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老外 boosted

Finally worked up the courage to push the shadows and details some more in my #RainyDay pic. I think I will need to highlight some areas but am not sure how much they will show. My phone camera makes it look much browner than it is; the paper is more off-white. 🤔 #MastoArt

Here is some #writing #marriage #relationships #creekbornking #readmystuff #amwriting 

Finally I couldn’t take it. I went to the cupboard and pulled the last jar of peaches I knew Lizbeth kept stored there. No doubt it was being saved for something special - that there would be special hell to pay in the morning. But if marriage is anything, I thought, it is a matter of bargaining chips. Don’t want people to eat your canned peaches, wife of mine? Then don’t make them sleep in the barn. Come the morning argument, I could bring up how rude Lizbeth was and we would at least break even. My argument would be solid as limestone. I was almost out the door when I saw Lizbeth’s satin shawl on a hook. An idea struck me.

I picked up Hute’s magic plate and spread the peaches out there. I went and got the last bit of bread from the day and broke it into pieces. These pieces I arranged around the edge of the plate, so that it almost resembled a birthday dish we once bought for Clemmie at Doocey’s. I threw the satin shawl on top, like a waiter in a fancy restaurant might cover a dish. The juice leaked through in wet spots and I smiled. I walked outside.

Then I stopped.

I don’t know what they had been up to, but Hute and Klara weren’t to the barn yet. It was a perfect moon out and I was lucky at that. The whole night, and the rest of my life to now, might never have happened if it weren’t for that perfect and bright moon. Because they were not that close together, because they didn’t appear to be walking in sync, because I had them pegged for friendly at best. But I saw Klara’s little finger, just a slight sliver of black against the paleness, wrapped in Hute’s fist. I stopped and went quiet.

If man might ever make a painting or picture that moves, they should make something of this. Her wide body and duck-swap steps. Hute’s braid hanging down and swishing out over the silhouette of his humped shoulders. There was something too familiar about it to be strange. There was something too familiar about it for me to be shocked. The whole scene competed for a title more natural than the big moon itself, the soil risen to pace about.

I walked back to the door and sat on the steps. I pulled the satin shawl off the peaches and got the pail. I cleaned the satin in fresh rainwater and hung it to dry on the hook by the door. Then I waited. I just waited. Waiting felt an odd but welcome thing. Crickets sounded and a firefly shone and somewhere way out a dog barked and then a coyote howled and I waited.

Until enough time had gone by.

Some writing #excerpt #writing #creekbornking #novel #amwriting #readmystuff 

I went into the bedroom after dinner for a bit of quiet. Dinner had gone about well as it could have, given the circumstances. Lizbeth spoke even less than she did the last time, when it was just Klara. Hute had the good sense not to talk much, only grunting to the few questions Clemmie asked him. I knew another talk with Lizbeth was in the works, and I wanted to be ready.

I picked Ma’s picture up and looked it over, just like I always did. I realized as I felt its weight, though, that I wasn’t really looking at it. Like sometimes you might look at a clock and forget to note the time. Like sometimes you might ask a question, but the answer slips out of your head before it’s in there.

It was dark out the window, but not all the way. I could still see the row of corn I planted with Pa. It seemed to be coming up fine, even without any work on it. Unless maybe Lizbeth had been out there, for whatever reason, tending to it. As I pictured her there pulling up weeds, it dawned on me what my mind was after, as if a part of myself was pointing a long finger to what the rest of me should be giving attention.

The limestone. The heavy rock that - what was it Tibbets called them, the geographists? – had calculated was down there below. It was a leap to assume he was telling the truth about anything, but it made no difference. I could almost see the plants dying right there before my eyes. I could imagine the house crumbling, being torn down around me. I could see the pictures on the faces of the townsfolk as we rode our wagon out past Four Points. And, again and worst of all, I could see Clemmie playing on a dirt floor in some shell of a house we might afford down where the Good Lord knows where. Only difference was, now in the dream she had no tattered book even, no tattered book of fairy tales. All she had now was a doll stuffed with hay, and they hay pouring out from the seams, a button-eye sprung from its socket and dangling by a thread.

“He’s absolutely a madman,” I heard from behind. Rather than turn and look at Lizbeth all at once, I stared at her reflection in the window, saw her drying her hands on the front of her dress. “You were better off with just the woman, Tom J. Least Clemmie thought that woman was something.” I did not know how long I was in my state of dream, but I realized fast that it was a good while. Moonlight now lit the field by the house; there was a clean reflection of my wife in the window.

“How’s that?” I said.

“It’s a good wonder you made it this far,” Lizbeth said.

I realized I was still holding the picture and I put it down. I turned around to look at her. “How’s that?”

“Stop saying that, Tom J,” Lizbeth said. She pulled her hair up good and hard like she always did when she was good and mad. “Stop asking me ‘how’s that?’ You better have a plan, Tom J.”

“Course I do,” I said. I still didn’t understand. I was going on instinct.

“You mind telling me what it is then?” Lizbeth asked. She brought her hands down from her hair and balled her fists, put her fists on her hips. “Cause it sure as hell can’t be bringing every crazy stray dog here trying to fix that election.”

“How’s…what are you talking about, Lizbeth?”

“Is that an Injun, Tom J? That man in our kitchen? He sure as hell looks like it, clothes notwithstanding. You know what he’s doing right now? In our kitchen? In our kitchen, that crazy man is talking blasphemy and…well…he looks to be drinking himself to death. Which at his age, it isn’t far to go and I wonder how he made it this long. And what’s he have in that pipe? Smells like he shoved some leaves in there and added every spice he could get his hands on. You would think a man so invested in his comforts could afford a pair of shoes. The Injun is not wearing shoes, Tom J.”

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