Listen ...Forces of Nature

FORCES OF NATURE
by Marilyn Celeste Morris
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It was going to be a two-shoe day.

Howard the Weatherman woke with what he referred to as That Certain Dread and a bad taste in his mouth, to boot. The birthday party for his youngest granddaughter the previous evening was the cause, even though it was just ice cream and cake and no booze, befitting his solid Southern Baptist background.

The feeling lingered on the fringes of consciousness until he was fully awake.

Glancing over at his sleeping wife of forty years, he considered waking her and telling her about his dream. No, he would prepare for work first, and let Neva sleep a while longer.

He eased out of bed and padded into the adjoining bathroom. He allowed the shower head to spray stinging hot water over his face and body, all the while he was reciting his usual morning prayers: “Father, I thank thee for this day that thou hast made. I will rejoice and be thankful in it.”

He continued with his intercessory prayers for his family and friends, and for the nation as a whole. “And so I beseech thee, Dear Lord, heed my prayers. I pray in the name of my savior, Jesus Christ.” Normally, his prayers would have ended at this point with a heart-felt “Amen”, but this morning he added softly, “And Lord, if it be thy will, spare us the agony of this day, and keep us safe from harm. Amen.”

Neva was up and in the kitchen when Howard stepped out of the shower. Wrapping his robe around him and combing his thinning hair, he walked down the hallway past the empty kids’ bedrooms and into the kitchen.

“Morning,” Neva said, setting a cup of coffee at his usual place. “Sleep well?”

Howard paused before replying, “Fine.” There was no sense in telling her now. “You?”

“Fine, until you began tossing and turning. What was that all about, Howard?” She sat across from him and studied him over her coffee cup.

“Nothing. I don’t remember,” he evaded, knowing full well what Neva was going to say next. Why did he even try?

“It’s the dream again, isn’t it?”

He sighed, then nodded. “I knew I couldn’t keep it from you. You know me too well.”

She smiled softly.

“Honey, it’s going to be a bad one today.”

“They’re all bad, Howard. Even small tornadoes that don’t send people to the hospitals, or kill them. Property damage, schools, businesses, all suffer.”

Howard finished his coffee and shook off his wife’s gesture of handing him a plate of bacon and eggs. “I’m gonna be late if I don’t leave now. I should have the official National Weather Service information the first thing when I get to the station. Then I’ll have to butt heads with our new station manager about interrupting the regularly scheduled programs for weather bulletins.”

“It’s going to be that big?” Neva followed him into the bedroom.

“Stay close to home today, honey. I want you close to the cellar.”

Howard wouldn’t have wanted it known that he had a “fraidy hole.” Having been born and raised in southwest Oklahoma known as Tornado Alley, he had spent many hours in the safety of his parents’ cellar while monster winds roared above, snapping power lines, tossing huge trees like matchsticks. To this day, Howard could recall the pungent smells that filled the old cellar: his mother’s canned peaches and preserves, and potatoes by the tow sack full mingled with the faint odor of field mouse droppings.

Howard thought back to one particular day when he was still in high school. He had told his family early in the morning that there would be a tornado that day. His family had come to respect his gift, and they followed Howard’s calm statement of fact: “There’s gonna be a tornado sometime this afternoon.”

He had dreamed of a tornado the night before; he saw dreadful winds ripping huge trees apart, snapping power lines and shrieking its way across the land. Sometimes he woke in a sweat, panicky, while he tried to still his thumping heart and not wake his brother who shared his room. He lay quietly and reviewed the dream, feeling clammy and cold and sweaty all at the same time, until finally he would dispel the feeling – which he soon began to recognize as a certain dread – until it came time for the storm to present itself on the horizon.

Sometimes the Certain Dread came upon him minus the accompanying dream. Or, he had the dream but didn’t remember it. Even as a high school student, he would be sitting in school, gazing at the object of his affections, and scheming a way to get her off to the side in the hallway so he could talk to her. Just talk to her about anything at all except what he really wanted to say, and that was that he loved her and wanted to marry her and live with her the rest of his life, but he was afraid she would laugh at him, because he was, after all, only seventeen.

But while Howard was trying to figure out how to speak to his vision of bliss, the feeling came over him and dispelled any other emotion he may have had. It almost overwhelmed him, causing his head to spin and his heart to pound just as it did in the nightmares. He knew for sure he had to get out of school, go home and warn his family that a twister was on its way and to go to the cellar.

So strong and certain was this feeling that he got up from his seat during French class conjugating verbs, causing Mrs. Dosser to frown and ask him where he thought he was going.

“I have to go home, Mrs. Dosser,” he said simply, and as he passed Neva’s desk he whispered to her to come join him in the hallway. Astonishing both himself and Mrs. Dosser, she did just that.

As she stepped out of the classroom, he told her, “There’s a tornado coming. Don’t ask me how I know, I just know. Go home. Tell your family to get to safety. This is gonna be a real bad twister.”

“They’re all bad, Howard.” Yet she nodded, as if she had known all along about his strange gift. “The others?” She glanced back inside the classroom.

“You think they’d believe me?”

A moment’s pause, then she placed her hand on his arm. “I believe you.”

Listen ...Sabbath's House

SABBATH'S HOUSE by Marilyn Celeste Morris
Available in Print and All Ebook Formats

Prologue

1890 – Ames, Texas

Emily Harris smiled contentedly as she put the last stitch in her embroidered pillowcase.

Emily could hear her three children playing in their attic playroom; every once in a while a shriek pierced the silence of the house, indicating the boys were once again teasing their little sister.

She smiled, set down her needlework and moved to the kitchen where she began supervising dinner preparations. Cyrus would close his office soon and the children would no doubt be hungry within the next hour.

In the attic playroom, Ben and Lewis were indeed torturing their little sister.

“Come on, Lucy. Don’t be a sissy little girl,” Ben taunted. He pulled a large steamer trunk from its place in the corner to where Lucy was standing.

“Here, Lucy. Stand up on this. This is the Outlaw’s horse.”

At ten years of age, Ben’s stature allowed him to dominate most other children, and he took advantage of his size whenever possible. Especially when he towered over his siblings. Now, he easily grabbed a rope dangling from the beam above.

“Yeah, Lucy,” Lewis echoed. “Come on.”

Lucy eyed her brothers with suspicion. Her five-year old instinct told her this was not a good thing for her to be doing; yet she didn’t want to appear a baby in their eyes. Her brothers were not only her playmates, but also she idolized them as being the smartest, best looking children on the block, and she was eager to please them.

She climbed up on the trunk and stood, eyeing the rope Ben held in his hand.

“You mean you want me to put this rope over my head?” She asked Ben.

“Yeah. Put it on, Lucy. Here, I’ll help you.” He moved behind his sister and looped the rope over her head. “We’re playing Outlaw. And how can we play Outlaw if we don’t have somebody to be the Outlaw?”

“Girls aren’t outlaws,” Lucy bargained.

“Yes, there are some girls who were outlaws in the West,” Ben informed her.

Lucy considered this, coming from her smart brother, Ben. If Ben said so, it must be true.

“Okay,” she conceded. “I’m the Outlaw.”

Lewis snickered, mainly to impress his older brother. “Yeah, an outlaw. A girl outlaw, in a prissy blue dress.”

Ben ignored him, as he always did. “Good. Okay, we don’t have a rope hanging from a tree, just the ceiling beam, and you’re not on a horse, but this trunk can be your horse.”“

Lucy’s blue eyes rounded in curiosity. “What’s gonna happen now?”

“This is your horse. You know, the way they did it in the olden days. They would string up the outlaw on his horse, and then they’d whack the horse and make him bolt, and the outlaw would die by hanging.”

“Uh….I don’t know,” Lucy’s voice quavered.

“Sissy girl,” Ben countered.

“Yeah, sissy girl,” Lewis echoed.

“But won’t that hurt?” Lucy’s stance wavered.

“Naw. We’re just pretending. You can pretend hurt, if you want to. You’re a real good pretender, right?”

Lewis nodded at his brother and they both pushed the trunk out from under Lucy’s slipper-clad feet.

“Okay, you outlaw,” Lewis shouted, taking off an imaginary hat and dusting his trousers with it.

Lucy moaned softly, then came a gurgling noise. She raised her hands to her neck, flailed her slipper-clad feet while her eyes screamed in terror.

Lewis, surveying his sister’s plight asked Ben, “Should we cut her down? It looks like she’s not just pretending.”

“Naw. She’s a good pretender. Remember how she got you last week down in the cellar, when she pretended to trip over a box and hurt her knee? She cried real hard, and pretended like she was really hurt, bad. She’s good at that.”

“Well… if you say so.”

Lucy flailed her feet harder, no doubt with her last conscious thought hoping her feet would connect with the trunk, but it was far removed. Her hands struggled with the rope for a few seconds, she continued to make noises, and then her eyes closed and she was still.

Listen ...My Ashes of Dead Lovers Garage Sale

MY ASHES OF DEAD LOVERS GARAGE SALE
by Marilyn Celeste Morris
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My Ashes of Dead Lovers Garage Sale And Other Adventures of a Single Woman of a Certain Age Author’s Note: This book is a selection of articles written over a ten year period for Suburban Newspapers, in Fort Worth, TX. The publisher, Boyden Underwood, has graciously given permission to re-publish, and I thank him for his support, and that of his late mother, Janice Underwood, who encouraged me and, paid me, essentially, to have fun.

School, Tonsils, and a New Perm

It’s that time again. Time for the kids to (heh, heh) Go Back To School.

In the Olden Days, when I was a little kid, the beginning of school was heralded by at least three events: The first was: Before I entered the first grade, I was whisked away to the hospital where my tonsils were yanked out.

This was a ritual in my day; every kid on my block, it seems, had his Tonsils Out a few weeks before school started. I can still remember the smell of the ether that permeated the entire hospital and a couple of blocks around it. (Yes, ether. That was before they began using Other Stuff that doesn’t smell so bad, and before you start guessing how old I am, let me remind you that if you, too, remember Ether and Taking Your Tonsils Out, then you are Real Old.)

Next came Getting My Books and Supplies. The List came out from each teacher in each class and parents dutifully trooped down to the local bookstore, stood in line for hours and emerged with stacks of notebooks, workbooks and assorted things like protractors, mechanical drawing sets, things like that. I remember my mother standing in line with the other mothers of the neighborhood, comparing notes on other kids’ supplies, other teachers, hemlines, absent mothers seeming to be Fair Game for Gossip, excuse me, I mean, Exchange of Information—-heck, it was just like an afternoon bridge game, but without the cards. One of the bet things about Mother getting my School Supplies was that I got a New Pencil Box.

Now, I don’t know if kids today even have such a thing as a Pencil Box, but every kid on the block had to have a new pencil box each year, the old one having been virtually demolished through much use during the last school year. Of course, I always wanted and got, a Red Pencil Box. So when the First Day of the new school year came, I could hold my head high, carrying my Brand New Red Pencil Box.

The third event of a new school year was getting a Haircut and/or a Permanent Wave. Boys didn’t have to go through the Ritual of having a Permanent Wave; they merely got their hair cut. Girls, on the other hand, trying to imitate their mothers, or their mothers trying to make little ladies out of their tomboy summer daughters, insisted on trooping into the Beauty Parlor (yes, indeed, that’s what they were called in the Olden Days) and subjecting said female children to the rigors of the Permanent Wave Machine.

Here’s where I may lose some of you who are under forty. (Well, what the heck--even under fifty, are you satisfied?) A Permanent Wave was accomplished by Attaching Wires to one’s hair and having said wires attached to an electrical plug which heated the clamps which in turn heated one’s hair. A lot. I can still remember the smell of burning hair and my fear that maybe the Beauty Operator would forget that I was at the other end of this electrical monster and I would fry my hair off, and then my Brains would be next, and I would be found like the Wicked Witch, dissolved in a heap on the Beauty Parlor floor.

Nothing of the sort happened, of course, and I emerged looking like all the other little girls on my block with Shirley Temple ringlets (and ‘if you have to ask Who’s Shirley Temple? I swear I will cry.) So finally I was pronounced ready to Start School, with my Tonsils Out, Supplies in Hand, and Curly Hair.

All this is being brought to mind right now because not only are children all over the country going back to school, but also I have taken the great leap forward. Or backward, as it were, into my childhood. I am Going Back to School. Night Classes, of course, since I have to work during the day to earn the money to pay the mortgage, feed myself and my cat, keep my creditors happy and, of course, pay for my schooling. I am pretty much following the same ritual of my first school days. I got a permanent, the first I can remember since childhood, and they don’t use the Electrical Machine any more. I didn’t have to Have My Tonsils Out, of course, (or anything else, thank goodness; at my age, it’s pretty well all been taken care of, anyway,) and I didn’t have to line up at the local book¬store for Big Chief Tablets and Workbooks with my mother. No, I have a pretty nonchalant attitude about Going Back to School; after all, I’ll just be going a couple of nights a week.

But I’m still thinking about getting a Red Pencil Box.

Listen ...Sabbath's Gift

SABBATH'S GIFT by Marilyn Celeste Morris

Available in Print and All Ebook Formats


Chapter Two

The rusting gray Chevrolet glided silently down the caliché road, coming to a halt a good distance from the isolated farmhouse. It sat idling for several minutes as the driver, sitting immobile, contemplated the warm, sultry night. In a moment, the driver stirred, then emerged from the car, a shotgun in her hand.

She stalked down the road toward the house; her black, sturdy dress shoes scattering pebbles in front of her. As she walked, she brought the shotgun up to her chest, cradling it like a baby.

Moonlight outlined every shrub, bush and grapevine along the side of the rutted path, illuminating the brightly lighted structure at the end of the road.

The weather had been exceptionally warm for this time of year in the Texas Hill Country. Bluebonnets had bloomed way before Easter, presenting a spectacular display along the highways, into far off fields; these had given way later to Indian Paint Brush and Black-Eyed Susans; abruptly, the wildflowers had faded. Now, cicadas sang from shade trees lining Slocum’s residential streets.

"Early summer this year," old-timers nodded to each other in passing.

"Yep, this summer's gonna be a scorcher.”. The male population of Slocum fanned their beefy red faces with sweat-soaked brims of their "gimme" caps. The women, influenced by Southern tradition, fluttered small white lace-trimmed handkerchiefs in the general vicinity of their powdered, rouged faces, pausing occasionally to pat daintily at exposed portions of their glistening bosoms.

Life in Slocum proceeded in their proscribed ritual. All seasons had their litanies: Masonic Lodge, church socials, Sunday School lessons; all brought a certain measure of comfort in a time of rapid, unwelcome changes around their small community nestled on the banks of the Pedernales.

Wilma Folks had grown up in Slocum, with her sister Wanda. Her church-going, solid-as-a-rock family had been regarded as respected members of the community; however, the reality of life inside the Foulkes' house was harsh and violent. Their God-fearing father beat both the girls regularly, particularly when after he had been drinking. Nobody knew, and nobody would have believed it, if either of the girls had ever told anyone. Why, the Foulkes family appeared in their church pew every time the doors were open; Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday nights, would have been the shocked response.

Fine, upstanding family, everyone agreed; that is, until Wanda disappeared abruptly one spring day twenty-seven years ago.

The gossip began, much of it accurate. “That Foulkes girl, Wanda, is pregnant” Miz Annabelle Parker lowered her voice, as the women in the fabric store measured cotton chintz for their summer slipcovers.

“It’s the Cox boy responsible, I understand,” Miz Habanera nodded solemnly. “The one that never came back from Viet Nam,” she added for emphasis, while Miz Draper and Miz Parker shook their heads, clucking under their breath.

“I heard that boy never even had to go to Viet Nam. His daddy’s influence, you know.” She nodded wisely. “But he surely did go somewhere…so he wouldn’t have to be faced with the responsibility of fatherhood.

“No wonder Wanda had to leave town...heard she went to Austin to have the baby. Poor little thing, baby having to grow up without a father,” Miz Heabner at last decided on the rose-printed chintz. “This will do nicely for my couch, don’t you think?” She held up a swatch for the others’ approval.

“You know there’s another girl, about Wanda’s age. A good, responsible child, that Wilma,” Miz Heabner remarked.

“Not at all like her sister.” Miz Draper tittered.

“Oh, give her time.” Miz Parker sniffed. “The apple don’t fall too far from the tree, you know.”

“What a thing to say!” Miz Draper snorted. “Not when she’s so plain. No, that girl can’t possibly get in trouble.”

Listen ...The Women of Camp Sobingo

THE WOMEN OF CAMP SOBINGO by Marilyn Celeste Morris
Available in Print and All Ebook Formats


Eleanor sat at the dinner table, toying with her food. How could she tell her parents the utterly forbidden—she wanted to marry a soldier?

Albert sat at the head of the long oak table, crumbling his cornbread into a glass of buttermilk. Nell’s stomach rolled; she hated the sight of her father doing that, night after night.

Evan wouldn’t have such a bad habit, she assured herself. When they were married, everything would be perfect.

The low hum of her sisters’ and Buddy’s voices droned on.

How to bring up the subject? Maybe I won’t have to, she thought. Maybe we could just elope. I could pack my bag tonight—and break my parents’ hearts. Better do it now.

“Mom? Dad?”

Martha’s spectacles flashed in the reflection from the overhead light. Albert paused in his savoring of the buttermilk cornbread mixture, his spoon poised expectantly.

“I want you to meet somebody.”

Albert laid his spoon on his plate.

“A boy—a young man—I’ve been seeing.”

“Does this young man have a name?” Martha asked.

“His name is Ralph Mayfield Martin, but everybody calls him Evan.”

“I’ll bet,” Buddy muttered into his plate.

“And what does Mr. Martin do for a 1iving?” her father asked.

Nell took a deep breath. “He’s a private first class at Fort DA Russell.”

Her sisters’ forks paused in midair. The next to youngest, Daisy, quit swinging her feet under the table. Even the baby ceased her cooing to gaze silently at Nell.

Martha leaned forward and nodded at the children—the signal for dismissal. Milk glasses thumped on the tablecloth; knives clanged on their plates. As the children departed, they shot their sister a look that said, “Oh, oh, now you’ve done it!” Only Buddy gave his sister a knowing smile of approval.

Then, all was quiet, save the ticking of the clock on the mantle and the soft rumble of the eastbound Southern Pacific train passing the station blocks away.

Nell twitched in her chair. Martha removed her glasses and polished them on her napkin, a habit Nell had seen as often as she had watched her father crumbling his cornbread into his milk glass.

“Eleanor, you know we’ve forbidden any of our girls to associate with soldiers from the camp, yet you’ve disobeyed us. Why?”

“It started out as a dare. Mary Edwards arranged a blind date, just one blind date with this boy from her boyfriend’s unit. I thought just once I’d go since I’ve been cooped up here with the kids and the chores. I just wanted some fun.”

“I know it’s been hard on you since my illness, and children are a burden on a girl your age, but, Nell, you’ve evidently gone more than once.”

“Yes, I have, and we want to get married. Right away. Before a war—”

Nell’s parents nodded at each other and stood. “We want to talk about this privately, Nell. You understand. It’s quite a surprise."