Pretty Lady #T

In the attic again.  Picking my way through the boxes and framed pictures, I stooped to pick up a picture lying on the floor.  General Palmer astride his bronze horse, tall  pedestal in the middle  of  the  intersection.  I flipped the snapshot  into  a nearby box and straightened up too fast and too much without regard for the rafter above my head.  I mean, squarely atop my head.

The birds were twittering and chittering in the elms shading the sidewalk as I hastened down Weber Street.  I had walked all the way across town to Memorial Hospital to visit short minutes with my friend, Mary, as she had a ten-minute break at six  o'clock.  We had not seen each other since I left for college those many months ago.  I still had a soft spot for her.   Our visit was pleasant but not very  informative, for what can one say in ten minutes?  So now I am hurrying home because I promised Mom I would go to meeting with her this evening.

Passed by the east side of the old high school and reaching the corner I turned right onto Platte Avenue toward the west.  The sun had dropped behind The Peak, light rays streaming upward and outward, a painting almost as a child would represent a sunset, yet so very powerful my heart leaped within  me!  God's creation is marvelous beyond our abilities to fully appreciate it sometimes.  Then  there are perfect moments such as this one.

What is that figure that just crossed Nevada Avenue and is heading toward me with a quick and purposeful stride?  A young woman.  As she passes the front entrance of the high school I am nearing the middle of the block.  I recognize her.  It is Gwen.  Gwen whom I have not seen since the night we crossed the stage to receive our diplomas more than a year ago.

Gwen and I had started our senior year here in this building that stands beside us as newbies, that is we were both transfer students, the only thing we had in common.  The half-thousand other seniors all knew each other, more or less, but a small subset of the class were new to the facility.  I noticed Gwen.  She would have been hard to overlook because she was easy to look at.

Gwen was one of the best-dressed girls in the school, but fashion did not dictate her choice in style.  Her skirts, for instance, were hemmed two inches below the knee in a day in which the style required the hem two inches above the bobby sox.  She often wore a bolero jacket, style dictating an angora sweater.  The jacket was almost always accessorized with a scarf, either around her neck or over her shoulder.  Her makeup was modest but exquisite, with one exception.  Her carefully-applied lipstick was just a shade too red. Gwen's hair was black and when one looked into her eyes he had to know that the hair color was as honest as the piercing eyes.

Gwen and I were friendly to the extent that we spoke to each other in the hallways, she smiled when she saw me and I thought she was visiting Earth from Olympus.  In other words, way out of my league.

The aura of mystery surrounding the young lady never entirely lifted.  It was known that she had moved into town from another city.  The guys whispered behind their hands, "She lives with her sister, you know.  No parents in that house."  From which I was to infer-- what, exactly?

And thus we met, mid-block, late afternoon on a lovely summer day.  "Hi, David!"  Had she not spoken first I would have passed her without a word, for my daddy taught me that a gentleman never addressed a lady before she spoke to him.  "Hi, Gwen!  How are you?  Haven't seen you in, well, in a year."  We stopped to visit a bit.  I told her of my college choice, my plans for the summer.  She told me she worked in the secretarial pool at a large company whose corporate headquarters were on Cascade Avenue.

Breaking eye contact with me, dropping her head just slightly, her right foot caressed the back of her left calf.  Gwen said, "You could walk me the rest of the way home, if you like.  I live just around the corner on Weber."

Seldom to that point in my life did I fear that my heart would leap completely from my chest.  I took two very deep breaths, blushing I know, for I could feel the heat rising from the top of my head.

"Uh.  Oh, wow.  I'd really like to, but I promised my Mom I would take her to her meeting this evening and I am running late now."

"Oh.  Oh, okay.  Nice to see you again, and good luck with your life.  'Bye!"

In the Present #T

We left Me standing in the attic, a copy of Plato's Symposium  in my left hand. I am recalling, though, a day in which Ben and I were having a heated debate, Plato's idealism, versus Aristotle's realism. Finally, enough time devoted to that on this day, in the opinion of Prof who said, "Enough for now.  You may take it up again on Friday.  But you will switch positions for the balance of the discussion."

"But, Doc.  That puts me at a severe disadvantage, for Alcibiades here is noted all across campus for his chameleon-like non-stance on anything.  He can switch allegiances in an instant."

"And so you must learn to do as well, Mr. Moore," quoth the good doctor, "for you will find in your chosen field of endeavor that you will have every dart and javelin flung at you, every sword the enemy can command will come into play.  To defend your position, you must be able to understand the other side.  And to do that well, you must be able to argue either side.  Point, Alcibiades."

Reverie over.  I dropped the book in the dust, retraced my steps and descended the ladder.

End the portion of the account that may contain some elements of fiction, and back to reality as I start the car, ready to carry out my mission for the day.

The years that followed saw Ben and Wes graduate, and  I, too, the year following.  Ben rather precisely followed his life-goals chart he had developed as a youth.  His career included a successful ministry including the establishment of an outreach mission to the city's down-and-out.  He wrote several books which were published and at least one of them sold quite well.  He might have extended his goals chart a few more years, though, for twenty-five turned out to be enough.  He died just days short of his 44th birthday, 25 years almost to the day that he pinned his Life Goals to his dorm wall.

He planned thoroughly and followed his plan.

RIP, Ben.

I, on the other hand, 41 years after Ben's demise, still live my life one day at a time.

Word of the day realism, in philosophy.

 The real Ben and what he wrote in my yearbook six decades ago.

The Barn in The Attic #T

Pulled down the folding stair and laboriously climbed into the attic.  It has been a long spell since I roamed through this silent dusty old place.  I turned the corner and started walking down a narrow lane, clearly disused for some time, for the tracks were overgrown with weeds which had withered and died, drooped over and formed a carpet on which to tread.

Presently on my left I spied an old barn, wind-beaten and grey, and listing to the east.  Prevailing winds, you know.  Curiosity poked me in the side and I went through the open gate to the barn lot.  The door hung on a rail and would have been easily opened but that was not necessary for it stood open anyway so I walked inside.

Shafts of sunlight shot through the cracks that separated the siding in random places.  I stumbled through all sorts of clutter, disused machinery, even an old kitchen sink, and galvanized tubs, a 1940s vintage washing machine, its wringer dismounted and jammed into the tub.

Then what is that on this old bureau?  In stunned amazement I recognize this piece of long disused machinery as my old Idea Mill.  I have not seen it in ages and I have no idea how it got here.  I must have placed it in the refuse bin for disposal and somebody salvaged it, dragged it to this haven for old stuff.  Whoop! Perhaps I can now gin this thing up and work up an idea for a blog post.    I reached for the handle and discovered the first problem.  The handle was not mounted on its axle but rather it was sticking up from inside the hopper.

I took the crank and placed it back on its shaft.  I did not have a pin to hold it in place, but it fit snugly and would perhaps allow a few turns without falling off.  I tried to turn the handle.  Frozen.  Looking into the hopper I could see that the raw material for new ideas had been left in the hopper and it was all clotted, gummed up and hardened into an ugly mass.  I looked around for a tool with which to dislodge the stuff.  There is a tire iron.  Surely that will break it loose!  Not so.  All my efforts were futile.
 
I wandered, defeated, out of that place and shambled away.  Another hope dashed.


Word of the day:  shambled 

Pressure #T

Mathematics: “A subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true” (Bertrand Russell)  Not that I believe Russell ever knew what he was talking about.  But perhaps that is just me.

Brushed some sticky new cobwebs from my hair and forehead as I passed through the attic door.

It seems I had driven down Woodstock, turned up Westmoreland, wheeled into the Foster-Scholz parking lot. Now I am walking past those residence halls, passing the twin Doug firs on my right.  My copy of my thesis is clutched in my left hand and the butterflies are swarming in my stomach.  At the end of the next hour, my degree will be either confirmed or denied.

My footsteps on the stone echoed throughout the near-empty old edifice as I neared the room in which I was to defend my thesis, or, as I thought of it, to be interrogated.  At the doorway of room 106, stood my thesis advisor, Dr. Dennehy.  I had taken only one class under Tom Dennehy, but he had been a rock throughout the time of my preparation for this moment.  He shook my hand and  said, "Don't forget that I am in your corner, and I know you are ready.  They are ready for us, and I will make the introductions after which the Chair will be in charge."

Dr. D said, "This is our candidate.  Be as gentle as possible."  A bit of humor in an attempt to reduce the tension.  "Doctor Hunt, I believe you know Dr. Hunt, Dr. Chrestenson, whom you also know; and this is Dr. Roberts."

My head starts to spin and black spots swirl in front of my eyes.  Dr. Roberts?  The legendary Dr. Roberts about whom stories swirl across campus like a monsoon over Formosa?  Joe Roberts had been absent from campus during my time there.  A sabbatical, a guest lectureship at Gottingen, or whichever of the circumstances speculated upon happened to be the correct one, if any of them were.

"And this is Dr. Williams.  She will be chairing this session. He is all yours, Dr. Williams."

Eee-yikes!

The next hour could have been days.  Or weeks.  For all sense of time folded into one eternal enclosure of my brain in a pressure cooker, steam up!  And I am supposed to be able to think clearly enough to make a cogent summary of where I started and where I went with this thing.  I am supposed to be able to intelligently answer the questions of these mathematicians.

And I did, or at least I guess I did, for after the most excruciating five minutes of banishment to the hallway, Dr.  Dennehy called me back into the room, Dr. Williams stood and extended her hand. "Congratulations, vanilla," smile beaming across her visage, "This committee finds your work meets the required standards, and your presentation here today is commendable."

The end.

2√2b²

Notes to the experience
1.  Thomas P. Dennehy taught the introductory course to the program.  This extremely pleasant man seemed truly to want everyone to succeed.  Unfortunately, the washout rate following his class was about fifty percent.  Not his fault. 
2.  Burrowes Hunt was known to all as "Buzz."  He wrote a textbook creatively entitled Calculus and Linear Algebra.
He had just received the galley proofs from the publisher.  He arranged to get enough copies for everyone in his class.  It was our textbook, and he got the free services of a dozen readers to help him make the final edit.  I still have my tattered paper-bound copy, and you may get one, too, if you wish.  Amazon has a dozen or so copies available.
3.  Hugh Chrestenson taught the non-Euclidean geometry course.  I did really well in that class.  Yes, that is a boast. And I have probably forgotten 97.6% of what I learned. And that is a fact.
4.  Joe Roberts was legendary on that campus and his career there ultimately spanned more than fifty years.  An oft-told story was that his doctoral dissertation required but half-page.  I suppose that might have been embellished to state that it was originally written on the back of an envelope, but then, A. Lincoln had proprietary rights to that one.

Uggy Reaches Out

Nodded in my recliner and presently I found myself in the attic ambling along an oak-shaded street, a sandstone wall surrounding a magnificent mansion on my right.  I had just passed the portal that guarded the drive to the house when I noted a pair of wing-tips dangling beside me.  I looked up, and

“Hugh!  Fancy meeting you here.”

“Do fancy that,” he said.  “And you can call me Uggy, everyone does.”

“What on earth are you doing, sitting there alone on a stone wall?”

“What? Indeed.  I have a bone to pick with someone, and I think you are that someone.  Several years ago, some writer, to mention no names, created me, fleshed me out rather nicely then set me aside whilst he went merrily on his way.”

“Sorry about that.  I did intend to pick you up and carry you along in some later adventures, but the situation never arose.  Don’t feel slighted, though.  You are not the only character I’ve abandoned here or there.  For instance, there was Marcus a while back.  I left him wheeling his Ford into a motel in some godforsaken Texas outpost.”

“I know that.  We characters should form some sort of union, working conditions being what they are.  Even better!  We should have a Character Convention!  Hire an arena and advertise Care Con far and wide.  All out-of-work characters could present ourselves to the assembled authors, make ourselves available to someone who might appreciate us.”

“I suppose you could fill a hall, all right.  Think of the characters that have been stranded somewhere along the line!  Why, even the protagonist in America’s greatest novel "lit out for the territory.".  There surely would be a market for Huckleberry Finn!”

“Now wait.  You are getting carried away.  That little.  well, he had his day.  Adventures galore, known by all.  Let him coast into his old age.*  It’s guys, gals, too, I suppose, like me who need an opportunity to have at least one interesting adventure.  Say, maybe you could pick me up here and work me into a swell tale?”  With that, Uggy hopped down from the wall and swatted the seat of his britches to remove the dust.  “Let’s get going, Doc!”

“Who do you think you are anyway, Bugs Bunny?”

*In 1983, Greg Matthews published The Further Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Airplanes in the Attic #T

Stack of books in the attic.  Corner of a yellowed pamphlet showing between two red books.  Pulled it out.

And my postprandial walk is taking me along a narrow street in what is clearly a small town.  To the west and to the south sunlight reflects from the granite of the mountains which darken to blue in the distance.  Nice little patch of sweet corn to my left.  Someone will have some good eating in a few weeks.

Two small boys, eight, perhaps nine years old are standing at the edge of the corn patch.  They look to the sky, one of them points.  The other riffles through the pages of a pamphlet.  I look up to see what has riveted them.  An airplane, clearly a military aircraft.  This village is at least forty air miles from any military base, remote one might say, nestled next to the mountains as it is.  Not many airplanes of any kind fly over this burg.

"What's going on, Son?"

"We are spotters, Mister. We are watching out for enemy airplanes.  We can't be too careful, you know."

Yes, I know.  The world is in total chaos, what with the Axis pushing across Europe and North Africa, tearing up the South Pacific and our Naval forces. Indeed it is an ugly world, and the Allies are hard-pressed to repel the evil ones. We have so immersed ourselves into the patriotic fervor that two small boys in a remote village, fifteen hundred miles from any ocean and those oceans between us and the action are involved in the "war effort."  They are doing their part.

"It's not a Nazi plane, is it, Sir?"

"No.  Look!  You can see the stars on the wings.  She's all-American.  I think it is a B-25.  I've not seen one of those over here before.  Check that in your book."

"I think you got it right!" The boy shows me the silhouette drawings of the B-25.  "We saw a P-38 yesterday, and a P-51 last week."

Then I hear the roar of a single-engine prop plane as it banks away to the left above me.  There are no little boys, no cornfield.  There is no World War at the moment, but there shall always be conflict somewhere.  I am back in the twenty-first century, and the days of my juvenile, "war efforts" return to their nook in the attic of my memory.

My neighbor's restored P-51 starts its climb into the eastern sky.  Bill does a fly-over about once a month.  That's how he keeps his memories alive.

©2015 David W. Lacy

Pretty Little Liar #T

Fourteen-year-old Rosie was perhaps an inch taller than I.  It would be yet several months before the growth spurt that would put me over six foot three.  The first time I saw Rosie walk past the concession stand, my head spun around, and it was still spinning  five days later when camp was over for the year.  She may or may not have been the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, but she was without doubt the most intriguing.

Rosie wore her auburn hair in two long plaits.  I knew just how long from just one glimpse, for after she braided her hair, she coiled it and pinned it atop her head, which of course made her seem even taller than she actually was.  It was my day to work as camp messenger.  Just before lights out the camp counselor handed me an envelope and told me to deliver it pronto to Cabin C.  That was Rosie’s cabin!  Well, Rosie’s and seven other girls, but they didn’t matter.  

I knocked on the door.  One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Missi--  the door swung open and there stood Rosie in a robe, hairbrush in her right hand and her hair hanging free.  There is no doubt that she could sit on her hair if she chose to do so.  I mean, oh, man!  I did not sleep for thirty hours.

So just how did Rosie lie to me?  Let me count the ways.  One, she told me I was “cute.”  I was too inexperienced at fourteen to understand the real meaning of the expression in girl language.  Two, she told me she would write back when I wrote to her.  I wrote, she didn’t.  Three, she told me she would “never forget me.”  On second thought, that may have been the truth, for she did call out to me just now, didn’t she?

We reminisced a bit, caught up a bit with talk of spouses, and children and grandchildren, and so forth.  I ribbed her about her dishonesty with me, all in good fun, because what did it matter now?  “Oh,” she exclaimed, “I am a very deceitful person.  I try to be truthful in word, but in deed it is a different story.”  Here she reached up, twisted the hair arrangement a bit, and removed her hairpiece from her head.  Bald.  Totally bald.

Then and only then did she tell me about the cancer, the chemo, the prognosis.

I cried.

She swatted my arm with her magazine.  “Go on.  Get outta here.  You always were a sentimental old fool, even when you were a kid.”

©2015 David W. Lacy

Rosie in the Attic #T

Climbed the ladder, pushed back the hatch and crawled into the attic again.  As I turned to my left, I bumped my noggin on a rafter.  I looked up, of course, to cast a scowl at the offending timber.  My eye fell on the five letters crudely cut into the wood, “ROSIE.”  “Oh, wow," I thought.  "How old was I when I carved that there?  Fourteen."

The summer I turned fourteen Rosie came up from Iowa for summer camp.  No, let’s not go there; shake it off.  I am walking along a sidewalk in a shaded residential area, a northern suburb of my mind.  Curiously the houses are of the cookie-cutter variety, remarkably similar in architecture and construction.  They are all single-story affairs, all with a front porch, roof cantilevered from the main structure and supported in front by two cylindrical pillars.  Twelve- to sixteen hundred square feet living space, I am guessing.  

Interesting is the fact that every house is painted a pastel shade, blue, yellow, green, aqua, orange, nothing glaring, tastefully selected colors, not a white one on the block.  I start to whistle  as I stroll, “In the corner of my mind stands a jukebox. . .”  Wait a minute.  I see no jukebox; just this row of homey little houses.

I am in front of a residence now which is a muted magenta/pink in color, pastel rose, in fact.  As I am reaching down for the low note. the elderly lady sitting in a rocker on her porch speaks.  “Hey, Red.”  I turn and look behind me to see who is there.   It has been sixty-five years since anyone called me “Red.”  She spoke again, “Red,” and appended my last name.  I look toward Grandma.  She laughs.  “It’s me, she says, “Rosie.  Don’t you remember your Rosie?”  

She had at least the good grace to eschew the “It is I” affectation.  I know, I know; that is the grammatically correct form, but for some reason it is off-putting to me.  Probably my plebeian roots.  I stopped, of course, turned up the walk and stood at the foot of the steps.  It was Rosie.  There was little doubt that this was the same person I had met during that summer long ago.  “Rosie!  This is wonderful!  But how did you recognize me?”

“Recognize you?  Why, you haven’t changed a bit!”

That clinched it.  No doubt this was Rosie, for Rosie was, and clearly still is, an inveterate liar. 

©2015 David W. Lacy

Arlo #T

Louie set a plate on our table.  "Bon appetit!" he said, and walked back to the kitchen.  

"Ooh," crooned Maizie, "it's not every day that Louie shares his croquignoles with the help."  As we nibbled on the most amazing pastries, Maizie continued her account of her life.

"He’s not a big man in a physical sense. Arlo stood five-six at 135.  When I wore heels, we were eyeball to eyeball.  But Arlo was a big man in every other way.  Anatole Broussard, Frenchman, New Orleans native, rich daddy.  Too complicated to go into.  Anatole hated his name for numerous reasons, so he called himself Arlo.  Changed his last name, too, after he and his daddy had a fallin’-out.  Arlo Bruce; so I am Mrs. Bruce.  Oh, yes, he suckered everyone he met, and I was no exception.

"Well, Arlo came in here once, twice a week at first, started sweet-talking me.  Soon coming in four, five nights a week and before long we were a thing.  Charm? The man shoulda named himself Charm.  Suave? oh, yeah, and slick, too.  Talked me right out of any good sense I might have had.  Long story short, I am forty-five, no raving beauty and middle-age crazy.  We were married in a beautiful little chapel over in St. Martinville, Louisiana.

Now the thing is, Arlo really loved me.  Truly he did, and I loved him.  It didn't hurt that he had money.  I didn’t ask.

"Arlo had a little fifty-six foot Princess cruiser, kept a crew of two on board.  Come October, we sailed for Cozumel.  Wonderful trip, three greatest weeks of my life.

"Then the Federales came, then came the extradition.  I know you have read about the trial, lasted five weeks, it did.  Convicted on a list of fraud charges longer than your left leg.  Sent to Federal Camp at Pensacola.  And I was forty-eight and broke as the pitcher that slipped from my hands yesterday."

“Weren’t any of your children in a position to help you?”

“Position to?  Yes, indeed.  A mind to?  No way.  They were against the marriage in the first place, and they too much had ‘I told you so’ on their minds.  Here we are a decade later, and I've made it on my own.  If only it weren't for this darn bunion."

©2015 David W. Lacy

Maizie, Maizie #T

" Pssst.  Hey, looka this.”  No more had I brushed away the cobwebs and crawled through the attic door than Skinny Man stepped from the mouth of the alley onto the sidewalk directly in front of me. Startled?  Not that the man had stepped from the alley but by his appearance.  He was wearing a wheat-colored three-piece linen suit.  The Shelby-knotted white tie laid in stark contrast against the plum-colored shirt.  He shot his cuffs to display the pearl links and extended his right hand toward me.

“I want to thank you, Captain,” he said.  “You saved my life.”

No longer startled, now I am stunned.  “How did you go from that to this in only a week?  Don’t tell me.  You bought a scratch-off ticket with the dollar, won five-hundred bucks and blew it all on clothes.”

“You are not only a gentleman, Captain; you are a card!  No, no, nothing like that.  I took your advice to clean up, pitched my inventory into that trash barrel there beside you, went over to the mission above Pier 18.  Got scrubbed up, cleaned up, and the preacher over there introduced me to Jesus.  I am a new man!’'

“I can see the difference, but how did you get rich in seven days, short of robbing a bank.  Don’t tell me you robbed a bank?”

“There you go with the jokes again.  No, Captain, I told you I met Jesus, and he has changed my life.  I have some skills and a spot of education, was just sunk too deep into myself to do anything useful for the past five years.  Mission cleaned me up, suited me up, and I got a job with GulfTel.  I am working, Man, and I owe it all to you.  And to Jesus, of course.”

“Well, look.  I am thrilled for you and all, but I’ve got to be around the corner before eight-thirty.  Good luck to you.”

I stepped around Skinny and headed on toward the café.  “Thanks again, Captain!”  I heard him say to my back.

I grabbed the door pull.  No dice; the door was locked.  Missed her by moments.  I turned, but as I did, I caught a glimpse of the yellow dress out the corner of my eye as Maizie moved toward the entryway.  She hit the panic bar and said, “Come on in here.  I thought you weren’t going to come.”  We sat in the back booth next the kitchen and sipped our coffee.

“So,” I said, “you were forty, broke, jobless, and alone except for a kid wanting to go to college.  Then what?”

Maizie lit a  cigarette, took a long draught, exhaled through her nose, twin streams of smoke rebounding in billows from the table top.  “Then what?  That is the question, isn’t it?  Well, I got a good gig in a swell restaurant in Biloxi.  Clientele was good people, not rich people, but people who could afford to eat out once, twice a week; people who had earned their own way.  They knew that good work should be rewarded, and they tipped well.  I was rolling in dough, so to speak, and never had to make a single loaf of bread!  The kid went up to Jackson State, and you might think I had it made.

"Well, it did look like I had it made.  Between my work and his, Will, that 's my boy, Will got through school, good job in Memphis now.  But then Arlo walked into the restaurant one night, twenty minutes before closing time.  Say, that was just what you did here the other day.  I sure hope you are no Arlo.

©2015 David W. Lacy

In the Nooks and Crannies of the Mind #T

The lady had taken off her cap and snood, had thrown a grey knit stole around her shoulders.  She slid into the booth opposite me, had a coffee for herself.  “Name’s Maizie, as you know.  What’s yours?”

“Don,” I said.  My name is Don.”

“Well,” laughed Maizie, “that should be easy to remember. Is it short for Donald?”

“No, it is just plain Don.  Mother said Dad took one look at me at birth, scarlet, scrawny, and screaming.  ‘You’ve got to be putting me on,’ he said.  ‘Don.  It’s Don.’  And I have been Don ever since.”

“Well. any man digging around in his own mind, looking for a story is surely entitled to it if he finds it.  Here it is.”

Maizie lit a GPC, snapped her lighter shut, dropped it in her purse.  “You don’t mind if I smoke?”  Actually, I do mind. It is, after all, my mind, but I just nod my head to indicate that she should continue with her tale.

 "I was born in Gautier, Miss’ippi like I say, fifty-nine years ago.  Daddy worked in the shipyards, good provider he was.  Had no siblings and Mama doted on me.  Anything I wanted was mine for the asking.  Grew up thinkin’ I was a princess, I guess.  Went to Ole Miss when I was seventeen.  That’s up to Oxford, you know.  Was gonna be a librarian, always loved books.  So I met this Wilfred up there, an’ he convinced me he thought I made the sun come up in the morning.  Wouldn’t do but that I be his wife, so I dropped out of school, married him.  An’ start poppin’ out kids, one a year for four years. Put up a new calendar, have another kid.  Three girls and a boy.

"Well, Will, I always called him Will, was good to us, handed me his paycheck every week, and never missed a day’s work.  But Will had a wild hair.  I knew this, but he remained steady, always headed to work in the morning, came home at night, turned over the paycheck.  The first two girls graduated high school, got married.  The third girl and Will, Jr graduated together since they were Irish twins less than a year apart and in the same class.  Commencement ceremony over, party at our house to celebrate.  Their Daddy came in, hugged each one of them, told them he loves them dearly.  Turned to me and said, 'Thank you, Ma’am.  You did good, gave me four wonderful children.'  And he walked out the door, took nothing but the clothes he wore, and I’ve not seen him nor heard from him to this day.

"So there I am.  Forty years old, no job, no income, savings enough to last a couple weeks, and a boy that wanted to go to college.  And me in coastal Miss’ippi.

“Now not being rude, but you’ll have to excuse me now.  I need to get on home.  This bunion is killing me.”.

“But, but. . .”  I stammered.  “What on earth happened to you?”

“Well, Silly Don.  Here I am.  What you see is what you get.”

“No more story, then?”

“Unless you show up in the same corner of your mind next Tuesday evening.  ‘Night now!”

©2015 David W. Lacy

  

Poking Around in the Attic #T

I have taken some time away from writing to search through my attic, hoping to find another story or two.  I strolled at twilight along a deserted urban street in the northwest corner of my mind.  As I approached the middle of the block, a skinny little man, unkempt and ragged, stepped from the alley and accosted me.  “Pssst,” he hissed, “you like some  dirty pictures, some filthy stories?” 

“Not interested,” I said. “Here,” I handed him a dollar bill, “go buy yourself some soap. And get your mind out of the gutter while you are at it.  Scram.”

The café on the next corner was still open.  I stepped inside, took a stool at the counter.  A buxom woman well past life’s midpoint ambled along behind the counter, slopped a glass of water and a setup in front of me.  “Whadda ya want?”  she asked.  I noted her mustard-colored, not to mention mustard-stained dress, her name tag on her left breast, “Maizie.”

Looking into her clear, pale blue eyes, I replied, “I want stories; or even one story.  But you look a little weary.  Guess I’d settle for a cuppa joe and that last slice of apple pie there.”

“Mister, you don’t know from stories.  Look at me.  No, really.  Look at me.  I am fifty-nine years old last week, and here I am after eight o’clock on Tuesday night  sloppin’ coffee ‘n slingin’ hash.  You think I don’t know from stories?  Well, sir, you ain’t lived long, then.”

“Do tell.” 

She narrowed her eyes. “I ain’t into no funny business, Mister.  I work hard, I go home.  That’s it. You want stories, you’re barkin’ up the wrong tree.”

I was disappointed because I really thought she might have a tale to tell.  I took the last bite of pie, swallowed the last swig of java.  I swung off the stool, laid a ten spot on the counter and said, “The change is yours, Maizie.  Have a nice night.”  

As I tripped the panic bar to open the door, Maizie spoke to me again. “Wait.”  I stopped, let the door drift closed.  “I get off work in ten minutes.  We can sit right here in a booth and talk a bit if a story is really all you want.”

“All right, then.  A story is exactly what I am looking for, and the only thing I am looking for.  Why else would a man be rummaging around in the recesses of his mind at this time of life?”  I slipped into the vacant booth nearest the kitchen.  Maizie put another cup of coffee in front of me.  

I waited while she finished her shift.

©2015 David W. Lacy