Category Archives: Daily Prompt

Time to separate the sheep from the goats

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Met by only the dark, I’m finally off the train. I walk the fifteen minutes to the house, all the while grateful for the time to stretch my legs. I’m eager to see Mother, Sis and Pooch, but my hands sweat when I think about seeing Dad again. It’s not because he can beat me anymore, I know he can’t. It’s because I’ve promised myself to show him a thing or two from a man’s perspective, this man’s perspective. I want him to know he’s done us wrong over the years and I want him to be accountable for it. It’s time to separate the sheep from the goats.

The house looks the same. I stare at the window, the one I’d escaped from. I see the light shining in the kitchen window. I smooth out the wrinkles in my Uniform as best I can. I take a deep breath and walk into the house.

Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper

Daily Word Prompt: Uniform

Sitting in the back of the bus

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I’m sitting with Isaac in the back of the bus as we pass Pease Park, one of my favorites. Daddy said Governor Elisha Pease owned the land for a slave plantation. But Pease believed in the Union’s cause so I must imagine that he treated them with kindness. Pease also owned the area the area now known as Clarksville. Freedman Charles Clark Griffin bought two acres of that land for one-hundred dollars, the land where Elias Ford has his home.

But Shoal Creek, the grass and the oak trees, aren’t what catch my eye. I’d recognize that red Schwinn anywhere. He’s staring at the bus.

“Duck down, Isaac.”

Isaac doesn’t ask why until he scrunches down in the seat, his eyes wide.

“It’s asshole. He must have followed us.”

Ours is the next stop. We don’t get off. Fifteen minutes later, we find ourselves back downtown. The bus’ engine shuts off. I have to pee in a bad way.

The driver stands up, his hands on his hips. “This ain’t no tour bus,” he yells to us.

“Sorry,” I yell back. “I must have fallen asleep. I’ll stay awake this time, I promise.”

“What about you, boy?”

“Must’a dozed off too. I’m headed for Clarksville.”

When more people climb the steps to board, Dick-Driver restarts the engine.

“I think we lost him,” I say. “He won’t find me now.”

“We’re stopping at Clarksville first,” the driver fumes out.

Isaac is the only Negro on the bus.

We pull to a stop. The brakes screech.. “Out,” Dick-Driver says.

When I follow Isaac out the door, the driver shouts at me. “Where you think you’re going?”

Fifteen passengers turn their heads and glare at me.

“Home,” I say.

“Home,” Isaac says as he waits for me to get off the bus.

“What a jerk,” I mumble.

“Shoot, that was nothing. But I don’t mind saying, it feels good to be in Clarksville again. No offense or anything. I enjoyed the movie.”

“None taken. Can I use your outhouse?”

Isaac nods. “Uncle Elias keeps it real clean.”

After the bladder relief, I meet Isaac on the front porch. “I was wondering. Mind if I look at your books. I think that’s another thing we have in common. You know, movies, books, dislike for mannequins.”

“What time is it?”

“Not time for your uncle to be home if that’s what you’re asking. Besides, I won’t stay long. I have to get back to Olive’s.”

Isaac ushers me inside. Of course, I see no TV or radio.

“A hurry to get back to the mannequins?” he says.

“Yep. Can you imagine if Gladys and Fritz only have Olvie to talk to?”

Isaac snickers and points to the books. The one open next to his sleeping pallet has no writing on the outside. “Your journal?”

“Private, if you don’t mind. Now it’s my turn.” Isaac heads out the front door.

The bright green cover is the first of his books to grab my attention. The Negro Motorist Green-Book was about how to avoid problems when travelling. I dig further—The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes, Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Harriet, the Moses of Her People by Sarah Bradford.

The last book is called Black Like Me written by John Howard Griffin. Something about this book jars a Distant memory. Is it on our bookshelf at home? I open the front cover and see that it’s a library book. I pull the yellow card from its pocket. Checked out on July 31 by Sylvia Peterson. The day she disappeared.

Excerpt from my WIP, working title Olvie and Chicken Coop, set in 1963.

 

Daily word prompt: Distant

Bed Robbers

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Last night, alone in Sadie’s bedroom, I had slipped a chair beneath the doorknob to prevent intruders from stumbling in while I slept. Even so, I tossed and turned worrying about Sadie meeting Clayton.

Although too early for breakfast, I hurried to dress and entered the kitchen to hear the soothing melody of Miss Reba humming Coming for to Carry Me Home while stirring diced potatoes in the fry pan.

“Mornin’, honeypot. You’s up early.”

Like always, the woman had eyes in the back of her head. About to tell her I couldn’t sleep, Miss Fannie sauntered out of her bedroom and into the kitchen wearing her familiar lavender peignoir. “Had a doozy, last night.”

“’Nuther bed robber?” Miss Reba said without turning.

“Bed robber?” I asked.

Miss Fannie filled her coffee cup and joined me at the table. “A nightmare, Meta, and yes, it was a doozy. I dreamed me and Sadie were both stuck in the shining closet. Neither of us could breathe, but it was Sadie who turned blue. Her hands were bound together, but she lifted them to her throat trying to speak. I tried to reach for her, help her, but my arms were frozen to my sides.”

Miss Reba chopped off a chunk of butter with a loud thud with her knife. “A sighting? Teeth chatter?”

Miss Fannie shooed an Imaginary fly from her face.

Excerpt from The Last Bordello

Daily word Prompt: Imaginary

Easy money

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Cono Dennis, my dad

Shortly after arriving in San Antone, I went to town and bought some switchblades, knucks, and other crap that I thought I could sell for a profit to those little green-behind-the-ear boys who were still thinking about sucking on their mothers’ tits. I went into our classroom and when the instructor wasn’t around, I sold everything I’d bought and for a good profit too. I even told those boys that if they needed help knowing how to use those weapons just to let me know and I’d teach them, for a little fee of course.

About a day later, some fella came in and said, “Dennis, the lieutenant wants to see you.” I walk in and salute, and he says, “Soldier, what were you doing selling those knives and and knuckles?”

I had to think real quick-like so I said, “Sir, I didn’t want ’em anymore, didn’t need ’em anymore. I just wanted to get rid of them.”

He sized me up better than I could’ve done myself, smiled, and said, “I don’t want to ever see you in here again.”

“No sir,” I said, and I haven’t seen him since. But it didn’t stop me from still wanting to do something extra on the other side of the army air force paycheck. Before long, another opportunity invited itself over. I was made responsible for mashing the Brass cans that bombardier and pilot wings come in I looked in them before I started mashing them, and I’ll be damned if there still weren’t wings stuck to the bottom of some of those cans.

I looked in every one of those cans with the eye of a person who had starved before, who had tasted hunger, but had learned to keep it as a memory pinched between cheek and gum like chewing tobacco. I plucked those pins out and shined them up real good with a blitz cloth until they looked brand new. I took them to class and, again, when the instructor wasn’t around I asked, “Who wants to be a bombardier? A pilot?”

I remember Dad telling me a long time ago that if a girl sees something shiny, she’d just have to go over and touch it. So I knew it really didn’t matter if they wanted to be a pilot or bombardier. What mattered to those boys was going out for a little R & R, because if girls got sight of those shiny pins those boys would be happy for a whole night and maybe more. Now that I think on it, I should have sold them for more than a dollar a piece.

I also knew that a unit of boys were about to be shipped over to Japan. I bought all the fake diamond rings I could find at the five-and-dime store, went back to the barracks and told those boys the same thing. Today, thanks to me, I bet there’s a lot of gals over in the Pacific wearing fake rings on their fingers.

No more onion soup for this man. The money in my pocket is finally mine. Pulling out my wallet I count twenty dollars and change. Nobody’s stealing this money from me.

Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper

Daily Word Prompt: Brassy

That rare gift of laughter

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One Thanksgiving when we lived in the Tourist Court, we had enough food for Mother to make a real meal, but it was Pooch who landed on Plymouth Rock. We didn’t have money to buy a turkey, but somehow Mother got hold of an old hen to cook. She baked it for most of the morning, even making cornbread dressing to go with it, which, for her, was like pulling a cart full of lead. She set the food on the kitchen table to let it cool while we went to the drug store to get Dad his medicine. Seeing as how it was Thanksgiving, the drug store was closed and Dad had to rely on his refrigerated liquid medicine to make it through the day.

When we got back home, Dad opened the door and what we saw made my mother want to spit cactus needles. There on our kitchen table laid scattered bones where our chicken used to be and only half of what used to be a whole pan of dressing.

We looked around the corner into the bedroom. Lying on Mother and Dad’s bed, head on a pillow and wearing a smile that stretched from Rotan to Sweetwater, was Pooch. We were the three bears coming home to find out that our porridge had been eaten, but this time, not by a little blonde-haired girl but a Curbstone Setter with an eyepatch.

Pooch’s smile disappeared when he caught sight of Mother spitting fire from her eyeballs, and coming at him with a big broom in her hand. Once those straw bristles touched his butt, he was out the door lickety split.

We ate the leftover dressing and the pinto beans, which had been safe from the theiveing on top of the stove. Mother’s teeth were so clenched with madness, I’m still not sure how she got anything into her mouth. Dad, on the other hand, was trying not to laugh, and he looked like he was enjoying every bite of the scant Portions.

“Ain’t it surprisin’ how full we can get without eatin’ meat?” Dad says stuffing more beans into his mouth, his eyes pushed into a squint by his smiling cheeks.

“It ain’t funny, Wayne,” Mother says.

We all stayed quiet for a bit so Dad could concentrate on keeping his food in and his laugh from coming out. Then he mumbled out loud, “Guess we’re not saving any leftovers for Pooch.”

I couldn’t help it. I had to stick my head under the table and hold my breath to try to keep my own laugh from spewing across the table.

Dad leaned back in his chair, pushed his plate away, patted his belly, and said, “I ate so much I think I got a little pooch.” That’s all it took. My sides started to split right along with Dad’s. Delma giggled, and Mother, although she tried to hide it, was starting a grin all her own.

Pooch didn’t show up until later that night, when everything was calm again and the chicken and dressing had settled nicely in his belly.

Even though we had beans, cornbread, and dressing for Thanksgiving, it was Pooch who really celebrated the feast of the pilgrims. And, I think because of that, Pooch had given us a rare gift around the supper table: laughter.

Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper (for those who have enjoyed these excerpts, remember you can order the novel on Amazon. 

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Daily word prompt:Portion

Tick tock, tick tock, they’ll put you under key and lock.

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Tick tock, tick tock, they’ll put you under key and lock. Lucinda had made good on her threat.

Too skinny from institution mush, my skin peeled off a layer at a time. Curled on top of a thin, lumpy mattress on a rusted bed frame, the fingers of my left hand Traced the wall where another’s bloodied nails had scratched—dark red stains proof of another’s determination to escape a world unworthy of its inhabitant.

Earlier, the attendant had pushed my forehead back and forced open my jaw. Unnecessary effort on his part. The medicinal haze thickened. I found myself calm but without spirit.

Strange how I felt erased by a pencil yet without the rubber remnants reminding me I once existed.

Any bits of green paint that remained on the wall, I peeled off the first day. I didn’t know if I had been there three weeks or three months.

The chamber’s confines remained still, inactive, and almost empty. A bucket to catch my excrement. The bed fetid like the bucket, the whole place a shithole.

A cockroach scurrying across the floor would have been a welcome sight. Or, a black widow working tirelessly to create a fine net to catch its prey. I stared at idle hands.

I wanted to float outside where flowers bloomed, where the great oaks of San Antonio provided shade from the sun. The rattle of trains and trolleys would have been welcome sounds over the never-ending cries and moans of despair.

Despair. “Do not cry. Do not cry,” I told myself. But tears came anyway. It didn’t matter. If they heard, they never came.

My eyes blurred as if drunk. My body trembled like the women escorted to surgery before their reproductive parts were cut away and discarded like the contents of my bucket.

I heard the click of a door key. It wasn’t mealtime. They had already drugged me. What did they want? Confusion—as potent as a heaping spoonful of laudanum laced with arsenic.

The attendant in white stood firm, stoic. “Come with me.”

Excerpt from The Last Bordello

Daily word prompt: Trace

Ya gotta get to know a fella ‘fore you say you don’t like him

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Pa always tells me, “Cono, if ye don’t like somebody, it’s jes’t ’cause you hadn’t got to know him well enough’s all.” That sounds like something H. would say.

“Hey, Gene. Ye want to meet a real colored man?” I ask.

“Sure, I do. Who is he?”

So I tell him what I know. I tell him about the man with dark skin and kind eyes. I tell him how he looked at me like I was a real person and not just a stupid little kid.

The next day after school, I take Gene to the barbershop.

“Hi, Mr. H.,” I say.

“Hey there Little Dennis, what you know good?”

“This here’s my friend, Gene.”

“Well, it’s a real pleasure to know ya, Gene,” and he sticks out his hand for Gene to shake. Gene waits a second, stares at H.’s big brown hand, then pumps it up and down like the handle on a water well.

“Well, now that’s a mighty fine handshake ye got there young fella. Ya play any football?”

“No sir, not really. I jes’t throw the ball around a bit’s all.”

“Gene’s real good at throwing the football, H.”

“I can tell that, I shorly can. Besides my wife, Teresa, that’s one thing I love. I love that game ’a football.”

“Why don’t ye play then?” I ask.

“Well, I s’pose that window has closed down on me already, but I been going over to the Yellowhammers’ to watch them practice. They’ve started to let me be their water boy. I sure like it, too.”

“Maybe we kin watch a game with ye sometime,” says Gene.

“Anytime, boys. I’d like that. Uh-huh, shorly would.”

“Ya like shinin’ shoes?” asks Gene.

“Shor I do. I get to talk ta all the folks. Real nice folks here in Rotan.”

The barber’s door jingles as a man walks in. He’s got enough fat on him he could be two people instead of one. After he takes off his cowboy hat and hangs it on a hook, he props up his booted feet on the footrest of the barber’s chair, and says, “Shoe shine, boy.”

“Yes, sir, it’d be my pleasure. Ya better look out now, yer shoes ’re gonna be shinin’ to the next county in jus’ a few minutes.”

The fat man doesn’t say anything. He just opens his newspaper and starts to read while H. starts to Buff his shoes.

Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper, my father’s story.

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The real H. Govan

Click the H. Govan link to read more about this amazing man.

Oh, what a word, what a world

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Daily Word prompt is Detonate. Untimely, in my opinion. The word itself is too commonly used these days and its connotation is disturbing. How about we all gather at Disney World and watch as the fireworks are ignited? Let’s see the beauty and feel the magic instead of the alternative. Care to join me? I’ll pass out the Mickey ears.

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Rule breakers

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The scream from upstairs booted us from our chairs. Reba ran to her bedroom yelling, “Don’t you go up there ‘fore me.”

In no time, Reba followed me up to the first door on the left, Ratchet steady in her arms.

The cowboy turned when the door opened, his wicked grin melting. Naked and trembling, Sadie stood an arm’s length from the cowboy.

Blood pounded in my ears. “If you did anything to hurt her…”

The two-syllable ratchet of Reba’s shotgun finished the sentence. She aimed at the target. “I say time’s up.”

“Why, you old pickaninny,” he growled.

Reba’s face Radiated brown flames of fury. The cowboy backed away.

Sadie wiped her eyes and unclenched her teeth. “I told him my rule. He tried to break it.”

I knew the one she referred to—animal and specialty acts. Reba and I knew the reason, knew what had happened to her back then. Never would I allow a client to fracture the boundaries that made my girls feel safe.

“Tried to? Did he?” I draped a dressing robe around Sadie’s bare body and steered her to the bed.

Excerpt from The Last Bordello (1901)

 

Daily Word Prompt: Radiate