The Cullen

text test

barbara_y — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 15:35:18 +0000

well, look at that

			it’s a fine day, fine

after weeks of misery heat

		    drag you down heel and heart

comes this perfect little parallelagram

crispy edged and going somewhere

						not a day to piss away

wave your hands and shake your butt

hal-le-freakinlujah

			pass the biscuits

						just look at it

test

barbara_y — Sun, 16 May 2010 06:11:24 +0000

Not In Cansas (1)

barbara_y — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 07:51:50 +0000

The mission had been doomed to failure. She had been unable to find anyone suitable for the job after her first two recruits had been so unfortunately disposed of by that sneaking unspeakable. And that stranger, the one with all the sterling attributes, the one who seemed too good to be true, had simply walked off the moment she had come to depend on him. What should have been accomplished with stealth and guile and a minimum of blood loss had turned into a nasty fire fight, the sort of thing she hated. It didn’t matter that she was good. It was simply not her style.

The flash of lightning, the clap of thunder, and the single sharp ring of the phone in the hall were almost simultaneous. The lights flickered twice before the power failed entirely, taking the unsaved game into good riddance. Just as well, Juliet would be coming home from church at any time now. Juliet the lovely. Juliet the perfect. Juliet the absolutely intolerable. What the rest of the world did not know about that particular darling would choke a horse.

And of course Robin was blind to her faults. Say anything, and who would seem petty? Not that he was entirely at fault: she was a charmer when she wanted to be. Juliet did not consider Abby worth the effort, that was all.
She came in with a dramatic blast. The leaded door flew all the way open almost knocking the hall tree over. Fortunately, it was a heavy thing, mahogany as sturdy as the house itself, and almost as old, but Abby’s bright red jacket and black beret shook on the heavy brass hooks as if they were trying to escape the violence.

Abby left the parlor and came into the front hall to see what the noise was all about. Juliet was standing in the doorway, pale in the lurid green light, terrified. “Tornado, “ she gasped.

“Where’s Robin?”

“The car stalled. In the intersection. He said run. We have to go to the basement. It’ll be here in a minute.” She was already beginning to unfreeze and start toward the kitchen and the door to the cellar stairs.

At that moment Robin arrived with a cluster of other people in tow. “Hurry! There isn’t any time to fool around. Come on, Abby.”

Persephone was pacing around her feet, bothered by the noise and fuss. Abby scooped the anxious cat up and flipped her onto her shoulders, then she grabbed the spare flashlight by the umbrella stand. In a moment of clarity she realized that she was still dressed as she had been when she started gaming after breakfast, in her pajamas. She snagged the jacket, too, and almost against her will, closed the door in what she realized was a futile gesture toward keeping the storm away from the house. She hated the idea waiting in the dark for something to happen. Meeting things headlong was easier, if not always wiser. Besides, she had never seen a tornado.

Everyone always said the sound would be like a freight train. She expected to hear the sound rumbling out of the distance. She couldn’t hear it. There was so much noise from the wind bending a half mile of trees down to near ground level. That, and the creaking of the big old house around her filled everything to create soundlessness and dark. In the still hallway, Abby could feel the world around her moving through her bones. With that, her curiosity disintegrated and she fled toward the illusion of safety.

Downstairs, Robin had already lit the battery powered lantern, and was directing everyone toward the center of the room, away from the windows and the cellar door. Away from the stairs. Stairs could fall. Hell, whole houses could fall, and did. On top of people hiding in basements like mice. The sight of Abby, stumbling down the steps, mismatched pajamas and wearing Persephone like a seal collar would have been good for a few cracks under most circumstances. This time, Juliet was beyond caring. She sat huddled on the floor with her bible clutched in one hand and her Marc Jacobs in the other, paying no attention to anyone or anything around her. Not even Robin, settling down to put an arm around her waist, seemed to exist in Juliet’s small universe by the time Abby reached the solid floor below the shaking wooden steps.

Even with windows in the room, the darkness surrounding the lantern’s circle seemed as absolute as a moonless midnight. More, without that manmade glow which diffuses the night over every city, it was black.
Abby noticed that the table on which the light stood was moving. Odd. At the same moment, Persephone dug into her shoulder like a handful of fire. The next thing she knew, she was sitting on the floor. The noise was inside her and all around, and she could not think.
“Honey, it’s all right,” were the first words she could hear above the storm. By then it had bulled its way across the hill to tyrannize the rest of Riverside.

The Chosing Knife

barbara_y — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 06:40:27 +0000

The girl was sitting on the creek bank away from the of the packhorses being unloaded to make camp for the night. They were some days from the next known water, low on meat, and tired one and all. Kers suspected that this camp would last for two or three days for hunting, fishing and resting. He did not like that the girl was off alone. With travel in abeyance, some of the men might remember that she was there and consider her fair game for their sporting. She might be a hostage in theory, but in truth it was unlikely she would see home again, if she so much as lived to see the end of the journey.
“You should get back to the fire”
“What? Oh. You. It is more quiet here. Do you mind?” Her voice was muffled and raspy.
“What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing. Just leave me alone.”
“You are crying. Do you miss your mother and sisters? Is it your abduction that distresses you, or has someone hurt you? You should not be harmed.”
“No. Not that. Nothing. Go away.”
“Not until you stop crying enough to talk to me. It is my assignment to see to your welfare. Please allow me to do this. You are fatigued. We have been long hours in the saddle. Perhaps.” He was unsure of how to phrase it in her awkward language. And to speak of a lady’s private parts, even to consider that she might require medication was rude at the least. Still. “I have unguents.”
She turned away from the water and looked at him. A blank stare, truly, but there was in it recognition of another human for the first time in their long ride together.
“Unguents?”
“For,” he dusted across his pants, ”aches.”
“Unguents for aches,” she said. “No. For my pain, sir, there is no balm.” She wiped her reddened eyes with a dusty hand, leaving a muddy smear across her cheek. “I am in your care, you said. Does that mean that no one else does care for me?”
“Mistress?” Kers wondered if this were one of those women of Valorin reputed to be dedicated to the temple at birth. Or perhaps she had a lover who had been killed in the fighting, the idea saddened him. He chose to return to the idea of family.
“Mistress, I am sure your family will choose to give us our free passage while you abide with us and whatever token ransom the Sa’Al Theron requires for your return. My understanding is that your father is not an unreasonable man. That was why the Sa’Al Theron chose him for his first foray into Valorin. My lord is not a barbarian fool like many others, but a man of thought before action.”
“You admire him, your Sa’Al Theron?”
“Of course, mistress. He is a most admirable lord, a wise leader, and a strong man.”
“I thought so,” she said. Then she looked Kers full in the face with all attention. “ What would appeal to him? How should I make an approach?”
Kers was stunned. Was it possible that they had mistakenly snatched one of the family concubines instead of one of the daughters? Impossible. The household had been scouted for weeks in advance. Spies had been paid large sums. The plan had been perfect, and this girl was its object. Perhaps he was misunderstanding her language.
“Mistress. If you have a message for the Sa’Al Theron, I could deliver it to him.”
She sighed. “The message is myself, boy, and if you cannot understand that how can I expect you to deliver it to your beautiful, wise, and admirable Sa’Al Theron.

“The banquet,” she said, “the banquet from which he stole me was to be my Choosing. I see you do not understand. It is of no consequence that you do not, but that he does.
“When girls of my class reach the time of Choosing, we have a gathering. If the girl has chosen a path other than home and children, she announces it at that time and leaves with representatives of that path.
“If she has chosen to be wife and mother, in most cases arrangements have been made already. She has been asked. Her father and mother have given permission. Nothing unusual will happen. On rare occasions, she has not been asked or has turned down all suitors. If no one asks her whom she finds suitable and she has turned down choosings along the other Paths, the man who claims her has made the choice.”
“The Sa’Al Theron has Chosen me. And I will say that there was no man in my own city who could make me wish otherwise. He is a man to answer any woman’s dreaming. When he rode into my father’s hall, he came directly to me on that fine chestnut stallion. He made it dance for me, I could see that. No rider would smile so broadly else, while his horse capers like a goat in the midst of battle.
“Then he dismounted, took my hand in his, and drew me toward him. What he said, I must admit I could not understand, but his voice made me tremble. And with one small gesture to his fretful horse, it quieted as if turned to stone. He lifted me to the saddle, mounted and wheeled, and all you men broke off your fighting to follow.
“It was so obviously a Choosing from the old stories that, without doubt, my father will follow the traditions as well.”
“And what would that lead him to do, Mistress?”
“Why, he will send two messengers to follow us. One will carry a gift of value and the other an unadorned knife, made for this purpose when first my mother announced she was with child. It has been used only once, to cut my birth cord.
“By the time the messengers find us, the Sa’Al Theron should know which message to accept. If he keeps the gift of value and sends back the blooded knife, my father will know that I was unworthy of my choosing. If he sends back the gift and keeps the knife, there will be rejoicing in my family and the knowledge that my husband wants me to be armed and safe against danger.”
The noises from over the rise were beginning to settle into the rhythm of camp life. Some of the men were setting tents, some starting the cookfires, others picketing the mounts. Guards were being posted. Kers’ single duty was this one girl—woman, if what she said was true—small and rounded, red-haired and odd-eyed. He had yet to understand those eyes.
His Lord had given the welfare of the hostage into his hands on the morning of the raid, had told him to save her “no matter what” from anyone who might harm her. Then he had turned and rode for home, and left his son in charge, the Sa’Al Theron. The wise, the admirable, the so very beautiful Sa’Al Theron, who would gladly take this girl to his bed until her lack of skill or enthusiasm or her very calf eyed adoration bored him, and if she were lucky, he would only throw her away to one of his subordinates. If he had noticed her perfection and her beauty, he would find the story of the Choosing Knife amusing.

The Sa’Al Theron was very good with knives.

Never a Hero

barbara_y — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 04:48:36 +0000

It was a lovely day in April when my sister Jamie went to glory for her country, not in some strange and distant land, but less than three miles from Aunt Hen’s house, in a dusty alley.

Life is funny that way.

After all she made it through, to have such an end didn’t seem fair to anybody. It wasn’t an heroic way to go. I should know better than to think things like that. Jamie, one of the things she said to me before she went off to war was that I should remember that we are not all heroes, even in our own stories. I told Gran that at the funeral, and she spit in the dust and said no granddaughter of hers woulda died thinking like that. Jamie just wanted me being a little more thoughtful and a little less actful. Didn’t I remember the story she used to tell us when we were babies? Since Gran is a woman who believes in finishing what she starts and since her way of looking at a conversation can include very long, if interesting, periods of her talking and you not even peeping, I did a mental sit-back and waited for the story because even if I had said, “Oh, you mean the one about the little old Thus-and-such and how she won the day with a word, a stich, and a bowl of turnip soup” or whatever, she would have given me the look and told the tale and happy to do it.

I loved her for it. Jamie loved her for it. And now it doesn’t matter. My sister’s down there in her fine uniform and I’m up here in mine and all the other grandbabies are boys unless Aunt Hen suprises everybody and gives Gran another hero for the war.

Becoming a Hero

barbara_y — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 04:25:43 +0000

Mother left me first of them. Rafe was nine and I was three. Between us was another girl, not a person, only three small words cut in hard rock. Not real to anyone but, I suppose, mother, who carried her the long lonely months father was away becoming a hero.

It’s A Joke

barbara_y — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 16:16:06 +0000

Comedy Central has a Joke-a-Day mailer. As a rule, the jokes are blue, sophomoric, and old. Usually, even as jokes they could stand some rewrite, but now and then there is one that suggests something more. Just a little tinkering here and there, and you have a story–an old story, the trick would be to bring some life to the people, and then you could really get a kick out of the husband’s choice of alibi.

While the Cat’s Away

A woman is in bed with her lover, who also happens to be her husband’s best friend. They make love for hours and, afterwards, while they’re just lying there, the phone rings. Since it’s the woman’s house, she picks up the receiver. The best friend listens, only hearing her side of the conversation:

“Hello? Oh, hi… I’m so glad that you called… Really? That’s wonderful…. Well, I’m happy to hear you’re having such a great time… Oh, that sounds terrific… Thanks. Okay. Bye bye.”

She hangs up the telephone and her lover asks, “Who was that?”

“Oh” she replies, “That was my husband telling me all about the wonderful time he’s having on his fishing trip with you.”

To Protect the Guilty

barbara_y — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 06:44:18 +0000

Family, Gin once said, is not what you should be worrying about. She never got around to telling me just what that ought to be. Probably because she was a poet. Liked to leave things half incomplete. I wish she hadn’t been like that, or at least not in my mailbox. Why the hell she had the Home send all that stuff to me. They’ve been saying she has been round the bend for months now, but every time Mama and I pick her up and take her in to town to the heart clinic she’s been clear as Mama.

I have been trying lately to put together all the things that I know about my Aunt Gin. Sis. Virginia. Ginny.

For starters: she isn’t my aunt at all, not really. Her sister is married to my daddy’s youngest brother. And a more useless pair you would be hard pressed to find. Look. I am not one of those sorts who pretends to be all goodness and light, then turns the other direction and spits venom. I mean what I say: Carl and Shelia are not worth a dime together.

Aunt Gin is something else. She is a lot older than Shelia. Her mother’s first baby, and always sick with something or other. Shelia is the youngest, after a long dry spell, at that. The family miracle child. The family beauty. She is a witch and I am not going to talk about her any more because it makes me feel like talking politics or religion to people with one eye.

THE STORY SO FAR

barbara_y — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 06:40:42 +0000

THE STORY SO FAR

Back and back and back and back. Choice is seldom what it seems, and even when it is, you will be changed in ways no one can foresee. Here’s a story for you: A woman was sitting in a bar and a man came up and said…

She had not been drinking for that long; not in this bar on this block. Not tonight. But she hadn’t yet been sober in this town which had so many bars and so many churches, and she had reached the end. This would be the last one. The last pine paneled smoke-stained bar, last cold long walk alone to that small and stinking room, last collapse to sleep with no kind dreams.
Tomorrow would be different. She would find the job. Call her family and let them know the worst. Look up a friend or two and start life. For now, though, the music from the other room was warm and smoky and the light was gentle and kind to the odd mix of players in the room. College types slumming for the music, white collar city workers who never made it home after happy hour, plaid shirts, a prowling sweet young thing.
The tall redhead had left the spotlight of the pool table for her own escort in the dark corner booth across the room.

Waiting

barbara_y — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 01:59:52 +0000

Just waiting. No plans. Holding off. Let slide. Don’t go any where. Just be here when I need you.