MOUNDS, a Guest Blog

dontravis.com blog post #286

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday got a host of hits, but few comments. Stop sending me mixed messages, guys. Let me know what you’re thinking.

Not too long ago, I posted a guest blog by Donald T. Morgan, an excerpt from his unpublished novel, Old Sassy Pants. Today, he’s giving me another one, the opening to another novel called Mounds. Let him know how you like his work.

*****

MOUNDS

By Donald T. Morgan

Courtesy of Pixabay

PROLOGUE

Malcolm County, Southeastern Oklahoma

She lay sprawled beneath him on a frayed horse blanket in the gloomy hayloft. There had been no greeting, no posturing, nothing except a harsh entry followed by a sweaty, steamy explosion. He aimed to hurt. But she was a match for him, meeting his thrusts, absorbing his anger, and frustrating attempts to reduce the assignation to the level of just another roll in the hay.

“Bitch!” He dragged the word across the breadth of his orgasm.

“Bastard.” A self-satisfied smirk hid in her breathy drawl; his had carried nothing but longing and suppressed fury. She sighed, already drawing breath more easily than he, and ran scarlet-tipped fingers through the pale flame of a candle lit to watch him labor over her. “I do like the way yawl screw.”

“Not… make love?”

“Wouldn’t wanna mess up a good thing by calling it wrong.” She laughed low in her throat at the way he vainly fought to keep his eyes off her shadowed curves.

A snarl tore out of him, ending in a sobbing shudder. “I oughta kill you. Someday, I will.” Without another word, he threw on his clothes and left, moving stealthily through the moonless Oklahoma night.

She lingered on the rough, scratchy blanket, allowing his aura of carnal fury to dissipate. Caressing her violated flesh, she inhaled the heady redolence of the barn: manure, urine, and the earthy aroma of the big animals in the stalls below, masked by the woody hay, her own fragrance, and his stimulating musk.

The thick, humid air crackled with the charged atoms of an approaching thunderstorm, although she preferred to believe it was the lingering essence of the most exciting man she had ever known. Drowsily, she mused over her conquest.

Dangerous? Of course, it was. That’s what made it so wonderful.

CHAPTER 1

Figuring his daddy was about ready to emerge from a two-day hangover, Derek Monsum came in from the fields early and found Carlton working on Red Rover beneath the huge oak in the front yard. A good sign. His father wouldn’t take a wrench to the old Chevy pickup unless his hand was reasonably steady. That pile of bolts and faded red sheet metal was their only means of transportation.

“Can I talk to you a minute?” Private code for “Are you up to listening?”

Carlton adjusted the crutch under his arm to compensate for the right leg he’d lost in the Panama invasion. “Sure. Trying to tune this balky carburetor, but it’s a touchy piece of work. Fields look pretty good, Derek.”

“Thanks.” He took heart at his father’s grammar. Carlton’s drawl got heavy and his English went careless when he was under the influence. “Did you hear the news on the radio last night?”

His father pulled his head out of the truck’s innards. A trace of alcohol rode the heavier oil and grease fumes rising from the motor. “What news?” 

“Oklahoma University’s gonna excavate the mounds. Some fellow by the name of Dr. Henry Ericksen’s gonna lead a team from the Anthropology Department down here this summer.”

A flash of pain twisted his father’s features. “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I know that was your dream.”

“That’s okay. It was bound to happen one of these days. I’ll never be an archaeologist, anyway.”

He regretted the words the moment they came out of his mouth. Carlton looked as if he’d been slapped. But it was true—that ambition died when he quit school to take care of the farm after Bowie ran off. His brother had put up with Daddy’s new wife for two years, but Cassie was always on him. Derek was too young back then to understand things he could see plain as day now he was a grown man.

Ashamed of his thoughts, he cleared his throat. “What I was thinking was, maybe I can take a job at the dig. It’d just be labor work, but I could make a little money and get some practical experience, too. You know, see how they do things. At least be a little part of it.”

Carlton hid back inside the motor cavity. “Could be.”

“I’ve got the disking and fertilizing done. I’ll start seeding tomorrow. That won’t take long.” He scraped the ragged edge of a peeling rust spot on the raised hood with his thumbnail. “After that, it’ll be an easy time for a spell.”

“One your old man can handle.” The voice from the motor well held a wretchedness that drove Derek a step backwards.

“Shoot, you’re ten times the farmer I am. You could—”

“Don’t patronize me. I know what I am. What you’re asking is if I’ll stay off the booze for the summer. Well, you gotta ask straight out.”

Derek almost lost heart at the misery in his father’s tone, but he scratched the brown mole on his upper lip—his stress barometer, his mama used to call it—and held his ground. “Yes, sir, that’s what I’m asking. Will you keep it under control for a few weeks so I can try for a job with the dig crew?”

Carlton’s shoulders sagged as he pulled out from under the hood again to face his younger son. “I’ll keep a lid on things. You go see if you can get a job. The extra dollars will come in handy.”

“They probably won’t pay much.”

“Whatever it is, it’ll be welcome.” Carlton put his head down again, signaling the conversation was over.

*****

If I had to guess, I’d say this is a story about a young man trying to recapture faded ambitions. Knowing Donald, I’d also say the novel holds some mystery. By the way, he’s writing about the country we both came from. In real life, it was McCurtain County, Oklahoma, centered around a little town nine miles from Arkansas and thirty miles from Texas. I know it well.

Now my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on writing. And keep on submitting your work to publishers and agents. You have something to say… so say it.

If you would like to drop me a line, my personal links follow:

Email: dontravis21@gmail.com.

Facebook: Don Travis

Twitter: @dontravis3

Here are some buy links to City of Rocks, my most recent book.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/City-Rocks-Vinson-Mystery-Book-ebook/dp/B071Z9V7DT

DSPP: https://www.dsppublications.com/books/the-city-of-rocks-by-don-travis-393-b

Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-city-of-rocks-don-travis/1126419974

Apple: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-city-of-rocks/id1217068245

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-city-of-rocks

The next book in the BJ Vinson Mystery Series, The Lovely Pines is scheduled for release on August 28 of this year. Abaddon’s Locusts follows on January 22, 2019.

See you next week.

Don

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

New Mexico… My Adopted State

dontravis.com blog post #271

A Forties Era motel on East Central
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Regular readers know that I’m born and bred an Okie. I don’t believe I even left the state until I was sixteen when my family moved just across the border to DeQueen, Arkansas where I graduated from high school. After that, I lived in Texarkana, Texas awhile, graduated from TCU in Fort Worth, meandered around Germany for a year or so with the US Army before being shipped to Colorado. After discharge from the military, I took work in Denver where I met and married my wife Betty. Denver was okay, but I wasn’t enamored of it as many people are. So I wasn’t disturbed when my company transferred me to Albuquerque, New Mexico. I still remember topping a hill and seeing the city spread out in the distance.

My reaction was “Wow!” My wife’s? “Oh, crap!”

I loved it instantly. It took her about a year before she lost the urge to return to Denver. Over time, my liking for my adopted state has only strengthened. I hope that comes through in my writing. I try to highlight different areas of New Mexico in each novel. I’ve reproduced some of my treatments showing that respect below.

*****

From The Zozobra Incident:

Prologue:

          The Sangre de Cristos to the north and the Jemez Mountains on the west stood like massive, mute sentinels. An unforgiving sun high in the cloudless sky bleached the desert landscape brown and turned Interstate 25 into twin ribbons of glistening black tar. The white four-door Impala barreling down the highway pushed the speed limit—not enough to attract the attention of passing cops but sufficient to clip a few minutes off the hour’s drive to Albuquerque.

Chapter 4

I picked up I-25 South and exited at Central Avenue, turning left up the long, steady climb to the heights. Central was once touted as the world’s longest main street and had been a stretch of the famous Route 66 before Eisenhower’s interstate highway program did it in. Now lined with one-story brick and stucco antique shops, cheap motels, bars, and adult bookstores, Central was well past her glory days, but she still put on a flashy show of neon lights by night. Inevitably the morning sun exposed her timeworn wrinkles and sagging frame.

I had intended to use this time to think. Instead I found myself examining the venerable old gal. The impressive campus of Presbyterian Hospital showed signs of recent construction, but then it usually had something underway. The University of New Mexico was a beehive of activity. Apparently some sort of musical performance at Popejoy Hall had ended, and cars were now spilling out of the side streets. The trendy Nob Hill Mall, with its boutiques and outdoor cafés in the Midtown area, drew college students and young adults from every walk of life.

I motored past the sprawling and aging New Mexico State Fairgrounds, where a weekend flea market, in-season horse racing, and daily casino operations attracted gamblers, drunks, touts, and prostitutes of both sexes. Back in the days when I was a street cop, this area and the rabbit run a little farther to the west had dealt me more trouble than anywhere else. I’d pinched more than one thief trying to sell his loot in the flea market. I’d faced down a distraught family man who’d gambled away the mortgage money at the racetrack and was determined to commit suicide by cop in the parking lot, but thank goodness, my partner and I talked him out of it.

*****

If you haven't read Zozobra yet, I encourage you to take a look at it on Amazon. I believe they allow you to read a significant portion of the book on-line. 

Central Avenue sounds seedy in the above. But that’s all right. Parts of it are seedy. A wonderful seedy that gives you an insight into the days when it was part of the fabled Route 66 that stretched clear across this nation. Eisenhower’s interstate highway system might have done it Route 66, but so far, it hasn’t appreciably altered Albuquerque’s Central Avenue.

And now my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on writing. And keep on submitting your work to publishers and agents. You have something to say… so say it.

If you feel like dropping me a line, my personal links follow:

Email: dontravis21@gmail.com.

Facebook: Don Travis

Twitter: @dontravis3

Here are some buy links to City of Rocks, my most recent book.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/City-Rocks-Vinson-Mystery-Book-ebook/dp/B071Z9V7DT

DSPP: https://www.dsppublications.com/books/the-city-of-rocks-by-don-travis-393-b

Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-city-of-rocks-don-travis/1126419974

Apple: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-city-of-rocks/id1217068245

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-city-of-rocks

See you next week.

Don

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

A Word Picture of My Hometown, Circa 1949 (A Reprint)

I've been thinking back on my childhood in Oklahoma more than usual lately and came across a blog I did about the town of my birth, childhood, and teens. I'd like to re-post it below:

Courtesy of Wikimedia

*****

Broken Bow was a lumber and farming town situated in the rolling hills and green forests of the "Little Dixie" Baptist bible belt of southeastern Oklahoma.  The town sat nine miles west of Eagletown, an important Indian trading community on the Arkansas border back when the two states were known as Indian Territory. Eagletown, now reduced to no more than a nondescript service station, huddled beside the highway as busy travelers whizzed past without noticing.

Broken Bow began life as an Indian village called Con Chito. Over the generations, it waxed and waned and died and revived until two brothers by the name of Dierks incorporated the community in 1911, naming it after their hometown in Nebraska.

The town of roughly 2,500 souls fastened itself to the narrow blacktop highway coming in from Arkansas and the railroad tracks paralleling the road. Most commercial businesses clustered along the two paved downtown streets running north from the highway and a couple of graveled roads pacing them on the east and on the west. The Dierks Lumber Company sawmill, the town's largest employer, lay on the other side of the railroad tracks where the highway turned south and ran twelve miles through open farm country to Idabel, the McCurtain County seat, and beyond to the rich river bottoms. From there, it crossed into Texas after another twenty miles.

Broken Bow was the kind of place where no one knew his own address. A family lived three blocks east of the feed store and one block south, second house on the left, or some such descriptive direction. There weren't even street signs when I was a child. Nor was there postal delivery, except for rural routes. Town mail was collected from rented boxes or the free general delivery window at the post office.

Generations of children measured their growth by running down the sidewalk on Main Street and jumping to touch the rafters of the wooden overhang protecting pedestrians from the blazing sun or heavy rain squalls. The drug store on the uphill corner of this block-long shaded section boasted a soda fountain, making it a magnet for the younger set.

The town's most popular Saturday night pastime was parking head-in to the curb along the main drag as near the drug store as possible. Entire families sat in cars and trucks to indulge in some serious people watching until it was time for the picture show half a block down on the other side of the street. It was a good way to keep up with budding teenage romances and the state of the neighbors' marital relationships. Sartorial splendor was considered anything beyond a gingham house dress and bib overalls.

The Broken Bow High Savages annually engaged the Idabel Warriors in the "Little River Rumble," one of the oldest football rivalries in the state. Back then, the schools were segregated, of course, and remained that way until 1964. In fact, although were were in the midst of the Choctaw Nation, I don't recall attending class with any Natives except two boys a few years behind me. However, the school secretary was a Native American... a Hopi from distant New Mexico. For what it's worth, the first year that two black players were permitted on the team, Broken Bow High won the championship in their division.

I fondly remember the town as an easy-going, not-much-happening place where my grandmother and I rocked on the porch in the early summer evenings, while my grandfather sliced open a plump, red-meat watermelon. The setting sun caught in the topmost branches of the chinaberry tree in the front yard and played among leaves ruffled by a gentle breeze. Often, as heat waves slowly dissipated on the asphalt highway and the delicate scent of roses and hydrangeas and morning glories flooded the porch, we'd hear a family on the far side of the railroad tracks harmonizing familiar gospel songs. Sometimes we joined right in. I've always wondered if they heard us as clearly as we heard them.

*****

Ah, those were the days. At least, that's the way I view them from today's perspective. In truth, they were as stressful and troublesome as those I sometimes experience today. The problems were just appropriate to the time. I hope this re-post provoked thoughts of your own times past.

Be happy to hear from you at dontravis21@gmail.com.

Gonna leave the links to me and my writing below:

: dontravis.com

Email: dontravis21gmail.com

Facebook: dontravis

Twitter: @dontravis3

DSP Pub ebook: https://www.dsppublications.com/books/the-bisti-business-by-don-travis-360-b

DSP Pub paperback: https://www.dsppublications.com/books/the-bisti-business-by-don-travis-361-b

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Bisti-Business-Vinson-Mystery-Book-ebook/dp/BO1MSATKCO

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-bisti-business/id1161475375?mt=11

Barnes&Noble: http://ww.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-bisti-business-don-travis/1113760492?ean=2940157409005

As always, thanks for being readers.

Don

New blogs are posted at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.

SNUFF

How about a bit of nonsense this week? I don’t know where these things come from. The word snuff popped into my head, so I sat down and wrote something using the word. Like I say, it’s a fluff piece, but I hope it brings you a chuckle or two. Not only that, but it’s written in the present tense. I NEVER write in the present tense. This is beginning to worry me.

*****

SNUFF

Sinclair Nevaeh Fleurette. That’s my name. And I hate it! How’d you like to haul that load of alphabets around on your back? Sinclair’s not so bad… compared to the rest, that is. Mom says it’s old English for the French Norman town of Saint Clair. But come on, what can you do with the name. The familiar for Robert is Bob or Rob. William is Bill or Billy. Sinclair is… well, Sinclair. Sure don’t want anyone calling me Sin or—less yet—Clair.

But Nevaeh? Pronounce it for me, will you? Half the time it comes out wrong, so I always just put down N as a middle initial. Where does it come from? I’ll tell you where. My old man likes the rock group P.O.D., and when the vocalist named his daughter Heaven turned around backward, Frank Flourette thought that was neat. Didn’t he realize Sonny Sandoval was naming a girl, for crying out loud? He’s also probably cool with P.O.D standing for Payment on Death. So there’s no help for me there. Being called Nav wouldn’t be so bad, except I’d be explaining what it stood for all the time.

Some guys get called by their last name? You know, “Hey, Jones” or “How’s it going, Irons?” Nobody wants to say Fleurette… except the teacher who’s always calling me Mr. Fleurette. You know what it’s like to be called Fleurette in the middle of the high school gym? Thank goodness, I’m an only child, so nobody else has to put up with it. Except Mom. But Mrs. Flourette doesn’t sound all that bad. My dad? He’s Frank to everybody in town.

So all the other kids settled the problem for me… like they usually do. They came up with their own name. Fortunately, it wasn’t what I was afraid they would settle on… Flower, or worse Little Flower. They took my initials SNF and turned it into Snuff. So that’s what I’m called, and have been for years by everyone under the age of twenty-one in this little Oklahoma town. Snuff! Ain’t that grand?

At the beginning of this school year—my senior class—a new family moved to town. All the way from Quebec up in Canada. French Canadian, everyone says they are. All I know is their youngest daughter is in my homeroom class, and she caught my eye right off the bat. Small, heart-shaped face. Pink, rosy cheeks. Pouty, cherry red lips. And she talks with just the slightest accent, which she claims comes from speaking French in the family. Her name is Antoinette. Not An-to-net, but An-twoi-nette. Beautiful… just like she is.

When the teacher has us go around the room and introduce ourselves, her eyes fix on me when I say the word Fleurette. Later, when I discover we have adjoining lockers, she smiles, dimpling one of those rosy cheeks, and pronounces my last name. It flows off her lips like a bubbling brook slipping over moss covered-rocks. Lyrical. Poetic. Beautiful.

All of a sudden, my last name isn’t so bad after all. Certainly better than Snuff.

*****

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why I’m posting this. If you come up with something that makes sense, email me at dontravis21@gmail.com. As always, thanks for being readers.

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

Spittin’ Watermelon Seeds

Another of my short stories this week. Hope it tickles some childhood memories and takes you back a few years.

*****

Common Carrier Photo courtesy of Google Image Search

SPITTIN’ WATERMELON SEEDS

“Ain’t nobody better’n me.”

Ohm Blake was talking about spitting watermelon seeds. His name was really Jerome, but the kids called him Ohm or sometimes Doodoohead. He was wearing bib-and-brace overalls without a shirt. The sprung brace on his left shoulder wouldn’t stay hooked to its brass button and hung down his back like a weird floppy arm. He smelled like old farts and toe jam.

I snatched up his dare. “Bull crap. I can spit longer’n you any day.”

“George, if you takin’ me on, you gotta make it worth my while." He paused. "Like your Swiss army knife.”

I backed off. Uncle Cage gave me that knife just before he shipped out and got killed in the war. “Nobody gets my Swiss army knife. Besides, you don’t have nothing near what that knife’s worth.”

Ohm fished around in his overalls and came up with a big pocket watch. Gold with spidery black numbers on a pure white dial, the watch had “Waltham” printed just below the “12.” Thin ebony hands marked the time. A longer, even slimmer sweep hand raced steadily around the watch. Man, it was beautiful.

My pal, Buddy Oates, brought me back to earth. “Where’d you get something like that? You stole it, didn’t you?”

“Didn’t, neither!” Ohm shouted. “My granddaddy give it to me on my tenth birthday last month. He carried it when he was a train conductor. His official Railroad Chro-no-me-ter.”

Wow! A chronometer! That had to be way better than a watch. All of a sudden, I just had to have that timepiece. It had kept a train running on schedule for years and years. “You’re on. My knife against your chronometer.”

There were four of us. Me and Ohm. Buddy and Ohm’s pal, Harry. Five, really, because this big old crow was perched atop a telephone pole taking a good deal of interest in us. The birds were scavengers. Thieves. No-goods.

Watermelon seed spittin' contests had a strict set of rules. Best two out of three. Show your spitting seeds to the other guy before you store them in your mouth. Can’t touch them again with your hand. Stand behind a line you can’t cross. Take no more than two steps forward and spit. Seed’s gotta land over another line ten feet out in front. The winner is whoever lands farther behind that one. If two seeds come out of your mouth at the same time, or if you can’t spit three seeds for any reason, you lose.

Buddy and Harry scratched out the two lines while Ohm and I dug into two slices of juicy red watermelon. I buried my face in my slice and chewed a big hunk of the sweet meat, carefully culling the seeds and storing them in my cheek. Then we swiped our mouths with the backs of our hands and spit out the seeds into our palms to select the right ones. I wanted a good solid seed. Not the biggest; not the smallest. But a good spittin' seed had to have some bulk.

After I made my selection, I eyed the crow on the pole. “What’s he hanging around for?”

Buddy studied the bird a moment. “I think he likes that pin on your cap.”

I’d paid a quarter at the Five-and-Dime for this little pin that spelled out “George” in shiny letters. It looked good fastened to the front of my baseball cap.

We played rock-scissors-paper to see who went first. Rock crushed scissors, so Ohm got behind the line, stuffed three seeds in his mouth, and got set like he was running a foot race. He took two steps, and with his head way out in front his chest, let go. “Pttt-tu!”

It was a good one, landing six inches over the line.

I got into position and dug around with my tongue to select a seed. It felt smooth on my tongue. After a couple of deep breaths, I darted forward. “Ptoo-ey!”

Not good enough. It landed half an inch short of Ohm’s seed. He gave a big smirk that said “nice try, shmuck” before making his second launch. It fell short of his first seed. Short of mine, in fact.

I lined up and let go without even taking my two steps. My big, black seed flew through the air and landed beside his. Then it scooted about a quarter of an inch beyond. I’d taken the lead.

Ohm scowled and shrugged his shoulders to loosen up, making his sprung brace wiggle like a dog’s tail. Then he gave it everything he had. Man, did he spit! His seed flew through the air, landed, and bounced once. About a quarter-inch beyond my mark.

I took my position. This was it. My prized knife was at stake. I got set and …

Buddy let out a yell. Startled, I glanced up and saw the crow heading for me. I ducked as the bird’s claws snatched for my cap. He missed and flew off, cawing all the way.

As I took my position to start over again, I realized there wasn’t a seed in my mouth. Then something squeezed past my Adam’s apple. I started coughing like crazy, but that seed kept on going down my craw, even when Buddy thumped me on the back. Oh, man, I was gonna have a watermelon growing in my belly.

Ohm brought me back to reality with a big grin on his fat face. “Go on, spit. You can’t, can you? You swallowed the seed.” He jumped up and down and clapped his hands. “He did! He swallowed the seed. I won! I won. Gimme my knife.”

“Geez, Ohm, that crow took him by surprise.” Buddy said. “Be a good sport.”

Ohm put his finger across his lips like he was thinking. Then he gave an ugly grin. “Nope. He knows the rules. You can’t spit the third one, you lose.

#####

My mom never asked about her brother’s knife, but she musta wondered about it because I was always hauling it out and using one of the blades to work on something or the other. But I figure I came out ahead anyway. Sure, I lost my uncle’s prized knife, but I learned what Mom called a “life lesson.” Don’t risk what you value most, no matter the temptation. Sorry, Uncle Cage.

By the way, I didn’t end up with a watermelon growing in my belly. Another Old Wives’ Tale bit the dust.

*****

I don’t know about you guys, but this takes me back to Oklahoma in the summertime. Any day we could get a watermelon was a good one. My grandfather grew the biggest, plumpest, juiciest melons I ever tasted. He even grew some of the yellow-meat kind, but I preferred the red. Don’t know why. They tasted about the same.

As always, everyone … thanks for reading. Look around the site while you’re here, and give me some feedback on the story.

Don

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

How About Another Prologue this Week?

Last week we had a short piece from an unpublished novel. Today, I’d like to give you the Prologue of another one entitled SOURWATER SLOUGH. It takes place in my old neighborhood of Southeastern Oklahoma. And speaking of Oklahoma, let’s take a moment to remember the tragedies of that great state’s recent super tornadoes.

By the way, the protagonist in this book (whom we will not meet in the prologue) unexpectedly finds himself a brand new Malcolm County Deputy Sheriff—after spending most of his teen years being a thorn in the Sheriff’s side. How he got there’s an interesting story in itself. Tishomingo Echo Hawk is a cool, woman-chasing, hard-drinking Choctaw not yet twenty-one whose tenuous tie to the native community is a sassy, no-nonsense grandmother who outsmarts him every time. He dislikes the way his mother selected his given name, so he goes by the moniker of Mingo.

Here’s the start of his story. Enjoy.

###

 

 Sourwater Slough along the Little Fork River south of Clovertown, Oklahoma

“You’re crazy.”

The girl tossed her head and looked at the pickup sitting thirty yards away on high ground. Her long black hair rustled like silk. That hair was what he liked most about her. Along with her eyes.

She turned her gaze to the black, silent water at their feet. “Why’d you bring me to this creepy swamp, anyway?”

He wagged his eyebrows suggestively and immediately felt like a fool. “Looking for a little privacy. You know, to have some fun.” He shifted his weight. His boots slipped in slimy mud.

“Fun? In a place like this? You are crazy.”

        “You’ve been to lotsa parties down here. We both have.”

        Why had he chosen this spot? Maybe to get her goat. No, that wasn’t it. He liked the place, probably because no one else did. He inhaled the fetid air like perfume.

“Down in the bottomlands, maybe, but not in this sewer. Sourwater stinks like a toilet.” She pointed a dimpled chin to the west. “Fisherman’s Slough is bad enough, but it’s Lake Texoma compared to this cesspool. I wanna go home.”

“All right, we’ll go back to Fisherman’s, but don’t blame me if somebody comes by and interrupts us.”

“Interrupts us? No way, buster. If this is all you think of me, there’s not gonna be any interrupting. Who do you think you are, some lover boy? Well, let me tell you something. You aren’t that good. Now take me home.”

Her words struck like a body blow. He flushed. Struggled to fill his lungs. “You get off on giving a guy a sniff and then telling him to take a hike?”

“That’s disgusting.” She whirled and started for the truck, skating in the mud before catching her balance. “Let’s go. Right now.”

“Don’t turn your back on me, bitch!”

He tugged on her slender arm. She stumbled backwards, scrambling to maintain her balance. Thin-soled slippers lost traction in the goop. She went down with a muted cry, slamming into the bole of a tree. She dropped and lay like a rag doll.

He swayed over the inert body, drawing sharp gasps. The rage dissipated. His hands dangled at his sides, fingertips twitching. His hammering heart rate slowed abruptly, leaving him dizzy. Reality returned in the faint drip of water somewhere nearby; in the smear of blood on the rough, curling bark of the tree; in the rank stench of the swamp. A stultifying breeze ruffled his face.

He looked down at her. “Come on. Get up.”

Aw, hell. She wasn’t gonna get up. Ever. Oh, man, what now? It was an accident. Her fault. Anybody could see that. Anybody but that fat Malcolm County Sheriff, Joe Lee Buchanan. That redneck wouldn’t buy it. Not for a minute.

He’d just wanted to get it on, to do it. That’s what they’d come out here for—or he had, anyway. Wasn’t like they hadn’t done it before. Why’d she have to go squirrelly? It wasn’t fair. Got him all hot and bothered and then crapped out on him. She couldn’t get away with that.

His shoulders rose and fell with a sigh. She was usually a good sport, up for doing crazy things. He’d led her away from the truck on purpose, laughing at the awkward way she skied through the mud. How was he supposed to know she’d get mad? God, she looked funny lying there. Too bad, but she ought not have treated him like dirt.

“Serves you right.”

His words echoing hollowly across the dead surface of the slough spooked him. Didn’t sound like his voice. More like a stranger’s. Was somebody in his head talking for him?

A splash down the shoreline sent his heart pumping and puckered his flesh. He peered through the late afternoon haze. Fishermen? Frog giggers? But nothing stirred in the oppressive heat. Not a leaf. Just swarms of gnats and flies. Sourwater lay silent and mysterious, looking more like a pool of dirty motor oil than water. A thick canopy of branches overhead almost obscured the low bank of clouds hiding the sun. The heavy atmosphere made it hard to breathe. The bog reeked of death and decay. What the hell was he gonna do now?

Ripples near a cypress knee poking up out of stale water turned into a snake. The sight of the ugly moccasin gave him an idea. Nobody knew he’d brought her out here. So he’d just leave her for the swamp. Fish ate dead flesh, didn’t they? Better yet, his great-granddaddy used to tell about a big alligator down in the bottoms. That dude would take her for sure. Clean up after him in a minute. Nobody’d ever find her. That was the answer. The slough knew how to take care of its dead.

A clap of thunder overhead and an answering rumble off to the south freed him from inertia. He slogged through the mud to his vehicle in search of something to weigh her down. Rope was no good—too distinctive. All kinds of killings got solved with nothing more than a hair. He knew that from watching TV, although Buchanan and his Malcolm County crew weren’t as sharp as those guys on “CSI.” They wouldn’t catch him like that. Not those slobs. Still, he needed to be careful in case they called in professionals—like the state cops.

A spool of fishing line might work. Everybody in the county had a reel, and it wouldn’t take fingerprints. What was that other stuff they talked about on those shows? Skin thing-a-ma-bobs. Epi—epi-something-or-the-other. The nylon was too smooth to hold anything like that, but just to be safe he’d wear a pair of work gloves from the pickup to handle everything.

He stripped to keep sweat from ruining his clothes. Buck naked, he scrounged enough rocks to fill two burlap sacks he found along the shoreline. Panting from his efforts, he lashed the frail, dead form to the bags with yards of filament. Man, even that thick hair looked different now. Lost its luster.

As he struggled to lift the trussed up package, he slipped and fell on his face. He fought his way to his feet as the first raindrops crashed through the overhanging branches. When he rolled her into the slough, she slid a couple of feet and stopped. He recoiled as her big eyes stared at him.

He swiped his running nose and steadied himself. It was just the water. The weighted sacks had caused her to turn in the shallows. She wasn’t looking at him. She wasn’t looking at anything.

He forced himself to wade into the revolting stew of sediment and noxious ooze to struggle with the bundle, all the while trying to ignore thick muck squishing between his toes and clutching his ankles like spectral hands. Oh, hell. Where was that water moccasin? It was all he could do to keep from bolting back to the shore. Fat raindrops raised pimples on the dark water, making it seem alive. Green at the edges, the lagoon turned black toward the middle. Poisons leaching up out of the ground. Acids eating his flesh right now.

He grabbed the body before he freaked himself out and heaved with all his strength. His feet shot out from under him. He went down hard in the slick mud. The girl seemed to clutch his chest. With a mindless squeal, he shoved her away and scrambled to find purchase on something solid, but the slimy bottom betrayed him. He floundered helplessly as Sourwater sucked him into her depths. He fought his way to the surface, splashing like a five-year-old who couldn’t swim. Reason returned, but not before he’d taken a lungful of filthy water. Coughing and gagging, his insides burning, he clawed his way back to shore to throw up on the muddy bank.

While he struggled with his heaving stomach, a brilliant bolt of lightning struck a tree across the lagoon. Ear-splitting thunder left his head swimming. A sharp odor filled his nostrils. He tasted ozone on his tongue. His hair stood on end, and his nerves sang like they were plugged into a live socket. That had been close. He threw up his head and laughed.

“Missed me! And if you can’t get me, who can?”

 

###

Next week: I'll try to get back to THE BISTI BUSINESS. After all, we haven't visited Bisti/De-Na-Zin yet.

New posts are published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.

 

Do You Remember Those Old Telephones?

Last Friday evening , a friend I were having dinner at Charlie’s Front Door in Hoffmantown Center on Menaul. Bobbi is the considerate lady who saw to it I survived the first month after my back surgery last August.

Side note: Apparently “Lady” is an old Oklahoma term for a first class broad, while “Woman” seems to be the preferred term of today’s ladies…uh, women. I’ve gotten in trouble several times of late attempting to confer a compliment by using my Oklahoma upbringing, only to be corrected by modern ladi…wom…well, females. All of this is apropos of nothing in this piece, but I’m at an age where I get easily distracted.

Back to Charlie’s. Shortly after we were seated, two couples were escorted to an adjoining table…and I do mean adjoining. We heard every word they said, and I’m certain they were privy to our conversation, as well. After learning one couple was from Dallas visiting New Mexico friends, I very politely intruded on their supposed privacy to volunteer that I was a TCU grad and familiar with their part of the country. I withheld the information that while I liked Fort Worth, I considered Dallas to be “No-Man’s Land.” Even so, there are some nice people living there, and these seemed like two of them.

Broken Bow Water Tower

The cross tables conversations continued, and when asked if I was from originally from New Mexico, I replied that I hailed from the southeastern Oklahoma town of Broken Bow. It’s a small world, folks. It seems the gentleman from Dallas likes to fish in Broken Bow Lake and at Beaver’s Bend on the Mountain Fork River. During the ensuing conversation, Bobbi made sure they knew I was a writer and shamelessly plugged my books. I could only sit and blush. I’m a writer, for Heaven’s Sake, not a salesman, and quite introverted at that. Bobbi, a retired airline hostess (I’m probably in trouble again because I’m not sure that the proper word isn’t “stewardess”) doesn’t know how to spell shy.

Broken Bow Public Library--But not the one I remember

During the discourse, I mentioned I’d done a blog post about Broken Bow and provided my dontravis.com blog address. So perhaps these new friends will be reading this one day after they finish fishing the San Juan up near Farmington. If so…hi. Enjoyed our inadvertent night out together.

At any rate, that got me to thinking about Broken Bow again (and it’s only taken me 424 words to get around to the subject I wanted to address).

When I was a kid (yes, I can remember that far back…sometimes more vividly than what happened last week), there weren’t many telephones in our little town. My grandmother had one of them. Her number was 28. That’s it: t-w-e-n-t-y-e-i-g-h-t. For a while, we didn’t have a phone of our own, but that was okay. She was just at the bottom of the hill, one block from our house. If someone wanted one of us, she’d send Granddaddy Bill up with a message. Or more likely, she’d wait until my sister or one of my brothers or I came down for a visit. Granddaddy Bill usually had a watermelon cut, so that was often.

The telephone was a long brown wooden box mounted on the wall of the kitchen. It had a big black plastic (or was it Bakelite in those days?) dish-like thing poking out of the middle, a hook for the receiver on one side, and a crank on the other. I used to stare up at it with my mouth hanging open, marveling that we could stand in our own kitchen (or my grandmother’s, at least) and talk to all the people in town…providing they had another instrument like that one in their home. And at least 27 others did, because Mama’s was number 28.

I didn’t use the phone often; after all, I was a little kid, and almost anybody I wanted to raise, I could reach by standing in the front yard and hollering. Nonetheless, I used it a couple of times. I remember the first time I did so. I stood on a chair, put that black receiver thingy to my ear and gave the crank a little spin. No good. Not hard enough. I tried again, and then a stranger’s voice came back in my ear.

“Number, please?”

“Twenty-eight,” I said.

“No, no. That’s the number you’re calling from. What number do you want?”

That was a stumper, and it was all I could do to keep from putting the cradle back on it’s hook (I didn’t know about technical terms like “hanging up” at the time) and running to hide under the bed. (I’ve already warned you I’m shy, remember?)

Fortunately, I froze instead. So the voice asked who I wanted to speak to.

“Who…who’s this?” I remember asking.

“This is Susan. I’m the operator. Who are you looking for, honey?”

“Jimmy.”

“Jimmy who?”

“Dunno. Just Jimmy.”

“Where does he live?”

“On the highway out south of town?”

“Oh, you must mean the Hinsons. Just a minute, sweetheart.”

Lo and behold, I was speaking to Jimmy’s mother in less time than it would have taken me to run and hide under the bed. Unfortunately, Jimmy was off playing at somebody else’s house, but that’s beside the point.

What is the point? Try that with today’s fast, sophisticated, automated communications systems and see how far you get.

 

Next week: Judging from recent posts, it could be anything.

New posts are published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.