Dennis L. Siluk's New Stories and Poetry

Dr. Dennis L. Siluk’s has published 72-International Book. He is a poet since twelve years old, a writer, Psychologist, Ordained Minister, Decorated Veteran from the Vietnam War, Doctor in Arts and Education, and Doctor Honoris Causa from the National University of Central Peru, UNCP. He was nominated Poet Laureate in Peru. One of his books, “The Galilean”, took Honorable Mention at the 2016 Paris Book Festival and received an award from the Congress of Peru, for his cultural writings.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Black Blood in Jeremiah's Vines

Black Blood in Jeremiah’s Vines
(A Dream Poem)

And I heard the crackling of wood,
and I noticed the Lord God had made men of wood,
and fire came from his mouth.
Then the winds poured grief upon mankind
—over his sins; and I heard the words
for the seventh time: "Go to the mountains
and the dens, foolish people of this land,
pray and understand—for I cometh!
Thereof, toss thyself upon thy knees,
for the roar of rebellious man will bleed:
black blood, through the grapevines of Jeremiah.”

Note: 5/10/05, 11:28 AM #639
Reedited 3-2011

Delia's Inn (a short story)

Delia’s Inn
((A story about inequality, with a smile) (Ashley Walsh, of Ozark, Alabama))

Havana, “The Heartless City,” the birthplace of the Rough Riders, and the destruction of the Battleship Maine, 1898, the destructive floods of the 1920s, when oil drilling was reduced…
And where Ashley Walsh made her home, and where she died—1867-1929.

Night Waters off Havana
((1867) (Aboard the ship ‘Peron’) (Captain Ashton Tyron Peron, Rosalina and Ashley Walsh)) Part I of VI

The Captain’s cabin had a lower ceiling, than average, especially for a huge man like Captain Ashton Tyron Peron, and every time he came through the doors he’d pert near hit his head, especially when drunk, forgetting it was so low. The heavy wooden floor inside and outside his cabin, was varnished, to a high glow. Ashley Walsh, remembered she was no more than seventeen years old when Rosalina, who owned one of the whorehouses in New Orleans, drugged her and sold her to the captain for $500-dollars, and she was kept for a year pretty much under lock and key in that cabin.
It was October 7, 1867, when she had paused, the captain this one early evening, the captain was somewhere, on board the ship, perhaps drinking with that negro banjo player, Wooden-leg Joe, they seemed to get along quit well, he was also a good helmsman the Captain told everyone (had she had to guess, it would be they were both at the helm, drinking rum or moonshine, hopefully, the ship would be steered by itself, to its destiny, often they’d get sidetracked because of there drunkenness and end up in some local, they’d have to pull the map out find out where exactly they were).
Anyhow, Ashley had paused, heard two drunken voices outside the cabin, she heard one of the rustic voices say, “You son of a snake, I get her first.” Then the other man’s voce replied, “You son of an American farmer and favoured dog, I was here first.”
Ashley could not see who was who, very well, as she peeked through the keyhole of the door. The men were separated by a distance of no more than three to four feet. Too close she thought for a pistol shootout.
“I’ll give you money if you go away,” said one of the two voices, drunken voices. It was as if they were beating each other’s wings down, verbally, and hoping the other would get tired and just walk away, but in the meantime, they were pushing and shoving, harder and harder, at one another, it would just be a matter of time, thought Ashley before they busted down the door, and they’d then figure they could take turns on her, share her—at this juncture, they didn’t want to do any sharing. They were getting so heated up; it was like two snakes biting their own tails.
“I’m going to give you some alligator sleep,” boasted one of the voices, meaning he’d put him out right quickly, for a long spell if he didn’t leave.
Ashley now could hear above the cabin, Wooden-leg Joe dragging his wooden leg along the deck, she was hoping he could hear the men, and would go tell the Captain.
The ship was on a course to the Port of Havana.
Then all of a sudden Captain Ashton Tyron Peron showed up looking at these two drunken sailors, sloppy drunk. He himself had had too many cups of rum, and wanted his woman, and they were in his way, plus he didn’t cater to the idea, what was on their minds.
Peron simply lunged into both of them, ramming his fists into their faces, which bounced against the cabin door. He grabbed his dagger, stuck it into their cuts, and ribs, as they dropped and dribbled with blood collapsing—more like crashing, onto the shinny varnished floor, to unconsciousness.
The Captain then kicked the lifeless bodies to the side, stepping over them, paying them no more attention, than he would the wax that made the floor shine. It was time for his pleasures.

That was the night Captain Peron would tell Ashley, he was going to drop her off at the dock—matter of fact, it was within a few hours of this most recent disparity, with his shipmates.

No: 766 (3-7-2011)
Part of the book: “The Old Folks”
Untold Tales of “The Cotton Belt”

Delia’s Inn
(Ashley Walsh, 1868)(Havana)) Part II of VII

When Ashley was set free by Captain Ashton Tyron Peron, after a year’s incarceration in his cabin, a sex slave, she had found homage in Delia’s Inn. Delia, was much like Rosalina, of New Orleans, she ran a whorehouse, a café, and rented out apartments as well, all in one building, on one corner of Havana. But this time Ashley Walsh was no longer—the foolish young girl she was eighteen months ago, she knew the ropes. After three months of working for Delia, she asked for a written contract for them to be partners, since she was the main attraction, young, still lovely to look at, shapely, and experienced, and even the notorious Judge Castro Montes, known as “The Grave Judge,” took a liking for her. But Delia refused to sign the paper Ashley had drawn up, making them equal partners. Thus, she did something at the spur of the moment—perhaps remembering what Rosalina had done to her, Delia would sooner or later do to her again, Mickey her drink and sell her to a ship’s captain, and be in the same old dilemma she just had gotten out of three months past.
Consequently, she hit Delia over the head with an accordion that was lying in the corner of her room, belonged to one of the musicians, who couldn’t pay for services rendered. When Delia awoke, she was tied to a chair.
“Now will you sign?” Ashley asked in a demanding tone.
“No,” she said, “and when I get out of here, you’ll be back on one of those filthy ships, doing what you know best,” and she laughed.
Ashley pulled out of a drawer, a danger Delia kept in her room for occasions that might demand its use, and she shot Delia in the thigh, and Delia screamed to the high heavens, likened to a dying cat. Ashley stepped back, she had never seen anyone is such pain, suffering, and out of some automatic impulse, the danger having two separate chambers, for two bullets, she pulled the trigger again, and it penetrated Delia’s chest, right through her heart, right out through the back of the chair, she was deader than a doornail.

Ashley was half asleep in her cell, it had a funny kind of smell to it, unknown—at first, but a decaying smell, then a reeking urine like smell—excrement, it was that of Delia. In her sleeping mind, she had asked “Haven’t you started your intergalactic trip yet?” Funny things we say in our dreams.
Ashley drifted into a deeper dream like mode, in and out in and out of it she went, as if the nightmare demon was working overtime. She saw beggars holding out sumps of rotten arms, great black worms with wings protruding out of Delia’s Grave.
All these creatures, sleeping in their own filth; then she heard a voice, it woke her up. “Your name is?” asked a gentlemen, standing by the iron bars of her cell, dressed in an expensive suite.
“I’m sorry, sir” said Ashley, dumbfounded, trying to regain her composure.
“I have passed your case onto the Judge, you know which one,” he said, as if he was disturbed of the fact he had to be the judge’s messenger.
She leaned forward onto the iron bars, thinking, ‘The old evil judge, will want to get a lot of freebees for this.’
The vile and putrid smell had gone, but as she looked up onto the ceiling, she noticed someone had written, “I know we’ll meet again some sunny day!” Then she yelled at the jailer, “Get me out of here,” she could hear the patter of footsteps pacing her cell.”

No: 763 (3-7-2011)
Part of the book: “The Old Folks”
Untold Tales of “The Cotton Belt”

Drunken Laughter
(1869)(Kill Devil, at Delia’s Inn) Part III of VII

Everyone said in Havana, Delia’s Inn served a good drink, Kill Devil, they called it—also known as Jamaica Rum (fermented from sugar cane). When Ashley took over the establishment, she maintained its dutiful reputation.

The muddy streets of Havana, the night air, it was warm, someone was strumming on a banjo, and that someone was Wooden-leg Joe, from the ship ‘The Peron,’ which was anchored at the dock.
Everyone having left the ship, now on the dock area, were getting drunk, some already in a drunken stupor, laughing all about the dock area, peeing into the Caribbean, as if it was their humongous toilet, Captain Ashton Peron was on the dockside thinking of what brothel or gaming house he was going to brawl in, and take Joe with him, as often he did. It all was too familiar and too noisy for him—there, where he stood with a cup of rum in his hand, therefore they left the waterfront.
“How about Delia’s Inn…” questioned Peron to Joe?
“They got a-hell of drink down there,” commented Joe.
It was getting late, and it seemed they were gravitating towards the Inn, unconsciously, as they passed from street to street, shops were closing up, blacksmiths, goldsmiths, grocers, all closing up for the evening, and then lo and behold, they were standing outside the Inn.

Ashley had counterfeited Delia’s signature onto a contract she had made up, before she killed her. After she had got out of jail, her friend the Judge, Castro Montes, helped make it all legal, knowing good and well, he’d be welcome in the Inn, free of charge to the last of his days on this earth. And the ownership was accepted with good grace.
Captain Ashton Peron had a deep and long scare on the right side of his forehead, an obvious proof of his past. He was aging, yet he still had some of that youthful steel in him, it hadn’t gone.

When Wooden-leg Joe wasn’t playing the banjo, he was a perfect helmsman, if not drunk. Now both standing inside Delia’s Inn, he patted a waitress on the dairy air, “Get me some of that hard kicking Jamaica Rum!” And she went to fetch some. Then he spotted Ashley, of all things.
“Life is sweet,” he said to Joe, as if Ashley was one of the Inn’s whores, and expecting to take her as he had before. Joe was silent, frowning, He knew Ashley was known by everyone in Havana, even the notorious Judge Castro Mantes, and Sir Godfrey, by her side, was no push over, and as Peron neared her, so did several larger men than him, none with aging slanting backs.
“So you found employment here, I see…” commented Peron.
“No, not necessarily, I own the place, and I think it is better you leave while you can.”
“But life looks sweet for me here,” he told her; Joe pulling on his coat jacket.
“When do you sail?” she asked, stern and steady, not with a once of fear.
“In two days time,” he responded.
“Leave like bacon in the winter wind! I don’t necessarily want revenge; I just don’t want to see your face, ever again.”
Joe kind of chuckled, it rhymed and Peron looked at him as if to say: what’s so funny.
Leave here, and go find yourself some giggling women elsewhere. And surprisingly he did.

Sir Godfrey was nearby, said, “I can get a few men to do him is?”
“No,” said Ashley, “Revenge or hate is like a snake biting his own tale, the only legal revenge with God is success. Can’t you see in Peron’s face how he hates me for who I’ve become?”
“Yaw,” replied Sir Godfrey, “no bones in sympathy,” thinking perhaps she held some kind of respect for the old Captain, and that she could not outgrow.

The Barrel Maker
((Judge Castro Montes Capitán Ashton Tyron Perón, Wooden-leg Joe and Pablo Llosa, the Barrel Maker) (1869, Habana)) Part IV of VIII

He was the barrel maker, who lived down the street from Delia’s Inn, Havana, Cuba; Pablo Llosa, he made a good living off barrel making, for ships needing large quantities of water, Salt Park, for long voyages.
Wooden-leg Joe, had remarked, perhaps in an ugly tone, the following morning, after they had been told to leave Delia’s Inn, remarked at the barrel makers shop, commented in front of Pablo as Captain Ashton Tyron Peron was ordering barrels, who took what Joe had said in a fictitious kind of manner, with a salty kind of smile, “We ought not to try to get revenge off that girl, we got lots of sea to travelling to do, she’s just trouble, we need to get these barrels onboard before she goes to her friends, and she’s got plenty of them around here I hear.” Joe meant no harm, he just knew the Captain well, and knew what was on his mind, what was annoying him, but it would have been better unsaid.
But he was hungry for Ashley Walsh in the worse way, mostly for blood, “I should have fed her to the sharks,” said Peron, and Pablo Llosa started laughing. And in a blink of a red eye, Peron slit open the belly of Pablo, and stood and laughed as his slimy coil of intestines spilled out onto his hands, it was, thought Joe, the ugliest sight, he had ever seen, but what took place next was even more amplifying, Pablo had for some odd reason been standing with his hands and palms upward, as if he had a six sense, and had caught his guts before they fell onto the dirty floor which had no floor at all, just a dirt floor—and there he stood, strange and erect as a totem pole, holding his innards and all in place, and with one hand he shifted them over and onto the other, onto his forearm, and with the free hand he picked up an old Spanish metal armour plate, and as his wife came running, having seen from a window, out of the back where the shop was attached to the kitchen, she placed it around his midsection, tying it with a belt, and then Pablo picked up a sword, and was ready to fight the old Captain.
From that, Joe deduced, this was seriously to be taken as an omen, of an impending doom for the ship, “The Peron,” and he verbally washed his hands of his friendship with the Captain.

Judge Castro Montes, had no time for omens, but he would be, Peron’s omen, knowingly or not. Although renowned as a captain, stupid sometimes, and brutal, he ordered Peron to jail, and realizing the ship had no crew, that it was left anchored, and it had no real value for cargo, and it was an old brig, and it might serve a purpose, he set out an agreement, for Peron to take “You sign your ship over to Pablo, and you’ll save the city a hanging, and feeding you in jail until that hanging takes place. And Pablo, will have more wood for more barrels, and can pay more taxes—somewhere along the line. And perhaps you can find your way off this island in twenty-four hours…because that’s as long as got before this agreement runs out.”
There is no sense in getting into a lengthy statement on how Peron felt, it was obvious. He just wordlessly turned about, and walked away.

No: 767 (3-9-2011)

The Red-haired Dog
((Ashton Tyler Peron) (1927)) V of VIII

Looking beyond the cobblestone streets of New Orleans, out into the Mississippi, Captain Ashton Tyler Peron, now ninety-seven years old, perhaps thinking of his old ship, being turn-up for barrel wood, and wondering how old Ashley Walsh was doing, simply looked out upon the river as if he was staring through a glass window, as he hobbled on his painful gout leg, his right leg, along the dock’s edge. He had disregarded that year he kept her captive on his ship, only to admit, she was the prettiest Negress he had ever seen, or been with, it was perhaps why he couldn’t feed her to the sharks.
His hair was nearly as thinned out, as a one year old babies might be, fatter than a plump goose, and he had a bottle of red-haired dog in his left hand, a cane in his right, moseying along the dock way, a dark heavy long coat on, it was December, a black hat, taking a step at a time, drinking a gulp of the rum, at each pause.
He was blunt with God, likened to how he was with everyone; it was how he lived, choleric in temperament. He bent a little as his gout was hurting him, and he collapsed upon the top soil, next to the cemented walkway—as if he knew he was going to; he died of dysentery, so the autopsy read.

No: 759 (3-5-2011)

Calamity with Composure
(Captain Ashton Tyler Peron; Judge Castro Montes; Ashley Walsh)(Havana, 1928)) Part Seven Part VI of VIII

Ashley Walsh had lived in the shadows of a long shaking fever. It had killed several people from the docks of Havana every year. It was a dismal and scented evening. She walked the dock area, it was the summer of 1928, ghastly smells of the harbor lingered into her nostrils, dissipated throughout the pier area. It somewhat reminded her of those far-off days, when she was kept prisoner on Old Captain Peron’s ship.
Dressed in light clothing, she went and had dinner in Sir Godfrey’s mansion…as was her custom, she was now seventy-seven years old, and he was in his eighties. They had a light meal this day. (Godfrey, was at one time, some fifty-years ago, at one time the manservant to the Governor of Cuba, and through his dealings somehow acquired a small fortune, and a daughter, by Ashley Walsh, and not by wedlock rather by lust, for Ashley had no marriage view worth considering, but Godfrey nonetheless named her, Ashley Ann Walsh-Godfrey, not ashamed to give her his name, nor take his mothers name away. That was back in 1875, she would have been fifty-one years old now.)
“Were you aware,” said Sir Godfrey, “Captain Ashton Tyler Peron had died a year ago?” (He had just found out for himself that very week.)
She drank some more of the wine; she was a hard woman, but not without emotions.
During her permanent status as a citizen of Cuba and resident of Havana, she became the busiest female Havana’s natural harbor, a maritime hub, dealing with sugar, tobacco, coffee and rum sales, and running Delia’s Inn, becoming one of the richest women in Havana, if not the whole Caribbean . No need to whore about anymore, although in the beginning, that is where she got her working assets.
She said, as if it was a passing thought, perhaps a dutiful idiom, “He helped make me what, or is it that, I am today, rich, I figured if that dumb clucks can own a ship, why can’t I own a business, and make that plural?”
“Well, he sure did hang around with an unruly lot!” said Sir Godfrey.
The room fell silent.
“Murder, I was clumsy at it, I had an ugly old man do it for me kill a bulky old man called Josh, I was only in my teens then, that is my most hideous crime, well almost, Delia’s death included; my second crime, suffocation of my youth that one year in New Orleans, when I was a whore, but even Rosella the once queen-bee of whore of the city, taught me.”
Godfrey pretended to listen, but did not raise his eyes. “I was never a wife though,” she added to her comments. “I was hardly fourteen when I slept with a man named Silas; I love him so very much, simple as he was, back in Ozark, Alabama on the Hightower Plantation, I loved him, I really did, I’m sure he’s dead by now.”
She stood up, walked out of the room, knowing good and well, she could say and do nearly whatever she wanted to, she had become rich enough.

No: 760 (3-5-20119

Marble Moons
((Ashley Ann Walsh-Godfrey; Sir Godfrey) (1875-1928)) Part VII of VIII

Marble Moons (the Poem)

They say the sky above
Heaven’s dome,
Are scattered with Marble Moons…
For those who are
Sincere and true—
That your love
Still is the same,
That your life pleased
Him, the most, as Lord and King!...
And you kept your faith
In Him; thus, those
Marble Moons,
Above heaven’s dome
Will someday bow down
On bended knees to thee…
How can I not be singing…!

No: 2905/3-6-2011
By Ashley Ann Walsh-Godfrey

Ashley Ann Walsh Godfrey would have been fifty-one years old, in 1928, had she not died in 1887, at twelve years old; this day in 1928, her mother, Miss Ashley Walsh, in pacing in Sir Godfrey’s garden. Nothing could have prepared her for that shocking day of her daughter’s death, over thirty-five years ago, but you would not have guessed it, by her equanimity at the time.
In the capital city of Cuba, law and order in 1887 was bleak at best, there was a constant drag on it, in the city of Havana, vagabonds, ill-mannered hoodlums, doing nearly as they pleased, everywhere, whenever, pert near right out in the open, it was Ashley Ann on her way home from school, when one old man, vulgar and drunk chased her into an alley; a pretty girl, a favorite in her class.
He had cornered her, now vomiting in the alley…two men brawling fifty-yards away, disorderly at ever corner, at every nook; all cutthroats, seamen for the most part.
Who could be blamed for Ashley Ann’s rape and murder that day? To have her mother watch the kid, day and night was a second duty, and not fashionable for her, she never did, she never would have, consequently, anyone dare ask.
She was busy increasing her numbers and wealth, while the city of Havana, also got richer and richer. Gold, and goods, commerce was thriving, as was her Inn, while the natives were getting more hostile: ultimately, a person only has 100% of themselves to give—to any one thing, or several things however one wishes to slice up the pie of life, their life, no matter which way you slice it though, there still is only 100% of you, and there is no more. To Ashley these were the hard facts of life in Havana; she gave 99% of her life to what she valued —, respect, power, money, the high of the buying and selling and again I must add Delia’s Inn, and that one percent left, she gave to her daughter, and that was only a half percent actually, because her lover, Sir Godfrey, got the other half of the one percent. That’s how it was.

Sir Godfrey, on that scornful day (her father) had cried out to Ashley—his mistress for forty-years, “Your daughter is with God in Heaven now!”
“Yes,” she remarked, “let her be with Him, it’s too damn hostile down here for her anyhow.”

Notes: Part of the book: “The Old Folks” sequel to “The Cotton Belt”
No: 761, 3-6-2011

Night Waters of the Caribbean
((Ashley Walsh) (1929, year of the rats)) Part VIII of VIII

“There’s a time for everything under the sun…”
Solomon/Ecclesiastes

As the population increased in Havana—as it had on the other Caribbean islands such as: Jamaica, and in Port Royal, and Saint Domingo, on Hispaniola, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, everyone firmly having enough to eat, Ashley Walsh recalled (at least in the past), now sitting on a bench, looking out onto the night waters of the Caribbean—at a pretty twilight, so had the islands hostilities. Far to the left—but not too far, were three seamen, gawking at her, she glanced their way, whispered, but the wind carried the whisper, “They’re no different than sewer rats.”
The looks on their faces went berserk!
If the hands of Ashley Walsh had known what her mind was thinking, they would have wanted to be cut-off.

The consequence, and sequence, of a crowding city—perhaps not much different than a tree with its uncountable leaves, having to shed them to make room for more, one might conclude, as this being Havana, had its share of outbreaks, street fighting, domestic violence, child abuse, soaring infant mortality, psychosis, increased homosexuality, and hyper-sexuality, alienation, disorientation among the older public, ruthlessness, Black Sunday rippled through the United States and over onto the Caribbean Islands, commerce declined, as did skills (in 1929).
Among the tenant housing, remorseless fighting, squalling. People were living like cats and dogs, and some like rats, dominated and aggressive ones, and the most normal humans of Havana went berserk because of this.
Homosexuals made advances on juveniles of both sexes. All tolerated by the city’s officials. The city with its own crowded population, became hyperactive, hypersexual, bisexual, and in some cases cannibalistic. Hence, as the population increased, so did this unusual behaviour, well, not all that unusual, although it was never far-off, and Ashley knew this, she looked to her left again, she knew this—now seventy-nine years old, there were now five fellow seamen grouped some twenty feet from here, they crept up like bowlegged quails, she thought. Old Ashley Walsh just absorbed, and observed twilight, narrow it became, and then the five men had mustard up enough courage to do what they were thinking, not knowing what Ashley was thinking, she always had plan B. The old stone wall she was now sitting on, hands firm, palms down on the wall to her side, she simply gave herself a push with those two hands, and over she went, into the twilight waters of the Caribbean.

No: 762 (3-6-2011)

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Marble Moons
((Ashley Ann Walsh-Godfrey) (1875-1928)) Part Eight

Marble Moons (the Poem)

They say the sky above
Heaven’s dome,
Are scattered with Marble Moons…
For those who are
Sincere and true—
That your love
Still is the same,
That your life pleased
Him, the most, as Lord and King!...
And you kept your faith
In Him; thus, those
Marble Moons,
Above heaven’s dome
Will someday bow down
On bended knees to thee…
How can I not be singing…!

No: 2905/3-6-2011
By Ashley Ann Walsh-Godfrey

Ashley Ann Walsh Godfrey would have been fifty-one years old, in 1928, had she not died in 1887, at twelve years old; this day in 1928, her mother, Miss Ashley Walsh, in pacing in Sir Godfrey’s garden. Nothing could have prepared her for that shocking day, her daughter’s death, over thirty-five years ago, but you would not have guessed it, by her equanimity at the time.
In the capital city of Cuba, law and order in 1887 was bleak at best, there was a constant drag on it, in the city of Havana, vagabonds, ill-mannered hoodlums, doing nearly as they pleased, everywhere, whenever, pert near right out in the open, it was Ashley Ann on her way home from school, when one old man, vulgar and drunk chased her into an alley; a pretty girl, a favorite in her class.
He had cornered her, now vomiting in the alley…two men brawling fifty-yards away, disorderly at ever corner, at every nook; all cutthroats, seamen for the most part.
Who could be blamed for Ashley Ann’s rape and murder that day? To have her mother watch the kid, day and night was a second duty, and not fashionable for her, she never did, she never would have, consequently, anyone dare ask.
She was busy increasing her numbers and wealth, while the city of Havana, also got richer and richer. Gold, and goods, commerce was thriving, while the natives were getting more hostile: ultimately, a person only has 100% of themselves to give—to any one thing, or several things however one wishes to slice up the pie of life, their life, no matter which way you slice it though, there still is only 100% of you, and there is no more. To Ashley these were the hard facts of life in Havana; she gave 99% of her life to what she valued —, respect, power, money, the high of the buying and selling, and that one percent left, she gave to her daughter, and that was only a half percent, because her lover, Sir Godfrey, got the other half of one percent. That’s how it was.

Sir Godfrey, on that scornful day (her father) had cried out to Ashley—his mistress for forty-years, “Your daughter is with God in Heaven now!”
“Yes,” she remarked, “let her be with Him, it’s too damn hostile down here for her anyhow.”

Notes: Part of the book: “The Old Folks” sequel to “The Cotton Belt”
No: 761, 3-6-2011

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

The Monster Hog (a chapter story from "The Cotton Belt")

((…of the Wallace Plantation) (August, 1964/and conclusion))

It was a bad summer, 1964, bad because the Wallace Plantation had buried, Charlie Codden, a relative of Abby Wallace, bad because she did not have the help she needed to take care of the place, Langdon Abernathy was told not to return to work for them anymore, it was all too much: first Burgundy, and the slaying of her child, and then the mysterious hanging of Old Whisky Charlie, and before that the deaths of Frank and Wally, although that was now a little over three years in the past since Wally had died. Even old Amos avoided the plantation as if it was plagued by God and Satan or both; Burgundy was still in the hospital in the Midwest, close to two years now. So, what next could happen, or go wrong, no one knew, and no one wanted to be acquainted with it, whatever it was going to be—meaning that plantation. The Ritt family, was making money off the land they bought, and although that did not worry Abby for the most part, she heard the ghosts—as she referred to them—talking at night how they hated Abby for selling the land to the Ritt Bank. Evidently, Wally and Frank hadn’t gotten over it yet, hadn’t gotten enough revenge, because he fought over who got to tie the hands of Whisky Charlie, and who got to swing the chandelier with Charlie hanging from it, that is what Abby told Amos anyhow, also mentioning in passing: “I don’t think the boys know they’ve died!”
But what was really on her mind, Abby’s mind, now was to sell the plantation, and so she had put it in the paper up for sale, and Frank, the mean one, the suggestive one, angry and more hateful than a horde of rattle snakes and more stubborn than a herd of mules, the more aggressive one of the two brothers, read the three line ad in the paper: “Lovely four acre plantation (or, hobby farm, because that was all that was left of it) outside of Fayetteville, for sale, any reasonable price.”Frank and Wally knew there was no other plantations for sale, this was it, Abby was selling their souls now, so the brothers grimly said.
It was a warm August evening, in the year 1964, the end of August, Abby heard the hogs squealing, fighting with one another, biting at their tails, at their feet, the big one, the one they called “Big Wally the Hog,” the nine-hundred pound hog, the one that won a Blue Ribbon at the County Fair, was becoming nasty to one of the smaller hogs, the very small one, the smallest of the lot in the enclosure—or pigpen—and took a nibble out of its leg, it was a week since Amos had came around to feed the hogs, and she was always scared to get too close to the hog pen herself, although it was fenced in, with four by four poles, and two by four cross beams, to make a sturdy fence. Actually there were several hogs in the pigpen, nearly all over 400-pounds except a few smaller ones, and that one little one that got a bite taken out of its leg that had been yelping to get fed, and instead became in part, part of the Blue Ribbon hog’s meal. Abby at this point was quite frustrated, hearing those hogs yelping like wild dogs night and day, endlessly yelping, and so she called up the Stanley House for Amos to come on over and feed them—nearly begging him this time, but Amos refused to work for her, his mind unchanged, it was out of sympathy he had came the few times he did after her brothers had died, because of her constant mumbling about her seeing and hearing the brothers walking about the house and yard—especially by that old car of theirs that they worked on for ten-years straight, it was all too creepy for him, all too much, way too much for Amos to take, so he refused to come for the last time—with a straight emphatic and final:
“NO!” Mr. Ritt, the owner of the bank who purchased the land from Abby, through Burgundy, and in earlier times bought land from Frank and Wally Wallace, stopped by to see Abby, he did now and then, a kind gesture if anything, he knew she liked company; he figured he’d say hello, and she’d offer him coffee as usual and he’d have a little break, and be on his way. But she didn’t answer the door when he came, and the hogs were going wild in the back area, where the pig enclosure was. And he went back to see what was going on.
The evening by itself was most pleasant with its starry sky and gibbous moon, overlooking the Wallace Plantation, had not the hogs been yelping, moreover giving it an uneasy kind of eerie touch within its atmosphere it would have been a perfect end to a long day.
As he, Mr. Ritt walked slowly back to the pigpen, it seemed as if everything was unattended, he even got a cramp in his stomach, a nervous cramp, as if something strange had taken place, or was taking place, you get such feelings when something is wrong, deadly wrong—death reeks, and your body does something like a turnabout, a knotting up of muscles to protect you, to guard you from heart attacks and strokes and all those impending doom related occurrences that take a person by surprise, it signals the brain, beware…! And it was doing just that.The hogs were fighting mad, squealing mad, jerking this and that way everywhichway, bumping everything, pulling with their teeth, bits and pieces of the wooden fence, gnawing on the thinner parts of the fence like rats, to free themselves: he got closer, they were limbs he was seeing, limbs his eyes scanned, indeed he confirmed they were limbs, red like roots hanging out of the limbs, muscles tissue, read knotted fleshly muscles hanging out like threads from a limp limb; hair hanging out of the pigs mouth—Big Wally’s mouth, and his associates, they were chewing Abby Wallace up, like pulp, as if she was in a wheat grinder, a saw mill, she evidently was trying to feed the hogs, fell in, or got pushed in, through the fence (because it would have been pretty hard to fall through those two-foot openings between the two wooden flat pieces of timber, one above the other, crossovers, and foolish to have gone to the top of the fence of the pen it would not have been necessary) and before she could get up, she was pined down by the monster hog—all nine-hundred pounds of pork. Her head was balled, they had ripped the hair out from its roots, and her torso was the main thing now the hogs were fighting over…. Her shawl lay over one of the fence two-by-fours wooden cross beams, and many of her bones—splintered—laid about, and the hogs licking the marrow out of them; everything was being caked with mud, as it surfaced here and there, as the livestock moved about, then sunk into the mud again, as if the hogs themselves were trying to hide the flesh from the other predators; Mr. Ritt had to turn about, look deep into the sky, hold his stomach, catch his breath and grab his heart, as it started to leap.

Note: Chapter 13; written in part: 6-2008; reedited, 10.-2009, and reedited 5-2010. And again in 2-2011 (“The Monster Hog,” is one of three chapters, to “The Wallace Plantation,” within the book, “The Unvanquished Plantations”).

The Monster Hog (a chapter story from "The Cotton Belt")

((…of the Wallace Plantation) (August, 1964/and conclusion))

Black Poetry

Black Poetry Undercover
(By a White Man: Four Poems)

The Chick-bone Poem

Black is black
And White is white
An’ it don’t matter (to me)
What Youall like—
Its chicken-bones for me tonight!

No: 2899 (2-27-2011)

Derek Walcott’s Poem

I aint wrote poetry like this for a long while
I think I’ve lost my style
Perhaps the goat and the rope
Perhaps after this poem
I’ll lose the Black votes…
But Derek Walcott don’t care
He’s a fresh wind over old Roman
Balconies—he’s on the Obama’s list
As the outstaring anthropologist…!

He even breaths in white air
When he’s in Washington signing books
He eats drumsticks made out of stones—
So, I hear; I wonder if he’s ever ate
A Watermelon Whole…?
That would be worth buying a book or two.

No: 2901 (2-27-2011)

In the Deep

From Africa to America I came,
The hard way…
It wasn’t on a four engine plane
With me, I brought some poetry
Made of black speech and music….
(a little drumming and dancing too)
We had more rhythm than the baboons.
From our ancestral tongues
That’s how poetry was begun…!
Then, from the slave ships and all
From their Deep suffocating halls…
We got the call! More poetry due

Homer and Dante and Shakespeare
They weren’t around: didn’t know a thing
When they came, about Negro poetry,
Not even the Jew…That’s how it was
We were a waterway in the deep—

No: 2900 (2-27-2011)

Sister Marlo

Sister Marlo, was on her elbows
Praying away one day…
When de gallopin’ hoss of hell
Passed her by…
He say: “Come on here, come…!”
“You de devil’s voice,” she say
“It aint God doin’ de callin’.
And de devil he say: “How
Youall know that?”
And sister Marlo say:
“I knows he can afford a chariot,
When he comes a calling,
Not no humdrum mule.”

No: 2902 (2-28-2011)

The River inside the Ocean (a short story)

The River inside the Ocean
(Betty Lee Demuth)

They walked down into the back of the housing project in Babenhausen West, Germany, carrying the bag of chicken and several coke cans, and their twin boys, three years old. Anyone passing might have thought, they had unfrequented the picnic area, which they had, she kept herself in the house pretty much; Glenn Demuth was a Sergeant in the U.S. Army, stationed at Babenhausen.
The afternoon was hotter than expected, in the nineties. They walked around several of the apartment buildings, sat down by where a band was getting ready to play, it was the 4th of July, 1975, and there were perhaps two hundred other soldiers with their wives and kids. They put their blanket down, and rested a bit, the twins were sitting upright, waiting for the chicken. As Glenn looked into the basket, pulled out a dish full of chicken, he saw it was scorched black.
“Let me take them,” Betty Lee said. “The chicken ought to be eaten while it’s still hot. I’m sorry but I burnt them a little.”
He turned to the boys, moved the coke cans over to each boy, waited to open them, the pile of chicken looked dry and way too burnt to eat, but he also knew they were hungry. He closed the bag of chicken, searched for the less burnt pieces and handed them to the two boys. He could not believe she took all morning to cook burnt chicken. He had been calm and careful and restrained about it, lest she fly off the handle, go into a manic episode, or depression. It could be a disaster, and he knew it, possible that is what she wanted, perhaps she did it on purpose, and it was some ghastly joke, it would not be the first time. So empty and dead was the moment. He reopened the bag to find some more pieces of chicken eatable, and gave them to the kids, he ate one leg, it was all he could stomach, and then opened the cans of pop for the boys.
He grabbed the coke can before Betty Lee could, having seen a bee fussing about it. She became angry, grabbed it from him. The two boys were just watching.
“Don’t drink it; there might be a bee in there!” He told her. “I won’t tell you again,” Glenn said.
She turned away from him, looked at the band, then turned back and went to give the coke to the boys, and he grabbed it, before she could.
“No, you don’t,” he said. “You can drink it if you want, but not them.”
“Not them, but I can?”
“Don’t you remember I said there was a bee?”
“Cody has to go to the bathroom,” she said, and put the can down. Glenn stood up, and took his hand, “Me too,” said Shawn, and he took them both behind some trees, and they took a pee, and they went back to the picnic.
“The boys look like their burning up,” she said.
“I bought them hats, why didn’t you bring them along?”
“I know,” Betty Lee said. “It’s always my job. Where did you put them?”
“You mean, where did you put them?”
“I won’t tell you,” she said.
“No, just tell me and I’ll go get them.”
“I don’t know, go and find them yourself.”
“I should really go anyway, get some more coke.” Glenn said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“That’s good,” Betty Lee commented. “It wasn’t my fault, dea-rr!”
Glenn started to stand up, turned toward the coke, was going to pour it out, when a bee climbed out of the top, and flew off.
“Look, look, the bee,” he yelped. But when she turned to see, it was long gone. Nonetheless, he grabbed the coke and poured it out onto the grass. The boys had seen it, and their eyes were big as owls, unblinking.
“Sure, sure there was,” she said.
“Where did you put the hats?” Glenn asked.
“You wouldn’t understand if I told you.” Betty Lee remarked. “That’s why I won’t tell you.”
“I know,” said Glenn. “You put them most likely in our bedroom closet.”
“Yes, I put some of their summer cloths there.”
“I’m sure you did,” Glenn said. “You stuff everything into that closet you don’t intend on using. I’ll just go back and have a look.”
“But you’ll come back, right?”
He had walked away, didn’t really want to come back, he would have preferred running to a bar, or guesthouse. She was getting worse, the doctor had put her on valium, and she hated the medication—sometimes she’d not take it, it made her feel like a zombie she said, but without it, she was hard to live with. Upon his return, the band was playing.

“Wasn’t it just where I said it would be?” Betty Lee asked.
“It was where I guessed it would be, yes!”
“But I really thought I ought not to tell you, have some fun, I was just kidding around, I would have told you, had you not guessed.”
“How are the boys?” he asked.
“Now you can go back to the apartment if you want, why do you ask such a question?”
“Sure, you’d like that, and go nuts again and hit the boys with a frying pan on the ass, when I’m gone, displace your anger.”
“You couldn’t know how bad I feel about that, about doing that, I only did that once.”
“I told you I’d not forget that.”
“I know,” Betty Lee said, “but not just now, you really don’t care about hurting my feelings.”
“Why did you do it?”
“I couldn’t stand their crying.”
Glenn poured the boys some coke, he had a beer for himself. He remembered the day he came home, and she was crying, she had told him what she had done, that was a year past.
“Let’s not talk about it,” she said.
“I’d like not to, but it’s a valid question.”
“Okay, the boys are fine as you can see; worst thing is they’ll have sun burnt faces tomorrow.”
“All I want to do sometimes is get away from you, you make me crazy,” he told her.
“You shouldn’t talk to me like that in front of the kids, Glenn.”
“No, I shouldn’t.”
“They can hear you, you know. And who says I want to stay married to you anyhow?”
Glenn drank another beer down, and the boys ate some burnt chicken, and drank the coke.
“Maybe I’ll stay married to you and never give you a divorce that would be pretty good. I should kill you?”
“You tried twice already.” He remarked.
“I’d not give you a thing if I left you, you know.”
“I’m sorry if you’re angry, I just never know why you are?”
“All right,” said Betty Lee. “I’m sorry also. I’m sorry I ever met you. I’m sorry I married you.”
“Well, at least we got that in common.” He said.
“Shut up please, you shouldn’t say that in front of the kids.”

He knew she was getting worse, as the years passed on, her condition, he realized he’d not be able to endure her for a lifetime. Perhaps the remark she made about the marriage, was a rhetorical one, it was obvious, his drinking was increasing, and her mental condition was increasing. He poured himself another beer.
“I’m sorry to be so oppressive,” she said.
“Really?”
“Yes, I want to keep the marriage, I need someone to do the laundry.”

No.752 (March 1, 2011)
Originally written in June, 2006
But revamped, for dialogue.