News-flash: It appears that it’s not so much ‘how’ you cope as ‘where’ you cope
To all my friends who might happen to be Jewish,
I am truly sorry for the way you are being treated and will stand beside you to the end.
I hope you are seeing what is happening at the U Of F, Ole Miss, U of A, and UNC, among other great southern universities. For myself, I thank the good Lord for my Southern heritage, a heritage which might have been tainted a ways back, but is standing tall as toddy today. I am on my way this weekend to one of those Southern universities to see my grand-daughter graduate. I would like to thank those kids who have guaranteed that my trip is set off upon with a great amount of pride. I am somewhat ashamed to admit to having and sharing in my stories on this site my poor opinion of our colleges and universities (or more specifically of the educators who are filling those universities with rot), but I am so very proud to see that the rot has not infected you all. That shines!
God Bless America and Yeehaw you Intifada sons of biscuits. Go crawl back under whatever
rock you crawled out from.
Sincerely,
Huckleberry Hoo
A Brief Description of One Man’s Death (Repost)
I cannot presume to say what every death feels like. I can only speak to my own, and it was really not all that interesting once the knife was removed and the murderer escaped, but I will do my best to enlighten the reader as to its effects upon my body, and also to its effects on my inner thoughts at the curious moment of passing.
I can tell you that the wound succombed quickly to shock, so there was little pain, but there was the freightening knowledge of something terribly wrong, of some important thing inside of me being irreparably damaged. Having little knowledge of anatomy I cannot say for certain sure what that something was, but the blood was dark in color, almost black, so I suspect it was the liver, or possibly a kidney that suffered the injury.
The blood was also plentiful. It pooled quickly around me until every appendage of my body layed within it. It even touched my face so that its strangely sweet odor filled my nostrils until I accepted the smell of the blood as being the smell of death itself. I recall being shocked at the amount, and presumed correctly that a body cannot lose that amount of blood and survive.
With the shock and the blood loss came the cold... a deep, down to the bone cold that sent my muscles into spasms which served to push the blood out of the wound even faster than my heart-beat could push it alone. The spasms acted upon my blood vessels like squeezing a sponge as my body did what it could to speed up the natural process that it evidently knew had begun. In a final effort at self preservation I curled myself into a fetal position, my arms pressing into the wounded area in a feeble attempt at both warmth and to thwart the flow of blood. The effort was far too little, and it was far too late.
And finally came the exhaustion, an overwhelming desire to sleep that pressed against my eyelids with an enormous weight that willed them shut, a feeling not unlike that which the sun will give you through the windshield after a heavy afternoon meal. My eyes closed under that weight. Sleep massaged my temples with the gentlest of fingers, but something inside my head, something in the folded gray matter of my brain railed against it, knowing that at this point in time every second, every feeling, every thought was sacred and I must induce one more of each! To sleep was to never awaken, but I was so very tired. I wondered then that I could really die! I would be no more? In my vanity that did not seem plausible, that the world could carry on without me. Of course I had always known that I could die, that I would die... someday... but now that it was upon me it did not seem acceptable. Who gave that person, that murderer, the right to end me, to take the only thing that really belonged to me and to run away into the night? How is it that he should live and not me? I, to die? I, who was life's greatest advocate! I, who was filled only moments ago with joy and song? I, to vanish as though I had never existed?
But it was true, and so I did; while the earth continued its turning, and the heavens continued their expansions. A few tears were shed, perhaps, and then the life that I held so dear ceased of its importance, and its appointments, and its deadlines, and its pleasures so that the hole my absence left on the earth's face was no greater than the hole left when you pull your finger from a glass of water.
The End
Light and Set
The pair had put in a long day of travel and sought a place to ‘light and set’ awhile before continuing on. A cup of hot coffee would do some good for the one, and a rubdown for the other, and perhaps to gather some news on the lay of the land.
The hair curling down from under Johnny Cotton’s Stetson spilled over his collar as snowy white as his name. Another fine bit of it tickled his upper lip, while still a tad more curled over his bronzed and angular chin, the patchwork amounts of them all told the tale on Johnny’s youthfulness.
The gelding was equally as tired and dusty as his rider. The only accoutrement on man or beast still holding it’s shine was the well-oiled Colt’s revolver on the man’s thigh, but the shimmering pistol still remained as dark and nondescript as were the horse, the man’s clothing, and the Stetson covering his head. An admitted vanity, his hair was the only thing showy about our boy Johnny. Well, that and the perpetually high arc of a single, dubious brow. Aside from the gelding there had been little in Johnny’s past to allow for trust, not in his fellow man… nor in women, either.
The house Johnny reined the gelding up in front of was little more than a one room shack sitting on the farthest outskirts of a far away one street town. Several things caught Johnny’s eye about the shack, to include a white-washed picket fence which corralled nothing in it’s front yard save several water deprived flowers planted in a neat row along the shack’s front, those and a dead and leafless shade sapling which clung to the sandy soil on the one side of a barely discernible dirt path which led up to the cabin’s warped door; doomed luxuries these, luxuries which few frontiersmen had leftover time to care for, what with the nonstop and mostly brutal industries required just for survival. A man would only supply such things if he truly loved his woman… or if he was pushed to procure them.
The woman, or girl rather, who emerged from the door did not look to be the frontier type, but then, Johnny supposed, who did? Pioneers tended to come from all sorts. She was young, probably not much older than Johnny was. The woman, or girl rather, had the expected youngster on her hip, and another, larger one clinging to her aprons. The tight bun on her head was dark, just as her eyes were, and her expression. She did not appear happy with her life situation, but then, other than dance hall girls Johnny had not known many women who were happy. Nor men either, for that matter. But those dance hall girls sure seemed happy, didn’t they? And why wouldn’t they be happy, doing what they did for a living? And the men with them seemed happy enough too, so long as they were with them, though Johnny had seen plenty who had soured on that opinion come the morning after.
”You want something?” The woman‘s directness was not off-putting.
Despite the appearance of past gentrification her tone had taken on the more casual ‘prairie speak’ Johnny was accustomed to; her “want” coming out sounding more like “won’t”, and the “g” in her “something” remaining silent. “Good,“ Johnny thought. He would not have to ‘put on airs’ either, as the saying went.
”Naw, It’s just your fence is falling down, and your tree is dead.”
”Humph. Ain’t you somethin’.” It had not come out like a question.
”Just sayin’, is all.”
”Man’s gone. You wanna climb down and fix it? I could use another around here.” The hopeful list in her voice was undeniable, but the invitation was not especially appealing, despite her obvious beauty. ”Ain’t my affair.”
”Then why’d you stop?”
”Curious, was all. Don’t normally see these sorts of frew-frews like you’ve got, not out here on the prairie, leastways. How long‘d you say your man has been gone?”
”Didn’t say, but awhile.” The woman, or rather the girl, switched the baby over to her other hip while Johnny adjusted to a more comfortable position in the saddle.
”How come?”
”Nosey, ain’t ya?” She’d gotten pretty good at prairie speak, though the Virginia gentry in her still shone through it.”
”Like I said, curious is all. Though I expect I already know the answer.”
”You just want to hear me say it? All right, then. He was lazy.”
”Figured as much. Lazy, huh? Fields are empty, what happened to the cows?”
”Sold ’em to eat.”
”Pens are empty. You sell the chickens too?”
”Weasels.”
”Pig slough needs tending to.”
”No point. The pigs ran off.”
”And all this happened since your man left?”
”Yep.”
”Hmmm. You are partly right, Mam. Your man might have been lazy, I can’t speak to that, but he sure wasn’t dumb.”
Neither was the gelding dumb. The gelding’s rider might be young, but the youngster had never done nothing to spoil the beast’s trust. The pair had put in the miles together, and sensing his rider’s mood and needing neither a kick nor a cluck to start him, the gelding picked up where he’d left off on the long walk towards town.
This would not be a place to rest.
“Too bad.” The smarter of the pair ruminated. “It might have been nice to light and set, if only for a short while.”
Keeping it Real
Seems that people will do just about anything to gain the spotlight these days, prying themselves into it; fake tits, ass and all.
Think about it. Who is it you are trying to impress, anyways?
Fame is a strange thing to seek, especially that kind. Is fickle too, fame is. Especially that kind. Hare today, goat tomorrow.
You want them to cheer when you walk into the room? You want to dazzle them?
Then seek your fame from the right people, and for the right reasons. Who stands taller, shines brighter, or is remembered longer than a dad walking in from work?
Be famous to the right people, and for the right reasons.
Don’t those people deserve a forever G.O.A.T.?
Turn it Up
… turn it up!
Those quietly spoken words follow Ed King’s first, meticulous little guitar riff in the original recording of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.”
I clearly remember riding with my father in his pickup truck back when I was in the fourth or fifth grade (which, by the way, was a long, long time ago). It was the first time I remember hearing the song. Ronnie Van Zant’s words, “turn it up,” rattled in to us from the WANV radio station where my mother worked through the truck’s static-y, AM speakers. I remember watching in awe as my father’s hand subconsciously reached for the volume button. The singer of the song had asked my dad to “turn it up,” and the old man was actually doing it? It was both a mystery, and a revelation at once. My father liked to make it known that he had no use for what he called “hippie music,” yet here he was, “turning it up“ on command. Furthermore, as he was “turning it up” with the one hand his other one was tapping out the beat atop the steering wheel. And even more uncharacteristically yet, Pop was singing along with the chorus!
”Sweet home Alabama
where the skies are so blue.
Sweet home Alabama,
Lord I’m coming’ home to you.”
My father wasn’t big on singing, though he liked music well enough, Hee-Haw mostly, yet he somehow recognized this song well enough that he could sing along in parts. I’d only ever heard my dad attempt to sing a few times, and then he was more likely to be singing along with The Statler Brothers, or maybe The Temptations, some of his favorites. What can I say? The old man was partial to harmonies. At least I come by that right.
Yea, Pop!… turn it up!
I would learn later in life that while recording the song, what Ronnie was actually doing was asking the song’s producer to give him more sound in his headset before he started singing. “I need more volume,” he was telling Al Kooper. Upon hearing the recorded playback Al wanted to edit the words out, but Ronnie stopped him. Ronnie knew he had a great song, and he knew that kids listening in their cars would do exactly what he’d just been telling Al Kooper to do, and conversely what my father had done. Those kids would “turn it up!” And, as usual, Ronnie Van Zant’s instincts were spot on.
Speaking of instincts, less than a week before that recording session Ronnie had called Al up in the middle of the night. “I need some studio time,” he’d told Al. “We’ve got this song, and it’s perfect right now. If we wait the song is gonna change. They always do. We need to record it right now.” So The Lynyrd Skynyrd Band took the long bus ride to Doraville, Georgia, where they laid out their soon-to-be rock and roll classic nearly a full year before the rest of the album was cut. Apparently it paid to follow along with Ronnie’s instincts.
… turn it up, Al!
The funny thing about the song though is what I learned from my dad that day in his pickup truck. Sweet Home Alabama appeals to nearly everyone. While the song is unmistakably rock-n-roll, it somehow manages to take a savvy listener on a four and a half minute southern musical odyssey. The airy, initial pluckings of Ed King’s guitar have a blue-grassy sound, being almost mandolin-ish, while Gary’s country, slide guitar accompanies it. The rhythm section which follows in behind those guitars only complements that bluegrass sound with a slow, very steady, stand-up bass feeling. When Ronnie’s voice joins in it is light and articulate, coming off as being almost untrue to his redneck persona. When the Honkettes (JoJo, Leslie and Cassie) join Ronnie in the chorus their harmonies bring in an almost hymnal quality, their “ooohs and aaah’s“ raining down from the holier, upper pews. The guitar solos are steeped heavily in the Memphis blues, and the sprinkling in of boogie-woogie piano finishes it all off. The music itself is very nearly the coming together of all the great, southern musical styles into one pop-rock perfection.
And then you have the lyrics. Home is what the song is about. It tells you right there in the title. The song is about home, about wanting to be home after a long stint on the road, and about loving one’s home, warts and all. Yes, the song was inspired by Neil Young’s song “Southern Man”, and yes Ronnie takes a pretty good dig at Neil Young in the second verse, but that is all in loving one’s home, and in refusing to see it disparaged by someone who isn’t even American, much less southern. “Fix your own house before you stick your nose into mine,” Ronnie fairly enough reminds Neil Young, “A southern man don’t need you around, anyhow!” It was the early 1970’s, a time when it was already rightfully difficult being southern, but no weed-smoking, sandal-wearing Canadian had any business piling on, did he? Young had tried it twice now, beating up on southerner’s, but not again he wouldn’t. And the funniest thing about it was, Ronnie wasn’t even from Alabama. But even though he never lived there Ronnie felt a kinship to her people, people who were sharing the same struggles that his folks over in north Florida were.
“Big wheels keep on turning.
Carry me home to see my kin.
Singing songs about the southland.
I miss Alabamy once again (and I think it’s a sin, yea).”
For fifty years now I’ve rocked out to “Sweet Home Alabama.” I’ve heard it hundreds of times, maybe thousands, and I still “turn it up” every time it comes on, my toes instinctively tapping along to the radio. I heard it at the end of Forrest Gump, when Jenny and Forrest had become “like peas and carrots once again.” Reese Witherspoon made a whole movie out of “Sweet Home Alabama.“ The song has been covered by just about everyone; to include Nirvana, Rihanna, Poison, and Justin Bieber. Kidd Rock wrote a tribute song about this song that was a response to another song. I’ve heard symphony's attempt it, and marching bands, and even a bagpipe ensemble. I live in Nashville, where you cannot to this day walk down Broad Street without hearing it blare from at least one live music bar, and more often then not from two or three at once.
Oh yea. I’ve heard Neil Young do the song he inspired too (and he did it with much respect, too. Thank you for that, Friend).
Hey Neil! ... turn it up!
After much careful consideration about this prompt I have decided that “Sweet Home Alabama” has what it takes to be the “Soundtrack of my life” (which is not a mantle easily bestowed). It is not my favorite song. It is not even my favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd song, and may not even be my favorite song on its own album, Second Helping, which also boasts Curtis Loew and Swamp Music. But I am choosing it due to it’s popularity, and because the song is very nearly everything I believe I am while also managing to remain relevant for nearly as long as I have been around to hear it. The song is upbeat, straight shooting, contemplative, artistically diverse, it features a fantastic arrangement of driving guitar work, and it brings some attitude along to boot. Those are the very things I am about. That description happily meets me out there afloat somewhere on the big, slowly rolling river that is the Dixieland Twelve Bar Blues.
So take a tip from me, Ronnie, Al, Neil, and my old man. The next time you hear those light, plucky strings followed by Ronnie's suggestion that you, “turn it up,“ don’t just sit there...
Reach for the damned dial, already!
..…
By Candlelight (Repost)
It would be dark as death if not for the candle burning above the fireplace. The candle’s flame levitates above the mantle’s shelf as though it is alive, and possessed of a soul, or possessed by one, which of course it can be neither. While a flame may in some sense have a life, as it does eat, breathe, and die, it cannot be considered “alive” in a conscious, soulful sense, can it? We would not say that a tornado is “alive” would we, even though it eats, breathes and dies? No, and neither can we say that a flame is. To be “alive” requires an organic body, and some sort of instinct for survival, something more than just a raging, rampant energy. I would have laughed at the irony of that thought had I cared enough to do so, but affectivity, like the other perspectives, is long forgotten in my current state. Emotions are inconsequential to one who is no more “alive” than a candle’s flame.
The candle by itself is insufficient to illuminate the entire mantle, let alone the large, high ceilinged room, but it must suffice. Without it there is nothing but blackness... and there must be something. The flame is mine, the one thing I can control. I alone spark it to life, and I alone snuff the life from it. In between doing those things I am only a spectator as invisible drafts from the chimney bend the candle’s flame this way, and waft it that way. The flame seems to enjoy the drafts, spiraling on tiptoes, as she once did. It dances lightly, barely jiggling the lubricious surface of molten wax that collects in the hollow melt surrounding its wick. When the opportunity arises, the flame leans hungrily toward the ragged Victorian wallpaper, but barring an accident it remains tied to it‘s candle as I am tied to the room. The difference between us is that fire lacks conscious thought. It cannot be unhappy about it‘s situation, and so it twirls, bends, and illuminates, while I merely endure perpetuity.
The chimney’s antique flu sucks heavily at the outside air, pulling it through a creasote-crusted trachea filtered by an assortment of abandoned webs, and nests which thicken downward as the gales cascade through the depths of the shaft. The gusts whistle and howl with anger through the blockages. The steady, hollow clunk of a loose damper keeps unsteady time, it all supplying an eerie accompaniment to the candle flame’s gyrations.
Above the mantle, in the spotlight of the candle, hangs the portrait of a girl, a young woman rather. It is not a particularly good portrait, she was much more beautiful when seen in real life. But the painter needed renown, and the portrait received high reviews, so that other young ladies who saw it begged, demanded even, for the handsome painter to come and paint their portraits. The girl in this one begged him not to go, but he was young, and he needed the work. Besides, those other young ladies had beauty of their own, and even more money than this one, and the demands of success and fame are intoxicating, so he went.
But somehow those other portraits all took on the aspects of this one, their eyes with her luster, and their smiles with her benevolence. How could they not, with her picture framed forever in his mind’s eye? His hand painted what it saw, the tips of his brush blushing her cheek, or twirling her hair, even as he gazed upon another.
Of course, I am that painter. And, of course it was too late when I returned. She was gone, her home vacant but for the portrait I had painted of her hanging in it’s place above the mantle. And now for sixty years since, her house has remained empty of “life”.
“They” say it is haunted. “They” say that the painter did what he did in front of her portrait so that she might see him do it, and so that he could see her as he did.
They say that he lit the candle on the mantle, tied his rope to the crystal chandelier, and kicked away the velvet footstool those many years ago. Rumor has it that his bones lie there yet on the floor beneath the chandelier, just as they fell, one by one as the blackened flesh freed them from its moldering grip.
There is always some truth to rumors. “They” are never completely wrong.
It is true that the flesh has withered. It is true that the bones have piled. But some sort of life remains amongst the remains, some flame from the heart, some spark from the soul, something that remembers, and smolders, and sees her face through the dim light as it swings from the end of it’s rope.
A Cold, Hard, Philosophical Truth
“All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.” - Baruch Spinoza
Sometimes it’s easy to feel like you are on your own little purposeful island watching from a plentiful beach as others zig-zag through the waters of life in search of a dry shore. I stumbled across a quote from someone named Katelyn Gleason yesterday that spoke to my own personal truth.
”A decade or so of unreasonably hard work is the barrier of entry to a rare life.”
I found it somewhat ironic that the quote came from a woman, although it absolutely applies every bit as much to her as it does to a man, but it is a truth that almost any guy with any sense at all learns and understands from his very first day of high school, the day when that truth presents a glass barrier before him which he will never pass through any other way than to work his way through it. Let me explain.
Women are attracted to success. Due to this they intrinsically prefer older, confident men, as she can more easily determine that man’s value to her and her potential children. Has he sacrificed those years between he and she, putting in the work to improve himself? Or has he sloughed those years away, complaining that life is too hard, and that others only succeed because of their better educations, or their better looks, or their higher stations in life, or even their race? You have to wonder if the people who say such things actually put in the work required to find that out, but you don’t have to wonder about it for long. Those types always choose the easiest, quickest routes to nowhere.
People who work hard for success loathe a whiner.
It is no secret that boys are visually attracted to girls. It is why, on the whole, women are more attractive than men are. And a boy learns hard and fast that the pretty girls his own age who showed him any interest in middle school lose that interest on the very first day of high school, those girls now having eyes for the juniors and seniors as they seek to up their reputations. I cannot tell you how many times I was blown off by that girl who, “has a boyfriend in college.” Sheesh! But that freshman boy also sees that those older guys who are successful at something, at anything really, be it football, debate, auto-shop, or science; those are the guys who attract the attentions of the most girls, and the prettiest girls. It is one of those “ah-ha” moments for our young man. “If I put in the work now to raise my status in their eyes, it might pay off for me later.” And so he sacrifices now for then. His life actually starts on that day when work becomes his motivation, rather than play.
Some guys do luck out, admittedly, and girls pay them attention from the very start… at least through school days. But sooner or later those dudes will also hit that glass barrier, and when he does, if he has any sense, he will pick it up a notch. It is rarely too late to begin your ten years of unreasonably hard work, and is always better late than never, as the saying goes.
After ten years of improving himself and learning to be a man the guy who put in
those “years of unreasonably hard work” will find himself competent, confident, with a good job, and in the enviable position of having his pick of younger women, women who crave his newly higher status. But strangely, during those years our man’s tastes have changed. He finds that he is no longer necessarily interested in the prettiest, cheerleader type girl, at least not as a life partner, although there still is that in the short term, but he finds himself drawn more to the ones who have also sacrificed, holding on to their own values, and to their good reputations. A man who has sacrificed and put in the work does not want a woman who will embarrass him, or worse, might be an embarrassment to his family later on. Having worked so hard on improving himself, he finds himself drawn now to a woman‘s character as much as he is to her beauty, so he seeks the woman who has both. Has she worked to improve herself?
Those out there who do not understand these truths, male and female, are doomed either to “settle” for someone who shirks their way through life, believing that success only comes to those who are lucky or privileged without ever having really given it a go. Or they wind up depressed and alone. Both are pretty poopy options.
So, I say 10 years is about right, Katelyn Gleason. Ten years of sacrificing is what it ultimately requires; ten years of working longer than your scheduled hours, of holding off on a family, of sleeping alone, of both mental and physical learning, growing, and achieving. It takes ten years to make a better man; a better decision maker, a better husband, and a better father.
Ten years… if he puts in that unreasonably hard work.
The Pooh Tutorials
It was surprising, how the old house still felt like home. As the great door was clicking shut behind her Eve set her bag down in the foyer and paused for a moment, reveling in a rush of sights and smells, giving herself over to the nostalgia of a sensory teleportation back to her youth, a teleportation so real that she actually heard her long departed father’s welcoming bellow, and watched on amazed as Happy Jack’s giant paws skidded crazily across the hardwoods in his stampede to greet her, his rush followed by the warm aromas of roast beef and cobbler which were stirred up from behind in the big dog’s wake. The hallucinations combined to conjure up a rare smile from this bitter, current-day version of Eve, as they reminded her of how pleasant true happiness can feel.
Isn’t it ironic? How it took Mother’s death to bring about some little bit of joy in her?
Evelyn Forrester goes mostly by Eve now, as she hates the antiquated sound of “Evelyn”. When she hears “Evelyn” she is reminded of the portraits in the foyer of her family home, of the many grandmothers and great-grandmothers sitting solemnly in their guilded picture frames at the sides of their equally solemn (and likely domineering) husbands, men without the good sense to feel the shame of their deeds, but who instead gaze arrogantly down from their elevated positions upon the papered and patterned walls of this house that had once been their home. Eve has just lost her mother, but you should not feel too badly for her, as the two have been long estranged. Don’t get it wrong, Eve is saddened by her mother’s passing (as she would be for anyone’s), but she is in no way left distraught by it. In fact, Eve can barely remember a time when she liked the ultra-conservative woman, much less when she felt love for her, although she actually had loved her, once upon a time.
And Mother’s feelings were painfully mutual, as she made her disappointment in Eve apparent whenever the opportunity arose, the old biddy.
With her mother’s passing Eve has unwillingly inherited the family home. Having avoided it for the past twenty years her initial plan was for a quick sale, the house being much too large for a single woman, although her mother somehow managed it in her later years, and the property includes too much acreage to economically maintain it without farming, which Eve has neither the skills nor desire to do. Besides, it is too far from her job in Savanah, although she could as easily work from home, she supposed, if it came right down to it. Only it would be lonely here, wouldn’t it? As if it wasn’t lonely in Savanah.
On the drive in it became apparent to Eve that the once secluded house now sits in a prime location. The sprawl of suburbia was slowly encroaching, nestling in around the property as one local farm after another has been parceled out to General Contractors who have happily developed them into more of those awful, modern day McMansions until the beautiful, pastoral settings of Eve’s youth have been completely swiped away, and never will be again. She is not sure how she should feel about that, as what has stolen the beauty from her childhood home has also significantly increased its monetary value.
But then Eve finds her thoughts interrupted by another bit of nostalgia… specifically the Westminster chimes of the doorbell which have begun echoing through the foyer, flashing her back to the day when she’d discovered Pooh McCann standing on the front porch with flowers in his hands, flowers he’d picked fresh, just for her. The memory of it brought another smile. Pooh! What an awful nickname for a boy, though he’d never seemed to think anything of it. And poor Pooh had carried such a crush on her back then! Eve had actually gone to the movies with him a couple of times, back in middle school. He’d been a sweet boy, if embarrassingly shorter than her. She had even let Pooh kiss her once, right out there on that very porch. Just a peck mind you, which Eve had not returned.
So it was eerily deja-vu-ish to open the door and find him standing there again, sans flowers, a bigger and better version of the same Pooh McCann, although this older (and larger) Pooh was wearing very nearly the same t-shirt and ball cap he’d worn way back when.
“Pooh?” As it always had when they were kids a snicker escaped Eve when she said his name, although there was really nothing funny about him anymore. Her Pooh was all grown up! He was easily a head taller than she was now, while time and a southern sun had removed any baby-ishness from his face. And below his now chiseled face taut muscles strained against his t-shirt and jeans. Eve’s inability to look away from him flushed her face and neck with a tell-tale signal that Pooh fortunately did not seem to notice. Good God, but her little Pooh was gorgeous!
”Hello Eve. They said you’d be coming in today, and I saw the car in the drive, so… But hey, I’m really sorry about Patricia. Really and truly I am.”
Eve was confused. Patricia? Patricia, her mother? Pooh was calling her mother Patricia? Since when? Before replying, as a woman will, Eve stalled for time by brushing the hair away from her face, giving her thoughts a chance to gather themselves. And what was he doing here now? Had he only come to offer condolences? Or was there something more to this visit?
“Yes, of course. Thank you.” He had come to her, so she would let him begin.
Sensing her puzzled curiosity, Pooh explained himself. “We’ve been planting over here since your father passed. Patricia… err, Mrs. Forrester and I, we split the profits fifty-fifty, her land-my labor. The proceeds helped her to keep the place up, and I have to admit that the extra money has helped us out as well. I have no idea what your plans are, if you even plan to keep the farm, that is. But I thought I’d come on over when I saw the car out front? I hope you don’t mind. But if you do decide to keep working it, and I hope you will decide to, we’d love to continue helping, but if so we’ll need to get started soon. It‘s already pretty late in the season, you know?”
No, Eve did not know, and she did not like not knowing. At her own job she was used to being in command of every situation. Her every intention had been to sell, up until now that is. But this might offer a chance to get closer to Pooh, to get to know him again? Who knew… she might even rekindle his old flame?
“You said ‘we’?”
With Pooh’s attractiveness still stimulating her Eve readily stepped onto the porch to see where his tanned and muscular arm was pointing. In moving closer-up beside him she was introduced to the pleasant, musty scent of red-clay soil which emanated from him, and to the the sickly sweetness of motor oil, as well as a cottony perspiration smell that worked into her like magic, reminding her of the favorite, slobber-soiled fabric “Teddy” bear of her childhood, his aromas pulling Eve in and adding to her temporarily addled brain. But as her eyes followed to where his arm pointed her mood was slammed from its clear, blue skies like a shotgunned quail back to a harsh and unforgiving earth.
For over there in the eastern pasture chugged a blue and white tractor. Perched proudly on it‘s seat was a boy of thirteen or so. Another, even younger boy rode shotgun beside that one. Worse, a woman was balancing herself on the tractor’s hitch plate while clinging to the back of the seat. The woman was somewhat pretty, even if she was dressed roughly the same as Pooh was; cute in her own boots, jeans and ball cap, the cap swishing a soft-looking, blondish pony-tail behind it. If she’d felt like being mean right then Eve might have commented that the woman was a wee bit chunky, but she did not feel like it, like being mean, that is. Well, she did feel like it, but she couldn’t, could she? Pooh McCann was not just another soulless stranger who was forced to be nice to her no matter what kind of bitch she acted like just because he was on her payroll, was he?
Shit.
”I don’t know, Pooh. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with the place yet.”
As they always will do the old, happy memories turned to shit once liquor was poured. And then came the inevitable texts from work. Could the incompetent boobs not even leave her alone to grieve (as if that was what she was doing)? But of course that was what she was doing! That was what Eve always did. And when darkness finally descended she was alone again, only now she was all alone in this gigantic house.
Shit indeed.
Eve woke with a start, her head and her bearings off kilter, to find her old bedroom awash in a glittering, silvery gleam which the midnight moonlight usually reserved for wind-stirred wheat fields, or for heavily rolling waters (although the bedroom no longer resembled her childhood one, as all of her girlish “things” had long since been packed away). Even as Eve watched them the moonlight glitters swirled together at the foot of her bed, slowly taking on the unmistakable shape of a woman, a woman whom Eve at first disdainfully assumed to be her mother, although her straining eyes could not yet make out any distinguishable features through the paleness of it’s light.
But the glitters continued their swirling’s and gatherings, and in her fascination of them Eve forgot to be afraid. It soon became apparent that the glitters floating about were not from the moonlight at all, but were of the woman… or the apparition… or the dream, whichever one “she” was. And sadly, Eve’s drunk and drowsy state refused to let her care, so she simply waited and watched. What was there to fear anyways? If it was a woman, then she would only talk, as that is what women do. And if it was an apparition, then with any luck it would take her mournful soul away... far, far away. And if it was a dream, as Eve expected it would be, then she would simply wake, wouldn’t she?
Eve hoped it was not a dream, as the first two options seemed preferable.
Settled now into their feminine form the glitterings did not diminish, but continued their subtle attack upon the darkness, their numbers brightening the room as they gathered together like wasps to a hive. Thusly illuminated Eve could see that it was not her mother’s form at all, but neither could she deny a shared resemblance with the apparition, even though the matronly ghost looked to be considerably older than Eve’s thirty-six years. Still though, their physical commonalities shone through its glittering wrinkles, as Eve and this ghost shared similarly pert noses, thinly drawn lips, and even the same intelligent brows which arched over the same expressive eyes which judged Eve back from her mirror each morning. Eve found herself vainly comforted by these feminine likenesses, that comfort making her more curious about this midnight interloper than frightened by her. “Who was she, and why had she come,” Eve wondered? She wished she’d paid better attention when Mother had explained those old photographs to her, describing the lives of their family matriarchs. Had she paid more attention then Eve might recognize who this ghostly woman was, but as it stood she had no idea. Only that it must be some figure from her family’s long history.
The minutes ticked by as ghost and mortal examined one another, each curiously fascinated by the other. When the apparition finally spoke it was with a not unexpected directness, as their sort of woman has always felt untethered from any necessity for pleasantries, irregardless of their places on any historical timeline.
“What are you doing?” The apparition’s drawl was too pleasant to be off-putting, it’s southern lilt roundly bending the words, though not enough to actually fracture them. Eve framed the idea that this ghost’s voice was the very sound pancake syrup would undoubtedly make while sliding off of hot butter, supposing it could choose its own sound to make of course; the voice being that smooth, that warm, and that delectable. It was so warm in fact that Eve unconsciously set about mimicking it, and did not do a horrible job of it either, as the ability had always laid somewhere down there in her genetics awaiting it’s moment to emerge.
But it was too vague an inquiry, Eve thought. What exactly did the ghost woman mean? Did she mean “what am I doing this very moment?” Or, ”what am I doing in this house?“ Or was it, “what am I doing with my life?“ How was Eve to know which? She did not know, so she decided to answer from a position of strength.
“I am sleeping in my own bedroom, and minding my own business. The real question is who are you, and what are you doing here?” Eve was disappointed to hear the callous brusqueness in her own voice. She had never before cared that her tone was so grating until hearing this cleaner, undeniably better one.
”Is that what you are doing? Sleeping?“ There was a calculated pause before the glowing woman continued, “And alone, I might add.” The ghost’s un-kind words did not sting nearly so much as the sarcastic smile which followed them.
Good grief! Perhaps this ghost was Eve’s mother? It certainly used the same tone that her mother used. Eve’s nostril’s distended as if she smelled something bad. ”I am fine sleeping alone (“Bitch”, she did not need to add).”
”Are you? Are you really? One thing I know, having once been one, is that no woman living on God's green earth is fine sleeping alone.”
This was a fact. Eve must be more careful. This “ghost” woman was no fool. “My mother slept here alone. Did you visit her, too?”
“Your mother was never alone here. Your mother lived surrounded by those she loved. As for who I am, and why am I here? I am here because my name is Evelyn Rouseau. My husband built this house for me. This is my house.“
”That’s where you’d be wrong.“ Eve did not like this ghost, and was feeling ornery. “It is my house now.”
”Is it? We shall see about that.”
”There is nothing to see. The house is mine, now. It is the only reason I am here.”
”You are here because I called you here, child… before it is too late.” Eve detected frost in the ghost’s tone.
Because of it Eve’s reply was equally cold and quick, perhaps a little too quick, but Eve felt like this ghost woman was getting the better of her, and she didn’t like it, though she regretted her quick words immediately. “Did your husband really build it for you? Or did his slaves build it for you, on land you stole from the Creek natives?”
Even the woman’s smile was familiar to Eve’s, breaking as icily as her own. ”Ahhh. Ashamed of us, are you? That is to be expected, I suppose.”
”You suppose?” Dammit, Eve did it again, but the non-plussed apparition quickly cut her down.
“Those things are not your concern, Missy. I have already been judged, and by better than you.”
The retort was not as vague as Eve wished it to be. She knew exactly what the woman meant by, “I have been judged.” Eve understood it so well in fact that a chill raced down her spine at the realization of it. There is a God! Or, at least something or someone to judge one’s deeds? And that this ghost was here right now, rather than being somewhere better, meant that the woman had been found lacking, did it not? Though Eve did not particularly like this ghost she found no comfort in that knowledge, as the ghost woman had undoubtedly come here for a reason, and that reason was obviously Eve. How lacking must Eve herself be that the dead found her situation dire enough to come back to warn her?
Eve was not such a bad person, was she? Yes, she was tough, but she’d had to be. Eve had worked herself up the ranks in a manly-man’s business. She was strong, and independently wealthy, but Eve could be kind when she felt like it. Her monthly donation to St. Jude’s was quite generous, though it was an admittedly small part of her overall salary, just enough really that she could tell solicitor’s that she, “gave at the office” without any accompanying guilt. Still, it was something charitable, and was more than most gave. She was a decent enough person, wasn’t she? Eve swallowed hard before asking the question that would supply her with the answer she needed, although she prepared herself to parry with an angry response if she felt that the answer given was the incorrect one. “Have you come here to tell me that I am bad?”
“No, Dear. I have not “come here” at all. I am always here. I have always been here. I have only made myself discernible to you now because we are worried about you.”
There was that word again, “we”. Eve was probably not going to like the answer to this question any more than she had when she asked it earlier in the day, but she felt that she had to ask it anyways. “We?”
”Yes... we.” The ghost was apparently not ready yet to humor her with specifics.
”Well then, if you are not here to tell me that I am bad, then what is it you are so worried about?”
”I have already told you what, if you would only listen. We are worried that you are alone.”
Eve chose to try deception. ”I am not that alone. I have friends.”
”Do you?”
So, deception wasn’t going to work. Looking up at her, Eve was relieved to find the ghost’s expression sympathetic. She could not have explained why, but feeling the need for honesty, Eve opened up right at the start with her hardest, most pitiable truth; the one truth she had considered over and over again every night for the past twenty-some years. Yet hearing it spoken out loud only highlighted the ridiculousness of her excuse. “I cannot help that people don’t like me.” Thankfully this admission, right in front of her antagonist, was not followed by the welling-up of tears.
As with any good therapist the ghost did not respond to Eve’s confession immediately, but waited quietly instead, knowing that once the spigot was opened a woman could not turn it off until her pressure was relieved. “Women don’t like that I am strong, and men are intimidated by me.”
The ghost actually chuckled at that revelation. “Are they? Really? The same men who march off to war for you… those men are intimidated by you? By thin, frail, little ’ol you? Hmmm. The same men who kill snakes for you, and spiders? The same men who protect you from bad people, who extinguish fires, and who rescue you from floods? Those same men who would willingly offer you their seats in a lifeboat are intimidated by you? A mere woman? My, you are a special one, aren’t you?”
”But they must be intimidated. I am not terribly ugly. Why else would none of them want to get to know me better?
”The better question for you to ask yourself is, why would they want to?”
”Why wouldn’t they want to? I am pretty, I am educated, I am successful… I have a lot to offer.”
”There are lots of pretty girls my dear. And any decent man already has those other things.”
Eve felt the anger boiling up inside her. “I suppose you are implying that I should cower submissively before a man, like you did when you were alive. I don’t think so, Granny. Women are beyond that now.”
”I am implying nothing of the kind. Come with me, Dear. I want to show you something.”
Eve followed the floating figure down the stairs, and into the foyer where it stopped in front of the painted portrait of a stern looking patriarchal man with an equally unsmiling woman seated at his side, a woman who did not look terribly unlike Eve herself but for the graying hair pulled back in a bun, the lack of make-up, and a very modest, high collared, skin covering dress.
”That is you in the picture, isn’t it?”
”Yes, it is.” There followed a long moment of silence as woman and ghost studied the painting.
”You were pretty.”
”Long before this was painted, maybe. But bearing children ages a woman.”
”How old were you here?”
”Thirty-five.”
Eve’s age? But she looked twice as old! “Oh my God.” Eve didn’t mean to say it out loud, but when she did so the ice she felt in her heart for the ghost melted away. What that man in the picture must have put Evelyn Rousseau through that she appeared so… so worn looking at just thirty-five years of age? “And how old was he,” Eve silently wondered.
”Forty-two, I believe.” The ghost answered without even being asked the question.
Forty-two! Eve would have guessed sixty, or even seventy! “Please don’t take this wrong, Evelyn Rousseau, but the woman in this picture doesn’t have the look of someone who should be preaching about happiness.”
”Ah, that is because you cannot see the whole picture. We were living in serious times, back then. Life was hard, but if you could see down just a little bit lower you would see that Charles’ hand is resting comfortably upon my thigh, and you’d see mine lying atop his. Our hands stayed exactly that way for the full six hours that it took Henry Allen to finish this painting. We were happy. It was a happy day which we both relished. There were not many days when we were able to spend so much time together. Charles had to work so hard! And on top of that, to answer your earlier question, he did build this house, although it was not so large then, and has been added-on to over the years. Charles built it when we were still poor. He built it with his own hands. My father tried to warn me away from Charles, telling anyone who would listen that his future son-in-law was an uneducated nincompoop, but Charles showed him! He was quite competent, Charles was. There was almost nothing he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do for us.”
”For us? Who else, besides you?”
”Why, the children, of course.” The ghostly figure slid itself over to the next set of picture frames on the wall. The men and women in the two paintings were equally as stern looking as the first, though obviously younger. “These are the two of our six who survived to adulthood. Charles Jr. had his father’s looks, but it was my side his personality took after. We were so proud when Charlie became a doctor, and a good one too, so good that he was made a surgeon during the war. Our Charlie was twenty-three when he caught dysentery and passed. Charlie tried, but he never made it back home to Abby. He passed aboard “The Memphis” right outside of Charleston Bay. His widowed-wife was seventeen, the child he never saw having recently celebrated her first birthday. Poor Abigail never recovered from the loss of him. She moved in here with us, of course. We did our best for her, but she was so distraught. The girl was suddenly husbandless with a baby to care for, and no income. There was war raging all around us at the time. New lists of the dead were arriving almost daily; her husband on one, a brother on the next list, and then another brother on another list. Here was a friend gone, and there an acquaintance. Abigail was so young and innocent, with a heart as big as any ocean. Every name she knew hit her so hard.“ Evelyn looked my way then. “How fortunate you are to have missed all of that, although I would not trade those memories of Charlie and Abby for anything, and will cling to them for all of eternity.
“But here I am,“ Evelyn followed her story sorrowfully. “Going on like an old fool when my time with you is nearly up.”
”No!“ Eve looked down at the row of as yet unexplained portraits. There were so many more pictures, so many more ancestors of whom she knew nothing. Her people. “Please don’t go, Evelyn. I need to know more.”
”It can be learned. There are records. The one thing I can tell you now is this. You are living your life in competition, as though men are your enemy. Men are not the enemy, Eve. With men comes all of this,” Evelyn gestured all around, but mostly down the long row of portraits. “From men comes companionship, love, security, family… life. Without them women are nothing, you are nothing, just as he is nothing without you, and therein lies your strength… that you are as necessary as he is. Be what you are, Dear. And allow him to be what he is. We are destined to suffer apart, but together... together man and woman are eternal.”
It was a bright Georgia sun through the window that woke Eve, that and the chugging of a distant tractor. Had she slept in? No, Eve never slept in! Curious, she donned her robe to check the noise. It was him on the tractor… Pooh! Descending the staircase toward the coffee pot she paused before the first in the long line of portraits on the wall, feeling strangely drawn to it, or rather to the man in it. There was a lot to do today, and many decisions to make. Eve wondered what the man in the portrait would do if he was her? He certainly looked competent enough to make a decision, though Eve suspected that whatever decisions he made would be with the woman sitting next to him in front of mind. In fact, on closer inspection, the man in the portrait looked somewhat like Darryl, that lead engineer at work. Darryl was competent too, he only lacked drive… or maybe it was not drive he lacked, but inspiration? In any event Darryl was undoubtedly bright. If Eve could only find a way to motivate him then the two of them might form a formidable team… possibly even a team outside of work?
Huh. That was a strange thought, when Eve had always worked best alone, but thinking on it, Darryl did have strengths in some of those areas she was trying to improve on. Perhaps they could help each other?
Pausing at the next picture, it was the woman this time that drew Eve’s attention; so young to be married, yet the artist had applied a happy sparkle to her eyes that for some reason made Eve blue. The woman, a girl really, looked too vivacious to be alone… but why would Eve even think that? The girl in the painting was not alone, was she? She had the man that she loved beside her, and a glow about her that not even the darkened oil paints could dampen, and the girl had a whole life left to live, besides. Yet this thought crept into Eve’s mind. ”Fate is fickle, is it not? Love while you are able!”
The coffee on, Eve hurried upstairs and dressed. With cups in either hand she headed out to the field.
The dying of the tractor’s chugging engine created a heavy silence which his smile thankfully broke.
“Good morning!” She held the extra cup up in invitation.
”Good morning to you!”
”I have decided to keep it! The house, that is! And I would like for you to keep working the fields, if you would? I have no idea what to do with them, or how to do it? But I can learn!”
”Of course you can. But it won’t be me working them. It’s really Charlie who worked for Patricia… err, for Mrs. Forrester.”
”Charlie?”
”Yea, my son.” Pooh’s smile was contagious.
Eve was surprised. ”The one on the tractor yesterday? But he’s so young!”
”Nah. You gotta start sometime! Charlie made nearly three thousand dollars working for Patricia just last summer. He’s working to pay his way through college someday, if that’s what he decides to do. Or for a head start on a business loan, whichever. Of course, I make him rent the tractor, and pay for the seed.” Pooh winked knowingly at her. “At least he thinks he is paying for it.”
”And that woman yesterday was your wife?”
”Bitsy?” He laughed. “Yea, she’s the best. And what a mother! Those are the luckiest kids ever!”
”Yes. Yes they are. And you are lucky, too.”
”You bet I am.”
Eve took his empty cup and turned back towards the house.
”Hey, Eve?”
She turned to face him.
”I’m glad you’re back.”
And she could tell that he was. It was such a little thing he said, to mean so much.