VOTE! 2010 SAMHUINN/BELTANE PROSE

[Earthwoman]

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[wyeuro]

the peppercorn trees

ice weed. thick green frost-crusted starfish on the pad of moss against the grey, ochre-lichened wall, and douggie trelorne said any cow would eat that, scoop it up like a steam shovel, go squelch, crunch, slurp with the cold juices sluicing out through the splitting membranes and the busting ice blisters and jetting hard against the roof of his mouth if he were the cow, and running down the sides of my chin, green and trickly all over my big, purple twisting tongue if i were the cow, and he looked at me with benevolent, brown cow eyes, did douggie trelorne; but it was only his ghost.

the flesh and blood of douggie trelorne was nearly a man, but his brother adrian was in my class at school and looked like him, only smaller. both were thickset and pinkish with fairy faces with deep folds in the flesh of their foreheads, curving downwards from where their feelers would be down to between their long, slanting eyes, their little piggsie snouts moist and pink, and their rosy little mouths all puckered up for kisses. in his flesh and blood douggie trelorne only once spoke to my mother while i was there, and he said nothing to me. he was going to be a solid slab of a man, my mother said. my biggest brother gerald knew him pretty well at high school. adrian could do the barn dance, and the military two-step and the military three with the grown-ups, steering big, middle-aged women round the floor like a man. but then, a lot of the moonah boys could.

ice weed. jady-aqua, like a lakeland coloured pencil colour, and as big as your face, with little chunks of clear, pure ice, like tears on cheeks, blisters of clear fluid under the waxy membranes. what a find! what a treasure!

but it’s the pepper trees that win me, great cascades of spicy green heavily tasselled with bunches of pink beads, and i can spend long hours underneath them without anyone calling me home. i’m trusted.

there is one very old one in our yard, but it doesn’t reach the ground. the ones outside along the side wall are like willow trees, with their dark ferny fronds cascading like a fountain all the way to the ground. their fallen berries make a pale, pinkish-grey pebbly river of the footpath there that no one ever uses but us.

i look out through a curtain of beads the colour of . . . oh, colours you don’t find in any pencil box, not in the subtle dreams of lakeland, not in the voluptuous blood-colours of staedtler, not even in the zany élan of the double-ended norris. nor was it ever in any paint box. only plastic is ever as perfectly pink and translucent as the beads of a pepper tree, or cellophane.

the long, voluptuous bunches mingle in her cascades of green tresses like the threaded beads in the head dress of the . . . oh, look! shaman! who suddenly stands, nearly naked, a nearly visible film in the air, red-skinned, but no, green -of the tree’s own deep and subtle shade-green luminosity. he has a broad stripe the colour of vegemite over his nose and cheeks. he is the curved pink film of the bead itself, suspended elegantly in the air like the long twist of the shine a leaf, like an accidental shine without its leaf. like the tiny pink, broken eggshell berry skin on my fingertip. perhaps he sees me briefly, though i can’t let my self see him yet.

the peppercorns, though, when the pink shell is broken, are sticky and thoroughly unpleasant within. they make me feel cross, just to smell their fruity, sticky old-sauce-sticking-in-the-bottle-neck smell come streaking through the pure, clean, white sheen of the odour of the leaves, which caught up your heart in its clear, cool hands, and caught up your eyeballs as if they were two little hearts, and held them like a naturalist would, as if they, our hearts and eyeballs, and our little dormant wombs, were frogs between their respectful, scientific hands; and they made me a bit wild with remembering something so heart-touching, so eye-holding, so womb- and foetus-cherishing, that lived more deep than heartwood under the high, soul-thrilling artistry of its fawn and silver slivered and scruffily scrolled bark.

no, they’re not food; they’re not peppercorns. you can’t eat them, but you can wear them in your hair, braid them into your plaits.

oh, yes, at the time i believed i could have lived there in the green, ferny palaces among their worshipping branches in the perfectly swept rooms within its swaying walls with their pink beaded curtains between me and the world, or resting upon the soft, deep, eye-soothing black and russet carpet of the leaf litter further in. i was always so contented under those trees.

and sometimes, when i reminisce, and i feel again the sudden cool slap of a frond against my bare arm, catch the sharp, rasping odour of the berries and leaves in my throat, feel the warm press of fallen fronds under my hands and knees, i truly believe that i never really left, it will always exist there, and i will always find contentment in those luminous green rooms under the pepper trees.

(this is excerpted from a longer work)

[meicalabawen]

The Tops Blow Away

The sun is not as strong as the wind is today, on Padre Island. It is early in the summer, the best time of year to play in shallow water and mock the gulfen waves. I stand on the loose dry sand of the beachfront. The first row of sand dunes rise behind and the gentle waves roll in from the Gulf and break across sand bars before me. I lose myself in the roll and play of salt water.

After a while I turn and look to the boys. Number one son is waist-deep in the trough between sand bars, where the big fish feed. A mullet jumps, startling him. His simple joy in playing with the waves changes instantly. A moment ago he was happy and now he is truly terrified and he races to me, to his rock and his safety. I hold him in my arms and he lays his head against my shoulder. He is so tall now.

Those who don’t know my older son always wonder at his childlike emotions, unacceptable in a double-digit boy. They don’t understand the life he lives, the scary world all around him. Half his life was spent as just another abandoned child, in an orphanage where one small room was his whole world for five years. This half, this life that we share now is defined by his illness, the bipolar nature that drives him to extremes. It drives us as well, to desperate searches for simple pleasures that so many people take for granted. We come here to Padre Island in search of those simple pleasures, stalking childhood memories for our sons. The island is a perfect place for memories.

Number two son has come to us now and puffs up his little chest. He is sure to take advantage of the scare, to tease his older brother. It is just too good a chance to miss and my older son is the perfect target for childhood malice.

“Stupid Pablo, afraid of a little fish! We got goldfish bigger than that!”

Another moment passes and the fists are flying. I step in to protect them, one from the other. Number two is tough, but he only lived several years in the orphanage. He didn’t learn to fight like his older brother did, just to survive, but Jean Pierre is no piker. He gives as good as he gets.

Later, after I have separated the boys and glared away the stares of nearby bathers, I explain to number one. “Little mullet swim with you,” I say, “chasing littler fish still. It is like a game they play, and sometimes the bigger fish play also. When they do, the mullet jump in fear and fly away.”

“Like me, Dad?” he asks.

“Like you.” I say with a grin. “Like you my son.” and he smiles and laughs with me.

After a while Pablo is ready to go back into the water and Jean Pierre is there waiting for him. Number one pretends not to be afraid, and number two pretends to be a mullet, flailing wildly at the surf and screaming in fishy fear. Pablo picks him up and ploughs the water with his head, calling for sharks to come and get it. It is time to step in, yet again. I am not surprised; the boys fight with all the regularity of waves beating the shore. Their shouts and screams are always there, wearing away at any brief moment of peace of mind that I can find.

Still, we go on, and day by day our lives unfold, like waves rolling onto shore.

#

Three more days have gone by and we have built memories from them. Sooner or later the tops of the memories will fade, but the roots of our time on Padre Island will survive, even if only in the undergrounds of our conscious minds. Jean Pierre will grow up and move on and build a life of his own. Pablo may never grow emotionally, or become more acceptable even as his body ages. We just don’t know. The doctors cannot tell us what will come. They can only make vague guesses and predict the worst that can be; the HMO’s do not pay for the dispensation of hope. It is up to us to find it, on the island, in our memories or perhaps in the soft pale gleam of a perfect seashell at day’s end.

[Mellinda]

Retirement

Guess I’ll just fix it myself, no use asking my husband for any help. Since he retired he just sits there in front of the TV flitting from channel to channel, says theirs nothing worth watching? But still he sits there day after day, night after night moaning about the programmes.

Why he can’t find anything interesting to watch or do I really don’t know? I have watched a program about flower arranging, painting for pleasure, home baking and lots of gardening programmes, also how to play a guitar, well I had a go at that but really not for me, I kept braking all the strings.

Well ill just leave him sitting there I just need to finish fixing this tyre then I’m off.
I’m going to the car club, we meet up every second Sunday we have such a good time.

I bought this old car from a scrap yard a year ago. I watched a program about how to repair and build a car, so thought id give it a go.
Its taken me about 6 months and now its finished, Iv painted it red with a black stripe down each side and big white teeth on the bonnet. I couldn’t think of a good name, so my friend came up with one she suggested Red Rage a twist on Old Age.

Ok the last wheel nut to tighten then were ready to go, oh yes you guest it I did watch a program about stock car racing!

By L F Tallis (Mellinda)

My Short Story 10.10.2010

[Frog]

Touch of the Holly King

My gloved hand touches the wood of the gate. With a little resistance it swings open and I step out into the wintered clearing. I can feel the chill of the air on my exposed face, the breath hanging in the still air as a small cloud, slowly dissipating. The gate closes shut with a click. With ruddy cheeks I step forward into the clearing of the moor. Each step on this chilled morning cracks through the thin ice membrane – and then through to the cold, wet mud puddles beneath.

I stop to look at a large puddle just up ahead; two magpies are looking at the ground with quizzical nature; their heads tilted to one side as they try to work out why their beaks can’t just dip into the water that they see. As I walk forward they see me and with much grumbling they take off, to land on a nearby tree; as their feet land they shake the branches and a shower of leaves drop straight to the ground; the frost on the browning leaf giving the weight and solidity to stop the gentle flutter. I look down at the lake and see the geometric fractures in the ice echoing the dew covered cobweb in the Holly Bush.

As I look round the moor, the trees that line the edge are slowly removing their summer clothes showing their brown skeletons, fingers stretching towards the clear blue sky, the contrails from passing planes drawing geometric lines across the sky.. Behind them, the sun lazily climbs, drawing long shadows across the frosted ground. Its low bright light shines into my eyes and I use my hand to shield them, the edge of my glove cold against my forehead.

I walk to the nearby stream, and see the ducks wrapped up tight, beaks wedged firmly under their feather blankets. A lone swan drifts slowly down the stream, pausing to eat the fronds of grass hanging over the edge.

As I turn to walk back, I can see the slow gentle warmth of the sun is melting the frosts on the ground, each low blade of grass now holding their own crystal balls, individually divining their future. Each footstep I take towards the warmth of my house taking me away from the frosty touch of the Holly King.

[Earthwoman]

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