Weekly Wasted Words 03/02/2020 Long Goodbye

Title: Eventually

“I can’t believe it’s happening so soon,” Jah says.

Sammy laughs. “So soon? This world has been around millennia.” Sammy moves a black checker piece forward one space.

Jah surveys the board, plotting his next move. “I know, but it just, it never feels like long enough.”

A pair of fighter jets blow by the rooftop game of checkers at mach speed. Debris scatters in the wake of the gust from the low flying aircraft, but the checkers board stays perfectly intact.

“I just, I never thought it would go…” Jah sighs. His deep brown eyes are tired, the bag under his eyes probably visible to the pilots on their flyby. “Quite like this.” Jah pushes a white piece forward with one finger.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

Sammy smacks his piece across the ancient wooden board, grinning as his swipes two of Jah’s pieces away. “Really? I kind of figured there’d be more blood.”

A bomb explodes in the distance. A mushroom cloud of smoke marking the detonation point, not more than 50 miles away.

“I mean, really,” Sammy says, “nuclear apocalypse? How 1980’s of them. Your go.”

Jah rests his chin on his knuckles, surveying the board without any real interest. “It’s not the how,” he says. “It’s the why.”

Sammy rocks back in his chair, smiling at the old man in front of him. “I see now. You thought this was going to be my fault, not yours.”

A flash of something like anger passes over Jah’s eyes, a feeling he hadn’t succumb to in centuries. Jah wondered if anger was the right word, maybe hurt. Sammy was right. The end of times had always been inevitable, but no amount of omnipresence prepared him for what his own believers were capable of with free will.

Clack.

Jah jumps over a black piece, landing at the other end of the board.

“King me.”

Sammy does a flourish with his hand, seemingly producing another white game piece out of thin air. He stacks the piece on top, making a king of Jah.

“I just don’t understand,” Jah says.

“It’s easy.” Sammy rolls a white checker piece across his knuckles as he speaks. “The people who go my way, the bit of your flock left unattended, they are only out for themselves. Truth is, you can only wreck so much in your own name.”

Sammy slides a piece forward. “But in God’s name? That’s a-whole-nother story. Men will do anything for you.”

Jah cringes in disgust. “I never asked this of them.”

“But they sure heard otherwise, didn’t they?”

“There weren’t listening!”

“Fanatics don’t actually listen to the words on the wind. They listen to the brimstone on the page. I seem to remember you being a bit of an overbearing father figure at one point, all rage and damnation. Some folks left the theater before the second act of that play. They never saw the love and forgiveness part.”

Jah watches as another jet passes over head. Below the screams of a million terrified people blend to a cacophony of horror, the soundtrack of the end of the world. Jah blinks. A single tear runs down his cheek.

“So this is really it, huh.” Jah slides a piece forward, not paying any attention to the placement.

“Stalemate,” Sammy says.

“Huh?”

Sammy raps his knuckles across the board, drawing Jah’s attention back to the game. “Stalemate.”

A tired laugh comes from Jah’s throat. “Sounds about right.”

Sammy turns to look out at the growing cloud in the distance, already beginning to blot out the afternoon sun. “Same rules apply.”

“I guess they do, Sammy. I guess they do.”

“You know,” Sammy says, “the French have a saying.”

“Of course they do.”

“To say goodbye, is to die a little.”

“So this is goodbye.”

Sammy slides his chair around, so he’s sitting next to Jah. He’ wraps his arm around the back of Jah’s chair. “This is goodbye.”

In the distance, a jet breaks through the clouds. The plane is pointed directly at the building.

“I can live with that,” Jah says.

“I’ve just got one question, before we go.”

“What’s that, Sammy boy?”

The plane passes overhead, a bay opening beneath to release a million tons worth of firepower on the city below.

“I was always your favorite, wasn’t I?”

Jah tilts his head up and smiles as the bomb strikes down.

That Old Movie with the Cat

Two bedroom, secluded lot with water/sewer included! Only $750 a month! 2 years references REQUIRED!

Gravel crunches under Betty’s damn-near worn smooth tires. I creak the old Wagoneer’s door open, wet heat from the August summer makes my t-shirt stick to my skin before I’m fully out of Betty. Evan throws her passenger door open, laughing at the sad sight of my new residence.

“Oh shit sis, talk about a downgrade.”

“Fuck you.” He’s right. Dammit.

Thick, old growth trees surround the single wide trailer. A small, very welcome breeze flows through the leaves, verdant and alive with youth. The leftover whisky lingering on my breath from my breakfast reminds me I’m barely either of those, living or young. The fiberglass stairs leading up to the aluminum door of my new abode sway in the wind. Not to worry though, the bright yellow pig statue placed downwind of the stairs steady them.

Evan and I walk down the stepping stone path, little glass marbles embedded within the concrete. Someone at some point tried to spruce up this Waylon-era steel tornado trap. A bug flies into the bug zapper hanging from the gutter next to the door. Calvin and I shared a five bedroom, ADT security monitored mini mansion for the last seven years. He said I’d never make it without him.

“Who will take care of you?” Calvin rubs the blood off my lip. Blood from his last blow. He tenderly brushes my sweat soaked hair behind my ear. Black dots fill my vision, all sensation hurts my body. “I love you, you know how much I love you Lara.” I jerk my head up and down, hoping to hell he takes that as agreeable submission.

Evan uses the keys the landlord gave me this morning to open the door, walks in. He’s lanky form barely fits in the 6.5 foot walled interior. He walks to the A/C units hanging out of the windows behind the baby shit mustard yellow sofa, the weight of the units making the window casings sag a little. A few knob turns later and the units shudder to life. The noise scares a field mouse out from it’s hiding position behind the sofa, its tiny body makes a beeline to the safety of the little crack between the ancient stove and particle board cabinets in the kitchen.

Evan and I don’t react, we don’t scream and jump on the sparse furniture littered around the living room/entrance/dinette area. We’ve lived in worse growing up.

“At least he can’t do jack shit to you here.” Evans’s little-brother snootiness has left his voice. He may only be a nineteen-year-old kid, but some scars run deep.

“He sure can’t,” I agree. Evan refuses to say Calvin’s name.

I sit my Michael Kors purse onto the dinette tabletop before easing into the booth, making a mental note to list it on Craigslist. An easy $40 could go a long way in buying some groceries. The vinyl seats squeak as Evan slides in across from me.

“Do you remember that old L.A. movie with the cat,” Evan asks, fiddling with strap of my purse and looking everywhere put into my eyes. Our dad liked to think of himself as Philip Marlowe cool cat type of man. I guess he kind of looked the part, dark hair and lanky build like Evan. He took the drinking bit a little too far though, never knowing when to stop until he was sitting in the county jail’s drunk tank and pissing himself. We only had the TV channels the rabbit ears picked up and a few old VHS’s that dad liked.

I knew the movie.

“What of it,” I pull my purse out of his grasp, not wanting him to ruin the resale value.

It was one of the very few things I had packed while Calvin was in the office today. My clothing, pictures and Kitchen Aid mixer were shoved into the back of the old Jeep I owned before Calvin ‘saved me from my background’ before our marriage. He never forgot to remind me of my roots. I left my black BMV sitting in the three-car garage of the house Calvin bought ‘for me.’ He was always proud of the fact his wife drove a new car. My white wedding gown and five karat diamond ring were left for him to find, sitting on the velour stool in the two hundred square foot closet attached to the master suite. I would have sold them too, but he’d probably say I stole them.

Evan throws his skinny arms wide, deliberately looking around at the brown water stained ceiling above us, shag carpet and linoleum covered floors, avocado green appliances in the kitchen.

“To say goodbye is to die a little” Dimples crease into his cheeks as Evan smiles down at me, he liked that movie almost as much as our dad did and was proud of himself for remembering that line.

“No one will ever love you the way I do.” I suck air into my lungs, the old bruises on my ribs sending streaks of pain through me.

“Maybe, but to be reborn you have to die first.”

A Time To Say Goodbye

It is well known that Sheriff Robert L Shirley is a man of few words. He rarely talks of his valorous service in the war and never brags of his time in the state penitentiary. No, he wasn't convicted of a crime. He was undercover to investigate a drug ring inside. In less than a week, the inmates were filing reports that he was an escape risk and a hardened criminal bent on getting meth. Of course, he had already discovered the ways and means of the drug ring.

We are grateful for a positive relationship with the Sheriff. His crime reports stick to the bare boned facts, but when asked he gives us the information we need to write the story. It still feels like pulling teeth, but that is why we converted the barber shop chair to a dentist chair. Not being one to waste time, he has convinced the barber to cut his hair during those interviews here.

Over time, we noticed, he almost never says goodbye. The only time I have heard those words leave his mouth was on the gallows before a murderer was dropped from the noose. I asked him about the absence of the common phrase during a recent visit and haircut.

"To say goodbye is to die a little." He replied. I needed more. He explained it went back to his Army days. It isn't so much a superstition, but takes on the feel of one. His Army time sent him to many lands and he has learned more one language. He pointed out the way other cultures say hello and goodbye, often offering "greetings of God," or a farewell of "Go with God." His favorite was "until we see each other again," though the Germans have a shortened version. Still, it didn't explain his avoidance of "goodbye."

He has told many fellow Soldiers goodbye. Over time, he began to reserve the phrase for those orders routinely given a comrade to move to a new duty station. The chances of serving together again were high, but not for several months or years. His job in the Army meant a small circle rotated through the same set of posts. Often, they knew each other, before the orders brought them back together, at Blanding or Baghdad. Those rotations prepared him for other goodbyes, but he always found an alternative to goodbye when going on patrols, or seeing his men off on one.

Goodbye has a finality to it he explained. He bid them a temporary absence, a speedy return, "until later," or "safe travels," and since they too knew those languages, most often, it wasn't in English. "When only the bodies came back," then he said his goodbyes. There was finality to it, and little time to dwell on it.

Soon, another Soldier would arrive to fill the hole left on the team, but the mission would go on. There was no time to focus on the one lost to a final post above, just as those routine orders to a new post had prepared him before. Whether on the battlefield or having wounds tended after, if focus shifted from the enemy to his front, or his next mission, it meant not just the permanent loss of the Soldier on the field, but the one off task focused on loss, instead of defeating the enemy.

Suddenly, it was clear why he had bid the man goodbye on those gallows so long ago, and why I haven't heard him bid any others the same. The next time you depart his company, bid him "safe travels," rather than push for a good bye.

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Angéle is French.

She was transferred to our Seattle office for twelve weeks as a liaison between our teams.

We are shivering on a bench in a gazebo. It is forty degrees and raining. White paint peels off the grey wood of the bannister. Figures on the path form as they approach, then are lost in the rain as they move away.

I kissed Angéle for the first time in the alley behind an Irish pub. We were both incredibly drunk.

That was two weeks ago.

She goes home today.

We sit in the gazebo and I try to memorize her profile. The perfect curve of her skull under long black hair, the slant of her smile, the shape of her nose; the swirls in her ears, the freckle on her lip.

“Je t’aime,” she says, breaking the silence like the the crack of an egg. Her voice is soft, barely audible. She thinks I still can’t understand the words she would whisper as she fell asleep in my arms.

She becomes self-conscious and pulls her collar around her face, giggling.

I look at my shoes. For a moment we are awkward as teenagers.

She would join us after work for drinks. At first we sat on opposite sides of the table. As the weeks progressed the number of people between us shrunk, until we were sitting side-by-side.

We left our friends at the bar for a five-minute smoke break.

We must have been out there an hour.

“That should’ve have happened,” she had said.

“I know.”

“I am married.”

“Me too.”

“Never again.”

I agreed.

Angéle would come over to the efficiency apartment I’d been renting since I moved out and cook us dinner. We would have some wine and watch an old movie, curled up against each other. We would make love.

“I wish it could be like this always,” I would say.

“I have a husband.”

“I know.”

“I made a vow.”

“And I have two children.”

“Je sais.”

I want to say goodbye, but it feels like dying. I want to say I love her too, but what would be the point?

We don’t speak. There is nothing left to say.

One night she asked me if I loved my wife.

“I don’t know,” I replied.

A pause.

“Do you love your husband?”

“Je ne sais pas.”

She stands and I start to say something stupid, but she presses a finger to my lips.

“Partir c’est mourir un peu,” she says looking into my eyes one last time. She kisses my forehead.

And then she is gone, another figure lost in the rain.

Title: Southern Comfort, part 2 (continuation from last week’s story submission)

Comments: Sure! Thanks for reading. I’m soooo sorry this is terribly long. And disjointed. It seemed to get worse the more I tried to fix it so I decided to release it in the wild as is haha.

“Mama, it wasn’t like that. You know how the gossips in this little bitty town are,” Ellen May cajoled. “When they go over a speed-bump they tell it like they drove straight over Mount Everest.”

“You can’t drive over Mount Everest.”

“Exactly my point.”

“So you didn’t bring a plate of deviled eggs with little red peppers to look like devil ears and pitchforks to George’s widow?”

“I absolutely did not do that to Veronica.” Ellen May counted to five. “Ain’t nobody got time for that Pinterest stuff, these were normal deviled eggs.”

“Ellen May Beaufort. She may be a spineless tramp who seduced your husband … and sorta killed him with sex … and aired their kinky dirty laundry … leaving him in a very undignified state to be mocked by the whole town…” Mama seemed to be having a hard time finding a point.

“But?”

“But it’s not right to rub it in. She’s grieving!” Mama’s train of thought was pulling into the station at full speed now. “Have some respect. Did you think that was some sort of poetic revenge? It was a cheap shot and you know it.”

“You’re right. It was a cheap shot. And now I feel bad about it, to be honest. I learned something that changes everything.”

“What? Did you try reading your Bible for once?”

“Har har. No, it’s something about George. But I don’t want to go into it right now.”

“Daughter, you are going to be the death of me.”

“Hush. You’d better not die. I don’t have any ham left to make more sandwiches.”

“Oh, are you bringing your ham sandwiches to the funeral? At least I haven’t completely failed in my raising you. I’ll see you later at the church.”

Mama was already off the line before Ellen May could take a breath. That was just mama’s way.

The long, bumpy road to Cedar Grove Baptist for George’s funeral did absolutely nothing to settle her nerves or the pit in her stomach. When she arrived, she quickly checked on her precious cargo: The 24 perfect blue-ribbon recipe Ham Tea Sandwiches had arrived unscathed despite the best efforts of a few surly gravel roads. Now, if only she could get through this funeral intact that would really be saying something.

If George had died a year ago she would have been standing in the family line, shaking 100 sweaty hands and accepting as many “sorry for your loss” sentiments. Today, the best she could hope for was a chance to finally and fully shut the door on this chapter of her life.

Once inside in the church, she carefully arranged her antique platter amongst the many other antique platters on the buffet table and made her way towards the pews.

“Ellen. May. Beaufort.”

She didn’t have to look to know who was calling out to her through gritted teeth.

“Hello, Mama.”

“Don’t you dare make a scene at this funeral today.”

“Exactly what kind of scene would I make? It’s down to the wire but I haven’t decided what to do -- I could use your fantastical ideas.” Only at a funeral could Ellen May get away with speaking to her mother in 14pt sarcasm font.

“Just get in this pew and shut your mouth.”

“Yes, get in the pew and scoot over to make room for me,” piped up Ellen May’s best friend Charlene.

After a bit of shuffling and small greetings they settled into silence to observe the proceedings.

“Closed casket, hmm.” Mama mused before cutting Ellen May with a sharp glance that clearly was meant to discourage Ellen May’s input on the subject.

Behind the closed casket they’d hung a minimalistic bit of typography art that would have looked at home in any hipster coffee shop if it weren’t for what was written there.

“‘To say goodbye is to die a little,’” Charlene read the sign aloud. “Well, he actually did die, so in this case isn’t saying goodbye to die a lot?”

Ellen May turned her laugh into a choking cough and whispered “allergies” in a strained voice when the woman in the next pew turned to give her a scathing look.

“Charlene, I will call your mama and tell her about your behavior if you don't behave, I swear. Let’s just get through this…” Mama chided. “Then let’s hit that buffet table back there. Make it count.”

“Mama!” Ellen May hissed, a little impressed.

Mama shushed her quickly but their noises were covered by the racket that was steadily building at the back of the church. This was not the din of well-meaning folks who seemed to have learned to whisper in an industrial factory -- this was an argument. And a big one.

The doors at the back of the church burst open and the sound of a well-fermented argument rolled over the pews. Every head turned as a woman came through the doors, pulling two small children along behind her. They were all dressed in black and clearly had been part of whatever altercation had happened outside those doors. George’s widow, Veronica, came stumbling through the door shortly after them, visibly intoxicated.

“Who’s that I wonder?” Mama whispered under her breath.

“That’s George’s widow, Veronica,” Charlene answered.

“I know her, I mean them,” gesturing to the new arrivals.

“That’s George’s widow Ashely … and his two children,” Ellen May said in an even voice as she stood up left the pew to go towards the subject of their discussion.

“WHAT?” Mama’s sharp voice echoed through the church.

“Ashley, I’m Ellen May. I’m glad you were able to make it.” She put out a hand and received a small, tentative handshake.

“Thank you for contacting me. I’m sure that wasn’t an easy thing to do, but we’re thankful.”

“Of course. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“It’s all of our losses, isn’t it? George’s wives...” Ashley made a sweeping gesture to include Ellen May and the hiccuping Veronica. “I didn’t know you or Veronica … existed. We thought George traveled a lot.”

Ellen May nodded. “I only learned about you yesterday..”

“We don’t even know if this is it yet, do we? George might have more women out there somewhere.”

“Time will tell,” Ellen May said evenly.

“I’m the only true wife. You’re just a-a-a harlot!” Veronica pointed at Ashley before sinking into the pew with more sobs. The last women standing watched in awe as Veronica pulled a flask out of a pocket in her dress. “Though we’re all harlots, I guess. Here. Have some whisky. It helps.”

Ellen May took the flask from Veronica’s shaky hands, downing a gulp. “To George.”

Ashley pointed the flask in a semi-salute to the casket. “To George.”