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Something to make your heart soar and regain your spirit of compassion
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Monthly Archives: July 2017
If it crawls up your drawers
“So’s what she found a scarf? Who wouldn’t pick it up if it weren’t attached to a person?” Reba’s hands might have been in the kitchen when Meta came home, but her ears were everywhere in the house. She knew what had happened.
“It belongs to that missing Temperance girl, Rebie.”
“And ‘member that red hat I’s left at Market Square? Belongs to somebody else now. That Sadie might have a stubborn streak miles long, but she wouldn’t hurt a Bumble bee ‘less it crawled up her drawers.”
Had it? Had the Temperance women hovered over her, gotten too close? Invaded her safety? Sadie had become a barbed-wire fence that kept others out or, perhaps herself in.
What was Sadie keeping from me?
Excerpt from The Last Bordello
daily word prompt: Bumble
Missing Moms
Maybe Frank doesn’t like the quiet since I’ve stopped talking because he says, “Emma June, I’m sorry about your mom being gone.”
My eyes water. I grab a stick, snap it in two.
“I’m sorry you don’t get on with your real mom,” I mutter.
“Maybe I’d like her if she’d raised me. She didn’t. She gave that job to her sister. I only live with her now because Aunt Sissy died. I don’t have any other kinfolk.”
Like me. I only have Daddy now. “What does your mom do in Holly Gap?”
“Nothing really. Takes in ironing. Doesn’t leave the house unless she makes enough to buy groceries. Sulks mostly.”
Like Daddy. But when I’m around, he tries to Bury his sadness.
“She never drives anywhere, takes you places?” I ask.
Frank shakes his head and gives me a devilish eye. “Sometimes I get to drive her old jalopy, though. When Aunt Sissy died, Ma got the junk heap and me.”
Now I feel bad about giving him that dog food sandwich.
Excerpt from The Moonshine Thicket, 1928
daily post prompt: Bury
Shootin’ Sunshine
Cono Dennis, my father
Here I go again, on the way back to Sweetwater. Not to get a donkey but to shoot Sunshine, My Only Sunshine.
Driving down the highway, Aunt Nolie doesn’t talk much, at least not with her mouth. She clutches that steering wheel like she’s about to squeeze all the Texas sand and Grit out of it and that’s a whole conversation in itself.
We finally get to Sweetwater and park in front of the Lucky Star Bar.
“Cono, ye wait right here.”
“OK,” I say, since I’ve already met the woman, who’s about to be shot anyway.
I sit in the car, again. I watch the people come and go, again, except this time, the ones that had been going were coming and the ones that had been coming were now going. I wait for the sound of a gunshot, the sound I’ve become familiar with when I hunt with my dad. I wait alright ‘cause there’s nothing else for me to do.
Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper
daily word prompt: Grit
A frolic food?
“This is good. What the hell is it? Huh? An aphrodisiac, you say?”
That’s what I said the first time I ate one off a cheese plate.
The Caper berry is a Mediterranean fruit that grows on a thorny plant. They are actually the buds that are picked before they flower into white blossoms. In Biblical times, the caper berry was supposed to have aphrodisiac properties. Hmm… Perhaps, when ingested, they help us frolic about and have a mischievous caper of our own.
Suggestion: eat sparingly 🙂 🙂
daily word prompt: Caper
The Brute at the Butcher Shop
Savage. An appropriate name for a butcher.
The door ajar, the stench of raw meat penetrated my nose, but the familiar voice inside stopped me from running past. “Hold on, Sadie.”
“What?” Sadie bent down, retying her bootlaces.
I peeked inside the butcher shop. Miss Reba stared up at the burly man towering over her. “No sir, you must’a misunderstood I’s just—”
“Don’t tell me I misunderstood.” He drew his arm across his chest then slapped Miss Reba across the face with the back of his hand. She tumbled sideways, her head smacking the edge of a table before she hit the floor.
“Colored’s always have to wait,” he added.
My blood curdled as I rushed to her side. “Miss Reba!”
“What have you done?” Sadie yelled behind me.
I knelt beside Miss Reba. “Ach Gott. Are you all right?”
She moaned and lifted a limp hand to the side of her head where blood dripped onto the floor.
“She needs to wait her turn, ain’t that right butcher?” the brute said.
Mr. Savage stood there, his mouth open. The patrons gasped and whispered. No one came forth. What was wrong with these people?
Sadie glared at the man and reached inside her small black purse. She unfolded a man’s shaving knife, stood and approached him. “If I pricked you with this, you’d squeal like a stuck pig.”
My mind blurred. What does it take to kill someone? To sacrifice one’s self for a cause?
The bearded man pointed a finger at Sadie. “Whoa, now girlie …”
“And then, our butcher will take you for a hog,” she said. “After hanging you on a meat hook, he’ll slit you from neck to belly until you bleed out. Isn’t that right, Mr. Savage?”
Mr. Savage blinked a few times and cleared his throat. “Sadie, you best look after Miss Reba there.”
The abuser’s nostrils flared. He pointed a finger inches from Sadie’s face. “You need to shut that vulgar trap ‘a yours, Missy. Surely you got a sheriff in town who can lock you up for pulling a weapon on me.”
“ Unmensch! Her weapon?” My words hurled forth, surprising me. “Your hand was a weapon! You hurt Miss Reba.”
Sadie glanced side to side. “We have the best county sheriff in the state. Looks like he’s not here right now. So, the next time any of us return to purchase pork, including this fine lady on the floor bleeding the same color red as everyone else, you might be the pig we get to eat.”
The man clenched both hands into fists. “Why you …”
Excerpt from The Last Bordello
Missing the country-side
Electric streetcar rails made circular patterns on the paved intersections of busy streets while the trolley’s bells deafened my rural ears. Businesses of every kind lined up one after another, many sharing common walls. Women wore feathers and stuffed birds attached to their hats and paraded them down the street like migrating nests. Barouche carriages transported men and women in their finery. At least the clamor and Jangle of wagons pulled by tried horses reminded me of home.
I set my luggage down and rubbed my tired arms.
Excerpt from The Last Bordello, 1901
Placing thoughts
10639761 – many-coloured feather
Finally in the safety of my own room, where the roving tourists of mourners are not allowed to venture, I can place the nib of my Quill into the waiting black ink upon my desk, the desk Papa made for me then carved his initials on the bottom left corner as an artist signs a canvas. If I do not write down these things I will surely go mad. There is much to say.
Although Papa rarely wrote words upon a page, he has always encouraged me to do so. He says I have a talent for such things, for placing thoughts into words and packaging them safely on the empty page as if the page were a box for keepsakes.
Excerpt from a long ago draft.
Ain’t no room for belly achin’
Cono’s Ma and Pa
The windows are open and the summer breeze floats across my bed like a puff of air that puckers and ends up whistling out a happy tune. Anything bad that might have happened during the day has been blown on through. I hear the sound of the train chugging by ever so often. The kaPluck, kaplunk of the oil wells pump like they’re helping to push the blood through my veins. That’s when I start to get sleepy.
And when I hear that nicker that Polo makes? I know I’m almost out like Lottie’s eye. Tomorrow, I’ll ride him like a wild Indian.
The morning shows up and knocks on my window like a redbird pecking at his own reflection and I know that Pa has already put in a half of days of work. Pa’s a real good man and a real good farmer. Gallasses help to hold up his pants, since he got ruptured on a bucking horse early on. Pa said, “That horse swallered his head n’all. I must’a had the reins too tight.” Pa keeps going like nothing ever happened. He doesn’t believe in “bellyaching.” He says, “Thar ain’t no room fer it.” The sound of no bellyaching is music to my ears. That’s one thing I’m glad there ain’t no room for.
Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper
Pluck- daily word prompt
Don’t lick your dog
In the last fourteen hours, I’ve seen more scenery than a turkey vulture. I tell Daddy I can’t wait to go. For the most part, it’s true. I won’t have to think about the vulture’s nest – a tangled up shack were Frank lives.
I put on a nicer dress, the blue one with Sailor pockets, brush through my hair tangles, and think about chopping it off. I stare at the scissors when the familiar voice calls out.
“Emmy! Emmy!”
I twist my hair into a braid.
“She’s in the house, Scoot Bug,” Daddy yells from behind the house.
“Emmy! Emmy!” he yells again.
I find Scooter outside. He’s hugging Choppers and licking his fur.
“Scoot! Your mama doesn’t like for you to lick dogs.”
He gives me a devilish grin and spits mutt hair from his mouth.
If he asks me to whirly-bird, this time I’ll say no. I’ll show him the still-in-the-carton Tinker Toys instead.
“Ba-boom-ba-boom. Ba-boom-ba-boom. A hullabaloo!”
He’s doing it again. His few words tell me he’s been with Frank.
“I thought you couldn’t leave without your parents watching over you.”
“I am watched over.”
“Yeah? Where?”
Scoot points toward his house, but I know his parents can’t stand on their front porch and keep an eye on him a good hundred yards away.
Halfway between Scoot’s house and mine, I see him waving under the clump of live oak trees. My arm’s too heavy to wave back.
Excerpt from The Moonshine Thicket
Sail – Daily word prompt
Carolyn Dennis-Willingham 