by Steve Rzasa
“Oh, don’t fuss. You’ve got one of those handsome deep voices, it sounds awful when you complain. Ladies!” Esperanza planted brown leather gloves on her hips. “Come on, we’ve got work to do!”
They filed out in a babble of voices, some curious, some complaining, all at top volume. Kenny just shrugged and lit up a cigarette, until a tall woman in wool snow pants slapped it clean from his hand. It spiraled end over end like a flaming baton, landing in a hiss of steam. She and a round black woman shoved him along, disparaging his nasty habit as they scooted past him up the hill. Poor Kenny wheezed in their tracks.
Dean whistled.
“You should see Dolly and Alice in the pool,” Esperanza said. “They’re as graceful as dancers—ballet, mind you, not those tramps in the bars. You know the kind.”
“No, ma’am, I don’t.”
“Hmm. Well, if you say so.”
Dean got to digging, but didn’t get far before he heard joyful calls from up the hill. Dolly and Alice were jogging down already, Kenny sloshing behind. All three of them carried the other twelve shovels—though Kenny had the greater armload.
“Such a nice young man!” Dolly gushed. “He let us have all these for sixty dollars plus tax!”
The women cheered as Kenny and Alice started passing them out. Dean glared up, squinting at the blue sky. Frederick’s red gloves waved like victory flags—or, given Dean’s mood, a matador’s cape.
“All right! Everyone, dig in!” Esperanza positioned her ladies where she wanted them, and before Dean knew what was what, they were shoveling with a cadence that would have made the most experienced Road and Bridge foreman jealous.
Plus, they started singing “Honky Tonk Woman” by the Rolling Stones, if the Rolling Stones sounded like an angelic church choir.
Dean couldn’t help chuckling as he joined their rhythmic scooping. They sure weren’t gasping.
“Don’t look so surprised,” Esperanza said. “One thing I learned all these years, the body needs to be in motion. It lasts longer that way!”
They got it cleaned out in time for Dean to scoot back to the cab and answer the interrupting chime of the CB. “One Nine Seven Seven, Two Oh Eight, on West Loop.” Joel again.
“One Nine Seven Seven, go ahead.”
“How’s it looking, Dean?”
He grinned. “Pretty damned good.”
The CB crackled. “Is that… singing?”
Sure was. Dean also spotted Kenny up on the back of the truck, doling out sand. “You know, got some tunes on, helps pass the time.”
“All right. Get on up to the Rec Center when you’re done. They’ve got some drifts blocking the driveway.”
“Got it. One Nine Seven Seven, out.”
Dean climbed back down, and made sure there was plenty of sand around the wheels for traction. He restarted the truck. The engine grumbled. “Everybody stand clear!”
The wheels slipped, skidded, and suddenly caught. Dean steered off the edge and got her right in the lane. The swimmers cheered.
He plowed up the hill smoothly, and was whistling “Honky Tonk Woman” with such glee he even waved to Frederick, the scheming little entrepreneur. He turned, and plowed back down to the first barricade. The bus waited for him to pass before following on the final run to the top. Dean cleared out the impassable Chamberlin Road intersection with ease.
The sun was shining when they hit the Rec Center and he battered aside the drifts blocking the parking lot entrance. The clock on his dash read 8:55.
Dean waited by the bus door to shake hands with the ladies as they exited. Esperanza kissed his cheek. “Thanks, ma’am. You need anything more, let me know.”
“Well, since you owe us…”
Dean’s apprehension spiked at that look in her eye. Frederick seemed less mischievous. “What?”
“This weekend’s our talent show. We’re short a person, thanks to the flu, and you’ve got such a lovely voice. I’ll bet you can really sing!”
PRIOR ENGAGEMENT (2017)
I WROTE THIS FLASH FICTION story for a romance contest. It’s set in Maine during the War of 1812, an era and region I’ve studied with interest. Few people in New England were in favor of what they derided as “Mr. Madison’s War.” While the story was not accepted, I received some excellent feedback, and in sharing it, found readers who told me the best thing an author can hear: “I want to know what happens next!”
June 1814
Daniel marveled at the way Evangeline’s blond hair shone like a silver cascade beneath a canopy of alders. They walked, arm in arm, down a packed dirt path, broad enough to admit horse and wagon, as the ruts evidenced. An owl hooted in the distance. Its mate answered. Clouds scudded a star-speckled sky.
Evangeline rested her head against Daniel’s shoulder. Her breath teased his neck. “You could not have picked a more sublime evening.”
His heart hammered. “I would say ‘morning’ is apt. It’s nearly half past one.”
“After whiling away the hours with good friends and fine wine, what a fine end to the day.”
“Hardly fine, my love. Jameson uses that swill to strip paint.”
She poked him in the ribs, gloved hands not deterred by his jacket.
They were laughing when the path opened free of the white alder trunks and revealed British soldiers in crimson coats. The men stood guard at the fort perched on the tiny diamond-shaped peninsula.
Daniel found “fort” an exaggeration.
A six-foot earthen berm walled the south end, whilst a lopsided wooden palisade barricaded the north. They surrounded a block house and powder magazine, as well as a single cramped barracks. Those were charred black and billowing smoke. Golden flame illuminated the structures’ corpses.
The air smelled of wet dirt and burnt pine. The St. George River burbled along the rocky banks, its surface black as the soldiers’ boots.
“Stand! What are you doing about?” The tallest of the four approached. He bore a Brown Bess musket and a sergeant’s chevrons. The night masked his face beneath a towering black cap.
Daniel trusted his and Evangeline’s faces were likewise disguised. “Good evening, fellows!” He pitched his voice to a grating obnoxiousness and affected a stagger, wending like a ship caught in a gale.
Evangeline, bless her, giggled and swatted at him.
“You’re out late with your wife, sir.”
Daniel’s heart skipped. “Ah, she is not betrothed to me, good sir, but she and I are … familiar.” He slurred the word.
A burly soldier behind the sergeant snickered. The man had a nose that would put the greatest eagle’s beak to shame. “You Yankees best find somewhere else to continue gettin’ familiar. We’re busy about your Mr. Madison’s war.”
Orange tongues lit the opposite shore. Daniel spied the silhouettes of masts wavering amidst the flames.
“Enough, Corporal,” the sergeant snapped.
“Surely you’d not shoo us from observing you fine soldiers at work.” Evangeline’s sway of her hips, accentuated by her pale green dress, drew the corporal’s attention.
Daniel glimpsed a barge bobbing at the end of a stone quay, laden with Congreve rockets.
“Miss, this is no place for your… outing,” the sergeant said. “We must be wary.”
“Never know if you Yankees are looking to trade or fight.” The corporal couldn’t disguise the hunger in his eyes for Evangeline.
Daniel let the twist auger slip from his sleeve into the back of his hand. His face was flush with anger. He hoped the soldiers would mistake it for supposed intoxication.
No more fires tonight.
Evangeline held out her hand. “We shall take our leave, then.”
The corporal swept in and kissed it.
“Such a firm grip,” Evangeline cooed.
The sergeant hesitated, but followed suit, not wanting his subordinate to outshine him. He smiled, but paused, the expression frozen.
The corporal licked his lips, and grimace
d. He pressed his pale fingers to his head. The musket’s stock hit the ground. “What in hell?”
“Sergeant? Corporal?” The other two soldiers hurried forward, ignoring the drunken lovers out for their late stroll.
Daniel abandoned his stagger and bashed the first on the back of the head with the auger. The soldier collapsed like a felled tree.
His companion whirled, trained his musket, but Daniel sidestepped and struck his exposed throat. The musket dropped. Mercifully it did not fire. Daniel wrapped his arms around the soldier’s neck and pressed until the man’s eyes rolled up into his head. Impeded blood flow would do that.
Evangeline stepped over the twitching corporal on her way to the barge. He corporal whimpered, curled on his side. The sergeant stayed on his knees, but held up trembling hands, swatting at unseen adversaries, while sputtering nonsense.
“Shush.” Evangeline brushed her fingers across his lips. His tremors intensified until he, too, crumpled. “I bid you good night.”
“Effective.” Daniel dumped the muskets in the river.
“Diluted tetrodotoxin of the blue-ringed octopus.”
She and Daniel used augers to drill holes in the barge until water came gushing in.
Daniel helped her back onto the quay. The barge sank in twelve feet of water, its cargo ruined.
“The rest of the barges are headed up to Thomaston.” Evangeline pointed to shadowy outlines of men and boats vanishing in the thickening fog that crept downriver. “If we get to the horses, we may sound the alarm.”
Shouts and the distant report of musket fire broke the night. “I’d say there’s a fair chance that’s taken care of.”
“We shouldn’t tarry.” Evangeline gingerly stripped off her gloves and tossed them into the dying fire of the ruined fort.
“Come. Jameson will be waiting.” He offered his arm.
Evangeline held to him as they walked back to the path, leaving four fallen British soldiers in their wake. “Speaking of Jameson, when we left his house…”
“Yes. Well.” Daniel brought her beneath the alders and held her hands before him. “Evangeline Martin, you have emboldened my life beyond measure. Do me the great joy of becoming my wife.”
Her eyes widened.
“Do not make poor fellow ask twice,” Daniel said, smiling.
“I would walk beside you forever, Daniel Ross, in this life and the next,” Evangeline whispered. “No matter the adversaries.”
He brought her lips to his and kissed her, the first time.
His heart exploded like the fort’s powder magazine.
MORE BOOKS BY STEVE RZASA
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