CAPTAIN POLLY’S LORE OF THE LINDIAN WOODS

Posted on June 7, 2015 by Raji Singh

(as overheard by Raji Singh)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

You cannot stop Captain Polly’s storytelling chatter. We here at the Fiction House don’t mind. The children like her tales. So do us adults. Better than t.v. – cheaper than movies.

Captain Polly’s the Mark Twain of the critter world. For decades, Twain toured, yarning from his E-Z chair, smoking cigars, sipping cognac. Instead, Polly paces her perch sideways on her talons, sips water, slips open sunflower seeds, spits away shells, and relays the wide repertory she’s gathered in her over two centuries of travel. I wonder if she knew Twain, maybe got a few stories from him – or he, from her.

Here is just one of her hundreds, in honor of June, National Dairy Month.

A BIRTHDAY PRESENT FOR COW

Once upon a time, Cow awoke from a wonderful dream. The creatures of the magical Lindian Woods were giving her a silver bell. It was attached to a blue ribbon that matched her most beautiful eyes.

But it wasn’t a dream. It was really happening.

The Frog Brothers tied it, in a big bow, around her neck.

SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA

Welcome to the Lindian Woods © Photo Mark Rogers 2014

All the Lindian Woods animals shouted, “Surprise!” They gathered around her by the pond.

“When you bend to drink, Madam Cow,” croaked Frer Frog, “or to eat grass, you will hear it. And so will all the creatures.”

Cow swayed her head and the bell softly tingled. Faster. It echoed with a delightful ‘CLANG, CLANG, CLANG.’ All the creatures clapped.

Squirrel said, “It is the shiniest thing in the Woods.”

The Ten Otters climbed out of the water. One at a time, they paraded past Cow, rang the bell with their nose, and laughed their squeaky laughs. Hawk flew in with a surprise birthday cake on her back. She and the Toad Sisters had baked it – full of Cow’s favorite things: hay, grass, molasses, and sorghum. How Hawk kept the candles on the cake lit while in flight, no one knew.

All the creatures clapped, sang Happy Birthday. Turt, no stranger to celebrations, trumpeted a musical medley in time to the singing and bell ringing. Brer Frog drummed Turt’s shell with reeds. Giant stooped, patted Cow’s head and said. “May your milk be the creamiest and all your calves grow to gentle heifers or raging bulls.”

Squirrel cut the cake with a sturdy twig and put slices on big oak leaves for everyone. Squirrel, Raccoon and Beaver were gathering acorns to scoop water from the pond for drinks. But Cow said to Turt, “Could you help me? An occasion like this calls for milk. And I’ll provide it.”

Turt’s fin-claws were cold, but always gentle. He grasped her udder firmly. ‘SQUISH, SQUISH, SQUISH.’ In just a few shakes of Cow’s tail, a gourd was filled as a pitcher. Brer Frog did the pouring into the acorns and the milk and cake were served.

A great Lindian Woods celebration!

Little did the Woodland creatures know their gift of sound would play a big part in their dear Cow’s life one day – and very soon.

PART II: COW’S FATE

The next day.

Cow’s hoof stuck to the railroad track as she crossed it to get to the greenest grass she had ever seen. The great steel train was bearing down. Since Cow’s moo sounded just like the railroad’s whistle that was telling her “CLEAR THE TRACK! CLEAR THE TRACK!” no one in the Lindian Woods realized she was calling for help.

“The Bell!” She told herself. Cow began swaying her neck in wild motions.

‘CLANG! CLANG!’ All her friends from the Lindian Woods heard. They came crawling, hopping, running, and skipping to see what was happening. Frer and Brer Frog moistened her hoof with their slime. Hawk swooped and fanned her wings to get the frog juice oiling between hoof and track. The Ten Otters scooched besides the railing and pulled in unison.

Others of the woods cawed, brayed, and chirped encouragement. “Pull Cow! Pull! Hurry! The long, rattling monster will be on you in only seconds.”

With but moments left, Cow moo-d, her loudest ‘MOO’, ever. Just before the train arrived, she yanked free. She, Brer and Frer, Hawk, and the Ten Otters tumbled safely away.

And that’s how the expression, “saved by the bell”, came about: Or, so tales Captain Polly.

(Read more of Turt and Captain Polly in the novel, Tales of Fiction House. Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment. Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures. You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE. My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2014 Raji Singh

Posted in archeo-apologist, Children, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, whimsy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

PET DATING SERVICE GOES VIRAL (A HEADLINE WE’D LIKE TO SEE)

Posted on May 31, 2015 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

In celebration of National Pet Month, we’d like to refer you to what your pet REALLY needs! (Repost)

*     *     *

Want to find the best mate for your Rex or Ol Tom?  Here at Fiction House Publishing we’re considering a new idea, online matching for critters.

“Run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes.”

“Trot it around the track.  Will it make the finish line?”

No!  Madison Avenue testing cliche’s are not good enough here!  Our pets are too important to be left to an advertising committee.  Got to go right to our creatures to discover the Mr. or Ms. Right for them.’

Here is how I believe my lifelong friend, Turt, would fill out the forms to find his perfect soul mate.  (with a few of my own minor insertions to embellish his desirability)

Have some fun.  Try answering along with the questions with your pet-friend in mind.

Question 1.  WHO AM I? 

Call me, Turt (for that is what is written on my shell).  I am a titanic, half-land – half-sea creature.  A Trumpeter.  From the island of Jericho.

My friend Charles Darwin termed my species, turtus trumputus.

~ ~ Editor note:  see Darwin’s The Beagle Has Landed, page 81, verse 19, line 22, ‘He is no turtle, yet they call him Turt.’  Fiction House Publishing, 1838.  (soon to be added to FHP online library.)  ~ ~

Question 2.  WERE YOU HATCHED OR BORN?

Hatched.  In what two-legs call the year, 1800 I’m still strollin’, floatin’ some 200 years later.  I’m crusty, but spry.

Question 3.  WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST MEMORY?

My tribes’ trumpeting sounds.  They turn heavenly harp as they scythe through thin grass blades and then scale the lushly forested mountains.  Just one word two-legs have for the ascending crescendo – BEATIFIC.

~ ~ Darwin – from his journal:  ‘After studying fossil remains on Jericho Island, and reading the Captains’ logs from a multitude of exploratory ships, I have come to the conclusion that, for millennia, the population of Trumpeters was in the hundreds of thousands.’  ~ ~

Question 4.  WHAT ARE YOUR MOST VIVID MEMORIES? 

That’s E-Z.  Those of my halcyon shell-ing days:

a. Smelling the baked pungency of seaweed marinated with jellyfish and crab corpse as I crawl the warm crystalline beaches of Jericho.  (What sweet Terry-pin wouldn’t just love such a moonlight dine!)

b. My first foray into burbling and swirling tide-pools.

c. Staring for hours at the mirror-clear estuary, and seeing myself swimming there for the first time.

d. Watching a shell-ing my age and size being scooped by a flyer and taken away, forever.  The glee I felt because it wasn’t me.  (So wrong a feeling, I now know.)

Question 5.  DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE CREATURE FRIEND?

Indeed.  Her name is Captain Polly.  Strictly platonic, ladies.  Who among creature or two-leg can say they’ve a 200 year long pal-ship, despite OUR rancorous beginnings – of wanting to ‘murtilate’ each other.  (Read of how we met in Chapter 27 of Raji Singh’s Tales of the Fiction House.)

NAME YOUR MOST DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: 

Fin-claws.  I can crack lobsters in the fronts, and coconuts in the rear – simultaneously.  Ladies, I am distinguished but I am no weakling.  For you more mature ladies – my top shell may be slightly greyer, but, upon your swaying oyster bed, I’ll be a stay-er.

Beak-snout.  Ditto that vice-wrench capability.

Shell:  So voluminous, if hallowed out, heaven forbid, could hold a hundred Captain Polly’s.

Tattoos:  I shall show you them, ALL, EVERYWHERE, when you’ve gotten to know me more intimately.

IDEA OF THE PERFECT DATE:

Sl-o-o-o-w moonlight strolls on a Johannesburg beach with a shell-endowed bachelorette Terry-pin.  Purpose:  Romance, sl-o-o-o-w and steady.

LIKES: 

Riding out a rambunctious typhoon in the Gulf of Mexico.  So vivid the sights, sweet Terry: ‘See the seahorses gallop to the safety of their coral corrals…’  Few greater physical pleasures than swirling plankton being swept along your under-shell.

Sliding down South America’s Iguazu Falls.  Nothing beats the slapdash spirit of onrushing waters.  Come, swim with me, sweet Terry.  And feel my spirit.

TURNOFFS:

Pirates of the late 1700’s who decimated my picaresque island for the bounty that was Trumpeter shell, eyes, meat.  Clubbing, splitting us open; gathering us into gunnysacks, buckets.  As a shell-ing, I watch as my ma and fa are… auugh… To this day, I cannot think about that final dreg raid.

     ~ ~ Editor note:  see, Tales of the Fiction House for a full account.  ~ ~

MOST INTIMATE THOUGHTS:

Am I the last of my species?  That is why I travel.  Searching.  Is there another of my kind out there.  Somewhere on the earth or in the sea?

‘On new shores I trumpet my anxious call, then wait, fearing there are no more of my kind to hear.  I listen.  No answer.  With fin-claws, I scrape the sand.  I sniff.  No familial soothing dank pungency to assure me my own were here or still might be in existence?  My blare resonates with my melancholy.’

The dreg raid haunts me for the first few decades of my life.  To this day I only ‘live with it.’  I can never forget.

LIFE’S TURNING POINT: 

The day I encountered my first Fiction.  The ‘throw ‘im back’-size four-year-old was appropriately called Carper by my friend the ancient Mariner.  Carper was an orphan-foundling as I.  We bond – closely as any creature and two-leg can.

~ ~ editor note – read the account of Carper, my g-g grandfather and his now best friend in Tales…~ ~

YOUR ALTRUISM:  (I mustn’t be modest.)  Watching over the Fiction line for well over a century and a half.  Their guardian, their protector – their ‘watch-trumpeter’.

This completes the online dating form.  Please add any information you’d like that a future mate might find helpful in selecting you.

HOW I GOT MY FIRST, MY FAVORITE TATTOO:  The renowned artist, Kunta, the two-leg who found me, took me in,  carved his African village into me when I was a shell-ing and he a tad-ling.  I’m proud to still wear it.

© Raji Singh 2012

(Read more of Turt in the novel, Tales of Fiction House. Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment. Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures. You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE. My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2014 Raji Singh

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Uncategorized, whimsy, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

PET TO HUMAN DEDICATION – WHY WE HAVE NATIONAL PET MONTH

Posted on May 27, 2015 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

I am James Thaddeus Fiction, the Fifth – a true Fiction. Typhoon tears me from my mother and father on board a sinking ferry near the Lindian coast. I alone survive. I become an orphan foundling, taken in by new loving parents Dr. Ben and Indira Singh. Now I am Raji. These are my found and foundling tales.

*     *     *

‘CALL ME TURT

‘For that is what is written on my shell. I too am a foundling. A kind human took me in as a shelling. On new shores, I trumpet my anxious call, then wait, fearing there are no more of my kind to hear. I listen. No answer. With fin-claws, I scrape the sand. I sniff. No familial soothing dank pungency to assure me my own were here or still might be in existence? My blare resonates with my melancholy.’

SUMMER, 1966

Turt’s leathery head, the shape, the size of a football, bobs above the glassy Lindian Ocean surf. He notices that absent suddenly are the screams and strafing of gulls. ‘Flyers know things,’ Turt thinks, ‘something is amiss.’

Octopi carcass oils pucker Turt’s tongue as they skim past his beak-snout. Blue water fleetingly shines vermillion then dulls. Clear sky mirrors the change. Turt’s sea-senses, honed over the past century-and-a-half, warn of these signs no ‘two-legs’, humans, could recognize: ‘Young Master Typhoon is born, grows beyond the horizon. Snake-sly is he. In a blink, those white-capped fangs will grow deadly. He will devour all who are upon the sea.’

Ordinarily, Turt welcomes riding out a typhoon’s rambunctious nature and thrills at their slapdash spirit. Today he is wary. For Turt is on a mission. He shadows a ferry, the Bashri Raku, to protect three passengers, Dr. James Thaddeus Fiction IV, his wife, their four-year old James the Fifth.

They are taking a two-year Peace Corps leave of their free clinic in Cincinnati that treats the city’s growing number of Lindian immigrants. They hope to recruit a Lindian – a Dr. Singh – to practice in Cincinnati and help them better understand his people’s ways.

Turt has vowed the Fictions eventual safe return to their home half-a-world away.

The family knows Turt is near, though he seldom surfaces. Faithfully, he has followed, down the Ohio, Mississippi, through the Gulf, out to sea. He dines quite nicely on sumptuous scraps the cooks toss overboard, and delicacies that swim too close. Whenever some curious critter queries ‘Whither thou goest, Traveler?’ he explains, then adds, ‘In strange lands, best I follow quietly – lest I end up in two-leg soup served in mine own shell.’

A LOYAL HOUND IN ARMOR TO GENERATIONS

Most of his life, this giant of sometimes land, sometimes sea, has looked after the Fiction line. It started with helping protect the patriarch, the foundling James Thaddeus Fiction, the Carper, 140 years earlier, from all variety of nemesis – man, animal, nature.

At a picnic two years before now, Turt rescued impetuous James V (that’s me, Raji) after he stripped off britches and skimmed quietly into the Ohio. Turt slipped quickly from bank, coursing swiftly to the rescue. Submerging, rising, he emerged with the boy fish flopping atop his shell. He delivered James safely to shore, to frantically searching parents who had looked away for ‘just seconds.’

Why does Turt do this? Quite simply, pet-to-human dedication: He is a loyal hound-in-armor to generations. Only those animals with the freest of spirit, as Turt, choose this highest form of be-knighted pet-hood. Turt has seen all the Fictions’ frailties, foibles, faults, traits that turn humans from one another. Of all pets, only the most loyal fully sense these things, never understand them, always forgive, and make fidelity, as Turt does, paramount. Turt’s bond to the three on board has been fused, hardened, and forged through generations.

Humans would call it love.

Turt will not let even the most powerful Master Typhoon pull it asunder.

But the sky reddens, ripples patter the Bashri Raku’s stern – nudging, warning, ‘The Sea is MINE.’ Belligerence rapidly grows as Typhoon reaches adolescence. Now, waves batter. Wind slaps. ‘All in it, or upon it, belong to ME!’

Next Time:  THE TALE OF THE CREATURE THAT SAVES MY LIFE

My Pet Calico (©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

My Pet Calico
(©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

(Read more of Turt and Calico in the novel, Tales of Fiction House. Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment. Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures. You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE. My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, whimsy, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pets on Memorial Day

Posted on May 22, 2015 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

I am James Thaddeus Fiction, the Fifth – a true Fiction. Typhoon tears me from my mother and father on board a sinking ferry near the Lindian coast. I alone survive. I become an orphan foundling, taken in by new loving parents Dr. Ben and Indira Singh. Now I am Raji. These are my found and foundling tales.

*        *        *

Being a foundling on Memorial Day is difficult. You want to memorialize past generations. How can you, if you don’t know your relatives? Pet lovers, like me, we can remember a Fido or Puss passed on.

But what if your beloved is a parrot? My Captain Polly may live well over 200 years.

Or your beloved pet is a Trumpeter? Turt is my Trumpeter’s name. He is a rare form of giant land-sea turtle that may live just as long.

“They may very well outlive you, Raji,” my wife reminds me.

Maybe they will parade by my headstone to honor me one last time.

I can just see it – Captain Polly rides on Turt’s huge shell. I smell the sweetly pungent sardine – my favorite food – Turt, in my honor tosses from his beak-snout onto the sod that sits six feet above my head.

I smell the warm, dry brimming-with-seed sunflower – my favorite snack – that Captain Polly drops from her talons alongside Turt’s offering. Then Captain Polly warbles a rhapsodic melody and Turt trumpets a coronet-like accompaniment.

Such is the life of a foundling for Memorial Day: Just imagination, dreams.

I love my pets. I know they love me.

For the next series of postings, I will be ruminating on pets of all sorts. I hope you’ll recognize some similarities to critters you know. And what more appropriate time than May, National Pet Month?

My Pet Calico (©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

My Pet Calico
(©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

(Read more of Turt, Captain Polly, and Calico in the novel, Tales of Fiction House. Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment. Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures. You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE. My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2014 Raji Singh

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, whimsy, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A DESSERT RECIPE- FOR DELIGHTFUL BOUDOIR RESULTS

Posted on May 17, 2015 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

In the late 1800’s, my immigrant Russian great grandmother, Shelva Fiction was barely able to speak English.  She learned it by beginning a journal about her husband, ‘Doc’ Fiction.  His was a life dedicated to folk and patent medicines, and cures in general.

One of her entries was of special interest to women.  It was Madame Rrrose Heather’s Whure’s Delight, or as G-gra’ma Shelva called it, ‘R-R-Ruse’s Pride’.  It was, and still is, a popular pastry aphrodisiac.  For generations wives have been serving it to husbands, quoting G-Gra’ma “with delightful boudoir results.”

Shelva compiled copious note on the ‘Delight’.  She was a great story teller.  Here is her version of how the delight came about.

TALE OF THE ‘WHURE’S DELIGHT’ – HOW ONE RECIPE CAME TO WOO A NATION

For nearly 75 years, an anonymously-written cooking column appears weekly in the Cincinnati Daily Opine. (We at the Fiction House know it is the work of Madame Rrrose Heather, owner of Cincinnati’s most notorious bordello.) The column’s recipes exotic fare is served on 19th century dinner tables – maybe once. Then it’s a return to the basics more reflecting a society’s stern work ethic. But one sumptuous fudge dessert, with a few alterations becomes culinary legend throughout the land.

SHELVA

SHELVA

“What ye sprinklin’ in the Delight sauce, Rrrose Heather?”

“In the old country it’d be…” Over hot stove, Rrrose whispers it and Bonnie titters. Rrrose smiles – so enjoying these ‘mother-daughter’ kitchen times with one of her ‘girls’. “But since we cain’t be gettin’ that here I use, just a smidgen’ mind ya, oil ‘a the buckeye. It be givin’ the same passionate allure. Wouldn’t be surprised if our business triples after they print this; while over on the domestic side ‘a the city babies begin poppin’ out left and right nine months down nature’s path.”

Rrrose tenderly strokes Bonnie’s abdomen. She can’t wait until Bonnie realizes she’s pregnant. ‘A grandmother, Cincinnati’s Rrrose will be!’

(Author’s note: That original recipe, now so commercialized, so changed over time that it has lost, how might one say, its ‘vigor’, but the original Whure’s Delight is still served – fresh-baked daily – couples make your reservations today – at the Fiction House Bed and Breakfast.)

(Read more of Shelva and Rrrose Heather in the novel, Tales of Fiction House. Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment. Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures. You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE. My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

©2014 Raji Singh (additional material)

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Uncategorized, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

THE BECKONING CALL OF THE PORTRAITS

Posted on May 11, 2015 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh 

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

I am James Thaddeus Fiction, the Fifth – a true Fiction. Typhoon tears me from my mother and father on board a sinking ferry near the Lindian coast. A thousand minus one perish. I alone survive. I become an orphan foundling, taken in by new loving parents Dr. Ben and Indira Singh. Now I am Raji. These are my found and foundling tales.

*      *      *
Sometimes late at night, I can’t sleep. Tenille and our children are upstairs in bed. So, I roam the grand old rambling Fiction House and examine the portraits lining the walls. They are those of the hundreds of Fiction House former ‘residents’.

I know them only in my imagination.

They are relatives, authors, friends of the family, and some foes. Others – characters in stories – it’s hard to tell if they are real, or if they’re fiction from the bookshelves.

So quiet! You feel tonight is different from other nights. Then you hear – barely audible at first – whispers. They rise from the paintings.
“Tell our stories Raji. If you don’t it will be as if we’ll never have lived.”

I gently touch the canvas face of my great-great grandfather James Thaddeus ‘Blackjack’ Fiction, the Fiction House founder. It’s cold, yet it warms my hand as if he’s alive as he was when he sat for the artist. He’s a handsome devil. (See above picture) Looks just like me. (Hee! Hee!) I take Blackjack down to dust his old frame. I believe the dapper old gent just smiled appreciatively.

As I hold great-great granfa close, I notice something I never before did – or maybe it’s a strange magic of night. The wall covering beneath the hanging is no darker than the rest of the wall. The burgundy fleur pattern from the 1850’s isn’t faded.

THE TALE OF THE WALL COVER OF THE FICTION HOUSE (even it has a tale)

It is made from the finest, most expensive deeply dyed silk from Lindia. Its installation is the result of Blackjack’s abolitionist relationship with his friend-decorator, Madame Rrrose Heather. She operated a chain of bordellos along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers – from Cincinnati to New Orleans – that served as safe houses on the Underground Railroad. She used the design at each location.

“Seek safety in the whure of the fleur,” became an abolitionist password. Torn swatches of the wall covering became discreet codes along southern trails. They pointed the way to northern safety for runaway slaves:

To safe houses like the Fiction House.

“Tell our stories Raji…”

THE TALE OF RAJI

The portraits’ beckoning haunts me, nicely. I’ll not refuse their request. I, Raji, know little of them because I became an orphan, a foundling, at a tender age. I continually discover who, I, am through their stories.

SHELVA’S TALE 

SHELVA

SHELVA

In my role as archivist-editor for the many generations-in-existence family business, Fiction House Publishing, I’m continually finding the writings of my Russian immigrant great grandmother Shelva Fiction.

They are tucked discreetly but haphazardly hither, thither, and yon within the tired home: Beneath re-upholstered settees to build them up.

Reams of wadded writing pack tightly into dusty airshafts. Fistfuls more, they’re insulation for the attic, and draft dodgers in the basement.
No rhyme, reason, nor explanation for this word-hoard, or their hiding spots.

Since Shelva shelved them – many over 100 years ago – mine eyes are the first to see them; hands first to touch; nose to smell their not quite completely faded lavender scent.

Oh, the treasure trove of history and drama they hold for me to reveal to the world: journals, diary, and biography. It is the treasure I’ve dreamed of, hoped for – stories of my past I’ve never known.
It is every editor’s dream coming true. Every glorious find an archivist may discover.

G-gra’ma Shelva barely spoke English when she arrived “to Amerika” from her Mother Russia. One can see, over the decades, by the flow of her prose, how she became proficient – second-to-none in her adopted language.

Shelva enjoyed, and became impassioned by the unique and adventurous lives of the Fiction House women. Through the scraps of Shelva’s writing I find, I piece together their stories told in their words, through Shelva’s caring voice.

Shelva showed special interest in an elderly healer-midwife named Mama Lucy. Shelva’s husband Doc Fiction, my great grandfather, based many of his healing medicines and pharmaceuticals on Mama Lucy’s bayou potions and notions.

“Tell our stories Raji…”

MAMA LUCY


 Down the hallway gallery I go to Mama Lucy, 125 years old if she’s a day. In her portrait she cradles a floppin’, flounderin’ foundlin’ baby gator. Her blind eyes seem to scrutinize me, and pity me for being a foundling too, and encourage me to discover my past by telling of all those who are pictured on the walls. Mama Lucy does all this with the same deadeye look.

A poet who spoke in Lake Pontchartrain Cajun strains, Mama’s words came softy and sublime, often in sing-song rhyme.

‘Yer life, Raji, it be a dereliction,

If you not be tellin’ the tales ‘a the House ‘a Fiction.’

I answer her in kind.

“Yea, my Mama Lu,

I be Fiction true.”

I straighten her painting. I wonder: Maybe it has been askew for over a century? I notice that Mama’s is much heavier than others of the pictures I’ve handled. I remove it from the wall, slip away part of its backing. Out slides hundreds of formulas for the notions and potions.

A recipe catches my eye – Madame Rrrose Heather’s Whure’s Delight, nutty fudge, with a few merry alterations.

A newspaper review is attached to it. In the mid 19th century of the Sunday culinary section of the Cincinnati Daily Opine, the cooking editor describes it, “A bawdy repast for the never to be bored again boudoir. Just one taste will assure your just desserts.”

*      *      *

The portraits in the Fiction House, they beckon me – ‘Tell our stories, Raji.’
I shall, every Sunday night in these postings. Join me, won’t you? No telling what grand adventuring we’ll be invited to be part of amongst these 1,001 tales.
NEXT WEEK: THE TALE OF RRROSE HEATHER’S WHURE’S DELIGHT

(Read more of Mama Lucy, King Creole, and the gators in the novel, Tales of Fiction House. Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment. Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures. You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE. My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

©2014 Raji Singh (New material)

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MOTHER’S DAY MAGIC

Posted on May 3, 2015 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh

SHELVA

SHELVA

I am James Thaddeus Fiction, the Fifth – a true Fiction. Typhoon tears me from my mother and father on board a sinking ferry near the Lindian coast. A thousand minus one perish. I alone survive. I become an orphan foundling, taken in by new loving parents Dr. Ben and Indira Singh. Now I am Raji. These are my found and foundling tales.
*      *      *
MY THREE MOTHERS

She was well over 100 when I was still a little boy.
I am not even sure I met her, though I am told I did.
Yet my memories of her, my Russian immigrant great grandmother Shelva Fiction, they are vivid as the two mothers who raised me. My memories of Shelva come from letters and stories ‘Mother’ Shelva composes throughout her lifetime:

She tucks the writings away in obscure hiding places in the Fiction House.

Who can say why?

Securely they wait, until I discover them.

The find, purely by accident?

“No,” Tenille tells me, as we sit in front of the fireplace on a still brisk May evening – Mother’s Day. “Fate led you to them, Raji. In spirit, she was watching over you, leading you to them.”

Here now is how Shelva accomplished this mystical feat – on a magical Mother’s Day, of the previous year.

* * *

It’s late. Luny Mum is full. Dark clouds drifting by occasionally obscure her orb. Scarlet-hued rays streamed ominously from Poppy Sol before he retired for the evening. Tenille and our children are asleep upstairs. It is quiet. Other than a squeaky floorboard, or rattling water pipe, the grand rambling Fiction House is so peaceful this time of night. I am drawn to Shelva’s portrait gracing an alcove. I cannot say why, maybe I’m under a spell or in a trance.

Shelva’s a smooth-cheeked brunette, her neck thin and willowy. She’s stately as any Czarina. The flash of her blue eyes radiates against her glowing olive skin. Ageless, I cannot tell if she’s 25 or 45 when she posed Breathing, deeply, I think I smell borscht and caviar, her favorite repasts: Maybe she and the artist noshed midst the sitting, and now a tangy beet-earth scent and a wisp of the sea life permanently saturate the canvas.

I crank her old oak Victrola, and turn the volume low so I won’t wake anyone. The only ones aroused are the spirits of old Russia as the soft strains of balalaika music sift around me. Suddenly and for no reason the music spikes.

The noise – like a thousand Cossacks crowding me, doing a foot-clapping kazatsky dance.

Fortunately, the doors upstairs are closed. No one stirs.
Shelva’s portrait tilted slightly from the vibration.     The tilting, along with Luny Mum’s obscuring shadows make it look like Shelva’s mouth moves. It must be my imagination, but I hear her say, “I’ve been waiting for you for a long time Raji. Catch me as I make the leap into your world.”

Her portrait begins to teeter-totter, as if somehow it is unbalanced. Then I hear a fanning-shuffling, like a deck of cards. She falls toward me. As I hold her upright, hundreds of envelopes spew from around the back of the frame. They cover the floor.

The very first one I open is a word map, giving directions to her hiding places. Squirreled into nooks, crammed into crannies, filed behind false-paneled walls, I find more envelopes, containing what I’d describe as “word-hoards”.

Furiously, curiously, deliriously I read her tales of the Fiction House. They give me clues – as to who I am, and the history of forebears I never knew; and knowledge of all the residents, saints to sinners, whose lives helped mold me –

The Fiction House residents: Blackjack Fiction, Laza Bones Thibidioux, The Mariner, Kunta Kiinder, Efraim Ephraim, Captain Polly, Turt, Cecily Cobra, Luny Mum, Poppy Sol and all the others I’ve never met.

I sit on the floor and weep, in joy. For the first time since the ferry accident, I truly feel I am James Thaddeus Fiction – the Fifth, besides being Raji Singh.

I feel re-born –

As James.

Thank you great gra’ma, Shelva. Happy Mother’s Day.

Calico (©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

Calico
(©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

To me, an orphan foundling who knew little of his past, or the people he came from, it is Happy Birth Day.

(Read more in the novel, Tales of Fiction House. Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment. Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures. You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE. My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

©2014 Raji Singh

Posted in archeo-apologist, Children, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Uncategorized, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

MAY DAY ON THE BAYOU IN POEM AND STORY

Posted on April 28, 2015 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

To acknowledge the end of National Poetry Month and welcome May Day and Mothers, here is a poignant story of a mother’s lament

*     *     *

“Tis 1800, there ‘bouts, early morn.

Today Thibidioux chil’ to be born.

Butterflies come and tell me so.

‘Come Mama Lucy – time to go.’”

110 year-old healer and midwife Mama Lucy chants these words as she walks sprightly along the bayou road leading to the Thibidioux cabin. Amulet necklaces of critter teeth and bones click together in time to her pace.

“13’s be wild

Bad tidins’ for comin’ child

Ups to me to potion free

The innocent born to be”

She cups hands behind her back and catches a floating 13-pointed leaf. For luck, she extends ritual by popping it in her mouth, swallowing.

“Should be gay – this First of May

But twelve plus one crayfish

Black pussy, at my door, lay.”

Mama Lucy’s words that come, seldom, yet sublime, often arrive in singsong rhyme. ‘Dems of the bayou forgive her this crime. They know the tragedy that fraught this

“My only beget,

Son,

He,

Alligator ‘et’.”

Shoeless, her worm-thin toes wriggle in the dirt. Dress looks a gunnysack containing rattly-bony frame. Never tall, with age she’s shrunk to the length of a yard-and-a-third stick, almost as thin. She’s pliable, like willow; no dry twigs of arthritis. Easily she carries a 40-pound carpetbag of potions, lotions and cures weighing half herself. Ghost-white hair sprouts sparsely from atop once onion-round head that is now withered, avocado shape. You can’t tell if she’s white or black because time has blended her skin to a neutral gray. Blind, eyes shriveled pits; she views with eagle vision the world through her senses.

From seemingly nowhere lightening crisscrosses the azure sky, occasionally igniting burbling swamp gas. The explosions are like popping firecrackers. They frizz thick moss swaying from trees. Mama Lucy sniffs,

“Rotten egg smell.

Calico, A Foundling's Gentlest Friend (©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

Calico, The Secret Whisperer
(©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

‘Yea, do foretell

Fomentin.’

Bad day be born

Today’s chil’

Lifelong forlorn.”

She plans to dose the mother with a tonic of foamed mushroom and boiled spleck to delay birth ‘til past midnight, when a new day would bring fresh charms.

Mama Lucy feels the air, suddenly dank.

“Hundred yards yonder

13 gators, dey bask.

Dey no hinder

My carin’-for task.”

She doesn’t veer: BLIND PERSISTENCE; BLINDING STUBBORNESS!

Rouge dust stirs at Mama’s feet as she meanders to, then among the lounging reptiles: All are tan-tinted 8 to 12 footers – biggest in the swamps. [1]

  Senses tell Mama Lucy that today they scheme as they lounge. She feels their fear and apprehension as they nervously swing open their snouts. Teeth brush her knees. They cry out at her intrusion.

Their instincts – to stave off riling-up two-legs, thus, preventing wholesale gator slaughter – dictates their bayou code:

GATOR BRETHREN EAT A TWO-LEG. THEN THEIR RELATIVE BE UNTOUCHABLE. SO, NONE MAY HARM MAMA!

This, be their ancient bayou ‘way’.

Mama Lucy plucks gently into balmy air and catches mosquito. She holds it, as New Orleans gentry hold teacup between thumb and forefinger.

“Skeeter, take mah blood.”

She lets it sting, then, bayou-lightening fast, moves her hand and places it near the biggest gator’s battle-cratered snout – that of King Creole. King Creole instinctively scissors open, shuts jaw. He snarfs insect cleanly, not touching human finger.

“I trick you, mah shaz a mio.

My blood floods into you, King Creole

So now hast you strode

Over your own precious code”

Again, this cunning ancient human who knows him well has duped him – the KING!

She, who took him in as foundlin’ gator, hardly bigger ‘n a human finger. He were dehydrated, floppin’ down-side up, hunnerd yards from the bayou. Doctored ‘im day n’ night; wet-nursed scratchy, wee-toothed beast right alongside own boy ‘til ‘e could ‘et solids: Let ‘em both sleep together; raised ‘im into a fine young specimen, she did, then set im free in the swamps so ‘e could live ‘mongst own kind.

N’ ‘ow ‘e repays ‘er? By, years later returnin’ and ‘etten her grown son, his own crib, then sandbox, then pirogue, brother.

Creole snaps, bellows. Slimy reptile saliva spatters Mama’s face. She wipes it into a bottle she snakes from pocket.

‘I trick double.

My mojo’s workin‘

Gainst your lurkin’

No’ting a better fixer,

Den gatah-spit elixir.’

–Poppy Sol reflects philosophically down at the alligator conclave. ‘As humans do what they gotta; so to, gators do, but not necessarily what they oughtta.’–

Gators stare warily at their king. Grumbling growls. Some wonder. Should they doubt his ability to deal with the bayou two-legs.

King regains composure. He brings the conclave to order by thumping gavel tail. He needs their full support in their long-planned, REVOLUTION against humans that begins today. He raises tail, proudly, and then dangles it, disgusted. Embedded into it is a squirrel that failed to hustle past with a nut.

Mama Lucy: No longer does she despise Creole for ‘etten her only offspring right in front of her 3/4’s century past. She began rhymin’ – that’s how she stays sane. It took Mama nearly half-a-century,

“…ta be a realizin’

Life way-too shoat

To be a grievin’

A pirogue

Cain’t no longer float.”

She pats Creole’s snout. Though blind, she believes she can see her son’s eyes in Creole’s eyes. Imagined though that might be, it’s the only vestige of his life she’d ever have. Because of that, never would she harm Creole, she long-ago vowed. [2]

“I know you be a plannin’ somethun’, King Creole,” says Mama Lucy. “I be keepin’ eye on you wif’ my soul.” She slides a bottle from her carpetbag and sprinkles sparkly contents over gators. She chants,

“Grinded an’ pulverized leather hide

‘a gators long gone-away.

Let descendents see yer evil fate,

If today, on humans

You darest to prey.”

Gators sneeze, quiver, and shiver, at feeling the dust-touch of ancestors. Some run.

Huey Long, ruthless politico, demagogue in the making – King Creole’s top Lieutenant and held back only by King Creole – stops them with a growl that sends treed birds flying. ‘Do not let the old witch bad-omen us and stop our revolution. If you do, I will hunt you down. Your fate will be worse than that of becoming your ancestors’ powder.’

Gators of the conclave crouch. They fear staying but fear even more, going.

Mama Lucy re-commences trek toward the Thibidioux place – just up the way. Gators mill, always with two on lookout for Thibidioux cousins, uncles who might pass by with glistening explosion sticks deadlier than any razor fang.

[1]Perilous tannicus: Nicknamed ‘Gatemouth Browns’, because these muddy-complexioned perils have snouts that thrash wildly as gates in a gale. The swinging produces a twangy bluesy melody. Perilous tannicus live five times longer than most gator breeds, and some bayou folk claim it’s because their baby-cry-like songs relieve tension, subdue worries.

[2] ~~Editor’s note:  You, too, can see Mama Lucy’s son’s haunting eyes.~~

(Read more of Mama Lucy, King Creole, and the gators in the novel, Tales of Fiction House.  Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.   My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

©2015 Raji Singh (Additional material)

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Uncategorized, whimsy, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

EYES OF A LIFETIME: A BAYOU POEM

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Farewell to April and another National Poetry Month.

And

Farewell to Lucius Abel.  That last day with him, his Mama relives every day.

*     *      *

All is dark. Just one thing she sees – her son’s eyes – perpetual eyes.  Mama sees them from his beginning to end.

“He has your eyes darlin’ Lucy. We’ll call him after you”, young husband, now, so-long deceased, tells her.

She holds newborn tight. “And after you Abel. We be so happy – dans notre paradis de jolie.”

Her man strokes her perspiring jet hair and she feels so proud –

A tiny fragile body has her life in him.

Then she sees Lucius Abel a boy; eyes gleaming excitement when he catches first catfish by hand…

…as groom, determined eyes set on beautiful bride and their new life…

…then as new fa, to a boy destined to be their only child – excited, nervous eyes…

…as his wife and teen-age son are pulled from him during the hurricane; cold,despairing eyes…

…as his eyes now go dim, as the gator pulls him under for the final time.

She sees the turquoise eyes again of the newborn she once so tightly held.

“Sleep tight mon chil’.”

(Read more of Mama, Lucius Abel, and the gators in the novel, Tales of Fiction House.  Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.   My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

©2014 Raji Singh (Additional material)

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HALF-HUMANS/HALF-BEASTS, A POEM

Posted on April 19, 2015 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

April is National Poetry Month.  We at Fiction House Publishing celebrate all types of poetry. From Deep in the Bayou, comes this warning from Turt, our fin-clawed hero in Tales of the Fiction House:

Turt’s thoughts are all broad smiles as he thinks of the wonderful moments he and the foundling, Raji could share. But, from a lifetime of observation, he knows of the invisible barriers twixt two-legs and other creatures. Never, should it be breached. Those who do make the cross-over from person to animal, or animal to person, those like ‘Laza Bones’ Thibidioux, they are hideous and monstrous to both worlds –

– Half-humans/half-beasts:
You live LONG in the shadows and on the fringes,
Bleached of any human kindness – any animal pride.
You enslave, abuse and betray your own,
In your futile attempts to become even more of both
You may fracture, mar and deface
The beauty which is life.
Never can you destroy it.

Though these crossover interlopers possess the physical beauty of both worlds – human, animal – they encompass fully beast-nature of both. This makes them hideous to look at because the sages of the ages are correct in their simple rages…

“Beauty is only…”,

‘But oogly – oogly it traverses all the way to the bone. (More precisely, to the soul.)’

(Read more of the poetic skills of Turt in the novel, Tales of Fiction House.  Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.   My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

©2014 Raji Singh (Additional material)

Posted in Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Uncategorized, whimsy, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment