#'are these vultures overhead?' (sylvester) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

shouldyouwakethewriteblr · 2 years

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I wanted to indulge in a little Sally-actually-experiencing-joy and so I wrote a cozy flashback with her and the kids. Felt like sharing. 😊🛏🌙

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Words: 1'803

Rating: (K+/PG)

Setting: Early 1880s (Flashback)

Characters: Sally (33), Martha (11), Sylvester (8), John Ira (6)

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Standing in her nightgown by the kitchen table and using a dull pair of sewing scissors, Sally sawed at the burnt wick of her glass lamp, her tongue in her cheek and eyes squinting in the dark.

Above her, a series of heavy footsteps pounded back and forth across the ceiling, shaking dust loose onto her head, followed by shrill laughter. Sally scoffed and blew the charred remnants of the cut wick away.

Upon relighting her lamp, she carried it by the foot to light her way up the saggy, old wooden steps.

On the other side of the little, three-foot-wide hall, orange candlelight flickered inconsistently around the cracks in the heavy door in the boys’ room, interrupted by sporadic movement on the other side.

And still, the children’s voices giggled and yipped, with the occasional excited and unintelligible whisper.

Sally paused outside for a moment, turning her ear close and smirking.

“Pull, pull, pull!” one voice whispered.

“I’m trying!” another hissed back.

With one quick shove of her shoulder, Sally shoved the door open.

In the small, candlelit room, her two oldest children sat opposite each-other on the two iron-frame beds, each putting their weight into pulling one end of a bedsheet they’d folded lengthwise.

Startled, they dropped the sheet when their mother entered so abruptly, and the final, youngest child, who’d been hanging from the sheet by his arms and legs, hit the floor with a hard thump, the sheet spilling overtop of him.

“My god,” Sally scoffed as Sylvester scooted back to the head of the bed and Martha sat straight with her hands in her lap and a nervous smile on her face.

“What are you hellions doing?” She sat her lamp next to another on a shelf by the door. “Are you trying to kill your little brother?”

“I’m under here, Ma!” John Ira’s little voice called out, muffled from beneath the sheet. “I’m alright!”

“Oh,” she chuckled, crossing the room and stooping to pull the sheet off the boy, crumpling it up under her arm. “Come here, sweetheart, let me see you.”

John climbed up from the floor, grinning as if nothing had happened. She took his face in both hands and rubbed her thumbs on his cheeks, then turned him a little to peek at the back of his head.

“Ah, shoot. You’re all flattened back there.”

“Huh?” He went to rub the back of his head, but she quickly moved on to pinch his chin.

“And you knocked a tooth out! Tsk tsk.”

“That already happened before, Ma! Wer-rember?”

He bared his teeth to show off the wide gap where one incisor had fallen out about a week prior. Sally laughed and patted the side of his face.

“I’m only playing, hon… And it’s re-mem-ber.”

“Re-mem-ber.”

“Atta boy.” She winked and stood up, taking the sheet and tossing it at Martha’s chest for her to catch.

“Everyone’s in their bedclothes?” she pointed around the room. “Good. Sylvester, c’mere.”

She went to the side of his bed and he crawled forwards and got up on both knees for her to reach and knot the laces of his nightshirt.

“Thank you, Ma,” he said shyly. She shook her head and finished the bow, giving her son an affectionate nudge under the chin.

“I’m not cross with you all for playing together,” she told them. “I’d just rather it be at the cost of something other than perfectly good sheets or your brother’s skull. And Martha, you know better.”

Sylvester let out a quick laugh. “That’s right, Martha!” he mocked.

Martha stood up and tried to whip a pillow at him, but expecting it, Sally snatched it out of the air and tossed it back, only making Sylvester laugh out louder.

“It was his idea to use the sheet!” Martha protested.

“It was your idea to be ugly,” Sylvester retorted.

“Dear lord, children.” Sally put her hands out. “Calm down. There will be no heads in the stockades today. Relax.”

“We were trying to make a tightrope,” John Ira explained, climbing up onto the foot of the bed with Sylvester. “—Like the man in the waterfall picture.”

“Oh, wasn’t that something?” Sally scooped the little one up by his arms and dropped him on the pillows next to his brother.

“Uh-huh and Martha and Sly were helping me, so you shouldn’t be cross with them at all ”

“I just said I wasn’t.” Sally lifted the bedding and the boys shimmied under it. She then pulled the covers up to their chests and smoothed them out.

“Is tomorrow Tuesday?” Sylvester asked up at her.

“Yes sir.”

“We’ll go to the Pooles’ place, then?”

“Yes, you’ll help Mrs. Poole on the farm while I work. You know that.”

Sylvester softly sighed, fidgeting with the edge of the bedspread.

“You’ll be finished after lunch, then?”

Sally scoffed. “I’ll be finished when I’m through. What’s the matter with you, huh?”

“He doesn’t want to go,” Martha chimed in. “Last week Mrs. Poole yelled at him for pushing Tom on the ground.”

“What?” Sally looked back. “Surely she’d have told me if that were true. Sylvester?”

Sylvester shrugged, still staring at his own fingers poking at a fray in the blanket.

“He laughed at me.”

Sally sighed. “Sly—”

“I asked him to stop and he only laughed more!”

“What reason would he have to laugh at you?”

Sylvester frowned over at the wall. “Because I needed help with my trousers or I was gonna piss myself,” he said bluntly.

“Ah.” Sally looked back at Martha and pretended to shield her hushed words with a hand.

“I’d have wanted to push the little rat, too,” she said, causing Martha to cover her mouth and snort. When she looked back, Sylvester also seemed to be fighting off a smile.

“We must be kind with the Pooles, though,” Sally changed her tune. “They’ve been nothing but good to us.”

“I like to play with Jessie,” John Ira commented. “She’s nice.”

“Oh, I’ll bet you do!” Martha sprawled on her side. “Wouldn’t you know I caught you kissing her cheek over by the chicken coop!”

John Ira shot up in the bed. “You weren’t supposed to tell!”

The eldest pair erupted into laughter. Sylvester rolled over to jab his brother in the side with his fingers.

“You gonna get married?” he teased. “Start kissin’ on the mouth?”

Playing along with the torment, Martha made kissing noises from her side of the room until Sally shot her a look and she ducked down shyly.

“Uh, no?” John seemed only confused. “I’m six years old and uh, she’s five years old.”

He held up five fingers, and Sally threw back her head and cackled.

“G-Good answer!” she told him, pushing on his chest until he laid back down. “Plenty of time for all that nastiness when you’re older.”

As of on queue, Martha and Sylvester both broke out in a second chain of mock kissing sounds, causing John to blush red and yanked the pillow over his face, sending them into a giggling fit.

“Stop it!” he roared out in his scariest ‘wild beast’ voice; even less intimidating when muffled out by a pillow. The other children laughed harder.

“Enough,” Sally chuckled, pulling the pillow away and kissing the forehead on her boy’s frustrated, flushed face.

“Good night, sweet boy. Leave your brother some room tonight.”

“Alright, Mama. Goodnight, Mama.”

Crawling over a ways, she planted another one on Sylvester’s temple, then brushed a strand of hair from his fair eyes.

“Goodnight, Sly,” she whispered. “I’ll rush home real quick-like tomorrow, alright? Just be a good boy for me.”

He smiled softly and nodded. “Goodnight, Ma.”

With that, Sally went to fetch the lamps. One she twisted off and the other she brought over to the second bed.

“Scoot over, blondie,” she told Martha, who complied, shifting back until her back hit the wall.

She set the lamp on the low table between the two beds and twisted the know until the tall flame’s light became a hazy orange glow.

Then, getting under the blankets, she stretched out her toes beneath the warm, heavy linen and sighed, looking over at Martha.

“You do this yourself?” she asked, taking Martha’s braid from her shoulder and admiring the shining plaits.

“I did.”

“You better quit this growing up bull fast, young miss. Christ alive.”

Martha chuckled. “You can do it next time.”

“You bet I will,” Sally teased. “Who do you think you are?”

Martha grinned and snuggled into her pillow, her eyes half-open and reflecting back the light from the tiny flame. Sally sighed, and laid the braid gently behind the girls back before brushing her cheek with the back of her hand.

“Who’s idea was it to let you become so pretty, huh?”

“Hm. It’s the river water does it,” she joked.

“Oh, hush,” Sally playfully tapped the side of the girl’s head, and she smiled without opening her eyes.

“Goodnight, Ma.”

“Hmmph. Goodnight, miss Martha.”

Reaching back, she twisted the lamp off fully, turning the room black and filling it with a temporary smell of sharp smoke.

Once the light was out, she heard little more than the occasional shuffling around from the children, who knew to be quiet after dark. Still, she waited until she could hear all three individual breathing patterns slow before she let herself drift off.

°°°

Some uncertain time later, Sally awoke as she often did. With a heavy weight on her body and clenching of her throat. She jolted in the bed and opened her eyes to the near-darkness, a hazy grey light soaking in through the window, with crickets still trilling outside.

For a moment, she drew in air, reminding her lungs to open up and breathe, then she settled back into the mattress, glancing over at the silhouettes of the boys in the opposite bed, seemingly tangled and piled all on top of each-other.

She sighed—and a hand fell softly upon her chest, nearly causing her to jump again.

“Bad dream, Mama?” Martha’s weak, tired voice creaked. Sally turned her way and saw the outline of her pale face and hair in the dark, still rested on the pillow.

“A little one,” Sally answered in a whisper. “Don't worry.”

Martha loudly sighed, then wriggled her body close until her chin rested against Sally’s shoulder.

“It’s all alright, Mama,” the girl softly soothed, weakly patting Sally’s chest.

“Everything’s good and—” She paused to yawn. “—well.”

Sally gave a silent chuckle, her heart finally ceasing to pound so violently as before.

She reached up and laid her hand over her daughters and kissed the top of her head, letting her stay there and fall back asleep as she herself stared up at the shadow of the ceiling, unlikely now to do the same.

#this gave me the indulgent warm fuzzies btw #my writing (sywtw)#◇ 'long way down to the bottom of the river' (sally)#◇ 'losing grip of what i thought i knew' (martha)#◇ 'are these vultures overhead' (sylvester)#◇ 'baby lion lost his teeth' (john-ira)

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