3 posts tagged “short story”

This story for my writing group is based on a historical event, commonly known as the Battle of the Braes.  It was the last major action of the highland clearances and is often referred to as the last battle on British soil.  I got the idea for the story after reading a news report of the battle in which the author marvelled at the vehemence of the women who participated.  So I started thinking about this story as from the viewpoint of one of those women.  In the process, it developed into a story about this one woman's belief in God.  This is the revision after incorporating the inputs from my writing group.

MAIRI’S BATTLE

18 April 1882

“They’re here!  They’re here!  Comin’ roon the brae!” the cry pierced through gaps in the door slats and the cloth covering the open window.  Mairi pushed open the door, standing in the damp April air and watched as neighbors left their crofts and headed toward the road.

Mairi knew it would happen, but it still came as a surprise.  She had hoped it would all disappear, like the mist that creaps in from the sea and then, one day, dissipates to blue skies and pony-tail wisps.  She hoped Laird MacDonald would take mercy on them, seeing how wretched and poor their lives were.  It would be the right thing, the Christian thing, for him to do, like when Christ took pity on the masses and fed them on the shores of Galilee.

For weeks, now, the crofters refused to pay their rents to the Laird’s factor unless they were given permission to graze their animals on the slopes of Ben Lee.  In response, the Laird sent his factor and the Inverness sheriff to serve eviction summonses.  Mairi’s husband, Peter, and the men from the surrounding crofts, Norman Stewart and Alexander Finlayson—two trouble-makers—set upon the factor and sheriff forcing them to burn the eviction documents.  There was whisky and fires late into the evening that night as the crofters celebrated their victory.

Mairi knew they would come back.  Still she prayed.  She prayed for the Lord to deliver her family from the poverty that was her heritage for so many generations, she almost believed there was nothing God could do to change it.  She prayed for the Lord to share his Grace with the Laird MacDonald that he might understand and take pity on those beholden to him.  She prayed that the crofters would remain righteous in God’s eyes by turning the other cheek.

When it appeared that each of her prayers had gone unanswered, she prayed a prayer of contrition and apology.  It wasn’t her place to question God’s plan.  Everything was His doing.  This was God’s design.  The Laird was wealthy because God willed it.  Her family was poor and hungry because God determined that to be their status in the world.  How could she question the architect of this world, the One who gave her her husband and children, the One who painted the glorious Skye sunsets and who caused the northern lights to billow in the night sky?  Mairi thought she may have offended God with her selfishness, and she finished her prayer with tears.

So, when she stood in the doorway and saw her neighbors leaving their crofts for the main road, she folded her hands and bowed her head.  “Dear Lord, help them to see your plan and know their place in it.  You are truly a great God from whom all things emanate.  We all are humble and give thanks for what we have.  Amen.”

As she finished, Peter came round the side of the house, a wood pitchfork in one hand.  He stood with Mairi for a moment, watching, and then quietly said, “MacLeod says constables are comin’.  From Glasgow.  About fifty.  The Laird must have hired them to run us off.”  He fell silent for a moment, then continued, “I have to go, Mairi.”

“No, dinna go, Peter.  No.”

“Hush woman.  I was there at the beginning.  I’ll be there at the end.”

“There’s only trouble there, Peter.  Someone could get hurt.  You could get hurt.  Then where would we be?”

Peter remained silent.

“If it’s the constables, you could be arrested.”  Mairi’s voice began to crack.  “Think of this, Peter.  If you don’t go, if the Laird hears that we weren’t part of this, he might take pity on us and leave us alone.”

Peter looked at Mairi with dark eyes and shook his head.

“What if this is the Lord’s will, Peter?”

Peter kicked a stone, then looked to the distance where already a crowd gathered.  “Then I suppose I should get on with earning my passage into Hell.”  Peter began walking toward the road and the growing band of crofters.

Mairi lifted her apron and held it to her face, in part from shame over Peter’s blasphemous comment, and in part to catch the tears of fear now streaking her cheeks.

She imagined being put out of her home and being sent to a seaside village where Peter would need to learn fishing and the women waited on shore to clean the fish or waded out into the low tide muck in search of clams and mussels.  She’d been told the smell of raw fish never leaves you, though you get used to it in time.  Her two boys, Niall and Ailean, eleven and nine years old respectively, would be forced into someone’s employ to help put food on the table every day.  Worse still, they could all be put on a boat and sent to Canada or the United States.  She’d heard rumors that life in Canada could be difficult with short growing seasons and bitter cold winters.  In the States, foreigners were looked upon with disdain and treated as outcasts. 

Those fears were soon forgotten, though, when from her periphery she saw Niall and Ailean running to join Peter.

“Niall, Ailean, come home, now!”

They did not stop, nor look back.

“Even if they could hear ye Lass, they wouldna come home.”  Old Anna approached from behind the house.  She carried a large walking stick and a cloth bag at the end of a leather strap that she had over her shoulder and across her body.  The bag was filled with something weighty.

“Anna, they shouldna be going.  This isn’t something for bairns.”

“I’m thinking ye couldna stop them.”  Anna leaned on the walking stick slightly out of breath.  “They want to be men, and men they’ll be today.”

“No!” cried Mairi.  “They’re too young!”

“Mairi, when yer protectin yer hame, no one’s too young.”

Mairi looked after Peter and her sons and began to sob.

“Here now, Lass.”  Anna put her arm around Mairi’s shoulder.  “They’ll be fine, I warrant it.  I’ll tell ye what ye can do.  Why don’t ye come with me, and we’ll go and keep a watchful eye on those lads o yers, eh?”  Anna squeezed Mairi’s shoulder.

Mairi nodded.

“Ah, fine.  That’s grand.  Here now, carry me bag if ye will.  I’m no as young as I used to be.”

Anna lifted the strap over her head and handed it to Mairi.  Mairi nearly dropped it, it was so weighty.

“What’s in here?” Mairi asked while opening the mouth of the bag to look.

“Some wee stones I gathered in the field.”

Mairi quizzically looked at Anna.

“There of no use in the field now, are they.”

As they walked toward the road, Mairi was conflicted.  She wanted to rush to where her boys were, but she felt obliged to stay with Anna who was laboring with the soft, uneven ground and the slight incline.  To make matters worse, Anna did not talk in her exertion, leaving Mairi to fret unabated.  At one point, Mairi asked Anna if the constables would carry guns.  All she received in reply was Anna’s heavy breathing and a wave of impatience from her free hand.

The crofters, men, women and children, arrayed themselves along the short stone fence bordering the road.  Four men and one woman crossed the fence and now stood on the road facing in the direction from which the constables would approach.  As Mairi approached the forty or so crofters she began to hear murmurings and an occasional raised voice.  Nearly all gathered had something in their hands—a rake, hoe, pitchfork, a walking stick, or stone.  It frightened Mairi.

“I don’t see Niall or Ailean.”  She stopped thirty feet from the crowd.

Anna took a step or two past her unaware they were stopping, then leaned heavily on her stick and looked back at Mairi.  Between deep breaths she said, “Well, come on then.  Ye’ll no find em back here.”

Mairi was becoming more frightened by the apparent attitude of the crofters and didn’t move.  “I canna see them, Anna.  Can you?”

“Lass, let’s go look together.”

“No, no.  I want them to come to me.  To come away from that . . . that . . . rabble.  Can’t ye see?”

“Aye, I can see well enough.  Yer afeared, aren’t ye, Lass?”  Anna shook her head and stepped back toward Mairi.  “Give me the stones then.  I’ll find yer bairns and shush them back to ye.”

Mairi helped Anna lift the leather strap over Anna’s head and onto her shoulder.

“Mairi, the future of yer hame, yer life, is going to be right here, on this road.  The Laird’s hired men are coming to take it all away from ye.  Will ye no stand up for yerself?”

Mairi said nothing, looking past Anna as though she hadn’t heard a word.  Anna turned, shaking her head, and trundled to the back of the crowd.  Soon Niall and Ailean emerged from the crowd slowly and dejectedly walked toward Mairi.  Ailean stumbled and fell from watching behind him and not on the ground he was walking.

“What are you two doing here?  This is no place for young lads.”

“Others are here, Ma,” said Niall pointing back to the crowd.

“Well, they shouldn’t be.  This is not a Christian gathering.  This is not the sort of thing Christ would have taught us.  No.  I’ll no have my bairns straying from the teachings of Christ.  Do you hear me?”

Before the boys could answer, one of the men in the crowd shouted, “There!” and soon all eyes, including Mairi’s, were focused down the road where a lone horseman rode out from behind a rise.  The rider trotted a short distance, then stopped.  He stayed there for several moments before wheeling his horse and leaving from the way he’d come, disappearing around the curve and behind the rise.

To a soul, the crofters remained silent while the rider was in sight.  As soon as he disappeared, their murmurings started again, but at a noticeably higher decibel.

“See, now,” Mairi said, her voice betraying relief, “he spied us and thought better of it.  It’s all over.  We should be to hame, now.”

“What about Da?” asked Ailean.

“They’re all staying, Ma,” said Niall.

“It’s over,” Mairi raised her voice, “and that’s the last I’ll say of it.  Ye’ll go hame now and say yer prayers thanking God for his grace and wisdom that kept us all safe.”

“Look!” shouted Ailean pointing back down the road.  “Look, Niall.”

From behind the same rise, the rider reemerged.  This time, men on foot followed.  From this distance and in the muted light, Mairi could still see their dark uniforms with dark caps.  The crofter’s murmuring stopped again.

 It was now coming to pass, and the fear gripped her by the throat.  Marching up the road in navy uniforms with brass buttons was her misery.  They were the harbingers of homelessness.  On their belts were truncheons of destitute lives.  On their caps were badges of cold-heartedness.  Mairi began to feel the desolation deep into her soul.

Still, her soul was buoyed by the thought that this was all part of God’s plan.  Recognizing that her destiny was unfolding before her, even though she had no notion of what that destiny held, was a small comfort.  These constables could be, instead of the messengers of misery, the instruments of God’s will come to ensure God’s will come to pass. 

Nevertheless, she feared them and the destiny they brought.  She feared finding a new home.  She feared going hungry and watching her bairns starve.  Most of all, she feared the possibility she could be put on a boat destined for a different and foreign land.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw someone turn and run away, toward the crofts of Balmeanach.  With her eyes, Mairi followed his flight until he disappeared behind some buildings.  When she looked back, Niall and Ailean were no longer in front of her.  They were nowhere to be seen.  Mairi panicked and moved closer to the road to try to find them.  When she reached the stone wall, she saw them.  They were on the road with their father, Peter, facing the oncoming constables.

“Niall!  Ailean!”

The boys looked at her, then at their father.  Peter patted Ailean on the head.  They stayed with him.

“Peter!  I dinna want them there!”

Peter looked at her and frowned.

“Fine young men ye raised there, Mairi,” said Anna tanking Mairi’s arm.  “Their Da will keep them from harm.”

“He shouldna have to,” said Mairi.  “They shouldna be there.”

“Och, let them be, Lass.  Ye’ll remember wha they done here wi’ pride, ye will.  They’re good, brave lads, sure.”

Anna moved back toward the bulk of the crofters.  Mairi looked to the approaching constables who were now close enough she could make out the determination on their faces.  Then, from her right periphery, she saw more people from Balmeanach climbing the hill toward the road.  To her left she saw movement among the stones on the slope above the road.  Now the constables would be outnumbered and it only served to build Mairi’s dread.

The crofters were silent as the constables approached.  Mairi wondered what they were thinking.  With more coming up from Balmeanach and those on the hill, she began to worry even more that this confrontation would become a conflict of high emotion rather than a meeting of reasoned coolness.  She looked back to Peter, Niall, and Ailean, and became even more fearful.  Looking for strength, she folded her hands, bowed her head, and silently prayed.

Dear Lord, I know you’re a just and merciful God of Grace.  And I know this may all be according to your plan.  But, Lord, I feel like we’re the Israelites and the constables are the Egyptians.  Ye helped the Israelites.  Ye parted the sea and when they were safe ye crushed their enemies with the very thing ye saved them with.  Will ye save us like you did them?  What have we done, how have we sinned so, that makes us less worthy of your salvation than the Israelites?  Dear God, do something.  Keep my family from harm.  I beseech ye.

The constables stopped short of the gathered crofters.  Their eyes, edgy, almost frightened, their heads constantly moving as though they expected something to happen and wanted to see from which quarter it started.

The crofters began drifting down the stone wall until they were abeam the constables.  Peter, Niall, Ailean and the other men blocking the road moved closer as well.  Mairi followed from behind the stone wall.

“Yer no welcome here!” shouted one of the men standing next to Peter.  “There’s nothing for ye here.  Go back to where ye come.”

From the front of the constables, the sheriff replied, “We’re no here for a welcome.”

“Then go hame!” shouted someone from the wall.

“Aye, off with ye, ye buggerin bastards!” shouted someone else followed by a chorus of “ayes” and grumbles from the crofters shaking their sticks and raising their fists.

The constables’ unease was now palatable.  Many removed their truncheons from their belts and held them at the ready.  Mairi could see that some began moving into a stance she could only imagine was in preparation for an attack. 

The sheriff dismounted his horse and reached into his coat breast pocket pulling out a folded paper.  He kept watch on the crowd as he unfolded the paper and prepared to read.

“The Laird Alexander MacDonald and the magistrate of Portree have issued a warrant for the arrest of Norman Stewart, Alexander Finlayson, Malcolm Finlayson, Peter MacDonald, Donald Nicholson, and James Nicholson . . .”

Mairi heard her husband’s name and panic swelled in her breast.  She could feel her throat constrict and her breathing quicken.  Where was God, she wondered.  Where was his compassion and justice?  Certainly he could not be looking down on the misery that was about to be inflicted with a dispassionate heart.  Certainly, he would not loose the wolves on his flock.

From the crofters, someone yelled, “Ye canna fool us, ye’ve come to hump our sheep.”  The crowd burst into laughter.

“Ye’re all the shite in the field.”

A woman followed, “Nay, they’re the worms under the shite.”  More laughter.

“Ye’ll nay take a one, sae help me,” Peter replied to the sheriff.  “Ye can drag yer bloody arses back tae Glasgow.”

“Oh God, no, Peter.  No,” whispered Mairi.  She saw Naill standing next to his father.  He now held a stone in his right hand.  Ailean had backed away.

“Ailean!  Ailean!  Come here!” and the lad began making his way to Mairi all the while keeping watch on the formation of constables.  When he reached Mairi, she could see the fear in his eyes and when she stroked his hair, she could feel a tremble.  She took his hand and held him close to her. 

“Wheest, child.”

The crofters were tense, waiting, it seemed to Mairi, for an excuse to rush the constables.  The constables were tense as well, fearing what appeared to be the inevitable pain of sticks and stones.  The crofters began shouting at the invaders.  There was Anna shaking her walking stick in their direction and shouting, “Go hame, ye buggerer of boys!”

Mairi saw the sheriff turn toward the constables behind him and then point to the men blocking the road, including Peter and Niall.  The sheriff then stepped out of the way and a dozen or so constables, truncheons in hand, began walking toward the men the sheriff identified.  Apparently, that was all the crofters required.  Stones started flying toward the constables.  A few crofters hopped up on the stone wall and began swinging their sticks and tools at the police.  Mairi saw movement on the hillside and looked in time to see several large stones rolling toward the massed constables.

The din was tremendous.  Mairi couldn’t make out what most were saying, but she could tell it was being said in anger.  She looked down at Ailean who was now hugging her side.  It’s not right, she thought, it’s not right.  These uniformed men, these strangers who’ve never seen any of us before, have been sent to do the bidding of the one who does know us.  They’re the hired tools of a coward.  No better and not much different from oxen yoked to do their masters’ labors.

As she watched in frozen horror, the clash between crofters and constables became more involved and pitched.  Crofters clambered over the stone wall only to face truncheons being swung wildly in an attempt to keep crofters at a distance and to deflect incoming sticks and tools.  Mairi saw crofters being hit by truncheons and staggering away.  Moments later they were ready to rejoin the fray.  She saw constables backing away from the pressing crowd.  It appeared the crofters were gaining the advantage.  Then she saw Anna stumble away from the crowd.  Mairi went to her.

“Are ye hurt?”

“Aye,” whispered Anna as though she was out of breath.  “A wee bit.  A bastard got
me . . . before I could get . . . one of them.”

Anna turned her head away from Mairi.  Her neck was brilliant red and a small trickle of blood escaped from her ear.  Mairi hissed, sucking in air.

“Striking a woman.  Have they no decency?  It’s no too bad, Anna.”

“That’s no why . . . I left,” continued Anna.  “I also got hit . . . in the chest.  Knocked the breath . . . from me.”

Mairi helped Anna sit on the ground.  When Mairi knelt to clean the blood from Anna’s ear, Anna brushed her away and pointed to the road.  Mairi saw a desperate struggle between the men on the road and the constables.

“Peter won’t . . . give up yer hame . . . without a good row,” said Anna.

Mairi looked up to the road and Peter who was struggling against the grasping hands of the constables.  She stood.  A truncheon lifted above the fray.  It swung down.  Niall fell to the ground.

“No!” Mairi shouted and began running toward the fighting men.  “A dhiobhail!”  She hadn’t spoken Gaelic in years and now the first thing out of her mouth was to curse the constable as a devil. 

Niall crawled away from the brawl.  Mairi rushed to him.  He was crying and holding his left shoulder.  Mairi helped him away from the road.  When they stopped, she tried to cajole him to stop crying to no avail. 

Two constables now had Peter on the ground and one was striking Peter with his fist.  Mairi looked down, then moved Niall to the side and picked up a potato-sized stone.  With all her might, she hurled it at the men holding Peter.  When she’d thrown it, she yelled, “A mitic an deamhan!”  [You son of the devil!]

Her stone fell short of the men, but one saw her throw it and nodded toward her and said something to another constable.

“Yer a poofter!” shouted Mairi.  “Aye, you, ye clotheid.”

The constable took two steps toward Mairi and stopped.

“Cha toll?” she taunted.  “Pog mo thon!”  [No?  Kiss my ass!]

Mairi picked up another stone and threw it at the stopped constable.  He caught it before it could hit him.  He shook his head, dropped the stone, and turned back toward the brawl.  Mairi shrieked in exasperation.

The crofters who had been blocking the road, including her Peter, were now being drug back to the main body of constables who were still fighting off crofter sticks and stones.  The arrested men were handcuffed, yet struggling against their captors.  In short order, the constables and their captors were enveloped in the main body of constables.  When they were all together the constables slowly began backing down the road they’d arrived on with the shouting and harassing crofters in pursuit.

Mairi lost sight of Peter.  She left Niall and Ailean with Anna, who was still sitting and panting, and followed the crowd.  She picked up a stone and was preparing to throw it when she realized that Peter was somewhere amongst the constables and her stone might hit him.  So she dropped the stone and instead shouted, “ Yer mither’s a salope and yer the gowk from her wame!”  She saw another woman pick up a stone to throw and said, “No, no.  Our men are in there.”

When it became apparent to Mairi that Peter was going to be taken away and the gathered crofters weren’t going to affect it, she stopped following and watched the crofters and constables drift slowly down the road, still in contact with each other.  Soon more and more crofters fell out of the crowd and the pace of the constables quickened. 

Mairi still seethed with anger at the whole situation—the Laird and his lackey factor, the sheriff, and the hired constables.  How dare they come into her space, her home, with ill intent?  They were invaders.  She hated them all.  They were vile thieves.

Mairi turned away from the retreating army and returned to her boys and Anna.  Both boys had stopped crying, though Ailean still gulped large breaths of air.  Mairi brushed back his hair from his face, then with her thumbs, wiped the dirt streaks on his cheeks.

“Where are they takin Da?” Ailean asked.

“Awa, lad,” she whispered.  “Dinna fash yerself.  Yer Da will be back soon enough.”

Mairi turned to Niall who was still favoring the shoulder that had been struck.

“Ah, Niall.  Are ye hurt bad, dear?”

Niall shook his head.

“Can ye lift yer arm?” she asked helping him raise his arm from his side.  “Good.  It’s no broken then.”

“I’m proud of ye, Mairi,” Anna said pulling herself to her knees.  “Ye stood up for yer man and yer hame, ye did.  Against them coofs.”

Mairi looked back down the road and muttered, “Ifrinn an diabhuill . . . a dhia, thoir cobhair.”  [Devil’s hell . . . God help us]

“God dinna help them like us, lass,” said Anna.  She lifted her arm toward Mairi who took it helping Anna to her feet.  “It’s the Laird he helps.  The Laird and them like him.”

“Anna, wha now?”

“Aye, wha now.”  Suddenly Anna looked frantically toward the crofters that were now trudging back.  “Have ye seen Angus?”

“Aye, I did.  He was fine.”

Anna looked back at Mairi and smiled.  Patting Mairi’s cheek, Anna said, “Aye, wha now.  I guess we go hame, go hame and wait.  Will ye be alright, then?  Just ye and the lads, there?”

Mairi nodded.

“Come on then, lads,” said Anna.  “Let’s tak yer mither hame so ye can wait for yer Da’s return.”

In the quiet walk home, Mairi relived the day ending in the anxiousness she now felt returning.  Her husband was gone, taken by the agents of a greedy, powerful, uncaring man.  The Laird had taken her man, her boys’ father.  She and the boys could manage the croft for a short while, but soon those same agents led by the Laird’s cousin, the Factor, would come to put her out.  She and her boys, and what they could carry, would be sent to a fishing village or put on a boat to Canada.  How would Peter find them when released from custody?  How would they ever find each other in a foreign land?  She had no answers.  No convenient comforts to ease her fears.  Answers abandoned her when she needed them most.

He abandoned her . . . or she abandoned Him.  I didn’t matter.  He wasn’t there.  He didn’t protect her or her family from the calamity they now faced.  He had to know what was happening to them and He turned a blind eye. 

When they arrived at the croft, Mairi said farewell to Anna, assuring her again she would be fine, and sent the boys inside.  She stayed outside the door in the cool, damp air and watched her neighbors and villagers stream back from the scene of the battle.  Some remained defiant, boisterous to those for whom it did not matter.  Most, though, were silent.  Mairi thought they were contemplating the ramifications of the day and their futures that were already rather bleak.  Most were barely able to eke enough from the rock-strewn, spongy soil to pay their rent, let alone have some money left over for fish or coal.  The Laird would certainly be harsh in his retribution for their insolence, and they walked as though they knew it.

It was when Duncan MacPhee passed that her soul blackened into obscurity.  Duncan was the most God-fearing man she knew.  Many said he should be the reverend rather than the sot they had.  As he walked past Mairi’s croft, she could see blood matting the hair on his head and in his beard.  Here was a man who, of all men, had no sin.  He lived day-to-day by God’s word.  He prayed night and day.  If God would love and protect anyone, it would be Duncan MacPhee.

Yet, here he was trudging back from the confrontation with the constables and on his head a sign that God had not been with him, had not protected him.  Could it be Duncan was also being punished?  Could God not forgive him this once for all the years Duncan had been his most devoted servant?  As the Lord’s devoted servant, Duncan suffered like every other crofter.  Diseased crops, starving beasts, and a demanding landlord plagued Duncan no less than it did, say, David Conroy who drank too much, whose every sentence contained curse words and who routinely disappeared leaving his family to fend for themselves.  His life and Duncan’s life were equally hard.  How could that be?

Did God not care?  Could he not see this part of the world to know the pain and suffering they were enduring?  Had he washed his hands of men only to intervene in the world to punish?  Is there not a better way, a more compassionate way, to deal with our misery?  Can He not think of anything better?

Mairi took a deep breath and turned to go inside.  She stood next to the fire for a moment, then said, “Lads, come here.  I dinna know when yer Da will come home.  It may be soon, or maybe no.  I’m sure the factor will soon call and charge us to leave.  So, we need to be ready.  I’ll be relyin on ye two to help.  Do ye understand me?”

Niall and Ailean nodded.

Mairi looked into the fire and continued, “Aye, we’re on our own now.  There’s no one to help.  We must do what we have to.  Rely on no one or nothing.”

Here's the latest thing I'd written for my writing group.  It's still first draft.  I haven't incorporated any of their comments yet.  UPDATE:  This is the edited version of the story.  It incorporates the critiques from my writing group.  I welcome you comments.

PAINTCREEK LANE

What have you been up to?  Have you been tormenting old Miss Brodie again?  Don’t think I don’t know.  Come here.  Sit down.  Let me tell you a story.

He lived in a run-down, one-story house squeezed between two sprawling ranches of post-war prosperity.  How his shabby little bungalow came to be there I’ll never know.  It was actually more like a cabin than a bungalow.  Something like you’d see on the banks of the Wabash where fishermen would camp over the weekend.  It was white . . . or at least it was once before weather and age did what they always do to things that are fresh and new.  The most distinguishing feature of the house, though, was a deep and dark front porch.  This was where I first saw him.

The kids in the neighborhood shared a common fear of him borne from a source that I never knew.  I don’t exactly recall the details of the legend because each time I heard it the details changed.  History, for children, can’t be something fixed or static.  It’s living and subject to change.  That’s what keeps it interesting.  It’s not the facts as they were, it’s the facts as we knew them.  That’s true for adults, too. 

Anyway, the story goes that he didn’t like trespassers, especially young trespassers.  He would sit on his front porch guarding his property, and, as a deterrent, he always had a gun next to him propped up against the house.  Once, a kid from outside the neighborhood, who didn’t know what we knew, wandered into his yard.  So, of course, the old man took his gun and shot him.  The results of the encounter varied wildly depending on who was telling the story and sometimes who the audience was.  They ranged from a warning shot over the kid’s head to the boy being shot through the heart instantly killing him.  For ten-year-old kids, this was a powerful story.  It didn’t matter that there were tenants of jurisprudence that made certain features of the story problematic.  We were ten years old and hadn’t taken Latin in school yet.

For us, all that mattered were the facts as we knew them, and there were many that supported the story.  Take, for instance, the fact that he seemed to always be sitting on the front porch, in the shadows, the gun at his side propped against the house.  Take the fact that no one was ever seen setting foot in his yard.  Even the mailman would walk out onto the street rather than step on his property.  Of course, for us it didn’t matter that the mailbox was curbside.   Take the fact that his yard was littered with baseballs and kick balls and other toys that had gotten away from kids, found their way onto his yard by accident, and now were fixtures on his landscape.  There were all facts that, for a neighborhood of ten year olds, made the legend true and chilling.

Ten year olds can be cruel.  I’m not sure why that is.  We use to ride our bikes on our way to someplace or another, and we’d look for him sitting on his porch.  If he was there, someone would invariably shout out some sort of slur, like “freak” or “weirdo” or some other powerful-for-a-ten-year-old word, and then we’d pedal as fast as our little legs would go, laughing a nervous, hold-off-the-demons, laugh.

One time, though, the cruelty went a little too far.  It was Halloween and a bunch of us were trick-or-treating.  Johnny Musgrove was with us.  I think he’d recently become enthralled with the idea and the word “murder.”  He’d use it all the time; even when it didn’t make sense. 

I remember Dad had made me a mask for that Halloween.  It was brilliant.  I was a one-eyed space creature.  The mask, made from chicken wire and paper machete, was painted green with one big eye, a whiffle ball painted like an eye, inset into the paper machete.  Its mouth was a long alligator-looking snout.  I saw the world from the back of the space creature’s throat.  It was the best costume of all.

We had finished getting a popcorn ball from the house next to the old man’s and were being careful to avoid his property by walking in the street.  The lingering twilight and street light was enough to see him and his gun sitting on his porch.  For some reason, we all stopped and stared.  That’s when Johnny shouted, “Murderer!”  As soon as the old man heard that he stood up and took his gun in hand.  That was enough for us.  We bolted, running down the street feeling certain that we would hear the explosion from a gun and one of us would fall dead.

Chicken wire and paper machete make great masks, but they’re heavy and fragile.  So, here we were, dashing down the middle of Paintcreek Lane as fast as we could go, careful not to spill candy from our plastic buckets.  I was falling further and further behind the others because of the monstrosity of a mask I was wearing.  To make matters worse, while I was running for my life, the jarring caused the mask to weaken.  Soon it began to come apart which slowed me down even more.  My sight portal through the creature’s mouth was gradually closing as the mask disintegrated.  When I heard the creature’s lone eye pop from its socket and bounce on the street, I stopped, put my hands on my knees to catch my breath, then flung the remains of the mask to the street.

That incident convinced us that he was certainly a murderer, probably capable of committing another one with the slightest provocation.  After that encounter and after the word spread of our experience, that was the last epitaph shouted at the old man.  Our fear of him and what he could do increased exponentially.

* * *

It was a spring weekend, after the Halloween incident, and I was going to trade baseball cards with Stewart.  I’d gathered my cards into a shoebox and put the box in the wire basket on the front of my Schwinn.  I left for Stewart’s which would take me past the old man’s house—a fact that didn’t cross my mind as I left. 

I was excited.  You see, Stewart liked the Cardinals.  I didn’t.  I liked the Cubs.  Stewart didn’t.  I was certainly going to come out ahead on this deal.  So, when I tried to pop a wheelie on a small bump in the road in front of the old man’s house, I wasn’t thinking about where I was.  The jolt of the front wheel returning to the pavement caused the shoebox lid to fly off and baseball cards scattered everywhere.  I pushed back on the pedals stopping the bike, kicked down the kickstand, and began to gather the cards from the street.  It was then that I saw a number of cards laying in his yard.

There, lying in the grass flat on his back, was Ernie Banks, my favorite Cub.  Over there, on the side of the sidewalk closest to the house, was Ron Santo.  Cubs were scattered all over his yard.  Well, all over the yard within ten feet of where I stood, my toes touching the curb.  I should be able reach down and pick up some of the cards without setting foot on his yard, but I couldn’t.  They were so close, within reach, and yet they may as well have been gone forever.

I was frozen with fear and sick with anger.  My Cubs, my favorite team, the pride of my card collection, begged for me to rescue them.  My fear said I should know better.  I was torn and it quickly took its toll on me.  I stamped my foot and was nearly on the verge of crying when a voice came from the porch shadows.

 “Go ahead . . . pick em up.”

I stopped breathing.  I didn’t move.  I couldn’t.  The voice of my doom had spoken inviting me to join him in the realm of death.  It paralyzed me.

 “Are you deaf?  I said pick em up.”

Still I didn’t move.  I saw through the shadows that he took the gun in his right hand and slowly stood up.  I nearly wet myself.  I was visibly trembling and could feel cold sweat beading in the small of my back.  I was going to die.  I knew it.  Yet I couldn’t move.  He was going to pull that gun to his shoulder and take aim at a ten year old kid who, despite himself, couldn’t make the shot difficult. 

He moved toward the center of the porch and  I could see a hitch in his slow gait.  A limp.  When he took the first step out of the shadows and onto the stairs leading off the porch, he put both hands on a shoulder-height stick, not a gun.  In doing so, he placed most of his weight on it to help him manage the steps.  At the bottom of the stairs he returned to having only one hand on the walking stick, though it was obvious he needed the crutch to walk.

I was still frightened.  This man that was limping toward me, was still the man we all believed capable of shooting at kids like me.  This was the same man that Johnny had called a murderer and I was sure he was going to prove it on me.  There was still the certainty in my wildly racing mind that he could beat me to death with that stick.

The fear and anger that had kept me frozen curbside had changed to fear and curiosity.  In that short span of time, I had forgotten all about the Cubs in the yard.  I now fixated on this thin, limping old man and what he might do to me.  I stayed right where I was, though I could’ve easily run away.  Although I still trembled, curiosity was beginning to take over.

He stopped five feet from me and surveyed the display of cards on his yard.  Lifting his walking stick, he swung it to his left and dropped the stick’s butt next to Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks.

 “Is that Ernie Banks?” he asked.

I responded with a blank stare that must have looked to him like I was about to cry.

 “Mr. Cub,” he continued.  “He’s my favorite player.  Say, if you don’t want him, do you mind if I keep him?”

Now I did start to cry.  I didn’t fall on the ground blubbering uncontrollably, mind you.  I was too afraid to take my eyes off the old man.  Still, my nose started running.  My throat hurt and my eyes burned.  My guess is that when the first tear seeped out of the corner of my eye, my lip started quivering.  That caused him to lean heavily on his stick, look away while rolling his eyes and sigh deeply as though this was such a bother.

He looked back at me, shook his head and said, “Look, just pick up the cards, okay?  Go ahead.  I’m not going to beat you.  I promise.”

He stared at me.  I stared back not sure what I should do next.  I wiped the trail of tears on my cheek and sniffled.  He continued to stare at me.  I slowly leaned over and, careful not to lose sight of him, picked up the card closest to me.  His position leaning on his walking stick didn’t change.  His stare didn’t shift.  I picked up another, then another.  No movement from him.  When I picked up the last I could reach without stepping onto his yard, I stopped.

“The rest of those mine?” he asked unceremoniously.

This was going to be a monumental step for me.  Probably the most important I’d taken since my first.  With my first step, I was stepping into life.  The next step I was considering could possibly be, for all I knew, my last.  Yet the feeling that he wasn’t going to do anything was working its way from my brain to my gut.  So I took the step from the street onto his yard still fearful of what might happen, yet more firmly believing that nothing would.

He continued watching me and leaning on his walking stick.  I began picking up cards.  It wasn’t long before I’d retrieved them all.  As I was putting them back into the shoebox in the basket on the bike I said the only thing I could think of to say.  I said what I’d been taught to say.  From my bike, I looked him in the eye and said, “Thank you.”  He nodded and looked at the ground.  I moved to mount my bike.

“If you want to show them to me, I’d like to see the rest of your cards.”  He didn’t look at me when he spoke.  It was as if he was embarrassed to ask.  As if he was ashamed to be admitting that he wanted company.

I stammered telling him that I was on the way to a friend’s house.

“Sure, I understand,” he turned and started back to his house with that pitiful limp.

Watching him struggle with each step and with his plea for someone to talk to still in my ears, I suddenly felt intensely sorry for this man.  It stuck me how wrong I and all my friends had been about him.  At that moment, I no longer saw him as a menace, but instead as a lonely old man.  I pitied him.

I guided my bike onto his yard, leaned it against its kickstand, grabbed the shoebox from the wire basket and ran up behind him as he was climbing the porch stairs.

“I’ve got some time,” I said.

Without turning around he looked over his left shoulder and asked, “You sure?  I don’t want to keep you from nothing.”

I nodded.

“Well, come on up here.”  He moaned while taking the last step to the porch.  He moved straight to the old metal porch chair where we always saw him sit and slowly eased himself down.  The walking stick took its place to his right where before his gun had always been.

He looked around after sitting as though looking for something he expected to be there.  “I guess I don’t have a chair for you.  Uhh . . . see that wood box over there?  Drag that down here to sit on.”

I put down the shoebox and went for the old ammo box.  There were rope handles turned gray and fraying from age on either side, so I tried to lift it.  It was too heavy.  Using one of the handles, I drug it, rather awkwardly, across the porch until it was in such a position that I could sit on it facing him.  After retrieving the shoebox, I sat down on the ammo box and started pulling out cards.

The cards on top were rather jumbled from my ill-fated attempt at popping a wheelie, while the cards on the bottom were still orderly because they were bound by team with rubber bands.  These were the cards I rarely looked at or rearranged.  Teams like the Tigers and Senators.  The result was that when the lid flew off the shoebox, the loose cards were free to seek their escape while the bound cards stayed put.

When I started handing him cards, I noticed how frail he looked.  He had thin, white hair, but it covered his head.  It looked like he hadn’t shaved in over a week.  In fact, now that I think about it, it looked as though he’d cut his beard and hair as close as he possibly could using scissors.   Even back then I noticed that his beard was rough and uneven.  The skin on his face, neck, and arms was loose and leathery, like it had once covered a larger body that had spent hours outdoors.  His movements were slow and measured.  He had an unconscious habit of rhythmically pushing his tongue out so it minutely emerged between his lips.  It reminded me of my baby brother who would do the same sort of thing with his tongue while he was sleeping, his blankie in hand.

I showed him most of the loose cards I had.  We spent a long time looking at the Cubs.  He recognized many of the older players, but not many of the more recent team members.  He’d ask about them and I’d tell him all I knew for a ten year old.  He’d smile and nod.

“I saw the Cubs at Wrigley right after I came back,” he said handing me back my cards.

“Neat.  I’ve never been to Chicago.”

“You’d like Wrigley.  It’s a palace to baseball.  It’s what a ballpark should be.”

“Who’d you see?”

“Who else?  Cubs and Cardinals.”

“Holy mackerel!” I exclaimed.  I’d have given all my cards to see a Cubs vs. Cardinals game at Wrigley Field.

“Yeah, but the Cubs lost.  I think it was seven to two.  But Mr. Cub got a hit.  That was his first full year with the Cubs.  We all knew he’d be something special.”

“You saw Ernie Banks play?”

“Sure.  I think it was 1954.  I’ll tell you what, if you promise not to tell a soul, I’ve got something I think you’d like to see.”

“Scout’s honor!”  I held up three fingers since I was still only a cub scout.

“I’m going to have to ask you to get it for me.  Inside, on a table against the wall, is a box.  It might be a little heavy, but see if you can bring it out here.”

There was hardly anything in the house.  An upholstered chair faced the center of the room from the front wall.  On one side was a small table with a lone candlestick.  On the other side were well-read paperbacks stacked on the floor.  On the opposite side was a metal kitchen table with two candlesticks and two chairs that didn’t match.  The only light in the room was the daylight filtering dimly through drawn paper shades.  On the right wall was a door and just beyond was the table with the cardboard box.  As I passed the door, I could see that his bed was a thin mattress on the floor.  I saw no bedding.

Mind you, we didn’t have a lot when I was growing up, but we were comfortable.  I had a bed with sheets and blankets.  We had a television, a sofa, bookcases and lamps.  In his house, I was standing in a different world.  I’d never seen anyone live like this before.  It made me uneasy, so I grabbed the box off the table and took it back outside to the world where I was comfortable.

“Ah, good,” he said as I came out the front door cradling the box.  “Bring it to me.”

I put the box in his lap and stood by his side anxious to see what was inside.  He smiled seeing my eagerness.  To keep me in suspense he stuck his hand through the folded top.  After fishing blindly inside the box for a few moments, his smile widened and he slowly drew out his hand.  In it was a baseball.  It still looked new.

“I got this ball at that game.  It was a foul ball Ernie hit.  It came floating right to me.  Caught it in my right hand.”

“Ernie Banks hit that ball?”

“Yep, and look here.”  He twisted the ball and there, like it was written yesterday, was Mr. Cubs’ signature.

“What do you think of that?”

I was speechless.  It was 1967 and Ernie Banks had much earlier cemented his position as the quintessential Cub.  Everyone loved Ernie and I certainly counted myself in that number.  At that point in my life, no possession could have been as treasured as that ball.  It was Fort Knox material.

The old man held out the ball.  I took it in both hands and held it as though it was pure crystal, as though it was a Faberge egg, as though it was my baby brother.  I dared not touch the signature, though I badly wanted to.  I began feeling nervous holding something so precious so I handed it back to the old man who quickly returned it to the box.

“Have you got anything else in there?” I asked bending over to try and see in the box.

“Not really.  Just some army stuff.”

Now, if there was one thing I loved more than baseball, it was playing war.

“Really?!  Were you in World War Two?”  World War Two was my favorite war.  That sounds odd doesn’t it . . . having a favorite war.  It’s kind of like having a favorite method of execution.  There was something satisfying about having the Nazis as enemies though.

“No,” he said quietly.  “Korea.”

“Dad was in Korea!  Did you shoot anyone?  Dad was a medic, but he was there after the war was over.  Still, I tell all my friends that my Dad shot more people than their dads.  Get it?  My Dad was a medic.  He shot more . . . he gave people shots.”

He smiled and nodded.

“What kind of army stuff is in the box?”

He sighed deeply, then pushed the box toward me.  “Look for yourself.”

I put the box on the porch floor and greedily flipped open the top flaps like it was Christmas.  Inside, along with the Ernie Banks baseball was a treasure trove of military memorabilia.  There were spent rifle brasses, patches, many of which had a large number eight, rank insignia, and various uniform accoutrements.  There was a tobacco tin filled with dirt, some stones and a lot of newspaper clippings held together with a paperclip.  I touched everything.  The sergeant’s stripes, the stained patches, the broken marksmanship medal.  There were also three leather cases stacked on top of each other.

“What are these?” I asked.

He stared straight ahead without answering.

I took the first leather case out, flipped open the latch and slowly raised the lid.  Inside was a gleaming Silver Star medal.  The second box was stuffed with four Purple Hearts.  The third case had a Bronze Star medal.  I’d never seen anything like it before.  I’d seen the medals on TV, but that was black and white.  I’d also seen toy store replicas.  These were real.  The Silver Star was really silver, the Bronze Star I initially mistook for being gold, and the background around the four George Washingtons was the most regal purple I could imagine.

“Put them away.”  His voice was much deeper and hoarse.

“But . . .”

“Just put them back, please.”

I closed the leather lids, secured the latches and one-by-one placed them gently back in the box.

“Boy, if my friends could see this stuff . . .”

“What do your friends say about me?” still with a deep, hoarse voice.

“Huh?”

“What do you and your friends think I’ve done?”

Suddenly, I was deeply embarrassed by what we’d said about this man.  The time I’d spent with him had made me forget entirely about what we’d accused him of being.  Now it had come back voraciously.

“Nothing.”  I didn’t know what else to say.

We were at a sort of standoff now.  I was ashamed to tell him what my friends and I had been saying about him and he apparently insisted on hearing it.  He didn’t look at me at all.  Instead, his gaze was intensely blank.  His eyes were moist.  I thought I could see in the moistness reflections of images from a different place and time flickering like a movie reel.

Then, in a whisper he said, “I have killed.  I’ve murdered . . . men.”

Now the original fear was returning.  I imagined that he was confessing to me prior to doing me in.  Suddenly, I desperately wanted to leave and yet somehow was compelled to stay.

“I was in the North when the Chinese attacked.  There was so many of them.  They just kept coming.  Day and night.  I couldn’t sleep.  Here they’d come again.  It was cold.  December.  Snow.  Blood.  Fear.”

These few words evaporated my urge to flee.  I sat quietly and let him continue to talk, though I’m not at all sure he was talking to me.

“Dan, my best friend over there, the guy I did everything with, exploded.  Grenade.  Blew him to bits.  I had blood and flesh all over me.  I was washed in the blood of Dan.  I took some shrapnel.  In my leg.  They took me back and got most of it out.  Took some bone from Dan out of me, too.  Sent me back to the front.

“I didn’t want to go.  I was tired.  Sick from seeing my buddies die.  Sick of death.  I wanted to die to keep from seeing more death.  But, I didn’t want to die like this.  I didn’t want to die in agony, moaning in pain, gasping, gurgling blood trying to breath.  One shot.  Instant nothing.  Just to stop the death.

“We were falling back.  Rough ground.  Horrible ground.  Snow to our calves.  Snow covered with ash and dirt and blood.  We’d establish defensive lines.  They’d come again.  Hundreds of them.  Screaming, shouting, shooting.  We’d fall back more.

“One night, they came again.  Too many of them.  Too many.  They overran us.  We had to fight to retreat.  Hand-to-hand.  Knives.  Helmets.  Rocks.  Whatever we could find.  I can still feel the bayonet . . . entering.  I cut a man’s throat so hard I nearly cut off his head.  His blood was warm on my cold hands.  It melted the snow.  Shot a man about to throw a grenade.  I didn’t kill him.  He dropped the grenade.  It blew him ten feet into the air.  Squeezed a man’s throat so hard I could feel his windpipe crack.  The throbbing from a bullet poorly aimed.”

He paused for a moment.

“I’ve killed.  I’ve murdered.”

Even at that age, I think I understood the torment of living with the horror.  It’s always with you.  Like a heart beat.  It’s with you until it’s not.

He spoke no more.  Nor did I.  I took my box of baseball cards and went home.  I put them in the closet, lay down on my bed, on the thick quilt, and stared out the window.

* * *

From that point on, every time I’d pass his house, if he was on the porch I’d wave.  Sometimes he’d return my wave, other times not.  When he didn’t, I imagined that he was elsewhere and didn’t see me.  The word soon got around to all my friends that his walking stick was, in fact, not a gun and that he’d seen Ernie Banks play against the Cardinals.  He even had a foul ball Ernie had hit signed by Mr. Cub himself.  It took a while to convince them, but one day we were all riding our bikes past his house and I waved.  He waved back.  That’s all it took.  I didn’t tell anyone, not even my Dad, about the old man’s medals or war experiences.  I didn’t think he’d want me to tell.  It would be parading his private hell for all to see.

In November of that year, the week of Thanksgiving, it snowed.  Down in southern Illinois, we didn’t get a lot of snow.  Some years it didn’t snow at all.  On that November day it snowed enough to cover the grass and streets.  It was too exciting for an eleven year old.  I had to go get a friend, Steve, to see if he wanted to have a snowball fight or see if we could find a hill for sledding.  I started running from my house towards Steve’s until I came in sight of the old man’s house.  There were five or six cars and trucks parked out front.  People were walking in and out of the house.  Some were carrying things out and tossing them into the back of a big stake truck.

“Mister, where is he?” I asked a man who’d thrown one of the old man’s kitchen chairs in the truck bed.

“Where’s who?”

“The old man that lived here.”

“Oh, he died last week.”

It hit me like a wrecking ball.  I had a thought that became crucially important.  I shouted to the man who’d begun walking back to the house, “Mister, how did he die?”

“In his sleep,” he answered over his shoulder before disappearing into the house.

I remembered what he’d said about “instant nothing.”  I smiled.  If anything could be better than instant nothing, it would be moving from nothing to nothing.  Moving from the nothing of sleep to the nothing of death would be as close as you could get to not moving at all.  For once, he’d probably gotten more than he asked for.

Before the door closed, a woman emerged carrying the box containing all his treasures—the patches, the Mr. Cubs ball, the medals, his joys and sorrows.  The woman heaved the box onto the back of the truck.

“Excuse me.  What are you going to do with this stuff?”

She looked at me like it was none of my business and then said, “It’s going to the dump.  Why, you want it?”

“No.  Just asking.”

I waited for her to disappear into the house.  When no one else was around, I clambered onto the back of the stake truck, moved the treasure box to the end of the bed, jumped down, grabbed the box and took off. 

I couldn’t allow the treasures, the only possessions that seemed to matter to him, to end up in the dump.  Had these people no feeling?  Did they not know how much these things in this cardboard box meant to the old man?  Apparently not, but I did.  I knew that in this box was the life of a man few people understood.  A life of incredible pain and anguish, yet a life that contained moments of pride, belonging and delight.  I would somehow have to give it the respectful treatment that he’d only rarely received during life.  And I did.

So that’s my story about the old man we were certain was a child murderer.  Now, tell me again what you all say about old Miss Brodie.

I’m a member of a small group of writing enthusiasts.  We occasionally propose writing assignments—homework—to motivate us to write, take us a little out of our writing comfort zone and to help build our stores of stories.  Here’s how they work.  At one of our monthly meetings, one of us proposes a writing assignment.  The most used assignment is to exchange first sentences.  Then each person has until the next meeting in which to write their story and get it sent to the others for critiques.  At the next meeting, we discuss each other’s writing. 

As I mentioned, the preferred assignment seems to be exchanging first lines.  Here are some examples of first sentences: 

"I'm sorry," the doctor said, "it's stage four cancer."

After having his butt pinched by a short girl in an even shorter skirt and stiletto heals, he walked out of the hotel lobby and was immediately sickened by the mingling aromas in the oppressively humid Thai morning – orchids, salt, mangos and rotten eggs. 

 

It was a beautiful winter day, and among the many other things Janice would do today was go for a walk in the park two blocks east of the neighborhood that she had called home for the past twenty-five years. 

At our last meeting, we decided it was time again for another writing assignment.  We talked for a bit about what kind of assignment it should be and decided rather quickly that it should be something different than our preferred assignment.  Someone suggested that we should all have the same first sentence just to see what direction each individual takes from a common starting point.  It might be very revealing.  We all agreed.  Then someone suggested that instead of using the same first sentence, we should all be given a short poem to use as inspiration for a story.   We’ve all seen stories that have a poem just below the title that are supposed to be indicative, in one way or another, of the story that follows.  One of us volunteered to find a poem we could all use and that became the method for our next writing assignment.

So, here’s the poem that we’re supposed to use as the header for our short story assignment:

Listen to the moon next time it sings.

Join the chorus of the stars.

Hum the tune of the pitted orb

    in cheesy harmony

    as it pulls you into

    the blue of the night.

It’s an excerpt of a poem by Patty Fisher.  Now imagine a story that might follow. 

I’m stumped.  I have to admit that while I enjoy reading poetry, and writing a little every now and then, I’m not very adept at seeing metaphors.  In fact, I once wrote a poem about a poet who complains that despite the popular interpretation of one of his poems, he meant nothing more than what he wrote.  So when I read poetry for my own benefit, I focus on the sound and the descriptions and the choice of words.  But when I read a poem and know that I’m going to talk about it with others, I struggle to look for meaning whether it’s there or not.  

So now I’m supposed to write a story that’s somehow connected to this poem and I’m struggling because I’m afraid there’s something more to the poem than a wonderful description of the poet’s musings on moonlight.