The Wait

photo by Ré Harris

Waiting for life’s next chapter can be exciting, whether you’ve been laying groundwork with a tingle of anticipation or letting things fall into place as they will, like leaves in autumn. That sort of waiting and often the Birthday or Christmas kind, holds a sweetness for me or an umami thrill that has glided me over bits of the road that have shaken my chassis and blurred the scenery for a bit. Sometimes the very idea that the future isn’t written in stone has helped me over times when I’ve been broken on rough road and can’t see much of anything.

I’ve had an immense capacity for waiting, even in dark moments. But darkness intensifies what seems like patience in me, turning it into a grotesque version of anticipation that irritates and provokes like fingernails on a chalkboard, and hurts like lost love.

When the waiting is very dark I’ve sometimes written about it here. Often my capacity for patience and ability to see that light can follow dark has made it seem that I’m saying something different than I am. My poetry especially often says things to people that I hadn’t intended. I’m working on accepting that and on getting better at saying whatever it is I think I want to get out in my writing. Today I’m going to try for bluntness.

Before Thanksgiving, I needed to redo a mammogram. Soon after, I had to schedule a needle biopsy. The earliest date they could give me was December 28th. Waiting for that sort of thing through the time of year I take to heart and usually enjoy at least half of the time, made me feel like I was receding, like I didn’t belong. I took some solace in knitting simple pieces for family with soft yarn, and making cocoa butter/shea butter bars and basking for a while in hopes that the pieces would come out right and be welcome. Mostly my world grated on me. After my post referring to Lincoln, I found it hard to write anything and hard to escape.

The biopsy showed cancer. Monday I go to see a surgeon, knowing that early detection is a gift of sorts. I know this because I had an even earlier detection on the opposite side over twenty years ago. No chemo, no radiation. This time there’s talk of radiation, but I know from years of paying attention and reading and medical shows on TV, that I need to wait for the surgeon to get a look inside and see exactly what’s going on. I know about margins and things. I remember understanding the doctors when my mother went through ovarian cancer even when other family members needed clarification on certain points. I feel pretty confident about my outcome because of all the things I know already.

My N.P. was surprised I didn’t have questions. I won’t have answerable questions until I’m presented with real choices before or after the surgeon has a look. When I get to Monday’s appointment I will want to talk about anesthesia, because the local I had for that first biopsy so long ago wore off in the middle of the surgery. The idea of the smell of cautery in an operating room (which I hadn’t thought of) would have made me sick to my stomach before that. After it, not even the nurse’s rushing to stand behind me, massaging my temples and speaking to me softly as I cried, can soften the memory of the smell and the feel of it.

I hate waiting. I suppose I’ll seem patient while I do it for however long it takes to know that I’m done with treatment and things look good again. However I might look, I don’t anticipate feeling patient.

I have information. I have a good understanding of ‘doctor speak’. I’m immensely grateful for the healthcare republicans think I shouldn’t have if I can’t pay for it myself. I’m grateful for family and friends.

I try to be a grateful person, but I’m not good with hearing how strong I am. (And I’m so sorry now if I’ve pissed anyone off in the past by telling them that during their dark times.) Although I’m grateful for my strength, I’m pissed off that it doesn’t look or feel like what it is when I’m using it. Maybe I’m just pissed off period. I understand that people have gone through and will go through worse times than this one is for me. But whether I get my regular writing mojo back tomorrow or much later, I’m interested now in getting in touch with my inner pissed-off chick who’d rather scream about this, whether anyone wants to hear it or not.

I wrote a short poem on Words One Hundred about how some of Christmas Day went for me (a very nice time for the most part) even though the undercurrent bleeds through even when you’re having a good day. I’ve been trying to begin a post about how to make the cocoa butter moisturizing bars because I remembered to take a picture, but I don’t know when I’ll get that up.

I want to be an artist who throws color at the canvas and only cares that it’s right, not that it’s pretty. I want to write whatever the fuck I want, if only the words would come to me. I don’t want to write about the cancer, but if I think I need to, I will. It’s a part of life; it deserves ink. Mostly I just want to be free to be angry and not hear how positive thinking and glitter ponies will make the road easier. (‘Glitter pony’ being my euphemism for “there’s always light at the end of the tunnel” and “remember God never gives you more than you can handle”, etc.) I’ve got positive thinking covered. My friends know that.

My stuffed bunny is threadbare (yes I sleep with one — want to make something of it?) But if anyone tosses me a glitter pony (and isn’t too young to know better), they better be sure to duck so it won’t hurt when I toss it at their head. I’m thinking of retiring the bunny my daughter gave me so long ago and replacing it with a squooshy brown bear or another rabbit, brown and lifelike, to be soft and warm with me under the winter covers. I deserve that.

And one of those tiny key lime cheesecakes from the Magnolia Bakery that recently went up to seven dollars (that I could eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner.) I’m trying to talk myself out of getting only one or the other for this month’s splurge. Because I deserve that, too, despite water bills and taxes and everything else that doesn’t stop coming just because I’m having a hard time.

I’m grateful that we haven’t had much snow here this winter, the streets and sidewalks are clear, and I’m sure-footed as I make my rounds.

I told you I had positive thinking covered.

Now it’s time to roar before the quiet and the waiting allow too much of the dark in. Because there is dark, and I don’t think positive thinking means I should pretend I don’t feel it.

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas dear friends, readers, and anyone who has stumbled here by accident. If you haven’t read the Christmas story I wrote for this space last year, here’s a link to it: A Light in Disguise, A Christmas Story.

May the new year bring peace and love to you all.

 

 

Nightmare

Lately I’ve been watching a series on PBS about Abraham and Mary Lincoln. I found the beginning two parts of it to be very interesting, fulfilling my interest in history and my desire to understand people and their motivations. But soon enough I became uncomfortable, as I always do, when faced with people’s strange feelings and reactions to “otherness,” in this case African-American life and the “legal” practice of slavery.

Today, during parts three and four, I nearly changed the channel as comprehension eluded me, or came into focus so sharp that it hurt to see. The story below came up in me — a flailing response to the pain of political ridiculousness, I’m sure — but it took me away from the sharpness far enough to sit at my keyboard and try again to make it understood, because the conversation is far from over. 

Nightmare

The president arrived at his office, closed the door and headed for the stack of papers on his desk. Upon hearing the sound of breathing across the room, he found an unfamiliar man there staring at him. “How did you get in here?”

The stranger removed his hat with one hand and said, “That does not matter at this point.” Before the president could call out for help, the man spoke again. “Your son has been taken.”

“Taken …?”

“Your son has been sold.” The stranger watched the president’s face express shock and the downward trajectory of his heart.

“You are mad,” the president huffed through trembling lips.

“No. I am sane and pragmatic, as are you and surely the other men entrusted with running this country.” He gripped his hat in front of him with both hands, waiting for his statement to sink into the steel trap of the statesman’s mind. “And your youngest is gone now. I doubt that you will ever see him again. I have sold him in such a way as to render your power and finances of little help to you, though I do suspect that if you try very hard, you may eventually find the boy, especially if our side wins the war.”

The president straightened his back with determination to contain his fear. He began to compose a rebuttal to counter this new enemy and make him see reason. “You cannot possibly succeed in this horrible exercise to tear apart my home. If not me, think of my wife. How could the boy’s mother be expected to bear this?”

The stranger turned to the velvet back of the chair nearest him and lightly stroked the fabric as the turn of his mouth registered a mild amusement, his eyes a glazing of anger. “Indeed,” he said with formidable calm.

The president pressed his side against the desk just enough to keep himself from sinking. “This is kidnapping. Surely you know that you will be prosecuted.”

“What would that change? Would you expect his return through our present system of law? You should understand better than anyone how much law is about the moment. All that follows from it stems from those notions and provisions already in place. Even if one does aspire to some semblance of fair treatment for all, changing things is difficult. Is not tending to the whole more important, making human sacrifice necessary?”

“H-human sacrifice? What are you talking about? Are we barbarians?”

“That is a question I have wanted to ask you, sir. Are we barbarians?”

The president’s voice was hushed. “Of course not.” His thoughts flew past him as he contemplated his plight. He had trouble holding onto any one of them long enough to argue sense to the stranger who was breaking him in two. “Listen to me,” he said, “I can see that something is on your mind. Let us discuss your points like men — leave my child out of this. Return my son and let us speak to your concerns.”

“The country as a whole has done nothing but speak to my concerns during these last bloody years. What good has that done for decency and freedom?”

“But my son …”

“Perhaps it is time to think about more important things than your son.”

“You are mad. We are talking about an innocent child here! How can you be so callous?”

“Callous?” The stranger cocked his head as he contemplated the word. “You think my selling your son into slavery is callous? This is something you believe?”

“Wait … how can you say you’ve sold my child into slavery? He is not …” The president’s voice grew silent as if something thick and cold fell over him, muffling his body as it folded in on itself and sank into a chair in front of his desk.

The stranger watched, the glaze in his eyes glinting strong in the lamplight. “You are answering your own questions now, I see. This is all I could hope for. In the years that have passed until now, reason has been too much. Step by step, it has been taken out of the equation because it gets in the way. There seem to be things that those who lead find more important.

“Reason got in my way, too. I preferred to talk and write and appeal to human virtues as if all people had them. I thought those virtues were only dormant and waiting for the right progression of words from a caring soul to bring them to light and move them into the realm of deeds. I thought that until yesterday. Then I decided to ignore reason, too. I fear for tomorrow.”

Soft sobs rose from deep inside the president, becoming rattled retching sounds that filled the space between him and the stranger who lamented, “I have hoped for it, and hope for it still, but I do not see reason on the horizon.”

The Strange One About Kitty

Photo by Ré Harris

 

It’s said that cats don’t communicate to each other verbally. They meow to us because they notice how we talk to them and what happens when we focus on them that way. Cats find that interesting or advantageous things follow after we speak to them: a treat, a meal, a gentle scratch someplace they can’t reach. They learn to meow to us to ask for what they want or to participate in what we do, and we bask in their desire to fit into our lives, comforted by their hard-won attention.

Kitty will ask for a bowl of food or that I get off the computer and let her sit in my lap. She’ll mew through the window to greet me when I come home, or to show concern when steam precedes me out the bathroom door after a shower. She entreats me through the bedroom door when she thinks I’ve overslept and need to come out and feed her, maybe play. Our conversations then go back and forth, her voice rising and falling on syllables that vary, saying things I’m sure I can follow. I answer, calming her if it’s much too early, or assuring her that I’m on my way and only need a moment or two to dress.

But there are times, an increasing number of times, when Kitty stands or sits in a hallway or a corner of a room, looking up and meowing in an earnest, sometimes agitated voice. As I watch her from a far room or close vantage point I’ve crept to without her notice, she engages something I can’t see. Not a bird teasing her through a window — she chirps at those. Not a bug or insect crawling up a wall so slow that she could bat it down — she doesn’t meow before doing that.

I’ve watched Kitty speak to something that reminds her enough of a human that she wants to talk to it, asking or demanding something I’m powerless to understand, perhaps responding to a provocation I’m unable to hear. At those times, I wonder what that something is. When those moments pass, I work hard to forget the feeling that something shocking is at play, something I don’t want to know.

Avoidance may be the wrong way to go according to Stephen King stories or the kind of movies that glut the market at Halloween, but it’s the best I can do without being privy to the plot.

I wish I really did understand Kitty’s language. I think.

 

Suicide

I wrote this story in 1979. Before this one, my stories were stuck in a genteel loop of trying to find my voice in the ‘longing for love’ and ‘love lost’ stories that rolled off my pen, stories that incorporated the tearjerker side of the underlying otherness and pain I felt every day into the kind of stories I’d been exposed to that I thought were special because they’d been published in popular magazines.

I was the oldest ‘kid’ in my household and I didn’t have friends — definitely none to help me expand my oeuvre. I had an acquaintance who I thought was a friend at the time, who didn’t really understand me, but she wasn’t drawn to art the way I was. We didn’t explore galleries or offbeat places together and I didn’t explore those places much on my own. But I listened to a lot of radio and ran out and bought Elvis Costello’s album “Armed Forces” because it did something to me. I loved Neil Young and understood the breadth of emotion he wrote about, but Costello woke me up to how different words could be while still expressing things I understood deeply. I loved the old school rat pack feel of his pinched vocals, his melodies juxtoposed with the lyrics and way the music sounded, and I loved going to the dictionary or encyclopedia to understand the words and phrases he used that had gone over my head. Mostly I reveled in the otherness in his work that made me feel like I did belong on earth after all.

One day I sat down to write something different from the stories I’d written that I’d come to hate. In the blank that took over my mind (which felt as blank as the paper) I got restless and scared that I’d been chosen by a nebulous something to do a thing I had no skill at. I sat for a long time before I challenged myself with this: What would Elvis Costello write?

Of course he couldn’t have written this. He wasn’t me. And of course I couldn’t know that he might have written this sort of thing. The point is that with one idea, I thought differently about my writing and the stories I’d lived that already made up my life and I thought differently about what my words could do. Other writers will understand what I mean. No one else needs to ‘get’ that part. With a little editing after rediscovering that story this week (much less than I would have thought after having learned so much this year) this is the story I wrote from the prompt that changed my writing life:

Suicide

by Ré Harris

The city is never dark, he thought. Too many lights everywhere, staring in your face, assaulting you even through the windows of your own place. People are too scared, afraid of their own shadows — weaklings running through the streets like rabbits, squealing at the slightest sound. Why don’t they stay home, he thought. When the sun goes down all the little rabbits should stay at home in their little holes, nibbling cabbage and sleeping in the far corners, with one eye open.

He was angry. The world didn’t suit him and he had long before cultivated an attitude of perfect apathy toward everyone and everything except his own butt, but now everything inside him was shaking. He had feelings again that ran in more directions than he could name — all of them negative.

He tapped his cigarette with his thumb, letting ashes fall over the bed. Then he turned on his side and kicked her, a calculated move intended to wake her up and (although it fell short of this objective) to knock her to the floor. She shrieked and extended a foot quick to keep herself from falling. As she sat up in bed, that one long bare leg holding her steady, she shook her head, willing wakefulness into the remnants of a dream. She stared at him, seeming to hold her head in place with the back of her hand beneath her chin, the blandness in her expression unique to those who hold tight to sleep for as long as they can — two eyes, a nose, and a pair of lips saying nothing at all except ‘let me go back’, but he was smiling.

“Let’s go again,” he said, slapping at the knee she left curled around the sheet.

Incredulity crossed her face. “What is it with you lately? You crazy for me all of a sudden?” She yawned. “Or just crazy?”

He smiled broader. “Of course I am,” he grunted, stretching his arms out as if reaching farther than he ever had, making a show of reaching out to nothing and pulling nothing around him like an overcoat. He dropped ashes onto the floor and turned back to the lights. “But you knew that didn’t you?”

She rubbed one of her eyes and tilted her head back and forth like a ball between her shoulders. He grabbed at her with one hand, but she darted out of his reach. “I’m going home,” she said.

She slipped out from under the sheet and stood for a moment blinking before walking across the room to where she’d left her clothes on the floor.

He stared at her as she sorted through her things. The neon light flooding through the window, shone on her skin, giving it a luster that made her appear luminous, like an angel. At first that vision made him laugh. She was anything but an angel, yet standing there bathed in that blue-white light …

He found the thought unsettling. He decided he had never liked her, never cared what she felt or what she wanted. From his view, the only reason she drew breath was to take care of him, do his bidding and take care of all those unsavory little chores that were far beneath him.

He put his cigarette out in the ashtray instead of on the nightstand he’d pitted with scores of circular and oval shaped burns through the veneer down to the pale wood base. She had turned toward him as she shimmied into the lace-trimmed thong she’d worn for him, that she knew he hadn’t noticed and never would. She watched his expression cycle through spoiled, sneering little boy to something serious she hadn’t seen from him before. Her thin blouse was in her hands as she watched him come toward her, slow, deliberate, without humor — puerile, twisted or otherwise.

He said, “You’re not going anywhere. You’re not through,” the near whisper of his voice belying the command and the look on his face that struck her as strange. She thought it odd, but was still reacting to the kick. He’d kept her awake for hours that day after knowing she’d had a long night before, so she was trying to slip the blouse over her head when he came at her, punching her in the face and pushing her over the chair. He watched her fall to the floor on the other side of it, listened to the thud of her hip on the bare wood. For all his demanding, grabbing and little kicks, he had never hurt her that way. She knew to be afraid then, that she would have to get away from him or be devoured by his runaway sense of self, overblown now into an unrecognizable version of the man she’d never really known, but had been drawn to like insects around light bulbs.

She crawled across the floor as fast as she could toward the door, but he stepped in her path. “No,” he said. “You’re not leaving.”

He punched her again, pulled her up by her hair and tossed her on the bed. She rolled over the side and tried to crawl under it.

She attempted to yell, but her voice cracked as she felt her jaw swell. “Stop it … what are you … why are you doing this …”

He ran around the bed and pulled her out from under it with one of her legs. She swung at him and kicked and tried to dig her fingernails into his angry face, but he was much taller and heavier than she, and in his crazed, violent state could do her more harm than she could do to him without a weapon. She fought him anyway, flailing and jabbing, accumulating battle scars and inflicting as many as she could until he slammed her against the nightstand on the side of the bed he slept on when she was there. She closed her eyes tight while anticipating another blow, and remembered something from the week before while waiting for him to hit her again.

*****

“See this?” he said to her, loading the gun, then holding it in his hand and pointing it at various objects in the small dark room tinged with the neon he hated. “Loaded and ready.”

She tried to stifle a giggle. “For what?”

He dropped the hand with the gun to his side and turned to face her long-legged body sprawled sideways across the easy chair. He barked at her, “What the hell are you laughing at?”

“Everybody’s scared of you already, so what d’you need a gun for?”

He lifted it until it pointed straight at her face. She stiffened and he began to sneer.

“Come on … stop that,” she said. “I mean, hey, come on …” She sat up in the chair. “You know, everyone else thinks I’m crazy, putting up with you. You know? But, like, aside from getting paid on time, I really like you.” She looked into his eyes and tried to ignore the gun. “I don’t think you’re as different from everybody else as you want us to believe. I think you got real deep feelings. Lot’s of ‘em. So come on … you’re okay with me. Why do you want to play with me like that?”

He came a step closer, pointing the gun so deliberately at her that she got angry. “You want me to be scared? Okay, I’m scared. Put that goddamned thing down and stop it, okay? Shit.”

He lowered his arm with a triumphant smile, walked over to the nightstand, opened the drawer slow and placed the gun inside. He watched her watching him as he closed the drawer, and as she wiped sweat off her neck, she couldn’t help wondering what the whole scene had been about. If there was anything she was sure of about him, it was that he always knew what his twisted doings were about. He didn’t care if he made sense to anyone else. In his own head, in his version of reality, his actions were fully thought out and sensible.

In hers, he paid her when he was supposed to, tossed her extra for food when she was hungry, and never asked where it all went. He never bugged her about other johns and hadn’t put a lasting mark on her, even when he was rough. In her mind, that was a version of love that got her through the day and brought her back when she wasn’t on the clock. Once he put the gun in the drawer, she wanted to smack him, but she was fine so she forgot about it.

*****

She opened her eyes now and reached up to the drawer above her head. She expected another blow as she fumbled for the pistol, but when it was in her hands, she pointed it at arm’s length toward his chest. “I’ll kill you,” she spat out at him. “I’ll do it.”

He’d been close enough to knock it out of her hand before she could focus, but he stared at her, taking heavy breaths, his heart pounding as though he was sick and close to sinking down with something like fever. He eyed her, but the rage she’d seen had dissipated. He took a step toward her, but there was no malice in the movement. If not for the beating, she would have accepted him into her arms, but she was bruised, maybe cracked, her shoulders scratched and aching, face bleeding. She could no longer take her chances with this strange man. Being hurt that way wasn’t what she expected from him and she couldn’t take the time to figure out what she’d done.

“I know it’s loaded,” she said. “I remember from when you were playing with it. So don’t come near me. I’ll shoot you.”

“Yeah?” he said.

“I’m not playing  … I’ll do it.”

“So do it,” he said, soft like when he wanted her to do something she didn’t think she had time for, like when he wanted her to rub his back for an hour or suck his toes.

She began to cry from the confusion, and he came toward her, head cocked, elbow raised in the air, fingers clenched into a fist and angling down at her.

She shot him in the chest, but he didn’t seem to feel it. He was almost knocked over by the bullet’s force, but his fist was still hovering over her so she shot him again as his figure blurred behind her tears. She was sure he would kill her because he had become invincible, shot twice in the chest (through the heart, she was sure) but still standing. She blinked and waited for him to move, but he didn’t.

She slid across the floor, around him to her clothes, dropping the gun and gathering most of her things in a sloppy scoop as she barreled toward the door. He didn’t try to catch her. He dropped his fist and stood where he was, waiting for her to leave. She had served her purpose and he no longer had any use for her. He listened for the door to slam, then went to the window and looked out at the street ablaze with a thousand lights. He sneered at the sight and sank down to the floor.

At least half the neighborhood had heard the shots, he thought to himself, but no one would come. Chances are no one would even call the cops. They would just run and hide and pray they wouldn’t be next. He’d be long gone before anyone discovered him.

In a few minutes, he felt the two burning holes in his body, looked down and touched the blood running out of his chest faster than he thought it would. Then he closed his eyes, leaned his head back against the wall, and waited for death.

Questions, New Stuff, Old Stuff

I’ve had an awfully restless day and should’ve done so many other things, but staying on track has been hard for various reasons.

While trying to focus, my wandering mind and eyes fell in love with a new theme, then figured out how to change the unfortunate address of my first blog so I could put the theme to use. By changing that blog’s address, I can get some use out of it and stop grimacing every time I spy the unusable title on that drop-down menu on the dashboard.

The idea of that blog being something besides a placeholder pointing here or to Words One Hundred, consumed me like wanting chocolate and being told I couldn’t have any, until I tinkered with it and decided to gather a certain kind of work there so I can access it easier and enjoy the new scenery.

No one has to visit there but me, but then I wondered, would anyone want to?

Photo by Vijay Sonar via Flickr

Hence the question and the poll. You can tell me the truth. Why would I want anything less?

As a thank you for voting, I offer one of my favorite songs from the sixties to listen to as you peruse the answers and maybe leave a comment. I know I’ve needed a summertime love-in these past few days. After watching a documentary about The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, my favorite show so many years ago, I’m feeling as nostalgic as a person can who doesn’t really want to go back. Maybe you’ll find this one soothing too.

A Late Monday Rant – The New Comfort With Obvious Lies, They Think We’re Too Stupid to Notice or Don’t Care If We Do

Question:What’s the difference between Romney’s statements (especially during Monday night’s final presidential debate for the upcoming election) and an ad campaign for a product you don’t need that might actually be bad for your health?

Answer: None. They’re both working from the point of view that lying and obfuscating facts is perfectly acceptable as long as it confuses you into believing in their product.

Romney’s product that we don’t need is his party’s hope that once he’s elected, they’ll be able to further their actual agenda, the republican agenda that they’re too afraid to explain to us truthfully for fear that we’ll reject it.

That means the truth about the policies they actually want to change (or keep the same) must be truths they would expect us to say no to. That doesn’t bode well for the poor. Nor for the middle class and owners of small businesses that they insist they do want to help.

As I search my mind for the answer to the next logical pressing question: exactly who it is that would benefit from a republican win in this election, all I can think of is the smiling, agreeing faces that watched Romney insult 47% of American citizens. It broke my heart to see so clearly how so many of us don’t matter to the republican candidate for president and those who back him monetarily. My heart broke even more tonight to see just how far the lies go right in front of us. Now it’s acceptable for Romney, the republican candidate for the highest office in our country — the person we would look to for truth in times of difficulty and the person we should be able to trust — to insult the intelligence of citizens by lying to us directly and pretending that we are all insignificant past our ability to vote, definitely too stupid to remember what he has said in the past.

Perhaps he and his political party believe that voters pay much less attention these days, or that the ones of us who do pay attention are too few to matter. Does that justify their tactics?

Or does Romney believe he’s doing us a service by unceremoniously changing the gist of what he’s said previously in the campaign, many times on film where it can be clearly proved, and lying that he never said certain things at all? Are we lucky that Romney’s conscience allows him to think so highly of us?

Until this election, there still seemed to be at least a slightly negative connotation to being caught in a lie, but republicans have decided that times have changed. They must be thinking, if you’re caught, continue lying. What can the voters who care do to you? Most of them aren’t voting for you anyway.

I don’t agree with the republicans that this new development is progress, not by the word’s definition in my dictionary: “progress noun – forward or onward movement toward a destination • advance or development toward a better, more complete or modern condition.”

Or does this definition work for their insidious purposes, too? It could, if only the top per cent matters.

I hope we all remember that not voting plays into the hands of the people who think we aren’t important, the ones who’ve been trying to stop many of us from exercising our precious right, and have succeeded at it too many times.

I read a sentence a week or so ago that felt like an anthem to me. I’ll close with my version of it: Please vote like your future depends on it. It does.

 

Ahh, Crochet …

Something else I was up to this month …

Sis commissioned a baby sweater for a woman she works with who’ll be back from maternity leave in a couple of weeks. These were the particulars I was working with:

1. The baby’s a girl.

2. Her mom likes Disney kinds of things and pastel pinks and bows.

3. Her dad’s a rocker who’d be more inclined to dress their new sweetie in a black Nirvana t-shirt if only mom would let him.

My mission, if I chose to accept it, was to try make them both happy.

First, I found a darker pink yarn and white buttons with flowers carved into them. Sis had suggested edging my trusty sweater pattern - the one on my sidebar that’s for sale at Knitpicks.com - with a contrasting color.

Then I nearly swooned when I found that delicious variegated riff on deep greens and blues. (I even love the James Taylor song. The video’s below in case you haven’t heard it.)

After that, I worked up a matching hat just for the heck of it. It’s hard to see in the photo, but there’s a crocheted cord woven through the hat’s edge and tied in a mock bow.

I know the pieces are still girly, but don’t you think I found some middle ground?

I delivered them to Sis last Saturday and she was happy. Mission accomplished. Whew!

 

 

 

Entanglement – Part Twenty-One

“At Sidewalk’s Edge” by Wanderin’ Weeta via Flickr

Previous installments of Entanglement can be found by clicking Home on the header menu and scrolling down. If you haven’t begun the series and would like to, here’s a shortcut to Part One.

♥

Aliss hadn’t forgotten logic. She’d stopped searching for it. “If you can relax a little, you’ll see the sense here — what there is of it.”

An older man in a dark suit with vest and tie, stepped onto the edge of the lawn. She observed him peripherally at first. He was shorter than Miller with thin shoulders and limbs, yet broad around the middle. Beneath his brown fedora, she saw a fine spray of white hair flutter in the breeze at his temples, garnering her attention like something caught in a camera, as if that was where she was supposed to look. The man watched Miller with a focus that accentuated the creases of his face, and spoke to Aliss. “Are you all right, dear?”

She answered, “Yes,” without thinking. The man held the handle of a long umbrella with both hands and leaned his weight onto it like a walking stick. His gaze moved to her. With a second’s thought she added, “It might not look that way, but I think we’re all right.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

His question hung in the air, shifting in her mind as though the breeze was catching it like the strands of his hair. She appreciated his concern, but not the interruption.

Miller moved his hand away from her shoulder and rubbed the palm on the front of his sweater as if wiping away something he hadn’t known was there. As if waking from slumber, he stood taller, faced the stranger and said, “I was upset for a minute, but I … I’m calmer now. I’m sorry.”

The gentleman straightened and raised an eyebrow. “You should say that to the lady.”

Miller turned dutifully toward Aliss and she saw reason returning to his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said, the heft of his anger retreating to some corner or another inside him as he spoke the words.

She said, “I know.”

As if chastised by the man’s very presence, Aliss was unsure what to do or say next. She walked closer to him thrusting her hands into her pockets, trying to smile. “We’ve had a little trouble lately. Sudden trouble … but we’re figuring it out. I hope we didn’t upset you.”

“You’re so young,” he said, the skin at his eyes crinkling even more though his expression relaxed, “the both of you … there’s less time than you think. You should be enjoying yourselves as best you can. Leave the fighting to the inevitable wars and people who don’t care about love. I can see in your eyes, I heard in your tones of voice, that something draws you together. Let the feeling be pure and unclouded.” He bent lower to her, his face imploring. “If it can’t be, then protect yourself. Each one of us is worthy of that.”

Aliss stared for a moment. “Who are you?”

The man smiled. “I suppose I’m no one to you. Just making my way home to share supper with my wife. When I saw you, I was reminded of my daughter when she was a younger woman.” He sighed. “Perhaps I’ve intruded. Perhaps I’ve given you two a bit of time to settle down.” He nodded in both their directions. “I’ll be going now.”

As the gentleman walked away, Miller went to Aliss’s side at the edge of the walk. His voice a hoarse whisper, he said, “The old man’s right. I’ll try to listen.”

“What happened?”

“Just now?”

“Back there. You had to be talked down from something.”

“What you did … reminded me of something.”

“Something that scared you?”

“I guess … when I was a kid.”

Aliss leaned into his body. “Let me take you someplace wonderful.” She placed her hand in his and waited.

 

Hidden at the Edge

Photo by Ré Harris

This started out on Words One Hundred as a hundred word story from one of Julia’s prompts. It seemed interesting to some of those who read it, and they wanted more. I realized how much I liked writing it and how it seemed to be writing itself, so since this week has been weird for me and I have to get a lot of things done tomorrow, I figured I should just let it flow.

As always, feedback is very much appreciated. Whether you like the story or you don’t, I’d love to know. Here goes:

It was 1926, back in Utah.

With trouble hot on our trail, I woke with another headache. Vince gazed out at the mountains like he was thinking of another woman.

“You want to fend for yourself?” I said, checking the gun under my pillow.

“What’s your problem?”

I raked fingers through my hair, staring at the latch on the door while cold wind blew through the cabin and grabbed me under the threadbare blanket. I rose, fully dressed, holding my gun.

“You’re always upset about something,” he said.

“And you hate women with brains.” Light reflected outside the other window as I crept closer to it. “Too bad you need ‘em.”

Vince’s pause before saying, “Now what?” said he’d caught on to his lack of diligence. Could’ve been cornered before he remembered to check another direction.

“What’s the point of the gorge at the back and only two ways in? Why take watch, if daydreaming’s all you’ll do?”

He cocked his piece at the window with the mountain view, before tossing a whispered yell. “Shut up.”

I let it go.

I woke with another headache for sure — Vince. Not sharp, but damn if his neck didn’t smell like clover sometimes.

Billy approached behind bushes, pistol in hand, rifle slung. I eased the window up and aimed.

After the shot, Vince was quiet as Billy’s whining started up outside, muffled but gaining volume as my heart ticked off the seconds. “You see anything over there?” I said.

I didn’t watch him check before he said, “No.” I felt his eyes turn to me. “Was ‘at Billy?”

I didn’t answer.

“Why the hell’d you shoot him?”

I wasn’t in the mood for stupid questions. Vince would see what was what in time. I waited and watched as Billy wailed. If he knew anyone had followed him, he’d let it slip while writhing on the ground clutching his bleeding leg.

“Maybe he was just mixed up about the meet,” Vince said.

“Should’a stayed mixed up someplace else if he wanted to go on two legs.”

“Shit, girl … we made it here okay, didn’t we?”

“Halfway to Mexico in a car’s better.” I shot Vince a nasty look. “Why was he on foot?”

Vince strained himself. “Crap.”

I searched the brush past Billy and waited some more.

Billy kept saying, “Aw, come on! I can’t walk! Help me! Help me dammit!”

Any time someone calls me Dammit, it makes me take longer. Vince didn’t even ask. Good thing. I wasn’t done running permutations in my mind. We didn’t just have to wait for signs he wasn’t alone, I had to figure out the order of things as best I could before we dragged him in. I wished we had a wireless so I could get some idea what the cops were thinking.

I didn’t see any more movement, no more reflected sun flashing. I told Vince I’d cover him while he dragged Billy in. From the sigh he let out and they way he flew out the door, you’d think the two were best friends from childhood or something. Maybe he just wanted to know what had gone wrong as much as I did. We thought Billy’d been pinched.

Once inside and on the bed, crying as loud as he had outside in the dirt, our no-longer-missing wheelman was submitting to Vince’s attempts at a tourniquet around his bleeding thigh. While writhing in pain, his eyes looked for me in the background. I moved around the room to vex him. Every time he lit on me, he looked scareder than usual. For a minute, I tried to remember what he’d seen me do that’d make him worry so much. Then I figured it must just be the bullet in his thigh.

When Vince had done the best he could, I went over to the bed and looked Billy in the eye.

“I couldn’t get there,” he said, sucking up snot. “The car … stopped on me.”

I reached my leg over and sat on his chest.

“What the hell?” I heard Vince growl. “The man’s hurt. What’re you doing?” I was glad I was wearing slacks. Vince couldn’t have a cow because a stupid skirt was hiking up.

I pressed the tip of my gun against the side of Billy’s forehead and his eyes closed tight. “Jesus, girl …” he slobbered. “You got no call to do that!”

“I fixed that car myself. She ran sweet and fast.” I stopped right there. It doesn’t do to talk more than you have to. Billy wasn’t the kind to know that.

“I don’t know what happened. It just stopped … it stopped right past the Mattson bridge. Running just fine, then she just stopped an’ I couldn’t get ‘er going.” He must’ve thought that sounded good because he added, “Maybe you don’t know all there is about engines.”

I held the gun steady and ruminated. I started back at the beginning and thought about how I’d laid out the parts as I took each one out, cleaning and checking. That line of thinking didn’t go on for long. I’d been making pocket-money since I was fifteen fixing cars for anybody who wanted it done cheap and right and didn’t care that a woman was doing it. I cocked the hammer and reached back to Billy’s wound. He squealed like a baby when I poked it. Vince was breathing hard, but when it came to fixing cars instead of driving them, he always kept quiet. “Where’d you say it stalled?” I asked the baby.

“Mattson bridge … Come on, Maybelle, put the gun down. We’re all in this together, remember?”

I leaned in as I reminded him of something. “Call me May or Belle, but if you ever slap the two together again I’ll shoot you on the spot.” I waited for him to nod, then I straightened up. “Now tell me exactly where it stalled.”

“R … r … right after the bridge, right after that little bend.”

“He’s lying.” I said.

Vince asked how I knew.

I stared into Billy’s weepy eyes as I dug the barrel harder into his temple. “If it stalled on the town side of the bridge it would’ve rolled down, all the way down to Burt’s dusty five and dime at the edge, before stopping. Road’s on an incline down to there. He would’ve only had to steer. He coulda got to us in time and warned us before we started.” I turned to Vince. “You don’t think for a minute I fixed a car that stalled out right away.”

Vince shook his head.

I looked back at Billy. “Who’re you working for?”

Billy wept and sputtered. “I don’t know what you’re on about …”

“I guess it doesn’t matter which ones,” I said. “Benson’s gang, or those city boys fighting ‘em and wanting to run all the counties. One side or the other figured us out. Or maybe you told ‘em. Did you do that to get in good with the ‘big boys’? They waiting for you to report back? You came up here to shoot us and take the money back to one or the other.”

“How the hell’d you figure that out?” Vince said.

I knew he didn’t expect an answer to that. “We don’t have much time.”

“How we gonna go without a car?” he said.

I smacked Billy across the head hard enough to put him out cold. “We’ll talk about that later just in case he can hear a little.”

“You’re not gonna kill ‘em?”

“Whichever gang he went to will take care of that, if he doesn’t bleed to death first.”

Me and Vince hadn’t spread out much in the cabin, it was too cold in there to even undress, so we strapped a lot of the sacks with the cash around our bellies and buckled the rest of it, and anything else loose, into the two big over-the-shoulder bags we’d brought it all in. I strapped on Billy’s rifle and Vince got his gun and all the extra ammunition. As we started putting on our coats, I got an idea for a way to get down the mountain that I was pretty sure neither gang knew about. I’d lived and explored around there since I was real little — sometimes with my dad.

Watching Billy in all that pain put me in mind of Daddy’s last moments, when he’d grabbed my hand and made his peace.

Daddy’d been laid on the kitchen table by coworkers from the mine. They’d put a couple of dish towels under his head and the little crocheted blanket from the couch over him, up to his chest, so I wouldn’t see the wound when I got there. When I took his hand, he turned his grip on me and kept trying to raise his head as he rasped and blood dribbled out of his mouth and down the side of his face.

“They killed me, May,” he said. “They done killed your Daddy in that mine.”

I started to cry but he told me to stop.

“You listen to me,” he said. “I taught you everything I knew after your mama passed. I did the best I knew and I never cared you were a girl. You’re smarter than I ever was. Once you know something, you just do. You don’t have to think too long. That’s a good mark for a mind.” He spat out some more blood and went on, holding my hand even tighter and pulling me closer. “Do better than I did. Don’t go out poor. They got plenty, girl. Don’t you go out poor.”

“Oh, Daddy,” I said. I tried so hard not to cry, but tears fell.

“Promise!” he said so loud that it scared me.

I whispered into his ear, “I promise, Daddy.”

He’d been the one to teach me about cars. He taught me how to shoot and run as fast as any boy. He told me how he’d robbed strongboxes, store registers and a bank before he met my mama and went straight. He wasn’t scared to tell me that. He knew I’d still love him.

It took me a few years to figure things out. I wanted to do it once, big, then go someplace warm and live the way Daddy wanted me to. I would’ve got it done someday on my own, but meeting Vince made it perfect. He was another set of hands and someone who knew most of the ropes. He knew enough to see that I could plan things well. And since that wasn’t his strong suit, he let me plan it all. The coal company would never know who’d robbed their safe if we could just get the hell out of there and on our way south. I wasn’t going to let the little problem with Billy mess it all up.

As I was about to put my hat on, Vince caught me under my coat just above the waist, just above the tens, twenties, and fifty-dollar bills I was sure we’d get across the border. He moved his thumb around just under my breast the way he knew I liked.

I said, “I thought you dreamed of bleached blondes.”

“What’s a bleached blonde got over you?” He looked me up and down, those thick lashes of his threatening to melt me all over again.

I wiped a wisp of brown hair out of my eyes and felt for the pins holding my curls in place.

“You gonna listen to me for a change when we get to Mexico?”

“I’ll listen to you all you want,” I said. “I’ll even buy one of those pretty dresses and walk through the garden holding my shoes in my hand like we saw in that picture. Maybe wear a big straw hat with flowers around the brim …”

“Not gonna buy yourself a diamond ring, too?”

“Husbands are supposed to do that.”

“All right then. I will.”

I smiled at him.

“How ’bout babies?”

“Sure,” I said. We had plenty of money for that life. “We’ve got to get out of here now,” I said. “Let’s go.”

As we went down the side of the mountain farthest from town, going my most secret way, I kept my eyes and ears open, but I couldn’t stop smiling.