Smokey Mountain Breakdown

...is up on Dew on the Kudzu. You may read it HERE.

I hope you enjoyed it. I need to write more short story length work. Flash is so addictive, satisfying like dark chocolate, that it's hard to give up.

I have a cold. A bad one. I'm pitiful. I've been awfully sick many times in my life. The thing about being seriously ill is that you don't care about things. You lose interest in everything that is important to you. And because of that--you feel very numb, even in the midst of unbelievable pain and physical trauma. What's what's so sadistic about the common rhinovirus, is it makes you feel like you imagine you would feel if you were dying. Sort of an imaginary sense of dying--but trust me--dying doesn't feel nearly this bad. It's scarier, but not nearly as miserable. This, they should put me in a coma for.

...on Dew on the Kudzu.

"The Ghosts are Dancing" is a story I wrote some time ago loosely based on the flood of 1972 that struck the Hartford/Grassy Fork area. It's a long one, so Idgie has been running it through the month of February. Would of let you know sooner, but I forgot it was out there and scheduled to run.

It runs each Monday. Here are the links to the past three installments:

The Ghosts are Dancing: Part One

The Ghosts are Dancing: Part Two

The Ghosts are Dancing: Part Three

There should be another one tomorrow.

This flood weighs heavily in the minds of everyone who lives here and lived through it. Everyone has vivid memories of it and I collected many of the stories from local residents to get a feeling for what it must have been like. The flood wiped out every single bridge in the area. Livestock washed away ten miles from where it lived. They say it was a freak rainstorm that hit "The Gulf" and washed everything away down Big Creek.

The title comes from the Cherokee myth of their great flood story. It's one of the more haunting stories from their mythology--with one of the most evocative images. I chose to begin the tale with it:

This was what the old women told me when I was a girl. The dog came to the man and said, “Build a boat for a great deluge is coming.” So the man built the boat for his family to ride out the great storm. The water rose until it covered the tops of the mountains. When the waters receded, the man and his family built a fire in celebration. They heard in the night, drums beating in the distance. They went to look, happy others survived the great flood. But all they found was a great pile of human bones and they realized--the ghosts were dancing.

Well, they say we may get some snow tonight. I'm not sure if that is the truth, but it certainly has been awfully gray today and sort of mild. That's usually what happens when it snows. I doubt we'll get much though.

Max continues the stupid goose thing. What is puzzling is that Max has been here for a year or so...and the geese have been here even longer. So, it's not like all of a sudden there were geese and they were something completely new in the Maxiverse. I, unfortunately, did not have the digital for yesterday's most amusing moment. I evidently broke Max's concentration by stepping out onto the porch and he took his eyes off of them for a second. Bad idea. The biggest gander grabs Max by his tail stub and hangs on for dear life. Max screams and high-tails it to the porch. He's going so fast...screaming the entire way...that the gander has to take flight...still hanging onto poor Max's tail. It looked like a goose-dog para sail for a moment there. The gander finally lets go rather than follow Max up on the porch where he cowers behind me. From a point of safety he utters some rather aggressive sounding barks at the geese. The geese laugh maniacally and do something that can only be described as a goose "high-five".

I've had my nose buried in the laptop all day finishing "The Ghosts are Dancing". I think it's pretty good, but its still too new for me to really be objective about it. The story tops out at 5,500 or so words. I have the last installment up on EditRed. I'll be combining all the parts in a few days for the first edit. Let me know what you think. I think this story merits a "hanky" alert.

Bridey pulled her mother from the back bedroom and led her towards the porch. Lurlene got as far as the screen door before looking out into the morning.

The Pigeon had risen beyond its bounds and the little white house was now an island. The water foamed and surged around the house. The rake that Roger had left out had long since been carried away and the martin house tilted drunkenly at an angle. Her world was being swept away.

Lurlene stepped onto the front porch and realized the seriousness of the situation. A crash sounded on the far side of the house and she peered around the corner to see part of somebody’s roof floating crazily down stream. It had crashed into their back porch, taking with it a corner of the building. Assorted flotsam came crashing down the river, now flowing through her yard. She strained her eyes over to her neighbor’s house that was even closer to the banks. The water had already risen as high as the windows and was rushing into the home. There on the roof of a small shed stood a miserable sow bellowing for her piglets, her udder swollen with milk. Lurlene watched as the sow lost her footing and plunged into the rapids. The sow rushed by them, her panicked human-like eyes met Lurlene’s and begged in rolling terror.

Lurlene had no idea how long the little white house could stand there on its foundation before joining the tumbling buildings and livestock. Bridey put both of her arms around her mother’s waist and buried her head in her side.

Lurlene stroked the girl’s hair and looked out into the coming day. The rain was ending, but the torrent continued to rise.

“Dear Lord, Jesus,” Lurlene prayed, for the first time in a very long time. “We gotta get out of here.”