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Friday, October 31, 2014

A Halloween Tale: Peach Trees and Prischila's Porridge

ProetryPlace Blog 66:      Peach Trees and Priscilla’s Porridge

    “I can’t believe the low price on this house. Four bedrooms. Five acres. A peach orchard.”
    For years we had wanted a little place to call our own but never could afford it.
    “Five acres? Must be a misprint.”
    “Well, let’s call. Take a look. For fun, at least.”
    
    We closed the deal two weeks later in mid-July, hardly able to believe our good fortune. By the end of the month we had the old, one-time farmhouse cleaned up and ready to move in. Our used and hand-me-down furnishings seemed ready made for the staunch old relic with its worn, wide pine- board floors and high ceilings.
    The spacious kitchen with its huge walk-in pantry was our favorite room, the room where we spent most of our time, reading, talking, drinking tea or wine and taking meals, unless we were outside on one of the two wide sitting porches or asleep in one of the four bedrooms.
    The dirt road that led from the busy highway to our newly acquired haven passed through several acres of undeveloped woodland before emerging into what had once been the working barnyard. Only a stone and concrete silo remained where the cattle barn, the chicken coup and the machinery shed had stood.
    Between the derelict barnyard and the rambling, gray clapboarded house a fenced garden was loaded with un-harvested produce—sweet corn, beans, tomatoes, peppers, okra, squash—our inheritance from the previous owners that we had never met.
    On the far side of the house, the orchard of gnarled, antique peach trees, each still bearing fruit but for the largest of them, a single, sturdy O’Henry standing tall surrounded by half a dozen Summer Ladies, its branches wide spread but barren.
    “Odd, that big old tree has no fruit. It looks as healthy as the rest.”

    We had our first visitors in September, well after the peach harvest, an old couple with the names of Benjamin and Julia Smith. An odd couple they were, she a large, loud woman, he a wiry imp of a man who spoke with the hint of a British accent and had the devil’s twinkle in his eye. They told us they were our nearest neighbors from the other side of the woods. We chatted over cups of Earl Grey tea at our kitchen table.
    “Hope you folks decide to stay. Seems like someone just moves into this old place and they’re moved out again.”
    “We can assure you that we plan to stay. We love it here.”
    We showed them around the place, but they seemed disinterested, as if already familiar with it, more familiar than ourselves. We showed off the new swing we had hung that week on the wide back porch, and we wandered into the orchard. The trees pointed their gray, bare branches toward the gray, autumn sky.
    “We had a great peach crop this year, except for that one tree. Next year we will bring you some.”
    “Don’t you know about that tree? That is where they hanged the scoundrel, McComber, after he killed his darling young wife. Way back when these trees were young. Strangest thing. They say that tree never bore fruit since.”

    Cool autumn breezes scattered the withered peach tree leaves along the fence of the dormant garden. The nights turned cold. We enjoyed our first crackling wood fire in the old stone fireplace.
I wondered if she heard the voices too.

    The steaming bowls of porridge looked and smelled inviting. Just the thing for a cold late-October morning. Later, we would carve the Jack O’Lanterns, fit them with fat candles and set them out on the front porch, although visitors in our remote location would be unlikely. But now we both enjoyed the warming, filling, unexpected treat of porridge. Finished, I fixed our coffees, hers black, mine creamed and sugared.
    “I didn’t hear you up early making the porridge. What made you think of that? We never have porridge. But it was great.”
    “Are you being coy? I don’t know porridge from a pot hole. And I sure didn’t get up early.”
    “Don’t tease me. It’s not funny. Someone made the porridge.”
    “But . . . I swear, I . . . .”
    “Not Funny!”

    Later that morning, while we were still not speaking, Benjamin and Julia stopped by for a friendly visit. “Hope we’re not imposing by coming unannounced. We often roam about on Halloween.”
    We almost forgot the porridge incident as we sipped our tea and talked about the change in the weather and such. Eventually, I asked, “About this McComber, how did he kill his wife?”

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    “Poisoned her, they said. Put strychnine in her morning porridge, they said, and went out to the barn to do the morning milking. Her kinfolks came by and found the fair young bride stretched out dead, with a horrible grimace on her beautiful face, still warm. Right here, on this very kitchen floor. They found the foul McComber in the barn, hauled him out, all fussing and protesting, and hanged him from that old peach tree. All the while, him shouting and screaming his innocence.”
    

    The voices came now more clearly and more often. Young voices. Happy voices, speaking of love, speaking of the future. Then a woman’s raucous laugh. Then a sad, profound silence.
    And every morning, steaming bowls of porridge.

    
We packed the last of our things into the overloaded van and locked the house door. A fine white blanket of snow had been deposited the night before. Stubbles and stalks in the dormant garden stood above the cold dusting as if to wish us a forlorn farewell. We drove slowly without speaking past the For Sale sign at the edge of the lawn. As I turned to look upon the deserted silo one last time, the semblance of foot prints appeared in the snow, like someone being dragged toward the vacant old house. I sped toward the woods.

    “We’ll just stop to say goodbye. To let them know we are leaving.”
    We searched for the mailbox number the Smith’s had given us. Finding it, we pulled into the long driveway. Ahead, the tower of a fine old Victorian rose above the trees. The gingerbread was painted
bright cream, in contrast with the dark mauve of the shingled siding. Children’s toys and bicycles lay abandoned on the broad, somewhat neglected front lawn.
    We rang the front door bell, and heard voices from within. A man and woman, younger than ourselves, smiled and greeted us. Children laughed with delight in another room. The woman turned briefly and called out, “Peter, Priscilla. Not so loud!” and returned her attention to us.

    “Hello. We just stopped to say goodbye to Benjamin and Julia.”
    “Benjamin? Julia?”
    “Yes. The Smiths.”
    “Oh?” The young husband glanced at his wife, then back at us. He frowned. “There was a couple named Smith that lived here.” He cracked a wry smile. “ About a century ago. Not now.”
    “But, we saw them just a few weeks ago. At the old McComber place.”
    “Sorry. The Smiths we know of died many years ago. Executed if you want the truth. This was their home. It’s said that they lynched that man you mentioned—uh . . . McComber. They thought he’d killed their daughter, Priscilla. Found out some time later she died of a stroke. Unusual for one so young. Too late for them. Sadly and surely, too late for the poor bloke, McComber. Tragic, all around.”
    We stepped back, stunned, confused, unbelieving, “But. How?” We turned to leave.
    “Say, can you stay? We would love to have you two join us a while. We were just fixing breakfast. We’re having bangers and nice hot homemade porridge. It’s an old family recipe.”


Richard Allen Anderson     31 October 2014     http://richardandersonblogs.blogspot.com

Saturday, October 18, 2014

PoretryPlace Blog 65 So Where’s the Blog?
    We got a little busy here this past month. Had to forego a few weeks of bloggery.
    Some medical issues and testing kept us occupied full time for a number of days. Sparing you the not-so gory details, we are both okay now.
    I took advantage of the dreary hours of worry and uncertainty in hospital waiting rooms to get in some reading time. Often, this goes: read a few pages, worry, nod off, read a few pages, look up at the television, worry, try to find some coffee, read a few more pages . . . . Not this time. While the worry factor remained in the back of mind, Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” kept me turning page after page.
    The book took the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and two years later was made into a motion picture. It is a story without chapters that moves relentlessly in McCarthy’s direct, arresting, unconventional style. It keeps coming at you. It is relentlessly desperate. It is relentlessly hopeful. At the end, I was exhausted. If you have not read it, read it.
    I spent some time submitting my work for publication. I sent a few poems to Contemporary Haibun Online. They accepted one. It is in the current (October 2014) issue. Check out the website:
www.contemporaryhaibunonline.com if you would care to read it or other great haibun.
    Encouraged by this acceptance, I sent three more haibun to Rattle poetry magazine for their spring 2015 Tribute issue to Japanese poetic forms. I’ll have to wait a couple of months to see how that goes.

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     Then there was MeccaFest, the juried arts and crafts show at the Carrollton Cultural Arts Center, last Saturday and Sunday. We gawked and shopped and bought some unusual items as gifts and for our own use. There are also live performances on the outdoor stage, mostly musical talents. Members of the Carrollton Creative Writers Club were asked to read some of their short works to fill time between acts.  I read both days. In case you missed it, as nearly everyone in Carrollton did, here is one of the Silverstein-esk pieces I chose for the Saturday readings. It is titled Your Pick.




When it comes to your face
You might want to erase
The assemblage
You got from your parents.

You don’t get your druthers
Your chin is your mothers
And happy or sad, eyes
And ears are your dads.

You can’t make the selection
Of which direction your tongue
Sticks out of your mouth
But you do get to pick
Your own nose.

    Sunday, I got a little more serious and read a couple of my recently penned (I actually use pencil) seasonal haibun. Here is one with a taste of autumn, titled County Roads.

Open fields on the outskirts of our small town near the western Georgia border have lain fallow and unworked for generations. Weathered gray barns and sheds, dilapidated reminders of distant days, teeter precariously alongside the rural byways. The land seems to sing with subdued voices of the past—black workers bent over dry, prickly cotton bolls on a hot August afternoon; echoes of the gee and haw of a farmer guiding his mules and plow.
Late on dusky autumn evenings, small rafters of wild turkey emerge into the long shadows of the surrounding woodlands to scavenge barren fields. Ravens gather to conspire in the dimming light of day. And slowly, silently nature reaches out to reclaim her rightful providence.

black birds bob and strut
on rusted tin roofs, below
only goldenrod

    So our days spin on, one to the next, moving uncertainly to a certain fulfillment, like the man and the boy in “The Road,” ever circumspect, ever mindful, step after faltering step, ever hopeful.

Richard Allen Anderson,     http://richardandersonblogs.blogspot.com     18 October 2014