Locked in Freedom

The lock covers Amanda's mind. It stares at her everywhere she goes, her own private eye. Billy deserved it, he deserved it, he deserved it. "Excuse me, Miss, uh--your bag." Cheezums, Amanda almost walked right through the airport scanner. She hands it to security and smiles, "Sorry about that. My mind is a million miles away." He smiles back, like everyone does when she flashes her perfect row of braces free teeth. Everyone except Billy. "Uh, Miss...the lock?" Confused, the lock in her head closes. She looks at security, holding up her bag. Amanda pulls the chain from her neck and hands it to security. "The red one," she says. Security opens her bag, rifles through it, hands it back. "Have a nice flight, Miss."

With an hour to kill before boarding Amanda buys the latest gossip rag, and finds a chair in a corner, away from the throngs of people passing through the terminal on their way away, like her. She wonders if all locks look like eyes...if there's a reason this lock looked like an eye...if she'd be haunted every day she breathed. Billy deserved it, he deserved it, he deserved it. "Is that this week's Go Gossip Go?" A voice brought her back. Amanda looks up at a girl, about 12 dressed to the nines.

"There a party I don't know about?" Amanda says, looking her up and down, trying not to laugh.

"Enough with the wisecracks, smartass, I'm going from one rich parent to the other. A bizarre war wages between them. Who can dress me better? My mother actually hired me a dresser. A dresser! I am THIRTEEN YEARS OLD, I CAN DRESS MYSELF. Bet you're glad you said anything now, huh....Is that this week's Go Gossip GO? Or do you want to hear more about my enthralling life running from parent to parent in the richest of circumstance"

"Uh here...sorry for the wisecrack." Amanda sits back, tries to meditate, but can't shake the image of the lock. If she watches the girl read, maybe the eye will disappear. The girl lifts her head and laughs, looks at Amanda, "This is some good shit. People are sure stupid, listen to this one. She starts to read. 'Living on his boat The Hornet, American playwright Jonathon Henchion…" Amanda wonders if her face will grace the cover of Go, Gossip, Go...but no, she is small potatoes in a world of Henchions “…If the world finds out, may my boat explode.' Can you believe it? He says that, then his boat explodes, with him on it. Do you think it was a set-up?" Amanda sits there, quiet. "Well I know what my friend Gravy Train Jones always says." Billy deserved it, he deserved it, he deserved it. "Don't YOU want to know what my friend Gravy Train Jones always says."

"Huh?" Amanda turns to the girl, "I want to know who in their right mind would name a kid Gravy Train." She has no idea what the girl is talking about.

"That's not the point, it's his nickname. What he always says is,” she slows down and tries to sound mysterious. “Words once spoken take on a power of their own. You be careful Shania, he says to me, any word you say has power, it can make you, or it can break you."

"How old is this Gravy Train Jones?"

"32. He's gay. He's my dresser."

Amanda laughs. "He's right, you know. Gravy Train. That's why I prefer to sit in silence, so nothing life changing can come out."

"Can I ask you something?" Shania says.

"Sure."

"When you were sitting there, before I walked over. You looked so sad, or worried, or angry, or I don't know, I thought maybe, ...uh...haunted? Anyway, I was just gonna walk on by, when I got a glimpse of something, above your head? It was hovering there, like a ghost or something."

Amanda's heart is racing, it's beat is deafening her.  Billy deserved it, he deserved it, he deserved it.  "What was it? What did you see?"

"It looked like an eye, or maybe a lock or something, I couldn't tell for sure."

Groggy, Amanda opens her eyes. The room starts swirling. "You passed out Miss. This is the airport holding area for sick passengers."

She sits up, "I'm not sick, I need to be on that plane, I need..."

"Miss, the plane is gone." He put his hand on hers to comfort her. "The police are waiting outside to speak with you. I'll get them now."

The police ascertain her identity and show Amanda a picture. "Do you know what this is?"

"It looks like a trunk," she says.

"Have you seen it before?"

"Yes."

"Do you know what it contains?"

"Yes, I do. I do know."

"Well?"

“That box contains my freedom, or I thought it did, until its eyeball lock started hovering above my head. Can you see it there?”

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Shout out to Willow over at Magpie Tales for the picture prompt.

Hazel & Edna

This photograph by Lyndon Wade inspired Edna, the narrator in this piece. Her wistful appearance initiated the journey this piece takes.

Hazel & Edna
Hazel and I were born in Blue Earth, Minnesota, where an 8 foot statue of the Jolly Green Giant stands sentry near the local Wal-Mart. I remember the day the giant was erected. As he rose. my best friend whispered to me, “Oh my good golly,” she paused, and looked at me with sparks shooting from her eyes, “a jolly green erection.” My laugh turned every eye our way. My face reddened, eyes turned down, but Hazel pointed her chin up, and said “You are a clever one, Miss Edna,” leaving the crowd to think that I said something witty and wise. Hazel’s brazenness filtered over to me, only after she died. Hazel’s absence sparked that change. I envisioned her hovering above me at different moments, pleased with my new found spunk.

When Hazel passed over I recalled Red Rover, the childhood game where we met. Until my dad was killed, and she went back to work, my mom homeschooled me. I attended public school for the first time at 10. We played a game that first day out in the field at recess with locked arms grabbed wrist on wrist. My team screamed, “Red Rover Red Rover send Hazel right over!” A girl with cinnamon hair and the bluest eyes I had ever seen locked those eyes on me before starting across the field. Hazel ran into my arm hard, rolling her weight against me until we landed a giggled embrace. At ten I felt the world shift.

Every day, Hazel encouraged me to “grab the bull by the horns.” She is the reason I made it through high school. We spent hours together at the library pouring over tomes. Whispering stories and details from books we journeyed through enchanted kingdoms, high society teas, factory workers sweaty struggles, and illicit sex. We grew up in the Blue Earth public library. In between the arts and literature Hazel touched my hair. “It’s so black.” she whispered, “like a raven.” She made a sound that cooed shivers through my shoulders. I turned to face her. “Yours, Hazel,” I picked up a strand and gazed at it, “looks like fields of wheat tinged red by the sun’s low hanging light.” Hazel pulled me to her, I lowered my face to hers and we kissed. Mouths open, lips wet, our tongues explored each other’s dark caves between the 700s and 800s in Blue Earth Public Library, our love fest began. It didn’t die until Hazel passed, at 83. We fell in love between the stacks, and we loved each other every day that we lived.

In '72 we bought a Victorian house in Blue Earth. Its staircase spiraled to the second floor. Back then, Hazel would swing one leg up over the banister, slide down, body forward, arms up high--"Woo Hoo!" she'd hoot. Not me, she was the brave one, my friend, my lover, my life. She slid for the day we might walk out in the world, hand in hand, not hand in hiding. Our sexuality remained hidden for nearly 50 years. We were born into a world that didn't understand us, wouldn't accept us, might even persecute us. We knew that, and pretended to be roommate spinsters.

Funny story this one coming: Hazel had t-shirts made. Spinsters-in-Arms headlines a picture of the two of us 73 year old ladies touting Rugers, shoulder to shoulder shooters, in front of the Eagle's Eye Shooting Range. That idea was Hazel's. She wanted me to be able to defend myself should she pass first. One day, Rugers in hand, she asked a patron at the range to take that picture of us. She entered it in a contest and won $750. "This is our chance to show everyone who we really are." Hazel said. She used all the money for t-shirts, when they came, she showed me one. At the bottom of the tshirt it said, "sharing guns and a bed since before you was born." Ha! You reach a certain age, and something like this just needs to be out there. We wore our t-shirts with pride and gave them out free to every member of Eagle Eye Woman's Trap Club.

It isn't really true that we fell in love between the stacks. Well, it was Hazel's truth, I suppose. It was not my truth. For me, it was the day she lay on top of me in the field where we played Red Rover. It was the moment I looked up at her and saw sky peek through the slits where her eyes were, framed by the sunlit grasses of her cinnamon hair. We were never persecuted, people got it. Hazel said that "They must see the love in our eyes." I think they could feel it ripple like waves between us. It ripples still. I feel her, I'll feel Hazel in me until I stop breathing and join her in the waves that strum the universal hum.

Taluna's Revenge ~ A Magpie Tale

Something always comes knocking on Georgia’s brain reminding her that things are never quite right. Last night it was Johnny’s sister. Georgia sat up at 3:33 am and saw an image of Taluna hanging from the tip of the crescent moon. Her eyes all bulged out. She almost woke Johnny to warn him, but he didn’t put much stock in her “flashes of insight,” as he liked to call them, using his fingers like quotation marks in the air. Johnny’s constant ridicule wore thin. Taluna told her to leave him twenty years ago, but Georgia just couldn’t do it. She wished it was Johhny she’d seen last night. Not Taluna, not the one person who understood what Georgia endured with her big brother. Taluna planted a field of poppies in Georgia and Johnny’s back yard “to soothe your journey, Georgia, to soothe your journey.”

She woke to an empty bed, flicked open her cell phone and pushed the 2. When Taluna didn’t answer cold flooded Georgia. She knew. Sure enough, Taluna was found in her fourth floor walk up loft, hanging from the rafters. With her eyes bulging out, that much Georgia knew. When the police ruled it a homicide, she decided to tell Johnny about her vision.

Johnny flew into a rage, drove his truck straight to Ace and came back wearing his toolbelt, a piece of plywood under arm. Georgia watched, bemused, as Johnny got the ladder from the garage. “I’m sick to death of your little “flashes of insight,” he whined, “this oughta take care of it once and for all.” He trudged up the ladder with that plywood and started to hammer it over her window. A gust of wind picked up. It sent Johnny and the plywood sailing end over end until they landed with a thud in the yard.

Georgia ran to Johnny’s side. She could see that this was the end. “I killed her,” Johnny moaned, “Taluna, baby, I did it…….” His eyes closed for the last time. Georgia shuddered.

That morning Georgia woke at 3:33 a.m. and looked out the window above her bed. There was Taluna, swirling with poppies through gusts of wind. Georgia could swear she saw her wink.

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This story is in response to the picture prompt offered by Willow at Magpie Tales.  Be sure to check out the link other creative responses to the picture.  And thanks, for stopping by!

Ponderosa

A painted turtle blinks, stands, and plops into the lazy murk of Curry Creek. “When I was a boy that tree touched the sky. Look at it now, lying there, can’t even tell it was a ponderosa. pffft.” Jacob’s hand indicates a broad log stretched across a colony of deadfall floating stuck, from the shore to turtle island.

“Jacob, it’s beautiful, why make a face like that?”

Jacob looks at her with that sense of calm running through his eyes that tells Justice he wants to listen to her ideas. She wishes she would learn to keep her mouth shut. Jacob has a way of making her spill her soul into words. Jacob is ancient—older than her grandfather. He raised her when a flood stole her folks. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Justice, tell me what you see.”

Justice starts slowly, “Not too long ago, Jacob, this tree touched the sky, beauty is its legacy.” Her eyes lose focus on the world in front of her as she continues, “When you were a boy, this ponderosa housed squirrels and bugs. Deer relieved itches on its bark, birds nestled in its branches, chittering chipmunks devoured its tiny pinecone seeds, and little boys? They looked up at this tree with wonder in their eyes, because this tree touched the sky.” Justice throws her head back and sweeps her hands overhead. Jacob’s eyes spark with life, and a smile plays its way about his mouth.

“See those branch stumps?” Justice points at spots where branches have broken off with time. Jacob nods. “Every one of them has moss growing around it. Moss is made of cells, Jacob, just like you. Just like me. Just like that dead ponderosa. It died, Jacob, but look at it now—it is greening over with life, Jacob!” They both grow quiet, as a turtle elder pulls itself to a basking site on the jam. “It’s not just the moss, but the turtles, too. This logjam slows down the creek. Imagine their home in the muck, Jacob, it’s dark, it's quiet, it’s safe. The ponderosa protects.” Justice falls silent when a breeze eddies up pine needles along the path, and swirls out over the creek making reeds dance circles.

She opens her hands over masses of grass poking up through the creek, and the logjam, where several turtles eye them, “Up here?  They sit in the sun on this old dead tree, worn smooth by water and time, this incredible dead ponderosa. Can you see it Jacob? How seamlessly woven it is?” She looks him in the eye. “The ponderosa is a gift, Jacob, a beautiful gift.”

“Beautiful? Yes. I see it now,” he answers smiling, “But a gift? No. You are the gift, Justice, you.” Jacob’s big hand ruffles the hair on her head as Justice wraps an arm round his waist, and nuzzles in the familiar scent of his buckskin coat.

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Shout out to Writer's Island for this prompt:  The seventh official re-opening prompt is: THE GIFT… What is it that comes to mind when you think of the concept of a gift — given or received, large or small, personal or on a broader scale. Tell us in your words (poem, prose, flash fiction) the why, who, what, where, when, or how regarding the gift — whatever it is that moves you to write…

Shout out to the universe for turtles and ponderosas!

Click the Writer's Island link for more takes on this prompt.

Hank and Nancy: A Magpie Romance

Hank found 1000 pencils in a box stashed in a back corner of Nancy’s Knickknack Nook. Eyes shining, Nancy said she found them in a box of poetry and prose peppered with magic. She raised her eyebrows when she said it.

“Uh, I was more interested in the uh, mug, uh, you know, for Guinness.” Hank felt the color rising in his face. Why was it talking to Nancy did this to him every time?

“Sure Hank, but I’m telling you, these here pencils? Magic. Something to do with the cup. Sharpen them.” Nancy grabbed Hank’s wrist, and looked him in the eye, “Needle sharp now, you hear? Then stick them in the cup with the sharpened end up. Do not be drinking beer in that mug Hank Sanders, or you’ll dull the magic.” She let go of his wrists, and looked down. “Sometimes it sticks, Hank. Give it a go.”

Hank remembers his heart racing when Nancy grabbed his wrist, but it’s the soft way she almost whispered at the end that made it skip a beat, still does today. Hank sharpens each pencil and puts it eraser down in the mug that never held a Guinness, until each of the final fourteen stands tall.

At one pencil per day, two weeks remain. Legions of women read his blog, Magic Pencils. Hank pencils all of his posts on pages of half-used notebooks and paper scraps from Nancy’s Knickknack Nook then takes pictures of his poetry and prose. Snapshots of magic, Nancy calls them. 986 posts inspired by Nancy. She thinks it’s the pencils, but it’s not the pencils. It’s her.

Hank started writing poetry for Nancy when he started sharpening pencils. He loves her, always has. Turns out, Nancy loves Hank, too. Hank figures some kind of magic stops him from tripping over his words every time he talks to Nancy. He attributes that magic to Nancy, too. Yup, this Magpie Tale has a happy ending.

Nancy wrote the sidebar ‘About Hank’ for his blog.

***
His name is Hank. He likes his beer dark, a smidgen below room temperature. He understands the underbelly of a woman the way most men understand the engine of a truck. His words make women purr.

***

It’s true. Nancy knows. Nancy knows she will keep purring whether Hank has magic pencils or not. And Hank? He knows that real magic is the stuff that happens when Nancy touches his wrist and whispers, and he whispers back in couplets that burn with desire.

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Shout out to Magpie Tales for the prompt.  Be sure to click the link and visit for other creative responses to this cup of sharpened pencils.

Blindsided by Hopper

To commemorate her sixth Christmas in the world, I wanted to surprise TL with a deaf dog. She asked Santa for one, so she “would not be the only deaf person” in our small family of two. An online search led me to Bangtail dog rescuers in Bozeman, Montana only 3 hours away. Most of these dogs were of herding stock, and that gave me some concern as our small house teemed with cats. Nonetheless, at $250 to cover the hand shape training and upkeep of the dog, I was about to take the plunge, when the Deaf school rang me up, urging me to come in to the office.

When I arrived, they showed me a flyer.

“Black Pete
Deaf Dog
Free to good home
Call Skyline Veterinary to set up a meeting.”

There he was, the dog of our dreams. Free.

The sheriff’s department found him on the side of highway 87, head split open, brain exposed. They carried him in to Skyline Veterinary, where they stitched his scalp together. The staff loved Black Pete for four long months, until he was ready to go. Home, with us—where TL calls him Hopper, and he knows the sign for love.

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Shout out to Writer’s Island for the prompt, blindsided, or having something unexpected drop into your life. Hopper is a gift we enjoy every day. Serendipity.

Ken and Barbie Star in a Magpie Tale

“Anyone can catch fish, Ken. Most people clean them before tossing them on the table.” says bitch-and-a-half Barbie as she digs dirt from beneath her nails. Her plastic ball hinge knee creaks when she swings her leg. Ken wants to take that leg in his hands and snap it in half.

Melanoma took Malibu Barbie. It makes bitch-and-a-half Barbie smile just to think of it. It makes Ken want to cry, but his damn face freezes in that dumbass smile. Only two females remain—bitch and a half and her sister, Mod living Skipper, who still mourns missing Malibu Barbie’s tanning tutelage and believes her little girl pink skin keeps Ken’s eyes on her big sis bitch-and-a-half.

“Well we’re not people, are we?” Ken growls back at bitch-and-a-half. “We’re fashion dolls, stuck in some freaky ass story, and these fish?” Ken picks one up. “Pewter. Tell me how I’m supposed to clean them. Tell me.” He grabs bitch-and-a-half Barbie by the hair, pulls her head off and swings it in the air. Slipping out of his hands it twirls to the floor of the room and Jonesy, the house mongrel chews it until nothing is left.

“I like the fish, just the way they are, Ken.” Mod living Skipper purrs. If Ken had moveable eyes, he’d roll them.

Later, the people laugh when a big chunk of bitch-and-a-half’s head shows up in Jonesy’s shit.

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A shout out to Magpie Tales for giving Ken, bitch-and-a-half Barbie, and Mod living Skipper a chance to share the drama of their closeted lives.

Benign

Something about anything would not come, so Sierra marched up to Molson’s desk, journal in hand. “What do you mean, something about anything?”

“For instance, Sierra,” Molson holds up his own journal and in a low voice reads, “Every spring an army of ants invades the kitchen of his mother’s house. They climb up walls, and the side of the white plastic garbage can at the top of the stairs. Every time Oscar ascends from the depths of his basement hole, he counts them, and announces the count to anyone who cares, “27 ants.” Molson stops and looks at Sierra.

“You want me to write about bugs?” She wrinkles her nose.

Molson says, “Write about something you know, Sierra. I know about ants climbing the side of a garbage can. I know how difficult ants can be to control. It has to do with cleanliness, of course, but that is beside the point, or maybe that is the point, hmm . . .” He stops and writes the words controlling ants=cleanliness in his journal, then continues, “The point is Sierra, pick something mundane, something ordinary in your life, write a story around it. I started with ants. You can start with anything ordinary in your life. Write it, watch it grow.” He motioned with his hand toward her desk.

Sierra walked back to her desk, everyone else in class was writing. Now it was her turn. She sat down and looked at the clock— 22 minutes. She began.

The pregnancy stick looks so benign.

Sierra knew the word benign because Molson used it as what he called a “sometimes” synonym for the word mundane. She also knew it meant that whatever they cut out of your body would not kill you, as in, the cancer is benign.


That’s probably a good thing, Joy thought. She was sitting on the toilet in her Step-mom’s sister’s bathroom, holding the stick in her pee. The box said that it would be a + if she was pregnant. It said to wait for results. She didn’t have to wait long. Joy looked down at the stick. It didn’t look so benign now. It cut out a piece of her right then and there. This was one of those “defining moments” her English teacher always talks about.

Sierra sat up and looked at the clock again, thinking. What next...she didn’t know. She looked across the room at her best friend Jess, wondering where words were taking her. Jess was her inspiration for Joy. Sierra had no idea what Jess would do with her pregnancy. Her pregnancy, it made Sierra shudder to think about it. 15 minutes remained. Sierra decided to reread what she’d written before continuing. Molson always says to do that, and sometimes the story writes itself. “Let it come, let it go,” Molson says from one of the monthly Caldecott books he shares, A Story, A Story.

Sierra let it come.

Never one to cry and let life run her course for her, Joy takes action. She contacts Planned Parenthood and sets up an appointment with a pregnancy counselor. Joy knows that they will tell her about all of the options out there: abortion, adoption, open adoption, and raising a child. Joy knows what she wants. She asks the counselor about places where girls can live for the duration of their pregnancy, and give the baby to a family to raise. That’s what Joy wants to do with her pregnancy. She doesn’t want to tell LJ, because she’s afraid he’ll tell her it isn’t his baby. She’s afraid he’ll scream at her. She’s afraid he’ll call her a whore, or a slut, or a hose-bag. She’s even afraid he might kick her, or swing one of his rock-hard fists into her face and scream, “WHO ELSE HAVE YOU BEEN FUCKING, BITCH!!” with his rank cigarette stained breath.

Sierra’s sharp intake of breath as she sat back in her chair was loud enough that three people looked up: Molson, L. J. Jones, and Jess. Each one of them looked at her. Sierra looked down, and scratched out everything she had written. She ripped the pages from her journal, went to the trashcan, and she shredded them.

Molson looked at Sierra and said, “Good stuff, eh.” with this weird knowing grin on his face.

Ant Log

It is my belief that the ants are developing a resistance to Terro. Somehow it is entering their little ant bodies sending resistance to future generations. They drink at the trough, but they keep coming back –ants on dogs, ants on me. Yesterday I lost control and killed 15 ants before I finally stopped finding them. Today an ant charged me in the kitchen. Most of its kin run from feet. Other humans verified the charging ant. One thought it was his reincarnated grandpa, and we all stepped aside.

Just the Way You Were

The package arrived dusty, with a postmark from China. Larry did not open the package for several days. It stared at him from its perch atop a pile of books on the desk. Every time he went into the kitchen, it mocked him from the open doorway of his home office. The Internet instructions said not to open it until a blue moon lit the night sky. Two more days.

Larry carried on as normal at the office, trying to avoid Glenda’s fervored glances. She looked at him with yearning eyes behind black studded cat-eye spectacles. Being near her caused beads of sweat to pepper Larry’s head, and tied his tongue in knots.

The night of the blue moon, Larry followed the instructions from the Chinese vendor to a T. He opened the package outside under an evergreen tree, and removed a small glass bottle. The liquid in the vial glowed blue as he centered it in the face of the moon and repeated three times the three rhyming lines he constructed for the occasion:

      Blue moon renewal
      share now the jewel
      to keep me from feeling the fool

Larry finished the ritual and headed to bed. He fell asleep doubting the veracity of the Chinese vendor’s claims, but when he woke, Larry put his hands on his head. He screamed out and ran to the bathroom mirror. The blue liquid he had rubbed into his scalp had worked indeed! Larry had a full head of luscious curly brown locks.

Entering the office on Monday, Larry walked right up to Glenda with a bouquet of daisies and said, “How about you and me head to Meadows after work for a couple of cocktails.” He felt darn good, he said it, he did it, he had hair. Glenda looked up from behind her glasses and said, “Oh my God, where is your beautiful bald head, and what happened to you?” She mocked him, “How about you and me head to Meadows after work for a couple of cocktails,” she continued, “How about you get away from my desk, Mr. Suave, Mr. Debonair, Mr. I liked you fine just the way you were!” At that she shuddered and went back to her computer screen her fingers furiously entering data. Larry stood there, stunned.

petal

As far back as her memory took her she woke up every morning with a petal in her mouth. She never told a living soul about it. Each morning, she took the petal out, and turned it round her eyes taking in the soft curving shades of yellow deepening toward its outer ruffled edge. Each morning, she placed it on her tongue and washed it down whole with a tepid cup of rosehip tea placed on a bedside table, saucer and all, by her grandmother when she brewed her own.

Every time a blue moon filled the night sky, her grandfather’s ghost visited. He told her everything he knew about anything she asked. Without fail. And he always told the truth. Unfortunately, he did not understand the petal, but was certain it was a mark to signify something special that would occur in her life. He always said, “It is a talisman, you will see.”

Sometimes she doubted her grandfather’s words. She wondered if everyone woke up with a petal in their mouth, and not one person ever talked about it. Why, there could be hundreds, thousands, even millions of people who woke up with a petal on their tongue. She let that thought simmer for several seasons and closely observed other people. She watched her mom wake up, she watched her grandmother wake up, she watched her dog wake up, she watched her friends wake up. Unless they secretly swallowed the petals, not one person woke with one on their tongue. She grew convinced that she was not at all like most people. She believed her grandfather. She pondered the petal’s significance.

Enter the young man. She met him at the Harvest Fair. When he said his name, she drew in breath, through no power of her own. It was as if the instant took hold of her and created the gasp. She knew he would be her first. He thought she might be his only. They explored tenderness through the Ferris Wheel’s magic circle, rising and falling and kissing and touching until the world disappeared.

It was almost the end of November. The crisp air held enough moisture to blur the stars. She met him in the cornfields behind the livestock barns at the fairgrounds. She stomped a flat area and spread out the love quilt her grandmother constructed of her grandfather’s clothes. Her grandfather might show up tonight. She listened to her young man stumble through the stalks and felt the blue moon rise. He did not perceive her until he fell upon the open quilt. She fell upon him with hunger, and then sleep took her far away.

She looked up. The morning sky was pale. Her young man appeared and held her eyes with his own. “Every night since I was a child I have had the same dream.," he began, "In the dream, my grandmother tells me I will wake to find a yellow petal in the mouth of my one true love. I did not have the dream last night.” He held the petal in his hand, and turned it around between their eyes. Then he placed it in his mouth, and swallowed it with a cup of tea from the thermos he brought. Rosehip tea.

Drums into Dawn

I thought that I had made it through a September blue moon without mishap, or mayhem, when at 3 a. m. I woke to pounding at my apartment door. The peephole exposed my neighbor Jimmi, wild-eyed and jumpy. I turned the knob, and she pushed through the open door coughing, exuding the essence of smoke. “You’ve gotta,” Jimmi coughed, “my room…” I pushed through the door past her and saw the problem. She had tried to stuff her burning mattress out the window onto the tarred roof of the Bon Ton building next door. It was stuck. Half in, half out. Her room was filling with smoke. We shut the door and went back to my place.

The windows in my apartment looked out at a four-foot wide canyon between our building, the Lovelace, and the Bon Ton. Jimmi and I closed down the Haufbrau more than once together and walked home to retire to that roof and talk under Montana stars. To make it accessible from my place, we angled a seven-foot plank, about 12 inches wide, from my window to the roof. The first time and every time she used it, Jimmi walked across quickly, with a dance in her step, while I always crossed on my knees, hands gripping both sides of the plank, eyes on the blackness below. Jimmi waited until I was safely across to berate my fear of walking upright. “What are you, a cat?” she’d laugh, and we’d settle into talk, KGLT pouring out of Jimmi’s windows into the night.

Jimmi wanted to cross from my place and try pulling the mattress out. She was tanked. I insisted on walking the plank. Jimmi pushed, and I pulled until the mattress let loose onto the roof. We drug it away from her window. Jimmi’s apartment was a single room, mine had a kitchen with a sink. We carried pitcher after pitcher after pitcher of water from my sink through her room, to the roof drenching the mattress before the smelly smoldering ceased. Then we set up fans to blow the smell from Jimmi’s room. We drug the mattress to the ledge on the building's backside and balanced it there. We looked up and down the alley. Nothing. We got the mattress in position to drop it, looked long at each other thinking our own private thoughts, then let it loose. The mattress landed with a splashing thump in the alley below. It was when we were sitting in our lawn chairs later, that Danny Choriki was on KGLT, laughing about some story he’d heard about the mayhem of blue moons and I remembered. Here it was, my very own mayhem, a blue moon story waiting to be told. Jimmi and I laughed and rolled Drums into dawn.

In the Barn

Tim, the hired man locks the sheep into a blue metal basket, one at a time, as I feed them to him single file, through a long curved wood chute in the barn. A big stick I found in the field last week encourages their journey through. Once locked in, Tim gives a carnie flip to the blue basket. The sheep’s eyes spin wide searching circles of fear while Joseph shoots them in the backside with a big blue syringe. I look at Joseph’s blue eyes, and wonder if he makes certain that everything around him is blue, or if it is a matter of simple mistakes or coincidence.

“Dadblast it!” Joseph curses, “Those Pretty Feathers got themselves a brand new truck last week.”
Tim concurs. “Damn nice ‘un.”
“I heard in town that they traded it with Wilson Family Ford for ongoing butcher services.” I offer.
“Bullshit they traded it.” Joseph counters, “I’d more likely believe they paid for it with the money they save up not paying taxes on that butcher business. Lance Wilson won’t do business with Indians.”
“Wouldn’t be too sure about that,” I retort, “Wilson’s wife Wanda is friends with Josie Pretty Feathers.”
Tim chimes in, “I heard it ain’t no butcher business, at all, but a cover for card games they got goin’ on in the freezer. My wife read a book by some Indian woman, talked about playin’ cards in freezers.” He punctuates his remark with a loud laugh.
“Either way," I say, "Wanda and Josie took that new truck out cruising last Friday night. I saw them down by the Gap.”

Outside, the lambs bellow for their momma’s teats, and the ewes inside feel some relief—that is until they get closer to the basket. Fear spreads to the first three or four ewes in line. Eight to ten ewes back from the basket, I station myself on the bottom rung of the chute, my own personal soapbox. “Do you know,” I flourish the stick above my captive audience stretching know into an almost two-syllable word, “That the Pretty Feathers are the only people who make potato sausage (present company excluded) in a five county radius?” Pausing for effect, I raise my voice slightly, “Do you know, that the Pretty Feathers are required by law to pay both state and federal taxes?” I stop to catch my breath, look up and notice that Joseph has stopped working and is staring right at me.
“Now what do you think you know Miss FancyPants?”
Stepping off the fence and onto the soft barn floor, I turn and face Joseph straight on, “Will you listen?”

He will sit on every word I say, just to think of a way to turn it into a question about Wanda Wilson and Josie Pretty Feathers. Joseph is a good listener; he remembers things no one should. His wheels are spinning.

“Come on Joseph,” Tim pleas, “Tell 'er you’ll listen. I wanna hear this one!”
“Go ahead, I’ll listen, but let’s keep these ewes moving through, I don’t want to spend another day in here with you two.” The metal squeaks as Tim turns a ewe on her side.
I start slow, striving to sound mysterious, “Let me start by saying, it isn’t what I think I know, it’s what I’ve been studying, it’s what I am coming to know.”
Joseph rolls his eyes, and Tim laughs.

“First of all, the Pretty Feathers land is not on the reservation. They are required to pay taxes. Not only federal property taxes, but state property taxes, as well. Because they live and work off-reservation, they pay the same state and federal taxes that we do, even income taxes. They are also responsible for business taxes, too. They run their business in Harlo, not on the rez. Most of their customers are folks like you and me.”
Tim posits, “…and every Indian in Harlo, and every Indian in the Gap.”

Joseph holds the syringe up in the air and squints one eye, “Is it legal for them to do a trade business? Do they have to report that for taxes?” For emphasis, he inoculates the ewe right as he says the word that.
“I don’t know, Joseph. Now if they lived and worked on a reservation---that would change things up a bit.”
Tim asks “How so?”
“Squire vs. Capoeman is a Supreme Court case. It holds that legally, Indians must pay the same federal income taxes as everybody else, unless Congress expressly grants them immunity through a treaty or other statute. So unless it is written in law explicitly, that Native Americans are exempt for any reason, they pay federal income taxes.”

“What about on the rez?” Tim asks.
“Because reservations were set up with the idea that Indian tribes are sovereign nations, the courts have upheld that state taxes don’t apply to Indians who work and live on the reservation. Unlike states, recognized Indian tribes have a government-to-government relationship with the US Government. Concerning federal taxes, a few exemptions were upheld by the Squire vs. Capoeman decision. For instance, Indians earning an income from the land they were “given” through the General Allotment Act do not pay federal taxes on that income. The court interpreted that GAA “conferred” that immunity from taxation. So, if Joseph were a Native American and these sheep,” I push one along, “were on the reservation, this business would be immune from taxes on the income it brings.”

Joseph blurts, “That there is a crock of shit!”

“Simmer down, Joseph. Let me tell you why I think it works this way,” I say. “Vine DeLoria, a Standing Rock Sioux, finds fault with the implication from “Squire vs. Capoeman forward…that the (tax) exemption occurs because Indians are incompetent. That we won’t tax them until they are our economic, social, and intellectual equals.” DeLoria calls that a “hazardous thing to hang your hat on.” It is a system that grew out of racist, paternalistic ideas of white guys like you.” I smile big at him, knowing he hates the whole blame the white male for every malady that arises in history attitude. “The General Allotment Act, or the Dawes Act, sought to civilize the Indians. The land they were allotted was supposed to be some magic carpet ride into the white man’s view of success. American Indians did not want isolated pieces of land to farm—their culture is communal in nature. Not to mention, the language in the act is ridiculous. It talks down to Indian peoples. There are all kinds of assumptions regarding their inferiority written into the document.”

“Okay, okay enough pontificatin’!” Tim continues, “So because we wanted to civilize ‘em, we gotta give ‘em a tax break?”
“I think it’s more about the language in the treaties, and statutes. It’s more about semantics----or what those words mean. Picture a bunch of people sitting around arguing over what the words mean.”
“Like church,” Joseph says, “everybody’s got their own ideas about the Bible.”
“Yeah, it’s like interpreting the Bible, and look at all the havoc that’s reaped! The GAA was supposed to empower Indian peoples to meet with success as individuals. Taxing them on income earned from the land impedes their progress. At least that’s how Squire vs. Capoeman interpreted it.”

“So what if I as a white person had my business on the reservation, would they get to tax me?” Joseph asks, read for another go at it. (I’m still waiting for him to bring up Wanda and Josie.)
“My mind is full of learning, Joseph; let me think on this for a minute.” We keep moving sheep, most run out of the barn with bleats of protest. Back in the corral, they nuzzle their lambs wildly. Pacing the floor of the barn, I formulate my response and with incomplete certitude posit, “I think you still pay the same taxes that you do, and I don’t believe the tribe can tax you, too.”

“What, the tribes tax me, too? I don’t have a brand new truck from Wilson Family Ford!”

“Whoa, hold on, Joseph, I said they can’t tax you. The state and the feds will take care of that---and what does any of this have to do with a truck?”

As the last ewe entered the basket Tim said, “Truck, schmuck…Joseph never did get over Wanda Wilson.”

“What the hell she doin’ with an Indian chick on a Friday night, anyway?” Joseph let the last sheep loose, and it ran out the door without looking back.

John Goodman's Head

Disclaimer: In no way does the author wish harm to John Goodman. This piece was written in response to a photograph from David Lynch's "A Dark Night of the Soul" exhibit. National Public Radio led me to the picture. Several musicians created a "uniquely collaborative album" -"Dark Night of the Soul." Lynch conjured the images in his photographs while listening to the album. I conjured John Goodman's head from the second of the pictures in the NPR piece.

Now the head in Lynch's photograph is not John Goodman's head, but it reminded me of John Goodman. That, the children, and Aunt Ruth in her apron, got me pondering the power of apple pie. A story beckoned.

And so, without further ado, I give you:

John Goodman’s Head

The children looked so small standing beside John Goodman’s head. Aunt Ruth put the head on the dinner table because she didn’t know what else to do with it. Just the day before, so the story goes, John Goodman called Aunt Ruth. He heard tales told about her apple pie.

Now Aunt Ruth’s apple pie is no ordinary apple pie. Nuh-uh! Aunt Ruth’s apple pie, when eaten under the right conditions makes wishes come true. About now you are probably wondering just what those conditions are. So I’m gonna tell you.

But before I do, you need to know what a blue moon is. Do you know what a blue moon is? Just in case you don't---a blue moon is the second full moon that graces the night sky in a single calendar month.

In our case, Aunt Ruth’s apple pie makes your wishes come true if you eat it under a blue moon in October.

Unfortunately for him, John Goodman called Aunt Ruth the night before this October’s blue moon. He told her that he wanted that apple pie. He told her that he wanted that apple pie more than he’d ever wanted anything in his entire life.

Now Aunt Ruth isn’t one to judge people. If someone wants her apple pie she makes it for them. People come to her sometimes by the dozens, sometimes none come at all. There's power in her pies. John Goodman was Aunt Ruth’s first celebrity. Maybe she shoulda smelt trouble. But he was her only request for apple pie this year, and Aunt Ruth loved baking on blue moons. She’d been doing it as far back as she could remember. Blue moons in October don't come that often--that’s why we say stuff like this only happens once in a blue moon. (Now ain’t that the truth!)

Anyway. the entire time Aunt Ruth made that pie, she wondered what John Goodman would wish for. She just couldn’t wrap her mind around it. Aunt Ruth manifest all the yearning she could and put it right in that pie. She wanted to supercharge John Goodman’s wish. If he wanted to fly, she wanted him to fly! (that wish had only been manifest once before, it ended badly for the wisher) If he “Wanted to be a Millionaire” she manifest doubling it. Whatever it was that John Goodman wished for, went into that pie. Aunt Ruth isn’t sure how it works, she only knows THAT it works. Oh Aunt Ruth was feeling smug all right. She knew she’d whipped up one of her most powerful blue moon apple pies ever. She could feel its strength as she worked..

John Goodman arrived at Aunt Ruth’s house as the blue moon rose. She seated him at the old Ma Bell spool table under the oak tree out back and handed him a bib. “Nothing like moonlight and apple pie, I always say.” Aunt Ruth said.

“Bony Aphrodite, that’s what I always say,” John Goodman said as he raised his fork. Aunt Ruth laughed. “Wait,” she said. “The wish. After I go inside the house, stand up and say your wish out loud, wiggle your hips side to side three times, and no it don’t matter what direction you start,(ya wouldn’t believe the number of times I get that question) Say your wish out loud, Swing them hips a yours three times, just like this. Clap once, then sit down and eat. Eat every last bite. No ala mode, no cheddar cheese, nada.”
“Cheddar cheese, EW.” John Goodman wrinkled his nose.
“I know, right?” Aunt Ruth said with a laugh. “Well as you say, Bony Aphrodite.” Aunt Ruth turned and walked back toward the house, thinking about John Goodman’s wish.
Before she closed the door she heard John Goodman say, “Bony Aphrodite, indeed.”

About twenty minutes passed, and Aunt Ruth heard nothing. Then a gawd awful wailing started up outside. Followed by a “Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit.”

Aunt Ruth hurried outside. John Goodman had grown a good four feet. She thought he was a big man before, but now he was friggin huge! His head was as tall as the trees.

“This is not what I meant.” John Goodman said. “Life is one BIG fucking joke.” He threw his hands up in the air, knocked a branch down, then grabbed his forearm. “Ouch, Fuck!” He rubbed his arm. “Fuck!”

Aunt Ruth approached John Goodman. “Just exactly what did you wish for, Mr. Goodman?”

“I wanted to be “big”, real big, not just some type cast, flash in the pan, second fiddle, small-time loser nobody. Shit. I’m big now. I’m big now.” He threw his hands in the air, turned and stomped off toward the barn.

There he was, John Goodman throwing a fit in Aunt Ruth’s backyard. Aunt Ruth stifled her laughter while he was going on and on, then she remembered something horrible….. “Oh shit! Stop! Oh Mr. Goodman, stop!”

It was too late. John Goodman stormed through the 12 foot barn doors. Just two days ago, Aunt Ruth and her husband’s cousin Joe stretched a piece of razor wire from one loft to the other across the barn. They video- taped themselves throwing all kinds of things at that razor wire, from watermelons to tin cans, thinking that they’d make it onto America’s Funniest Home videos. Thinking they’d hit the big time. Thinking they stood a chance.

They hit the big time all right, just like John Goodman’s head hit the floor.

The family stood at the table stunned.

“I didn’t know what else to do with it,” Aunt Ruth said. “It just didn’t feel right leaving John Goodman’s head out there in the barn.”

Noisy Time

Currently, a fine flock of feathered friends shares our life: Sophia the scarlet macaw, Sadie the blue and gold macaw, Sweet Pea the Senegal parrot, LB the green cheeked conure, and Harpo the yellow canary who can sing like no other.

A noisy time is when every bird in our house has something to say, and each of them hollers to be heard above the rest. Sophia wins, wings down. Most days, there are two noisy times: both 7ish. Will I miss them when I venture into the Bozone this summer? I fear not.

Sophia is a scarlet macaw. Everything we read ahead of time warned of the noisy wildness of this particular critter. HOWEVER, the summer Len and I got married we visited Sophia at Petco frequently. Trips to visit Spaghetti-O and Paris, a blue and gold macaw became family outings. I taught Sophia to belch during those visits (What was I thinking?). We bonded.

Paris sold to a couple in Helena. Sophia remained at Petco, waiting for a home. The bird handlers told us that due to a diminished market in Great Falls(and a deformed toe), Sophia was moving to another Petco. We did not want her to sit in a cage at Petco forever, and the first of many birds joined our roost.

The thing about birds is, when you have one, people get wind of it. Soon friends have friends who want to give you birds. They have allergies, they didn’t know how loud they would be, they don’t think they spend enough time with their feathered friends. Dumb ass us, we take them into our home so they can have noisy time twice a day.

Call and response is so natural in our home, its absence may send me into campus conversation with crows. Perish the thought.........

whacky

You know the story--the one about the guy selling pencils on a corner in China having an impact on butterfly wing flapping in Montana. Everything affects everything. We are, I am, a massive oneness. Duality is an illusion that makes it easier to "deal."

Think of the the responsibility this brings. Every thing you do impacts the all.

In March of 2003 a truck pummeled through our front fence and landed in a parking spot at the school across the street from our house. The fence had only been up for a week. It was there to protect TL when she played in the yard with Hopper. The man tested clear of drugs and alcohol. He claims that he threw up and passed out. He meant to hit the brakes when he threw up, but he hit the accelerator. He was fine afterward and there were no other injuries. The fence in my front yard looked sad for a short spell, and his truck suffered some damage.

Now, what does this little truck story have to do with the price of pencils in China? There was an earthquake in Indonesia at the same time a man threw-up and lost consciousness in Great Falls,
Montana clearing out the corner of a chain link fence with his 1/2 ton truck.

Was that a message? HEY LADY! You think a fence will protect your kid?!

Fences indeed.
Good fences make good neighbors, or in our case vicious dogs.

Hopper is a pit bull mix. He was found on the side of the road by the sheriff with his head split open--the apparent victim of a hit-and-run. The sheriff's deputies brought him to the vet. We adopted him.

A favorite game of the neighbor boys was to run up and down the length of the chain link fence making faces with wiggling fingers at Hopper. Hopper growled and they encouraged him. His fence behaviour is offensive, if not scary. We moved. Hopper still hates people on the opposite side of a fence from himself. I encourage neighbors to spray him with their hoses, it humbles him.

Hopper is the Doodles. He rocks. His behavior mellows more and more daily as he ages into stiff muscles and well-cushioned rests. Although signing "walk" or "outside" still gets him wiggling.

Blah blah blah, what does this have to do with connections at work within the massive oneness?

Oh yeah....
My daughter wanted a deaf dog for Christmas. I searched online and began commuication with a woman in Bozeman who rescues deaf dogs from shelters or other circumstances and engages in agility training with them. I was considering one of her dogs that worried me as it was a breed with herding tendencies. At that point in time we had seven cats in the house. (We bred Maine Coons for a spell...don't try it in a small house.) Still, this was the only deaf dog I could find, and Christmas was merely months away.

Here's the clincher, kismet, fate, connectedness.....a flyer shows up at the MSDB (Montana School for the Deaf and Blind) office: Pete -- Deaf Dog, needs home, come to Skyline Vetrinary. The Blazer got us to Skyline Vet , and in no time "Pete" was one of the family. Pete is Hopper, Doodles, Doodley-Doo, and he came to us right when we were looking for him. He wanted us, we wanted him.
We fit right. (from a Deirdre Flint song)

Many months later, I was at MSDB subbing, when the supervising teacher told me to go home. She had just driven by my house and saw that "someone took out the front fence." My immediate panic was Hopper. Did I leave him out that morning? I usually didn't leave him out in front because he terrorized school children. But if the back fence was at all compromised....who knows what Doodles would doodly do?

When I got home I didn't see Hopper, and checked in the house. Oblivious to recent drama, Hopper's snout rested across the pillows of my bed, and he barked that soft little dream bark that makes his mouth look like he's smiling. With TL at school, Doodles asleep, and the cats in windows, my attention turned to the fence.

I felt victimized. There had to be a reason that guy puked right then; he said he felt fine up until that moment. He was checked out and released from medical attention. I googled earthquakes and tornadoes all day until I found one. The time fit. On May 26, 2003, an earthquake in Halmahera, Indonesia coincided with a freak accident in a Great Falls, Montana front yard. Every action has a reaction.

Things happen simultaneously. Balance in the massive oneness flows in and out of whack.

Or is the preceding verbage simply whack?