Carolyn Paul Branch

Forty quarts into a hundred quart garden
the canner is whistling, steaming,
calling my name.
Tomatoes, red ripe, round
pungent, fill baskets on porch, kitchen floor
are piled on tables, counters, chairs.
tomatoes, tomatoes everywhere.

I wash, blanch, peel,
season, cook, and ladle
into clear (fresh washed)
steaming hot jars.
Set those in the canner,
(it only holds ten)
turn around and start over
washing, blanching, peeling again….

My hands sting from tomato acid.
My back aches like I’ve been loading bricks
A sweat soaked blouse sticks to my body,
hair falling down sticks to my neck.
The song I had in my heart
at six in the morning
sticks in my throat
by mid-afternoon.
As the sun goes down,
still in the kitchen,

I throw back my head
and howl at the moon

A short story to share. This one took a prize at the Ozark Creative Writing Conference a few years ago.

My father didn’t really sell me, or trade me off like some folks say. Pa just sort of threw me in to sweeten the deal when he was selling a string of green-broke horses to J.D. Branch.

We brought 25 head to the sale that day. Pa was leaning on the fence in the shade, visiting with folks who stopped to look, while I rode round in the lot showing off one horse after another. I’d been at it all day and was hot, dusty and needing a drink of water. But I knew better than to complain.
When he pointed across the corral and hollered “Bring that bay mare over here where we can see how pretty she is.” I trotted old Prince over, threw a rope around the mare’s neck, and led her over to stand in front of Pa and J.D. Branch.
Pa was still talking up the bay’s fine qualities when the Stevens family went by in their wagon. They waved and I waved back until the dust swallowed up the wagon and I couldn’t see the blue of Molly’s bonnet anymore. My disappointment was keen because I had dreamed all week how I was going to show off my riding skills to Molly Stevens, then buy her a glass of lemonade, walk her around and visit a little. Maybe even get a chance to kiss her like I did last sale day. Now here she was going home and I never even got to say hello.
“Billy! Quit moonin’ and pay attention! Mr. Branch wants to see the rest of the herd.” I tried to put Molly out of my mind and went back to work.
I pushed all the good mounts back in the barn and opened the gate to the back lot where the green horses were penned. They came charging out, kicking up dust and gathered up in a constantly shifting mass of horseflesh as far away from the men as they could. Pa knew better than to ask me to rope one of that wild-eyed bunch while a customer was watching. I dismounted and walked in among them slow and easy, talkin’ quiet, reaching out to pat a neck or a rump here and there. Horses tended to stand still for me and Pa knew that made even the wildest bunch look gentler.
J.D. Branch didn’t just fall off the turnip wagon, though, and he wasn’t so easy satisfied. He climbed over the rails and tried to walk up on a big old yeller stud horse. J.D. knew not to make any sudden moves, but before he got close that stallion was throwing his head back, showing the whites of his eyes. When J.D. reached out a hand, the horse wheeled and took off running. Of course, all the rest of the bunch went with him.
J.D. just stood there in the dust they kicked up, watching the horses mill around and crowd up at the other end of the corral, trying to climb over each other to find a way out. I was wondering which one was going to give out first, the fence or Pa’s temper.
J.D. took off his hat, ran his hand back through his dark brown hair and turned to look Pa square in the face. “I need horses I can handle. These are too green. Like I told you before, I have to get ‘em ready to ride by fall.”
Pa wasn’t flustered. Working a balky buyer was as natural to him as horse taming was to me. “These horses ain’t all that green. Why, Billy can handle any of ‘em. If we was to keep ‘em, he could have ‘em all lady broke in a month or two.”
Well, I knew my part in Pa’s horse trading. I slipped over to the horses, hushing, soothing, touching, calming as I went. When I got to that big palomino, I made sure he saw me and knew who I was. He was the biggest, flashiest horse in the bunch, and although the customers weren’t to know it, I had spent the last two weeks getting him ready to show off. I didn’t try to touch his head, just lay my right hand on his back, grabbed a handful of mane with my left, and flung myself up on top of him. He danced around some, but I hung on, and pretty soon I had him trotting around the lot like it was his own idea.
Pa was beaming when I slid off and walked back to the men. He thought the sale was made. But J.D. still wasn’t convinced. His blue eyes were smiling, but his voice was firm. “I have no doubt your boy could have them all lady broke in no time. But I won’t have him to do it for me when I get back to Missouri.”
Pa was always quick to pick up on what it would take to make the deal. “Well,” he said, “You could, though, sure you could.”
I didn’t pay much attention when he first said it. I figured it was just Pa’s way of keeping the fish on the line while he worked out the best way to reel it in. J.D. turned away from the horses to really look at me. “What is he? Thirteen? Fourteen? Awful young to be taking that far away from his Mama.”
Pa’s mouth tightened to a straight line, the way it did when he was reminded of Ma and the fever that took her last year. But he changed it into a grin before anybody but me would’ve noticed. “Fourteen. Coming on fifteen. Age don’t matter anyhow. He’s been working horses since he could walk under their bellies without duckin’ his head. If he don’t have the whole bunch broke before your army buyer comes this fall, I’ll buy ‘em back from you myself. Guaranteed.”
Quick as that the deal was made. If Pa had more than horse-trading on his mind he kept it to himself. Within an hour we headed out, pushing the wild bunch sixty miles up the road to J.D.’s place.
He lived at the end of a narrow rocky trail that wound through the woods and opened up to a little green valley. The log house had flowers blooming all around and a clear running creek not far from the back door.
J.D.’s wife, Belle, had two little ones hiding behind her skirts and another one swelling her up in front, but she made me welcome, and cooked up fine meals three times every day. They offered to let me bunk in with the kids, but I fixed up a spot in the hayloft and slept there on fresh-cut hay covered by an old horse blanket. It was kind of cozy and nice listening to the soft breathing and shuffling of the horses down below.
J.D. was a fair man but he was depending on the money from those horses to get his family through the winter. He expected a full day’s work out of me and I gave all the strength and skill I had to the job of making Pa’s wild bunch the best riding horses the U.S. Army ever bought. It was hard, but J.D. worked right along beside me.
After supper at night, when he was settling in for the evening with his family, I went back to the hayloft and dreamed about Molly Stevens. I pictured her rubbing my aching shoulders, the way Belle rubbed J.D.’s and I relived our one sweet kiss a thousand times.
Hard work and Belle’s good meals put pounds of muscle on me and I was busting out of my clothes by fall. When J.D. got top dollar for the horses he paid me a little, even though that wasn’t part of the deal. I bought a new set of clothes and when I looked at myself in the store mirror a man looked back at me. The scrawny kid was gone. I went back to the counter and picked out a little gold locket.
I rode straight to the Stevens farm and I had my speech all ready for Molly’s pa. But a stranger opened the door. “They don’t live here no more. They got gold fever. The whole family packed up and went to Californy – all except that girl Molly, she got married…”
He kept talking, but I didn’t hear. I walked away and got back on my horse. It was dark by the time I got to Pa’s house. Lamplight shining though the window showed me a scene that turned my favorite dream into a nightmare. It haunts me still. Pa was leaned back in his chair, a contented smile on his face. Molly, my Molly, stood close behind him, rubbing his shoulders

My friend, Judy Nickles, has a very thoughtful Independence Day post over at her Word Place blog.

I’ve heard the phrase “the American people” so often lately it is begining to irritate me. Every politician, pundit, and newscaster seems to know what “the American people” need, feel, think, deserve, or demand.  Do a Google News search on the phrase  and you’ll see what I mean. There are hundreds this week including these:

“No one—not his lieutenants, nor his cabinet, nor his generals, nor the American people, nor our allies, nor the Afghans, nor our enemies—can be sure whether the president wants to win the war or just to end the war.” – NBC Washington”

“At a news conference, that had the appearance of being staged to appeal to the kindness of the American people, a second-grade pupil asked Mrs. Obama if President Obama would deport her mother, because she had no papers.”

“The republicans and democrats are both at fault here. these people were voted into office to do the good of the american people. but it seems that both of …

“Other than Sen Sessions, Congress failed the American people. She’s just another liberal radical that wants to change our country and is saying all the …”

There must be a better, more precise term that could be used.  As far as I can tell it is impossible to get the all of one neighborhood, one workplace, or even one family to agree on what they want and what they think….let alone all of The American People! 

“The American People”  is a  meaningless junk phrase .  Every writer (and politician) should think twice before using it.

Seven of us are spending the weekend in our friend Teresa’s beautiful country home. This sonnet is for her.

Writers Retreat

What joy we all find in this weekend stolen
From our homes, our children and our men
Is born of stories shared and interwoven
A sisterhood of writers not blood kin

bonded by a glue of dreams, ideas and ink
we write and talk, eat and write
again trying to find the perfect word and link
plot lines, scenes, and characters that might

catch the fickle eye of some young reader
and be snapped up by his slightly older boss,
talked about by every twit and tweeter,
a mystery,romance, paranormal cross

on the New York Times bestseller list all year..
this weekend feeds dreams we all hold dear.

Daddy
I remember the comfort of your lap.
On late summer afternoons
in the front porch rocker
I explored the many pockets
of your blue bib overalls.
Each held a different treasure:
unfiltered Lucky Strikes packed
behind a bright red bullseye,
covered with crackley cellophane.
If it was a new package
there was a little red strip I could
pull to let the rich tobacco smell out.
There was a shiny silver Zippo
and a tiny box of wooden matches,
for use when the old lighter didn’t work.
You didn’t like the paper book matches
some men carried. Sweat made them damp,
you said, and unreliable. I loved to
watch you light the match or the lighter
with a flick of your thumb.
It was strong and stained nicotine
yellow, like all your fingers.
One pocket held a worn brown leather
snap-top coin purse. I learned to count
lining up pennies and Indian Head nickles
on your calloused palm. In another pocket,
a soft white muslin pouch held loose tobacco
and a thin packet of roll-your-own papers.
You only used them if the Lucky Strike pack
and the brown coin purse
were both empty at the same time.
My favorite pocket held the gold pocket watch,
the engraved design around its face worn smooth
by the touch of your hand
and the touch of your Daddy’s hand.
I held it against my ear and listened
to the tick tock, tick tock, while
my other ear pressed against warm denim
and heard the slow solid drumbeat of your heart.

On an average work day I spend 6 – 7 hours sitting behind a computer at my job doing research, email and writing. Most evenings at home I spend another 2 – 3 doing personal research, email and writing.  I’m not complaining. These are the activities I most enjoy.

But anything, carried to excess, can be a bad thing.  Even a sin. Or so I’ve been told.  So when I made plans for this week off work, I intended to use the computer only a minimal amount. I knew I would HAVE to check my email at least once a day. Maybe look up the winning lottery numbers or glance at the weather report.

It hasn’t exactly worked out like that. This week I built this website and started this new blog. I ordered new business cards online from VistaPrint, so I could put my new website on them.  I wrote a whole new section for the Fulton book. And I’ll admit it.  I even played solitaire a few times.

Today, determined to get out of the clutches of this seemingly irristible machine, I left home (without my laptop) and went to Columbia to shop. I wanted to find new curtains for the ten big windows in my living room. I fought with traffic and trudged through huge stores all over town and managed to come home with some great halfprice hanging baskets from Lowes. But no curtains.  Everywhere they were either too ugly, too expensive, or they didn’t have ten alike.  When I got home I was hot, exhausted,  and most of the day was blown.

But that’s okay. I just found exactly the kind I wanted at overstock.com. It took less than 20 minutes and I did all my shopping sitting down, barefoot, with a big glass of ice tea close at hand.

Living online works for me.

PostScript:  I feel compelled to edit this post.  The box from overstock.com was delivered to my front door within a few days. Unfortunately, the curtains in the box were not the ones I ordered. Different style number, different color.  I hate them.

I’m considering going with the minimalist no-curtains look.

Newspapers across the world last week published letters decrying the advent of the birth control pill from a man who signed them Frank Henderson. But they all carried different, and obviously fake, addresses.

“Frank” popped up all over the States – from the Baltimore Sun, to the Washington Times and on to the Colorado Springs Gazette.

Then you can find his letter in Ireland’s The Examiner, in the
Times of Malta and in several Canadian papers, such as Vancouver’s The Province.

This man certainly moves around because he manages also to have addresses in South Korea, the Virgin Islands and Taiwan. Google him and you’ll see he has managed to get his letter into more than 100 papers around the globe.

Some papers carried outraged responses from readers. One published a comment from a health editor. One was moved enough to write a leading article. So what did “Frank” write? Here’s the version from the Trenton Times in New Jersey (most are exactly the same):

“Last month was the 50th anniversary of “the pill.” In the 1960s, the birth control pill was heralded as a development that would liberate women from male dominance and lead to fewer divorces, fewer unwanted pregnancies and fewer abortions. It is now clear, however, that things did not turn out that way.

As the pill became more widespread, the number of divorces and abortions soared. We saw a lowering of moral standards and a rise in infidelity and promiscuity. In addition, the well-being of children declined by a variety of measures, from depression to diet to the number living in poverty and the number experiencing child abuse or neglect.

Though women now have access to places and positions that once belonged only to men, they have never been seen more as sex objects than they are today.

The major disconnect caused by the arrival of the pill has been a loss of the idea that men and women make babies. As technological advances in artificial reproduction are made, the idea that God plays a role in procreation has increasingly been lost.

Sadly, the horizon does not look promising for the family. With the rapid increase in activist judges with a proclivity for elitist social engineering, we will soon be seeing countless forms of sexually bonded groups that are not only unstable but seriously harmful to children.

May God help us.”

So I guess “Frank” is representing himself as a conservative Christian and anti-feminist who hates the modern world.

As Danny Bloom (who discovered the scam) points out in his I see from the snailpapers blog, the letter was published “without one editor checking to see if FH was a real name or where he really lived or where he really was writing from or if he REALLY was a reader of said newspaper.”

Every writer’s conference and professional magazine says I must own my own name.   So I bought my name.  Many months later I’m trying to put some information up on it.

I’m not sure exactly what I’ll be posting here, but at least I have a start….