Dancing with the Devil

“Damn that wind,” Lilly Jean muttered to herself, slamming the door of her Chevette and then pausing for a moment to make sure the door wouldn’t fall off of the old rattletrap.  “Messing with my hair again.”  Lilly Jean wasn’t used to living at the bottom of a valley.  She didn’t like it.  Didn’t like it at all.  The wind whipped her hair across her face; it made her eyes stream; it made her mascara run.  Lilly Jean didn’t understand how people could enjoy living here: Rather than walking purposefully to their destinations, they were blown there, heads held down against the wind.  The wind gave everyone a rumpled look—like towels left to dry on the clothesline to save a bit on the electric bill.  The wind drew squint lines on every face and the skin of the residents of this valley was ruddy and pocked.  Or perhaps it was just the harshness of their lives that decorated their skin that way.  No.  Lilly Jean shook her head.  If that were the case, her skin would be as ruddy as the rest of them, despite the moisturizer she slathered on every night before bed.  Watching her one night, Daddy Sheriff complained about the cost of her moisturizer.  Told her he was saving up for a new truck and couldn’t she use something more cost-effective?  She caught his eye in the mirror.  Held it there.  “You certainly wasn’t complaining about my moisturizer when you first met me.  Your skin is so soft, baby.”  Daddy Sheriff had the decency to blush then.  “’Sides, it ain’t as if you’re shellin’ out the cash for my creams.  I’m paying for it my own self, just the way I always have done.”  And just to spite him, she applied an extra generous amount of moisturizer to her neck.

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Absence

Well, we took our kitchen table to the basement to make a study area for the kids.  Hopefully, this will help to keep the house a bit neater: Rather than stacking backpacks all over the house, the kids will take them downstairs.  But this absence of the table leaves a surprising emptiness in the kitchen.  It makes it look as if we’ve just moved into the house or are in the process of leaving it.  So we take our meals in the dining room at the table my grandmother gave my husband and me for a wedding gift.

“We need a new table,” my husband said as he banged his head on the kitchen light yesterday.

I wanted to buy a table made locally; a table made by people who live close to me; by people who take pride in their work; by people who take a product from start to finish.  But we didn’t want to spend thousands of dollars.

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Hand in Hand

“Daddy Sheriff and me?  We knew the second we met that we were perfect for each other.”  Lilly Jean took a straw and tapped it against the counter until it burst through the paper like a  butterfly emerging from its cocoon; reminding Lilly Jean of the way she felt when she first met Daddy Sheriff.  She grabbed another straw and opened it the same way before putting both in her milkshake.

Bitsy raised her eyebrows.  “How do you think Connie felt about that?” 

“Connie shouda’ paid Daddy Sheriff more mind when they were together, ‘stead of hounding him now that she’s lost him.”

“Seems to me Daddy Sheriff shouldn’t have been going to the fair without his wife.  Connie loved the fair.”

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Bittersweet

This post was written in response to an Indie Ink challenge.  The Drama Mama asked me to "write an ode to chocolate Dr. Seuss style."  I challenged Diane with "three drops of rain in a deadly sky."

Bittersweet

It happened every Christmas.  A certain special tin

Arrived in Grandma’s glove-ed hands; creating quite a din.

This tin bore handmade chocolates; chocolates filled with creams:

Spearmint, orange, maple, the stuff of children’s dreams.

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First Love and Distant Dreams

“Believe me, Ellie, you get yourself a man, you’ll be the happiest woman in the world.”  Lilly Jean extracted a tube of red lipstick from her gigantic purse and uncapped it.  “‘Sides me, of course.  Ain’t no one happier than me, and you can thank the Daddy Sheriff for that.”  She ran the lipstick across first her lower lip, then her upper one before squashing her lips together. 

Watching this from the breakfast bar, Bitsy was reminded of two thick worms competing for space on Lilly Jean’s impossibly small mouth.  “How did she ever win all those beauty pageants she’s always yammering on about?”  Bitsy murmured to Spank, who’d emerged from the kitchen with a dish towel slung over his shoulder. 

“Be kind, Bitsy,” Spank said.

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Half a Husband

“You here for dinner again?”  Spank said, as Lilly Jean settled her sorry ass on the stool closest to the diner’s entrance.

 “What’s it to you?”

“You got a pout on your face the size of Texas.”  Spank polished a fork on his apron and Bitsy suspected that, had she not been looking, he would have spit on it to remove the bit of egg stuck between the tines.  “What’ll that make, the third time this week?” 

“I ain’t counting.”  As she looked at the menu, Lilly Jean spun herself back and forth on the stool with the tip of her toe.  She reminded Bitsy of a pendulum: Lilly Jean was all wound up; full of energy with no place to spend it.  Lord knows, there wasn’t anything to do in Medford.  And so, back and forth she went.  This way, then that, history repeating itself again and again until time stopped altogether.  Daddy Sheriff’s first wife had spent many a night on that very stool until she’d stood up and walked out of Medford for good, just after Jonathan’s son had run off and Howard had made up his mind to become a monk, confusing the entire town with his undeclared vow of silence and poverty.  What had happened to Howard’s dreams?  What had happened to her own?  

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To Cool in the Peppermint Wind

There is a place where the sidewalk ends

And before the street begins,

And there the grass grows soft and white,

And there the moon-bird rests from his flight

To cool in the peppermint wind.

My husband and I went to the pet store today to pick up tick medicine for the dogs.  It’s one of those massive pet stores—a department store, really—for owners of dogs and cats; rodents and reptiles; fish and birds.

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A Sad Man...

This week, Sir challenged me with: ...it's a sad man, my friend, who's livin' in his own skin and can't stand the company  -- Bruce Springsteen.  I challenged Supermaren with "The sun glinted off the surface of the ocean.  It was a dreary day."

“You’re ruining them rolls, Bitsy.”  Lilly Jean Jacobs blew on her coffee before taking a sip.

Bitsy Barnes continued kneading the dough on the stainless steel counter.  “I’ve been standing at this counter every morning making sweet rolls for over thirty years, Lilly Jean; been working in this diner since I was practically a baby.  How much time you got invested in a kitchen?”

Lilly Jean laughed and lit a cigarette.  “I’m here every day, ain’t I?”

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The Great Brain Robbery

Growing up, one of my all-time favorite books was The Great Brain.  The book’s cover featured the novel’s protagonist, The Great Brain, a smug-looking boy of about eleven, arms crossed one over the other, assuming the expression of one well-familiar with his uncanny intelligence.

Though the book was written by John D. Fitzgerald, I was under the impression that the author was F. Scott Fitzgerald; that I was reading a book by the author of The Great Gatsby.  Soon enough, I knew, I would graduate to bigger, thicker tomes while my classmates were left behind with Nancy Drew and the Trixie Belden Mysteries.

In The Great Brain, I thought I had found myself.

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Deal with the Devil

This post, part of the fiction I’m working on, was written in response to an Indie Ink prompt.  Lance challenged me with: The devil makes you an offer you can’t refuse.  I challenged Rachel with Terms and conditions may apply. 

* * *

Bitsy Barnes put on a pot of coffee and contemplated the fragility of sound.  The sound of a midnight darkness was plush and inviting and as lovely as dark chocolate.  As night turned softly towards day and the rooster crowed, the town would begin to rouse itself, stretching and rolling over to stay in bed for just five minutes more.  Medford gentled into the day that way.  But now, the silence stretched thin—taut and quiet and beautiful as daybreak—made even the more precious because at any moment, once the first rays of sunlight kissed the ground of Medford, the silence would be shattered into a thousand pieces.

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