Burned

I need your opinion. Have I told you about 100 Words? (See Campville Preferred Links on the right of this blog)

100 Words is a website where you sign up to write 100 words a day - exactly 100 words, no more and no less.

I failed miserably.

I wrote 100 words a day for 12 days and then I got backed up, bogged down – work, kids, other writing, laundry, dishes, feeding the animals (I currently have 3 piggies, 2 boys, and a dog) – Arrgghhhhh!

It was challenging writing in such a restricted form; seeing what you can come up with, see if you can keep the thoughts in some kind of sensible form. The problem is I seem to always start and never finish. (See my previous blog post Friday, April 18th – Continuation of a Short Story); an idea that has not reached maturation either.

So I need your opinion. Please make a comment; good, bad or ugly I would really like your opinion on both pieces. Is this something I should continue, or should I give up the ghost and move along?

The note said, “If you can’t love me enough to let me be me without cursing my ways, just let me go. This is who I am. You can’t change me.”

The paper it was written on had been opened and closed so often that it was soft as buttery lambskin, the edges indistinct, the writing beginning to blur.

He folded it once again and placed it carefully under the torn lining of his wallet. The wallet he slipped back into the pocket of his jeans.

“Mitch?” his wife’s voice drifted across the yard. He rose slowly from the picnic table.

All under control, dear,” lifting the lid of the grill he turned the control knobs to high and hit the starter.

Two clicks and propane flames licked the edge of the burner. It burned blue close to the element that released the gas, yellow as the flame licked at the air. Just like always, two clicks of the button and the flame burst forth.

Staring at the flames, her laughter, lilting, musical, floated on the air. Just the thought of her ignited a burning in his stomach and spread toward his balls. Just thinking about her did that to him.

He knew her smile, her laugh, could start a fire in most men. It made them do stupid things. It made them crazy. It made him crazy, he’d really loved her. She’d said she loved him, then wanted to leave; was that love, was it?

Mitch grabbed the thick, red sirloin and slapped it down on the hot rack. It sizzled, spit, protesting as the flames reached hungrily higher and hotter searing the flesh; just like she had sizzled, her flesh burning, her smile melting away.

Nausea boiled in his belly. He closed his eyes against the world swirling by.

***


He hurried around the corner thinking of the morning’s first hot cup of Joe, of glancing through the New Milford Times as he sipped that coffee at the counter, of picking up Molly’s watch from the jewelers when he finished with all that.

As he rushed along headfirst, looking down at his feet instead of where he was going, he almost knocked her down.

“Well, hello handsome,” she said as she giggled that luscious giggle of hers. “Why are you in such a rush?”

He stared drop jawed like a smitten schoolboy.

“Well, I, umm, getting coffee, yeah, umm, coffee.”

“I drink tea and I could really use a cup. Mind if I join you?”

She locked arms with him, looking up expectantly. Mitch stood frozen; his brain wasn’t working in any kind of cognizant way. He stuttered, he fumbled, all senses grasping at her freshness, her smile, flashing white; her laugh, girlish and magnetic.

“I, you aren’t from around here are you?”

Mitch moved forward desperate to recover his senses, a feeble-minded school boy he was not; reaching up to touch her hand resting so lightly on his arm, a warning flash, the morning sun on his wedding band.

As the light caught his eye Molly’s brunette bob and freckled face flashed in his mind.

“I’m on the run, as you noticed,” he laughed lamely. He moved forward disconnecting his elbow from her hand with little to no finesse at all.

Laughing in return as she kept step alongside him, “I‘ll just walk with you then.”

“Weren’t you headed in the other direction?”

“Like you said, I’m new around here, so I have an excuse for going in the wrong direction. I could really use a cup of tea. My name’s Grace by the way.”

“Well, Grace, I’m Mitch.”

***



Molly stared out the kitchen window at Mitch lighting the grill. She washed and slowly dried her hands, a light breeze gently stirring the curtains. Her mouth pursed, wrinkles formed between her eyes as she lost herself in thought. Mitch had been acting so different lately. Not like himself at all.

They had known each other since grammar school. What Molly had always loved about Mitch was his steadiness, his dependability. Lately he had been scattered, unreliable, unavailable; just recently she and Mrs. Johnson had to wait outside the Public Library for 45 minutes. He said he’d forgotten; how odd.

The hours he’d been keeping lately were very sporadic. She used to be able to set her watch by his comings and goings, but now? True, he had gotten much busier at work since he’d taken on a new client, the Aspinwalls. Mitch had complained several times that whenever he completed an architectural draft as requested they came back with numerous changes.

Molly sighed. Blowing a wisp of brown hair from her face she turned from the sink to the butcher block. Picking up the knife she absentmindedly began chopping cabbage. The Rhineharts would arrive soon for their afternoon picnic.

She was glad Sally and Charlie would be joining them. The Rhineharts and the Wildes had been close for years now. Charlie, Mitch and Grace had all grown up together. There had been an uncomfortable time for a bit in high school; a love triangle thing, kinda. It had been complicated and confusing, until Grace remembered what she’d always known; she would marry Mitch. He had kissed her in kindergarten under the big oak tree and told her it would be so. Looking into his blue eyes, calm as the sky on a hot August day, she never doubted him.

Charlie had gone on to attend agricultural college in the Midwest. Mitch had headed to the city to obtain his design degree. He had always loved to imagine, to draw, to build. A career as an architect had seemed as inevitable for him, as farming was for Charlie.

For as long as they all could remember Charlie had dug in the earth, driven tractors, milked the cows, baled hay. His family had been farming for generations; it was a lifestyle Charlie embraced.

While they were growing up, Westchester County folk were slowly and steadily creeping toward their quiet country town.

As if overnight old dairy barns were torn down. Large swaths of pasture were cordoned off into postage stamp sized lots; the same little house in different colors grew up as if replacing the cows.

Charlie had always wanted to save the working farms, and each time another family folded under the pressure and cashed in their land, their inheritance, well it was so sad.

At least when that did happen Mitch spun them into what they all jokingly referred to as “new fangled old homes”; he tried to cultivate clients who at least loved the idea of a farm.

Molly worked steadily in the kitchen moving from sink to refrigerator to the counter, chopping vegetables, molding hamburger patties, folding mayonnaise into the potato salad. Stopping at the sink she gazed out at her husband sullenly drinking a beer at the picnic table staring into the flames from the grill.

“Patience, patience; I need to just wait. He’ll tell me what’s going on when he ready. Just wait, just wait, just wait.”

She’d been repeating this over and over in her head for weeks, a silent prayer, a daily mantra, reminding herself of the faith she had in her husband.

Outside My Office Window...

...I can see hayfields. Autumn has definitely arrived here in New York State, but winter is knocking on the door - loudly. On Tuesday night, October 28th, we had snow!! It is gone now and the days are alternating between what feels like frigid to me (32-33 degrees) to something more "comfortable" (55-60 degrees). Seems to be harder for my body to become acclimated these days.



Can't think about moving though. The changes in the season, in the weather, that's what make this one of the most beautiful spots in the country. A few days previous we had a sun shower over a corn field that had just been chopped. A few raindrops hit my lens, but I think you'll get the idea.

Pear-Ginger Crisp

You know I like to cook; particularly this time of year. When the days get short and cool you’ll find me in my kitchen, canning, creating, trying new recipes. When autumn’s in the air I always like to cook with apples: apple pie, apple sauce, apple crisp. While we have a lot of apples here in New England in the fall, I’ve always eyed the pears and wondered what I could do with them. Then, thanks to Rural Intelligence I discovered this recipe for Pear-Ginger Crisp. The texture is definitely different than apples but the flavors are delicious and the aroma when it is cooking is fantastic.

If you have friends that are allergic or don’t care for nuts substitute quick oats in the topping, and make sure you use a hard baking pear, such as Bosch or Red Anjou.

Pear and Ginger Crisp

Courtesy of Bobby Flay by way of Rural Intelligence

serves 10-12

3/4 cup pecans, coarsely chopped

1-1/2 cups all purpose unbleached flour

3/4 cup brown sugar

5 T sugar

pinch cinnamon

pinch kosher salt

9 T unsalted butter, room temperature (softened)

2 T fresh ginger, peeled and grated--about a four inch long piece, give or take

juice of 2 lemons

10 medium pears, peeled, cored and cut lengthwise into 1/2 inch slices

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Make topping: toast pecans in a small sauté pan over medium heat until they become fragrant--just a few minutes. Don't let them burn! Mix flour, brown sugar, 2 T sugar, the cinnamon, and salt together in a small bowl. Using a spoon, slowly stir in butter--the mixture will be crumbly and bumpy--and then stir in pecans.

In another larger bowl, gently stir together ginger, lemon juice, 3 T sugar, another pinch of salt and the sliced pears. Turn the fruit into a baking dish, and cover with the topping mixture. Bake until topping is crisp, about 50 minutes.

I just finished reading “Wise Blood”, a novel written by Flannery O’Connor. I found it disturbing and fascinating. This was the first time I’ve read any of O’Connor’s work and so I chose to read her first novel. I found its form to be stark, direct, simplistic, its content dark and disturbing. I am entirely intrigued by her style and content and look forward to reading her short stories.


Flannery O'Connor was the only child of Edward F. O'Connor and Regina Cline O’Connor. Born in Savannah, GA in 1925 she attended Peabody High School and Georgia State College for Women (now Georgia College and State University). She majored in English and Sociology. In 1949 O'Connor met and eventually accepted an invitation to stay with Robert Fitzgerald, a translator of Greek plays and epic poems and a respected poet in his own right, and his wife, Sally, in Redding, Connecticut. In 1951 she was diagnosed with lupus, and subsequently returned to her ancestral farm, known as Andalusia, in Milledgeville, GA where she died at the age of 39 years on August 3, 1964.


“Wise Blood” is written in the Southern Gothic genre. Southern Gothic is a subgenre of the Gothic writing style, unique to American literature. Like its parent genre, it relies on supernatural, ironic, or unusual events to guide the plot. Unlike the Gothic writing style, Southern Gothic uses these tools not for the sake of suspense, but to explore social issues and reveal the cultural character of the American South. This genre of writing is seen in the work of many celebrated Southern writers such as: William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, Cormac McCarthy and Katherine Ann Porter among many others.


I am particularly interested in the short story which has become less popular in our times. “Wise Blood” began with four chapters published in Mademoiselle, Sewanee Review, and Partisan Review in 1948 and 1949. O'Connor then published it as a complete novel in 1952, and the publisher, Signet, advertised it as "A Searching Novel of Sin and Redemption."

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, “Flannery O'Connor was a Roman Catholic living in the American South, and her fictions consistently illustrate not merely religious, but theological points of view. By the time of “Wise Blood”, O'Connor was herself diagnosed with lupus and was receiving treatment with hydrocortisone therapy at Emory University hospitals in Atlanta.”


After her first major attack of lupus in 1950, she had been forced to return home to live with her mother on the family farm. O'Connor's father had died of lupus, leaving her with no illusions about the outcome. Having previously lived in Iowa and in and around New York City, she found her mother's company and the general area of Milledgeville to be difficult. The smart-aleck child coming home, and resentment of mother figures and parents in general, permeates all of O'Connor's fiction, and “Wise Blood” is true to this context.


In this novel, O'Connor explores her recurring concept of an alienated young person returning home coupled with the theme of the struggle of the individual to understand Christianity. O'Connor's hero, a young man named Hazel Motes, sneers at communal and social experiences of Christianity. Having returned from serving in the Army Hazel is travelling by train to the fictional city of Taulkinham having just discovered that his family home has been abandoned. His grandfather was a tent revival preacher, and Hazel is told repeatedly that he "looks like a preacher," though he despises preachers.


An interesting cast of characters follows including Miss Leora Watts, Enoch Emery, and a blind preacher, Asa Hawks, and his young daughter, Sabbath Lily Hawks. Leora Watts is a prostitute, Enoch Emery is attracted to Hazel's new "Church Without Christ" and believes himself to have wise blood, Asa Hawks is a blind preacher who is not blind, and Sabbath Lily has a wild side and has fixated on having Hazel for her own.


Hazel Motes tries desperately to find freedom from his conscience by choosing to ignore his belief in God. He believes that if he eliminates morality from his life, he can avoid Jesus. The cast of characters in Wise Blood are frequently deceptive, chronically unkind, and brutally violent. “Wise Blood” is a spiritually empty, morally blind, cold, hostile place. Over the years, critics have often referred to Flannery 0' Connor's first novel as dark and grotesque.


In 1979 “Wise Blood” was made into a movie. According to Rotten Tomatoes “from the "The Maltese Falcon" to the "The Dead," filmmaker John Huston created provocative adaptations of stories and novels -- and "Wise Blood" is considered to be among his most daring.”