injaynesworld it's "Finders, Keepers..."

A story for all those who, at some time in their lives, have experienced unrequited love.  In other words, all of us...

It twinkled like a bright star in the north sky; sunshine bouncing off metal as if calling to her from the deep spring grass.   Charlene knew this object, knew the one who wore it, knew the sadness she would feel at its disappearance, but as her hand closed around the locket’s warm, smooth surface, she also knew she would never give it back.  

Charlene Woods had loved Richard Daniels since childhood.  They had climbed trees together and raced each other across this same field.    In fifth grade, when a virus nearly took him from her then, she had brought his school work and sat with him every day until he was well.   He had taken her to their eighth grade graduation dance where they shared their first real kiss and his hand had lightly (accidentally?) brushed against the bodice of her dress.   But high school had changed everything and now it was Lauren who was on his arm and in his heart.  

Charlene’s fingertip lightly traced the delicate etching:  “Richard and Lauren forever.”  She could see that the clasp on the locket was broken and imagined it slipping from Lauren’s neck as the two of them embraced under the cool moon in just that place the night before.   Tucking it into her pocket now, she felt no remorse.   

Once home, Charlene gently opened the locket and gazed at the two tiny pictures inside.   She slipped a fingernail under Lauren’s photo, which popped out easily; so much for “forever,” she thought.  Then she opened the high school year book to her own photo, carefully cutting around the edges until it was of the same oval shape and size, and placed it inside the locket next to Richard where she knew she was meant to be, and believed with all her heart that one day he would know that, too. 

And so she waited, spurning the attentions of others until they ceased altogether and she was alone, while Richard and Lauren only seemed to grow closer.  It was no surprise to any of their friends when the couple announced their engagement after college.   Charlene was invited to the wedding by Richard who told her that, as his oldest and dearest friend, he could not imagine the day without her.  “Of course, I’ll be there,” she had replied, smiling while the locket under her blouse burned a hole in her heart.  

The years passed quickly.   Richard and Lauren had children and then grandchildren, and Charlene, who had never married, was always included in their family festivities.   Lauren often told her that she was the sister she had always wanted and, despite her best attempts to resist, Charlene developed a growing fondness for Lauren, as well.      

Richard’s death came after a long and debilitating illness that had required the total devotion of both women to meet his needs.    Charlene watched as Lauren held Richard’s hand and he looked into his wife’s eyes one last time.   “Forever…” he whispered.   As if of its own accord, Charlene’s hand moved to touch the finely-linked chain around her neck…

“… And that’s where the locket was found upon her death the very next morning,” Lauren told her eldest granddaughter, as she opened it up and showed her the photos inside.  

“I don’t understand.  Why do you still keep her picture there next to Grandpa’s?” the girl asked.

Lauren’s hand closed around the locket and she held it to her heart, “Because I knew that I had taken from her much more than she had ever taken from me.”

injaynesworld “Country Ways…”

There’s nothing quite as sad as the cries of mama cows calling for their babies.  This is the time of year when “calving” takes place whereby the young calves, ready or not, are separated from the herd.  The females go off to be dairy or breeding cows, the males maybe prize breeding bulls if they’re lucky, more likely a “Burger King” special.   This particular herd lives in a field not twenty feet from my door.  

As cow lives go, they’ve got one of the better ones.  Each spring, I watch the mamas out on the rich green grass, their heavy bellies nearly touching the ground, waiting to give birth.   Then one morning I spot the first newborn shyly hiding behind its mother.   While curious about the two-legged, red-haired creature who coos to it softly, trying to coax it to the fence for a pat, it stays pressed firmly to Mom’s side.  Mornings go by and there are more babies to romp and play with the first.  Each year I caution myself not to name them, but I can never resist.   Francesca, Mikey, Belle…

The herd is a matriarchal society; other mothers, aunts and even grandmas tend to the discipline of any youngster who strays too far or otherwise requires correction.  We humans would do well to take up this practice.   

They are lovely neighbors.  Mostly quiet, they tend to mind their own business, and happily take care of the yard work, providing brush clearance for free, making the high-fire area where I live less likely to ignite.   So I can’t complain about the loud, mournful bellowing that kept me awake last night and greeted me this morning as the mother cows, teats still painfully full of milk, roamed the hillsides searching for their babies. 

I step out to water my garden and they gather at the fence line, look at me expectantly, hopefully, as if I can restore their little ones to their sides, though I’m sure it is my own guilt for just being a human being that causes me to believe this.  Still, I apologize.  “I’m so sorry” I say.  

It’s quiet now.  Maybe they’ve given up, or maybe they’re just exhausted with grief.  Living as intimately with the animal world as I do, I’m blessed daily with joys too numerous to count, and then there are times, like today, when I’m brought just as low by its sorrows.

But that’s life, isn’t it.

injaynesworld when “Creepy Crawlers Come A’ Callin’…”

It’s tarantula season here on my hilltop, that time each fall when, for about a month, the male of the species emerges from its underworld to wander the hillsides in search of a mate, while the female stays at home in her cozy burrow waiting to be wooed.   No word on her criteria, but even if she does accept the advances of her eager caller, she may decide to kill and eat the hapless chap in her post-coital desire for a snack.   And that’s what’s known as a really bad date.

When I was a city girl, insects terrified me.  Especially spiders.   I bought Raid by the crate.  When an unfortunate arachnid crossed my path, I’d drown the thing in a wave of toxins, spraying until the entire can was empty and nearly asphyxiating myself in the process.  I am personally responsible for that hole in the ozone we hear so much about.  But all of that is in the past.  I have given up my murderous ways.  For the last 20 years, I have been a country girl and learned that most of the natural world would just as soon avoid us if at all possible.   And really, who can blame it?  

This year, I allowed a Daddy Long Legs to take up residence in one corner of my living room.   It had not the slightest interest in me and it kept the mosquito population down.  I named her Beatrice when I suspected she was “with eggs” and, alas, had to evict her before her kids could hatch and get used to HDTV.   As with all such evictions, it involved an empty pint-size ice cream carton placed carefully over the intruder, while a piece of cardboard is gently slipped underneath.  Then I march its creepy little ass back to the great outdoors.  Each time I hope that one of them will turn out to be of the magic variety and, for my kindness, will bestow upon me the proverbial three wishes.  I’m still waiting. 

This week, on his way to a fate still unknown, a tarantula mistakenly wandered through my open front door.   My cat, Mason, never known for his bravery, alerted me to the intruder just in time for me to see the last of its long, hairy legs disappear behind the TV cabinet.  

Hollywood has given these docile creatures a bad rap.   Once the critter realized that it had been spotted, it scurried to hide.  The only thing worse than a tarantula loose in one’s house is a tarantula-in-hiding in one’s house, and so the need to capture and relocate my frightened, furry friend took on a certain urgency.

In the old days, I would have taken a bat and beaten the bejeezus out of the thing, while screaming at an octave only heard by dogs and peeing myself.   Instead, I dumped out a shoebox (clearly, the pint-size ice cream carton was not going to do), grabbed a broom and managed to gently coax the big guy inside.  Then I walked up the hill, looked for a ground hole that might contain the next Mrs. Tarantula and deposited him quietly beside it.   I do hope the bitch didn’t eat him.    

injaynesworld it's "A Tiny Tale of Talking Tulips..."

Everyone in the village agreed; there was something most unusual about the garden in front of the long-abandoned Humelsmith house.   Not only were the flowers larger and brighter in color than  those of any of their neighbors, but even in the harshest of winters they raised their blooms toward the sky in what could only be described as a defiance of every natural law.

This, however, was not the strangest thing about the tiny plot of land, for though no one would speak of it for fear of being thought quite out of their minds, several of the villagers could swear they had heard the flowers whisper to them as they passed by.

Gladys Weesley had been warned by a gentle geranium not to sleep in her bedroom on the very night that a large branch from an ancient oak had crashed through the roof, pulverizing the bed where she surely would have been at slumber, while Delores Kiddlebaum found the comments of a climbing rose about her sizeable derriere particularly thorny, but she never worn horizontal stripes again.

Though the house itself had become an eyesore, talk of tearing it down has long ceased and so the garden remains to this very day, and the children of the villagers, now adults and having grown up playing among the precocious petals all their lives, find nothing unusual about it at all, though they still keep their conversations to themselves. 

This post in response to the Five Sentence Fiction prompt, “Flowers.”

injaynesworld it’s “Another Fucking War…”

I don't give a shit about Syria.  Fifteen hundred men, women and children massacred in a deadly saran gas attack by their own government and I can't get it up to find the outrage.  What a rotten excuse for a human being I am.

I’m sorry.  I can’t help it.   I’m done with war.   And you know why?   Because I can no longer differentiate between the good guys and the bad guys.

There was a time when that seemed so clear.   Then came Vietnam and it played out on television leaving indelible images of carnage in my young, impressionable, albeit mostly stoned mind.   The realization that we, the United States of America, were the bad guys had never before occurred to anyone of my generation, or the generations preceding mine either.  

A sacred trust was forever shattered and bad foreign policy after bad foreign policy since then has left me with no belief in our ability to do good anywhere in the world anymore when it comes to military intervention.   With the possible exception of Bosnia, we’ve fucked up everything we’ve touched in the last 40 years.  

France is so eager to punish Syria, let them.   They owe us for Vietnam anyway.   Jordan has an air force.  Why can’t they go drop some bombs?    Israel, stop worrying about your own ass and cover ours for a change.    We let our own people go without food, shelter and health care.   Our educational system is a shambles.   Our bridges are falling down.   Today a one-year-old child was shot in the head with a bullet intended for his father.   Twenty-six innocents slaughtered at Sandy Hook and we still care more about gun “rights” than human life in this country, so don’t try to sell me on the outrage over loss of life in Syria.  I really can’t get worked up over it.

They can take care of their own damn problems.   Let’s take the billions we’d spend on bombing raids and put it to work helping our own people.  

Believe it or not, I woke up this morning intending to write a humorous post.   Major fail.