I'm not sure if anyone reads this blog or not, and I haven't posted anything in a long time. But I came up with an idea of what I might post. I recently took a writing workshop and started a short story. I decided I can post sections of it here to see if anyone has any thoughts...if anyone is reading. So if you are, and have some thoughts, please comment.
Here's the first installment (it's a rough draft):
The house had finally quieted down, and the smell of bread and chicken were waning. The ladies from church had finished all the dishes and put away what they could. They were kind as could be, but always squawking—like the hens in the coop when you go to gather eggs. Noisy, but not loud; always busy, without getting too much accomplished. But this was their duty to their Christian brothers and sisters. So Lew left them to their business, but it was a welcome calm that followed their departure. His brother had walked the kids back over to Aunt Tenn’s house. There’d been a lot of death in those kids’ lives—first their mom to TB in ‘27, now less than a year later, their grandfather. He would have to keep an eye on them. His mother was upstairs resting, so it was one of those rare moments that he had to himself in his own house.
Lew didn’t want to disturb her, but he needed to be busy. That’d been his job for years now; keep busy taking care of everyone else. If he kept busy, he didn’t think too much. It was easier if he didn’t think about it. But that was always the danger when things got too quiet.
Maybe this was a good time to put away some of his father’s things. It was a delicate balance. He didn’t want to rip away every trace, but his mother shouldn’t be bombarded with sad memories. As he stood in the front hall and looked into the parlor, he felt the lingering heat of the day, his body lightly glazed in sweat. The whole house had that sticky heaviness that comes in those late-summer, Arkansas days. The curtains rustled gently at the open windows, with an evening breeze that helped break the heat of the day a bit. But real relief wouldn’t come until he’d had a cool bath and was able to catch the late night breeze in his bedroom upstairs.
The parlor had that comfortably cluttered look that a well-lived-in house should have. He sometimes couldn’t believe he’d been here for 8 years already. So many things had accumulated in that time. Where to start? As he looked around, he couldn’t help but think of how the house would have been so different if his parents hadn’t come to live with him as they got too old to live by themselves. What if he had gotten to live here with WJ? How different would the house have been if that had been the case? All the tumbling thoughts of what might, but couldn’t, have been got stirred up, and, alone in his house, he let the tears flow.
