19. April 2024 · Comments Off on From “West Toward the Sunset” · Categories: Chapters From the Latest Book

Another snippet of the current W-I-P, wherein Sally and her little brother Jon have become lost on the prairie while gathering buffalo chips …

It was at that moment that I nearly jumped out of my own skin. A party of Indians appeared, as if out of the very air – not a sound, not a warning. At least a dozen of them, all men – on horses with unshod hoofs. They didn’t make a sound on the battered grass where a big wagon party had passed with a passel of loose cattle. The Indians were just suddenly there. Jon didn’t make a sound, for which I was grateful, but he pressed close against me, and I put my arm around his shoulders.

“Hello,” I said, although I was quite certain that they wouldn’t understand me – but it was polite to say, and Ma always insisted on good manners to strangers, even Red Indians.

And that was the curious part; the two who stood closest to us, after they all slid down from their ponies – were really red. Half of their faces, anyway; painted with red paint. They had also shaved their eyebrows and the hair on their heads nearly bald, save for a scalp-lock at the top. One had adorned the top of his head with a crest of stiff horsehair, dyed red and yellow. That one Indian man, who seemed like he was the leader, stepped closer to me and held up his hand. He said something that I couldn’t understand, guttural and harsh sounding, and waggled his fingers. I said ‘Hello,” again, as politely as I could.

I was glad that my voice didn’t shake. We were mortal afraid of Indians, then – especially being alone as Jon and I were. Although the Indians that we had seen in Independence, and those who ran the ferry over the Kansas River crossing hadn’t seemed that much off from the ordinary. They were just people, although considerably more browned from the sun and much more skimpily dressed than most.

And I saw that half of the Indian party were really boys – just about my age, and perhaps a bit younger – skinny, half-naked and … really not all that dangerous-looking. Were Jon and I supposed to be mortally afraid of boys hardly as old as I was? They seemed as curious about us as I would have been – that is, if Pa and Mr. Herlihy or Mr. Glennie had been with us. Indeed, one of the boys came up really close to us, as the older ones talked among themselves over our heads. That one boy reached out and touched Jon’s hair, feeling it with his fingers in one hand as he reached for the little wood-hilted knife hanging from the string that held the little flap of cloth around his middle to hide his male parts. It was as if that Indian boy were considering a bit of scalp-taking, and Jon flinched.

That was it, for me – no one had the right to scare my little brother out of his skin! I was so angry that I shoved that Indian boy so hard – so hard that he fell backwards on his behind.

“You let my brother alone!” I yelled at him, as fierce as if I were chasing off Aunt Rachael’s bully goose, who used to chase Jon and the other children something fierce. The boy glared at me, but he didn’t dare come any closer. He crawled away rapidly, before he got to his feet again. I was a bit taller than he was, and I must have been at least as strong. All the grown-up Indian men laughed. They said things to the boy that sounded as if they were making fun of him; he looked abashed and embarrassed. I put my arm around Jon and pulled him even closer to me.

“Don’t worry, Jon,” I whispered. “We’ll be all right. We’re close to camp, and they don’t really seem to want to hurt us.”

Jon’s lips wobbled. “Is Pa gonna come for us soon?”

“I hope so,” I whispered back. I had just about decided that I should chance our luck. The Indians didn’t seem all that inclined to take us prisoner – before or after scalping both of us. I thought I should just say goodbye and stride off confidently in the direction that I thought that our camp should be in.

After all – they hadn’t tried to hurt us or take us officially captive, yet. I reasoned that if they hadn’t done Jon or I any harm … maybe they would allow us to just go our way.

Whichever way that might be – which I didn’t know, but no one had to really know that, least of all these Indians.

Just as I had made up my mind to do this, I heard the jingling of harness, and the steady dull clip-clopping of shod hooves. The Indians – they all turned, alert in every bone. Half of them slid from their horses and vanished. It was like a trick from a traveling magician; one minute they were there, and the next they were gone, melted into the remains of tall grass, or shallow hollows in the ground.

“Well, well … what do we have here, Deacon?” drawled the man holding the reins of a wagon drawn by half a dozen mules, hitched two and two and two. He was a dark man, with grizzled hair, dressed almost like an Indian himself. He halted the mules and regarded us all – Jon and I, and the remaining visible Indians with great interest.

The other man stood up in the wagon, with a big black book clutched to his chest. He was older – I mean, I think they both were about the same age as Grandpa Reverend, but the dark man driving the wagon looked somehow fitter. Spry. He was dressed in a fringed leather hunting coat that looked somewhat like the Indians wore, and a long knife at his belt. The man called Deacon just looked old, with white hair down to his shoulders, like the picture of a prophet in the Old Testament – but he looked happy, not thunderously angry, as Grandpa Reverend always allowed that the prophets were, given that they were sent to chastise sinners.

“Children, Mr. Bayless – and the heathen that I was sent to redeem!” Deacon exclaimed, waving his free hand, and the other man – Mr. Bayless heaved a great sigh and seemed to roll his eyes in exasperation. “It is a heavenly sign, indeed! Tell them that I mean no harm! I have come to bring them the good news!” his eye finally fell upon Jon and I. “Children … are you of the Kettering party? I was told that such a company was on the trail, and we were desirous of joining such a godly company…”

Meanwhile, Mr. Bayless was making peculiar sweeping gestures with his hands, and venturing some words – words which the red-painted Indian with the horsehair crest to his scalp-lock and the others all appeared to understand – from the rapt manner in which they all paid mind. The Indian leader then responded with similar. Sign-talk, I think they called it. A simple manner to speak with another tribe if there was no language in common. It was a curious thing – that the Indian tribes in the wild lands beyond the Mississippi River had no single language between them, other than this signing-talk.

The other Indians – the ones who had hidden – emerged silently from wherever they had concealed themselves. They stood around, watching the signing-talk, listening to Mr. Bayless and the horse-hair-crested Indian leader, and talking among each other.

12. April 2024 · Comments Off on From – West Towards the Sunset, the new W-I-P · Categories: Chapters From the Latest Book

(This will be a young adult adventure, about a family going west on the California trail in 1846.)

I think it must have been two weeks after leaving the big company that Jon and I became lost on the prairie late one afternoon. We were gathering buffalo chips, while Pa and the other men made camp, and Ma and the other women sorted out what they were going to cook for supper, especially if the menfolk had managed to hunt some fresh meat and as soon as we brought more chips – and wood for the fire, assuming that we were able to find any.

Jon and I walked away from camp that afternoon, each of us with an empty pair of big tow sacks. We were with some of the others at first – the Herlihy boys and Shiboone. It was one of those days with a clear blue sky arching overhead, spotted only with little shreds of cloud, like bits of rag and clumps of lint torn or scraped from some larger fabric. The rolling prairie stretched out all around, almost completely featureless, save for the distant thread of the Platte River and the range of low bluffs that ringed it. The trail at this point meandered along parallel to the river, but not really close to it. It seemed hardly any time at all before we had wandered farther and farther from camp, deeper and deeper into the grasslands. I can’t recall why – only that the air seemed clear and fresh, the wind stirring the grass at the tops of the low rise, and I wanted to see what I could beyond. Then there was a good, well-dried spread of buffalo chips, and another higher hill that promised a better view, the grass waving in the light breeze as the sun slid father down in the west … and Jon suddenly looked around and said, tremulously,

“Sally … where’s the camp?”

We were well out of sight of the wagons, I realized with a horrible sinking feeling in my stomach. That feeling sank even farther when I realized that I didn’t know which direction to go. I could not hear – as hard as I listened – the clamor of our company setting up camp. The clank of harness chains, the men calling to each other, Boomer and the other dogs barking, the cattle lowing to each other as they grazed … nothing, only the whispering rustle of the wind in the tall grass.

But I knew better than to panic. I couldn’t let it show that I was nearly frightened to death, all alone on the wild and trackless prairie with my little brother.

“We have to sit down and think,” I said finally. “And not run as if we were being chased by wolves…”

“Are there wolves here, Sally?” Jon’s lips trembled. I was afraid that he was going to cry and I wished that I hadn’t mentioned wolves.

“There are, I think – but they only hunt at night … and it’s still daylight,” I said – and that was the first thing that gave me a notion. “See … there is the sun, in the west. If we keep it to our left as we walk… then we aren’t going in a circle. If we walk in a straight line, Jon, I think that we’ll come to the river. But before then, we should see the trail.”

“All right,” Jon answered. He already sounded reassured. I didn’t tell him that if we found the trail … we should have to examine it very carefully, to see if our party had passed over it, or were the tracks from one ahead of us? Would we walk to the west … or back along the tracks and hope to find our company, before it got dark. If night came … I didn’t want to think about that. I hoped that Pa, or Mr. Glennie and Oscar would be sent out on horseback to find us, but as Grandpa Reverend always said, ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ I couldn’t build a plan on hoping that someone would find us. I had gotten us lost – and it was up to me to get us un-lost. I hoped that we could find our camp before Ma would begin to fear that she would lose us the way that Aunt Rachael had lost our Cousin Matty. I took Jon’s hand, hoisted our two sacks of buffalo chips in my other hand, and we set out walking. I tried to set our path in as straight a way as was possible, hoping that every moment we would see the thread of smoke from our campfires rising into the air, and then the pale canvas wagon covers.

Straight as a rule, we walked, although it did take us a tiresome way, up the side of a low hill, and down the other. I didn’t see anything but more of the same rolling prairie grasses – but reassuringly, the line of bluffs, far and away on the far side of the river. So – at least, we were walking the right direction.

How had we managed to walk so far? It was as if everything had been swallowed up by the sheer vastness of it all. Jon and I walked up another rise, down the far side, up another … and then I was reassured of the value of my own good sense. We finally came upon the trampled tracks of a cattle herd, scored briefly here and there by the deep ruts of wagon wheels – a track that went towards the setting sun.

“Look here, Jon,” I said to my brother. “I think this must be the trail. Whether it was made by our company or another … I can’t really tell. Look around – and do you think we came this way, today?”

Jon frowned and shook his head. “It all looks the same to me, Sally. The same hills and grass. Nothing – all the same. It’s not like back in Ohio, with different trees, different hills.”

I sighed. “Let me think, Jon – about whether to go east or west. There might be a party ahead of us. I just can’t tell how old the marks are. I think … I hope that we have crossed our own track, and everyone is towards the west of us. I just don’t know…”

It was at that moment that I nearly jumped out of my own skin. A party of Indians appeared, as if out of the very air – not a sound, not a warning. At least a dozen of them, all men – on horses with unshod hoofs. They didn’t make a sound on the battered grass where a wagon party had passed. The Indians were just suddenly there.

A half a chapter from the latest work, the YA adventure now tentatively titled West Towards the Sunset.

As Ma predicted, the meeting was not done in twenty minutes. Ma looked impatiently toward the Clayton wagon, and the gathering of men around it, and said,

“Go fetch your father, Jon. I’m about to feed his share of dinner to Boomer.”

Jon went off at a run, as Ma finished filling Pa’s plate with cold biscuits and some slices of ham from our stores, and a scoop of apple crumble that Ma had made from dried apples the night before. I was hungry, impatient for sitting down and eating. But within a minute or two, Jon returned, breathless and tearful.

“Ma, Sally – come quick! They’re talking about shooting all the dogs!”

“Oh, my dear Lord!” Ma exclaimed. She flung off her apron; we had already lost any appetite for food, after hearing this.

“Pa wouldn’t let them shoot Boomer, would be?” Jon demanded tearfully and Ma replied,

“No more than he would let someone shoot one of you!” which seemed to comfort Jon at least a little, and he loved Boomer so very much. But I recollected how Major Clayton disliked dogs – and he was the captain of the company, and would Pa have any voice in a decision that the men of the wagon company had voted on?

It turned out that Pa had more voice than I had thought at first, as well as more respect among the men of the company generally. When Ma and Jon and I came running to where the men were at the meeting that Major Clayton had called – it had already gotten fractious and angry. Mr. Herlihy the Irish blacksmith was already shouting, so angry that his face was nearly as red as his hair and wiry beard, his powerful hands knotted into fists.

“God blast you for a treacherous, murdering salpeen!” He bellowed into Major Clayton’s face. “Murther me own dogs, you say! In hell you will be, before ye and your bully-boys harm a hair on the back of them!” And he went on, the Irish in him coming out so thick that we didn’t rightly understand more than one word in five.

“I will not stand for being addressed in this disrespectful manner!” Major Clayton shouted back, when Mr. Herlihy had run out of breath and before anyone else could get in a word by turning it to the thin side and wedging it in.

“Then you had better sit down for it!” Mr. Herlihy roared, and the shouting from all the men present burst out like the whistle from a steamboat. In the meantime, Mrs. Bishop, the poor invalid woman had her little spotted spaniel in her arms, hugged to her as she wept torrents and her husband had her arm around her, trying to talk reason and not being heard by anyone. We stood next to Mr. Steitler and Henry, at the edge of the crowd and Ma asked him what had happened to bring about all this ruckus.

“The lad’s dog,” Mr. Steitler replied. “Our commander of wagons has put it to a vote that all the dogs should be shot as a hazard to the company, since he blames the dog for panicking Herr Martindale’s cattle and breaking the wagon-tongue. All the dogs are a danger. Putting the wagon-train at the risk of harm, he says.”

“Surely the men have not approved this…” Ma replied, and Mr. Steitler shrugged.

“The majority voted so – that the dogs are a risk to all. I did not agree, but since I am a foreigner…”

This was appalling. We could not allow this, not Boomer. What would Pa do, now? Ma had said that Pa would as much countenance someone shooting Boomer as Jon or I … but this was the company, and we were out on the wagon trail, a week-long journey from where there was any settled law.

Meanwhile, Mr. Herlihy had taken a breath and resumed shouting at Major Clayton – and he had such a powerful bellow that he could be heard over the clamor.

“Before God, I swear I will leave the company and set off on me own, and what say ye to that, ye thrice-damned pismire! The de’il will make a ladder o’ your spine, afore ye murder my dogs!”

“You’ll be murdered yourself by the Indian savages before you get a day farther!” Major Clayton roared back, and suddenly, there was Pa, stepping up on the wheel of the Major’s wagon, where he could be seen above the heads of the men gathered. Pa put two fingers in his mouth and whistled – a shrill blast that cut through the babble, and such was Pa’s manner of resolute command, after the anger in Mr. Herlihy and the others, that there was a momentary silence – likely out of sheer surprise – into which Pa said, calmly,

“And I’ll take my own wagon and go with Herlihy, here. We voted to form a company, boys; we can vote to un-make it. Who’s with us, then?”

“I am!” That was Mr. Bishop, with his arm around his distraught wife, still weeping over the little spotted pup cradled in her arms. Mr. Bishop looked around, as if he was looking for support in his indignation. Three of the five German boys chorused,

“Ja! Ja – yes, we go mit Herr Kettering! Aber naturlich!” It seemed that they were indignant over their dog being blamed by the Major, in spite of doing all they could to help mend Mr. Martindale’s wagon to make up for it. Mr. Steitler also nodded, in vigorous agreement.

“Mir auch! We go, also mit Herr Kettering!”

At that, nearly a dozen other men called out their own dissent with Major Clayton’s captaincy; some had dogs, others had not, but I guess had been unhappy with how the Major exempted himself and his cronies from taking a turn at guard at night and for traveling on Sunday, the Lord’s Day. The Major looked fit to be tied, almost white with rage at being defied.

“Then leave and be damned to you all!” He shouted – and some of those men and boys who had decided to break from his company jeered scornfully, calling him a tyrannical old windbag and other names that at the time I did not know the meaning of.

Pa, still perched above the crowd, put two fingers in his mouth and whistled again for attention.

“Lads – we’ll move on in ten minutes, all of those who want to leave with me.” He jumped down, and extended his hand to the Major, who refused it and glared. “No hard feelings, sir? We just can’t countenance your latest order. Best that we go our own way, then.”

Major Clayton looked as if he would spit on Pa. “You be damned, sir! You and all the rest of you vile, selfish ingrates!”

“I can not say that it has been a pure pleasure traveling with you,” Pa replied. He seemed unruffled, although Mr. Herlihy glowered, scowling as if he would like to strangle Major Clayton with his bare hands, once Major Clayton had taken a moment and untangled the real intent of what Pa had told him. “Good day to you, sir.” Pa looked past the Major, at the remaining crowd. “Any of the rest of you are welcome to join us and form a new company. Ten minutes, boys. We’ll roll out in ten minutes.”

And that was it – the breaking up of the company. There were eleven wagons following ours and the Herlihy’s two, away from that nooning place. Mr. Martindale and his family followed a little later, rejoining us that evening, at the place where Pa and Mr. Steitler decided to camp, as the sun slid down into the west that evening.

25. March 2024 · Comments Off on Easter in Spain · Categories: Memoir

This is the painting that I have put in the corner of the den – a sort of private place in my house, as most people without knowledge of world religious customs and knowing nothing about the cultural traditions of Spain would likely take one look at it and begin melting down into puddles of deeply offended goo. I bought it from the artist herself, along with two other paintings. She had a table next to mine at an NCO Wives’ Club Christmas bazaar at Zaragoza AB sometime in the late 1980s. I was selling bespoke Cabbage Patch doll clothes and making a mint; she had her lovely folk-art paintings and wasn’t selling a single one, and I felt so sorry for her – as well as loving the simple Grandma Moses-style vibe  – that I bought three of them. (One – of a street market in Spain – I gave to my brother as a wedding present, as I was skint at the time. I would have asked for it back when he and that wife divorced, but one of his subsequent girlfriends loved it, and took it with her when they broke up. Damn. But I still have two – this one, and a small one of boats drawn up on the beach.)

No, it is not a KKK march – it is, in fact, a tradition far, far older and from another country – Spain, from which the KKK boosted the whole robes, pointed headgear and masks concept wholesale and likely without attribution. My painting depicts a procession of a religious association, a confraternity – a traditional charitable organization with deeply religious overtones. The confraternities in Seville are the most well-known; most famous for their spectacular processions, carrying images of the Passion, the saints, the Virgin and Christ through the streets during Holy Week. But Zaragoza and other cities also have confraternities which would parade the streets of the city with ritual, drums and trumpets during Easter Week. One year, one of the Zaragoza confraternities paraded on the major avenue next to the San Lamberto urbanization where we lived at the time. It may have been a one-off, for I never saw or heard of them any other time, and the avenue was a major and heavily-traveled artery to Logrono, the next big town to the north. The men in their heavy, ornate robes and masks, marching in the twilight, with the religious image carried on the shoulders on a big float, and the sound of the drums echoing off the tall apartment block at the edge of San Lamberto … It was deeply spooky; I believe there were torches involved, along with the drums and possibly trumpets. Feeling nostalgic this last weekend, I called up google street view. San Lamberto seems to have changed little, although the duplex that we lived in has been added onto and expanded. But I can’t retrace the back road that was a short-cut to the base and to the commercial air terminal from San Lamberto – there is now an enormous highway interchange laid out over top of that little road. But the confraternities in Zaragoza are still active, of course – I did find some Youtube videos of the marches, with the drummers and all. Nice to know that some things don’t change at all.

28. February 2024 · Comments Off on In the Garden – Spring 2024 · Categories: Domestic

So I am going to try again in the garden this year, since I have the greenhouse that I purchased and assembled last year – too late in the year to do vegetable starts from seeds in a sheltered environment, but this year in the nick of time. The last predicted freeze in this part of Texas is for mid-March, and I have a whole specialty scrapbook of seed packets assembled from various sources. The last couple of winters – cold, frozen and miserable – and summers (boiling hot and dry) have done a number on a lot of gardens. I think my back-yard Santa Rosa plum is entirely dead, and so are all three of the potted citrus plants. But this year, the local HEB chain has favored us with a nice assortment of roots for things like rhubarb, potatoes and onion, so I am having a go at the first two. I may go back and try a crop of onions – the trouble is that onions are so very inexpensive that it’s hardly worth the hassle of making garden space for them.

Rhubarb, on the other hand … I love fresh green beans and peas, garden cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers of various sorts. And I’ve had excellent luck getting them started from seed, as well as herbs of every description. Nothing beats having fresh basil, thyme, sage, parsley, chives, and cilantro instantly on hand. When I was just newly established in San Antonio, I regularly went to the yearly Herb Festival, when it was set up at a local park pavilion and bought a small potted bay tree one year. That sprig in a small pot graduated to larger and larger pots, until I finally planted it in the ground out in the front yard – to my recollection, I have not bought dried bay leaves in years. Neither, I don’t believe, have any of my neighbors. The tree itself got to be thirty feet tall, until nipped by Snowmagedden – but it bounced back and now is about fifteen feet and densely packed with leaves. The birds love it, for the shelter thus provided. As for other herbs, I once had a parsley plant establish itself so firmly that the stem became the size of a small pinecone. The pot of chives comes back, year after year – maybe the thyme will. If not, I have seeds for it, and for sage.

On the other hand, depressingly – growing zucchini escapes me entirely. Which is exasperating, because that is one of those vegetable garden plants which is legendarily supposed to over-produce, to the point of stories of gardeners abandoning sacks of zucchini bounty on the doorsteps of strangers, ringing the bell and running away. But I am going to try it anyway. Costco had super-big bags of raised-bed/container garden soil at a very reasonable price, and I bought two of them. I’d have been out planting zucchini, cabbage and squash seeds today, but I had to spend some time securing and closing up a gap in a corner of the Amazing Catio, where a large racoon was getting in and raiding the cat’s food dispenser – a gap about six inches wide near the eaves, where the bugger was getting in, and sending Benji the dog absolutely spastic in the middle of the night. Sigh. Renovation of the house three doors down has been going on for nearly a week, now, and a whole colony of racoons and other rodents were evicted from those premises – and obviously, they are now looking for alternate digs.

And there are no citrus plants anywhere but Costco, and those are big ones, at a price that I am reluctant to pay, especially as none of them were lemons or limes, which is what I really, really want, in order to replace the ones killed by winter. Sigh – perhaps a visit to a local nursery – but they might be even more expensive there. I swear that Snowmagedden a couple of years ago must have demolished the plant nursery business the length and breadth of South Texas, and prices for potted plants almost immediately doubled – well ahead of the price of everything else doubling as well.