Moving to the city
was not something anyone ever dreamed Lenna might do, but here Rory stood with his odd little dog at his side, saying his mom had been threatening it for years.
"Doesn't sound like the Lenna I knew," DeLorean said.
"You don't know my maw." He bent a surprisingly long arm down to the dog's ears, stroking one and then another, his vivid blue eyes focused on the animal rather than the woman who had barged into his life. "There's a word for people who live out here, a hundred miles from the nearest WalMart."
DeLorean waited for it.
"Urban Rejects."
"That's two words," she said, figuring it would get him to look at her again even if it was to scowl.
"You're like two people," she dared to say this strange man, this virtual stranger, this short, wiry, long-armed son of her mom's cousin. "Sometimes you talk like Lenna, and sometimes you talk like someone in book. More educated."
"I'm just full of surprises."
That he was. Those wild looking yoga poses, something he picked up from the nut house, not that he called it that. What had he called it? Not rehab. Sandy the nosy nurse would know. Anger Management facility?
He pointed to the north, where a distant barn and house huddled on the horizon. "That's where the trouble began. Mom's favorite dog in the world came to a terrible end there, and it drove her to God like nothing else ever had."
DeLorean frowned. "I thought finding the forty-year-old mummy of Marlin was what sent her over the edge, so to speak." Everyone knew Lenna had always been a fan of the Catholic saints and known for talking out loud to them, especially Tony, the patron of lost things. Anthony. Tony, Tony, look around, my lost car keys can't be found.
"Mom's not as far off her rocker as people like to think." A little fire of rage started flickering in Rory's eyes. "Her dog was a friendly little fellow, a terrier. Houdini. He could spring straight up in the air and make her laugh on the darkest of days. He also liked to run after things and nobody could catch up to him then. Problem was, he liked sniffing around the Tomlinson place, and he had this thing about taking a leak on their truck tires. It's what dogs do, right? Well, Dick and Shirley took so much pride in their shiny new Dodge Ram, they started threatening to shoot the dog if we didn't keep him from running off to pee on their tires. One day Mom gets a call from Shirley that the dog is there and she'd better come get him or she'd shoot him like the stray that he was. Mom gets there, and Shirley has her pit bull at her side. Soon as she sees Mom get out and call Houdini over, Shirley lets Houdini out of a pen, then says to her dog, "Rocko. Get the puppy." And that pit bull charged so fast, Houdini didn't even hear him coming; he was too busy wagging at Mom. Right in front of her eyes, Mom saw that pit bull shred her favorite little dog ever."
"Oh!" DeLorean clasped a hand over her heart. "No. No!"
"Yes. Yes. I tried to press charges, but the sheriff, he don't care. Our dog was on someone else's property. And not for the first time. It was the property owner's right to get rid of the pesky stray however they saw fit."
"But your mom showed up. And Houdini didn't do anything worse than pee on a truck tire, and for that, your mom had to witness something so traumatic? And this Shirley woman just gets away with it!"
"You got it."
"Lenna must have wanted to shoot her."
"See, I been tellin' ya. You don't know my mom. I wanted Shirley to get struck by lightning, but Mom just started praying for her. Forgive us our trespasses, she mumbled while mopping floors or chopping cabbage for dinner, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and she'd look right at me. We all do our share of trespassing, one way or another, she'd say. So she prayed for Shirley's heart of darkness to see the light and receive God's mercy."
"Well, dang." DeLorean wouldn't have been that charitable.
"She actually did move to the city for a spell," Rory said, "but she didn't like the traffic, the concrete, the noise."
"So where is she now?" DeLorean fixed her own gray-eyed stare on him. "If you're not an urban reject, why'd you greet me with a gun barrel when I got here?"
"Ain't none of your business where Mom is now," he said.
Day 605: 5 Minute Freewrite: Monday - Prompt: moving to the city
NOTE:
Earlier today I posted about a published novelist whose book began as a series of vignette about assorted characters, who took shape in her mind, gradually, as one character, "Uksana." I got to thinking I should do that with my assorted freewrites. Another revelation came to me: instead of trying to weave an ongoing story into the daily prompts, I could just not worry about how the last part ended and post the new freewrite without any effort to weave the threads that lead from one day to the next.
See
Freewrites, Short Stories, why not "a Novel in Stories?" + "Murder By the Slice"
You know, I think that would be wonderful for the reader too. A slightly new story, no need to remember the details of what happened in the last episode, but I remember enough that I know these two characters pretty well, the tension between them is solid, the new revelations about Lenna are very interesting, and that horrible story about the fatal mauling!
I came within an eyelash of witnessing just such a mauling (of a cat), and the almost-memory is as vivid in my mind as if the cat had not escaped at the last moment. Also in real life, our Nebraska cousin, the bachelor farmer, has a dog that pees on the neighbor's truck tires. And they have made it very clear the dog is not welcome to leave his scented graffiti there. "Culpability" might be the next prompt I will use - those who fail to keep their pet constrained are culpable, no matter what the punishment someone inflicts on a beloved pet who was given more freedom than it deserved.(Even so: "The punishment doesn't fit the crime" is my daily lament for things I say and do, not just what others suffer. How do other people get a free pass to be an ass, while I get crucified for the most trivial and above all un-intended offenses....)
I'm debating whether to delete the comment above, or edit the freewrite.
The point is this: Lenna was not angry or outraged, but sad. Just plain sad, and sorry, that people can carry so much hatred around and do harm with such a sense of being justified (entitled). The mauling of the dog was a "character arc," shall we say (and this is all backstory), the kind of arc @bex said was lacking in my novel "Ironwolf." Lenna didn't turn bitter or angry; she turned sad, and disappointed in the human race. So she may have moved to the city, as Rory says, but not for long. And I should rewrite the closing line too. But who is reading these comment boxes, and who cares? Right? Right???
You have too much talent, @owasco, and too little time, for digging into the drama behind the drama. Ultimately, nobody else need ever know what or who inspired Houdini or Marlin. For now, it's just me "thinking out loud" and feeling free to do so, because listeners lurk in the shadows, perhaps hoping to lull me into a false sense of security, but I know they're listening and judging, and it doesn't change me or who I am. Have I just stopped caring? Did I achieve
apathyer "detachment" at last?I understood Lenna to not be angry or outraged after witnessing her dog's horrible death, although I expected her to be from what I already knew of her ("Lenna must have wanted to shoot her" I also thought), and came to love her when she asked for forgiveness for the brutes. What a beautiful soul!
I have no idea why you want to delete or edit any of this.It's a great installment to the story, loose ends and all. And I really love the idea that you can leave loose unwoven ends between the stories - we spend too much time trying to make sense of things, when really there are a whole lot of unwoven bits in life. It seems natural to me to write this way. And as I said, takes pressure off the reader too. More fluid.
This episode could be my most favorite of this series so far. It's very moving, humbling, kind, and just.
You're amazing! you're the kind of reader a literary writer dreams of - more insightful and astute than the mass-market book fans. Lenna did start out feisty, a fighter ("the little tart", as in sassy) - but she's all heart. And after years of witnessing human cruelty, she's weary, and rather than fight, she wants to retreat into her hermitude and just pray for people and tend to her animals (my mom's cousin with her menagerie of strays and rescues is one of the role models for Lenna, but ironically the real-life cousin is very anti-Catholic, so I fipped that one). It's Rory who got sent into some anger management program or mental institution--DeLorean is still trying to pry it out of him or puzzle it out herself. Thank you so much for your close attention to this sprawling little story
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You are amazin', sometimes I feel lost about what write really means and how make peoplee feel what I want to express.
You? After your excellent post about rodeo bulls (or toros coleados) and family and compassion toward animals? If you didn't express what you want, I wonder what the heck else you were hoping to express. You're golden! Fellow freewriters, don't believe her; read for yourself:
https://steemit.com/freewrite/@isgledysduarte/freewrite-rodeo
What a sweet little creature thank you for sharing
Thank you for reading!
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