POST No. 18: THE WHIMSICAL SHORT STORY BLOG SITE.

Posted on November 25, 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. 

It’s been four months since I started this blog site.  The response to my whimsical, once-a-week short stories has been wonderful.  Thanks so much for letting me entertain you.

It’s fun to imagine and create a new story each week.  In gardener parlance – starting out with the seed of an idea, cultivating until it flourishes then is ready for display on a Sunday evening.

For those of you coming upon the Tales of the Fiction House website for the first time, the stories are from 200 to 1,000 words.  Sometimes they’re in a series of three or four vignettes.  (You may read all from beginning to now by scrolling down.)  They are the ‘further tales, fables, legends, and myths’ based on characters through the centuries who are the ‘residents’ of the Fiction House.  The stories are meant to bring a laugh, a tear, a smile, a ‘knowing’ grin, a, “c’mon who’s he trying to kid”, to the reader.

They’re meant, too, to introduce you to the style of my novel, Tales of the Fiction House  (Amazon and Barnes and Noble)  It’s a book adults enjoy.  It’s suitable for younger adults.  A little bit Twain, Connecticut Yankee in King Author’s Court, comedy.  A tad, Hitchhiker’s Guide, fantasy-farce.  An abundance of Steinbeck’s, Tortilla Flat, humor-pathos.    (A great Hanukkah, Christmas, Solstice, or Lindian Independence Day gift!)

I hope you’ll enjoy it.  In the meantime, visit me each week at the Fiction House, your first stop for short story whimsy.  Meet all the residents as I archive their lives and adventures.

Happy Holidays!

© 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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POST No. 17: (Holiday Edition) THANKSGIVING AT THE HOME OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN’S NE’ER-DO-WELL BROTHER

Posted on November 22, 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.

The Ancient Mariner, the scruffy sea salt who raised my great-great grandfather, told this curious holiday story.  It’s been handed down for almost 250 years.  Enjoy!

*     *     *

“To the GOOD life!”  Benjamin Franklin toasts.  A dozen of Franklin’s relatives, and a spiffed up Mariner, all “clunk” tankards.  They gather in the Philadelphia home of Franklin’s half-brother Franklin Ulster.  The men, all finely dressed in vests and jackets:  The women, in best subtle gray long dresses.    

     Ulster’s already woozy having sneaked many-a-nip to help cope with Benjamin’s incessant boasts.

They give thanks, sit, pass the food, and eat steamy sweet potato, tart cranberry compote – all the usual, with all the sweet scents of banquet, but turkey.  No one would dare offer up Ben Franklin’s noble favorite creature, which he backs as the new nation’s symbol.

“BETTER than any ale you’ve had, eh Ulster.”

The host limply nods.  On that, he must agree.

Franklin proudly thumps his chest and sniffs.  “A woodsy scent this batch has.  I must say, this is the BEST stump juice yet that Mariner and I have had the privilege of brewing.  Fitting nectar for the heroes of the Colonies who lie at rest in their Elysian Fields.  A place you shall need not worry of ever residing, being battle shy midst our Revolution.”

Ulster starts to defend his weapons merchant status, but his wife kicks his ankle under the table.  Brother-in-law Benjamin just might be convinced to float a loan to keep the creditors from the door.  The home, though not a hovel, is faked; garish below the surface.  Plaster of paris Louis XIV statues stand in for the real marble.  Sturdy walnut furniture is replaced with rickety pine lookalikes.

“Concerning our stump juice, as with all things in life, as I always say, Ben Franklin says, ‘Good, Better, Best.  Never let it rest.  Until the good is better and the better best.’  That’s what I always say,” Benjamin Franklin says.

“Oh you do,” Franklin Ulster challenges.  Ulster had pre-dinner fumed for an hour as the honored guest told of his Paris diplomatic exploits that help borne a new nation.  Now he’s caught brother braggart in a lie.  He maliciously spits out, “We both know those words you quote were written on the sign at Goode and Betty Bests Bakery when we we urchins.”

Benjamin squints down on Ulster through his bifocals, and calmly honeys a bun.

“And just who do you think sold them that adage.  Moi!  Mr. Ulster.  And for a pretty penny.  That coin built up through the decades made me the wealthy man I am today, Sir.  As I always say, ‘A penny saved is a penny earned.’”

Franklin Ulster grits his teeth, but Benjamin Franklin is just beginning his pillorying.

“I am truly sorry your Shoppes and various ventures failed.  If only you’d listened to my sage brotherly advice instead of wagering at cockfights.  You could very well be in the financial position I reside.  So, there!  F.U.”

Some of the younger ladies at the table attempt to hide their eyes with their handkerchiefs.  Some matrons titter at the bawdy inference.  Elder statesman, Uncle Benjamin smiles pleasantly at each of them.

Ulster abruptly rises and his brass cock belt buckle upends his plate, sending his Thanksgiving fare down the front of his pants.  “Damn you, Ben.  My name is Franklin Ulster.  I demand the courtesy of being addressed as such in my own home.  Not being treated as some bastard kin.”

“My full apologies Franklin Ulster.  In amends, let me personally serve you the escargot I’ve made for our repast.”  Benjamin Franklin nods to Mariner and Mariner kindly returns the courtesy.  “The Mariner taught me his special recipe when we first met in Paris.  It was the talk of all the French society.  The grand chefs of the city paid my friend quite handsomely for his recipe.”  Franklin goes to a rickety sideboard, and gets a clean dinner plate.

Franklin Ulster impetuously grabs it.  “Snails we eat to appease the grand Doctor Franklin.”

Benjamin Franklin responds, “You’d not offer eagle to those who want it for our national symbol.”

Ulster spits out the crawly foreign fare after the first bite and throws the full plate against the wall.  It smashes into a dozen shards.  “I’m off to slaughter a turkey.”

Before he gets to the door, the normally talkative Mariner, who has been quite quiet throughout the afternoon, shouts, “I’ve ‘ad enough of yer performin’, mate.  Show yer respectins’ for the honored Doc Franklin, F.U.”  The wiry, but sturdy seaman quickly intercepts Ulster, and in seconds, from the long sea line he always has in his pocket, keel hauls him, and hangs him from a ceiling post beam.  There he dangles until a leisurely meal is complete.

~ ~ editor note:  (Keel haul – to tie line to each arm and hang from the bow of the ship.)

The accounts that various Franklins relate in memoirs and letters in the archives of Fiction House Publishing tend to back the overall story. The reader must take into consideration, the Mariner, known for his proclivity for tale telling, and this is his telling, after all – he may have embellished his part in the holiday affair.

You may read A Thousand And One more of Mariner’s tellings in Tales of the Fiction House.  ~ ~

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sincerely,

Raji

© 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. 16: CHARLES DARWIN MEETS TURT (‘naked and loving it’)

Posted on November 18, 2012 by Raji Singh

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

The upcoming passage comes from the galley proofs of; THE BEAGLE HAS LANDED by Charles Darwin.  Fiction House Publishing, 1838.  Memos I am discovering in the Fiction House archives indicate the publisher, James Thaddeus ‘Blackjack’ Fiction, my great-great grandfather, was dissatisfied with the original draft supplied by Darwin.  He enlisted Fiction House’s chief writer, William ‘Golden Boy’ Golden to collaborate with Darwin on what would become the final version.

Because Golden Boy was mostly associated with western writing so popular during that time- period, Fiction omitted Golden’s ‘as told to’ name from the publication.  He made that decision in the thinking that it might hinder both Golden Boy’s entertainment sales and Charles Darwin’s scientific sales.

This passage can be viewed in its full context in TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE, available on AMAZON, KINDLE and BARNES AND NOBLE, NOOK.

*     *     *

On calm waters, aboard the H.M.S. Beagle.  Charles Darwin adjusts his spectacles as he writes at the desk in his wood-paneled cabin.

‘I met the strangest creature during the third week of our voyage.  He had been following us for a good two weeks, as if he knew our plans.  We netted him up.  He did not fight us.  It was as if he was curious about something and wanted aboard.

‘Age 25 to 45.  Length, beak to tail, 144 cm.  Head, the size of my fists together.  I wonder how big eventually he will become.  Hippo, elephant-sized, or stay the height of a large St. Bernard as he is now.  He is shelled, but make no mistake, despite the abbreviated lettering on his shell – T-U-R-T – he is no turtle.

‘(There are tales of an island of those like him.  They sun by day and at night blare trumpet-like, beautiful seductive music, through their highly intricate larynx.  They would be extinct now, if accounts I have heard are true.)

‘His feet are finned yet strangely clawed, as those of a large raccoon.  He could traverse land – he demonstrated that as he coursed the Beagle’s deck – as well as he could swim seas, though not as fast.

‘There is artwork on his shell.  It is Exquisite!  Like those of sailors who are completely illustrated.  The artwork on his shell encompasses within an African village motif.  Surely, it is the work of the finest of tattoo visionaries.

‘Perhaps that is where he was hatched and it was carved in when he was hardly bigger than my thumb.  I will go into more detail on that later when I study the ship artist’s precise copy.  The art may reveal clues to the mystery of his species.  (A crewman sneaked onto the deck one night and painted the ship’s mascot, the beagle, next to an existing image of a sneering tabby standing erect, his paws poised in boxing gloves.)’

~ ~ editor note:  Cat Boxing of the 19th century:  P.T. Barnum called it ‘The greatest sport on earth’.  The top cat boxers were most always foundlings because those, like Puss ‘N Gloves, depicted on Turt, were the toughest of pusses, having to survive the wilds as cute kittens.  From alley – to ring royalty.  They were treated s top racehorses are today.  Carried on the shoulders of a quartet of humans, the combatants traveled to bouts in ‘spired edifices’, velvet inside, large enough for feline cousin, the tiger.  Humans by the thousands, lined-up to view the parade of lavish ‘cat-sels’.  ~ ~

‘I speculate that this ‘TURT’ who honored our BEAGLE with his visit is a creature only thought extinct.

‘He stayed with us all the way to and through our Galapagos Island studies.  It was as if he were on his own voyage of discovery.  Of what I will probably always wonder.  He seemed nervous, disconcerted, and maybe even lonely.  As if he were the last of his kind, yet, didn’t want it to be so, I theorize.’

Darwin’s long face wrinkles.  He sets aside pen, removes jacket, tie, spectacles, and rolls up shirtsleeves.  He stretches, puts hands behind his head, and thinks.  I miss the fellow.  Been gone three weeks now.  I admire what must be his tenacity for life.  For what more, could one ask?

Darwin, exhausted from a day spent in writing, begins to doze.  Aloud, but to no one but himself, he says, “Ah Turt.  You will probably be around long after I have departed this world.  The wonderful adventures you will have that never will I see.”

Then, Charles Darwin drifts to sleep and dreams of crossing the Atlantic, blissfully riding atop Turt’s shell.  And Charles is naked, and loving it.

NEXT WEEK:  THE LINCOLN – DARWIN DEBATES

©Raji Singh, 2012

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No. 15: HOW I GOT MY NEXT THOUSAND OR SO TATTOOS – TURT’S STORY

Posted on November 11, 2012 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh (editor-archivist, 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. 

If my friend Turt could write, this tale he would scribe…   

I experienced unparalleled bliss as the kind ‘two-leg’ gently carved the very first tattoo into my shell.  The “scritch, scritch” scratched incessant itches beneath my shell.

Ecstasy!

I was hooked.  So I allowed other two-legs to satisfy my craving whenever possible.

Of course, even my ‘super’ dome isn’t large enough to hold so many tattoos – paintings, drawings, carvings.  Most wear or wash off as decades pass.  Strangers add new ones.  I am an easy target.

The “swish, swish” of their brushes is always – Nirvana massage.  Feels like when I roll around in a forest of coral.  A pencil point’s poking – It’s not as rough, but just as effective acupuncture to my shell as a shark’s futile “clackety” chomps on it.

I can’t say why humans want to mark me.  What creature ever knows what a two-leg thinks from one moment to the next?  Maybe magically, mystically, both the male and female of the species are drawn to my artworks as I crawl along a riverbank or float in some peaceful inlet.

I ask myself.  A future artiist, yet another, surrealist Man Ray wanna-be, tarries my way?’  I smile as he or she rows out or walks up to me.  A look of anticipation canvasses their face.  The air seems slightly warmer around them – from the rise in their body temperature – from that anticipation.

The two-legs have a common scent at this moment.  It penetrates my sapient nostrils.  Reflexively, I clench the muscles in my beak-snout, because the smell is the acrid stink of an oil slick coat upon the ocean.  But worn by the two-leg it is a perfume of sweet, fresh life – not the old moldy of million-year old dinosaur decay.  So, now I breathe deeply.

How can I sense all this:  By my centuries of contact with the two-legs:  Big, little ones I encounter throughout my travels:  black, brown, red, white, yellow ones.  If I don’t see, smell, feel these things, as they approach, then I am wary.  Then my natural defenses make me impregnable, uncatchable.  I shell-up, or I submerge and swim away.

Otherwise, I am never afraid.  I look forward to the two-leg’s humming, singing, poeticizing, philosophizing, as they paint, pencil-mark or carve.

So that they can tell their stories on some clear space on my plating – that is a most wonderful feeling of sharing for me.

Maybe two-legs yearn to leave their imprint in this world, like their ancient ancestors, the cave wall drawers, and mountain rock carvers that my forbearers may have observed.  Perhaps I’m as a message in a bottle to them.  Their ideas transport by sea to faraway lands.  Maybe it helps them make sense of their life – for at least, that moment in time.

In the end, it doesn’t matter.  The itches beneath my shell are relieved, and, the two-leg camaraderie is pleasing.

~ ~ Editor note:  I can attest to Turt’s numbers on the tattoos.  In my archiving of the Fiction House, I’ve uncovered a virtual plethora of pictures of Turt taken by staff photographers, by my great-great grandfather, James Thaddeus ‘Blackjack’, and by my great grandfa, granfa, and fa.

All show different pictures emblazoned on his shell from one decade to the next:  From the many sketches, paintings, and carvings of Turt by his renowned artist-friend Kunta from the early 1800’s; to the mid-century, glossy daguerreotypes of Turt, where other images decorate his shell.  Onto Matthew Brady credited Civil War era photographs of Turt, into the 20th century vivid 35 mm Leica, onto instant Polaroid, finally to my sterile digital – the distinct markings show an always-changing Turt-shell into the 21st century and beyond.

Enough images for us to form a separate gallery for them in the Fiction House Museum.

A wing in the gallery is dedicated to the painting on canvas of Turt in his wrap of shell art.  They are works by mostly unknowns.  But over the years the Fiction House has purchased early canned Warhol’s, pancake droopy Salvador Dali’s, and blotchy Jackson Pollack’s – of Turt, before prices for those artists’ works rocketed stratospheric.

Just possibly, we may be in possession of a rare, though not yet verified, color-full starry night of a Van Gogh, Turt.  (We’re wishing on those stars).

ROCKETING STRATOSPHERIC AT THE FICTION HOUSE: 

For the kids and the sake of, kitschy, we’ve included a number of 1950’s era pristinely kept Japanese movie poster by the noted graphic artist, Yoshira Kergasi, where Turt is  the jet-packed model for Gamera Saves Tokyo Harbor from Codzilla – and its many sequels that Turt appeared in. ~ ~

    …While strolling along an isolated Tokyo dock one eve, dozens of skinny, camera toting two-legs waylay me.  They strap rockets to my shell.  3, 2, 1, blast off…

~ ~ editor note, little did Turt know he was being made a non-voluntary stand-in for an  animatronic Gamera who’d short-circuited in the fog. ~ ~

…As I fly through the sky, air, not a care, have I.

Sayonara for me – NAY!

Domo Arigato – YEA!  I’d do it a thousand times more.

Any sweet Terry-pins out there game for a ride of their lifetime, contact me at Tales of the Fiction House.com.  This could be the beginning of a highflying shell romance.  Don’t be wary, Terries.  You can read and learn all about me, in my friend Raji’s book Tales of the Fiction House.

NEXT TIME:  Turt:  My first encounter with Charles Darwin aboard that big dog, BEAGLE,

©Raji Singh, 2012

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No. 14: PET DATING SERVICE GOES VIRAL (a headline we’d like to see)

Posted on November 4, 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.

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.

NEXT WEEK:  HOW I GOT MY NEXT THOUSAND OR SO TATTOOS.

© Raji Singh 2012

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No. 13: A TALE OF A MARINER’S WAIL AND A CAT’S CROOK TAIL

Posted on October 28, 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. 

The sorrows in my great-great grandfather’s journal: The 1840’s.  Cincinnati, Ohio.  He writes:

~ ~ “THE GLUMS.”  That’s what Mariner kindly called them.

“They blow in as the darkest storm clouds the sea’s ever seen, matey.

“Their gale force knots, knot-you-up ‘til you barely breathe.

“Their doleful siren wail scales all peace from your soul.”

I feel them more-so now, then ever in my life.  My wife Anne Marie and our just-born Caroline succumbed  in childbirth barely 12 hours ago.  I, James Thaddeus ‘Blackjack’ Fiction – respected businessman, renowned publisher said to control the life or death of an author’s work with the “yea” or “nay” from my dip pen – I can hardly cope with my fate – living without them.

“THE GLUMS.” 

To escape their strangling grasp I walk the quiet and desolate pier where Mariner discovered me as a 4-year-old orphan foundling, shivering, “glumming it” – beneath a cart.  He called me, Carper.  I revisit that past to escape the insanity of my present, and to, somehow, build a sane future.

“Just make the glums set sail, you little Carper,” Mariner spouts.  Cull ‘em from your thoughts like you would seaweed from your nets.”

How many times, I cannot recall the high count, did the ancient salt tell me that?

I smile now, for the first time since Anne Marie and Caroline’s passing – at Mariner’s simple solutions to life’s travails.  As a youth it worked.  So, why not try?

One of two of a foundling’s lifelong companions is Luny Mum.  She’s been keeping me company, shining softly on me throughout my nightlong grief walk.  She whispers, ‘I must depart lad.  Be brave.  Remember.  Be you 4, 40, or 80.  I’m here in your dark to soothe you with my light.’  As her beam strokes my hair, as any mother’s would with a gentle hand to ease a melancholy son, another voice so familiar comes.

‘I’ll take over for you now Mum.’  Poppy Sol, the other forever-there, greets me cheerily, ‘ello bloke.  Tis my turn to cheery-o you.’  His warmth feels like a sturdy, fatherly arm encircling my shoulder.

Imagination – a foundlings’ refuge in a harsh world.

I smile a little more, and return to the simpler life of youth that could always chase such GLUMS.

But to ‘make ‘em blow away,’ as Mariner’d say, I imagine I am not me, I am stoop-shouldered Mariner, finding me.  I can taste his Kentucky stump juice, reeking like a blast furnace from my mouth.  Instead of the pungent tobacco imbedded in my waistcoat, I smell a lifetime of fish saturating my sailor shirt and dungarees.  Instead of being able to being able to maneuver my dip pen nimbly to write a rejection letter, I can barely open my arthritic fingers, wrecked from a lifetime of casting nets and setting sails.

I feel myself disappearing – just to cope with my grief – into a jumble, stumble, and tumble of imagination.

As I did as a foundling.

I see a fish cart.  Just like the one Mariner seined me from underneath.  He examined me like a catch hanging from a line.  You are Mariner, doing the hanging up of you.  That, in itself is something to smile about.  THE GLUMS.  Ever so slightly, they sift away.

But like shifting sand, ever so slowly they drift back.  ‘Shun them by continuing to be Mariner,’ you order yourself.  You cannot.  You stumble back to you, Blackjack.  You see so vividly Anne Marie and Caroline’s pain-wracked faces in your mind.  You wince.  You clench your hands into fists.  So agonizing, reliving their last moments in this world.

Deep breath.  Fading, fading, their faces.  Give me temporary respite from the agony!

You tumble back into Mariner.  ‘Don’t think I’ll throw this little Carper back to sea.  Looks like he’s got good prospects,’ you as Mariner tell yourself.  The GLUMS, they begin to recede again.

‘Push them away.  Keep pushing.  They’ll return.  But time heals, though brutally sometimes.

‘PUSH! – Just to survive your now.  That’s all you need – for now.

You blink.  You’re a jumble of Blackjack again. 

     ‘Looky up ahead, bloke.’  Poppy Sol blinks so you can see more clearly.  You squint, almost disbelieving what’s there.  You walk toward it.  The dew-moistened dock makes a ‘slip-slip’ sound beneath your shoes.  Sol’s warming sends the Ohio River’s fishy, mildew scents into your nostrils.  They grow stronger as Sol rises, brightens. 

You see, peeking from under the cart, a butterfly.  It lights on a cat’s crook tail.  You recognize the butterfly.  “Long time, no see, Calico.”  The recognition suddenly changes you.  You’re Carper at age 4, when Mariner found you. 

     “I see my pal Calico’s been keeping you company, Carper,” Mariner says to you. 

Calico flitted away then, as she does, now.  You pick up the kitten:  So dirty gray from being alone, uncared-for.  The little rascal.  He’s shaking.  You warm him to your shoulder and say,

     “You’re a foundling, as I.”

That simple act – of caring for another – oh how it begins easing the glums.

‘Just you be spyin’ that crook tail, says Poppy Sol.’ Suddenly you see what is so obvious.  It’s identical to the tail of ol Tom, the one-eye cat, ‘el patron’ to so many on the docks.  You met him as a boy, when Mariner took you to his wharf-shack.  Ol Tom, gritty as he was, was the cleanest looking and cleanest smelling thing there.  Ol Tom rubbed you and instantly adopted you as a new son.

     You don’t understand any of this that your escape to imagination is doing to you, for you, but it is – briefly – defying, so slowly chipping away at the GLUM wall. 

“Ol Tom.  You’ve come back to me,” four-year old you, shouts, knowing fully all these years later it is impossibility.  But, by the tail!  You know.  This kitten.  He is certainly one of lovin’-up ol Tom’s, at least great-great-great-great-great-great grandsons. 

    “Hello, Lil Tom,” you whisper. 

Lil Tom, “meow.”  (Little can I or Lil Tom know, the greatness, the world fame this kitten will achieve – see, Puss n’ Gloves.)

But for me now, Lil Tom is achieving the greatest thing of his life.  Oh so important, this thing is for me – Relief; at least for now; Enough to help me through the glums – through another second of them, another half-minute, minute, hour, day, week.  And on, into the future –

Relief from the shrouding, GLUMS.  ~ ~

© Raji Singh, 2012

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No. 12: WHY I ARCHIVE, ARCHEO-APOLOGIZE

Posted on October 21, 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. 

 

So many times, have my great-great grandfather, the publisher James Thaddeus ‘Blackjack’ Fiction, and other long-now deceased residents of the renowned, the notorious, the oft-fabled-of Fiction House come to me.  In my imagination they say, “Tell our stories, Raji.  Through our stories, we’ll live forever.  Untold, it is like we’ll never have lived.”

I am The Fiction House Publishing archivist.  It is my duty.

It is with this in mind that as I peruse Blackjack’s journal entry about his wife and daughter’s sudden, unexplainable deaths, my hands shake, my breaths become tense gasps, and my eyes moistly glaze.

I sit at the desk and the chair that were his for three quarters of a century.  I stroke the pages stained with his tears of remembrance of that time for him that morphed instantly from ecstasy to melancholy.  The pages still hold the brandy scent of cigars he nursed to see himself through the pain.

These pages; they are so brittle.  I am sure I am the first person to view my great-great grandfather’s words since he wrote them.

How, Raji?  You ask yourself.  How can you reveal emotions so close to his heart?

     In my imagination, I feel his oh- so- often- there reassuring hand upon my shoulder.  His soft words of reassurance ease my doubts.

‘Tell my story, Raji.  Remember.  If you don’t, it will be as if I never lived.’

Emotions knot my throat.  I can barely whisper, “Yes, Great-great Granfa.”

~ ~ THE WRITING OF JAMES THADDEUS ‘BLACKJACK’ FICTION. 

I stand rigid, proud, welcoming Caroline into the world – cradling her warm, squirmy tininess in my arms, hearing the soft breathless yearning to seize life…

I bring thumb-size Captain Polly and Turt dolls from my vest pocket.  I want my daughter to meet my old friends.  Her itsy finger brushes their even itsier velvet heads.  I know Captain Polly and Turt are outside the window grinning their proud creature grins.

I caress Ann Marie’s gentle hand as she lay in our bed.  Light from the bureau lantern plays softly in her dark angel hair haloing the pillow.  Her perspiring face radiates purest joy.  I bend to kiss her flush cheeks and breathe in her wonderful scent – a fresh blossoming bouquet of roses.

Anne Marie’s voice is but a wisp.  “Caroline is born of our love, James Thaddeus.”

The stern-face midwife, hovering incessantly like a bat above us, says something cryptic to our maid.  I cannot tell if it is an order, question, or plea.  Then she begins swooping wildly about.

Why doesn’t the old, BAT, just fly off, leave our little family to be alone.

(Oh how hurtful, how wrong my mean, regressive thoughts would prove.)

Suddenly Anne Marie coughs, spitting out bile the red of rose.  And red:  It’s saturating the sheets between her legs.  The maid massages her womb, as the midwife instructs her to do.  In vain.  The bleeding continues.

Everything is happening so quickly.

Why?  Why?

I shall never know – the why.

Caroline, she is turning the blue of my sudden sorrow.

The BA…, the midwife, swoops about the room in a flurry.  She seizes Caroline, and strokes, pats, and feverishly pets her as she eases medicine drops into her mouth.  The maid begins stroking Anne Marie’s suddenly twitching temples.  The twitching quickly spreads to her whole body.

Captain Polly and Turt tap violently on the window.  My old friends are alarmed.  But what can they do?

I wish I could see their faces out there in the darkness, reassuring me, ‘Stay calm, Blackjack.’

Seconds, now are minutes?  Minutes, are hours?

Many years later, now as I write this I still don’t know – seconds, minutes, hours – which were which that cursed night.  Time from that night is only a haze, but the emotions, the sorrow, the pain are leaded weights vivid yet in my thoughts and heavy in my heart.  They pull me down.  They drag my soul through dark, barbed chasms of grief.  The scars – they show on the lines of my face, but they are invisible, aching furrows to my heart.

“Anna Marie, Caroline, come back to…”

I know that will never happen.

They are gone.

I am alone.  ~ ~

 

NEXT TIME:  Anne Marie and Caroline gone, Blackjack revisits the past to escape the insanity of the present and to, somehow, build a sane future.

© Raji Singh, 2012

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NO 11: SHOOTOUT AT PETTICOAT JUNCTION

Posted on October 13, 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. 

 

“Craw!  Craw!”

Everyone at the pro-slavers after Sunday-come-to-meeting picnic thinks the horrific sound is from a retching crow.  Abolitionist author William ‘Golden Boy’ Golden, posing as his Willamina undercover persona, knows it is his compatriot in abolition, Captain Polly, warning him – something’s awry.

“Jake, dearest.  Your Sweet Little Legume just, HAS TO, use the little girl’s outhouse,” you say in your best Willamina sing-song.  You fidget.  You sway.  Jake releases his Gila monster lock on your arm and obligingly kisses your cheek.  You hate the rub of his whisker stubble.

“Let me escort you, Willamina,” Jake’s sister says.

You’re thinking, as she leads you down a prairie-rose path, ‘things may start getting thorny.  Better to take your leave, live to see another day.  If nothing’s wrong, you’ll return with the excuse,  “Papa fetched me, Jakey.  He wanted me at church.” 

     Jake’ll believe.  So twisted around your finger he’ll swallow anything his Little Legume might dish up…‘Oh, darlin’ Jake.  Your eye’s on fire.  It’s so bright and hot it’s giving me the vapors.  Be a dear and pluck it out so your sweet Willameenie will be comfortable?’

     ~ ~ Golden Boy, as Willamina, notation:  ‘Hey sisters, we all know gents like Jake.  Which friends will they sell down the river to please us?  What’ll they sell, borrow, or steal to covet us?’  ~ ~

     Jake’s sis leaves Willamina alone in the outhouse and returns to the picnic.  Willamina hears a scratching against the roof and a muffled, “Golden Boy, Golden Boy.” 

     It’s Captain Polly. “Beware, awwk, a stool pigeon.  Follow me, Golden.”

“Before I sacrifice an opportunity to discover more about their plans, Captain Polly?” Golden Boy whispers,“I better be certain.”  Never discount Captain Polly’s information, he realizes, for maybe the hundredth time, when he hears Jake suddenly begin ranting in the distance,

“She’s GOLDEN BOY?  Are you loco?  She’s Willamina, I tells ya, stranger.  Every soft inch of her!  I otter’ know.  I done my explorin’.”

“Stool pigeons flown in,” squawks Captain Polly.  “Go, Golden, now.”

You hear boots and shoes stampeding the earth. 

“I never trusted her, um, him” Jake’s sister screeches.  “She, um, him, he’s not good enough for you Jake.  He’s a stinken’ abolitioner.”

“She’s a saint I tell you, Sis,” shouts Jake.

You peak out the crescent moon slit on the door that acts as vent.  The hoard heads your way.

Trapped like a rat – albeit one with makeup concocted by mixing ash and elderberry juice by campfire light that makes him, look so naturally, she.  And no rat would wear the latest petticoats from Paris.

     “Loose boards.  In back,” squawks Captain Polly.

Captain Polly’s call is too loud.  She attracts attention.  Somebody shouts, “Up there!  A stinken’ jayhawk.”  They shoots.  “ZING!”  A bullet jets twixt Captain Polly’s wing and breast.  She feigns death, dropping behind the outhouse.

“She’s faking,” the little dickens who thought he shot Captain Polly earlier in the day, shouts.  “Let’s get her.”

With her beak-snout, Captain Polly pulls at the loose board as Golden Boy kicks.  It crushes out.  He crawls through, losing his bonnet and wig.  He follows Captain Polly, unseen, into the woods.  He strips away the the hindering Willamina dress, petticoats, bustle, girdle.  Ta Da!  Appears – canvas shirted, jeaned, cowboy William.

“To the river.  To Turt,” squawks Captain Polly, quietly as she can.

The little dickens got great ears.  He’s the only pro-slaver to hear.  “They’re headed Kaw River way,” he shouts.  They follow.  In a moment, they see him.

Bullets zing past Golden Boy as he dives into the muddy water.  Captain Polly swoops upward, circles, flying interference.  Gunfire misses her.  “PLUNK, PLUNK, PLUNK!”  Bullets can’t find Golden Boy as he submerges and swims.  Pursuers follow him in, then under.

What they find, they’ll never forget –

Turt – in full underwater battle prowess.  Unmatchable by any human.  His shell.  Impenetrable.  He’s long as a sea lion, but leagues more imposing with his razor-shark beak-snout and fin-claws.  He’s wide as a stingray, and as swift and deadly.

With one slam of mighty fin-claws Turt brains some pro-slavers.  With massive beak-snout, “CRACK”, he snaps arms and legs of others.  With fin-claws, he peels skin from not just a few of the screaming ‘two-legs’.  They retreat from the water – blood reddened, meaty-faced.

None who chased in after Golden Boy could fully see their attacker.  In the one-sided battle, Turt churned the water into a cascade of mud:  So the portrait of the ‘monster’ in future telling of the nightmare varied, stratospherically – from dragon, to ogre, to bear.

~ ~ Raji Singh, editor, archivist, ‘archeo-apologist’ Fiction House Publishing; note.  The hundreds of stories and legends that grew from this river battle, stirred fear in the thoughts of uncountable ante-bellum slavers and slave hunters.  It did so again during the war, with Confederate soldiers and sympathizers who believed the opponents had a vicious underwater ally who could crawl out onto terra firma and wreak land carnage.  ~ ~

Satisfied that he’s quelled the pursuers, Turt swims to the nearly breathless Golden Boy.  He submerges and takes him onto his shell.  Midst cover of cattails growing along the bank, he rises to allow Golden air.  Off they float with Golden Boy holding tight.

Captain Polly’s barely in the cover of clouds, watching to be sure the getaway is clean.

And so, our trio lives to fight many-another day, for the rights of all.

Alas, the picnic ends.  The vermin hoard return to their holes to recuperate, or die.

Alone, Jake traipses the woods gathering Willamina’s dainties.  On the riverbank he kneels, buries his face into the dress that still holds Willamina’s unforgettable coriander perfume.  He breathes it in deeply, falls prostrate and weeps mightily.

Captain Polly swoops from the clouds and smiles to herself as she listens to his choking voice.  “I love ya, Willamina, My Little Legume.  I surely do.  That ter-ra-ble Golden and his monsters stole you away from me.  I jus’ know it.  I jus’ know you’ll break free of ‘em.  I’ll find you one day, My Sweet.  I’ll never stop looking.”            

© Raji Singh 2012

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POST No. 10: ARCHIVING THE FICTION HOUSE – WILLAMINA’S SHADY SUITORS

Posted on October 7, 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. 

When last we saw the Fiction House Publishing chief writer, William ‘Golden Boy’ Golden, going undercover as his Willamina persona for the Abolitionist cause, we heard his TALE OF...

…a pistol-whipping slave hunter who had the gun-butt turned on him, his slave stolen, then freed to board the Underground Railroad.  The ‘retributioner’-liberator: Willamina, but at that time he was William.

NOW:  The hunter stalks Willamina at a pro-slavers picnic.  Confused, his memory a blur from the beating, he wonders, ‘Once we kept company, I‘m just sure of it?’

Willamina’s little worried the stalker will recognize him:  makeup and corset separate, like a chasm, Willamina from the leather-booted-chapped-vested, William.        – Raji Singh,  editor/archivist/archeo-apologist, The Fiction House

*     *     *

Following the picnic basket ‘vittelin’ and the band’s ‘fiddlin’, Willamina writes mentally as he promenades on escort Jake’s arm.

‘Everything’s going fine,’ you tell yourself.  “All Jake’s male kin think you’re the cat’s pantyloons.  All the female kin coming at you cat clawed.  That’s to be expected.  Can’t win over both sides of your dress in one afternoon.  Though, wouldn’t mind lettin’ that one sweet sisteren’ a Jake’s go cattin’ about inside your pantyloons some night – exceptin’,then you’d be’ lovin’ up’ a lousy pro-slaver.  ‘That’ll never happen.’

~ ~ Editor’s note:The more writings of Golden Boy I discover the more I see the unique chances good writers take.   For instance, following this second person inner monologue done in such a mellow-dramatic ‘dime western’ fashion, he will immediately change voice, becoming almost Flauberian prose.  The reader will sense it, even come to expect it now and then, because Golden Boy stays so consistently with his William-Willamina characterization.  ~ ~

Besides your harvesting of the ever-burgeoning array of malicious vicissitudes for any race other than their own that blossom in their pro-slave garden of poison ivy and oak, you’ve unearthed dozens of leads about their heinous plans (to murder Free-Staters emigrating to ‘Bleeding Kansas’). 

     Your compatriot in abolition James Thaddeus would tell you, 

“You have a bounty of information to fill our basket, brother William.  Depart this evil garden at once.  Turt awaits you at the river.  Upon his shell you must hasten northward, to the Eden abolitionist encampment.”

‘Oh, no Blackjack.  That is why you are the office gland and I the garden hand.  You mark success by an endeavor’s safety.  Nay, if not for risks, nothing would flourish.  I will gather a dozen more leads before my time comes to hasten my departure.  Besides, the gooseberry pie is yet to come, and I’ll not forgo a righteous goose or…’

“Gander at…”  Willamina shouts suddenly as he sees a diamondback rattler far in the distance.  It slithers out from under a bush, and wonders to itself, ‘Should I join my slimy two-leg compatriots in picnic.’

The eyes of the picnickers – on the contemplating serpent just briefly – quickly shift to Willamina, when, from behind, the stalker approaches.  He spins Willamina around.

‘That’s the second time you’ve done that today.  What do you suppose me to be – a dreidel?’

~ ~Raji note:  Now see how Golden Boy’s suddenly mixes voices, momentarily, to create a language bridge so the reader isn’t confused.  ~ ~

‘You face the whiskery, whiskey-ed wretch.  If you spit upon him you’d only make him cleaner.  Thin as a whisp.  Pliable as a willow.  You could knot him into a bug in three shakes.  In two you could squarsh him like the dung beetle he smells like.  No need to act in haste, fair damsel, Willamina, you assure yourself – you are in the arms of your mighty protector, Jake.’      

     “Pard, it’s time you stop pesterin’ my sweet little legume,” demands Jake.”

Pard ignores him.  “Where you fum, Willamina?  You not fum around here?  You fum one of those stinkin’ abolitionist holes ain’t ya?  John Brown’s Osowatomie?  Maybe Lawwww-rence?”

Jake lifts him straight up in the air, by his hair.  “Pard, yer rilen’ me.  Her ma and pa hail from St. Joe across the border in the holy slave state.  Their preachin’ the ‘right way’ of the way the lesser races should live, from amongst our sympathizers in Atchyson.”

“Let him down Jake, darling.  He’s no match for you.”

You stroke Jake’s arm, and coo ‘ooh, ooh.’ 

     The biggest of grins cracks across Jake’s face.  You know men!  This one’s wondering how ‘far’ he can get with you.  Yes, another date with him is in order.  Something moonlit, on the river.  Not, un-chaperoned, as he will believe it to be, of course.  Captain Polly’ll be flying reconnaissance – early warning.  Turt’ll  be a few feet away, just under the water.  Ready.  Waiting, in case he’s needed.  And Luny Mum will be squinting protectively at her Willamina, to let you clearly see Jake’s movements. 

     Oh, the information you’ll romance from him before, “PLUNK”, you’ll make him disappear permanently beneath the water.

Jake lowers the pard, and then winks at you.

“Pard’s jealous, My Little Legume.  ‘Cause all he’s got is his filly, Bessie, and she won’t share her oat bucket like you did your picnic basket with me.”

Here’s the test.  Here it comes.  Jake’s pard is either a little drunk, a little stupid – or a lot of both.  You brace yourself, as he pulls you close and plants a hot, wet one on your cheek.  He holds his mouth there for one, one-thousand, two- one thousand.  It feels like 40-, 80-, a zillion- one thousand. 

     Ack, yach, ack.  Even nuzzling up to stinky ol Turt, be better ‘n being touched by this lout.  But you take it, and he doesn’t pull away. 

     YES!  It’s one thing you know all about – men. 

     You can almost smell Jake’s testosterone rising in those two seconds.  You’re home free with Jake.  To the river for your next date, you think, as he commences lambasting the pard, churning the soft willowy wisp into softer lard.  Jake, he’s practically announcing his engagement to you to friends and family via the violence. 

     MEN! 

     You’re home free you think, until the little dickens who thought he shot a jayhawk earlier in the day, rushes in carrying Hawk’s cold, limp body.

    ~ ~ Raji note:  In an earlier posting – A TALE OF TWO BIRDS – I reprinted Golden Boy’s accounts of how pro-slavers utilized hawks to carry information, and to kill messenger birds used by abolitionist to deliver their plans.  ~ ~

     “Hawk had an important message for us,” moans the little dickens.  “I just know it.  Some stinkin’ abolitionist done him in afore he could deliver it.”

You recognize – by the crescent gouges along Hawk’s neck and head – it’s Captain Polly’s deadly handiwork.  You get a little jittery.  Jake puts his arm around you, and mumbles something about,

      “Don’t be afearin’ a little dead bird, My Little Legume.”

You know Captain Polly has a message for you.  One that may be a matter of life and death.  Your own.   Somehow you’ve got to find out what it is.

Next week’s final episode of this sequence of Willamina undercover – SHOOTOUT AT PETTICOAT JUNCTION   

©Raji Singh 2012

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No. 9: A PARROT’S LIFE (A Tale of Two Birds – continued)

Posted on September 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. 

My wife Tenille asks quietly from the next room, “Has Captain Polly arrived?”

“Yes.” I answer.

“Good, the children will want to play with her after dinner.”

I know Tenille’s smiling.  Captain Polly’s been close in her, my, and our children’s  time of need.  She’s always there.  For everyone.

Captain Polly dozes – slight “peh, peh, peh” snores.  She sways lightly on her perch beside my desk.

I’m busy archiving, archeo-apologizing Fiction House Publishing manuscripts that date to the 1850’s.  I pet her.

She sighs, content:  Deservedly so – after over 20 decades of high-flying living.  Ever young is Captain Polly.  Feathers are the vibrant yellow, blue, orange of when she was in her 20’s:  Just some frays about the edges.  Sunflower seeds, a worm, grub, or bug here and there, gives her vim; keeps her trim. Vision’s sharp.  Probably 20-20.  One eye’s askew.  That’s how she sleeps.

Still, I can’t help thinking she’s somehow fact-checking notes I’m making about she and my great-great granduncle, author William ‘Golden Boy’ Golden – and their abolitionist exploits.

In this writing, he’s tending to tracts about the Underground Railroad to garner support by sympathetic, yet apathetic mid 19th century readers.  He ‘tells-embellishes’ how various message delivery birds played a vital part in the abolitionist cause.

 –Raji Singh, Publisher, Fiction House

 LAST WEEK: 

Captain Polly’s mistaken for a ‘do-gooder’ Jawhawk by pro-slave ‘border ruffians’ in anti-slave ‘Bleeding Kansas’.  She feigns taking a bullet, and performs a dying swan into a pond – all for the sake of getting vital information delivered for the abolitionist cause.

THIS WEEK:

HOW CAPTAIN POLLY CLIPPED THE INFORMER’S WINGS.

As the soaked parrot paddles quietly to shore her archenemy, Hawk, the pro-slaver’s air minion, swoops to intercept her.  He grips the muddy bank with one claw.  Raising the other for battle, he screeches.  ‘I can take a Macaw with one claw tied behind my wing.’

~ ~ editor note:  As in many wars throughout the centuries, hawks were trained to attack couriers of opponents – whether they were carrier pigeons; or humans on horseback, wagon, or ship.  ~ ~

Hawk’s speed, swiftness, and brute strength while airborne are unmatched by Captain Polly.  But Captain Polly is grounded – in cunning.  In this, no other flyer is her equal.  This is her reason for feigning being shot – to drop before Hawk attacked mid air.

Land advantage now – Captain Polly:  At least in her mind.   She shakes off water as she emerges from the pond.  It slicks up the clay bank:  Part of her scheme.

Hawk screeches as he motions with his beak.  ‘Right here, taped to my leg, I have human words that tell just who your mistress Willamina is, Captain Polly.  She is your Master, Golden Boy, a stinkin’ abolitioner is disguise.  I plan to deliver this information soon as I finish parsimoniously dissecting the voice box of one way too talkative prairie parrot.’

Captain Polly inches nearer Hawk.  Even from a few feet away his breath reeks carrion rot – from eating other flyers.  Captain Polly despises any creature that eats its own kind.

She glares into the glassy ebony eyes.  She knows the cunning eye flick hawks make before attacking their prey.  When it comes, Captain Polly will be ready; will react instantly.

Frogs inch out of the pond.  To savor the battle they sense is coming.  Crickets and grasshoppers leap onto the greenback’s slick shoulders, to ‘givva gander’.

Closer, ever closer Captain Polly inches.

Hawk must remain in place to keep his claw firmly in the clay.  He pulls his saber beak as far back as possible.  One lightening lurch will fell the macaw.  This is what Captain Polly knows he’s thinking, and she’s ready.

“No two-leg is my MASTER,” says Captain Polly.  “No bird, animal or human is master to another.”  Her words are clear as any humans.  “You, HAWK, choose to do the bidding of evil humans who seek to enslave.  In that, you willingly act their slave.”

‘Talk, talk, talk,’ chatters Hawk.

Closer, ever closer, comes Captain Polly.  She hears Hawk’s feathers ruffling – at the thought of sky king being dressed down by a mere pretty bird.  She sees his throat dryly heave at the contemplation of his mighty air throne challenged, with lowly, slimy pond creatures witnessing a forced abdication.

Pride goeth before a …

Hawk acts impetuously – just a moment too soon – just as Captain Polly was sure he would.  He lurches.

Captain Polly bends, avoiding his saber beak.

Hawk teeters, having no parrot head to grasp to help keep his balance.

Captain Polly dives, not at Hawk’s throat, but at his leg.  She seizes it in her gnarly beak.  She vices, tighter, tighter.

“SCREE!”  Hawk collapses.  His talons can’t catch hold in the wetted clay.  He slides like a ball, tethered by Captain Polly.  Topsy-turvey, round-about.  Saber beak gets nowhere near the ever moving parrot.

Frogs “ribbit” and crickets ‘whistle-screech’ hearty congratulations to Polly.

Captain Polly knows her next move must be swift, smooth, and flawless.  NOW!  She releases Hawk.  She flies at his neck with talons outstretched, beak open wide.  Instantly she’s on him.

“CRAA-CC-KK.”  She snaps his neck.  She claws away the implicating note on Hawk’s leg, and shreds it.

Hawk has one last laughing gasp in him:  ‘There… is… one… other… who… knows…, Captain… Polly.  The two-leg who wrote the note…’

COMING SOON:  HOW TO WARN GOLDEN BOY, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.

©Raji Singh, 2012

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