We Will Not Be Taken Alive (part IV)

"We were friends once, weren't we?" Aida looked at me with a Cheshire grin that dripped syrup sweet. Aida. They'd named her for Aidos, the greek spirit of modesty and reverence. If she was Aidos, I was Athena. 

"If you had asked me when we were children, I think I should have said 'yes, the very best.'"

"But I didn't ask you then, did I?" Her eyes narrowed from chestnuts to almonds.

"Not that I recall, no." I narrowed my own almonds on the wash in my tub.

"Well I'm asking you now. Now that we're grown women, I would like to know if you remember us as friends?"


Were we grown? Neither of us were married, or had children. At nineteen years old all of our collective experienced was wrapped up in this nothing town. A living thing needs nourishment to grow. 

She sat at the edge of the cistern that held the water for the horses. Wells were running dry in countless counties. People were packing their entire homes, as many of their dusty belongings as they could carry. Whole families were leaving, heading off into the unknown to avoid starving, but the Binghams had drinking water for their horses. She trailed long, delicate fingers across the surface of the water, mindlessly. I tried to avoid her stare. A storm was building behind those pale blue peepers. She was impatiently waiting for my answer.


She had never been a friend to any person or animal. She was bred to think only of herself. It was hardly any fault of her own. I would like to have pitied her for it, but she was cold and beautiful. Her character was thin, superficial, and any hint of depth was a scheme of her invention, used for manipulation and advance. She left little room for pity, or friendship.  

As I was in the employ of her father, I could make precious few of my sentiments known, but my compulsion to honesty drew me to walk a high wire with my response.   

"As a grown woman, as you say, I suppose that children are of no mind to truly know friend or foe. They are free to whittle away their youth in the throes of idle pleasure. I venture that in adulthood, one chooses one's friends from common interests." I emphasized the last word to imply that interests must certainly include class and ability. "Mere proximity doesn't seem to weigh into the matter for adults. So to answer your question, yes. We did once while away our time when we were within a proximity, and yes, I believe we enjoyed one another's company." I paused a moment in consideration before adding, "but that was a long time ago, ma'am." I half expected her to correct my use of "ma'am," but she was perfectly pleased to let it float on the air between us. 


I fixed my eyes on my hands and my work. My hands seemed only ever to change their shades of red. My fingers cracked, swollen. I imagined the shadowy water swirling around Aida's ivory fingers. Her beauty annoyed me. It was too effortless, unappreciated, and over leveraged. I wished she would take her silk, cream complexion inside, and leave my to my work and a little peace.


"And you have found those in your life, those with whom you share a common interests? You seem to have a great many friends." She said. She spoke as though she knew all about me and my life. I disagreed with her tone, but kept my silence. When I didn't answer she began a new tactic. "You must think this whole life of mine is great fun, that I know nothing but leisure and luxury."


"I have no opinion, ma'am," I lied. She ignored me and continued. 


"It is luxurious. I'll admit that to you. I have never wanted any physical thing for more than a moment or two before I was appeased. You wouldn't understand it, Lucene. You're probably too jealous to see how dissatisfying it all is." I bit down hard on my lip. "There are a great many things that money cannot buy, things I can never have."


"What could you possibly want that you can't have?" I snapped, exasperated with her noxious mix of self importance and self pity. "The trouble is you don't appreciate what you do have." I was crossing a threshold now, throwing my job at the mercy of my temper. I jumped in with two feet. "You're easily the most beautiful  and richest girl in the town. You never have to worry about food, or time or sleep, or whether you can be or do anything. You simply have to dream up some concoction, no matter how far fetched, and say the word. You get to dictate your own terms. In fact, your whole life is one great big dictation waiting to be made!" I was running out of breath. "Any cloud cast over your existence is nothing but vanity and pure bad attitude and ungratefulness on your part."


"That's exactly what you think of me, vain, selfish," she was confirming her own suspicions. "Well it's what everyone else thinks of me too. It has never occurred to you that no number of artifacts can mean anything to person who has no friends, or talent by which to win them."


"Have you lost all of your senses?" I asked, frustrated but softening. "You're lousy with people. The minute you set foot off this property, you're inundated with friendly smiles and compliments. You have the entire town's attention."


"Having attention is not the same as having companionship. Not one of those people would speak to me if not for my father's standing, and not one cares for a minute what I may have to say. I don't expect you to understand. You've always been so smart and so charming that people are simply drawn to you. People actually like you. Don't forget that I used to be one of those people. When you would play with me, it was as if the sun was shining just for us." She was looking out at the horses now, her thoughts drifting off on ether. I said nothing to interrupt her, my pity growing. 


The silence stretched between us, a yawning chasm. She was right, and so was I. We would never understand one another. I thought again of Paris. If I had even just a bit of Aida's wealth, I would have run away to Paris years ago, before Mama died. Now, no amount of money could get me out of Kansas. Who would raise Frank and Samson? Who would feed Pa? Sweep the dust? Even when the rain came, who would help Pa plow, sew, harvest, thresh? Maybe in a few years the boys could begin to help in the fields, but any great number of things could change by then. Of the great many of my friends Aida mentioned, there was only one I couldn't imagine leaving behind. 


Aida turned sharply to face me again. All woeful sorrow condensed into a fierce energy that startled me. "Do you remember when you were too poor to continue school? Your family pulled you because they couldn't afford it. You had to go work the fields with your father and mother, until your mother died of course." Her words were frozen razors, and she was spitting them at me with forced intent. "I cried then, for you. I was horribly despondent when you told me that morning that it would be your last day. Do you remember?" I remembered every detail of that day every time I looked at her. "You were so smart. What a shame for you to have to quit." Another dagger. "I couldn't stop crying, couldn't even look at you. Out on the playground, a boy in our class came to comfort me. He was a simple, silly boy, really but a kindhearted little pip-squeak. It was sweet anyway." 


The fire in my gut burned into my face. "Philip." I whispered. 


"Why my dear laundress, yes! You do remember." She was pure ice now. "Philip sat with me, but even that couldn't stop my crying. So he took my hands and held them, and then he hugged me. It was quite a comfort to me in that state. But you," she was coming toward me now, "you went berserk. Little Lucene lost her temper. You pushed me down and pulled at my hair. 'I'll get you!' you screamed at me over and over. They finally had to carry you off, and you didn't even get to finish your last day. That was the last time I saw you for the better part of a year. And we never spoke of it. I didn't want to embarrass you and I never told anyone about it. But we both knew then that we were no longer friends." She was uncomfortably close as she spoke, leaning her mouth toward my ear. "Then your dear Mama died, and you had to come here and plead for work, like an ordinary beggar. How awful this must all be for you, Lucene. You must constantly wonder if I hold a grudge, if it'll cost you your job." She pressed her forehead to my ear. It was colder than I expected, and I shivered. "I forgive you." She whispered like a lunatic. "You never have to 'get' me, because I forgive you. No matter how wicked you were to me. I forgive you now." Some of my rage subsided transformed into confusion and fear regarding Aida's stability, but not all of it. 


"And Philip?" I asked.


"What of Philip?" she shouted taking a step back. 


"You admit he was kind to you. What do you know of him now?"


"I told you he was a silly boy." She hissed. "He went away for some time, and then he returned. Who would return here from Europe? Only a fool. That's all I need to know of him."


"He owns the apothecary." I defended, "That's no fool's work."


"Well it means nothing to me, anyhow," she answered. The ice was melting and extinguishing the fire in her. She suddenly looked dried up, and spent. "I'm going in now. Please try to keep the wash from becoming too starchy." She turned from me without ceremony. 


"Yes, ma'am." I said as she walked away.

We Will Not Be Taken Alive (part III)

Men of my own age showed no interest in me. Oddly, however, men of Pa's acquaintance often talked of my beauty. As a girl, I could only believe the nature of such compliments to be courteous. But as I grew older, I began to sense the sincerity of such ravings.

"Such mesmerizing eyes on you," one would say, or "What a raven heart breaker she is," to Pa before turning to me, "You must have to beat the boys off with a stick!"

At this I never fail to blush. Blood rushing to my cheeks and to my eyes turns the whole of my complexion a scarlet shade of ivory which only seems to suit the older men all the more.

"Ah! A blushing beauty!" he'd say, fully amused with himself, "and growing up so quickly too." If I so happened to meet one of these, Mr. Greene perhaps, or Mr. Kelly, on an unescorted trip into town such an observation was followed by a swelling silence and the man would stand looking at me expectantly as if giving the matter a few moments longer I may suddenly grow into a respectable match for himself. The moment would stretch until it became awkward and vaguely inappropriate given that both of these potential suitors were already purported to be happily married with families.

"Well give my best to your Pa," he'd add with a cough and turn quite suddenly from me with a enough purpose to hide shame.

The exchanges themselves along with their frequency bewildered me. How could it be that so many men over 30 years old could find me so irresistible, while so many men under 30 failed to notice my very existence?

"They'll notice you soon enough," Pa would answer any time I asked him. But only to myself would I dare to admit that I was in no need of affection from the masses that Pa called "they." I secretly longed after the attention of only one man. And truth be told, I had a great deal of it. But not in a manner that I found to be in any way gratifying.

Philip had been my very dearest friend from so young an age that I don't recall ever meeting him. It was as if I was born knowing and loving him. We'd learned to read together at the school house, and books remained our one true and common passion. As springs broke across the plain we would find each other every year at the creek and embark on the wildest adventures of discovery, tracking brightly colored birds with the softest saddest songs, or suspicious looking prairie dogs on the hunt for a spring time feast.

But mostly we laid in the sun and talked. We discussed a great many thoughts on our present and on our futures. With Philip it was always so easy to dream out loud and to make such grand plans for the lives we would live as adults.

Philip had a great uncle who lived in Paris, and he relayed glorious stories of the tulips that would sprout in the spring rain, and of the engineering of the Eiffel Tower and the wonderful art at the Lourve and fresh baked bread and cheese. I told him that when I closed my eyes I could see us there eating the finest foods and drinking the coffee and the wine and walking under the Arc de Triomphe.

I believed I loved him even at that early age. Then, in late October when we were both nearly thirteen years old, Philip came to out house near dusk. He'd come in from the fields where he'd been harvesting all day and found a treasure.

"I simply had to come here immediately and share this with you! I hope I'm not interrupting your supper, but I knew you'd want to see this as soon as possible." We had not yet finished cooking our supper and Mama excused me for long enough to join Philip on the porch. From his shirt pocket he pulled two thin flat pieces of cardboard with writing on one side and photographs on the other. He showed them both to me before handing me one.

"This is for you to keep." he said, his excitement dripping from his smile. He was sort of shaking and pacing while he waited for me to look at the card. "It's a postcard!" He said and slapped a hand over his mouth admonishing himself for not giving me the time to take in the value of what I held. I looked at the side with the photograph first. I beheld a large steel structure, not a building exactly, but more like a triangle whose sides were caving in. It was photographed at night, and the structure was covered in thousands of tiny electric lights. I had heard of these lights but I had never before seen them in person or in a photograph. It looked like the sagging triangle was wrapped up in a heavenly blanket of thousands of twinkling stars.

"What, what is this?" I asked Philip. I was as befuddled as he was enthused.

"It's Paris!" He exclaimed. "That's the Eiffel Tower!" I had imagined a concrete column reaching up through the clouds and even the thought of that had been overwhelming to me. "This is magnificent." I barely whispered. I could feel Philip's excitement infecting me now, and my heart started to race. At once I felt more fulfilled and more hollow than I ever had before. It was as if I was standing in Paris at the foot of the great tower, but also as if I would never get off of this porch in Kansas.

"I wrote to my great uncle," Philip started to explain, no longer able to contain himself. "I told him of our dreams to come to Paris and to meet him and see all of its wonders. And he sent these two postcards, one for me and one for you. Isn't it spectacular? Read the back. He wrote it to you personally."

The blood rushed to my face as I could not conceive of my great fortune.

"Sweet Lucine, I have heard of your dreams to come live in Paris. May this small token stay with you until you are grown when can come and have the city all to yourself. Please do not be angry with me for taking dear Philip from you, but know that he will return to you soon enough, and that when you are both grown you will be always welcome in my home. Sincerely Great Uncle John"

I immediately looked to Philip who was now still and watching me with a cheshire grin.

"That's the best part," he started. "He's sent for me. I'm to go live with him for a year, and study and learn all there is to know about France. Isn't it wonderful?"

My breath caught in my throat and I couldn't speak. "Oh, Cine, I wish you could come too. I will miss you terribly. But I will know so much that when we go back someday, you will have your very own Parisian guide!"

I knew then with absolute certainty that I was in love with him, and that he was going away. And all I could do was smile and congratulate him.

"They'll notice soon enough," Pa was saying about the young men in town, "And if ever a single one of them even dreams of taking a liberty with you, my girl, he'll have to answer to me for it," he chuckled.

"But, Pa, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Greene are always paying me fine compliments. Do you not require an answer from them?"

"Never you mind them," he said with a wink, "many a good man knows a line when he sees it and even the wisest of men may be tempted to try a sturdy line from time to time. It don't mean he'll cross it." He laughed like a man with a secret and put an arm around my shoulders, "My girl, it isn't the older men I worry about for you. Those who are honest enough to compliment you to your face are honest enough to leave it there. Its the fellas that pretend not to see you that scare me a bit." He trailed off there and looked at me thoughtfully. I must have looked awfully confused, and I saw concern eclipse his face. "Have you really no idea of your charm? Of how the men of this town speak of you?"

"No, Pa. They don't often speak to me directly."

"Ah, of course they wouldn't." He shook his head at the ground as if bringing himself around to some realization. "Well let me ask you this, do you think your mother was pretty?"

"Stunning" I answered, "she was easily the fairest lady in our town, and possessed the most grace."

"True," he confirmed, "but was she not also the strongest women you ever saw?"

"Oh yes, Pa, easily."

"And do you remember how she could get the best of you in an instant with her clever cunning?"

"Yes."

"Me as well," he added, "And didn't it sometimes smart just a bit, on the inside when she did?" I bit my lip. I hated to admit even to dear Pa, when something smart. I nodded. "I know it do. For me as well," he said, "But don't it make you want to win her over all the more for it?"

I was sure Pa had some way of knowing my thoughts and promised myself to be more careful with my expressions around him. He laughed his deep belly laugh again.

"Sweet, Lucine, I can tell you as a matter of some fact that you are very naturally your mother's daughter. Sure, you're her spitting image too, but I mean on the inside. You're her through and through and all the way around. And don't it smart doubly for me when you and your clever cunning get the better of me." I was beginning to catch his drift. "Now, I can only imagine that the young men of your knowing feel much the same way, but oh if they won't want to know you and win you over all the more for it. That's my concern, you see. Those who keep their desires hidden may be pushed too far one day, and of that you ought to be cautious, my dear. On the other hand, the lucky son of a gun that does win you over will have to be one of great character and integrity. Of that I am sure. Just like your old Pa, here."

He flashed his winning-est smile at me and I could see his point was made.

We Will Not Be Taken Alive (part II)

I rose before the sun had time to promise his curse. Echoing from my sleep her sobs rang out, a spectral siren. Daily now, I awoke from the phantoms of her moans, or the shadow of her blood crawling across the linens. I rubbed her twisted expression from my eyes as I set the water to boil on the stove.

The stillness in the house was dreadful. In its overwhelming emptiness the screaming silence beckoned the imagination to draw upon it the most ghastly creations of manifest horror. Like a spurned sorceress, the darkness satiated on my misery. It consumed my grief in gnashing teeth and with slurping satisfaction. It gnawed at all things. My fear being only an taste, it licked the flames on the stove and sneered. It rolled into the pantry and swelled. With silence the silence grew, and as it lapped at my feet they too fell quiet. It dined on the very dust and air until I was choked.

As it swallowed it surroundings it so mutated everything within its reach that the very room was transformed into a pathetic reflection of its own hollowness. With building pressure the void pushed in all directions. It weighed upon my shoulders and squeezed my skull. It pressed against the walls and the floor and the ceiling until it shattered them to nothing with its breath. I released the grip I had on the table ready to be swept off on an empty wind. I was ready to be sucked up into the blackness, or to be erased, or dried up and disintegrated like the wheat in the field.

The kettle's steam whistle cut through my skin and my blood and my bones. It shattered the crystalline sarcophagus into the sharpest though most invisible splinters. I opened my eyes to the relief that the house still stood around me on all sides. And from the window I saw the first purple hues in the distance indicating the impending day. That fainest light calmed my disturbed nerves. I poured the water into the coffee grounds. Holding my face into the steam, I soaked in the moisture. I soaked in the quiet. The predator now dismissed, banished with the kettle bell, there was a serene calm to it. And then, in a flash I smelled her. The lavender she kept in a sachet in the wardrobe passed through me and was gone. I began sniffing like an old hound, all around me, searching for a scent of that scent. All I found was coffee, but in my heart I saw her smile. I felt it, the way she smiled when I was young, when there was wheat and corn and vegetables in the garden. She looked happy.

I set my mind to my day's work. There was great work to be done and to be done soon, and though these few gruesome moments were all I truly owned, all I truly felt, they were spent, and I had little choice but to start moving.

We Will Not Be Taken Alive (part I)

It was dusty then. The dust was everywhere. It scratched at our eyes when we walked to town. It got in our mouths and made sandpaper of our teeth and paste of our spit. It rained down upon us, a cruel unmelting snow that griped our kindling hair and caked on our callous faces.

It was windy then too, and the gales whipped the dust up in angry spirals before hurling it into mounds and chiseling the mounds into austere monuments. These unholy temples lined the road walls and the foothills, and grew and receded at the mercy of the fickle wind. A cathedral of sand and dirt that hand defied a direct passage in the morning would often be withered and impartial by the afternoon. And one sensed it was the very same dust that one rubbed from his eyes before sweeping it from his threshold. The dirt that had caked windows yesterday, clogged the well today. And always the sentry dust beacons watched from the foothills and the road walls, more patient than we.

Despite our best efforts, we consumed that dust. I fashioned a small scrap of muslin around Frank's small ears before I'd let him out of doors, but by the time he came in for his dinner the muslin was a clogged filter, laden and black and Frank would take to fits of coughing. Twice a day did I rinse the thin muslin, and three times a day, did it collect its filth, a dismissive tithing from an unapologetic wilderness. Our water was stale with the dust, and it left a perceptible film of micro-grit upon all of the potatoes, the plates, and the cups. At times I began to entertain the idea that we were made of dust, and that if we were not, we may be worse off for it.

At night, soon after I had fallen asleep, I would dream of darkened thunderclouds rolling up over the ridge line at the horizon victorious. They were low lying things, their bellies swollen with rain and electricity. My thirst was quenched. As the rain began to fall, it welled in the eyes of my father and of my neighbors. We danced in it. We shook it from our lips and our fingertips. It rolled cool over my skin with aquatic nutrition. This was benediction, baptism, a revival. Through the rain, I saw the smiles come back to the stern and the sorrowful. I saw color for the first time in our world. The fields were velveteen green and sunset pink apples dotted the orchard. Through the rain, in my dream, I saw life.

Long before I awoke the apparitions disappeared. A serpentine light coiled around the thin curtains covering the window and pried my eyelids wide. There had been no feast in the garden, no rain dance, no praise to our forgiving God. Just dust and wind and fear.

It was during this time, this drought that Samson was born and that Mama died...

The Long and Short of It

We buried that turtle in the back yard next to Gil, the pet goldfish. We didn't name him because he wasn't ours and he was dead when we found him, but we marked his final resting place with a glossy rock I found at the beach.

"I hate those fucking kids." he said.

"I know. I hate their parents. They've really fucked up." I said.

We sat in quiet agreement for some time while we payed our respects. We gave the creature our mental apologies on behalf of our species and the mistakes we can't help ourselves from making.

Then we rallied for a drink.

Leaving the sunlight outside to wear itself out, we stepped into the corner bar again.

"How old do you think that turtle was?"

"I dunno. How old do turtles usually live to be?"

"I don't know."

"He was probably a few months old, born in the spring, you know?"

"Is a few months long enough for a turtle to have a wife and kids?"

"Maybe it was the wife."

"Maybe. Do you think she had kids?"

"Probably not. It's not spring yet, you know?"

"Right." He paused, "Think she was pregnant? God! That's awful! Those little bastards."

"Turtles lay eggs, like chickens. They don't get pregnant."

"Right. They're still bastards."

"Don't you think its at all strange that we're more sympathetic to a dead six month old turtle than we are to living human children that are lacking some significant guidance?"

"They're cruel."

"I know. That's my point. Isn't their present, leave alone their future, so much more tragic than the death of one middle aged reptile?"

"Amphibian."

"Whatever." I'm met with silence while he drinks his beer. He's thinking. After a minute he answers.

"Logically that makes sense, yes. Intellectually, I agree with you. You're right. The value of a human life should be worth more. The quality of that life has more bearing, moralistically, than the entire existence of one simple turtle. In the hierarchy of the animal kingdom humans reign supreme. We have emotion, rational thought, the ability to to learn and grow and develop as a society. Hell! We have fucking opposable thumbs! But emotionally? Fuck those kids. They're bastards. They're cruel. They killed a small being unequipped to defend itself. They misused their rights and responsibilities as more evolved beings. Its disgusting."

"It is disgusting."

"They're bastards."

"They're only gonna get older."

"I know."

"Let's have a shot."

"Yes. Let's."

"its like static," she said

and I cant remember why we're standing here.

but then the bottles smash together and infringe on my audial arena.

its not the ballerina twinkling of a windshield shattering, but more of a hollow grinding.

like an explosion in the absence of air.

like its been all used up.

"like fuzzy buzzing?" I ask.

"like snow" she answers.

and we both shudder.

because our feet are wet, slumping, from walking here in the April Chicago snow.

the kind that cancels baseball games.

the kind that cancels souls.

In that space, where the souls were before the snow, we replace emptiness with whiskey so as not to be so hollow.

like those goddamned bottles...