The Black Sedan

((or “The Unlawful Death Case of Otis Wilde Mather)
(A Shannon O’Day, four part story))

Parts one thru four:

Cornfield Burner
A Countryside Boxer
The Black Sedan
&
The Corncob Pipe


“Cornfield Burner…!”
1950

Part One of Four


“What proofs have you Mr. Gus O’Day?” ask Judge Finley.
“I told you the nigger got into my cornfield, was drunk waiting for my brother Shannon to show up and he was the only one there!”
Judge Finley hesitated looked at Otis Wilde Mather… “But that isn’t any substantial proof!”
“I told him, warned him not to go in there without Shannon my brother, I knew he smoked that damn corncob pipe, and drank,” said Gus O’Day.
“Shannon, he tells me, your honor, it be O.K., ef-in I goes in dere and waits fer him,” said Otis.
“Who told you that you could talk Mr. Mather, shut up until you’re told it’s your time to talk, you hear me?” said the judge.
“Yessum,” said Otis, and then nodded his head up and down.
“And this here is the man you’re talking about, right Mr. O’Day?” and the judge waved his hand for Otis to standup.
“Yes sir, your honor, that sure is the man who burned my cornfields…” said Gus O’Day, adding, “He’s a strange one, but my brother likes him for some odd reason, comes from down south and causes trouble up here.”
“But you don’t have any real proof,” said the judge, “you can see that, right?”
“Bring that big black nigger up over here, he’ll tell the truth, or else!”
Otis was still standing, big and wiry, in patched trousers, dusty and dirty, and ripped along the ridges, they were too tight for the six-foot six, man, some 220-pounds. With deep dark eyes, unkempt hair, gave him a wild look, yet he was not an uncultivated man per se. He noticed all the white males’ grim faces in the courtroom. And here was a short white, gray haired judge, past middle age, with small gold rimmed glasses ordering him to stand and be accountable.
Otis’ body appeared to be stiff, from sleeping in a cramped jail cell overnight. This was not a court of judgment, just a fact finding court that being of a preliminary hearing to see if it was a case to be taken to court, or could be settled out of court.
Otis, didn’t seem to look at anybody in particular, he just stood there blankly, like the Tower of Pisa.
“What’s your name, boy?” asked the judge.
“Otis Wilde Mather, sir,” said the big Blackman.
“Where is your hometown?”
“Ozark, Alabama, sir.”
“Did you fall to sleep in the cornfields and with a lit pipe, burn Mr. O’Day’s crops to smithereens?”
“Nope. But I done drank some whisky your honor and I done left my corncob pipe at Mr. Shannon O’Day’s apartment, sir.”
There was no sound in the courtroom, you could have heard a dime drop had one dropped; it was absolutely hushed, everyone waiting for the Judge’s decision on the matter.
“So you’re saying you’re not guilty of this crime, is that so Mr. Mather?”
“Yessum your honor, dhats waht I is sayin’ cuz I dont rightly know how dhat dhere fire got a burnin’”
Gus’ face exploded with anger “Damn nigger!” he yelled.
“Case dismissed,” said the judge, adding “I can’t even find you careless, Mr. Mather, but I suggest you leave this city and go on back home where you belong, down to that Alabama place, and right quick. And if I ever see you in my courtroom again, you’ll be in the workhouse faster than you can say Jack Johnson.”
“I aint a-goin’ to stay,” said Otis, “dont care fer this place anymore…”
“That’s enough,” said the judge, “get on your way now, out of my courtroom, case dismissed!”

Shannon O’Day had appeared somewhere in the crowd, saw Otis, and then walked out of the courtroom with Otis, gave him some chewing tobacco, they both had smiles on their faces, everyone else had a grim face.
Out on the courthouse steps were several women, farm folk that lived around Gus’ place, repeating: “Cornfield burner! Cornfield burner!”
Said Gus to his brother Shannon outside in the courthouse, “Brother, you got to learn to stick with your own blood!”
Shannon didn’t say a word, he knew the truth, and the truth didn’t come out in the courtroom, and he knew who had the truth, and if it did come out, Gus would hate him for it. So Shannon just stood behind other folks and listened, and figured, ‘We’ll see what tomorrow will bring.’


Subchapter
The Secret


Shannon gave Gus $500-dollars, every penny he had, it was a gift given to his wife from her father, now separated from Margaret-Rose. Gus took the money saying to his wife, Mabel, “I hate to take it but I got to plant again, I imagine I’ll remain friends with my brother, even if he likes niggers—he didn’t burn my cornfield up anyhow, I know that! And I’ll owe him heart and soul until I pay him back.”
Then Shannon showed up at the door, hugged his brother, and they were like two happy hogs again.
“I have some work to do with my new man,” said Gus, “Albert Fitzgerald, we’re going to replant as soon as possible.”
And he left the house.
“Come with me,” said Mabel to Shannon, and they went outside, to make sure no one was listening.
“Yes,” said Shannon.
“Otis,” she mentioned, and then paused as if it was Shannon’s turn to speak.
“I’m supposing he’ll be fine, he’s going back to Alabama on the 7:30 p.m., train this evening.”
“You know I’ll owe you body and soul for as long as I live Shannon!” she said.
They walked up to the burnt cornfields, to its edge, it was a warm day, and as Shannon looked over the field, it was as if he had lost his lover, but he always had his friend’s farm to drink in, right next door to Gus’ place.
“You saved our marriage,” she told Shannon, as he stood foot solid looking at her, she was a nice looking woman, more plain than pretty, but she kept herself up, she wasn’t fat or too thin. Then he turned about, saw her farmhouse, perhaps this was the first time he took a good look at it, and the rose bushes, the wooden gate that was closed tight in the front of the house, the creek that run in the back of the house, and to its side, Gus and Mabel had put a lifetime of work into their marriage, and this farm.
It was a land of small farms, and cornfields, it was his world as well as Gus’. It brought him peace and joy. For no reason he could put into words, his mind being too liquefied from booze for deep thinking, yet he knew Mabel and Gus were safe from divorce now. And her dignity untouched and the buzzing wasps from the courthouse were put to rest, no longer capable of stinging his family.
Shannon knew this was the only way to stop sorrow, certainly raving jealous rage, iron like anger, it would have changed Gus forever, had he known the truth…

Shannon remembered his Negro friend was shouting: “Miss Mabel! Miss Mabel! You-is drunk, go-on back to your house befer youall git us in trouble!”
Gus was passed out in his bed, in the house. And Shannon had just taken a bath in the creek. No one seeing him, not even Otis, still waiting for him to show up, and here he was watching it all, pert near all.
He saw Mabel, in a thin, near see through nightgown, more like a slip, laced around the neck, thrashing like, trying to wipe booze off her lips and face and chin, with the palm of her hand.
After it was all over and Mabel no longer on her back, she stood up, shook herself clean, and headed on back to her house.
Shannon, now looking at Otis, “I tole her no, but…” he said to Shannon, cockeyed and loopy, as Shannon just shook his head.
“I heard yaw!” said Shannon, “now will you please just go away,” he told Otis, holding his breath, and Otis did.

Mabel had carried a kerosene lamp (paraffin style house lamp) the kind where the knob protruding to the right adjusts the wick, and hence the flame size—carried it outside with her, and now was carrying it back towards the farmhouse—heading out of the cornfields, it slipped out of her hands, and she fell a few feet from the fire that had now started, it had started almost instantly when she dropped the lantern—the glass had broken, and the fire escaped, and Shannon could do only one of two things: stop the fire by putting it out with his shirt or pants, or put Mabel back into her house, into her bed with Gus before Gus woke up to find out what all the fuss was about, and hope Otis could find his way back to his apartment in the city, in the dark, but he’d have to let the cornfields burn if he did that. And we all know what he did—what he felt was the lesser of the evils. He did not speak again to Otis until that day at court. He had never seen a man, white or black sweat so hard, as Otis did in that courtroom. But then, who wouldn’t under the same circumstances.


5-12-2009 ••



A Countryside Boxer
((A Shannon O’Day Story) (Follow up to “Cornfield Burner!”))

Fall of 1979

Part Two of Four



In the corn growing farm business, Mrs. Mabel O’Day appeared to prosper (even after her husband and brother-in-law, Gus and Shannon O’Day passed on). That being, she soon eliminated all unneeded expenses, and presently she was out of the farming business, with a hired manager, Mr. Fitzgerald to run it. And we farm folk from that area, figured that we knew what the stepping-stone to the rise of her prosperity was due to. On the other hand we believed it was without a doubt—the evil that brought on Gus’ down fall—likened to the evil that brought on his brother Shannon’s down fall (both being the same evil), was due to, pure and simply, abuse of alcohol. All these lost hours and days, and years, have a bearing upon a man’s prosperity—we told one another—despite his hard labor, he needed a level and clear head, a healthy body; this he seldom had, if he ever had.
We saw Mabel O’Day every Sunday—those of us who went to church that is—saw Mabel behind the last pew in the church—fresh as a daisy—younger looking at seventy-nine, than she was looking at forty-nine; having a rosy kind of rich coloring to her face.

Although Mabel was considered born plain, she somehow—now in her golden-years—brought with her that vast, calm impermeable loveliness. Listening with a slight smile to the corners of her mouth as the preacher preached, the collarless young preacher, of our local countryside church, who this one day gave a sermon on how life is but a flicker of light, from a bonfire—which was the Sunday before all this happened.
That’s why we seldom gossiped about her, when we saw her at the North St. Paul restaurants, or country store, or walking the concrete sidewalks of St. Paul.
We all doubted she was ever, had ever been close to anyone but Gus; for to do her justice we simply didn’t gossip about that—save her husband and Shannon O’Day we had enough to talk about. But there was still that vague, hazy, indefinable, if not intangible thing, a white and gray cloud over her head called Otis Mather, from Alabama. Shannon O’Day’s close Negro friend, the very one Gus took no liking for. Tried to prosecute him for burning his cornfields down one year who had gotten drunk in the cornfields and somehow a fire started.
Certainly it was not his fault that the cornfields burnt to smithereens as it had come out in the court hearing, but we in the countryside felt that the idea of a Blackman visiting Mabel regularly, for a number of years now, almost habitually, something was fishy—that is to say, and I hate to say it, perhaps we were all missing something, perchance what it was, was that somewhere along the line, there had been some kind of adultery in the past with Otis and Mabel.
It seemed absurd at first, even perverted: we could have accepted it, had he not returned to making it more obvious, if not seemingly natural to do so, and now it seemed more logical to think so.
We didn’t try to guess or know her thoughts—not at all, those of us who saw her gaiety when with Otis, walking in the parks, sitting on the benches so close to one another, you couldn’t put an acorn between their thighs, and for hours on end—; hence, she was no longer fooling anyone. We simply said, “She’s not the woman she used to be,” whatever kind of woman or wife she was; now we really didn’t know. For here was a Negro man, with the deceased husband’s wife; a close and dear friend of ours, one of us you might say, and Otis an outsider and a nigger to boot. It was hard for us to make sense of.

Otis was very tall and very black, also very successful, who was from Alabama, who had moved on up to Minnesota a few times, and now it seemed he was more in Minnesota than Alabama, and perhaps thinking of staying on a long term basses in Minnesota, or perhaps even moving to Minnesota on a permanent bases and getting hitched with Mabel. He had never been married.
One afternoon he had just finished raking the front lawn at Mabel’s farm house, and started burning the fall leaves. He was smoking his corncob pipe. The very one Shannon O’Day had given him, when suddenly appeared a black sedan (Otis hadn’t notice the car), but he did the fellow walking towards him. The smell of the fire was rich, fresh and clean and the night part of twilight had just smothered the day part—and there was tranquility in the atmosphere, even the birds seemed to mellow down for the change over of day to night, and the rapid waters from the creek even reduced in sound.
The man approaching had no particular age, heavy boned and broad shoulders, big hands, boxer hands, a broken nose, and a cauliflower ear, a dark shirt on, and a black hat. His face was square and rough looking, he needed a shave. His face looked flat, to absolutely empty. His eyes bloodshot and he staggered just a slight. He seemed lipless, chewing tobacco. He looked up at Otis, about three inches—
“How much did the pipe cost you?” he asked.
“Nothing, it was a gift, why?” asked Otis.
“It must weight a ton for an old man like you to hold onto for any length of time?”
“It’s just a corncob pipe, it don’t weigh nothing!” Otis remarked.
“If it doesn’t give it here, I’ve never smoked a nigger’s corncob pipe before!” the stranger told Otis.
Otis simply continued to look down at the stranger, still holding onto his pipe, then he heard an excruciating sound as if a bone, or bones cracked, a snap here and there, then Otis spit up and out of his mouth blood (it more like poured out), and with a half turn to his right—as the stranger now was walking back to his car, his back to Otis, never once looking back, he knew the damage he had done—Otis having been hit as if by an iron hammer, wobbled, his jaw and neck were broken, he fell onto the ground like boiler room explosion; and expired.


No: 516 (11-16-2009)


The Black Sedan

1981

Part Three of Four


After Otis’ death Mabel built this invisible stone wall that seemed to encircle her—slowly. But then it is always strange to what a simply community of farmers—their methods—what they will resort to in order to punish someone—anyone, dissimilar to them. It was as if there was some unseen force that seeped into the atmosphere and bombarded her; disabling her own level-headedness in business, as if she was working against her better judgment, the very thing that brought her, her prosperity. She fired Mr. Fitzgerald, the very one person, man that had he not picked up where Gus (her late husband) and Mabel herself left off and carried pert near the farm on his own, there would not have been a farm to farm. If anything, he showed high vision, and confidence and courage, where there was none to be found.
Her dream at first—after Gus’ death, and her brother-in-law’s death, Shannon O’Day—was not so high, it was no higher than a casual –common-day laborer’s. Just enough to get by on, eat, and pay for the gas to heat the farmhouse, and buy some feed for the chickens, and seed to plant with; because she didn’t hire Mr. Fitzgerald until the first months of 1968, after Shannon had died.
“She almost came to the point back in the late ‘60s, where she had to sell the farm,” I remember the sheriff had said that, he also told us folks she hadn’t paid her taxes, property taxes going on seven-years. And then we all said, “That damn midnight black nigger—Otis,” and then the last straw was seeing the nigger raking her leaves in the front yard, right out in the open for everyone to see, he must had been gloating, I mean what was next—god forbid!
And so Truman Quinn, got his son, Joe Quinn, the ex boxer, that couldn’t even read an 8th grade text book or the time on a clock properly, to throw a few punches his way. Oh, well, we never believed Otis would get killed over it all, our intentions were to intimidate him, drive him back to where he came from, Alabama. So when Joe hit him, Otis’ head spun to the right, like a dial flying off a speedometer, out of control—something snapped, and then cracked, Joe had broken his jaw and neck—Joe then turned about, came back to the car, we all left Otis there, right where he lay, all four of us in that black sedan of Finley’s, not even willing to see how he was, nor call an ambulance, or to notify his next of kin, we believed they lived in Alabama, and we didn’t want to become a suspect. Plus, it was a cold fall evening, we all wanted to get home, get settled in for the night.
We all assumed, Mrs. O’Day must have dragged that loose and heavy black body, inch by inch, into her home, hoping he would open those dark eyes, and so did the sheriff.
“What in the hell happened?” asked he Sheriff to Mabel.
“I don’t know. I’m just telling you I found him this way, I just don’t know,” and she didn’t know, only four people knew, and three were in the car at the time, the sedan, the black sedan of Finley’s, and the other, the forth one was Joe, and had Otis lived, oh well, why speculate.
She had fired Mr. Fitzgerald, so he couldn’t say a word on the matter, and we four, shut-up about it—the burden was heavy enough, without projecting. Although we were afraid Joe would get drunk and spill the beans, start whispering something out loud about it, some night, and that something would float over to the sheriff’s office, and who knows where else, but it didn’t.
“You mean—” said the sheriff, “that as far as you know, you don’t know anything about this?”
She just nodded her head up and down, holding back, a flood of tears, so the sheriff said.
Up to that night I slept well, and so did Truman, and Joe and our Lawyer friend, George Finley Jr. (the son to the late Judge Finley). We all had been catching our forty winks or so—but now things appeared to be in disarray, you can bet I never slept a whole night through that year of 1979, I always felt I was on a pile of coals, hot coals.
In time we all did—or was able to—shut our eyes and mind to the issue of Otis’ death, as if we had washed our washtubs with Spick and Span (dirt free), and now we could all take a clean bath…
But that disappeared after Mabel died in 1981, at the age of eighty-one years old. She had done exactly what she had done a few decades previously, that being, when she dropped the lamp in the cornfields and burnt them all up; the very ones Otis got blamed for. She had fallen and smashed it on the floor this time, and the house went ablaze. She simply retired into a dim corner of the house, behind some of the junk in the pantry: junk Gus had left piled up before he passed on. Things for the car like bolts, and fitting, and so forth. She just kneeled there, touching those pieces as if sorting them out until the smoke and fire covered her like a foot inside a shoe, removing the last of life from her, tossing it—like a kick from a mule behind her, as if she never was.
That’s the way we all figured it was anyways. That’s how the sheriff saw it likewise. When he looking down on her, after the fire settled, chewing his tobacco as usual, checking his timepiece out as usual, and making out his report as required, the report read “No evidence of foul play,” likened to the report he made out pertaining to Otis Mather’s death.

No: 517 (11-17-2009)



“The Corncob Pipe.”
Winter of 1982

(Part Four of Four)


Joe Quinn stood there with his huge broad, hulk of a body, with his hard square large fists.
“What are you up to?” asked Sheriff Donavan.
“Paw left up in the night, gone fishing I suppose, and it got cold here in the house, and things so quiet, I couldn’t sleep none last night. I spent the whole night trying to fix this here boiler Sheriff, what brings you out this way?”
“Can’t get enough steam in that big old boiler haw?” remarked the Sheriff.
“By the time I shut my eyes last night I could hear the steam shutoff, and I woke up myself chilling like a freezing pigeon. Then after a spell, I couldn’t sleep again.”
“Did you relight that pilot-light underneath the boiler?” Asked the sheriff (smoking a corncob pipe that looked as if it was the very one old Otis Wilde Mather had on the night he was beat to death, that appeared to catch the eye of Joe.
Joe stepped back into a dim lit corner of the basement where the boiler was, where the sheriff had seen him through a window of the basement where a light was on—he came to pay them a visit, was hoping to find Otis alone, knowing these winter months his pa did a lot of night and early morning fishing on the frozen lakes (there in Minnesota), he’d drill a hole in the ice, sit in his icehouse, and drink his beer, fish with his friends, and to him that was heaven on earth.
The Sheriff had simply opened up the outside door, walked into the house, and down the steps to the basement where Joe was (kind of inviting himself in, knowing they usually didn’t keep the doors locked there in the countryside).
“Boy, your pa’s got a lot of junk down here, but I suppose one accumulates it after a life time of miscellaneous collecting everything and thinking one day you’ll going to use it (there were valves and rods and so forth, piled here and there).”
Then the sheriff kneeled down to check the pilot-light, a piece of round metal (like a small cylinder) with a hole in its center, which lit the boiler, and its heating pipes above it, and he lit it, then saw the water gauge to the boiler, a glass flask, brass on the top and bottom, showing the water level, which was perhaps less then ten-percent filled, meaning the boiler was per near dry.
“You’re going to blow this boiler sky high,” said the sheriff, if you don’t refill it with water, cold water, not hot water—hot water will make it crack in this cold. The pilot’s lit now. Once it’s filled gradually heat it, do you understand Joe?”
Joe didn’t want to wait—he just wanted to turn the attached knobs on the water pipes to the boiler, to get it going, operating. Then the sheriff told Joe, “That’s what you got to do, so are you going to fill this thing properly, or blow us up to kingdom come?”
Joe glanced once more at the boiler, then opened its iron trap door, into its round like enclosure, then spat on it, to see if it was hot, and of course it wasn’t hot. Then he glanced again at the corncob pipe, “That corncob pipe sure looks like I saw it before,” remarked Joe, with a frown, “didn’t it belong to that there Negro from Alabama?”
“You mean Otis Wilde Mather?”
“I tends to my own business, I don’t know a thing about what happened to him—ain’t no trouble of mine.”
The sheriff stood there eagle-eyed, chewing his tobacco, and looking at his watch, “Tell me what you know about the unlawful death of Otis Wilde Matter? I’m just trying to get enough facts so I can close this –reopened case, his family from Ozark, Alabama wants a new, and improved investigation, they said the last one was the worse one they had ever heard of—I mean read. And to be honest, we didn’t do much look into.”

Joe had waited until the sheriff had finished, then said—blinking his eyes slowly, and taking in a deep breath—surprisingly said, “Okay, okay, just fix the boiler before paw comes home, he’ll have a fit.”
But the sheriff had already started filling the boiler with water—having had already connected a hose attached to one of the pipes to the boiler, and to the sick, turning on the water, opening up the valves to the boiler, and watched the water level in the glass tube rise, filling the boiler up to a half-inch below the top, allowing a free flow of water throughout the boiler. Then he turned the water off, by turning the two knobs counterclockwise, tightening up the valves, so the water would not drain back out.
“What then?” the Sheriff said.
Joe didn’t answer. He stood large and faceless, too quite, a little cold.
“Yes, yes,” Joe said, “we did it. I hit him, paw told me to scare him, so I hit him, and I guess I hit him too hard.”
Now the sheriff turned on the furnace and it lit up boldly.
“You got anything else to say on the matter?” asked the sheriff.
“No,” said Joe, relieved.
“You do as I say, unless you want to spend the rest of your life in jail (Joe nodded his head up and down, indicating he understood; he was tired of it).
“Who else was in that black sedan of Finley’s, Mabel O’Day’s neighbor said she saw a black sedan that night parked out by the fence, behind that large old oak tree, suspicious like, but hadn’t come forward with the information, knowing it was old Judge Finley’s son’s car?”
Grimly Joe named all four men in the black sedan, to include his self.

No: 517 (11-18-2009)

Dickey’s Diner

(A Shannon O’Day Story)

For those who have read the ongoing stories of Shannon O’Day (in the author’s previous books), this here sketch, is how he came to become friends at Dickey’s Diner, which was hardly mentioned (somewhat of an interlude between the previous stories)…; also it is an overall sketch of many
parts of his life; conceivably you could call it a synopsis…
in addition the reader will get a new happening
thus far untold of Shannon’s working days
at the foundry (in part two
of these two sketches)

(Part one, is an overview; part two, is a new sketch)



Part One of Two



Narrated by: Clayton Claymore Sycamore
((Observer at Dickey’s Diner, partisan and Journalist for a local periodical) (1968))


Mr. Sycamore is sitting at the diner counter talking to folks to his right and left, and a new cook, an assistant to Old Josh…Clayton is also talking to him, as he is cooking their food, as is a waitress nearby listening as she stands ready to serve them once the young cook puts the food on a plates, as Clayton C. Sycamore tells the life, and times or what he knows about them of Shannon O’Day, who had did a year earlier…



So when we first saw Shannon O’Day walking into the diner giving off that rough, independent, worn solidarity look, impression as if in another minute our flesh itself would burn off through our garments—looking more cleaver than a cobra, or even the devil himself—in some kind of disorderly-haste, he—O’Day—didn’t even pay no mind to us, not one iota, folks staring at him, it seemed to us we were watching fate of which both he and us in the diner were meat to meet, and perchance be future victims. It was our first time we laid eyes on each other. We didn’t need to, and I suppose for some of us, we didn’t want to. We assumed of course he was an unregenerate, he’d simply slip out of the diner after he ate, the same way he appeared to have slipped in—but we were not sure of that either. By some devious charm or method he got to know us all quite well—as if he had laid in ambush, just to get to know us, find a new hangout, because more than just he had won, been excepted, thus our new decade, was set. But not solely with him, on the contrary, we were all closer to each other (or in time would be, because of him).
We didn’t ask how it came about, we simple were all allies—in due time that is, his confidents, you could say. Our whole diner (Dickey’s Diner, here in St. Paul, Minnesota) was accessory to that drunk and cuckold—all though we had no proof he was a husband of an unfaithful wife (gossip perhaps feeds the imagination to no bounds, and in our case it did), he simply was never home much, so we assumed so. He was amicable with us; that is, when he was not under the influence of alcohol (though it was hard for us to decipher, he drank from sunrise to sunset).
We were not against Mrs. O’Day, we didn’t even know her, and it was perhaps we had not yet read, or even seen the whole picture. We were never in favor of infidelity, wrongdoing: we simply liked Shannon O’Day and heard about his wife (although I think he had three in sum total, this was his first wife I’m talking about), you see, they drank a lot in the cornfields together, then one summer morning, before he woke up in those cornfields, she had already up and left him, just like that, for what most of us called ‘ordained fate.’ Luckily, the diner didn’t supply their battleground (but for all intent and purposes, there was no battle, as I said, she just up and left, just like that; one morning there simply was no more of her).
Even Mr. Ingway (who works for the foundry, a friend of Shannon’s and who ate here at the diner), and old Josh, the night cook at the diner now, and even that young lad who sings those Ricky Nelson songs at night here in the diner, who sits in the back in the corner, we all said to the rest of the folks here at the diner—in one way or another back then, ‘This diner isn’t that big. Shannon he’ll come back he just went to Erie to get a breath of fresh air. He doesn’t want to stay there, what for, nothing there worth staying for…!”
Then we learned he was back in town.

Shannon got a job at the foundry a while back, for a while, and somewhere along the line, he made friends with that negro from down south, I think Ozark, Alabama, his brother Gus, never took a liking for him, said once, “That damn nigger burned my cornfields…!” but Shannon whispered to Josh on one occasion, “It Aint so, he’s got it all wrong, but I can’t tell you the truth, so don’t be judging the wrong man for the wrong crime!”
But he never was all that serious about anything after he came back from the war, the Great War —I hear tell—, he was a hero of sorts, that’s when his drinking went from moderate to chronic. Never very serious, not any connections between his loves, life and long friends, only liberty to do as he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it.
I don’t suppose even he knew where his life would end up, where he was headed. He retired before he even began any long term employment. And then he died in those cornfields he so adored—in his late 60s, out by his brother’s farm, after his brother had died a decade earlier. He even talked to us as those cornfields being a most pleasant idea for drinking and conversation.
“Why not?” He’d say to us.
But he’d stay out all night drinking, until he passed out in those cornfields, and we all had regular jobs.



A Third Person Narration


Part Two of Two


At the Diner Counter




Said the partisan to the left side of Clayton Claymore Sycamore, Henry Aldrich, sitting at the diner counter:
“Tell us something nobody knows, I heard about this guy and that’s kind of old news?”
“That’s what…” said Clayton?
“Sir,” he said, “old news.”
“Why not!” said Clayton, looking about the diner to see if any old timers, partisans new Shannon well, were around—not wanting to start trouble, or alleged gossip.
At first he laughed, then he looked at the young cook, he was just finishing up frying his hamburger.
“At the foundry, where Shannon worked a short while, he was the low last man in the hierarchy, and he was drinking a lot in those days, and he was not happy with his second marriage, marriage, sentimentalized by a few as a hero of lost gallantry, now lost and irrevocable tragedy, if not misfortune. This all lead to what he’d do, and no one but a few would find out.”
“Here’s your hamburger sir,” said the young cook, whipping his hands on his apron, ready to mix some pancake blend, said, “I think I heard that story too.”
“He,” Mr. Sycamore said, “he hid the iron, and copper and brass all right, where no one could find it. Not even Ingway could find it. Because it wasn’t where he thought Shannon put it, said he had put it, because after Shannon told Ingway he took it, he shortly after that, was accused of taking it, Ingway had told the foreman, but Shannon had already moved it, denied it; because Shannon was no match for wasting time when it came to certain things, and he wanted drinking money.”
And Ingway said to Shannon, “What did you do with it?”
That was when Ingway let it go…,” because Shannon said he sold it, but he didn’t, not yet anyhow.
“You,” said Ingway to Shannon, “made me look stupid in front of my boss!”
“I hope so,” he remarked.
It was nearing twilight, when he got off for a break, carrying his lunch pail to make it look proper, he sat near the shower room eating, because Ingway saw him. Well, Shannon told me, “Me and that old Indian, called Cochise, for short, not sure what his real name was, we threw it out the back window by the shower, and picked it up after our shift, no one being the wiser. And we went that evening, he and I out to my brother’s cornfields, and drank the weekend away.”
Though by the time it got dark, and there was no light to the side of the shower room, outside, so it was dark enough for somebody, I suppose anybody to walk about and take the items thrown out the window, put into three or four sacks, and sell the next morning at the junkyard, but he even had that figured out, he called Jefferson Thomas, the owner of the junkyard off Mississippi Street, to keep the place open, and they weighed the items, and he had brought near a half ton of iron, brass and copper to him.


No: 482 (September 30, 2009) •• Part one of Two “The Diner”
No: 483 (October, 1, 200) • • Part Two of Two “At the Diner Counter”

The Circular Years

((Shannon O’Day’s Youthful Years in Sketches) (1900-1909))


There have been three books written on Shannon O’Day and some independent sketches, this is one of those sketches, for the curious reader who wishes to know more about Shannon’s earlier years especial how he came about for the liking of his most precious substance—booze!



Sketch One

The World According to Shannon O’ Day



The world, which grownups call civilization, or the city or county or country, is composed of a hazy, perhaps never-ending flow of thoughts, and to an eight-year old boy, I could say any boy, with a vast accumulation of energy, but in this case, that is, in particular, Shannon O’Day’s case, he fits the bill quite well.
They, Shannon’s nuclear family, consisted of his brother, mother and father, and they lived in the upper apartments, near the Capitol, of the inner city of St. Paul, Minnesota, between 1900 and 1909.
They only had one lamp for light, sloping crossways, giving light circular throughout the one big room they had. Although the kitchen was sectioned off, the bathroom was in the hallway, on each of the three floors. The building was old—even in 1900—an old wooden structure, perhaps built in the late 1870s.
Like all boys of his age, at his time and place in history, he wanted to travel, journey in search of adventure, perhaps to a war, yet his eyes could scarcely decipher what life was all about. He saw his father almost from birth—with his drinking daily, preparing to die daily, that is to say, coughing up blood, and hangovers, and bloodshot eyes, and reeking with booze out of his pores. Once out of madness, he nearly hurled him over the banister, from their third floor apartment. He wasn’t corrupt, just kind of disband, melted down you might say, with the winds of booze, which often swept his mind, engendered, stimulated his second self, his death’s second self, the one waiting for him, with his demons.
But Shannon, of Irish stock, had that intuition (or learned it mighty quick), that near second insight I might say, perhaps that the Druids had or Celts had; he also had that mental book, cyclical book of the devil’s, that he could see into—per near read, so Shannon knew when his father was possessed and when he wasn’t. This would suffice for his survival through those trying years.
These were the circular years for him, because he seemed to be going always in circles, especial with his father, things seldom changed, that is to say, he got drunk, they ate very little, except when their mother brought home groceries because she did some sewing for a neighbor, or cleaned a house, and so forth.

No reasonable mind can doubt this truth, whose instantaneous result would show up in the future—hence, thereafter, time without end—the curse of the world would befall him; and the theory holds true I believe, that when a boy is weaned on milk, he will grow strong boned, when he is weaned on milk and booze, he will perhaps grow strong, but also acquire a taste, a liking for the cursed substance called booze. He will—in time, have a body-chemistry change over, or if his genetic structure is likened to his father from day one, this imperfect substance, maliciously will take a voyage throughout his system, and seat itself at the helm of his being—near his soul, and forevermore, make him want more, make him come back for more, and Shannon’s father, was the organic ladder for Shannon’s demise with alcoholism, as well as his own, and the weakening of the heart of Shannon’s older brother Gus, I do believe.
It is enough to compare a drunk with a drunk, the rude unsteady hands of Shannon’s father would bring—or better put—permitted the formulation of Shannon’s future addiction to alcohol, where there would be no satisfactory resolution for him to stop its usage. This formless substance, with its chaotic nature made his father insensitive at times, and thus, would form a faithful, and catalogued character, and friend to and for Shannon.

No: 455 (8-25-2009)


The Circular Years
((Shannon O’Day’s Youthful Years in Sketches) (1900-1909))


Sketch Two

“Implacable Death”


I went to my bed, flopped down on top of my iron framed bed—I had already closed the curtains around the bed, nobody was home, just me. And there I lay on my back. The never changing world circled around me, as did the room. Everything was hazy, it was near twilight, the sun in the sky appeared to be hung onto a rope like a shadow, or perhaps it was like a cloud, it was by and large, an incredible day, a day without end, many omens, and I felt my pitiless death surround me. In spite of having been a child of eight-years old, my grandfather had died of alcoholism, and my father was on his way to such a death, and now me, at eight-years old, I was in the symmetrical gardens of the dying, or so I felt, my father allowed me enter without cost, perhaps more at coheres me to enter, to drink four-shots of 140-proof vodka—was his way of saying: welcome to the family curse.
“Was I to die now?” I asked myself.
I looked in the window behind me, it was likened to a mirror, I saw my reflection, in the midst of it all, I hated looking at myself, nearly in terror—I had a long looking horse-face.
“How does one put an end to these wandering illusions?” I asked myself, but of course, in simpler terms. Then got thinking, my father lived with these on a daily bases—by gosh, what a life.
I knew the fast moving thoughts and visions I was having were doubtless due to the alcohol, four shots in a row—it per near poisoned my system, saturated my blood stream. A bird flew across the window, unthinkingly I turned my head and waited for it to return, it never did. I had even noticed as I tried to talk to myself, my human voice weakened. I had tried to tell dad “No more…!” but he said, “Grow up you little twerp!”
And so I had two more shots, four all together. Back then, back when I was just a youngster, nothing I said reached the ear of my father; a man who is sitting in his own infinitely senseless, silence—somewhere I would expect, wanting, waiting but not getting another drink of booze, cause he’s long gone.

The Lamp and a Timorous Boy


The lamp lit the room, and after I sobered up I got thinking, no more faces remained or shadows. They had all gone a good distance away, without waiting for my head to produce questions and answers, there I laid in bed thinking….

I was a timorous boy, to say the least. I can say it now, but wouldn’t have back then, now that I have entered—and seem to be in the middle of (looking back), entered I say, into carrying out a life of drinking, that alcohol had degraded me by making me become shy. Furthermore, it made me an over unassuming man—, as a boy, I took leave of myself, went looking around for pa’s booze, sneaked it, quiet like, even took a few dollars out of his pocket when he was passed-out, and bought corn whiskey with it. The truth is that, I felt too often, and perhaps most often, too visible and vulnerable. But vainly, I kept my drinking under some kind of control during those youthful years.
At age ten, I had already told myself happiness had ended for my youth, no accident of fate. Somehow I thought in my head, or foresaw, that humanity had two regions that he could dwell in happily, one being a soldier, the other a bandit. On the other hand, a lifetime job seemed to me, whosoever would undertake it that is—it would impose upon him a future as atrocious as trying to find your way through a labyrinth. So I hoped and prayed there would be a big war, and there was, they called it, The Great War, and I told myself that was my cup of tea. For as I grew older, I drank more, and the more I drank the more the eyes of men looked dead to me. Anyhow, so war was my forte for when I’d grow up.


A Blurred Young Soldier’s Vision


Under the trees of our apartment building’s backyard, I meditated on this loss of youth I felt surrounded me one summer afternoon when I was ten-years old, ready to go and move in with our Uncle Hawk, and perhaps try to figure out the plan mankind had for an extended life for a human being, for a labyrinth that produced an everyday job for every solid citizen, in the country. I imagined it was under the control of some secret society, on top of some far-off mountain, and that they could escape if need be by some underground tunnel beneath the mountain that lead into the sea, and came up and out, somewhere else right out of a river, what a thought, and want a maze, growing out of a ten-year old mind. Yes I was lost in these imaginary illusions, for an undetermined period of time, youthful time. By observing my father, I got the impression men might be enemies of other men, depending on the simple differing of opinions they shared. But all men seemed to share the same understanding, and loyalty to the one country they lived in, perhaps that is why I figured being a soldier inspired me—filled my mediating days back then. I could see an avenue of escape, a strange destiny and course. Now looking back, I know the blood and tears that are required for a war, the madness, the shapeless mass of contradictory words that float across oceans and continents and other large land masses.

No: 456 (8-25-2009)

Yesterday

(A Shannon O’Day Story)


Gus O’Day had not always been a Minnesota corn farmer. But the time when he had not been, his neighbors, or even his brother Shannon could not remember, it was more than forty-five years ago, and it was such a short period of time in his life that only the old men at the County Old Folks Farm could recall it, and to be quite honest, in 1956 (several months before he’d die of a heart attack), it was hard for them to even recall it, and most of them did not, because in that time he was not yet even twenty-years old.
He was a young man then, working at a pawnshop (His Uncle Hawk Gordon O’Day owned it, down on Wabasha Street by the Lyceum Movie Theatre, across the street from the World Theatre. Hawk Gordon was a man of a small figure, with red hair, always having greasy looking hands and shirt and face, wiping his hands constantly onto the back of his trousers—), he worked there at his mother’s request and done so voluntarily when asked, he even tried to persuade his mother (Ella Teresa Cotton O’Day) to let him do it alone, which she refused because after his father departed (dropped them off there), left them to go to who-knows-where, he knew this part of his life—with his younger brother but ten-years—was a mere formally, and a fragment in the span of a life time.
So Gus did what he felt he had to do. Years after (after the death of his mother, and his marriage to Mabel Foote, and taking in his younger brother, and buying his farm), years after that, he still said it was the only thing he could have done, or do; that is, to put up with the situation, and the drunkenness of his uncle in which he was convinced he was taking advantage of his mother, of which she insisted he remain neutral, because he provided a backroom for them to live in, and food—room and board.
Actually he did not overlook it, several months after his mother had passed on—that following winter, having saved enough money in the past two years for a down payment on a small farm, he bought it, and left that part of St. Paul, and moved twenty-miles outside of the city in what was then a remote section of the outskirts. He left his uncle with a taste of his fists, the night he left, and just like they had appeared one night from nowhere, he left the whiskey soaked uncle, the sole owner—promptly, and dignified, with a bill of sale for the farm in his pants pocket and his name signed to it.

The following morning, Gus woke Shannon and Mabel up, sat in the kitchen, at their square wooden table, and Gus handed them a butcher’s knife, and said, “I killed Uncle Hawk Gordon, five hours ago.”
Mabel half awake, who had been sitting drinking coffee at the square wooden table first, before Gus arrived, perhaps had been sitting there for those hours Gus had been missing from the bedroom, whose to say, looked at the nine-inch knife, looked it over, as Gus had swayed—unnoticeable swayed it to and fro: she looked at that knife in his hands with a flat affect, “Let’s not jump to conclusions it appears no one took you into consideration yet.” And with the morning paper to prove it, she looked high and low, page after page, turned on the radio, station to station, end to end, not a word of the murder, and with that she calmed her husband down, claiming the wrong he did was so far undetected on his part, and perhaps better left alone.
I can remember the odd and surprised look that Shannon had on his face. I grabbed the evidence, and it did not take but ten-minutes to dispose of it into the forty-foot well outside near the creek.
“We’re farmers now,” Mabel said, “not storekeepers anymore.” And it would have seemed to an onlooker she had become unshakable to the incident. Gus’ voice was near silent, almost numb, she added, “There’s not going to be any court-trial over that gray and redheaded whiskey drinking pervert!” She insisted.
Only those words were harsher than the words she’d use in 1956. But even then, she’d confess, he got what he deserved. That the justice system would not consider the torment he caused his fellow man, and Gus’ mother, you’d have to be rich, or famous, or know someone—someone who could understand, and empathize, and someone who could do something about such a person, and there was no one out there like that, not even Judge Finley would have protected Gus.
“We all know in this country,” she said back then, “we all know from birth to death that justice—if you want to call it that, demands the culprit be given his rights over the victim, and it is seldom the everlasting price, mentally if not physically—or ever would be considered by the injustice system presently in place.” And as far as she could see, Uncle Hawk had only his own life to pay for the life he tormented, thus, his death, spares those who would have come before him, had he not died.

“I had felt at the time I had to take Uncle Hawk Gordon’s life from him in order to stop him from using people the way he used us!” said Gus. “I didn’t know back then it would follow me to my grave. And that is what I am talking about—somewhat talking about, not about a dead man per se, that died forty-years ago, or his character per se, nor his morality or the sexual acts he made my mother perform, that I saw from the keyhole, but that she was defenseless and he justified it in forcing the issue with our survival, and basing it on her performance. Of course, he never knew this, he slept sound with his bottle of whiskey in his hands each night, as he did when I killed him. Perhaps he still has that bottle in his grave.”
“Yes,” said Mabel, “I’ve tried to tell you this for years, she had no choice in the matter that she was just trying to do the best she could do, with what she had at the time, under the trying circumstances she found herself in. And your instincts and beliefs made his death inevitable, and caused no one any misery, and perhaps better for humanity’s sake.”

Gus had been sitting at the same kitchen table, in the same room he had sat in forty-years ago, where his brother Shannon had sat as a boy…took in that deep breath of disbelief, and everything was so quiet you could only hear the clock ticking on the wall, that seemed to go throughout the room, as if in a bell tower.
“Well Gus,” said his wife, “at least after forty-some years you’ve stopped talking about it, and now at sixty-six it surfaces.”
“That’s right,” Gus said, then corrected himself, “I thought about it everyday of my life, every time I look at that wall, I even replaced the clock so I’d not have to hear the ticking.”
His eyes no longer bright, his face thin, his hair starting to whiten, his heart weakened, “Come here,” said Mabel. “I want you over here for a moment. Ask your brother to come over, you’re feeling way down, over that perverted uncle of yours. Shannon seems to perk you up!”

They were outside now, standing on the wooden stairs, Gus stepped halfway down, his hand on his wife’s shoulder to keep his balance, his eyes half shut too weak to keep them open any wider.
“Justice was accomplished for once, if you can’t bear looking at it that way, don’t look at it at all,” Mabel said.
“Yes,” said Gus.
“Then what do you want?” or expect?”
“I can’t help it,” Gus said, and he couldn’t. Yet for him it was like it happened yesterday, not forty-years ago. Then he heard a voice, it was Shannon’s, “Stop! Over hear!” And Gus looked to the right hand side of him. He could hardly see Shannon. There he stood, benting over the railing, much older looking than he was, barefoot on his porch steps, with a haunting and fierce look on his face; his skin pale, like buttermilk; his hands shaking, as if having palsy of age.
“Come,” said Shannon “I got some homemade corn whisky, let’s sit in the cornfields and get drunk!”
“Yup!” he agreed “let’s get out of here and get off these porch steps, let’s go!” And they did.
His eyes were now eager, content and more than willing to let the dead bury the dead, at least until tomorrow, which today would be yesterday, after they finished that bottle of corn liquor.


No: 449 8-5-2009.. Independent of any other stories of Shannon O’Day

Burying Shannon O'Day (a short story)

Burying Shannon O’Day
(A Shannon O’Day and Otis Wilde Mather Story)


Chapter One
The Meeting


“All right,” Otis Wilde Mather says. “Then I will pay for his funeral, and his headstone, since no one else will—”
“Gentlemen and Ladies,” said the lawyer, Miles C. Hoffman, and the young one, Annabelle Henry the first one standing up and sternly saying and near tears, “Can’t you all see, Mr. Shannon O’Day was a part of our lives, we all need to make him a big gravestone, not just leaving it up to Otis, because Otis is rich and handsome and kind, and was a close friend to Shannon.
“I’ve already thought of that too,” said Poggi Ingway, a dear friend who had worked at a foundry with him, and even Maribel Adams, who had married Shannon for a season, and lost him to Annabelle, and now was married to Earnest French, making her new name Maribel French, who had traveled all the way from San Francisco to Minnesota to attend Shannon’s funeral, “I feel,” she said, “he belongs to all of us, let’s build a mausoleum, and make it look like a cornfield, because he liked to drink in those damn fields all the time.” (And she chuckled.)
“He’s a war veteran,” says judge Finley, now in his eighties “no need for this meeting to see who’s going to bury the drunk, let’s just have a funeral and a wake and say our goodbyes, the Army provides a wooden coffin, and a hundred dollars I hear.”
Said the Lawyer, “He fought with the French, not the US Military, we’d have to contact them, see what their rules are concerning this matter of payment.”
“Hum…mmm” said the judge.
“Wait, wait,” said Gus’ wife Mabel, “Youall came to my husband’s funeral and there was no fuss about folks putting in fer his headstone so we should jest take up a collection now fer Shannon see what we all can get.”
Old Josh, Zam-Zam and Jake from ‘Dickey’s Diner,’ were also on hand, along with J.R. Ritt from the bank, the owner, he knew Gus better than Shannon, and had a eye for Mabel, always had an eye for Mabel, went to High School with her, fancied her then, and now. I suppose, and I’m sure she supposed, it was a chance for both to meet again; they were standing by one another.
“But there isn’t’ any crime if Otis wants to put the bulk of the proceeds in since he’s a rich—(and he was going to say nigger, but the Lawyer, held his tongue and said) black gentleman.”
As everyone looked at everyone else, like big bass fish, with bulging eyes, nobody paid any attention to no-how to anybody, until Annabelle said, “Well, damn it, will someone speak up!”
“Then what the hell do you want from each one of us, someone take charge here—please!” said Judge Finley.
The Lawyer Miles sitting there calm and quiet, with his face paper white and stiff; and it had seemed to Annabelle, he hadn’t learned much how to speak up and fight, timid as a hermit mouse.
“I was more Gus’ friend than Shannon’s,” said the judge, in a whisper, waiting for someone to make a rule on the amount of money needed, but it was obvious, nobody knew what they needed and wanted, and Shannon’s body needed to be buried, and that was what they came there for, to settle just that, by a passel of amateurs who knew not how to go about having a board meeting, or confronting issues, in a professional way, aimed at trying to simply bury someone, somehow, more now than then.
Poggi was somewhere in the group, and stood up and looked out at the others, “Gertrude, is Gertrude here?” (one of his five wives), and she was there standing in the archway of the door that lead into the kitchen from a hallway, with her daughter, Cantina.
“Yes, Poggi, I’m here, why?” she asked.
“I suppose we’ll have to have your daughter’s signature on everything, she’s the closest thing Shannon had to anyone being legal over him. And I guess you’ve heard as much as we have here, as any one on recommendations, so perhaps you can give a few?”
“Yes: all right, suppose everyone come back out here to Gus’ farm tomorrow and bring what money they can, and my daughter and I will see how much it cost to make him into ashes, and buy him inside a urn and if you all want him to have cornfields, I’ll have the urn designer, that is, do a quick paint job on it.”
Said Judge Finley, “We’ll hold the meeting out here at Mabel’s farm tomorrow then, Gus would like that, and I hear Sally-Ann and Margaret-Rose will be in town tomorrow, Shannon’s other wives, so perhaps the piggy-bank will have more money in it for his funeral. Or his wake or those cornfields Gertrude was talking about.”
Then they all got up to leave, some laughing and talking and joking, back and forth, Annabelle enjoying Otis’ company; Judge Finley looking at Otis, as if he was the Chief Head Master of the Minnesota KKK: old judge Finley had always treated Otis as if he was a foreigner, not even paying no attention to the others, standing by him, just staring at Annabelle and Otis, who became a millionaire in the meat market business, between Minnesota and Alabama, in the past twenty-years or so with the $500-dollars Shannon had won off a racehorse, in the 1940s. And J.R. Ritt, looking at Mabel as if he wanted to restart those old flames from his high school days.
“Now are you satisfied?” said Gertrude, to Poggi. As if to say, now you can leave me alone. She had stood in the archway of the door not wanting to be recognize, who she was—she did not come burrowing through and up to the meeting, relishing the fact she had to take on the coordinating of her ex-husband’s funeral, she had been in Chicago, all this time, just doing normal business until someone said Shannon’s lights went out, she was setting alone in a small apartment, how does a woman say it, inviting her soul to keep her company. It was really simple a time for her to see her daughter, and since it was a grieving time for her, she wanted to be by her. She, herself, had already done all the grieving she was going to do over that man.


Chapter Two
Gertrude’s Testimony


To be frank, and down right honest, Gertrude, wanted to go back to Chicago that very night, she did not want to attend the meeting tomorrow, and she told Cantina that, in so many words, and it didn’t seem Cantina needed her anyhow.
She was capable, but that wasn’t it, she was frail, as if her bones and flesh became fragile and her eyes seemed sleepless, and her mind seemed as if she could not dream anymore, she told her daughter, and that she was relearning these things since she left her father (and her ex-husband),
“Your father meant well, he always was a laugh, and we drank ourselves sick and silly, and I drank with him knowing I would never be enough woman for him, but he was enough man or drunk to do me harm and damage me more mental than physical, he never laid a hand on me, just enough man to do it mentally though, and, I might add, or maybe I didn’t know him, thank god I got away from him. Ay, thank god for that, I found peace in Chicago, perhaps it’s too late, I still have some ensnared anguish, and I thought I could be brave for you.”
“There, there, mother, it’s all right, I know you were brave then and you are brave now,” said Cantina.
“The morning I left your father, when I got home, the first thing I did was to turn on the lights, and the heater, the big space heater in the living room, it was cold. I propped the door to stand open, and I grabbed the bank book. The second thing I did, was to get the money out of our account, then out of town before your father called the police on me, looking for me, I was merely running and wanted him to leave me alone, I was dying of drinking, and he would never understand that.
“I ran up the stairs got my cloths, and I turned off the space heater before I left, and I suppose maybe your father thought there might have been an intruder, but I tried to be tidy about leaving. So I leaped here and there to turn this and that off, I moved, turned away from my home and husband, I had learned the hard way, he had the right to be where he was, and to change things I had to change me and my environment, had I stayed we would have fought over this and that, to flee to run, succeeded. With your father I would have had to be some lesser and baser other, to be vulnerable to him, to have to be silent to his drinking, and to be his drinking partner.
“To gain what? For what? What did I desire, what was I hoping for—it was all scary at first, but what I really wanted was simple, my own identity. I found privacy to sleep, and read, and not be in a state of despair.”

“I understand mother,” said Cantina, “You left because you were unhappy, simple as that, and its okay.”
“Shannon wouldn’t really mind, because I can’t hurt him now,” said Gertrude, “I can’t harm him, not just me, no matter what anyone did, they couldn’t harm him. That he would really just as soon drink and sleep and die in those cornfields as he did and for what godly reason I don’t know, perhaps just to show he cant be hurt. All right, you don’t’ have to agree, what do you want me to do here now?”
“I would like you to stay with me until he is buried,” said Cantina.
“If you were not drinking with your father, after a while he became a nuisance, all drunks are a nuisance when you are sober and they are drunk. I will not miss him, least his drinking, perhaps some of the laugher in the cornfields, since we both agreed in the beginning, cuckolding each other.”
“Lock the door mother,” she said. “We’ve already had a long day, its getting late, let’s go to bed.”
“I hope Cantina; you didn’t mind what I said about your father?” expressed Gertrude.
“Oh no mother of course not, but I do value him as highly as I value you and your coming here proves you value me. Good night!”


Chapter Three
Cantina’s Dilemma

Gertrude told her daughter Cantina, in a smooth yet sour way, the following morning as they readied for the second meeting, “You are much like your father you know, a dreamer and a poet—usually women are only swayed by poets long, a short while perhaps, they prefer reality, facts, and truth, well, they can make it fit in-between as long as they can iron out the other two, but you, you see your father as a hero, the facts are that which existed some forty-years ago, there is no more reality to that, it is all squeezed out like a wet rag, but you won’t even believe me, he was a drunk, no more, then than now, or just before he passed on—I mean.”
“Don’t say anymore maw, I’ll just end up hating you both, you most of all because you started it.” Then Cantina hesitated, trying to get her composure back, “I don’t believe you,” she said, cried and thought.
“So,” said Gertrude, “there is nothing I can say.”
Gertrude held her cigarette in her hand, motionless, as it burned down towards her fingers, “Bury him and be done with it.”
“Don’t you see mother that is what I’m after?”
“Our marriage my dear was a fact, the rest of it was that poetic romance I was fool enough to be fooled into, that only a fool follows a fool, but at the bitter end, the fool, one fool woke up.”
“Good-bye!” she said harshly, adding, “you’ll have to bury him alone, or not with me anyhow!”
“All right,” Cantina told her mother, “thank you for coming anyway.”

∙

Cantina didn’t care, know anything about womanhood for the most part, the parts anyhow, Gertrude was talking about, the things like romantic love, she only knew parental love, or mortality (death), she was too young to think of such things, to place them on a table and call them facts of life, she didn’t care about her mother’s reality, let alone the truth or no truth of what was the real truth that went on between them two, it was their lives, not in particularly her’s—perhaps she wouldn’t have put it quite that way—but she knew little about such things, yet she knew she had time to learn them, in time, she only knew what she knew, and felt, that she loved the man that died, her father, and it was unconditional love, it was free for him to take, and her to give, and she gave and he took, and he gave and she took, and it was not necessarily always receiving. If it was, then it was a trade, not unconditional. And that is what she knew, and felt, that was her reality.
And she knew this second meeting, meant just that. And she knew by the time everyone was done talking at the meeting, all the ex wives, and the banker, Ritt, and Poggi, and even Otis, her father’s body, oh yes, the dead can look ugly, and smell bad, no semblance of who they really were. This, the second meeting was the devil’s ambush, to take from her what her mother couldn’t, but tried, that last reflex of devotion and make it like sour milk
“All right,” she said, “just tell me paw how do you want to be buried?” and she fell to her knees, put her hands over her eyes, then when she opened them, in his shoe, she found an envelope, she opened it, and in the envelope was a letter, his will, how he wanted to be buried.
Then that afternoon she set out to follow the instructions. It all was too simple, but simplicity was greeted as a gift, a pusher, a stressor taken off her.

That evening, while everyone waited in the yard, at Gus’ farm, Cantina, showed up, all knowing she had the instructions from Shannon himself now, written out in plain English for her daughter to follow, all watching what she was going to do, she said “Okay paw it’s your idea to go home, it is you who insist on it being this way…” she held in her arms a two gallon antique, moonshine jug, one that Shannon used for drinking moonshine, and wine and his corn whisky in and from, those they had around the 1880s thru about 1910, or so.
Next she started walking down the rows those tall cornstalks rows one after the other, one by one, slowly and contently, inside that jug was his ashes, and she started emptying them out, pouring them out as if she was fertilizing the ground with them, per his instructions, and she whispered along the way: “I hope your pleased paw…I hope your pleased, I really do, I really do, I really, really do.”


No: 412; Written 6-10 & 11, 2009

Day of the Damned Horses (WWI, 1916)

Day of the Damned Horses
((A Day in the battle for Verdun, WWI, 1916) (A Shannon O’Day story))




Chapter One
The War and the Machine Gun Nest

(It is 1964; Shannon O’Day’s daughter Cantina is twelve-years old. She is with him for the weekend. They are out at Como Park, sitting along the banks of Como Lake. He often talks about the Great War with her, the one he was in as a young lad, and she always listens, but it is often a repeat, but nonetheless she listens, and today, Saturday, he is talking to her about it, they have cool-aid and hotdogs, sitting on an Indian type blanket in the grass:)


Says Shannon to his daughter, Cantina, “I came, I saw, I concurred, in the Great War…” then paused to look deep into her eyes, to see if she was really attentive, listening, “I was a man alone, like an island in the middle of the sea, entire of itself, like a continent, or part of one, that is how I felt in the war, especially in this one day of battle I had, and I had two days that were special in that 300-day battle—oh, perhaps more, but two that haunt me, one of victory, one of tragedy, both during the Battle for Verdun, in 1916, let me tell you about the first one, I call it ‘The Day of the ‘Dead Horses.’” (She nods her head yes, up and down slowly, she’s heard it before, each time though she gets something new out of it, something he was fearful before of releasing, so she has learned to not show discontent for him bringing it up for the umpteenth time, she knows when he’d dead, gone, these will be her private stockpile photos, of his trying days in battle, ones he only shared with her, and only her.
Cantina knew ever since he had come back from his war—some forty years ago, as Shannon called it, World War One, there was a since of duty that remained in him. As if he should have died, but survived for some reason.

She knows, but she can’t put it in words, knows: He sees no hope for victory in the long run for mankind, but finds he can live a full life in the hours God has left him. She knows this has told herself this in so many words, just sitting there talking to her father, thinking but not saying, saying only those things that are pleasing to him, she knows, he doesn’t fear death or solitude, never has and he finds love is possible for him in a sense that in that will, his will, he must never hide from death, nor retreat from it, he can live a full life, closely interwoven with it, but remembers the village where he almost lost his life in France, the girl who lost her two boys, and he had to half kill her, she did the other half of the killing. And those horse, those damn dead horses, he remembers them well, and therefore, he feels in life, ever since, he stands alone.
“What are you thinking?” asks Shannon to his daughter.
“The way you might be thinking.” She says back to her father, and it actually makes him smile, what daughter would try to understand a man like him, a good and fine daughter, that is who, he confirms this to his second self. “She doesn’t judge him,” he tells himself. “How funny, everyone else does.”
And so on this day, in 1964, in the park, sitting on the Indian blanket, here is the story he tells Cantina, I shall tell it in my own words, as he tried to tell her in his:


Shannon O’Day was making his stand in a trench. He did not like this trench and when he saw it he thought it had a shape of a woman’s womb. But he had no choice this was the trench, and he selected it as far away from the German artillery shells could reach as possible. But not as far away as the sound of automatic machine guns reached with their bullets banging away night and day, halting and firing, hesitant, uncertain, and then firing again and again, to give him and his platoon of eleven men a nervous case of being shell-shocked.
There still was snow on the ground, frost for the most part, it had ruined the ground, made it muddy, chilled and hardened at night, when the sun sank, and when the horses came pulling wagons of supplies, jerking, and climbing, and staggering their way through the mud, and snow, hauling equipment, men pulling their bridles, the rains coming over their heads and shoulders, holding the horses by the mane, many had to be shot, and many got shot in the line of battle, and there they lay dead, where they feel, for the flies and the worms and the rats.
The horses sometimes were used for barricades, if the battle took place within the timeframe the carcass was still plump, and not gutted by animals, and even Shannon and his men shot over their bodies on occasions, their burnt hides, laying their hot muzzles on their dead flesh and firing at the enemy instead of within the trench, allowing at times for them to advance, knowing all that was behind them were empty trenches, in particular their one empty trench this day of battle, and so they used these dead horses, fifty shot in one day to advance from one point to another, giving Corporal O’Day an idea, one that could take out that nest of machine-gunners.
This day, this one early spring day, one of 300-days in the Battle for Verdun, in France, once the twelve men had reached the perimeter, of the enemy, within pistol distance, there were several more horses laying dead thereabouts, they had succeeded in stealing foot after foot after foot, to get that close to the enemy, and now behind those several horses they waited until night fall, when their first shooting would start, the enemy not knowing how close they really were, and how many had perished in the previous battle, which none had.
Of the twelve men who had reached the outer rim of the boarder where the enemy had their machineguns, two were wounded, Henry Sanchez and Elmer Boswell. Henry was from New Mexico a young lad of eighteen, and Elmer, was a man from Wisconsin, a son of a baker, he also was eighteen.
Henry had a leg wound, shot twice, in two places. And Elmer had an arm wound. All the men were very thirsty, and the wounds of the men were starting to stiffen, yet Corporal Shannon O’Day, was too close to victory to halt the operation, it must go forward, wounds or not. Henry had told Shannon it was very painful. And this brought on a severe annoyance, and he told the soldier, plainly, “You will have to endure the pain, or take death as your way out, or if you have an aspirin, that might help, whatever you chose, make it quick, and if you can’t fight anymore, stay put, and if you can, continue to do as you’ve been doing, but this is not debatable.”
It was no joke, reality, it was the mission first, not the man, and if nausea became deeper and deeper throughout the night for the two soldiers, they were considered no longer usable in battle and therefore, second in priority.
Shannon and his other now capable nine men were spread out likened to the Little Dipper. Using the horses for cover, they simply waited; the horses big like mounds linking the soldiers like baseball bases, from one point to another. Shannon moved on his belly from one horse to the other checking his men to make sure they kept their steel helmets on, a few had bullet holes through them, a few had hammered them out, yet some of the edges were still unsmoothed.
When the shooting started at, 3:00 a.m., and all the helmets had been clapped, you could hear a few of those bullets banging against the helmets, and the heads inside of them swaying, the sounds were death sounds: mouth-draying sounds, spiting sounds, cracking sounds, mechanical sounds, machine-like sounds, desperation sounds, and then a final sound—and throaty voices were no more!
The dryness and fear Shannon had in his mouth, and gut, were on hold, as he looked among the nest for the bodies of the enemy, he had thrown in three grenades, men were laying flat on their faces, arms, torn off, reaching—but reaching unconnected to their bodies, for more machinegun rounds.
Shannon walked among the dead, he wondered said to his second self, “What was their last word inside their head, their last thoughts, or to one another, to the comrade next to him?’
Said Shannon to Henry, as now he had taken the pain, and simply endured it, was still part of the onslaught, standing by his side, “It is better to die on your feet, than on your bellies.”
Another man said in back of them, “Why should they die and not us?”
And of course, in days to come, that voice would die, in a trench, but Shannon had no wisdom, or witty words for the older man, older than he by far, so he said not a word. But Shannon O’Day was thinking: it’s early now, and soon would be first light, and he could take his men back to the General and tell them, if they didn’t already know, the machinegun nest was silenced, and they’d all get a three to seven day pass to Paris or someplace safe, and a good breakfast, and Henry would go home, the war was over for him, and so was it for Elmer. And he’d get two replacements in a week or so.’
He looked around carefully, looked in back of him at the dead horses, in front of him at the machineguns, he looked at the mud where he had crawled, at the bodies he had killed, not one of his men died today, just two wounded, but this was a good day—he felt, he knew there would be worse.


Chapter Two
Rest and Recuperation in Borges


Shannon had went to Paris, for his rest and recuperation, then right onto Burgos, Belgium, for the rest of his seven day leave from the war, it had seemed to him that from now on, after that killing of several men in the machinegun bunker now everyone he passed or talked to, anyone, one and all, he met, or saw, recognized him as the face of the man who killed the seven Germans, that he had a specific face and name, and that each person knew he’d be in Belgium, floating down the cannel in a boat, looking at the old houses, the tower, the square. On second thought—he knew this to be a mental if not physical impossibility, a trick of the mind, a stress from the war, the battle, that war was destroying him, a certain quality in him anyhow, that people like him, had gotten, but even sharper than him, debilitating. He told himself, “When I go home, I’ll have to fix myself, learn how to deal with people again, talk to them,” he meant, not react to them, but act by them.
As he walked along the cannel, and in the square the days he was there, pacing almost unnoticing the people around him as if he was a pigeon in the air, just sailing away, the horses came back to haunt him, the arbitrary shooting, the appearance of the body parts separated from the bodies, he was blank, expressionless, person. Each moment was a new moment a bizarre moment, he was trying to pretend to the people around him he was not involved with the war, that he was someone free of the war, never heard the name, World at War, thinking instead of someone whose destination and goal in life was higher than that, higher than allowing one man one day, start a war between two countries, and pull in the rest of the world, and the rest of the world followed like blind working ants building an anthill, and all these countries miles and miles away, and the spirit of war, having legs, walked and stretched its way down every side street and road in every town and village and city in the world.
He didn’t know these scares would last decade to decade, penetrating his daily life, habits, he didn’t realize then when he got out of the war, he’d be out of the world, out of a life, perhaps his mind betrayed him, the war was fatal to him, he would increase his drinking, it was a healer, and he just couldn’t find anything better.


Chapter Three
The Crossroads Restaurant


Shannon got hungry, and went to a nearby shell of a restaurant, it was in-between two crossroads—shaped like ‘y’ and the restaurant was in-between the ‘y’; inside there was a hearth ablaze, with thick and colorful flames, and the crackling of the dry wood echoed in each ear, it was warm and cozy, he sat close to it.
The guesthouse provided an oilcloth-covered table, with an oil lamp in the middle of it. He ate alone, the guests had vanished, the room looked empty, the plate of food was all eaten, sauerkraut, with a sizzling steak, and corn from a can, and some biscuits, a cup of dark coffee. A few wood embers floated by his table, he spoke casual to the waitress, light conversation, and idly he remained looking out the window.
He spread his legs to warm his inner thighs, the kitchen light went off, he spoke inattentively, “I suppose you’ll be closing for a spell,” he said.
“Just for clean up, we’ll open back up in two hours,” said the waitress.
Shannon asked her to speak a little louder, there was a ringing in his ears, he had become a little deaf from all the gun firing, and artillery; consequently, her having to speak launder, triggered something inside of him, a immobility, a guardedness, he held his breath, looked about as if he was searching for the enemy.
“Are you okay, sir?” asked the waitress.
Shannon’s side was to the fire, something beyond just stillness had overcome him, then he pulled himself back together, his voice had remained the same, “I’ fine, fine,” he reassured her.
“You just sit on where you are mister,” said the waitress, “I’ll cleanup around you, no need to move.”
Shannon nodded his head in thanks, and his mind shifted, as if he was taking a nap with his eyes open, he remembered drinking in the cornfields with his older brother Gus, he’d fall to sleep on the ground, wake up in the mornings, have a feeling the earth itself sucked all the living protean out of his bones, it was as if the ground had arms, and was trying to pull him down into its depths, before his time, but the alcohol would make him pass out and that is where he laid, and that is where he got a full sleep nonetheless—well, not a full sleep, no drunk does, but a dead sleep, not like when he was in the trenches, he could never get a good nights sleep or full sleep, and when he did wakeup from his sporadic sleep in those mud and fly infested trenches, he never knew were he was, thought he was at home, in the cornfields, in his brother’s house, everyplace but where he really was. So that is why he had gotten a hotel room the first day he was in Burgos, and that is why he was thinking about the cornfields, he was thinking about the places he got the best sleep—or at least a full sleep, and now he had learned to appreciate a good full sleep, one of the great gifts of God—is a good night’s sleep, he murmured, and the waitress now sweeping around him, heard him, and knew—right then and there, he was not a tourist, he was a soldier of the Great War.


Chapter Four
Anyplace will do


Shannon O’Day was really not much different in battle than out of the battle in that he never did much hiding or luring about, with his behavior, perhaps unseen and unheard as if he was a space invader, and could be an animal as in their natural habitat like a coyote or a wolf, after his prey, and when he attacked he was not concealed any longer, not crouching behind those dead horses, after hours of discomfort—laying against those smelly decomposing, horses, whose shapes were no longer shapes of horses, infinitesimal insects from the horses crawling from the dead to the living, like crossing over on continuant to another. These were the thoughts going through his head as the waitress mopped the floor, and he stared into the flicker flames of the hearth. A little jealous the waitress never had to face such uncertainties that soldiers had to, but happy for her at the same time. She was pretty, he noticed as she walked by the light shinning through the window, near the corner of the room. He had finished his meal, and was now drinking a beer, with his feet propped on a stool, that was left by the hearth for someone to sit on and feed the fire with dray wood.
He didn’t need to be shot at anymore, he could sense, almost feel the whizzing by of bullets, just daydreaming where he was, he could hear them like a bees shooting and buzzing by his ears, it was all invisible to the eye, soaring sounds of invisibility; beyond the woman sat a man counting the morning’s and noon’s receipts—thinking hurriedly, as if the doors would soon be opened again for the early afternoon rush, to dinner rush. He didn’t need to say anything, he just ordered a third beer, and watched and listened and gazed at the legs of the young and pretty waitress. He hadn’t moved from his chair, not once.

The waitress looked at Shannon, trying to figure out his age, figuring him to be twenty or twenty one, not sixteen or seventeen, she was twenty-three, and she had seen many a soldier come through those doors, and sho enough he was a soldier, and she knew had she been through war, she wouldn’t have much left neither, that what she’d want is just what he was wanting, a warm corner someplace, a quiet someplace for a little while. And she left him to himself.


No: 412 (6-9-2009)..

Corn Harvesting and Hogtying (a Shannon O'Day Story)

Corn Harvesting and Hogtying
(A Shannon O’Day Story)




Chapter One
Cantina’s High School


“You are most unhappy when your life is empty,” Shannon O’Day told his daughter Cantina O’Day, picking her up from her High School in March, of 1965 (three months before school would let out for the summer season).
“You got to keep yourself busy,” he pressed this point, “you live from moment to moment, and you should never have any recollection of the previous moment, this way you never have to concentrate or dread tomorrow, it’s all one flash, and one fiesta—!”
But Cantina knew that was the way her dad lived, and for her it just wouldn’t do, nor last. But she smiled at his philosophy it was really meant to smooth her troubled mind about her going with him for the several months, while out on school vacation, and her uncle Gus was visiting down in North Carolina.
She was the kind of like her mother, Gertrude, if she didn’t look out the window to see what or who was coming down the road, or look at what she might have to bear in life, it would become for her unbearable, life postponed, and this in itself would create to a great extent, anxiety.
She knew her father wouldn’t even budge from those cornfields he loved so very much while drinking in the late springs and summers, that an atom bomb wouldn’t chase him away, or even an attack by bees in all directions, yet he was her hero, who fought in the Great War, and fought while in those foxholes they called trenches, and was decorated, while in Europe, by a French General.
She remembered what her mother told her that when Shannon reached home in 1919, there was no triumphant hooting for him, yet he wanted to believe that there were things worth dying for in life, fighting and dying for in life. For at least one thing—even if it wasn’t the real reason—was that Shannon O’Day, himself never thought or believed of naming it anything other than what it was because to him, to Shannon O’Day, it was nameless anyhow, it was that someday he’d have a daughter, and he didn’t want her to have to worry about a dotted world outside the boundaries of America the beautiful—soldiers and sailors and marines pushing their way with hands and weapons onto her sacred soil and coming down the highway standing on the corners waiting to kill Americans like hogs waiting for the slaughter—like rooting hogs, ready to enslave America.
During some of his trying times, he never once went on relief, leaving the bureaucratic Government one less recipient.
So he came to Washington High School, off Rice Street, in ST. Paul Friday afternoon to pick up his daughter, that he Shannon O’Day, knowing that he would have her for the rest of spring, the entire summer and until after harvest time, and then she’d be heading back to school (March through September, to about October 1), about seven months, through the planting season and harvesting time of his brother’s cornfields, outside of the city, where Gus and his wife took care of Cantina, but because Gus’ wife’s mother was ill down in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Gus and she were going down there to take care of her, she was 92-years old.
Shannon would do his farming along with his friend Otis Wilde Mather, although Shannon didn’t tell Gus about Otis being with him during some of the planting and harvesting time (the rest of the time Otis, would be gone attending to his businesses in Ozark, Alabama, and a Meat market, he owned on Jackson Street in St. Paul) Gus never like him, called him a ‘Sneaky and cagey nigger.”

Cantina was thirteen-years old at the time.

That was the situation when he arrived at the school that Friday afternoon, to pick up his daughter. There was apprehension in it too of course, since, for Shannon, to raise a daughter with his drinking condition, and it was Gertrude’s normal concern whenever he took her, even for a day, now for seven months, but she insisted she be with her father on the familiar farm, for Gertrude had to remain close to where she worked, her and Shannon owning a house on Albemarle Street, and working downtown by the Mississippi River at ‘Gillette’, assembly line work.
But now, even if she had changed her mind, it was really too late, the last breathe on the issue had been discharged.



Chapter Two
The Planting


(March) The morning was cold; it was the 10th of March, Shannon had not drank for ten-days, and was already seated at the kitchen table, with Otis, when Cantina came in, down from her second story bedroom, looked out the window, and joined her father, he was leaning back reading the newspaper, as Cantina, clutching her shawl, like her mother often did, said in a waking up manner,
“What are you going to do today when I head off for school?”
“I’m going to start planting,” said Shannon.
“Don’t you think it’s a little early?” she commented.
“Why it’s the tenth of the month, and I’m not waiting for no train.” He said with a chuckle.
“I mean paw, is the ground warm enough?” asked Cantina.
“Warm enough, I don’t know, the worms are still in the ground, they are warm I’d think, when they get cold they’ll show their heads, and that’s good enough for me,” and he laughed again pouring down his coffee, and had a little whisky in it he had hidden, not even told Otis about the pint he kept in the back water where one flushed the toilet.
“All right,” she said, and Shannon remarked, “Get on out of here and go onto school, like you’re suppose to do.” And she did.

It was that the ground was 45F, not the normal required 50 to 55 or 60, for best planting weather, and thus, Otis and Shannon took the direct seeding and planted in the cold soil, and they planted between six to eight inches apart, not the normal eight to twelve for corn stacks to grow among each other, he wanted to get a big harvest, and early planting. And he planted two inches deep, instead of the normal one inch, thinking he’d not let the crows have a feast, and his rows were 20 to 25 inches apart, not the normal 30 to 36 inches, and he had blocks of 8 rows, not four, and it was a wet spring, the soil was drenched, and he needed to drain some of it, but felt no need to, this would save Gus a big water bill, and didn’t. And accordingly, the planting was done, the way his drinking was done, fast and careless.
Then, exactly like Shannon, the other one, Otis, said, “We aint got a thing to do but wait now I reckon, lets git on to doin’ some serious drunkin’?”
Without hesitation, and forgetting his pledge to his wife, he simple said, “Okay, but damn, we’ll be sure not to tell Gertrude, or my daughter, I’ll sleep it off before she comes back from school. Go-on now and bring in that jug of corn whisky, I know you got it hidden someplace.”
Shannon knew Otis had some whisky hidden, and Otis knew Shannon was drinking on the side that he was not as serious to sobriety as he proclaimed to be, but didn’t say anything to Shannon he knew, he just figured it was timing before he’d bring up the subject, and the jug, and therefore, he moved lickety-split like to the loft of the barn where he hid the jug under some hay, and brought that jug in, pulled the cork, and with one hand like a pro, laying it against his cheek, and on his shoulder, he gulped down a big mouthful of that corn whisky like it was Coca-Cola, and Shannon, likewise.



Chapter Three
Watering & Harvesting

As the weeks passed, Cantina would have to remind her pa to water the fields, and he’d do so when she’d go off to school, and during the summer, early summer, she noticed the corn was not growing well. And she watched her papa watering; he did it too shallow, “Paw” she said, “you got to soak the soil thoroughly! And be careful not to damage the plants while cultivating!”

“Cultivating, what is that?” asked Shannon, but Cantina didn’t hear him, she was long gone by the time he got the last syllable out.

As the corn stocks got bigger (knee high), Cantina noticed it was starting to look like a jungle in the cornfields, “Paw,” she said (a little inquisitively), “don’t you remember when you were drinking, there was room for you to put your bottle down, lay back, spread your feet out, while drinking in the cornfields, now if you were drinking today, how would you do it, the cornfields look like the Amazon?”
“Hum…mm, what is your suggestion my dear?” he asked.
“Well, by planting early, you avoided the warm problem somewhat, but now the corn is not growing fast enough you planted it too deep, if you can harvest early, like in August, and not September or October, you will be ahead. You need to use more insecticide.”
“No, I haven’t used any yet, not well for the bones,” said Shannon.
“Oh my gosh,” she murmured, “You should every several days, and when it gets real hot—like it’s starting to get—we’re going to have real big problems.”
It was soon after this that the corn started to silk, and the weather got blazingly hot, and worms were starting to show up, and there was leaf rust (disease on the corn), and there was tumor like growth on the leaves.
During all this, Otis and Shannon were drinking during the early afternoons, sleeping the late afternoons away, as Cantina went to visit her friends and mother. By the time she arrived back, Shannon had a 4:00 p.m., there was usually dinner on the table for her, and Shannon would be looking, or at least acting, all sobered up.

At the dinner table this one evening, she asked, as often she did, “How’s the cornfields?”
“Fine,” he replied.
“Have you done any weeding yet?”
“Weeding,” he repeated, “am I suppose to do weeding too?”
“Oh paw, frequent weeding, that is cultivation, you got to do that before you get a problem, you cultivate just deep enough to cut the weeds off below the surface of the soil. You got to be careful so you don’t damage the plants.”
“Well dear, your old paw knows a lot, but not everything about this farming life.”
“Yaw I know paw, I think Gus knew also, he wrote me, he asked if his field is a disaster yet or not.”
“You’re kidding me, my own brother said that?”
“And I know you’ve been drinking and I won’t tell mom or Gus, because she will take me away from you.”
“I suppose she might, if she knew, but I thought I was being pretty clandestine, like that Charlie Chan fellow, you know, that detective from Hong Kong.”
“Yes, I seen the movie paw, that’s pretty old fashion thought, it’s Perry Mason, nowadays.”
“Yaw, I watch him too, but the best of them all is that private eye called, Sherlock somebody…!”
“Why we are talking like this, when it is a serious matter, you got to take care of the farm Paw, you promised Gus.”
“But I’m doing the best I can, really I am.”
She looked at her paw, and she just couldn’t help but smile, he really felt he was, even if he wasn’t, “I know you are paw, I just wanted to remind you of your promise, sometimes you forget.”

Cantina went out to look at the jungle of corn, it was all of that and worse, worms were starting to mature and eating the corn, and much of it was diseased, and you couldn’t see five feet beyond the first row of corn, and the ground was mushy, and it was late July. The ears were full and milky.
“Pop,” she said as she ran into the kitchen, “I think we can save half, or near half the harvest if we harvest now, sorry about the rest, but it’s bad.”

Gus was getting abut five bushels of corn per acre, using about 9000-gallons of water per acre. And planted 400-acres, thus, getting, 2000 bushels of corn; Shannon got 750-bushels, used about 1000-gallons of water, per acre, and none in August or September, normally high water volume months, but somehow, everyone thought under the circumstances, he did a fair job. And everyone felt, he was drinking, and many of the neighbors said he was for sure they saw him and Otis drunk and laughing in the cornfields as if they were trying to hogtie each other, but since no one got killed in the process, Gertrude and Gus, didn’t say a word concerning the matter, to save Cantina’s respect for her father, they wanted her to see him as she always saw him, her hero, because other than drinking, he had good values, so they had just crossed their fingers, and thanked the Good Lord everything turned out rosy, somewhat.


6-7-2009. . No: 411