Celia Hayes – The Accidental Texan

(While on a carriage excursion and chaperoning her young cousin Charlotte, who is being courted by Pres Deveraux, Minnie is involved in a dreadful carriage accident.)

She couldn’t breathe. All the air was sent from her lungs by the force of that fall over the side of Mr. Devereaux’s Tilbury gig. A constellation of exploding stars blotted out the sky overhead, and Minnie felt herself suspended between not being able to draw a breath and a white-hot agony exploding up to her shoulder and down to her hand, and from her head, which had struck the road with cruel force. Somewhere, a woman was crying out in alarm. She sounded very young, panicky – Minnie felt herself lifted, as limp and powerless as a rag doll in the grip of something. She couldn’t think, only felt – and what she felt was pain, pain and more pain.
“Miss Minnie! Wake up, open your eyes – speak to me!” a voice begged – a somehow familiar voice. A man. Authoritative … and for some curious reason, frantic in concern.
Minnie obeyed the command to open her eyes, although her sight was somewhat baffled by … oh, yes, the brim of her bonnet, now crushed and disarranged, and a flood of something sticky and warm on her face, wetting the collar of her dress. And this was the countenance of … oh, yes – she fished in her dis-jangled memory for a name. Mr. Devereaux, the handsome and raffish adventurer … presently courting the very young Charlotte Edmonds.
Yes. She was supposed to have been their watchful chaperone.
Minnie struggled to recall – yes, an aggravating and contrary man, a whirligig of opinions posed for nothing more than to harass and torment … but he … he was a man … and Minnie fished for knowledge and insight in her present torment.
A man who waged a war on a chessboard and was the most gallant when losing to a mere woman.
“She’s bleeding so awfully!” the younger voice exclaimed in horror – Charlotte; yes, that was Charlotte, daubing ineffectually at Minnie’s forehead with a dainty handkerchief smeared horribly red. Mr. Devereaux replied,
“Her head struck a large rock on the ground, I believe – and it is well known that such injuries always bleed out of all proportion … Miss Minnie, please speak to us!”
“Wha … h’ppened?” Minnie stumbled over the words. It hurt to speak.
“A runaway team, on the road!” Charlotte exclaimed. “The driver could not control them – he had fallen from the wagon, and the wagon struck Mr. Devereaux’s gig … they kept on going! And now the wheel is utterly smashed! What are we to do, Mr. Devereaux? What are we to do, since we are all this way from town? Surely, Cousin Minnie needs a doctor at once!”
“Miss Edmonds, calm yourself, I beg you.” Mr. Devereaux sounded as if he barely maintained control of his emotions, Minnie thought through the pain in her head and shooting up her arm like bolts of white-hot lightning. “Take your shawl and spread it out on the grass over there … good. Miss Minnie – forgive me if this causes you pain…”
“Hurts,” Minnie gasped, but with recovering her breath and voice. “My arm. The left. I … cannot move my fingers without pain … I fell with it under me…”
Mr. Devereaux’s strong fingers palpated Minnie’s arm, and the burst of white-hot lightning intensified, almost to the point of Minnie losing awareness entirely.
“I fear that one of the bones in your arm may be broken, my dear Miss Minnie!” he exclaimed in a whisper. “But I beg you – do not be stoic on my behalf. If you would cry out, or faint … I cannot bear that you would suffer in silence to spare my – our feelings. I would … Yes, Miss Edmonds – is Minnie’s shawl still in the gig? You must fetch it, girl – she must be wrapped closely, against the bodily cold that attends upon sudden injuries such as this. And find me … find me a straight stick, a length or branch sufficiently strong to construct a splint…”
Minnie felt a new warmth on her face as Charlotte bent over her – the girl was crying, and her tears splashed upon her own face. Useless! Minnie’s own intellect raged. Don’t be such a silly-billy, child! Do as Mr. Devereaux has asked, and be quick about it!
Now she felt herself to be lifted – Mr. Devereaux’s strong and steady arms underneath her shoulders and be knees both. He stood, lifting her from the dusty road as easily as she would herself have borne up a small child … He must be very strong, Minnie’s disjointed intellect observed, over the searing pain in her skull, and the white-hot agony in her arm.
Charlotte had gone away. Gone… gone somewhere. Minnie neither knew or cared. When she was aware again, and strictly enjoining her scattered thoughts to obey, she lay on her back, on something rather softer and more yielding than the hard and dusty road. Within her vision, Mr. Devereaux was tearing strips from a handkerchief – a large man’s handkerchief, of a rather more useful size and material than Charlotte’s wispy bit of lace. Or maybe it was a cloth napkin… Minnie’s thoughts went wandering again.
“Cold,” Minnie whispered, for she found herself shivering, in spite of the warmth of the day. Charlotte appeared, her face pale against the bright sky.
“I found your shawl, Cousin Minnie,” she said, sounding as if she were trying to be brave and not succeeding very well at it, as she tucked the folds of it around Minnie. “Mr. Devereaux has unhitched his horse from the gig – the poor thing was frightened to death, nearly – but unharmed. Which is good, as Mr. Devereaux paid a goodly sum for him. Once he has splinted your poor arm … we are going to walk back towards town, with him carrying you and I leading the horse. He says there should be someone along this road with a wagon, once we are closer…”
Minnie tried to thank the child – she still shivered, even when Mr. Devereaux removed his coat and added that to the shawl. He knelt next to her, with a small flask silver in his hand.
“Miss Minnie,” he ventured, with the gravest of expressions on his face. “I am prepared now to splint your arm, but I fear that it will briefly prove to be agonizing in the extreme … if you are not of committed temperance principles, might I persuade you to drink a little of his brandy? It’s for medicinal purposes, after all, and while it will not abolish pain entirely, it will take a little of the edge from it.”
Minnie brought herself to nod in acquiescence; he uncapped the flask and held it to her lips while she sipped. It tasted …warm, warm and fiery. The pain ebbed a little in her head, leaving her feeling a little as if she were floating, floating up into the sky like the little tufts of cotton-white cloud.
“I’m going to bind up your arm now,” Mr. Devereaux warned her. “So that the broken ends of bone will not grind against each other. Ready?”
Minnie nodded acknowledgment and set her teeth as Mr. Devereaux laid gentle fingers on her arm, murmuring instructions to young Charlotte.
Think of the clouds, she commanded herself. Look at the clouds, and think of nothing … no, think of the chess pieces, obedient and passive on the board. There was no pain. Chess pieces felt no pain. Breathe deep, look at the clouds and think of Mr. Devereaux’s marvelous chess pieces.
Oddly enough, this method of mental diversion proved effective; she did not banish the pain of a broken bone so much as she succeeded in setting it aside, in removing it from her immediate attention, although a sharp movement as Mr. Devereaux secured the last knot – perhaps that of the broken bone ends settling into place – nearly broke that adamantine concentration on the floating clouds overhead and figures of ivory. Upon the final knots being tied, securing her arm to a length of scrap wood – was it a broken bit from the Tilbury gig’s hood? She rather thought so – Mr. Devereaux cleared his throat.
“Are you ready, Miss Minnie? We should not have to walk very far before encountering help … this is not a well-traveled road, but in about half a mile, it runs into one…”
“You might take the horse,” Minnie suggested, faintly. “And leaving us, ride ahead and beg for assistance…”
“I will not think of abandoning you, or Miss Edmonds,” Mr. Devereaux insisted. “Not under any circumstances would I leave you alone. No – we return together, no matter how slowly may be our progress! Not another word, Miss Minnie; I will not hear any argument.”
Saying so, he stooped and lifted her into his arms once more, swathed in shawls and coat. Curiously, Minnie found this of considerable comfort. She hurt in every limb and sinew – but Mr. Devereaux would not abandon them all and take the horse. It felt as if she were part-floating, carried in tireless arms, until she floated away entirely into the sky and was aware of nothing more.

A cookbook, that is – one cookbook to rule them all. A good few years ago, what with the popularity of so many food and cooking websites, we got in the habit of printing out recipes that sounded good, and if they did turn out really, really good – putting them in sheet protectors in a three-ring binder for easy referral. That binder is the every-day reference for putting together an evening meal, only as time went on – the book got terribly random and unwieldy, with the recipes inserted in any old order. There were also pages of recipes that had once looked interesting, but not enough to actually cook them, or that we tried once and went ‘meh’ or alternate recipes for a dish that we had a recipe for that we liked better … and the pages themselves got sticky from use, or being splashed, the binder began falling apart … and I swear that one of the cats (now exiled to the Magnificent Cation) was in the habit of spraying on the back of the binder …so, time to cull, re-print, re-arrange, put into fresh page protectors and a brand-spanking-new binder and also to create a duplicate book for the day when the Daughter Unit has her own domestic establishment.

So that has been the current project, now that Luna City #8 is fairly launched. I started with going through and pulling out all the recipes for chicken. A few of them I had to just copy into a fresh document, most of them I retrieved from the various websites where they had originated, and copy-pasted into a new document. Doing this let me change the size of the font – look, it’s a bear to have to fetch my reading glasses to read a 8 or 9 point font, while reducing the recipe itself to a single page – because flipping over three pages to follow the same recipe is … not helpful, especially when half of it might be taken up with pretty pictures. (No, I don’t need the pictures. Ingredients and instructions are sufficient, thank you very much.)

After a weekend of working at this project, I have gotten all the way through the chicken recipes, and all of the beef/pork/lamb/venison recipes, which I think must have made up more than half of the original binder. The remaining sections – for vegetarian, fish, and miscellaneous side dishes and sauces should go much faster. And that – along with another chapter of the Civil War novel – was my project for the week.

Oh, still waiting to hear from the garage regarding my poor little car. Getting a replacement side light seems to be the main remaining challenge – it may very well have to come all the way from Japan by special order, although I would think that a little creative metal bending and plastic fabrication, such as Dad used to do in his garage for some of his automobile projects, would do the trick. It absolutely fries me that the idiot whose’ rotten driving caused the accident had no damage at all to his car – whereas I have now been without mine for a month and a half.

A longish and somewhat exhausting morning – this the day that my social security is paid into my bank account – (Yes, I collect it, having put into it for all those working years since the age of 16, and having no more patience for working full-time for other people) so we went up to New Braunfels for the semi-monthly purchase of meats and sausage at Granzins, then a little farther to the new super-HEB for assorted groceries, and then a loop around to Tractor Supply for flea spray, drops and collars for the critters. Who are all afflicted with the summertime plague of fleas, and the most seriously effective yet most reasonably-priced remedies are all available at Tractor Supply, including a carpet/surface spray which has a strong yet pleasing odor of citronella and only seems to be available at Tractor Supply. I wish that I drove a pickup truck – I wouldn’t feel like such a townie, pulling into the parking lot there. I might even pull on those vintage Ariat boots that I bought at a charity thrift shop a couple of years ago.

Anyway, loaded up at Granzins on chicken breasts, quarters, a small steak (which is my monthly treat) and some of their divine locally-made sausage, which makes a splendid main dish when rubbed with a little of Adams Reserve Steakhouse Rub, spritzed with a bit of olive oil and then baked until done. At the super-HEB, a 7 ½ pound pork tenderloin at a good price, to be chopped into roasts and boneless chops … and when returned home, an hour of time with the vacuum sealer, packaging it all up for the freezer – set with meat options for supper for the next month or maybe even longer. Look – we flirt with tasty vegan options at least one night a week, but that’s just for the variety of it. Otherwise, we are unashamed carnivores.

Part of the journey to New Braunfels involved a fitting … for a costume to be worn at a book-launch party in Seguin late next month by one of three – the author and my daughter Blondie to be the other two. I committed, in a moment of weakness and affectionate friendship for another author, to sew frontier ‘soiled dove’ outfits for the launch party bash. Easy enough – a white cotton shift, a flashy skirt with lace trim, and a fitted and laced bodice. The skirts and the shift are simple enough, the laced bodice must be fitted to each individual; the pattern is one I am not happy with, since I will have to add some extra lacing to the back of the bodice to ensure that the shoulder portion will not be slipping down … eh, the outfits will be marvelous when I have completed them.

Tuesday mid-day was likewise consumed by a necessary errand – to the cardiologist at BAMC for the yearly check-up. Yes, I seem to have developed a noticeable heart murmur in the last couple of years. Such was was noted when I was in my twenties, but was written off to a) pregnancy, b) a doctor doing research who apparently wanted to find such in healthy young adults for the purpose of generating a research report, and c) a bout of viral myocarditis discovered during a routine physical required when I was putting together an application for an officer commission – a condition which eventually healed on its’ own, although at the time it scared the bejesus out of my supervisors, my parents and the hospital administrators at the Misawa AB hospital. The comforting thing in the current iteration is that it doesn’t appear to have gotten any worse since being first observed. EKG – same as last year. Sound of it all – same as last year. Barely over the line for concern, according to the cardiologist. Hardly rating any concern, considering the appearances of other patients in the waiting area of the cardiology clinic – yeah, the full collection of canes, walkers, and wheel-chairs. Look – we all die of something. A dicky ticker over the next two or three decades appears to be my fate. I’m OK with that, considering some of the other alternatives.

Luna City Behind the 8 Ball is now available in Kindle, and on most other ebook formats! Enjoy! The print version will be available later on this month. (And if you really, really enjoy the Luna City series, please post a review somewhere, and tell all your friends!)

So – stuff has broken around here. My car is still waiting at the body shop for replacement parts, which since it is a somewhat aged vehicle, the manager must resort to eBay for the bits that were broken when I was side-swiped last month on my return from a regular ladies’ luncheon.  (Insert diatribe here describing the at-fault other driver, whose automobile was not even scratched, but whose wheelchair lift scraped off my bumper and shattered the sidelights. HE was at fault, as testified by the eyewitness, and deduced by the police officer who generated the appropriate report, and the insurance company investigator, but I am the one massively inconvenienced!)

Then my computer died. Another inconvenience, but since all the important stuff was saved to an external hard drive (and the really important professional stuff saved to the hard-drive and backed up by other means) it only meant a morning of migrating the various necessary programs, peripherals and bookmarks to the spare new computer, as well as signing in to the various subscriptions and installing printer drivers . I think I have had about five computers die on me to date, so I’ve gotten efficient at the process. This only wasted a single morning for useful work.

And then – the front door latch began to stick. The latch lever on the outside began to jam, and then the doorknob on the inside followed suit. Lubricated the latch – no luck. It might just as well have been solidly welded together, the last couple of times that we tried it. Good thing we did this from the inside. I entertained a brief nightmare about being stuck outside the house and having to break a window or something to get back inside. Last week, we unscrewed the bolts and removed the bolt mechanism entirely (OK, so I am handy and toweringly optimistic that way!) looking for something that might be broken. Couldn’t find anything significant. Put the outside door plate back on, covered the hole where the doorknob had been with tape, and ordered a replacement bolt mechanism from Amazon. I did not want to have to purchase a whole new door hardware assembly, at a cost of well-north of $100 even at the rock-bottom packages available at Home Depot or Lowe’s, so I took a guess at something that might very well work, for under $10. The latch assembly finally arrived last thing on Sunday, and it fit when I experimented with it on Monday. Door fixed in five minutes of fiddling with screwdriver. Did I mention that I am handy? I owe it all to the example of Dad, who had a full toolkit and would have a go, although some of his mechanical workarounds were eccentric.

And finally, my sewing machine needed attention. Like the doorknob and the computer – complete non-function. A serious inconvenience, since I had committed to doing saloon-girl costumes for an author friend and two of her buddies to wear at a book-launch event. (Hey, everyone is getting the idea to wear appropriate, or near-appropriate historical costume for this kind of thing.) My dear old Singer was whisked off to a local sewing-machine place which did repairs – much like the enterprise where I bought it, in South Ogden in the early 1990ies. (A rehab, and originally top-of-the-line machine), upon which I put many, many … many miles of stitching. Today, I got the word from the shop: motor is totally fried, and the company doesn’t provide a replacement anymore. So – sighed and said I would donate it to the shop for whatever gears and parts were still salvageable to the shop, in lieu of their charge for opening up the guts to it in the first place. (Their tech apparently plays with mechanical sewing machine when he burns out on trying to fix the computer-driven version). I was a bit saddened by this. Singers go on forever. I have a lovely little portable which came from Grannie Dodie, and when in college I bought a lovely antique machine from a fellow student which was as heavy as unvarnished sin and ran the quietest motor… I think my sister still has it. Anyway … sewing machine is morte. I have Blondie’s latest model Brother to do the costumes on, but there is a learning curve involved.

So – 50% effective in fixing stuff, or getting stuff fixed this week. And yours?