Dancing With a Morning Breeze

This is my contribution to the April Write Stuff Creative Carnival. The prompt was luck.

Some Thursday Thirteen participants may recognize the characters from my Fruits of the Spirit storyworld which I featured in TT #13. The following was a scene extracted from Making Rag Doll Babies and Million Dollar Maybes. a story some 16,000 words long. I can't really call it an excerpt as I completely rewrote a 2000 word section in order to bring it in under the 1000 word limit, to excise stuff that made no sense without previous or future scenes, to add clarification when excising would do violence to this story and to emphasise the theme. I hope that what is left can stand alone, even if only like a brick of Swiss Cheese.

At the very least, it was an interesting exercise.

Enjoy.

Dancing With a Morning Breeze
by Joy Renee

Faye paces under the jaundiced glow of the sodium vapor lamp. Wilma and Julia cast nervous glances her way from the bus stop bench, but neither ventures to reprove her. The three have waited in tense silence since calling the police. Faye goes to the gate to peer up the driveway that slithered into the cavernous dark, gravid with threats to small girls and from there to the road to peer into the black maw of the highway as though her anxious peering into the night might materialize Briana out of the fulvous shadows.

She clutched the foamy body of Dollbaby to her breast, breathing incoherent words that seemed to be both prayer and incantation. “Let her be alive. Let her be safe.” Her eyes groped among undulating shadows for the form of a small child agile with joy, swinging on the gate, dancing with the morning breeze.

The lights came like sudden ice freezing Faye in place to stare at the coils of light drawn on the dark, at the vaguely ambulance shaped nimbus, with time to think, Not the police, before it spawned a light bedizened apparition that came to her limbs all akimbo screeching, “My baby. My baby.”

Faye stood in feeble-fingered confusion as two arms snake out, encircle Dollbaby and pry her from her grasp.

“Dollbaby!” The voice scolded. “Where’s your sister?”

In a sudden flood of scalding light Faye witnessed a Medusa-headed pixie smothering Dollbaby in hugs and kisses. The light, held aloft by a gnarl-browed man who snugged a mini-cam between cheek and shoulder, enwombed Faye and the pixie, raising shadows like blisters on every surface.

A shadow tucked under an elbow of the tree-tall man detached itself, gliding with elfin grace into the circle of light.

“Jerrica Holms, KWMB.” The voice held the crisp musicality of wind-chimes nudged by a whimsical breeze.

“Faith Fairchild Gardner.”

“Troll and I,” she motioned toward the cameraman. “were supposed to interview Fancy and Cassie about the Rag Dolls.”

“The Rag Dolls?” Faye forced words past lips numb with bewilderment. Julia joined them in the circle of light.

“The Rag Dolls won a state high-school talent contest last week.”

“Yeah.” Fancy added. “Cassie and me, we were jamming in costume--you know, just waiting for Ms. Holms to show--when Breezy come up missing.”

“So.” Jerrica cut in. “We’ve been with Fancy all day. Troll heard over our scanner a car being dispatched here to ‘See the lady regarding missing child.’”

“I made the call.” Julia said. “But Faye may have seen, Briana is it?-- This morning, swinging on the gate as her bus pulled away.”

“Where was the doll?” Jerrica asked.

“Hanging on the gate where Briana put her.” Faye said.

Fancy returned Dollbaby to her perch atop the gate as Troll trained camera and spotlight on it.

There came a sound part chuckle, part sob. Faye turned, recognizing Mae Bea Morgan by her head full of riotous curls, who spoke through lips thin and motionless with the habit of holding a line of straight pins at the ready. “You might think that was the babe herself hanging there.”

A figure near twin to Fancy shivered and clutched her chest. Mae Bea reached an arm around the girl. “No sense borrowing trouble. Soon as Brick Travis gets here with Snoopy we’ll have Breezy back safe as pennies in a wishing well. Nothing bad can befall us Morgan girls. We lead charmed lives.”

Cassie ducked her head as Fancy too slung an arm over her friend’s shoulder. “Like the time Mae lost me in Freddy’s. She went to try on a swimsuit and when she came out, I was nowhere in sight. She ran up and down aisles in every department but grocery, still wearing that swimsuit, mind you.” A fit of giggles set her yarn pigtails aquiver.

“I was headed into grocery when I saw a clerk waving Babydoll over her head requesting a price check. I almost gave some poor ole Gramma a heart attack when I rushed over screaming, ‘My baby, my baby’ Ole Gramma took us to the toy department where she’d found Babydoll and there Fancy was curled up on the shelf, fast asleep between Orphan Annie and Mrs. Beasley. When Granny heard I’d made Babydoll myself she commissioned me to make another and that’s how Rag Doll Babies got started.”

“Yeah.” Fancy said, flipping Dollbaby off the gate and tumbling into her arms. “And where would we be without Rag Doll Babies?’

“The proverbial silver lining.” Faye smiled.

“Or plain dumb luck.” Julia scoffed. “But there’s much to be said for dumb luck. Some people do seem to have it in abundance. It’s enough to make you wonder if we‘re the game pieces of providence..”

“Must you subject us to your inane amphigories?” Wilma snapped.

“Oh, figgeries, chiggeries. You and your lame sniggeries.” Julia taunted.

“Girls!” Faye shamed them and to her amazement, they both hushed.

No one spoke and no one seemed about to. Fancy swayed, humming a mournful lullaby to Dollbaby. Faye recognized “Tears of a Clown.” and meeting her eyes saw irony and self-scorn blooming in them. These were no more the eyes of a child than were her own. Faye knew she was witnessing a cataclysmic event taking place in the soul of this girl who, having managed to conceive, bear, and raise a child to nearly five years of age while never relinquishing her own claims to childhood, was, with the threat of that child’s loss, laying claim to motherhood.

Faye was caught in a moment that seemed to stretch into infinity--a time-slip that held all possible outcomes within its grasp. Briana was out there somewhere and like Schrodinger’s cat she was both alive and dead, both harmed and unharmed. They would either find her or not. Both the grief of her loss and the joy of her recovery were caught in a dynamic dance in the hearts of those who loved her.

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A Tale of a Wail

This is my contribution to the WriteStuff Creative Carnival. The prompt: Sibling Rivalry.

A TALE OF A WAIL

by Joy Renee

Her mother would tell the tale for decades of how Abigail Ames sucked in her first breath and released it in a vibrato wail, with no impetus but surprise and how it took her seven years to break her daughter of the embarrassing habit of howling in the face of the tiniest disappointment. And her mother had broken her well. So well that she didn’t cry when at age eight, she watched her brother’s dog Griswald break the neck of her kitten Calypso while her brother, Darcy, stood by laughing. So well that she didn’t cry out at age ten when Darcy and his buddy Curtis strung a rope over a high tree branch and put a noose around her neck and slowly tightened it until crying out would have been impossible anyway as simply drawing breath burned like fire. When they lifted her into the tangle of leaves and branches and then let go of the rope so that she fell, breaking her right arm and spraining her left ankle, still she was silent.

Her self-enforced silence began the night of her seventh birthday when her mortified mother removed her from the dinner party after she let loose an endless open-mouthed howl when eleven year old Darcy blew out her candles for her and told her that meant he had just stolen her wish. Her wish had been to someday sing the part of Annie in the Broadway musical. It didn’t strike her that the transference of such a wish to her brother was a ludicrous concept. All she had registered was the irrevocable loss of hope. She was inconsolable. So her mother took her to her room and lectured her on the protocols of social engagements and the expediency of stiff upper lips for young ladies. Especially for a daughter of the Apostle of the Airwaves, Amos Ames, author of Daring To Profess.

“If you simply must cry, then go somewhere no one can hear you. And if that is impossible, then at least get off alone and put your hand over your mouth like this.” She placed Abigail’s own hand over her mouth and pressed. “There, see? You can cry as hard as you want and no one can hear. Pretty soon you will learn to do it without even using your hand. Once you learn to do it without screwing up your face into that unsightly mess, you can scream and cry and carry on in a crowd without even disturbing your make-up.”

Abigail took the lecture to heart. She never again cried out loud. But nor did she ever again sing out loud. Not, at least, until she was nearly out of her teens and too old to play Annie. Darcy had stolen her wish after all. The first of many precious things he stole from her. And now he was about to take from her the last precious thing because he refused to take her years of silence in lieu of an oath of eternal silence.

“Swear on what, Darcy?” she asked. “On my purity? On my honor? You took those from me long ago. And what point is there to swearing an oath to a man without honor? It would be nothing but babble in his ears. Easy enough to disregard on a whim.”

Nor would an oath suffice. Darcy had not gone to the trouble of tracing her after ten years just to hear her mouth a ritual phrase. She doubted he, on his own, had the means to track her to this remote mountain cabin in Southern Oregon. But he had managed to get a message to her through the one childhood friend whom she hadn’t the heart to cut loose of. Nor would Darcy have gone to that trouble on his own. It had to be on behalf of, and with the resources of, Curtis Christopher, currently campaigning for United Sates Senator in Idaho. Darcy had been Curtis’ campaign manager for every election he ran in since his run for Class President his senior year of college. Abigail had been privy to the inner-circle of that one, though still in high-school herself. She knew that Curtis kept himself willfully ignorant of the tactics Darcy used to make things go his way. She knew that their ambitions had been, from the beginning, to go all the way to the White House. With stakes that high, there was only one guarantee of silence that would satisfy Darcy.

Darcy’s mistake was in thinking that she had spent the last decade cowering in this redoubt, nurturing terror and shame, with nothing more than a salacious tale to tell that could be spun as sibling rivalry, if she ever dared to voice it, an embarrassment that could be averted by a single stroke. He could not suspect that the timid, biddable Abigail had been preparing to sing on a stage dwarfing any stage her seven-year-old imagination could have conjured, for if he had he would not have attempted to back her into the corner that abutted that stage on one side and the abyss on the other.

For, far from nurturing terror or shame, she had been cultivating a network and a name recognized for integrity and intrepid truth scrounging. Trudy Ann Daring, Investigative Journalist and founder of TruthDaring.com, had created the stage on which she would sing. And her tale was far more than an uncorroborated he said/she said family scandal. She had proof--documented facts and the living, breathing truth, that last precious thing--Truth Ann Daring, not yet ten, sleeping that peaceful sleep of innocence --just this little bit longer--in the loft over Abigail’s head.

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Kicking the Bucket

The following is my contribution to the WriteStuff Creative Carnival. The prompt was: A New Beginning.

Kicking the Bucket

by Joy Renee

The sky was beginning to lighten when Reggie pulled around a long curve and caught her first glimpse of the sea. She spotted a bench facing the ocean at the side of the road and pulled onto the gravel cut-out that provided parking space. As soon as she opened her car door, she regretted that she had left in such a rush the previous evening. She had no jacket and still wore the same tank top she’d worn in the sweltering packing sheds yesterday. Memories of that heat made the chill morning breeze off the water more refreshing than unpleasant and the chance to see, unobstructed, the view that had beckoned her across the coastal range was enough to draw her out of the car to brave the shivery gusts that whipped her hair about her face.

Only the prospect of a sunrise over the water would make this more perfect. It had been the thought of a Pacific Coast sunset that made her turn her steering wheel towards the west last evening. But there had been no hope of reaching here in time. She was determined, instead to watch the changing color of the sky and water and the early morning flocking of the sea birds as the sun rose behind her back. Could there be a better place for contemplating than a bench on the edge of the world as dawn scribbled the sky with the colors of hope and peace?

She was determined to figure things out if she had to sit here until the sun set as well. She could not go back until she knew what to do.

Reggie hugged her arms and rubbed them to generate heat. She might have to retreat to the car after all. There was no color in sky or landscape yet so sunrise was a solid half-hour off. The shadows among the dunes and rocks were still fathomless. Her eye snagged on a light near by. Not a football field’s length away. A campfire. Probably some local teens had partied all night. But minutes later she smelled brewing coffee. How many teens knew how to brew coffee over a campfire or had the foresight to bring the equipment to a Friday night keg party? Not her two. For sure.

"Brrrrrrrr!" Reggie finally sang out and jumped to her feet to jog in place, hoping to force her muscles to heat themselves. This just might work she thought after three minutes or so. Yet it was not conducive to a peaceful reassessment of her options. She looked toward the horizon and was startled to see movement of shadow on shadow just yards away.

"Yoo-hoo." A voice emanating from a blob of dark gray sliding against charcoal.
Reggie blinked her eyes trying to make sense of what approached across the sand, wondering if she was still asleep in the car at the rest-stop and dreaming this apparition.

"Yoo-hoo." Now accompanied by sounds of heavy breathing. "I have hot coffee. And a sweater."

Reggie was as surprised at her own impulse to trust this as a gift called up from the earth in response to her need as she was by the sight of a very large woman pushing a baby buggy. She was moving toward it before she fully realized she had decided to. And then the woman abandoned the buggy and moved to meet her, holding open a voluminous sweater in which she enfolded Reggie before pulling her inside her heavy cloak. "Honey! Whatever possessed you?"

Reggie laughed as much to quell the urge to cry like a child against her mother’s breast as in amusement. "It was over 100 degrees when I left home."

"Come sit by my fire. I’ll make hot cereal." They were already moving in tandem toward the buggy before Reggie nodded. The woman pulled a thermos from the buggy and poured a steaming stream into a mug saying, "Call me Mama Cat."

Minutes later Reggie was settling on a driftwood log in front of the fire. Mama Cat removed her cloak and slung it over Reggie’s back before pulling a handful of squirming fur out of the buggy. There was enough light now to identify this as two barely weaned kittens. "These guys’ll keep you warm. Oats or wheat?"

Neither spoke again until their cereal bowls were on the ground for the kittens now numbering four. "If my own kids would eat out of the same bowl like that, I probably would have slept in my own bed last night."

Mama Cat’s silence invited her to continue. "After I kicked the bucket, I thought I better get away to think what to do."

"Yes. Mama Cat chuckled. "Kicking the bucket does tend to make room for new beginnings."

"I passed out twice from the heat yesterday. Once while waiting on the pizza as I held the KFC bucket. Jay prefers pizza and Rae fried chicken, see.. Then again in the driveway at home. The kids were standing over me calling, ‘Mom! Mom! Where’s dinner?’ Must have been pure rage gave me strength to stand up and reach into the car. First for the pizza which I launched like a Frisbee, then…" She closed her eyes against the sight of seagulls flying against a clear blue sky and saw again the arc of the KFC bucket she had drop-kicked into the neighbor’s yard.

"How old are they?"

"Jay’s nineteen. I got him a job in the sheds. He quit at noon on his first payday. I smelled pot on him that night. Rae’s sixteen and dating Jay’s friend behind my back."

"Have you ever seen a mother cat defend her kittens?" At Reggie’s nod Mama Cat continued. "Have you ever watched a mother cat wean her kittens?" Another nod. "Then you know what to do."

Reggie sighed. "I know."

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