Beem Weeks blog
Beem Weeks
Greetings, fellow indie writers and readers! I am Beem Weeks, author of the historical fiction/coming-of-age novel JAZZ BABY and SLIVERS OF LIFE: A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES. My goal in life is to promote the indie movement to the world. I can be found on Twitter @VoiceOfIndie and @BeemWeeks. I enjoy indie films, loud music, and a well told story. Lansing, Michigan, USA.
Jazz Baby
Slivers Of Life
The Secret Collector: Chapter One Preview
/BeemWeeks • sample chapter • 30/08/2013 19:30:54 • link •
THIS IS CHAPTER ONE FROM MY SECOND NOVEL--ANOTHER HISTORICAL FICTION, SET IN 1910 ALABAMA. THIS BOOK IS NOT FINISHED. WHILE THIS CHAPTER IS LONGER THAN MOST POSTINGS HERE ON KOOBUG, IT IS EXCLUSIVE TO KOOBUG.
There might have been a dream. Or maybe not. Violet Glass really couldn’t recall. Probably, though. A dream concerning some stupid boy—or maybe even a girl. It sometimes happens that way.
Whatever.
Can’t control what creeps through your sleep.
Her body stirred awake as the blackest part of night splashed its inky resolve across Alabama. She’d gone warm down there, where her legs meet; that slippery sort of warmth common to a girl working on yearnings.
Violet stared at the ceiling, tried like the dickens to recollect a face, perhaps a voice, anything belonging to the one responsible for this latest agitation.
Nothing came through, though.
Even dead of night did little to lay low that sticky heat. Old-timers in town swore oaths affirming this, the summer of 1910, to be more oppressive than any other summer since before the south fell against Yankee aggression.
Violet eased from her bed; the soles of her feet found cool the touch of creaking floorboards.
There’d be nobody to catch her, not at this hour.
Nobody but Ruth.
And Ruthie Sender, she’d never tell a living soul.
Violet scampered through the kitchen, flung her blue-eyed gaze against the darkened parlor. Only shadows and silence bore witness to her planned escape, a girl’s nightly traipsing.
The back door gave up with only minor provocation.
Dripping moonlight splashed the yard with a silvery sheen; promising secrets lingered among the gathered glow.
Violet’s fingers worked loose that length of red yarn keeping her hair tied up off her shoulders. A quick shake of her head sent the blond mess spilling long and free, reaching near to the middle of her back.
Around the rear of the house she skulked, careful to hold close to shadows, keep hidden from ones who’d blab, those others who’d hold it over her head for gain. She despised their ideas of gain, those stupid boys—always expecting a gawk at that thing that makes a girl a girl.
Back behind the barn she found her crouching spot, fell low to the ground, fixed sight on the direction of Ruthie Sender’s place a few hundred yards away. Traipsing just didn’t hold its fun without Ruthie tagging along.
Violet rushed her granddad’s cotton field without that hesitation she’d known only a summer earlier. Escape came easier since Seef Canu moved north, took all those voodoo spooks with him.
Shadows stirred and wiggled in the distance. Figures formed, made shapes around a low-burning fire. Even at the center of all that cotton Violet could pick out words of songs sung by the coloreds, those kin to Seef Canu, kin to Ruthie Sender.
They sang about standing on wood, an old slave’s saying, drawing up recollections of a time when they themselves belonged to someone else.
Belonged to Violet’s kin.
Wood-smoke fogged the night air, choked off regiments of mosquitoes on a march for blood.
Violet hunched low, skirted the yard where those coloreds took up with their fire and song and whiskey. Friendly sorts, all of them. Always first with a kind word, an interest in Violet’s family, how the girl’s folks were getting on—even if that interest leaned toward pretend. It’s Violet’s great-granddad who’d once owned all those souls that gave creation to the very ones now singing and drinking.
She broke through shadows collected beneath an ancient willow tree, found respite behind the Sender family’s privy, and waited for the girl to either show or not show.
Over near the fire, boys spoke of girls and the things they’d do to this one or that—should agreement ever find mutual commonality. Nasty intentions, these notions under discussion; ideas conjured mostly in the male mind—though Violet, she’d configured a few of her own, those things that traipsed through her sleep.
But Violet, she’d never speak openly of such notions.
Except maybe to tell only Ruthie Sender.
She spied the colored girl’s legs first, dangling free from the pantry window, bare feet scrabbling at the air, searching for a solid thing to set down upon. The thud of her sudden drop wouldn’t wake anybody—not with those other ones gathered around their fire, singing old slave sayings.
A dingy gray nightshirt clung to Ruthie’s skinny body; her dark-eyed gaze landed out where she knew to find Violet. If the girl offered a smile, it went lost; couldn’t see her face from this distance.
“Go out back of Tussel’s, maybe?” Ruthie asked, finding space in Violet’s shadow.
“Catch a strap across my butt, I get found by a saloon again,” Violet promised. “Daddy won’t say a thing more than once.”
Ruthie Sender said, “Chicken liver.”
Violet backed down a notch, weighed her options. “Who’s gonna be there?” she asked, meeting the colored girl’s taunt head on.
“Fella name of Ferdinand something-or-nother. Plays piano. Most folks calls him Jelly Roll.”
“How come they call him that?”
Ruthie flinched a shrug. “Maybe that’s all he eats.” She tossed a nod toward those boys out by the fire. “They won’t share us no whiskey.”
“Won’t share up to Tussel’s, neither—unless you got some money.”
Ruthie leaned in closer, tried to warm up an idea. “Might could get a drink, you let ’em see you—just like that time before.”
“Not doing that again,” Violet swore. She’d already laid rules against any such future notions after their last trip out that way. “Besides,” she said, “it’s your turn to give ’em a look.”
“They don’t wanna see me,” Ruth assured her. “They wanna see all that white skin you got; that yellow hair; them blue eyes.”
The burn of hot scarlet stung Violet’s cheeks. That last time came to mind, all those colored boys gawking, saying their piece, telling all manner of nasty doings they’d manage, should Violet submit permission.
She never did, though; only let them have a look, is all.
Violet’s spine jerked upright. She said, “Ain’t whiskey enough to get me to do that again!”
Ruthie dropped a knowing nod but still managed a quiet “Chicken liver.”
Violet said, “Just the way things are.”
* * *
They were born the same night, Violet Glass and Ruthie Sender, some fifteen springs ago. Only a few measly hours managed to get wedged in between them, separating the girls from being twins of a sort.
Close enough, though.
Ruthie came first—if her folks were to be believed.
Violet’s granddad, he didn’t trust the words of any people who’d once been under his people’s ownership. The man held notions of his own concerning the subject of birth, and how being first somehow conferred a right of nobility on that particular family.
There were others to come along before—both girls answered to older siblings taking rank over them. But no two of those earlier born ever came alive during the same month—forget about the same day.
Ruthie cut a slow move toward the woods. “Come on,” she said, flinging the words over her shoulders.
“Where are we going?” Violet asked, following after her best friend.
“Lena Canu’s place,” said Ruthie.
“How come?”
“She got stuff to drink, mostly.”
Droplets of sweat ran relays along Violet’s spine, leaving the girl’s skin wet and clammy. “Awful hot night, it is.”
“She a conjure woman,” Ruthie announced, laying her tone low, protected. “—Lena Canu, I mean.”
Midnight’s high ceiling lent sparse light to the path splitting the two properties. Violet’s kin, they’d once owned the whole lot. Her great-granddad, he’s the one took notion to make things right, gave half his land to the slaves he turned loose after the war.
Ruthie’s kin, mostly.
Senders and Canus.
Couldn’t ever really make a thing like that right, though.
A small cabin took a squat in the brush; the orange glow of a lamp shined in its windows. Used to be a slave’s shack, this one here.
“What’s she gonna conjure?” Violet asked, tasting the slight tang of fear, a thing that comes from uncertainty.
Ruthie halted just shy of that darkened door. She whispered, “Ain’t gotta conjure nothin’.” Moonlight dripped on the colored girl’s face, showed it round and smooth, lips full and perfect, eyes alive with life and mischief. “Gonna see does she got any drink, is all.”
Violet leaned closer, her bare arms feeling the other girl’s heat. She asked, “Can she read fortunes?”
“Like readin’ a book.”
“How much it cost?”
“Don’t matter; you don’t got no money no how.”
That dark door yawned wide; Lea Canu peered into the night. “Tell your fortune,” she said, “won’t cost you nothin’, white girl.”
Ruthie gave a nudge, guided Violet up the walk and into the shack.
A table and four chairs congregated at the center of the bare space. Kerosene fed a flame dancing like the devil atop a glass lamp. A pallet in a corner threw its lot in with the scene.
Lena Canu tossed a nod toward her rickety table. “Have a seat now, both of you,” she ordered.
Violet sat first; Ruthie found perch directly across from her friend. Beneath the table naked feet bumped and rubbed, each girl assuring the other this would be a good turn.
“You one of them Glass girls, ain’t you?” Lena asked, dropping on a chair of her own.
Violet said, “Yes, ma’am.”
Lena waved her off. “Ain’t no ma’am; just call me by my name, is all.”
“Rose, she’s the oldest,” said Violet, giving the lay of her siblings. “She got married last summer, moved over to Montgomery. Then comes Lily. Then comes me.”
“You the one runs wild.” It came as a pronouncement rather than a question.
Ruthie flung a mess of words into the mixture, tried to steer talk back toward their only purpose in being there. “You got any liquor?”
Lena’s head wobbled a nod though the woman herself remained seated, dark eyes fixed on Violet. “Got me a little curiosity,” she said.
Determining intent came next to difficult; Violet couldn’t quite read the colored woman.
“All that yellow hair on your head,” Lena began, “do it mean it’s yellow down there, too?”
Violet studied the woman’s face as if answers lurked beneath her skin. A common curiosity, really—though it’s mostly boys doing the asking.
“It ain’t,” Violet swore, fighting the urge to lift her nightshirt and lay the matter to rest.
“Well, then,” went Lena, “what color do it be?”
Ruthie Sender, all full of mischief, chimed in like the question belonged only to her. “Color of bees honey, she is!”
Lena, she attached her narrow gaze to the tattling girl, asked, “How you know what she look like down there?”
Cousins, they were, Ruthie and Lena—though more than a full decade fell between the two. And being on the younger end of their shared kinship did little to dull Ruthie’s natural edge.
“Been swimming with her, is all,” Ruthie explained, holding the older woman’s stare.
Lena’s eyes darted from Ruthie to Violet, back and forth a time or two, as if she might know more than she’d ever let on.
A clear pint bottle came into the moment; its bitter amber liquid promised that sort of burn a person won’t mind.
It wasn’t the taste Violet and Ruthie chased after.
Each girl drew off a long pull, let the heat mingle with their blood. Neither girl had ever gone full-on drunk; only a swig or two is all they ever dared.
“Don’t drink it all,” said Lena, conjuring woman. She spread a pile of chicken bones over the table and commenced to ciphering future happenings a girl might need to know.
Things about boys and marriage didn’t come up. Neither did mention of babies and such. All Violet heard portended mainly to trouble.
“Quit you runnin’ wild,” Lena proclaimed, “you be just fine.” She took up her narrow gaze again, aimed to settle matters. “But you keep on doin’ what you doin’, things gonna go bad.”
The suddenness of gunfire echoed through the sticky air. Three quick shots chased a lazy fourth that staggered along a moment later.
Lena jumped first, ran for the front door. Ruthie, little Miss Nosy, followed after, peering into the dark, no doubt expecting to put a face to the one pulling that trigger.
Violet remained stuck to her chair, attentions tugging between the matter outside and those sayings left to her by that conjuring woman.
She spoke up, asked, “What am I doing that’s gonna make things go bad?”
But Lena had other notions to attend to. “Sounds like those shots came from over to your place,” she said to Ruthie.
Ruthie tipped a nod, said, “Could be they gettin’ liquored up too much, huh?”
‘Might could,” Lena answered.
It happens that way, boys and their whiskey, wandering along crooked paths of discontent, blabbing things not really meant for harm—just boasting, is all.
But a boast to a drunken fella is as good as a punch on his nose.
“Gonna go see,” said Ruthie, pushing past the threshold, pressing on toward home.
Violet held her ground, let the colored girl disappear into the night. Attentions ceased their tugging, settled on the one making proclamations concerning bad manners and trouble to come.
Lena came loose of her thoughts, brought one to words, said, “Go on home now, white girl; nighttime belongs to devils.”
Violet wouldn’t hear of it. “Ain’t scared of no devils,” she assured the woman. “Besides, you ain’t finished reading those bones.”
“Read all I care to tonight. If they’s Klan done that shootin’, don’t need me no yellow-haired girl found here.”
“But you said—”
“They’s common blood round here, is all.” Lena Canu stepped clear of the door, dropped a nod toward the night. “ Now go on and get—else they come shoot up my place.”
* * *
Clouds laid a brief smudge against the moon, stripped its shine right off the night, left Violet to wonder if it really might be footsteps stumbling along behind her, following that same narrow path toward home.
“Fool boys,” she muttered, tossing nervous glances over either shoulder.
Footfalls fell heavy—like boots hammering at the earth; an eager thing born of desperation.
The Klan didn’t bother much out there—at least not where Senders and Canus were to be concerned. Seef Canu, he’d drawn ire a time or two, usually for not holding his tongue when being talked down to by some white man. But nothing ever came to guns going off or crosses getting set afire.
Even so, Seef had got on to Chicago, maybe.
Violet bolted left, squatted low behind a pile of brush that had the makings of a snake shelter. She held her breath and waited for the one back of her to pass on by.
A piece of tree limb came to her hand, a long heavy thing, able to put a soul right should he come at her wrong.
That smudged moon went shiny again, dripped light across the path, showed off the shape of a man loping toward home. Tall and thin, this one; he moved quick with purpose.
Going the wrong way, though, Violet thought, waiting for the man to pass.
She gained her feet, charged his retreat, swung that heavy piece of wood and caught the interloper straight between his shoulders.
“Jay-sus!” the man hollered, hitting the ground like a sack of potatoes.
“This is private property!” Violet informed him, fixing up for a second swing.
The fella pulled up on his knees, tried to reach for that spot on his back that no doubt had gone swollen. He said, “It’s private property only ’cause I say so.”
Foolishness seeped into the girl. She squinted against the dark, drew recollections of his face. “Granddad?” she said, hoping her recollections proved wrong.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” he asked, giving his legs a try.
“Came out to use the privy,” she fibbed, “heard gunshots, came to see, is all.”
“Liar!” the old man spat. “You been gallivanting again, ain’t you?” He moved closer to the girl, sized her up, made a big fuss over her running around in only a nightshirt and nothing else. “Your daddy’s gonna hit ya where the good Lord split ya—then he’s gonna move you to your sister’s room upstairs. Won’t be no sneaking out from there.”
Her gaze caught that glint at his waistband, a familiar hunk of blued steel. “Daddy’s gonna put you in the county home.”
“Account of what?”
Account of you’re going senile, traipsing off, bothering colored folks again with that pistol of yours.” Violet leaned closer, continued her spiel. “Heard him and Mama talking just last week, saying how you’re a danger to yourself just as much as to others.”
His jaw fell open and slammed shut; intended words went lost to the night. He couldn’t tell on her now, not without personal risk.
Defeat fogged his eyes. He said, “I won’t tell your business if you don’t tell mine.”
Violet seized the moment with both hands, said, “Depends.”
“On what?”
“Who’d you shoot tonight?”
“Nobody. Just meant to scare, is all.”
“Gonna kill somebody one day.”
“Naw,” he confessed. “Ain’t in my blood, killin’.”
“Don’t have to mean it to do it.”
The old man pulled back, let frustration have its way. “We got us a deal or don’t we?”
“You gonna leave Ruthie’s people be?”
He argued, “Just want what’s mine.”
“Ain’t yours no more, Granddad, it’s theirs—been so for forty-five years. A hundred guns ain’t gonna make it not so.”
He never did wear misery well; it fit his countenance like a bunch of wrinkled old rags.
Violet’s arms went easily around the man. She pulled close to him, breathed in that familiar odor of sweat and tobacco.
He said, “I won’t bother them no more.”
Good enough for Violet. She said, “Then we got us a deal.”
**END**
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