Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick's Search for Love

Dewy White Flower, by [Maris] - Louisa, KY 1997

"What about Knee-Brace Kenny," Laura Delite suggested.  "He seems positively smitten with you, Barb."

Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick scoffed.  "I don't even want to dignify that with a response.  You're lucky I don't--"

"Stab me?" Laura said.  "I mean, stab me again?"

"You know me so well.  Look - Kenny's very sweet, but he's just a boy.  I need a man.  A real man.  Plus, knee braces give me the willies something awful."

"Well, how about Magnetized James?  He's a man's man.  All the lady hoboes think he's a dream."

"Oh Laura, be serious," Barb groaned.  

"I am being serious," she insisted.  "You two made a swell couple.  Everyone said so."

"Oh, I know," Barb admitted, "but we had no future together.  The man is magnetized, you know.  Anything I had that was metal - my fork, my cans, my knives - they all stuck to him.  Once, I was about to stab this yard cop, and James got too close to me and ZAP!  There went my trusty stabbin' knife.  Cut him pretty bad.  Again."  She shook her head.  "No.  No future."

"Yes, I remember that story.  I felt bad.  If he weren't magnetic, it might have worked out."

"And don't even say Ironbelly Norton," Barb cautioned.

Laura Delite laughed.  "Oh, I wasn't going to bring him up, honey.  'Yes, Norton - you can eat gravel and newspapers and dead frogs, and not even throw up or anything.  We're all very impressed.  Isn't there anything else you can talk about?'"

"He was such a braggart," Barb nodded, looking down at the Louisville and Nashville trackbed as she walked.

"Say, how about Huge Crybaby McWeepy?" Laura proposed.  "He took a shine to you the minute he saw you."

Ol' Barb laughed loudly.

"What?  So he cried.  Most fellas cry when they get stabbed by a gorgeous blue-eyed dame from the road - or by anyone, for that matter."

"It's not just that he cried," Barb countered.  "But he's an ugly crier."

"An ugly crier?  Oh come now - who's not just a little bit ugly when they cry?"

"He looks like a circus clown when he cries.  So, no ma'am.  I think I'll pass on Mr. McWeepy."

"You're impossible," Laura said.  "You can't be so choosy, out here.  How about Stool-Sample Frank?  He's nice.  Tall, handsome, great smile, seems strong and kind."

"He's always trying to sell me a stool.  I'm a hobo.  What am I going to do with a stool, for goodness' sake?  And if I could afford a stool, would I be out here walking from town to town looking for work picking crops and cleaning stables?  No.  You're welcome to him."

Laura thought for a moment.  "No, you're right.  I forgot how hard he tried to sell those stools.  You'd be better off marrying No-Banjo Burnes."

"Ha!  The only man I ever failed to stab, and dare I say, he scared me, just a little.  I had nightmares of being beaten in my sleep with that rusty old banjo."

"If only you hadn't--"

"Don't."  Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick stopped in her tracks.  More accurately, she stopped in the L&N's tracks.  Either way, she stopped.  "Don't say his name."

His name was Shane Stoopback, and Barb had loved him, once.  He didn't love her back, and it made her as irrational as a schoolgirl with her first crush.  He ran from her, he hid from her, he begged her to leave him alone.  One night, she saw him sitting by his fire, singing a soft, pretty song to some woman she didn't know.  In a blind, jealous rage, she stabbed him to death.  The other woman ran off and hadn't been seen since.

"Have you ever considered trying not stabbing people?  It might help..."

"Never mind, Laura.  Some gals just ain't meant to find love.  I'm coming around to it.  I'm learning that it's not in the cards, for me.  I'll never find love, and that's just how it's going to be.  Thank God I have you, though."  She took her best friend's hand, and they continued west toward Memphis, into a hazy orange setting sun.

You silly woman, Laura thought.  Love has already found you.  You just don't see it, yet.  But so help me, you will.

Once again, I wrote in response to a wonderful prompt, "He's an ugly crier," excerpted from fellow STUDIO 30-PLUS blogger LM Leffew's elegant post THE KING IS DEAD.  Check it out.  She's really good!



 

The Gathering Before Christmas

For thirteen years, December, for at least one homeless wanderer, had been the same.  As 1940 drew to a close, Cranberry Sauce Oppenheimer stopped walking, stopped seeking work, stopped trying to recall his given name.  He knew that he was about twenty-seven years old, having left home at fourteen, and he was pretty sure he had been called Eugene, in the hazy past.  He vaguely remembered a childhood divided between Louisville and Cincinnati, but could no longer recall which had come last, and he wouldn't have been able to find his parents' home on a bet.

His annual Christmas letter to his mother was usually burnt in the hobo jungle fire with the hope that its smoke might somehow reach her, but on occasion, when December found him near the Ohio River, he would fold it into a tiny paper boat and send it floating downstream toward his two hometowns.  Such was the case with this year's note.


Dearest Ma,

     It's me - your son (Eugene, I think).  I hope you and Pa and the twins are well.  This year has been the hardest yet.  I lost my hat in a card game, but I remember how you used to say 'always look on the bright side.'  Do you still say that?  I do.  I try to, anyway.  So the bright side of losing my hat was that I learned never to play poker with a deck of only 45 cards - especially if your opponents know which cards are missing.

I worked the bean fields for most of the summer, and in the autumn I picked pumpkins, if you can believe that.  Otherwise, however, I could find no work, so I must confess that I stole more food than usual, and even took a pair of pants from somebody's clothesline.  I'm not proud of that, Ma.  I tried to go to confession a couple weeks later, but they kicked me out, on account of my stinkiness. 

My fortune went from bad to worse, when all my clothes were stolen while I was in the creek, trying to boil up and get clean for a job interview.  It would have been good work, too - helping to build roads in Indiana.  I got arrested for public indecency, of course, and although it was a relief to have a shower and a bed and a roof for 30 days, it was a jail shower, a jail bed, and a jail roof.  An old-timer in the big house told me it was Karma or some such thing, getting me back for taking that stranger's pants.  I can't say I disagree. 

I also got into a bit of trouble with my sauce-making, this year. I could only find cranberries that had been irradiated, and my sweet side dish made some of my hobo friends ill. When they saw that I never eat the stuff, they accused me of deliberately poisoning them. I tried to explain that I'm allergic, and just wanted to make a nice treat for my brethren, but it was no use. They beat me pretty bad - even knocked out a tooth - and I was on the run for weeks, before I lost them, somewhere in Pennsylvania.

On Thanksgiving, my only friend on the rails, a fellow called Bippity Hankerson, found out that his parents, who owned a little restaurant in Milwaukee, had died.  His Pa dropped a can of lard on the floor, slipped and fell, kicking the legs out from under their deep-fryer.  It spilled boiling oil all over him, and burned him right to death.  Bippity's Ma came running, slipped on all that lard and oil, and fell onto the butcher's knife she was carrying.  Bippity was so distraught when he heard the news, he got crazy-drunk on hobo wine, stumbled into the path of a fast freight, and was obliterated.  I burned what I could find of him.

So I suppose it makes sense that this December, the fog that annually envelopes me is gathering once more - as thick as ever, and twice as fast.  I'm not sure I can go on like this, Ma.  Oh, don't worry - you know I will go on - but, when this fog comes for me, I honestly can't see to the other side.  It's dark.  Christmas bells toll in my ears like a death knell.  I don't want to die, but I don't much care to be alive, either.  I want nothing.  I have nothing.  I am nothing.  Everything is nothing.  There is naught but this fog of unremitting sadness and despair.

The only thing that gets me through these Decembers is knowing that you and Pa are out there somewhere, praying for me, and knowing that no matter how numb I may be to it, Christmas happens, and is beautiful.  It also helps knowing that it won't be long before our beloved Cincinnati Reds get back onto the field. 

Until then, sure it's bleak.  I hate the fog.  It always ALMOST kills me, but I'm like a bear.  I hibernate as best I can.

Please wake me, Dear Ma, when it's over.

Your loving son,
Cranberry Sauce Oppenheimer, aka Eugene (I think)

Another post in response to a community prompt from my friends at