Saturday Morning Short Story: Fu

April 15, 2012
Sorry to be so late with your Saturday Morning short story. After being up a lot of the night, spending part of it in our tornado shelter, I had meetings that took most of the day,(I was waiting for my husband to finish with his meetings so we only had to drive one car.)  We’re expecting supercell tornados all night long. The good news is that we get to spend some quality time with our nextdoor neighbors! Tornadoes have a way of focusing my attention on what’s really important to me. What would you grab when it’s time to run?

Fu’s tail wagged him all the way to the shoulders.  His owners had chosen him from a backyard breeder’s litter of puppies because his playmates could not distract him from the longing, eager adoration he gave to the Marquette family when they came to look. His round, melted chocolate eyes promised to love, honor and obey them, as long as they both should live.

And Fu had chosen well. There was perhaps nowhere a family more ready to enjoy canine worship than the six Marquettes. They named him ‘Fu Man Choo’ because of the little reddish beard he wore as testimony that though he was a papered golden retriever, an Irish setter had left his stain on Fu’s mother’s character. A DNA test would have revealed that the culprit lived through the fence in an entirely different neighborhood, as far as the humans were concerned. But inbreeding dogs causes congenital defects to become more prominent in each generation. And though Fu never knew it, his litter mates were so defective that they would serve to put the breeder out of business. Fu escaped with nothing worse than a small, red beard, by virtue of his mongrel blood.

Like a child snatched from the iron jaws of foster care, Fu was grateful for his family. He would have quickly become obese via his habit of resting his soft, bearded little chin on the knees of each of the family in turn during dinner. Each thought him/herself favored, and each rewarded Fu’s special love with a tasty people-food tidbit. He didn’t grow fat, however, because he also charmed his family by bringing them each his leash, carried in his mouth and laid at their feet. He set his mileage record one Saturday when each of the family members walked him, and five of six decided to take him out again when he asked so charmingly.

But Fu had duties, too. When the doorbell rang, Fu ran with skidding toenails on the tile floor to sit beside the front door. He would release one bark in his deep, muscular throat. Solicitors seemed to think he implied something sinister in his singular bark and would most often retreat, glancing over their shoulders as they went.

But when friends rang the bell, he sat, he barked and when the door was opened he nearly wagged himself in half for the joy of company.

Lest you begin to look at your own pet with sorry, regretful eyes, I must honestly tell you that Fu was not without fault. As long as he was indoors or in his own yards, he was indeed a virtual canine Adonis. But outside those property lines he was as yellow a coward as his coat suggested. If a stray ran out to meet him, he wound his leash around his owner, trying to get himself as far behind their legs as possible. At the beach, he yelped and darted away when a blue crab raised on his back legs and waved at him. Even cats, walking disdainfully along a fence rail sent him to the far side of the street in a panic.

This was not really Fu’s fault. Mrs. Marquette, wishing to be a model citizen, bought a sort of hobble for Fu, so that when he walked the neighborhood, he smelled the markings of other dogs on fire  hydrants and the trees, but he could not lift own leg to make his residence in the area official. He lived as a perpetual guest, hobbled by his owner’s good manners. This uneasiness made him fearful of offending and uncertain in his ambiguous social position.

But all six of the Marquettes agreed that they would much rather have an overly gentle dog than a fighter, and they forgave him of his shortcomings as a protector.

Fu had long outgrown his puppyhood when the Marquettes decided to spend a week of family time camping in the mountains. Mr. Marquette bought a large family tent and six sleeping bags, a camp stove, a folding shovel and an axe.  Mrs. Marquette ordered everything off a one week survival list from an online site. A week later, a great volume of dehydrated potatoes, soups and prepackaged oatmeal were delivered to their front porch with a $1000. receipt.

The boys each bought themselves a fishing pole with adequate tackle and checked out a fishing book from the library. The girls bought romance novels, bug spray, disinfectant and beads for elaborate hair braids.

The family set out in the minivan with their lodgings and trappings strapped to the roof like a melting scoop of ice cream. Fu sat proudly on the back seat where he could push his nose out the open window.

After ten hours of easterly driving, they left the freeway for a highway that wound gently into the high elevations of Tennessee. They turned from that highway onto another highway, whose curves were sharper and its inclines steeper. At last they found a narrow, gravel turnoff almost hidden by the undergrowth. Mr. Marquette double checked the map and forged the minivan bravely ahead. They drove fifteen miles on an ever fainter track before the road ended altogether in a little glade beside a stream.

The Marquettes poured from the van to explore the campsite. Some earlier pioneers had cleared a spot of stones big enough for their brand new tent, and beside that spot was a ring of rocks with some grayish tone to the earth that showed between tufts of tall, green grass.

“Nobody’s been here in a long time,” Mrs. Marquette said as she cut the netting off of the firewood she’d purchased and laid it log cabin-wise in the ring. She set up the camp stove according to the instructions inside and set some bottled water to boiling. The menu called for boiling water poured into a zip lock bag filled with powdered gravy, noodles and chives. (Mr. Marquette had looked over the survival delivery and packed five pounds of trail mix under the front seats of the van.)

Mr. Marquette’s instinct served him well enough to direct him to start building the tent immediately, as there were only three hours of daylight left.

The boys set up their fishing poles and went to look for a “slow, sheltered spot in the stream,” teeming with trophy-sized trout. The girls went for a walk around the area to see what they could see. Fu went with the girls. They quickly found that they were in a narrow band of trees and a wide open meadow stretched almost to the shore of a shining pond.

After a full day of riding, the expanse of the meadow tempted Fu beyond his formidable self control.  He launched himself into the grass, smelling an exotic stew of odors, hearing a cacophony of unidentifiable tones and sensing no danger at all. Indeed, his breeding had tended so long to the suburban pastures, his ancestral knowledge, (including that of Ireland) had been very nearly extinguished. All he knew was that it was strange and delicious and his well fed muscles rejoiced as they stretched and reached. He plunged through the tall grass, leaving a path like a wake behind him. His family had found him a doggy Paradise.

The girls turned back toward camp when Fu was only halfway through his romp. The boys returned to camp with two aqueous creatures of unknown species that had swallowed their hooks. They wanted Mrs. Marquette to retrieve the hooks, which she did, using a pair of pliers from the minivan toolbox. Mr. Marquette was still occupied with ‘pole A’ to be inserted into rivet B and fastened with lynch pin A-1.

Fu came back to camp when the sun had retreated so far that Mr. Marquette decided that since there was no sign of rain, they’d sleep under the stars and he’d set up the tent by daylight. The family had each tasted they boys’foil-wrapped finned creatures and found them highly preferable to the gluey wad of noodles and gravy with green specks of paper the company called chives. Fu finished the wad of noodles gratefully and drank long and deep directly from the stream. His beard dripped on the younger girl and for the first time in his life, she pushed him away saying, “Don’t slobber on me, Fu!”

In the morning, Fu saw that his adorable family was baggy eyed and irritable. Humans apparently found it as difficult as he had to ignore the strange, wild rustlings and howlings, to say nothing of the dew that settled on their heads.

 Mr. Marquette made the children stay in camp until the tent was up. Each read the directions and found different meanings in the poor Chinese translation. They argued and struggled and finally used the picture on the package to figure out what the thing was supposed to look like.

Fu revisited his wide meadow. He recognized a gopher scent and nobody scolded when he began to dig. Dirt flew behind him and his nose explored the deepening den rapturously. At last a mother gopher rushed at him and he killed her in his wolfish jaws. She tasted much better than noodle glue.

Fu found a pond and saw something splash. He knew from the odor that it was not another dog, nor was it a house cat, so he plunged into the water and swam toward the center of the widening rings. He moved more swiftly than he’d expected to, keeping his nose up and his churning paws stroking toward his goal. Of course the splasher didn’t wait around for him, and he found nothing but the joy of the cold water swishing through his coat, and the exhilaration of buoyancy.

The Marquettes ate grainy mashed potatoes made with powdered milk and powdered butter, and trail mix for lunch. Fu wasn’t hungry. He wanted to show them the pond, but nobody seemed to know where his leash was and they all wanted to nap. Sleep was anathema to Fu, in that supercharged life center.

On the third day, Fu realized that he had seen at least a thousand trees in his new kingdom and not one of them had been marked. The courteous hobble was forgotten with the leash. He began the arduous undertaking of marking. He drank deeply all day and at its end, had a fair start on his kingdom’s perimeter. In the twilight, the Marquettes’ voices calling him carried over the wide valley to where he snuffled in an abandoned badger’s den. He hesitated to leave the intriguing puzzle of odors, but on the third whistle, he ran.

When he rocketed into the sorry campsite, Mrs. Marquette ran a hand over him and then squealed. “He’s covered in gray bumps! They’re like giant moles!”

“Dog ticks,” one of the boys said. “You pull them off and then step on them to squirt out the blood.”

The girls acted like they would be sick. Mr. Marquette was palpitating a ziplock bag of pancake mix with artificial blueberries in it. “You boys pull all the ticks off of Fu. He can get sick from them.” Just then the ziplock bag ruptured and Mr. Marquette was drenched in pancake mix. He said a word that Fu didn’t know. But it wasn’t a nice word, he could tell. And the girls wouldn’t let him come near them. At least the boys seemed to enjoy the task and he sat still for them.

The next day, Fu rose very early and found a black and white creature eating the congealed pancake mix out of the dirt. The old Fu would have whimpered and rushed behind a child, but the new Fu remembered that he had clearly marked this as his territory, and he growled. The cat-like creature raised a sullen head for one sneering moment. Fu growled again and it turned its back. Fu wondered what sort of rebel came into his territory and then behaved so rudely.

The creature sprayed something acrid and chemical in his face. It stung his eyes but the odor was so strange and interesting, Fu stepped closer, sniffing and growling. He must not allow his authority to be defied! The creature waddled away irritably.

But when he took his place at breakfast, the Marquettes howled and scolded him. They ate watery oatmeal with raisins for breakfast and shivered themselves blue as they bathed in the stream. If Fu came near for a friendly lick, they screwed up their faces and ordered him away. They said he reeked and said he must ‘keep away.’ Fu barked once, in his deep, throaty, voice, and Mrs. Marquette threw a rock at him. At last he understood. He was free. He ran to the meadow and rolled in some unseen creature’s dung that pleased him with its muddy coolness. When he paid the honorary visit to the Marquettes, Mr. Marquette himself threw another rock at him. “Keep away, Fu. You’ve fouled yourself too much to come near.” They left some hard nugget dogfood at the edge of camp, but Fu found an aqueous creature in the stream and devoured it alone in the woods.    

The next day, Fu caught himself another gopher and he swam in the pond and he let the sun dry his long, yellow coat to a high gloss. He slept on a ledge overlooking the valley. He watched the Marquettes roast marshmallows and heard them bicker like he had never heard them before. It was then that the great truth came to him. They loved him so much that they came to his own dog kingdom where he was to rule them instead of the other way around. They offered him horrid food so that he would recognize the superiority of his dog heaven. They scowled and howled and scolded him to show him that the human world is not the place for him. He was born to be king of this wilderness. 

Fu wanted to make it easier for the Marquettes. After all, they had raised him and loved him and he had loved them. They had sacrificed to bring him here, where they could not live. But now he understood their message. He could not live anywhere else. So in the morning when they dismantled their shelter and packed their dirty pots and pans into the van, he watched from his ledge. He saw the grass wave out of rhythm with the wind and new he must regulate that movement later. The Marquettes called him by his former name, “Fu, Fu, Fu, Fu! Here boy!” But that was no longer him. He didn’t pronounce his new identity in his canine brain, but he understood that it was much more than ‘Fu’. It meant, “Ruler of the “Grass and Gopher Field, Master of the Stink Cat and Swimmer in the Pond, He Who Sleeps Overlooking His Kingdom and Does not Like Noodle Glue.”

The Marquette’s did not know his name. They had not learned it as he had. So all morning long they cried “Fu! Fu! Fu! Fu!” and all morning long he wagged his tail sedately, letting the tangled feathers of his coat move in the breeze.

At last they got in their human conveyance and drove away, leaving an incongruous cloud of dust over their way. As long as he lived, nothing would raise the dust like that again.

And He-Who-Ruled-The-Grass-and-Gophers watched them from his high place and was grateful. He missed them sometimes when the snows came and game huddled deep, but it never crossed his mind to return to the distant life where he had been a hobbled stranger in the land of humans.

Septic systems

April 4, 2012
There’s no good way to be forced to learn about septic systems.  But here are some things I know. Your septic tank should be pumped about every 8 years.

The bacteria they try to sell you. . .really is necessary. I think you’re wisest to buy it from a septic supplier. I bought some online years ago and ended up with bags of sawdust to flush down my toilet. There COULD have been the needed bacteria in there, but it never seemed to make any difference.

A couple of weeks ago, our whole house backed up. (Gurgling in the kitchen sink is REALLY GROSS! I opened the cleanout and found it full of water, which told me that the plug was between the tank and the cleanout. I plunged it from the cleanout and cleared it.  A few days later, it was gurling again. I bought an auger and tried to move the clog through.  25 feet was too short. But I plunged it down again and watched it drain. That lasted about four days. So I bought a longer auger. 50 feet was long enough and after a bit of work, the water all drained away. Whew! That lasted two full days.
So I called a plumber and he reached down there and pulled the plug out. He very politely told me that tampons are NEVER to go down the toilet. Not only do they not break down, they float and therefore tend to cause clogs. Apparently the half roll of paper towels Thomas had flushed down when he cleaned his animal cages wasn’t too good for a sewer pipe either.
  So, we now have a properly draining house, a septic tank FULL of necessary bacteria,(the label said it had more than 3 TRILLION of them, which is VERY strong) (I got it at Red Dirt Septic on Waterloo for interested Okies) and since the plumber was here, he fixed a running toilet whose handle we’d been jiggling for a while and a dripping shower(which I had already replaced the O rings and it didn’t help. He replaced the whole cartridge and had to pull it out in bits. It was REALLY stuck).
The plumber told me that the ‘strong and soft toilet paper’ keeps plumbers in business. He recommended that we drop down a notch to the flimsier stuff.
This is probably TMI but I figure that if you use a septic system, it will save you a lot of headache and money if you keep your pipes clear, your septic tank digesting properly and your leach fields draining. If you have wet spots in your leach fields (in dry weather) the septic tank additive will probably fix it.
I thought you ought to know. . .Happy trails.
Having been defeated by my plumbing, I went to Hobby Lobby and bought the new clockwork for our nice wall clock. It was easy to install and so I’m back to feeling smart.
   

Saturday Morning Short Stories: The Illuminator

March 31, 2012

The young monk rubbed the back of his closely cropped head, feeling the sweat that collected on his scalp. The page he illuminated reflected the bright sunshine slanting through the slot that was his window in jewel tones so rich, his heart swelled. It was tedious work, it was true. He often took months to finish a single page. But deep in his chest he had long ago learned to accept the healing salve of monotony.

How long ago it seemed that he had spent his autumn hours painting biblical scenes on canvas, dining with his wife and rocking the baby to sleep in the twilight. Now he measured the progress of a day’s labor in a pair of square inches of space bordering the meticulously penned phrases from the apostles or the Master himself.

But even with his window opening  a mere crack, into the heady, intense air of the early autumn, the smell of the grapes and the ripe garden and green leaves baking in the sun reached into his memory and beckoned to him. He would withstand the temptation to walk outdoors in the sun and leave his paints and single-haired brushes for different day. He had very nearly finished the Gospel of Luke. He worked from back to front, forming the calligraphy backwards so the text would fill the page evenly. If there was extra space, it must appear at the top of the sheet.

 But it was no small thing. A bee explored his dim workbench, landing first on his arm and then his shoulder. It hovered a moment over his intricate painting, but despairing of any promising scents, he flew to freedom again.

In his youth, he had loved to paint the garden scenes that surrounded his country home. But since the fateful month that preceded the opening of two graves in the churchyard,  he had not painted out of doors. He could not. The flashes of grateful joy in God’s creation turned to pain of memory. And it was better this way. Better to wield his gift in the solemn, silent illumination of the holy writ: a sacred sacrifice of self. His own heart was broken then, and it seemed the only value in continuing in this veil of tears was in sharing something of the glimpses of godliness he had received.

But that day, he sat motionless, feeling his mortality in surging strength. His senses seemed more vigorously alive as he smelled the sweet harvest richness and basked in the gold and green and purple landscape delivered in slivers through his small window. After six years of that narrow view, he did not often see it. But that day, he relished it, yearned to widen it, flex his dormant muscles and to expand his narrow cell.

The page he had been working on told of wise men searching for the Christ. The man let his gaze shift from his work to the window. He remembered his little son running with his head forward, his legs pumping eagerly as they tried to catch up. He had also been a beautiful boy, full of bright thoughts and whimsical dreams. He had learned to speak very young and had seemed to see the world as it would be when restored to Paradisiacal glory, rather than as it really was. Everything was beautiful to him. Everything interested him. Each night he had closed his eyes grudging the beauty he must miss as he slept.

A noise behind the monk caused him to startle and spin to see who entered his room. Two boys stood staring at him. Their ragged costumes bespoke their orphaned state. Shoeless and hatless both, they hesitated timidly at the door. The young man wondered that he had not heard them arrive. He had known they were to expect some orphans from the village.

“What can I do for you?”

“We’re orphans,” the bigger one replied as though that explained why they stood on the threshold gazing at him.

“I see.” He nodded wisely, looking into each face expectantly.

“The Father sent us to the abbey and the Abbot sent us to you. You have to take us into the orchard and find some work for us.”

The young man wondered how many children had trudged up the winding road to the abbey that day.  With cholera in the village, only the heartiest would survive. But he had not heard any children in the monastery that morning. “You must be mistaken. I am an illuminator. I paint the pictures in the beautiful Bibles.”

“Yes, he told us where to find you. He said you needed to go outside anyway.”

The monk felt a wave of shame when his heart leapt in his body and his breath came more quickly. But he quelled the guilt with wondering if God intended for him to yearn himself away from the nearly finished work. Was it time to move forward? Had God opened a portal for him to return to vital, seething life in bustling human interaction?

The monk carefully cleaned his brushes with spirits and laid his paint pots side by side on the shelf above his workspace.  The smaller of the two boys came forward, watching his methodical process. The child reached for the remaining pot of brilliant yellow. His buttonless cuff caught the feather pen protruding from the ink pot. It flipped in the air, splattering black ink on the boy, the monk and the nearly finished Matthew.

The monk gasped. The boys gasped, their breath poised fearfully in the dank cubical.

Slowly, methodically, silently, the monk examined each damaged page. The splatters had dispersed over a dozen pages, but they were mostly small. On one sheet, the lettering seemed underlined with a row of fine, droplets. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren,” the passage began. But the segment that the splatters highlighted were “ye have done it unto me.” He laid the muslin cover over his workbench as though nothing had happened. He closed and locked the slot window.

“I’m sorry!” the older boy whispered.

“Accidents happen,” the illuminator replied. “Tell me your names and ages.”

“I’m Yvegenny and I’m eleven. This is my brother Vlad. He’s eight.” The boy hesitated, glancing toward the splattered desk. “I’m so sorry about your painting. He didn’t mean to, he just didn’t see.”

“I know, Yvegenny. Don’t worry. I had been sitting at my workbench wishing I could go out and pick apples and here you come, like angels from heaven, bringing me back out into the sunlight.”

The little boy raised his serious eyes. “Do you like little boys?”

And the monk was suddenly filled with light and joy and his chest felt as though it would burst the bands of scar tissue. He could only nod.

Vlad persisted. “The Abbot said that you used to have a little boy, before you were a monk.”

He nodded again.

“What happened to him?”

“He and his mother rest in the churchyard.”

“With our mother and father.” Yvegenny murmured softly.

“Then we’ll be your little boys,” Vlad said. He slipped his hand into the artist’s palm and drew him from the room.

The dust grew thick on the covered Gospel of Matthew. The lock on the cubical door rusted.

In a cottage about half way between the village and the abbey, a young orchard sprang heavenward and burst into bloom each spring. Two boys grew into tall, square-shouldered clear-eyed men.

The monk transformed from an adopted father to a husband and again to a father and then to a grey-bearded grandfather.  In the autumn, you may see him sitting on a canvas stool in front of his easel illuminating a canvas with the full rich ripeness of the harvest.

The Beauty Contest

March 26, 2012

 Grape hyacinths in early March

 Pink tulip on March 26th. (Deer got her sisters)

 candy stripe tulip

 baby girl tulip

 Creeping phlox with tulips

 Why are these called ‘bleeding hearts’?

 Sherbet! (with a little early purple verbena)

Pansies and tulips and (pink and red) dianthus, purple anenomes.

Saturday Morning short story: Passengers

March 26, 2012
                                                    Passengers

Emmajean eased her way down the aisle, trying unsuccessfully to keep her body from bumping those she passed. Sweat trickled down her back, not only from exertion, but from the stress of the moment. The horror of anticipating it had kept her from acting on what she knew was best for years.
The airline had made her buy two seats. It was fair, she knew, but not less humiliating to be given two seat assignments.  She kept her eyes down, navigating the shoulders and knees of those sitting on the aisle. She glanced up to see the ‘G’ above the seat she passed and pushed forward, trying to ignore the murmuring that followed her like the wake of a boat.
The plane was very full.  Emmajean passed the ‘N’ seats, and surveyed her seat assignment on the ‘P’ row.  Her stomach squeezed tightly around her throat. Her seat assignments were both on the ‘P’ row, but on opposite sides of the aisle.  She had not noticed until that moment that there were no adjoining seats left in the aircraft.
“Oh no!” she cried. A few neighboring passengers raised their languid eyes to her. She pushed the call button with a trembling finger. The flight attendant strode briskly from the front.
“What seems to be the problem?”
Emmajean handed her the stubs and said as softly as she could, “I bought two seats to accommodate my size, but they’re not adjoining. They’re across the aisle from each other.”
“The flight’s very full. No extra seats.”
“I can see that. But I paid for two. It doesn’t do me any good if they aren’t next to each other.”
The attendant blew out a long sigh and then cried. “Is anyone who’s sitting next to an empty aisle seat willing to move to a new seat?”
“I don’t think so!” One of the three possible passengers mumbled. “We’re not going to sit in separate seats on our honeymoon.”  Another woman had a child with her and shook her head.
Emmajean caught the eyes of the few passengers waiting to be seated behind the attendant. The flight was overbooked. The ticket agent must have failed to count her twice. She wondered if her hot face matched the red upholstery yet.
“Here! Sit here by me. This man says he’ll move to another aisle seat and we’ll make room for you.” It was a woman on row ‘N’. There was a small child next to her. The man on the aisle stood up and backed up the other passengers so that Emmajean could get to the seat. 
The thin woman pushed the armrest to the back and scooted half way into the window seat where the child pressed himself against the wall. “There’s plenty of room here,” she said.
Emmajean lowered herself into the seat and took the seatbelt that the woman held out to her, already lengthened to its maximum. Her arm and body and thigh overlapped the skinny lady. The other passengers forced their way to the scattered seats behind them.
“Tell the flight attendant to mark your stub so that you can be refunded for your second ticket. They sold that spot to a standby passenger.” The skinny woman gestured with her left arm, since her right arm was pinned by Emmajean’s shoulder. She told the attendant about it and the attendant soon returned with a document indicating a refund due.
“Thank you.” Emmajean said. “I feel like I’m crushing you.”
“No. This little man beside me is going to see his grandma and he wanted to sit by the window anyway. You didn’t mind scooting over a little did you?”
The child shook his head and turned back to the window.
“Oh, he’s not yours?”
“No. He’s traveling alone, but he’s a very sweet boy.”
The plane taxied and lifted into the sky.
“I’m afraid you’re very uncomfortable,” Emmajean said.
“No, I’ll be honest. I like to sit next to heavy people on planes because I’m always freezing and large bodies give off lots of heat.”
“You’re so lucky. I can only imagine how wonderful it would be to freeze instead of bake.”
“Well, no.” The skinny lady lowered her voice so much that if Emmajean had not been very near, she would not have heard. “Being thin isn’t always pleasant.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” she also lowered her voice so that only her seatmate could hear. “I’m on my way to New York for a fat camp.”
“Really? So am I! Not a fat camp, but a diet camp.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’m anorexic. I’m trying to get over it.  They’re starting a camp session for all eating disorders. My boss told me I could have my job back when I get home. Are you going to the Perennial Bloom Camp? ”
“Yes! My boss told me he’d pay for half and he gave me three extra weeks of vacation.”
The thin woman laughed. “Do you have cabin mate? I’ve been worried about getting someone I liked to live with for the next six weeks.”
“I don’t have a cabin mate. I wasn’t sure I was going to follow through until you told me to sit down next to you. I would have run away if the aisle hadn’t been blocked.
“I’m Emmajane. You have no idea what a relief it is to me to go into camp already having a friend.”
 “I think maybe I do know. It’s a strange coincidence. I’m Emmajean.”
Emmajane laughed again. “We must be twins. Separated at birth like the “Parent Trap.”  By the end of camp, nobody will be able to tell us apart.”
Emmajean smiled. “Well, I believe in miracles.”
“So do I.” Emmajane nudged her companionably in the shoulder the overlapped hers. ‘We never really know where our blessings will come from, do we?” 

The Bargain

March 17, 2012

The Bargain

Bryce sat in the doctor’s private office, stiff in his chair, turning his head from one wall to the next, studying the framed certificates and paintings that adorned it. Directly opposite his chair in a gilt-edged frame were the words, “Beware, angels are taking notes.” There was an image of a winged nurse with a notepad underneath. He smiled faintly and let his eyes drift to the window.

The doctor had asked his receptionist to make a private appointment with him to discuss the results of Bryce’s recent blood tests. It couldn’t be good news, he knew. The doctor had said he should be the last appointment of the day. Was he protecting his other patients from the weeping and wailing that he expected to result from the interview? 

‘Beware, angels are taking notes,’ drew his eyes back. “Please, dear God, don’t let it be cancer,” he murmured. But he had other symptoms. Private, inconvenient and embarrassing symptoms had finally driven him to seek medical help. The doctor had ordered extensive tests after the exam. “Can you come tomorrow at 4:00 o clock?” the girl had asked when the tests came back.

The clock behind him ticked loudly, measuring out the time he sat waiting for the doctor. “Lord, don’t let it be cancer.” This time he spoke more earnestly. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. “Lord, please give me more time. I’ll take care of those things I need to tell my wife. I need more time.”

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. He heard the doctor speaking near the door, but a different door opened and he heard the doctor greet a different patient.

“Dear God, Don’t let it be cancer! I promise I’ll clean up my act and be more honest and faithful with everyone. And I need to spend more time with my kids. I’ve let too much time go by since I spent any quality time with them.” Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.

Bryce wished he had not lied to his wife about the doctor’s appointment. But he’d been afraid of other, more embarrassing information. She might have wanted to come with him if she had known about the appointment. So he lied. But with the clock ticking and tocking, he wished he hadn’t lied. He hadn’t thought of cancer right away.

“Oh, dear God, please don’t let it be cancer.” It was becoming a chant, a mantra that linked him to power beyond his own. He did believe in God. God could take it away, he knew. God could heal him. “I’ll give up all my vices if You’ll just not let it be cancer. I’ll be a new man, reborn! I’ll give to the poor and I’ll stop. . .” he paused. He didn’t want to speak too loud. His eyes shifted to the sign, “Beware . . .angels are taking notes.”

“I’ll stop all the bad stuff. Everything. Cold turkey.” Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. “Oh God, please don’t let it be cancer! I’ll give up everything.” He didn’t need to be specific. God read his thoughts.

The doctor bid his nurses goodnight. Bryce heard him lift the records from the slot beside the door, humming softly as he scanned them.

“Oh, Lord, don’t let it be cancer,” he murmured one more time.

Dr. Eddison was young and tan, with good teeth and a square jaw. “How’reya doin’ Bryce?”

 He swiveled into the chair behind his desk and gave the folder another quick perusal before looking up for an answer.

“I don’t know, Doc. You tell me.”

The doctor opened the folder again and read silently. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.

“Well, you’ve got an enlarged prostrate that is to the point that it needs to be treated, you’re fifty pounds overweight and your LDL cholesterol is too high. What does that mean to you?”

“I don’t have cancer?” It seemed almost too good to be true.

“No cancer that I know of. But you need to go on a diet and get more exercise. You’re getting old and fat and you’ll feel much better with those extra pounds off.”

Bryce hardly heard the rest of the treatment plan. No cancer! Nothing worse than the obvious!

The doctor shook his hand and then settled back at his desk to finish the day’s data entries.

 Bryce’s step was light as he unlocked the door remotely on his Lexus. It was earlier than his wife would expect him. He had time to make a stop. Just a quick little detour and she’d never be the wiser. He dialed his home phone and when his wife picked up, he hung up. Good.

Bryce pulled into traffic on the boulevard and accelerated. He did need to hurry. The light turned yellow two hundred feet in front of him. He buzzed the intersection. A teen age boy in a pickup was coming fast from the other direction, playing chicken with the light.  It changed for the boy a second before he entered the intersection. He didn’t even touch his brake.

One instant, Bryce was driving, and the next he was looking down at his mangled Lexus. “Oh, this isn’t good,” he thought. “How will I explain why my car was going south?” He watched as the emergency vehicles screamed up. The teenager was crying and pointing and explaining and other witnesses were nodding agreement to his story.

Bryce watched as they used the jaws of life to open his door. They drew a white sheet over his head.

“Oh, this really isn’t good,” Bryce said. He felt a gentle touch on his elbow. He turned toward the figure dressed in white, holding a note pad. She read her pad with a deep frown. At last she raised her eyes. “The doctor did tell you that it wasn’t cancer?”

Saturday Morning Short stories: The Spot in the Middle

March 11, 2012

The Spot in the Middle

Nobody but Lisa knew Shayla’s secret. But she was willing to keep her sister’s secret, since she was necessary for the success of her sister’s experiment.

Shayla was the middle child of thirteen. Her father, Wilson Baker, was a child psychologist with grand plans to become the world’s foremost expert on the effect of birth order on children. He often philosophized on how much more subtle the effects were than merely noting that the eldest was a leader, the youngest was dependent and the middle child an observer. In fact, when he and his wife were married, they determined in advance that if they could, they would have a ‘baker’s dozen’ children. “A Baker’s Dozen” was to be the title of the book Dr. Baker would one day write.

Shayla was only 10 when the Dr. Baker finally had his baker’s dozen and congratulated himself on that blessed occasion that he finally had a complete laboratory. But being the middle child of thirteen was not entirely satisfactory to Shayla. She spelled her name with an ‘Sh’ because she grew weary of explaining how it was pronounced. Her birth certificate spelled it with an ‘X’. But most people had no idea how to pronounce ‘X-e-l-a’ . But her name was spelled with an ‘X’ because ‘x’ marks the middle spot.

The weakness in Dr. Baker’s research was that even spelling Shayla with an ‘x’ didn’t make her the middle child at first. She was the youngest for thirteen months until Lisa was born. Then she was the seventh of eight, the seventh of nine and so on. So her family position was fluid as more babies crowded into the Baker’s lives. Dr. Baker failed to consider that indeed, the only child that kept their family position was the eldest. Nothing short of a murder or terrible accident could unseat the eldest from her position, but that’s another matter.

Perhaps it was this fluidity, or perhaps it was the cheerful, pragmatic and capable personality God had given to the little girl, but Shayla became invisible. Not in the visual sense, of course. She was as plainly material as the eldest or current youngest. She ably filled a place on the bench at the dinner table and she had her very own seat belt in the 15 passenger Ford Clubwagon. She didn’t even realize her own invisibility until she was left behind at gas stations twice in one month, and left at the church two Sundays in a row.

Happily, Shayla lived with a child psychologist. She found him in his home office, writing furiously on his book and asked, “Dad, can I ask you a question?”

“Of course, Honey,” he answered without looking up.

“I feel like I’m invisible. I was wondering if there was a reason for that.”

“Mmmm hmmmm.” His typing didn’t pause.

“I feel like nobody notices me. I never do anything that someone hasn’t already done before me. I’m not as cute as the little ones, but I’m not old enough to do things with the older ones. Even things the older ones did at my age, they say I’m too young to do now.”

Dr. Baker clicked ‘save’ on his desktop keyboard and peered over his half glasses at her. “I think that’s a function of your age, partly,” he said. “Most pubescent children want to spread their wings more than they’re really mature enough for.”

Shayla had no idea what pubescent meant, but assumed it meant ‘about 12’.  “I know that the boys had built a tree house by the time they were my age and you even bought the lumber.”

“Well, building is good for boys. It was a good bonding experience for your older brothers. But most of what you’re feeling, is just a function of being the middle child. So don’t worry. Middle children often feel unimportant or “invisible” as you say. It’s perfectly normal.”

Dr. Baker traced the mouse over the screen to activate it, and pushed his glasses up higher on his nose.

“But Dad!” Shayla stood close beside his chair and tried to obscure his view of the screen. “I don’t want to be normal. Normal isn’t that great.”

“I see what you mean,” He often said that when he meant, ‘I’m too distracted to process what you’re saying and don’t want to be bothered.’

“So Dad,” Shayla leaned further into her father’s line of vision until he was forced to hang over the arm of his chair to continue eye contact with the manuscript on his screen. “Dad!”

“Ummmhmmm.”

“It’s normal for kids in Africa to be hungry. It’s normal for dogs to have fleas. Being normal doesn’t help the poor dog or the hungry kids.”

“Very true.” The screen flickered off Dr. Baker’s glasses and the reflection made it hard for Shayla to see his eyes.

“So if it’s normal, I suppose I’ll just vanish completely and nobody will notice.”

“No theatrics, Honey.”

Shayla knew he called her “Honey” because he didn’t have to recite down the list of her older siblings names to figure out hers.

“I’m going to start an experiment.”

“That’s my little scientist.”

Shayla closed the door quietly behind herself and went to the shed for a pick and shovel.

The Baker’s lived on a hundred acres of good farm land. They had a big vegetable garden and two dozen fruit trees for the sake of fighting the lazies. Most of the open land was planted in alfalfa. On the opposite side of the property, there was a year-round stream that ran beside a low bank. A ribbon of willow thickets, blackberry brambles and cottonwoods lined the stream so that the bluff was not visible from any place on the property. It was to this bluff that Shayla carried her borrowed tools.

That night, she came for dinner with bits of leaves and twigs in her hair. Since it was Saturday, she took her turn at a shower but when Lisa followed immediately after, the younger girl asked, “Why is the tub so dirty? There are little twigs and sand and all kinds of junk in there. What have you been doing?”

“I’m digging a cave in the bluff.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to live in it.”

“Can I help?”

“Sure. But I don’t think you’ll be able to live with me. And you can only help if you keep it an absolute secret. It’s an experiment. You don’t have to lie, but don’t volunteer any information.”

Lisa had agreed, and for the next two weeks after school, the two picked and shoveled until they had a snug little cave eight feet deep and about as wide. They squared the corners and dug shelves into the back wall.

Mr. Baker noticed their dirty clothes and heard the shower running that Friday and commented to Mrs. Baker, “Shayla is really coming into that awkward age. But I’m glad she’s taken to bathing so faithfully. We had a bit of a battle with Jimmy, didn’t we?”

“No, that was Kyle. Jimmy never minded bathing,” Mrs. Baker corrected.

“Oh yes, I guess so.”

“You guess so? Don’t you think I would know? I’m the mother, after all.”

Dr. Baker kissed her with a smile.

Shayla kept up her homework and her weekly babysitting appointments with the neighbors. She had saved the twenty dollar bill she got each week, too. So when she asked to go along when her father went to Home Depot, she didn’t need to ask for money. She bought a baker’s dozen 2×4 boards and had them threaded under the bench seats in the van before her father even came out. But when he saw the five pound box of nails and the new framing hammer in the far back, he asked about it.

“I’m building a house,” Shayla answered. “Do you mind if I use your saw? I’ll cut my lumber in the barn and then carry it to my house.”

Dr. Baker laughed and told her that he didn’t mind at all.

In two months, Shayla’s new residence was finished. It had a framed front wall, sheeted with odd scraps of plywood she had scavenged with permission at a building site about a mile down the road. The inside walls were lined with heavy plastic tarp and the space in the framed wall was stuffed with old newspapers. There was even a window made of a piece of stock plexiglass hot glued into a rather crooked frame. It opened with a leather hinge she had nailed to the cross brace.

Shayla used her babysitting money to buy a dutch oven, a cast iron skillet, four heavy blankets, two chairs, a set of red curtains and a curtain rod, and an old TV tray. She had fashioned a chimney using a post hole digger and a piece of duct she bought on another trip to the home store. Her little fireplace was dug into the wall and lined with the flattest river rock she and Lisa could find.

Lisa sat beside the TV tray admiring the little bed frame with it’s woven willow bark support. Her sister had cut the willow bows and lashed and nailed them into a sturdy bed.
                “Can I lie on it?”

“Sure, try it out.”

Lisa lay a folded blanket over the willow bark and lay gingerly down.  “Oh it’s comfortable! Make one for me too!”

“There’s not room for another bed, really.”

“Sure there is. You left the poles long enough that you could make it into a bunk bed.”

Shayla sat in the chair opposite, surveying the finished bed. It did seem very lonely. “All right, if you find four willows the right length and cut them down and strip off the bark, I’ll do it for you too. I’m going to weave in some string too, just to make it stronger.” She showed her sister the large ball of heavy nylon string. “The good thing about this is that I can knot it to the frame on the ends and it should stay tight. That way, I think it will support my weight but the bark will keep it in place and be more comfortable.”

And so it was that Lisa knew Shayla’s secret. And like pulling a hand from a bucket of water, nobody else noticed the smaller volume. Shayla accompanied her mother to the grocery store and bought her own groceries. Her mother didn’t notice that she kept her own purchases on the seat so they would not be mixed with the voluminous family foodstuffs.

 She learned to cook in the dutch oven and skillet and supplied herself in briquettes in case she ran out of firewood. Every morning, she caught the bus with her siblings and waited until they had turned toward their house after school before she slipped away to her own little cottage.

Shayla lived the summer through in the dugout, bathing and laundering her clothes in the stream. Her clever snares supplied her and her occasional guest with all the roasted rabbit she could want.  Rabbit hides cured on willow frames all along the sunny side of the stream.

That September, “The Baker’s Dozen” was finally published. Dr. Baker gathered his family for a group photograph for the back flap of the dust cover. The photographer counted twelve children and not knowing that a baker’s dozen is thirteen, thought nothing of it. The picture was taken and printed and burst upon the world in full force with the help of a $4000 per month publicist, without anyone noticing that “The Baker’s Dozen” was apparently false advertising.

Lisa knew that Shayla had not heard about the photo, since she had skipped Church that morning. Shayla’s Sunday school teacher asked Lisa about her sister’s absence, and she explained truthfully that Shayla was home nursing a head cold. The teacher asked if that explained why her attendance had been so spotty generally lately.

“I don’t know.” Lisa answered. “But I’ll tell her that you missed her. It will mean a lot to her.”

Dr. Baker’s second book was already under contract and half way finished by the end of November.  It was a study on how to establish a close personal relationship between parent and child without compromising parental authority and his readers awaited it’s publication breathlessly.

It was nine o’clock in the evening the last Monday of the month when the phone rang. The younger children had all been sent to bed and the house was quieting. Though house policy dictated that nobody took calls after 9:00, Dr. Baker, answered. It was Shayla’s English teacher. She explained that she wanted to meet with the Bakers and Shayla together as soon as possible.

“Is it something serious?” Dr. Baker asked.

“It could be. Yes, I think so,” the teacher answered. “I know you’re a psychologist, but I think Shayla’s developing some serious issues.”

“Why do you say so?” Dr. Baker tipped back his chair and cocked his head to the side defensively.

“I’m reading her journal. Journaling is required in my class, as you might remember from your older children.”

“What’s wrong with her journal?”

“I’d really like to meet with you and Shayla together.”

“It’s a very busy time for our family. Won’t you please just explain the issue so we can address it and move on?” Dr. Baker used his pseudo polite, measured voice that informed the teacher that she was slightly beneath his notice and her concern was in a similar position.

“I can make myself available any time you want,” Mrs. Armstrong persisted.

“Is she doing her homework? Is she turning in her assignments on time? Is it at least grade level and her best effort?” Now the doctor didn’t hide his irritation.

“Yes to all. It’s the content that disturbs me. She seems to be living in a fantasy from Little House on the Prairie. She writes of skinning rabbits and cooking beans in a dutch oven and heating her dugout house in a fireplace with a homemade chimney.”

Dr. Baker laughed. “Yes, I know about her fantasy. She went so far as to buy a pile of lumber and nails and her own hammer.” On the edges of his memory, he remembered a piece of plexiglass and a collection of odds and ends from the thrift store. Perhaps Shayla had been stricken with pubescent angst harder than most. He continued, “I can assure you that she’s perfectly normal. It’s a hard time for every girl. Maybe puberty is a little harder for her, but she’ll come out of it.”

The teacher hung up, unconvinced. Normal? Wouldn’t she know normal after teaching kids that age for fifteen years?

That was how Shayla came to have two guests for her Christmas party. Lisa proudly showed Mrs. Armstrong her sister’s bunks and the pantries. The little house was warm and charming, strung with popcorn and peppermints. Her solar lanterns glowed comfortably bright. Her school books and notebooks were stacked neatly on a little table.

Lisa kept her secret. Mrs. Armstrong kept the secret, with many misgivings. But when Shayla graduated as the valedictorian and earned a full scholarship to a great university, she felt she had chosen right.

Shayla worked in the cafeteria all four years to pay for her wedding and graduated magna cum laude. She married a man that was a year ahead of her in medical school.

The proceeds from Dr. Baker’s books easily sent all twelve of his children to college and paid for their weddings and he retired young and enjoyed a successful second career as a public speaker, renowned as the foremost expert on sibling relationships in the world.

.
          

Arrrrgggghhhh

February 21, 2012
Temperature 102.6, coughing, headache. No story this week. I started it. . .it’s called “The Spot in the Middle”. You’ll like it when it’s done, I think.

Safety vs Wing-spreading

February 9, 2012
A response to my previous post (Daddy with a shotgun) has set me to pondering and remembering two incidents, one from my childhood and one from my son Brian’s childhood.
 A shallow irrigation channel ran in front of our house in Utah. Sometimes the shallow ditch would run with cold, clear water from the Provo River. I don’t think it was ever more than 12 inches deep, and as a three-year-old child, I asked if I could “go swimming in the ditch.” My dad was doing something outside and he said okay. I put on my little pink bathing suit and enjoyed lolling around in the gutter, (a pleasure I have never relinquished?) The tiny current propelled me across the front of our yard, and it almost DID seem like I was swimming, walking along with my hands on the grassy bottom. On that day, I don’t remember that any of my older brothers were out with me, but many times before, I’d seen them let the current carry them through the culvert that run under our driveway. From my low vantage point, I could clearly see the headspace through the culvert and since they considered it a mark of bravery to go under the driveway, I decided to do it too. I was much smaller than they were anyway and felt not one qualm of fear.
   The problem arose when my Dad checked on me just AFTER I’d gone into the culvert under the driveway. He called me, I answered that I was under the driveway. “Are you stuck?”
“No.” I also wasn’t in any hurry. Eventually, I floated through and my Dad scooped me out of the water. He made me go in the house! He said I had done something dangerous. But it seemed to my three-year-old reasoning that “swimming” in the current on the grass and “swimming” through a culvert with ample headspace for a tot my size were pretty equal if there was any danger. (Of course now that I have the perspective of an adult, I see it differently.)
  A similar incident occured shortly after we moved from our home in the high desert of L.A. county to the tall pines of the Black Forest in Colorado. Brian was five and he said he was going to climb a tree. I told him to hang on tight. The next thing I knew, Brian was fifty feet up, perched in a pine tree. He called down that he could see Pike’s Peak.
Just then, Jeff came home from work. “Look at the little red squirrel in the top of that Pine tree,” I said. When it registered with Jeff that the squirrel was Brian wearing a red sweat shirt, his impulse was to command him down, but agreed with me on second thought to let him do it his own way. He was a wirey, very strong fellow and I knew that his instinct would warn him away from using a branch that wouldn’t hold his weight. He called out all the things he could see from up there, (Like Yertle the Turtle?) and finally, climbed down as readily as he had gone up.
I admit that when he posts videos of himself running down rock cliff faces and climbing sheer mountains (or descending into caves.. .oh my!) my heart quales. But better for him to find his limits, to know how high he can soar than to keep always physically safe. The only broken bone he’s had occured when a neighbor boy deliberately rode a skateboard into him. (We won’t mention frostbite here, since that would weaken my arguement).
It’s a line that as a parent we are constantly prayerfully, thoughtfully seeking. My dad was right to forbid me from the culvert. I did not perceive the dangers, but they were not only very real, but very likely. What if my bathing suit had snagged and I couldn’t get free? What if the sluicegate upstream was opened wider, even accidentally?
Life is complicated. Parenting is complicated. How could we do it without the guidance of the Holy Spirit? 

Are you a prepper?

February 1, 2012
He’s a prepper, she’s a prepper, wouldn’t you like to be a prepper too?
It’s short for preparer. Preparing for gas prices to be too high for truckers to be able to afford to haul food to the grocery stores. Preparing for a drought that first makes meat and dairy prices go up up up and then grain prices (breads and related products) go up up up, and then fresh produce becomes food for the rich. Have YOU noticed any of these trends when you go to the grocery store?
If you’re a beginner, start with staples your family eats. If you must buy food that is more basic than you usually prepare, that’s okay. Flour, sugar, oats, beans, pasta, rice and powdered milk are good basic foods. Be sure you have lots of salt on hand. It’s cheap and makes all the difference in most basic foods. Try simple recipes using the basic, easily stored food. You’ll find that making the recipes printed on teh packages will guide you in what else you need to store to make foods most enjoyable.
Store some water. The two liter soda bottles are made of the right kind of plastic for long term storage. If you store them somewhere that they might freeze, be sure to allow a few inches of headspace at the top.
Did you know that you don’t have to be Mormon to buy large quantities of staples like wheat and milk, oats etc at the LDS Bishop’s Storehouse? They have facilities for you to package it for long term storage too. It’s very reasonably priced, too. Find the phone number online. Mormons have been told to be prepared for emergencies and famine for years.
Save up an emergency fund. Dave Ramsay is the super-guru for financial wisdom. Get his book and follow it. It will bring greater peace even if you do nothing else, I promise. As you enter the saving step, save some of that in food storage.
If you have access to a few square feet of dirt, grow something good to eat in it. A soil mix of one part spaghum peat moss, one part (aged) manure and one part topsoil is a good basic recipe for vegetables’ soil. Green beans and squash are fairly high yield and and dependable crops. Tomatoes might take a little practice to find the best variety for your climate and soil conditions. It’s almost time to put the onions, lettuce, spinach and other cool weather crops in! Once you’re started, add manure every year and work it into the garden soil. It’s like the frosting on the cake. It makes all the difference.
  It isn’t hard to be more prepared each week. Just do a little something every time you have opportunity. Invite your neighbors to do it to. Plant fruit trees, if you have room. Make it fun. Make it a game or a competition. I’ve been surprised by the huge upsurge in interest for “prepping”.
I hope you’ll want to be a prepper too!    
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