SELECTED SHORT WORKS

By FREDERICK EDWARD PITTS

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2009 Frederick Edward Pitts
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4490-0599-3

Contents

"EMBERS" A short paper about the life of my maternal Grandfather, Edward M. Robbins, who died at the age of 94 in his little tin house on the Blackwater river in Milton, Florida. Written in about 1960......................................................................................................................1"THE REUNION" A short story about the sweetness of young romance, it's loss, and the dream to recover it. Written in about 1983...............................................................................................................................................................................................4A BRIEF RETURN Simple, perhaps poetic little thoughts on childhood lost. Written in about 1960................................................................................................................................................................................................................................16TALE OF THE HUMMINGOPOTOMUS short-story, although a long one, and a comical approach to adult fantasy. Written in June, 1989..................................................................................................................................................................................................17SPECULATION A single philosophical verse on the meaning of life. About 1959...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................18"THE CONDITIONING" A short story of philosophical science fiction. Based on a dream I had when I attended the University of West Florida. It was turned in for an assignment in Creative Writing. Written in about 1971.......................................................................................................19SUCH FOOLISHNESS TO LIVE IN PAIN This is a Shakesperian sonnet which won considerable attention from the professor who demanded it of me. It was written to satisfy one of the requirements of an English Literature course taken during my sophomore year, Pensacola Junior College, approximately 1961......................29

Chapter One

"EMBERS" BY FREDERICK E. PITTS

The old man was alone. His white hair amber in the orange glow of burning oak, shadows dancing across the wrinkles of his face, he seemed almost young again. His gray, limpid eyes gazed into the threads of fire crawling like worms among the coals, but he was seeing only the past. The past was his present now. The future now was only a cold challange for the young. Now, for the old man, there was only remembering and waiting. As he rocked back and forth on the naked concrete floor with slow subtle movement, the methodical creaking of his wooden chair joined the tapping of his shoes to create a curious rhythm.

"Tap, creak, tap, creak, tap, creak", went the rhythm like the pendulum of a clock. It was not a cold night. He might have simply worn a wrap for his comfort, but the fire was his warmth and his company.

"Tap, creak, tap creak." Hypnotically away before the busy, popping fire, his mind shuttered back through time nearly ninety years to the place of his childhood home in Alabama. Burning logs in the fireplace were transformed into his father's barn, set ablaze by Sherman's troops while their rifles felled the livestock. Crops, in frantic wind chocked with smoke, burned to the dirt. And confused and frightened slaves suddenly found themselves free.

"Tap, creak, tap, creak, tap, creak", and time flickered forward. Once again he saw himself bouncing on the seat of the chuck wagon under a merciless sun, following a herd of horses across the endless plains of West Texas. Dusk was as welcome as a cool drink of spring water. The oncoming shadows dried sweaty shirts, and soothed tempers, and calmed restless herds, and gave pause to the discordant rhythms of men and horses and beef-cattle. But the men gathering at the open camp fire expected to be fed. They must be fed. Their harsh survival gave no favor to one who could not perform. No time could be spared for a man to heal from whatever it was that had struck him. No one could attend him. No one could care. A young man then, he had worked through his fever, slept wit his gun, survived by his will to live and was comforted only by the wail of a distant coyote and the strings of a lonely man's guitar.

"Tap, creak, tap creak", and time moved on.

A Comanche bow creaked softly, drawn by the tall sun-browned man. The arrow was away, the prey down, and pleased braves sent up a cheer from behind. This white man whom they had rescued from near death, whom they had taught their ways, had earned his place among them. He had liked it there. The two Indian children, a boy and a girl who had been at his side all the while, walked along behind as he rode out of their camp for the last time. He could still see their mute and tearless faces ... still feel what he had felt when he looked over his shoulder at the two tiny silhouettes standing together on the hill top.

"Tap, creak, tap, creak".

Suddenly shooting sparks in the fireplace came from the exhausts of mechanical haste. Carriages became sleek, cushioned, metallic things which needed no horses. Horses became internal combustion engines, birds became airplanes, buildings of wood became brick and concrete and steel which grew taller than the trees they replaced. Planets drew nearer, parts of the moon were put on display. The Earth nearer, parts of the moon were put on display. The Earth grew smaller, and people's lives became fabricated and devised. A simple man could no longer live form his land. One who had always survived by the strength of his character and the skill of his hands, must suddenly punch clocks and compete for green pieces of paper with which to feed his children and to clothe them and to educate them ... so that they too could punch clocks and compete.

"Tap, creak, tap ... creak ... tap...." Time rushed on for an old man who had become discarded, obsolete. Memories grew pointless and vague, as the plans and wastelands of the past slipped away becoming once again only a concrete floor. His wagon became a rocking chair. His bow and arrow became kindling. Sounds of the past were now lost in the hard rain which had come suddenly upon his tin roof. The fires of ten thousand nights were reduced to flickering shadows across a tired face. The "tap" of his shoes fell silent then, as his chair yielded a final sighing creak ... and an old man's head rested on his chest.

"THE REUNION" BY T. CAMMEL HILL

It was both strange and wonderful to be home. It had been a long time since my toes had felt the warm, soft sand of a nearly forgotten trail in the woods where breezes chuckled in dense mulberry leaves overhead and whispered among the brush. It had been too long since I had heard the chatter of mockingbirds, or the cawing of suspicious crows, or the shuffle in the leaves as a snake moved quickly into hiding.

It was too hot for such a long walk wearing a business suit and carrying a suitcase, but having no choice in the matter I wore my shoes slung over my shoulder tied together with their own strings, and carried my coat behind my neck hooked on a finger. Perhaps the telegram to my father had failed to reach him. Or perhaps he had drunk a little too much. Or maybe he just forgot. But I would survive the walk, for it was the same two miles I had walked a thousand times before.

My tie hung loosely around my neck seeming silly and out of place, as indeed it was, and my armpits were already lathered in sweat. My pants were rolled at the cuffs, displaying a layer of dust which had collected at my ankles. Certainly I was hot, sweaty and thirsty but those conditions were merely a welcoming to a man who had been away for such a long time. I could no longer hear the traffic on the highway behind me now, perhaps because none was there, or perhaps because the noise was swallowed in pine bark; however, noises of the creatures about me grew more distinct as they monitored my approach then made announcements to others farther down the path.

Soon my shortcut through the forest would intersect with the dirt road leading directly to the farm on which I was raised. It was the road my father would have traveled to fetch me, had he chosen to do so. When I stepped from the bus, I had half expected to see him tearing up to the highway in the noisy old pickup truck towing a funnel of dust behind, then skidding to a stop at the pavement to be engulfed in the cloud. I had seen myself throwing my things in the back, and talking loudly over the sound of the engine as we rode home. There we would sit at the wooden table, drink coffee laced with "shine", eat biscuits and bacon strips, talk about my life in the city and what I had missed on the farm, and finally we would recall how nice it would be if only my mother were still with us.

When I rounded the bend and could see the clearing ahead, my excitement was renewed with the notion that I might yet find my father speeding to meet me. My pace quickened as I heard the sounds of a distant vehicle. Tugging the heavy suitcase as quickly as it's weight would allow, I reached the roadside just in time to see the passage of an old Dodge car driven by a very old woman. She must have been Mrs. Lambert who lived down the road past our place ... but she was unrecognizably older now, her white hair barely visible above the dashboard and bony hands clinging fiercely to the wheel.

No other vehicle was to be seen in either direction. Indeed, only the dry yellow sand of the road stretched before me where it lead into a long curve then down into a shallow valley and disappeared amid the corn fields. And the old Gruddy place was just ahead.

Shiela Gruddy had lived there when I was young. Shiela and I had picked blackberries together until our fingers were purple from picking and our lips stained from eating. We had walked in the woods and picked violets together, and exchanged bouquets feeling strangely warm inside and unexplainably closer than any adults thought us to be. We had played entire afternoons in the hay loft of her father's barn, hidden from grown-ups, and there we listened to rain on the tin roof feeling stronger than life itself. And we had held one another when we were safely out of view between rows in the corn field.

But Shiela had been gone a long time. We were in the ninth grade when she died. She was riding along the pasture fence when a rattlesnake spooked her horse and it got away from her. She was thrown into a fence post and received a concussion, which later led to a clot, and she died suddenly just when everyone thought she was going to be alright. The coldest memories of my life were the sight of her coffin being lowered into the ground, and then two months later, the departure of her parents as they moved away leaving Shiela's house empty and alone.

My own spirit was never the same after that. My world, which had been filled with warmth and happiness and dreams, became suddenly haunted by an emptiness which persisted through high school and followed me through college as though somehow she was not gone at all but simply left behind. Finally when I moved away to begin my career, my separation from the past was complete and, until this very time, I had never returned.

Walking slowly up the grade, the rusted tin roof of Shiela's old house came into view under a canopy of magnolia branches. It suddenly bothered me seeing the old place. Maybe it was because it was so weathered, tattered, or perhaps it was because of the sudden resumption of memories from which I had struggled for so long to escape. Whatever it was, seeing it again sent an uncomfortable shiver up my spine.

The house was set far back in a yard which, oddly, had never been able to support a normal growth of grass. As always, stands of nut grass grew in quilted patches on the hard white soil, and sandspurs and briars formed a row of hazards along the rusted wire fence which enclosed it. The compacted path leading from the road to the house was still there, but it was now flanked on either side by a row of colored jars with rather desperate looking weeds growing in them. The old barn out back was still standing, but its open doors were propped in the dirt sagging from their hinges. An antique Massey=Ferguson tractor sat like a rusting monument amid a growth of weeds outside.

The house seemed lower to the ground on its brick supports than I remembered, and it seemed much smaller and closer to the road. The frame structure had suffered over the years, having lost the last hint of paint, and was now the color of Spanish moss. It seemed hauntingly strange now to recollect that there had once been sounds of children's laughter and the quick thumps of bare feet chasing across the yard.

Shiela's father, just after her death, sold the old place to an out of town investor, who had believed, according to his own subsequent boasting, that oil was under the property; however, after a few dry holes, he gave up. He eventually left the land in the hands of a real estate company, but they were unable to see it and they had trouble keeping it rented. Later it was inhabited by transient families installed there by the social services, then the maintenance stopped, and it was allowed to fall into ruin.

I should not have been disappointed in what I now saw, for my father had warned me what to expect. Standing there lost in time, my shirt thoroughly wet, my slippery fingers losing the grip of my suitcase, my senses enveloped in thick reminders of honeysuckle and wild grape and blackberry and mulberry and magnolia, I was momentarily hypnotized. Just then, however, a horsefly made a nuisance of itself circling my head and persistently dodging my attempts to swat him down. Finally, it lost interest and went away. Dropping my suitcase to the ground and throwing my coat across it, I paused at the edge of the yard and wiped my brow on my sleeve wondering if artesian water still flowed in the back yard after all these years. It was certainly worth a look.

The movement at the window startled me as I approached, for the last thing I expected was to find someone there. I walked heavily, loudly up the steps, knowing the noise would announce my arrival, and knocked on the frame at the open door. The porch was missing a plank here and there, and the window screens had rusted away leaving the panes bared to a diversity of crawling insects and spider's webs, and to the pecking of a confused bee flying out of control. The sounds of feet pulsating across the floor came to me like a slowly beating heart, then there appeared a figure in the shadows before me.

"Hello," I said to the dark form. "I was just walking by the hoped you might let me have a drink of water."

"Where you walking to?" spoke her soft voice.

"My home, actually. I've been away for a long time. I was born about a mile down the road from here."

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Copper. Bryan Copper. My father is Roscoe Copper." I waited then, expecting some indication that she knew the name, while the tenure of the long silence which followed was enhanced by the return of the horsefly.

"I wouldn't know him if I saw him," she finally replied. "But you can have water." She came out onto the porch and went down the steps ahead of me.

The girl was wearing tight shorts, remnants of an old pair of jeans, and a sleeveless, buttonless denim shirt tied under her breasts. Bare feet picking carefully but somehow gracefully over the stones, long legs brown from the sun, it was impossible not to study her. She was breathtaking.

"Are you new here?" I asked, trying not to be obvious.

"Not really," she replied, but volunteered nothing more. She led me to the back of the house where the original water pipe was still sticking out of the ground. There, from its top ran a stream of clear artesian water which spilled onto the circle of bricks ... bricks set by Mr. Gruddy himself years ago. The easy-mannered, soft spoken girl removed a tin dipper form its nail on a board driven into the dirt. She filled it and handed it to me.

"Best water in the world," I said gratefully. "It tastes exactly the same as it always did." Watching for some reaction in the girl's mysterious dark eyes, I saw something friendly, almost familiar about her. "I used to come here practically every day. To play with a friend."

"Long time ago?"

"Yes. Another life ago."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean I was just a kid then. We were the same age."

"What was his name?" The girl took a step backward to sit on the edge of the porch where it was shaded from the sun, and her toes played in the dirt as she watched me patiently.

"It was a she. And her name was Shiela."

The girl smiled then. "Oh."

I took a long drink of cold water, refilled the dipper and drank again, then tossed the remainder onto a patch of grass.

"How long have you been away?" the girl asked.

"Since school. More than ten years."

"That's a long time to stay away from home."

"I suppose so, but there's nothing here for me anymore."

"You mentioned your father."

"Yeah, my father's still here ... but he and I don't have very much in common anymore. Anyway he visits me in Atlanta sometimes."

"So why did you come back now?"

My conversation with the girl was coming with unusual ease, such that her questions were not offensive to me and my responses were uncharacteristically candid. Somehow it seemed pleasant to speak openly with this lovely stranger, without the customary need for dishonesty nor defensiveness.

"Searching for memories lost, I guess. And I sure have a lot of memories here." I turned to look at the old barn then, and studied it for a moment. "Do you mind if I look inside the barn?

She laughed at that, and shook her head. We walked together to the double doors and stood there searching the darkness inside. There on the door beside me, carved deeply into the wood was the simple engraving, "Bryan + Shiela." I had carved it there as a naive boy who believed in the endless sweetness of life and who had not yet had to face the stone coldness of reality. Touching those scars with my fingers, I was suddenly struck with an inexplicable faintness, perhaps as though I had stepped back in time for just a moment; then, just as suddenly, it was gone. The girl did not seem to notice.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from SELECTED SHORT WORKSby FREDERICK EDWARD PITTS Copyright © 2009 by Frederick Edward Pitts. Excerpted by permission.
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