The Gods Said, "Fred"
(Special dedication to longtime club mentor and sponsor Fred Feagin)
Loki the trickster hied to Valhalla,
Home of Great Odin (what, you thought Allah?).
Loki was angry, his mind was at odds,
"Creation is not for humans, but gods!
Forging true beauty is labor divine,
A tough job indeed, but one that is mine."
Lord Odin laughed long, and he shook his head.
"Loki," asked he, "What on Earth have you read?"
The trickster-in a manner infernal-
Held up a book, a poetry journal.
"Amateur writers from TSUD,
Are weaving with words-with no help from me!"
And so the game's rules were therewith made clear;
Loki would whisper in every man's ear:
Thwarting our writers with school degrees,
Hard grammar classes and rough spelling bees,
Critics and pundits and editors mean.
Blunting young talents that once were quite keen.
Odin, for his part, had only one move.
To give man a chance: his spirit to prove.
Summoning forces eldritch and pagan.
He sent a hero, noble Fred Feagin.
A teacher, a mentor, leader, and guide,
Gentle of manner but forceful inside.
Fred greeted us on the day we first came,
Encouraging all and knowing each name.
With praise he was large, with blame he was small.
Under his guidance we grew strong and tall.
"That's good," he'd say smiling, "Keep writing more."
On wings made of words he taught us to soar.
The battle now over, victory's ours.
Loki's schemes were no match for Fred's powers.
Mission accomplished, Fred can stop fighting:
His legacy will keep writers writing.
Words
by Teresa Neville
I love words. Not the shiny store-bought kind but the over-loved with ragged edges kind;
The kind that one finds in a thrift store with softly worn spots where the true meaning
shows through, threads bare tossed aside as trite or passé.
The kinds of words that children string together like popcorn on a garland to decorate
their simple world. The words that some aged and skilled quilter patches together
in colorful patterns, sentences punctuated by drops of blood from the poet’s pen-pricked
soul.
The kinds of words carved out with sweat in the dead of night for the sculptures own
pleasure, having seen the figure in the plain white sheet and set upon it enraptured to
release its hidden glory.
Not the kinds of words stamped out on cards by machines, typeset for passionless form
and corrections, not those that are meant to cloy with clever interpretation, like
syrup too thick to swallow.
No I love those words that are knitted like a well-worn scarf, knitted together with love
and feeling, endless nights spent with needles clicking in careful consideration of the
wearing and the warmth those words will bring.
Your Garden
by Lois Coker
Graceful ballet of limbs and leaves…
The smell of sweet honey wafts on the breeze;
The musical drone of hardworking bees…
A myriad of sounds, a plethora of sweetness;
A gentle reminder of beauty and neatness…
Fresh earthy odor of new spaded dirt;
Rows freshly laid out like buttons on a shirt…
Take your shoes off, walk barefoot and feel
Cool, soothing softness ‘tween your toes and your heel.
Let your eyes feast on sunshine, your heart feast on dreams;
Let memories assail you of long-forgotten schemes.
Seat yourself gently somewhere in the shade…
See in your mind the garden you’ve made.
The feelings you have in this garden are rare…
Close your eyes—thank God that His beauty you share.
Reprise
by Joseph Evans
It is that time
of year you don’t have time
for me. When everything is beginning,
budding green and new, something
dulls the burnished glass between
our clasped hearts, placing
wide eyes on meticulous lines
and splotched ink. I can’t help
but feel a decaying
of space, connected to nothing, touching
my own limp fingers. What is there
to hold now that your hands are occupied? My wrist bones
are hollowed like a rest, a break over the bar line, slow
as a musical ease
at the end of a phrase. Always
ending, perhaps with a bow, a folding
at the waist that seizes
nothing. Gould’s fingers on ivory keys
resemble your own intrinsic pose,
hunched and swaying, making women swoon,
at the first note sounded.
You wear gloves in July and Soak
your hands just like him;
his pill popping
habit crouches around the corner
of your life and there’s too much blood
in your brain, waiting.
It isn’t Bach he’s playing
and you play your own
imagination recorded on tape
for me because you wanted me
to have something, each voice
of this lifelong fugue giving way
to the next part.
I swear you’re his incarnate
and I’m the one he never fell in love with.
But I suppose it’s too late now to start
from the grave, the stopped heart.
John A's Fury
by Steven Page
Georgia knew it hopeless from the very beginning. She felt the imminent failure on some deep primal level that evaded words with devilish cunning. Thousands of slaves had tried to escape the plantations. Most of them never got to experience the very thing that they were even escaping for, as they were either recaptured or worse, killed by one of any number of dangers out there. How were they supposed to cross rivers that were three thousand miles wide or deal with those evil Canadian crows that swooped down and plucked out black folks eyeballs? The simple fact was that though life was hard under the control of the owners, it was still life. The owners took care of them, for the most part at least. She had been safe back there in that place. In fact, she had been privileged to gain more attention that most slaves would have ever wanted, gaining favor with Mr. Maddingly, the plantation owner with her perfect cheekbones and mocha complexion. Mr. Maddingly had proved to be a fair and honest man, and treated his slaves with almost unheard of dignity. He and most of the plantation owners around him would keep their slaves safe so long as the slaves weren’t troublemakers or rabble-rousers. And now here she was, shaking her head as if that would help clear the nagging doubts that harried her like a flight of vultures.
She looked up ahead the scant five feet or so to see John A forging a path for them and her fears relented a little, for just as she had known failure was bound to happen, John A. refused to consider even that particular possibility of failure. He was like that- a handsome smile as broad as his shoulders and warm intelligent eyes that hinted of mystic knowledge. His infectious enthusiasm could spread faster than wildfire in a dry cotton-field. He had often told her before leaving that first time, “Oh we’s gon be free, Georgie! Even if’n it kills me, we’s gon be free.” In those days she had always simply placed a gentle delicate finger to his generous lips when he got excited like that. He would kiss her finger tenderly, but the fire in his eyes would never waver.
Those were the days before he had run away that first time, escaping the lashes and chains. That was before he had disappeared for near three years. That was before Georgia had borne her child. The two of them had never really talked about where he had been or what he had been doing during those three long years. Georgia had worked up the nerve only once to ask him and then it had been he who placed a finger to her lips and reassured her that he had simply been off preparing their way with a cryptic little smile. She would never push the issue for fear that he would ask her the same and she knew that she could not look him in the eye and explain the impossibility of their child to him, and graciously he never interrogated her about the little baby boy that could not be his, but that he treated as son anyway.
John A. had been recaptured while returning to her, and though Mr. Maddingly allowed his boys, Thomas and Andrew to punish him severely, the fire in his eyes would not go out. In fact, it grew more intense with the beatings each passing day until finally on the third day, Mr. Maddingly called the boys off of John A. to let him heal a bit before consigning him to work on the chain gang instead of sending him back out into the fields. When he came in that day from working on the chain gang, his eyes told more than his vocabulary could or ever would. She had tried to reason with him, tried to tell him that it was just one of those days that everybody had every now and then.
“Hun you knew’d they was gon be up to something cuz they gots to show the rest ev’body that they’s in charge. Ya know that. It’s gon get better hun, it is.”
“No, Georgie. It ain’t gon git no better ‘til we get gone from dis place. It ain’t gon git no better for me, an’ it ain’t gon git no better for our boy. No, baby, we gots to get gone, and we got’s to get gone yestaday.”
“It’s gon be different John A., I promise. You’ll see it will!”
“I said no Georgie! What part a dat don’t you git? It ain’t gon be no different tomorrow or a hundred years from tomorrow. Not for me and damn sure not for that boy!”
“John A., we can’t leave in this kinda weather! It’s too cold. We’ll freeze ta death. The baby’ll freeze to death! Babies ain’t got no business out in cold like dis.”
“Babies ain’t got no business not knowin’ who dey momma or dey daddy is neitha!”
The words hit her like a bolt of lightning and something in her caught the fire in John A.’s eyes. Somehow, he had gotten her to do something that she had forgotten about. Foolishly, she felt hope begin to spring in her heart, even though her mind and everything logical told her it was foolish to allow that. Somehow, John A. had moved her and she gave herself over to his fevered desire to escape north. The two didn’t say another word to each other, only packed furiously the few belongings they had, bundled themselves and the baby, and stole away under the New Moon’s absent gaze.
The sudden appearance of the three hooded specters and the cacophony of hooves paralyzed her with an unearthly fear. John A. had led them to a vast open field and there was no way they were going to make it to the tree line on the other side before the riders would catch up to them. They were riding steeds black as the night and she was sure that those steeds breathed the smoke of some hellish fire. The torches these hooded specters carried gave their flowing white forms a malevolent orange tint. Georgia was certain that hell had indeed spat forth these pursuers. There, almost in the middle of the clearing was a single large Oak and thankfully a few dead limbs on the ground. John A. grabbed Georgia by the arm and yelled, “Git gone Georgie! Take da baby and run!” He pushed her on ahead of him before turning to face the riders, swiftly arming himself with a dead tree branch, his very posture the picture of defiance and something else, though Georgia could not quite figure what it might be.
The riders howled in a manner all too human at the sight of John A.'s defiance though. They circled him like a pack of hungry wolves, as if they were toying with him to heighten his fear. The effect was lost upon John A. He set his jaw and swung wildly at the horses keeping them and their riders at bay.
“Ain’t this here the nigger that got sick and vomited all over your pants the morning Andy when we put ‘em on their knees and you wuz gonna feed ‘em that sausage fer breakfast?”
The other two riders howled with laughter, their taunts more severe as they drew their circle closer and closer around him. Georgia felt more than she saw that moment. She could literally feel john A. rage as he brandished his tree limb warding the riders from coming after her. She heard a deafening boom as the pistol’s bullet ripped through air and into John A’s leg. She smelled the gunpowder foul the crisp night air. She froze and turned back, her eyes unable to disengage themselves from the horrible events taking place at the base of the oak.
John A. swung his tree limb another couple of times before catching the heel of one of the riders in the back of the head. They swarmed about him like angry bees before finally, mercifully he fell, his body beaten to a bloody pulp before one of the riders dismounted and produced a thick rope. The noose was already tied and he placed it roughly about John A’s neck. One of the other riders looped the other end of the rope over a one of the Oak’s branches and rode off, the rope tightening all too quickly, then hoisted John A’s broken body like a bloody banner in the firelight. Somehow she could still see John A’s eyes as they implored her, “RUN!”
But Georgia could not turn away and run. She could only stare in horror as the life seemed to drain out of John A. She couldn’t remember exactly when it happened, but the baby was crying now. The cries brought her back to reality. She knew the riders would take her ever as John A. watched dangling helplessly from the oak tree that so resembled the scars upon his back. She knew as she looked into his eyes that he was not angry with her and it was the first time since he had been back that she saw what she finally came to realize as forgiveness in his eyes. He struggled against his bonds, kicking and writhing, the fire in those eyes never dying. In her mind she heard him, “We’s gon be free, Georgie. You just watch!”
The riders all laughed at John A.’s futile efforts to break free from the noose.
“I tell ya, they ain’t got the sense ta know when deys ‘bout dead.”
“Yeah you’d think he’d have the good sense to realize he’s jus makin it worse. Damn fool!”
It seemed as if an eternity passed before her legs finally responded to John A’s pleading eyes. She turned and bolted! Her legs seemed to have forgotten their weariness as fear slipped its icy tendrils around her heart.
“Oh oh Andy, looks like Dave’s girl’s tryin’ to git away.”
“I’m sho Dave’s got somethin’ special for her, Tommy.”
“Don’t you fellas worry ‘bout her. I’m gonna teach her a lesson or two ‘bout runnin.”
Georgia kept running. She knew the horseman would be riding to capture her and she knew she should be afraid of him, but she wasn’t just afraid of him. The rider was a man, afterall. Something else was coming. She had seen it in John A’s eyes. She felt it as the hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end. She could feel them rising in horrific anticipation. She heard the hooves of rider bearing down upon her.
The blow across her back still managed to surprise her and she tumbled headlong ungracefully, using her body to cushion her precious cargo. For the most part, it worked. She would no doubt be awful bruised, but the high cry of the baby told her that she had succeeded in keeping the fall from killing him.
“Why’d you try to run off Georgia? Didn’t I take good care of you?”
The rider dismounted his voice a curious almost impossible mixture of tenderness and menace. “Don’t you know you belong to me, girl? You’re mine!”
Georgia shook her head in terror, unable to form any words as the ghost in the white sheets became all too human, removing his hood. “You gon always be mine!”
“But Massa…”
He was upon her with a savage quickness that defied everything she had ever known of his civilized manners. He tore the baby from her arms with frightening ease, all the while the baby’s cries growing louder in the still night air. The tenderness drained from his voice leaving only an oily menace. “Is this what did it? Is this the thing that drove you to even dare think there would come a day when you wouldn’t belong to me?” He shook his head slowly. “No. No, Georgia. No amount of running, no fancy speeches, no empty proclamations, no amount of Yankee soldiers are going to be able to save you. The only thing that’s gonna grant you release is the grave!”
Georgia felt the tears roll down her cheek, felt the rage well up in her heart and before her mind could grasp it, flung herself at him in a murderous rage. But it was too late. Her baby boy fell lifeless to the ground, his frail neck snapped unceremoniously by the ghost who had become a man who had become an inhuman monster all in the span of less than two minutes. She felt a powerful backhand against her cheek as he easily warded off her attack. Her rage could not carry her and she did what was left to her. Her words spat venom. “Curse you!”
A dangerous grin lit his face. “So. You’re some kinda witch now, hunh? I’m supposed to be scared now? You think some backwards curse is gonna scare me?”
Georgia began to answer him, but found that she could not speak in the presence of the impossible. Behind him, John A’s body loomed like an ill omen, the rope about his neck torn. The voice that came from it was more like an unholy triumvirate than a single voice. The disjointed voices cut the night air with a tone as cold as dry ice and as palpable as gravel, “We are the Furies, and your fear of us is insignificant. We will destroy you.” The certainty in the trio’s voice was unnerving.
Mr. Maddingly whirled about to meet this new threat and found that he could barely keep his dinner down from the sight that greeted him. Two lifeless bodies crashed into him, knocking him backwards to the ground and in effect pinning him. Instinctively, he pushed one of the bodies off of his torso, but his hands pushed right through the skin, through a mess of shattered bones, and finally against some slick and bloody internal organ before finally he managed to shove that body off of him. He kicked the other body off of his legs and Andy’s entrails spilled out of a nearly seamless cut from the base of his neck down to his navel on onto Maddingly’s lap.
“You’ve got blood on your hands David Oliver Maddingly.”
Tears were running down Maddingly’s face now he was so overwhelmed with sheer terror, “But she’s just a slave girl. You can’t be answering a slave girl. Why she ain’t even human!”
Hands slick with blood reached for and grabbed the colt revolver. His grasp slipped. His fingers clutched desperately at the errant weapon before finally gaining purchase and gripping too hard upon the cold metal of the trigger. The gun went off before clearing his holster. The horses bolted as white-hot pain shot from his right foot, up the leg and spine to his brain at the speed of thought along with a terrifying realization. With the horses gone, and his foot blown to bits, escape was not looking like a very viable option. He decided he had to wake himself from this terrible nightmare and shut his eyes tightly. But the feel of the revolver did not go away, nor did the pain of his feet, nor the cold night air.
Slowly, deliberately he brought the colt revolver out of his holster and pointed it directly at John A’s chest. He squeezed the trigger. Again and again and again, he squeezed the trigger. The smell of gunpowder filled his nostrils. Smoke filled his vision. “Take that you…”
The hand reaching out of the smoke clutched his throat with supernatural speed and ferocity cutting his sentence short. Surely this was but John A’s corpse falling dead upon him and he would simply roll it off of him like he had done the other two corpses. Unfortunately for him the other two corpses had seemingly come to life as well and were holding his arms down while John A’s corpse pressed down upon him with preternatural strength. He began to see spots. He couldn’t breathe. In desperation, he brought his knee into what should have been John A’s groin. Where there should have been soft tissue though, there was a distinctly different feel. His vision cleared and his sanity instantly became suspect. A hideous hag of a corpse gripped his throat. The cock-eyed assailant left no doubt that these were the last minutes of his life. He felt the fingers dig into his neck; heard the sick tearing sound of his flesh. Soundless words poured out of his mouth. Kindly, the terrible corpse looked down upon him and answered his speechless question.
“Rescue? We do not rescue. We avenge.”
Mr. Maddingly died clutching at the remainder of his throat.
The three corpses rose in one smooth motion, looking nothing like the bodies they had once been. Where once there had been three demonic corpselike creatures now there were just three kindly old women.
“Why didn’t you save my baby?” Georgia’s grief and rage were unmistakable.
The old woman who had once been John A’s corpse turned to her. Only the eyes remained the same; they still possessed his fire and his sadness. The three bodies spoke in unison, “We’s free now Georgie. Go on now. We’s free. It was the only way.” Georgia shook her head in denial. “Go on now, Georgie. I didn’t spend three years gon from you to let it all fall apart. I learned to call the Kindly Ones, but the only way they would come is to avenge a blood debt. Don’t be mad at me. We’s free and Maddingly, well, he killed his own son, Georgie. The Kindly Ones wouldn’t allow that kinda sin ta go unpunished.”
Then the familiar fire in her eyes went out and her old voice said tenderly, “Run on along now dearie. It’s cold out here and you never know just what you’ll run into in woods like these.
A Visit to Grandma's House
by Tracey Kittsz
I had gone to visit my grandparents. When I arrived my grandpa was in the back yard enjoying one of his favorite pastimes, working on another old car. I spoke briefly and went inside to visit with my grandmother for a while. The conversation was light and pleasant, as it usually is. I thought nothing of it when she inquired about my father’s health. “He’s all right I suppose,” I replied. “I haven’t spoken to him for a few weeks. . . Why?”
“I talked to your mother this morning. She said he wasn’t feeling well,” said grandma. And that was that. I didn’t give it another thought. Since moving out several years ago, my parents and I hadn’t spoken as often; however, I had always been close to my father and guessed if it were really serious, he’d tell me.
A few hours later, I said my goodbyes, and as I was leaving my grandfather made a suggestion. “Why don’t we take it for a test drive?” he said indicating the car he had been so diligently working on. “Sure,” I replied. “Why not?”
We drove out of the yard and down the road. Now, the old dirt road that runs in front of my grandparents’ house is a straight shot from their house to the stop sign at the end of the road, which is a good distance. We rode down to the sign turned around to go back when the car stopped.
Grandpa asked me to get out and push. I just wanted to get back, so I agreed. As soon as the car cranked, surprisingly he took off and left me in a cloud of dust. So, there I stood. It was dark by now and getting colder. I was furious. Just when I had decided to walk back, I noticed an old tractor beside the road, one exactly like my dad has owned for years.
I walked over to the tractor, climbed up in the seat, and was glad to find the key already in the ignition. The key turned, but the engine would not crank. There wasn’t enough power in the battery. Then I found to my dismay that there were pedals on the footrest which I assumed were to pump up the engine. I began pressing the pedals as hard as I could. It was pitch black outside now except for the full moon, which I had just noticed.
The pedals were not like those on a bicycle; they did not turn; you had to keep pushing them in, like a stair climber, only backwards. I kept doing this until the headlights finally came on. This is when I became extremely alarmed. I saw lying on the other side of the road what I thought was a large black dog. Looking closer, I could see it was a wolf, but grossly oversized. My heart fluttered so rapidly with this realization that I thought I might faint. He could easily have weighed 150 pounds, or more. He raised his head and looked at me, and seemingly uninterested, put his head back down over his paws.
I began pumping the pedals harder and harder, trying to crank the engine. The wolf stood up and began trotting slowly towards me. His slow motion saunter said I wouldn’t get far. I was so scared that I could not breathe. He was almost close enough to touch now, within a few feet of the tractor. Then when I thought he would leap upon me…the engine cranked.
The tractor took off immediately. I was pumping those pedals as hard and fast as I could. It was then that I heard him behind me. Click-ety-clack…click-ety-clack, click-ety-clack. I could hear his claws clicking on the sand. No matter how fast I went, I could still hear him, too close behind. Suddenly the sounds of his footsteps changed from that of an animal, to the sound of a man, two feet hitting the ground. I was too terrified to look behind me to see how close he was.
My grandmother’s house was now in sight. All at once, my feet would not move! What’s wrong? “Damn!” One of the pedals was stuck. I jumped off the tractor and began to run with everything I had in me to the gate that surrounds her house. The gate is made of brick about five feet up and then there are bars that rise on top of the brick for about ten feet. While I was running I pulled the key to the gate out of my bra. I’d had a key to grandmothers’ gate for as long as I could remember, but not the house.
I was running so hard that I slammed into the gate rather than slow down. I quickly unlocked the gate and banged it shut behind me. I ran to the back door of the house. It was locked. What had I done to deserve this? I sat down in the bushes and waited. What was I waiting for? Death, I suppose . . . and it was coming closer. God only knows how long I sat there waiting, afraid of what I might see, and still out of breath.
Then as I peeked through the bushes, I watched in amazement as the thing that had been chasing me approached the gate. It couldn’t be. Could it? I watched him as he looked the fence up and down, sizing it up. My God….it was a werewolf. There was no other explanation. Your mind tells you that things like this can’t be possible, but in this type of situation, you tend to listen to your eyes.
He thrust back his head then and let out a blood chilling howl. He then proceeded to jump the entire 15-foot fence and come into the yard. You know that feeling you get when you’ve had to go to the bathroom for far too long and suddenly you realize you might not make it? Yeah, that’s the feeling I had. If only I could get in the damn house!
Just then I remembered the window above the sink in the downstairs kitchen. I needed to find something to stand on so that I could reach it. From where I was sitting, the window was just around the corner. I felt a drop or two of rain begin to fall as I sat there watching him. He hadn’t seen me…yet.
The creature lifted his nose to the wind, trying to find my scent. I think I stopped breathing for a moment. I knew if I sat there much longer, he would zero in on me. Just then, like an answered prayer, the heavens broke loose from whatever ties had bound them. The rain fell hard and unforgiving against my skin. It would help to mask my scent. Perhaps it was the distraction I needed.
I began sliding backwards across the mud. If I could just stay low and scoot around the side of the house, I might be able to find a way in. Finally, I reached the edge of the house. Slowly I stood up, all the while watching him, still sniffing the air. Lightning flashed bright and clear as day . . . and I knew he saw me.
There was no time to get in the house now. I tore across the backyard, stumbling and clawing my way through the rain and mud. There is an old barn out back and I ran for it as best I could. I couldn’t hear how close he was. The rain and thunder rang in my ears. Every time the lightning flashed, I knew he saw me. I had to get inside, somehow. The barn door, when I reached it, was unlocked. Inside, I climbed to the loft, kicking the ladder down behind me. By the time he found it in the dark, I would be making my escape. I waited for him to open the door. I was afraid to look out between the lightning flashes to find him. I was certain; he would find me as well.
It seemed like an eternity later when I heard the door swing wide. Whether it was blown open by the storm, or by the werewolf, I could not tell. Either way, he was inside. I grabbed the rope that ran from the loft to just above the ground outside. Looking out over the yard, through the flashes of lightning, I could see an old bucket. The storm must have blown it there. It was just tall enough for me to stand on to reach the kitchen window. If I waited for the thunder, perhaps he wouldn’t hear me hit the ground. It was wet and muddy and I knew I would splash.
At last the lightning flashed and I swung free from the loft, landing with a graceful smack in the middle of the puddle just as the thunder began to rumble. I took off again, nearly falling over as I grabbed the bucket on my mad dash to the kitchen window. When I jumped on the bucket and realized, I had nothing to break the window with. I looked back across the yard and in a flash, I saw him standing in the doorway of the barn.
I hurriedly tore my shirt off and wrapped it around my right hand. The adrenaline rush must have been something, because I didn’t feel anything when I shattered the glass. Reaching through the broken window, I flipped the latch. My hands were in the sink now and I was wriggling through the window as quickly as possible. I turned around, sitting in the sink, to try and get my feet through. He was almost to the window. Just as I snatched my feet through, he slammed against what was left of the window. He didn’t need the bucket.
I screamed at the sight. His face was a snarling atrocity of teeth, but somehow…human and hauntingly familiar. I drew back with my still bandaged right hand and hit him in the face, HARD. I felt that one. He drew back probably more from the shock than from any pain that might have been inflicted. Either way, he couldn’t fit through the small window.
I climbed out of the sink and ran down the hall. Where had they gone? My grandparents had evaporated, or so it would seem. The gun cabinet was in the back bedroom. Lacking yet another key, I smashed the glass door. I grabbed a double-barreled shotgun and some bullets, and went up to the second floor of the house, hoping to get a better view from the second-story balcony. Walking out in the rain onto the balcony, I looked out. Having long since given up on fitting through the tiny kitchen window, he had now made his way back into the front yard, yet again, he saw me. He walked purposefully closer to the house.
I believe he had been just about to give up until he saw me standing there. I backed up against the door, loaded the shotgun, and positioned myself to shoot anything that came on to the balcony. Just then the werewolf who had been chasing me leaped up onto the balcony. This view was much more intimidating. He was huge. His legs were so toned they seemed to be knotted with muscle. His chest bulged and rippled with power. His arms hung by his sides like thick cords of rope tensed to snap at a moment’s notice. Suddenly I came to my senses and realized I had to shoot him.
I took aim at his head and fired. The werewolf jerked violently to the right side where he had been shot. He did not fall down. Instead he turned back to face me. The sight was horrifying. There was only a hole where his right eye should have been, a hole that I could see straight through.
How could he remain standing with a hole in his head? Was there any truth in the legend about a silver bullet? If so, I was out of luck. Even worse, I only had one shot left. I quickly shot his left leg blowing away half of his huge calf muscle down to the bone. Only now did he really seem to notice me again, and to my horror and amazement, began limping towards me.
I reached for bullets to reload my gun and dropped one leaving me with only one shot. There was no time to go for more bullets. I shot him in the side – another hole. Though it wasn’t this that moved him, he did turn around.
He began to limp back to the ledge of the balcony and fell off. I ran to see where he fell. He appeared to be dead. I was going to make sure. After grabbing some more bullets, I went downstairs. It was then that I made a classic mistake. By classic, I mean a mistake that anyone else would have seen coming. I walked up to the body.
He had fallen face down; the muscles of his back were incredible, the clawed feet, and thick hair. What a monstrous sight to behold lying in your grandmother’s front yard. Still I was struck with awe. I didn’t think something like this could be real. Something about the creature was still vaguely familiar. My curiosity got the better of me and I moved closer. A moment ago, I could have sworn he wasn’t breathing, and maybe he wasn’t.
His hand reached out faster than I could move away and snatched me off my feet. I went sprawling in the mud. My head pounded with the violence of hitting the ground. Reaching behind my head, I found the rock that I had landed on. I tried to push up on to my elbows. My vision blurred and I collapsed back against the cold wet ground. I could hear him sliding to a sitting position.
I looked up at the falling rain and awaited my death. I could hear his breathing close beside me, and felt the cold steel of the gun still in my hand, but I couldn’t remember if it was loaded or not. The world was a nauseating sea of confusion.
Pain splintered through my battered head. I put all the effort I could into getting a better grip on the gun. I felt his hand on my knee. He was pulling himself closer to my face. His claws dug into my thigh. If I didn’t pick the gun up soon, he would be too close. There was no way to be sure where I was aiming. Picking up the gun, I fired to my right where he had been lying, then lost all consciousness.
When I awoke, it was morning, but the rain had not stopped. Looking around, I realized I was laying on my grandmothers’s sofa. I sat up quickly much to the dismay of my aching head. Then I remembered what had happened. MY GOD, where was the body? I panicked. Surely I had killed him. He was right THERE, beside me . . . surely.
“Are you all right, my dear?” The voice was familiar, but my head hurt too badly for it to register it immediately.
“Mom?” I asked. She came over to sit beside me and began examining my head the way mothers do. “What happened?” I murmured.
“Your grandmother found you this morning in the yard, unconscious, bleeding from the head and carrying one of your grandfather’s guns,” she said matter-of-factly. She paused and her words grew more frazzled. “Now, honey, I have to ask you . . . why in the world did you shoot your father last night?”
-SPECIAL SELECTION-
From the TSUD Archives of Wiregrass History and Culture
Hog Killing Time
by Helen Cook Lamb
Among the nostalgic memories so deeply imprinted upon the minds of West Floridians, those of Miss Lucy’s generation, and those of Don’s generation, is that memory which accompanies the first cold snap of winter. Such memory attacks its victim wherever he may be. It may strike the high-powered executive as he swivels between telephones on the one side and buzzers on the other, behind a period desk in a luxuriously furnished office. I think it has struck many times behind pyramids of paint cans while Don helped plan a decorative scheme for a Jacksonville home or business building. And I am sure that it finds a welcome reception in the minds and hearts of those who have reached that age at which they lay aside all endurance tests and take life with necessary ease.
Regardless of one’s financial, social, or physical status, that back-home thought creeps in with that early chill which buttons the coat and rolls the collar high. That memory, so vivid, yet of events so many years in the past, and probably many, many miles distant, is “Hog Killing Time.”
Hog Killing Time, in its true and literal meaning, is fast becoming a memory to all West Floridians. Artificial freezing methods have supplanted nature’s cold storage system which sometimes fails in Florida’s unpredictable and now-publicized “unusual” weather.
Today, Hog Killing Time is my time.
When a farmer has a nice, fat pig for family consumption which has been fattened and firmed with the peanuts and corn grown on his own land, or when a city man has a yearn for fresh pork and trades with a brother farmer for a fat little shoat, that “unclean” four-footed animal is decapitated whether the weather be 80 degrees or 18 degrees. It is then cleaned, and cut into squares, cubes, triangles, strips, and hunks, each requiring a special culinary preparation and each having a distinct flavor. Such parts as are not desired for immediate table use are methodically wrapped in individual packages, labeled and packed deep in the home freezer or in the community freezing plant which has lockers for rent to individuals on a yearly basis.
That supply of fresh pork is invaded according to the dictates of the family appetites, or when guests are invited over for a family repast. Because of modern artificial freezing methods, there is no fear among the individual home packers of the toll which a summer day in winter might take from the meat supply.
However, during the Hog Killing Times of yesteryear with which Miss Lucy and Don are familiar, those “Times” being identical in nature although a generation apart, the only freezing method used was that provided by nature. From the reminiscent stories which Miss Lucy and Don like so well to exchange about their individual experiences, although tempered by their hard work which of necessity was a part of such undertakings.
In those days, when the first cold spell put in its appearance, a cold spell which gave promise of a few days of 30 to 40 degrees temperature, slaughtering begun. Usually, that period of Florida winter extended over the months of November, December, January and February.
Neighbors were called over to the home of another neighbor who had his hogs fattened and pinned, ready for slaughter. Some slaughterers called in relatives to help neighbors. Some called in share-croppers or tenant farm hands. Others called in help for a day’s hire. Everybody was busy at Hog Killing Time.
Many of such helpers were without experience, performing those duties that required no special training. Within that class of duties came the building of fires and the drawing of water from the 70- or 80-foot well from which the family supply of water was procured. Controlled and piped water was very rare.
Of such nature were the duties that Don performed when he was a little boy on the farm. But among the workers that took part in the hog killing were those who were skilled in the art of slaughtering and in the art of butchering. For each was done in a methodical manner. Such skill was acquired solely by trial and experience; there were no academic degrees underlying such particular technique. But all workers, skilled and unskilled, gathered together in the backyard of Mr. Slaughterer, whose back yard became a miniature packing house.
The gathering took place before daylight on such a winter day. The early morning frosty weather was bad on the workers, but good for the job.
First, a fire was built under the family wash-pot and the water for scalding the animal was heated. Then the hog’s throat was cut. When the water had reached the boiling point and the victim had breathed his last breath, the boiling water was quickly poured into the hogshead or turpentine barrel which had been buried in the ground in a slanting position, the mouth of the barrel resting even with the surface of the ground.
Immediately the hog was dipped, head first, into the barrel of boiling water, rolled, removed, reversed, and rolled again. These preliminary R’s were the fundamentals of hog killing. For upon this process depended the external cleansing of this animal which, during his life, had spent most of his time rooting in the mire.
The animal was then removed from its steaming bath and laid upon the pine straw bed which had been spread upon the ground at the mouth of the hogshead. Here it was scraped to remove the hair and the dirt from the skin. Then, after the sharp knife was wielded, the swine was reposed on the butcher table in a dozen, more or less, piles and pieces. Should the decedent’s spirit have descended upon this awesome sight, it probably would have given that grunt peculiar to its earthly family, so familiar to those over whose soil this animal had so recently rooted, and returned to its Great Beyond, disappointed in mankind and shocked at the gruesome act just performed by those whom he had believed, during his earthly sojourn, to be his friends.
But this backyard activity, on this chilly day, presented a different aspect to the by-standers, the participants, and those by whom the reminiscence is related today. It was a time of feasting. A bounteous supply of fresh meat graced the table at every meal, not only of the one who killed, but of the neighbors, for runners were sent for miles with pans of fresh pork as a gift from a friend or neighbor.
Through reciprocation, the various dishes prepared from fresh pork cuts were enjoyed throughout the winter by the neighborhood families. Helpers were usually paid in pork, as was their preference.
From one slaughtered swine comes an almost endless variety of dishes, each requiring a different preparation and seasoning, and each of an entirely different taste. The feet, head, and tail are sometimes boiled together until the meat and bones fall apart, and the meat is pressed into a solid cake known as hoghead cheese, or souce. Vinegar is sometimes added or the souce is served with vinegar. Or, the feet are boiled tender and eaten while hot; sometimes pickled and served cold.
The tails are cooked into a stew to which rice or rolled dumplings are added. The tongue is a boiled delicacy, chilled and sliced. The brains are scrambled with eggs, with a very distinct flavor. The head is cured by salt or smoke process, and the jowl is saved for New Year’s Day, when it is boiled with dried black-eyed peas. It is customary among southern folk to eat hog jowl and black-eyed peas cooked together, on the first day of the year, with the thought that the eating of such a dish would bring good luck to them throughout the year. Such a custom is also followed by many larger southern cities where the hog jowl is purchased from the supermarket rather than taken from the smokehouse, where the peas are purchased in cellophane bags rather than shelled from pods that have been hung in the smokehouse to dry.
Hams are cured and packed for future use, or they are baked while fresh with a cornbread dressing, and eaten while hot, or chilled and served with cold sweet potato. Don recalls very vividly those after-school lunches of ham and cold baked sweet potato, and how good they tasted after a three-mile walk from school. It was their habit upon their arrival home from school in the late afternoon to round the house on two toes, hit the middle and top of the back steps, dash into the kitchen, pick out the largest baked sweet potato from the pile laying on the hearth of the large wood stove in which they had been baked—second man getting second in size—then proceed to the “safe” where they found some kind of cold meat. (The food safe was usually on the back porch where it was cool. It had tin doors, perforated for air.)
Then, with potato in one hand, meat in the other, off to play they went. “We had syrup from Dooley yams all over our faces and hands—made the dirt stick good,” Don says.
There was not a time that day, nor any other day, to worry about germs; nor was there time to read Miss Etiquette’s column in the daily news sheet concerning table manners, if they had had a daily news sheet. The backbone was severed from the sides, the full length of the pig. It was unjointed and stewed with rolled dumplings or rice. Spareribs were sliced from the sides intact, later to be cut into small pieces and fried. The sides of the pig were usually cured for seasoning vegetables during the summer months. Liver was stewed into a hash to which was added the lights if desired. This stew was highly seasoned with peppers and sage.
The “trimmings” were ground into sausage and seasoned very highly with red pepper and sage. This sausage mixture was stuffed into casings, then twisted into links approximately twelve inches in length. The casings are the thin outer layer of the intestines, which have been carefully removed and carried through a special cleansing process.
Chitterlings were a very special dish at Don’s home. They were also a very special dish at Miss Lucy’s home when she was a child, but when she became a lady of the house and planned her own menus, this very special dish was not permitted upon her table.
Chitterlings are the intestines of the hog. The yards and yards of intestines have been turned inside out, scraped, washed, soaked, and boiled until tender. They are then clipped with scissors into inch links, and fried in a very hot fat. Chitterlings are also carried through a lengthy and tedious cleansing process. To those who like them, they are a very special delicacy. “Those who can eat and enjoy them know not their origin or have an unusual ability to forget,” so says Miss Lucy.
But the best of all the dishes produced from pork is crackling bread made from the cracklings. Crackling bread is not to be confused with “shortnin’ bread” that “mama’s little baby” likes.
Every pig that has been fattened for the table, has rows and hunks of snowy fatty tissue. This fat is clipped from the hog and carried through a boiling process. The liquid is then poured off as pure lard. The bits of fleshy tissue which remain are dry and crisp and of a golden brown. These bits are cracklings.
Sometimes cracklings are eaten as they are taken from the boiling vessel while hot and crisp. To make crackling bread, the crisp bits are chipped into small pieces and added to water and ground meal. To this salt is added and a sufficient amount of water to form a paste. This mixture is patted onto the hoecake spider or griddle which has been greased and heated to the smoking degree, and cooked very slowly for an hour or more. When one side is of a golden brown, the cake is flipped and browned on the other side. Some cooks prefer to roll the meal-and-cracklings mixture into small pones and bake them in a slow oven.
When Miss Lucy and Don and the other kiddies of their generation were growing up, one of their favorite desserts was crackling bread and syrup, and a “between meals” was crackling bread and buttermilk. But the old-fashioned method of killing hogs has not entirely disappeared from the yearly routine of the West Florida farmer, nor has the age-old method of curing his meat for use during the year been replaced by modern methods. With some of the farmers, yesteryear’s methods and process still prevail.
On one of January’s warm days when the temperature was playing around in the 70’s, Miss Lucy and I left home immediately after dinner—twelve o’clock dinner—for the wide open spaces.
We decided on that route which took us over State Highway No. 77 north across Alligator Creek, taking the first graded road to the left, one of our favorite rides. It was this road that had led us to cane grindings during November. It was this recollection that prompted the suggestion from Miss Lucy that we go visit Sarah Mae.
When we got to Sarah Mae’s little unpainted three-room mansion—and we knew that to her it is indeed a mansion—she and her three boys, four, seven, and ten years in age, were in their freshly swept back yard. Sarah Mae’s interest, we observed, was centered around the smokehouse, while the two older boys played with the shiny red wagons they had received from Santa Claus a few days before.
The four-year-old was on top of the lean-to shed adjoining one side of the smokehouse, removing the trash that had landed there while the boys were chunking at one another. The oldest boy had doubled one leg in the body of the wagon, the other foot pushing against the ground in long strides propelling the wagon to another part of the grass-free yard. The seven-year-old stood beside his mother in an investigative mood. On first glance into his face my thought was—and one I dared not express to him—“you should have been a girl.” The wagon exercise had brought to his cheeks roses which we thought existed only in a fairy story, certainly not in the warm Florida climate. Such color made his dark eyes sparkle like some rare gem. His black hair lay in a casual curl upon his forehead. It was a naturally beautiful face, made so by that same brand of cosmetics that Mother Nature uses.
Under the lean-to shed was a pile of oak wood, cut in stove length from trees which grew in the nearby wooded section. It had been cut very recently, for the sawdust still clung to the newly sawed ends.
The smokehouse was a small eight by ten structure, built of undressed lumber, without paint, and I would guess without blue print or architect. The boards lay crosswise nailed to four two-by-fours. Between those boards were cracks sufficient in width to admit insects—and possibly reptiles.
It was very apparent on that day that such little smokehouse had been appropriately designated, for smoke was pouring through the spaces between the rough boards in clouds so thick as to completely envelop the little house from which it came. The atmosphere all around us was filled with a narrow fragrance of burning oak.
Sarah Mae released the latch which held the narrow door, and suggested that we take a peep. We were indeed curious to know what was taking place within those crude walls, and were pleased that we were being taken into confidence.
At first that peep was not very revealing, for into our faces through the open door came a puff of smoke as if to inform us that we were intruders and had been caught in the act. I had a feeling for a second that some giant monster was hiding her young and had thrown out a smoke-screen to protect them from harm. My eyes were full of tears, not from sympathy for the frightened monster, nor from tear gas, but from a sudden overdose of clean, fragrant smoke.
When the smoke had cleared and our eyes were free of blinding tears, we saw suspended from the ceiling rows and rows of pork hams, shoulders, and sides. In the center of the floor, which was just a hard-packed dirt floor, was a pile of oak logs of the dimensions of those we had seen carefully placed underneath the lean-to shed. A shallow dent had been made underneath the oak logs. The logs were slowly burning in a smouldering fire. Bright coals were struggling for breath. The heavy smoke rose to baste the fresh pork. By this process, it was being preserved and flavored.
After days and days of smoking, Sarah Mae’s pork would be cured into that delectable food known as old-fashioned southern home-cured hams and bacon. So, this was Sarah Mae’s interest in her back yard on that warm January day. That crude little eight-by-ten house which emitted such a pleasing aroma to the passers-by, or those who cared to tarry for pleasantries, held Sarah Mae’s meat for the year, the meat with which she would feed her little family until hog killing time the next year.
The bacon she would use to season the summer vegetables for the family, which she grew in her own little garden. The hams and shoulders she would fry or boil for the two older boys’ school lunches and for the four-year-old’s between-meal lunches. For such lunches those choice cuts of smoked cured ham were usually placed between golden brown halves of a cold biscuit or placed beside a sweet potato, the wrinkled jacket of which could be easily yanked from position with one stroke of five dirty fingers the color of the potato peel.
Of course, I did not get a peep into those lunch boxes on that warm January day, but I already knew all about lunch boxes carried by little boys, and knew all about their contents, for the husband had many times given me a mental peep into his little lunch bucket, then a little tin bucket about the size of a country biscuit, when he was a little boy on the farm and his lunch meat was out from the ceiling of the smokehouse just like the one in Sarah Mae’s back yard.
With a quick turn and a few short steps across the clean-swept yard, Sarah Mae was off to the house on an errand for we knew not what. She called back to us:
“Ya’ll don’t leave; I’ll be back in a minute.”
She returned with an empty sack, and she went into the smokehouse closing the door behind her. When she returned, drying her eyes of the smoke tears with the corner of the print apron she was wearing, she handed to Miss Lucy the sack that she had filled with link sausage. Our prior peek into the smokehouse, so quickly made, had not revealed the homemade sausage coiled in reach of the smoke that they too might be seasoned.
Real home-made, smoke-cured, country sausage is a very special treat to West Floridians. In times gone by, country smoked sausage could be obtained from almost any farm home during the winter months, but those times have gone by. Most of the country smoked sausage on the market today is factory packed.
So, Sarah Mae’s gift to us was indeed a rare gift. At our insistence that she accept monetary consideration for something for which we would have gladly paid a premium, she replied with an emphasis almost akin to indignation: “Do you think I would accept pay from a good friend for sausage from my own smokehouse?”
Sarah Mae had given to us a portion of that which we knew to be her year’s supply of meat. But Miss Lucy was a friend, and it was a neighborly act for her to divide such as she had with that friend, as she had done on previous occasions.
"Do you think it will turn cold tonight?”
That question sounded casual, just a remark about the weather, but there was a note of deep concern in Sarah Mae’s expression, when upon our departure she had expressed a deep fear. Miss Lucy and I had theretofore been so selfishly pleased with such a beautiful warm spring day, deep in the cold of winter when some parts of the country were covered in snow, that it had not occurred to us that the weather was ever made for anyone besides ourselves and our own pleasure.
But that warm spring day, so glorious for our purposes, held within its grasp a warmth which, within a few hours, would take its toll from Sarah Mae’s meat supply, that meat which she so carefully guarded for the feeding of her little family during the year. Many times I have expressed disapproval at the weather. A very cold day, or a rainy day, usually prompts expressions of displeasure from the best of men. Most of us frown upon the heat of the sun in mid-summer and grumble about the cold in the dead of winter. But I had not long been a resident of West Florida and a dweller under the same rood with Miss Lucy when I was made to realize that the earth and the people of the earth need the sun, the rain, the cold, and the heat. I soon learned that my complaints about what to me was unfavorable weather struck a note of discord upon Miss Lucy’s ears, and it was not long before I quit complaining about something which was planned by an intelligence greater than that which we earthly mortals possess.
But my lack of knowledge was not so forcefully impressed until I stood at the smokehouse door with the mother of a family whose food for the year is dependent upon the sun and the rain, the cold and the heat, and heard those words from that anxious mother!
“Do you think it will turn cold tonight?”
Could a day so beautiful, so warm, so bright, so pleasing to Miss Lucy and to me, hold such dread for another? During the night a little rain fell and the weather changed. The following day, as is not unusual after a winter rain, the temperature dropped about forty degrees.
We did not see Sarah Mae for weeks after that day and that incident became just another of the routine matters which take place in the daily life of an individual. The next day Miss Lucy’s seemingly casual comment was, “Sarah Mae’s meat will not spoil” and we knew that she had a smokehouse full of choice meats for her little family for another year.
I think, should it ever be known three petitions went up on the night of that warm January day to the Great Throne of Justice and Intelligence, and, as we would say in legal phraseology, the Judge had entered an order allowing those petitions.
HELEN COOK LAMB was a talented writer and a native daughter of North Florida. Her work “Hog Killing Time” is one of many in her papers located in the Archives of Wiregrass History and Culture at Troy State University Dothan. The collection was donated by her nephew and former Dothan, Alabama mayor, Larry Register, and the piece is included here with permission from the family.
An Abundance of Pumpkins
by Jeri L. Peters
For my Eldest son
To be opened upon my death
Dearest Son,
It is time for you to know the truth. It is a truth long suspected, I think by all the relevant players. My husband is not your father. Could there ever have been a doubt? Smallish, bookish you, ever with your nose in a book and your head in the clouds, the son of that rude boorish man? No, he must have known from the first, and that is why your bore his wrath more often and more harshly then the other children, or even. As fierce as his rage was, however, he never named me harlot nor you bastard to any in the village. It would have shamed him more than I, at least in front of the other men.
I was a maiden then, and comely. They got that much of the story right, at least. Not worn as I am now from too many babies and too many beatings, when the Connecticut schoolmaster first arrived. I had not a scad of education, could barely make my letters or figure. All I had to my credit was a bonny face, and plump rear, and a small fortune to inherit. The fortune was what most interested the suitors. Ichabod arrived to teach school, and while the men heaped scorn on him, mocking his educated ways, his beautiful singing of the psaltery at meeting, his neatly pressed clothes, we women thought differently. What the men deemed weakness and effeminacy, we girls saw as politeness and gentleness, a cool drink from an icy spring after being pawed by begrimed, work roughened hands. Mothers, daughters, all the women loved Ichabod Crane.
Brom Von Brunt had been paying court to me since I was fourteen, if you can call being cornered in barns and accosted on market day in ways it would not become a lady to write, courtship. Brom was entranced by my figure, and my father's fortune, and had no use for my mind or my happiness. My father, an uncouth man himself, saw no lack in Broms' manners. My mother saw only a strong man who would run the farm and take care of me. So they both pushed for the match-pushed unseemly hard, risking my honor on more than one occasion by leaving me too long with the oaf. I had almost resigned myself to a lifetime of connubial bliss with the lout. In spite of his faults, he was the best of a bad lot. Any husband at all would be better than none, so I had always been taught, and believed.
But that all changed when Ichabod arrived. I was as infatuated with him as any school girl. I set my cap for him the first time I set eyes upon him. I chased him as shamelessly as the coquette that big city cad named me when he told the tale. Ichabod was so kind, and intelligent. He always spoke to me like I was a person, not a wench to be tumbled, or a fortune to be had with a ring. He taught me to read. He put Shakespeare into my hands, as carefully as if he was handing me his new born son. When I could not make out the words with my small learning, he read sonnets to me in the shade of an ancient oak.
Oh, my son, I know it's hard, hard and maybe repugnant to you to picture your old mother as young and beautiful and lusty but I was. I was, and as Ichabod read me those words, those beautifully romantic words, I knew that he must be my husband, or I would die and shrivel like a caterpillar that doesn't make it's cocoon in time. My father, impatient, and ill, though I did not know it, took matters in his hands, and planned an engagement party for Brom and I, though I had continued to refuse him. I had raged and cried and carried on, but 'twas no good.
"You'll marry him!" my father thundered at me, "You'll marry him, or you're no daughter of mine! Your old, too old to not be wed he's the best chance you've got!"
"I will not! He is coarse and illiterate! He chases me like I was a brood sow and him a boar--aye, and he smells as bad, too!" I screamed back
I never saw the blow coming, just felt his broad farmers hand slam against my face with more force than I knew he had. My head rocked from the force of the blow, and as I raised my hand to my tender face, I could feel the heat of the blood rushing to the insulted flesh. My father had never struck me before.
"You've made an idiot of yourself over that schoolteacher long enough." He had stopped yelling, spoke reasonably to me, almost contritely, "He doesn't want you. And even if he did, I'd not say yes. He can not support you, he can not take the farm when I'm gone. Brom may be no prince charming, but he can take care of the farm. He can take care of you." He reached out, and wiped a tear I wasn't even aware of from my face.
"Not tonight" I whispered, "You can speak to Brom tomorrow."
"Allright, Kat, all right. Tomorrow is soon enough."
My father thought me obedient and complacent. And in all other matters, I was. But I would not give in to his plans yet. I had a plan of my own.
The party was grand. I had taken especial care with the food, because Ichabod loved few things more then a good meal. It gave me such pleasure to see him eating the food I had prepared. When I was his wife, he would eat like a king! When dinner was done, we danced. How we danced! By the time the story reached the ears and the pen of the one who wrote it, it was made that Ichabod danced foolishly and I was only embarrassed. Not so! Ichabod danced like he did everything. Perfectly. He was grace, and music.
I had avoided Brom all night, and with very little effort convinced Ichabod to stay late after the others had gone. "Ichabod" , I said, laying my hand on his sleeve, "You've such a long walk ahead of you, and there is plenty, and more then plenty of food left. Please have some ham before you leave." The kitchen was warm , and like he was an ancient Rajah, I placed a heavily laden trencher in front of him. He lost himself in the food, and then, I whispered his name. He looked up, and as I stood in front of the flickering fire, I unlaced my bodice with trembling fingers.
Sometimes, even the best ham needs a garnish.
I was scared. It hurt. I wept, even as he took me, but it did not matter. I would let him have me, and then I would have him--forever.
"You'll speak to father in the morning?" I said, shyly, as I tucked and adjusted and replaced. (women's clothes do not lend themselves with any ease to the art d'amour)
Ichabod laughed, a short harsh sound. How had I never heard the cruelty in his laugh before this?
"I do not think you wish your father to know of tonight's business, Katrina."
"but we will have to marry now, of course."
Again, that harsh bark of a laugh, "I? Marry you? I'd rather tie a rock to my ankle and jump into the Hudson!"
"But," I couldn't believe what he was saying. He had to marry me! "But I'm ruined now! You have to marry me!"
"Be that as it may, girl. You offered the dessert, I merely enjoyed it. Am I to be billed for a gift I did not seek to purchase, but was freely given." He finished adjusting his coat and ascot, and popped the last bit of the ham into his mouth.
"But I love you!" I wailed naively believing that would soften his demeanor.
"That is your misfortune!"
I grasped the last straw, "My father is rich!"
"Only by Sleepy Hollow standards. Not for all the money in this village, the stare of new York, would I marry you. You are coarse, and common, and dreadfully stupid. Your hands are hardened with work. You are not a fit wife for an educated man like me." He jammed on his three corner hat, and looked at me the way I might look at a spider on a freshly laundered sheet, "Besides, I would never marry a wench so easy to tumble. If you'll lay down this easy for me, you'll give it to anybody. Your nothing but a harlot!"
And he walked out of the kitchen, paying no heed to the tears pouring down my face like a waterfall. I felt as if the very heart inside my ribs was going to bust, to shatter into a thousand, no a million, pieces. But the passions of youth run hot in every way, it wasn't many moments before the sorrow began to ooze slowly away, as a new emotion crowded it out of my heart.
How dare he? How dare he take his pleasure from me, giving me none in return, and then fling insults in my face? I was never a reasonable girl, always prone to fits of temper, and as I faced Ichabods complete perfidy, I recalled the foolish ghost stories Brom had been telling early in the evening. It had been a pathetic attempt to impress me, but the one it had impressed was Ichabod. Being a New Englander, he had a horror of the supernatural, and had seemed quite disturbed by the silly nonsense about a dead Hessian soldier who sought his head. As if inspired by Satan himself, I saw a late season pumpkin as it had been starting to rot, and exude a suspicious odor, sitting my the fireplace, and in the same glance, my eyes took in my fathers over sized cloak. Would this man be allowed to make light of me, or even worse, the thought came unbidden and unwelcome to my head, tell the village I was a light-skirt? By God, and By Satan, By Heaven and By Hell, no!
You know the rest of the story. The frightened cowardly teacher being chased by the headless horseman was probably the only part of the story that foolish man got right. Though he did miss how he wept like a woman, he had wept like I had, as I pulled the carving knife from the pumpkin and taught the teacher that I was no mans strumpet, and no mans plaything. Nor did he write of what was found amongst the pieces of the shattered rotten pumpkin, in a million pieces like my heart.
Brom? Oh, he must have suspected something, as I still reeked of Ichabods blood when I went to him and gave him what I had given to Ichabod, so when he took me, "blooming to the alter", he would not suspect that bud I bloomed with was not his. He did, though, as you grew more and more like your father. And , son, I see the resemblances that even Brom does not. I see how young Prudence looks at you, and I leave you with this last warning. Treat her better than Ichabod treated me. Because. It's true, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and her fathers farm grows an abundance of pumpkins.
COPPER BLADE REVIEW, ISSN 1096-4118, is published by the Creative Writing Club of Troy State University Dothan, P.O. Box 8368, Dothan, Alabama 36304, (334)983-6556. © 2003 by COPPER BLADE REVIEW. All rights reserved. Except for use in a review, the reproduction of any part of this publication is forbidden without the permission of the publisher. The persons mentioned in the short stories and poems are products of the authors; any resemblance in them to actual persons is coincidental unless otherwise stated.
Last Updated: 01/10/2011
