The Fox Went Out: Part Two

Hello, Folks!

    I apologize for the delay with today's piece of The Fox Went Out! It's Mother's Day weekend (appropriate, considering Anise Clare is a new mother) and I spent the better part of my waking hours cooking a veritable Middle-Eastern feast for my mother. She's the best. She deserves it. But I didn't forget about posting Part Two for you, and I can't tell you how excited I am that you are enjoying it so much thus far. May this second sampling not disappoint.

The Fox Went Out

by Rachel Heffington

Part Two:

John O’Grady soon got used to the idea of me not giving him a son. I don’t believe you can will a baby not to come, but I out-willed myself anyway, working to not give a boy to that man. Because of this, our family was just John, Duck, and me. My rebel-self took heart as the years rolled slowly by. I found little ways to own myself and now that I had Duck, I had one ally. John wanted me to dress pretty for him: reds, blues, pinks. I chose Quaker-gray. Lady redbirds don’t dress gaudy and their nests stay secret as badger’s dens.  I felt safe with my forest-creature neighbors and put myself in their ways. And my life—every bit of it—was stuck on keeping my Duck away from her Pa. I got hit for it more often than not, but it made me glad to see Duck go quiet when John came home of a night. It was right she saw him as a stranger. Someday we’d break free.

When Duck was four years old, gossip started round. I first heard it while waiting in the silver-wood wagon with my feet propped on John’s load of corn bags. Bandy-Joe, the break-easy man, leaned against a hitching post, chewing a straw.

“Fox’s runnin’ round the country again.”

I didn’t know then what I know now, and my blood still ran chilly. Why’d the mention of a brush-tailed fox turn me giddy? All I knew is that I didn’t know half enough, so I pulled my knees into my arms and rocked a little.

“If there’s fox-trouble, why don’t somebody hunt it down? Don’t anybody want a nice fox-pelt?”

Bandy-Joe removed his straw, snorted, and looked me over admiringly. “I surely doubt anyone’d want his sort of pelt edging up their winter coat or linin’ their wife’s mittens.”

My baffledness must have showed through, for Bandy-Joe stepped nearer and looked me straight in the eye. “He’s a fox...and a man.”

“Shut up, Joe. You’re scarin’ Duck.”

More than likely I’d just told a lie—Duck never scared half as easy as I did, but she didn’t mind me pulling her close. She slid her little arms around my neck and laid quiet against my shoulder, good as you please.

“Quit foolin’ around with your haint-stories,” I said.

Joe shrugged and put the straw back between his teeth. “The Fox has got a taste for blood. Sharp, sharp teeth. Runs on all fours. Wears a tail.”

With each new description, my stomach shuddered. “Quiet, Joe!”

He saw me spook and drew close. “Hair like fire...eyes like coals. And sometimes he’ll come up close to a lonely cabin and cry at the windows.”

Joe’s hand slid along my forearm, pressed into the skin. “I’d ask your husband to keep close of a night if I were you. Just till someone runs the Fox out of the way.”

“I think it’s a bunch of nonsense.”

“You think that, Miz O’Grady. You think that.” Joe stuck his jaw out by way of farewell to me and greeting to my husband who now approached.

My husband raised great, goldy-brown eyes to me. Duck had the same eyes, only hers didn’t burn like his. “What was all that?”

“Some fox-trouble.”

Heaving himself onto the wagon box, John took the reins, clicked to the mules, and pulled our wagon into the dust-white street. “Heard about that.”

“He’s just tryin’ to scare folks.”

I pulled Duck’s bonnet farther across her face. She’d fallen asleep and her chubby arms grew heavy around my neck. John drove our wagon out of town, round the edge of the lake, and well into the forest before saying anything.

“If you hear any more foxes, Anise, let me know.”

Though it wasn’t much like me, I laughed. “Not you too.”

John slid me a look half-humored, half-daring. “I can let you handle that old Fox yourself if you’d rather. Didn’t know you liked chillin’ things.”

I jerked my chin above Duck’s bonnet and faced him. “It isn’t true, what Bandy-Joe said.”

“I’n’t it?”

We rattled down the road as the trees yawned overtop our way.

“All I know,” John finally said, “is that every man from Breckwater to Fletcher-town is sittin’ up nights. The Fox takes things.”

“And why fuss over a couple stolen sheep or a hen or two? Why, that’s hardly more’n a real fox would take.”

“Oh,” John said. A world of meaning in that oh. It beat up on crow-wings and swooped over my head like an August storm.

“What does he take?” I asked. I didn’t want to know but his silence pulled the question from me without my sayin’ yes to it.

John’s unnerving eyes settled on me again as he shrugged. “He don’t take those sorts of things. He’s after more.”

That’s all John would say. I knew that’s all he’d ever say. So when I heard a fox bark, same as I’d heard so many times since the Duckling came, I kept quiet and locked the cabin door. But I didn’t tell my husband and I didn’t mind a hoot. I’d grown used to rebelling.

Two nights later I sassed John O’Grady and the gold in his eyes turned to rivermud. He beat me with a closed-up fist, tore my grey dress top to bottom, and left me in a heap on the floor.

Foxpiece II:

The cabin grew out of the clearing’s center, sturdy as if it had put down a tap-root. Thinking of it, the little hairs along the back of the Fox’s neck pricked. The Man had passed this way recently. The blood-smell was thicker than it had ever been. Spooked by such a desperate scent on the air, the Fox trotted the last little bit to the hill-crest and peered down the clearing.

Something was different.

The cabin-door stood open and cried on its hinges.

He took a half-step forward, knowing that if he showed himself now, the Gray Goose would sound the alarm. Half the Tennessee territory was looking for his hide already and it was just this sort of thing that brought their skinny hounds on his trail. It was too dangerous and the Fox turned to go.

Then he heard it: a song. A tattered-up, tear-stained, poor excuse for a song, but a song still. Nothing had ever made the Fox lose his instincts before, but that song did. Or perhaps his instincts weren’t lost at all. Perhaps the song awakened the part of him that had shunned anything but the deepest shades of the forest these long years. Perhaps he’d never known what instinct was until the woman’s tattered song limped up-wind and wrapped like a fox’s own ruddy-gray brush around his throat.

The Fox cast a reel at the moon. Too bright. His shadow might take her notice before he hid himself in the bigger shadow of the strong-rooted cabin. But tonight it didn’t matter because tonight he’d come for her. And when the Fox had come for something, why he intended to do what it took to have it.

These kind of nights were the worst because I hurt and because Duck had seen John O’Grady’s rage from her corner-cot. But in their own cracked-up way they were the best ones too, because he’d be gone all night and the next day.

With no real reason to move, I burrowed into the cabin floor best I could and stayed there. Not that I could have moved, I was that bruised. My brow-bone had taken a shine from the table-leg and the blood shimmied down over my right eyelid. The chilliness of the outside came in through the door and ran up my torn dress.

“Mama?” Duck’s voice crumpled at the edges. “Mama?”

“Stay in bed, Duck,” I told her. Stay in bed. Like staying in bed would rub away all she’d just seen. Like staying in bed would save from the life that was ours to keep. I was sorry it wouldn’t do that. Sorrier than I’d ever been about anything.

Duck dropped her stubborn feet onto the wood boards and pidder-pidder-pattered as she trotted from her end of the room to mine. Little rebel, just like her mama.

“Pa’s a mean man.” Only four years old but I’d never seen an owl look half as solemn.

I opened my mouth to say no, her Pa wasn’t mean, he was just a little frustrated. But I couldn’t lie to her. Best to know meanness when she saw it and take a good dislikin’ for anything wearing similar colors. I patted the floor next to me. Duck plopped down, scooted my skirts to the side, and ruffled her fingers in my hair.

“You hurt bad, Mama?”

Tears came up. “Not real bad, Duckling.”

She moved her finger to my face, smoothing my cheek. “My pretty Mama.”

I turned my head and kissed her fingertips. The bruising already burned a little less. My head had stopped bleedin’. Duck had magic in her fingers. Baby magic. The kind the fox had barked at the night my Duck was born.

“You settle on down, Duck,” I whispered, and shifted so her head laid in the curve of my waist. “I’m gonna sing you a song.”

“Is it an old one?”

“A new one.”

“Good.” She flipped over to face me and her bottom lip pushed out pink as strawberries.

I eased my arm around her and bit my own lip as pain grappled with my shoulder. John O’Grady had dislocated it this time, I was sure. Still, holding onto Duck was like holding onto all the goodness in the world at once.

“O, the fox went out on a chilly night,” I sang. My voice didn’t stand too strong on its legs, but it was for Duck I sang and I knew she didn’t care.

I sang what words I remembered, made up others to fit the tune. “He begged for the moon to give him light, for he’d many a mile to go that night before he reached the town-o, town-o, town-o. He’d many a mile to go that night before he reached the town-o.”

Duck’s eyelids flickered and finally closed and her sleeping-breath came on, slow and heavy. I pulled her dark curls through my fingers and kept singing to comfort myself.

“First he grabbed the gray goose by the neck and he swung a duck across his back...”

A wind freshened in the doorway and fluttered my torn dress.

“...and he didn’t mind the quack-quack-quack or the legs all dangling down-o, down-o, down-o...”

Shadows dragged across the yard, driving hard before the wind.

“O, he didn’t mind the quack-quack-quack or the legs all dangling down-o...”

Foxpiece III:

The Fox went in to her, into the place that smelled of blood and desperation, fear and fevered pride. Silent at first, and on tip-toes. She still sang and he stood above her, his breath quivering.

The moon shifted and his shadow came to dance.

No more song.

Caught in the trap of intruded-on pain, she blazed gray-eyed surprise and the duckling blazed too, a smaller, in all other ways identical, version of her. Right then, the Fox forgot how to speak. Hours of practice, only to forget again.

“Come with me.” The invitation tottered like a drunk from between his teeth, fell down his beard, tripped into the gray cotton which pooled around her battered body like a stream round a fallen willow. A graceless offer. But had the Fox formed words at all? Neither his Gray Goose nor the duckling seemed to understand. Stiffening like opossums, they stayed where he’d found them, unblinking.

“With me. Come with me. Going to sweep you away from here.”

Words had come out that time, however chewed-sounding. Frustrated, mistrusting, the Fox reached down for her arm to help her up and carry her away from the man who, he suddenly feared, would return before they’d looked  for him.

He reached a paw down. The Gray Goose bit it, pulling a surprised snarl from him. He jerked away, uncertain now.

“Leave me be!” she vixened.

He watched her chest flash like the sides of a baby rabbit. Fear. She feared him; that he would not suffer.

“You will come!”

Though he made careful to keep well away from her red lips and the teeth they shielded, the Fox raked her into his arms. Strong he was, accustomed to carrying many kinds of loads away from the places they had once belonged, but the burden of two…this he had not expected. The duckling must remain behind. He had no need for her; one was enough for his plain kind of happiness. Two he could not imagine caring for.

“Please!”

Hitherto, a catamount’s wail seemed the worst sound in the forest, but this other-worldly howl was worse. A one-word punching of his well-attuned eardrums, scalding his forearms like oil. His grip on the woman trembled. The Gray Goose had claws. They dug into his shoulder blades.

“Let me have her!” she cried.

Quaint thought in both their hearts. Let me have her. Let him take this Gray Goose to his den. Let him have her. Let nothing, least of all a duckling, stand in his way. He made to leave the house but the woman’s teeth sank into his the skin round his collarbone. Yelping, he flung his burden to the ground.

“Let me have my Duck and I’ll go with you,” she gasped at him.

The childish side of him resented the idea of sharing the Gray Goose, even with her own child. “I don’t want a baby.”

“Bring her or I’ll raise Cain till th’dogs chase off th’buzzards for a chance to worry your bones.”

Hesitation blew in with the night air, cooling the Fox’s brain. What trouble was a Duckling? He grabbed the child then, holding her damp weight against his hip and flung his Gray Goose over his back once more. Then, hearkening to some part of him that understood as the animals, the Fox went his dark way back through the forest: a different trail than that he’d come, so the threat of hounds might have more trouble manifesting.

Two thoughts uppermost in my head:

It’s happening again.

Three heart-beats.

Oh, dear God, it’s th’Fox.

I’ve said it twice now: life and I kept hold of one another pretty tight. I didn’t faint. I stopped thrashing. I stopped weepin’ and simmered all of it into a shaking in my core: a sugaring-off call for help, more plea than prayer:

Dear God, The Fox.

Dear God, The Fox.

By an’ by it stopped being The Fox, like a name. Became something a little less crazed and more like plain fear: The Fox, a fox. What was the fox, really? His eyes, though bright and funny-looking, hadn’t glowed. He didn’t bite me. In fact, it’d been the other way round. And as far as I could tell, though his pace hadn’t let up one mark, he was standing only slightly bent over, much like any man would have, carrying a full-grown woman and a hefty toddler. The awful truth stuck around, though: I’d been taken once more, against my will, by a man I knowed only by the bad taste his name left in the mouth.

Couldn’t see much what with bouncing and being slung over his bony shoulders like a sack. My shoulder was still out and half-killing me with pain. Still, I fumbled over the Fox’s left arm and found my Duck’s hand. She held it back and didn’t make a sound. If I hadn’t had the proof of her bein’ all right in the way she squeezed my fingers, I’d of had a hard time believing she was even alive. Right about the time I wondered if the Fox intended to trot us clear to Kentucky, he turned of a sudden and dumped us onto a creek bank.

“You’re hurt.” Curious fingers prodded my shoulder.

I whimpered at his touch and kicked him away, feeling the damp, mossy earth ease into my stiff body.

He drew back on his haunches a teeny space and cocked his head. “It is a dislocation. I’m afraid I’ll have to hurt you a moment to fix it.”

“Don’t touch me!”

My words didn’t seem to bother that foxy gentleman one bit. He eased his left hand under my shoulder and felt. Then he extended my arm, braced his bare foot in my armpit, and in the space of my one desperate scream, had fixed me.

The moon, bein’ bright this time of month, showed the Fox to me plain and I took a good long look at him. His panting chest was so thin and white and bruised-looking, I almost couldn’t believe this was the same creature who had carried my child and me hours through the woods. But when I looked, I saw muscles all over him. Callouses on his hands. His arms though...why they were strong, but bandy as frog’s legs with just enough skin to cover ‘em and no more. Not anywhere on his body a pinch of fat. Reddish hair covered the foreparts of his arms, the back of his neck, grew in a thick beard on his face. The hair on the top of his head was darker, almost coffee-colored and grew down into a widow’s peak above clever eyes. Didn’t have too much on for clothing: just buckskin breeches and a vest covered with a dozen pockets. For thieving, I guessed. He wore no shoes, which was less than strange, for I had none, nor did Duck. The Fox could have looked scarier. He could have looked handsomer. Above all, he didn’t look—

“Is it well with your shoulder now?”

His question cracked my peace. My blood burned. I’d almost forgotten the Fox could speak, he seemed so odd. But if he was not people-ish, he was even less like a fox.

“You got a tail?” I asked.

An alarming smile sprang out of his beard. A handful of seconds before, he’d been haunting. Now he looked happier’n Duck with a pink-striped candy stick. He didn’t answer right then, just raked hard fingers through his dark hair and smiled. The wind stirred something out behind him and my blood thickened: a fox’s tail. Then the moment passed and he turned and I saw it wasn’t attached to his rear but to a belt cinched around his waist. A fox’s brush that swung right to left as he slid down the bank of the creek and scooped a handful of water to his mouth.

He turned, flicked silver beads of water off his wrist, and scrambled back up the bank. Then without saying anything, he grabbed me and Duck and hurried off again into the wilderness.

It was dawn when we got to his nice, warm den. Somehow he kept totin’ me and my child all through that night and into the pinky morning. First thing I knowed of gettin’ near his homeplace was a yelping sound, a sharp singing-whining sound that dug into my ears and pulled me out of my gritty-eyed tiredness. Through the gloom, I made out eight or nine wriggling, spade-eared creatures pelting toward the Fox. He stopped at a break in the bottom of the woods. The oaks went quiet and the birches grew lace. He gentled me and Duck onto the ground. Then he dropped to his knees and romped with the fox-kits. The sight of my kidnapper on all fours, false brush swinging while he played with the pups, scared the life out of me. I pulled Duck into my lap. She was awake now (if she’d ever been to sleep at all) and watched the Fox with round, wondering eyes.

“Mama, who is he?” she whispered.

I flat out refused to call him the Fox any longer. He was done frightening me.

“What are you called?” I asked.

The Fox stopped, rose to his knees, and considered me. The kits round him gnawed on his elbow, his breeches, the edges of his vest. Another time I might have found it funny. Not now.

“They call me the Fox,” he finally said, wary.

We weren’t playing this way. “What do you call yourself?” I heaved Duck to my hip and stood so he’d know I belonged to me and no one else.

“I am Reynard.”

I had no reaction. Folk had a lot of strange names. Wasn’t my place to laugh at his.

He fondled a fox-kit’s ears and shrugged. “It means fox. It is what gave me the idea to...live like this.”

Then he hadn’t always been the Fox. I wondered what had made him like this, so unhuman, so ghostly. But if I was to be his property now, like I’d been John’s, there’d be plenty of time for askin’ that question and everything else.

“This where you live?”

“It is.” Grunting slightly like his arms and legs were punishing him for his long night, the Fox, Reynard, got to his feet. “Come inside.”

He led us through shy morning light to a cave split into a rocky hillside. Moss grew all around it and vines covered the top half of an oak door held together with wood-pegs. Leather hinges creaked to let us inside. I found a room filled with willow-wand birdcages and the birds that lived in them. Duck’s eyes went even rounder as she walked up to one and put her finger through the bars to a little, red-headed finch.

“That is Audubon,” Reynard said. There was something a little tetched about his voice. “You may not want to bother him. He nips.”

Sure enough, the finch darted at the cage and caught Duck’s fingertip in his hard, orange beak. Duck cried and set the whole bird-village to twitterin’ and squawking. Reynard shushed them with a low, tuneful whistle and took Duck’s hand.

My hackles rose. It was one thing to touch me but to touch my Duck without my say-so...I ground my teeth, crossed the floor, and knocked Reynard’s wrist. He yelped and backed away, nursing the hurt limb.

“Never touch her again.” My voice sounded as gritty and stinging as my eyes.

He saw I meant it. He gave me a curious, smart look and shrugged. “Best get some rest.”

Leading the way to the back of the cave, Reynard showed me a stone bench cut into the wall, piled high with sheepskins. Probably stole the fleeces from one of my old neighbors. I backed into the crevice and pulled Duck in with me. Before I realized what he was about to do, Reynard pulled the skins over, tucked them around me, and set his pale-skinned hand on my head. Despite my guess that he would try no tricks just now, panic fluttered around my lungs. But Reynard ruffled my hair as I had so many times ruffled Duck’s, smiled again, and left me.

He whistled amongst his birds a while, tail swinging, then settled on his haunches before a tiny stove. After a moment, he rolled onto his side and fell asleep. How he could fall asleep so easy, so gentle, when he’d just dragged a stranger overland eight hours and dropped her in his bed confused me.

I whispered my fox-song to Duck and waited for sleep to catch me unawares. For sleep, like everything else in my life, never came when I expected it.

The Fox Went Out: In Serial Form

Spring is a time for many things, including the announcement of Narrative Magazine's Winter Short Story Contest. Some of you will remember that I sent my short-story, The Fox Went Out, into the contest to be judged. The winners were announced last week and mine was not among them. I can't say I am much disappointed. I wrote the thing in a fit of "let me try something entirely new" and it was more a writing exercise with a good ending than a piece I intended to elbow with into the running. What it means for me, really, is that I get to share The Fox Went Out with you, my dear blog readers! Some of you will be happy to hear this. I hope the rest of you will be pleased as well. I have decided to release it serial-style, like I did with my Christmas story, John Out-The-Window. I'll be sharing two parts a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays, till the thing is done. Here is the first, and I sincerely hope you enjoy this trip with me into a new style and genre. :)

The Fox Went Out

By Rachel Heffington

Part One:

John O’Grady is a man of his word. If, in a fit of the tempers, John says he’s going to kill you, why he just does. I never knowed an honorable man half as holding to his word as John O’Grady.

It was a poor day for justice when that man rode into our clearing and declared his mind..

“Anise Clare...” He pronounced it “Annis,” tasting my name like it was something he’d gone and invented. “I’m fixin’ to marry you.”

I snapped a wet garment against the side of the wash-tub and looked him right in the eye. Took all my willpower, I was that frightened of the man, but I knew better than to show my scared.

“Well, I’m not fixin’ to marry you, John O’Grady.”

The soft place between my shoulder blades turned tighter than January as he swung off his horse. He had powerful-shaped legs—giant’s legs—and they took him over to me in four paces. His arm went around my waist. I planted myself in the muddy ground.He uprooted me into his embrace.

Panic sudsed to my head, feebling my knees.

“Hey, Pa?” I called.

John’s face, which leaned in close to mine like he was trying for a kiss, went still. No answer from the cabin. If Pa had chosen to go out hunting or fallen drunk, I knew John Grady’d have his way.

“Pa, git out here, please.” The very end of my voice choked on itself.

John’s arm tightened. His face advanced.

“O’Grady?”

I got dropped and scrambled to the other side of my washtub, out of reach.

“Mister Clare.”

Seemed funny to hear John O’Grady calling my Pa “Mister Clare.” Why, Pa weren’t ten years older than him, and only half his size.

“What’re you doin’ here?” Pa asked, leery-voiced.

“Just sweet-talking Anise.”

Pa squinted at O’Grady. I knew he couldn’t see good with the morning sun singing glory in his eyes. “Whatcha want with her?”

John’s laughter shot out. “Lots a’things, Mister Clare.”

The tips of my ears tingled shame-bright.

“More to the point, I’m wanting to marry her.”

Pa’s tired eyes scooted from John to me, to the soggy laundry in the trough. “Best stop foolin’ around, Anise.”

Did this mean Pa’d send John O’Grady off for good? But Pa jerked his chin, inviting him into the cabin. Can’t say I was surprised. Pa never was one for protecting. I knew, even without sneaking to the window-ledge, what would happen: Pa’d pour whiskey into two big mugs and slide one rumble-slosh across the table. As the drink dwindled, so would his caution, and John O’Grady’d get what he wanted.

So I didn’t spy. I didn’t run off into the cool, friendly forest.

I washed Pa’s shirts one by one: red checks gone pink, green stripes gone moss, blue and brown gone gray. I wrung them with a wish to wring O’Grady’s neck and pegged them to the dancing clothesline by the hen-coop. Really, just like any other morning. Except for that shag-bark laugh...and the chair crashed over...and the front door slammed against the side of the cabin. I turned around only because he forced me, and took the kiss full on my mouth without looking at him once.

He tipped my chin with his finger. An empty-feeling finger, it was so calloused. “Lookit me, Anise-girl.”

I went cross-eyed trying not to.

“Lookit me!”

His snarl scared me but I still refused to look at him. That decision was simple-foolish, but it was the only way I knew how to rebel. I would not give it up. I’d just been sold over a glass of whiskey. My first kiss had been snatched by a brawler. But I still belonged to me and I didn’t have to look at him.

“You’re gonna die like a devil,” I snarled.

“Don’t mind. Angels don’t have no fun anyhow.” Laughing again, even though I could hear the anger rush up like floodwaters, John O’Grady stalked across the clearing and swung onto his horse.

“Have a good day, sweet-pea.”

I hope your horse trips and breaks your neck.

“I’ll be back soon, sugar.”

Hope he falls in the river and drowns you.

“And I’m gonna marry you, Anise Clare.”

He left it at that, and Pa left it at that, and in two weeks, I married him.

You’d think I would have done something desperate after the wedding—killed myself, run away—but life and I kept hold of one another pretty good. Of course I hated to be married to John O’Grady. Trouble was, people supposed his wife was just like him.

I could take my new, solitary world of John’s clearing and John’s laundry and John’s cabin and John’s dog. Everything was John’s—he even thought I was his, which fact I was reminded of many nights. I could take all these things because they had nothing to do with who I was. But when we rode into Fletcher-town in the silver-wood wagon and the women made way and the men made jokes, that’s when life and I got to scrapping.

No one liked John O’Grady.

No one liked me.

And sometimes I near split with an ache to tell ‘em that me and my husband were not one flesh. We were summer and snow, wet and drought. But since when do devils marry angels?

They all believed what they wanted to, and I grew to know that the reason they steered clear of thinking anything else is so’s they never have to consider the badness behind other solutions. It’s easy to forget a bad man with a bad wife. But a sweet young girl handed like a heifer to a blackest-hearted man...that’s a lot to swallow in good company.

Eventually, I found myself burdened with living secret. If John didn’t know, It would be safe and quiet in the dark place inside me. I did not have to tell him, though It was partially his. Another small rebellion. Another piece of me that did not belong to him. So I kept my secret for several weeks till the violent vomiting-spells told on me.

“You’re gonna give me a son, ain’t you?”

John’s bare excitement petrified me. I had never known him to be so worked up about anything. He moved too quickly for my dizziness and threw himself on his knees beside the bed. He swept his hand into my hair, pushed the strands out of my eyes.

“Don’t you drop this baby,” he warned. “You rest. You grow it strong.”

I pushed his hand away and closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see the energy in his face. I had none of my own. I’d emptied it six or seven times into the wooden bucket beside my bed.

“Water, please,” I whispered as another wave of sickness crawled its clammy paws over my gut.

For once, my husband served me. He whistled out to the well, returning with a jug of the clear, cold water. Even tipped some of it into a blue china mug and placed it in my hands.

“Best news I’ve heard in an age, Anise-girl. Water that son.” The over-brightness of his eyes, declared him already familiar with the inside of his gin bottle, though it was only midday.

“Thank you.” I sipped from the mug and tipped back. “Just let me sleep.”

John took a kiss and his hat and slammed the cabin door. I listened to his dog bawl the length of the clearing, probably hunting up a rabbit to chase, and thought long and hard. My sickness had stole the secret. I needed a new defiance. And then it came to me.

Lurching out of the bed, I pressed my fingertips to my wrist. Be still, stomach. On my knees, I rested my forehead against the humid mattress and breathed. The stench of vomit swirled around me and my stomach flopped.

Dear God, I prayed. Give me a girl. He wants a boy, but this is my child. Give me a girl, if You love me at all. That didn’t seem quite fair, suggesting the Lord God didn’t love me, but I thought He’d see the heart of it. See that I couldn’t give John O’Grady a son. A girl, Lord, I repeated, just in case He hadn’t been listening. A girl.

Eight months later, I birthed my baby. John was drunk and the midwife refused to come. I birthed that baby alone and talked myself through the miserable pains same way I had once talked Pa’s cow through a hard calving. That is, when I could talk. Most of the time I yelled and tried not to pray to die. I didn’t want to die. Not truly. If life and I split apart now, my baby’d have none but John O’Grady for a parent. I’d deserve damnation for leaving an innocent child to fend for herself. Besides, I believed it’d be a girl and that she would be mine and I’d have won that battle against John, at least.

In the sticky night, in my sticky bed, I pushed a bawling, sticky child into this hard, hard world and lifted her onto my breast. She was a beautiful girl, small and perfect and squalling.

John took one look between her legs, cursed, and left the house.

The door stood open and the night air flooded in. Was it bad for my baby? But no, it couldn’t be. It was the night, friendly and smiling with stars. It would not, could not hurt my baby. Good things came out of the night. Things like sleep, and unconsciousness, and a rest from the world staring at my troubles.

I thanked God for a girl, for a few hours to belong to myself and my baby. Somewhere, deep down in the quiet part of me that I’d about forgot since my mother died, the part of me that danced barefoot in a thunderstorm and skipped rocks at the riverbend—in that part of me way, way deep down, the rebel-ness strengthened.

And somewhere outside a fox barked.

Foxpiece I:

The Fox watched her for three years, craned his neck, caught the moon, and laughed.

Tonight, standing in a loamy hole on the hill, he sniffed the air and scented her. She smelled of stubbornness and wood-fires, wildwood honey and sadness. Her small one smelled of protection. Sometimes he sensed blood, too, and on those nights the Fox crept close to the cabin, confident of remaining unseen. He sang to them in his crying-voice through the cabin walls and wished She could hear. He never feared the man, because the man had brought the blood and would be gone all night in his rage. What he feared was the woman—the Gray Goose, as he liked to call her—discovering his presence and forcing him away.

There was no blood-smell tonight and no reason to skulk closer to the cabin. The Fox settled down on his haunches...felt the wind in his autumn hair...watched another year. 

Il Lato Negativo Dell'Amore

"I peered at Lord Grosvenor's name and the pretty scrawl in Clarisse's handwriting below: 'La mia bella amante? Oh my, Clarisse! That is bold. Calling Lord Grosvenor your 'beautiful, illicit lady-love' will certainly win his affections. It might affront his masculinity, but he'll be quite glad you think him beautiful; he's so sure on that point himself!"

- Chapter One, The Windy Side of Care

Listen my children and you shall hear of the midnight release of.... Cinque Scarpetto di Cristallo! 

At the end of last week my fellow Five Glass Slippers authors and I were informed that Rooglewood Press (our publisher) was all set to release an Italian translation of our stories! It seems ridiculous to think that Lady Alis, Prince Auguste Blenheim, Laureldina, Sir Humphries, and the step-sisters will be available to Italian readers across the world in print and ebook formats, but so it is. Right now some gondola-man in Venice could be posing with his arm slung round a pole reading about Charlotte Russe from his Kindle. I am actually wildly excited about this. Plus, try saying "Cinque Scarpetto di Cristallo" without grinning. It's nearly impossible. "Scarpetto" is a classy trade-in for "slipper" I think.

Know any Cinderella-loving Italians? Mind pointing them in the direction of Cinque Scarpetto di Cristallo? I think they'll love it, and I am thrilled to death to see Rooglewood putting this book in the hands of foreign readers who might find it difficult to enjoy the stories as much in English. We are informed this is the twelfth in a long line of governesses who have come to look after the children. Good heavens. I mean to say that it is the first translation of (hopefully) many that Rooglewood will endow the world with. Three cheers for Rooglewood Press, Five Glass Slippers, and the grand old tale of Cinderella!
Hip, hip, huzzah!
Hip, hip, huzzah!
Hip, hip, huzzah!

Can I marry a stockbroker?

"It is true that if you want to write well and live well at the same time, you'd better arrange to marry a stockbroker or a rich woman who can operate a typewriter."

-Flannery O'Connor

When one first begins writing, one hears lots of advice:

"Never end sentences this way: example."

"Never ever do this in this situation: example."

"And above all, show, don't tell."

As a young writer, I didn't realize that much of this advice drew from public opinion of the moment. True, lots of it is good advice when one looks at it from the viewpoint of having one's manuscript accepted by a big-time editor and put on the New York Time's Bestsellers list. I've read many books but I will admit that, till recent years, the majority of what I had read was written pre-1950. That meant that my literary examples were of the old style. My literary education was performed at an old school. While popular tastes demanded the modern cosmopolitan flair of Manhattan Prep from White Collar, I spent my school years at something with more of the flavor of Eton, to use a great school in a loose analogy. Naturally, I came to the class reunion talking slang from years back and finding "yo dawg" was not exactly what people these days go around saying. And yes, I felt as cheesy as that sounded. How is a girl to write the way she has been taught without sounding like an ancient tome? Because I have picked up books by authors who obviously had a similar literary education to my own and have thought, "Yeah, I wouldn't choose to publish this either." In many ways, the advice I was given was exactly what I needed to hear.

It is true that the modern reading public has a shorter attention span than in the days of Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo. I consider myself a fairly patient reader and even I had to have three go's at the unabridged Les Miserables before I could finish, and even then it was a terrible struggle to push through his ponderous lectures to get to the heart of the story.
It is true that modern readers expect a certain hook at the front of the book and look for page-turning plots. The books I put down are inevitably the books that bore me to tears. If you can't capture my attention within the first chapter or two, how am I to trust you with my valuable reading-time not to continue to bore me throughout?
It is true that it's always nice to show instead of tell. We all like details. Details! Juicy, fat, details.

 I'm here to say that though much of what the modern writer is taught is good advice, pleasure remember that it is just advice after all. It is someone else's idea of how to you ought to write. Perhaps this other person is more qualified than you to say what sells, what readers like, and what will attract the attention of a worthwhile publisher. But when it comes down to whether modern taste is Holy Writ, I'm here to say it is not. To illustrate my point: at a coffee shop the other day I chose an old, weathered book off the community shelf. I picked this book because the illustrations looked similar to those in a P.G. Wodehouse novel. My Ten Years in a Quandary by Robert Benchley. Between rounds of mancala I read the first two chapters. Nothing much happened in those two chapters. Gasp. Rob Bell would have a fit. But the book entertained me well enough to the point that I left a note inside at the place I left off for the next reader. How? Nothing happened! The plot did not advance in the slightest and I can hardly see how each sentence mattered to the whole of the book's events. Here's the secret power of this book and the best of the those in the old style: they didn't arrest a reader by virtue of action, but activity. Benchley's voice in the first two chapters of his book is anything but passive. It romps about with as much energy as The Hunger Games could possibly give, though in the latter you're thrown right into the midst of a world gone mad.
I also know from experience that I don't mind character-driven fiction. Sure I like things to happen and plot is terribly important. Glaring at you, The Notebook. But if the characters are well-drawn, the voice lively enough, and the story-world interesting, I am one-hundred percent okay with a sauntering pace. Just like I don't run marathons because I prefer walking and enjoying my surroundings (and let's be honest: I'd feel like I was dying), I almost prefer a story that, while well-constructed, leaves me time to savor the summer pace of its pages. I think of some of my favorite films (Cinderella, The Devil Wears Prada, The Help, Saving Mr. Banks, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Hundred-Foot Journey, Miss Potter, Master & Commander...) and realize that though plot is present and well-formed, the real reason I am invested is the strength and color of the characters.
I'd been throwing these thoughts around in my head and waiting for them to gel before writing a blog post when the final driftwood was thrown onto my seaside fire: Flannery O'Conner (yes, that paragon of all things Southern) gave me a lift in denouncing the prophetic law that the Modern Reader has tried to make of "Show, Don't Tell":

"All the sentences in Madame Bovary could be examined with wonder, but there is one in particular that always stops me in admiration. Flaubert has just shown us Emma at the piano with Charles watching her. He says, 'She struck the notes with aplomb and ran from top to bottom of the keyboard without a break. Thus shaken up, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard at the other end of the village when the window was open, and often the bailiff's clerk, passing along the highroad, bareheaded and in list slippers, stopped to listen with his sheet of paper in his hand.' The more you look at a sentence like that the more you can learn from it."

Yes, dear Flannery O'Connor. We can learn that the editor at Harper & Row would fling the papers into Flaubert's satchel and say, "Try again some other time when you've learned the market." Yet one of the most well-respected writers of Southern fiction goes on past the quote I shared and continues to praise a very obvious lapse of POV and showing vs. telling. Now I don't mind so much. I'm accustomed to that kind of description and that kind of description is, in fact, what I tried for when I first began writing. But such a thing would admittedly not stand up in today's court again a jury of modern readers. I suppose the point of all this is to show you that there is both wisdom and error in the advice given to the modern writer. Wisdom, in that the current marketplace wants a certain thing and if you want to engage in commerce, you must learn to cater to their whims. Error, in that the modern way is the only way to write well. Flannery O'Connor reminded me that in each era there is, speaking of literary technique, a temporary right and wrong. Each era's faux pas were different. Our era's are one thing...fifty years from now it will be another.

For now....just try not to write like Flaubert.

Goodbye.

Never say goodbye.
As the rain falls, silvering a field green with wheat. As small drops on a breeze sift onto the back of your neck, refuse.

The goodbye wells up in my heart, thrusts itself forward for notice, and the sky weeps for me. This melancholy strokes my soul with a meaningful fingers and says....what?
That it is time?
That old things must change?
No, the rain sings a many-tongued song but it is not that. The meaning lies just beyond my reckoning but the body needs no words to feel the import of this painful pleasure. Have you ever worked till blisters form? A hot, swollen testament to purpose, a work completed.
Well done, old girl, well done.

This rain blisters me. Under old callouses a new but familiar pain forms, swelling to the chafing of the true things it flings earthward. A cardinal flaunts on a gaunt pine-branch and its small voice is as sharp and acid-sweet as the rain: a goodbye that won't come.

Train-song drives upwind, iron wheels hammering the same tune. Away, away, away, away. How I want to reply, "I will away with you!"
But I can't. Never say goodbye to good things. To good friends. To best times. I never do. How could I?

Harder, fleeter, faster fall the raindrops. The pain intensifies, becomes sweeter and firmer in its vintage. Goodbye, goodbye!
I could say it. If my soul was more tender or a deal harder I could say that dolorous word, goodbye. But I think that if I hold onto Them, those things I cannot set free, They will stay. Goodbye would be easy if I did the leaving. But while the song drums "away," it is a gypsy-call for Them. Those things I feel I must keep. The song has two words...
"Remain," is mine.

Like rain, my word spreads feather-light mist over my eyes and soul.
Let them away. You remain here, for here is your place. Say goodbye.
But I cannot. Never say goodbye. Goodbye is a severe word. If they go away, who promises I will see them again? Who promises I will not remain obedient and empty-handed and absent-hearted?

A train shouts through the mizzle: away, away, away, away.
And again.
And again.

I shiver. A divisive pleasure and pain this is, though as dusk falls I have learned its tongue, dividing my will in shards of yes and no.
Remain.
I will. I believe and trust it is right.
Away. Give them away.
But can I? Greater than a fear of tangible evil is the thought of being left behind, forgotten, shrugged out of like a coat They once loved but grew too large for. Must we keep growing? Can we not stay as we are? Remain young and safe so They will never have to give me away? I would like that. We could walk in this rain together and balance on the tracks along the railroad and staunch its song. Never have to say goodbye. We could all stay. Would that be so wrong? We are so happy.

More rain. Green now yawned up by slate and darkness. If my heart would not grow, would not breed such eager dreams, maybe the rain could not chafe its palms. We all accept the good agony of a heart's sprawling expansion, though it sometimes makes to burst the chest apart.
Oh. That is why we grow bigger, isn't it?
If we could not, would our frightened, brittle child-bones crush the thrumming soul? Or would the heart grow like cancer and force the indolent frame apart? The frame that would not say goodbye, at war with itself.

My lane is a pale blue horseshoe in the grass. Rain trots down the gutter and asks again:
Won't you say goodbye?

Will it hurt? I don't like to hurt.
Will I be lonely? I can't bear to be alone.
Will I ever get it back?
But the rain has only one double-edged sword: away, remain. It is my choice to let us grow or to make us suffocate in a body ill-shaped for the shape of our souls. If I say goodbye, if They never come back, will I miss Them? Will other days and people and times come to fill the emptiness They left? And will the day arrive when "remain" will have become too small a word for my life? And will They have to say "away" to me?

Down, down comes the mist and all glistens in the gloaming. Maybe, soon, I could say goodbye.

My blisters cool in the rain.

Away, away, but you: remain.

And somehow it's enough.

April's Chatterbox: Walk it Off

No, I haven't forgotten.

What?

I saw you looking at me that way.

I have not forgotten that it is April and that we are midway through already and that I haven't set up this month's Chatterbox topic. I have taken artistic license with time-frames this month, and you already knew that. So. Without another delay, I am here to announce that April's Chatterbox topic is...

Travel-by-Foot

 I am allowed to be arbitrary, you know. This is my Chatterbox and my blog-space. The decision to label April's topic as "travel-by-foot" might have a little bit to do with the fact that I took a five-mile walk (at least that far) out in the countryside this morning with a friend. April is a time perfect for taking long walks, at least in Virginia. The year hasn't heated up so much that she's all sweaty and humid. Pollen will soon settle down (the pine-pollen is KILLING me today), dogwoods bloom like forgotten lace handkerchiefs along the roadsides, and if you intend to get any sort of outdoor walking into your year, you'd be wise to get out now, because Summer temperatures strangle that idea. Plus, walking along the road gives one the opportunity for many new experiences. I met an interesting old fellow Sunday afternoon, and you never can tell what'll happen by going by foot in a world overrun with autos. :)

When you've written your Chatterbox piece (see tag at bottom of post for details), link up with the linky-dink and we can enjoy each other's work. Also, it's #wordplaywednesday so if you have anything of that nature, tag it up and share on social media! Cheers!

(Travel-by-Foot)

Humans: They Amuse Me

April, my loves. April has come with all of its busy glory and I have to say that the front half of it has been impossibly full. For one thing, my hours at work were slightly beefed, I snuck down to Atlanta to surprise my best friend, Katie (Lady Alis of The Windy Side of Care), Easter happened while I was down there, and then I came back to play hostess and fundraiser and help my sisters organize, prep, create art for and throw a swanky soiree silent-auction to benefit our upcoming missions trip to Romania. All that to say, I have not written anything except people-watching sketches this month. I feel slightly bad for even admitting that until I realized that living life also qualifies as research. Meeting and appreciating new people helps one build realistic characters. Hashing through life situations with friends helps one understand and portray nuances. And I think we're all on board with the idea that travel broadens the horizons of one's mind an awful lot. So maybe April has been full of useful and unusual methods of research.

I am currently in the mood to ask each of you to drop what you are doing and start up a people-watching journal. I can't tell you what a treat it was to drag mine out on the flight from Norfolk to Atlanta and read back on all of the wonderful humans I have come in contact with since I began to write about them in December. It is such a treasure because each description, however slight, never fails to conjure up an exact image of that moment in that place. Take this, for example:

"A man with shy eyes an a gentle smile and his young daughter are sitting across from me. He has good hair and is in his prime but has no ring. His daugher is shy around him, leading me to believe he is divorced, not widowed. Very handsome but sad-looking, somehow. His daughter has his profile and their eyes share the same quiet humor. She is about twelve, he probably in the late half of his thirties."

When I read this, I can picture the exact table in the Busch Gardens Fest Haus at which I sat when I encountered this man. It is a fascinating way to retain experiences as well as practice one's descriptive powers.

"The man is so terribly conscious of himself. Not self-conscious, but apparently confident that all eyes are ever upon him. I dislike him so strongly and I am unsure whether it is mainly his real character I despise or whether I merely resent the fact that he expects homage paid...One fears to ask oneself what sort of life he leads that he can afford to leave all so flippantly and gang tae the hielands on his ridiculous whims. (He) is proud of being a dilettante and I have no patience for it."

My entries range from the frustrated (above) to the amused (below) and everywhere in between. But all through I find myself content with playing the game of capturing likenesses of as many people as I can in words. I think of it as my hobby, sort of in the same manner as photographer Brandon Stanton's Humans of New York project.

"...When we finally ordered, Maryanna mentioned a shrimp allergy and he grew so incredibly excited.
'Oh, I totally understand,' he crooned. 'I'm allergic to everything under the sun--lactose intolerant, gluten intolerant--I'm also a bit of a hypochondriac. And I was eating shrimp the other day and my lips started itching and I am so worried I am developing a shellfish allergy.'"

I usually keep the entries brief, though some require longer explanations if I take time to set the stage of the interaction. Of course it is inconvenient to keep such a thing up; I realize that. I learned the discipline required in the first year I went to Romania and religiously kept my travel journal. But I count my people-watching book a valuable tool. Not only does it serve as an opportunity to improve my non-fiction writing skills and keep my goal of writing something every day, but it also gives me an entire volume of characters to choose at will for my stories. Do I need someone unusual, or a funny interaction for a scene? With a people-watching journal kept faithfully, I ought to have plenty from which to choose a case that fits. Let it be a lesson, dear folks: there are many reasons keeping your eyes and ears open (and remembering what you see and hear) is of value. Also, never underestimate the power of smiling at strangers and looking approachable. You never can tell what sort of interesting humans are waiting for a chance to meet you!