Flicker, page 7
Rings of Light
pool waters beckon
with rings of light reflected
in the deep depths
Siren’s Kiss*
Waves wash away our sand castle, but his kiss lingers after his footprints fade into the ocean.
I wait for his return.
Watch Out*
Watch out, slow sidekick!
I have villains to kick and wait –
you can't do that!
Extra Long Cape*
My extra long cape
trips me when I run but looks
good when I am-
-ouch!
In His Shadow*
Enough time in his shadow
has taught me one thing:
even heroes have fears.
Sidekicks Anonymous*
Sidekicks Anonymous:
where we name our addictions:
spandex and gadgets.
Essays on Battle Tactics
Samantha Redbrook growled over the stack of student essays on battle tactics in front of her, and then shoved them to the corner of her desk. She wished she could skewer them on the edge of one of her knives, or set them on fire, or use them in the privy.
What kind of fools were her students this year? Did they not think she had read the entire section of the library on battle tactics, or that she even knew the basics of her own course materials?
She growled again and stood up to pace the length of her tiny office. Her left knee buckled slightly when she turned, and she grunted. Curse the battle injuries that kept her in this dismal, miserable school!
A knock at the door made her pause mid-step. She fingered the sword on her hip and unknotted the peace ribbon, just in case.
Of course, when she opened the door, it was only Gerard with a tray of her favorite tea and meat pasties.
His smile faltered when he saw her expression. “What is it, Sam?”
“My current batch of students is a bunch of idiots who think I won’t recognize plagiarism, lies, or their obvious disrespect shown in their battle tactics essays!”
“I thought you rather thought that beaky-nosed fellow, the girl with the curly hair, and the boy that no one else would take on because of his height, or lack of it, showed promise.” He set the tray down on the center of her desk, poured them both teeth and then sat in one of the chairs by the fireplace.
She sighed, and took a meat pasty in her hands. They were crumbly and warm, just how she liked them, but she didn’t take a bite yet. “You’re right. It isn’t all of them. It’s just that, that son of a noble fool who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else and that kid who thinks I don’t notice that he’s rolling his eyes at me when I have my back half-turned. And, that girl . . . ooh, the one who thinks she’s so funny.” The pasty started to crumble in her tightening fingers so she held it over her mouth and slurped some of it in. It was delicious, so she finished it off in a few mouthfuls. The warmth and the food helped her mood, but she was still angry.
“Let me see the papers,” Gerard held his hand out.
Sam wiped her hands off on one of the napkins and picked up the stack of essays. She pulled out the three best, and the two mediocre ones that showed promise, and then handed him the offensive three. “Here.”
“Don’t you ask them to turn in several drafts?” Gerard fingered the short stack in his hands.
“Yes, but none of these three did. They all had various excuses of course. The family scribe lost his, her sister ate hers, and the last one claimed I didn’t hand him back his rough draft with feedback on it, but I know it did. I checked it off my list when I handed it to him.”
Gerard stared at her, his mouth open. “Wait, did you say the student claimed you lied to him?”
“Oh,” Samantha thought it over. “Yes, I believe he did, in a roundabout way.”
“Roundabout or not, that’s grounds for expulsion.”
“You know whose son he is, don’t you? I’m not sure I can do that to his mother, given what I know about his father.”
“Hmm.” Gerard looked through the three papers and held up the one by the student she meant. “This one?”
“Yes.”
“His father was seen threatening a tavern maid just yesterday. Of course, when the constables arrived, he handed out his gold freely and managed to make it sound like it was the maid’s fault.”
“His son seems to want to follow in his father’s footsteps.”
Gerard hmmed again, and read another paper. “This is the girl? She is funny in an incredibly disrespectful way.”
“She bullies some of the younger students, but the older students all think she’s clever. I think she’ll end up dead on a battlefield from ‘friendly’ fire within a month of graduation.”
“Good riddance?”
Sam sighed again. “No. She has intelligence in that thick, disrespectful skull of hers. She just needs something to change her ways.”
“And, the last . . . the one with the family scribe?”
“Yes.”
“I know you don’t have a soft spot for nobles.”
“Quite the opposite, with a few exceptions.”
“Me, of course.”
“Yes, but read the paper.”
He did, and then he crumpled it up and threw it in the fire.
Samantha lunged forward to save it, but he stopped her. “No, no. Accidents do happen, don’t they? And I’ll be a witness to say that it wasn’t your fault that the window draft from your tiny office blew the papers into the fire.”
“Not all of them!”
“Of course not.” Gerard set the funny girl’s paper into the flames, and then burned half of the one by the kid who claimed she had lost his previous draft. “There. you rescued this one.” He blew out the flame and handed it to her.
“What about the others?”
“Oh, that’s simple. They were turned in early or on time, if I’m correct, and you had already corrected them and put them back in your satchel when the accident occurred.”
“Mostly true.” Samantha quickly put the other papers in her satchel.
“It will work. I mean, this is a lesson on battle tactics, correct?”
The In-Laws*
“What is that?” he asked as howls surrounded their parked car.
“You insisted on meeting my family,” she reminded him as her fangs emerged.
Tone Deaf*
The magic sword sang in battle like a whiny goatherd. Brendan’s foes forfeited in laughter, but he won Princess Rose, known to be tone deaf.
The Tail of a Star*
She caught the tail of a star burning brilliant before crashing to earth.
After, he held her close in a cinnamon warm embrace.
Pyro Pink*
When the pink-haired lady at the fireworks stand offered real adventures, Sam didn't expect the dragon on his doorstep. Thankfully, he owned a fire extinguisher.
A “Special” Guest
At the Sunshine Charity Hospital, there were two wards separating the boys and the girls, but there were three factions: the angry, the determined, and the refusals. The angry were simply that, angry at their disabilities and the world and God or whatever power in the universe had placed them in their situation; the determined were those who, even if they had been angry before, had decided to conquer the hardships and do something to make their lives better; the refusals, well, they were the ones that Reuben worried about because they either refused to accept their disabilities at all, or they refused to live. Reuben classified himself and his three closest friends as determined. They knew they had disabilities, they didn’t like their disabilities or whatever situation had placed them in the Sunshine Charity Hospital, but they were determined to make it out of the place sane and able to live out their dreams somehow.
However, today, as one of the days that the Sunshine Charity Hospital had a “special” guest, even a determined could get angry. As Reuben watched the famous baseball star Wayne Nelson enter the ward, at breakfast time instead of lunch when he was expected, he growled slightly and glared at the man.
Whole, in prime athletic condition, and beaming a celebrity smile, Wayne Nelson exuded success.
Reuben hated men like him. They came to the Sunshine Charity Hospital to get their picture taken with the “poor, disabled kids” and show that they had hearts for those “in need.” Usually, they arrived with several van loads of news crews and even makeup and hair specialists. They would strut around the ward, and pose with different children, giving out autographs and trinkets.
The littlest kids would get excited to talk to their heroes. But these men never had time for more than an autograph and a smile, they left moments after the last flash bulb went off, and sometimes they would even shrink away from the kids with the most noticeable disabilities.
The air smelled like sour disappointment after they were gone. They didn’t really care; they just posed for the cameras with kids with disabilities and claimed they had acted out some great community service. It was sick.
So, after a few moments of glaring at Wayne Nelson, Rueben went back to his breakfast. Cold oatmeal with no sugar, with sour milk over the top of it, it made for an unappetizing distraction. Rueben took a few spoonfuls out of the center, and pushed the tray away.
Nurse Redder walked by, saw the tray, and stopped. “Rube, you have to eat. You’re down to 70 pounds and you’re fourteen years old. You don’t want to be one of the refusals, now do you?”
Nurse Redder, one of the only male nurses, and one of the few that seemed to care, was the only nurse that Rueben allowed to call him Rube. He was also the only one who knew of the way Rueben and his friends separated the Hospital into angry, determined, and refusals.
Rueben shrugged at Nurse Redder. “I’m not refusing to live, I’m just refusing sour milk.”
“It’s sour?” Nurse Redder picked up Rueben’s bowl and sniffed it experimentally. “Hmm. Just turned, hasn’t it? I don’t know why they don’t get you into the kitchen when the Chef’s pouring out the milk. Seems like you would know what’s good and what isn’t, with your grandfather running a dairy.”
It was a conversation they had many times a month. “Yeah. I don’t know why either,” said Rueben.
“I’ll get you a new bowl, but promise me something.”
“What’s that?”
“You won’t be rude to Wayne Nelson like you were the last baseball player,” Nurse Redder cocked his bushy gray eyebrows at Rueben and waited.
“Fine,” Rueben smiled. “I’ll be polite, but only if he treats Cyrus right.”
Nurse Redder smiled slightly, as if he knew something that Rueben didn’t. “I’ll take that deal.” Redder lifted up his whole tray, and returned back the way he had come, to the employee hallways that led to both the boys’ and girls’ wards, the kitchens, the emergency and operating rooms, and the employee housing. Not all of the staff lived at the charity hospital, but some did. Nurse Redder had a family so he lived “off-campus” with them. The boys weren’t allowed in the employee hallways.
Reuben sat back against his doubled pillows, and closed his eyes. The excited chatter about Wayne Nelson around him wouldn’t let him slip away into a daydream, so he sat back up and pulled a drawing notepad and a sharp pencil out of his the small drawer by his bed. He flipped through the first few pages, glancing at his artwork and seeing how it progressed.
Yesterday’s sketches of a B52 had turned out pretty well, he thought, but today he wanted to work on something different, an idea of a new kind of plane, all his own, and meant for boys like him, and boys like Henry, Fred, and Cyrus, although Cyrus didn’t really need any different kind of plane to suit his needs, only privacy.
Reuben had worked on sketches for this plane before. The plane itself was really the same on the outside as any other small private aircraft or private jet. The cockpit though, that part had to be drawn and engineered correctly for all of them. Therein lay the trouble.
Reuben could engineer a cockpit just for himself, or just for Henry or Fred, or just for Cyrus, but making one work for each of them at different times presented a difficulty, and since he had stirred up the dream of flight for all of them, he felt he needed to make it real, or at least possible.
Even though his last library book on flight had gone back yesterday and been replaced with a biography on the Wright brothers, Reuben had drawn the controls and the cockpit set up for a regular plane several times. He shuffled back to those pages, but found he couldn’t concentrate because of Wayne Nelson’s hearty and annoying laugh.
He looked over at where the baseball player stood next to Willie’s bed. His huge hand held onto Willie’s tiny one as he shook it and said, “You have the gift of humor, little man. Think of the ways you could use your special gift to share joy with the world. You could make a difference in the lives of others for countless generations. I know. My parents still listen to recordings of a 20th Century comedian Bill Cosby. Ever heard of him?”
Reuben couldn’t hear Willie’s quiet answer, but he watched Wayne Nelson’s reaction. “Why sure I think it’s a gift, just as much of a gift as playing baseball is for me. And to tell you the truth, I think it might be better than throwing a ball around.”
Reuben looked away, and tried to tune out the rest of their conversation. He stared at the pages of his drawing notebook but the lines faded away. A baseball player who thought humor was a gift, and thought it could make a difference, and thought it was better than baseball: Wayne Nelson might be different than the other self-seeking star players after all.
Reuben realized something else that was different. There were no flash bulbs going off. No camera operators glided around the room. Wayne Nelson had come alone, and four hours early.
Maybe Nurse Redder had been right. But Reuben wouldn’t be sure until he saw how the man treated Cyrus. It would be soon, he thought, since Cyrus’ bed was just one over from Willie’s bed.
The boys’ ward, and Reuben assumed the girls’ ward was just like it, had twenty beds, with ten lined up against each wall, and a tiny dresser and nightstand next to each. There were all full, and supposedly, there was a waiting list to get in, or at least that’s what Nurse Frosty always told them when she gave them all her icy glares and told them they were lucky to be there. Her real name wasn’t Frosty, of course, it was Forrest, but Reuben thought Frosty fit her personality and the rest of the boys seemed to agree. As one of the oldest in the ward, Reuben’s word had weight, although he tried not to overuse that.
Nurse Redder arrived with a new tray for him, and gave him a sideways look. “Remember to be nice,” he said.
“Sure,” said Reuben. He watched Nurse Redder check on the other boys’ breakfasts, and saw that he took several more trays back with him towards the kitchen. “I’ll be back with the cart, since all of these need fresh milk,” he said to Reuben as he went out the door.
Since Reuben’s bed was the farthest into the room from the main hallway, it was closest to the employees’ hall, and he got the first and last words from any nurse that visited.
Reuben ate a spoonful of his new oatmeal appreciatively. It would taste better with honey, but he knew he wasn’t allowed any. Nurse Frosty was sure that keeping him off sweets would get rid of his acne. His face was still covered in the stuff, but he had lost five more pounds. Most of the food just didn’t taste good enough to eat. Nurse Redder seemed like the only Nurse who cared and he only worked five days a week. The other days were horrible, and Reuben barely ate on the weekends.
As he ate, he watched and listened to Wayne Nelson out of the corner of his eyes.
The man seemed genuinely likeable, although a little loud in the depressingly white ward.
Of course, hadn’t Reuben always longed for something to liven the place up, some hint of bright color, or laughter, or the ability to play a game without Nurse Frosty coming into break it up? Maybe Wayne Nelson was just what the boys needed, or at least what the other boys needed.
Reuben didn’t need anything other than his flight plans, or at least he told himself that on visiting day when his parents didn’t come. They couldn’t come, not really, with the farm taking all their time and work. It was nearly impossible to take enough time off to come visit him, since it required a two hour drive to the hospital.
Reuben shied away from those thoughts, and glanced over at Wayen Nelson. The man stood by Henry’s bed, talking quietly now, but obviously admiring the muscles on Henry’s arms.
Henry had lost both of his legs in a high speed boating accident, and had been working on his ability to get around in a wheelchair. He was back to full strength and health, but his parents were still struggling to find a way to remodel their mobile home to fit a wheelchair. Henry had started walking on his hands to fix the situation. He hoped he could convince the doctors that he could be mobile without the chair most of the time, and he could hand walk the length of the ward now. He wanted permission to go home, but the regulations concerning kids with disabilities stated that their parents had to have adequate accommodations for them.
As Reuben watched the baseball player talk to Henry, he saw the man glance over at the next bed, to Cyrus. Wayne Nelson’s eyes widened slightly, but then he looked down, and then back at Henry, giving Henry his full attention.
Reuben stopped eating his oatmeal and clenched his teeth together. He doubted the man would make it to Cyrus’ bed now. He wondered how he’d handle it when it came time to leave Henry’s side.
