TODAY
Well, I have an appointment for my hearing aid and me. I have to leave in half an hour. I’ve had my swim and a nap —because I slept only 4 hours last night—stayed up too late. I am such a fool.
Anyway , I was discussing writing a week or so ago—when? I was trying to list the springboards that hoist a writer to creation—IDEAS, A WORD, A SCENE, A PERSON, A MEMORY. And I had a memory, a very early one, that I used several decades later when I needed a scene in a short story—actually part of a collection of stories that might be called a novel, if it’s ever published—and I tried to find it—among the files I am collecting to send as my last shipment to the archives at my university.
I found the piece and and I was going to copy it for you yesterday, but the day, the week, in fact, ended up a mess.
And I have to call a cab and go to my hearing check-up.
Always something.
I’ll be back.
Today?
———————
Yes—NOW
Here is the excerpt from the larger story:
The mother, Kate, begins to tell a story to her children, Margret and Mark, about her older brother, their Uncle Danny, when they were little.
-He always made strange things happen.
-Like what?
-Well, one time when we were on a picnic, he blew up an ant hill.
-Yuck, said Margret.
-I know. I’ve been trying to make it up to ants ever since….
By now she is deep in memory….
Kate had finished her sandwich as fast as she could and ran after Danny who was already on the other side of a small sand dune, scrambling down into a shallow declivity. He had been fishing in his pockets for matches and a string of small firecrackers.
By the time Kate caught up with him, Danny had dug a small trench halfway round an ant hill and was carefully paying out a string of firecrackers.
-What are you doing?
-Shh. Don’t stomp so heavily. Sit.
Kate obediently squatted on her heels and watched her brother.
-Get me a couple of long sticks.
She jumped up instantly.
-And don’t stamp!
She tiptoed back to the scrubby bushes at the foot of the dune and found a couple of branches. She stripped them clean on her way back to Danny.
He grunted as he took them from her. He stuck first one and then the other, deep into opposite sides of the ant hill. Then he took a piece of punk and attached it to a firecracker that he poked into the tiny tunnel he had made and did the same to the one on the other side.
He stuck another piece of punk onto the string of crackers surrounding the base of the ant hill, paying it out as he backed away, pulling Kate with him..
He leaned forward, lit a match and lit two pieces of punk one on either side of the ant hill.
The inside crackers blew up with small internal thumps, but powerful enough. Kate watched the top of the ant hill rise in a puff of earth and then crumble down the sides. As the ants scurried out of the hill, Danny lit the cracker string and a series of explosions ringed the mound in an inexorable devastation.
Kate watched in silent wonder as Danny danced around the destruction making war sounds….
-Boys are different from girls.
-Did anyone catch him?
-No one ever knew. Just you two, now.
-You never told anyone?
-What’s to tell? Mark was bored.
———————-
You probably are, too. But I was amazed at what I remember seeing so many years ago now. I guess everyone does that, not only writers.
The End.