Superhero Softball

     Part of my freelancing writing for the past year has been for a superhero film/TV news site called BamSmackPow (I review The Gifted each week).
     Because of the World Series, there won't be an episode to review next week, and my mind working the way it does, began to speculate about what characters would be drafted if Marvel TV and the Arrowverse were to play a softball game against each other, powers being legal to use.
     Villains are not allowed to play, due to trust issues, though antiheroes may with close supervision.

TEAM ARROWVERSE

First base: Kara Danvers/Supergirl, Supergirl
Reasoning: Kara can fly, which is useful for catching fly balls. She's very strong, which helps in throwing, and her cheerful attitude would be great for team chemistry. Plus her friendly demeanor would get baserunners involved in a conversation, thus keeping them distracted from the action.

Second base: Cisco Ramon/Vibe, The Flash
Reasoning: Cisco can teleport, which would be very useful when fielding, plus he already works closely with...

Shortstop: Barry Allen/The Flash, The Flash
Reasoning: Line drives require instant reactions, and who has a quicker reaction time than The Fastest Man Alive? Double plays would be a snap.

Third base: Sara Lance/White Canary, Legends of Tomorrow
Reasoning: Sara's an assassin, very skilled with weaponry of all sorts, but especially knives. She's never missing first base on those infield throws.

Left field: Jessie Quick, The Flash
Reasoning: Her genius-level intellect, combined with Speed Force powers, provides the outfield with a quarterback.

Center field: Firestorm (Jefferson Jackson & Martin Stein), Legends of Tomorrow
Reasoning: Jax was a star quarterback in high school, and with his athletic prowess combined with Stein's knowledge of physics and advanced math, Firestorm would be a great pick to have on your team. Plus they can fly, robbing sure home runs.

Right field: Joe West (The Flash) or John Diggle (Arrow)
Reasoning: There's no way you can leave Joe out of any important situation, and Joe would see this softball game as important. While his lack of superpowers would relegate him to right field, his strength would be useful at the plate and his teammates could always look to him for advice if needed.
Diggle would apply for many of the same reasons.

Catcher: Leonard Snart/Captain Cold, The Flash/Legends of Tomorrow
Reasoning: His presence is intimidating, which would spook opposing batters. Catchers are typically those players on the team who work as the glue, holding everything together, and Snart is an excellent and meticulous planner - he would forge the greatest strategic plots ever.to help his team succeed, even if he didn't especially care for most of his teammates.

Pitcher: Oliver Queen/The Green Arrow, Arrow
Reasoning: Oliver's determination, level of fitness and deadly projectile accuracy makes him an excellent choice for Team Arrowverse's pitcher. He commands respect, and his steely glare and fierce stubble alone would give him a mental edge, as they're already MLB-caliber, similar to John Smoltz.

Manager: Harry Wells (Earth-2), The Flash
Reasoning: He's maybe the smartest person in the multiverse, and his gruff manner and awful people skills cover over an awkward affection for his workplace proximity associates. With Felicity Smoak (Arrow) as assistant manager translating and using her techy wizardry for Moneyball-sih purposes, they make an unbeatable leadership duo for this project.

Team Doctor: Obviously it's Caitlin Snow (The Flash), who doesn't trust Killer Frost enough to allow herself to play, despite secretly being deceptively good at softball.

Fans - Ralph Dibney, whichever of Joe or Diggle isn't playing, Thea Queen, Kara's sister Alex, Winn Schott, Jimmy Olsen, Ray Palmer. 

TEAM MARVEL

First base: Matt Murdock/Daredevil, Daredevil
Reasoning: Matt has great reflexes, which would be handy when fielding - no sight required. He would be the most reliable bet for snagging teammates' throws. 

Second base: Clarice Fong/Blink, The Gifted
Reasoning: "They have a teleporter on second, we need one, too," she'd sum up everyone's thought process here. Plus her sarcastic wisecracks would keep everyone loose.

Shortstop: Elena "Yo-Yo" Rodriguez, Agents of SHIELD
Reasoning: Yo-Yo's quickness would be extremely useful in the infield, able to zip across the field to tag runners out.

Third base: Grant Ward, Agents of SHIELD
Reasoning: His discipline and military training would be a great asset to this team, and he would play nicely enough with his teammates to reluctantly be allowed to join in. His sense of dark humor might even rattle the other team. And I bet he would be a decent threat to get extra-base hits each time at bat.

Left field: Jessica Jones, Jessica Jones
Reasoning: She's super strong, and that's needed in the outfield. She's also mentally tough and used to working on her own, which is a necessity for the occupants stranded out in the pasture. At bat she'd be a good leadoff line-drive hitter.

Center field: Bobbi "Mockingbird" Morse or Melinda May, Agents of SHIELD
Reasoning: Bobbi and May can do everything - of course either of them could play softball adequately enough to join this game.

Right field: John Proudstar/Thunderbird, The Gifted
Reasoning: He's very strong, useful for those long throws to the plate, and great at tracking due to his enhanced senses, which would help at tracking fly balls. His personality would mesh well with these teammates, even though some of them he might not entirely like being around.

Catcher: Alphonso "Mack" McKenzie, Agents of SHIELD
Reasoning: Mack is enormous and strong, which are good traits in a catcher, and though his emotions might occasionally steer him wrong, he's generally a reliable leader to lean on, which his team would need. Plus he would be a home-run threat at the plate, and ensure great team chemistry.

Pitcher: Lauren Strucker, The Gifted
Reasoning: Lauren's powers allow her to manipulate air molecules, which would be very helpful in throwing unhittable curveballs, sliders and knuckleballs. And I bet she's played softball in the fairly recent past, as most girls do. Besides, she's incredibly stubborn, which is an admirable trait in pitchers.
Also, her dad Reed played Little League baseball growing up, so it might be in the Strucker genes.

Manager: Phil Coulson, Agents of SHIELD
Reasoning: Coulson is incredibly inspiring and passionate, and people believe in him. That's the confidence you want in your team's manager. His assistant manager would be Colleen Wing from Iron Fist, as Daisy Johnson would claim she knows nothing about softball in order to fangirl over Thunderbird and the Green Arrow.

Team Doctor: Jemma Simmons and Caitlin Strucker would team up to fill this role when they weren't running the concession stand.

Fans - Lorna Dane/Polaris, Reed and Andy Strucker, Leo Fitz, Foggy Nelson, Lance Hunter, Karen Page, Marcos Diaz/Eclipse, Daisy "Quake" Johnson, Danny Rand.

Team Arrowverse is much more skilled, but Team Marvel would work better together. The outcome's a tossup, but I would love to see this happen.   

Ping Pong Diplomacy

     The Bulldogs beat the Tahlequah Tigers Friday night, or at least the boys’ team did, but Tom didn’t go. He thought about going to the games, but it didn’t seem worth the trouble, because he’d run into Natalie, and he didn’t want to deal with her accusing stares. That was the trouble with his next-door neighbor being on the cheerleading squad, he thought – even at basketball games he couldn’t escape. And since his friend Trevor had moved away from Skiatook to somewhere around Chicago about a year ago, there weren’t that many people to be around. Tom had trouble making himself talk to new people. The thing was, though, that Natalie was right – he just didn’t want to admit that.

      She was mad at him for making fun of Svetlana’s reading – she had been adopted by the Maguires about the same time Trevor moved. She was from what had been the Soviet Union - it was now some new country spelled with an unpronounceable jumble of letters, and the encyclopedias in the school library hadn’t been updated with all these new countries yet. And was it his fault that he had always excelled at retaining written information? His mother said that that didn’t give him reason to make anybody feel inferior because they didn’t grasp concepts quite as quickly. That was pretty much what Natalie had said, too.

      So Tom sat on the couch with his younger siblings and watched the latest episode of Boy Meets World, which he found ridiculous and irritating – Corey Matthews was simply too boring to be interesting. But Jenny was obsessed with the show, alternatively attempting to recreate Topanga’s choices in hairstyles and clothing or gushing without end about Corey’s friend Shawn. And Lenny did whatever Jenny told him to, so he always watched the show, but only because his twin did. So the phone ringing gave Tom a welcome excuse to vault off the couch and into the kitchen to answer it.    

      “Curtis residence, Tom speaking. Who is this?”

     “It’s Nat.”

     “Hey. Couldn’t you just walk over if you had to talk?”

     “This feels too important,” she sighed. “Can you meet up tomorrow?”

     “I think so. What time?”

     “How about eleven, by the mailboxes.”

     The Curtises and Phillipses had lived on the same red river-gravel road for as long as either Tom or Natalie could remember, and the cluster of mailboxes near the highway turn-off was the bus stop, and thus  generally the neighborhood gathering place.  

     “All right.”

     “Didn’t see you in the stands tonight,” her tone sounded disappointed.

     “No, I didn’t go.”

     “Pete could’ve let you ride with us, you know.” Pete was the oldest Phillips sibling living at home, two were in Norman studying at OU, and Natalie fell the fifth out of six in terms of birth order.

     “Yeah, I know… I just….thought it would be good to spend some time with the twins.”

     He knew from experience that she would have one eyebrow raised and a hand on her hip right about then, playing with the phone cord.

     “Tom, you NEVER spend time with the twins if you can help it.”

     “So? I wanted to tonight. What’s so wrong with that?” Tom snapped out. His tone was much harsher than he meant it to be. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

     The cli-thunk of the phone slamming down on the receiver cut another another of her sighs.

     The wind was whipping along pretty well, even though the sun was shining, so Natalie and another girl, one with black hair, were wrapped up in coats. Nat was shivering, but the other girl - Svetlana Maguire - looked at ease.

     “Heeeyyy,” Tom greeted them warily.

     “Hello,” Svetlana greeted him back.

     “Hey. Since you’re here, you might as well come over to my place for ping pong,” Nat stated. Pete was by far the best of their family, but the Phillips garage could get noisy whenever there was a match in progress, they were all so competitive.

     The wind whistled by, obscuring the girls’ faces.

     “All right. I guess so,”  he agreed reluctantly.

     “Ah...what is….ping pong?” Svetlana asked.

     “It’s, uh - Shit, what is it called….?” Tom tried to answer.

     “Table tennis!” Nat smiled at the Russian girl. Her face lit up in response.

     “Oh! Table tennis! I know this, how to play.”

     She could, too. As had been Natalie’s plan, showcasing this skill cast Svetlana several rungs higher in Tom’s respect, as since he was a guy, athletic prowess in anything, even something as dorky as ping pong, equalled greater respect. That was part of the reason Nat became a cheerleader in the first place, though she would never admit that to anyone, and barely to herself. At some point through the day Tom apologized for his behavior, and Svetlana graciously accepted the apology.

     Pete drove the three of them and Natalie’s youngest sister Amanda into Tulsa to go see the Michael Jordan movie, since Svetlana needed to be indoctrinated into American pop culture more fully, and she had some knowledge of the Looney Tunes already.,full of sarcastic one-liners.

     “I bet I’m gonna show that to my kids someday,” Pete declared afterwards. 

     "That'd be, like....two thousand and fourteen. Will the world even exist by then?" Amanda asked.

Two People Fell in Love

     If it wasn’t for the pestering of my roommate Eli’s crazy girlfriend Marti, we never would have gotten together. Marti can be obnoxiously persistent when she wants to. All of us were studying at OSU-Okmulgee at the time.

    This is Lee Ann. I’ll try not to interrupt, but when I heard this idea I wasn’t a fan. “Marti! I grew up in Muskogee. In a trailer park. You said he’s a photographer. Like Peter Parker - I don’t think this is a good idea!” “It’s a great idea. Opposites attract, y’know.” Decisive head-shake from me and a dubious snort. “Just once, to meet him?” Marti pleaded. “Fine…”

      “She’s – different but you’ll like her, Mike. And it’s just a date, not like I’m askin’ you to marry her or anything. Please? Pleasepleasepleaseplease?” That finally wore my defenses out eventually, and so I unenthusiastically agreed to go on a blind double date with her and Eli. And so that’s where I first met Lee Ann, in a Braum’s one Friday night.

      The usual amount of older people were there, and a couple of teams from the local YMCA kids soccer league were having their fall-season-wrapup parties at the restaurant, with parents and siblings in tow, so the place was really crowded and noisy. She had darkish hair and her fingernails were painted teal. I noticed that because I’d never seen any girl use that color nail polish before, and because it looked good, like the uniforms of the Charlotte Hornets, San Jose Sharks and Arizona Diamondbacks. Honestly, a dude would compare to sports… She was wearing a black leather jacket, jeans and – I noticed this since it was practical – running shoes. I was hoping she didn’t notice that I’d buttoned my shirt crooked due to nervousness. Yeah, I did notice that. I also thought you were strange. But in an interesting way. She says she was wondering if she was too standoffish. We talked about surface-level things of the likes-and-dislikes variety, somehow the topic of country music came up, which we both enjoyed. We got into a long argument over Taylor Swift; I said she was terrible, Lee Ann liked her.

      I didn’t call her, even though I wanted to. I even picked up the phone a couple times with that intention, but I couldn’t ever quite finish dialing her number. Me? Why would I have cared? I was half afraid he would call. But I was also somewhat disappointed and pissed off that he didn’t.

# # #

      This inability to communicate continued until we ran into each other one afternoon in a shopping center parking lot in Tulsa about two months later. It was a chilly day, and the wind kept slamming her largeish Hobby Lobby bag into her hip.

      “Good day of shopping?” I asked, pointing at the sack.

      “Huh?” she asked, startled. “Oh, yeah. Found some cool scrapbooking stuff on sale.”

      “Cool. You scrapbook?”

      She nodded. “I like to, when I have time. What’re you here for?”

      I pointed my thumb at Guitar Center. “I need to get some cables for my amplifier, browsing around for some other stuff, kind of to get an idea of prices.”

      Her brown eyes sparkled. ”You play?!”

      “Yeah. Learned in middle school. Why?”

      She looked down at her Asics and coughed, self-conscious. “Would you….be willing to teach me? I have an acoustic with one of those funny little plug-things-“

      “Okay, so it’s possible to hook it up to an amp. Acoustic-electric.”

      “- but I don’t know what kind it is. It’s bright orange, if that helps-“

      “Not really,” I smiled a little.

      “-but I don’t really know how to play. The strings are kinda tarnished and grimy, so…”

      “That’s not hard to fix. And sure, I guess I could try.”

       “Do you sing?”

       “Not when people can hear me.”

       “If you’re going to Guitar Center anyway,” she bit her lip. “do y’mind if I tag along? Could use some advice on what stuff to get.”

       “Sure, why not?”

       “Thanks.”

       “No problem.” I held open the door to the store, she walked in. “When do you want to start?”

# # #

      “Ever wonder what the history a guitar’s seen in its previous life?”

       Lee Ann was scowling at her aching left hand, trying to shake the muscles loose, so she wasn’t really paying attention to this comment. “Mm…not really, no. What’d you mean?”

       “I dunno. Like, what happened to yours before it wound up with it?”

       She thought a moment. “I know I’m new at this, but you said guitars usually have names, right?”

       “Most of the time.” 

       “When I bought it, I heard that it-” she gestured at her Ibanez, “was called Steve. So that would mean it belonged to a girl?”

      “Probably. Not sure why, really, but that’s usually the way it goes, the guitar becomes the opposite gender.”

     “And yours is Sophie.”

      I nodded, patting the black Takamine. “Ready to get started again?”

     She shrugged halfheartedly and we began practicing again.

     “Okay, “Never Alone” by Sara Evans is pretty easy. So the chord progression on this one is D-A-Bm-G,” I said. “So to make a D, that’s your first finger on the third string, second fret, second finger first string third fret, third finger second string second fret.”

     “Tell me this gets easier…” she muttered. “And don’t strum the top two?”

# # #

     “Come On Over Tonight to a Brad Paisley concert?” I texted her around New Years.

     I remember it particularly because it was the start of a new decade, too – 2010. And I couldn’t resist the pun of including the title of one of Brad’s earlier songs in there. And she recognized the reference for what it was – a declaration that I cared about her and an invitation to go steady.    

     “She said Yes!” Lee Ann replied after what felt like forever. I wasn’t sure whether she was referring to the Rhett Akins song with that title, or the one-hit wonder “Yes!” (complete with maybe-unnecessary exclamation point) from Chad Brock. Either way, it was good news.

     So that was our first outing as an official couple. The concert was part of the American Saturday Night Tour, at the arena in Oklahoma City where the Thunder play, it was called the Ford Center then. Justin Moore and Miranda Lambert were the opening acts, and they’re both great, too. He’s from Arkansas, and she’s counted as an adopted Oklahoman, since she was married to Blake Shelton. And although a couple songs Brad forget the lyrics to, it was a fantastic show.

# # #

      Eli knocked on the door late one Saturday morning. “Hey, dude? You in there?”

      I shut up quick then, and the sounds of Sophie’s strings stopped abruptly while I opened the door.

      “Whatcha playin’?” Eli’s arms were full of grocery sacks after a run to Wal-Mart. He knew the answer was “More Than a Memory,” but figured it would be better to keep his mouth shut. 

      “Garth. And Keith Urban,” I growled. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, about anything. And so I wasn’t trying not to mope.

     “Don’t let me stop ya.”                            

     Eli began restocking the kitchen cabinets with chili, paper towels and cereal. Pretty soon from the living room he could hear the anguish within “Stupid Boy,” a reproach-filled exercise in self-flagellation. He hummed “Even If It Breaks Your Heart” to himself, spinning around from the open refrigerator to poke his head into the living room. I shushed Sophie and glared at him.    

     “Hey. Whatever happened – just apologize. Love her like she’s leavin’. Don’t mess this up; she’s a keeper. Y’all can meet in the middle somehow.”

     “You do know many song titles you used just then, don’t you?”

     “Uh….more than I meant to? I was thinking Diamond Rio…”

     I flipped him off, and he went back to whatever he was doing.

  “C’mon. You can get through this,” Marti consoled. We were in Marti’s living room, sitting on the uncomfortable faded-blue hand-me-down couch she salvaged from somebody’s driveway, and a pile of feel-good DVDs were on the coffee table, along with several cans of Bud Light and a mostly-empty pizza box. Sleepless in Seattle was playing on the TV.

  “Ooh, maybe I could slash his tires!” I tried to cheer myself up.

  “Nope, you don’t wanna do that.” Marti had previous experience with that form of revenge. It didn’t lead to good things.

  “Yes I don’t,” I huffed in frustration. “How ‘bout…I dunno… go sit in the football field stands at the high school an’ drink a beer?”

  “You think that’d help?”

  “I dunno. But that’s how I process shit. Think about it endlessly. Eventually it makes sense.”

  “Sure, let’s try it,” Marti shrugged.

# # #

     We got back together eventually. Having the other’s presence around to deal with the trials that come up made life a lot easier. And we had our share of disagreements and fights, but gradually got to understand the histories and baggage behind most things the other said and did. She grew up in a trailer park in Muskogee, while I bounced around southern Missouri and eastern Oklahoma. She enjoyed reading Billie Letts novels, and I followed halfheartedly along on the trips to the library. We were squeaking by; she was working at Wal-Mart and I had a shake photography business going.

     One day Marti send me a heads-up text that Lee Ann was leaving for her thinking-place, so Eli and I raced over to Eagle Stadium. It being August by now, the boys of fall were almost ready to shine, and at the moment Morris High was having a scrimmage, maybe against Haskell, I don’t remember. Anyway, other people were there watching, but the atmosphere was pretty relaxed. Eli was born and raised in Morris, so he knew everyone, including the people running the press box. So that part of our plan was easy. I spotted where Lee Ann was sitting in the splintery orange-painted bleachers, tucked away into the bottom-left corner, on the third row. Not many people were nearby, except a second-grader down at the railing in her cheerleader uniform, watching her big brother play.

     “Mind if I sit here?” She shrugged.

     I sat down and called Eli. He was inside the press box, and the CD player was all set up. Somebody started it, and Josh Turner flooded the loudspeakers. There were amused chucklings of approval throughout the stands, first in surprise at the unexpectedness, then as they watched what unfolded. Lee Ann’s foot tapped along automatically to the bluegrassy mandolin-led tune; by this time she’d taught herself how to play the banjo. Then which Josh Turner song it was registered – “Would You Go With Me?” – or maybe that was my being on one knee with a ring I’d improvised out of an old guitar string (because poor college students have to MacGyver things most of the time). .

     She laughed in disbelief, managing to nod her assent, while everyone else in the stands snapped pictures and whooped their congratulations. I think it was a front-page story in the local newspaper that week. Everybody dies famous in a small town, right? Anyway, that’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it. 

Go, Go Gadget

     This flashfiction story was adapted from a flashfic play we were assigned in Pop Market, where we then all cold-read our scripts. Dr. Dial-Driver's reaction - "Okay, a tragedy, that's fine.But - Damn! Why'd you have to kill the dog??!!"  I also played a 91-year-old grandmother with dementia that day. It was a super depressing start to the morning, when all of us seniors were already depressed because it was Thursday, which meant another dose of the soul-draining Capstone course. And usually we like Pop Market.

     "Not the smartest dog in the world," Ted said, looking skeptically at the puppy his wife of five weeks was holding. "But not all of them need to be."
     "I think he's adorable!" Melanie declared. "We can't let him..." her voice trailed off into the breeze, knowing that the owner would send the unwanted puppies to the local pound if they went unclaimed by Wednesday.

     "And so that's how we ended up with Gadget. Since then he's torn up shoes, shredded the couch, and angered our landlord by peeing on her purse," Ted mused aloud, remembering the day they'd taken him home, and all the chaos in the years since
     "Yes, he had done all that, and more. But there's also been the comfort he gave when your dad died, Or how he keeps me company while I'm grading papers. But now...here we are -" Melanie's voice choked up.

     "Do we have to go in?" Ted's question was barely audible.
     "Nnnyee-sss," Melanie groaned.
     "Damn."
     "We'll be okay," she comforted, not believing it in the least.
     "I know." Long pause. "I just don't believe you right now."
     "Me neither."
     But they got out of the car and removed Gadget's crate from the backseat, slowly walking into the building.
     "Welcome to Wilson Veterinary Clinic. How may I help you?" The receptionist's name tag said her name was Mia.
     Ted and Melanie looked at each other for guidance.
     "It's...we....the poor guy -" she gestured at Gadget's crate.
     "He's....almost -"
     "All right," Mia's tone was soothing but disinterested. "Dr. Cassidy will be in in a few minutes. Take as much time as you need."
     The couple sat themselves uncertainly in two of the waiting room chairs, glancing around at the other patients. Mia turned back to the computer screen and began typing again. When it's time for an animal, especially a pet, to be put down it's always so hard. I may pretend I don't care, or the owners must see it that way, but I wouldn't be able to function working here if I could let myself be too empathetic.
     Dr. Cassidy poked his head into the doorway. "Ted? Melanie?"
     "(That's us, yeah,)" they mumbled indistinctly, moving towards the doorway.
     "This is Gadget, huh?" the vet addressed the occupant of the crate. Mute nods from the people. "You've had a long and distinguished career, Inspector," Dr. Cassidy bit his lip, hesitating. "If y'all want -"
     "Thanks - but - we'll stay here," Melanie managed to answer the vet's question. She knelt down to get eye-level with the crate, her forehead resting against the bars. They felt stable, but everything was swimming and blurry. "Thank you, buddy. We'll miss you - so, so much."

     "Go - go - goodbye, Gadget," Ted choked. Melanie put a hand on his arm, and together they turned away from the freshly-dug grave.

Historical Fiction Flashfic

     This was a historical fiction flashfic in-class assignment for Dr. Dial-Driver's Pop Market. The first historical quote that leapt to mind to indicate setting was Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!" speech from June 12, 1987.

     "Mr Gorbachev, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!"
     I was nine, and so I didn't understand what President Reagan meant. I just knew I liked his movies. (And yes, I knew how weird that made me.) But Dad liked him, and so I figured that maybe he could explain.
     He tried to.
     "The Russians - y'know, from WarGames, they - well, this is in East Germany, and they're similar to the Soviets. Dangerous. Anyway, people over there are tryin' to escape - there's a MacGyver episode about it, remember?"
     I nodded. Sort of.
    "Okay, well, what Reagan is tryin' to do is get the Soviet prime minister - sort of their president - to do is let the East German people escape by tearing down the Berlin Wall."
     "He prob'ly wont, will he?"
     "I don't think so, but maybe. It could be like Rocky IV, where we decide that the other side is human, too."
     His tone was mystified and pessimistic, so I figured that that was enough politics and that it was time to do math homework. Mrs. Jackson was attempting to teach us fourth-graders division, and that was going about as well as comprehending metrical feet would in a poetry class I'd take in college.
     "Fourteen goes into ninety-two - no, that's not right... If you have ninety-two, and there's fourteen..." I muttered on my way up the screaky stairs, my Keds furthering the erosion of the woodstain in the middle of each step.

Suspense Flashfic

     For Dr. Dial-Driver's Pop Market. This was an in-class timed flashfiction assignment, making a suspense story ending with the line, "Some days I almost forget about the scar. And some days I still feel like I'm being followed, but I always remember to [blank]." Brian suggested the closing phrase, and there were a lot of interesting spins put on the phrase.
     It's not a great flashfic, especially compared to Lauren's - suspense is her wheelhouse, and she delivered a great tale of an assassination attempt with an Agatha Christie twist. McKenzie had a great fight scene in a coffee shop MacGyvering kitchen implements into weapons. Brian had a psycho attack a guy in an empty movie theater, which was a great use of setting, and Deborah set her story in an aquarium, where a stalker was eaten by a shark. A guy named Shane had us all thinking that his narrator was kidnapped by a cult, until the twist ending revealed that the narrator was actually a sugar glider, and what we thought was a cult was just the normal world seen from a rodent's perspective. That provided some material to chew over.

     Things were tense. That's the best way of describing where we were in life at that moment. I was without a steady job, and my girlfriend Jamie's parents were divorcing.
     It started when the guys from one of the frats got drunk one Thursday night. I was walking back to my apartment when I heard some scuffling noises. I went to see what was up. Three guys, a girl - this wasn't good.
    "HEY! What the -?" This got their attention, as did the fact that my phone was up to my ear reporting the rape.
    The girl - she was a small redhead - slipped away into the night. The dudes chased after me. I evaded them as best I could, running more or less in a circle across back alleys and untraveled sidewalks until the cops showed up. They were locked up for about a month, then released, somebody rich was there to clean up "this minor mistake," as they called it.
     So they tailed me, waiting for an opportune time to strike back. This didn't help ease the tension between me and Jamie, either. She knew I wasn't telling her everything, but she didn't press. That wasn't her way.
     I was walking out the store to deliver a pepperoni when they jumped me, slashed up what felt like everywhere. Someway or another I got to the hospital - since they knocked me out those details were fuzzy - and I slowly healed, except for the large jagged scar on my right forearm. It was raw and red and every day multiple people commented on it, or pointedly didn't. Eventually it faded into a nasty-looking birthmark sort of thing, and once I had enough saved up I got a tattoo to cover it.
     But the paranoia continued, as did the pain.
     It was rough.
     And it took a while, but I'll finally graduate in a couple months, after missing all that time recovering and paying off medical bills. Some days I almost forget about the scar. And some days I still feel like I'm being followed, but I always remember to --
     "Brad? Are you okay?!" Jamie looked distraught.
     I looked around, groggy, from her couch, where I'd been taking a nap. And then I knew. Not sure how that works, but it wasn't a dream: It was a vision. This was all going to play out, someway.
     The final line of the voiceover haunts echoingly in my mind - "Some days I almost forget about the scar. And some days I still feel like I'm being followed, but I always remember to..."

Get the Job Done

     Dr. Dial-Driver's Creative Writing for the Popular Market is the final creative writing course left for those RSU English majors who made their minor Creative Writing. It's basically genre fiction, which is fun to explore. That two-thirds of the class are computer-science people is a pain (this class was originally called Writing Video Games), though it provides examples of what we're trying not to do.
     This flashfiction assignment was ghostwriting practice; we were given a random selection of six elements - plot, character, character relationship, setting, and scraps of dialogue and background info. Then we had to turn them into a two-page Western. I was definitely thinking of a Clint Eastwood/Firefly vibe while working on this.

     “Remember those days when we were together? Before you changed?”

     Jack McClain rode through the dusty town of Yatesville, the scalding sunlight roasting everything in sight. It didn’t improve his mood much. Replaying his wife Maggie’s forlorn questioning about their relationship wasn’t helping with the current task at hand, either. That task was to apprehend one Garth Boggs. Yatesville was a three-day ride from their homestead, but bounty hunting was a job. It was difficult to balance when there were problems at home to sort out. Glimpses of corruption of various types were seen in almost every building he passed as he pulled up at the saloon. As long as the drinks kept coming, his relationship with Henry the barkeep were fine. When they weren’t – things were strained, likely because of that time years ago when Jack had to pull Henry into the ranks of the freshly-incarcerated. It was about a year before he and Maggie were hitched – most men would reckon her as pulchritude if it weren’t for that scar ‘long her cheek. So he laid a claim, her drifting days were finished, and it had worked out pretty well. The dubious business dealings of the Yatesvillains wasn’t his problem; keeping a low body count of uninvolved persons was.

     “What the hell’s this?” Jack frowned at his beer after tasting it. ”Don’t look normal.”

     “New truck at a discount. Cain’t say properly th’ name, sold by some German fella out of St. Louis.” Henry slid his Remington revolver across the tabletop and whipped out the lopped-off Winchester underneath the bar. The cowhands in the corner – the only other souls in the establishment at the moment - quit their hand of poker and slunk under their chairs.

     Boggs had entered the saloon.

     Jack whipped around, slinging the mug of beer into Boggs’s face while scooping up the Remington. Blood dripped from a gash over Boggs’s forehead into one eye, and it mixed with the tears and beer droplets running down his face. None of that kept him from swinging the Bowie knife towards Jack’s throatal region.

     Henry emptied the Winchester into Boggs’s hip, and Jack had already pegged his right arm. He was beginning to unholster his Smith & Wesson, just in case, when Henry vaulted over the countertop and snapped Boggs’s left arm.

     “Damn - what’d ya do that for?”
     “You know how much those mugs cost to replace?” Henry snorted. “And it’ll cause you trouble, explainin’ the condition he was hauled up to Wichita in.”

Jack ignored this reply and hoisted Boggs’s unconscious form towards the livery stable where he’d kept the farm wagon, staggering and almost faltering under the weight. Once the cargo was deposited, he retraced his path back to the saloon.

     “You’ll need that, I reckon,” he said to Boggs, flipping the outlaw’s hat into the wagon bed. “No need t’ git overheated any more’n can be helped.”

     “Thank ye,” Boggs whispered.

     “Changed for the better, I hope, Maggie,” he muttered as the horse plodded along some time later, not realizing he was speaking aloud. “Or at least that’s a start, anyway, ain’t it?”

     “It’s a sight better than leavin’ me daid,” Boggs answered from the back. “Who’s Maggie?” 

     Jack ignored him. 

Lost In This Moment

     For Dr. Dial-Driver's Pop Market. This flashfiction assignment was a romance, and the structural commands were that it had to be exactly one page long. So I snuck around the double-space-everything-in-MLA-format rule by writing half of this story in poetry, because poetry can be single-spaced. Because it's me, I knew that the title would be influenced by country music somehow, so the title is borrowed from a Keith Anderson song that Big & Rich later covered. The cover is the better-known version of the tune.

While the swing goes on in the predestined way –

endlessly pacing, like all such furniture must journey –

the background  fills with our friends’ chatter,

someone’s klutzy dog makes quite a clatter,

and I’m one lucky dog with a brand-new fiancée. 

Clasped hands and hearts on that old porch swing; Desiree,  

is it this song that’s such an enchanter?

Don’t answer aloud – let your gaze say

while the swing goes on.

Years from now, this moment will stay

in my favorite memories, thinking of last Saturday,

and though in years ahead we’ll weather paint splatters

and deal with your mom – drat her -

but they’ll be counterbalanced by moments of play  

while the swing goes on.

      This was the rondeau that Mike wrote for his wife Desiree in their hotel room one night on their honeymoon. He had proposed to her while they were at a Fourth of July party hosted by friends; they were snuggled on the creaky porch swing in the Allans’ backyard, and it finally seemed like the right time to ask – they’d survived their first year of school, (they’d figure out the transfer details later) and there was family housing. Most people would say they were crazy, but if their grandparents had made it work so young, why couldn’t they? He set her guitar back into its case (he’d been using as a desk) and tucked the poem between the strings where she’d notice it first thing. Then shaking his head, wonderstruck that this was real life, he slipped under the covers. She grunted sleepily and loosened her grip on the comforter. 

BIbliography of Suggested Reading for Teens

     For Dr. Dial-Driver's Children's Lit class. This bibliography, too, was extremely difficult to narrow down to ten examples. I tried to be diverse when it comes to genres.

Rawls, Wilson. Where the Red Fern Grows. Doubleday, 1961.
     Billy Coleman lives near Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and he diligently saves up for two years in order to buy a pair of coonhound puppies, which he names Old Dan and Little Ann. His grandpa helps him teach the dogs to hunt raccoons, becoming one of the Ozarks’ most accomplished hunters. After Dan dies following a mountain lion attack, loyal Ann dies from a broken heart, and the Colemans move out of the mountains at Mama’s request, settling in Tulsa.
     The chief heartbreaker of all dog-story-tearjerkers, this ought to be required reading for Oklahoma children due to the local setting. Loyalty is the chief virtue expressed in these pages, though there are many virtues scattered throughout. I was five when I first heard this story, which was plenty old enough to understand it. Wilson Rawls wrote his books for “people,” and hated the idea that publishers marketed them as children’s literature. Therefore everyone ought to read it, as an example of true love and the power of patient hard work. Especially teenagers.

Kaye, M.M. The Ordinary Princess. 1980. Doubleday, 1984.
     In the far-off kingdom of Phantasmorania, there is a seventh princess born to the king and queen, her royal highness Amethyst Alexandra Augusta Araminta Adelaide Aurelia Anne – and the seventh princess is always the prettiest, the most graceful, the most blessed of all the fairies. Everyone knows that. But everyone also knows how contrary fairies can be – and this is what caused this princess to be ordinary, of all things. An ordinary princess would be an embarrassment to the kingdom, so Amy becomes a scullery maid in the royal castle of the next country over, where she eventually falls in love with a man-of-all-work.
      This was mystery author M.M. Kaye’s only fairy tale, but it works supremely well, mainly because it has such an emphasis on the ordinariness of life, while at the same time clearly being a fairy tale and containing all the classic ingredients. These elements are treated with respect, unlike so many things which claim to be modern fairy tales (glaring at you, Shrek).

Schaefer, Jack. Shane. 1949. Bantam, 1975.
     In 1880’s Wyoming, the Old West was dying quickly. This novel is narrated by a man named Bob Starrett, who was eleven when a dangerous stranger rode onto their farm one day, signed on as a hired hand and then found himself defending the group of local homesteaders in the middle of a range war with a devious cattle rancher.
     It’s a straightforward and formulaic Western plot, but the writing quality alone makes it worth reading for the strength of Schaefer’s descriptions. Bob Starrett is one of my top ten narrators across all books ever.

Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. 1960. Grand Central, 2010.
     This tale set in a Depression-era southern Alabama town chronicles Scout and Jem Finch’s childhoods dealing with their father Atticus’s occasionally absent-minded parenting, in addition to the trials of public education and racism. Character and setting are much more important than plot.
     Scout Finch is probably my favorite narrator of all time, and Atticus is one of my favorite characters. This is a classic of southern American literature, and therefore almost has to be read at some point. Lee deals with a lot of big questions in this novel, and doesn’t provide all that many answers, which appeals to teenagers everywhere. If the reader has writerly ambitions, then studying Lee’s Go Set a Watchman shows how important the revision process is.

Goldman, William. The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure. 1973. Del Rey, 1987.
      In the country of Florin, long before Europe and just before glamour, but after America and blue jeans, lived the most beautiful woman in the world. She was a farm girl named Buttercup. Forced to marry Prince Humperdinck against her will, she is kidnapped and then reunited with her first love, Westley. Once Buttercup is recaptured, Humperdinck brutally murders Westley. He is resurrected (this is a fairy tale, after all) and teams up with Buttercup’s original kidnappers to break her out of the castle. The novel ends on a wonderfully ambiguous note, as they’re running away as fugitives with their end unknown.
     There’s the first sentence, to start with: “This is my favorite book in all the world, although I have never read it.” So many quotable quotes. So much more character depth than in the movie. This is a fairy tale for grownups, which claims neither to be more nor less. It is presented as an abridgement of a longer satirical Florinese history by fictional author S. Morgenstern. To paraphrase an A.A. Milne quote (from Once On a Time), the reader will either love this style of narration, or he/she will not. It’s that sort of book.

Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing. 1598. The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, edited by Stephen Orgel and A.R. Braunmuller. Penguin, 2002, pp.365-400.
      After the conclusion of a civil war, many people gather at the house of a rich man named Leonato. His daughter Hero is engaged to Claudio, whose best friend is Benedick, former lover of Hero’s cousin Beatrice. Everyone schemes to get Benedick and Beatrice back together. Complications ensue.
     William Shakespeare is one of the greatest storytellers in the history of English. His comedies are the easiest for modern readers to understand, and Much Ado follows most closely the formula of a modern comedy. And Benedick and Beatrice are amazingly snarky, slinging insults at each other with gleeful abandon. There is also the brilliant Joss Whedon film adaptation.

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. 1953. Simon & Schuster, 2013.
     In a bleak dystopian future, humanity is enslaved by addiction to technology, books are banned, and firemen create fires. After making the acquaintance of his quirky neighbor Clarisse, fireman Guy Montag comes to question everything he knows about his life and his society, to the point of becoming a wanted fugitive.
     The idea of dystopian literature is to serve as a warning of what society could become. Thus, while it may be uncomfortable to read, it is an important genre to be aware of, in order to avoid the futures described in the books. Bradbury’s Fahrenheit, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984 together make up the triumvirate of essential dystopian literature.

King, Stephen. On Writing. Scribner, 2000.
     Almost everyone has read at least some of Stephen King’s works while a teenager, so why not read about the man behind the stories? The first half is a memoir, detailing his life from childhood up until the struggling early years of his marriage. The back half is a “how to write well” book. Both of those genres are necessary sometimes.

Crichton, Michael. Jurassic Park. 1990. Ballantine Books, 2015.
     A billionaire with no common sense creates a theme park featuring live cloned dinosaurs. During a cold opening of the park as a final measure of readiness before allowing the general public, a traitorous employee sets a catastrophe in motion which severs all power and communications, letting all the dinosaurs loose from their enclosures. Lots of people are eaten over the weekend.
     While mostly a bit of thriller fluff, there are some profound questions raised by this novel, mainly dealing with the role of science and technology in our world. And a quote from Dr. Ian Malcolm is interesting: “In the information society, we expected to banish paper. What we actually abolished was thought.” Loads of academic jargon make this somewhat difficult to wade through, so I would estimate high-school-age as a target audience.

Montgomery, L.M. The Golden Road. 1913. Kindle Direct Publishing, 2012.
     This novel meanders here and there, so there isn’t much a plot. It follows a group of friends and the adventures they had together just before going their separate ways as they grew up, narrated by the adult version of one of the characters. That makes it a perfect read for panicking high school graduates going to college to destress with as they reflect on memories made. This is another book with the target audience of “people.” I love most of Montgomery’s works, but this is my favorite of hers. 

BIbliography of Suggested Reading for Children

     I LOVED Dr. Dial-Driver's Children's Literature course. This assignment was really difficult, because there are so many wonderful choices to pick from, and we could only use ten examples.

Eastman, P.D. Are You My Mother? 1960. Random House, 1993. 

     A small baby bird gets lost after falling out of his nest, and he has to look for his mother. Once he finds quite a lot of things which are not his mother (including a dog, a cow, and a gigantic Snorting Power Shovel), he gets back home in time for a warm hug from Mom and a yummy worm dinner. 

     This is one of the Beginner Books series, so if your child is learning to read, this would be a good bet. P.D. Eastman’s pictures are spectacular, though, so this would be a great choice to read aloud to toddlers, as would his other books.

Bond, Michael. A Bear Called Paddington. 1958. HarperCollins, 2014.

     This is the first of the Paddington series; each of the chapters-work-as-short-stories variety like P.L. Travers’ Mary Poppins books. Paddington is a small bear adopted into a rather bland London family, and he gets usually himself into a variety of strange and sticky situations. Literally sticky situations, since he loves marmalade. However, things always work out in the end.

     I would guess this is written for seven-year-olds just starting to read “big chapter books” on their own. They work well at introducing that indescribable quirky British sense of humor, which is their chief merit. If anthropomorphized animals are not a family’s cup of tea, then they should skip these books.

Barrett, Judi. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. Illustrated by Ron Barrett.1978. Aladdin Paperbacks, 1982.

     A grandfather tells his grandchildren a tall tale about the small town of Chewandswallow, which had no grocery stores, because the town got all its food from the sky, because they didn’t have normal weather. Eventually, something went wrong, and terrible storms forced the evacuation of Chewandswallow, because it wasn’t safe to live there any longer, what with the tomato tornadoes and five-ton pancakes.

     Food connects people of all ages, and everyone has their favorite food they wish it would rain (like milkshakes or gumdrops, according to the Barney song.) The pictures add a wonderful dimension to this tale, which I would estimate as appropriate to first introduce anywhere from four to seven, depending on if it were read aloud or not. The imaginative concept appeals to a child’s mindset very well, and it could be used to learn about the different food groups, as well as the idea of tall tales and their history.

Rawls, Wilson. Where the Red Fern Grows. Doubleday, 1961. 

     Billy Coleman lives near Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and he diligently saves up for for two years in order to buy a pair of coonhound puppies, which he names Old Dan and Little Ann. His grandpa helps him teach the dogs to hunt raccoons, becoming one of the Ozarks’ most accomplished hunters. After Dan dies following a mountain lion attack, loyal Ann dies from a broken heart, and the Colemans move out of the mountains at Mama’s request, settling in Tulsa.

     The chief heartbreaker of all dog-story-tearjerkers, this ought to be required reading for Oklahoma children due to the local setting. Loyalty is the chief virtue expressed in these pages, though there are many virtues scattered throughout. I was five when I first heard this story, which was plenty old enough to understand it. Wilson Rawls wrote his books for “people,” and hated the idea that publishers marketed them as children’s literature. Therefore everyone ought to read it, as an example of true love and the power of patient hard work.

Wallace, Bill. Upchuck and the Rotten Willy. Aladdin Paperbacks, 1998.

     Chuck, a young orange kitten, has just lost his friend Louie, who got smushed by a car on the highway. And then an enormous monster of a Rottweiler moves in down the road. And then his best friend Tom moves away. And then, to top it all off, his Person Katie moves to somewhere far away and cagelike called “College.” What’s a lonesome, scared cat to do?

     This is a terrific first-person narrative starting around age seven, illustrating well the emotions of life as only Bill Wallace can. It deals with loneliness, abandonment, the changing of life-seasons, in addition to offering some humorous insight on dating and emphasizing the power of friendship, especially the friendship found in overlooked corners.

Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds. Shiloh. Atheneum, 1991.

     Eleven-year-old Marty Preston lives in the extremely rural town of Friendly, West Virginia, where he comes across the new beagle of infamous-dog-mistreater Judd Travers. Marty and his little sisters nurse the dog, now called Shiloh, back to health, trying to decide if it’s ethical to steal Shiloh in order to prevent certain future cruelty by Judd.

     This novel is appropriate for readers around nine, because they would likely have a deep bond with their pets by then, and the beginnings of an understanding of empathy and the complexity of this world we live in. The first-person tone draws the reader in, and if he or she is of a writerly turn of mind, they can study how that first-person POV can be used to describe the rural setting, poverty, and ethical dilemmas within. Real life is often very gray, and this novel explains that while keeping a kid-appropriate tone.

Brink, Carol Ryrie. Caddie Woodlawn. 1935.

     Caddie Woodlawn and her brothers grew up in Wisconsin after their parents moved to Boston, and this novel tells about some of their adventures growing up. It doesn’t really have a plot, but it’s the kind of book that doesn’t really need one.

     This is included because it is clearly historical fiction, as the author makes note of in the introduction, and that is a good genre to be introduced to. She is retelling the childhood of her grandmother, based on the stories that she heard as a child. If Laura Ingalls Wilder is seen as too girlish for boys to think they’d enjoy, this might be a good alternative. Girls could appreciate Caddie’s indecision between wanting to be a tomboy at times, and a lady at other times.  

Sachar, Louis. Holes. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.

     After being accused of stealing a pair of sneakers, Stanley Yelnats gets sent to a juvenile detention facility in the Texas desert, where he gets to know his coworkers as they dig holes “to build character.”  Interspersed with the mystery that follows is a history of the outlaw Kissin’ Kate Barlow, a former schoolteacher who turned rogue after her romance with a black man was discovered.

     The braided nature of these interweaving stories is a very interesting stylistic technique to take notice of, and given the complexity of the issues raised (mainly juvenile delinquency, the justice system and interracial relationships) I would say a reader should be around eleven or twelve before tackling this one. Those subjects are handled in an age-appropriate way, but given the general meanness of the characters to survive, some thick skin must have already been developed.

Pyle, Howard. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. 1883.

     A retelling, perhaps the first aimed at children, of the legendary antiheroic character of Robin Hood, from his first coming to Sherwood Forest to his death by treacherous arrow. Little John, Friar Tuck, Maid Marian and the Sherriff of Nottingham are all here, as well, as is King Richard the Lion-Hearted.

      What kid doesn’t like adventure? Pyle’s book abounds with it, though the reading difficulty might present problems unless the reader was an especially-determined nine-year-old. This would be a good candidate to read aloud for younger children, giving a chance to practice comprehension skills by asking them to summarize the action at various points throughout each chapter.  

Neville, Emily. It’s Like This, Cat. Illustrated by Emil Weiss. 1963.

     This Newbery Award winner tells how a 14-year-old named Dave deals with problems of early teenagerdom, including hero worship, fights with his father and first love. His cat, who was given to him by a family friend named Kate, serves as a sounding board in figuring out all these problems.

      This would be appropriate for readers about eleven, I would estimate, because parents aren’t perfect, and they have as many flaws as anyone. There are scenes of smoking, if I remember right, some interest is taken of the opposite sex, and the characters wander around New York City entirely unsupervised a vast majority of the time. Knowing some history of what was going to happen later in this decade, this novel gives a better picture of the day-to-day life of those growing up in this era, and reminds readers that human nature is much the same everywhere. The first-person narration is used well to highlight the urban setting, providing literary-minded readers a glimpse (especially in contrast with Shiloh) of how the basic tools of writing can be used in interesting ways. 

Time Compression Experiment

     For Dr. Mackie's Creative Nonfiction course, this assignment was from a less-than-helpful textbook titled Tell It Slant. We were supposed to take a mundane experience and compress multiple instances of that incident into one bizarre stew. So I chose a typical Sunday morning at church.

     “How are you doing?” Sam asks after we show up to church half an hour late for Sunday school – again. It’s been another rough week, and I guess she can see that, even if she wasn’t one of the few people my armor will let inside to see the real me.

Mrs. Ferguson is standing nearby, leaning against the Grace and Truth bookshelf to relieve back pain from her ninth pregnancy. Her oldest daughter Kerra’s married now, and Josh soon will be, it looks like from the grapevine.

     “Um…I’m all right, I’m fine,” I say.

     “And by that, he means it’s hell,” Mrs. Ferguson grins, and she lumbers down toward the kitchen. Sam crushes me in a gigantic hug, pulling away after our youth pastor Steven coughs.

     “Your eyes said more than your words.” Her voice has a quiet undertone. 

     “Thanks.”

     “Sorry to hear about Sunny,” Steven says. “Losing a dog is tough.” 

     “It’s all right. She was old, and arthritic, and nearly blind, and –“ I bolt for the kitchen. I need coffee if I’m going to stay awake during Marie’s dad’s sermon from the Gospel of John.

     There are a lot of empty spaces in the pews; what with the mass exodus and all. It wasn’t even orchestrated, really, not that anyone could tell. Just one family leaves for some legitimate reason, then another, and then another, and it’s like Welll…who’s left? Not the DeSpains, or the Buckmasters, or the Lawsons (and Cassie’s at OU now, anyway, so it’s not like we can chat about writing). Mr. Gundersen’s been thinking of taking a long-term trip to his vacation house in the Arkansas Ozarks, and he can’t really be blamed for needing the rest, though it is kind of worrisome. It will take a while to stop thinking of him as the pastor, since he stepped down from that role last month.

     In the prayer requests it looks like Justin Selby just blew up his hand with some fireworks, I bet Melody was worried sick. Marie is mentioned again as needing prayer…that’s not a surprise to any of us who were in the youth group. She was just lacking – It, whatever that was. We all knew that she would be eaten alive once she was out on her own. And there were a lot of problems each of us were dealing with, just trying to keep ourselves together and reasonably in one piece to get through high school and slowly progress through college. Lots of people’s parents dying from cancer, which is horrible. Dad’s out of a job again, which is somehow normal. Dylan’s working on a ranch in Wyoming over the summer, so pray for safety for him, and peace of mind for his parents. He’s doing all right, though it can get lonely up there, from what I’ve heard. But he’ll be okay.

     Hymns we’ll be singing today, hmm… “In Christ Alone,” that’s a great one, of course, wasn’t it ages ago that I learned that? Feels like it. “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” that’s one we forget to ponder too often. “How Firm a Foundation” is another great choice. Bennett and Laura are doing a fantastic job on guitar and piano – it was always fun when Laura filled in for Josh when we were leading the youth group’s worship music, she played at a fast enough pace that my strumming didn’t sound like I was rushing things.

Rags will be sad that I have to immediately head back to school, but cats can’t rule the world like they think they can. Finish revising/updating that story where they try to, if there’s time. Then SWAT has a special rehearsal for the show Wednesday night, and there’s volleyball practice after the Monday night worship service, with the state BCM tournament coming up next weekend. Note to self, check to make sure everyone brings their scripts just in case they need them. Okay, then – not ready for this next week up ahead, but here goes.

     This was a weird experiment, kind of like I was consciously constructing a dream, given the wild mishmash of events and the blurry first-person stream-of-consciousness narration. Maybe I should have chosen “a typical Sunday morning at church” for the event to condense. But there was plenty of material to choose from – that’s one of the good things about going to the same church for fourteen years. The bad thing can be that the ghosts of those gone, or of events past, can sometimes pop up and dominate the scene in real life. So they don’t need any encouragement, swirling the history all together into a McFlurry (do those still exist?) like this assignment asked for.

     The prompt asked what we gained and lost by this experiment. I’d say that I recognized again what a rough couple of years our church has been through, with nearly every family going through at least one or two chronic-stress events. There was a lot of trials and characters that were left out of this sketch, of course – it asked for a compliation of a typical event. Not everything fits. And though the facts have been chewed though a blender, as far as chronology and everything, I think the tone was kept, more or less. I don’t really like this piece, but some writing one likes and some is just to beat the deadline. The honesty was stripped away, by mangling the timeline, and that kills the spirit, even if the style can produce interesting and sometimes pretty effects like CDs when microwaved. 

Two Outs in the Sixth Inning

     This was the first draft of my third workshopped story for Fiction Writing. I was mostly concentrating on the contrast of lightness of the ballgame with the darkness of Carol's impending death, and also on the internal monologues, using as little dialogue as possible, since most of my stuff tends to be dialogue heavy. Several classmates said it was their favorite story they'd read all semester.

     They were using the tennis ball today. They usually alternated between that and an oversize softball that Bill Raye called a “cabbage ball,” due to its size and general mushiness. But since they had the tennis ball, they had the gloves out. She smiled, listening. Last summer she had felt good enough to sit on the porch and cheer them on. The Bulldogs were hitting, they were losing 2-0 to the Alley Cats, according to Allison’s chalkboard scorekeeping, and it was the fourth inning. They usually played six, unless something unexpected happened. She liked to imagine that her grandson in Wichita played ball with other kids he knew, and he enjoyed hearing about these neighborhood games, so she tried to remember everything she could about what happened. Carol just really lacked the energy right now to write a letter. So she just sat and watched the window instead.

     Jocelyn slapped a ground-rule double, planting herself firmly on the pizza box that was second base. Now Aaron was up at bat; his younger sister Amanda was pitching for the Alley Cats. Mandy tossed two of her elevator balls for strikes, then wound up and struck him out with one of her blazing fastballs. To the players, Carol was just some older lady who liked baseball. She used to have a dog named Sassy, but not anymore, and she let them use her yard as a field, so that was cool. She was sick more often now, from something that had to do with eating too much crab dip.

     Carol had given Sassy to Amanda’s family since she was too sick to keep a dog. She’d always liked kids. Maybe that was part of why she became a librarian. Of course, once the cancer came she had had to give that up, but… So now she didn’t get out much. Sometimes she fixed them some cookies if she felt well enough. They were just store cookies from Dollar General, but they didn’t seem to mind. Hmm, cookies sounded good. She walked into the kitchen and took two out of the package, pulled a glass off the shelf and set about enjoying her snack.

     Except that she didn’t.

     The half-gallon container was too heavy to pick up. So she ate one of the cookies dry and left the other for later.

            Alley Cats at bat now, David was facing Rich’s pitch. Rich let the neon yellow ball go into one of his loopy slow-motion flight patterns. The bat swung around and connected for a pretty solid line drive, and David reached the first-base Frisbee easily. Sarah Kate scooped up the ball on two hops and threw it to Danny.

            Bill sat on his deck, watching the game from his perch in left field. Cars seldom-to-never came down the cracked concrete of Fourth Street, so the outfield stretched across the road and into the Raye’s backyard. The dogs were barking their fool heads off like always; he ran them inside through the screen door. They were a nuisance, but Barbara enjoyed having the little yappers around, so that was that. The kids knew they could just slip inside if a foul ball landed inside the fence, as long as they didn’t let TieDye or Taz out. Not that the dogs would want to run loose, they were too used to their sedentary lifestyle, but it gave the kids some boundaries, which was good for ‘em. Mandy was at the plate right now, Rich’s throw had even less backspin than normal, which wasn’t much to begin with. In other words, it was so slow that Bill probably could’ve pounded that throw. Point was, she got her bat off her shoulder and socked that tennis ball across the street and off the Raye’s roof. It shot twenty feet skyward before coming down on the weathered maroon paint of the deck.

     Barbara stepped out onto the deck to see what was going on. “Home run, honey?”

     “Yep. Mandy Chapman.”

     Her cousin Steve was going nuts, while Allison updated the scoreboard to now read Alley Cats 5, Bulldogs 0. Bill had nicknames for some of them, Steve he always called Bob Costas, due to his tendency to enthusiastically announce the progress of these ballgames. Mandy tripped over her shoelace between second and third, then picked right up and ran home. Bill tossed the ball back into the outfield, and after half an inning more, the kids in yellow T-shirts headed home with frustrated expressions, while the kids in the black T-shirts looked pleased with their afternoon’s work.

     The jerseys were Barbara and Carol’s idea after the kids were wistfully picturing how “official” their teams would look, so they got together and went to Michael’s or Hobby Lobby, well, one of them other crafty-type stores; then they screen-printed the team names and numbers onto the front and back. The jerseys were a huge hit; and there was a bunch of thank-you letters and pictures mailed to both houses. Their fridge was already covered up with pictures from the grandkids, but a couple of the baseball teams’ drawings had found display-places, too. And Carol got a huge kick out of it, which she like as not needed a great deal. Her treatment wasn’t going too well, and she hadn’t been out much for about a week. Since she’d worked at the library, almost everybody in town knew her, and while it was agreed that she could be a handful – specially after moving over to the Methodists after being part of the PH church ever since her divorce – still, town opinion held her in decent standing. She was part of the fabric of the town; she was Good People. And if you were Good People, then you were gossiped about, certainly, but it was done kindly. And gossip was just what everyone did when it wasn’t football season no longer, that’s been the ways out-of-the-way communities got their recreation for goodness knows how long. Just part of the rules. Like when Jocelyn’s family moved into town four years ago and her mother called the police department asking if fireworks were allowed on Fourth of July. Pete popped the top of a Diet Coke and drawled, “Well, ma’am, it’s technically illegal, but nobody follows that rule, so you may as well go ahead.” Like how everyone knew to hunt up those Mullin cats Lewis & Clark at the Lange house when they got loose. Sarah Kate’s fur allergies kept her sneezing for four days afterwards, but cats have their own minds and will be their own masters.

     Barbara stepped across the street to deliver one of her fudge-pecan pies to Carol, and they’d probably chat for several hours over topics as silly as “why boys didn’t seem to like brown-haired girls any more.” He’d huffed in disgust when he once overheard this conversation, but danged if he hadn’t wondered the same thing since on occasion!

     A couple days later, the teams got together again for another game, using the cabbage ball this time. That meant pretty much whichever side made less errors would win; as the size of the ball made it hard to hang on to. There just isn’t really anything to compare it to, sixteen inches around made for a weird – what was that big math-related word? – circumference? Danny readjusted his cap and got into position covering second base. Rich was stuck at home cleaning his room, so Sarah Kate was pitching instead. In the first inning, she struck David out and forced Mandy and Kristy into weak little grounders. With Jocelyn at first base, everything was caught cleanly, and that was the first inning. Chris pounced on a line drive down the third-base line in the second, and still nobody had scored yet by the third. That was when Ranger decided to join in on the fun. He loped(Danny liked that word and used it whenever possible) onto the field and began covering everyone in sloppy blue-heeler kisses. And then Sunshine the beagle puppy from two houses over dug under the fence and joined in. That set off the Raye’s Lhasa Apsos even worse than usual; and once they got started the Haworth’s Labs and the Byars’ German shepherd got started howling, too. That took a while to sort out, and then a bunch of runs were scored, with the Bulldogs leading 8-7 a close call degenerated into a loud argument. Carol was feeling better today, she was watching from her front porch.

     “What happened, y’all?”

     They explained. Danny had tagged Kristy out at second, but she said her foot was already touching the base, since it grazed the corner of the box.

     “You guys know how to settle this.” Carol looked vaguely disappointed with them – it was a hard expression to understand, Danny thought. Most grown-up expressions were. Something like they wanted to cry, or smile, or yell a lot of cuss words whenever they thought nobody was around. Maybe all of those at the same time, if that was even possible. It was why he tried to stay out of the house as much as possible. Dad and Mom were always arguing about something, it seemed like, or they were worried about money, with the rent due in a couple days and Dad without a job, really. It was a lot simpler whenever the gang got in fights about calls and stuff; Carol had decided that Rock-Paper-Scissors was how those close plays would be figured out. Maybe that’s what grown-ups needed.

     “Rock, Paper, Scissors, SHOOT!”

     Danny threw paper, so did Kristy. They tried again. They both threw scissors that time. He threw scissors again on the third try, and Kristy threw a rock. Rock smashes scissors, of course, everybody knows that. So she was safe.

     He wasn’t exactly sure what “cancer” was, but it was something pretty bad, he knew that. Usually you had to be kind of old to get it, but sometimes there were stories about teenagers who had it, or even kids. Anyway, it sucked the life right out of you, is how Carol explained it. He’d asked Bill about it once, and didn’t really get a good answer. Instead he just shook his head and asked whether he remembered when Mandy and Aaron’s dog was run over. Danny remembered that, yeah. Copper had just sort of laid there a while, and kinda whimpered; he’d been over there that day, and all three of them bawled their eyes out til it didn’t seem like there was any room for anything else inside. Copper tried to lick the tears away, but it hurt too much, so she just set her nose on Aaron’s leg and watched. Then, eventually, she just….wasn’t there any longer. Bill had said that cancer was a little like that car that hit Copper; and so, bit by bit, Carol’s body wasn’t working right anymore. It was confusing. Where would they play ball if she wasn’t there anymore? Her house would have to be sold, probably, and what if whoever lived there next didn’t like kids? Wouldn’t let ‘em play ball in their front yard? What if they had a big scary mountain of a dog, like that man in that movie from Eagle’s Nest video store?

     Later he was up at bat, and he got a good chunk of Sarah Kate’s pitch. The ball sailed into the outfield for a clean base hit – wait, what? Mandy was yelling and pointing at something, ohhh. He had thrown the bat; which everyone knew was an automatic out because Carol said so. That rule had been put into place so nobody would get hurt, after that happened one time when Lee flung his bat and it sailed into Sam’s ankle.

Anyway, they ended up winning 10-7, so that was a good thing. Some of them walked down to Shuttle Stop for a candy bar or bag of chips and a pop. They talked about books they were reading for the library’s summer reading program, and what older siblings were doing. Being a teenager seemed awfully dramatic and unpleasant and confusing. It probably wasn’t exactly like the movies explained it, but some didn’t seem that far off, either. Danny was glad he wasn’t a teenager yet.

            Dear Kevin,

Things are going well here. Are you all planning anything for Fourth of July? Planning on having an army-man battle in the driveway again, maybe? I haven’t felt too well here lately, but today I felt good enough to watch the ballgame. The Dog Club interrupted it for a while, and then Danny and Kristy had a fight over a tag at second base. She was safe, but the Bulldogs ended up winning today 10-7. Have you been to any Wranglers ballgames this season yet?

The hummingbirds haven’t been eating too much, I guess it’s just been too hot. The Mullin cats (Lewis and Clark, you know, they belong to Kristy) came over yesterday before wandering over to Sarah Kate’s. They just plonked themselves down on the front porch and gave themselves a very thorough bath. In between their toes and everything. Then they took a nap in the sunshine, drank some milk I set out for ‘em, and scattered when Fred came by with the day’s mail. That reminds me – I need to go check the mailbox.

Okay, back now. The paper came today, looks like the teenagers from church are excited about camp coming up in a couple months, and they’re holding a car wash to raise money for that. One of the high school juniors won a trip to Washington, D.C. with a bunch of other kids from all over the state. I read about it in the paper last week; seems like it’ll be a really cool experience. Just imagine – seeing all that history up close! They’re gonna meet some of our Congressmen, go to George Washington’s house at Mount Vernon, see all those memorials to guys like Jefferson and Lincoln, and even go to the Smithsonian museum! She’s going to keep a journal of the trip and the paper’s going to print it, so the rest of us can know what it was like. That’ll be in a couple weeks. Here’s a funny clipping for you guys to laugh at (from the police reports) – "At 10:15 p.m. Alverson and Mitchell investigated a report of breaking and entering on West Chincapin Street. A caller said someone broke into the house. It turned out to be the caller's brother who got in the house, no charges were filed." Or this one: “Holmes investigated a report of a suspicious vehicle parked under the Collyge Street awning at the elementary school at 8:30 p.m. The owner put it there to protect it from the hail and the thunderstorm."

My friend Barbara came over the other day with one of her fudge-pecan pies, it sure was yummy. We talked for a while, her husband Bill’s blood pressure isn’t acting right, so they’re not sure what’s going on with that, exactly. I’m gonna go to the doctor again for more chemo tomorrow, and if I feel good enough, to the store this afternoon and then into town to run some other errands. Hope you can visit soon.

Love,

Mimi   

     Somebody had once asked her how come she cared about the neighborhood kids so much, or why she specialized in children’s literature when it came to the library; in reply, she’d quoted C.S. Lewis’ preface to The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe: “Someday, you will be old enough to read fairy tales again.” The kids were engrossed in their game; which was how things ought to be. There were a lot of educational things they were learning without realizing it: conflict management, dealing with what life gave you, focusing on a larger goal than any of them could accomplish by themselves. And they reminded her to treasure the mundane: cookies unexpectedly, sunshiny days, a base hit, a caught fly ball. Yes, she was going to die soon, certainly by next summer, but the kids had their lives ahead: High school, dating, divorces, college, kids, marriage. She wasn’t that important to them; they’d forget about her. But maybe someday they’d remember. And these games wouldn’t last forever, either, once the kids started hitting puberty. But for now, the game continued. 

"Yellow Wall-paper" Assignment

     For this flashfiction assignment for Dr. Mackie's Fiction Writing course, we were supposed to retell Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wall-paper" from a different character's perspective. I went with Charlotte's husband John, and this assignment was incredibly easy, given my familiarity with late-19th-century writing styles.

(John F. Gilman, M.D. writing in his diary.)

I have told Charlotte time upon everlasting that exercise depends on her strength; and that food depends somewhat on her appetite, but air, of course, she shall absorb all the time, having as much as she pleases. And the room is quite fine – large windows, and a yellow color in the wall-paper. What a trial it is to have a helpmeet who cannot perform her wifely duties as homemaker. It reflects quite poorly on my reputation as a physician with the populace of the town that Charlotte suffers from hysteria. Mary is a comfort and a pleasure to have around the house in her stead.

            She has not been undertaking her furious scribbling, which at least is some improvement. She is acting nearly deranged on occasions, however – that is troubling. Prattling on about something about the “woman trapped within the wall-paper” or some other such nonsense. I believe that more time in the natural elements should do her good; and what is more, Robert agrees with my assessment. Charlotte objects quite vehemently to this course of action, but after all, we are trained doctors with her best interests at heart, and naturally we know best.

            Perhaps leaving for Massachusetts will do her good, the quietude of the change of scenery should quiet her nerves. The humidity of this wretched Southern climate is beyond endurance, before the condescension and suspicion the local peoples have of my profession as John F. Gilman, M.D.  They will only require my services if one of their number has injured himself in a reckless game of foot-ball. The last boy didn’t last throughout the night, I have not slept in sixty-one hours. Presently I shall go upstairs to fetch Charlotte and we will make arrangements to be off. Much as I hate to lend credence to her absurd superstitions and fancies, there is something about this estate which is lacking in the proper grandeur. It makes me feel quite disconcerted. To top it all, Jennie has said something about the wall-paper coming loose. Not that it is any of my concern, and I have no intention of repairing it, as we are leaving on the morrow, but it smacks of disreputable tendencies which will not reflect well on me. If the trip does not help, or the following excursion to the esteemed Doctor Weir Mitchell’s sanitorium, then I believe I have no choice except to place her in an institution. Our carriage has arrived, so for now I shall conclude these writings and continue them at a convenient time. I will go fetch Charlotte henceforth.