Tag Archives: books

Searchin’ for the “Funny”

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Dad never owned a car long enough for him to learn how to drive, or for that matter, long enough for me to learn to drive. Until we moved to Temple, that is. Dad was the odd man out, never having an interest in cowboying or even getting on top of a horse like the rest of the Dennis’.

Dad tried to ride a bull once. Maybe it was a low point for him. For for me it was anything but. We were living at the Dennis ranch when Dad came home drunk and decided it was time to act like a real rodeo star. I was standing outside the corral, where we kept one of our two-year-old bulls. Dad saunters over to me and slurs, “Cono, grab that bull o’r yonder. Hold’em still ‘til I get on. I’m gonna ride that son’a bitch”

“Sure I will, Dad.”

It was better than watching a picture show. While I was putting the rope around the bull’s neck, Dad went over and fixed Ike’s spurs to his shoes! Not to his boots because he didn’t even own a pair of boots, but to his shoes! Then he slapped on Ike’s chaps. I helped him get on top of the bull and stood there holding his rope.

“Whenever you’re ready,” I said.

“I’z ready,” he Slurred.

I let go.

Dad put one hand up in the air and said, “High, ho, silv……”

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That bull didn’t even buck. He just turned around real slow like he was trying to see what kind of idiot would sit on his back. Well, that slow turn was all it took. My Dad fell right off that lazy bull and straight into the dirt, Ike’s spurs dangling from Dad’s shoes.

I turned around and looked in the other direction. I didn’t want Dad to see my shoulders quivering from laughter.

Dad got up and staggered back to the house mumbling something about killing steak for dinner.

Some things sure were funny back then, but other times? You couldn’t find “funny” anywhere you looked.

Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper

Cono meets a “Colored Man”

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Cono Dennis and his sister, Delma

1934:  We walk into the barber’s shop and Dad shakes hands with Mr. Kindle. The place looks pretty much the same as Grady’s in Ranger, but instead of a boxing poster, there’s a framed picture of President Roosevelt. Something else different too. There’s a colored man standing in the corner holding a rag. Dad walks up to him, shakes his hand and says, “How ya doin,’ H?”

  “I’m jest fine, Mr. Wayne. How ‘bout yerself?” They shake hands.

   “Any better ’n I’d be dead.”

  “Well, that’s fine then, jus’ fine,” H. laughs.

 “H., this is my boy, Cono.” H. bends down, looks me square in my eyes and says, “We’ll, it’s a real pleasure Little Dennis, a real pleasure.”

 I like how he’s Squatting so he can see my eyes. Like we’re playing on the same team. I don’t have to look up to him and he doesn’t have to look down on me. I stare back into his eyes where I can see right into the middle of him. What I see is safe and comfortable. So I say, “I ain’t never met a real colored man before.” I hear Dad laugh.

   “‘S’at right?”

   “Yeah.”

  “Yes, sir,” corrects Dad.

 “Yes sir,” I say.

“Well, Little Dennis, I’ve never met a young man so strong and smart lookin’ as you.”     Dad gets in the barber’s chair and H. pulls up a stool to start shining Dad’s old black shoes.

I like the way H. looks at me, like I’m worth a jar full of quarters.

Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper

 

The Good Seats Aren’t Reserved for Me

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Cono Dennis

My ears focus on the Sound of the train’s idling, but eager-to-go engines. Where the hell would I be today if I didn’t have those railroad memories chugging along with me, some good and some anything but?

Just as I’m feeling comfortable that I won’t be crowded, I feel something settling into that worn seat next to me, making itself comfortable but making me anything but. It nudges me. I ignore it and then tell it to go away. It doesn’t listen. The memories want me to pay them a little attention. I know this train is about to pull out. I know this train is taking me to Temple. But my mind and my uninvited seat companion start to take me somewhere else, somewhere I’ve already been before, somewhere I don’t care to go back to. It starts speeding me down the track a lot faster than this train is accustomed and a whole lot faster than I can put a stop to.

The first memory is safe. It makes me wish, “If only it could have all been this easy.”     But past wishes were reserved for the other folks with good seats.

Not for me.

Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper

If the Bordello’s table could talk!

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Madame Fannie Porter’s “soiled doves” give Meta, the bordello’s piano player, a gift.

“Meta,” Lillie said, her voice soft, as usual. “We have something for you, too.” She nudged Sassy Sarah.

“Sorry it’s not wrapped.” Sassy pulled the item from her lap and presented Meta with a comb carved with ivory roses.

“Kinda my idea,” Greta said, and ignored Sassy’s frown.

My girls. Their thoughtfulness overwhelmed me. They remained dry-eyed. Maybe too leather-skinned from hard lives to soften now. Some day, perhaps.

Meta shook her head as she placed the hair ornament inside the box. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“Well, missy.” Reba shook her head. “You sure picked a fine time to come to the big city.”

Meta chuckled. “A doozy.”

“I seen doozies of trouble in my day. Most is harder to pull off than ticks. Best thing? Meeting Fannie Porter. Worst? All them days before.” Reba draped a handmade amulet necklace around Meta’s neck. “For good luck.”

Meta didn’t ask what concoction Reba had put inside the amulet. Instead, she curled her fingers around the necklace then stood to hug Reba.

Reba and I had been worried about Meta after the shooting. Unlike my girls, Meta came from a simple, pleasant life. When she came to San Antone, she had seen the hardscrabble side and had proven herself a survivor.

Meta sat quietly, skimming her fingertips across the tabletop.

“What you thinking, girlie?” Reba said.

Meta let loose a wide grin and glanced at each of us. “So many secrets engrained in this wood. If only it could talk.”

“H’yaw, now.” Greta thumped Meta on the wrist. “Cain’t tell everything.”

We all cackled like a bunch of old women at a quilting bee and that image made me shiver.

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excerpt from The Last Bordello

 

 

Overwhelming

A Kindle Ad reminder

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As a kid, I hated to read. Nothing stuck. Everything around me had more meaning than written words inside a book. Then came To Kill a Mockingbird. At age 14, this was the first book I read cover to cover. “So, some books are good?” I thought. This one was proof.

I always liked writing but, many, many years passed before I became an avid reader. Maybe it’s because my mind could finally focus on words I didn’t write, words that enticed me to enter new worlds such as:

ancient Egypt in River God by Wilbur Smith

1975 India in A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

the Depression-era Ireland in Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

inside the memories of a man from a very dysfunctional family in The Prince of Tide by Pat Conroy

And many more, of course.

Still, I am very selective of the books I read. Many times, a book is over before I finish it. And no, I don’t feel guilty for closing it prematurely as some do. I just grab another and hope others don’t do the same with my novels!  🙂

Read to your child when they are young!

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NO NOOSE AROUND THIS NECK!

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Once again, my sister has come through. (And wait for the “punchline!”)

Pat bought me the perfect gift for Christmas. (She has read my historical fiction novels, the last one set in 1901.) Upon closer inspection, it became even better!

First, this: 

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Then: 

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THIS, MY FRIENDS, IS NO NOOSE. THIS IS MY BADGE OF HONOR!! 🙂 🙂 🙂

Sincerely,

Bad Ass Carolyn

 

Hopeful Mama Still Loves Me

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Scoot and me are late to school. I don’t like being late because everyone stares and Miss Primrose expects a ‘reasonable excuse for tardiness.’

Scooter pulls out his pocketknife and strolls to the front, his happy eyes aiming at the wood he’s about to shave into invisible.

“Emma June?” Miss Primrose says.

“I’m sorry, Miss Primrose,” I say, glancing at Frank who’s giving me a half smile. “Scooter had himself a bit of an adventure.”

The class giggles and I want to punch them all in the face. What’s wrong with an adventure? At least the ones that don’t make someone carry a grudge. Daddy said Mama still loves me. There’s hope in that.

I try so hard to remember what happened toward the end of the carnival, but everything is jumbled up like bad scrambled eggs. Carla was in better shape than me, but she fell asleep on the ride home when Mama and Beauty had the fight. I remember fading in and out while they argued. I remember upchucking more than once. There’s nobody to tell me what happened except Mama.

So many questions I wanted to ask Daddy that morning when  I woke up to find Mama gone. The only answers were Daddy’s tears. “We’ll work this out. Don’t worry. We’ll work this out,” he had said. And then his words faded as he shuffled away to his bedroom and closed the door.

I don’t know how to help him work things out any more than I know how to make Mama come home. I might as well try picking up shadows.

 

Excerpt from The Moonshine Thicket (1928)

Hopeful

She Mopes Loud!

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I tried to ignore the crash from upstairs—the third one now. Reba shook her head, her smile fading. “She still up there caterwauling and hurling things ’cross her room. Poor chil’ don’t never seem to get a leg back up ’fore it drops back down again.”

But Sadie Dubois was damn good at spreading them. Employed at the bordello longer than any of my other girls, Sadie brought in the most money. But last night, she had morphed into a puddle of anguish when her best friend left with Harry Longabaugh. Better known from the wanted posters as “the Sundance Kid,” he had hefted giggling Etta on the back of his mare and trotted away. “Other girls still sleeping?”

“Don’t know ’bout now, but when I went upstairs to check on things, three of them bedrooms was quiet. But that first one on the left? Phew! What a racket.”

“She’ll be fine, Reba.”

“And a hen’s gonna grow teeth. Her waters run deep. ’Sides, you knows well as me that after Sadie’s done with her conniption fit, she gonna keep spewing a pout.”

“She’ll buck up when she needs to.” Even with a sordid past, Sadie could pull a charade better than most.

Three years ago, when Sadie was seventeen, she arrived dressed as a boy during a ferocious storm, her aquamarine eyes pleading for entry. I knew then that Sadie could wear a flour sack and still be a looker—curves in all the right places, blond hair that Reba called “thick as good gravy.”

Excerpt from The Last Bordello

Mope