tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96377852024-03-13T18:17:51.402-05:00Bill's BilgeI'm a novelist, short story writer, and newspaper columnist. Other than that, I'm just another run down, beaten down, slapped down, broken down, shot down, hung down, put down, and kicked around old Boomer who's been beaten up, tied up, chewed up, blown up, hung up, screwed up, messed up, held up, and told to shut the hell up.
I'll be posting some of my short stories, chapters from my novels, the occasional odd thought or observation plus any other bilge that comes to mind.Bill Fullertonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13525822318125971222noreply@blogger.comBlogger88125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-80938360101067277812010-04-13T20:52:00.000-05:002010-04-18T05:03:57.360-05:00WE DANCED TO RAY CHARLES: synopsis & prologue<div align="left"><a href="http://www.getreligion.org/wp-content/photos/burning_cross.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; width: 320px; text-align: center;" alt="" src="http://www.getreligion.org/wp-content/photos/burning_cross.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><em>Due to uncertainity over what constitutes "published" in this age of the internet, only the synopsis, prologue, and first two chapters of this novel can be posted on an "open" blog. </em></div><div align="left"><em></em></div><div align="left"><em></em></div><div align="left"><em><br />Anyone interested in reading more after plowing through this should e-mail me at </em><a href="mailto:bemildered@yahoo.com"><em>bemildered@yahoo.com</em></a><em> for the link, username, and password to the "protected" blog.</em></div><div align="left"><em></em></div><div align="left"><em><br />Bayou Bill</em></div><div align="left"><em><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></em></div><div align="left"><em><span style="font-size:85%;"><br />==</span></em></div><br /><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"><strong>SYNOPSIS</strong></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><br /><br />Moral choices are seldom as simple as the one faced by MARK CAHILL in the summer of 1968, but it was the dangerous simplicity of a razor’s edge. On one side were an exotic beauty, the chance for political office, and the approval of most people in his small southern hometown.<br /><br />On the other side were his beliefs, self-respect, and life-long friends, one of whom he now loved but knew he could never have. Set against the backdrop of racial tension and social change, We Danced to Ray Charles is a story of love, hate, temptation and loss.<br /><br />Mark’s problems begin at a spring keg party on the levee of the Mississippi River. That night he and AMY MARSHALL, his oldest friend, kiss. Mark falls in love, but is convinced Any didn’t since, “guys like me don’t stand a chance with girl’s like her.”<br /><br />Then the petite, exotic, BEBE BOUDREAUX, makes a very pragmatic decision to move in on Mark. She’s rejected him for years because, “he’s just too damn nice,” but arranges to accidentally bump into him at a dance in Pinefield. By the time they leave, she’s agreed to what becomes the first in a series of ever more intimate dates.<br /><br />While Mark is delighted and surprised by this turn of events, there’s more to his wanting her than just hormones. He’s always felt like a perennial runner-up. As he explains to a friend, dating Bebe is like winning a blue ribbon; it says he’s a winner. And he hopes being with Bebe will help him forget how he feels about the unattainable Amy.<br /><br />What Mark won't admit to anyone is how dating Bebe also helps him deal with a long-standing self-loathing over his fear of DARRELL RAY SIMS, Bebe’s long time, back-street lover. While in junior high, Sims humiliated him during a football game. Since then, Mark has been afraid of Sims and ashamed of his fear. That Bebe would go out with Sims and a lot of other guys while rejecting him just re-enforced this feeling.<br /><br />However, Bebe’s unexpected change of attitude forces Mark to face some serious complications. For one thing, she’s a racist. So are a lot of other people he knows. But he and his friends are not, and it’s getting harder for him to overlook her type of blatant racism. It’s even tougher to ignore her father, who has taken over the local Klan.<br /><br />That’s a particularly awkward situation since one of Mark’s other close friends is WILLIE CARTER. His father is Pinefield’s leading black minister and head of the area’s civil rights movement.<br /><br />Mark, Amy, and Willie were born a few weeks apart and grew up together. Along with laconic latecomer BOB HEMPHILL, who Bebe once publicly insulted, they are a close-knit group. Even for Mark, who can rationalize almost anything, balancing his values and old friendships with dating Bebe is a tricky act.<br /><br />There are other complications. When Bebe begins dating Mark, Darrell Ray Sims, who has always felt a class-based contempt for the “candy-assed, city kid,” turns to Klan activities in an effort to impress her. Many of these acts relate to a “Peeping Tom” trial the Klan supported sheriff hopes will insure his re-election by embarrassing Willie’s family and impeding the voter’s registration drive.<br /><br />But for Mark, the worst complication is the physical attraction he continues to feel for Amy, the homecoming queen and campus beauty who he’s sure can never be more than his friend. When he sees and feels her tall, slim, nude body the moonlit night they go skinny-dipping, it leaves him numb, speechless, and feeling hopeless.<br /><br />Amy is facing her own complication. While unsure how she feels about her life-long best friend, she’s positive Bebe is evil and would be terrible for Mark. Amy wonders if she’s trying to break them up because she cares for Mark, hates Bebe, or is there more to her motives? But as she confides to her sister and cousin, it doesn’t matter how she feels about Mark. He’s so nuts about Bebe he didn’t even react to her body brushing against his the night they went skinny-dipping.<br /><br />For Bebe, it’s a much less complicated situation. A Cajun, she’s a relative newcomer to the clannish town and wants Mark for financial security and social respectability. If hooking him antagonizes Amy, the long-time rival she despises, so much the better.<br /><br />Another friend summed up the situation this way for Mark:<br /><br /><em>After knowing Amy all your life, you go and fall for her just when Bebe drops in on the act. You didn’t ask for advice, but in my opinion you should tell Bebe to hit the road and then take your best shot with Amy. But you won’t do that. You’re too hung up on Bebe and too afraid of losing Amy. Besides, we both know you’re a nice guy who was born to compromise.<br /><br />The problem is you could end up losing ‘em both, plus a bunch of friends and, what the hell, toss in your self-respect just for good measure. So I feel sorry for you. No shit, I do. ‘Cause unless you change your ways, something tells me you’re in for a very interesting summer.</em><br /><em></em><br /><br /><div align="center">==<br /><br /><br /><strong>PROLOGUE</strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"></div><br /><br /><div align="left">Headlights off, three large cars glide through the muggy Louisiana night like nocturnal birds of prey. Each front door brandishes an angry, ornate star and the words Kisatche Parish Sheriff’s Department.<br /><br />From the dark cab of his pick-up truck, Jack Boudreaux and his second-in-command, Delmar Bullock, watch with approval as the cars turn right onto a dead-end road with no lights and no name in a nowhere place called Sandtown.<br /><br />On one side of the street, abandoned cars, a basketball goal with no net, and a weed-choked baseball field occupy an otherwise vacant lot.<br /><br />A row of small frame houses, perched as if ready to flee at the slightest noise, face the lot. All are tidy but patched and weatherworn. Short fences outline bare-dirt front yards.<br /><br />The quiet procession halts in front of the last house. No dogs bark as uniformed white men get out. One circles behind the dark house. The others set up around the front and sides.<br /><br />A tall, nervous man wearing western boots and a cowboy hat steps up on the porch. After a last glance around, he hitches up his pants and pulls a pearl-handled, .44-caliber revolver from its hand-tooled holster. He yanks the screen door open and begins banging on the wooden, hollow-core front door. With his first blow, red lights start flashing on top of the cars.<br /><br />“Open up! This is the Sheriff. Come on out, Amos. We know you’re in there.”<br /><br />From inside comes the sound of frightened whispers and scurrying feet. The tall man hits the door even harder. The sound echoes in the damp night air. “This is Sheriff Tobias. Get on out here. We gotta talk.”<br /><br />“I’m comin’. Jes let me get my pants on.” There are more loud whispers. Someone peers out from behind the curtains of a front window. Then the door opens a few inches and a middle-aged, black face with old, wary eyes looks out.<br /><br />“What ya wanna talk about, Sheriff? I ain’t done nothin’.”<br /><br />“Don’t give me that shit, boy. Get out here or I’m gonna bust in and drag you out.”<br /><br />“You don’t hafta do that. My Momma’s in here. You already done scared her ‘bout half to death.” The door swings inward and a short, wiry man wearing khaki work pants and a white t-shirt steps out. ”What y’all doing here dis time of night, Sheriff?”<br /><br />“Shut up, nigger!” The white man holsters his pistol, then reaches behind his lanky frame and produces a set of handcuffs. “You’re coming with me.”<br /><br />The black man steps back. His face shows surprise and fear. “How come? I told you I ain’t done nothin’.”<br /><br />“And I told you to shut up. Now turn around and put your hands behind your back. I’m taking you to Pinefield, to jail.”<br /><br />After a momentary hesitation, the voice of white authority overwhelms any outrage or bewilderment. The man named Amos does as ordered and the cuffs snap into place.<br /><br />The Sheriff spins him back around, steps away, pulls out his revolver and uses it to motion for another white man to join them. Then he glares at his prisoner. “You’re a goddamn pervert. You know that, boy? We got an eyewitness who saw you looking into the bathroom window of a white, widow-lady named Myrtis Oglesby. Amos Little, you’re under arrest as a Peeping Tom.”<br /><br />“A what? Sheriff, I ain’t been looking into no white woman’s window.” The prisoner turns from the Sheriff to the deputy, as if searching for support. “Least of all no dried-up, crazy old white woman like Mrs. Myrtis.”<br /><br />Bathed in the rhythmic, flashing glare of red lights, the sweeping motion of the Sheriff’s right hand resembles something from a flickering silent movie as his fist, and the revolver it holds, smash into the side of the prisoner’s head. A scream comes from inside the house. He staggers in a macabre, jake-leg dance of insensibility, then drops to his knees.<br /><br />Sheriff Odell Tobias leans close and hisses. “Nigger, you’re talking about my wife’s aunt. Now it looks like we’re gonna have to add a charge of resisting arrest.”<br /><br />Another deputy joins the first. They pull the prisoner to his feet, drag him off the porch, and shove him into the back of the lead car. There’s a ragged volley of closing doors.<br /><br />With sirens on and lights still flashing, the three large cars with the words Kisatche Parish Sheriff’s Department and an angry, ornate star on each front door swing around and leave. As they drive past the pick-up truck, everyone but the prisoner waves at the two men sitting inside.<br /><br />Thin red streaks emerge from the dark cab, arc through the still night and land with small bursts of glowing embers. Headlights come on and the truck moves down the now deserted street. It stops across from the last house, the one with the front door still open. Inside, a black widow-lady named Bernice Little is alone and crying for her son.<br /><br />The men get out, lift an X-shaped object from the bed of the truck, and carry it into the vacant lot. A small flame soon spreads up from the base of a wooden cross. They wait to make sure the cross is burning properly. Once assured it’s another Klan job well done, they head back towards Pinefield, and home. </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-42934241555475247002010-03-17T02:36:00.000-05:002010-04-18T05:11:10.611-05:00A BRIEF AFFAIR, Chapter One, The Kiss<a href="http://www.elvision.net/images/couple_kissing_mask.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;" src="http://www.elvision.net/images/couple_kissing_mask.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />This is chapter one of my much-revised first novel, A BRIEF AFFAIR. It's a semi-autobiographical, sort-of-a-memoir, fictionalized version of how a nice, engaged, Jewish nursing student from Queens got mixed up with a backsliding Baptist from Louisiana.<br /><br />Any comments and/or suggestions would be appreciated.<br /><br /><br />==<br /><br /><br /><strong>A BRIEF AFFAIR</strong><br /><br />Chapter One<br />The Kiss<br /><br /> <br />“In other national news, a Defense Department spokesman said 18,000 of the 31,000 US troops ordered into Cambodia by President Nixon have been withdrawn.”<br /><br />Gwen Kaplan gave her bangs one last touch. Before this summer, news about Vietnam had been little more than the background noise to her life. She cared—had worked at a student nurse run aide station during the Wall Street riots, and still wept at the weekly list of US fatalities on TV. But the war had never been personal. Now things were different. Now she knew someone who had fought over there, and been wounded.<br /><br />“Investigations are continuing into the killing of protesters at Kent State and Jackson State universities. Authorities are discounting recent allegations by Mississippi officials that both incidents were started by snipers firing from student dorms.”<br /><br />Two weeks ago, the south was just a blur to her. Now that was also different. Now she also knew someone from the south. The same patient on her ward at the VA who’d been wounded in Vietnam. Her hair would do, she decided, and put the brush into her purse.<br /><br />“In local sports the Mets and Yankees both dropped Sunday double-head--.”<br /><br />She turned off the radio, then got up and gave herself a last check in the long mirror her father had mounted behind the bedroom door. The short white uniform looked okay but, as usual, Gwen didn’t like anything else she saw. Despite visual evidence to the contrary, her self-image was still that of a pudgy schoolgirl with dull brown eyes, drab brown hair, and a sprinkling of freckles across an otherwise nice enough nose.<br /><br />After dieting all winter, her figure was at the point where she could actually consider buying a bikini for trips to Rockaway and Jones Beach later this summer. Johnny would like that, a lot. She shook her head and glanced at the framed photo of Johnny DeAngelo. The face of her long-time boyfriend was frozen in a self-conscious smirk.<br /><br />Of course, she’d end up with a more modest two-piece. That still marked a vast improvement over the dowdy, one-piece suits she’d always worn. But no matter how she might really look, what she saw in the mirror never seemed to improve. She sighed, grabbed her purse and suitcase, and headed for the living room.<br /><br />“So you’re going to miss your cousin Sammy’s party this Wednesday, am I right, and not come home until Friday?” The sound of her mother’s hectoring voice made Gwen cringe.<br /><br />They had fought all weekend about her decision to skip the bar mitzvah of a particularly unappealing cousin. Gwen felt a little guilty about not going. But staying away from her mother all week was too tempting. “That’s right, Mom. But I’ll call tonight from the dorm.” Not wanting to give her mother a chance to re-start the hostilities, she gave her a quick kiss and then hurried out the apartment.<br /><br />It was a beautiful, almost balmy Monday morning in the borough of Queens. Birds were singing in leafy oak trees. Spring flowers bloomed in well-kept beds. Clean looking clouds floated in a blue sky lacking the usual load of pollution.<br /><br />Mrs. Esther Katz and Mrs. Irene Goldman were in their accustomed spots on the front stoop. Deep into one of their non-stop morning dialogues, they appeared oblivious to all these marvels of urban nature. But when Gwen came out the front door, they smiled and interrupted their conversation.<br /><br />"Morning, doll. Hi ya doing?" asked Mrs. Katz, who had known the newcomer all her life.<br /><br />"You always look so nice in your pretty nurse's uniform,” gushed Mrs. Goldman. “So tell me, dear, do you still like working at the VA?"<br /><br />"Yes ma'am," replied Gwen, in a brief, consolidated response to all their questions. Both women had well-deserved reputations for knowing practically everything about everyone who lived in the building. This included Gwen’s summer job as a nurse tech at the Manhattan Veteran’s hospital.<br /><br />"Those old vets aren't giving you a hard time, are they?" Mrs. Katz gave her a knowing wink.<br /><br />"You know they are, Esther," teased Mrs. Goldman. "I mean, as cute as she is, especially with those pretty legs of hers and the short skirts all the young girls wear these days."<br /><br />Gwen felt her skin flush under the appraisal. To cover her embarrassment, she set down the suitcase and began rummaging around in her roomy purse, making sure she had some of the new thirty-cent subway tokens and exact change for the bus.<br /><br />"Now, Mrs. Goldman, you’ve got to remember, I'm working on an ophthalmology ward. Most of the patients are pretty old and have such bad eyesight they couldn’t tell if I was even wearing a skirt, much less notice its length." A protective instinct told her not to mention the ward’s new patient, the young, wounded Vietnam vet from the south named Mark Cahill.<br /><br />The ladies laughed and began warning her about dirty old men. The discovery of both tokens and change reprieved Gwen. Giving her tormenters a smile, she said good-bye, picked up her suitcase, then hurried down the steps and across the street to the bus stop.<br /><br />In Gwen’s opinion, getting on a city bus during rush hour was a form of hand-to-hand combat. People in front and back would be pushing and shoving while you battled to hang onto the handrail and whatever you were carrying plus your tokens or exact change.<br /><br />Doing all this with a suitcase in one hand and a purse on your shoulder, while trying to keep your white uniform clean and the hem of its short skirt in place, made the experience even more interesting. Sometimes it didn't all work.<br /><br />Today she was taking the early morning Q65A bus, however, which meant things were easier. To her delight she grabbed an empty window seat near the front. Depositing the small, battered suitcase on the floor, she sat, tugged at the hem of her skirt and strategically positioned her large purse on her lap.<br /><br />After checking her watch, she pulled out a paperback copy of The French Lieutenant's Woman and prepared to endure another long Monday bus ride from her working-class neighborhood in Flushing to the subway station in upper-crust Forest Hills where she’d transfer to the F train for the even longer ride into Manhattan.<br /><br />Mondays were busy on the ward. It was after lunch before Gwen had time to begin rubbing a medicated ointment onto Mark's upper torso. The idea was to treat a mild rash, a side effect of the cortisone he took following his recent corneal transplant. For the past two weeks she’s used her best massage techniques to carefully apply the thick, topical medication.<br /><br />Today’s treatment was to be the last one. To her surprise, she felt some vague, mixed emotions at the prospect of no more back rubs.<br /><br />“How are you feeling?” she asked, while spreading the creamy ointment over Mark’s back.<br /><br />“Okay, I guess.” There was a distant, mechanical, almost truculent tone to his voice.<br /><br />“Is something bothering you?”<br /><br />The question seemed to annoy him. “No, nothing.”<br /><br />“Don’t tell me nothing,” she insisted, while still working on his back. “I’ve never seen you this moody. Something must be wrong. Whatever it is, I’d like to know--I really would, but only if you feel like talking.”<br /><br />After a long pause, Mark began speaking in a low voice. “I met a guy down in the canteen this morning. Turns out, he was with the armored unit working with us the day I got hit. According to him, there was a second KIA. I knew a guy named Tony Doughty got wasted. The last thing I remember seeing was his body being tossed around by the blast. That was bad enough. He was new, a cherry, and in my squad. I felt responsible for him. Now I find out someone else got killed and I’ve got no idea who the hell it was.”<br /><br />She didn’t interrupt, letting him talk through his emotions. The muscles in his back tensed, then began to ease. A few minutes later, he looked at her and winked. “Thanks. Guess I needed that.”<br /><br />Something told her the subject of the unknown dead soldier was closed. "Glad I could help.” She smiled and recapped the bottle of ointment. “It looks like that rash is gone.”<br /><br />"Well, to tell the truth, I kind of hate to see it go.” He rolled over, sat on the edge of his bed, and reached for his pajama top. "I've grown pretty fond of these back rubs."<br /><br />She washed her hands while trying to think of something to say. "Actually, you can have a back rub anytime you want. It's standard nursing procedure. It, uh, helps prevent bed sores."<br /><br />Inwardly, she cringed at her lame remark. No patient as active as Mark Cahill was ever going to get bedsores.<br /><br />"I'll be sure to remember that," he said, while buttoning the short-sleeved top. "Changing the subject from the fascinating world of bed sores and rashes, when you get a chance, could you help me snag a new pair of pajamas? I managed to get that stuff all over these."<br /><br />“No problem. Let me put all this away and I’ll meet you at the linen room in a couple of minutes.”<br /><br />In the nurse’s station, Gwen replaced the bottle of ointment, then pulled Mark's chart and dutifully recorded the treatment. After checking with Mrs. Anding, the ward’s head nurse, she got the key and headed for the linen room.<br /><br />It was located off the main hall in a quiet cul-de-sac which contained several other small rooms used for storing cleaning equipment and other non-medical supplies. When she arrived, Mark was leaning against the door.<br /><br />She smiled. "Sorry it took so long. Mrs. Anding was on the phone.”<br /><br />“No problem. I've just been hanging around admiring this scene of old world culture and charm."<br /><br />She laughed and unlocked the door. Inside, she switched on the overhead light and they began looking for a pair of extra large pajamas.<br /><br />The VA issued two types of pajamas. Most patients wore the traditional style which came in a choice of either faded or washed-out green. Mark preferred ones called convalescents. They were dark blue and made of heavier material which allowed him to walk around without a robe.<br /><br />The trouble was virtually every pair they found was old and had no label. They lucked out and quickly came across some bottoms in reasonably good shape with a label saying they were his size. Finding a matching shirt proved much tougher. While Gwen hunted, Mark tried on whatever she handed him.<br /><br />After more searching, she came across one which she was sure would fit. From her kneeling position she looked up and laughed. "You're not an easy man to satisfy, you know.” She stood and pressed the garment against his bare chest. "But maybe I've got just what you need."<br /><br />It was a very brief triumph. "As the granddaughter of a tailor, I’m certain it would fit. But now I notice it’s missing a button.” With a sigh, she lowered her hands and began folding the shirt.<br /><br />When Mark said nothing, she continued, “But remember I told you about my friend, Ann? Well, she’s working on another ward. I'll take this one over there and see if they have one like it, but with buttons."<br /><br />"Oh, don't worry about it," he said. There was an odd expression on his face.<br /><br />"I don’t mind. It's about time for my break anyway."<br /><br />With the help of her friend, Gwen’s mission accomplished. She returned to her ward, checked back in at the nursing station, and then headed for Mark’s room. After handing over her prize, she said, "I'd offer to close the curtains so you could change. But you've already put on the bottoms, so if it's all right, I'll wait to see if this fits."<br /><br />"No problem," said Mark, who was standing in the middle of the room, putting on the top. To her surprise, he began struggling with the simple task of buttoning the shirt. Trembling fingers gave mute testimony to his growing frustration.<br /><br />At first, Gwen hesitated to offer any help, afraid the gesture might hurt his feelings. But she was unable to just stand by and do nothing. "Can I help?"<br /><br />He answered without looking at her. "Man and boy, I've been dressing myself for over twenty years. But, yes ma'am, if you don't mind, it looks like I could use a helping hand."<br /><br />She came over and took the offending button from his fingers. His voice had been relatively calm. But standing next to him, she could feel his entire body shaking in frustration.<br /><br />"It's these damn cataract glasses," he said. “They make doing some things pretty tough.” When she finished, he mumbled a thank you, then flopped back onto his bed.<br /><br />It wasn't uncommon for her to spend a few minutes on slow afternoons talking to Mark. She liked him and liked hearing his smooth, southern accent. Not that he didn’t listen. Under his gentle questioning, she’d told him about herself, including Johnny. Her long-time boyfriend and now fiancé’ had dropped out of high school, washed out of the Navy, and was having trouble keeping a decent job. It could be very frustrating, she admitted, but she assured Mark she still loved Johnny and that once his situation was resolved, they’d get married.<br /><br />Now, something told her Mark was the one who needed to talk. He’d just finished another long weekend alone on the ward, learned of yet another buddy’s death, and now the limitations of his vision had just been brought home to him.<br /><br />She turned his bedside chair around and sat down facing him. "Mind if I stay for a minute and rest my feet?"<br /><br />He seemed startled by the request. Looking in her direction, he responded, "If I ever start to mind that, then I really will be in trouble.” While he’d replied with a joke and a grin, to her, the humor sounded strained and the smile looked forced.<br /><br />"Things like what just happened, do they bother you a lot?” Normally, she wouldn’t have been so direct. But she sensed that if she didn’t move quickly, he might try to rationalize away the incident and once again hide his emotions with humor.<br /><br />"Just two times," Mark said, sitting up in bed, "daytime and nighttime.” As their conversation deepened, he told her what it was like to be totally blind for nearly a year and how he struggled to cope with his limitations and frustrations.<br /><br />“The way I figure it, life is kind of like a poker game. You can’t control the cards you’re dealt, but you can control how you play your hand. In other words, you can either make the best of a situation or crawl away and wait to die.”<br /><br />After a moment of indecision, she decided to risk asking the question that had always bothered her. “Do you mind telling me why you joined the Army? You had to know it meant going to Viet Nam.”<br /><br />“Well, the war was out-of-style, very uncool, and I was in kind of a slump, so what else was I supposed to do? Besides, it was the only war around and I wanted to do my Ernest Hemingway thing. You know, check out what war was like.”<br /><br />Gwen sensed they were circling a much bigger issue. Hoping she wasn’t making things worse, she said, “Mark, it’s okay if you don’t want to tell me, but I’d really like to know what happened when you got hurt.”<br /><br />“No problem. It was last summer. The guy in front of me stepped on a booby trap. I caught the blast from the waist up and couldn’t see a thing. About a month later, I was flown to an Army hospital in Texas. The doctors there removed one eye and said I’d never see out of the other. And if it hadn’t been for a lot of luck, they might have been right,” he said in conclusion.<br /><br />The brief story was almost too much for Gwen to handle. Hoping to change the mood, she asked, “Does the government pay for all this?”<br /><br />“They didn’t at first. The Army said I’d never see again and so the VA had me ticketed for a blind rehab center. But now they’re paying and letting me stay here while I heal up.”<br /><br />“So how long have you been up here?”<br /><br />“Since January. I’ve gotten home a couple of times. Short visits. In fact, that’s where I was when a certain nursing student named Gwen Kaplan began her summer job.”<br /><br />Mark was sitting on the edge of his bed, feet propped on the lowered railing, elbows resting on knees. His voice was so low and soothing, Gwen had to scoot closer and lean forward to hear.<br /><br />He paused in the middle of a sentence, apparently having noticed something around her eyebrows. In a casual tone, he said, "Close your eyes a second.”<br /><br />Assuming he wanted to remove whatever he’d just spotted, she obeyed—and was stunned to feel Mark's lips press gently against hers. An intoxicating erotic energy took possession of her body. No hands touched her, but she couldn’t move. As if in a dream, she responded to the unexpected kiss.<br /><br />The tip of his tongue met no resistance as it slipped between her lips. Once inside, it made slow sensuous love to her mouth, caressing and coaxing her into returning its touch. She felt powerless to resist. All she could do, all she wanted to do, was savor the feel of Mark Cahill's mouth against hers.<br /><br />Seconds, minutes, hours, days later, she couldn't be sure, he broke the kiss and leaned back. Gwen opened her eyes and saw him looking straight at her. What he’d done wasn’t right, she was certain of that. But what was she supposed to do now? After all, she didn’t want to hurt his feelings, and she’d loved the kiss.<br /><br />From somewhere deep inside her jumbled brain came a memory of instructors saying to reject the act, not the patient. Now all she could think to say was, "I like you, Mr. Cahill."<br /><br />He responded in his trademark soft southern voice. "I like you, too, Miss Kaplan."<br /><br />Unable to think of anything else to do, she struggled to her feet and somehow managed to reach the foot of Mark's bed on legs which threatened to collapse. "And Miss Kaplan,” she paused at the sound of Mark’s voice and looked back, “someday I'm going to kiss every inch of your body."<br /><br />Still shaken by the kiss, she couldn’t believe this guy had just told her something so blatantly sexual. Things like that weren’t supposed to happen to nice Jewish girls from Queens, especially when they were engaged.<br /><br />With her head spinning, she mumbled good-bye and made her way out of room 24. In the empty, neon-lighted corridor, she sagged against the wall. Her addled mind raced with unanswered questions triggered by that unexpected kiss.<br /><br />How had it happened? She wasn't sure.<br /><br />Had she, somehow, encouraged him? No way.<br /><br />Should she tell her head nurse, Mrs. Anding, or Johnny? Definitely not. Mrs. Anding was too professional to approve and Johnny too insecure to ever understand.<br /><br />What should she do the next time? She didn't know.<br /><br />Would there be a next time? Possibly? Probably?<br /><br />She glanced back at the door to Mark’s room. Hopefully?<br /><br />#<br /><br />"You're not an easy man to satisfy, you know," she'd said, with her soft, inviting, brown eyes gazing up at him from under those long, dark lashes. “But maybe I’ve got just what you need.”<br /><br />With that, she’d stood and pressed a pajama top against his chest. When her fingertips touched his bare skin, it’d been a struggle to keep standing.<br /><br />Sitting on the edge of his bed, Mark kept replaying that scene, hearing those words. He went over and looked at himself in the mirror above the room's sink. With the thick, milk-bottle glasses he had to wear, the sprinkling of tiny powder burns around his eyes and the small scar on his left cheek, his face just wasn't the sort to tempt an engaged girl to flirt, especially a nice one like Gwen Kaplan.<br /><br />And yet, back in the linen room, even before she touched his chest, he'd felt something happening between them. He stepped over to the window and stared across the street at the Bellevue nurses dorm and wondered which room was hers. Had she been standing a step closer than necessary? Had she been giving him a sexy look? Was it possible that she'd been flirting? Or was he just wanting to believe a cute girl like her could be attracted to him?<br /><br />It’d been two years since he’d last felt anything like the emotions which swept over him, first then and later in his room as she buttoned the pajama top, fussed with the collar, and smoothed out the non-existent wrinkles. Looking into her eyes, feeling that touch, remembering those words, his palms had begun to sweat.<br /><br />Of course, she probably hadn't been flirting. After all, she was studying to be a nurse. Assisting patients was part of her job. That included everything from coming to the rescue when they couldn't even button their damn pajamas to getting them talking about past traumas.<br /><br />On the other hand, when he kissed her, she didn't jerk away or protest. That's what he'd expected. That’s why he’d hesitated too long in the linen room. They were, after all, practically strangers, and she was engaged, and what he’d said hadn’t just been a line, he really did like her. After a last, thoughtful look at the dorm, he turned and headed back to his bed.<br /><br />But it had been a good kiss. And when she responded, it became a very good kiss. Very good, hell, it’d been outstanding. There’d been no mistaking the invitation in her moist, pliant lips, an invitation he'd gladly accepted. Nor was there any mistake about his wanting a chance to do it again.<br /><br />The kiss startled her, he could tell. Of course, that line of his just before she left had probably been a total turn-off. Still, wasn’t there just a hint of a smile on her lips as she said goodbye and left? With his lousy vision, he couldn't be sure.<br /><br />For all he knew, she might consider this sort of thing just another hazard of the job. Maybe she'd tolerated the kiss because she didn't want to hurt the feelings of a half-blind vet a long way from home.<br /><br />Maybe. But something in her lips said that wasn't the case. Lying back on his bed, he could still smell her perfume and feel the sweet pressure of her mouth on his. It was a nice memory.<br /><br />Gwen Kaplan had triggered a feeling he once doubted he’d ever have again. In a way, that was scary. Feeling nothing didn’t hurt. So her being engaged was a good thing, probably. He wondered if this might be the start of something interesting. That seemed very doubtful, but it was a nice thought.<br /><br />Mark reached over to the nightstand and turned on his small radio. “In other national news, critics of the war in Vietnam are calling for renewed demonstrations over the government’s failure to immediately pull all US troops out of Cambo….”<br /><br />The radio went silent. Mark released the on/off switch and stared out the window. Lights were still on in several dorm rooms across the street. It’d been a long time coming, he thought. But thanks to Gwen Kaplan, he now had something else to think about, and to sleep on.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-1166625535556812102009-12-30T08:31:00.000-06:002009-12-30T20:18:34.380-06:00THE OTHER BOWL GAME - a short, short story<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.schools.pinellas.k12.fl.us/gallery/sports/FunnyFootballPlayer.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; width: 200px; cursor: pointer; text-align: center;" alt="" src="http://www.schools.pinellas.k12.fl.us/gallery/sports/FunnyFootballPlayer.gif" border="0" /></a><em><br />'Tis the season to be jolly, and watch football games, especially college bowl games. Every year more of them appear on our screens. With the media talent pool stretched thin, two seldom used TV sportscasters are given the assignment of covering the newest, least important, most obscure bowl game.</em><br /><p><em>Bayou Bill</em></p><p><em>==</em></p><p><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>THE OTHER BOWL GAME</strong></span><br />by Bill Fullerton</p><p>“Hello sports fans. This is Greg Gumball coming to you from fabled Waterproof Stadium in the heart of beautiful Dry Prong, Louisiana. This hallowed old structure is the picturesque setting for this year’s first annual No Hope Enterprises Motivational Bowl.<br /><br />“Today’s football game will pit the always tough Fighting Snipes from the Sam Houston Institute of Technology, led by head coach Jimmy Bob White, against coach Thomas ‘Gimmie’ Moore and his formidable Jackalopes from Southern Oklahoma Baptist.<br /><br />“Both teams come into the game with impressive records. Sam Houston was 6-5-1, including three wins against community junior colleges, while Southern Oklahoma went 7-5 against the point spread.<br /><br />“We’ll be getting insightful analysis of today’s eagerly anticipated football game from our color commentator, the one-time special teams specialist and all-district honorable mention from Middlebrow High School, Allan Michael.”<br /><br />“Thank you, Greg Gumball, and hello to football fans everywhere. This should be a real battle between teams with contrasting styles. The Jackalopes of Southern Oklahoma feature a ball-control offense built around the talents of team’s 5’4”, 145 pound, senior running back, Cedrick ‘Say What?’ Sullivan.<br /><br />“Operating out of coach Gimmie Moore's famed Broken Bone formation, the diminutive Sullivan has pounded out almost six-hundred yards in four seasons with the Jackalopes. No doubt Say What? would have racked up even better stats had he not been wracked up by a series of painful, crippling injuries while running up the middle in his first three seasons.<br /><br />“This year, he’s begun to improvise, running a lot of end sweeps. But these sweeps are so wide he goes out of bounds on almost every carry. Sometimes a really quick defensive back can catch him first, but Say What? has been running with a real sense of urgency this season.<br /><br />“While the Jackalopes run, the Snipes fly. The offense is lead by quarterback Rod ‘The Reel Thing’ Coker, who passed for over 1200 yards this season. Unfortunately, about half of those yards came on interception returns. But when he's hot, he's hot.<br /><br />“You know, Greg Gumball, everybody’s talking about Reel Thing's favorite target, split-end Tyrone, ‘Spear Catcher’ Jones. Although Jones isn’t blessed with blazing speed, he makes up for it by running erratic, broken pass routes, leaving defensive backs bewildered and out of position.”<br /><br />“That's great, Allan Michael. It sounds like this football game's got all the makings for a great offensive shoot-out.”<br /><br />“You could be right, Greg Gumball. But both teams have defensive units which could play significant roles in the outcome.<br /><br />“The Sam Houston Institute of Technology Snipes have one of the biggest defensive lines I've ever seen. Anchored by 5'7" 353 pound nose tackle, Buford ‘The Blob’ Grossman, the Snipes' defensive linemen are simply awesome. But despite that incredible size, they're unusually slow.<br /><br />“That combination should make it hard for the undersized Jackalope offensive linemen to execute any of their favorite weapons, such as: traps, influence blocks, and holding. And since the Snipes use either five or seven down linemen with outside linebackers who often act like defensive ends, the Jackalope's elusive running back Cedrick ‘Say What?’ Sullivan may spend a lot of time heading for the sidelines.<br /><br />“Southern Oklahoma Baptist counters with a defensive unit that features some of the wildest linebackers in the business. The leader of the group is 6'2" 167 pound senior, Anthony ‘Nasty’ Nasturtium.<br /><br />“I tell you, Greg Gumball, those guys are just plain mean. According to defensive coordinator Sam ‘The Body’ Breaker, they don't rely on any traditional defensive schemes. Instead, they just hang around and clobber anyone who happens to come nearby. In a recent game, they managed to cripple three members of the school’s marching band who hung around a bit too long after half-time, a couple near-sighted game officials, and a little old lady who’d made a wrong turn while trying to find the restroom.”<br /><br />“Sounds to me, Allan Michael, like that could spell trouble for the Snipes' great pass receiver, Spear Catcher Jones.”<br /><br />“That's right, Greg Gumball. Despite rumors to the contrary, Jackalope defenders aren't stupid. They do know the difference between playing tough defense, roughing the passer, personal fouls, and manslaughter. Now whether they care about those differences, well, who knows?”<br /><br />“How's the kicking game, Allan Michael?”<br /><br />“You know how it is, Greg Gumball, all kickers are a little strange. Well, so is the kicking game for both teams.”<br /><br />“That's great, Allan Michael. Fans, we'll be right back for the kickoff after this pause for commercials, public-service announcements, station breaks, and dead air.”<br /><br /><em>~~ "We're off." ~~</em><br /><br />“This dump’s falling apart, Gumball. Somebody fix that draft--I'm freezing my buns.”<br /><br />“Me, too. Hey, what about some coffee over here?”<br /><br />“Who picked these teams anyway, the humane society?”<br /><br />“Nah, the bowl committee. They’re all former International Olympic Committee members. For them it was an easy choice. These were the only schools willing to pay the price needed to get an invitation. By the way, Cedrick Sullivan pronounces his first name SEED-rick, not SAID-rick.”<br /><br />“Who gives a flying buffalo chip?”<br /><br />“You do, if you don't want to go back to calling Middlebrow Junior High games. Hang loose, we're going back on the air.<br /><br /><em>~~ "Back on in three, two, one." ~~</em><br /><br />“This is Greg Gumball along with, Allan Michaels. Welcome back to Waterproof Stadium and the first annual No Hope Enterprises Motivational Bowl. Any last second comments before the kickoff, Allan Michael?”<br /><br />“Just this Greg Gumball. Fans should pay close attention to my main man, Southern Oklahoma Baptist running back SEED-rick ‘Say What’ Sullivan. If he starts turning up-field before running out of bounds, SEED-rick could have a real impact….“</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-58503665491183237432009-11-21T08:30:00.002-06:002009-11-21T11:22:13.261-06:00A SPECIAL PRESENT: for your special someone<a href="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-12/909970/Clipboard03.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;" src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-12/909970/Clipboard03.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>
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<br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">A SPECIAL PRESENT</span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >Bill Fullerton</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >I was halfway between Sears and flat broke, sitting alone in the mall’s noisy food-court, eating a tasteless salad, and wondering why I let my mother con me into getting dressed and driving into town with her to go shopping the day after Thanksgiving, the busiest shopping day of the year. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">She was right, of course. My mother is always right. And to prove the point, I had somehow managed to finish all my Christmas shopping. That’s good, because I could be a little busy in a few weeks. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Today’s shopping cost me more than just max’ed out credit cards. My feet hurt, my back ached, I felt tired, bloated and miserable. Of course, I felt that way long before hitting the mall. Being eight months pregnant can do that to a girl. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Make that an unmarried, pregnant girl. Of course, I’m no girl either, although it does seem like I stopped growing a lot sooner than the owner’s manual told my parent’s to expect. In her infinite wisdom, Mother Nature decided five-foot nothing was more than enough for Becky Miller to handle. So there’s not a whole lot of me to pack around a baby that keeps getting bigger by the hour and seems anxious to get out and look around. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">It’s not like I didn’t know better. This will be my second baby. My first, Kylie, is two going on twenty and can’t wait to play with her baby brother. But my knowing better and doing what’s smart isn’t the same thing. At least it isn’t for me, not after falling in love with someone I may never see again. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">The new baby’s daddy, Matt Hampton, never knew I was in love with him. And I wasn’t, not at first. We’d known each other forever. Of course, everybody knows everybody else out where we live. In high school, we fooled around a little, but didn’t date. A couple years after graduation, I got married instead of going back to college while he dropped out and joined the service. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Last December, I showed up at my parents’ house with Kylie, and a black eye. Stuart, my rich, good-looking, socio-path husband, gave me both. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">A few days later, Matt came limping home with his left leg in a cast. Something very bad happened wherever he’d been doing whatever it was he did. Kylie and I went over to visit him the next day. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">A lot of girls have had a crush on Matt. He was an all-everything jock with a boyish smile and a teasing attitude that was just a little cocky. The Matt I saw that day was still blonde and good-looking, but he was no boy. His skin wasn’t tan so much as a hard, weathered brown. There were tiny creases around the corners of his eyes. And sometimes those familiar blue-eyes had this funny, distant look. Most of all, the cockiness was gone, replaced by a quiet self-confidence. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">In other words, he was a man—and I wanted him. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">The next afternoon, I went back, without Kylie. We were alone, and soon making love. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">"Becky Miller, you have the most delectable boobies.” He interrupted a very thorough job of nuzzling my breasts to say that, and was now smiling at me. My sweater and bra were off; my jeans and panties were about to follow. We were on the carpet in the living room. A few small logs burned in the nearby fireplace. The lights on the big Christmas tree were turned on. Just like me.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I stroked his short, blonde hair and grinned. "Don’t give me that, crap. I'm an original member of the Itty Bitty Titty Club.” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">"Size don't mean diddly. I’ve always told you that." Matt used the tip of his tongue to emphasize the point. "Quality means a lot more that quantity. Believe me, lady, yours are first-rate. In fact, while these prime samples of female flesh may not be the biggest, they are, without doubt, still the finest pair I've ever had the pleasure of enjoying." <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I don’t mind having small breasts. In fact, I prefer mine to the big udders most guys seem to go nuts over. That’s just as well. Even after having Kylie, there was little change in mine. At most, they went from hard-fried eggs to a couple sunny-side up. Matt’s gentle teasing and compliments reminded me how sweet he could be, and how much I wanted him. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">"If that’s what you think, then there’s more than just your leg that needs attention. Lay back and let’s see if I can give you an early Christmas present." <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">When it ended, I was content, tingling all over, and stretched out on his chest. It was a good place to be. I could feel his heartbeat slowing while my body moved to the rhythm of his breathing. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Matt broke the silence. “To me you look a lot more like a cute elf than old Santa Claus. But I sure do like your Christmas presents and the way you deliver ‘em.” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">After that we were together almost every day. Since his parents both worked, most of the time at his home, although we go out on dates. I’m sure everybody in town figured they knew what was going on between us. After all, everyone in our town knows everyone else and what their fellow citizens are doing. But I never heard of anyone so much as raising an eyebrow, much less objecting. That included our parents. In fact, I think that, like everyone else, they approved. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Still, Matt and I knew it was just a brief affair, nothing more. He would return to the service, I’d go back to college. No strings attached. That’s the way it always had been between us. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Then I fell in love with him. It’d been coming on for some time, but I wouldn’t admit what I was feeling. Sure Matt and I had changed. But we hadn’t changed that much, had we? There’d been no chemistry between us back in high school, so why now? I kept telling myself that what I felt was a combination of friendship, sympathy, and sex, not love.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">All that ended the night he beat-up Stuart, my husband who had beaten me up—twice. It happened the week after the divorce papers were filed. We were at a club with some friends. Matt still had his cast on, so we were just listening to the band. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Stuart came over to our booth and started carrying on. Matt never moved, just told Stuart, who was almost leaning on him to get closer to me, that he should leave. When Stuart ignored him and kept yelling at me, Matt hit him several times, real fast, just how and where I’m not sure. Stuart let out this funny, gurgling noise and sank to his knees beside our table. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Matt put a hand on Stuart’s shoulder and must have done something, because I saw Stuart grimace. Then Matt pulled him close and asked, in this dead-calm voice, if he was ever going to bother me again. Stuart’s a big guy, and believe me, he’s strong. But I could see fear in his eyes as he mumbled, no. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">From then on, I was hooked. All my life, I’d felt in total control around men. It’s not my looks. I’m short, flat-chested, and no great beauty. But guys seldom seem to notice. I like to think it’s my eyes, and smile, and personality. Maybe those do play a part, but most of it is my being a total flirt, and having a nice butt. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Everything changed when Stuart beat me up. After the second time, when he started for Kylie’s room before I got him to turn back on me, I would feel this twinge of fear and uncertainty around men I didn’t know. But the fear vanished whenever I was with Matt. Then I was my old self, feeling in control, safe, complete. I’d always liked Matt, now I loved him. My problem was how to convince him he loved me. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Then he told me he wasn’t just going back to the service, but back to wherever he was when he got wounded. He felt responsible for the deaths of two friends. “I trusted someone who betrayed us. My friends are dead. He’s still there.” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I thought I was going to have a breakdown. This wasn’t fair. What scared me most was the absolute certainty he didn’t give a damn whether he lived or died, just so long as he killed that other person first. The only thing that gave him any second thoughts was my reminder that he was an only child. I begged him to think of what his death would mean to his family. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">But I knew he wouldn’t budge. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">After Christmas, he went back to the service to spend a few months getting his leg in shape and preparing to return to his old assignment. Meanwhile, I re-entered college and considered my very limited options. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">In April, he came home on leave prior to going back to wherever that other guy was. I met him with a big smile, and a body that was all his and free of any trace of birth control pills. If the next few weeks were the last I would ever have with him, maybe I would have his child. If his parents, who I dearly loved, lost their son, they might at least have his grandchild. Maybe that would ease their grief, our grief. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Now, eight months later, Matt may be dead or alive, I don’t know. But I’ve got his child, his son. “Matt Hampton, Jr.,” I whispered the name, smiling at the sound. Then I heard myself continuing, “…only child of the late Matt Hampton,” and began to cry. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">“This seat taken?” I didn’t look up, just shook my head and kept searching for a napkin. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Someone pulled out the chair next to me and sat down. “Is the food here that bad, or are you just sad to see me?” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Who the hell was this idiot? I turned, and was staring at someone who looked just like, Matt Hampton. For maybe the first time in my life, I was speechless. Just breathing was hard enough. Before I could think of something to say, he leaned over and kissed me. It was soft and gentle, and seemed to last forever, which was way too short for me. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Nothing made sense. “What are you doing here?” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">He smiled. “Glad to see you, too, Miss Miller.” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Then it registered. “You’re alive!” I threw my arms around his neck, buried my face against his chest, and really began crying. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I didn’t want to look up. The face I saw might not be Matt’s. This could all be a dream. But I recognized his hard body, his special smell, and his gentle touch as he stroked my hair. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">When I worked up the courage to look, all I could say was, “Really, what happened?” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">“I quit.” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">“You can’t just quit—can you?” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">“My mission was accomplished. My time was about up. I told the bosses I had personal business to attend to, and quit.” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">“Am I that personal business?” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">“Damn straight. I got a message a few weeks ago from old Dad. Don’t ask how. Anyway, he filled me in on what you did and how things have been, well, developing since I left. He said you were way too good for me, and that while there may have been a few bastards in our family, they were all self-made men, not accidents of birth.” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">“He shouldn’t have done that. This was no accident,” I touched my belly. “I don’t want you here because you feel sorry for me.” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">“I don’t. I’m just—“ The smile left his face. To my amazement, Matt looked away, but not before I saw a tear roll down his cheek. After a moment, he wiped a hand down his face, turned back, and gestured toward my protruding middle. “You love me, that much?” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I nodded. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">He swallowed. “Becky, before leaving, I fought falling in love with you. It wasn’t easy, but I wasn’t sure I’d make it back. Nearly didn’t.” He almost looked embarrassed. “Anyway, Dad didn’t let me know about you and the baby until after I finished. He was right to wait. Because since then, I swear, you and the baby, and Kylie, and just life itself, that’s all I can think about. So I had to get out. I want life now, not more death. And it’s because of you, because I love you. Oh, God, how I love you. Becky, will you please marry me?” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I nodded and we were hugging and I was crying again all the while grinning like I’d won the lottery. In a way, I had. We kissed. It made the first one seem like a chaste peck on the cheek. When we came up for air, I patted my very big belly. “I’m afraid it won’t be much of a honeymoon.” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">“That’s okay. I’m counting on having a long life to make up for lost time. When’s the baby due?” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">“Well, if your son will wait that long, around Christmas.” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">“A boy baby, at Christmas.” He seemed pleased with the prospect. “And we’re not even Jewish.” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">“You’re an idiot. But I do love you.” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">“And I love you, too. Remember last year, when we first made love and I said I liked your presents and the way you delivered them? Well, I still do.” He reached out and laid the palm of his hand on my belly. “It’s just that I never counted on such a special Christmas present.” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I began to cry again, and pressed his hand against my belly. The baby picked that moment to kick. Matt grinned, stood up, and began helping me out of my chair. “I think that was a not-too-subtle hint from our son that we better get moving on this marrying business. Where’s the nearest jewelry store? We need to buy some rings.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">==</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><o:p></o:p></span></p><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;" ><o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoPlainText"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;" ><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >Bill Fullerton has been a newspaper columnist, government paper-pusher, oilfield roustabout, and served in Vietnam.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >His short stories have appeared in: <b>Rose and Thorn, New Works, Review, DeadMule, Chick Flicks, Nibbler, and Muscadine Lines. Long Story Short </b>named one of his short stories, Story of the Month.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style=";font-family:";" >LSS </span></b><span style=";font-family:";" >also ran an excerpt of his second novel, <i>We Danced to Ray Charles,</i> a coming-of-age love story that was a semi-finalist (work-in-progress) for the Faulkner Award, and a finalist in the Santa Fe Writer’s Project contest.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-4568183935660403052009-08-12T07:45:00.000-05:002009-08-12T07:48:09.017-05:00YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS - excerpt<a href="http://www.silentsaregolden.com/articles/jazzageclip1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; width: 320px; text-align: center;" alt="" src="http://www.silentsaregolden.com/articles/jazzageclip1.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><em><span style="font-size:85%;">For the last few weeks I’ve been enmeshed in the re-writing of my second novel, We Danced to Ray Charles. The night the story’s two life-long friends, Amy and Mark, first kiss is a key moment. In the book’s current version. The scene occurs about half-way through as a flashback/dream told from Amy’s perspective.<br /><br />What I’m thinking about doing is adding Mark’s version of the same scene to the opening chapter. That’s what I’ll be posted today. In a few days, I’ll post the scene in which Amy recalls that evening. A third and final post related to the event, will detail what happens when they chance to return to that spot.<br /><br />For those faint of heart and/or weak of stomach, they don't go, "All the way." Maybe they should. Maybe it's too detailed or not detailed enough. Maybe the whole idea is weak. Your feedback, whether it be brickbats or bouquets, hallelujahs or hand-grenades, posted here or sent by email, is needed and will be appreciated.<br /><br />Bayou Bill<br /></span></em><br />==<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">You Must Remember This</span></strong></div><div><span style="font-size:85%;">An excerpt from Chapter One of, <em><strong>We Danced to Ray Charles</strong></em></span></div><div>by Bill Fullerton</div><div></div><div><br />Bebe fluttered her fingers in a goodbye gesture as she pulled away. There was a brief squeal when her tires hit the asphalt road. Mark watched the taillights vanish into the sultry night while touching the spot she’d kissed.<br /><br />A warm breeze drifted past. With it came a faint scent of spring flowers and the succulent eroticism of approaching rain. It reminded him of another night and another girl. His hand droped, his smile faded, and he whispered, “Ain’t life a bitch?”<br /><br />It was like a bad joke. The once unobtainable Bebe Boudreaux, the girl he always wanted, seemed interested in him. That would be great, except he’d just fallen in love with Amy, someone he could never have, someone he loved so much it hurt to even think her name.<br /><br />Even the possibility of a well-financed shot at becoming a state representative couldn’t get Amy off his mind. Once, they both loved politics. He still did, and had always wanted to run for office. But after today’s meeting with local big shots, all he could think about was how, after what Vietnam did to her brother, she no longer cared.<br /><br />Thank God he’d run into Bebe. What politics couldn’t do, she could, almost. With Bebe around, it was hard for thoughts of anyone else to slip in, hard, but not impossible. The moment she drove away, memories of that night with Amy came flooding back along with a familiar, sick, hopeless, soul-shriveling sensation.<br /><br />A swarm of hungry mosquitoes began intruding on his thoughts. An absentminded attempt to wave them away failed and he headed for his car. He wanted to think, to try and figure things out, not feed mosquitoes.<br /><br />The tree-lined streets of Pinefield featured more gentle hills than traffic signs. Even in the downtown area there were few other cars passing the lighted storefronts. Mark ignored these icons of his youth as he tried to focus on Bebe and what happened at the dance. But his mind kept going back to Amy and that night on the levee.<br /><br />The party had been his dumb idea. To be dumped by a guy you’ve dated for over a year is tough. To have him do it for another guy—devastating. That’s what happened to Amy, and Mark had never seen her so confused and depressed.<br /><br />So the idea, the hope, was that after a couple weeks of mourning and talking his ear off on the phone, a casual beer-bust with friends would kick-start her back to life. And while everyone else seemed to be having a great time, he could tell she was miserable.<br /><br />That’s why he kept checking on her and noticed when she drifted away from the center of the party and then vanished into the late evening shadows. At first he thought it best to let her be alone. But he changed his mind when a tall, arrogant jerk with a long-standing case of the hots for Amy seemed ready to follow.<br /><br />In the breeze off the river, he heard a faint, whimpering noise like an injured animal might make. He followed it to her hide-away behind a driftwood log.<br /><br />They’d talked and talked about what happened and why she felt so damn depressed. There was more to her mood than just breaking up with a boyfriend, much more. But by now he didn’t know what else to say. So he just sat beside her and said nothing.<br /><br />A fresh breeze came off the river and she shivered. He put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. With a low, anguished wail, she buried her face against his chest and began soaking the front of his shirt with what seemed like an endless stream of tears.<br /><br />When her sobs began to taper off, she didn’t pull away and try to apologize. Instead, she continued to lie against him, silently sliding a fingertip across his soaked shirt. It felt good, very good, and he smiled<br /><br />That’s when she lifted her head and looked at him. Even with all the crying, she was still beautiful. He’d never been “turned on” by Amy’s looks—neither had Amy. Maybe it was a trick of the mind to protect their friendship. Still, he understood why guys--.<br /><br />His evaluation of Amy’s beauty came to a sudden stop when she slipped her hands behind his neck, pulled his face to hers, and began to kiss him, and kiss him, and kiss him.<br /><br />Later, he wondered if that was when he fell in love with her. Did that first touch of her lips, her tongue, and the warmth of her mouth against his melt whatever barrier had stood between their friendship and love? He’d never know. What he did know was that by the time their lips parted, something in him had changed, forever.<br /><br />There was a look of serenity, or something like that, on her tear-streaked face. But he sensed another, more subtle emotion. With a jolt of disbelief, he realized she was waiting for him to do something. The problem was he had no idea what that should be.<br /><br />He tried to think, tried to be rational and decide what was best. Amy was wasted, hurt, vulnerable. He’d never taken advantage of a girl, and didn’t want to start with his best friend. But the memory of that kiss, and the way she kept staring into his eyes, made thinking about anything other than kissing her again, and again, and again, impossible.<br /><br />This time she didn’t have to pull his face to hers. At some point it occurred to him that Amy was one helluva good kisser. He envied the guys she’d dated.<br /><br />The next time they parted, he started to say something about stopping. Maybe joke that he wasn’t sure how much more of this he could stand. Only it wasn’t really a joke.<br /><br />Before he could get started, Amy snuggled closer and pulled him back down onto her mouth. Though unsure if he’d fallen in love with Amy during their first kiss, what now followed made that a very moot point.<br /><br />As if on autopilot, his hand slipped under her sweatshirt. Amy shivered and tried to pull him closer. He took possession of her breast, savoring its firm, silky smoothness. The nipple was already hard, as if waiting for him. As he gently rolled it between finger and thumb, Amy broke their kiss and moaned.<br /><br />He took his time kissing her eyes, her cheek, her chin, letting his lips trail down to her neck. There was no resistance when he pushed the sweatshirt higher, exposing her small, perfect breasts to the pale moonlight. A moment later his lips encircled one of her nipples. Amy gasped and tried to press herself deeper into his mouth.<br /><br />Once again he told himself he should stop, but his hand seemed to move of its own accord down her slim torso. When he began fumbling with her zipper, Amy made no move to stop him.<br /><br />More than anything in his life, he wanted to make love with Amy Marshall. And he knew if he didn’t stop now, that would happen. Only it wouldn’t be love, it’d be screwing. And though aching with desire and need, he didn’t want to do that to his best friend. And he didn’t want to risk losing his best friend over what, considering his present condition, would probably be a two-second burst of ecstasy.<br /><br />With a resigned sigh, he gave up on the zipper. His lips released her breast and returned to her mouth.<br /><br />Their tongues performed a lazy dance from one mouth to another. He pulled her sweatshirt down, covering breasts he’d probably seen for the last time. For a moment, he allowed his fingers to caress first one, then the other. He wanted to remember their texture, shape, and warmth.<br /><br />The kissing became less intense but didn’t stop. He hated to break that last contact with her. Besides, they both needed to cool down before returning to the--.<br /><br />The irate blare of a car horn brought Mark back from the Mississippi levee to one of the few Pinefield intersections with a traffic light. A light he’d just run. He waved in apology at the offended driver, and headed out of town. If he was going to let himself think about that night with Amy, he better get off the road. </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-1147670563623898952009-07-19T00:15:00.000-05:002009-07-19T22:10:03.988-05:00WHAT SUMMER MEANS TO ME - flash fiction<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6493/710/1600/swimming%20hole02.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6493/710/320/swimming%20hole02.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>What Summer Means To Me</strong></span><br />by Bill Fullerton<br /><br /><br />Summer means no school.<br /><br />Summer means having to mow your yard instead of going fishing or swimming. And to make matters worse, my tightwad father don't hardly pay me a thing for all that work. He claims riding around on a John Deere for a couple of hours isn't some kind of cruel and unusual punishment. And he also says he won't pay me time-and-a-half for hazardous duty. Someday I’m going to turn him in to the Federal Wage and Hour people like that ad I saw on TV said to do.<br /><br />Summer means fishing with the other guys, whenever I can sneak off that danged John Deere. Most of the time I go fishing with just Freddie and Mike, but sometimes Mike's kid brother Jerry tags along. He's a real pest, if you know what I mean.<br /><br />Jerry is an okay kid I guess, but like I said, he can be a real pest. Like when he scares all the fish by kicking the bait bucket or when he falls into the pond, accidentally on purpose. To tell you the truth, his falling in the pond is not that bad a deal. You see then we all have a good excuse to jump in, clothes and all, to save him.<br /><br />Then when we get home and our Mom's start yelling about getting our clothes wet, we can tell them the gospel truth, that we were just trying to save poor little Jerry from drowning to death in the pond. Boy if they ever find out Jerry swims like a fish, they'll kill us all.<br /><br />Summer means swimming. Sometimes we swim in the pool in Bob's backyard. That's okay except Bob's folks never want you to play King of the Hill on top of the diving board, or Bull-a-Gator tag in the pool. It also mean's having to be careful whenever you go into Bob's house so his Mom won't get mad at you for tracking in water or making some other mess.<br /><br />Swimming in the pond is more fun. There's a rope swing and the bottom's not really that muddy. The only problem is nobody's parents wants them swimming in the pond on account of how they're afraid we'll all drown or something. So we always have to stop at the filling station and rinse all the mud off before we go home.<br /><br />Summer means playing baseball, and playing baseball, and then playing some more baseball. Most of us don't really care for it that much, what with all the rules and coaches and umpires and all. But for some reason, our parents seem to get a kick out of the whole thing.<br /><br />All summer long they keep coming to game after game after game. And about all they do is sit in lawn chairs and talk to one another while swatting at mosquitoes and sweating like a bunch of rushing racehorses. Maybe they keep coming because they enjoy yelling at the coaches and umpires. They also do a lot of that.<br /><br />Summer means there's nothing to watch on TV except for reruns. There's also the Atlanta Braves and the Chicago Cubs, or even worse (if that's possible), golf. But personally, I'd rather watch the reruns.<br /><br />My father took me with him one time when he went to play golf. There's only one word for that game, BORING! I mean, all that happens is a bunch of grown-ups hit a ball, ride after it a long ways, and then hit it again. It was fun getting to drive the golf cart, but when it comes to the game, who cares?<br /><br />As for the Braves and the Cubs, well as the girls say, gag me with a spoon. The Cubs are all losers, except for Sammy Sosa, and the Braves are even worse.<br /><br />Sometimes my father gets me to watch a real baseball game with him, like say the Dodgers against the Giants. That's not too bad. Dad's no pro, but he seems to know a thing or two about baseball. And it's kinda fun sitting with him, drinking Cokes and talking baseball, even if he does keep kidding around and calling the teams the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants.<br /><br />But usually before the game is over, Mike or Freddie have come over, maybe with Bob and Jerry, and I tell Dad I want to go with them. Dad always says it's okay to leave, but sometimes it seems like he gets this funny, kinda sad look on his face.<br /><br />Summer means no school.<br /><br />The EndUnknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-1143341121721170252009-06-17T19:21:00.000-05:002009-06-17T07:01:44.675-05:00A FISH-EYED VIEW OF HUMANS AND SEX<a href="http://www.pvisuals.com/fishing/bookstore/images/big_bass.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; width: 320px; text-align: center;" alt="" src="http://www.pvisuals.com/fishing/bookstore/images/big_bass.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong></strong></span><em><span style="font-size:85%;">A few months after their wedding, two good friends of mine went fishing. They anchored in a shady spot for lunch and, being young and in love, one thing led to another. I've no idea about the fishing that day, but nine months later there was indisputable proof something was caught. The location for this amorous activity was Fool's Bayou. And no, I'm not making that up.</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">After hearing that story, I wondered how the bayou's various native life forms might have reacted to what was going on in the fishing rig. Here's one, not so likely, possibility.</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">Bayou Bill</span></em><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>==</strong></span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong></strong></span><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">A FISH-EYED VIEW OF HUMANS & SEX</span></strong><br />by Bill Fullerton<br /><br />Bronson the Big Mouth Bass stuck his head above the bayou surface and looked around. What the hell was going on? It was mid-day and too damn hot for any respectable fish to be feeding. Even the dumbest human must realize that. So why had those two in that fancy fishing rig slipped past the screen of willow branches and tied up against the trunk?<br /><br />The event was so surprising, even Freddie the Frog and Pasquale the Possum had stopped bitching about how humans were the only animals not required to have alliterative names. From their usual spot on the limb of a nearby cypress, they silently studied this phenomenon.<br /><br />No one ever said humans were smart. But Bronson hadn’t gotten where he was by taking them for granted. Maybe the humans were going to fish for crappie. But that didn’t seem likely. Even the dumb, if passionate, Paula the Perch, wouldn’t be nibbling in this heat, at least not on food.<br /><br />Bronson was certain there could be no greater calling in life than to be a bass, especially a big bull bass. However, except for an occasional brief, and exhausting, leap out of water, being a bass meant your air-world viewing angles were limited. So he decided to slip over to the cypress and let Freddie and Pasquale fill in any action he might miss.<br /><br />From his new vantage point among the cypress roots, he looked up at his two friends and asked for a report. “They’re like, you know, feeding,” said Pasquale. He’d spent time on a hippie commune and found the subject of human food very interesting.<br /><br />“And drinking something in cans,” added Freddie. “It looks like beer. The big guy’s on his third. The little one with the floppy hat is still on number two.”<br /><br />Even from his low angle, Bronson had seen all that and was not impressed. In his opinion, watching mold grow would have been more exciting. “Is that all? You two long-winded, worthless excuses for friends are supposed to--.”<br /><br />His diatribe was interrupted by new activity on the boat. The smaller of the two humans had just removed the big floppy hat. With a shake of the head, a whole bunch of long dark hair came tumbling down. The longhaired human then turned and gave the big one a smile that, to Bronson, seemed to make the water even hotter.<br /><br />There was no doubt, the one with longhair was most definitely a female-type human. And what a female. Even Bronson, who looked upon all air-breathers with a certain disdain, was impressed.<br /><br />The female’s smile got even bigger when the big male moved up and sat beside her in the middle of the boat. No one at the cypress could believe what happened next. The humans began making like sucker fish, going mouth-to-mouth while the male messed with her top.<br /><br />When their mouths finally parted, the female gave the male a look that made Bronson’s tail curl, and removed the top. The male seemed to like what came into view, especially two odd-looking bumps. At first he had his hands all over them. Then he leaned down and did something like the mouth-to-mouth thing, but on first one of them and then the other. Judging by the look on her face, the female seemed to enjoy all this.<br /><br />“Psst. Hey, Bronson.” It was Pasquale.<br /><br />“Yeah, what is it?” Not wanting to miss any of this odd behavior by humans, he hated to look away.<br /><br />“You won’t believe what else that dude’s up to.”<br /><br />“Wadda you mean?” This time Bronson’s curiosity got the better of him and he looked up. Pasquale was hanging by his tail. That wasn’t so unusual considering his specie. But on his face was a grin unlike any ever seen on a possum. His forepaws were busy doing something Bronson felt certain he didn’t want to know about.<br /><br />“Pasquale, what in the name of Moby Dick are you talking about?”<br /><br />The possum continued watching for a moment, then he glanced down. “Man, that dude is like some kid unwrapping a birthday present. Check it out.”<br /><br />Bronson looked back. The female was standing while the male shucked off her pants. The boat rocked a bit. But she put her hands on his shoulders and they did more of that mouth-to-mouth action until things settled down.<br /><br />There wasn’t a whole lot of the female, but what there was seemed to please the male. And Bronson had to admit, she did have a certain slender, symmetrical appeal.<br /><br />It came as another surprise when she lowered herself in front of the male. After some more mouth-to-mouth, her head vanished from Bronson’s view. “What’s going on, you two? I can’t see a damn thing but that shit-eating grin on his face.”<br /><br />“Well,” Freddie paused to clear his throat, a nervous habit endemic to his species, then started again. “Well, not much, really, she’s just doing something with her hands. No, wait. Now she’s holding this thing. I swear, it looks like an albino snake.”<br /><br />Bronson sensed he was being given the business. “Bullshit.”<br /><br />“No shit,” insisted Freddie. “She’s doing something to it with her hands and it’s gotten bigger. What the…? Okay, I’m not making this up, I promise. But she bent over just now, and that snake-looking thing, it seemed to slid right into her head.”<br /><br />He looked down at Bronson. “You think this is like some Praying Mantis deal? You know, the female eating the male? Damn, I hope not. That’s one bug that creeps me out.”<br /><br />“How the hell should I know? One less fisherman is fine by me—cuts pollution and the number of hooks. But what’s happening now?”<br /><br />“Well, it doesn’t look like she’s having him for lunch, after all. I mean, she’s bobbing, her head up-and-down. And when she’s up, you can still see whatever it is, only now it looks all wet and shiny.”<br /><br />None of this made any sense to Bronson, who prided himself on his knowledge of human behavior. In the bayou, it could make the difference between living another day and becoming a fillet. “Pasquale, is Freddie making this shit up?”<br /><br />There was no answer. Bronson steeled himself and looked upward once more. Freddie was sprawled across the limb with his eyes bulging and his tongue hanging out. It would have been a pitiful sight under any circumstance, but it was especially so when the tongue in question belonged to a frog.<br /><br />Bronson felt a bit embarrassed and looked over at Pasquale. The possum’s paws were moving even faster and his grin was, if possible, even bigger. “Pasquale, you pervert! What’s going on in the boat? I can’t see a thing except the male, and I’m tired of looking at his stupid grin.”<br /><br />“Easy there, Brother Bass. It’s just like old Freddie told you. Mellow out and go with stroke, so to speak. Oh, yes.”<br /><br />“Hey, you guys,” Freddie croaked. “Look, now.”<br /><br />There was no question where they should look. Bronson turned toward the boat. The female was standing with her hands on the male’s shoulders. With slow, careful movements, she straddled him and then eased down over the snake, which by now was more pink than white. It soon vanished from sight and they were sitting face-to-face.<br /><br />At first, all the humans did was more of the mouth-to-mouth stuff. When the boat became still, the female began making small, up-and-down movements. The boat again started rocking, but soon the female’s motions and those of the boat were in a sort of harmony.<br /><br />“I don’t know what they’re doing,” said Freddie, “but I do like the show.”<br /><br />Pasquale groaned his agreement.<br /><br />Bronson had to admit the two in the boat looked like the happiest humans he’d ever seen out fishing. The female was leaning back and seemed to be looking for something up in the limbs of the willow tree. Her long hair swayed in rhythm with the other movements. Meanwhile, the male was doing a mouth-to-mouth type thing on one of her bumps.<br /><br />“Hey there, you big bass. What’s happening?” The unexpected greeting startled Bronson. It was Paula the Perch, and she was looking great.<br /><br />“Uh, hi, Paula, just trying to figure out what those humans on the boat are doing. Thought it might be important. I mean, you can’t learn too much about them.” Why did he feel like a fingerling watching all the action during spawning season?<br /><br />A loud groan and a louder screech came from the boat. The male and female were holding each other close and shaking. But they didn’t seem to be in pain. In fact, they looked very happy.<br /><br />Paula brushed up against him. “Oh, I know all about that. I was spawned in a lake near a college campus, remember? It’s the way humans, you know, do it.”<br /><br />“Do, it?”<br /><br />“Sure,” she languidly stroked his side with a pliant fin, “you know…it.”<br /><br />“Oh, IT. Of course. So, what do you say about a little demonstration?”<br /><br />“Since we’re not air-breathers, that’d be a real challenge, silly. But come with me and I’ll try to give you the idea.”<br /><br />As they began to swim away, Freddie managed to ask, “Where you two going?”<br /><br />“Off to do a little research on how humans do it,” said Bronson, before slipping beneath the surface and following Paula toward an especially cool, secluded nook.<br /><br />“Fin-tastic,” said Pasquale. His paws now hung limply at his side. The grin on his face bore a surprising resemblance to that of the male on the boat. “That’s fin-tastic.”Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-1148619546507069752009-05-25T23:43:00.000-05:002009-05-25T06:37:51.991-05:00ALIVE AND GOING HOME - short story<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6493/710/1600/dustoff03.4.jpg"><img style="margin: 10px; float: left;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6493/710/320/dustoff03.2.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6493/710/1600/Alive01.2jpg.0.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 0px 30px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6493/710/200/Alive01.2jpg.0.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">Memorial Day is a time set aside for Americans to honor those members of the armed forces who lost their lives while serving our country. The following story is loosely based on some of the things that happened around me while I was in Vietnam. It's dedicated to Sandy, and Hassle, and Tony, and to all the others who won't be enjoying the day off with their families.</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">The painting is titled, Dustoff: Angels of Mercy by William Phillips. The name of the model in the photo is unknown. Heck, the car isn't even a Chevy. But then, I bet you didn't care either.</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">Bayou Bill</span></em><br /><br />==<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Alive and Going Home</span></strong><br />by Bill Fullerton<br /><br /><br />The explosion sent twenty-four soldiers sprawling. Dust and acrid smoke filled the air along with the sound of men cursing and scrambling for better cover. There were no screams of pain.<br /><br />As he hugged the ground, Sergeant Mike Floyd told himself there were better places to be and things to do. His first choice being in the back seat of his car with Mary Beth Riser.<br /><br />He was tired of death; tired of trying to kill unknown men who were doing their best to kill him. He wanted peace, and life, and Mary Beth.<br /><br />Today’s plan called for his recon platoon to leave the shelter of a jungle-like wood line and cross a large expanse of dry rice paddies to a village. The word was it might be a staging area for the Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese Army, maybe both. If everything went right, the infantry company and the troop of armored personnel carriers left back in the wood line would then move out and join them.<br /><br />For the officer in charge of the operation, the plan had the advantage of protecting the men in his own company while risking a handful of troops. Vietnam was a numbers war. Should recon get shot up, the casualties wouldn’t be figured against his unit’s body count.<br /><br />It was a scheme Mike and the other men of recon knew all too well. They were the eyes and ears of the battalion, experts at operating alone on intelligence gathering operations. Ambushes, snatches, tracking, manning listening posts at night and observation posts during the day were all considered good missions.<br /><br />No one thought today's assignment, serving as scouts for a regular infantry company, was a good mission. They were now under the direct control of another unit's commanding officer. Whenever that happened, they became expendable.<br /><br />Halfway to the village, everything started going wrong. A sudden, high-pitched shriek ended in a sickening explosion and a geyser of dirt, smoke, and death. Unable to tell where the fire was coming from, they dove for the only available cover. After that, it was a matter of praying they had put rice paddy dikes between themselves and a body bag.<br /><br />The platoon began checking in. "What the hell was that? Where's the son-of-bitch? Is everybody all right?"<br /><br />"Hardcore" Harding, the unit's platoon sergeant, yelled over from a nearby rice paddy. "That thing's gotta be a goddamn recoilless rifle, Lieutenant."<br /><br />"Roger that, shit. You got any idea where the hell it's firing from?" Lieutenant Lester never stopped scanning the surrounding terrain.<br /><br />"Can't be sure, sir. But they've probably got it set up on that hill over there on our right flank."<br /><br />Mike forced himself to lift his head and look at the hill. There was a second explosion followed by an eruption of small arms fire from the village. But he’d seen a flash.<br /><br />“I think Hardcore’s right, Lieutenant. I spotted something looked like a small back-blast. Probably about two-thirds the way up the hill, just left of that dead tree.”<br /><br />Dale Lester studied the hill and then the surrounding terrain. His platoon, a group he and Hardcore had molded into a first class recon unit, was pinned down in the open. Meanwhile, Delta Company and the supporting armored personnel carriers were back in the safety of the wood line and didn't seem anxious to risk exposing themselves by providing fire support. "Looks like it’s command decision time, Bear.” Mike, whose size had earned him the nickname, wiped sweat and dirt off his face and nodded.<br /><br />"If we stay put and call for help that recoilless rifle will pick us off," said Lester. “Heading towards that automatic weapons fire is out of the question. Going back’s not much better. So that leaves….<br /><br />His words were cut off by another incoming round. Mike had an idea, but wished he hadn’t. “Lieutenant, my squad’s closest to the hill. What if the platoon lays down covering fire long enough for us to shag ass over there? If it’s just the weapons crew, odds are they’ll ‘di di’ when they see us coming.” What he didn’t need to say, what both he and the Lieutenant knew, was that if the crew didn’t leave and the position was defended, the squad could be in a world of hurt.<br /><br />Lieutenant Lester glanced at Mike, then surveyed the situation. “Okay. Go get your squad moving. We’ll do our part here.” He looked away and began yelling orders to Hardcore.<br /><br />Mike rose into a crouch and started running in a zigzag pattern toward first squad, his unit. The sound of another incoming round sent him diving back for cover. It exploded along the base of the dike being used by second squad, the squad of Sergeant Andy Andrews.<br /><br />Redheaded, freckle-faced Anderson Andrews, Mike's friend and fellow squad leader, son of Mr. and Mrs. Carl P. Andrews, brother of Paul and Joyce, Kim Irving Andrew's husband, and father of their three month old daughter Kacey, was killed instantly when members of the North Vietnamese Army manning a recoilless rifle on Hill 87 scored a direct hit on his position.<br /><br />Before Mike could get back to his feet “Hassle” Castle was rushing to Andy’s motionless form. The expert grenadier and Andy had joined the unit the same day. They were very tight.<br /><br />Everyone knew to avoid the junctions of rice paddy dikes. They were prime spots for booby traps. Hassle knew better. But maybe all he could focus on was his friend’s body.<br /><br />There was a small bang and a can filled with tiny steel pellets shot into the air, then exploded at chest height. It was hard to believe how many holes that "Bouncing Betty" drilled into Hassle's dark, wiry, young body.<br /><br />The recoilless rifle fired one more round while Mike’s squad was racing to the base of the hill. After catching their breath, they formed a skirmish line and began moving up the steep hillside toward the unseen gun position. The heavy brush and small, low trees made it impossible to see more that a few feet ahead. It was a very hairy climb.<br /><br />That may be why they got careless. The well camouflaged firing site was undefended and deserted. For the squad, the danger seemed over. They relaxed and instinctively moved closer to talk and check out the scene.<br /><br />Mike was on the radio with Lieutenant Lester when he noticed what the men were doing. With an impatient gesture, he motioned for them to move away. “Don’t cluster fuck. Spread out and watch for….” He never finished his last command. There was an explosion. Tony Doughty a big, pug-nosed, good-natured guy from Tennessee—so new to the unit he still didn’t have a nickname had stepped on a booby-trap. His large body was now dancing in mid-air as a sheet of flame, laced with white streaks, raced toward Mike. It was the last thing he'd see clearly for months.<br /><br />When the force of the explosion slammed into him, Mike struggled to stay on his feet. He’d heard other explosions and didn’t want to risk falling onto another booby-trap. Then his knees gave out and he crumpled to the ground.<br /><br />After spitting out a mouthful of something, he made a quick, unsuccessful search for his rifle. Reaching for his canteen, he discovered his pistol still in its holster. Knowing he had the .38 Special made him feel better. It was common knowledge the VC seldom took prisoners and when they did, the captives were tortured to death.<br /><br />He remembered to check his body for wounds. There was something warm and wet around his groin. The growing sense of panic passed when he discovered it was only urine, not blood.<br /><br />The blast had caught him from the waist up. There were tiny pieces of metal and gravel in his arms, chest, and face. Raw powder burns covered his face and he couldn't see. But even with all those injuries, Mike knew he'd been lucky. He was alive.<br /><br />The cries of wounded soldiers replaced the sound of exploding booby traps. In front of him, someone was moaning, "Crotch, crotch, crotch." Grabbing his canteen, Mike rinsed out his mouth and then started crawling toward the moans.<br /><br />The casualties soon turned into statistics. Tony was dead. Three more, including Mike, would require a medevac. The immediate danger of an ambush was over. Now the wounded needed moving to a flat, open spot for quick loading onto the “dustoff” helicopters.<br /><br />Somebody linked Mike up with "Cowboy" Thompson. The low-key, reliable fire team leader had gotten his right leg messed up. "Cowboy" could see, but couldn't walk. Mike could walk, but not see. The lame soldier and the blind soldier linked arms and prepared to help one another down the hill.<br /><br />"Helluva way to spend the day ain't it, Bear?"<br /><br />Mike’s mind flashed on an image of Mary Beth Riser stretched out nude and luscious on the back seat of his old Chevy. In his pocket was the letter she'd just sent—the one with the photo of her leaning against the side of his car and looking at the camera with that little smile she reserved for him.<br /><br />He was blind, had lost two buddies and the new guy. But for the moment, shock, and being a survivor, overwhelmed feelings of remorse and loss. Those would come later. Now, he struggled to handle the reality that he was alive and going home, back to peace, and life, and Mary Beth.<br /><br />"Damn straight, Cowboy. Guess we’ve both had better days. But it could be worse. We’re beat-up, but still standing. What you say we catch the next dustoff out of here and head for home?"<br /><br />As the two men began walking away from their war, a ragged version of "Homeward Bound" floated over the scrub brush, dirt, and newly filled body bags.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-27957287523653053112009-04-09T07:04:00.001-05:002009-04-09T07:42:21.026-05:00Happy Birthday, William Claude<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.blogger.com/%20http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/W_C_Fields06.jpg/250px-W_C_Fields06.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 268px;" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/W_C_Fields06.jpg/250px-W_C_Fields06.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>W. C. FIELDS<br /></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">No doubt you've made plans to celebrate this great day in due and ancient form. For as I'm sure you know, on this memorable day back in 1880, the great </span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: verdana;">W.C. Fields,</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> thinly disgused as </span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: verdana;">William Claude Dukenfield</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">, first trod upon life's stage while, no doubt, bitching about the location being too close to Philly (Darby PA).</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">To celibrate this great day, here are ten pearls of Fieldsian wisdom and a YouTube clip</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">I am free of all prejudices. I hate every one equally.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">I drink therefore I am.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">A woman drove me to drink and I didn't even have the decency to thank her.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">Ah, the patter of little feet around the house. There's nothing like having a midget for a butler.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">I like children - fried.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">Don't worry about your heart, it will last you as long as you live.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">Drown in a cold vat of whiskey? Death, where is thy sting?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against.</span><br /><br /><br /><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://www.blogger.com/The%20Sheriff%20Tends%20Bar">"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE_2uqCc_K4&feature=related"</a><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Bayou Bill</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-72930467969891589172009-03-31T12:35:00.010-05:002009-04-01T07:03:18.426-05:00A WEEK IN THE STUDENT NURSES' DORM<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.tinypineapple.com/nursebooks/c/images/cherry_ames_student_nurse.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 330px; height: 500px;" src="http://www.tinypineapple.com/nursebooks/c/images/cherry_ames_student_nurse.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.tinypineapple.com/">http://www.tinypineapple.com/</a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >A WEEK IN THE STUDENT NURSES' DORM</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">by Bill Fullerton</span><br /><br /><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >In the winter of 1971, Gwen Kaplan, a junior nursing student at the Hunter/Bellevue School of Nursing, faced the prospect of no social life. It was a radical change from a few months earlier when she found herself coping with the physical, moral, and emotional problems involved with having two men in her life.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >Since then her four-year romance with Johnny DeAngelo had come to a dramatic, non-negotiable end, and the new man in her life, Mark, had been out of town for weeks. Not knowing when he’d be coming back made things even worse.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >With nothing else to occupy her time, Gwen began concentrating on her studies. Back in high school, she had been a brilliant, straight A, honor student. In college however, she’d decided her goal was to become a nurse, not an honor student and had done little more than coast. While her grades were okay, for the first time in her life she had gotten a C in a couple of courses.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >The main challenge this semester was the much dreaded, Pharmacology course. “I’m not believing we’ve got over 300 drugs and all that other crap to memorize,” complained Ann. The outspoken black militant suffered few things quietly. She and Gwen were sitting with two other friends in a big, overheated lecture hall waiting for their Public Health instructor who, it being Monday, was late.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >“I thought I might have a jump on a few, but hash, acid, and grass aren’t on the list,” said Sue. Everyone looked at her in surprise. It was the first thing the group’s token hippie had joked since a major break-up with her latest boyfriend.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >“Keep the faith, child,” said Ann. “I understand the list does have some uppers and downers.”</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >The instructor scurried in and began hastily laying out his papers. Robin leaned over a whispered to Gwen. “Do you think he’ll say it today?”</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >“Probably,” said Gwen, who had just finished glancing over her notes from the last lecture.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >“I’ll bet you a Coke he doesn’t,” said the blue-eyed, blonde feminist. Back during the second week of the semester, she’d noticed their instructor, who had a slight speech impediment, recited his favorite principle of public health nursing at practically every lecture.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >“You’re on,” said Gwen. “But why do you think he won’t say it today?”</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >“It’s Monday,” answered Robin with an air of self-assurance. “He doesn’t say it on Mondays or when he’s late.”</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >“Now ladies,” said the thin, courtly black man, “as I’ve told you before, in public health nursing, clean-zee-ness is next to God-zee-ness.”</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >“Shit. Can’t count on any man. I’ll get you that Coke after supper,” grumbled Robin.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >“Make it a Tab, if you please.”</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >That evening, Gwen paused to sip on her victory Tab while the other residents on her floor in the nurse’s dorm continued pulling off the hall’s old, faded, floral print, wallpaper. “Who started this, anyway?” asked Robin, busy yanking down a long sheet of industrial green paper.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >“I don’t know, but I’m grateful,” said Ann. “I’ve been wanting to do this since the first day I laid eyes on this depressing crap.”</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >Gwen sat down her bottle and rejoined the pulling party. “Do you think we’ll get in trouble?”</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >“What are they going to do?” replied Sue, as she attacked a section of the wall with a furious intensity. “They can’t throw everyone on the floor out of school.”</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >A few minutes later, the last of the old wallpaper was gone. After stuffing the shredded remnants into several laundry carts, four intrepid nursing students slipped it past an unsuspecting Eagle Eye Eastland, guarding nurse of the reception area and then out of the dorm.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >The next morning, those same four wallpaper smugglers faced cold winds, freezing rain mixed with snow and, even worse, their psychology clinical lab.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >Bellevue Hospital is a long collection of buildings stretching for blocks along 1st Avenue. Their dorm and most of the classrooms were located at the south end of the complex. Many blocks away, way up in the northern most reaches, was the institution’s famous psych unit. That’s where they were now supposed to go for the clinical portion of Psychiatric Nursing.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >“Look folks, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m taking the tunnel,” announced Gwen. They were huddled together in the dorm’s lobby, looking out the glass doors at the miserable weather. “There’s just no way I’m going to walk all the way to 30th Street in this stuff.”</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >“Well, there’s no way in hell I’m ever going back down in that creepy tunnel!” shot back Ann. This emphatic response surprised no one. Ever since she’d encountered something furry while walking alone in the tunnel, Ann had hated the place.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >Everyone could sympathize with Ann’s hostile attitude. The tunnel in question was an underground corridor running the length of the hospital. Built years earlier, it let students and employees move around quickly while staying out of the weather. While convenient, it was dark, damp, spooky and had dim, mysterious recesses where small, unidentified objects could be heard moving about.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >Robin patted her friend on the back. “Come on, Ann. I don’t like that place either, but it beats going out in this crappy weather. Maybe we can try memorizing a few more drugs on the way over. Just think of it as one horror replacing another.”</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >Ann stared out at the late winter storm, apparently trying to will it into a warm, sunny day. Failing that, she accepted her fate. “Okay, I’ll go. Just don’t anyone tell me when they spot a rat.”</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >Their pharmacology mid-term was scheduled for Friday. The night before the exam, everyone convened in her room for a final try at coming to grips with over 300 pharmacology terms. Robin acted as chief inquisitor. “Okay Sue, here’s a toughie. Give me the low down on E.P.S..”</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >“Oh, that’s easy,” smiled Sue. “E.P.S. stands for extra pyramidal syndrome. Its symptoms are: Parkinson like tremors, pill-rolling finger movements, a mask-like face, shuffling gait, and rigidity.”</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >Silence followed as Robin, Gwen, and Ann stared at her in amazement. “This is unreal,” said Robin. “Let’s try another. Let’s see, if you got E.P.S. then Thorazine should be a snap.”</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >There was a blank look on Sue’s face. “Come on girl,” prodded Ann, “every freak on the lower East Side knows about Thorazine.”</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >“Guess that proves I’m no freak,” replied Sue, with an embarrassed smile.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >“How can you handle something as weird as E.P.S. and not know an everyday drug like Thorazine?” demanded Robin.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >“Easy,” said Sue. “I dated a guy once who had all the E.P.S. symptoms.”</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >The unexpected sound of someone yelling came through the open window, halting their laughter. In one day, the weather had turned from late winter to early spring. Unfortunately, the dorm’s heating system hadn’t caught up with the new climatic reality. As a result, everyone had their windows open trying to cool off the overheated rooms.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >Ann stuck her head out the window as an unseen student shouted, “Pharmacology sucks!”</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >Ann’s response was immediate and instinctive. “Screw Pharmacology!”</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >By now, Gwen, Robin, Sue and everyone else in the dorm were craning their heads out of windows. Others were soon echoing the first cries of frustration. Within seconds, the entire dorm was screaming in protest at the mindless memorization and constant academic pressure. After days of endless cramming, the dorm was experiencing a collective explosion of pent-up frustration.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >Gwen looked across at the VA hospital and saw patients standing inside their sealed windows, waving and giving them the peace sign and black power salute. “Hey, Ann,” she shouted, “the vets are on our side.”</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >After a few minutes, the shouting began to taper off. Several floors below, a lone figure walked out into the dimly lighted, run-down courtyard which separated the dorm from 23rd Street. Although she was a long way off and the lighting was bad, everyone recognized Eagle Eyes Eastland.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >The noise dropped several more decibels as Eagle Eyes removed her stiff, white, nurse’s cap. Then she looked up at the boisterous student nurses and proclaimed, “I’ve removed my cap, my symbol of dignity as a nurse, before talking to you because your behavior is undignified, unladylike, and unprofessional.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >“Please try to restrain yourself, if not out of self-respect, then out of consideration for those few of you who may actually be trying to study.”</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >After one last, disapproving stare, she carefully replaced her cap and walked back into the dorm. Some die-hards began singing, “Ding-Dong the witch is dead,” but the energy which had fueled the spontaneous outburst had vanished. After a few more half-hearted shouts, heads began to disappear from the windows as everyone returned to mid-term cramming.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >None of the students knew it, but they’d just seen the last stand of the old order. Next year, Eagle Eyes Eastland would have a new assignment with her place at the front desk taken by student workers. Their job would be to monitor the arrival of male visitors going to the previously sacrosanct upper floors of the student nurses dorm.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >For the first time in school history, students would be able to have anyone they chose, including boyfriends, in their small, private, rooms.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >By the end of Gwen’s senior year, hostility between students and those running the school mirrored that in colleges all over the country. No member of the administration would be invited to attend, much less participate in, the various graduation ceremonies marking the transition from student to nurse.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >But this evening the students’ immediate concern was Pharmacology, not social or academic change. They’d be up all night cramming. As Gwen reached for her worn note cards, she allowed herself a brief moment to wonder what Mark was doing.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-4327285918460055832009-03-24T00:45:00.005-05:002009-03-24T01:01:40.193-05:00MOONLIGHT REVELATION<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__ZJKcesiTKQ/Sch1gYtRJxI/AAAAAAAAAew/e19cVshFfK0/s1600-h/Ikarus1974.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 311px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__ZJKcesiTKQ/Sch1gYtRJxI/AAAAAAAAAew/e19cVshFfK0/s320/Ikarus1974.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316628559359452946" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">Just in case some agent or editor happens by, looking for the next best-seller, this is taken from a scene in my secone novel, We Dance To Ray Charles.</span>
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<br /></span></span></p><p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">MOONLIGHT REVELATION</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">by Bill Fullerton</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">Naked and a bit self-conscious, Mark stood waist-deep in the lake’s cool water, watching through the last ray’s of twilight as Amy began unsnapping her jeans. “Okay you clowns,” she yelled, “I don’t care how long we’ve known each other, y’all turn around till I get in the water."</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">It was an unnecessary gesture towards modesty. With clouds hiding the full moon, the only light came from the campfire she stood in front of while hesitantly undressing. All anyone could see was her silhouette.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">The request triggered an irreverent round of boo's, whistles, and cries of, "Take it off. Take it off." A voice cut through the din. "Come on, Sis. Don't play shy just because you're the scrawniest person here."</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">"Walt Marshall, you'll pay for that!" Amy turned her back to them, shucked off the jeans, and began tugging at her sweatshirt. In Mark's opinion, that silhouette in the firelight looked anything but scrawny. Maybe it had been back in junior high, but not now. Scrawny girls didn't become homecoming queens and fraternity sweethearts. Still, count on Walt to come up with the perfect line to get his kid sister moving.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">Once she joined them, there was a lot of horseplay, even a short-lived football game featuring an old sneaker Willie found on the shore, but very little swimming. During a lull in the action, Amy suggested Mark "toss" her, an acrobatic stunt that would involve him heaving her straight up out of the water. If done right, she'd have time to arch forward and re-enter in a controlled dive. They'd done this many times in the past, but never in the dark—much less while skinny-dipping.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">"Are you sure?" Mark was both surprised and a little dubious.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">"Of course, I'm sure." She moved so close he could see her familiar, teasing smile, and notice the top of her pale breasts just breaking the surface of the dark water. "Come on. It'll be fun."</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">When everyone else began urging them to give it a try, he agreed. "All right. But you guys aren't fooling me. All y'all want is to get my head under water."</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">He took Amy's hand and helped her move into position standing in front of him, facing away. The dark water lapped at her bare shoulders. When he asked, "You ready?" she nodded.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">After positioning his hands on Amy’s waist, Mark exhaled to offset his body's natural buoyancy and then began pushing his way down toward a squatting position at her feet. To reach that goal, he had to use her body to help propel and guide his descent. As his hands slid over her hips and his body brushed against her skin, Mark found himself struggling to ignore the feel of that warm, silky, and very naked flesh.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">Once in position, he tapped on her feet, the signal for her to rise up on tiptoe so he could cup a heel in each hand. When everything was in place, he shifted forward slightly and she leaned back against his shoulder, letting him know she was ready.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">That's when Mark lost his struggle. The touch of her thighs on his chest, the smooth contour of her hip nestling against the side of his face, and the incredible sensation of her bottom resting lightly on his shoulder; it was all more than he could ignore. An excited churning began in his stomach and a dizzy confusion filled his skull. His mind wouldn't work. His body couldn't move.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">Amy twitched her legs as a reminder she was ready, but he couldn't respond. It took oxygen deprivation to break the spell. Almost out of air, he began propelling her upward. But the long pause had gotten them out of synch. A knee buckled, a hand, or was it a foot, slipped and while only halfway out of the water, Amy began falling awkwardly back into the lake.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">Once the choking and gasping ended, neither of them got any sympathy from the onlookers. "That has to be the most pathetic excuse for a toss I've ever seen," said Willie, his voice thick with feigned disgust.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">"Yep, that was pretty sad, you two," agreed Frank.<o:p></o:p>
<br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">"You two nothing, it was all his fault." Amy pointed an accusing finger at Mark. "He even looks guilty."</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">It'd become so dark she was the only one close enough to make out his expression. But Amy was wrong. The look on Mark's face had nothing to do with guilt. Its source was a storm of other emotions so strong and unsettling he could barely breath. It wasn't easy, but he managed to croak, "I'm innocent. And I must have swallowed at least half the lake."</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">Amy drifted closer and put a hand on his shoulder. "You poor thing." She leaned close, giving him a wink that belied her teasing tone. "Do you need help? What about some mouth-to-mouth resuscitation? I think Frank got a merit badge in first aide. Would you like for him to come help?"</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">"Nothing personal," said Frank, "but if I've got to give him mouth-to mouth, I say let nature take it's course."</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">This strong show of compassion continued until Walt broke in. "I can't stand it. I promised myself I wouldn't do this. But seeing what a shambles you and Mark made of things, I'm wondering if you want to try that overhand toss we used to do?"</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">The overhand was tougher to pull off. The thrower had to squat with his hands held shoulder high like a weight lifter about to thrust a barbell over his head. This made it harder for the person being tossed to keep their balance. But since the thrower could extend their arms straight up during the toss, if everything worked just right, the results could be a high and spectacular ascent.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">Everyone but Mark agreed he was unfit for duty. After a feeble protest, he moved out of the way so Willie and Frank could get into position on either side of Amy.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">The clouds that had promised, but again failed, to deliver any rain were breaking up. Bright moonlight now bathed the lake. This made it easy for Mark to watch as, after a good deal of talk and shuffling about, Walt disappeared beneath the surface. A moment later, Amy went soaring into the warm, night sky.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="text-indent: 0in; line-height: normal;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">It was a high, absolutely perfect toss. The spray covering Willie, Frank, and Walt partially blocked their view. Mark was the only one who saw all of Amy's moonlight flight, and he was transfixed.</span></span></p><p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="text-indent: 0in; line-height: normal;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style=""></span>Whenever he remembered the event, it was in slow motion. The sight of her wet, nude, nymph-like body soaring gracefully above the lake was beautiful, and erotic, and devastating.<span style="">
<br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">The emotions still battering him instantly coalesced into a total and all-consuming love for Amy Marshall. Since that levee party last spring when, both a little drunk, they began to kiss, he'd fought against being in love with her. Before tonight, he thought he might be winning. Now he knew better. He'd lost--big time.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">But a guy like him didn't stand a chance with a beautiful girl like Amy. Making a move on her was doomed, and their life-long friendship would never be the same.<o:p></o:p>
<br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="">Mesmerized, he watched the graceful, moonlit form arch slowly and then begin heading back toward the lake. As it sliced through the smooth surface, Mark knew he was in trouble. He could have someone else, the girl he always thought he wanted. But</span> now and forever he was in love with Amy Marshall, the girl who’d always been his friend, the girl he could never have.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Or could he?</span></p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-15597942666614189952009-03-12T19:49:00.011-05:002009-03-12T21:33:47.565-05:00THE PROPOSITION<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__ZJKcesiTKQ/SbnF7GcsdoI/AAAAAAAAAd0/EoN5oQFPhDI/s1600-h/coffee+shop.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 167px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__ZJKcesiTKQ/SbnF7GcsdoI/AAAAAAAAAd0/EoN5oQFPhDI/s320/coffee+shop.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312494854594131586" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">This very short story (1000 words) is adapted from a scene in my first novel, the still to be discovered and published, A BRIEF AFFAIR.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Bayou Bill</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">==</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;" >THE PROPOSITION</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">by Bill Fullerton</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">In Mark Malone’s considered opinion, things could be a helluva lot worse. It was a beautiful, early fall day in New York. He’d gotten out of the VA hospital and now sat in a coffee shop on Lexington Avenue staring across the table at Gwen Davis. The third-year nursing student at nearby Bellevue seemed to be talking about school. This is damn tough duty, he thought, but someone’s got to do it.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">With just a touch of autumn crispness in the air, Gwen had on a long sleeved, burgundy turtleneck with a navy-blue vest and matching mini-skirt. Mark didn't know fashion, but knew what he liked, and he liked what he saw—a lot.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">There was something special about her today, something he could sense, but not identify. Not only did Gwen look good, she seemed brighter, happier and, if possible, even more desirable. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Since they met back during the summer, she’d become a regular visitor to his room. Whenever possible, they'd leave the hospital. She’d always made it clear, however, that to keep both her family and Johnny, her long-time fiancé, happy, she needed to spend time home almost every weekend. This often resulted in serious schedule juggling.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Well, I hope she thinks it's worth the strain, he thought, while half-listening to Gwen's complaints. After days of hospital boredom, he liked going out with her and splurging on a good time, something she also seemed to enjoy.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Last week, she’d warned him a major exam in Medical-Surgical nursing was coming on Monday and she had to put in some serious book time. A special study group would meet Sunday night in the dorm. She promised to try and get back early enough so they could go out for a few hours.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">While Mark admitted to being disappointed he said that, having battled higher education for three years before volunteering for Vietnam, he understood. To his relief, she’d managed to come back in time for them to catch the new Mel Brooks film. Now they were in a small booth at Milton’s Coffee Shop near her dorm eating hamburgers and talking.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"Are you listening to me?” She gave him a look of tolerant exasperation.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"Not really. I do believe you were in the middle of a major rant and rave about the idiocy of one of your teachers, but don't press me for details."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">She nodded. "So if you weren't paying rapt attention to my every word, what were you doing?"</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"To tell the truth, I was thinking how great you look today, and how I'm glad you got back in time for us to go out, and how much I wish you didn't have that damn test tomorrow."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"Why, thank you." Gwen seemed both pleased and surprised by the unexpected compliment. "I'm really sorry about the test. Believe me, I'd much rather be spending the evening with you than with a study group."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"I think that's what they call a back-handed compliment. But I'll take whatever compliments I can get."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">They both laughed. "Who knows,” he said, “maybe it's a good thing you're busy. You look so good today, you might run the risk of me trying to seduce you."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Gwen’s enticing brown eyes studied him until, in a calm, almost matter-of-fact voice, she said, "Well, if you want to do something like that, you'll have to ask."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Mark sat dumbfounded. He had been joking, well, maybe half-joking. It was supposed to be one of those things you said to a girl to let her know you wanted to make love with her without having to come right out and say so.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">According to the small town, southern script he’d always followed, the boy asked. The girl then ignored the remark, acted insulted, or smiled coyly while shaking her head, hinting that while not now, maybe someday.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">For whatever reason, this girl hadn't followed that time-honored script. Instead, she’d all but dared him to proposition her.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Over the past few months they’d gotten into some heavy make-out sessions, but nothing more. After all, she was the proverbial nice Jewish girl from Queens, and engaged. Making out with a beat-up vet you liked and felt sorry for might be okay, but nothing more. Now this.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Wish I understood what the hell’s happening, he thought. But if this is how they do things up here in the big city, I'll try to go along with the program.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">With Gwen’s gaze still boring into him, Mark stammered, "Sure. Well then, uh, so how about it? I mean, would you like to, you know, spend the night with me, some weekend?"</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">To his astonishment, he heard her say, "All right. But what were you thinking about in terms of when and where?"</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">It all seemed a bit unreal. After practically inviting him to ask, Gwen had said, yes, and now wanted to know when and where.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"As soon as possible, of course," he said, rushing his words. He paused, smiled at his own nervousness, then continued in a more normal voice. "But as I may have mentioned, I'm a stranger here myself. I've got no idea about the where part."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">For just a moment, she seemed to analyze the situation. "Next weekend should be okay. Johnny's going out of town with his mother, so there’ll only be my parents to worry about. And I think my friend Sue once stayed in a hotel around here with one of her boyfriends."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"I’ll try to check on the hotel with her tonight. But for now, the Fundamentals of Medical-Surgical Nursing calls. If I don't get back to the dorm and hit the books, I'll be an ex-nursing student."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Mark took the hint, stood, and then watched as Gwen collected her purse and slid out of the booth, the movement revealing most of her long, shapely legs. It might still be a beautiful, early fall day in New York, but in his considered opinion, things had somehow just gotten a helluva lot better.</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-52936843731142042102009-03-06T08:36:00.007-06:002009-03-06T09:05:36.415-06:00LEON BARMORE: the coach keeps on coaching<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n319/bayoubill/IMG_0082-1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 270px; height: 148px;" src="http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n319/bayoubill/IMG_0082-1.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">Leon Barmore with my daughter Betsy and me after the game.</span><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">This is a feature I wrote for the current edition of the Morning Paper of Ruston, La. in exchange for publisher John Hays providing a press pass along with some extra tickets to the game. The target audience live in and around Ruston, the home of La. Tech University, and are familiar with the school's storied womens basketball program, The Lady Techsters, and former head coach, Leon Barmoer, the subject of this piece.</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">Bayou Bil</span></span>l<br /><br />==<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >SATURDAY WITH LEON BARMORE</span></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" ><br />by Bill Fullerton<br /><br />For just a moment, it seemed like old times. With 2:30 left in the game, Leon Barmore’s nationally ranked team had lost its best player and seen the University of Texas Lady Longhorns whittle a 16-point lead down to three. The Texas fans at UT’s Ewing Center were noisy and excited, sensing their team was on the brink of taking the lead. It was time for a time-out.<br /><br />Trademark scowl in place, Barmore stepped into the huddle and spoke to the tired players with his familiar intensity. The man who had a 7-0 coaching record against the Lady Longhorns in their own gym, did not want to leave town with 7-1 record.<br /><br />Then the moment passed. Barmore stepped out of the huddle and, Kim Mulkey, no longer his assistant at Louisiana Tech, but now head coach at Baylor University, took his place. Whatever they said must have worked. The fifth-ranked Lady Bears held off the Texas charge to record a hard-earned nine-point victory.<br /><br />For long-time Lady Techster fans, the sight of Leon Barmore sitting passively on the bench with the other Baylor assistants while Mulkey squats in front of him directing on-court play is disconcerting. It’s as if Jerry Rice had starting throwing passes to Steve Young or Joe (not Hannah) Montana.<br /><br />It just don’t seem right.<br /><br />After all, this is THE Leon Barmore, the hall of fame member who served as head women’s basketball coach at Louisiana Tech from 1985 to 2002 -- retired with a .869 winning percentage, the best in women's basketball history -- led Tech to 20 straight winning seasons, including 13 with 30-plus wins -- coached the Lady Techsters to 20 consecutive NCAA Tournaments, nine Final Fours, five national championship games and the 1988 national title.<br /><br />Now the same man sits on the Baylor bench, seldom standing or gesturing, apparently saying little, and remaining on the fringes of team huddles. That was the pattern Saturday afternoon until a second half scuffle for the ball had him jumping to his feet and yelling at the officials. Nobody picks on Barmore’s players. Then with 2:30 left in the game, he said something to the team during that fateful time-out.<br /><br />After the game, Kim Mulkey moved through the throng outside the coaches lounge, looking every inch the harried head coach who, with the Big-12 tourney looming, had just lost her best player for the rest of the year. Moments later, Leon Barmore stepped out into the hallway with the relaxed, pleased look of someone who’d just finished an unusually good round of golf.<br /><br />Barmore, who has been a basketball player or coach all his life, clearly missed the competition, but not the stress. Now he has the best of both worlds. “I’m having fun,” he said, “but I wouldn’t want to do this full-time. (Barmore’s contract runs from October to April).<br /><br />The job lets him stay around the game he loves while doing sometime he excelled at, coaching, and he gets to socialize. Amid the post-game bustle, he bumped into former Texas head coach, Jody Conradt. The two long-time combatants, both with national titles to their credit, chatted companionably like two former neighbors who’d just met in a busy airport.<br /><br />The man who dislikes flying has even learned the joys of chartered flights. “We go to the airport in Waco, and 55-minutes later, we’re in Lubbock.”<br /><br />Talk of basketball and grandchildren stops when the mother of the Lady Bears’ point guard walks past. Barmore introduces her and asks if she’d mind taking a picture. Nothing would please her more. There are smiles, a flash, a round of thank-you’s and congratulations on her daughter’s play.<br /><br />Leon Barmore has posed for many such photographs over the years. This time, his smile is that of a man who’s having fun, and an old coach who just saw his record against Texas on their home court go to 8-0.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-1127180112397449822009-02-11T17:03:00.006-06:002009-02-11T17:15:26.124-06:00THAT LITTLE TALK - flash fiction<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://sawme.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/baby_stork.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 200px;" src="http://sawme.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/baby_stork.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >The many areas in which I lack anything resembling demostrated competence includes writing flash (short) fiction. I've manged to crank out a few that come in under 1000 words.<em></em> The story now before you, however, is my first attempt at the oft challenged but seldom mastered 100 word barrier. As always, your comments, whether they be brickbats or bouquets, will be appreciated.<br /><br />Bayou Bill</span><br /><br />==<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>THAT LITTLE TALK</strong><br />by Bill Fullerton<br /><br />“I guess it’s time we had that little talk.”<br /><br />His father’s voice was teasing. But Mark knew the talk would be about the summer job he hadn’t started. Maybe he could change the subject. “Oh, I already know all about that stuff. The stork brings the babies and leaves them under a cabbage leaf.”<br /><br />“So that’s how it’s done. And I always thought Doc Miles brought them in his little black bag.”<br /><br />“He does. But first he has to go by the cabbage patch and pick out a fresh one.”<br /><br />“I see. Now when do you start work?”</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-66884079939143812962008-12-19T23:59:00.007-06:002008-12-27T23:07:12.742-06:00THAT'S THE SPIRIT - a seasonal short story<p><a href="http://www.7dog.com/free/thumbs/301/849p.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 179px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 135px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.7dog.com/free/thumbs/301/849p.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />What follows is the product of some modification to an adaptation. Make sense? Else where in this blog, intrepid readers will find, The Seducers. That was a 1600 word adaptation of a scene from my second novel, <em>We Danced to Ray Charles</em>.<br /><br />When the challenge went out from Celina Summers <a href="http://shootthemuse.bravehost.com/">http://shootthemuse.bravehost.com/</a> one of the regulars at Absolute Write <a href="http://absolutewrite.com/">http://absolutewrite.com/</a> to come up with a seasonal poem or story under 1000 words, I responded by "adjusting" the time frame from summer to winter and deleting about a third of the original story. A few other modifications were also made, but those were the two biggies. </p><p>The next toughest part was finding a new image. The face and pose of the model in the one that appears at the beginning of, The Seducers, is perfect. But she's wearing short short, in fact, very short shorts, and a halter top. Having, as I do, just a touch of OCD, that hot-weather ensemble struck me as strecthing the bounds, not only of reality, but even of verisimilitude. So I searched the great information highway until I found the one above. </p><p>Hope y'all approve.</p><p>As always, any comments, whether they be in the form of bouquets or brickbats, will be appreciated.</p><p>Bayou Bill<br /><br />==</p><p><br /><strong>THAT’S THE SPIRIT<br /></strong>by Bill Fullerton<br /><br /><br />Velma Meeks sat enthroned at one end of the worn couch in her haphazardly furnished living room. In the far corner, a small, artificial Christmas tree flickered alone and unobserved.<br /><br />She lit a fresh cigarette with her old one, made a token attempt at crushing the butt, then left the still smoldering stub in the overflowing ashtray. After a deep drag, she leaned back and blew out a long, contended stream of smoke. Smoking chores completed, she propped her bare feet on the crowded coffee table and waited for her friend to come back from the kitchen.<br /><br />Waiting in silence, however, was not her style. The thirty-something bottled-blonde looked around at the empty doorway to the kitchen. "You know it's hard for me to believe you're this messed-up. You've always been so self-confident. Now, it's like you don't know whether to fish or cut bait."<br /><br />Bebe Boudreaux, the petite object of many local male fantasies, came back from the tiny kitchen carrying a bottle of Tab. "It's not that bad, really. I've just got this feeling, call it a hunch, that something's not right and I don't know why or what to do about it."<br /><br />She reclaimed her spot at the other end of the sofa. "The thing is, Mark and I went out a couple of times last weekend. One was a real date. The next day we did some Christmas shopping at the mall. Both times he seemed, well, sort of distracted. Like, it was nice to be with me, but no big deal, either."<br /><br />"You think maybe he's just jealous and pouting because you went out with Darrell Ray the week before?"<br /><br />Bebe shrugged and reached for her own cigarettes. "Could be. That's what I'd hoped for. This casual dating is getting old. But now I'm not sure. I mean he never even asked what I did while he was gone. At first, I figured somebody had told him about my dating Darrell Ray and, like you said, he was pouting. But now, I'm beginning to think he just doesn't care."<br /><br />“I doubt it." Velma leaned forward and inspected the second coat of bright red polish she’d just applied to her toenails. "Maybe he's just trying to act cool."<br /><br />The women smoked and pondered the situation in silence until Velma started rummaging through the clutter on the coffee table. "Have you seen my nail file?" She paused and looked over at Bebe. "You know, I just had a thought. You think it might be something that happened during the date?"<br /><br />Bebe picked the file off the floor and handed it over. "Well, I might have carried on more than usual, you know, showing how much I'd missed him and all, doing a lot of the talking, trying to act like I was interested in that fancy ball. Other than that, nothing.”<br /><br />“You told me his old buddy, Amy, was also there. The two of you aren’t exactly best friends. You think she might have put a move on him herself just to spite you?"<br /><br />"Maybe. Who knows? With someone like Miss Society, anything, and I do mean, anything, is possible."<br /><br />“Speaking of anything,” said Velma, “I take it you and Mark still haven't done the dirty deed?"<br /><br />"No, not yet. The timing’s never felt right.” Bebe tried to act nonchalant. "You don’t think I went out with Darrell Ray just to make Mark jealous, do you?"<br /><br />They both giggled. "Well, honey, maybe old Mark’s getting tired of waiting for some action. Look, even if that's not the main problem, I promise you, give him a little lovin' for Christmas and you’ll get his undivided attention."<br /><br />Bebe grinned. "I would hope so."<br /><br />"The trick is," continued Velma, "to act just a little confused and vulnerable afterward, like it was so incredible you’re all shook up. Say you never 'felt' like this before. It's a sneaky little way of suggesting that, even if there might have been one or two others, he's the best."<br /><br />Down at the other end of the couch, Bebe pretended to take notes. "Act confused and say, 'felt.' Is that right, Professor Meeks?"<br /><br />"You got it, girl. That way he'll get all full of himself and want to be your knight in shining armor and go around saving your honor—for himself, of course. Once he's your big, brave protector, you say something about Darrell Ray, and then start reeling old Mark in."<br /><br />"Velma, you won't do. Does any guy ever have a chance around you?"<br /><br />"Not if I have my way, honey. They never have and never will. Just ask my poor husband."<br /><br />"So you think it's time I let Mr. Mark have that special present he’s been wanting?"<br /><br />"A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. And just between you and me and the walls, some girls say it’s kinda fun."<br /><br />Bebe laughed, then checked her watch and stood. "I've gotta scoot. But do you remember that joke you said you told Buddy, about how you were giving up sex because it was too messy, too much work, and the positions were ridiculous?"<br /><br />"Oh, yeah. I had him going for a minute. You should've seen his face."<br /><br />"Well, to tell you the truth, that's pretty much how I really do feel. I love everything leading up to it. You know, the flirting and the dates and making-out. And there are times when I do get a little turned-on and really want the guy. But most of the time, well, you know. Still, I suppose if it has to be done, it has to be done."<br /><br />"That's the spirit.”<br /><br />"Because I promise you," continued Bebe, in a voice that left no doubt about her sincerity, "there's no way in hell that damn Amy Marshall is going to keep me from marrying her best friend."<br /><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-17692520830514141502008-11-10T10:51:00.004-06:002008-12-16T17:18:37.190-06:00WHERE WERE YOU?<div align="center"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/__ZJKcesiTKQ/SP38l734fGI/AAAAAAAAAUE/MTLpsg7xde4/s1600-h/EarlLong.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259637668496047202" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/__ZJKcesiTKQ/SP38l734fGI/AAAAAAAAAUE/MTLpsg7xde4/s320/EarlLong.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><strong>Stump Speaking</strong><br />Former La. Gov. Earl K. Long</span></div><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><div align="left"></div><br /><div align="left">This is a more-or-less faithful retelling of the great “Date Debate” that occurred during a race for the Louisiana House of Representatives back in the fall of 1951. However, due warning is hereby given that being as how the story involves politics in my home state, no claim is made, either explicit or implied, as to whether “more” or “less” predominates.</div><div align="left"></div><br /><div align="left">A much sharper looking version of this piece is currently appearing in USADeepSouth. <a href="http://www.usadeepsouth.com/">http://www.usadeepsouth.com/</a> Check out the site. You'll find a lot of southern oriented writing including poetry, fiction, non-fiction, memoir, and some that sorta fits kinda in-between those categories somewhere or other.</div><div align="left"><br />Bayou Bill<br /><br />==<br /><br /><strong>WHERE WERE YOU?</strong><br />by Bill Fullerton<br /><br />It’s no secret that politics ranks second only to football as Louisiana’s favorite sport. This was especially true in the years after World War II when populist Democrat “Uncle” Earl Long seemed to move in and out of the Governor’s Mansion on a four-year rotation. With each parish (county) having at least one member of the House of Representative (Senate districts were, theoretically, based on population) there was a nice farm system for those who wanted into the game.<br /><br />Two such men faced off in the second primary of the race for the house seat from bucolic Grant Parish that fall. W. T. “Brandy” McCain, who’d served in the house from 1940-48, wanted the job back. W. L. “Willard” Rambo, related to the politically powerful Long family by marriage, opposed him.<br /><br />Back in those days, campaigning consisted of going door-to-door, showing up at any event where three or more voters might gather, the usual deal making, and a lot of “stump speaking.” The only available “mass media” in that rural area of north Louisiana was the local weekly paper, The Colfax Chronicle, which came out each Thursday. About a month before the election, at the bottom of the standard full-page ad extolling Willard Rambo’s candidacy, was a simple question: “Brandy McCain, where were you the night of…”followed by an otherwise insignificant date a few years previous.<br /><br />The exact date used in the ad is lost to the ages, or the Chronicles’ archives. That’s okay because the exact date wasn’t important. The important thing was McCain having no idea what he’d been doing back then.<br /><br />Next week, the Rambo ad concluded with a note asking McCain who he’d been with that night. By now, just about everyone in the parish was considering possible answers. After all, McCain had been in the state legislature back then. No telling what he’d been doing.<br /><br />This put McCain in a bind. Any response would be a week late and might focus even more attention on the issue. For the rest of the campaign he tried, with uneven results, to deal with his inability to answer the weekly questions.<br /><br />The next question, “Brandy McCain, just what were you doing on the night of…?” kept folks talking, not about the McCain campaign, but about what he might have done years earlier.<br /><br />By election day, voters went to the polls still unsure where McCain had been that night, or what he’d been doing, or who he’d been doing it with, or why he wouldn’t say. Rambo won.<br /><br />A few months later, the two men, who while not close friends, were long-time acquaintances, ran into one another at a watering hole on the road to Baton Rouge. After the usual exchange of family news, local gossip and talk about politics, McCain asked Rambo the obvious question, “Willard, what the hell was I doing that night? My wife’s still giving me funny looks.”<br /><br />It’s reported, though not verified, that Rambo grinned, picked up the check, and said, “Brandy, if you don’t know, how the hell do you expect me to? I’ve no earthly idea. My wife thought those questions might stir things up a bit. As usual, Mary Alice was right.”<br /><br /><br />note: Since posting this piece, I've come across a Wikipedia article about Willard Rambo. It's well-done and informative. Here's the link: <a href="http://http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._L._Rambo">http://http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._L._Rambo</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._L._Rambo"></a> </div><p>another note: An e-mail arrived yesterday from Jim Brown who served as Lousiana's Sec. of State, Insurance Commissioner, and member of the State Senate (not at the same time). To folks outside the state, he's probably best known as the father of CNN's Campbell Brown. He said he'd enjoyed this piece and asked if I'd add a link to his site. <a href="http://http//www.jimbrownla.com/blog/index.php">http://http//www.jimbrownla.com/blog/index.php</a> I was, of course, just a tad puffed up by this notice and more than happy to oblige.</p><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-9883621416169394942008-11-03T11:52:00.000-06:002009-01-08T12:35:36.759-06:00And the Ceiling Came Tumbling Down<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__ZJKcesiTKQ/R4pRO9DyZGI/AAAAAAAAAI4/4Xipicot5q8/s1600-h/GTOWN.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5155022040829420642" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__ZJKcesiTKQ/R4pRO9DyZGI/AAAAAAAAAI4/4Xipicot5q8/s320/GTOWN.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>AND THE CEILING CAME TUMBLING DOWN</strong><br />by Bill Fullerton<br /><br />What follows is a more or less true story, honest.<br /><br />While I was but a wee, callow youth, maybe three, my father took it upon himself to put a new ceiling in the middle bedroom. When the project was finished, he posed his lovely wife and snot-nosed son on the bed under the new ceiling and proceeded to take a few celebratory snapshots.<br /><br />Moments after he'd finished and taken the film from the camera, the adhesive holding the cork(?) tiles in place went on strike. At first, the process seemed like slow motion as the interlocked tiles began to sag, one following another. Then the entire ceiling decided to get in on the act and joined in gleefully yielding to the laws of gravity.<br /><br />Falling tiles were everywhere. I can only image how my father felt, but I can promise you it was more than a bit traumatic for a three-year old, even with his mother sitting beside him on the bed amidst the tumbling tiles. That is to say, I tuned up and started to cry.<br /><br />I'll never know which one started singing, but being in the church choir, they were soon doing a pretty fair acapella rendition of, "Joshua Fit The Battle of Jericho and the Walls Came Tumbling Down." Thanks to that song, instead of my world crashing down around me, I was in the middle of a great, and very messy, adventure--perfect for a three-year old boy and for making good memories.<br /><br /><br /><em>Joshua fit the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho,<br />Joshua fit the battle of Jericho<br />and the walls came tumbling down.<br /><br />Oh, you may talk about your king of Gideon,<br />you may talk about your man of Saul,<br />but there's none like good old Joshua<br />at the battle of Jericho<br /><br />Oh, Joshua fit the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho,<br />Joshua fit the battle of Jericho<br />and the walls came tumbling down.</em><br /><br /><br />Bayou BillUnknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-70328533535790356122008-09-22T15:30:00.000-05:002008-12-09T02:11:43.996-06:00THE WAY WE WEREN'T: a rumination<div align="center"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_wSQx_p63AqM/RoJXkrwoRBI/AAAAAAAACL0/WzJXc4h264M/s320/hayden.jpeg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_wSQx_p63AqM/RoJXkrwoRBI/AAAAAAAACL0/WzJXc4h264M/s320/hayden.jpeg" border="0" /></a>
<br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">Hayden Penettiere stars as Claire Bennet, </span></em></div><div align="center"><em><span style="font-size:85%;">a high school cheerleader with self-healing powers, </span></em></div><div align="center"><em><span style="font-size:85%;">in the TV series, Heroes.</span></em></div><div align="left"></div>
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<br /><div align="left"></div><div align="left"><em>Can it be that it was all so simple then
<br />Or has time rewritten every line
<br /></em><strong><em>If we had the chance to do it all again
<br />Tell me - would we? could we?</em> </strong></em>
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<br />Those lines by Marvin Hamlisch from, <em>The Way We Were</em>, got me to thinking about the past and some of the things I regret doing and others I wish I'd done. My ruminations lead to this.
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<br /><strong>THE WAY WE WEREN’T</strong>
<br />by Bill Fullerton
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<br />While no BMOC, I enjoyed high school. Having gone to college the summer before my senior year on a special program, I knew high school was a sweet deal and did my best to savor every day of my senior year.
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<br />With an enrollment that always hovered around 300 (1-12) my school was so small I got to do things, such as play basketball and serve as photographer on the yearbook staff, which my very low skill level would have prohibited at a bigger place.
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<br />That’s not to say I don’t regret some of the things I did while there and kick myself over others I didn’t do. What follows is one of the latter.
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<br />You see, there was this short, cute, blonde cheerleader in my class who I’d had a crush on since, oh, the fourth grade. We were juniors when our parents received invitations to the inaugural ball for the state’s new governor. Hers couldn’t go; mine could and invited her to come with us. Us, in this case, included me.
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<br />The bottom line was I had something very much like a real date all lined up, finally, with my long-time heartthrob. And not just any date. It would involve a formal dance followed by a three-hour drive back home, at night, with my parents in the front seat and the two of us alone in the dark backseat. Oh, be still my beating heart.
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<br />Then came the proverbial hitch in the get-along. I beat on the bass drum in the school band. No problem with that, until bad weather postponed the winter concert to the night of the inaugural ball. The director said I had an obligation to the band and that since I’d missed a similar concert the year before (it wasn’t my fault, honest), if I was a no-show for this one, he’d toss me out of the band.
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<br />I did feel a bit guilty at the thought of skipping the concert, and I did like playing in the band. But I also wanted to "letter" in four different areas. My school gave letters for basketball, track, winning state in the yearly scholastic competition (we called it, Literary Rally) and for participating in band. No one had ever lettered in all four, and I was on track to do just that. But no band, no fourth letter.
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<br />So for all those reasons, I caved in to the band director’s pressure. If I ever had any hopes concerning the cute cheerleader, which is doubtful, they ceased to exist.
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<br />In hindsight, I’m certain skipping the concert and going to the ball with the cheerleader would have changed nothing. We were, and continue to be, good friends who still have our original spouses. But I've a strong hunch spending that evening with her, instead of a fool bass drum, would have been much more memorable and, for me at least, a lot more fun. </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-82168999004571608382008-07-24T07:36:00.000-05:002008-09-09T20:46:34.387-05:00THE DANCERS - chap one-<br /><br /><p><a href="http://images.inmagine.com/img/bananastock/bs138/vif071.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://images.inmagine.com/img/bananastock/bs138/vif071.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">This is the opening chapter of my second novel, We Danced To Ray Charles. In it the novel's bad girl begins to weave her seductive web around our poor hero. This version reflects changes suggested by Robert Flynn. As always, any input would be greatly appreciated.</span></em></p><p><em><span style="font-size:85%;">Bayou Bill</span></em> </p><p>== </p><p><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">THE DANCERS</span></strong><br />by Bill Fullerton<br /><br />It was another turbulent evening in the spring of ’68. Student protests raged from the Sorbonne to Berkeley. Civil rights demonstrations and anti-war rallies were turning violent. Martin Luther King was dead; Bobby Kennedy would be soon. Hundreds of other Americans were dying each week in South Vietnam. Soldiers patrolled the streets of Saigon, Paris, and Washington. Soviet troops prepared to invade Prague. And in a nowhere place in Louisiana called Sandtown, an innocent black man was beaten and arrested.<br /><br />But in nearby Pinefield, everything was perfect. At least, that’s what Mark Cahill kept telling himself. Bebe Boudreaux’s head rested on his chest as they moved in languid harmony to sound of Ray Charles singing, “You Don’t Know Me.” The petite, perfect form he'd always wanted was in his arms, molded against his body. It made for a perfect moment, in a perfect place, in a perfect world—at least it should have been perfect.<br /><br />He almost hadn’t come. After three years in college, a Junior League, End-of-School, dance held little appeal. Still, he needed to keep connected with his hometown friends and remind them he still existed. That might be very important in a few years. So when his mother, a Junior League member, strongly suggested he stop by and check on things, he agreed.<br /><br />Arriving late, he paused just inside the front door to shake hands and mingle. Thick cigarette smoke couldn’t mask the musty smell of the old American Legion hall. The Junior League had done its best to spruce up the place. Balloons, banners, and other decorations were everywhere but couldn’t hide all the World War II era posters and dated fixtures.<br /><br />Black-and-white photographs of serious looking men in funny looking hats like those soda jerks wore filled the far wall. All were former post commanders. Among them were his father and grandfather. Fading pictures of American Legion and Women's Auxiliary activities completed the décor.<br /><br />Aretha Franklin’s demand for “Respect” segued into the Rolling Stones frustrated search for "Satisfaction.” The sea of sweaty dancers paused, then broke into another spasm of jerking legs, flailing arms, and twisting bodies.<br /><br />As Mark watched from the sidelines, congratulating himself on not being out among them, someone tapped his shoulder. He turned and saw Bebe Boudreaux smiling up at him. He'd last seen her during Christmas break. As usual, she looked great. Now, as he gazed down at that delicate face with the big, liquid-brown eyes that commanded your attention, he felt sure she never looked better.<br /><br />As they spoke, Ray Charles began singing “I Can’t Stop Loving You.” Mark hesitated, then asked her to dance. To his surprise, she agreed. The next song was, “Crying Time” another slow Ray Charles country ballad. Bebe made no effort to extract herself from his arms, and they kept dancing. Without leaning away, she gazed up at him through long, thick lashes. "Ah didn't remember you being such a good dancer.”<br /><br />Mark wondered when Bebe’s new “Gone With the Wind” drawl had replaced her soft Cajun lilt. Her unexpected compliment pleased him, though he couldn’t recall the last time last they danced. “Ray Charles always inspires me. Besides, you’re just saying that because I haven’t stomped on your toes, yet."<br /><br />"No, really, it's true." Her familiar, sexy, little grin broadened into an all-encompassing smile. "You must have been practicing a lot down at LSU."<br /><br />He felt his face flush and hoped she hadn’t noticed. "Only the juke-joint shuffle and the Cajun two-step.”<br /><br />"Really? The Cajun two-step? Now you're talking about my people, cher.” She cocked her head and stared into his eyes. “You'll have to show me your technique sometime."<br /><br />"If you've got the nerve, I've got the time.” What looked like a pleased expression crossed Bebe’s face before she laid her head back on his chest.<br /><br />Mark forced himself to breathe. It wasn’t easy. Everything about Bebe, even her new accent and perfume, turned him on. He couldn’t figure the reason for her being so nice, but he liked it, a lot, and wondered where it might lead.<br /><br />The song ended and they sat at a rickety folding table with some friends from high school, flirting, telling jokes, and catching up on gossip. Later, when everyone else got up for a fast song, Mark made no move to follow.<br /><br />"I don't know about you, but I'm grateful we're sitting here and not working ourselves to death out there." Bebe stopped nodding to the beat long enough to give him a slow wink and say she agreed. To Mark, it seemed sexy beyond belief and convinced him to test the limits of her new and improved attitude.<br /><br />He cleared his throat, then spoke in a voice he hoped sounded calm and casual. "Of course, the Cajun two-step and juke-joint shuffle don't take as much energy. Are you, uh, still interested in us looking into that situation?"<br /><br />After a thoughtful sip of Tab, she tilted her head and gazed into his eyes. "What did you have in mind, Mark?"<br /><br />For just a moment, he hesitated. "Well, I was thinking we might go down to Shep's in Mansura. It's a pretty long drive and I've never seen any real two-stepping going on there. Still, it's a first-class Cajun honky-tonk."<br /><br />"That might be fun,” she said. “Shep's is one of my favorite places. When did you want to go?"<br /><br />"Oh, I don’t know," he said, trying to act calm. “If tomorrow night’s too soon, what about next weekend? John Fred and The Playboy Band are supposed to be there both Friday and Saturday."<br /><br />"Well, I’ve got to admit I'm getting a little tired of hearing, ‘Judy In Disguise.’ Ah mean it's been on every radio station around here just about forever.” She exaggerated the word, “forever,” and gave her head an amused shake which sent her long, dark hair into motion. “But other than that, the band's great and John Fred's really cute."<br /><br />Not having an opinion on the cuteness of the state's current leading rock star, Mark just nodded. She seemed to be considering the alternatives. "Why don't we go next Saturday?”<br /><br />The tension in his body began to ease. The age of miracles hadn’t passed. After all these years, he and Bebe were going on a date. While he tried to process this development, Bebe continued, "Ah really like Shep's better on Friday nights. To me, it's less crowded and friendlier. The problem is, Saturday mornings at the store can get really busy. Ah'd hate to try and handle a big rush after being down there Friday night."<br /><br />Someone bucking for sainthood played a slow Ray Charles song "You Don’t Know Me” and they got up to dance. “Born To Lose” came next and they continued to move. Mark decided another Ray Charles fan must be running the stereo and silently blessed him.<br /><br />As the song’s last melancholy notes faded away, Bebe said she had to go. "Ah really am sorry. But like Ah said, things can get really crazy at work on Saturday mornings, and according to that calendar over on the wall, tomorrow is Saturday."<br /><br />Mark’s initial disappointment vanished in a flash of inspiration. “I should be calling it a night myself. Why don't I walk you to your car?"<br /><br />"Ah'd like that. Just let me get my purse."<br /><br />He watched as Bebe made her way toward the cloakroom. The sight of that celebrated Cajun derriere swaying in a seductive rhythm was always arousing. Over the last eight years, he'd witnessed that wonder of nature many times. Far too often after another rejection. This time he felt no mixed emotions. Tonight, she would be walking back to him.<br /><br />Out on the floor, Penny Harrison and Ralph Lawson gyrated past him. Penny, a slender, pretty brunette, smiled and waved. Mark liked her, always had, and wondered if she and Amy were still fussing. Ralph, Penny’s long-time steady, pretended to be looking the other way. While Mark and Ralph were almost always civil to one another, their relations were, at best, tense. They’d almost gotten into it tonight. Ralph had made a crack about “niggers” and Mark responded with a joke at Ralph’s expense.<br /><br />Little “Skeeter” Cummings, flashing her new engagement ring, danced by with Mark’s old football teammate, the aptly named, “Hoss” Driscoll. Back at the table, her question about Amy had caught him off-guard. But she didn’t seem to notice his reaction. Probably too excited about getting engaged to pay him much attention.<br /><br />At the sight of Bebe coming back, all other thoughts vanished. Outside, they hurried past the swarms of June bugs circling the yellow porch lights, and stepped into the warm, muggy night. With the moon hidden by low clouds, the gloom in the gravel parking lot was almost tangible. The sounds of crickets and frogs had replaced the thump of rock music by the time they reached the 1966 Chevelle Super Sport Bebe’s father, Jack Boudreaux, had given her as a graduation present.<br /><br />"Thanks for coming with me. Dark parking lots give me the creeps. Ah'm always afraid some crazy nig--, uh, nut might be waiting to, well, you know."<br /><br />“No problem,” said Mark. He had noticed her double-clutching to keep from saying, “nigger,” but said nothing. Everyone knew he was “soft” on the race issue and that he and Amy were both life-long friends of Willie Carter, son of the town’s leading black preacher and civil rights leader. But he could recall Bebe, who had always been openly racist, ever trying to watch her language. Could she be getting better? God knows she couldn’t have gotten much worse.<br /><br />She unlocked the door and then turned to face him. "By the way, what time did you want to pick me up?"<br /><br />"Well, uh, what about six? If that's no good, name your poison."<br /><br />"Six sounds great.” She reached up and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "Ah’m glad you were here tonight. You made it a lot more fun. And you saved me from dancing with Hoss and Ralph or, even worse, high school guys."<br /><br />Before Mark could recover from the unexpected kiss, she slipped into her seat and closed the door. The big engine sprang into life with a deep, almost sensual, growl. She rolled down her window and gave him another smile. "Ah'm really looking forward to next Saturday."<br /><br />Bebe fluttered her fingers in a goodbye gesture as she pulled away. The tires made a brief squeal as they hit the asphalt road. Mark watched the taillights vanish into the sultry night while touching the spot she’d kissed.<br /><br />A warm breeze drifted past. With it came a faint scent of spring flowers and the succulent eroticism of approaching rain. It reminded him of another night and another girl. His hand dropped, his smile faded, and he whispered, “Ain’t life a bitch?”<br /><br />It all seemed like a bad joke. The once unobtainable Bebe Boudreaux, the girl he had always wanted, now seemed interested in him. That would be great, except he’d just fallen in love with Amy, someone he could never have, someone he loved so much it hurt to even think her name.<br /><br />Even the possibility of a well-financed run for state representative in the next elections couldn’t get Amy off his mind. Once, they both loved politics. He still did, and had always wanted to run for office. But after today’s meeting with local big shots, all he could think about was how, after what Vietnam did to her brother, she no longer cared.<br /><br />Thank God he bumped into Bebe. What politics couldn’t do, she could, almost. With Bebe around, it’d been hard for thoughts of anyone else to slip in, but not impossible. And the moment she drove away, memories of that night with Amy had come flooding back along with a familiar, sick, hopeless, soul-shriveling sensation.<br /><br />A swarm of hungry mosquitoes intruded on his thoughts. An absentminded attempt to wave them away failed and he headed for his car. He wanted to be alone, try to figure things out, not feed mosquitoes.<br /><br />#<br /><br />The tree-lined streets of Pinefield featured more gentle hills than traffic signs. Even in the downtown area there were few other cars passing the lighted storefronts. Mark ignored these icons of his youth as he tried to focus on Bebe and what happened at the dance. But his mind kept going back to Amy and to what happened.<br /><br />The party had been his dumb idea. To be dumped by a guy you’ve dated for over a year is tough. To have him do it for another guy—devastating. That’s what happened to Amy, and Mark had never seen her so confused and depressed.<br /><br />So the idea, the hope, had been that a casual beer-bust with friends would kick-start her back to life. It’d been easy to organize. LSU students consider partying a sacred obligation. Springtime parties on the nearby Mississippi River levee are illegal which makes them doubly popular.<br /><br />Everyone else seemed to be having a great time, but Mark could tell Amy felt miserable. That’s why he kept checking on her and noticed when she drifted from the center of the party and then vanished into the late evening shadows. At first he thought it best to let her be alone. But an arrogant jerk with a long-standing case of the hot’s for Amy seemed ready to follow so Mark changed his mind.<br /><br />Once away from the noise of the party, Mark heard a stifled, whimpering sound. He followed it to her hide-away behind a driftwood log.<br /><br />They’d talked for days about the breakup and how rotten she felt. There was more to her mood, however, than just breaking up with a boyfriend, much more, and they also talked about that. By now he didn’t know what else to say. So he sat beside her on the dry, sun-hardened sediment left by the receding early spring high water and said nothing.<br /><br />A fresh breeze came off the river and she shivered. He put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. With a low, anguished wail, she buried her face against his chest and began soaking the front of his shirt with what seemed like an endless stream of tears.<br /><br />When her sobs tapered off, she didn’t pull away and try to apologize. That’s what he’d expected. Instead, she continued to lie against him, silently sliding a fingertip across his soaked shirt. It felt good, very good, and he smiled<br /><br />That’s when she lifted her face and looked at him. Even with all the crying, she was still beautiful. He’d never been “turned on” by Amy’s looks—neither had Amy. Maybe it was a trick of the mind to protect their friendship. Still, he understood why guys--.<br /><br />The evaluation of Amy’s beauty came to a sudden stop as she slipped her hands behind his neck, pulled him close, and pressed her lips against his. The kiss was long and erotic and, for Mark at least, changed everything between them. No mental gymnastics could withstand the touch of her lips or the feel of her willowy body in his arms.<br /><br />The moment Amy’s lips touched his, Mark fell totally, hopelessly in love with his best friend. What he didn’t know was how she felt. Their lips parted and he noticed a look of serenity, or something like that, on her tear-streaked face. But he sensed another, more subtle emotion. With a jolt of disbelief, he realized she was waiting for him to do something. The problem was he had no idea what that should be.<br /><br />He tried to think, tried to be rational and decide what was best. Amy was wasted, hurt, vulnerable. He’d never taken advantage of a girl, and didn’t want to start with his best friend. But the memory of that kiss, and the way she now kept staring into his eyes, made thinking about anything other than kissing her again, and again, and again, impossible.<br /><br />This time she didn’t have to pull his face to hers. At some point it occurred to him that Amy was one helluva good kisser. He envied the guys she’d dated.<br /><br />The next time they parted, he started to say something about stopping. Maybe joke that he wasn’t sure how much more of this he could stand. Only it wouldn’t be a joke.<br /><br />But Amy snuggled closer and pulled him back onto her mouth. As if on autopilot, his hand slipped under her sweatshirt. Amy shivered and tried to pull him closer. He took possession of one of her breasts, marveling at its firm, silky smoothness. The nipple was already hard. As if handling a sacred object, he rolled it between finger and thumb. Amy responded by breaking their kiss and emitting a low moan.<br /><br />He took his time kissing her eyes, her cheek, her chin, letting his lips trail down to her neck. There was no resistance as he pushed the sweatshirt higher until her breasts came into view. They seemed to glow in the pale moonlight. A moment later his lips encircled one of her small, hard nipples. Amy gasped and tried to press herself deeper into his mouth.<br /><br />Once again he told himself he should stop, but his hand seemed to move of its own will down her slim torso. As he fumbled with her zipper, Amy made no move to stop him.<br /><br />In the most basic, physical sense, he wanted to this woman. And he knew she was his for the taking. But this was Amy, not just some woman. It was hurt, not love, behind her passion. And he wanted to make love with Amy, not screw her. Though sure this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance, and aching with need, he didn’t want to risk losing his best friend over what, considering his present condition, would be about a two-second burst of ecstasy.<br /><br />With a resigned sigh, he gave up on the zipper. His lips released her breast and returned to her mouth.<br /><br />Their tongues performed a lazy dance from one mouth to another. He pulled her sweatshirt down, covering breasts he’d probably seen for the last time. For a moment, he allowed his fingers to caress first one, then the other. He wanted to remember their texture, shape, and warmth.<br /><br />The kissing became less intense but didn’t stop. He hated to break that last contact with her. Besides, they both needed to cool down before returning to--.</p><p>The irate blare of a car horn brought Mark back from the Mississippi levee to one of the few Pinefield intersections with a traffic light. A light he’d just run.</p><p>He waved in apology at the offended driver, realized they couldn't see the gesture, felt even dumber, and then headed out of town. If he couldn’t stop thinking about that night with Amy, he better get off the road.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-50474405163673188442008-06-11T15:50:00.003-05:002009-01-26T03:24:48.196-06:00Bum Back Bilge CallGreetings, World.<br /><br />Had surgery yesterday to correct a bad disc that was pinching the sciatic nerve to my right leg. It all ended with both patient and doctor doing well. In fact, the sawbones was so proud of his work, he let me go home instead of overnighting in the hosptial.<br /><br />Between the after-effects of general anesthesia and some pain pills, I entered slumber-land very early. Slept well, despite waking for a couple potty breaks, which, thanks to the after-effects of a damn catheter, were a bit of a pain. But that too shall pass, so to speak.<br /><br />Today the back's sore where they did all the slicing and dicing, and the leg still hurts, but a lot less. With any luck, the pain levels should drop over the next few days.<br /><br />Morning chores took a bit longer than usual, of course. Feeding the two dogs being a logistics challenge that required sitting in a chair to get the bowls down to dog level (NO bending allowed). Rest assured all three of us broke our fasts.<br /><br />I'm still learning how to get around with this patch on my back. But there are plenty of pain pills and I have some audio books so staying inside (hit a record 102 here in Austin yesterday) is not the worst of all possible fates.<br /><br />There's one thing I just gotta, gotta, gotta share with y'all.<br /><br />A young gas passer came into my room to give me the usual pre-op talk. His name: Dr. Sturgeon. After he left, it occured to me that if he was a surgeon and a life-long celibate, he'd be:<br /><br /><em>(drum-roll)<br /></em><br /><span style="font-size:180%;">The virgin, surgeon, Sturgeon.</span><br /><br /><em>(rim-shot)</em><br /><br />Hey it's my blog and my back. :)<br /><br />Bayou BillUnknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-47714246074594883292008-03-09T17:58:00.008-05:002008-12-09T02:11:44.199-06:00An Evening With Bill and Pat Buckley<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__ZJKcesiTKQ/R9R1Iy3k2-I/AAAAAAAAAJM/jqbfP7Iv7Kc/s1600-h/wfb.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5175890665709820898" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__ZJKcesiTKQ/R9R1Iy3k2-I/AAAAAAAAAJM/jqbfP7Iv7Kc/s320/wfb.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>It is very possible that had William F. Buckley, Jr. not come into my life in an Army hospital back in 1969, I might have no eyesight today. (see <a href="http://billsbilge.blogspot.com/2004/12/outstanding-column-by-william-f.html">http://billsbilge.blogspot.com/2004/12/outstanding-column-by-william-f.html</a> )<br /></div><br /><div>That column would later be reprinted in, <em>The Governor Liseth, </em>with the following postscript: *William Fullerton, Jr., was operated on by the famous New York surgeon Ramon Castroviejo in February, 1970. Seven weeks after the operation he was able to distinguish colors.”<br /><br />What Bill did not add, would have considered extremly bad form to mention, was his being the one who arranged for me to meet his friend, Dr. Castroviejo, the world’s most renowned corneal transplant pioneer, in New York. In addition, Bill paid all expenses, and allowed my mother and me to stay in his NYC townhouse for several weeks immediately before and after my surgery while he and his family were overseas.<br /><br />What follows is an 1100 word excerpt from my first novel, <em>A Brief Affair</em>. While based on an actual event in 1971, it is not a memoir but a work of fiction with the names of everyone but William and Patricia Buckley changed to protect the innocent, not to mention my scalp.<br /><br />Bayou Bill<br /><br />==<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">An Evening With Bill and Pat Buckley</span></strong><br />(an excerpt from: <em>A BRIEF AFFAIR</em>)<br />by Bill Fullerton<br /><br /><br />"By the way, do you know what great event is coming up?"<br /><br />Gwen looked at Mark in bewilderment. "Washington's Birthday?"<br /><br />"Close, but no cigar. Actually, the great event in question is the birthday of two other outstanding citizens of the world. Namely, St. Patrick and me."<br /><br />"That's right. Your birthday is St. Patrick's Day."<br /><br />"Tis true, lassie. And a fine day for the Irish 'twill be," he said, with the first Irish brogue she’d ever heard tinged with a southern accent.<br /><br />"William Buckley will be celebrating the glorious day with a party at his place. My innate honesty requires me to confess that he and his wife do this every year. It's just a coincidence that it's also my birthday.<br /><br />"Anyway, remember how I left town early last November and couldn't take you to the get together for his magazine at the Tavern on the Green? Let me make up for that by taking you to dinner there and then going to the party at Bill's place."<br /><br />"Are you serious? Go to a party at William Buckley's home?"<br /><br />"Sure, anybody who's recently been groped by a congressman shouldn't have any problem with a bunch of card-carrying conservatives. Besides, I've been assured that everybody on the guest list has had their shots and with the possible exception of one or two writers, they're all supposed to be house broken."<br /><br />With her heart saying go while her head screamed, run, Gwen tried to stall. "Who's going to be there?"<br /><br />"Other than a few hangers-on like me, most of them will be people from his magazine. There are two I really want you to meet. When mother and I first came up here, they were super nice to us."<br /><br />I'm not believing all this, thought Gwen. What would Mark come up with next—dinner with the Mayor at Gracie Mansion? Thanks to Mark taking her to the Mardi Gras ball in Washington, at least she had a decent party dress and wouldn't have to go back to the sales racks at Alexander's.<br /><br />Two weeks later, a totally intimidated Gwen Kaplan, from Jewel Avenue in Flushing, Queens, walked into a Park Avenue townhouse for the first time in her life. She was a nervous wreck. As promised, before the party she and Mark went to Tavern on the Green for dinner. When they got up to leave, she suffered a total anxiety attack and slumped back into her chair. Shaking her head, she said there was no way she could go.<br /><br />"Come on, chicken. No guts, no glory," said Mark as he took her trembling hand and pulled her back to her feet.<br /><br />He cocked his head to one side and gazed with approval at the silver lame' pants suit she had settled upon after days of anguished indecision. "You look even better than usual, babe. We can't waste all that on dinner and a quick trip back to your dorm."<br /><br />William Buckley was tall, attractive, and charming. Gwen decided he looked and sounded exactly like the cultured, intellectual she had seen on television. After introductions, he asked Mark about both his mother and his eyesight. Just then a tall, elegant, dark-haired woman with the looks and figure of a fashion model joined them. Patricia Buckley wore a pale green outfit which most definitely hadn't come from Alexander's. In comparison to her, Gwen felt like her mother’s old Dodge Polara parked next to a new Rolls Royce.<br /><br />While talking with the Buckley’s, a smartly dressed, hyper-kinetic brunette came over and kissed Mark on the cheek. "There you are, love. Angie and I have been worried you might not be coming.” The voice sounded like a BBC broadcast, only with more class.<br /><br />"How could I not show up with all these beautiful women around here," said Mark. He nodded toward Patricia, placed one arm around Gwen's waist and draped the other over the new arrival’s shoulders.<br /><br />"And this must be Gwen," said the woman, extending her hand. "How are you, I'm Felicia Brice. I've been dying to meet you."<br /><br />The Buckley’s excused themselves to greet some new guests. Taking Gwen and Mark in tow, Felicia led them across the crowded room. "You two made it in the nick of time," she whispered conspiratorially. "Poor Angie has been cornered by Bruce Atkins, an agonizing death much worse than any fate."<br /><br />While Gwen had never heard of Bruce Atkins, she automatically sympathized with the unseen Angie. They were approaching a beautiful, blue-eyed, blonde wearing a dark green cocktail dress. She was listening politely to a short, intense looking, man in a plaid sports coat. If that's poor Angie, thought Gwen, the last thing she needs is my sympathy.<br /><br />The Grace Kelly look-alike proved to be Angie Douglas. She gratefully accepted the rescue offered by the arrival of Felicia, Mark, and Gwen. Before the party was over, Gwen learned that Felicia was Buckley's administrative assistant while Angie served as his chief researcher. They had known Mark ever since his mother first brought him to New York for surgery. Back in those days, when he was still totally blind, Felicia and Angie served as an unofficial support group, especially for the distraught Leigh Cahill.<br /><br />After his mother returned to Louisiana, Felicia and Angie took Mark under their protective wings. At first, they'd come visit him at the VA after work. Later, when his sight began to improve, they would meet him outside the hospital for dinner.<br /><br />To Gwen's relief, it quickly became obvious that while both cared for Mark, neither was a rival for his affection. That was a good thing, she decided. Competing with Felicia's witty urbanity or Angie's charm and good looks would have been tough.<br /><br />When the party started breaking up, Mark suggested they all go for coffee. Out on Fifth Avenue, they piled into a cab and, at Felicia's suggestion, went down to the Fireside Coffee Shop on 35th Street near where both she and Angie lived. By the end of the evening, Gwen felt she’d found two new friends and learned a lot more about Mark Cahill.<br /><br />After dropping him off at the VA, she headed back to her dorm. As she walked up First Avenue, Gwen remembered feeling sorry for Mark when they first met. To her, he’d seemed like a poor, lonely guy a long way from home. Tonight, she'd learned that poor, lonesome Mark had been going out regularly with Felicia and Angie. There had also been some brief, veiled references to a Pam-Am stewardess.<br /><br />Gwen wondered if she would have ever gotten involved with Mark had she known about his active social life. Probably not, she decided, grateful for her ignorance.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-1138943954252880152008-02-22T22:47:00.001-06:002008-12-09T02:11:44.432-06:00ANGIE'S ADVENTURES - short story<div align="center"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5071000776411062610" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__ZJKcesiTKQ/Rl_QVr22IVI/AAAAAAAAAA8/xBYvKFibVGY/s320/beagle.jpg" border="0" /><span style="font-size:85%;">Buford the Beagle</span><br /><br /><br /><div align="left"><em><span style="font-size:85%;">It feels like spring here in Austin town. This story is supposed to be funny, taking a jaundiced look at the perils of certain spring-time outdoor activities. Some may find the contents a bit risque and possibly in questionable taste. Others might decide it's trite and boring. Both could be right. Feel free to let me know what you think.<br /><br />Bayou Bill<br /></span></em><br />==<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Angie's Adventures: a cautionary tale</span></strong><br />by Bill Fullerton<br /><br />You and your soul mate are alone in a sun-kissed pasture, entwined in a torrid lover’s knot. High times and hot sex fill the afternoon you and your lover spend on a serene hillside. The two of you make slow, sensual love in an intimate grotto tucked behind a tropical waterfall.<br /><br />Hot, steaming, al fresco sex is a favorite fantasy for many folks. That’s why it’s a common subject in romance and erotic writing.<br /><br />Great sex in the great outdoors can happen. But fiction writers seldom give the whole, unvarnished story of such encounters. It’s true that nature can be breathtakingly beautiful. But when it comes to sex, beds are best. Those of a contrary opinion are both wrong, and encouraged to consider the trials and tribulations of Angelina Eveready.<br /><br />As is the case with many otherwise sane, normal people born and raised in the big city, Angie yearned for bucolic bliss. Her all-consuming fantasy was to make unbridled love with a rugged, yet sensitive, mountain man in the great out-of-doors. In her imagination, passion overwhelms them in some secluded mountain glade during a summer rainstorm, or they would make love while swimming nude in a tranquil lake, or the two of them frolic in an isolated meadow filled with songbirds and flowers.<br /><br />So entrenched was this longing for splendor in the grass, after the fall semester of her freshman year, she defied her parents and transferred from Elitist Private University to that bastion of rural virtues, Wodehouse College.<br /><br />When Angie arrived in January, the much praised WC campus proved to be cold, dreary, and disappointing. The weather was too miserable to do anything outside and there wasn’t much to do inside except study, sort through the male student body, and go to basketball games. To Angie, it seemed like spring had been cancelled due to boredom.<br /><br />Then April arrived and signs of nature’s renewal began showing up everywhere. The sun became warmer, the days longer, and student apparel skimpier. All this renewed Angie’s primal longing to play nymph to some insatiable satyr in an elysian field of erotic delights.<br /><br />It was her good fortune to possess those qualities most needed to fulfill her desires. She was a female and in love with the ideal of love. In other words, she was easy. It didn’t hurt that her earth-mother figure and exotic good looks attracted men ranging in age from pre-school to post-senility.<br /><br />That fall’s crop of freshmen females had been a poor one, boasting few blue-ribbon keepers. This paucity of prime pulchritude and her own ample charms made Angie an instant, and much sought after, sensation.<br /><br />After an extensive sampling of possible partners, Angie settled on Ernie. No doubt this choice struck some as odd. For while it’s true he was sort of handsome when viewed in a certain light, Ernie was not the rugged, mountain man type. Nor was he interested in becoming one. Having grown up in the rustic region surrounding the Wodehouse campus, he tended to take nature for granted. In his opinion, the best thing about the outdoors was coming indoors.<br /><br />But though built on the long and lanky model and no woodsman, he was patient and smart. Those attributes played a vital role in the remarkable improvement in Angie’s academic fortunes.<br /><br />To her credit, Angie was quick to reward this kindness. To her delight, Ernie’s slender frame was more than offset by two compensating factors. A member of the school’s cross-country track team; he possessed great stamina. And then there was his being, to quote a locker-room wag, “hung like a Missouri mule.” After becoming aware of both factors, Angie shifted her rewards program into overdrive.<br /><br />None of that “rewarding” activity lessened her wish to experience pastoral passion, however. With her full lips, enticing cleavage, and almost total lack of anything even faintly resembling a sexual inhibition, Angie seldom had trouble coaxing men. Long before the first warm weekend of the year, the reluctant Ernie had been well and truly coaxed into obliging her.<br /><br />When the great day arrived, Angie, being romantic, brought a jug of wine, a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Ernie, being practical, brought a plastic ground cloth, a blanket, and a first aide kit. He also brought his dog, an aging but still inquisitive beagle named, Buford.<br /><br />The chosen spot was under a towering tree in an out-of-the-way rustic glen. Ernie busied himself smoothing a spot and spreading the ground cover and blanket. The moment these tasks were completed, he learned what Angie had been doing. Wearing nothing but a big smile, she jumped onto the blanket and pulled him down beside her.<br /><br />Foreplay was not on the agenda. Ernie’s clothes seemed to vanish, followed moments later by his phenomenal phallus. But while neither participant had any idea where his clothes were, both knew the exact location of his magnificent manhood.<br /><br />Even with his endurance and her desire, that first explosion of passion couldn’t last forever. When they started to recover, a jug of wine and a loaf of bread weren’t what Angie wanted. She wasn’t even interested in Ernie being beside her singing in the wilderness. What interested her was having him on his back with his prodigious protuberance well positioned while she sat on top, controlling the pace and teasing him with her breasts.<br /><br />Thanks to her remarkable ability to coax men, she soon had everything she wanted. In a way, Angie was like Will Rogers except she never met a sexual position she didn’t like. But this one was special. It generated a wave of warm, tender emotions she felt compelled to share with her lover.<br /><br />“Oh, hell yes! This is, uh, so in-credible. I mean, there’s so, uh, much of you. It’s, you know, uh, uh, like so…. Oh, oh yes, yes, yes, yes. Oh, god, yes!”<br /><br />Words failed her before she could make any specific comments regarding the exquisite pressure Ernie’s erection was creating or how being able to look around at all the beauties of nature was adding to her pleasure. But he seemed to understand.<br /><br />A large tree trunk blocked the view directly in front of her. But there were butterflies in the wildflowers to her left. A few feet away on the right, birds flew in and out of a large thicket. Ernie’s old dog was nearby, stretched out on its belly in a patch of sunlight, watching them and slowly wagging its tail. She wondered what the dog thought about all this. Was he bored or enjoying the show?<br /><br />Making love like this was so good, so right. She cupped her breasts, kneading and rotating the heavy globes. Doing that always felt sexy, and like most guys, Ernie seemed fascinated. She noticed the dog’s tail was moving faster. Maybe they both were. The thought made her giggle.<br /><br />She began a slow rocking motion back and forth, enjoying the, oh so fulfilling sensation. Making love outdoors was even better than she’d imagined. Feeling the sun and wind on your bare skin was such a turn-on. Everything was peaceful and sexy. The sounds of nature were accompanied by rhythmic sound of their lovemaking.<br /><br />The more she thought about the scene, the hotter she got. It wasn’t long before she was leaning forward, hands on Ernie’s shoulders, her full breasts swaying back and forth, gently slapping against his face as he tried to capture one of the erect, elusive nipples with his lips.<br /><br />Angie felt herself slipping into the moment, her body taking control as her mind became a swirl of sensory delights. Ernie latched onto one of her breasts. He sucked hard, taking in more and more flesh before releasing just enough to let him chew on the sensitive nipple.<br /><br />On some subconscious level, Angie knew her hips were moving faster and faster, knew Ernie was meeting each downward stroke with a hard, upward thrust, knew she was on the brink of an outdoor orgasm for the ages.<br /><br />That’s when something very cold, very wet, and totally unexpected pushed in between the cheeks of her exposed, and unsuspecting bottom. At the moment, she was halfway through what should have been the penultimate downward plunge. Instead of rushing on to blissful completion, her body braked to a halt. Defying all known laws of inertia, it reversed directions with such speed and force she pulled a lower back muscle. This went unnoticed at the time and does not appear to have impeded her subsequent movements.<br /><br />The rapid reversal was accompanied by a spectacular sound. It bore a striking resemblance, in both its high frequency and even higher volume, to the nerve shattering screech emitted by well-tuned tornado alert sirens in the great state of Kansas.<br /><br />With a speed that would have pleased an Olympic sprinter coming off the starting line, she was rushing away from the cold terror down below. The terror in question was just another one of nature’s marvels, in this case the cold, wet nose of Buford the beagle. Although she later became aware of the circumstances surrounding this incident, the news in no way mollified Angie.<br /><br />We need to stop at this point and consider the situation. Ernie is naked and on his back with an empty mouth and an exposed erection in the initial stages of what has suddenly become a mid-air explosion. As with all men during such events, his mind has shutdown.<br /><br />Buford, the nosey beagle who triggered this event, is wondering what happened to the source of all those strange sounds and tempting smells. Although possibly unfamiliar with either the band or the term, not unlike the bearded troubadours of ZZ Top, he’s just looking for some tush.<br /><br />The miniscule portion of Angie’s cerebral cortex still in working order is wondering how to get even further away from whatever the hell that cold, wet, disgusting thing was that just assaulted her rear. This strong, instinctual desire to flee is about to present a very big problem.<br /><br />Although no member of this dysfunctional ménage-au-trios is aware of the fact, a thick blanket of pine needles covers the ground around them. These needles helped cushion the earth’s surface for Angie and Ernie while providing a happy home for blood-sucking parasites such as ticks and redbugs.<br /><br />As is often the case with pine needles when thus observed, these are all dead and have fallen from overhanging limbs. For needles to work as nature intended, they must have a direct connection to a tree limb. If limbs are to function properly, they need to be attached to a tree trunk. And it follows, as night doth the day, that trunks not securely attached to the ground cease supporting the life above them and become logs, firewood, or a building material.<br /><br />As realtors are always quick to remind us, location is everything. The instigator of this crisis, Buford the beagle, is currently out of harm’s way. However, the heads of Ernie and Angie are positioned mere inches from a very thick, very hard, very immovable tree trunk. To be precise, it is the trunk of an otherwise unoffending (Pinus taeda), more commonly referred to as a loblolly pine.<br /><br />Ernie’s head is more or less immobile. And since he’s still occupied firing away into the wild blue yonder, his brain remains completely inoperative. He is, therefore, relatively safe.<br /><br />The same cannot be said for Angie or her head. The portion commonly referred to as her mouth is wide open and busy responding to the brain’s terror alert by screaming like a Hollywood B movie actress confronting a particularly gruesome monster. Along with the rest of Angie’s body, it is hurtling forward with mind-boggling speed.<br /><br />Due to the extreme velocity of this motion, the distance between the top of her head and the tree trunk is diminishing at a rate any impartial observer would describe as, alarming. Some might even be moved to add, very. The laws of motion being what they are, the top of head “A” (Angie) is mere nanoseconds away from contacting the side of object “T”(guess) with a loud—<br /><br /><strong>THUNK!</strong><br /><br />After-action damage assessment:<br /><br />Angie:<br />1. Pulled muscle in lower back<br />2. Large contusion (bump) on head<br />3. Assorted teeth marks on left nipple<br />4. Spine in need of adjustment<br />5. Neck in need of adjustment<br />6. Numerous itchy redbug and tick bites<br />7. A tendency towards anxiety attacks when attempting the female superior position<br />8. A badly sprained wrist (note: This can only be indirectly attributed to the collision. The chief precipitating factor appears to have been her administering a “good one” to Ernie’s jaw.)<br /><br />Ernie:<br />1. One loose tooth (it was a very “good one”)<br />2. A busted lip (see number one)<br />3. Numerous itchy redbug and tick bites<br />4. A chronic case of semen retention headache resulting from Angie terminating (with extreme prejudice) her rewards program<br /><br />Buford:<br />1. A well-grounded fear of angry, large-breasted, naked, female-type humans<br />2. Chronic nightmares of one such human, with a big bump on her head and a large tree limb held in one hand, chasing him for miles</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-29555698967385866502007-12-10T10:50:00.000-06:002007-12-10T11:46:08.132-06:00Are You Ready For Christmas?<a href="http://www.suzannesutton.com/_borders/confused_man.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.suzannesutton.com/_borders/confused_man.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://www.savontv.com/im/nwimages/the-clapper.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://www.savontv.com/im/nwimages/the-clapper.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="http://www.savontv.com/im/nwimages/chia-bunny.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://www.savontv.com/im/nwimages/chia-bunny.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><br /><br /><br /></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><br /><br /><br /></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><br /><br /></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><br /> </div><div> </div><div><br />For a certain class of male, any form of shopping is a chore. Make that Christmas shopping and it becomes a severe challenge best avoided by the faint of heart. And if the prime directive is to produce a present is for the man's wife, it becomes a mission of near-Sisyphian impossibilty.</div><div> </div><div><br />Newt Harlan, a classic Texas story-teller and writing buddy, has faced just such a challenge and survived, more or less intact. Here is his after-action report.</div><div> </div><div><br />Bayou Bill<br /><br />==</div><div> </div><div><strong><br />Are You Ready For Christmas?</strong><br />by Newt Harlan<br /><br />Well it’s that time of year again. This is the time of year when folks wishing to make neutral conversation can ask you about something besides the weather, so everywhere you go you hear the happy question, “Are you ready for Christmas?” The waitress at the café, the bank teller, the post office clerk, the grocery checker, this is the question you hear almost everywhere this time of year.<br /><br />Personally, I’d rather they’d just stick to asking about the weather because my answer is, as usual, “NO”. I’m not ready for Christmas. I’m also not ready for Winter Holiday, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan or whatever it is that we’re supposed to be calling whatever it is that we’re supposed to be celebrating at this time of year, this year. It was so much simpler when it used to be just Christmas because back then I only had one thing to be not ready for.<br /><br />For the record, I’m a Christian. I believe in Christmas. I’m not a Scrooge or a Grinch, but the fact remains, I’m NOT ready for Christmas. -- I haven’t even bought the first gift nor do I have an inkling of what I plan to buy for said gifts.<br /><br />Really, it’s not so bad as it sounds. There are a bunch of gifts ready to go under the tree for the kids, grandkids and great grandkids. My wife pretty much takes care of that, so all I have to do is offer suggestions on boy stuff and sign my name on the nametags and cards. She even takes care of the signing part, if I’m not around. The big problem is that my wife doesn’t buy the Christmas presents to my wife from me, and that’s the main reason I’m not ready for Christmas.<br /><br />It’s really not my fault. For years, back when my daughters were youngsters, it became a holiday tradition for the three of them and I to go buy my wife’s presents and I got spoiled. The girls knew the correct sizes and many times their mama dropped hints about what she particularly wanted or needed.<br /><br />In our small town everybody knew everybody, there were no crowds and people all had the Christmas spirit. We’d just make our rounds to a couple of dry goods stores, maybe one of the drugstores and a variety store or two and our Christmas shopping was done.<br /><br />Well, that all changed. It seems like it was overnight, but it really has been a lot of years. My girls all grew up, got married, scattered and had their own families to worry about shopping for. Worse, our small town grew up or rather got swallowed up by the growth of our Houston neighbor.<br /><br />The stores where the girls and I had done our shopping all disappeared, replaced by a mall and a bunch of big box stores. All the people who knew everyone else were replaced by multitudes who didn’t know anyone, much less care---forget the Christmas spirit, just get in the thundering herd and claw your way to the finish line.<br /><br />Add to all the above, I am not a shopper; I’m a buyer. I know what I want and I go get it and get back in my truck and leave, or even better I get someone to get it for me. Plus I don’t do crowds, plus I’m a procrastinator.<br /><br />After our girls abandoned the nest Miss Edie got some really neat gifts from me. One year she got a really nice 4-gallon stainless steel pot for me her to cook gumbo and chili in. </div><div><br /></div><div>Then there was that beautiful genuine rabbit fur vest that she wore almost every day, well at least once or twice, well at least once. (It wasn’t my fault all the hair was falling out.) </div><div><br /></div><div>The next Christmas I gave her a really high tech vacuum cleaner and 3 or 4 “Clappers” to control lights and appliances and not just one, but three “Chia Pets”. </div><div><br /></div><div>Oh, and I almost forgot the year I got her the 12 place settings of genuine Melamac dinnerware complete with serving bowls, gravy boat and platters, and the year she got a set of high dollar stainless steel flatware along with a portable mixer. </div><div><br /></div><div>I think the year I surprised her most was the year I got the bargain on a gorgeous hand-embroidered, monogrammed bath set (I really didn’t think it was all that important that our family initials weren’t RQZ.).<br /><br />Finally, one year the girls, probably in an effort to prevent a divorce, suggested that I just give them the money and they would handle my shopping for their mama. <br /><br />Hallelujah! <br /><br />That has worked great now for the past 15 or so years. My wife gets gifts that she enjoys and I am relieved of the shopping chores -- just here’s my money and/or credit card and a day or two later, all I have to do is sign the name tags, no muss, no fuss, no problem. Then when we open presents at Christmas, it’s like I get twice as many gifts, my own plus I get to see what I bought for my wife.<br /><br />I know you’re asking since my daughters handle my shopping, why am I not ready for Christmas? -- Well, here it is getting close to Christmas and my daughters haven’t made contact about the shopping thing. You can bet if they don’t come around soon, I sure as hell ain’t gonna fight them crazy people out there shopping. At this stage of the game, I’m seriously thinking about a nice houseplant and maybe nice pair of new house shoes…<br /><br /><em>Epilogue: All is well. My number two daughter just came by and the gift situation is handled. Whew! Merry Christmas everybody.</em></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-1163975752091474362007-11-30T15:16:00.000-06:002008-12-10T21:04:59.061-06:00BAR FIGHT & REVELATION - short story<a href="http://www.le.ac.uk/arthistory/images/pow.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.le.ac.uk/arthistory/images/pow.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">This short (2000 word) story is based on a chapter from my second novel, "We Danced to Ray Charles." Any thoughts on how it might be improved would be appreciated.</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">Bayou Bill</span></em><br /><br />==<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Bar Fight</strong></span> <span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>& Revelation</strong></span><br />By Bill Fullerton<br /><br />A weary Seeburg Select-O-Matic jukebox crouched beside the front door of The Rebel Yell. The tenth playing that evening of “Please Come Home For Christmas” was just ending. Across the room, Sam, the joint’s cheerless owner, held court behind a short bar with several worn stools. Strings of Christmas lights acknowledged the season and provided most of the illumination. An old, printed sign taped to the cash register proclaimed, “You’re white today because your ancestors practiced segregation.”<br /><br />This same lighting scheme extended into a large dance area lined with plastic covered booths and small, scarred tables. The place had a pervasive odor of beer, cigarette smoke, hair tonic, cheap aftershave, and testosterone.<br /><br />Clay Hopkins stood next to the jukebox until he spotted Wheeler Sims sitting at a front booth. The Rhodes brothers were with him. So was Renee. With those eyes you could get lost in and an ass to die for, she was the best looking girl he’d ever dated, much less made love to.<br /><br />Abby once called her a manipulative bitch and, just for good measure, white trash. As usual, she’d been right. Renee was also a racist, so were a lot of other people Clay knew. He wasn’t, but had lusted for her since junior high. Years of futility ended last summer when they began dating, and then making love. But all that ended last week, a lifetime ago.<br /><br />The jukebox screeched in protest as he pushed it away from the wall. The needle settled back into a grove with Tammy Wynette spelling out, D-I-V-O-R-C-E. She reached R before he found the power cord and yanked hard. Lights went out and it ground into silence.<br /><br />A chorus of loud complaints erupted. People turned to see what happened. Then, like a scene from an old western, everything got quiet.<br /><br />Behind the bar, Sam reached for his blackjack. “Easy Sam.” Clay held up a hand. “Stay where you are and I’ll be out of here in a second.<br /><br />“Wheeler, you need to come outside. I’ll be waiting by your truck. There some things we need to settle. You know what. If you’re not there in a few minutes, I’ll leave a reminder on that bird-shit yellow paint-job about when I’ll be back. So you might as well come on.”<br /><br />Clay plugged the jukebox back in and left. Wheeler, along with Renee and the Rhodes brothers plus most of the bar’s other patrons, soon followed. They milled around in the frosty southern air while he made a show of checking out the situation.<br /><br />In a loud, cocky voice, he asked, “Okay, I’m here. What’s all this shit about?”<br /><br />“You started the church fire that killed Abby and Ike.” It was a statement, not a question.<br /><br />A tiny smirk flashed across Wheeler’s face. Then he put on a show of indignation. “Bull shit.”<br /><br />The men stared at one another, until Wheeler looked over at the two men standing beside Clay’s old Ford. “What you doing here, Hoss? Trying to keep Hopkin’s junker running?”<br /><br />The hulking mechanic pointed at the three Rhodes brothers standing near Wheeler. “Thought I’d come along to make sure this is a fair fight, a one-on-one deal, and your little buddies stay out of things.”<br /><br />The undersized brothers, who preferred doing their brand of fighting in dark, crowded bars, showed no interest in an outdoor encounter with Hoss Driscoll. They smirked, but made no reply.<br /><br />“What about you, Hemphill?” said Wheeler. “You want a part of this?”<br /><br />“Not me,” said Bob. He used his thumb to gesture at Clay. “I’m just here to make sure he doesn’t kill you. You’re not worth an involuntary manslaughter charge.”<br /><br />The casual tone seemed to unsettle Wheeler. But he recovered and turned to the large crowd clustered behind him. “Well, I guess Hopkins ain’t gonna be happy until I kick his sorry candy-ass across this parking lot. So let’s get it over with.” He punctuated his final words by making a big production out of turning back around to face Clay. What he saw seemed to surprise him.<br /><br />Across the small, neon-lighted space, Clay stood shirtless. A second summer spent wrestling with heavy, green, plank-road lumber had put some impressive muscles on his arms and upper body. The chubby junior high football player the two-year older Wheeler had once beaten and humiliated now looked more than a match for his former tormentor.<br /><br />The spotless cowboy hat came off in a big, sweeping motion. Then he smiled at Renee. “Would you mind holding this for a minute? I’m not gonna take my shirt off. Candy-ass might get all hot and bothered at the sight.” The crowd guffawed. Renee returned his smile and accepted the hat.<br />With the formalities over, Wheeler turned back, then moved forward, all the while talking loud and grinning. Without warning, he brought a vicious left up from the hip.<br /><br />Clay was expecting some sort of sucker punch and dodged, but he'd forgotten Wheeler was a lefty. The side of his head exploded with pain as the punch bounced off his ear. He countered with a short left to the eye and a hard, straight right to the jaw.<br /><br />Wheeler shook his head, then pressed in with a flurry of quick headshots. Some landed, most missed. Then a sharp jab shook Clay and left his mouth bleeding. It seemed to wake him up. Before, he’d been fighting more in grief than anger. Now a lifetime worth of rage took over.<br /><br />Wheeler took two hard shots to the body, and stepped away. He paused to rub at his swelling eye, then grinned and came on like a right-hander, throwing a left-right combination. While Clay was no fighter, thanks to his Golden Gloves father, he knew how to box. He parried most of the blows, then countered with a jab that bloodied Wheeler’s nose and followed that with a hard right to the gut. There was a satisfying grunt of pain as air exploded from a gaping mouth.<br /><br />Wheeler’s breath now came in short, ragged gasps. He moved in again but with caution, like a wounded animal. All his bluster was gone. Clay half-expected him to make a rush and try to wrestle him down. But after feinting with a right, Wheeler unleashed a savage left. It was a haymaker, a desperate attempt at a knockout.<br /><br />The feint was good, but he telegraphed the big punch. Once again Clay bobbed but felt the sting of knuckles banging off his already throbbing ear.<br /><br />The punch left Wheeler off balance and vulnerable. A right slammed into his mouth. Blood and spittle flew from busted lips. Eyes snapped open wide in pain. A left rocked his head. He tried to recover, to defend himself. But a right hammered him just below the heart. He grunted, doubled over, and stumbled backward before sinking to his knees.<br /><br />With hands propped on thighs, Wheeler Sims knelt, gasping for breath and stared at the ground. A string of bloody drool trailed from his swollen lips to the oil-stained gravel between his knees.<br /><br />Clay rubbed his throbbing ear, touched his busted lip, and then studied his cut, aching knuckles. Finished with his self-exam, he walked over and stood in front of the man who had killed Abby and Ike. “You did it, didn’t you?”<br /><br />Wheeler looked up and tried to glare at his opponent. He spit a glob of blood onto the ground between Clay’s boots. “What the fuck you talking about, candy-ass?”<br /><br />“You must be proud of being stupid.” Clay’s voice was unemotional, almost resigned. “But, maybe you’re counting on me being a nice guy. You know, the kind who always plays by the rules and would never hit a defenseless man. But just between you and me, I wouldn’t count on that any more.”<br /><br />Clay’s fist smashed into the unprotected face looking up at him. There was a crunch of breaking cartilage. Blood spewed from a shattered nose. Wheeler’s head jerked back. His body twisted and he crashed to the ground.<br /><br />A Rhodes brother made a move to come and help, but Hoss motioned him back. Wheeler struggled to roll over, then got to his hands and knees.<br /><br />Clay stepped closer and spoke in a low, patient voice. “Now let’s try that again. But this time, it’ll just be between you and me. You did it, didn’t you? You torched that church.”<br /><br />There was a pause, then a nod. Wheeler’s lips were split and swollen, his voice a bit garbled. “But I swear no one was inside. And I’m, I’m sorry about your girl. But why in hell did she and that nigger go running in there?”<br /><br />Clay’s reaction was immediate, instinctive, and brutal. He stepped forward and kicked his beaten opponent in the ribs. The work boot’s steel toe landed with a sickening thud and the sound of something cracking. Wheeler tumbled onto his side, screaming in pain, and tried to curl into a protective ball. This time, Hoss had to take two steps forward to intimidate the Rhodes brothers.<br /><br />Clay knelt on one knee and studied his long-time rival. “Can you hear me?”<br /><br />There was a soft moan, then, “Yeah.”<br /><br />“Let me tell you something, Sims. Abby Marshall wasn’t just my girl, she was my best friend, my fiancée. I’d loved her all my life but was too dumb to see that, then too afraid of losing her to admit it, besides, there was Bebe. When I finally manage to figure things out, you killed her.<br /><br />“We were heading home to tell everyone Abby and I were engaged. Ike was with us. Realizing we were in love, that was his doing. Then we saw the fire, and thought Ike’s folks were inside. Rev. Carter’s got a bum leg. They were out of the car and racing toward the church door the moment I reached the parking lot. It fell in before I could get there.”<br /><br />Clay looked over to where Renee stood, hands in her hip pockets, watching. Someone else had the cowboy hat. Maybe it clashed with her designer jeans and that fitted western shirt with all its unused snaps. There was a look of surprise on her perfect oval face, but also a familiar, subtle invitation in her bedroom eyes.<br /><br />That’s when he understood why Wheeler had burned the church. But Clay then knew, that beyond any hope of forgiveness, he was also responsible for the deaths of Abby and Ike. He shook his head in disgust and looked back at Sims. “And you, you poor, stupid, son-of-a-bitch, you killed her trying to impress Renee, because she’d dropped you and started dating me?”<br /><br />Wheeler nodded.<br /><br />“Well, what do you know?” Clay looked almost amused. “After all these years, you and I have something in common. We’ve both made fools of ourselves, not to mention killers, because of her.”<br /><br />Clay shifted and spit some blood on the ground. “Now about that guy you killed. His name was Ike Carter, and he was another one of my best friends. In fact, he and Abby, the three of us, we’d been friends all our lives. But then you killed ‘em trying to impress Renee. And I want you to get this straight, Sims, I want you to understand, Ike Carter was black, but he wasn’t a nigger. Is that clear?”<br /><br />Wheeler nodded, then flinched as Clay reached towards him, only to flick a brown oak leaf off his shoulder.<br /><br />With the leaf disposed of, Clay continued. “Now, listen close. Maybe I shouldn’t have busted up your ribs. But you'll heal, my friends won't. So I figure you still owe me for two lives. That doesn’t count what you owe the Carter’s and Marshall’s and a lot of other decent folks, not to mention your Maker. That’s all between you and them.”<br /><br />For a moment, Clay studied the man at his feet. “I’m going away for a while, but I will be back. And if I hear that you or any of your crowd has hurt any of my friends or called anybody I know a nigger, I’ll hunt you down and, unless you kill me first, I’ll leave you a cripple. Do you believe me?”<br /><br />“I believe you.”<br /><br />“That’s good. Just remember, you didn’t kill all my friends. I’ve still got a few left. And I know a whole bunch of people around here. So you be good now, ‘cause just like Santa Claus, I’ll know if you’ve been nice. And if Renee has decided she'll be your Christmas present, you don’t need any more enemies.”Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9637785.post-90714513370810147502007-11-24T22:00:00.000-06:002007-11-24T22:20:21.598-06:00Twenty-five Great Southern Novels<a href="http://content.answers.com/main/content/img/webpics/William_Faulkner.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://content.answers.com/main/content/img/webpics/William_Faulkner.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Twenty-five Great Southern Novels</span><br /></strong><br />The main problem with southern literature is the difficulty, some would say impossibility, of coming up with a precise definition. What follows isn’t a list of the “best” southern novels of all time. I’ll gladly leave that challenge to English majors, MFA students, and Ph.d candidates. This is just my subjective, personal, opinionated, ill-informed and no doubt biased list of twenty-five novels that are among the very best.<br /><br />Also included--at no additional charge--you’ll find a list of three great southern short story writers.<br /><br />Quibbles: Yes, I semi- cheated by listing the <strong>Snopes Trilogy</strong> for William Faulkner. Win a Nobel prize and I’ll include three of your best novels. (It was only “semi” because the novels were re-released as a single volume)<br /><br />If not including <strong>Huckleberry Finn</strong> offends you, add it to your own list. I cogitated over that call but decided it was an American novel, not southern.<br /><br />None of Erskine Caldwell’s best-selling novels are on my list because neither <strong>Tobacco Road</strong> nor <strong>God’s Little Acre</strong> are among the “best” works of southern literature.<br /><br />Feel free to comment on, or just plain denounce, my lame list.<br /></div><div>And now, appearing in no particular order, twenty-five of the best examples of southern literature.</div><br /><div>Bayou Bill</div><div></div><div><br />==<br /></div><br /><div><strong>NOVELS</strong><br /><br /><strong>To Kill A Mockingbird</strong>, Harper Lee<br /><br /><strong>Their Eyes Were Watching God</strong>, Zora Neale Hurston<br /><br /><strong>Gone With the Wind</strong>, Margaret Mitchell<br /><br /><strong>Invisible Man</strong>, Ralph Ellison<br /><br /><strong>The Last Gentleman</strong>, Walker Percy<br /><br /><strong>All the King's Men</strong>, Robert Penn Warren<br /><br /><strong>The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman</strong>, Ernest Gaines<br /><br /><strong>Other Voices, Other Rooms</strong>, Truman Capote<br /><br /><strong>Prince of Tides</strong>, Pat Conroy<br /><br /><strong>The Awakening</strong>, Kate Chopin<br /><br /><strong>A Death in the Family</strong>, James Agee<br /><br /><strong>The Color Purple</strong>, Alice Walker<br /><br /><strong>Cold Mountain</strong>, Charles Frazier<br /><br /><strong>Deliverance</strong>, James Dickey<br /><br /><strong>Leaving Cheyenne</strong>, Larry McMurtry<br /><br /><strong>Suttree</strong>, Cormac McCarthy<br /><br /><strong>Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All</strong>, Allan Gurganus<br /><br /><strong>The Heart is a Lonely Hunter</strong>, Carson McCullers<br /><br /><strong>A Long and Happy Life</strong>, Reynolds Price<br /><br /><strong>The Confessions of Nat Turner</strong>, William Styron<br /><br /><strong>Confederacy of Dunces</strong>, John Kennedy Toole<br /><br /><strong>The Snopes Trilogy</strong>, William Faulkner<br /><br /><strong>Look Homeward, Angel</strong>, Thomas Wolfe<br /><br /><strong>The Optimist's Daughter</strong>, Eudora Welty<br /><br /><strong>The Violent Bear It Away</strong>, Flannery O'Connor</div><div><br /></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>SHORT STORIES</strong><br /><br /><strong>A Curtain of Green</strong>, Eudora Welty<br /><br /><strong>The Complete Stories</strong>, Flannery O’Connor<br /><br /><strong>Uncle Remus Stories</strong>, Joel Chandler Harris</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1