Lesson Learned

This post was written in response to a prompt from The Red Dress Club: Write a post that either starts or ends with the words "Lesson learned." Word limit: 400 words. 

“Pig’s out!” Someone hollered and we all jumped into action.

Now, escaped animals weren’t a routine occurrence in my family’s history of farming, but it happened often enough to lend a bit of suspense to our daily lives.  Once or twice, my mother looked up from the kitchen sink to see cows in the back field, lazily grazing on the rich alfalfa crop intended to feed them through winter.  Another time, there came a midnight knock upon the front door.  Two men stood on the porch, inquiring whether the cows in the middle of the state highway belonged to us.

But a loose pig?  This was new.

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Hidden Message

The following post was written in response to a prompt from the red dress club:  You or your character find a forgotten letter or card from someone important in your life--whether good or bad.  What does it say?  How does it affect you or your character?  What is done with it?

* * *

He was following me.

I ran. 

I ran up the hill and behind the house that Jonathan had told me years and years ago never to go into.  It was too dangerous, he told me.  I could get hurt.

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School Trip

This post was written in response to a prompt from the red dress club:

School trips. We all go on them. What trip do you remember the most? Where did you go? Who was with you? How did you get there? Have you ever been back?

* * *

At the end of every year, the elementary kids would walk out the front door of our school and turn right.  When we reached the Variety Store at the corner of Prospect and Main, we’d head left—towards the village park.  There, we would ride the swings and scoot gingerly down hot slides.  We’d play kickball and baseball and red rover until we were hot and sweaty.  The teachers would call us to the shade of the pavilion where we’d sit at wooden picnic tables with green paint flaking from them.  We’d eat our lunch: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on Wonder bread.  Ruffled chips.  The obligatory apple.  A couple of chocolate chip cookies and, best of all, a Coke wrapped in foil to keep it cold.

And it’s this Coke wrapped in foil that reminds me suddenly of another class trip of sorts: The annual Memorial Day band parade.  As a member of the marching band, I would don a woolen uniform and board a bus with my baritone and—with the rest of the band and the cheerleaders, the flag girls and the majorettes—would march in four parades. 

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The Life in Their Eyes

This post was written in response to a prompt from the red dress club:

Flash Fiction can be fun and a real challenge. This week focus on the words and the strength of each to contribute to your story. Write a 300 word piece using the following word for inspiration: LIFE.

* * *

There’s a sign at the entrance to Bitsy’s Diner.

“She’s selling out.” Spank waves his spatula in the air. 

“This diner is your future, El.  The money I got invested in this place will get you out of Medford.”

“But…”

“You got your whole life ahead of you, child.  This is your opportunity to go and live it.”

“You know how she’s always going on about the city,” Spank says.

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Driving Lessons

This post was written in response to a prompt from The Red Dress Club:

The first time I ________-ed after _________-ing
Unfortunately, I was able to fill in the blanks with crashed and buying a car. 

“Here’s a nice one.” The salesman pointed to a red Dodge Charger hatchback.  “Bucket seats.  AM/FM.  Reliable.  Practical.” 

Practical wasn’t an image I was shooting for.

“It has a sunroof.  Wanna’ take it for a test drive?”  He held up his hands and mimed driving. 

I nodded, feeling the hot vinyl of the steering wheel beneath my fingers.  I got in the car and bucked my seatbelt.  I reached for the keys dangling alluringly from the ignition.  And there, in the center of the vehicle was...  “But I don’t drive stick…”

“Oh, well…I’ll just drive it for you then.” 

We exchanged seats.  The salesman cranked up the radio and popped open the sunroof.  He pulled onto the street and changed gears, all the while extolling the virtues of the car over Madonna’s “Material Girl.” 

We returned to the dealership.  The salesman casually draped his arm across the steering wheel.  “Whaddya’ think?”

* * *

My father insisted that my sister give me lessons.  Kathy went over the basics: clutch, brake, shifting, and we were off, the car rocking violently every time we arrived at a stop light, my sister shouting, “the clutch! Hit the clutch!” while other drivers and pedestrians, too, pointed and laughed with open mouths.  

Brake.  Clutch.  It was too confusing.  Fifteen minutes into the lesson, I pulled over.  I shut off the stupid car and let my sister drive home.  I could practice there.  It would be safer that way.

* * *

A circular driveway surrounded our house, separating the lush lawn from the woods that secreted our home from the busy state highway.  Lining the driveway was an army of massive boulders my father had culled from the back field.  Fifty-foot pine trees kept watch over those majestic stones, shading them and allowing thick moss and ivy to grow up along them.  Perfect.  Test.  Track.

That evening after dinner, I went to my car, popped the sunroof and switched on the radio.  I turned the key.  The engine sputtered…and caught!  At a rate of no more than three miles per hour, I pulled towards the front of the house.  So far, so good.  I sat up confidently and tapped my fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of Queen’s “Bicycle Race.” Ahead, there was a slight grade: I had to accelerate a bit to make it up.  Too fast.  I was going to crash into the fence and let the cows escape from the pasture.  I was…

Quickly, I steered to the right and hit the brakes.  The car lurched.  Again, the brakes.  Another lurch.  I slammed the brakes tight against the floor of the car, pressing so hard I lifted myself from the red bucket seat with faux leather trim. 

But the brakes had failed.  The car began rolling down the driveway.  Faster and faster, I rolled backwards, the pine trees passing outside my window at what must have been a hundred miles an hour.  There was a terrific scraping and then, suddenly, I stopped, my practical little car caught up on the mountain range lining the driveway.

I had the sense to cut the engine before opening the door.  I jumped from the car as it teetered precariously on its undercarriage and ran, sobbing, to get my father.  An hour later, from an upstairs window, I watched my dad laughing with the tow truck driver as his assistant wound the winch before leaving to get a different—larger—truck to drag my car from the rocks. 

When the car was finally free, my dad got in to drive it to the back of the house.  “You can’t drive it, Dad.  The brakes don’t work.”  I wanted him to go right to the dealership; to demand my money back; to punish that salesman for having taken advantage of me. 

“These brakes are fine,” he said, his foot depressing the pedal I’d sworn was the clutch.

Howard Snickered

This posting was written in response to a prompt from the red dress club:

"Physical beauty.

It can open doors - and can also shut them.

Write a scene in which a physically beautiful character is somehow impacted by that trait."

Of course, I probably broke the rules again. 
I also rushed it a bit: Filibuster is home and I'm off to pick her up.

Howard Snickered

Lilly Jean Jacobs plopped herself down right next to Howard Heacock and flipped open her menu.  “I’m not even going to say good morning to you, Dumbass.”

Howard swiveled slightly upon his stool to acknowledge his stepmother, a woman three years his junior, and was accosted by her bosom.  He turned away quickly and added three packets of sugar to his coffee.

“Lilly Jean, must you store your drink there?”  Bitsy nodded towards the plastic sports bottle tucked neatly in Lilly Jean’s ample cleavage.  “You’re nauseating my customers here.”

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Yoga Lessons

This post was written in response to a prompt from the red dress club: in which we were supposed to write about happy endings.

My mother was in constant motion.  In the evenings, she would make our clothes at the dining room table, the sewing machine whirring until late into the night.  The following morning, all evidence of my mother’s nighttime sewing would have disappeared except for the new pair of pajamas waiting on the table.  Every day, Mom would do laundry; wash dishes; wipe countertops; vacuum.  At least once a month, she would run a cloth doused in Liquid Gold over the faux wood of the kitchen cabinets—brown with a decorative inset of black where food would invariably get stuck.  She would go grocery shopping.  Take us to doctors' appointments.  Make us lunch.  And then, in the afternoons, before she made dinner, she’d get her book.  My sisters and I would sit on the couch.  Mom would lie down, stretching her legs across our laps, and the contest would be on: The three of us would begin rubbing my mother’s leg, each trying to win the coveted best leg-rubber award.  Mom would read a few pages before her book fell against her chest.

 “Who’s best, Mommy?”

“Hmmmmm?” 

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By Heart

This post was written in response to a prompt from the red dress club: asking us what we learned by heart in childhood.

To know something by heart is to love it so much that you hold it within your heart forever.  Growing up, I knew by heart our community bookmobile.  Every two weeks the bookmobile would round the bend in the road and toot the horn a couple of times before parking at the side of the road in front of my neighbors’ house.  I would go to my jewelry box and grab my library card; thick salmon cardboard with a piece of metal affixed to it.  I loved everything about this card: the raised letters of my card number; my shaky yet solemn signature; the little plastic sleeve it lived in between bookmobile visits.  My library card was my license to travel. 

Mom would give us the go-ahead, and my sisters and I would race out the door and down the hill.  There were three bushes—small, medium and large—separating our property from the neighbors’ place.  I ignored them, running between them and on to the lawn next door. 

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To Speak Again

This post was written in response to a prompt from the red dress club: "This week's prompt is all about character development. We'd like you to write about what your character wants most."  Posting my fiction online is not easy for me!

Daddy Sheriff told me I had to hold my tongue; told me that he’d kill me if I ever breathed a word about that night to anyone.  He told me he was just trying to help me to get ahead; to get me the hell out of Medford before the town rolled over and died.  Said he didn’t mean to kill Duke Ellis anyhow, just wanted to roughen him up a bit, and shouldn’t that count for something?

Daddy Sherriff told me to hold my tongue.  I guess I been holding it ever since.

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Skipping Graduation

This post was written in response to a prompt from the red dress club:

Well, now that school is officially over, I can confess that V never graduated.   I will never forget the excitement of that day:  The beautiful dresses; the carefully-applied makeup; hair combed and styled and sprayed just so.  Cameras and camcorders and grandparents and diplomas wrapped up in yellow ribbons.  Her older sister, offering advice.

My husband went out to the lawn to claim a few of the folding chairs that had been set up hours earlier in preparation for the big event.  I took V to the assigned room. 

She paused at the entrance.  “I’m not doing it, Mom.”

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The Music Died

This post was written in response to a prompt from: the red dress club:

This was absolutely the last time she would touch a piano; the last time her fingers would tease out the intricate patterns of notes and rhythms from the keys, black and white.  It was the last time her hands would repeat the conversation that has been going on for centuries.

“Stay after class,” her teacher told her, the day she let the conversation die.

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What Shall I Be?

This post was written in response to a prompt on the red dress club:

Growing up, my sisters and I loved to play What shall I be?  First appearing in 1966 and categorized as educational, it was proclaimed The Exciting Game of Career Girls.  Based upon the roll of the dice and the acquisition of cards, players would race be the first to line up a job.

The box’s cover featured a dorky-looking girl, herculean pink bow in her hair, index finger on her cheek, looking as if as if couldn’t decide between all those career exciting opportunities.  To her left were six women, one of whom would be this girl’s future self.

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