No. 28: THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE FIXER ELIXIR (continued from last week)

Posted on February 3, 2013 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’ll never have lived.’These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.I cannot refuse.

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

     Will the unjustly incarcerated Doc and Shelva Fiction be saved from the noose?  Will the Sheriff’s wife Millie get the Doc’s potions to their accuser before vigilantes arrive?     

From the jail cell, Doc Fiction instructs Millie how much elixir to apply beneath Efraim’s tongue.  “If he has two lines on his neck, Mrs. Jackson, just below his Adams apple, apply one drop.  3 lines, use 2 drops.  3 drops if more than 4.  If he’s got red worm-looking squiggles at the ends of any of those lines, well then, pour the whole ka-schmeer down his gullet.”

Millie carefully wraps the vial and medicine dropper in a handkerchief and gentles it into a basket.  Her eyesight is continually improving, further proving the efficacy of Doc’s ancient curatives.  Candlelight, she’s never seen it before:  She’s intrigued, by the warm glow it gives – the jailhouse – the Fictions – her own body.  She strokes Shelva’s face.  “You look beautiful as I imagined.  A dearest friend we have found in one another.”

Before exiting the jailhouse for Efraim’s cabin she turns, tears streak her cheek as she says, “Because of you and your husband I will be able to see my baby.  Come nine months Shelva, I shall see yours as well.”  Millie disappears, guided through night’s shadows by Luny Mum.

An hour passes.  The Fictions sit on the jail cell cot holding each other.  Doc worries, “Mrs. Jackson should be back with some word.  Something must have gone terribly wrong.”

“Do not fret, mine druzhyna.  We have dear Millie on our side.” ‘And the powerful Luny Mum guarding the other side,’ she assures herself.

They hear shuffling outside and a whining lone voice half singing – half wailing like a cat in heat.  The foreboding lyrics draw them closer to each other.  “Ol Efraim he’s dead and gone.  Those done him in ‘ll pay for ‘der sin.  ‘Der goose the Sheriff’ll cook.  The noose, it won’t be loose ‘round their neck come the morn.”

Sweat mingles in Doc and Shelva’s clasped hands.  Their mutual thought:  ‘Mightn’t even see the morn.’  How many are out there?  Just one?  Is he rousing a mob?  They yearn for Sheriff Jackson’s presence, and protection.

Their terror heightens as the doorknob jiggles.  The locked barrier between them and the outside unknown is thick, bastion oak.  Shelva and Doc breathe a little easier.  This sense of security departs quickly when they hear the scratchy sounds of a key inserted into the lock, then on this quiet night, what to them are the rumbling sounds of tumblers moving.

Then…, an explosion-like, “CLICK”.  Unlocked.

“EEEEEEE!”  The hinges scream in their ears as the door moves.  Like rats are they, in their cage.  Helpless, their eyes dart about for any escape.  ‘There is hope,’ Shelva knows.  Because she feels Mum’s protective glow coming through the jail window and cloaking their shoulders.

Doc makes his voice deep, menacing.  “Sheriff Jackson allows no one here.  Leave now!”

“Now is that a good bedside manner way to greet one of your patients Doc?”  A solitary, bedraggled man enters.  So dirt covered you can’t tell the kind of clothes he wears – looks like some sort of coveralls to the Fictions.  He glances Shelva.  “I ask ya ma’am.  Is that any way for your hubby to speak to a man just risen from his deathbed?”

“Eee-phra-im?”  Doc can hardly speak.

“Thas’ my name, Doc.  Don’t wear it out.”

Shelva is speechless.

Not Luny Mum.  Her speech comes in the form of a bright quasar-like warning that makes Efraim squint.  ‘You’ve scared them enough, Efraim.  Explain yourself now.  And quickly!’

Who knows if a campfire horror story tall taler as Efraim has time to cultivate the mystic ability to communicate with nature’s forces, or to hear its warning, yet he complies with Mum.  Maybe it’s out of guilt – for causing them to endure jail, and now scaring them.  Or maybe out of thanks for their magic elixir that a miraculously suddenly seeing Millie gave him.  The medicine, almost instantly made him feel better than he had in his whole life.  “I felt I could do a dozen jigs after I had it, Doc.  That’s saying something, because I’ve never jigged before.”

Efraim apologizes for “funnin’” with them when he was outside.  “Now, to make a long story short,” he tells the Fictions, then proceeds to make it too brutally long…  Then he sums it up all too graphically, with the intensity of a player in a Chekov drama, but without the grace.

“The medicine Millie gave me, made me sweat like a stuck hog.  Thought I’d die that very moment.  Suddenly yer elixir took holt.  My eyes flashed and I knew I just hadda rise.  Ran to the outhouse faster ‘n I ever felt compelled.  Never took such a big, or painful….  Instantly, I knew I was cured of every ailment.  Sorry Mrs. Fiction, but I’ll commence to be getting indelicate on this next part.  So kiiver yer ears if ya feel the need.”

Shelva considers it, but is oddly enamored of Efraim’s storytelling.

“Well, Doc.  I just had to see what came out of me.  When I looked down the hole – moonlight shinin’ bright in for me to see – Round stones, bigger ‘n any marble I played way with as a boy, some of ‘em big as chicken eggs, just layin’ on the surface.  You’d think they’d ‘a sunk.”

Now Shelva’s had enough.  “Why didn’t Millie come back, Efraim?”

“She’s spinnin’ and dancin’ in the moonlight celebratin’ her newfound sight, Mrs. Fiction.  Never ever seen her so sprightly.”

Shelva smiles.

“And I’m celebratin’ plain ol’ life by comin’ and thankin’ both you and Doc Fiction for savin’ me.”

Efraim talks so excitedly the Fiction’s can’t even get in a “You’re welcome.”

He meanders behind the Sheriff’s desk.  “I’m why you’re here.  I’m fine.  No use for you all to keep coolin’ yer heels.”  Efraim suddenly realizes the jail’s keys aren’t visible to the Fictions.  ‘Ah, a truly captive audience for yet another yarn.’  “Shoot!  I guess the Sheriff has the keys,” he tells them.

Shelva tired, though entertained by the boob, challenges Efraim quickly.  “Than how did you get in Efraim?  Unlock us.  PLEASE!”  Her please is stern, like the school marm who’d ruler-whack his knuckles as a tyke.  Efraim kinda liked her, despite her wicked discipline.  Efraim’s suddenly smitten by Mrs. Fiction.  Nothing sexual.  Just someone who cares about him in a stern, but not knuckle whacking way.  Most people just ignore him.

“Phooey, Mrs. Fiction.  You caught me red-handed.”

“I most certainly see your red face.  Unlock us.  Now!”

Efraim hates himself for having lied to this woman.  All he can think of to cover the lie about the keys is to have some fun with truthen’-‘bout other keys.  “I opened the door with a root.”

“Now Efraim,” Doc says.

“Honest Doc.”  He pulls from his pocket a near-petrified tree root he’d carved into a key.  “Sheriff Jackson’s locked me up plenty’s the time.  I made this so’s I could come and go at night when he went home to bed.  Got me some fresh air, a leg stretch, and a little white lightening that caused me the condition that caused me to be here in the first place.”

“Inebriated,” says Shelva.

“Well you might say that Mrs.  I prefer it to be just a small misunderstanding twixt the Sheriff and me.”  Efraim knows his story time is at an end.  At least he has a grand conclusion.  “Lift up the cot, Doctor Fiction.  There.  See that hollow out part of the foot frame.  Pull out what’s hidden.”  Doc does.  Another root key.  This one for the cell door.  Doc smiles.  Efraim bows.  Come join me in a moonlight stroll,” invites Efraim.  “Hmm,’ he thinks, ‘this truth telling has some merit.  I should try it more often.’

Outside, Doc and Shelva breathe deeply the night air.  Never did the smell of freedom seem so pure.

~ ~ editor epilog:  On their ride out of town, they see Millie slowly spinning in Luny Mum’s glow.  Good-byes are said.  Millie will square things with her husband, the Sheriff, concerning their departure and Efraim’s recovery.  The town will forget the incident.  Memories of Ephraim in the town will fade.

But, at the Fiction House, it will grow.  Because, little do the Fictions now know, he has stowed away in their wagon.  How could he let get away from him the people who so changed his life.  Soon the Fiction House will have a new and permanent tall taling resident.

As an editor, I know this conclusion of the story seems anti-climactic, but I have personal reasons for knowing it is not.  You see, Shelva and Millie’s babies were born on the same day; would become lifelong close as Millie and Shelva became and Doc and the Sheriff would later become.  You see, their children, would marry – James Thaddeus III and Paige Turner Fiction, are my grandparents.  If not for them, I’d not be here.  ~ ~

(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 their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE, but that’s a different story.  It’s available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

©Raji Singh, 2013

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

No. 27: THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE FIXER ELIXIR

Posted on January 27, 2013 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’ll never have lived.’These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.I cannot refuse.

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

     A noose awaits my jailed great grandparents Doc and Shelva Fiction if tall taler Efraim’s capricious kidney kills him – bad patent elixir they’ve been accused of pedaling, dontcha’ know. 

     But there are strange forces mixing and mingling in the night air – that of Luny Mum, and a mystic blind woman and all the powers of the five human senses.  The power of these combined forces is infinite.  If Doc can only recognize, then interpret them he can save he and his wife’s sleek necks.

*     *     *

     Millie bends backwards, staring blindly at the jailhouse ceiling.  She thinks a short prayer for her eyes and for Doctor Fiction’s healing hands.  Shelva reaches through the jail cell bars and props her head.  Using a medicine dropper, Doc carefully applies his mix of ancient Lindian cures around the corneal areas.  Following the ‘plip, plip, plips,’ she hears a slight bacon frying-like ‘sizzle’ accompanied by a smoldering sulfur smell.  She tenses, and squirms and moves to rise.

“It’s to be expected, Mrs. Jackson,” Doctor Fiction says.  He repeats the process with the other eye as he presses on her temples to restrain her.  “Keep your head back.  Do not blink.  You will feel tingling.  That means it is working.  The years of built up, what I call ‘scrup’, are burning off.”

Seeing Millie’s facial expression tightening, Shelva strokes her hair.  “Relax, sister.  Trust Doc.  His treatments do no harm.  They can only help.”  She takes a sachet of lavender petals from her purse and ruffles it so Millie can breathe its calming scent.

With the first ‘plip’ Millie was ready to run, screaming from the jailhouse.  With the second she wanted to curse the pain, and damn the Fictions “all to hell” – both things the mild of manner, ‘churched-up’ woman normally never would do.  Ah, but the third ‘plip’s’ the charm.  With it Millie sees for the first time – a slight light ray.  How appropriate that it emanate from her old friend Luny Mum.

A miracle!  A prayer answered.  Ecstasy!  Millie smiles broadly.  All tension flees her neck and face.

Luny Mum shines continually through the jail window.  The warmth of her glow tells Millie.  ‘Soon you shall see me in my full glory, Little Sister.’  Mum’s embrace is so comforting, Millie breathes deeply and calmly.  Mum’s suddenly mysterious whispering warmth tells Millie a secret.  ‘As, shall you soon fully see.  So now, I will enable the Doctor a special insight – through my magic.’  Mum glints brightly into Millie’s soft eyes that Doc Fiction is constantly examining, and ‘scrup’-wiping.’  ‘Look deeply into her eyes, Doctor Fiction.  That is where your Luny Mum shall show you what you must know to save Brother Efraim.’

~ ~ editor note:  For any of us, a revelation can come instantly.  It usually doesn’t, ‘just happen’.  It is because we immerse ourselves in the problem, situation, or encumbrance.  Doc had pondered over he, and Shelva’s dilemma for hours in the cell.  A sudden revelation for Doc – triggered by Luny Mum’s light that rainbows through the cocktail of medicines he used in Millie’s eyes – makes him realize… ~ ~

Doc begins setting out an array of multi-colored vials on a small stand and then combining select ones with the medicine dropper.  He considers silently,

‘Thousands of years worth of studied, tested, and proven base solutions – all in just a dozen vials I carry in my medical bag.  Mixed precisely, they can form thousands of curatives.  Yet, I do not believe any of that is required to help, maybe even heal Efraim.  A simple stratagem to fool him, and in turn his immune system, is all that is necessary.’

~ ~ editor note:  The term ‘placebo’ was not yet widely used in the medical arena of the 1890’s.  ~ ~

‘But, one drop of…,’ Doc says to himself.  ‘Just enough to paralyze the troubled kidneys to give his metabolism a chance to slow – to rest – until I or another physician can examine him in person.

‘NOW to get the dose to him, and administered.’  “Mrs. Jackson,” he says as Shelva helps her upright, “I have a favor, a huge favor to ask of you.”

Shelva wipes tears, perspiration, and ‘scrup’ from around her eyes with a handkerchief.  She is beginning to see the blurred silhouettes of her newfound friends.  “You both have done so much for me.  So, yes.  Anything.  Short of unlocking and opening my husband’s jail doors for you.”

NEXT WEEK:  WILL THE DOC’S MEDICAL RUSE LOSE?

(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 their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE, but that’s a different story.  It’s available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

©Raji Singh, 2013

         

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

No. 26: THE MAGIC OF LUNY MUM: IT IS ALL AROUND US.

Posted on January 20, 2013 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’ll never have lived.’These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.I cannot refuse.

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

  It’s the 1890’s.  ‘Ol Efraim, he’s a teller of tales and a crier of wolf from way back – a hypochondriac to boot.  He’s on his deathbed, so he claims. 

My great grandparents Doc and Shelva Fiction are enduring jail accused of selling him a wretched dose of patent medicine elixir.  A spanking new scaffold and noose loom outside their cell.  Will they be the first to test it if Efraim’s ‘claim’ comes true?

*     *     *

Mine husband, mine sweet druzhyna, paces our shadowy and cold jail cell: ‘What to do?’  He is considering what seems impossible:  How to help Efraim if Sheriff cannot get Doctor to him in time.  But for the rhythmic thumps of his shoes on the stone floor, so quiet.  I hear whispers.

‘Come Shelva.  Join your Luny Mum in her warm glow.  Bask in the magic power of my beams and ease your pain.’

I muster strength to rise from cot.  I clutch my abdomen.  The pain in my womb it comes and goes with such fury.  I am just certain it is my nerves – so frayed.  I look out the barred window.

On the desolate street – the most beautiful woman, ever I see.  Immerse in Luny Mum’s glow- light, slowly she spins.  Each circle takes just seconds to complete.  Yet, her long white-blond hair, all the way to her narrow waist, and her ankle length ivory gown, they twirl like a dervish.  Thin alabaster arms are raised high, gentle moonbeams.  They seem to continue skyward as far as the eye can see.

Her movements stop.  She looks my way.  Her face is round, milk smooth.  I cannot explain how, why, but seeing the gentleness of her face, my hurts – vanish.  I am unable to distinguish her features, only the smooth swipes of the saintly faces of church statures I’d amazed over as a little girl when our family visited St. Petersburg.  I know this face.  I visit with her nearly every night.  “Mum?”

“Did you say something to me, Shelva?”  Doc asks.  His voice is tired.  He sits, nearly collapses onto the cot.

“Nyet, mine druzhyna.”  I tell myself, ‘the woman, she is Luny Mum, come alive, come to earth to help us with our troublings.’

Her figure reaches down to lift something.  From my vantage point, I cannot see what it is. Ever so slowly, she continues on her on her journey, as Luny Mum is apt, traveling through the dark on a distinct celestial path.  ‘Mustn’t tell husband about her coming to our aid.  Break spell.  Magic, disappear.’  I go to him.  He sleeps.  I slip blanket over.  Half-dozen butterfly flit through the barred window, light on his neck.  Their tender thread-legs massage him.  Strain disappears from his look for first time in many hours.  ‘Are you all sent from Luny Mum?’

When I return to the window, the woman is gone.

“I have something for you,” I hear someone say.  I turn.  She is on the other side of the cell.

“I did not hear the jailhouse door open.”

“I have a secret way in.  Only the Sheriff and I know of it.”

I hesitate for a moment before I ask, “Mum, is that you?”

She smiles.  “Why, yes!  A new mum.  Can you tell by just looking at me?  I only just realized it a few hours ago.  Do I have a glow?  Am I flush?”  She carries picnic baskets.  They are what she had lifted when she was outside.  She sets them on a small table and examines her face – stroking, patting.  She looks at me, but doesn’t see me.  I realize she is blind.

She approaches and raises creamy hands, inches from my face.  They orbit slowly near my forehead.  Her smile is so natural it appears her mouth almost-always crescents happily upward.  “I feel the warmth of the sparkle in your eyes, sister Shelva.  Just as I can imagine a spark is in mine, now too,” she says.  Her sky blue eyes possess both the twinkle of night and the crystal of day.

I blink, suddenly realizing I’ve a warmth I never before felt.  Maybe it is from my condition.  I breathe in, wondering – has the warmth a scent?  I swallow.  Has it a taste?  Yes, both!  But I cannot recognize, or identify either since never in my life have I experienced them.  The warmth has even a sound – as if the jail bars buzz gently because hundreds of bees inhabit them.

My journey into the senses is broken when she informs me, “The warmth you exude tells me you too are with child.”

I smile broadly as she.  I am so happy my news is now shared, even with a celestial force.  Boldly I query.  “How did you come to leave your high home and come to this place, Mum?”

Her face suddenly reflects what I would call confused merriment.  Her unseeing eyes seem to study me coyly.  A lilting laugh barely grazes her voice.  “You’ve mistaken me for another, sister.  I am Millie.  Sheriff Jackson’s wife.  You’ve not told your husband yet – about your sweet and loving condition, hmm?”

I nod, knowing she already senses my answer.

“Nor I the Sheriff.  So that is one more thing we have in common.”  She opens the baskets.  “I bring supper.”

Savory scents of hot chicken, corn, potatoes freshen up the dank prison.  As I nibble, saving plenty for mine voracious druzhyna, she says, “We met briefly in the crowd of anxious women and equally anxious men purchasing  your, quoting your husband as he pitched from the wagon. ‘Rrrose Heather’s Whure’s Delight – a sensual recipe for a delightful boudoir.’  I come to tell you, Shelva – I know your name because someone said it was printed on the side of the wagon – that the ‘Delight’ worked instantly for the Sheriff, and me.”

I see she is now blushing, pinkish red, and she hides her face slightly, shyly.  “You helped me, Shelva.  Now I am here to help you…”

I know that my face reflects my puzzlement and that Millie senses it through her ability to read me via my warmth.

She continues.  “…Of course I just can’t release you.  But there just has to be a way.”

~ ~ Luny Mum smiles through the cell window, washing the two women with her milk glow.  ‘I have brought together, my sisters.  And together, will they work.’  ~ ~

     “Why do you spin as you did on the street?”  I ask.

“To take into all sides of my body the soothing beams of our mutual friend, Luny Mum.”

I glare, surprised.  “You know her?”

“That is another reason I know your name, Shelva.  Mum told me of you.  When I felt your warmth at you and your husband’s sale, I knew we were bound to meet again.  I just sensed it would be so.  Or, maybe Mum told me through my senses.”

My reaction; complete confusion.  “How can you know her, without being able…?”

Millie completes my question, “…to see?”  She touches my hand – so warm.  “You see and speak with her through your eyes, Shelva.  I feel, and then speak to her through my sense of warm touch.  It is through some mystery probably only Luny Mum can explain.”

Our conversation awakens Doc and he rises.  He runs fingers through his hair groggily.

“This is Sheriff Jackson’s wife.”

“Greetings Mrs. Jackson.”

She nods.

He stares intensely at her for long moments, as someone might; at someone, perhaps they have long ago known.  But no, that is not mine husband’s reason.  Luny Mum, at just the moment he saw Millie, had glinted brightly, intensely into her eyes.  He comes to the cell bars, and gets close to her as he can.  “I’ve seen your condition just once before; when I interned in Lindia after medical school.  I thought it a miracle what my mentor Dr. Singh did.  And perhaps it was.  He cured – Blindness.  I have the same combination of medicines in my bag that he utilized.”

I see Millie’s sudden doubt, confusion, and trepidation.

Luny Mum’s beam reaches to caress Millie’s shoulders.  I am allowed – maybe this too is a miracle – to be privy to their warm and touching conversation.  Their form of communication is exhilarating.

‘Have no doubt that what he says is possible, Little Sister.  For I have observed it to be so.  Now you shall see as well as feel your Luny Mum.  You shall gain sight’s freedom as well as expand your warmth.  You shall see how both of these powers will come to assist the Doctor and Shelva.’

NEXT WEEK:  HE MAKES THE BLIND SEE.  CAN HE MAKE A WOLF-CRYING HYPOCHONDRIAC RISE UP AND SEE THE LIGHT? 

(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 their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE, but that’s a different story.  It’s available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

©Raji Singh, 2013

Posted in Fiction House Publishing, Short stories, Whimsey, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

No. 25: THE MAGIC OF LUNY MUM

Posted on January 13, 2013 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’ll never have lived.’These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.I cannot refuse.

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

     (It’s the 1890’s.  My great grandparents Doc and Shelva Fiction find themselves far from home, wrongly jailed for selling an allegedly defective batch of patent medicine elixir.  Shelva’s pregnant and sick.)    

     Luny Mum beams her light down and through the barred window of the jail cell.  She strokes the hair of her ailing sister, Shelva, lying on a cot.  ‘Poor little sister.  I should step from the celestial to be with you in your time of need.  Yes, Mum, that’s what you should do.  Step down slowly, steadily.  Let your light legs become used to the earth.  Use your shadows and your light to become a form little sister can recognize, and trust:  A human woman, just like herself.  You could walk to her, talk with her, and then together you could…’

     NEWS FLASH:  THIS JUST BREAKING – FROM THE EDITOR-ARCHIVIST, RAJI SINGH.  We interrupt the story of the unjust jailing of the good Doctor and his wife to reveal a portrait of the sickly galoot who brought about their incarceration.  It details information of great import to the Fiction’s fate.

Midst archiving the facts surrounding the events of the Fiction’s traumatic experience that  Shelva related in her writings and that were recorded in Fiction House Publishing journals from the late 19th century, I have just discovered related stories taking place in a paralleling arc to theirs.  They were written by James ‘Golden Boy’ Golden, the Fiction House chief writer for over 75 years.

Being the Doc and Shelva’s Uncle, Golden Boy was concerned that their side of the incarceration be told in its entirety.  Since Golden Boy never turned down an opportunity to do some ‘hoot-in the-hat’ cowpoke-western style writing midst his serious biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Charles Darwin, the two Harriet’s, Beecher Stowe and Tubman, and others of note of his time, he decided to present his take on ‘Ol Efraim, the crotchety, will-of-the-wisp galoot who was behind all Doc and Shelva’s trouble.

Golden Boy wrote this, I feel certain, as not just an exercise in whimsy, but to make certain the good Doctor’s high reputation was unsullied by any inevitable re-writing of history.  We will return to the Doc and Shelva’s jail trauma next week.

*     *     *

OL’ EFRAIM’S TALE

Efraim’s a beanpole of a man with stringy legs that hang limply over the straw mattress in his cabin.  The cabin is his unique pod – plants, roots, tubers and bulbs of dozens of shapes somehow flourish as they cling to the sod walls.  The walls and his hands are stained green from the stalks, leaves, and grass with which he daily rubs them.  Live, twining vines line the ceiling.  Seems there are only two things he lives for:  Number 1 – tending his plants (for which he uses as ingredient for distilling liquor, and Number 2 – cultivating tall tales in front of the general store or on any town corner where he might corner an unsuspecting audience.

“Had a poison, mean crop of ivy growin’ in the rafters once.  One night they reached down slow and sly for my throat.  They truly did.  Commenced strangling me while I slept.  Guess they got fed up with my snorin’ as my dear depart-me-for- snorin’, wife did.  I can get rightful rattlin’ of the window panes with my snorts.”

“How’d you save yourself,” one of a group of wide-eyed boys and girls would ask as Efraim tells of the event in front of the firehouse of some warm summer eve.  The smoldering campfire-like intrigue of tall tail is in the air and the younguns’ love it to no end.

Efraim’s endings are always different.  “Fortune had it that I fell to sleep with my scythe right aside me.  Cut myself free, and ran like the dickens out of there.  Had to build a whole new cabin – far from that one just to be sure they wouldn’t come slyly creepin’ some night when I warn’t suspectin’.”  Or, “Had me some poison spray.  Had to keep dousing myself with it ‘til they let loose my jugular.  I kilt ‘em off right good.  Planted me only sweet ivy after that.  I have good night sleeps ever since.”

Thus – I, trusted historian, William ‘Golden Boy’ Golden, present to you, Efraim.  So little did my nephew, Doc and his wife Shelva, as they languished in jail, know what kind of a prevaricator, this Efraim was who got them into the bind?

Sheriff Jackson, after he arrests my nephew and his wife, then gets their side of the story, comes to Efraim’s pod to question him.  Efraim, on his bed, rolls-and-writhes – half-contrives about his illness.  Sheriff Jackson barely more than half-believes.

“You’re a crier of wolf, and a grand hypochondriac to boot, Efraim,” the Sheriff bluntly says.  His nose crinkles up at the musty-moldy air surrounding him.  “I am coming to the conclusion that I ought to let those folks go free.  That, if you’re really that bad off, it was from something of your own creating.  Dare I call it bad white lightening?  If I could get a sniff and taste of it I could probably prove it.  Your nose and your throat’s ability to tell a bad batch is undoubtedly fried away from too many decades of wormy hooch.”

“Well, a powerful awful snootful of somethun’s puttin’ me at death’s door Sheriff Jackson.  But you don’t see a still hidden ‘mongst my plants do you?”  Efraim challenges.  His nostrils are so narrowed he has to breathe through his mouth.  Complexion’s pale, white as Luny Mum.

Luny Mum peeks into the nearby woods.  She sees Efraim’s still,  hidden to the prying naked eye of mere mortals by thick entwining roots.  Efraim has cut, trimmed, and trained them to conceal it completely.  Luny Mum might beam out news of her discovery.  But, alas, Mum’s spirited words can be heard only by those like Shelva and cowboy poets as me who are open to the universe’s varied methods of communication.  Sheriff Jackson, he ain’t one of ‘em!

Sheriff grits his teeth.  “You sure it’s not your hypochondriac imagination that’s prostrating you E-E-Ephraim?  I can’t just have those people put in danger because the townsfolk are stirred to a lynching frenzy thinking one of their own might have died from their medicine.”

“Now Sheriff.  You know I’m a delicate sprig.  You know that if I could, I’d rise right up, straight as a corn stalk, and forget my failen’ roots.”

“Dammit, Efraim.  I told them I’d ride over to Bensonville to fetch you the doctor.  But I don’t want to bother him if this is all of your own still’s doing.”

“Believe me Sheriff.  I…”  Efraim suddenly lets out a scream, so loud, so piercing it looks like the leaves of his wall plants curl in – as if they’re humanly covering invisible ears.  The Sheriff tightens his shoulders upward, and clenches shut his eyes.  When he opens them, Efraim’s slack jaw is jacking continually, like a Venus Fly Trap that’s lost control.  And his whole body has gone green:  green as his pod.  Sheriff Jackson doesn’t know what to do.  Scoop him up and try to save him by transplanting him into the hospital in Bensonville.  Or leave him alone as he goes to get the Doctor, and hope his nursery plants will nurse him to recovery.

‘Go Sheriff,’ Luny Mum beams in through the window.  “My beam is long enough and strong enough to blanket and protect both he and Shelva at the same time in its protective glow.  But go quickly, and return in haste – for both their sakes – because I cannot stay ‘til the morn”.

     Sheriff Jackson looks up and around, then, through the window, to Luny Mum.  For once in his life, he hears. 

“Hold tight, Ephraim,” he shouts, departing.  I’ll be back quick as I can.”

NEXT WEEK:  THE MAGIC OF LUNY MUM:  IT IS ALL AROUND US.       

(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 their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE, but that’s a different story.  It’s available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

©Raji Singh, 2013

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No. 24: THE LIFE SAVING ELIXIR, So Near, Yet So Far Away

Posted on January 6, 2013 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh (editor, archivist, archeo-apologist Fiction House Publishing)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus "Blackjack" Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.I cannot refuse.

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

The content of this piece – from the writings of Shelva Fiction, my Russian immigrant great grandmother – exist only in fragmented segments.  I discovered them while archiving the Fiction House.  In the compiling, I found the trauma she was experiencing at the time the writing refers,   was so physically difficult, being kept in a dank jail cell while pregnant.  Also, an emotional drain:  She feared losing the baby.

~ ~ Shelva’s words:  ‘Not feel well.  I lie on cot.  Rock, hard.  My dress is thin for this time of year they call in Wise-consin, Lindian Summer – late fall.  Mine husband, he is my sweet druzhyna.  He removes waist coat.  Puts it over me.  Just cannot tell him about the baby.  Not in this cold, horrible place.’  ~ ~

These strains led great grandmother – as a means of adequately expressing the emotions she was feeling – to revisit her native 19th century Russian language.  Try much as an interpreter and I did, we could not arrive at suitable meanings in English that a 21st reader might understand, or truly appreciate.  Thus, we have utilized a limited menu of modern words to make her story more palatable.  That said, here is Shelva.

*     *     *

From the other side of the thick, black bars Sheriff Jackson, he say, “They claim a man’s nearly dying from one of the so-called medicines you two are hawking.  I tasted the contents of the vials my wife brought home.  Personally, I think yours is just spring water mixed with a little bicarbonate to make it bubble up like a drug store tonic.”

Mine Doc.  He holds my hand.  No idea has he of my pain.  I hide it well.  His concern now – the life of a man we do not know.  This only right.  After all, he is a Physician, sworn to help others.

“Do you have a Doctor looking after him right now, Sheriff?” asks Doc.  “That is an imperative.”

You can tell, Sheriff he cannot decide what to do by the way he unfastens and fastens the top button of his plaid shirt.  “I’ll get to that right shortly…”

I can only listen to their conversation.  Invisible sharp points jab at my womb.  I curl up and brace forearm to abdomen.  This help ease the hurt.  I look out the barred window.  Neither Sheriff, nor my husband, knows why I am suddenly smiling broadly.  Luny Mum has come to me:  Full, round, and glowing comfortingly in the sky.  She so brightens my dim imprisonment. ‘I am here for you little sister.  I’ll not abandon you.  Hold my beam in your heart.  Let it cool you, if cool you need, and warm you if you need warmth.  Bathe in my healing light.  Let it soothe you.  Though you won’t always see me Shelva, I shall be there for you.’

In my thoughts I say, ‘Thank you, Mum.  I know your magic touch will see me through, as it did during so many dark, cold Moscow nights when the Cossacks rampaged.’

Gentle Doc:  He tightens his grip on my hand.  Though he is riled at the accusations and the indecisiveness of the Sheriff, his touch, it is always gentle, gentle.  At this most important moment in time, Sheriff Jackson is languorous, as it is with many of the small American townspeople I have met since departing my homeland.  He licks his silvery moustache and says,

“Ol’ Efraim has a bad liver.  Been nursin’ it, some say milking it for sympathy, for on twenty years.  When it’s all said and done, I’d say it’s just acting up, once again.”  Sheriff stops to poke at earwax with the narrow part of the jail-door key.  He glares at mine Doc.  “Can you honestly say you are a real Doc?”

Sweet druzhyna, he takes the challenge like the man he is.  He walks rigidly to the bars; puts face inches from Sheriff.  “I completed the best eastern medical school.  I proudly carry my diploma.  If you’d like to rustle through my medical bag to view it, it is under the seat of our wagon.  I served honorably in the United States Army in the western campaign.  My surgeries saved many of our nation’s brave Cavalry.”

I know he is fighting back tears that come to his eyes whenever he tries to explain his path.

“Many of my medical colleagues from the warring time became ministers of the Lord because they could not stand to see ever again the bloodshed horrors man inflicts upon man.  Now they save souls – or at the least they pacify souls – to try to prevent wars, and yet another Doctor from having ever again to sever another gangrenous limb to save a body.”

Sheriff Jackson laughs a little, not disrespectfully, more so baffled.  Probably ashamed for the guffaw, he sort of flicks my husband’s string tie and says, “I too served…”  Maybe, that is the only way he knows to make physical and emotional contact with someone he considers kinsman – kinsman of the tribe of war.  “I served a brutal hitch, fighting our red brothers in the Dakotas.  What waste!  But, that all being the case, my good Doctor, why do you piddle with these salves and elixirs?”

“Sir!  I now save un-bloodied bodies.  “I had to operate to save our troops in the campaign.  There is very little of that – aside from a mule kicking a farmer, a boy or girl breaking an arm as they are apt, or some such – that is needed when some insane war isn’t being perpetrated.  So often, the simple cures of nature can best be utilized to help a human.”

I smile.  Doc, he present what he believes so honestly.  But now, his wife lay sick, beginning to perspire, getting hot, so hot, and getting cold, so cold.  Why bother him?  Nothing he can do.  Other than let me rest.  But if something happen to me, he blame himself forever.  But same with strange man, E-e-ephraim, if something happen to him.  What to do?  What to do?

My condition for some reason, I cannot explain why, it make my nose and ears extra sensitive.  I can hear the jail hovel cockroaches thumping along echo-y wanted posters.  I smell the rat fur of of the ever-present rodent inmates.  In my thoughts, I picture them as the scowling face Russian rats – THE COSSACKS who tormented so many of those I loved.

I hear my husband say, “Take me to the sick man, Sheriff.  I may be able to help him.”

“Well, Doc.  It’s like this…”  Sheriff hems, haws.  Hooks ring of keys on belt.  Their jingle jangle as he paces bothers him, so he hangs them on peg behind his desk.

Doc interrupts.  “I didn’t see anyone in the crowd as this Efraim.  It was still light enough out.  I would have seen by his rheumy eyes, and the ominous shade of his skin, if a liver condition were acting up.  I would have had just the right mix of medicine in my bag.  I could have given it to him instantly.  That is the beauty of nature’s cure.  We are one with nature…I am just certain he must be suffering from…”

I cannot pronounce what mine Doc just call it.  He tell Sheriff,

“It is not a wise thing to diagnose someone without seeing them, but I am just certain it is the condition you are talking about.”

“Be that as it may, Doc, he’s lying, maybe dying on a tuft of straw, in his cabin, and I’ve got to get over to Bensonville to bring back a real, practicing Physician.”

“Damn it.  I tell you I am.  I demand you allow me see him.  Take me to him!  For the sake of…”

“Don’t suppose the town-folk would like that.  Some of them think you caused his problem with your cures.  “You just hold tight here.  Liver probably just actin’ up again.  I’m just sure of it.  Ephraim, he’s a crier of wolf, but he’s a popular fixture about town.  Always with a new tale.  I sure wouldn’t want to be you folks if he don’t see the sunrise.”  We have a peaceful little town.  The anger of the citizenry’s never had to be tested.  Can’t say how they might react to the onset of adverse emotions.”  He points at a never had to be used scaffolding and rope outside the barred window.

Luny Mum blinks and disappears behind a dark cloud so the Fictions don’t have to see it.

The Sheriff says, “I’ll have my wife bring over some fried chicken, corn on the cob, taters.  No one can say we don’t treat our guests rightly in this town.  She’s a fine cook.  You’ll be havin’ what I had for supper.”  He departs, despite mine Doc’s continual pleas to allow him to help.

“We’re guests!”  Doc growls.  “But only if Efraim survi…”  He doesn’t complete the sentence.

I shake.  I tremble.  In my thoughts, I cry out.  Mine druzhyna, hold me tight.  He seems to mind read.  He strokes my neck, clenches me.  His bristly face scours my cheek.  Even this hurting touch I am grateful for at this painful time.  Quietly he whispers, words I cherish.  “Whenever I touch you, my dearest Shelva, I am forever lost in softness.  Whenever I hold you I feel I am keeping you forever safe.”

NEXT WEEK:  ‘TO THE NOOSE OR TO BE LET LOOSE.  THAT IS THE…’

(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 their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE, but that’s a different story.  It’s available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

© Raji Singh 2013

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No. 23: SHELVA FICTION’S GRAND, BUT WHAT COULD BECOME, DEADLY, AMERICAN ADVENTURE

Posted on December 30, 2012 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’ll never have lived.’These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.I cannot refuse.

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

(Writings from the 1880’s of my Russian immigrant great grandmother, Shelva Fiction just a few years after, as she would say “I come Amerika”.)

Mine husband, mine sweet druzhyna, Doc Fiction:  So successful is his spieling-on about his elixirs and folk cures.  He sell out all of entire inventory in the little Wise-consin town where we stop with our wagon.  The crowd, ach, good folk all.  Glad faced, they leave with salves, potions, and ointments.  Their itches, limps, and disorders of all types, they are cured, or at the least, eased.

The women show biggest smiles.  Plain countrywomen in their worn dresses.  They come as we prepare to leave for our next stop.  Say good-bye.  Hug me tight.  The two dear Kazaks, nomads – that is what my husband and I, are to them.  We give them hope for a merrier marital life with our “NEVER FAIL” sumptuous pastry we call Madame Rose Heather’s Whure’s Delight.  Its name derives from the recipe’s creator.

We load wagon with table we use to show our wares.  “Whoosh!”  Away, our ponies whisk us.

I remember always this particular night:  our romantic ride.  Autumn air is crisp.  Our beacon and protector Luny Mum, our close friend, she is nowhere to be seen.  A blanket of stars warms the crinkled land.  Cricket and frog choruses harmonize.  Their “kree, and rrribit” become a tender, continuous balalaika strum.  The countryside’s sublime honeysuckle fragrance – it ferries us along on a slight breeze.  All seems Heaven to me this night.  Especially so, because tonight I will tell mine Doc, “I carry our child, sweetheart.”

Only wish – that Luny Mum be there to share the joy.

In moments our Heaven, it become Hell.

“Whoa!  Hold on there.”  Three riders shout out.

Doc, he obliges them.  He say, something like.  “Sorry gents.  We’ve sold out our inventory.  More coming in by Wells Fargo.  A plentiful supply of Goat Scrotum Juice, if that’s what you’re needing.  And who doesn’t, ‘eh?  Meet us tomorrow night in…”  (I can not for the life of me recall name of next town we were to come.)

One of the three men seizes our ponies’ bridles and says, “Don’t rightly think so.”

I nudge husband.  He know our pre-arrange sign, and says.  “We sent our sales revenues to our bank via stage coach.  We only travel with a few bills.”  He pulls out billfold, shows lonely dollars.  “You’re welcome to it.”

All our money:  It safely below seat, in false-bottom secret compartment.  Trick I learn from University Professor papa of mine, Moscow.  He hide revolution papers from hoarding Cossacks in compartment on his horse drawn sled.

The three men – they dusty farmers not prone to talking.  Their strained yet somehow contented faces are no different from those of the dozens we saw in the crowd earlier in the evening.  That is why; when two of them draw firearms, I am so shocked.  I close eyes tight, think – COSSACKS.  This how some of my peasant relatives who live outside Moscow die.  By brutal hands of Cossacks – is this how I, Doc, and our baby, to die?

At that moment, I am changed.  It is because my ‘great protector’, Luny Mum, she peaks out briefly in the sky and says.  ‘Always I there in Moscow for you when you be sad, Shelva; and close by when you cross ocean alone to new land, saying, Shelva, be not afraid of storms, I am here; and, I beside you when you disembark ship and embark on the new land – I, a friend to a stranger in strange land.  Now Shelva, there is someone you must protect.  Be brave, little sister.’

Silently I begin repeating, ‘Saint Stylianos, I beseech you.  Protect our unborn infant.’  Maybe my prayer answer.  No shooting.  Men turn wagon around and lead us back to town.  Within me, I sigh.  ‘Good folk there.  They will protect.’

*     *     *

To jail we go.  A rickety wood fronted, stone backed, hovel.  “Clank” goes metal bar door to cell.  “Click” go lock.  I put my hand to bars.  Ice!  I pull away.  Lean, briefly, against stone.  Even colder!  Husband, he ask, “What charge sheriff?”  Quiet men who quickly seized us on the open road leave us just as quickly in the dank prison.

Sheriff, a flabby-face man, star on his dirty shirt, pistol in holster, sadness in eyes, pours coffee for mine druzhyna, himself, and myself.  He hands us ours.  “You folks don’t appear the typical drummers that come huckstering about.  Shoot, my wife’s even one of the ladies who bid you farewell.  Talked so kindly about you.  Even bought some of your ‘Delight’, preparing it for after supper dessert.”  He look right into Doc’s eyes.  Rigid, without blinking he says.  “Appears some of your medicines gave a man a bad turn.  Looks like the charge could be murder if things don’t get better for him by daybreak.”

I feel a sudden sharp stabbing pain in my womb.  I double over.  Coffee cup slips from my hands and shatters against the stone floor.  All I can think:  ‘I haven’t even told mine Doc yet.’  He helps me to lie down on a metal cot.  I look out the cell’s bar window.  ‘Please Mum.  Come to your Shelva.  Let me feel your warm glow.’

NEXT WEEK:  DEADLY ‘GLUMS’ OR GLORIOUS GLOW?     

(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 their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE, but that’s a different story.  It’s available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

© Raji Singh 2012

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

No. 22: MADAME RRROSE HEATHER’S WHURE’S DELIGHT AROUSES THE NATION.

Posted on December 23, 2012 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’ll never have lived.’These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.I cannot refuse.

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

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 them 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’.  Another product she often wrote of – Goat Scrotum Juice.  Again, quoting G-Gra’ma, “Doc Fiction’s male virility elixir for men 18 to 108.”  They were two of Doc’s most purchased items in his line of products that numbered into the hundreds.

She eventually compiled all her information about them into a book – a very popular one entitled, Return Ye to Paradise.  It was published under her husband’s name.  Only recently, while archiving the Fiction House have I realized it was she who did the writing.  Why wasn’t she listed as author?  Reading her journal, I must assume she craved her privacy nearly as much as she loved my great grandfather, the Doc.

Here now are her words.

‘My Doc’s, my sweet druzhyna’s book, Return Ye to Paradise.  Peruse it.  You be surprise, find so many useful health tips first conjured in the Leezian’ bayou; and, so many others, spirited from thousands of years-old ancient Lindian medicine cures.

‘The knigi, the books, sell two million copy – so far.  20 cent per knigi.  Yes, indeed, more than enough to buy nice trip for dainty Shelva to visit relatives in Moscow – show off fancy Amerikan fashion – ermin, lace, mink, the knigi buy for me.  I show off too, the strapping baby boy, James III, the Goat Scrotum Juice and Ruse’s Pride delicacy helped bring us.’

~ ~ editor note; Shelva’s figures were pre 1900 sales.  That is unprecedented for the time.

I have been tracking sales data figures from Fiction House Publishing ledgers.  In its decades on bookstore shelves, and in mail order Doc’s, Shelva’s knigi, has sold over five million copies.

With the new interest in folk, integrative, and alternative medicine, here at Fiction House we’re considering re-issuing Return Ye to Paradise under the all-new publishing line rage of ‘fol-gra-native’ medicine.

But why bother with buying it if we do re-issue (I guess I’m as interested in your health as Doc Fiction was for your great grandparents’ in their younger days – so I’m willing to lose sales.)  You probably have an old copy of it relegated to a dusty spot in your attic or basement.

One slight worry though (so you just might want to buy a spanking new copy after all.) This is for the sake of full disclosure – –                                                                                                                  

– – Fiction House founder and publisher, James Thaddeus ‘Blackjack’ Fiction (Senior), was printing so many copies of his son’s book – proud papa that he was – he used an ultra high-grade Lindian paper.  The pages are, for all practical purposes, indestructible – so Return Ye to Paradise would guarantee, ‘to always be around’.

One major side effect:  The residue left by the worm that spins the silken ingredient that makes the paper nearly eternal also attracts brown recluse spiders that nest in the binding.  ~ ~

NEXT WEEK:  SHELVA FICTION’S GRAND, NEARLY DEADLY AMERICAN ADVENTURE.

(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 their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE, but that’s a different story.  It’s available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

©Raji Singh, 2012

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Whimsey, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

No. 21: GREAT GRANDMOTHER FICTION WAS A WRITER? WHO KNEW?

Posted on December 16, 2012 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’ll never have lived.’These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.I cannot refuse.

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

Tucked away in thimbles, squirreled into deep recesses of musty cubbies; used for padding in cracking old button-top shoes:  Buried and forgotten in all these places for over 100 years are bits and pieces of writing by my Russian immigrant, great grandmother, Shelva Fiction.

I keep stumbling onto this total disarray of information she compiled, a treasure trove of family lore, her personal philosophies, a newcomer’s view of America uniquely de Tocqueville-ian.

If I published it – could her Shelva’d history become the next de Tocqueville Democracy in America.  More likely a title would be, The Fictions of Democracy in America.

Ironically, I am discovering her writing as I archive my great-great grandfather’s, her father’s-in-law, precisely detailed, but intentionally organized disarray of files, charts, journals of the Fiction House Publishing Company.

(He incorporated his method of ‘filing’ out of necessity, to keep his Abolitionists, and Underground Railroad activities secret from freedom’s enemies.  Whereas G-gra’ma Shelva was, kindly put, just plain disorganized.)

I was too young ever to have known G-gra’ma Shelva.  I am being introduced to her, “Nice to meet you g-gra’ma,” through her observations of she and her husband.  She spins a tangling web about g-grandfa’s successes and follies, and her patience with the constant landslide of them all.

     She writes: 

‘My druzhyna, my forever loving, my constantly roaming kazakh, ‘Doc’ Fiction – ach, with his line of patent medicines and aphrodisiacs.

‘A desirous public greets him wholeheartedly.

‘So joyous our travels in his fancy covered troika, pulled by three mighty ‘sveaty steeds.  Muscular beasts they are.  Tall blue feathers as babushka for their heads.

‘So successful is my druzhyna, not just one pony for him.

‘Clip-cloppity, clip-cloppity.  Everyone hear us!  We come with our wares.  Smell our miracle musk potions.  Swim in the scent of our lavender notions.

‘Exciting as the travelling is, ach, too much schi (cabbage soup) and other muzhik (peasant foods) cooked on our wagon’s little stove– being back at home at Fiction House it is our forever romantic foray.

‘At Home:  Mmm.  Arousing sbiten we imbibe.  Its honey sweet wine sticks us for days to our wedding- night bed.  Soon we shall soon wear it out I am certain.  Busy bee love, in this our Fiction House hive.  The strains of our Balalaika-like buzz – it flies us away.

‘But soon, all too soon for still buzzing little Shelva, after pleasure, it is back to business for my sweet druzhyna.  Ach for the Doc.  It’s back to his mixing la-bor-atory in the basement.

‘Two of his – “prescriptions” as he call them – prove very effective:  And I can attest to both.  The first:  His patent “Goat Scrotum Juice”, for male virility, “for men from age 18 to 118”.

‘For life of me, I not know how any man put a thing with such a name to lips, let alone imbibe – like old country-man do vudka.

‘The other, “Mudame Ruse Heather’s, Whure’s Delight” – you Amerikan would pronounce it, Madame Rose Heather.  It is, “a dessert recipe for a happy boudoir”.  Believe you me, once you taste it you’ll want to have ‘it’ six days a week.  Twice on Sunday.  That why our bed it wear out.

‘After some time your husband will insist on a ice box full.  He even whip it up his-self.’

~ ~ editor note:  Shelva’s words on ‘GSJ’ and the ‘Delight’ were actual testimonials her Doc used in his advertising.  ~ ~

‘I think, now that my sweet druzhyna will stick to our hive, the more the travelling will slow, then cease, when Doc’s plan for an air mail order business via his passenger pigeon idea comes to fruition.

‘Ach, mine Doc.  So many ideas, has he.’

~ ~ editor note:  Unfortunately for Shelva, Doc, and following generations of folks living in the middle west and east coast, the pigeons were able to unravel the packets containing Whure’s Delight, and Goat Scrotum Juice, and then disappear forever into romantic love nests in the high-rise buildings just being built.  ~ ~

Shelva writes:

‘Ach, mine Doc!  Such a good man he is.  I barely speak Amerikan, yet I must write so much of what he wants to say.  The medicines are all his concoctions, but my words sell them.’

~ ~ editor note:  “G-gra’ma Shelva.  It is time the world knows your writing story.  Your language is pristine.  With love, your great grandson, Raji.”  ~ ~

NEXT WEEK:  G-GRA’MA BECOMES A BESTSELLER, WRITING ABOUT THE WHURE’S DELIGHT.

©Raji Singh 2012

(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 their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE, but that’s a different story.  It’s available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

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No. 20: THE LINCOLN-DARWIN STUMP DEBATE OF FEBRUARY 12, 1809. PART II: WHAT CHILDS ARE THESE?

Posted on December 9, 2012 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh    (continued from last week)

Abracadabra, Magi! 

Our Founder, James Thaddeus "Blackjack" Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.I cannot refuse.

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

Appearing from seemingly out of nowhere in the desolate desert-scape, three kingly wise men:  Melchior, Balthazar, and Caspar.  They’ve a star to direct them as they goad their camels across the sand to find their manger babe.  For Christ’s-sake, you know the story, delivering precious gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  (You know.  That December Noel:  It’s been in all the papers, and on the internet.)

UPDATE:  Eighteen hundred and nine years, give or take a couple of months later, the pre-manger-ed Charles Darwin and Abe Lincoln have their star followers.  They are ones not quite-so royal as Mel, Bali, and Cassie.  The baby, destined to be Abie, his star followers are a salty sea dog – the Mariner, and a seasoned centenarian bayou healer-seer – Mama Lucy.  The yet evolving Darwin’s is a barnacle crusted, giant of a shell-domed land-sea creature – Turt.

Mariner and Mama travel – from the bayou, aboard a swift skiff:  up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, to Kentucky, the place of Abie’s birth.  Turt swims out the gulf, catches a jet ocean current, and crosses the Atlantic to England.  The trio bears gifts – a male pigeon, from the humans, for the not yet arrived log cabin Lincoln: for the future little Victorian darling Darwin, from the land-sea beast, the pigeon’s female, mate-for-life.

~ ~ editor note:  I am discovering these details as I archive Fiction House Publishing Company reference collections.  They are so obscure the patina of dust on the leather covering indicate they have not been opened for over a century.  ~ ~    

The other gift for the little emancipator and evolutionary to be’s – one more precious than all the glittering precious bullion or prized aromatic fragrances any royalty can give – Mama Lucy’s Newborn’s Stump Juice Healing Elixir.

(SPOILER ALERT!!!  Well not such a spoiler since we all know what became of our story’s title characters.  Suffice to say there was no debate necessary about utilizing Mama’s stump juice to help the mothers’ deliveries.  Without it, the babes would not have survived.)

Darwin’s parents are shocked at first seeing the beak-snouted monster as he hisses outside the window to get their attention.  He carries, in one of his fin-claws, the stump juice canister with a tiny gold spoon attached.  Alas, Mr and Mrs Darwin readily accept the gift of the pigeon – after nearly losing little Charles and trying everything to save him, even to having the doctor reluctantly gently spoon the elixir down the newborn’s gullet.  Ditto with little Abe’s parents midwife when Mariner and Mama Lucy arrived.

(You can read the thrilling and spectacular turn of events that led to the doctor and the midwife, against their better judgment, “but only at first”, reaching for the stump juice elixir as “a final life-saving resort” – in, Fiction House Publishing’s upcoming history Abe, and Charlie – Boyhood Friends, an Ocean Apart.)

*     *     *

Now to the pigeons:  Both were carefully trained by Mariner at sea and later by land – to find each other in any port, in any storm, in any coop.  Mariner hoped the newborns, the two future renowned figures, Mama Lucy soothsaid they’d become, would keep in contact with each other.

     How many hundreds of roundtrips did those bird-mates eventually make?  Their retirement together was a happy, contented one, visiting the major cities and statues of the world.  Dropping, plopping their ‘postcards’, to let feathered friends and two-leg strangers know they were there.  How many flights did their dozens of offspring continue to make for well over half-a-century?  Between England and Kentucky.  Between  Galapagos and D.C.  Find out in Fiction House Publishing’s follow up to Abe and Charlie – Boyhood Friends…, tentatively titled Abraham, and Charles – Lifelong Avian Chums.

     Thus, it is now revealed.  Abe and Charles were brought together by three wise Fiction House residents, and not to forget, Fiction House frequent flyer guests:  Maxine and Maxwell, aka ‘the ever lovin’ Pigeons.

     *     *     *

Here’s the pleasant irony – no, really more of a coincidence – just being revealed by the wonders of modern chemistry.  The two major ingredients of the hundreds in the infant elixir mix are frankincense, and myrrh, and they are activated through administration with a gold spoon.

(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 their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE, but that’s a different story.  It’s available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

© Raji Sing 2012

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No. 19: THE LINCOLN-DARWIN STUMP DEBATE OF FEBRUARY 12, 1809. PART I.

Posted on December 2, 2012 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh

     Steven Spielberg’s excellent portraying of America’s 16th President omits – probably because of cinematic time constraints – dramatic events of Abraham Lincoln’s Kentucky log cabin birth.  Those events relate directly to Charles Darwin’s birth in England on that same day.

The story begins, for the revolutionary evolutionary and the rail-splitter turned (alleged) vampire splitter a fortnight before they arrived in this world.  It begins with…

*     *     *

Mariner sits cross-leg atop Turt’s shell as they glide down the Leezian’ bayou.  He looks upward, mentally charting the strange new celestial alignment, even he, as an experienced seaman, has never observed:  A pair of stars – bright as planets – appears on a slow course of collision.

A pigeon perches on Mariner’s shoulders; another is at his ankles.  Their outstretched wings catch a light breeze and provide sail power.  Normally Mariner appears a muscled Poseidon – wild ivory hair, eyes fiery, clenching his trident-like custom-made harpoon.  But on this twinkling night, he’s swift, gentle Mercury in pigeon feather helmet and winged sandals.  He almost feels Mercury, messenger of the Gods, delivering news imperative to the survival of all mortals.

Neither Mariner nor Turt fear gators that swim near.  Mariner’s unrivaled in harpoons-manship.  Turt’s beak-snout strength and the quickness of his fin-claws overpower any gator, any size.

“Breathe in, deep-like ‘ol fella,” Mariner says to Turt.  “Smell it?  Blow me down, if we aren’t nearing our port.”

Turt arcs his crusty, leather neck and sniffs.  His perpetual beak-snout frown hides a widening smile.  He knows the joy awaiting him on the bank of the bayou:  Mama Lucy’s stump juice.

The dewy air is pleasantly thick with a fruit-nut pungency from the ferment The Healer of the Bayou brews for her medicines and delectable delights.  Our travelers are on their way to visit:  Turt, to renew old acquaintances and sip from a sumptuous stump, and Mariner, to query the blind seer about the spectacular sky omen.

From his dungaree pocket, Mariner extracts his dog-eared Seafarer’s Guide to the Galaxy and fans through the fish-smelly pages.  He finds the chart he has studied since first observing the star alignment.

~ ~ editor note:  The copy of Mariner’s ‘Guide’, necessarily vented by over two centuries in the open air, is on display at the Fiction House Bed, Breakfast, and Museum – “a nice place to stay and visit at a great price.  (When remodeling is complete.)”  ~ ~

Mariner cannot read – not a word in the ‘Guide’, but he’s versed in the celestial.  He sees on the pages and in the sky, an alignment not repeated for 1800 years and a decade – give or take a month or two:  Not since the B.C.’s became the A.D.’s, he knows, though he can’t even recognize his A,B,C,D’s.

“EEE-eee,” Mariner hears Mama Lucy screech excitedly from the bank.  “My ‘ol friends, ‘de come sailen’ in.  Back for a drink of my heavenly sin!”

*     *     *

Mama Lucy’s so old – a hundred years and many more – she’s shrunk to no taller than a yard and a third stick.  Her head is onion shape and hair sprouts up and out – bleach white.  She’s not white or black – more of an off shade of gray.  The Cayan people of the bayou have long forgotten which race from which she comes.

Mama Lucy rhymes to Mariner as she ‘reads’ the sky’s meaning .

My Bayou sky is showin’

Two Stars together comin’.

Be it glad or be it warnin’

A pair o’ birthin’ omens?

Mama’s words sublime often come in singsong rhyme.

She and Mariner sit by the bayou bank, on a log near her cabin home.  It is also her medical office / laboratory / backwoods herbal pharmacy.  Turt moseys, taste testing the varied fare the hollowed out stumps have to offer.

“Heyah Turt,” Mama Lucy calls out to him.  “Take a beak-snoutful of the grub worm aperitif. Brewed it up special for your under-shell itch relief.”

Turt sifts in a long, languorous drink of it and mentally mimics Mama’s rhyming.  ‘Ahh!  The magic fixer elixir.  If only you could carry it on a sea trek.  Nary would a parasite’s tarry make you a nervous wreck.’  Turt drains the stump and winks gratefully to Mama.  The pigeons, roosting comfortably on Mariner’s shoulder perch, fly over to join him at his next stump.

    Mama Lucy bends to arrange rocks on the ground to reflect the aberrant sky show.

“As I been watchin’ ‘em, Mama,” says Mariner.  “I’m seein’ ‘em move such that in a fortnight, they’ll be right about here.”  He readjusts her display.

Mama Lucy rises, creakily.  You can almost hear her bones rattling around in her shapeless burlap sack of a dress as she ambles about blindly ‘reading’ the sky, then rocks, then sky again.  ‘Connoitering’.  Reconnoitering, the weight, the feel of the stars on her bare shoulders, their sulfur in her nostrils, and glow in her thoughts.  “Something strange indeed up high.  Important babes birthin’ nigh.  May be a needin’ my mid-wifen’ to avoid a life a’ strifen.”

Mama lay on the warm ground to keep continual ‘read’ of the sky.  Mariner stretches.  It’s been a long and cramped, though convivial, sail aboard Turt.  “If you follow the stars’ path as I’ve been doing, Mama.  You’ll see, one points to England.  ‘Tother, to up north, Kentucky.  In not many days, I could get there.  England’s ‘nother matter.”  Mariner reclines besides her, but in moments snoozes – the effects of the alcohol in the stump juice he’s imbibed takes its effect.

Mama Lucy wonders aloud.  “Ah!  But the magical sense of creatures!”  Screech owls hoot wise agreement in the distance.  She looks over at the merrily getting tipsy Turt and his pigeon friends.  “Turt could find the babe, pre-manger, across the sea.  By creature-sensing the star’s magic, he could bring my birthen’ notions to the he or she.”

Mama continues to study and ponder.  At once, out of her knowings comes the answer.

“Two to be born.  Of that, I am just sure.

They omen hope and understandin’ for the sad world’s cure.

No complicatin’ of birth will there be

With me off to Kentucky and Turt to sea.”

NEXT WEEK:  THE STUMP JUICE ELIXIR BECOMES A NEWBORN’S, ABRAHAM AND CHARLES, FIXER.

©Raji Singh 2012

(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 their origins in my novel, TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE,   but that’s a different story.  It’s available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble,)

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