Temper Flares

This is just a little nothing I wrote this evening when I couldn't stand not writing any longer. I am Arianna in many respects, but Beckett is entirely fictional. The piece cannot possibly stand alone, and it really has no meaning, and now (of course) you'll wonder why I wrote it, and I will say "I don't know. But it popped out on its own accord." and that's all the explanation you'll receive, I'm afraid. :)

"Temper Flares"

By Rachel Heffington

“I would like a great many things,” she said in her queenliest voice, so that he might know the limits of her imagination were nonexistent, “but what I’d like right now would be to slip out of these horrid, sweaty clothes, and to slip into a cool white frock. I would like one of these velvety lawns, and nothing better to do with my time than lay in hammock reading, or to traipse across the green grass and look lovely.” That was exactly what she wanted—all these secluded, cool, wide lawns wandering up to white porches and arched windows filled her heart with a dusty, musty ache that kept pace with her increasingly drab appearance. Yes—she longed with all the passionate longing of a weary soul to have the luxury of traipsing.

“You want to….traipse?” her companion asked, evidently bewildered.

“Traipse. We are always walking or going or running or trotting off to do this, that, and the other—I’d like to take a wander and have no one bother me about politics or religion or a thousand-and-one other things People tend to like to bother an innocent young lady with.”

“Ah.”

She nodded; pleased with the way he’d taken his defeat. An “ah” meant he had resigned his verbal sword and would behave himself. It was a great relief that he had not said “aha” instead, which had much more of a challenge about it, and meant that she would be required to defend her point further. “Oh—and there’s one more thing, Beckett,” she said.

Beckett winced, and shook himself. “What is it, Arianna?”

“I have a headache, Beckett.”

“Well? Can I do anything about it?” Sarcasm, Arianna noted with contempt. Becket t always resorted to sarcasm first thing and wasted a situation in which wit ought to have played a decent part. He fought with a claymore of a tongue—she preferred a rapier; sharp, cutting, infinitely polite.

Arianna pressed her temples with her fingertips and tried not to think about how weary she was. “As a matter of fact, you can do something about it, Beckett,” she said at length. “You can take yourself off and leave me alone, and perhaps a massive portion of my headache would depart with you.”

“You’re a cruel woman, Arianna Maddox,” Beckett growled. But he lumbered off dutifully, and Arianna watched him with nothing greater than mild annoyance—he behaved exactly as a devoted lover ought: going away when bidden, and coming around when needed. He was just the sort of fellow Arianna liked, for though she was a woman and would faint before betraying her sex, she had never been overly companionable with any young ladies.

Beckett wandered off down the cool stone drive, and once Arianna was certain he would not come dawdling back, Arianna smoothed her shirt, fluffed her bangs, and re-folded the cuff of her capris. Dashing about campaigning through neighborhoods was all very well and good when the temperature was a balmy sixty-degrees, but the full summer heat had been beating upon them all day, and Arianna’s mood was souring. Beckett had done nothing but chatter all afternoon, and the hotter the day grew the faster his tongue wagged. It was almost as if Beckett had been a lumbering, bumbling, handsome sort of cicada intent on keeping pace with the advancing of the temperatures. “Which,” she thought to herself, “is exactly what he is.”

Cherry Pitts: Just a bit of Nothingness :)

All right. So this has nothing to do with the blog party or contest. This is a bit of nothingness that I simply had to scribble down before it left me. I will not follow it as a plot bunny....yet. :P I hope you enjoy it! I rather like Pitt myself. :)

Cherry Pitts

By Rachel Heffington

I didn’t even know we had aunts. There were uncles by the dozen, but they all “bached” it in a dirty, smoky set of apartments in the city. Buggs, Sharpshin, and I loved visiting them—we always had such larks, for there was a desperate element of danger in their antics: Uncle Nelson had a habit of juggling all the sharpest steak-knives and throwing them at you so they cut a few hairs off the top of your head, but left your scalp. Uncle Jem drank brandy (for his bum leg, he said.) and smoked dime cigars at the same time. Uncle Welch always dared us to walk along the wrought iron rail of the great bridge in the Park. But the youngest, most perilous—and therefore beloved—uncle of all was Uncle Brodie. He would load one chamber of his six-shooter, (that had done service to a real live Indian once) then coolly point the pistol in your direction and shoot the five empty chambers so you prayed he was paying attention and counting right.

We adored Uncle Brodie for the very fact that you were never quite safe around him—he was like a jungle, an island, a cowboy, and a pirate-ship all boiled down and buttoned up in a crumpled, grey suit.

We never knew what to expect from Uncle Brodie. Maybe that’s why we weren’t as surprised as we might have been when the door of Sallimander’s Drug jangled open one afternoon as Buggs, Sharpshin, and I were drinking our twice-weekly cream-sodas.

Uncle Brodie slung his lanky frame onto the barstool beside Sharpshin. “Hey kids,” he said.

 I sipped my cream soda and licked my lips, savoring the sweet furze that clung to them.

“Hey Uncle Brodie,” Sharpshin said, without taking his eyes from his comic book. He wasn’t reading it—I knew my own brother well enough to know that—he studied the super-heroes because he planned to become an inventor and he was determined to find the formula for Kryptonite. Buggs and I thought him a genius.

Uncle Brodie cleared his throat and I looked at him. His face was splotchy, and he kept swallowing funny.

“Want my cherry?” I asked, running a grimy hand through my red hair till it stood on end.

“Sure kid,” he said. He never called me Lewis—which was my real name—or even Pitt, which was what the guys called me. All three of us—Buggs, Sharpshin, and myself—were just “kid” to Uncle Brodie, but I didn’t mind.

I pulled the cherry off the deflated pile of whipped cream and eyed it with a little reluctance—but nothing was too good for my idol. I passed it to him and he tossed it in his mouth, chewed once, and swallowed it, stem and all.

I suppose there was a measure of talent mixed up in such a feat, but I stared gape-mouthed. Buggs, Sharpshin, and I had a religious system when we ate a cherry; we pulled the stem off, licked the cherry clean, polished it on our shirt-sleeves, then ate it in mouse-bites till the last bit of sweet cherry-juice was only a memory on the tongue.

The cherry being disposed of, Uncle Brodie cleared his throat again and pulled an envelope from his pocket. It was sweaty and crumpled and looked as agitated as a june-bug with a string tied to his leg. In fact, it looked just like Uncle Brodie did.

“What’s ‘at?” Buggs asked. He pushed his patched cap to a jaunty angle on his head and reached for the envelope.

Uncle Brodie shoved his hand away. “Listen kiddos,” he said, “I’ve got somethin’ important to tell ya’.”

I froze in my folding of a napkin into a sailor-hat. Sharpshin pulled his eyes from his comic book. Buggs pushed his hat back in the other direction.

Uncle Brodie crumpled his weather-beaten fedora in his hands and gave us a sympathetic grimace. “I’m real sorry, kids. I really am.”

Buggs cracked his knuckles. “So?”

Uncle Brodie slid the envelope across the counter till it hit my elbow. “So, it’s the aunts, kiddos. They’re claiming you.”