comradebird

[comradebird]

Added about 500 words, net, to that confederate graveyard thing

[comradebird]

When Rev froze twenty yards from the barn Buck almost ran into him, but he dug a boot heel into the dust just in time to avoid a mouth full of sweaty chamois. Buck peered around him. A rattler lay coiled just inside the barn. Typically this wouldn’t be a problem—the Bar T ranch could qualify as a militia under the laws of no fewer than twenty-seven sovereign nations. But on the other side of the two-by slats the ranch’s prize stallion, sire to the horses which brought in a significant portion of their livelihoods, paced in his oversized stall.

He was known to the working folk of the ranch as Bron, short for his registered name of Twelve-Twenty Bronze Sun Hauler. Bron usually had free access to a dedicated paddock off of his stall, but he had been lame in one long for about a week now and his door was closed. It takes three men to open Bron’s door, anything less sturdy and they may as we just leave the door off. And Buck was as strong as three-quarters of a man on a good day.

Something in how the rattler swayed indicated it knew the men were there, watching it. It slowly uncoiled, easily reaching the first gap in the slats, and sought eye contact with its quarry.

The barn was new, but not that new, and still made of wood. A shot would have a great chance of hitting Bron, and if the bullet didn’t, debris or a fragment almost surely would.

It took Buck only moments to process the situation before he was acting. Rattlers we’re fast, and this one, out in the daylight, aware of being watched, completely exposed, was especially unpredictable. Buck had no qualms about the general concept of drawing a snake away from a prized horse, but only if he had a fighting chance of coming out on top. Which was not the case here.

Within seconds Rev’s hat was floating through the air, spinning. Buck, arm already retracting from the toss, was reaching for a small revolver hanging on the wall. It was kept there for situations similar to this, but usually for varmints, not for snakes.

The hat fluttering over its eyes disoriented the snake. It was not expecting nighttime again so soon. This angered the snake, and it lunged twice towards the horse, twice finding only the wood planks of the stall.

By this time Buck had gotten a better angle on the snake. He dropped to a knee to have a level shot—the concrete floor was not only more valuable than his work, it was crumbly, and this revolver could easily dislodge gravel-sized debris. He aimed even with the stall so the shot would exit into daylight, and the woods beyond.

The snake bucked the hat and turned to Buck. Buck got off three shots, only the last one grazed the snakes scaly body. When the fangs were inches from the muzzle, a pitchfork, wielded by Rev, pinned the snake’s head to the ground. The times were driven completely into the dirt, and the snake, while not dead, was no threat. Rev retrieved his hat, and Buck stepped on the pitchfork to kill the snake.

Buck brushed Rev’s pony while Rev gathered what he would need for the day from the tack room. Tommy walked into the barn, saw the snake, and silently helped the other two open Bron’s door.

Rev and Buck put in a day’s work and returned to their respective bunks. That evening, as Buck pulled off a boot, he caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror and say two small holes under his left eye. He went to sleep.

625

[comradebird]

Buck Smelton hit his head on the bedside table when he rolled off of his cot in the early light, sending three beer bottles, a pocket knife, five .30-30 cartridges, and a single cigarette crashing to the floor. The bunkhouse is unfinished, but at least it’s new construction. He and three other farmhands are staying in this one, the newest. There a few others scattered around the ranch, the oldest built in 1948.

He struggled to aim his legs through the holes of his jeans and put his shirt on upside down, somehow. Reb was already at the door waiting when he opened it, thrashing in his shirt.

“I thought you’d slept in today,” Reb said from under his blonde handlebar mustache.

Buck hated the way Rev’s spurs jingled as they walked away from the bunkhouse, a reminder that Rev was an actual cowboy, and Buck just a hand. The main difference is that Buck didn’t ride a horse. This was a little bit by choice, as he was thrown from a horse on his twelfth birthday and never much cared for them since, but he was also just lousy in the saddle. He was much better at brushing and saddling horses than riding them.

Rev had taken a liking to Buck for some reason. Most cowboys would just let a wayward hand get what was coming to them. And Rev usually did. But there was something different about Buck. Something Rev just couldn’t get past.

247

[comradebird]

[deleted, might submit… excerpt:]

One of my ancestors, who would have been my five-time great grandfather, didn’t fight in the war as his brothers did. Even when the fighting came so close to home he could hear the screams and smell the burnt flesh. Even when a twelve pound lead ball turned his garden over. Even when three letters came, stamped with the CSA seal and hand-delivered to the farmhouse.

716

[comradebird]

“If it’s an American flag that’s anything other than just the American flag, that’s bad news.”

I was telling a couple friends I hadn’t seen in years about the flag I pass on the way to work. It’s composed of two different black fabrics to make an American flag. The field and half the stripes are a dull, flat, not shiny fabric. The stars and the other stripes or shiny. It’s an American flag, but not really.

There are actually two of these. I work at two different locations for the same employer. There’s really only one good route to get to each place. Both routes pass a different house flying the same black flag.

My secondary worksite is located in a part of the state that used to house most of the states incarcerated folks, given its geographic isolation from the rest of the state and the surrounding area. The house that flys the black flag sits directly off the highway that eventually connected the town to the rest of the state through some particularly trying terrain. It’s a small house in a development squeezed between to mobile home neighborhoods, across from a lot that has firewood for sale, a log cabin that is an ad for a rental company, and various farm implements.

It’s also completely fenced, front and back, by plain unfinished six foot planks. The flag flys from a lone flagpole in the front yard, between an American flag and the Gadsden flag. It’s about three minutes from my workplace.

The other flag is in a slightly larger town, actually the county seat. It’s three doors from my workplace. One street runs into the house with the black flag. I turn left in front of it and pass two houses and a salon, then pull into the parking lot.

It jarred me when I first saw it, not knowing anything about it. A plain black flag would have been unnerving, but this imitation of the national flag hit something a little deeper.

I finally looked it up. I can’t speak to the credibility of the sources, but I can say this explanation tracks with what I would expect from the places I work.

A black flag has historically been flown to mean no quarter will be given in an upcoming battle. It is a warning to the enemy that no prisoners will be taken, and no surrender will be accepted once fighting begins. It could be a bluff, a last-ditch effort for a failing army, or it could be a strategic push, sowing deep fear while also killing more enemy combatants than might be killed otherwise.

The American national flag used to be a unifying symbol. No matter how much citizens disagreed, we could agree that we supported our country, or at least what our country could be. But now it’s been co-opted by one political faction. It’s a symbol of a very particular vision of America, the ideal people refer to when they say “make America great again.” It’s a fiction, largely, but a dangerously powerful fiction that creates a deadly in-group and a vulnerable out-group.

Here’s one interpretation of this black American flag: “I am ready to take up arms, and commit violence, against any of my neighbors who have different political ideologies. I am ready to fight. I am ready to kill.”

This might sound dramatic, but given the complexity of the moment, with Threepers and boogaloo boys and proud boys everywhere, it’s more likely than it sounds.

A few weeks after these flags went up, our mailbox was smashed. We live at the end of a long road. There are a few other mailboxes near us, but there is nothing to do near our house, and certainly not past it. It’s not a place where high schoolers would be hanging out and decide to go smash mailboxes. Even if they did, you would expect a few others to be smashed, which was not the case. Given the circumstances, and the fact that we are socialists and do not take any particular care to conceal that fact, it feels targeted.

But I went to work last week and one of the flags was laying in the front yard. This one was mounted on the house in a regular flag holder, and it was knocked down. It has not been put back up.

733

[comradebird]

The first time I got a haircut in college I went to Sorts Clips and waited an hour. I had not been to a barber on my own for a few years. I spent the entirety of the hour scrolling Twitter and panicking about what haircut I would ask for, and how. I vaguely knew the sizes of guards, but did not know the names for different styles or even parts of the head. What’s a nape? Where does the crown begin? Surely sides isn’t the right word.

So after an hour of numbing my mind and overthinking, I sat in the chair and asked for a “number five all around.” This was a mistake. The stylist didn’t bat an eye, but I think she really should have. Did she see me? I had very thick, moderately long curly hair and a scraggly beard. This request is obviously a mistake. But she said nothing and gave me exactly what I requested.

My hair was so short I wore a hat for three days, despite the fact that my head is very big and has been since I was a baby. As in: hats look like if you tried to fit a sock over a cantaloupe. Maybe you can do it, but should you? Not only was it short, it would fall down over my forehead in a slanting line. The right side of my hairline curls up, and falls slowly to the left, so short hairstyles where the hair can’t really curl always slant.

My mother cut my hair for most of my life. Her sister was at one point a beautician and taught my mom the basics. Mom even has a set of wired clippers, scissors, and thinning shears that she uses to this day, complete with a haircut cape.

When it was time for a haircut, I would go find the old, heavy wooden barstool and carry it to wherever the best light was in the house we were living in at the time. It was always, always cold, and I was usually wearing thin athletic shorts, so it was unpleasant from the start. Then, depending on the style we were going for, mom would either start with the clippers or spritz my hair with a water bottle. My shoulders were often bare or nearly so at this point, perhaps only covered by the apron, and the chill of the mist was the worst part every time.

Mom would spend a very long time making sure everything was perfect. At the time I thought she was being obsessive. I didn’t care whether everything was perfectly straight, or if the hair at the back of my head started at just the right height. Or at least, I told myself I didn’t care. But I know that if my mom had given my a bad haircut, and anyone at school mentioned it, not only would I be devastated, I would have absolutely blamed her.

Now I cut my own hair. The first time I attempted that was near the beginning of the pandemic. My parents had given me a small hair cutting kit, which was primarily a set of wireless clippers with a vacuum, along with many guards, scissors, oil, and a tiny brush. I watched a video and read the instructions that came with the kit. I didn���t have a hand mirror, so I used my iPad and the medicine cabinet mirror to see the back of my head. It happened to turn out fine, but I spent fifteen minutes trying to fix on small spot of my hair that mounded up in the back.

Now I cut my own hair almost exclusively. We don’t make all that much money, and saving the twenty or thirty bucks seems worth the time. But I also really want to support my community. On our downtown square there are two flower shops, two restaurants, a jeweler, some agencies, and a single barber shop. If I was to get a haircut anywhere I would get it from there even though I’ve never been in and never known anyone who has. But it’s a five minute walk from work, and I think that’s important.

But when I go in a don’t know what to ask for. I could describe my exact process: trim up the back with a seven, then clip back the top of my and taper the sides, and so on. But I don’t want to give directions, and I have a constant fear that a barber will tell me they don’t cut hair like mine. And my hair is not all that unusual.

772

[comradebird]

Lake Cypress is a modest lake in north Louisiana. It’s equipped with a single dock and boat ramp, and a covered picnic area from which the dock protrudes. The parking lot can hold about twenty trailers and as many cars. It is run completely in the honor system. Usually folks launch, dock, and park, then walk back up to the small structure by the entrance to retrieve an envelope, fill out their information, and slide a five dollar bill inside, then drop it in the absurdly secure green lockbox bolted to the pole. I don’t know why they ask for your vehicle information. Presumably they can compare license plates to envelopes and fine offenders, but there has never once been any uniformed or official-looking individual of any kind at this particular park in years. And everyone knows it.

We were in my grandpas Bass Tracker. It’s a steel rig with what’s called a ‘vee hull.’ This particular boat has a point at the bow, as opposed to flat-fronted john boats, where two nearly flat corrugated steel panels meet. It’s buoyant, sturdy, and equipped with an outboard and a trolling motor.

One problem with Bass Trackers and similarly constructed boats is that they sit pretty high out of the water. Other, heavier boats, often made of fiberglass, filled with accessories and onboard systems, and motors five times the size of this one, sit lower in the water. This means they throw off a huge wake when going slow, but once they are “planing” on the water, their giant motors send them around at alarming speeds.

But a high wall means a long drop. Marvin, a sleek black and white mutt, came with us that day. He had never been fishing. As far as we could tell, he also didn’t care much for water. We certainly didn’t know whether he could swim. I presumed not. He’s dense, you see, what better writers would call “wiry” or something like that. When he played fetch, he was a 40 pound wad of quivering muscle and taut sinew. Seems like he’d sink like a stone.

We were trolling near a shore, downhill from some rich folks’ lake front property. I don’t understand why, if you have money to blow, you’d blow it here. But that’s not my business.

Marvin loves to sniff. He was perched on the round metal edge of the boat, front paws slipping on the metal, hind paws firmly set on the carpet. He looks like a vulture, or a gargoyle. Or, most accurately, he looks like Snoopy when Snoopy was pretending to be a culture.

Pawpaw cuts the trolling motor to the left just as Marvin reaches out his snout to the right to get a better sniff of a passing scent. His front paws slip into the water, his belly hits the bulwark, and he somersaults into the lake.

I have many thoughts at once. First, Marvin is in trouble. Second, he’s probably not really in trouble. Third, if he is in trouble, he may not have much time—I’ve never seen a dog drown, I don’t know how long it takes. Fourth, if he’s not in trouble, I’ll look stupid if I jump in, which is a ridiculous thing to be concerned about. Fifth, I’m in the water.

This sides of the boat are too high to reach underneath Marvin, and pulling him up by the collar is not an option, of course. So I hop in, almost immediately. My minds moving fast. I know drowning people will try to drown their rescuer. I know dogs have claws. When I jumped in I actually jumped over him instead of beside for that reason. So when I landed I was behind him. I grabbed him under the front legs and hoisted him up. I was met with blank stares. My brother, father, and grandpa looked at me with empty expressions. The same look they would give me if I just threw my rod in the water or started singing Ave Maria. No one moved. I held Marvin in the air, his legs pumping, neck straining for the boat. Finally my dad walks very slowly over and pulls Marvin into the boat. He calms down and paces the floor. Dad turns his back and walks away. I haul myself over the edge of the boat. Dripping wet, I stand toward the back to dry, then towel off. Pawpaw resumes trolling. My brother casts under a log. My dad stared into the distance. We remain silent for half an hour.

760

[comradebird]

Survivalist. Frontiersman. Prepper. Guns and Ammo. Dollar General stocks these magazines beside Better Homes and Gardens, Mother Earth News, Life, and the Farmers Almanac.

Just about anything can be found on the aisles of aDollar General. Canned goods and

(This is terrible, starting over)

A lot of people I know would never set foot in a Dollar General. It’s messy, dirty, cheap, dim, smelly. And yes, that’s true, but so what? For many, Dollar General is the primary grocery store. Think about it. With gas at $3.50 a gallon, 20 miles to the gallon, a trip to town can easily be uneconomical for a rural family. Rather than spending $5-$10 to make it to town and sinking an hour or more in travel time alone, it suddenly makes perfect since to go to the dollar store.

Admittedly, it can be really hard to make a meal at Dollar General. There is zero fresh produce, except in the new market stores. However, there is plenty of rice and beans, canned soup, packaged fruit, frozen vegetables. In fact, the freezer section is often really impressive. Pizzas, microwave dinners, fried rice, ice cream, a good selection of vegetables. As long as you don’t mind watery broccoli, it’s not that bad of a selection.

But dollar general isn’t just food, of course. The pharmacy section is completely unexpected. It has almost every generic drug you could ever need, plus supplements, first aid supplies, and other medical items at an extremely reasonable price. It’s simply nothing to scoff at.

DG also stocks socks and underwear, pajamas, and simple clothes like solid color tshirts. There is even usually some footwear. It’s all dollar store clothes, you won’t be winning any awards for fashion, but it’s accessible and functional.

There are also aisles for home goods, crafts, toys, office supplies, books, cleaning supplies, apparel goods, and so on. The kitchen section is comprehensive. However, the most impressive section is lawn and garden, especially in the spring. DG stocks actual, quality garden hoses. Better than most Walmart hoses. They also have garden soil, seed starting trays, fertilizer, weed killer, pest control, solar lights, seeds. If you decided to start a garden by shopping only at dg, it would take half the time and a third of the budget as heading to lowes.

But with all this convenience, something has to give. What is it? Could be anything. A store like dg, found mainly in rural settings, has to be heavily supported by trucks. Are drivers underpaid, overworked? Are trucks improperly maintain? Could be. But what about the employees? Are they also underpaid and overworked? Do they hold multiple responsibilities outside of their job description? Or maybe it’s in the quality of goods. Are the products tested and safe? Can we be confident they are free of defects? It could also be the POS systems that are always down, the chronic lack of bags, the minimal staffing.

Or, perhaps, there is no oppression. They just really struck a gold mine here.

503

[comradebird]

Luther was staring into Lyn’s eyes when it finally hit her: this wasn’t the same man she moved here with. Over the past three years he had changed, slowly, without her noticing, like a tree or a cancer or a niece. But all at once, here he was. The life had gone out of his eyes, his face, his body, and she wondered whether it had gone out of his soul, his spirit, too.

Standing in front of her should be the man she fell in love with all those years ago. It’s the same body after all. And it might even be the same person. Pieces of him had been slowly chipped away and replaced over time, so subtly she did not notice each change, each slight movement away from what she thought was his true self. Only today, when she sees him in front of her and their wedding picture over his shoulder, do all the years show themselves to her.

And she feels like she’s spinning, swirling, falling. There is nothing to hold on to. She feels the heat from the fire in the hearth, the solid handhewn cedar beneath her bear feet, the itch of her sweater and crease of her jeans. She does not feel scared or upset. She feels anchored in this moment, unable to escape, and unable to connect this moment to the chain of trillions of moments preceding it. It’s a moment in time, exploded to eternity. All that she and Luther have had, will ever have, is here and now.

And as she spins and swirls and wobbles in the miasma of the instant Luther continues to raise the revolver. It’s a blued Smith and Wesson, custom mahogany grip that Lyn had engraved for the second anniversary of their move here. It fires .44 magnum cartridges through its six inch rifled barrel. Powerful enough to stop the occasional bear that enters their orbit and portable enough to conceal in the pocket of a chore jacket. Not that it would have mattered if it was not hidden. Luther has kept the revolver on his person nearly constantly since he first got it, just as his encounter with a lone grizzly was nearly constantly on his mind. But perhaps between the look on his face as Lyn had entered the room minutes ago and the readied hammer she may have simply turned and left, not approached to find out what could be on her husband’s mind. Why he was up at this early hour. Why he was shaking.

Lyn recalled Luther usually kept two cartridges in the revolver at all times. He said that was enough for him to do whatever was needed, but not enough for anyone else to do any real damage. Given the weight of the weapon, no inexperienced would-be shooter could aim it. The first shot would mis. The power of the recoil and the fine hair trigger would likely discharge the second round almost immediately thanks to the double action, but even if they were able to aim the second time, it is very unlikely their aim would be any better. And in this moment, Lyn knew he was right. Two cartridges are plenty for him to achieve his purposes.

The barrel leveled off at her forehead. Luther clinched his jaw. Sweat beaded at his forehead. One nostril flared. He breathed a word to her, a single word, that landed like a boulder in a valley. “Sorry,” he gasped, barely audible.

And he squeezed the trigger. A single round entered Lyn’s forehead, dead center. It exited where her hair swirled slightly at the back of her head and lodged in the wall at the opposite end of their single room cabin, above the bed they had shared through countless frigid nights.

Lyn’s body crumpled immediately. Luther realized he had expected more drama. A final gasp or even a word, a plea, a cry, anything. Maybe she would pitch forward or fly backwards. Besides the slight backwards motion created by the lead bullet, Lyn fell straight down.

Seeing this, he for the first time considered what his own death would look like. Would he be any more dramatic? Would be able to redeem himself with a final word? Would there be any glory in his final moments?

He turned the revolver to his own temple and squeezed the trigger before he could think any further. His mind ended without resolving his thought. He fell immediately, swaying slightly left, head resting at an awkward angle at the foot of the armchair. The round exited the cabin through the top center pane of the window over his desk. It traveled through the dark for two hundred yards in a sweeping arc before piercing the ice on the pond and falling to the bottom of the frozen lake where Lyn first learned to skate.

813

[comradebird]

It takes about sixteen miles to come to a four way stop. About ten minutes if you don’t mind rattling your car around a bit. This crossroads has three establishments. On the southeast corner is a modular shed, the kind you find for sale or lease on a lot on a rural highway, lots of times with an attached uhaul business. This is a large model with an attached porch and stairs, which could be an aftermarket addition. The porch is where you stand to place your order. It’s a restaurant, occupying a lot that used to house a gas station. Until recently it was even complete with a pump awning.

Caddy corner to this burger place is a gas station. Surely it is part of a chain, but the sign just says Yanks Quick Stop. They serve barbecue sandwiches and a few other hot meals. Most of the beer is in a 24-pack in the beer cave, but there are also almost 12-packs. These are 24-packs cut in half with packaging tape over each severed end.

Between the restaurant and the gas station in the southwest corner is the Dollar General. There’s another one about twenty miles further up the road that sells produce and meat, but this one is plain and simple. All food is processed, packaged, or canned, but the freezer section does have a pretty good range of fruits and veggies. It can really be surprising how much stuff there is in a Dollar General. There’s probably every kind of thing you could want—clothes, medicine, food, magazines, you name it. It’s just missing fresh foods (except milk and eggs, got those covered).

(This started based on “magazines” — may want to later refine to get to that.)

294

[comradebird]

My goal: write every day. Every single day.

Specifically: no fewer than 250 words posted here. If not working on anything else, 750 words here.

Method: whatever comes to mind. Write non-stop for 5 minutes first, then may edit. If stuck: https://thestoryshack.com/tools/random-topic-generator/

That’s pretty much it. Giddy up