The Book of the Wounded Healers (A Study in Perception) – Chapter 3 “Hello”

The Book of the Wounded Healers (A Study in Perception) – Chapter 3 “Hello”

 
Have you ever noticed that your sock can drive you crazy? If the seam makes a little ball or wads up under your toes, it can drive you crazy?

***

Cetaf nudges my arm.

“What?”

“It hurts.”

I watch a corporal being ragged out by a lieutenant. The reason for this ragging is the corporal ordered some men to move back as we moved forward. The corporal did this just as every other corporal I’ve known to do it, the way he learned to do it by watching the DIs at Basic, by yelling at the top of his lungs and degrading his men in front of others.

The problem, it seemed, is Frog Lips, Elephant Toes, The Wisp, and I are the others and the lieutenant is concerned the corporal’s behavior may cause these three to shit sparks and otherwise cause more damage to our ozone layer.

He does this by spinning the corporal around and spittily saying he is dismissed, go away, be here no more.

As I watched the corporal being punished for doing his job how he thought he was suppose to do his job, I remembered Mrs. Woodbury, grammar school fourth grade. My strongest memory of Mrs. Woodbury stems from third grade, not even in her class yet. I had to get the boys in my class in line at the end of recess. We’d all go back into the school, nice and orderly, side by side, all in a line. It was my first day with this monumental responsibility. Everybody was making noise. I did to them exactly what my father did to me when I was making noise and he wanted it quiet. I yelled at the top of my lungs, “QUIET!” Mrs. Woodbury grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me around, slapped me hard across the face and shoved me into the school. All by myself. All the kids, boys and girls, laughed. I didn’t know what I did wrong. Never even let myself cry.

“What hurts?” I ask. “Where?”

There are tears in his eyes. This walking wall sheds tears like a mourner on overtime and does nothing to stop or hide it. From me.

From anybody, really, but it is my arm he nudged.

He held his face in his hands and shook it from side to side as if caught in some kind of rage. “These are the strongest tears of all.”

I looked at Cetaf, Jenreel, and Beriah. I looked up and down the street, at military types coming closer and police types moving away. “I don’t know what to do.”

Jenreel and Beriah move to either side of Cetaf and touch him. Jenreel stands in front and wraps his arms as much around Cetaf as he can. “The first communication must be instructions on how to build a receiver.”

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Previous entries in The Book of the Wounded Healers (A Study in Perception) series

Kaye Lynne Booth’s ‘The One That Got Away’ in WordCrafter Press’ Tales from The Hanging Tree Anthology

I asked fellow Tales from The Hanging Tree anthology contributors to share some things about themselves prior to publication and those generous enough to do so will be appearing here for the next week or so.

Each entry gives a taste of their contribution, a little about them, how to contact them, how their story came about, and definitely a link to Tales from The Hanging Tree (which you should purchase because it would make each and every one of us happy.
you do want to make us happy, don’t you?
i mean, considering what we wrote, you want us to know you’re a good person, right?).

Kaye has two pieces in Tales from The Hanging Tree. Yesterday we explored The Legend of Cottonwood Hollow and today we explore her second offering The One That Got Away. Here’s a taste:

The short squat man called Slim jerks her up by her hair and she spits in his face in defiance. He drags her across the course ground, bound and trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey, unable to fight back. Harvey, the tall and skinny one, leads her horse over to stand beneath a sturdy cottonwood branch, tying the rope to the saddle horn.
“Well, I’ll be pickled. I’m gonna be hung by my own horse. Things can’t get much worse.”

Continue reading “Kaye Lynne Booth’s ‘The One That Got Away’ in WordCrafter Press’ Tales from The Hanging Tree Anthology”

Just Paying Attention

The Wild is ever vigilant. Sleep, that deep, profound, dream-laden land of Morpheus, is forbidden The Wild by evolutionary design.

Pets are embraced by Morpheus (at least, should be. Some people don’t deserve pets) because modern pets – those not kept outside or in a barn – recognize the safety within the walls of home.

Their den, as it were.

When your cat purrs in its sleep, when your dog woofs and twitches, when your bird tucks its head under a wing, it communes with its kin through all time knowing such journeys undertaken are safe.

Not so in The Wild.

There evolution forbids deep rest because deep rest equates to being prey.

Western cultured two-Leggers have only enjoyed deep sleep (many, anyway. Definitely not most or all) for perhaps the past two-hundred years, basically since the industrial revolution, when group recognition fell from village or tribe and climbed to housing project or job.

Light sleepers’ non-conscious minds remember The Wild and pay attention.

Do you?

 

Kaye Lynne Booth’s ‘The Legend of Cottonwood Hollow’ in WordCrafter Press’ Tales from The Hanging Tree Anthology

I asked fellow Tales from The Hanging Tree anthology contributors to share some things about themselves prior to publication and those generous enough to do so will be appearing here for the next week or so.

Each entry gives a taste of their contribution, a little about them, how to contact them, how their story came about, and definitely a link to Tales from The Hanging Tree (which you should purchase because it would make each and every one of us happy.
you do want to make us happy, don’t you?
i mean, considering what we wrote, you want us to know you’re a good person, right?).

Kaye has two pieces in Tales from The Hanging Tree and we’ll explore The Legend of Cottonwood Hollow first. Here’s a taste:

1865
Long Feather is walking along the tree line near the riverbank upon return from his vision quest to seek spiritual guidance. Tonight, White Cloud will initiate him, in a ceremony that will mark his passage from boyhood and acknowledge him as a man. Soon, he will become a fierce brave, like his brothers.
He hears yelling voices from the direction of the white man’s stage stop, up ahead, but he pays it no mind. Today is an important day for him and he doesn’t have time to worry about what the white man’s troubles are. He lets his thoughts return to the approaching initiation.

Continue reading “Kaye Lynne Booth’s ‘The Legend of Cottonwood Hollow’ in WordCrafter Press’ Tales from The Hanging Tree Anthology”

Matt Usher’s ‘Death for Sale’ in WordCrafter Press’ Tales from The Hanging Tree Anthology

I asked fellow Tales from The Hanging Tree anthology contributors to share some things about themselves prior to publication and those generous enough to do so will be appearing here for the next week or so.

Each entry gives a taste of their contribution, a little about them, how to contact them, how their story came about, and definitely a link to Tales from The Hanging Tree (which you should purchase because it would make each and every one of us happy.
you do want to make us happy, don’t you?
i mean, considering what we wrote, you want us to know you’re a good person, right?).

Matt’s contribution is Death for Sale. Here’s a taste:

“Life for Sale”-no, that felt wrong. That would be offering more than she was ready to give.
“Death for Sale”-that was better. Much less nebulous. Easier, it occurred to her, to die for someone than to live for them. Hadn’t Tyndale decided that the greatest love was to bestow your life for your friends? But Tyndale had died before his time; the surviving translation held that laying down your life was the right of it.

Continue reading “Matt Usher’s ‘Death for Sale’ in WordCrafter Press’ Tales from The Hanging Tree Anthology”