Home, Safe?

The doctor lifted the sheet and peered at the injury on the boy’s leg.  It appeared to be a bullet wound, deeply infected, oozing yellow and green.  But, still.  I could’ve been worse.  He would mend.  “Looks like you’ve had some luck.”    Carefully, she turned the leg to the side. 

The boy winced. 

“I’m sorry,” she said.  “It hurts?”

“Of course it hurts, Doctor.”  The father frowned at her, as if she were responsible for the boy’s condition. 

She nodded.  Was the bullet still lodged inside?  And why had the parents taken so long to get the boy to the hospital?  “Although I’m not sure what I see.” 







Read more »

Freefall

Just before my husband pushed me, he’d whispered in my ear.  “A Roman emperor used to throw visitors he didn’t like over the cliffs and into the sea below.” 

I felt Phillip’s arms at my waist. 

And then, I felt nothing. 

I began to fall, the pressure of my husband's fingertips only a memory.

As I fell, the memories flew by, faster and faster until it was all I could do to grasp at them; as if by holding onto them, I could gain purchase on my life again.

I thought of the day I’d agreed to marry Phillip.

“Don’t go,” he’d said to me, the week before I was to leave on a mission trip.  “You can help people here—in the United States.”

“This is important to me, Phillip.”

He took my hand.  “The rainforest is full of dangers.  You’re terrified of snakes.”

I lifted my chin.  “I’ll learn to overcome my fear.”

He released my hand.  “At least come camping with me before you go.”

Phillip killed the snake that I’d found curled inside the tent.  And then, holding the snake by the head, he looked me in the eye.  “There are bigger snakes than this in the rainforest.  Marry me, Jules.  I’ll keep you safe.”

Within a year, I’d given birth.  I busied myself with bottles and diapers and doctor’s appointments.  As I began to navigate the waters of motherhood, my confidence increased.  I became aware of my power as a person.

And then, the baby got sick.

“It’s not your fault, Jules.”  But Phillip’s were eyes dark and angry as he turned away and knelt to pray in the hospital chapel.

The baby recovered.

My confidence did not.

There was an accident.

I totaled the car.

There was a dinner party.

My food sickened the guests.

But Phillip was there every time, to pick up the pieces and pat them back into place like a clay figurine, raw and unfired and malleable.

From this height, I could see the way the earth knit itself together.  The fields were anchored in place by pristine farmhouses and pretty red barns.  The roads crisscrossed here and there; so many places to get to where you are going.  So many paths to take.  Further off, the interstate cinched itself around the ever-expanding waistline of factories and malls and discount stores.

My mind returned to the snake, the baby, the accident, the party.  All of those events, I realized, were linked: Phillip had put the snake inside the tent.  Phillip had sickened the baby and slit the tires and poisoned the dinner.  And every time, Phillip was there to rescue me.  Now there was this; Phillip's birthday present to me, ostensibly to help me overcome my fears. 

Phillip had cinched a belt around my confidence.

I wondered how he intended to save me now. 

I pulled the rip cord.  My chute deployed. 

Time slowed.  

I relaxed. 

So this was what it was like, I mused, to be weightless.  This was what it felt like to be free of worry.  This was what it felt like to be full of confidence.  This time, Phillip's plan to rescue me had backfired: When he pushed me from that plane, Phillip had set me free. 

I studied the gentle swell of the earth rising up to meet me.  I was here.  I had arrived.  And as soon as my feet hit the ground I was going to ask Phillip for a divorce.

Post script: Phillip had cut the cord on the parachute he’d intended for me.  But just before the jump, while Phillip was in the front of the plane, the instructor switched chutes.

Apparently my husband had planned to save me mid-air.

No divorce proceedings were necessary.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Eric Limer challenged me with "Write something where the viewpoint character is in freefall for the duration of the story's timeframe. (Your POV can, like, think back on things, but he/she should be in the air at the beginning of the story and in the air at the end.)" and I challenged Chimnese with "You're given the opportunity to meet your mother or father at a point before your birth. Who would you meet? When? What would you talk about?"

Dog Days

 Momma burst into my bedroom, an accusing look on her face.  “Billy, you take Brutus out yet?” 


“Mmmph.”


“Billy, when we got that dog, you promised me you was gonna’ take care of him.”  Momma began enumerating my sins upon her fingertips.  “You was gonna’ feed him.  You was gonna’ walk him.  You was gonna’ pick up his doo from the yard.” 


I rolled onto my stomach; returned to my video game.


“You mark my words, child.  You gonna’ come back as a dog in your next life.  Then you'll see what it's like.”


“Catholics don’t believe in reincarnation, Momma.  You’re going to go to hell.”







Read more »

If There were Dreams

“Hey, Howie!” 

 Howard jumped.  Now that Daddy Sheriff had taken off to go hunting, he’d grown accustomed to the silences of the house.  He liked the quiet, after a day of noise at the farm and the diner.  But Lilly Jean had a way of letting the entire world know when she was entering a room.  Lilly Jean Jacobs’s goal in life, Howard suspected, was to get noticed. 

Whatcha’ reading?” 

Howard closed the book, keeping his thumb inside to mark his place.  He showed Lilly Jean the cover.

“Steven Hawking?  You understand that?”

Howard grinned.  Nodded. 

“You’re shittin’ me.”

Read more »

Somewhere Between Here and There

She pauses in her buffing to glance out the window.  The snow is falling heavier now, thicker.  Maybe he’ll let her go early tonight.  Not because he’s concerned about her getting home to her family on Christmas Eve, but because he wants to make sure she gets back to him tomorrow:  If she gets stuck somewhere between here and there, she won’t be able to serve Christmas dinner to his relatives.  And without her serving, how will he impress his family?

She studies her work.  The bathroom faucet gleams.  He won’t find water spots on it tonight.  This time, he won’t find a reason to dock her pay.  Twenty cents for each water spot on stainless steel.  A dollar for a missing button.  Every perceived grievance is fined: too much salt; bread that didn’t rise properly; towels misfolded; bed made up with incorrect sheets; a book placed upon the wrong shelf.  Every mistake costs her dearly: an immunization foregone; her mother’s pills cut in half; an empty space where the Christmas tree ought to be.  Over fifteen years, he has docked her pay by over nine hundred dollars. 

Read more »

Coming out of Retirement

“What’s wrong, Daddy Sheriff?”  Lilly Jean sat on the edge of the bed and watched her husband even out the straps of his Bolo tie.  The stone was green turquoise and, truth be told, was what had initially attracted Lilly Jean to her future husband.  She liked a man with an interesting past and Daddy Sheriff claimed he could trace his family back to the Navaho.  Naturally, she’d believed him.  She sighed.  She’d always been a sucker for a good tale.

Daddy Sheriff glanced at her.  “I could ask you the same question.  You’ve been setting there sighing for ten minutes.  You didn’t even know Wheezy Hart all that well.  What are you so sad-faced for?”  He shook his head. 

Those first months with Daddy Sheriff, before he’d brought out that diamond solitaire and ruined it all, those had been the best months of her life.  She looked at that ring on her finger, now joined for eternity by a thin elegant band.  The rings were beautiful.  But she found them too tight upon her hand. 

She found they strangled the life out of her.

Read more »

Lucky Orange Sock

“You bin driving my Chevette again, Daddy Sheriff.”  Lilly Jean stood before her husband, hands on hips.

Howard settled back on the couch.  This ought to make for an interesting argument.

“I wouldn’t be caught dead in that thing, woman.  Now move aside, you’re blocking the TV.”

“Daddy Sheriff…”

“Town Sheriff don’t drive no Chevette.  It ain’t dignified.”

“How do you explain this, then?”  She held up a sock—an orange sock.  Howard immediately recognized it as his father’s.  Score one Lilly Jean.  “I bin looking for this sock for three weeks, Daddy Sheriff.  I finally throwed its partner away.”

“You trashed my lucky sock?”

“Can’t get lucky when you’re all alone, Daddy Sheriff.”

Read more »

The Last Word

The sheets were white cotton.  Practical.  Opal was a practical woman.  And even if she were not—if she instead favored prints or silk or two thousand count Egyptian, circumstances would not have permitted her such luxury.  Nevertheless, the sheets were clean and pressed and carried on them the crisp scent of spring.  She thought of bluebirds and daffodils pushing their shoots up from the warming ground.  She thought of the first mowing of the season.  She thought of her seedlings, unwatered upon the windowsill. 

“Spring is a wonderful time to die.”

Read more »

Phenomenal

“Phenomenal,” Daddy Sheriff leapt to his feet and pumped his fist in the air.  “Didja see that pass, Lilly Jean?”

Lilly Jean smiled up at her husband.  “That was a pretty…”

He waved his hand at her.  “Hush yourself, now.”  He leaned towards the television, hands seemingly folded in prayer.  As the ball headed downfield, Daddy Sheriff leaned to the left so far, that eventually he was left standing on one leg, reminding Howard of a pelican.

 “Watch that drink on my new shag rug, Daddy Sheriff,” Lilly Jean said.  “Can’t get pop stain out of rug no matter how hard you scrub at it.”

“I said hush up, woman.”  Daddy Sheriff didn’t bother turning around.

Lilly Jean glanced at Howard before returning her attention to the rug she’d had installed two weeks after moving in.  For six weeks straight, Lilly Jean worked to make the place hers.  She scrubbed the ring from the bathtub; installed a new toilet paper holder.  She sewed curtains and painted walls and painstakingly scraped old wallpaper from the living room.  Lilly Jean had thought she could make this place her home.

Lilly Jean was wrong.

“Touchdown!”  Daddy Sheriff snatched the Terrible Towel from the top of the television set and began swinging it around his head.

“Trying to lasso up all that happiness and bring it on through the television set, Daddy Sheriff?”  Lilly Jean winked at Howard.

Howard knew the house couldn’t contain that much euphoria.

The kicker made the extra point and the game switched to a commercial break.  Daddy Sheriff arranged the Terrible Towel back on the television, smoothing it carefully and scooting it just back enough so that the edge just hung over the top of the screen. 

 “I got to see a man about a horse,” Daddy Sheriff said.

 “Mind my figurines.”  Lilly Jean said.

But Daddy Sheriff paid no mind to anyone but himself.  On his way out of the room his boot caught one and sent it skittering across the carpet.  She picked it up and held it close to her face, examining it carefully.  She held it out to him and shook her head.  “It’s my very best one and he’s gone and chipped its nose clean off.  Got it offa’ eBay two years ago when they was going cheap.”

There was a flush and the door opened.  “Man can’t even bother to put the lid down, let alone wash his hands when he’s done in there, I guess he can’t be expected to take care of other people’s fine decoratives.”

Daddy Sheriff took up his place again on the couch.  He grabbed a nacho and drove it around on the plate of Lilly Jean’s dip: picking up some lettuce here, some olives there, some ground beef over there.  He lifted it to his mouth.  A replay of the touchdown pass played on the television screen.  The television announcers, fickle men with their pretty white teeth and their perfect hair and their memories of glory days resurrected once a week during football season, suddenly set their sights on a Steelers win. 

“That coulda’ been you, Howard.”  Daddy Sheriff spoke with his mouth full.  Specks of nachos flew from his mouth as he spoke.  “Instead of watching these guys, I could have been watching my son.”  He shook his head.  “But you’re not phenomenal, are you.  Hell, you’re not even average.  No wonder your mother left me.”

“Ain’t nothing wrong with Howard, Daddy Sheriff.” 

“Oh, so you’re a doctor now, too?”

“Don’t take no medical degree to tell that Howard’s mind’s just fine.  Least he recollects to put down the toilet seat when he’s finished the job.  I’d reckon he washes his hands when he’s through, too.”

“Panty-waist.”

“No more than you, Theodore.”

Daddy Sheriff started.  His eyes grew wide.  “How did you…?”

“Don’t take a medical degree to figure out that one, neither.”  Lilly Jean giggled.  “Big bad Daddy Sheriff.  You think them cowboy boots you stomp about in constitutionalize manhood?  I seen you strap on that gun and stand sideways to admire yourself in the mirror.  But you ain’t no daddy, not in the real sense, anyway.  A real father wouldn’t mock his own flesh and blood the way you do Howard”

Daddy Sheriff pointed to the front door.  “Get out of my house.”

On the television screen, the Steelers scored another touchdown.

“Oh no you don’t.  This here’s my house too.  And Howard’s.”  Lilly Jean walked up to the television and switched it off before yanking the Terrible Towel from the top.  She threw it on her orange shag rug and ground it beneath her heel.  “You took your own dreams and tried to install them into your son when it didn’t work out for you.”

“I’m telling you to leave, Lilly Jean…”

“I ain’t going nowhere,Theodore.”  Lilly Jean picked up her figurines from the floor and set them back on her television set.    “I don’t care if you is the sheriff, you can’t just make me disappear.”   

Oh, but he can, Howard wanted to say, but as usual, his mouth refused to form the words.

For the Indie Ink Writing Challenge this week, Kensho G challenged me with "starting with the word 'phenomenal,' write whatever comes into your head without stopping.  I challenged Carrie with "they sat beside the ocean boiling water upon the beach hoping for a bit of salt to take home to their children."

Fanatic

Howard sat shivering in a lawn chair beneath the giant oak that grew in the yard.  The wind sent maple leaves cart-wheeling down the lonely dirt road that passed in front of the house he and Daddy Sheriff—and now Lilly Jean Jacobs—shared.  Yellow locust leaves clung to the patrol car and Lilly Jean’s rusted Chevette, both parked outside of the garage that each year leaned a little bit more to the left.

The rain had drawn the worms from the dirt.  They lay curled up and swollen upon the brick walk that led from the garage to the house.  Pearls of rain pooled in the cupped hands of the clovers and dotted the grass like crystals.

“Howie.”  Lilly Jean propped open the screen door and held it open with her foot.  “Game’s on.” 

He nodded.  No doubt Daddy Sheriff scared his new wife, what with his yelling at the TV.

Read more »

One Day Was All That Stood

One day of work was all that stood between me and the truth.  The letter was coming that afternoon, I was certain of it.  I could feel it; feel it in my bones the way Bitsy Barns could sense a rainstorm three days off by the throbbing in her right wrist.  When the truck came in with that day’s mail to be sorted and wrapped in the circulars like a babe in a blanket; I would find the envelope I was looking for. 

Of course, I would open it.

Read more »

You're Not Taping This, Are You?

Maura’s mother sat hunched over the dining room table.  Before her were a stack of torn photographs, a roll of adhesive tape, and an army of cigarettes smoldering in the chipped orange ashtray. 

The table’s surface was scratched and nicked and dented; each scar a record of their lives: The spot where her sister banged her spoon nonstop, the only way she had of communicating in an uncommunicative world.  The place Maura’s mother had darkened with shoe polish after her husband had tried to remove a wax ring with a knife.  Maura’s eyes fell to the words I hate math; words written in anger on her algebra homework; words never meant to be engraved on the dining room table.  Maura would inherit the table, she knew.  Her mother’s idea of a joke—a permanent reminder of her hatred of numbers.

Read more »