HOPE, WRITING, AND BLOOD Happy 12th IWSG!

 

Twelve years!

I've been here since nearly the beginning. 

So much has changed in the world, in the world of writing, in the lives of my fellow writers.

It seems like the world I knew has turned on its axis.

 On its ear.

How about you?

I see my earlier selves as different people, acquaintances I have outgrown. I wonder how I could ever have been some of them.

I still deliver rare blood.

After a year and a half stall

due to 4 hurricanes

and a massive heart attack,

 I am back to writing.

I've lost blog friends through death

Ann Best

Jeremy Hawkins

Some by the natural attrition of bloggers walking away from blogging.

VR Barkowski

Inger Wiltz

D G Hudson

Fortunately, all of us still have the founder of IWSG.

Alex Cavanaugh

https://www.alexjcavanaugh.com/

The more time passes in your life, I think the greater you understand perspective. 

Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.

The clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.

What has IWSG brought into your life?

Let me know.

I really would like to hear from you.

WHEN THE MONSTER IS YOU

 

The formidable Eleanor Roosevelt clashes with the officer to whom she feels superior, Major Richard Blaine.

WHEN THE MONSTER IS YOU

“Stand up for what is right regardless of who is committing the wrong, even if it means you are standing alone.

All through the ages, one lone voice of courage was the hinge which opened the door to a brighter path that never would have been walked had it not spoken up.”

 - Richard Blaine

 

I turned to face the indomitable Eleanor Roosevelt.

As sometimes happened with my quirky mind, I saw the image of her in a bathing suit (modest, of course) diving into her own reflection in the pool of public acclaim, becoming “sealed” in that reflection of adoration, rising from the pool, wearing that “seal” ever after.

Louise murmured, “Major, you suddenly look so sad.”

“Louise, be quiet,” snapped Eleanor.

Curtis gulped, “Now, Major, you look mad.”

She turned to me, and again my mind bled the image of a disapproving Queen Victoria over her.

 “You, sir, are covered in grime and dirt. How dare you bring it here to an invalid like my husband?”

I gave her my best wolf smile, telling what little was left of my better self that murdering the First Lady in front of the President was probably poor form.

“I just came from within the cliffs bordering Omaha Beach. Alas, there were no showers available.”

She waved a dismissive hand.

”Oh, I see that Spartan Helmet, Major Blaine. I, unlike my mystery loving husband, do not believe for an instant all the lurid tales spun of you in that doctored dossier.”

I winked at Curtis, gesturing to first, Eleanor, then to the Major General, and said, 

“See? I now have my own Greek Chorus.”

The President tried and failed to hide his grin.

She wheeled on him. “Of course, you approve of his insubordination.”

Curtis started to speak, but she cut him off. “Buzzie, you are here to be seen AND not heard.”

I said low in a tone that suddenly scared even me, for I knew of what I was capable when I fully lost my temper.

“He prefers to be called ‘Curtis’ now that he is a Spartan.”

Louise tried to defuse what obviously she saw in my eyes. “Eleanor, the young boy has the right to choose ….”

Eleanor snapped, “And you, my dear, are here at my deference ever since that unforgivable broach of etiquette on your part.”

I lost my temper.

 “Of setting the damned table when she was supposed to know you wanted to be in charge?”

Eleanor stormed right up to me, her nose arching up as if to reach mine. “You, sir, do not take that tone to me or use such coarse ….”

A huge roar of thunder rumbled loud so close overhead it sounded as if it were inside the White House. But I’ll give the First Lady this: she had sand.

“Oh, I know what General Eisenhower calls you: Spawn of Satan.”

I shook my head. “No, ma’am, I play for the Other Team.”

Her face became a living smirk. “Then, I have nothing to fear, do I?”

A blast of lightning struck so close, the mahogany floor shuddered beneath my boots, and I smiled with all the wolf exposed.

“But I never said I played by the rules.”

Sentient overstepped as usual as she took possession of my left hand, sweeping it up and over in an intricate swirl.

Eleanor backed up a step.

The ladies squeaked; Curtis yelped; and the men swore.

A misty image billowed and filled the center of the room. I saw it out of the corner of my left eye. I did not turn to view it full on.

I had lived it once.

I needed no encore presentation of the nightmare. I didn’t need it when asleep, but then, I had no control of what I saw.

I still felt the iron fingers of the four boys holding me over Headmaster Stern’s desk. Still felt the stinging agony of the bamboo cane as it splintered across my back over and over and over and over and over.

“Scream, damn you, Blaine! Scream!”

Louise whimpered, “Oh make it stop, Major. Make it stop.”

Missy husked, “He is not doing it. Are you, Major?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the blood begin to splatter and fly through the air.

“Scream, damn you!”

Dorothy gulped wetly, “I-I think I’m going to be sick.”

Curtis ran up to me and tugged on my left arm. “Please. Major. Make it go away.”

I flicked tears filled eyes to his own. “I’m not doing it, son. But for you, I will ask Sentient.”

No sooner had I said that than the image flickered away to slither and crawl into the shadows to eagerly wait for my nightmares later that night.

I blinked back the tears. I don’t know who I spoke to just then. “I don’t intimidate worth a damn. I never screamed.”

I turned to Eleanor.

“First Lady, these friends of your husband gather here nightly to try and give him a half hour of laughter so as to strengthen what hold on his sanity he has left.”

I drew in a deep breath.

“You disapprove of the drinking and the slurred laughter because of your family’s struggle with alcoholism.”

I sighed with old hurts, dead dreams, lost love.

 “Your husband has more on him than any one man should have to bear.”

My eyes flicked to where that nightmare image lived for no one but myself.

“But, ma’am, you know this life doesn’t care a whit for should’s. They just squat on our shoulders like Sinbad’s Old Man of the Sea, refusing to let us go our own way … until we throw them off.”

I walked slowly up to her as she edged to the back of the door and could go no further.

“You beg off these nights, saying you have too many important things to do to attend.”

I shivered with coiled muscles wanting to do things I refused to let them.

“So … ma’am … ma’am … please … please find those other things to do. Now. Please.”

Eleanor Roosevelt left without another word.

"The truth is, we all face hardships of some kind, and you never know the struggles a person is going through. Behind every smile, there's a story of a personal struggle." 

- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"Success is not measured by what you accomplish, but by the opposition you have encountered, and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds."

- Helen Keller

ATOMS WITH AWARENESS

 

Once again, Major Richard Blaine finds himself forced to beard the mighty in their center of power.

ATOMS WITH AWARENESS

“Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.”

– Marcus Aurelius

 

After my question, there was a long moment of silence from Sentient, the alien entity who shared my consciousness, 

and then, as she so often did, she answered incomprehensibly:

‘This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire universe, but it is, in a certain sense, the whole of it. Yet, sometimes it is hard even for me to remember that you humans are merely atoms with consciousness, capable of music and of murder.’

‘I repeat: what have you done?’

‘What I said I would do: heal that tribal chieftain.’

‘How?’

“Have you not been paying attention? Repeatedly, I have told you how your body has been altered, its biochemistry enhanced, your very atomic structure bolstered and reinforced.’

‘And?’

Her sigh breezed through the corridors of my mind like a misunderstood ghost . 

‘And your saliva is no longer sterile nor chemically neutral. Your spit acted as a catalyst to trigger a healing cascade within that tribal chieftain’s body.’

‘He’s healed?’

‘Not immediately, of course. But within weeks, his legs, his heart, his lungs will begin to reassert themselves. Pity the poor maidens to whom he becomes attracted.’

‘Pity his poor wife, you mean.”

“No. That one has brought most of her grief onto herself by enlarging the normal isolation of a Gilded Age childhood and minimizing her reasonably required duties as a mate and mother.’

I quipped an echo Harry Hopkins’ earlier comment. ‘But do you like her?’

The President’s personal physician, Howard Bruenn, jumped up and glared at me. “What did you do to him, Major?”

“Nothing, doctor,” 

wanly smiled the President, showing the patience, fortitude, and humility that he had slowly learned over his long years trying to recover from the polio that was not polio but was really Guillain-Barré syndrome.

Dr. Bruenn produced a stethoscope like a medical Houdini and began listening to the President’s heart while Roosevelt’s second physician, Dr. Draper took his pulse.

Buzzie, his pale young face mostly wide eyes, asked me, “Is Grandfather going to be all right, Major Blaine?”

I nodded. “Yes, he is.”

The Major General snapped, “You can’t make promises like that, soldier!”

I winked at Buzzie. “I do it all the time, and I made you a promise, didn’t I?”

He bobbed his head in an enthusiastic “Yes.”

I dug into my left blouse pocket and drew out a glowing Spartan Helmet pin. “As long as this glows, you will know we of the Spartan 3oo still live.”

“Another promise you cannot possibly make true,” said the Major General.

I wrinkled my nose at the boy. “I’m beginning to think he doesn’t like me, Curtis.”

I was pleased how the boy’s chest swelled when I called him by his given name. I had guessed correctly.

Called nicknames by adults often make the young feel devalued, not worthy of respect ... inferior.

Roosevelt laughed along with the boy. I pulled a folded piece of heavy bond paper out of the same pocket and slipped it into Curtis’s left jacket pocket.

“Here is the address of the first young man I gave this Spartan Helmet pin to.  He lost his father at Dunkirk. I think he would appreciate you as a pen pal. His mother and he were mighty thin when I first saw them. The mother more than her son, Richard Widmark.”

Curtis frowned. “Why was that?”

Louise sighed, “She was giving most of her food to her son, wasn’t she, Major?”

“Yes, ma’am. But no longer. I gave her a leather bag that never runs out of silver dollars that were minted ….”

“On the year of Major Blaine’s birth,” finished the President.

I looked shocked, and President Roosevelt gave an almost back-to-normal chuckle. “Major, I read Agent Cloverfield’s dossier on you every night.”

“Why every night, sir?”

“I have quite a fondness for mysteries as you might know, and your dossier is the most puzzling mystery, I have ever stumbled upon, for it keeps changing night after night.”

Curtis swallowed hard. “I-It does?”

Roosevelt’s chuckle was normal. “It does … Curtis. I can hardly wait to read the new section tonight.”

Fala padded to me, and I felt a weight lift from my chest as I petted him. I was going to get a dog if I survived this damn war. 

I turned to the boy, no, young man.

“A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance,” I winked at the President, “and to turn around three times before lying down."

He rumbled, “You, sir, are incorrigible.”

“That was one of the kinder words Helen Mayfair had for me, all right.”

His face saddened. “I would not have sent those F.B.I. agents to her had I known she was still grieving for your apparent death.”

“It’s done and over, sir.”

His eyes grew hard.

“From what I have read in your dossier, I would not have been so lenient to General Eisenhower as were you had our positions been reversed.”

“I always thought of him as King Saul to my David, sir.”

“Do not lay hands of violence on God’s Anointed, is that it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are a hero, Major,” murmured Louise.

“No, ma’am. But, just so you know, Sentient has healed your husband of cancer.”

“Why would she do that?”

Roosevelt looked at me oddly. “Because he asked it of her, Louise.”

Curtis cleared his throat. “Ah, what were your orders for Spartan Widmark?”

“That he obeys his mother and stand watch over her.”

“That’s it?”

“Trust me: in bombed out London that’s enough.”

“A-And what are my orders?”

I smiled. “That you obey your mother and stand guard over your grandfather and keep him safe from Cerberus.”

“Who?”

I smiled, “Your grandmother.”

Roosevelt almost choked on his laughter and managed  to get out,

“The hound of Hades, a three-headed dog guarding the gates of the Underworld to prevent the dead from leaving.”

His eyes were wet with tears of laughter. “You, sir, are quite the character.”

I shrugged. “St. Marok’s either built character in you or made you one.”

I smiled at Curtis. “I guess you know what it made me.”

Roosevelt gasped through his laughter, 

“And once or thrice this past week, Curtis, your grandmother has more than earned that particular sobriquet.”

Photograph by Oscar Jordan. August 1932

The entry door swished open. I looked up. I had never before seen a door swished open. But the doughty Eleanor Roosevelt had managed it.

With the two doctors still at his feet, the President looked up and beamed a beatific smile.

“We were just talking about you, my dear.”

UNINVITED TO THE CHILDREN’S HOUR

 

"Doctor President Roosevelt's martini" demands Sentient, the ancient alien entity who shares his consciousness. What has Major Richard Blaine gotten himself into? 

UNINVITED TO THE CHILDREN’S HOUR

“A tough lesson in life that one has to learn early on is that not everybody wishes you well.”

– Julius Caesar

 

I have a taste for solitude, and silence, and for what Plotinus called “the flight of the alone to the Alone.” 

I have a hunger for the silent horizon of inner contemplation.

A yearning for the lightless edge where the slopes of knowledge dwindle, and love for its own sake, lacking an object, begins.

Where you walk light as a handful of Aurora borealis.

Unfortunately, as Major of the Spartan 300, I had to force myself to command. And part of being a good commander was knowing just how much of the truth to tell your men.

I realized that I had shared too much truth with my men just then when Amos shook his head. 

“You know, Rick, my time with you has been so wild and bizarre, I just don’t know when you’re joking.”

“And after that, I intend to toss down a few glasses of vodka with Stalin,” I said.

Agent Cloverfield laughed, “Now, I know you’re telling the truth.”

“All right, gentlemen and lady, nap time.”

I caught Nurse Reynolds eyeing me suspiciously as if not buying that I had been joking about President Roosevelt.

Still, she lithely curled around her backpack and closed those magnetic eyes. I noticed she’d chosen Lt. Stein for a march mate. 

It was a prudent choice: not only was he a rabbi, but he was deeply in love with his wife, Rose.

Theo, who would have rather chosen Nurse Reynolds, prudently and jealously chose “Doc” Tennyson who was responsible for his love being here in the first place.

Cloverfield had chosen Dickens. At least, he was erudite enough to understand the university professor.

The others had chosen friends:

Reese with Porkins, Johnny Knight with “Kit” Carson, Evans with Taylor, Wilson with Stevens, Floyd with Mercer, Vincent with Lincoln (who insisted on Micheal never Mike, though he would answer to “Link.”)

Dimitri and Kent weren’t friends, but one had the saved the other so many times in Sicily that they were family … “distant, aloof cousins family” but there for each other when the chips were down.

I could feel Nurse Reynolds’ eyes on me through cracked lids.

‘No matter. In moments, she will slip into a coma with the others.’

‘What?’

‘I am quite impressed with your performance just now. They believe it was König, not I, who lined the walls of this tunnel with his devices.’

‘But ….”

“But me no buts, my champion. Our “Dance Card” as you might say is quite full. We must be off on our first metaphysical entanglement.’

As quick as a revolving door takes you from inside to outside and without the accompanying dizziness, 

I found myself in a shadowed hallway, standing upon a lush red carpet, facing a well-waxed mahogany door.

‘The second story of the White House. Listen to that deep laughter beyond that door which has fooled naïve maidens and jaded journalists who should have known better than to be seduced by it.’

‘Not a fan, huh?’

‘He is but another tribal chieftain of a long line of them which I have been forced to observe.’

Sentient sighed in my mind.

‘This one and his mate are the last vestiges of the extinct Gilded Age where sheltered wealth, good manners, eloquence, and hypocrisy reigned. Sadly, all that is left of that age is the hypocrisy.’

‘No more sheltered wealth?”

“Oh, still naïve, are we? Wealth of that magnitude will always be sheltered.’

‘Good to be King, huh?’

‘Not if you are half-paralyzed … which we are here to correct.’

‘What?’

‘Besides, his paralysis is a fourth psychosomatic, born of his guilt over his affair with Lucile Mercer and the attendant tailspin of depression to which his mate suffered because of it. The twain of them could benefit from decades of therapy.’

‘How am I supposed to three-fourths heal the President?’

‘Just surreptitiously take a sip of the martini he is currently swilling, and I will take of the rest.’

‘Sure. I’ll just walk in there and ….”

‘What a splendid idea. First, I will have you walk through the door and “get the lay of the land” as your Cloverfield puts it.’

Like a Zoom lens of a camera, I sped through time and space to find myself unnoticed smack in the midst of a laughing group of adults, one boy, and one Scottish terrier.

Well, the Scottish Terrier noticed me. But who pays attention to dogs?

Sentient gave me a rundown of the situation:

‘The tribal chieftain always changes his suit for the evening, putting on a clean shirt and a different tie. Then he is wheeled into the handsome oval study that is conveniently located right next door to his bedroom.’

An ill-looking man whom Sentient informed me was Louis Howe, Roosevelt’s personal secretary. In fact, that was his official title.

To this day I can smell the Sweet Caporal cigarettes he was smoking. They were pungent. The ashes from his cigarettes fell down the front of his shirt.

Sitting opposite Roosevelt’s desk, Louis Howe laughed, “Want to hear what the Chicago Tribune says about your latest radio speech?”

Roosevelt boomed a hearty laugh. “That rag? The only thing it is good for is the mulch Eleanor makes of it for her roses.”

“It quotes William Randolph Hearst who said ….”

“That man? He has the intelligence of a hillbilly evangelist, the courage of a rat, the fairness of a prohibitionist skirt chaser, the education of a high school janitor, and the honor of an ambulance chasing lawyer.”

A thinner, more ill-looking man Sentient identified as Harry Hopkins snorted, “But do you like him, Franklin?”

To which the group gathered around the President’s desk all laughed.

I liked the man at first sight. His slanted but engaging smile made it seem as if he was on the edge of laughter or about to make a sardonic comment.

Slouched, leaning forward, a slightly cynical expression on his face and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth—

‘That one is dying of cancer.’

‘‘Can I heal him, too?’

‘If you must, sentimentalist. But first, drink from the President’s glass and arrange that he drinks from it afterwards.’

I inwardly groaned. ‘Sure thing. Piece of cake … Devil’s Food cake … which I have never had, by the way.

‘Duly noted.’

The elegant woman in the satin, sleek dress sitting next to him … Louise “Louie” Gill Macy … was his new wife. She laughed gaily and said,

 “Louis, you never read that paper. How do you know what it said?”

Louis Howe waved a lazy hand at her.

“It was on the radio. You know this city. The radio stations here have such fun requests: ‘This is for Betty … I’m sorry I stabbed you’.”

Amidst new peals of laughter, Louise groaned, “Oh, Louis, you are too much.”

“What can I say?” he quipped, “I’m in the prime of my senility.”

A somber looking man with a disapproving woman hanging on his arm … Judge Samuel Rosenman, the President’s chief speech writer Sentient told me … huffed,

“As with most of the senators in this city. There ought to be one day – just one day, mind you, when it is open season on those scoundrels.”

Dorothy, the judge’s wife, slapped the arm she was draped upon. “Samuel!”

A no nonsense woman … Sentient informed me she was Roosevelt’s secretary, Missy LeHand, who coined the title “the Boss” for her employer.

Having worked for FDR since his campaign for the vice presidency in 1920, and having lived as part of the household after Roosevelt contracted polio, she had a special place at the cocktail hour.

Missy chided the man’s wife. “Dorothy, you are much too hard on poor Samuel.”

Roosevelt looked as if he wanted to take the spotlight off his friend, Samuel. He lifted his martini glass high.

“To the gallant lads even now storming Normandy beaches!”

Sentient knew a cue when she heard it. The room’s clarity intensified around me as if I were tightening the focus of a camera lens.

Dorothy shrieked, “Oh my good Lord!”

Glasses thudded to the rich carpet. I turned to Louise who had managed to keep her martini glass in her fingers.

“Sorry, ma’am. It is impolite to keep your hat on in the presence of ladies. So ….”

I took off my Spartan helmet as Louise gasped, “Has anyone told you that you are the spitting image of Tyrone Power?”

Dorothy shook her head. “What are you saying. He looks like Ronald Coleman.”

Missy frowned. “Are you all blind? He looks just like Gary Cooper.”

Roosevelt grunted,

 “I read it in that MI6 report on you, Major Blaine. But I didn’t believe it. Your face looks different to different people.”

He frowned at me. “What do you make of it, Major?”

“I believe it is a metaphor from the Father teaching me that none of us are seen as we truly are.”

Roosevelt’s military aide, Major General Edwin Watson, grunted, “The Father is it? Being an orphan, you don’t know yours, do you? So that makes you ….”

Missy snapped, “That is enough, sir!”

I flicked eyes to the suddenly pale twelve-year-old boy whom Sentient told me was called “Buzzie” and smiled, 

“What I am is an accident of birth, General. But you, sir, are ….”

Missy glared at me, and I finished “… a self-made man.”

Roosevelt boomed in delighted laughter. 

“Bravo, Major. Bravo! You defended yourself while protecting an innocent at the same time.”

Louise said, “Isn’t that what heroes do, Mr. President?”

“I’m no hero, ma’am.”

The Scottish terrier came out from behind the desk and sniffed at my right hand.

The President frowned, “I gave you a Silver Star, young man, because I was told you had lost your hands in battle.”

“Oh, I have hands like a bald man with a toupee has hair.”

“But the fingers move?” murmured Missy.

“I got these 413 years in a terrible future where the Nazis won because I wasn’t here to act as a needed catalyst.”

The Major-General growled, “I don’t believe you.”

I winked at Buzzie. “Me and dead owls don’t give a hoot.”

The boy and Roosevelt both laughed out loud.

I bent down and petted the dog and whispered, “Fala, Murray the Outlaw of Falahill.”

My eyes welled with tears.

“I always wanted a dog, Mr. President. But St. Marok’s Orphanage didn’t allow orphans to own pets. And even if Headmaster Sterns had allowed me to have a dog, it would have just been so he could kill it in front of me to see the look on my face.”

Louise gasped, “What kind of orphanage was this?”

I smiled of salt. “The kind where ….”

I looked to Buzzie. “Put your fingers in your ears … and I will give you a gift that only one other boy has.”

“P-Promise?”

I nodded solemnly. “Promise.”

He quickly plugged his ears as the President smiled sadly. “That bad, son?”

“Yes, sir. Headmaster Stearns supported the orphanage and his … habits by selling the attractive girls and handsome boys to the surrounding houses of … prostitution.”

Louise shook her head. “No!”

“New Orleans is the most corrupt city in Louisiana, maybe even the whole country.”

Buzzie couldn’t take it any longer, and he took out his fingers from his ears. “Can I?”

I nodded “yes” as the Major-General gruffed, “I don’t believe you.”

I winked at Buzzie. “Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care.”

Buzzie laughed, but this time Roosevelt did not.

The general huffed, “Soldier, you were not invited here!”

“That’s exactly what the Germans screamed at me and my Spartans when we charged upon Omaha Beach. Can you believe it? They actually shot at us.”

The President scowled, “So we have secured that beach?”

“Not so you’d notice, Mr. President. Tomorrow afternoon, General Bradley would have recommended we call off the invasion as Omaha was impossible to secure. It was pretty much a death trap.”

I took the glass from the President’s limp fingers and held it high.

“To the doomed second charge of the Light Brigade and the thousands of widows, orphans, and weeping mothers it created."

I took a sip and almost spit it out. “Oh, merde! You drink this for the taste?”

The President smiled this time. “It is an acquired taste.”

“It would take me a decade to acquire the taste, sir!”

“I don’t recall it tasted that bad.”

He frowned, took a sip, and smiled wide. “Why, this tastes brilliant!”

The President actually downed the rest of the martini in one gulp.

Missy exclaimed, “Do not!”

He smiled. “I promise not to make this a habit … but, oh, my! The room is spinning.”

‘Oh, Sentient, what have you done now?’