground, but could not. Ben shook the fist that clamped the gun, pushed it at his grandson.

“Come on. Here’s your chance.”

Mackey shifted focus from his grandfather’s face to the ragged cow. The child sunk down the pink bark, which snagged the back of his tee shirt, until his bottom grazed his heels. He covered his head with his arms and moaned, “I don’t want to.”

“This cow can’t get up. We have to put her out of her misery.”

Mackey stood, wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “Please…not me.”

Ben spoke through gritted teeth. “Come here and take this gun, boy.”

“Hunh-uh, I—“ Mackey faltered. He hung his head. He covered his face with his hands and sobbed again, his shoulders shaking.

Ben strode over and grabbed Mackey’s arm with his left hand and jerked him off his feet. Mackey scrambled to gain balance as Ben hauled him over to the cow. He wheeled the child in front of him to face the cow, scooped up Mackey’s left hand and mashed it beneath his on the barrel. Ben pressed the stock into Mackey’s shoulder and used his chest, arms, and the gun to position Mackey’s cheek next to the stock. Mackey bawled out loud. He clenched his eyes shut and tried to wriggle away from his grandfather’s hold. As he wagged his head about, mucous smeared onto Ben’s forearm.

“Shoot her!” Ben roared.

“Noo-oo!” Mackey cried. He felt the parts of the gun, metal and wood, against his hands and his cheek, his grandfather hemming him in. Ben jolted him again, repeating, “Shoot her!”

The child inched his finger toward the trigger, sniveling. The blast rammed the stock into Mackey’s shoulder and made his ears ring. The beast flinched then was still. Flies returned to the glossy red hole in her neck. Gun smoke momentarily battled and lost to the rancid smell.

Mackey wrenched free from his grandfather’s hold, bolted across the meadow and into the strip of woods. He tripped on a hackberry root and groveled several yards before he returned to his feet. He was still running as hard as he could, kicking up acorns and dirt clods. Tears blurred his vision, twigs slapped his cheeks, and fallen branches caused him to stumble.

When he cleared the trees, he could see across the near pasture to his father’s truck parked in the carport. Glenn stood in the back yard, his fists on his hips, watching. His uniform was stained with grease, his work boots like two chunks of granite. So big and strong, a stern expression on his face, he seemed to peer beyond his son. Mackey pressed his left hand to his side, took deep breaths to stop the sobbing, and slowed to a walk.

This story won honorable mention in the Page Edwards Short Fiction Contest at the Florida First Coast Writer’s Conference in Jacksonville, Florida. It was published in the Summer 2014 issue of Cloud 9 magazine.

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Nothing New Under the Sun

The Antiques Road Show has been a popular cultural phenomenon for some time now. Everyone who attends hopes their family treasure will be worth the big bucks. I learned from experience: from patrons to professionals, everybody at the Antiques Road Show is after the Big Story.

I heard that our state public television station was going to host the Road Show for a fundraiser. I had recently purchased an antique tureen and platter in addition to a 1767 English tall case clock. I had the information on the clock, but not about the ceramics. The bone china, transfer-printed with [cool] teal and raspberry Asian sketches, detailed with powder blue shading and fine gold etching, stood out in my house decked with [warm] moss and ubatuba greens. I decided I would find out about the ironware’s provenance in addition to their value.

I bought two tickets; each included the appraisal of two items. My parents had purchased a couple of matching gilded Plaster of Paris mirrors in Pocahontas, Arkansas when I was a teenager. They were not heirlooms, but since I had always liked and wanted to know more about them, I decided to take them. For the fourth item, I invited a friend, Ann, who chose a specimen from her late father-in-law’s paper knife collection (what are casually termed letter openers).

We drove from El Dorado to Hot Springs the Saturday morning of the event. When we arrived at the conference center, a queue of interesting people and objects already snaked out the door. Some people carted walnut sideboards and Rosewood étagères with appliance dollies. Others conveyed smaller, fragile items with wheeled luggage. I briefly wished I’d chanced hauling my beautiful old clock, eight-feet-tall and a showstopper, or at least used our overseas-travel-sized wheeled luggage to tote my entries. Ann and I took our place in line, which grew rapidly behind us.

Other peoples’ items were fascinating, if a little weird. Displays of real braided hair, sculptures of questionable anatomy, wooden carvings; there were articles transported from all over the world. A sour-faced woman with black hair stood in front of us. She carried an Asian-influence screen, decorated with mother-of-pearl inlay with images of courtesans in various stages of repose, promising delight and relaxation. To be cordial and make conversation, I addressed her.

“Oh, the Geisha. How interesting.”

“It’s not that,” she snapped and pulled it closer to her chest, as if to protect it from me. “It’s Japanese.”

Well, yeah, the Geisha are Japanese, I mused. She reacted as if being friendly to me might affect the value of her item. I just smiled, avoided eye contact, and said, “Yes, ma’am.” So much for passing the time pleasantly while waiting.

Soon the doors opened and the procession began to move forward. Attendees lurching along with their cumbersome heirlooms made me think about the animals embarking on Noah’s Ark. But people were polite. I thought about the possible aspirations of people standing around me. Were guests planning to dispose of an in-law’s piece they’d always detested? Were they trying to raise money to fund some long-held dream like seeing the Sistine Chapel, or covering a child’s college education? Or to pay off a monster debt? Were they simply curious, as I was, about the origins of their object? Was there anybody present who didn’t secretly hope that she or he held a lost Renoir, double minted Peace Dollar, or a Stickley? We stayed away from the woman we nick-named “Geisha-Lady.”

Inside, several categories were posted: Visual art, metals, coins, jewelry, and so on. Ann and I split up to pursue our own items. Since I was most interested in the tureen, I got in one of eight columns leading to tables for the China category.

A nice, blank-faced lady motioned for me to come forward and sit down. She was knowledgeable, immediately placing my tureen as a piece from Bates, Gildea and Walker, a company only in operation from1878-81. She identified the knot on the lid as Staffordshire ware, fired in a six-town region of England, more famous for their paired spaniel sets. My china was “typical of Japanese patterns of the day,” and a hairline crack on the tureen and its lack of a stand held its worth to $400-600. She pointed out that what I thought was the matching stand was too large, and estimated the value of the correctly designated meat tray at $300- 400. I could live with that; they still matched, and were worth much more than I paid. The lady asked me how I acquired them. When I honestly explained that they were by-products in the purchase of my English tall case clock, her shoulders slumped slightly and she motioned to the next person waiting. I understood I was dismissed.

I repaired to another area to learn about my mirror. This piece, a twin, was very rough-backed, with just a simple wire coiled around tiny nails on each side, no covering or markings. The mirror didn’t even fit well into the frame. I assumed this told of great age and primitive craftsmanship, and waited expectantly for the specialist to spin a tale of mystery and intrigue concerning my modest Plaster-of-Paris mirror.

The gentlefolk in front of me fell away in less time than I would have imagined. I proudly held out my beloved family piece. The authority, staring into space, rested his head on his hand, fisted at his jaw: bored, or forlorn? His demeanor checked my enthusiasm, and I lowered my hands slightly. He gestured for me to lay the mirror on the table, as if he had done this many times before. In fact, it almost seemed as if he felt he were being punished. What antique scandal had he committed that was so offensive that it led him to this banal imprisonment of estimating the value of peoples’ boring attic finds? He scanned the room while he muttered the verdict:

“Your mirror is obviously mass produced so it’s not that old. Last half of the nineteenth or early twentieth century. These usually came as a pair, they were molded, and the plaster was gilded. They are American made, though continental in form. Fair market $100-150. Where’d you get it?”

With this last question he finally looked at me. Such hope in his eyes! What was I supposed to say? I answered honestly: “My parents bought them about twenty years ago at an antiques store in northeast Arkansas.” Again, truth conveyed disappointment. He could not wait to be done with me.

As I hauled my pieces to where Ann sat across from an appraiser, I half regretted that I didn’t make up some fantastical story. My great-grandmother’s sister sold her illegitimate child for this mirror and a mule. This tureen was buried during the Civil War under the chicken coop along with the family’s coin silver by a cousin who was a Union spy. My great aunt’s lover ran with Dillinger and he passed this stolen platter along with many other treasures to her just hours before he died in an ambush. All my stories detailed other branches of the family tree; not that any of my direct descendants would be mixed up in anything dangerous or salient. I again thought how they’d be impressed with that tall case clock.

Ann was experiencing the same ennui from her expert. The lady, having spit out the barest of assessments, grew interested in a pair of emerald earrings being examined one seat over, and began to discuss their highlights with her co-worker, effectively ignoring us and the people in line behind us.

We finally got up and left. I told Ann of my scheme to construct an epic story about acquiring my pieces and we laughed at the possibility. We didn’t see Geisha-Lady again, but since the nightly news offered no report of a great Occupied Japan find, or any other grand cachet for that matter, I assume she was told her piece was as common as the majority of the items brought for evaluation.

Though I wasn’t surprised at the rather mild pedigree of my ironware and gilded mirror, I supposed I was just as guilty of being a sucker for a story as were the individuals on the other side of the table: we’re all waiting for the next big thing. Maybe next time, as I lug in my tall-case clock, I’ll also pack along a whopper: My great-great-grandmother stared down General Sherman himself to save this clock, and then rowed it across the Mississippi River herself with nothing but a plank for an oar, raising nine children alone, after having walked to school in snow four miles each way…

A Study in Cylinders

I wanted to post this on the fourteenth anniversary of my mother’s death, April 7. But I have hesitated. I wrote this as an exercise at a writing workshop I attended soon after Mom died; the scenes were still very fresh and visceral. It’s not an easy story to read, especially for anybody who knew and loved my mother, or for anybody who has watched a loved one succumb to cancer. I expressed a lot of frustration at the cancer in this story, and what it did to my gentle, generous, smart and conscientious mother. The story was originally published in the Spring 2004  Arabia Review,  p. 74.

With that introduction I submit:

A Study in Cylinders

Mom tramps toward the lipstick display in the Bath and Beauty Shop, leaning on the counter for support. She selects a tiny fake silver canister, pops off the cover, scraping a clump of color against the lid. She twirls a maddening fuchsia open to the very end, the way I got scolded for doing when I was a little girl, when I could not understand the weakness of the stick. She pokes it in my direction. I duck my head backward to keep from being given a clown nose. I also fear the column of color will break off, its length incapable of defending its girth against gravity. I check to see if the salesgirl is watching. Luckily she’s talking on the phone.

Mom’s hand is shaking and I imagine the oily pink smear on the tile floor. Pink is supposed to be the color without an ugly side, but I don’t want to use up my last tissue wiping it off Mom’s tennis shoes. I take her arm, still surprised by how thin it has become. I speak low, so the salesgirl won’t hear me.

“I don’t want a lipstick here. You know we always get Estée Lauder.”

I was taught at a tender age to believe that Estée Lauder’s sheep fat is higher quality than any other sheep fat. Mom stops a minute and looks thoughtful, a look that in recent months I have come to dread.

“You’re right,” she says, and walks unsteadily around a table offering salt scrubs and sponges. “And why don’t we finish with a lipstick?”

I sigh. The candle, talcum powder, and room freshener spray are not enough.

“Fine. I’ll get a lipstick.” I stalk to the display and snatch the product on the farthest right end, a deep brown red that is meant for a complexion much darker than mine. I hold the tube up to her and shake it to show her I got a stupid lipstick.

She smiles and sets down the lipstick she was holding without swirling it closed. The lengthened raspberry cylinder rests on the salt scrub table, somehow not rolling off, and I rush to it. I pick up the tube, twist the cord of color back into its shell, snap on the lid, and push it back in place with its sisters in the “Rave Pink” line.

I gently steer Mom toward the register. The salesgirl begins to tally our purchases. I glance sideways at my mother. Her blue eyes maintain that disheartening Not-Mom look that returned several months after the radiation therapy brought her briefly back to us. I wish we were at home instead of here.

Mom begins to fidget. “Did I get a lipstick?”

I try a distraction ploy. “Where’s your checkbook? Why don’t you start writing the check?”

As she rummages through her purse, tattered tissues spill over to the counter. Three of her lipsticks land with a soft tortoiseshell crack on the floor. She seems oblivious to the mess of tissue shreds as well as my finger tapping on the counter. She has become increasingly slow but earlier in the day she uncharacteristically snapped at me when I suggested I pay. At the florist shop, I was horrified at the unreadable state of her check register. Chicken scratch had replaced her lovely cursive in the items space, amounts crossed out or written over previous entries, several numbers strung along a single line. I made a mental note to hide her checkbook at home.

“Did we get your sister anything?” She doesn’t look up from plundering her purse.

“You brought her in last week, remember? I think we’re in good shape.”

I have tried to use that last phrase to move Mom on today, but it can backfire. After retrieving her checkbook, she wanders back to the lipstick display and selects “Rave Pink” again.

The salesgirl adds it to the purchases and beams, “$61.55.”

Her checkbook splayed open, Mom labors over the date line. I lean toward her.

“It’s January 28.”

She nods and begins to scribble large curlicues to the side of the personal information at the top of the check. The salesgirl stares at my Mom’s scrawls, wrinkles her eyebrows, and looks at me. My eyes plead please please please just be patient and don’t ask any questions. My mother has been a good customer of this store, but the girl is new. I fish $65 out of my billfold and hold it to my side, away from Mom, so the salesgirl can see. She nods, curious. Mom finishes the check, tears it out, and hands it to the salesgirl. She looks straight at my mother, doesn’t examine the check at all. She places our purchases in a sack, and when Mom turns to leave, crumbles the check. I thrust the money on the counter and mouth, “Thanks.”

In the car, Mom wants me to try my lipstick. She swivels it up and hands it to me at the stop light. I make an O with my lips and tap it on. It’s ridiculously dark but now I’ve used it, scratched that diagonal surface of black-maroon, so it’s nonrefundable. I curl the receipt around her “Rave Pink” and drop the tube in my purse. She’ll never use it and maybe I can return it.

She wants to take me to shop for jeans next. I’m exhausted, and I can’t see how she can stand, five days after the second treatment of her final round of chemotherapy. I maneuver the car toward home, but after the last stop light, she remarks, “Oh, we need to find you some jeans.” So I turn the car around and head to the department store.

I don’t need jeans. I don’t want jeans. I have never liked to shop, am not good at it. I want to take care of my mother, but she wants to buy me things.

I try on a couple of pairs, too big in the waist, too tight in the thighs, as they have been since puberty hit me. When I walk out of the dressing room the second time, Mom is resting her head on her hand, leaned forward. Her blouse hangs gaunt on her frame, and her wig needs to be adjusted slightly. I seize the opportunity.

“I’m not finding anything and I’m really tired. How about we go home?”

She nods wearily, and I am free.

 

The registered nurse instructs us to watch the tube.

“The tube tells the truth,” she says. “When it goes from yellow to red, it’s bad. The kidneys are shutting down. When the tube has flecks of brown in it, that’s actual tissue.”

It is early April. We sit around Mom’s bed and occasionally snatch a look at the tube. She doesn’t know this; such instructions and observations are passed in the kitchen, out of earshot. We don’t really know how much she knows now anyway. She can no longer talk, and is certainly past the thought of lipstick.

While my sister stands on the left side of Mom’s bed and holds her attention by telling about the grandchildren, I sidle over to the right side of the bed, about two-thirds of the way toward the foot.

It snakes down discreetly from the edge of the white cotton top sheet, loops through the metal frame of the hospital bed, widens into the bag we also observe nervously. But our main concern is the plastic tube. Clear, perfectly clear so that there is no mistake about its contents. At first the pale yellow liquid leaves no trace along the sides of the tube, sliding down into the bag as it should. An unpleasant sight, that tube, not an object of conversation at a dinner party, but vastly necessary. I forget its primary job of removal. I only think about its importance as a signal, a long narrow messenger that will objectively explain the internal ravages I cannot see. While the few visitors courteously avoid looking at the tube, it is quite visible to us, the family members. A life line, a death line.

For days, the tube remains clear. This is the good time. But the less Mom eats, the darker the tube will become. We coax the straw for the liquid supplement into her mouth, the natural and pleasurable act of eating having become a laborious, unnatural process that leaves us all drained. The book hospice gave us warns that at some point she will refuse to eat, and we must accept that.

A wash of red sticks to the sides of the tube, like cherry Kool-Aid in a straw, sending us into a frenzy of consultation in the kitchen. While we know it’s a step in the process, it still frightens us. We wring our hands and smile and say, loudly because we cannot help ourselves, “Morning, Mom. Look out at the sun. Your dogwood’s growing. See how tall and straight it’s become.” And when Mom slowly raises her unseeing eyes, whether or not to try and look outside, or just to respond to our voices, we glance quickly at the tube to find its sentence.

Next come the flakes of yellow that stick to the sides of the tube. They look like tiny confetti inside the plastic, which still curves gracefully at a diagonal from the middle of the bed through the bars and into the bag. The bag does not have to be changed because it isn’t full; it hasn’t been full in several days. In the agony of watching the flakes grow slightly larger, I find myself wishing it would get worse, hurry up and get over, anticipating the darkening, thickening contents of the tube.

I struggle to find subjects to talk about. Books I’ve read or house renovations both seem inappropriate. They reek of a material world in which my mother no longer has a part. A well-meaning relative arrives and puts makeup on Mom’s face, blush to camouflage pale, puffy cheeks, lipstick on shrunken lips, and I think if it makes the relative feel better, why not.

The tube exhibits a remarkable spectrum of yellow. It darkens to that of a Black-Eyed-Susan petal, a hint of orange entering the picture. Instead of rice-paper-thin flakes, there is substance, not a clot yet, but slushy. The flecks remain stubbornly lodged in the dispassionate plastic tubing. We graduate to shavings, then chips, and only several hours’ worth of gravity, seemingly quite uncooperative at this point, pulls them down.

The orange tint becomes dingy at first, then downright dirty-colored. Nobody vocally acknowledges that when we’re looking at more brown than orange, the brown of dried blood, it is, as the nurse puts it, pretty bad.

Reddish clots actually fill the circumference of the tube now. It doesn’t matter, though; there’s nothing coming through that would be blocked. I realize that I’m actually looking at kidney tissue. I’m tired in so many ways; I know where we are in the process, but still my mind irrationally tries to come up with ways to return that tissue to my mother’s body.

Soon there will be nothing at all coming through the tube, except the truth.

 

It’s August now, and I sit Indian-style on the floor in what now serves as my father’s bathroom. He wanted the dresses out of her closet the week of the funeral. Next I waded through costume jewelry, undergarments, and pajamas. Now I face a vanity full of health and beauty products.

I toss flasks of stale perfume, hardened lip gloss samples, facial powder that smells like an old woman, which saddens me because my mother didn’t get to be an old woman. Eyebrow crayons, bent bob pins, a tube of insect bite cream, items less than a quarter full that I don’t care to cart home. I place in a basket—one of Mom’s I will take home—a candle, an unopened tin of talc powder, unused room freshener spray. I have to be careful. With the first item officially retained, I reverse my unconscious policy of absolute disposal, and become prisoner to a law that decrees everything must be saved. A commemorative Estée Lauder bicentennial compact holds no memories for me but represents value. Seven combs of assorted lengths go into the basket because in my family of five, someone can always use a comb. A jewel-toned mosaic soap dish which matches nothing in my bathroom gets tucked into the basket.  Her toothbrush has been commandeered for fine-cleaning niches and corners. The lipstick Mom purchased for herself back in January, too light for me, remains, the receipt tightly coiled around it, in a pocket of my purse. It will stay there until it gets too hot, leaks, and permanently stains the lining.

Linked with the drudgery of my chore today runs a secret thought, that I might find some pearl of great price. Miniscule gilt boxes forgotten in the murky corners at the back of the drawers beckon with anticipation of ruby earrings, an overlooked sapphire, a Liberty silver Dollar. I lift the lid of a gold-plated round box to find a variety of lapel pins, all plastic, all related to cancer research: Race for the Cure, a smiley face, a pink ribbon. Another small white box holds Christmas jewelry: snowmen and angel pins, jingle bells, earrings that are sugar-cubed-sized purple wrapped presents. My hand hovers over the keep basket. I set the box down in between the basket and the waste can.

I proceed to the larger items under the sink, leaving the disinfectant spray and aspirin, taking the Vitamin C and iron pills. I recall how Dad and I combed the pharmacy for calcium with Vitamin C at Mom’s insistence, only to later learn that the doctor prescribed calcium with vitamin D. I chew a calcium tablet before dropping the bottle in the basket, but I have no faith that it will benefit my health.

In the back left corner, her side, a shoe box is stuck to the shelf paper. My breath quickens, and the silence grows loud in my ears. I lift it into my lap and raise the lid.

A faded crimson crepe hair net holds pink bristled curlers. I gulp when I realize that these curlers hold my Mom’s hair, her actual hair that fell out fifteen months ago and never really came back. I pick up one of the curlers and see the smooth gray rolled around it, not the fine chick down that covered Mom’s scalp after the radiation. This is the hair she had three Christmases ago when Dad griped at her for spending too much on presents for everyone, when she gave me another Estée Lauder gift set, when she slipped in my pocket the expensive watch that I didn’t feel like I needed because she had given me one ten years earlier, and it still ran perfectly well.

I roll the curler between my hands. Its wire structure is bent somewhat, most likely from being worn while Mom slept. The short white bristles must be made of incredible artificial fiber to survive, still spiny enough to hold hair tightly rolled. Each one of the cylinders in the bag has its share of Mom’s hair caught in the bristles, all that’s left.

My hand shakes as I touch one of the delicate filaments and pull it off the curler. I lay it against my leg and stroke it because it comforts me. I plunge my hand into the hair net, the curler bristles scratching me. I remember crying as a little girl when I had to sleep in abominable curlers such as these, the quills poking my head. Now I wish I could feel that pain, be a child again, have thirty more years with my mother.

More than the bath products, more than the countless jeans and shoes, more than the Estée Lauder, more than the jewelry that Mom gave me over the years, I want to keep these simple pink curlers. I press one up and down my thigh, feel the spines sting. I consider calling my sister to see what we should do with these curlers that could serve somebody for another twenty years. I sigh, and with tears rolling off my chin, I drop them in the waste can.

Roosevelt was Right

Theodore Roosevelt was my favorite president long before Ken Burns created his documentary about the Roosevelt family. Aside from his mistaken, historical-context-laden Native American policy, which I do not condone, Roosevelt rose to the challenge of Chief Executive and accomplished much in his eight years in the Oval Office. What makes him unique is that instead of trying to change people and issues on the other side of the political spectrum, Roosevelt tackled the problems that his own party was responsible for aiding and abetting. Through his family’s impressive economic and political profile, Roosevelt represented the party of Big Business. Yet he successfully limited the powers of big business, namely the growth of corporations, during his time in office. As an insider, Roosevelt knew well how to get their attention then motivate them to cooperate, effectively throttling a power that promised to run away with any sort of individual rights for the people and small organizations. His method of operation is one we should all consider and apply to ourselves.

With whatever demographic you associate, look to call down your own trouble-makers instead of pointing across whatever barrier there is, to someone who sees things differently (Notice I didn’t say “wrongly”).  I’m speaking in extreme opposites on purpose:  Immigration? If you’re a legal immigrant, use your knowledge of families and movements to help the police find law-breaking immigrants. Religion? If you’re religious or atheist, encourage like-minded individuals to find ways to make life better for everyone, instead of acting in destructive ways, which is the antithesis of true spiritual aspirations. Politics? If you’re a Democrat or Republican, stop encouraging the radical 2% fringe on each end, because they don’t represent the best of your party.  Economic or social status? Instead of the rich blaming the poor and the poor blaming the rich for all social ills, try to get your “brother” or “neighbor” to see how he might be adding to the problem, in the myriad minor ways people warp and tilt the law in their favor.

With a little forethought and dedication, you can use your situation as an insider in your own subgroup, as Roosevelt did, to appeal to citizens who are acting against the best interests of our country. We aren’t getting anywhere gouging at “the enemy,” whatever side of whatever skirmish we’re on. There’s really so much more that we have in common, if we would quit focusing on another group whose views on one subject or in one area might be opposite our own. Trust that “they” have their reasons, and, just like “your” group, most are committed to trying to make our world a better place.

We extol the courage of our military heroes. Does it really take that much courage to look at a bigot or sycophant and say, hey, bud, dial it down?!

So call down those in your own ranks who are giving the other side a target. I’d much rather someone I know and trust point out my thought distortions, gross exaggerations, and self-justifications than someone I expect to see the worst in me. I’ll pay much more attention to the former.

Roosevelt became president after the assassination of William McKinley. Who knows if he ever would have been elected president on his own? But when he was presented the opportunity, he made a difference. We each have unique opportunities in our own spheres of influence. Don’t waste your resources slinging hardballs into a brick wall; that negative energy  keeps your hands dirty. See what you can do with the folks on your side of the issue.  While you focus on that irritant in your own eye, that speck in your adversary’s eye might become less of a bother, and you might find ways to work together in spite of yourselves.

Feeling the Burn

I’ve always been fascinated by how childhood’s seemingly minor thresholds turn out to be major upheavals in how a child sees and understands the world, and it has been a common theme in my writing.  Our growth from innocence to experience exacts a high cost, and it’s what we pay, willing or not, to become adults. Last Saturday, March 19, marked the fourth anniversary of the death of my father, Frank Shell. I took one of the stories my dad told me about a lesson learned in his childhood and loosely transformed it into a work of fiction with several lessons. “Feeling the Burn” was originally published in Louisiana Literature*.  I’d like readers’ responses on what was learned that hot summer day.

 

Feeling the Burn

 

“I was hoping we’d get a soda this afternoon.” Fate Taylor kicked a rock repeatedly along the dirt road, weaving side to side to follow its path.

“Now how would that happen?” Terrell, Fate’s older brother by thirteen months, sidestepped Fate’s rock.

“Tell me again how it tastes.” Fate’s bare feet, calloused to convey him through an Ozark summer, were unhampered by the small stones, though he avoided the larger pointed rocks.

Terrell shrugged and chewed his biscuit as they ambled toward the game. “It burns your throat. But the burn feels good.” He added the last with a rise in inflection, conveying he understood it didn’t make sense. Fate watched Terrell’s lips repeat the description he had heard many times. He ran his tongue over his lips again. The heat absorbed the moisture entirely. Terrell kicked Fate’s rock. “But you ain’t gonna get that burn today.”

“Maybe I will,” Fate stuck out his chin in defiance as he looked at his brother.

Both boys had finished the second grade two days earlier, and summer stretched before them like a luscious treat to swallow whole. The next day their father Leland made them chop and stack a hickory hit by lightning for firewood. Cutting into that rock-hard wood burned their shoulder, arm and back muscles. All four Taylor boys crawled into bed at night with nothing left in their bodies that could possibly make provision for their family. They rammed cedar fence posts in the ground, hoed the tomatoes and pole beans, and cleared the meadow of sassafras striplings.

But this afternoon, the local boys of Simms Creed would take on the county seat team of Winnsboro at a baseball game, and Terrell and Fate’s mother Mattie had said they could attend, provided they finished their chores and Leland agreed. That morning Terrell milked while Fate gathered the eggs. They carried their burdens to the cool of the spring house. They wiped sweaty hands on their overall legs, and strained the steaming milk through a white cloth into frosted Mason jars which they lidded carefully and lowered into the spring.

“Think if we sold some of the eggs and got a soda Ma’s miss them?” Fate asked

Terrell frowned as he examined then tossed an egg Fate had cracked. “You blew your chance last year.”

One Saturday late last November, Mattie had their oldest brother Willis harness Jep the mule and drive the family to Greeson’s store in the cart. She sold the pecans that her boys had gathered that morning. She handed each boy a nickel in front of the store. Terrell had purchased a Coca-Cola, bolted it in a few gulps, and then belched with pride and surprise as the burning sensation in his throat ripened. Fate also bought a Coke, but did not drink it immediately. He seated himself on the left end of the store porch and placed the bottle beside him. Terrell tossed a baseball in the air and caught it.

“Hey, think fast!” Terrell fired the ball toward Fate. The ball glanced off Fate’s fingers, knocked over the bottle, and broke it. The dry gray boards quickly soaked up the liquid. Fate rubbed his knuckles, blinked, and glared at his brother.

“Why didn’t you catch it?” Terrell mocked. That night, he described the curious sensation of drinking the cola to his mother. “Burned a nickel is what you done,” Leland said, as he sat at the table and whittled a sling shot for Terrell. Mattie tapped her pointer finger against her lips from behind Leland, and raised her eyebrows at her boys.

I won’t lose it next time, Fate whispered.

The next month Fate, at home in bed with the whopping cough, missed the monthly trip to the store. After that, Leland had accompanied his family to keep an eye on Hank Greeson, who had demanded Leland pay with his best mule a debt he owed at the sawmill a couple of years ago. Even Mattie couldn’t prevail upon him to spare the boys a nickel in Greeson’s store. Leland groused, “I ain’t doing nothing to help that man. I’d like to—“ Mattie gently shushed her husband and gestured with her head at the boys.

But today, Fate’s desire made feeling the burn somehow seem possible. After five sprints to the creek and five trawls to the yard. A bucket in each hand, the brothers had filled Mattie’s wash pots. She whisked a bark-brown strand of hair behind her ear, and checked an impulse to hug her strapping seven- and eight-year-old boys. Terrell, with his wavy black bangs tumbling into his blue gray eyes, especially resembled her older brother Jessie, who had died in the 1918 flu epidemic. Fate’s bluish eyes replicated her father’s to the extent that, when Fate sat and read Dizzy and Daffy Deans’ stats from some newspaper he’d found, her father’s earnest countenance washed over his, and affection poured out of her eyes. She would turn aside quickly so that the boys would not have to make fun of her to cover their confusion at her tears.

“Go check with your pa.” She handed them the ham biscuits she’d wrapped in a handkerchief. They tucked the biscuits in their pockets and headed toward the barn. They found their father seated on a bench along the side, absorbed in his work on the reins of a bridle. The top buttons of Leland’s overalls were left undone so that his gut would fit in the 48 longs. He had shod his own farm animals for as long as the boys could remember. He could clench the back leg of a nervous horse and subdue the beast. His weathered fingertips were so calloused that it seemed impossible that he could actually feel with them.

“Damn city boy, coming in here from…” Leland grumbled. No one knew exactly where Hank Greeson had come from. The youngest Hutchison girl brought him home with her when she visited a cousin in St. Louis. Greeson’s business manner prompted old man Hutchison to bypass his older sons-in-law and install Greeson as manager of the family sawmill. His neatly groomed sideburns, waxed mustache and soft hands rankled the community farmers, but not as much as his smooth talking did. After the peach harvest last year, Greeson opened a dry goods store. Its convenience for the isolated hill folk around Simms Creed compelled most locals to swallow their distrust of him. But not Leland.

At first the man did not look up from his retooling. He fingered the tattered leather that had practically worn through. “Damn high-falutin’,” he muttered.

Terrell and Fate lowered their heads. The only religion their father could stomach was an occasional camp meeting, but Leland forbade profanity. Terrell had blurted that same word in front of Mattie one evening, with Leland nearby. Fate ran out of the house as soon as the whipping began, but he would get a dull ache in his stomach whenever he recalled the sound of Terrell whimpering in his bed that night.

Leland shook the bridle and the hardware jingled. “I knowed when I bought this damn bridle, that fancy leatherwork wouldn’t hold to.” His dep bass rose and fell in sarcasm.  “Needed a plain heavy strap, Greeson said this was all he had. Said it’d do. I knowed then it wouldn’t.” He slapped his thigh, which made the boys jump.

They stood at attention. A pair of mockingbirds swooped over the barn cat, who skulked through the apple orchard a little too close to the nest. Fate stared at them. Terrell studied a barn plank.

“I—damn that—teach him about fooling with a Taylor.”

Fate watched the cat watch the nest, despite the parent birds’ jeering. She snapped her tail back and forth as she waited for a moment to pounce on the baby birds, their open beaks swaying. Terrell stood unmoved, his blank eyes widened, as if they could speak instead of his mouth. Leland flung down the strap, spit to the side, and looped up to see his sons.

“You boys running off to the game.” The man had worked too deep into too many

Saturday sunsets as an eight-year-old himself to take any pleasure in his youngest sons rollicking like mavericks on a day perfect for thinning the corn.

“Y’sir,” Terrell barked.

Leland looked at his sons for a moment. They stood in front of him, ball caps in hand, respectfully of course, practically trembling. Leland’s love for his wife was permanent as a cowlick, though hidden much more effectively. And Mattie wanted her sons to enjoy the game He sighed and nodded. The boys turned, their muscles crouched for gathering speed. Leland reached for the strap and scowled. “Don’t you boys have nothing to do with Hank Greeson. Nothing.”

The brothers tossed “Y’sir” over their shoulders and kicked up dust. The youngest scudded away more quickly than his brother.

“La-FAY-ette TAY-lor,” Leland roared. “You hear me?”

Fate came to a standstill thirty yards away and turned to his father. “Yes, sir!”

The father stared hard at the son, who did not move. “Go on, then,” Leland grunted. Fate flew.

The boys reveled along the lane under a sky so clear that it looked as if a single drop of blue had been added to a pail of white paint. The air hung heavy with the scent of honeysuckle, and bees buzzed lazily in search of it. The road was already waving in the distance. They had neglected to draw from one of the buckets on their many sallies delivering the wash water, and now they licked their lips often.

“Don’t see how a burn can feel good,” Fate mused. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, smooth and soft inside. His three older brothers had all worn these overalls. The knees were patched, and the bottom had thinned to white, but the hardware was still good. He munched the biscuit, rubbed his hands on his thighs.

They cut through a peach orchard to run by Uncle Breck’s house. They took turns and sipped from the common dipper out of the well. Aunt Alta waved to them from the yard, behind her own tub and pile of overalls. Fate licked his lips again.  “I got to get a soda.”

They plowed through blackberry briars beside Uncle Brecks’s meadow, then bull nettles in the widow Claypool’s pasture. A hop over Piney Creek, and skip through a stand of chinquapins, and then reached the fence that ran along the gravel road toward the playing meadow and , a half mile deeper in the woods, Dodd Hole, the spring-fed swimming spot. School mates and older boys, some of whom steered family wagons or sat astride mules, shared the road with them.

At the field, a few faded quilts had been scattered on the ground, not too close to the action. The Winnsboro players stepped off the baselines and set out flour bags filled with dirt for bases. Several boys danced around Hank Greeson’s automobile, parked beside a grove of sycamores, away from the wagon teams. He had brought it back from St. Louis two weeks ago, the first in the county. The boys gawked at the soft-looking black tires and matte black body, and dared each other to touch the steering wheel. Community folk arrived in their wagons. Children spilled over the boards and mothers removed picnic hampers. Fathers looped the reins to nearby trees, slipped in a chaw, and spat with authority.

Hank Greeson strolled around his automobile. “You’re welcome to stop by my store, on the left up a ways. You know we even got ice now,” he winked at a Winnsboro girl. He smiled down at the Simms Creek folk, each of whom mumbled, “Afternoon Mr. Greeson,” without looking him in the eye. The Taylor boys hovered behind a pine bench used by the Simms Creek players, not too close.

The leadoff hitter fouled the first two pitches. When the first soared beyond third base, a band of local boys shot out after the ball. One of them delivered it to Hank Greeson, who playfully rubbed his head, like one does a dog. Fate looked at his brother, but Terrell stiffened. He shook his head slightly. When the second fouled rolled to the right of right field, Fate started to run, which a head start over the other boys. Terrell grabbed his arm as he passed, and clutched a handful of fabric. “Are you crazy?”

“I was hoping for a chance like this,” Fate countered.

“It’s not worth it.” Terrell held on to his brother’s sleeve.

Fate pulled his arm away and streamed up the right field line. But one of his schoolmates beat him to the ball, and proudly returned it to Greeson. “Thanks, son,“ Greeson took the ball. “Come by after the game and claim your soda pop.”

Fate looked at Terrell, who still shook his head. Fate stayed along the right field line, clapped his hands together and chattered, begging the batter to hit one his way. His farm work-hewn legs churned as if a split second would make a difference. He braved rattlers and ticks to run down the homers that rolled into the woods beyond the clearing. He didn’t notice that after the fifth boy approached Greeson with a returned ball, the man wasn’t saying anything about a free soda anymore. Terrell sauntered behind the home plate bag. He happened to catch bare-handed a pop-up heading toward a cluster of teenaged girls, who giggled. Their attention softened him somewhat. He grinned, shrugged, and turned around to find Greeson. In the seventh inning, Fate finally arrived at a right field foul before anybody else. He thought his heart would burst with excitement. He rotted the ball back to Greeson, who stood behind the crowd. Fate rubbed his lips together, and they stuck. He waited for Greeson to offer him a free soda, but Greeson just took the ball, nodded in the boy’s general direction, and continued his discussion with a Winnsboro man about a litter of bird dogs.

After eight and a half innings, Simms Creek led by two. The Winnsboro players silently gathered their bats and gloves while the home boys whooped and cheered.

“Now be sure and stop over to my store,” Greeson gloated over the dissipating Winnsboro crowd as he walked toward his automobile.

“Ain’t you heading to the Hole?” A classmate called to Terrell and Fate.

“Want to sit in back with the others?” A neighbor called them from his wagon. But the boys were already soaring up the road toward the store. Greeson passed them, dust spiraling behind the car, caking them with a layer of grime.

They reached the store after most of the crowd. Mule teams rested, their heads bent low, their great nostrils conjuring clouds of dust as they exhaled. The boys held their tender sides, which burned with the final burst of energy they used to run the mile and a half to the mercantile. They were blindly thirsty, their thin cotton shirts wadded under their overalls. They peeked through the door to the short, narrow aisles jammed by Winnsboro citizens purchasing stick candy, tobacco, and strawberries.

At the door, the boys hung back. Fate retreated to the spot where his soda had leached into the boards. Sweat coursed from his forehead into his eyes, which made him blink rapidly. Inside, Greeson addressed a local farmer’s wife who brought in a basket of eggs: “Now Miz Davis, that’ll go on your credit for last week, but it don’t get you nothing today till Hap delivers that rick of red oak.”

Greeson’s voice grew higher-pitched as he swaggered toward the front of the store. Fate looked at Terrell with raised eyebrows. The boys, ratty ball caps in hand, crept near the door. It swung open as a Winnsboro girl with auburn ringlets and a wide brimmed straw hat exited. She held a glass soda bottle. Her starched white cotton dress seemed fresh in spite of the swelter. A sweet scent like their Aunt Alta’s roses emanated from her. She dipped her eyes and kept walking. The boys fell back two steps, dazzled. Greeson patted the shoulder of a man behind her and said “We’ll have watermelons next month. Juiciest in the state.” Fate attempted to speak, but his parched throat offered no sound. As the Winnsboro stranger made his way out, Terrell and Fate slunk over to allow him to pass, and he nodded to them. In that moment of movement, Greeson shut the door, strode to the register, and rang up the next sale.

Terrell and Fate waited for someone on the inside to allow them passage. But as customers left, they ignored the dirty boys who lurked on the porch. After an hour or so, the store emptied. Greeson bolted the front door and proceeded to count the day’s profits at the register.

Fate peered in the screen door. He knocked lightly, but Greeson didn’t look up. Greeson slipped out the back and drove away. The dust choked the boys’ throats, and they heaved and coughed. Dodd Hole was the opposite direction from home, and most of their buddies would be gone. They did not need company now, anyway. Fate had lost his handkerchief somewhere in the woods. They heat and toil of the day caught up with them, and they began to scratch the chiggers they had not noticed earlier.

The boys slumped off the porch and walked around to the back, where they coaxed water from a pump to wash their faces and to suck the tepid brownish liquid out of their cupped hands. Terrell headed for home with Fate a few steps behind, their heads down. They had walked four hundred yards when Fate looked up to see Greeson beside his automobile. He leaned against the driver’s side of the car, arms crossed in front, and watched the boys approach. They didn’t hurry.

“Afternoon boys,” he said. “Why didn’t you come get your sodas?”

Fate started to speak but a glare from Terrell silenced him. Terrell continued to walk along the road as if Greeson weren’t there. Greeson continued. “I’m having a bit of trouble. What say you get your pa to bring his mule and tow my automobile?”

Fate followed Terrell’s lead of ignoring the man, but he managed furtive glances at Greeson with each step. Fate’s eyes strained to the left, watching Greeson, as they passed on the passenger’s side. Greeson turned around to continue talking to them.

“Course I’ll pay your pa a dollar or two.”

Fate looked to see what Terrell would do. Terrell kept walking, staring at the ground. Fate looked down, too.

“We’ll make time to go back and get the sodas.”

Fate’s head jerked to stare at Terrell, who frowned, slightly shook his head, and walked faster.

“You, little fellow, get your pa. Ever tasted a soda?”

“He said he’d pay him,” Fate hissed to his brother’s back ahead of him. Terrell shoved his hands in his overall pockets. Fate’s eyes were full of tears. His thirst had returned and his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. But he didn’t know the extent of his trouble until he looked up ahead to see his father on Jep, heading to Greeson’s store, the shoddy rein and bridle draped across the saddle horn. Fate took off running toward his father. When he reached the man, he flung his arms around Jep. The mule’s steaming black-brown coat shed onto Fate’s cheek and sleeves. Fate shuddered and almost collapsed.

“What’s wrong?”

“Greeson’s automobile’s stopped on the side of the road. He said he’d pay you to tow it.”

“What you tell him?

“We kept walking. Terrell wouldn’t say nothing.”

“Good.”

Fate gulped. He thought of the girl in white holding the soda bottle. Jep twitched his tail and Leland squinted up the road to Terrell and farther on, Greeson, who watched the boys and his father.

Fate looked back toward Terrell. “There’s something else.”

Leland rested the reins on his thigh. Fate lowered his voice. “Mr.—they—he—gives kids a soda if they chase down the foul balls. And we done it. But he didn’t give us the soda.”

“Who?”

“Greeson.” Fate’s voice came out a hoarse whisper.

Leland’s face contorted. With the suddenness of a horse leaping over a fallen tree, the enormous man dismounted the mule. He snatched Fate’s arm, and still holding the bridle, blistered his son’s backside with a torrent that whipped him around like a wet dishrag. Fate clenched his teeth to keep from crying, but the day’s disappointment, coupled with the knowledge that his confession would earn Terrell a whipping too, and that he’d pay for that later, overcame him. He sobbed until his shoulders shook. Tears and mucus mixed with seat and dirt, and formed little roads on his cheeks, lips, and chin. Fate wiped his nose on his sleeve and then his sleeve on his leg. Very softly he said, “Pa. I just wanted to feel the burn.”

Leland shifted the bridle to his left hand and turned his right one palm up. An apple-seed-sized gouge bubbled blood, from where the tongue of a buckle had gored his thumb during the thrashing. He narrowed his eyes and looked up the road toward Terrell, who had slowed down. Leland returned his gaze to his youngest son. Fate stood there sobbing with dirt-caked toes, black beds in his neck, black crescents under his fingernails. Greeson’s pale, think hands could not chop firewood as well as Terrell or Fate, but Greeson could cipher. And he had out-ciphered Leland and his boys.

Leland gritted his teeth. His bull arms quivered. He grabbed Jep’s reins, mounted, and nudged the mule in the right direction. “Come on, then.”

 

 

*Louisiana Literature, A Review of Literature and the Humanities, is published bi-annually by Southern Louisiana University. http://www.louisianaliterature.org/

This story appeared in vol. 23/1 in Spring/Summer 2006, p. 116.  http://www.newpages.com/item/6203-lou...

Witness

Short Fiction about Childhood’s New Experiences

I hadn’t thought about Brenda Duncan in twenty-five years. But as I drove my daughter Lucy and her buddies to Cumberland Springs for church camp, memories of my own childhood crowded into the forefront of my mind. When we arrived and the girls tumbled out of the car, excited but the most superficial degree of nervous, innocent but much less vulnerable than anyone would think, just as I had been so long ago, that girl from my cabin commanded my attention again.

The first night of camp when I was ten years old, we huddled along the bunk beds and tried to understand Brenda’s story. Ten months earlier, she had watched her father shoot her mother in their bedroom.

Brenda’s shaggy bangs hung in her eyes. She had scratched at the mosquito bites on her legs until they became sores. She swiveled on her ratty sleeping bag from side to side of her bunk, like an actress playing in the round.

“Mom reached for the ash tray on the dresser. She didn’t hear Dad walk in the room. He shot her in the chest. Her blood got all over the blanket she just bought at Woolworth’s.”

A shudder rippled through the bunks, lined with snaggle-toothed, saucer-eyed girls just like me. I couldn’t imagine my father raising a hand to hurt my mother. I feared I would get in trouble for listening to Brenda, because my parents didn’t allow me to watch scary movies or violent television shows. I felt a sense of shame, as if I were tainted just by hearing the story. But it was also delicious, darkly attractive.

The next day, I let Brenda cut in front of me at breakfast. My best friend Janet shared with Brenda the home-made peanut butter cookies her mom sent to camp. We invited her to sit with us at morning worship services. At crafts, Brenda always got the paint colors she wanted. She could claim the front of the water fountain line on demand as the tale of her tragedy spread. The counselors hugged her, patted her shoulder, cooed “poor child.” As we marched into the cafeteria for dinner, campers’ heads drew together, fingers pointed, mouths whispered behind cupped hands. All eyes focused on us, the loyal friends and the unfortunate girl. Brenda held her head high as she glided past the gossipmongers. The strange fixed smile on her face was one of defense, we reasoned. And after evening worship, a longer, deeper version of the morning, we could not tear ourselves away from the tale she was obsessed with telling.

“I hid behind the door. He stared right at me before he left. Momma never made a sound.”

The third day, she groped for details: how she hadn’t talked to her father since then. How when they returned to the house much later, she had to sneak in the bedroom while her grandmother made a phone call. How her aunt refused to listen to the truth.

We began to avoid eye contact with Brenda. That night, as she whipped up the emotions of our cabin mates, Janet and I used our flashlights to read notes we’d exchanged with boys during the worship services. Brenda poured on the effects: “Did I tell you about the gun?” A few girls yawned and fell asleep.

The fourth day Brenda didn’t say much. Nobody made room for her when she approached the crafts table. When she didn’t get her own bottle of glue right away, she wandered off. She found the camp nurse and they sat outside the nurse’s camper in lawn chairs. The nurse leaned forward, listened, and held her hand. When Brenda approached us in the cafeteria line at dinner, we turned away. She scooted her tray next to mine anyway then sat down at our table.

“My grandmother still won’t let me talk about it.”

Janet and I would not look at her. We giggled between ourselves about the lifeguard we both had a crush on. The three other girls at the table leaned over their plates, intent on their mashed potatoes and gravy.

“They fought all the time,” Brenda’s voice grew shrill. “I was used to it.”

“Okay, okay, we know,” I rolled my eyes.

“He’s in jail now,” she practically shouted.

Janet and I exchanged glances, and we shook our heads. I stabbed at the meat loaf. When Brenda touched my arm, I jerked away.

“What’s wrong with you?”  She appealed.

“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with me.” My voice grew louder.

“I was there all by myself.”

“We know the whole story. You’ve told us everything.” I slammed down my fork.  “And it’s sick and we’re sorry, but we wish you’d shut up.”

Suddenly the room was still. Everybody had frozen. Campers standing in the food line stared. But they were watching Brenda.

I picked up my fork, swirled my peas and carrots. “Look, we’re sorry. But we just can’t…you can’t talk about it all the time.”

Brenda’s eyes narrowed, but didn’t fill with tears. She whirled to her plate, chomped her dinner roll in silence. The noise gradually returned. Chairs scraped across concrete, forks tapped against plastic plates, occasionally a glass of fruit punch crashed to the floor. The other girls at the table wiped their mouths, set down their napkins, waited for me. We abandoned Brenda and bused our trays as a group. As we left the cafeteria, my friends thanked me for cutting her off.

I shivered at the memory then caught up with my daughter Lucy, who was trying to pick a bunk with all her friends nearby.  They had lugged in their big suitcases and only a few items remained in the front seat.

“Can I speak with you a minute?”

Lucy huffed but followed me back out to the car. She piled her autograph dog on top of her scrapbooks while I tried to talk to her.

“You’ll make new friends here,” I hesitated. She shrugged. I looked at the other campers trickling into their cabin. “Some will be different from you.”

A wiggle of understanding crossed her forehead. She looked at me straight on.

“Mom they’re waiting. We’re going swimming and I don’t want to have to walk by myself.”

“I know, but, the different ones, you’ll treat them…?”

“What? I still have to change. Can I go now?  I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

She dashed off to avoid being odd man out. It’s not you I’m worried about, I thought. I was still standing there when Lucy’s friends appeared in their bathing suits. She scampered to catch up with them.

“Make sure you…listen,” I called half-heartedly, but they were already out of earshot, carrying their monogrammed towels and sun totes toward the swimming area.

My Kingdom for a Cookie

We’ve lived in El Dorado for over twenty years. This cozy hamlet boasts an arts center, oak-framed parks, and coffee shops. What more could a girl want?  I figured it out the first February. While opportunities abound for Webelos, Cub and Boy Scouts, El Dorado is Camp Fire country. No Girl Scout troop existed. When I realized this disastrous drawback, I suddenly craved a Thin Mint, but there were none to be had.

I developed a geographically extensive support group for my Girl Scout cookie habit. My brother’s secretary’s daughter in Little Rock (two hours away) came through one year. Sorority sisters’ daughters throughout the state helped another time. Once in early spring, when I had abandoned all hope, I happened to be visiting a friend in Jackson, Miss (three hours away). As we drove by a Wal-Mart, my instincts surged. Near the entrance, a sign announced Girl Scout Cookies for Sale. We whipped right up to the table, popped open the trunk, and I helped that dumbfounded girl earn her cookie patch.

Truly, any Scout worth her batter would do well to call me. I’m a two-box-per-selection kind of gal. I would often carry a saucer with the discontinued Snaps, balanced with a cup of steaming Earl Grey, onto my back porch.  I snuggled in with a Trollope novel, dunking that crunchy ginger cookie in my tea. I’ve even served Trefoils at bridal coffees I’ve hosted, though it takes several boxes to do so.

I know the cookies and boxes shrink each year. Though it’s for a noble cause, that’s not why I buy them. I’d purchase them if the money only went to keep someone’s Granny in a bingo game. I’m not sure why it’s so important that I obtain Girl Scout cookies every year. Perhaps it’s the memories they conjure. As an eight-year-old, I’d slip into my green uniform, belt and beret, then carefully slide my patch-laden sash over my dog ears. I’d march door to door with the full confidence that I was completely safe, and that every neighbor would purchase at least a box of Sandwich Crèmes, because I peddled an excellent product. No telemarketing woes then.

Perhaps it’s remembering slumber parties with my pajama-clad buddies, our sleeping bags sprinkled with lemony Savannah Smiles crumbs. Perhaps it’s gratitude that I survived the afternoon when I single-handedly downed two boxes of Thin Mints (I did lay off a few years after that).

A few years ago, Caroline, my niece from Topeka and a fledgling Brownie, called to see if I might buy some cookies. Overjoyed, I ordered my customary two boxes of every type. A few days later, a college chum’s daughter called, cookie order sheet in hand. Being a fair consumer, I had to order a couple boxes of each from her as well.

I still had to hide them. With three teenaged boys and a husband with a sweet tooth, the Peanut Butter Tag-Alongs go pretty fast around here. I wouldn’t dare waste them in my sons’ lunch boxes. And by that May, I searched the frosty corners of my deep freeze, hoping to find one more box. Perhaps that’s the strongest draw of all: when they’re gone, they’re gone, and that’s when I need a Samoa the most.

It’s January, so I better start hustling my prospects. Maybe it would be simpler to move to a Girl Scout town. I’ve got to think about what’s important. Hopefully my family will join me—and they probably will if I just order enough Do-Si-Dos.

A Perfect Day in El Dorado

What is more precious than a Saturday at home, with no honey-do list? They’re rare for Jeff and me, and we were looking forward to a day of relaxing. We spent the morning reading the paper on our back porch with coffee, lazily catching up on each other’s week. That week was a first for both of us, because our usually all-male home had been invaded by females. We were hosting three Symetra Tournament (LPGA feeder circuit) golfers.

I can express how disoriented I am toward golf by confessing that during the tournament, I kept getting close to mistakenly referring to the caddies as “jockeys.” I simply don’t have much of a mental platform for golf, or understanding it. But Jeff and I wanted to be supportive of our three houseguests and this opportunity for El Dorado, so we drove out to Mystic Creek Golf Course, El Dorado’s newest course off highway 335, Saturday afternoon around 2.

A bright day, the kind of sunny day that can’t help but raise your spirits. A final-days-of-summer warm, with a fickle breeze flitting around us from time to time. We looked up the golfers we were hosting to find out where they were on the course. One was just teeing off right near the entrance at hole 10, conveniently for us, and one came behind thirty minutes later. We were careful not make eye contact with our golfer, U of A 3-time All-American #EmilyTubert. When you know you don’t know anything, you’re careful. At one point I conveyed to Emily’s caddie that we were there to cheer her on, and a hole later Emily acknowledged us.

It’s cliché, but the ball really does go thwack. I strained so hard to watch that tiny sphere against the clear sky. Others murmured encouragingly. We also watched Emily’s two round-mates (if there’s a term for it I don’t know it) tee off. Then we strolled along the tidy concrete path, nodding to and visiting with other El Dorado citizens we knew. There were also other spectators: parents from Texas and Mississippi, avid golfers, and many (sponsor) Murphy Oil employees out to enjoy the day and see some good golf.

We learned the rhythm of each hole. These girls were athletes: long and lanky, with impressive muscle definition in places you don’t expect to see muscle definition. And strong! We marveled at some of the shots. It’s always a pleasure to watch someone good at what they’re doing just bear down and give it all they’ve got.

We could find shade in the woods’ edge, and even if we couldn’t appreciate what the multiple levels of grass, the tricky pond and sand traps encircling the Promised Land greens meant to the game, we knew they were pristine and lovely. It was soothing to just be out there, watch a tiger swallowtail flicker by, hear aaahs of approval and clapping from a hole over a dale or two, feel a lone strand of grass tickle the calf. Even with walking and the days’ warmth, we were being revived.

After a couple of holes, we decided to check another one of our guests, #BrandiRodriguez, a rookie who played for Southern Mississippi University. We consulted the map and conjectured where she’d be heading. The Symetra website “live scoring” feature gave updates on each competitor, which was very helpful. We began our stroll to hole thirteen, again enjoying running into other enthusiasts, watching out for volunteers’ golf carts importantly zipping to their appointed duties, hearing an insect buzz interplay with the breeze high in the trees.

What a great day!

We were ahead of Brandi, but visited with some of the visitors and volunteers. One gentleman explained that his daughter appears on a golf TV show and was raving about the course. We heard from many about how great the tournament was, although the word “brute” came up more than once when golfers were asked to describe the course. We watched another trio through, taking care to pay attention when the balls soared over the knoll, holding our breath as the golfer completed her last practice swing, leaning to urge that putt into the hole. We winced at the shots that landed behind trees, in the rough, rolled back down the hill, or even beyond the green to the other side. With practice runs, the pro-am, and the tournament rounds, golfers had at least five attempts at this course. After so many weeks of golf, they had to be challenged to their limits.

Soon Brandi arrived, and between holes we waved discreetly, conveying her “fan club” was there. Her father had flown in from Orlando, Florida to surprise her, and he also complimented the tournament and the course. We heard often that on the golf substratum of social media, Mystic Creek was a hot item.

Our third houseguest, #GiuliaMolinaro, had completed her game, but I had caught her Friday afternoon. In a little while we returned to the lavish VIP tent, handsomely outfitted in cool white, luscious green, and the best of all…snacks and libations. We visited with many friends, both working hard as volunteers or sponsors, or simply there to enjoy the golf.

But we had to move on, because I wanted to attend the South Arkansas’ Symphony Orchestra’s Gold Medal Concert Series at the El Dorado High School auditorium. We scurried home and I underwent an approximate 25-minute metamorphosis from plaid cotton shorts, sneakers and a ball cap to LBD, artisan glass earrings and black suede kitten-heel pumps.

I barely made it to the auditorium on time, but was pleased to see it near full. Eight grand pianos formed a circle on the stage. Eight concert grand pianos make quite a statement, before any master even caresses a key. I grew more and more ecstatic as I pored over the selections. It was a Piano Greatest Hits: “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” “Country Gardens,” Dvorak’s “Slavonic Dance” (pieces like this were familiar, even if concertgoers didn’t recognize their titles), and the William Tell Overture, for starters.

In spite of all that keyboard magnificence, instead of being a stuffy affair, the concert was deliberately light. The first pianist, who happened to be the most recent winner, and who looked about sixteen to my middle-aged view, hopped aboard and ventured into “Chopsticks,” to the audience’s delight. Each virtuoso made a distinctive entrance, though all still touched on the comic. As they all hit those keys, it was hard to contain full-out exhilaration. The instruments sounded distinct, deep, high, superb. We were watching professionals. They could handle it. Together they created sound and sensation beyond their individual talents and skills. As the French say, Formidable!

I felt sorry for anybody who chose not to attend. I do some of my best thinking listening to artistic performances, and I’m surprised people sitting near me couldn’t sense the ideas zinging around in my brain, so intense were the concepts coursing through the ole gray matter. I could distinguish between the bright tones of the Steinways in front with the more mellow sound of some of the pianos that rounded the back of the arrangement. I determined to see what brands of piano were being played up there, beyond the obvious Steinways (a post-concert perusal revealed Yamaha, Kawai, Nordiska, Young Chang, and Baldwin).

After intermission, more treats: von Suppe’s “Light Cavalry,” which could be recognized as the theme to the Dudley Do-Right Canadian Mountie cartoon of my childhood. Though I’m not listing every presentation, and all were infinitely pleasing and familiar, I had to take care not to swoon during Bach’s heartbreakingly tender and beautiful “Sheep May Safely Graze.” The finale, an entire parade of musical animals from Saint-Saens’ Le Carnaval des Animaux, featured Ogden Nash’s whimsical poetry introducing each animal. Each very brief piece was a treasure in itself. Once again I caught myself recognizing tunes and melodies from popular culture. A roaring ovation confirmed that others appreciated the music as much as I did.

Last week I didn’t make it to the county fair, always a sterling opportunity for provocative people watching, seeing the depth and breadth of humanity. Nor did I make it to a single high school Homecoming activity, which had culminated on Friday, complete with downtown parade and victorious ball game. I was able to attend a wonderful reception for Ndaba Mandela, grandson of South African president, who gave a lecture at SouthArk Community College to a record crowd.  I would have enjoyed all of these, but couldn’t make them all. I often joke, though, that while we can’t do it all, we give it heck trying.

But back to Saturday. From a week of having company in my house, and walking the rolling hills of Mystic Creek Golf Course, to a stunning performance of classical piano music, I couldn’t ask for a better day. All right here in El Dorado.

 

Profanity Doesn’t Mean Crap Anymore

I never found vulgar language to be worth the trouble. Profanity didn’t provide enough payback for me in the currency of the sensations or satisfactions that compel us toward our chosen vices.  Though I remember trying out a string of dirty words in junior high, determining how they felt in my mouth and out of it, and deciding to opt for more gratifying improprieties, I’m by far the minority in this category. In recent years, I have observed profanity exploited to the point that it fails to provide the power it promises. And its usage, while superficially considered creative, more often hinders creativity. If people don’t come up with new swear words, we’ll be left with no strong language at all.

By definition, a curse word ought to be an attention-getter. It has been used historically as a show of bravado, or to offend, shock, hurt, or intimidate. We need a select group of words for just that purpose. Convicted felons, gang members, and down-and-outers, to name a few people who live in a hardened state, a state in which regular language will not suffice, deserve to have their own vocabulary to express their harsh existence.

I don’t generally come in contact with such a world, but during a particularly low time in my adult life, swear words occurred to me regularly. That phase passed quickly, but it did make me realize that there are times when profanity suits our condition. However, it shouldn’t be all the time for most people.

Profanity’s power partly derives from its status as a transgression; I don’t pursue that argument here. But the extent that swear words promote ignorance reaches almost a moral degree to any lover of civilized language. People have become so accustomed to hulking up curse words that they use them in lieu of better, truer words for the situation. For instance, a person once described a trip to me by saying, “We had a hell of a damn time.” I wondered, was that fun or miserable?

One symptom of this dumbing-down of vocabulary is the manner in which profanity has been adapted to many positions of sentence structure. Like all languages, English is complex and beautiful, with complicated rules, suffixes, and stress marks (among other indicators) to denote a word’s purpose in speech. And yet people opt for the same trite words to communicate myriad thoughts, actions, and information throughout their day. Take the sentence, “That lousy girl is always lying.” One may insert the word “shit” in four different positions:

“That shitty girl is always lying.” Or

“That lousy shit is always lying.” Or

“That lousy girl is shitting lying.”  Or finally,

“That lousy girl is always shitting [you].”

Who would have dreamed that “shit” as a verb would earn its own direct object?

The next time someone swears, think about all the creative alternatives the English language offers in place of the overused term.  One woman who didn’t want her sons to use bad language. When she overheard one, she required him to come up with fifty alternate terms for the offensive word. The list was quite innovative (corn-eyed butt snake, though probably not original to the teenager, is hard to forget), and much more expressive than any profane term could be.

Some comedians reveal their lack of imagination by making vulgarity their default language.  Human nature, with relationship woes, personality quirks, and weird family traits, presents adults with abundant opportunities to laugh beyond potty humor.  If the only amusing aspect of a comedian’s act is that he strings together curse words, he’s not really that funny.

Myths and arguments abound about legitimate origins of curse words, most notably “Fornication Under Consent of the King” (and its many variations) and “Ship High In Transit.” As a subset of language, profanity will evolve more readily because of its frequent usage. The introduction of “bitch,” “ass,” and “damn” into mainstream culture through song and show titles detracts from their quality as special words of power. And if the reader argues that “ass” isn’t that vulgar, I’ve proven my point. Younger generation audiences have grown so desensitized through overexposure that they don’t even realize the words are supposed to be taboo.

While today’s normal is hardly a constant, we must develop new words to maintain a specialized vocabulary for when circumstances are at an extreme, out of the ordinary, not a regular day. However language speakers solve this dilemma, it still doesn’t seem either creative or communicative to use the same word both to express how it feels to lose a loved one and to describe a sorry taco. Seriously–I mean no shit.