Mollie Hunt's Blog, page 3

TIME BEING Chapter 10. THE FORGOTTEN

A dying woman travels through time to significant points in her life, but things are not as she remembers them. Accompanied by a handsome young stranger and her childhood cat, the fate of both past and future now lies in her aged hands.

Chapter 10. THE FORGOTTEN

 

It was a dream that had recurred throughout Sylvan’s life for as far back as she could remember. In the dream, she was small, scarcely a toddler—she knew this because everything else was so huge. When she went to open her bedroom door, her tiny hand barely reached the knob.

In the long hallway, people were rushing about in hushed alarm. They crept in and out of closed doors; they spoke in whispers and moans. In the turmoil, no one noticed little Sylvan slip into the room next to her own, the hub of the muted frenzy.

It was a dream, yet there she was. No more plaza, no more colored lights or dark river. What remained was a single lamp on a bedside table. What remained were people gathered around the old man from the courtyard, but now he lay in a feather bed like a corpse. What remained was the elderly doctor bending over him, taking his pulse. What remained was the panic in Sylvan’s heart that something tragic was happening. Someone was dying, someone she knew and loved.

“Thank the Lord he gets to go on his own patch,” a gray old woman whispered to another matron, this one white from her wispy hair to her pale, bare toes. “He nearly didn’t make it home in time.”

“They want to take him to the hospital,” said a man with black hair sleeked back with gel.

“Shhh!” both women reprimanded. “You don’t want him to hear, do you?”

The man hung his head, duly chastised.

A soft crackling emanated from the pillows. The dying one was speaking, words as dry as ancient bones. “No… hospital…”

“Of course not, darling.” The gray woman moved to take his hand. “You’ll stay right here until you get better.”

“No… better…” he sighed, but a ghost of a smile touched his snakeskin lips.

Sylvan pushed closer, edging between the legs of her family until she got to the bedside. Peering over the edge, she saw her grandfather, or what was left of him. Sunken into himself as if already half-gone, she barely recognized the grandpa she loved so well.

Without words yet to form her grief and fear, she cried out, “Ga! Ga!”

“What’s she doing here?” the gray matron hissed. “She shouldn’t see this.”

“I’ll take her,” said her mother who had been lingering on the sidelines watching in horror as her father slipped from life. She was required to be there, and she hoped her presence brought her daddy some comfort, but she, herself, hated it, loathed it, would rather have been at the gates of hell than stuck in that familial room of death.

Mother went to pick up Sylvan, but the baby started to wail. “Ga! Ga! Ga!”

“Come on, darling,” Mother crooned. “I’ll read you a story, your favorite-The Adventures of Tom Kitten, with all the pretty pictures you like so well?”

Sylvan wasn’t having it. She squirmed and writhed in her mother’s arms, breathless with tears. Something was terribly wrong, something not even Tom Kitten could fix.

Before Mother could get away, Grandpa closed his eyes and made a funny sound. The doctor checked again, then turned to the watchers, his face grave.

The pale matriarch leapt onto the bed, keening for her husband of sixty years as if he were her new bridegroom. The gray woman rushed to her side with wails of her own. Cries went up from the others; people hugged one another, not for love but for comfort.

Sylvan allowed herself to be carried into her bedroom where she too sobbed for a very long time.

* * *

“This dream has been haunting me all my life,” Sylvan told Aron as the two gazed at the grieving family from just outside the ring of lamplight.

“Not a dream,” said Aron.

“Is it real? Was it real? Did this really happen?”

“What do you think?”

Sylvan turned away from the death. “All this time, it must have been a memory—I didn’t understand that until now.” She studied her hands, a distraction from the keening that continued behind her. “I think,” she said slowly, “that if I’d remembered my grandfather, my life might have gone a different direction.”

“How so?”

Sylvan looked around for Brie and found her curled up at the base of her dead grandfather’s bed. Gathering the cat into her arms, she sighed.

“I don’t know—I just feel it. He was kind and loving. He taught me to trust and to laugh. But until now, I couldn’t recall any of that. The trauma of his passing must have made me forget. My earliest memories are dark and filled with fear.” She held Brie closer. “I know I was just a baby, but if I’d been able to carry his gentle presence into my formative years, it might have saved me a lot of pain. And the dream that overshadowed everything—I wouldn’t have had to bear that dreadful nightmare for the last eighty years.”

Sylvan went out into the hallway and settled on the top tread of the stairs with Brie on her lap. “I need to write about this. I need to get it down before I forget again.”

“I doubt you’ll forget for a second time…”

Aron’s voice seemed distant, but Sylvan didn’t pay it any mind. Pulling the red diary from her silk bag, she began to read over what she’d written before.

You’ll never guess where I am! That’s because I can’t believe it either…

She turned the page.

A new place, a new time. A new place in time…

Below that entry was the pen sketch of the Avenue.

Even as she watched, the sketch was changing, the street morphing into a small river, wild with bubbling current. Its rocky shores were lined with old-growth firs, and weeping willows dipped their branches into the calmer of the waters. A profusion of wildflowers grew alongside. Sylvan could almost smell their perfume…

 

Chapter 11. PAIN AND FEAR, coming next Saturday.

Only five chapters to go!

For the complete story up until now, look here.

 

10 Ready to Publish

5 chapters to go.

TIME BEING Chapter 9. TIME BEGINNING

A dying woman travels through time to significant points in her life, but things are not as she remembers them. Accompanied by a handsome young stranger and her childhood cat, the fate of both past and future now lies in her aged hands.

Chapter 9. TIME BEGINNING

 

Sylvan and Brie crossed the dark river in the dubious boat. It wasn’t quite as rickety as she had first imagined. There was a solid bottom with no leaks that she could see or feel, and the sides came up high enough to keep the slimy water from sloshing overtop. As for steering, that was up to the whim of the current—though debris was scattered ankle deep across the boards, not a paddle or oar or even a stick could she find among it.

But she was alive. She was free.

The demons still clamored on the shore. She watched as the creatures shook with rage at her getaway. What they might have done had they caught her, she dared not guess.

Brie was back to her inscrutable feline self, seemly unmoved by their brush with chaos. She sat on the makeshift bow like a goddess, the wind sleekening her fur, the spray icing it with a ghost-like sheen.

“What were those things?” Sylvan asked the cat.

“Shadows. Memories. Figments. They came for you. They want to tell you something.”

“What? What do they want to tell me?”

“Nothing good,” the cat harrumphed. “But that’s your life, not mine. You deal with it.”

It hadn’t taken long for Sylvan to accept that Brie could speak, but though the words came out clearly enough, their meaning remained obscure. “Cats!” Sylvan muttered under her breath. What else should she expect?

For a time, they drifted, sometimes spinning lazily in the swirls and eddies, and others, holding on for dear life to maneuver the river’s choppy swells. Eventually they began toward the far shore. Sylvan was relieved to see no sign of demons there.

In fact the place seemed quite the opposite. Lamps of different colors were strung along the dock leading up to a group of small plazas and courts. Tables and chairs were put out under striped awnings where folks gathered in friendly camaraderie. The whole thing reminded Sylvan of the Avenue where she had landed on her arrival. Had they crossed the river at all or just moved farther down the shore?

Sylvan didn’t care. She stripped off the bulky coat the crone had given her as camouflage for their journey through the Patch, and with one last check for lingering monsters, she leapt onto the dock. Not bothering to tie up the old boat, she watched it slip into the mist, then scampered up the ramp, craving the feel of earth beneath her feet, beneath her silly, high heeled party shoes.

Ahead of her was a tiled courtyard no bigger than a room. There, people laughed and danced to quiet music playing over a speaker on a pole. Again Sylvan felt as if she’d regressed in time—no party goers of her own decade would have been so nicely dressed nor would they have been so carefree. In her time, parties had become fearsome events, with armed entourages, guns, and drugs. None of her friends went to parties anymore—or out in public much for that matter. Stepping outside the confines of one’s own environment meant taking one’s life in one’s hands. One never knew if they’d be coming home again or lying dead in a wayside.

Sylvan knew she would be safe among this crowd, however, and she was excited, enlivened by it. Smoothing a crease in her dress, she ran ahead, stepping lightly into the press.

But there again she was met with a shock. The instant her shoe touched the tile, there came a scream. Her pulse spiked with dread as she looked around for the source. It spiked again when she came to find that she, herself, was the screamer.

She screamed again when the dancers parted, revealing a man twitching and moaning on the ground.

“Aron!” She ran to him as she had the time before. But it wasn’t Aron. An old man with a bald head and kindly features lay at her feet. She knew that face. If only her rattled mind would turn from the madness long enough for her to remember.

“Out of my way,” someone commanded. “Step aside.”

The doctor crouched to check the victim’s vitals, the same physician who had passed the dire diagnosis on Aron.

The man bent closer, as he had before.

He sat up again, once more mirroring his former movements.

He gazed at Sylvan with sympathy…

Someone put warm hands on Sylvan’s shoulders. She turned to find Aron, his angel eyes fixed on hers.

“Not you?” she stuttered. “Then who?”

“I’m so very sorry,” was his cryptic reply.

Chapter 9. TIME BEGINNING, coming next Saturday.

Only six chapters left!

For the complete story up until now, look here.

REFLECTION IN A DARK POND

Our world is fraught with chaos, disaster, tragedy, and injustice. It can’t help but  spill into our lives, and it feels somehow irreverent to declare a moment of personal happiness in the midst of such upheaval. 

Still, I would argue that we must. It is our duty to our humanity to accept joy. By our joy, we heal ourselves from the daily wounds; and from our healing, we become able to heal others. If it is in our future to fight, to endure, and even to fall, the blessings of a single moment may be what keeps us from succumbing.

I accept peace, guilt-free and open, arming myself with the vision of a better, safer, righter time for all.

This is my bed of roses.

Even though the world is in turmoil, my family is safe, my drinking water pure and abundant. None of my cats are sick. I have everything I need and more. (Finally, being a hoarder is paying off.) The weather is soft here—no tornadoes or wildfires.

Mine is a good life. In my elder age, I have moved from doing to being. There is wisdom in that, and patience, and hope beyond what can be seen with the eye, heard with the ear, forecast by a worried mind. I can believe in miracles.

I know it all could come crashing down at any moment. I know my quiet will not last. That alone makes it precious. I appreciate today, not waste it on past regrets or future fears. I can say thank you to God for each one moment of peace.

TIME BEING Chapter 8. THE MIDNIGHT

A dying woman travels through time to significant points in her life, but things are not as she remembers them. Accompanied by a handsome young stranger and her childhood cat, the fate of both past and future now lies in her aged hands.

Chapter 8. THE MIDNIGHT

 

Sylvan—the other Sylvan—was nearly a block ahead by the time Sylvan the Original had processed this new information. Sylvan wasn’t a common name, and that someone else, a crone from a time warp dream, had the same name as herself was baffling. Then her tension eased. That was it, of course. In a dream anything could happen.

From out of nowhere, she heard Aron’s voice. “Not a dream. How many times must I tell you?”

Sylvan swung around, searching for the source. Aron was dead. She had seen the body. But hadn’t Brie, the gray cat from her childhood, told her he would be with them again?

“Oh, crap!” Her thoughts were a tornado of non sequiturs. “I give up! I truly do!”

Other-Sylvan was still on the move, Brie trotting beside her. Taking one more gaze about in case she’d overlooked something that might clear up her confusion and finding nothing that even came close, Sylvan rushed to catch up with the only two entities she knew in this place called the Patch.

For a while, she tried to make conversation with her namesake, but the other woman was mum, solely intent upon her path through the convoluted streets and alleyways. She seemed to take her job as leader seriously, moving like a bulldozer through the winding borough. Her services had been bought with a single sequin, and Sylvan kept coming back to the fact that her motives might not be friendly. Yet the only other choice was to strike out alone, and she knew instinctively her environment was more hostile than her guide.

The crone paused every once in a while to look up at the sky or to search the far horizon. The sidewalk under their feet had grown increasingly decrepit, whole slabs missing, revealing the thick clay underneath. The buildings themselves were little more than sheds and shacks, broken wood fences claiming tiny territory. Streetlights had become fewer, leaving entire zones of dark between each feeble glow. The place was desolation incarnate. Since their trek began, they had not encountered a single soul.

“Almost there.” Other-Sylvan flashed a quick smile.

“Where…” Sylvan began, but she sensed it was useless. She would know when they arrived and not a moment sooner.

They moved down a slope, walking faster now. The crone scurried at a near run, and Brie cantered with her.  A twist, a turn, and the pair was out of sight, getting away!

Sylvan hurried. Rounding the corner, she nearly bumped into them. Up ahead was something she couldn’t explain, a red cloud hanging low between the buildings, its center roiling with white light. There was a sound too, like an alien song—a choir of locusts, a symphony of cats. The glory of it was compelling beyond measure.

She felt a pull on her arm.  “…get out of here!” someone hissed in her ear. But she didn’t want to go. The thing was so beautiful, so terrible. She could watch its incessant churning forever.

Then another pain.

“Ouch!” Sylvan looked down to see Brie staring up at her. Four perfect dots of crimson oozed from her ankle. “You bit me. Why…?”

But she knew. Pain was the only thing that would bring her from her trance. Glancing once more at the red vortex, Sylvan felt only fear.

“Run!” the crone called as she fled the alley. This time Sylvan followed without thought.

A few streets down, the trio began to slow.

“What was that thing back there? Some sort of figment? An apparition?”

“Nothing so simple, girl. You don’t want to know.”

“But I do,” Sylvan insisted.

“You’d be better off paying attention to your own needs than following dangerous will-o-the-wisps,” reprimanded the crone.

When they arrived at the banks of a river, the crone stopped and stared pointedly across the water. Brie hopped onto a fencepost, watching the boil of the dark flow with singular intensity. Sylvan took the hint and put the red phenomenon behind her to follow their gaze.

“Is this it? Is this where you were taking me?”

“Yep, here we are, the end of the line. Or the beginning, depending on how you look at things.”

“And how am I supposed to look at things? I see nothing besides a dirty old river and some foul-smelling huts.”

“And a boat.”

Sylvan squinted, Sure enough, tied to the rotten dock bobbed a craft, though she wasn’t sure one could call the hodgepodge pile of logs and boards a boat.

“So? What? You want me to get on that thing? It doesn’t look safe.”

The crone sniffed and shrugged inside her bulky coat. “Makes no matter to me. That’s your way out of the Patch. It’s yours if you want to use it.”

Sylvan huffed. “I don’t think so. Take me somewhere else.”

“There is nowhere else.”

“Then take me back to the Avenue, the place where we started.”

The crone looked left, then right, then square at Sylvan. “Too late now.”

Without warning, Brie let loose with a cry that curdled Sylvan’s blood in her veins, a cat wail that went on and on.

“What?” Sylvan cried on her own.

“The Midnight! Quick! You must go. Now!”

“But… I’m not going on that boat thing.”

“Suit yourself. It’s your funeral.”

Other-Sylvan was backing away. She turned and bolted, disappearing into the dark streets once more.

Sylvan went to follow but stopped when she saw something in the shadows. Undulating shapes, blacker than oil, fouler than anything Sylvan could have imagined. Was this the Midnight other-Sylvan had been so afraid of? What were they, those demons of the night?

The shapes were drifting closer now, resolving into beings, all horns and claws, blood and ripped flesh that hung from the white of bones. Eyes upon eyes, yellow and black, directed at the woman on the dock.

Brie, still wailing, sped for the boat. Sylvan was only a step behind.

 

 

Chapter 9. TIME BEGINNING, coming next Saturday.

For the complete story up to now, look here.

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY: The Circle of Clarence

TIME BEING Chapter 7. IF YOU TRAVEL FAR ENOUGH, DO YOU MEET YOURSELF?

A dying woman travels through time to significant points in her life, but things are not as she remembers them. Accompanied by a handsome young stranger and her childhood cat, the fate of both past and future now lies in her aged hands.

Chapter 7. IF YOU TRAVEL FAR ENOUGH, DO YOU MEET YOURSELF?

 

Sylvan knew she should do something. Wait with the body. Go to the hospital. Talk to the police, the coroner. Those were the things people did when someone suddenly died on the street. But that was in the real world. This world, Sylvan had the strongest feeling, did not run by the same rules.

The serene avenue was quickly turning into a hotbed of chaos—people screaming, keening, embracing one another. Sirens were approaching fast, and once they arrived, she’d be trapped.

Brie did a fast pass around Sylvan’s ankles, then headed down the block. “Come on,” she called over her undulating shoulders.  “You heard the man. We have work to do.”

Sylvan stared at Brie and then at Aron, whose body was already beginning to shimmer with ghost light. “Goodbye,” she whispered, though she knew she was addressing an empty shell. Slipping head down into the crowd, she and Brie were soon away.

Sylvan felt shattered, utterly destroyed by this shocking turn of events. It was scary enough to be lost in some bizarre wrinkle of time, but both lost and alone? She had come to think of Aron as the rock in the shifting sand, the tree rooted solid against the storm. What would she do without her guide? How would she survive?

“There is another, you know,” Brie said flatly.

Of course! The magical cat who could walk through decades. Sylvan had little choice but to trust her inter-species companion now that Aron was no more.

As the gray cat led Sylvan along the quaint street with its cafés and shops, Sylvan began to notice things that had eluded her before. The people she met were garbed in an old-fashioned style of suits and dresses. Those who sat at the outdoor tables sipping coffee or wine were reading books, magazines, and newspapers—there was not a cell phone in sight. It seemed strange yet natural and altogether refreshing.

Suddenly Sylvan felt light as a dandelion seed, a woman enjoying a stroll with her cat. That too seemed natural, as if she had done it a hundred times. Now when she thought of Aron, there was no sadness to it.

“He’s not really dead, is he?”

“He is with us,” Brie answered. “We will be together soon.”

Sylvan smiled. All was right with the world.

But she was mistaken. Their environment had begun to shift, and not for the better. No longer the happy, well-dressed club goers, the bright facades. Without realizing, she had stumbled into another part of town where the predominant buildings were plain and sullen gray. Here and there a wooden door painted red or green or blue broke the monotony, but the individuals who slipped soundlessly among them were hunched and bent, hurrying elsewhere as quickly as they could go. A few souls crouched in the vivid doorways or on the sidewalk. Wrapped in coats and blankets despite the summer heat, they curled in on themselves as if trying to disappear.

“Brie,” Sylvan whispered. “Where are we?”

Cat-like, Brie said nothing. She paused only long enough to let the woman catch up with her, then was on the move again. For the next few blocks, that was how they traveled: Brie running ahead, then stopping; running ahead, then stopping.

“Hey,” grunted a voice from what Sylvan had mistaken for a pile of rags by a lamp post.  From under a hooded coat, a bright eye peeked, first at Brie, then up at Sylvan. “Hey,” she repeated. “You shouldn’t be here. No good will come of it. No good at all.”

Sylvan was taken aback. Though the voice was soft and rich, the threat stung.

“No, little one,” the woman said as if she could read Sylvan’s mistrust. “It’s not me who would harm you and your pretty cat. But others…”

“What others?”

The woman began to uncurl, the hood sliding back to reveal a tangle of dirty brown hair around an equally filthy face.

“Who knows?” she shot in that full, rich voice, so incongruous from this shriveled creature. “Not everyone is nice, you know.”

Sylvan was beginning to get a bad feeling. Strangely she had felt almost nothing when Aron met his demise on the pretty street, yet in that gathering gloom, the desperation was tangible.

Let’s get out of here, she wanted to cry. Let’s go! but something stopped her. She was there for a reason, even if she had no idea what it was.

“Can you help me?” she asked the crone.

“What’s in it for me, girl?” the woman snapped back.

Sylvan thought. She had nothing but the little dress she wore and her bag containing the red diary, the handkerchief, and the wallet. Grabbing out the wallet, she looked inside—maybe there was money. But as she opened the blue silk flaps, she found it empty—no cash, no cards, no driver’s license or identification, no slips of paper or phone numbers, no tokens, none of the things one collects in a wallet.

Then, in the inside flap, the innermost pouch, down at the very bottom,  something sparkled. Drawing it out, she found it to be a single sequin, the kind with facets and a hole in the middle for sewing onto a dress or blouse. She held it up to the streetlight, watching it flash blue.

A gnarled hand came up and snatched the sparkly. “That will do.”

For a moment, Sylvan felt a great loss, as if she were giving up something precious. Maybe it was because she had so little, or maybe the old sequin caused her to recall her past, but she couldn’t bear the thought of parting with it.

She reached out a tentative hand, but the crone slapped it away. “Do you want my help or not?”

The hand dropped to her side. “Yes, I guess I do. “

“Then we should get on with it, shouldn’t we?”

The woman tucked the prize into her bosom, then rose and shed her bulky coat, revealing a second coat of nearly the same drab color and voluminous size. She handed the first one to Sylvan. “Here. Put this on.”

Sylvan took the garment and brought it to her nose. She expected it to smell of the streets, of unwashed bodies, spoiled food, and worse, but all she could detect was a subtly sweet scent, like a field of wild summer daisies.

“Go ahead, it won’t bite.”

Sylvan slipped the coat over her evening dress and buttoned the front. For a moment the insulated heat in the already sultry atmosphere made her lightheaded, but the sensation soon cleared.

“Better,” the woman huffed. “Ready?”

“For what?”

“I’ll take you through the Patch. You’ll be safe on the other side.”

“The Patch?”

The woman made a sweeping gesture. “The Patch. You probably came from the Avenue. People make that mistake every once in a while.” She shook her mop of tangled curls. “Good thing I found you. Not all are so lucky.”

Sylvan was skeptical about who had found whom but didn’t think it worth mentioning.

The woman pulled herself up with the aid of the lamp post and began to shuffle away. Turning back, she called, “Come along. No time to waste. You don’t want to be caught in the Patch when the Midnight comes.”

Sylvan hesitated. Again she thought of Aron. There was something about his death scene that she was missing, but her brain wouldn’t track it. Did she really trust this person whose services she had bought with a single sequin? How could she be sure the crone wouldn’t lead her into more trouble? And what the hell was the Midnight?

Glancing behind her, she could no longer see any sign of the bright avenue. Up ahead Brie pranced after the receding figure. Sylvan sighed. If it’s good enough for the cat, I guess it’s good enough for me.

“Hey,” Sylvan called out. “What’s your name?”

The woman stopped, then turned, a sly smile on her murky face.

“My name is Sylvan.”

 

 

Chapter 8. THE MIDNIGHT, coming next Saturday.

For previous chapters, look here.

TIME BEING Chapter 6. A NEW PLACE IN TIME

A dying woman travels through time to significant points in her life, but things are not as she remembers them. Accompanied by a handsome young stranger and her childhood cat, the fate of both past and future now lies in her aged hands.

Chapter 6. A NEW PLACE IN TIME

 

The sun blazed in Sylvan’s eyes as she and Aron slipped out of the apartment door. Though she was virtually blind, she could feel its warmth infusing the air, bringing an instant sheen of sweat to her face.

An arm came around her shoulder, gently guiding her into the shade of a tall Whitespire birch. Sylvan blinked furiously. When her vision began to clear, she wasn’t surprised to see Aron staring down at her. Worry masked his face with color.

“What’s wrong?” she asked as the possibilities presented themselves. The fact they were traveling through space and time was only the beginning.

“Everything. Nothing.” His look cleared. “We’re here, aren’t we?”

“Where’s here?”

Aron gave a sweeping gesture.

That makes as much sense as anything, Sylvan thought to herself as she surveyed her new surroundings, a busy avenue lined with shops, cafés, and stores.  Though the sidewalk under her feet was cracked and old, it seemed to carry more of a loving, relaxed feel than the vacuousness of disrepair. The storefronts, too, were friendly, with hand-painted signs and arty decorations, something one would not see in the third decade of the twenty-first century, at least not in Portland.

A burst of laughter came from the balcony of a restaurant where a crowd was sharing drinks. For a moment, Sylvan felt as if she knew them, was compelled to join them in their reverie. With her off the shoulder cocktail dress and heeled patent leather sandals, she would fit right in. Where had she come by such clothes, she suddenly wondered. They were nothing she had ever owned, of that she was certain.

From her arm hung a satin evening bag, just big enough to hold the red diary. She peeked inside to be sure, but there it was, nestled between a floral handkerchief and a flat Japanese wallet. Then she remembered something else.

Frantically she stared up and down the lane. “Where’s Brie? Have you seen her? Did she come with us?”

Aron laughed. “Look up.”

Sylvan raised her gaze to the thick foliage of the birch tree. Nestled in its filagree of leaves was the gray cat, her amber eyes as big as gold dollars.

Sylvan gave a sigh of relief. There was something about the cat’s presence that made these time shifts bearable.

“Better?” asked Aron.

“Much. Now all we have to do is figure out what’s next.”

Sylvan moved to a green slat bench and sat down, beckoning the cat to join her. With a grand leap, Brie plummeted from her bower, landing with the lightness of a mirage on Sylvan’s lap. Sylvan stroked the long back, only half-musing on how the cat from her childhood had managed to join her now that she was so obviously in her twenties.

“Ha, you silly girl. I’m just glad you’re here.” She pulled the cat to her for a furry hug, then drew out her diary and began to write.

A shadow crossed Sylvan’s page, and she looked up in alarm. When had the sun sunk so low on the horizon? Hadn’t it been full above them when they arrived in the scene? Now it was dipping behind the buildings, leaving only long, stark shadows and twilight. Streetlights began to blink on, and colored fairy lights twinkled in the trees. A lone star, a planet, shone in the velvet sky. Retained heat simmered up from the sidewalk, and the air smelled of dust.

Sylvan sat, pen poised over paper. She’d managed one sentence, more of a heading really: “A new place, a new time. A new place in time,” then no more words came.  It was as if her mind was washed clean, so she made a little sketch of the café front instead. The umbrella tables, the night people—surely that should push her inspiration—she was a writer after all.

It didn’t. Her thoughts had become fragmented and not all there. Though her intention had been to catalog the changing events—she’d succeeded quite well with the birth story—this was different. She didn’t know where she was or even when, and she especially didn’t know why she was there. Without a frame of reference, where could she even begin?

A cry pulled her from her contemplation. At first, she couldn’t place the source, then she saw him collapsed on the sidewalk twitching and moaning.

“Aron!” She tossed her book aside and ran to the young man, pushing through the onlookers who were already beginning to gather. “Aron, what’s wrong?”

His dark eyes were wild, and his face frozen into a grimace. Blood flowed freely from his head, from the injury he’d suffered when she first discovered him in the hallway of her childhood home.

“What happened? Tell me.”

His eyes fixed on hers, then fluttered shut. “The old wound,” he whispered. “It will not heal…”

“Why? Why won’t it heal?”

“It will not heal until… Until the work is done.”

“Out of my way,” came a voice as someone pushed through the crowd. “Step aside. I’m a doctor.

The elderly man crouched down by Aron and checked his pulse, then touched the vein in his neck. He bent closer, then sat up again.

He fixed Sylvan with sympathetic eyes. “I’m sorry, miss, this man is dead.”

 

 

Chapter 7. IF YOU TRAVEL FAR ENOUGH, DO YOU MEET YOURSELF? coming next Saturday.

For previous chapters, look here.

IT’S THE THIRD OF JUNE…

It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day. I was out choppin’ cotton and my brother was balin’ hay…

Bobbie Gentry 1969

Today is June third.

Every year, I post about the enigmatic ballad sung by Bobbie Gentry back in the sixties. It’s been more than 50 years since she produced the haunting song that had a whole generation wondering: What did Billy Joe Macallister really throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge? Half a century later, we still don’t know.

Though speculation ran from flowers to a baby, no one ever got Gentry to commit. In 1976, a film was made based on the song, it’s interpretation including a homosexual theme. Herman Raucher, the screenplay’s writer, asked  Bobbie Gentry about the song:

“I said, ‘You don’t know why he jumped off the bridge?’ She said, ‘I have no idea.’”

What does it mean?

Even more intriguing is the meaning of the song itself. A handwritten page of Gentry’s original lyrics had been found. It began with a verse she never recorded and with the first line crossed out.

Sally Jane Ellison’s been missing since the first week in June. People don’t see Sally Jane in town any more. There’s a lot o’ speculatin’, she’s not actin’ like she did before. Some say she knows more than she’s willin’ to tell. But she stays quiet and a few think it’s just as well. No one really knows what went on up on Choctaw Ridge the day that Billy Jo McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge. —University of Mississippi’s Archives and Special Collections

In the published lyrics, Sally Jane became the unnamed female narrator who was only present with Billy Joe throwing something off the bridge. What it means has more to do with the nature of the ballad than the story.

The story itself has many dramatic elements— Billy Joe’s apparent suicide and the bridge-tossing mystery— that its true meaning was lost on the youth of the mid-sixties, as it has been lost ever since.

It doesn’t matter what they threw off the bridge. More ominous than Billy Joe’s suicide, more menacing than the couple throwing something off the bridge, more heartbreaking than the lonely narrator picking flowers up on Choctaw Ridge is the blatant apathy of the family to the tragedies going on around them. The true theme of the song is indifference.

“The song is a first-person narrative that reveals a Southern Gothic tale in its verses by including the dialog of the narrator’s family at dinnertime on the day that “Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.” Throughout the song, the suicide and other tragedies are contrasted against the banality of everyday routine and polite conversation.” —Wikipedia  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_to_Billie_Joe

Was the song based on a true story?

It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day
I was out choppin’ cotton, and my brother was balin’ hay
And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat
And mama hollered out the back door, y’all, remember to wipe your feet
And then she said, I got some news this mornin’ from Choctaw Ridge
Today, Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie BridgeAnd papa said to mama, as he passed around the blackeyed peas
Well, Billy Joe never had a lick of sense; pass the biscuits, please
There’s five more acres in the lower forty I’ve got to plow
And mama said it was shame about Billy Joe, anyhow
Seems like nothin’ ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge
And now Billy Joe MacAllister’s jumped off the Tallahatchie BridgeAnd brother said he recollected when he, and Tom, and Billie Joe
Put a frog down my back at the Carroll County picture show
And wasn’t I talkin’ to him after church last Sunday night?
I’ll have another piece-a apple pie; you know, it don’t seem right
I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on Choctaw Ridge
And now ya tell me Billie Joe’s jumped off the Tallahatchie BridgeAnd mama said to me, child, what’s happened to your appetite?
I’ve been cookin’ all morning, and you haven’t touched a single bite
That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today
Said he’d be pleased to have dinner on Sunday, oh, by the way
He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge
And she and Billy Joe was throwing somethin’ off the Tallahatchie BridgeA year has come and gone since we heard the news ’bout Billy Joe
And brother married Becky Thompson; they bought a store in Tupelo
There was a virus going ’round; papa caught it, and he died last spring
And now mama doesn’t seem to want to do much of anything
And me, I spend a lot of time pickin’ flowers up on Choctaw Ridge
And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Bobbie Gentry

Ode to Billie Joe lyrics © Spirit Music Group

In this photograph from the November 10, 1967 issue of Life magazine, Bobbie Gentry strolls across the Tallahatchie Bridge in Money, Mississippi. The bridge collapsed in June 1972.

Did you know?

Gentry initially didn’t want to sing “Ode.” She had a demo of “Ode to Billie Joe” sent to Capitol Records in early 1967 to sell the song, not to sing it. She only sang on the demo because it was cheaper than hiring someone else, and had Lou Rawls in mind to record it. When Capitol asked Gentry to do both, she agreed – but only so long as performing didn’t get in the way of writing and composing.

Read more at: The Oxford Eagle: The secret life of Bobbie Gentry, pioneering artist behind ‘Ode to Billie Joe’

TYLER TURNS TWENTY-TWO!

He is the love of my life! He is  the joy of my being! He is the solace for my anxiety! He’s Tyler!

Eight years ago, we adopted the dark-striped tabby from the Oregon Humane Society. It listed him as an eighteen-year-old stray who had been on his own a long time. He had, however been neutered and ear-tipped at some point in his life. Someone must have thought he was feral, but this loving, friendly cat is far from it.

He was shy at first, and in bad shape. He’d had all his rotten teeth removed at OHS, and that was when the doctors came up with the educated guess of age 18. When we took him to our own vet, however, she couldn’t believe he was that old and placed him closer to the fourteen-mark. That’s what we’ve been going by ever since, though we’ll never know for sure.

Tyler at the vet.

It took Tyler some time to get used to constant human interaction, but he took to the comforts of home from the start. He could finally rest without keeping one eye open for danger. He was safe and warm and loved, and he knew it.

Tyler was interested in everything! Everything except going outside. I guess he’d had enough of that when he was stray.

Bird TV

The Hartz catnip seahorse

Boxes.

We lavished him with toys and treats.

He was my muse.

He tolerated the other cats, even Jaimz who loved him madly.

Tyler in the catio with Blaze and Ginchan.

Tyler and his biggest fan Jaimz.

Last week Tyler had his bi-annual wellness visit, and his labs were perfect. He has a bit of arthritis/muscle wasting in his hind end, but it doesn’t keep him from running to top of the cat tree and dashing all over the house. His chronic conjunctivitis eye condition has improved greatly from when he came to us and is now barely noticeable. His favorite thing to do is to sit beside us on the couch while we watch TV. He’ll even meow for us to come sit with him when we walk through the room.

So handsome!

So happy!

So loved!

TIME BEING Chapter 5. SORT OF A NIGHTMARE

A dying woman travels through time to significant points in her life, but things are not as she remembers them. Accompanied by a handsome young stranger and her childhood cat, the fate of both past and future now lies in her aged hands.

Chapter 5. SORT OF A NIGHTMARE

Sylvan had been in those rooms before. Many times. She knew them well, the vast, cluttered chambers with their vibrantly painted walls and high windows, arranged one after the other like a string of boxy beads.

Each room was separated by short flights of steps, climbing ever upward. Each was totally unlike any other. A room furnished in pink chintz with a ceiling that sloped like an attic; an artist’s den, large as a warehouse and glowing with light and color. Many were bedrooms or bed-sitting rooms, and though they appeared lived-in, no human was ever present. At least not in Sylvan’s dreams, for that’s what they were—scenes from a recurring dream.

The place had haunted Sylvan’s sleep for as far back as she could remember. Dubbing it the long apartment, she’d become familiar with the maze-like structure and reveled in its surprising wonders. Nothing bad ever happened in the long apartment. It was a good place, a place that answered her needs.

But something was different this time—Sylvan felt it the moment she opened her eyes. There was none of that misty, morphing sensation that accompanied her nocturnal visits. Staring up at the ceiling, she could now pick out every detail, every crack and chip in the faded yellow paint. And through the window, behind the lace curtain, was a scene she had never beheld before—the outside.

Sylvan tore her eyes from the square of landscape to take in the room again—clothes strewn across comfortably worn furniture, a rack of vinyl records, a ceramic jug, a poster of a folksinger, a classical guitar. On the bedside table lay the red diary. She raised a hand to knock on the tabletop—rap rap rap—solid wood.

Suddenly she caught sight of the hand itself. No longer that of a child, but not her true, old-woman self either. Pearly fingernails, pretty, smooth skin. No wrinkles or blemishes—the hands of a young woman.

Sylvan was out of bed in a heartbeat, searching for a mirror. She found one—an antique full-length type in the far corner. Ripping away a shawl that was draped over the frame, she stared.

She had no idea what she’d expected, but it wasn’t what greeted her eye. Everything was there—the room, the clutter, the records, the jug, poster, and guitar, the cracked ceiling and the shard of sunlight streaming in through the window. Everything but Sylvan herself. Of the woman, there was not a single glimmer.

This must be a dream after all, she thought with some disappointment.

“Not a dream,” came a voice from directly behind her, though the mirror showed no sign of the speaker either.

“Aron!”

Sylvan rushed to the man and threw her arms around his neck. Now that she was no longer a little girl, she was tall enough to hug him properly. She could feel the strength in his muscles, the warmth of his embrace. Something stirred inside the young woman, a sensation she’d not felt in a very long time.

Quickly she pulled away, her eyes seeking the floor. The carpet was red with a complex design. She preferred to lose her gaze in that crazy pattern rather than look up into Aron’s strange and captivating eyes.

“Purrumph,” said Brie as she sauntered down from the next room. “Don’t forget about me.”

Sylvan’s heart softened. “I could never forget you,” she whispered, kneeling to caress the gray cat. It no longer seemed strange that the cat could talk. Would anything seem truly strange, she wondered to herself, ever again?

“We have to go,” Aron charged. “Bring her with us.”

Sylvan didn’t move—she’d heard this line before. Last time, Aron led her on a curious journey to her birth—what did he have in mind now?

“Come on, Sylvan.”

The man was visibly anxious—whatever drove his need to run was acute. But was it real? Was any of it real? Sylvan suspected not.

She scooped Brie into her arms but stood her ground. “And what if I don’t?”

Aron’s angelic face fell. “You have to come. I mean, why wouldn’t you?”

“Why would I?” she countered stubbornly.

“Because that’s where the future lies,” he began in all seriousness. “Where the wild things are, where the sidewalk ends, where the heart is, where the crawdads sing…”

Sylvan’s brow scrunched in confusion as Aron continued the non sequiturs.

“…where the ocean meets the shore, where the streets have no name, where the heather grows…”

“Stop! Okay I get it. And are any of those things relevant to this place you’re taking me?”

Aron considered. “I don’t think so.” He sighed, his bravado deflating. “Just trust me and come along. It’s meant to be.”

“So you’re some sort of dream guide?”

He shot her a disappointed look. “When will you get it through your head, this is not a dream?”

Sylvan gave a passive shrug. “Prove it.”

“All right, if that will get you moving.”

Grabbing her hand, he pulled her to the door. In all her dream visits to the long apartment, Sylvan had never been through the door before, hadn’t even registered that there was one. The only passage was into the next room, and the one after that, and the one after that, with nothing outside the windows save for the bedazzling white of light.

“Wait!” she commanded.

Running back, she plucked her red diary from the bedside table, then with a mix of resignation and excitement, she followed Aron into the unknown.

 

Chapter 6. A NEW PLACE IN TIME  coming next Saturday.

For previous chapters, look here.