Wheelchair Shadow

Wheelchair Shadow

My father sat in his wheel-chair, baiting a hook with a night crawler, as water lapped the pilings of the dock.

“Dad, when was the last time you went fishing?”

“I can’t remember. I think we were living in Myrtle Beach. Remember that creek that ran behind the Air Force housing where you and your mother used to catch tadpoles?”

“That was over thirty years ago.”

“Then it’s been over thirty years since I’ve been fishing. Hand me another weight out of that tackle box.”

I watched my father crimp a weight onto the nylon line. The sun bounced off the chrome of his wheelchair and cast a shadow across the deck. The cigar in his mouth had become a long tube of ash and the smoke made an aromatic veil around his head.

For twenty years my father has lived in a fog and hidden in a pine-paneled den with T.V., computer, and telephone. He never opened the blinds and never left the house. I brought him his mail and groceries. His leg muscles weakened from lack of use, but according to the doctor, my father has always been capable of walking.

“Daddy, why don’t you put out that cigar? It‘s just hanging there, dropping ash all over the place.”

“Hand me that cup by your foot.”

I handed him the cup, he doused the cigar in watered down soda. I asked, “You think those B12 shots are making you feel better?”

“Must be. I got more energy these days.”

“I noticed. It looks good on you.”

He squinted at me and smiled his toothless grin, then pointed at something over my right shoulder.

I turned and saw a bird fold its wings, dive down into lake, and come back up with a fish wiggling in its beak. It was lightning fast.

“Whoa. What kind of bird is that?”

“Osprey. They’re fish birds.”

“Its beak is like a harpoon.”

“Remember when we gigged those salmon in Alaska? Your mother cried cause she thought it was cruel.”

“I remember you laughing and doing a jungle dance around the campfire waving your harpoon in the air. You were drunk and fell into the flames, claiming George Dickel pushed you. I went around asking all your buddies if they were George Dickel, cause I wanted to fuss them out for pushing my daddy in that fire.”

Dad laughed and cast his line out into the calm water. “I remember that. I didn’t get burned though. I had those quick reflexes back then. I remember something else. I used to tease you when I was stationed in Florida. I tried to keep you quiet when your mother was resting after chemo. I’d tell you I was gonna feed you to the gators--tie you to the dock at supper time if you misbehaved.”

“I remember that too. You gave me nightmares with that talk.”

Dad pulled up his shirt with his left hand and showed me his gall bladder scar. “See this?”

I nodded.

“When I had my gall bladder removed, your mama brought you to visit me and you asked if I was hurting. I told you where they cut me was very tender, not to touch it. You twisted up your mouth, then your eyes lit up and you announced God was getting even with me for threatening to feed you to the gators. Your mother laughed and said that’s what I get for teasing you.”

We both laughed then got quiet; our eyes locked. That little girl who never grew up, swinging on the monkey bars somewhere deep inside of me wanted to cry out, ‘Mommy, look, look‘. I pulled my eyes away from his muddy-water gaze and I glanced back at the osprey hovering in search of fish. I whispered, “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” in that sing-song way my mother used to do. When I turned back around, my father was standing, reeling in a rainbow trout. His wheel-chair shadow was nowhere to be found.

___________________________________________

Paula Ray is a musician from North Carolina. She rescues instruments from local pawnshops and repairs them for her band students. When she isn't performing, teaching, or writing music, she writes poetry and stories. Her work has appeared in: Dew on the Kudzu, Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and Thirty First Bird Review, among other literary zines. Her blog is: http//:musicalpencil.blogspot.com/

South of Here

From the roof it looked less like disaster, more like fireflies.

The Bradford Pears were still, unwounded, smelling like dirty things. Rodney said, “Fish! Fish!” and sometimes the girl parts that made Daddy blush. I never smelled anything like it except in springtime, and I didn’t think Rodney had either, though he swore on Aunt Paula’s grave and didn’t even cross his fingers. It was in secret, the swearing, in back of the garden house where the azaleas grew best, a secret because if Daddy heard him swearing on Aunt Paula’s grave he’d be awful mad. Tracey was still at school, so I was the only one to hear him, which means if he was lying he’d get away with it for sure. He said he’d caught a whiff of it in the room where the older girls always change for choir practice and knew just what it was, and if he was lying he’d dig Aunt Paula right up out of the ground and dance her body all around that cemetery. I thought it was a horrible thing to say about his own mama, but I always knew Rodney was a ruined one.

I figured Tracey would know, one way or the other, but I was too scared to ask her for fear she’d go and tell Daddy about it. When Rodney caught me from behind and threw those blooms all over me and called me Fish ‘cause he knew I was a girl and had girl parts, I kept my mouth shut.

The smell came up at us and hung there since everything was so still and sticky, and I could tell what Rodney was thinking. I was glad when Tracey pulled out her cigarettes, for the smell’s sake. She shook ‘em a little like she knew what she was doing and then pulled one out and put it back in the box upside down. I asked her why she did it like that, and she said it was for luck. I don’t know what kind of luck – maybe for growing up real tall so she didn’t have to wear shoes with heels anymore or just for not letting Daddy catch her smoking. She picked out another one and then lit it up with the little lighter she stole from the grocery store last November when we went to pick out our turkey for Thanksgiving. She does look all grown up when she does it, I think. She sucked on it a little, like on a straw when the milkshake’s too thick to fit through, and then let the smoke out quick. We started coughing, all three of us, but we muffled it in the belly of our shirts.

The white light came in fast. I blinked and blinked, and there were little black spots all in my eyes. Then something cracked and broke and was eaten up, and the white died down into orange again.

“Someone should kill a mule,” Tracey said.

She always says that when something goes wrong. Rodney and I were used to it, so we nodded our heads like we knew she was right even though we couldn’t think of a single person around town who had a mule. We talked about it once and made a list. We thought up lots of cows and one little donkey but not even half a mule.

The stars all clouded over with smoke and left us alone up there.

“I hope this means we don’t have to go to church tomorrow,” Rodney said. He sat on his hands to give his legs a break from the hot roofing, and I was glad ‘cause it meant he wouldn’t pull on my hair or pinch me none.

Tracey shook her head and wiped out her cigarette on the roofing. It sizzled some and left an exclamation point.

“We’re not Presbyterian,” she said.

Rodney didn’t gripe. He scooted down some so that his legs could dangle off the side of the house.

Tracey pulled another cigarette out of the box and lit it up. The flame was a too small world, brand new compared to the big one down at Southside.

“Why are they burning it, Trace?”

She held the smoke in as long as she could.

“It was old, Kitty. It was already fallin’ down.”

I watched her mouth move and the smoke coming out, how it snaked free through the gap in her teeth.

I only saw Southside Presbyterian once before it burned, on the way to the ice cream parlor. I couldn’t remember if it looked old or not.

When her cigarette was gone Tracey wiped it out, this time across the exclamation point, making a black X on the rooftop. Then she said she’d had enough and climbed down.

She left the cigarettes though, and Rodney thought we should smoke one. Tracey still had the lighter, so we just held them in our mouths and pretended we’d blown out all the smoke in the sky. The fire ate everything until it fell asleep. Then the bugs at the porch light started eating each other because everything in the world was wrong. We couldn’t see them tucked up there under the awning, but we knew what they were doing. Rodney stayed, but I got spooked and climbed down. Even with the heat, I slept with the window closed.

In the morning they found Rodney on the ground out by the porch. Daddy took us out for ice cream so we wouldn’t have to see. At Southside everything was black.

_________________________________________

Written by: Kat Dixon

Kat Dixon gardens short-cuts in Atlanta and knows the benefits of mosquito summers. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in several prime locations and miscellaneous back alleys. She can be found online at katdixon.blogspot.com.

Upcoming July Book Reviews...............

Look for these book to be reviewed in July!

Browse the Dew Book Review Section for Summer!

Just wanted to remind everyone that quite a few of the book that the Dew reviewed earlier this Spring were not actually hitting shelves until Summer and a few were perfect for a day in the sun.

Most are available now so you might want to grab one before hitting the beach, the pool, or even the kiddie pool in the backyard!

Mama and the "Hex"

I know ya'll are waiting for this one so I thought I'd better get on it.

Long ago, in the dark ages of my youth, my parents belonged to a commune.

Yes, you heard me right... a commune.

It seemed a very family oriented one to me at that time - lots of mommies, daddies and kids running around. Everyone working the land for the better good of the earth and humanity. I have since heard that there were other sections of the coomune there that went for the free love stuff, but I never saw any of that.

I will tell ya right now that my folks left the actual commune setting while I was about 5 or so and had totally departed from the culture and leanings by the time I was out of elementary school so I'm not completely warped or anything! :)

Nor do I drink goats milk or eat sprouts and wheatgrass juice. Let's also not forget the "homemade granola" which I remember as being nothing more than nuts and twigs thrown into a bowl of goats milk. (Nasty!) (Come on people, if you can raise goats, you can raise a COW!)

Okay. To the hexing.

My parents were a host family or something in this big 4 story house. Lots of families running around in it but I think we owned the house. (They managed to get a LOT of money out of Daddy.)

I had to share a room with a mean little girl who pulled the tail off my mostest favoritest stuffed doggy in the world - Taffy. Chunks of fake fur too. That nasty girl got worms one day. I was really pleased about that. Mama tried to fix the dog, but since she was never a homemaker, she sewed it on upside down. Poor old Taffy never wagged again.

Mama worked in the kitchen in this place - all the adults had "assignments". The kids had tiny little assignments and the rest of the time were left to run loose like hooligans. My assignment was to avoid the mean girl and her worms as much as possible.

Apparently Mama had a falling out with a gal who worked in the kitchen, and was also the wormy girl's mother (don't that just figure). She also, unbeknownst to us, practiced withcraft as a hobby. Now having a falling out with Mama is nearly impossible, a sweeter woman was never on this earth. She never got mad at anyone. Except ants. She hated ants. Used to come up with cruel and unusual ways to get rid of the hills.

Anywho....this gal got mad at my Mama and decided she'd show her. She went to her room and pulled her little cauldron out or whatever it is they do, and whipped up a hex. Right away Mama started getting hives, migraines, all sorts of ills. She couldn't figure it out. She felt right poorly.

But the silly gal that hexed her was so proud of herself she couldn't keep her pie hole shut and started blabbing about it all. Well, guess what... hexing is not allowed in the commune - doesn't go with the whole living with nature thing. She got kicked out and took her wormy kid with her. I was most pleased.

But it didn't end there of course, even with her gone Mama was still itchy and suffering with headaches. So Mama and I were packed off and sent to another state where they had a "detoxification" center or something to get rid of your bad Chakra. (I was very happy to get away since I was sure the worms were still there even though the mean girl was gone.

All I remember about this place was that their "homemade granola" had a worm in it (MORE DAMN WORMS!) that showed up in my bowl and I threw such a fit Mama broke down and went to the grocery store and bought me some junk cereal. Thank heavens! Still, Captain Crunch loses it's appeal when goat's milk is poured over it.

I don't remember how long we were there, but one day Mama announced she was "clean of the hex" and Daddy showed up and drove us away. He also announced we were moving out of the commune and into our own home in Mississippi. I cannot begin to express my relief to be done with the whole communal living thing! Of course, where did he move us to - and old Nudist retreat next to a KOA campground.

But that's a whole other story.

_______________________________________

(Note - I was quite young in this story and while I remember the commune and the detox center, I had to take the Hex story from what my Mama and Daddy said. For all I know Mama just came down with migraines and hives from all the damn goats milk.)


....................................................................

You know, Idgie, in her past life as writer only, not editor, had quite a few stories squirrelled away in another site. You may see some of these get updated and moved over to the Dew. Perhaps Idg herself will become a contributing writer herself!

A NON-HEALING WOUND FROM AN UNKNOWN SOURCE - PART 2

A NON-HEALING WOUND FROM AN UNKNOWN SOURCE
By Tom Fillion
Tom_Fillion@verizon.net

Part 2


Wilbur set up the shit brindle brown frame in a short time. He had become an adept at it this part of the job. It was the god-awfullest, ass-wipe, looking frame that had passed through Dave's store in a while. As he looked at its god-awfullness he was overcome with the revelation that the shit brindle brown waterbed was in the only place it could be, where the God Margo Hamilton said didn't exist anymore would want it, with Gary Hopkins, owner of A-1 Septic Tank Service.

The waterbed filled with rusty well water and Wilbur sat in their family room and became part of the Hopkins' family, became part of the hurt and scars on Gary Hopkins face, if only for the short time he would know them. His new family had guns stored on the bedroom and family room walls. Shotguns and 22's mounted in one rack, antique flint lock rifles and pistols in the other. Musket balls, the size of the holes in the bedroom wall, and powder were nearby. On another wall hung an expensive-looking bow. Several arrows were below it, lying horizontal, the remainder in a nearby quiver. The tips of the arrows were made with razor blades and sharp as lightning strikes.

"Them's for deer hunting. You hide in the woods and wait for the deer. When they show up you have to be quiet or you’ll spook ‘em. They can’t smell you neither. You have to be upwind of them. I only use bow and arrow with deer. They don't hear the arrow coming. It hits them out of nowhere. That kind of wound will never heal up," Gary Hopkins explained like a father to a son.

Hopkins’ brutality and primitiveness stuck in Wilbur's mind later as he drove the van on Highway 41 to Dave and Margo's house. There was beauty and terror in his method. He imagined Hopkins somewhere in the woods, his thick frame and scarred face, scentless and invisible as he waited to shoot the razor-tipped arrow at an unsuspecting Florida deer that didn't know death, scentless and invisible, was in the air screaming towards it.

"Gary Hopkins paid me in cash for the waterbed," Wilbur said turning to Dave.
He grabbed three hundred dollars of Hopkins' hard earned sludge money.
"Fix me another ginny, " Margo requested. "And turn off that jazz. How many times do I have to tell you that. Put on my Tchaikovsky. The one I got from Reader's Digest. No, put on Ravel's Bolero."

Dave ignored her and walked to the back porch where the bar was located in the Japanese garden. Margo smacked her lips, and a pout came over her face.
"I love Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" too. It's simply gorgeous. Wilbur, have you ever heard Carmina Burana?"

"Uh."

"It's divine. You must really take the time and listen to it. Now's as good a time as ever," she said, while stopping Dave's record and replacing it with hers.
This was part of the job too, Wilbur thought, putting up with Dave and Margo. Instead of listening to the music, Wilbur kept thinking about Gary Hopkins in the woods somewhere, his arrow racing out of nowhere leaving a wound that would never heal up on a deer, or on his daughter, who would probably love and hate him and her ex-husbands and not know why she was getting on the Greyhound bus again bound for anywhere but there.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm a graduate of the University of South Florida. I teach mathematics and coach golf and tennis at a Tampa public high school. My short stories have appeared in many online publications. For a complete list please visit: http://dreammechanic.blogspot.com/

I have stories forthcoming at Danse Macabre, SubtleTea, Frostwriting, Read This (Montana State University), Cantaraville, and Rose & Thorn.

Sincerely,

Tom Fillion

ON HAPPINESS

ON HAPPINESS

About a chuckle and a half ago in the earth’s geologic history– say, five or six million years– one of our ancestors climbed down out of the trees and began to run across the savannah. Well, maybe he fell out of his tree, but he got down somehow. And as he ran, he probably looked back with longing at the arboreal realm he was departing– leaving the relatively safe environs of home has never been easy for most of us.

The fact that nearly everyone and everything he met was going to try to eat him might have sped him on his way and pushed the nostalgia button for him a couple of times.

I say this only because I am trying to point out that man’s unhappiness, coupled with a futile sense of longing for what we have lost, is probably genetic. It is as old as the trees from which we have fallen.

Now, we must not be so conceited as to think that man is the only creature who can be unhappy. Other animals grieve when one of their number deceases: the great apes, for instance-- when a female loses a young one, she will often run though the forest screaming and crying all night long. Dogs can become depressed and they too often grieve when a beloved person close to them is no more or goes away on a long vacation to the Bahamas. Cats– well, cats are a mystery that only Mother Nature understands– playful, yes, sentimental, no. We shall leave the feline out of it. Elephants when they encounter the long dead and bleached bones of one of their own will sometimes stand and ruminate over the remains as if they were contemplating their own mortality. Monkeys, especially, are moody creatures and become morose if robbed of their fruit or auto-erotic play– then, again, they are our cousins.

But it is not only death that can make us morose– in fact, mankind, so far as the present writer knows, is the only creature who will deliberately seek out his own brand of misery-- and if we don’t have it we will go looking. We human beings indulge in ourselves the capacity for finding unhappiness anywhere and anytime.

And gloom and doom, the feeling that we are being chased by the minions of Hell, is not bounded by race, creed, profession or social and economic status. The stale stories of unhappy millionaires, while they are likely intended to soothe the feelings of us have-nots, are, perhaps, not so fantastic as they might seem-- having rubbed up against some of the rich folks myself, I can testify to the crankiness and downright meanness of some of them. That is to say, your average millionaire– an oxymoron and he well knows it– is not going to be a boon fellow who will slap you on the back and invite you to join him for the weekend at his home in the Italian Alps, no, he’s more likely to tell you to keep your distance and set his Irish Wolfhounds on you.

I say this not to demean the rich, they can do that for themselves, but to emphasize that people with the resources and abilities to find their own joy are likely to be less than satisfied with their status quo. In their background maybe lurks a remembrance of how they got to be wealthy– Balzac somewhere says flatly, "Behind every great fortune lurks some enormous crime." However, this is no excuse for bad manners and depression.

The poor have better reason to be unhappy– after all, they are poor. They often lack fundamentals such as food,. medicine and education– the resources that might point to a better life. But what is one to make of the middle-class tendency for misery? A member of the middle-class often has the ability to improve their lot if they do not like it; they are neither dragged down by the huge weight of their fortunes nor doomed to a life of have-not. Yet stories of the unhappiness of the middle-class are legendary– drug addiction, bridge clubs and alcoholism are rampant in the suburbs– the middle class father is more apt, for instance, to come home one afternoon and murder his whole family and climb out of the window than the rich man or the abject poor. It has happened.

We shan’t speak of the unhappiness of clowns and comedians. A person who sets out to make other people laugh in this world has enough reason to agonize over his own sanity and choice of profession.

But these are all statistical matters really and they beggar the question, "Why do we make ourselves unhappy?" Is it genetic? Do we all really long for those days when we sat in the trees and ate insects and leaves and bayed at the moon?

Then again, given the condition of the world and the sights we see in it, maybe we have a reason for sometimes wanting to drink to forget and blot out the view.

There may be a more valid psychological reason.

Consider that human beings are sentient creatures of limited mental agility, we do not learn from our successes– we learn only from our failures and mistakes. Perhaps we are constantly pushing towards those ends, trying in some vain unconscious way to improve ourselves as individuals– by revisiting our shortcomings, our failures and miseries.

If this seems like perversity, it probably is. And maybe that’s– finally-- why we’re unhappy.

_____________________________

Written by: Jack Peachum

A NON-HEALING WOUND FROM AN UNKNOWN SOURCE - Part 1

A NON-HEALING WOUND FROM AN UNKNOWN SOURCE
By Tom Fillion
Tom_Fillion@verizon.net

“It’s that one over there,” Dave said. “The shit brindle brown waterbed.”

The frame was the same color as a pit bull.

"No one in their right mind would buy this clunker,” Dave said, quoting one of his favorite expressions.

“That means there are a lot of prospects out there to unload it on and here's the winner," Wilbur Dobbs said, completing the quote like a child in catechism class.

Dave handed Wilbur the invoice with the directions chicken-scratched on the back. Advertising on a country music station hooked another one Wilbur thought as he followed the directions on the back of the invoice and made a left turn from U.S. Highway 41, the road the Allman Brothers sang about for losers and misfits and Greyhound buses, onto a dirt road. He drove to the end of the sloping road and pulled up to a house with junk cars and trucks, junk tools and junk yard dogs in the front and back yards. A large man with thick arms and a huge chest walked out from the house. He had a dark beard that hid some of the spider's web of scars on his face. His truck was parked outside. "A-1 Septic Tank Service" was emblazoned on the side of the sewage tank cylinder mounted on the truck bed.

"Shut up," the man yelled at the dogs.

Gary Hopkins looked at Wilbur and figured right away he lived in the city and didn't know anything about septic tanks so he filled him in on the vicissitudes of the septic tank business. Wilbur listened as he had become accustomed to doing. He learned that was as important a factor in his employment for Dave and Margo Hamilton as delivering and setting up clunkers no one else wanted.

"Every time you turn around, they're raising the price to dump my loads. It goes up every year. I can't pass the costs on either. There’s too much competition. I have to eat it," he said angrily.

"You wouldn't think there'd be a lot of competition for sewage," Wilbur said.
"Are you kidding? People are moving to Tampa from all over. You'd be surprised what someone will do to make a living. It’s supply and demand."

“I never thought of that,” Wilbur replied and thanked him for the lesson.
"Put it up against that wall," Gary Hopkins said after they went inside, motioning to a beige wall. "We want to cover up those holes."

They stood in a bedroom next to the family room with a pool table in the middle. Wilbur looked at the wall he pointed to and saw the bullet holes. It looked like someone had used it for target practice.

Gary Hopkins’ young daughter sniffed the plastic mattress in one of the boxes Wilbur brought in.
"It smells like a new pool," she said happily.

He thought it must have smelled like perfume to her compared to her father's vehicle. What must it be like to have a father like Gary Hopkins and living so close to Highway 41 in the humid, fetid, palmetto undergrowth and in the shadows of decaying gypsum stacks just off the road? What year of high school would she get sick of being a septic tank daughter and run away from him with a sprint car driver from East Bay raceway that smiled at her from the concourse and her life would become all tangled up like the scrambled eggs and grits she would end up serving to truckers on some other stretch of Highway 41?

End of PART 1 - Look for Part 2 on Sunday the 14th

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm a graduate of the University of South Florida. I teach mathematics and coach golf and tennis at a Tampa public high school. My short stories have appeared in many online publications. For a complete list please visit: http://dreammechanic.blogspot.com/

I have stories forthcoming at Danse Macabre, SubtleTea, Frostwriting, Read This (Montana State University), Cantaraville, and Rose & Thorn.

Sincerely,

Tom Fillion

Chasin' Belle

Me and my friends were due a vacation, no doubt. All of us were plum wore out from our day jobs and various life dramas that seem to crawl out of the woodwork at the blink of an eye. Back in March we started to plan a visit to that beach in Florida where the sand is white and the water is bluish green. My babygirl was due to graduate from college so we plotted to escape from reality as soon as the tassels got turned. Nothing does a body good more than sand and surf, if you know what I mean. One of our party threw a hissy fit when the decision was made to leave the next day, but that's a whole 'nother story for a different time.

We all headed out from different locations before dawn on Sunday morning, traveling from Tennessee through Mississipi and Alabama down to the gulf coast of Florida. The car I traveled in was packed to the gills with coolers, chairs and clothes that we never wore outside of bathing suits, shorts and t-shirts. Being the touristy type, we also purchased a few more from that place where you can get your picture made with the alligators.

Our house was fully loaded with all of the luxuries that make home away from home even BETTER than home, right down to the screened in front porch where I sat my happy butt most of the week in the wicker rocker under the ceiling fan. And that is where I first spotted the runaway black poodle named Belle. Her mama was hot on the trail running in heels and hollering at the top of her lungs for that dang dog to get herself back to the bungalo.

"Belle...Belle!" she pleaded. "Come back!!" Belle rounded the corner of our porch and proceeded to travel toward the beach where I feel sure she had a boyfriend...probably a mutt.. just waitin' for a sunset stroll. Not long after, the PR lady for the resort returned with her poodle in tow, tucking her safely inside the screen door of HER house.

Lord ya'll...we had a blast! There was golf and sand and music and bars with piers on the bay and all sorts of things to do, with a trolley to tote us and our chairs wherever and whenever we got in the mood to move off of that porch with the lizards on the screen. We went to the beach every day at some point, and ate some mighty great food. Best of all, we bonded as a cadre of travelers on a mission to live life to the fullest for a week. One flew in two days later and another arrived from Texas driving eighteen hours just to experience Sandestin on a whim. I don't know about ya'll, but I just love spontaneous things like that. It's what being southern is all about, outside of jacked up four wheelers, good music and BBQ.

How long has it been since you and yours have taken a road trip? Might be time. Here's hoping that Idgie and company enjoy theirs and trust the posting to us. Note to editor: Forget about real life and live in the moment. That is where the magic happens.

Written by Poopie @ Pecan Lane

Stories Wanted

Send your stories to dewonthekudzu@gmail.com!

Some More Beautiful Pictures from Tennessee

Thanks to Poopie at Pecan Lane for these beautiful pictures.

A Cakewalk is Not a Piece of Cake

A Cakewalk is Not a Piece of Cake

By Cappy Hall Rearick

While on a recent visit to Saluda, North Carolina, Babe and I got bored staring at kudzu and decided to look around for some real estate. We hoped to find a sweet little cabin, not too old and not too big, in foreclosure

"Now's the time to pick up a little place on the cheap, Babe. Besides, if I spend another Georgia summer competing with 100 degree weather and hot flashes you won't need a Bic to light up the grill."

He had just polished off what they call a Mountain Burger in Saluda and then he ate half of mine. Good. Mama always said never ask a husband for anything until his belly is full. Mama didn't raise a stupid daughter.

I reached over and wiped the catsup off his chin, batted my baby blues and gave him the cheerleader smile that makes him think he's still captain of his high school football team.

"So, let's find us a cozy log cabin nestled close to town so we can ride bikes to the store."

He licked off what was left of the catsup and cocked his head. "Was that a question?"

That's when I knew I had him where I wanted him.

"People are so friendly here. I loved how they flagged us down today like we were long lost cousins."

Babe said, "Those people in cars with out-of-state license plates? They needed directions."

I rolled my eyes. "I'm just saying ..."

The waitress wearing a CLAREECE name badge ambled over with the check. The total was under ten dollars. Babe's eyes blinked like strobe lights. "This isn't right," he told Clareece who squinched into a frown.

"What's wrong with it?"

Babe rattled off the list of food we ordered including the super-sized fries and onion rings, two chocolate shakes and two Mountain Burgers with extra cheese. "It's not enough," he told Clareece who quickly removed her scowl.

"I thought I'd added it wrong. People round here don't usually order everything on the menu all at once. Let me see that thang again."

She looked the check over and shrugged. "Ain't nothing wrong with it. You wanna pay more, that's okay with me. I got grandchirren that wants a IPod." Then she smiled and showed off her new dentures.

I could almost see the wheels turning in Babe's head. Bargains, especially when it's food, turn him on.

"Now, if y'all have a mind for dessert, I've got just the thang," said Clareece. "

Babe's brown eyes turned into chocolate.

"Mr. Gleason, a gentleman who's lived here like forever, just found out his days are numbered. Po' man's got a brain tumor, so folks in town put their heads together and figured out how to help him. We do that 'round here for our people."

Thinking we should donate, I dug around in my pocketbook for some cash, but she stopped me.

"Huh uh, hon. We're having a cakewalk over to the Fire Hall to raise money for Mr. Gleason and his family. They don't take kindly to charity so this is how it has to be. I donated two big ol' pound cakes I baked my own self. Long about six o'clock, there'll serve barbeque and everything over there. All you can eat for five dollars."

Knowing how Babe's mind works, I figure he was wondering how much barbeque he could pile on one plate in order to get his five dollars worth without looking too much like a pig.

"Have y'all ever been to a cakewalk," Clareece asked and then proceeded to sit down between us.

I remembered Mark Twain writing something about a cakewalk, but senior moments being what they are these days, I had no idea what it was. As though clairvoyant, Clareece jumped in with the answer,

"You get in a circle and walk around while the music plays and when it stops, if you happen to be standing in front of a cake, why honey ... you git to take it home with you. You would do good taking home one of my pound cakes. I use real butter."

After my Mountain Burger, I didn't want to eat cake, barbeque or anything anytime soon, but I fell in love with the idea of a small town still holding cakewalks and taking care of their people.

"C'mon, Babe," I said gathering up a handful of real estate foreclosures. "Times a wasting, Somewhere in this town there's a cozy log cabin just waiting to be discovered."

_______________________________________



www.simplysoutherncappy.com
www.lowcountrysun.sc
www.griffinjournal.com