...This is it. This is Goodbye.

I had debated within myself over whether I ought to post the death scene of The Character. I thought not, and then I decided I would. I decided I wouldn't, and then I made up my mind over again to go ahead with it. So girls, you are now the privileged readers of a piece of writing very new to me. It spun itself out of my head only two nights ago, so it is fresh and young to the ways of the world--deal gently with it, but please tell me what you think of this pivotal scene. Oh, and I realize that it begins in a strange spot--it was difficult to know what to give you to lead up to the real piece. :P Please tell me your reaction to it initially, and whether it is too melodramatic. Actually, let me just describe Frank for you real quickly so you can get acquainted with the victim. :P

Frank Williams--28 years old, wife to Maggie, and father to Tucker and Dot. Ever since Cora came to live with his family, Frank has been father, brother, and friend to her. He's cheered her when she's down, given her courage when she's afraid, teased her just a little, loved her a lot, and generally has been the glue that's kept Cora together. Ever impulsive, Frank moves his family to Puddleby Lane so he can work on the railroad, but Cora only loves him the more for his boyish enthusiasm. He's charming and roguish, loving and tender. And when he's gone, it hurts. Deeply.

(Scene begins inside coffee-shop in Leastone) 

          Their voices faded as Cora’s attention focused on the mass of townspeople milling around a group of begrimed, wild-eyed—and bloody—men. “Ann Company!” Cora knocked the table behind her over in her haste. Ann Company, Nat, white cloth napkins and pocket-book sequins blurred in one massive obstacle between her and that group of people. She tore herself from Nat’s gentle touch and dashed out of the coffee-shop. Cold air struck her full in the face like a slap from an unseen hand. Cora stumbled over a frozen rut in the muddy road as fear swept her forward toward the crowd. She could see into the mob now, and what she saw sent fingers of terror winging across her skin.

Those men—those in the center of the group—wore the same denim cover-alls Frank wore when he worked on the rail-way bridge crew. He was there today, Cora knew. Whatever fate had befallen those workers, Frank must be a part of. Her body did not feel like her own as she neared the mob.

“What happened?” She heard a woman say—the voice was icy, immobilized, and fearing. Then Cora realized it was herself that had spoken. She repeated the question, hardly recognizing the sound of her voice, yet feeling her lips move. The crowd parted briefly and she caught sight of the crude stretcher, borne by four of the grimy, muddied men. Instinct told her to turn back, to shelter herself from the truth, but Cora could not take her eyes off the stretcher and the man’s form crumpled upon it. The mob swallowed the vignette as hastily as it had flashed it, and Cora was left on the edge of the crowd again.

Fainter than her own heart-beat, Cora heard Ann Company’s call for her to come away, and Nat’s deep voice seconding the command, but it was no use. Fear spurred Cora to action.

“Let me through!” she yelled, and stamped her foot with hysteric impatience as the teeming mass before her paid no heed. “I will look! I will!” she cried, and as she reached up to brush her hair out of her face, she felt her tears, warm and wet against her chilled hands. It was the cry of a stubborn child, thwarted in his purpose, but Cora had to know.  By some miracle she passed through the spheres of the crowd—first the interested, chaotic hum of the outer ring, then the pinched, sorrowful faces of the middle ring, and finally to the stunned core. Some hands strived to hold her back, others pushed her forward, but through it all Cora was of a single purpose:

To find Frank, to know he was well and whole, was her whole world. She stumbled into the center, directly in front of the stretcher-bearing men, and she searched each face hungrily, longing for a familiar feature in any of them.

A man with a red-stained bandana tied around his head and a deep gash on his cheek seemed to be the leader of the group. His eyes stared dully ahead as he bore his sad burden.

“Please, sir, where’s Frank Williams?” The voice that spoke now was hoarse as a raven’s and twice as foreboding. Frightened, Cora put a hand to her throat and tried again. “Tell me he’s okay. Just tell me!”

The man shook his head, jaw clenched. The gash deepened.

“He’s fine. I know he is. He’s gotta be okay.” Cora was reaching hysteria. The red on the man’s bandana flowed a vibrant, ghastly crimson against the white of the cloth. Cora’s stomach knotted and twisted till she thought she’d be sick. “Just tell me he’s okay,” she whimpered. A heavy, heavy hand descended on her shoulder, and a voice echoed dully the agonizing cry in her own heart:

“Dead. Wouldn’t leave th’bridge till th’last man was out of th’way…I’m sorry, Miss.”

 Dead. Dead. Dead. Cora pushed past the well-meaning but clumsy man and approached the crumpled figure on the stretcher. Knotted around his head was the handkerchief she herself had marked. How they had laughed over the little daisy she’d stitched in the corner. It had been so white—every petal dainty and pure—and now stained with the crimson tide that would not stop. Trembling in every fiber of her being, Cora touched Frank’s dark hair, caked with mud, and traced the noble lines of his forehead. The noise of the crowd—the weeping, the questions, the chaos—faded in the face of this great sorrow to a distant hum, no more threatening than the far-away traffic at that old stop-sign on Beaumont Street.

A pair of hands tried to remove her from the scene.

“Leave me be!” she screamed, tears coursing down her cheeks and dropping on Frank’s clay-streaked face. The stretcher-bearers stood in respectful silence, and the crowd ceased talking. Silence, like the heaviest of sentences descended on the scene. Cora laid herself over Frank’s poor body and buried her face in the homespun cotton of his shirt. His denim coveralls scratched her cheek, and the brass buttons pressed, cold against her hot tears. Her soul keened with murdered joy as a longing for one of Frank’s bear-hugs overwhelmed her senses. The faint scent of Bay Rum after-shave still clung to his neck, and Cora breathed it in. This was it then. This was goodbye.

“Goodbye, Frank…I love you,” she whispered, stroking his cheek with a trembling hand.

Heart screaming for the familiar reply, the jaunty, “Back at ya’ Corie,” Cora kissed him with quivering lips and spread the coffee-shop napkin over his still face.

 She dropped, then, into Nat Dartmore’s waiting arms and wept as she had never wept before.

At Long Last...

I have overcome my terror of my W.I.P. Yes, after a long absence--too long--from Puddleby Lane, I summoned my courage to write a little. I was determined, come Cora's reticence or Ann Company's dreaded cliches, I would thrash out a bit, however small, of the story. Here's what I came up with. Not the worst thing ever for having been silent on the subject for over two months. :P Don't judge it too harshly, as this is entirely first-draft work here. :)

“Y’wanna walk from here? Might be a bit more distinguished,” Ann Company said. Cora winked at her friend as they clambered down from the cart and landed on the slatted sidewalk in front of a blue-painted house. Ann Company’s skirt swished around her legs with a fine rustling, and the sunlight played on her hair till it looked like dancing firelight. They had worked for an hour that morning replicating the elaborate style Maggie designed. It would be worth it, though, when they walked down Main Street.

“Ready?” Cora’s chest felt tight with excitement. Ann Company nodded, lifted her chin, and set off down the board-walk with her smooth, even pace. Cora ran her gloved fingers along the tops of the fence, bumping up and over each picket. She hung back on purpose, wanting to savor this moment of victory for her protégé.

Ann Company paused for a moment before the door of the chandler’s shop, then threw a faint smile in Cora’s direction. Cora hastened to join her, and together they ducked through the low doorway into the nautical shop. The interior was dim and cool and smelled of tar and brass. Cora shivered at the change from sunlight to cellar-light.

A thin, sharp little man perched on his stool, frail yet grounded as if he were a twig grafted to a stump. His lifted his eyes to the pair and his thick brows, like twin caterpillars, worked their way up the twig.

“Can I help you ladies?”

Ann Company threw back her head and laughed her Puddleby-laugh. “Don’t y’recognize me, Zeb?”

A glimmer of recognition flared in the man’s pale eyes and his mouth worked as if he chewed on a lump of tobacco. His Adam’s apple bobbed once or twice before a thin, husky voice forced itself between his slit of a mouth. “Ann Company, that you?”

“It’s me, Zeb.”

“Don’t hardly look like ye’self with all them doo-dads on ye.” The caterpillars worked harder and slid down the twig, hiding the pale eyes from view.

“It’s Miz Cora’s doin’.” Ann Company stepped to the counter and tossed her pocket-book on the wooden countertop. “But I can assure you it’s me. I’m here t’get that rope Pa ordered, and them fishin’ hooks.”

Zeb brushed the palms of his hands against his leather britches and sighed. The caterpillars wriggled up and down now in a worried sort of fashion. “If’n this here De-pression don’t start lookin’ up real soon there won’t be no chandlery for your Pa t’buy his ropes and fishin’ hooks from.”

Ann Company put her hands on her hips and stared at the man. Cora dropped her eyes and studied her gloves, brushing flecks of white paint from the wooden fence to the floor. All was quiet in the chandler’s shop for a moment. Then Ann Company spoke in a voice brisk as a breeze off the bay.

“And what makes you think this Depression won’t start lookin’ up? You ain’t lost yer faith, have you?”

Cora lifted her head, invigorated by the quiet strength in her friend’s tones.

 Zeb’s caterpillars slumped, chastened for the moment. “Now Miz Comp’ny, don’t you be ridin’ my back. Feller can’t be blamed fer feelin’ the e-ffects of this De-pression, can he? I’m only bein’ the mouth fer what all them hidin’ behind their religion are thinkin’.

Ann Company removed her gloves, and pulled each finger right-side out, keeping her eyes fastened on the chandlery-owner. “Then you’re a coward, Zeb. At least some of th’folks are tryin’ to be brave and not complain. Like Miz Cora’s family here. They lost their house and ever’thing they owned back in Illinois and moved all th’way out here, but I don’t hear Mr. or Miz Williams pulin’ about it.”

Cora felt the blood mounting to her cheeks as Zeb’s caterpillars pleated themselves in disconsolate puckers and his pale eyes took stock of her. His mouth worked again, and a stream of amber-colored juice sang into a brass pot on the floor at the corner of the counter. Cora drew herself up to her full height and looked Zeb in the eye. He grunted and un-grafted himself from the stump of a stool. With stiff motion, almost wooden in its creaking gait, he jerked over to a wall covered in skeins of rope and yanked one from its hook. “How much did ‘e want, Ann?”

“Twenty-five yards of th’ three-inch, and eleven of th’one-inch.” Ann Company grabbed Cora’s hand and squeezed it.

Grousing under his breath, Zeb measured the rope yard by yard, pulling pieces the length of his arm, doubling the rope, and repeating the motion. The caterpillars had returned to their “at-ease” positions, and Zeb stared at Ann Company as his hands fed lengths of rope to the growing coil looped over his arm.

“How long’d it take t’get ye cleaned up?”

“Then y’like it?” Ann Company’s green eyes flashed triumph.

Zeb’s caterpillars zipped up the twig and hung, suspended by invisible threads, at the fringe of hair capping his head. “Didn’t say I didn’t. But ye’re lookin oncommon tidy t’day. Tell me true now. How long’d it take?”

Cora couldn’t stand it any longer. “I think Ann Company looks simply lovely whatever she wears. Why, we hardly did anything to her except give her a bath.” Cora put her hand to her cheek and quailed inwardly. Clumsy, clumsy tongue! Why had she mentioned a bath in front of this stranger…and a man at that? Hot blood coursed through her cheeks.

Zeb’s mouth worked again, but this time Cora suspected he was trying to keep from laughing. She wrung her hands and contemplated ducking into the huge round of rope coiled next to a case of Captain Livvy’s Deck Soap.

“And I s’pect ye’re one a’thems that never complain ‘bout this De-pression? One a’them Williamses.”

Cora shook her head. “No. I mean, yes. I mean, not truly. I’m Mrs. Williams’ sister. And I do complain more than I ought.”

One of Zeb’s caterpillars disengaged itself and slid back into place. He leaned forward and Cora heard his knees creak like an aged tree in the forest twisted by a perverse wind. “You and I’d probably get along real well if ye’re th’ complainin’ type. Ain’t that right, Miz Comp’ny?”

Ann Company slapped Zeb with the back of her hand. “Quit yer bedevilin’ and finish up with m’rope. We’ve got a sight of errands t’run and I cain’t be bothered with you.”

Zeb’s second caterpillar settled in place beside the first, and his arms continued with their pulling, doubling, and wrapping. The rope was soon cut and hoisted onto the countertop beside a packet of deep-sea fishing hooks.

“That be all?”

Ann Company nodded. “And if’n you’d get Nat t’haul it over to Eulalie and th’wagon I’d ‘preciate it. I’d not be wantin’ t’get Miz Williams’ fancy dress smirched with grease from those ropes.” She smoothed the blue skirt and smiled in spite of herself.

“Wait a spell till Nat gets here. I know he’d be a’wantin’ t’see ye all purtied up.”

Cora smiled at the rich color that flooded Ann Company’s face. So that was it! Ann Company tossed a few silver dollars into Zeb’s waxy palm and tossed her head. “I ain’t waitin’ fer anyone. Me an’ Miz Cora are goin’ winder-shoppin’. Good bye.”

Ann Company swept out of the chandler’s shop, tugging Cora behind her. The bells of the door jangled behind them as if the shop were begging for one last look at this new Ann Company.

“Where are we going next, Ann Company?” Cora asked, having to trot to keep up with the hearty pace her friend set.

“We’re goin’ straight to t’the hat-shop and I’m a’buyin’ myself a real hat like this’un I’m wearin’. Can’t be lookin’ shabby now they’ve seen me like this.”

Cora laughed. “Come off it, Ann Company. You’ll always be the same beautiful woman, fancy clothes or not.”

“For sure, Miz Cora?”

“Undeniably. Come on. Let’s get some coffee.” Cora pushed Ann Company into the coffee-shop, having set eyes on a young man who was gazing in awe at Ann Company from the opposite side of the window. A young man who, if she were not very much mistaken, must be the Nat whom Zeb had mentioned.

By Hook or Crook...

I'll pin you down, Cora Lesley! You with your bright smile and winsome ways! You who looked so innocent smiling across the page at me! You who promised me smooth sailing, for after all you are fourteen years old and ought to know how to behave!
But I'll tell you one thing, Little Missy: you are giving me more trouble than all of the Seasoning children put together! [Dill and Angelica included] What is it about you that is so hard for me to write? Why do I feel that as soon as you arrived at Puddleby Lane you shut me out and ran away from me across the smooth yellow sands, free and swift as a sandpiper? I can't understand you right now. I write you into a scene and make you say and feel things I know you never saw nor felt, but you aren't helping a bit. You smile at me with that sweet complacency and look over my shoulder at these fictional actions. When I ask you what you think of it you shake your head and say, "It may be like me and then again it may not. You decide."
But I don't want to decide! I want you to let me in on that secret of yours. I find I understand Ann Company with all her eccentricities far more than I do you. Cora Lesley, I brought you into being and I find you are an enigma. So simple and yet so complex. What in tarnation did I write you for?
And yet for all this I love you. I love you for your complex simplicity, even when I'm foundering in misunderstanding. I love you for your quiet strength that is so foreign to me. I love you for being bold when I'd be frightened, and for being weak when I'd be strong. I'm sorry I'm not able to read what's behind those soft brown eyes. You are the sweetest character [despite your prejudices against being written] that I've created thus far. But, dear Cora, couldn't you be a little more forthcoming? I'd appreciate it.
                                          Your Befuddled Admirer,
                                                            Rachel Heffington