by Thom Mahoney
to
Kellan and Julia
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Andrew Langholf, Langholf Photography, www.langholfphotography.com for all of the images used for the stories and the cover, except, Tracy Bouffard, the photo accompanying “MEMO: To All Parents”
Free Flash Five
Thom Mahoney
Copyright 2011 Thom Mahoney
This e-book and the content therein is copyrighted by Thom Mahoney, except those images by Andrew Langholf, Langholf Photography, and Tracy Bouffard. All rights reserved.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cover (start of book)
Dancing on Miz Ives
In Her Purse
The Longest Valley
Preying Hands
MEMO: To All Parents
DANCING ON MIZ IVES
The rain had stopped, but the air was thick and smelled of green moss and black dirt. Steam rose from the muddy creek, and mosquitoes buzzed in marauding packs. Mamaw sat on the porch, blotting her face and her neck with one of her late husband’s bandanas.
“Why do we have to go see Miz Ives?” Candy asked. She was visiting her grandmother for Easter and was put out that she had to take part in this gruesome ritual.
“We’re goin,’” Mamaw said. “That’s all there is to it.”
“But going to a grave is creepy.”
“C’est dommage,” Mamaw shrugged.
Candy was from Shreveport and found the practice barbaric. Certainly nothing anyone from the city would ever, ever do. Dancing on some old lady’s grave.
“But why?”
“It’s what Miz Ives asked, right ‘fore she passed.”
“But there’s nothing there anymore, is there?”
“The Petit Maison is gone, but the ol’ arch is still standin.’”
“But we’re not even related to her.”
“You livin’ in her house, ain’t you?”
“I’m visiting.”
“Then you livin’ in her house.”
Candy sighed. There was no use arguing.
Miz Ives had taken Mamaw in as a little girl and raised her and let her live in the back shack when she started a family of her own. And for some fool reason she had a Petite Maison, or Little House, built before she passed, and Mamaw had promised to dance over her grave every Saturday before Easter, which was her most favorite holiday.
When Mamaw and Candy arrived, they tended the grave and pulled weeds and trimmed back overgrown bushes, and after an hour in the thick and dense air Mamaw pulled a pitcher of lemonade and finger sandwiches from a cooler in the back of the truck, and they sat on the tailgate and ate and drank and rested, before Mamaw got up and walked through the concrete arch that used to be at the front of the Petite Maison and put her arms out from her sides and began to spin real slow.
Then Candy watched as Mamaw kicked up her heels in a fais-do-do, suddenly a young woman again, her face beaming, before climbing down from the truck and walking through the arch and joining in.
“Y’awful quiet, child,” Mamaw said on the way back, the yellow glow of the truck’s headlights cutting through the night fog.
“I was thinking how happy you looked when you were dancing on Miz Ives.”
“I loved Miz Ives like a mother, and somehow doin’ this for her every year brings her back.”
“I’ll dance on your grave if you’d like,” Candy said, a little later.
“I’d like that, Cher. But not too soon.”
IN HER PURSE
“You’re not going to leave those things on there, are you?” Tina asked, though it didn’t sound much like a question.
Her husband, Darwin, was the proud owner of a set of blue TruckNutz his friend Mike had given him. They were celebrating the successful installation with a couple of beers, when Tina pulled into the driveway.
“They were a present,” Darwin said. “It wouldn’t be right to be rude, now, would it?”
That didn’t sound like much of a question, either.
“We will talk about it later.”
She didn’t wait for a response. Nor did she prevent the front door from slamming.
“You’re in the shit house now,” Mike said.
“Nah. She knows it’s my truck. I can do what I want with it.”
“Wear the pants in the family, huh?” Mike taunted.
“At least Tina doesn’t keep my balls in her purse like your wife.”
Mike punched Darwin’s shoulder. Then they cracked open two more beers.
That night they ate dinner in front of the TV as they usually did, Tina controlling the clicker until she got up for some reason, whereupon Darwin would find something more preferable.
Tonight it was cage fighting.
“We’re not going to watch that, are we?”
“We’ve already seen that ‘Law and Order.’ Twice, I think.”
“So that’s the way it is,” she said, getting up and leaving the room.
“How would you like it if I hung boobs from my rear view mirror,” she asked, when Darwin went up later to reason with her. “Or maybe a vagina from my back bumper?”
He forced himself not to laugh.
“I think every single straight man on the planet would love it.”
That wasn’t the right answer.
“It’s vulgar and disrespectful,” she said. “What if one of my friends should see it…them…those?”
“We never take my truck anywhere.” Darwin said. “When we go out, we always take your car, don’t we?”
Darwin slept on the sofa that night.
The following morning, Darwin helped Tina in her garden, then made sandwiches for lunch, and even loaded the dishwasher, and later that afternoon they enjoyed a cocktail before dressing to go to the Berk’s for a bar-b-cue.
“What the hell is that?” Darwin asked, horrified, after climbing behind the wheel of her Pontiac.
Dangling by their strings from the rear view mirror were three tampons.
“You were right. You should do what you want with your truck, and I’ll do the same.”
“No, no, no,” Darwin protested, unfastening his seat belt and getting out of the car. “I’m not driving to the Berk’s with those things in my face.”
Then Tina pointed out her newly applied bumper sticker: PMS: Punish Men Severely.
Darwin considered his options. Blue balls or give in.
After accepting a kiss from Tina, Darwin followed her to his truck, where she disconnected the TruckNutz and dropped them in her purse, before removing the tampons and heading to the Berk’s for bar-b-cue.
But she left the bumper sticker.
THE LONGEST VALLEY
We had been out for five days when the late summer snow began to fall, soft and gentle at first, swirly and confusing, looking at times as if it was floating upward, instead of falling downward. Soon, the clouds thickened, and it became more difficult to see, large and wet snowflakes piling up around us like some overfilled heavenly wheelbarrow had been dumped over.
It didn’t take long for the two trails up and out to become unsafe for us. Though, really, anymore it doesn’t take much to make anything unsafe for either of us. Who knows? I saw weather coming. Maybe I just wanted to take the long way out, one last time.
Is was to be our last trip together. And we’d come to the valley to walk along its craggy walls as we once had, to watch the clouds blow in with each afternoon’s rain.
But now, it was time to go. The long way.
We’d spent the summer visiting all of our old hau
nts, Boomer and me. We’d camped at Hattie, outside Laramie, warmed our aching joints in Saratoga, threw away a few worms up near Walden, paddled the old Coleman canoe down the Poudre to follow the eagles and herons.
After the two years with Alice, Boomer and I were glad to get outdoors again, though each of us felt her absence with each day, each sun shower, each step through beloved and treasured memories. She’d said right before the end that the thought of the two of us out there again made her passing sweet.
I never believed her. She was jealous, and we both knew it.
One thing she was right about, though, was what two years of taking care of her had done to Boomer and me. We’d gotten fat and out of shape, and by winter we were both chomping our Celebrex with breakfast.
Imagine my surprise when the vet explained Celebrex would be good for Boomer’s arthritis , too. Damn dog always had been more human than beast.
And now, soon, we’d both be put down, in our own ways. Me to the residential community the kids got for me right before Alice passed and the reverse mortgage was used up.
And Boomer? Well, I was still working on that.
The kids couldn’t take the old guy. Schedules were too busy, yards were too small, lives were too complicated for a dog.
I’d spent the summer trying to find a place for him, trying to remember to be grateful for what the kids had done. Though they just couldn’t swing the cost for a place Boomer and me could stay together.
We reached the car by dark with the snow still coming down. I had to lift Boomer’s hind legs to get him in the seat, and he sat close next to me, watching the oncoming traffic, the valley snow still melting in our hair.
PREYING HANDS
He was eight the first time it happened, a
