By Reaona Hemmingway
“Cider, how old are you?” Revelation asked.
“Done lost count after sixty. Why’d you ask?”
“I think you’re gettin’ senile draggin’ me up this mountain to freeze my ears off. What I should be doin’ is takin’ you to Denver City to see a doctor.”
Cider laughed. “Well, Rev, guess it is odd climbin’ a mountain with a bullet in my chest.” He looked at the red stain on his buckskins. “I’ll die anyway. And when I do, I want to rest beside Whispering Tree.”
“Is she really the only gal you ever loved?”
“Prettiest Blackfoot gal ever walked this earth.” The gray horse stopped when they reached the top. “I used to trade furs with her pa. Gave him two pack horses for her.”
“Ever have any kids?”
“Three. Two of them died.”
“What about the third?”
Cider looked at Revelation. “Whispering Tree died givin’ birth to him. I buried her right up here on top, facin’ the morning sun.” Cider swiped his arm at the vast world below. “To the north, west, and south all you see is mountains, to the east the plains. You’ll never see more land at one time than you can at this moment.”
Revelation pulled the fleece coat collar coat over his ears. Cider handed him a shovel. “Let’s get digging,” the old man said. He paced off from a boulder and pounded a pickax into the frozen earth. Revelation finished digging after Cider passed out.
“I found her!”
Cider opened his eyes and looked down at the bones showing through holes in the rotted Indian blanket. “That’s your ma, boy. Sorry I left you at that children’s home. Your real name’s Stanley after my pa, but the mother superior named you Revelation.”
Revelation peered into his father’s eyes. “How come you never told me?”
“When I found you starvin’ on the streets, you swore you’d shoot your pa if you ever met him. Figured we’d get along better as partners. Forgive me…”
Cider stopped breathing. Revelation wrapped him in a Hudson Bay blanket and laid him beside Whispering Tree. As he filled the grave, he thought about all the times he saw love in the old man’s eyes.
Early the next morning, he returned to the trading post. Stella met him, her raven hair blowing in the wind. “Hey, Rev, where’s Cider?”
“Buried him on the mountain next to his wife.”
“Chase Lassiter shot him bad then, huh?”
“Yep. But Lassiter didn’t make it far, either. He died from Cider’s bullet.”
“Did Cider leave you anything?”
Revelation looked up at Pike’s Peak. “Well, I got what was left of his poke. And he let me know I was never really alone in this world.”
(C) Reaona Hemmingway. First published in the 2010 Kansas Authors Club Yearbook.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
A Box Marked Shoes
By Reaona Hemmingway
Memoir, July 2004
On the first morning in my new house, I started looking for a box marked “Shoes” so that I could get dressed for church. Every muscle and joint in my body ached and complained about all the packing, moving, and unpacking I put it through during the past month. The fibromyalgia and tendonitis warred against my conditioned habit of waking up on Sunday morning to spend two hours away from the bed my fatigue craved. I ignored the magnetic draw of the bedroom and continued to look because without the box, the only shoes available for me to wear were the old, worn out, holey sneakers my feet refused to wear another minute.
As I searched, I thought about how compared to some women, I possessed a limited footwear supply. All the shoes I owned fit into a three-foot by two-foot box about eighteen inches high. My shoe wardrobe included one pair of dressy black pumps, three pairs of flats, three pairs of casual shoes, one nice pair of tennis shoes for wearing with summer outfits, green flip flops, three pairs of slippers, three sets of boots, and my moccasins.
After spending Saturday unpacking, there weren’t many boxes left in the house, but the box marked “Shoes” eluded me. I thought about my grandma’s shoe supply. When we moved her from Dodge City, the moving van came loaded with fifty-three wardrobe boxes filled with clothes, purses, hats, and, you guessed it, shoes. There were black, brown, white, cream, red, blue, green, and every color including rainbow. There were pumps, flats, tennis shoes, sandals, slippers, boots, and stilettos. All made from either suede, patent leather, snake skin, canvas, cork, calf skin, nylon net, and just about anything except cheap vinyl. They came in four different sizes and in all the fashionable brands while most of my shoes were bought at Wal-Mart. I often refer to Grandma as the Imelda Marcos of Dodge City, Kansas.
During the first yard sale my family held after Grandma’s two-bedroom apartment ran out of room to hold what used to fit into a four-bedroom house, we sold seventy pairs of shoes. One man bought fifty pairs at two dollars for his wife. After we moved Grandma into an independent living facility, we held another yard sale where we sold off another sixty pairs of shoes. Certainly the supply would dwindle. It didn’t. With Grandma, shoes multiplied like rabbits.
With all those shoes, Grandma could have worn a different pair every day of the year and never wear the same pair twice. But no, not Grandma. Every time I picked her up to go shopping, she wore the same pair of black patent leather pumps. The pumps were too big and clunked when she walked. She frequently complained that her shoes flopped. She often shuffled her feet to keep her floppy shoes from falling off. When I asked her why she didn’t wear a pair of shoes that fit, she said, “I don’t know.”
Afraid that she would trip and fall in her floppy shoes, my dad took Grandma to Dillard’s to buy a new pair that fit. The salesman measured her foot and Dad walked around with her in the shoe department as she tried on new shoes until they found a pair that fit just right. But the next time she came to church, she wore the floppy shoes. I asked her why she didn’t wear her new shoes and again she said, “I don’t know.”
Unless Dad reminded her, she never wore her new shoes. On one Saturday when I picked her up to go grocery shopping, I told her to wear her new shoes, but she didn’t know where they were. I looked all over her apartment and found boxes and boxes of shoes under the bed, in the closest, and stacked in corners. The shoe rabbits were breading again.
When I finally found her new shoes and took her to the store, she complained that they hurt her feet. I asked her why she bought them if they hurt her feet. All she said was, “I don’t know.”
A few months later, we moved Grandma into an Alzheimer’s facility and held another sale. We counted nearly a hundred shoe boxes. Most of the shoes were never worn. We separated them onto tables in four different sizes. When the sale ended, we still packed a dozen cardboard cartons with shoes for the charity thrift store to pick up. Finally, the shoe rabbits were spayed.
With a shoe supply like Grandma’s I probably would have made it to church that first Sunday after I moved into my new house. Instead I sat down on the couch with my tired, sore joints and muscles and fell asleep with visions of shoe fairies dancing through my head.
Later that evening, while unpacking more boxes, I finally found my one lonely box marked “Shoes.”
(c) 2010 Reaona Hemmingway
Memoir, July 2004
On the first morning in my new house, I started looking for a box marked “Shoes” so that I could get dressed for church. Every muscle and joint in my body ached and complained about all the packing, moving, and unpacking I put it through during the past month. The fibromyalgia and tendonitis warred against my conditioned habit of waking up on Sunday morning to spend two hours away from the bed my fatigue craved. I ignored the magnetic draw of the bedroom and continued to look because without the box, the only shoes available for me to wear were the old, worn out, holey sneakers my feet refused to wear another minute.
As I searched, I thought about how compared to some women, I possessed a limited footwear supply. All the shoes I owned fit into a three-foot by two-foot box about eighteen inches high. My shoe wardrobe included one pair of dressy black pumps, three pairs of flats, three pairs of casual shoes, one nice pair of tennis shoes for wearing with summer outfits, green flip flops, three pairs of slippers, three sets of boots, and my moccasins.
After spending Saturday unpacking, there weren’t many boxes left in the house, but the box marked “Shoes” eluded me. I thought about my grandma’s shoe supply. When we moved her from Dodge City, the moving van came loaded with fifty-three wardrobe boxes filled with clothes, purses, hats, and, you guessed it, shoes. There were black, brown, white, cream, red, blue, green, and every color including rainbow. There were pumps, flats, tennis shoes, sandals, slippers, boots, and stilettos. All made from either suede, patent leather, snake skin, canvas, cork, calf skin, nylon net, and just about anything except cheap vinyl. They came in four different sizes and in all the fashionable brands while most of my shoes were bought at Wal-Mart. I often refer to Grandma as the Imelda Marcos of Dodge City, Kansas.
During the first yard sale my family held after Grandma’s two-bedroom apartment ran out of room to hold what used to fit into a four-bedroom house, we sold seventy pairs of shoes. One man bought fifty pairs at two dollars for his wife. After we moved Grandma into an independent living facility, we held another yard sale where we sold off another sixty pairs of shoes. Certainly the supply would dwindle. It didn’t. With Grandma, shoes multiplied like rabbits.
With all those shoes, Grandma could have worn a different pair every day of the year and never wear the same pair twice. But no, not Grandma. Every time I picked her up to go shopping, she wore the same pair of black patent leather pumps. The pumps were too big and clunked when she walked. She frequently complained that her shoes flopped. She often shuffled her feet to keep her floppy shoes from falling off. When I asked her why she didn’t wear a pair of shoes that fit, she said, “I don’t know.”
Afraid that she would trip and fall in her floppy shoes, my dad took Grandma to Dillard’s to buy a new pair that fit. The salesman measured her foot and Dad walked around with her in the shoe department as she tried on new shoes until they found a pair that fit just right. But the next time she came to church, she wore the floppy shoes. I asked her why she didn’t wear her new shoes and again she said, “I don’t know.”
Unless Dad reminded her, she never wore her new shoes. On one Saturday when I picked her up to go grocery shopping, I told her to wear her new shoes, but she didn’t know where they were. I looked all over her apartment and found boxes and boxes of shoes under the bed, in the closest, and stacked in corners. The shoe rabbits were breading again.
When I finally found her new shoes and took her to the store, she complained that they hurt her feet. I asked her why she bought them if they hurt her feet. All she said was, “I don’t know.”
A few months later, we moved Grandma into an Alzheimer’s facility and held another sale. We counted nearly a hundred shoe boxes. Most of the shoes were never worn. We separated them onto tables in four different sizes. When the sale ended, we still packed a dozen cardboard cartons with shoes for the charity thrift store to pick up. Finally, the shoe rabbits were spayed.
With a shoe supply like Grandma’s I probably would have made it to church that first Sunday after I moved into my new house. Instead I sat down on the couch with my tired, sore joints and muscles and fell asleep with visions of shoe fairies dancing through my head.
Later that evening, while unpacking more boxes, I finally found my one lonely box marked “Shoes.”
(c) 2010 Reaona Hemmingway
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Wrong Turns to Tallgrass
By Reaona Hemmingway
June 25, 2010
Welcome to the first post on my new blog. The business of this past week has brought to Emporia, Kansas for the 25th Annual Tallgrass Writing Workshop craving relaxation. My original purpose for coming to Emporia happens in the morning, Saturday, June 26, 2010. The Towne Crier bookstore here is holding their 3rd Annual Kansas Authors Extravaganza and I will be there to sign copies of my book along with forty some odd other authors who live in or originate from Kansas. As luck would have it, the Tallgrass Workshop is also this weekend, so I get to do both with one trip.
The great part about coming to workshops or conferences is the opportunity to meet with and swap stories with fellow authors. The horror comes in trying to leave home with everything you need: Clothes, laptop, toiletries, directions to the hotel and conference, and so on. To give myself plenty of time I took half a day off from work to give myself time to get packed, deliver books to the Hastings store in Topeka, drop poetry contest entries into the mail for this year’s judges of the 2010 Kansas Authors Club Literary Contest, get cash from the bank, and leave town in time to arrive in Emporia before supper. That was the plan, not the reality.
The first time I left home around 3:15 I made it six blocks when an AT&T cellular phone commercial came on the radio. The horror of listening to this ad was remembering that I had plugged my cell phone in after I came home so that it would be charged up by the time I left. It was still on the kitchen counter sucking up juice from the wall socket. A few right turns and loops around circulars brought me back to the house where my new tenant was just settling down to work on the computer and my yellow Lab was just settling down to an afternoon nap. I retrieved the phone, went back out the door, and headed to Hastings.
Things were going good again as I dropped off my new published book off at Hasting, drove to the Post Office and mailed the poem to my judges—I’m the poetry contest manager this year, and then headed to the bank. Four blocks from a bank branch on the south end of town near the freeway, I realized I left my checkbook and credit card case at home. Bummers.
I looped around on the freeway heading north instead of south to Emporia and drove back to my section of town, waded through the circulars again, and disturbed the sleepy dog, again, in order to get what I needed to pay for my hotel and meals for the weekend. Such are the hazards of not carrying your checkbook and credit cards with you. The bonus of leaving such things at home is that you can’t so easily impulsively buy things at the store. Purchases take thought, a trip home, and a return to the store. Usually, by the time I get home, I decide I don’t need the item bad enough to make another trip to Wanamaker Road where all the malls and stores congregate in Topeka.
As I finally headed south again, I stopped for the gas and, because it was dinner time by then, I swung through Wendy’s for chicken wraps, ice tea, and a coffee shake. Now if I wasn’t so full from eating all that and an hour behind schedule arriving at the first workshop event, I could have enjoyed a Mexican buffet with my fellow writers.
Now don’t think I’m one of those people who would misplace their head if it wasn’t attached. If you ask anyone who knows me, I’m generally well organized. The trouble comes in adding the poetry contest management with settling in a new roommate and getting on the road with everything you need into a week of working full time, sprinkle on a few physical challenges and bake long enough to in high temperatures and even higher humidity and you have a recipe for taking wrong turns on your way to a writing workshop.
By the way, the program tonight was great. We were entertained by the Tallgrass Express String Band. If you like folk music about Kansas, I highly recommend you check out their website at www.tallgrassexpress.com. Truly a Kansas born and Kansas bred sound for celebrating the beauty of our Flint Hills.
(c) 2010 Reaona Hemmingway
June 25, 2010
Welcome to the first post on my new blog. The business of this past week has brought to Emporia, Kansas for the 25th Annual Tallgrass Writing Workshop craving relaxation. My original purpose for coming to Emporia happens in the morning, Saturday, June 26, 2010. The Towne Crier bookstore here is holding their 3rd Annual Kansas Authors Extravaganza and I will be there to sign copies of my book along with forty some odd other authors who live in or originate from Kansas. As luck would have it, the Tallgrass Workshop is also this weekend, so I get to do both with one trip.
The great part about coming to workshops or conferences is the opportunity to meet with and swap stories with fellow authors. The horror comes in trying to leave home with everything you need: Clothes, laptop, toiletries, directions to the hotel and conference, and so on. To give myself plenty of time I took half a day off from work to give myself time to get packed, deliver books to the Hastings store in Topeka, drop poetry contest entries into the mail for this year’s judges of the 2010 Kansas Authors Club Literary Contest, get cash from the bank, and leave town in time to arrive in Emporia before supper. That was the plan, not the reality.
The first time I left home around 3:15 I made it six blocks when an AT&T cellular phone commercial came on the radio. The horror of listening to this ad was remembering that I had plugged my cell phone in after I came home so that it would be charged up by the time I left. It was still on the kitchen counter sucking up juice from the wall socket. A few right turns and loops around circulars brought me back to the house where my new tenant was just settling down to work on the computer and my yellow Lab was just settling down to an afternoon nap. I retrieved the phone, went back out the door, and headed to Hastings.
Things were going good again as I dropped off my new published book off at Hasting, drove to the Post Office and mailed the poem to my judges—I’m the poetry contest manager this year, and then headed to the bank. Four blocks from a bank branch on the south end of town near the freeway, I realized I left my checkbook and credit card case at home. Bummers.
I looped around on the freeway heading north instead of south to Emporia and drove back to my section of town, waded through the circulars again, and disturbed the sleepy dog, again, in order to get what I needed to pay for my hotel and meals for the weekend. Such are the hazards of not carrying your checkbook and credit cards with you. The bonus of leaving such things at home is that you can’t so easily impulsively buy things at the store. Purchases take thought, a trip home, and a return to the store. Usually, by the time I get home, I decide I don’t need the item bad enough to make another trip to Wanamaker Road where all the malls and stores congregate in Topeka.
As I finally headed south again, I stopped for the gas and, because it was dinner time by then, I swung through Wendy’s for chicken wraps, ice tea, and a coffee shake. Now if I wasn’t so full from eating all that and an hour behind schedule arriving at the first workshop event, I could have enjoyed a Mexican buffet with my fellow writers.
Now don’t think I’m one of those people who would misplace their head if it wasn’t attached. If you ask anyone who knows me, I’m generally well organized. The trouble comes in adding the poetry contest management with settling in a new roommate and getting on the road with everything you need into a week of working full time, sprinkle on a few physical challenges and bake long enough to in high temperatures and even higher humidity and you have a recipe for taking wrong turns on your way to a writing workshop.
By the way, the program tonight was great. We were entertained by the Tallgrass Express String Band. If you like folk music about Kansas, I highly recommend you check out their website at www.tallgrassexpress.com. Truly a Kansas born and Kansas bred sound for celebrating the beauty of our Flint Hills.
(c) 2010 Reaona Hemmingway
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