Thursday, March 31, 2016

On Being Donald

Courtesy Google Images
In the past, I’ve shared some of the potholes in the road of my daily existence. When my wife died yesterday (well, it was actually in 2009 but it seems like yesterday), I was forced to assume responsibilities for things she had taken care of for lo these many years. And boy, did she take care of a bunch of things. Things I’d never given a thought to before.

  





  •     She fed me. Now I have to do it myself or starve. The big trouble here is that I don’t know how to cook.
  •      My clothes always magically hung on hangers in my closet, clean and pressed and ready to be worn. Now they lie limp and inert in the dirty clothes basket until I’m forced to do battle with the washer and dryer.
  •       If I lost a button on a shirt, it found its way back in the proper place. Now, I buy slip-over shirts. And if the two buttons at the top come off, who cares?
  •       As for rips and tears, I don’t darn them with needle and thread; I damn them with curses.
  •       And if I get sick, there’s no one to pour the right medicine down my throat in the proper amount and at the proper time. My friend B will do this for me, but I have to reach out and solicit her help, which goes against my nature.

I could go on, but it’s already tiresome, so what’s the point? Instead, I’ll just tell you what happened recently to set me off.

All who know me recognize my ineptness with anything mechanical or electrical. Actually, it’s not ineptness, it is the total absence of ept. I’m hopeless. When the dirty clothes pile got too large the other day, I decided to wash a load before eating breakfast and starting to work at the computer. I put Shout on the collars (can’t have ring-around-the-collar, you know), tossed in some laundry detergent and Spray and Wash and started the wash cycle. Can someone please tell me why I need both detergent and Spray and Wash? I use both only because that’s what was on the shelf when Betty went to the hospital for the last time.

My washing machine is the cheapest I could find. Consequently, it does not have a bell or alarm to alert me when the wash cycle is completed. As is often the case, I discovered midafternoon that I’d forgotten to place the clothes in the dryer. They were very near dry, but I’ve learned the hard way that if you don’t put them in the dryer, they’ll be so wrinkled I’m embarrassed to be seen wearing them in public.

So I dutifully transferred the damp clothing to the dryer threw in some flimsy little square sheets on top of it. Don’t know why I do that, either. Except those little pieces are great for cleaning out the stuff that collects on the lint trap.

Then I set the timer for 70 minutes and pressed the start button. Nothing happened. It refused to start. I pressed the button three times before panicing. (I always try things three times, somehow believing the magic fairy is going to fix the problem if you just persist for three tries.) Didn’t work.
So I opened the electrical breaker box (yes, I learned what and where that was the first week I was on my own). I even found the breakers for the washer and drier. I flipped them off and back on and pressed the start button again. Still nothing. Naturally, I tried that process three times.

Nothing to do but load up the damp clothes and haul them to the laundry room. In a foul frame of mind, I went into the bedroom and changed into street clothes. Then I fished around in my change jar and found enough quarters to do the job and returned to my laundry area... only to discover the door to the dryer standing wide open.

Chagrined but relieved, I closed the dryer door, pressed the start button, and listened to the thing start up without a hitch. Betty, I really do miss you.

*****
Thanks for putting up with my nonsense. I’m sure this tripe is of no interest to anyone, but it does help get things off my chest, so to speak.

Feel free to lodge yout complaints at dontravis21@gmail.com.


New Posts published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.

Thursday, March 24, 2016

Another Guest Post: Donald T. Morgan’s THE EAGLE’S CLAW

How about that… two guest posts in two weeks. Does that mean I’m getting lazy? Probably not. When it comes to social media, I’ve always been lazy. At any rate, I asked another Albuquerque writer with Oklahoma roots to give us a little more of his New Mexico family saga, THE EAGLE’S CLAW, this week, and he complied with Chapter 2 of the book. In prior posts, the last one on December 7, 2015, Donald introduced us to Román Otero (who comes to be called Ro) and his grandmother, known as Cane-Woman. I continue to consider the old woman spooky, but her contemporaries are likely closer to the mark when they label her a witch. Chapter 2 introduces the other side of the equation, the Chandlers, a white family that owns a large ranch abutting the Edge of Mountain Apache Reservation where Ro and Cane-Woman live.

I recognize the post is longer than usual, but please see it to the end.
*****
THE EAGLE’S CLAW
By Donald T. Morgan
Chapter 2

La Ciudad de Terreon sprawled across its tight little valley like age rings on a pine stump. Rows of project homes spilled into older residential sections crammed with ill-fitting commercial zones. In turn, these crowded down on the narrow old-world streets of the original settlement.
Jim Chandler’s army surplus Jeep motored past the adobe church on the plaza and turned north on NM35. Once across the Rio Chacon—a tenuous trickle still known to the area’s indigenous people as Wandering Water—he left the town behind and soon breeched Snowflake Pass where the Chacon Range met the Capucha Spur.
Almost immediately, the highway entered the Edge of Mountain Apache Reservation and unraveled down the far side of the slope into a violence-ridden fissure known as the Canyon of Winds. The road straightened upon emerging from the gorge and dropped rapidly toward the desert where the rush of air turned hot.
Jim bore right at the beginning of a long curve five miles short of his J-Bar-C Ranch. He forsook pavement for the sandy hardpan to play tag with a thick column of dust raised by his spinning tires as the Jeep bounced forward over treacherous dunes to short-cut the road by half a mile. He regained the asphalt and raced north until a red-tiled, two story house came into view.
He turned east on a gravel drive and eased in beside a black Lincoln. Tall and heavy-framed, he was in his mid-thirties. He would one day likely tend to flesh, but hard work kept him at a trim two-ten. He got out of the Jeep and eyed the tires on the sedan as his wife stepped from the wide veranda. He was going to have to try to find some new ones. They were still hard to come by since the war.
“What took so long?” she asked.
“Stopped at the Cattleman’s Club. Why? What’s the matter?”
“It’s Paul. I’m going to dust his britches until he can’t sit a saddle for a week when he drags in. Before he rode off this morning, he promised to be back by three to mow the lawn.”
He glanced at his watch. Almost seven. That didn’t seem such a catastrophe, but Judith was no alarmist. He swept off his hat and ran fingers through thick, dark hair. “Paul can outride any twelve-year-old in the county, and Pedro would make straight for the corral if anything went wrong. Let’s face it, mowing the lawn’s not our son’s favorite pastime.”
She shook her head. “It was the lawn today or no movie tonight.”
Paul was something of an enigma to his father. His need for people seemed insatiable, yet he often wandered off alone. Giving in to his wife’s sense of urgency, Jim headed for the bunkhouse and gave instructions to his foreman, Chuck Griggs, to saddle Chigger and turn out the hands for a search.
As Jim entered the house for supplies, an unusually restrained Teresa met him at the door. He lifted his daughter and planted a kiss on her tanned cheek.
“Where’s Paul, Daddy?” Her eight-year-old voice lacked its customary fire.
“Goofing off somewhere. What say we give him a tanning when he comes in?”
That brought a half-hearted giggle. She delighted in getting her brother into trouble.
             Jim was rummaging the hall closet for his sheepskin and a jacket for Paul when he heard Judith calling. As he stepped out onto the veranda, the house was in deep shadow, although an invisible sun still touched the mountains. The earth cooled beneath an evening breeze.
He stared into the fading light at a horseman plodding slowly up the gravel driveway. It wasn’t Paul. The pony was a paint. Pedro was black. Eventually, the horse shuddered to a halt beside the veranda. Rider and mount made a scraggly pair. It was difficult to tell which was scrawnier, the flop-eared mare or the youngster on her bare back. The boy stared mutely, a lot of white showing around his pupils.
Jim cleared his throat. “What can I do for you, son?”
“Uh…does a blond-headed kid live here?” The rider fixed his gaze squarely on Jim’s boots. The mare lowered her head and began cropping grass.
“My son has blond hair. Why?”
“His pony fell down Blind Man’s Arroyo.” He pointed with his chin. “Not far.”
Judith gasped. “Is he hurt?”
The lad’s gaze flicked to her and quickly dropped away. “Leg. Broke it, maybe.”
“Can we get to him by truck or Jeep?”
Sudden interest lit the boy’s eyes, but he shook his head. “Horses.”
When Chuck rode up leading Jim’s stallion, the rancher said some reassuring words to Judith and a wide-eyed Teresa before climbing into the saddle. He led the way past the corral toward a gate between the ranch and the reservation that would save them an hour and a half of riding. The remaining daylight evaporated before they reached it. Once they passed onto the Edge of Mountain Reservation, Jim’s heartbeat picked up the rhythm of Chigger’s hooves until the strange calm that had settled over him wore thin. Then his pulse raced, making progress seem desperately slow. He rode with his shoulders tensed. His legs clutched the saddle. More to break the silence than anything else, he asked the youngster’s name.
“Román Otero.”
He repeated the name silently—ro-MAHN…o-TAIR-o.
The boy had said it wasn’t far, but that meant little. The ponies plodded onward. Jim’s uneasiness became pain. The night wind swept away his patience. Roman’s thin voice startled him, and he pulled up to see the boy pointing into a deep arroyo. A sliver of moon topped the eastern horizon and cast faint gray images. The black depths of the gully swallowed his flashlight’s beam.
“Paul!” His voice rolled across the night. “Hold on, son. We’re coming.”
While Chuck broke out a lantern, Jim followed Román over the edge of the abyss, half-climbing, half-falling down the soft wall of the ravine. He stood swaying at the bottom until his eyes adjusted to the deeper darkness. His flashlight’s beam settled on Paul lying nearby. He knelt at his son’s side. “How are you making it?”
“Leg…busted. Tried to jump. Pedro fell, Dad.”
“Okay, take it easy. We’ll have you fixed up in short order.”
“Water. Thinking about water all day. Water and sun and snakes.”
“Román, there’s a canteen on my saddle horn.”
The boy raced for the water, passing Chuck cursing his way over the side of the arroyo, laden with ropes and a portable ring of light. A low whinny pulled Jim’s attention down the wash. He motioned, and the foreman went to check the pony. When the canteen arrived, Paul snatched it and upended the container.
He took the canteen from his son as Chuck returned and shook his head. “You know what has to be done for the pony,” Jim said.
“P…Pedro?” The boy slumped back and nodded.
“Take care of it, Chuck.”
Jim slit the denim of Paul’s right pant leg from cuff to thigh. The break was between the ankle and knee. As he fashioned a splint from boards he’d brought, Paul cried out twice. Román hovered nearby to help where he could.
A rifle shot shattered the silence, dying in a chain of fading echoes down the length of the long ditch. Jim glanced at his son, grateful he was half out of it. “That’s the best I can do. Now, let’s get him out of here.”
Chuck appeared at his elbow with Paul’s gear. “Can’t get no horse down here, Jim.”
“We’ll have to lift him out. Give me a hand.”
He knelt in the dirt as Chuck held Paul in place while Román lashed the boy’s wrists together in a fireman’s carry: one arm over Jim’s right shoulder, the other under his left arm.
Chuck knotted a rope around Jim’s chest and disappeared with the lantern up the side of the arroyo leaving the pit darker than ever. The flashlight punched a feeble hole in the blackness as he handed it to Román. Moments later, Paul’s saddle bumped its way to the top at the end of a second rope. Finally, Chuck yelled that he was ready.
Jim lurched to his feet and braced himself. “Okay, take up the slack.” The rope grew taut. “Careful now.” He waddled awkwardly toward the embankment. The rope threatened to flatten him against the side. “Hold it!” The pressure eased. He found a foothold. “Okay.”
The tether tightened, and he began walking up the side of the ditch. Chuck paced him well, pulling steadily, yet giving him time to keep his equilibrium. Paul must have lost consciousness. The boy twisted to one side. His bound wrists pressed against Jim’s windpipe. He stood it as long as possible.
“Wait!” he managed to gasp. As he pulled his son higher on his back and drew fresh air into his burning lungs, the earth crumbled beneath his right boot. He cursed as he slammed against a protruding rock. His shoulder went numb. The bones in his neck creaked, but fear for Paul pushed pain from his mind.
Román, climbing at his side, grabbed Paul and kept his broken leg from harm. This quick effort threw the lad off balance. He clutched at a long root and seemed to hang in space for a moment before plunging back into the arroyo.
“Are you okay?” Jim found new footing.
“Okay,” a reedy voice answered from below.
He gave the word for Chuck to start hauling him up again. Progress was agonizing. He used his good arm to keep Paul from choking him. The right was only half-alive. Román caught up and stayed alongside until they crawled over the top. Jim rested a moment while a thousand needles danced over his arm as feeling and strength returned to his muscles.
After they lifted Paul into Chigger’s saddle, Jim mounted behind him. The rancher peered through the moonlight at the boy beside the stallion. Smooth, deeply shadowed skin, arched brows, and a sensitive mouth drawn into a firm line. Obviously from the reservation. Not a blood though. Too tall. About Paul’s age. Perhaps a little younger. Ten or eleven.
“If you hadn’t found my son, it might have been bad. We’ll take it from here, but you come back to the house tomorrow afternoon, okay?”
The youngster’s eyes stole up to examine him frankly for a second. Sensing revolt, Jim leaned over.
“You come tomorrow afternoon, or I’ll send someone to get you.”

*****
I loudly proclaim my love and admiration for New Mexico, and the opening of this chapter paints a great picture of the grandeur and diversity of the state. Donald’s novel, THE EAGLE’S CLAW, is self-published as an Amazon Kindle book. I hope this prompted your interest enough to go buy his book. After all, without readers, we aren’t real authors. So keep on reading.

Feel free to contact me at  dontravis21@gmail.com. Donald can be reached at dtm1332@aol.com.

New Posts published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.






Thursday, March 17, 2016

Guest Post by Mark Wildyr

This week, we'll have a guest post by Mark Wildyr who's excited about the March 18 release of his new novel JOHNNY TWO-GUNS by his new publisher. I should let you know that he writes gay erotica, often featuring people from different cultures. So let's hear from Mark:
#####
Hi, my name is Mark Wildyr. Don invited me to guest post this week because he knows I'm fired up that my new novel JOHNNY TWO-GUNS is scheduled for release by Dreamspinner Press on Friday, March 18. JOHNNY is my first collaboration with Dreamspinner Press, but I hope it is not the last. Those are professional and supportive folks over there. Let me tell you a little about myself before we take a look at a scene from the book.

An Okie (like Don) from a little southeastern Oklahoma farming and lumber town, I’ve always been creative. Childhood tuberculosis convinced me I couldn’t do what others my age did, so I turned inward and lived in the local library where I developed a fascination for history and the study of various Native American cultures. Those two interests have remained with me throughout a stint in the Army and my business career. Historical events and cross-cultural relationships are key elements in the Wildyr books. Thus far, I’ve published 60 or so short stories, a novella, and seven novels.

The following scene takes place in Chapter 2 of the novel. Roger Mackie, a Denver architect, has agreed to give a young Chippewa a ride to Arizona in exchange for help driving and some conversation. They have stopped for the night in Provo, Utah. Rog’s reaction to Johnny Two-Guns is visceral, raising recollections of long suppressed experiences with a high school jock.
*****

We ate a midnight dinner in Provo, Utah, where we found a good motel. The room was pleasant, and management accommodated us with two queen-size beds. As soon as we were settled, I found I was charged up rather than tired. Dressed in my sweats, I invited Johnny to join me for a run. But all he had were his cowboy boots, and they weren’t made for running… or walking, for that matter.
I made the four miles by myself, and when I opened the door upon my return, Johnny, fresh from his shower, stood combing his glossy hair in front of the mirror with nothing but a terry cloth towel snugged around his waist. I literally stopped dead in my tracks with both the door and my mouth wide open. There was no fat on the boy, just muscle and sinew, which made his shoulders look wide… hell, they were wide. Traps and lats rolled with his movements. He must have been just shy of six feet and probably weighed 170 or 175. The chest was an odd combination of defined pecs and still-developing adolescence. His skin looked velvety smooth and hairless. Brown nipples centered on large areolas that were almost black. His belly wasn’t washboard, but had definite musculature. His navel was high and deep.
He caught my look in the mirror. “Sorry. I’ll put some clothes on.”
“Don’t bother on my account,” I managed to say, brushing past him quickly so he wouldn’t see the state of my rising excitement. “You leave any hot water?”
“Think so.”
I stripped in the bathroom, and by the time I got in the shower, I was thinking of Hank and how he looked at me on the camping trip. I showered for a long time. The last five minutes of it in cold water.
Johnny was in bed when I returned to the room. As I pulled on a pair of shorts with my back to him, I wondered if he was watching. When I turned around, he was on his side, his eyes closed. The three TV channels on our set held nothing of interest, so I snapped off the light and turned in… to spend an hour lying there in the dark assessing Roger Mackie. Why was Hank and what he had done to me so vivid in my mind’s eye? The answer was clear, although I was loath to admit it. The young man sleeping in the bed not five feet from me stirred up old, forgotten memories. Had I been gut punched for the second time in my life?
There had been no thunder and lightning when I met Julie Ann. I liked her, dated her, and married her. It took time and effort for our love to mature. And it was love. Even so, lying in the dark in that small motel in Utah, I wondered what would have happened had Hank showed up at any time during the courtship. What if I’d had to choose between them? Had I loved Hank? No, but the fact I was thinking so much about him lately meant something. What? Obsessed with him, maybe? I shook my head in the darkness. Really, Hank was nothing but a guy who’d shown me something I knew nothing about. Planted a seed that perhaps sex wasn’t just something that happened between men and women. Could that be right?
         I turned over and searched through the darkness for the still, silent form of Johnny Two-Guns on the other bed and wondered if he had heard the peal of thunder. Surely it wasn’t just inside my head.
*****
As I wrote this scene, I was “in the head” of both Rog and Johnny, as I recalled both hitchhiking cross country in my youth and providing rides to others in my young adulthood. While none of my trips were as eventful as this venture, I can still recall the thrill of expectation with each new companion. A few provided dalliances, but none measured up to the life-changing events these two characters experienced. I hope this short passage whets your appetite for more.

Here are some links where you can learn a little more about me and my writing.

Website and blog: markwildyr.com
Email: markwildyr@aol.com
Facebook: markwildyr
Twitter: @markwildyr

The following are Dreamspinner’s buy links (they are presently accepting pre-orders, by the way):


Well, thanks for reading. Readers are some of my favorite people. Again, let me express my appreciation to Prism Book Alliance for allowing me to guest post this blog.


Mark
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This is me again. I hope you enjoyed a look at Mark's new novel. If so, please consider supporting hi by purchasing one of the books.

Hey guys, keep on reading. Love to hear from you at markwildyr@aol.com.

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Joe Jinx


 How about a little flight of fancy for this week? Sometimes I feel like I’m the guy in the story.

*****
JOE JINX

     Joe Jinx isn’t really my name. It’s actually Joseph Rastankowski. With that moniker, you’d think I’d be an ethnic type with loads of rich Eastern European cultural history riding my back. I’m not. Until you learned my name, you’d take me for an Englishman or a Scandinavian. Just an ordinary all-American guy… except for one thing.
     The best way to explain that one thing is to say “don’t ever get behind me in a grocery store checkout line. “Inevitably, something goes wrong. The cashier’s machine goes on the blink. The cashier goes on the blink. The customer can’t find her money or sends a kid to pick up something she forgot while everyone else fiddles and fidgets. Something.
     It started way back in high school when I was playing sandlot baseball with some of the guys. I was racing to catch a high pop up fly when the wind caught the ball. I yelled for Auggie Hixton to get it, but he was kinda slow getting set, and it went right through his hands and popped him on the forehead. Laid him out flat and raised a goose egg like a third eye two inches above the real ones. Things went south fast after that. Actually, I think the guys were just using me as an excuse when they goofed up, but it wasn’t long before it started to take on some heft. I was called Typhoid Joe for about three weeks before someone settled on the name that followed me for the rest of my life: Joe Jinx.
     My rep got so bad that everyone started begging me to skip our varsity ball games. Afraid I’d jinx them. One year during the state championship game, our quarterback gave me ten bucks to go to the movies or someplace… anyplace except the football field.
     My sophomore year in college, my dorm mates bought me a blonde—a little older than the coeds we usually ran with—as an inducement to pass up the basketball finals. As you’d expect, that one didn’t work out too well. The rubber broke, and I spent a few anxious weeks thereafter, but I never heard anything from the girl… er, woman.
     Even college debaters got in on the act. My roommate at the time was on the team and threatened to strangle me in my sleep if I didn’t keep my distance from Frocton Hall where they were holding the regional finals. Even so, they still blamed me when our guys were eliminated in the first round.
     I don’t even play chess, but the college chess club shoots daggers my way ever since I walked past the room where they were holding their eliminations. At that precise moment, one leg of a long table where there were six matches going on collapsed and dumped boards and pieces all over the place.
     Of course, the condition survived my college years. My associates at work refused to fly with me on business trips after we had to exit the airliner cabin on one of those rubber slides when an engine caught fire. I tried to point out how lucky we were that it happened before we left the runway, but no one was buying it.
     The boss always finds important chores that have to be done immediately anytime he has an important staff meeting coming up. That’s most likely because during the last one I attended the bottom to the coffee pot dropped off and spilled scalding hot liquid all over his thousand-dollar conference table and dribbled down onto his two-thousand-dollar suit pants. I felt that was terribly unfair, even though I was the one pouring him a fresh cup at the moment of the Pyrex failure.
     Fortunately, this hasn’t impacted my personal life much other than spending a lot of time in slow-moving lines. Well, I guess I that’s not really true, either. I’m still single, you see. Was supposed to get married right before Christmas last year, but that went up in smoke when Felicia—that’s my ex-fiancée—came over just as I was putting away the blow-up doll the guys gave me at my bachelor’s party in lieu of a hooker. Don’t know why she wouldn’t believe me when I told her it was their idea of a joke. Maybe it would have gone better if I hadn’t been standing in my briefs when she walked in.

*****
I sincerely hope you did not recognize yourself in this little bit of fluff. Keep on reading, because readers are the greatest people in the world. And feel free to contact me at  dontravis21@gmail.com.


New Posts published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.

Thursday, March 3, 2016

An Imaginary Conversation... or Was It?.

 As some of you know, I’m in the middle of some significant dates that have to do with my late wife. This morning, something sparked a conversation with her in that half-awake/half-asleep twilight zone, so I’m not certain if I dreamed what follows or concocted it in my own head in wakeful moments. In the end, it doesn’t matter much, does it? The reverie (that’s as good a term as any) began with my awareness of her presence.

     “I’ve got a birthday coming up, you know,” she said.
     “I know. And we just had another significant date pass. Last month was the seventh anniversary of your—”
     “Don’t call that an anniversary. An anniversary is something you celebrate. You don’t celebrate somebody’s death. Or maybe you did! Maybe that was your own personal emancipation day or something.”
     “They let you keep your red hair up there, didn’t they?” I sighed, or at least I think I did.                    "According to Merriam-Webster, an anniversary is something you remember or celebrate. The day I lost you was a significant day for me.”
     “I imagine,” she said. “That was the day you realized you’d have to wash your own clothes and cook your own food and keep your own house. How’s that working out?”
     “Okay, I guess. Couple of false starts with the clothes. Eat out of the freezer.”
     “Out of a cookie jar, most likely.”
     “Well, that, too," I admitted.
     “Never did understand that one. You ate the sweets, and I got the diabetes.”
     I dream-shrugged. “Don’t know what to say.”
     “How about the housecleaning thing?
     “Don’t want to talk about it." I paused for a minute. “Uh… d-did it hurt?”
     “Did what hurt? The diabetes? Have you forgotten already?”
     “No, I remember all that. I meant when you… you know, passed. Died.”
     “What do you think? Ripping a soul outa one place and shipping it to another.”
     “Oh.”
     “You always were a wienie when it came to pain. To be honest, I don’t remember much about that part of it. Took too much effort to adjust to the new reality. And boy, does it take some adjusting.”
     “Tell me about your new reality.”
     “I'm not allowed. You’ll just have to wait and find out for yourself. Of course, you might not even end up where I am.”
     “Where else would I go?” I dream-saw a flash of undulating red and got a whiff of brimstone. (which is puzzling because I have no idea what brimstone smells like). “Oh,” I said.
     “Besides, I’d rather talk about the birthday coming up. It’s March 13, you know.”
     “How could I forget? You even named one of our dogs Three-thirteen.”
     “Should have named the other one Four-Eight so you’d have remembered our anniversary.”
     I didn’t want to rehash the disagreement we’d had over what day our wedding anniversary fell on, (she’d been right, it was the eighth, not the third), do I went back to the birthday. “Just think, in ten more day’s you’d have been—”
     “Shut up!”
     “Wow, you still are red-headed, aren’t you? Anyway happy birthday.”
     “Thank you. You have any plans to come on up anytime soon?”
     My heart lurched so hard the bed shook. “Why, do you know something I don’t?”
     “No, we aren’t privy to things like that.” She switched subjects the way she always did. “How are      the boys?”
     “Don’t you talk to them?”
     “They’re all wrapped up in their own lives. They don’t have time to lollygag around and let me in.”
     “To answer your question, they’re… well, they’re the boys.”
     “Still like that, huh? Well, give them my love.”

I’m not sure that I got to answer her. I blinked my eyes open, and the room came into focus. It was just another day. Although I have to admit, my mood was lighter than it usually is during my “dark quarter,” which is what I call February, March, and April of each year.


*****
Keep on reading folks. And feel free to contact me at dontravis21@gmail.com.

New Posts published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.



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