King of Coosa

George Wayland Taylor

Description

Life challenges Catherine as Alzheimer’s disease steadily robs her of memory and her very being. Uncertain of how to remain true to herself, she passionately retrieves and relives the fullness of life in lucid moments. Imagination and reality are both her allies and severe contenders as two close friends aid her. All that she has known and experienced helps her hold her ground, so she and her son David are never far removed from the enticing atmosphere of their Deep South natural world. David expands the tale as he struggles to find meaning against a keen awareness that his work demeans him daily. Uncertain and unwilling to conform to life’s demands, he searches for ways to leave his predicament and still maintain his family life and sense of place in the world. In the 1990s with family and companions, he moves through Tuscaloosa County and the Black Belt of West Alabama to engage himself and others. Will he be able to build something new? 

Sujets

• Disabilities
• Literary
• Literature
• General officer
• Disability
• General
• Family Life
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Outskirts Press
• Date de parution: 11 mai 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781977264442
• Langue: English

Extrait

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King of Coosa All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2023 George Wayland Taylor v3.0
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.
This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Outskirts Press, Inc. http://www.outskirtspress.com
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022916635
Cover Photo © 2023 www.gettyimages.com . All rights reserved - used with permission.
Article acknowledgement: The Tuscaloosa News , Monday, March 29, 1993. Worker killed at meat plant. The Associated Press, Selma.
Outskirts Press and the "OP" logo are trademarks belonging to Outskirts Press, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Table of Contents
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1
Brilliant. Today I am brilliant. Yes. I shine, young and aglow. After morning coffee, an early breakfast, I can see the day ahead as sunshine growing through the window, all through my every, strong thought to make for something truly memorable. If only for this one day, my life must stand out clear like the new oak leaves waving me a cheery greeting from the side yard. Not any ordinary time, today becomes life concentrated with the amazing focus I have coming to me this morning, a rainbow beam shooting through my magnifying glass. Oh, what a rare gift all too wonderful to believe or claim as my own!
All’s brilliant, sparkling, like fresh morning dew on the Betty Prior rose bushes in my front yard. So not a moment to lose, I must be quick, make every single second count, for I can never figure out when that suffocating, dank curtain will fall, too heavy to bear. The strong net will fall, entrap me, the victim moldering. And I will be nothing, again. Will be. Nothing. Soft feathered prey caught in relentless jaws. Can sense that time to come when there’ll be no escape. Right now I won’t. No, can’t dwell on the hideous void that’s bound to invade, hold me hostage. Any time now the snare. No one can know when. But my story lives for this single day, maybe the entire day, and imagine that! Maybe a few hours, and when I lose it all for sure, to be ravaged again, it doesn’t matter for now.
A powerful empress in sunlight, for this one day, Great Catherine, Empress of the Russias to survey all, rule, yes, control through endless horizons. I am she. But what makes me think of Great Catherine? What makes me think of anything? There’s the mystery! Total and complete. The mystery trapped within this body of mine.
Even more, today is all my time, flung far back to past years and then projected in leaps forward to strange, new imaginings. Oh, I can fly back to realms I once somehow reached. Again I dance so lightly around the Maypole, garlanded with flowers, can bound off to rediscover all that was dismally lost, oh, how fearfully gone, so pathetically lost, and yet next I go soaring off to discover what can be. Reborn for the day am I, out of the dark asylum. My heart has become red clover and wild flowers bobbing in the breeze, waving their jubilation in the sunny meadows of the Black Belt. A new, sharp, divine instrument of clarity, living willfulness. That I am. Yes!
So what shall I choose for my point of departure? What’s to make the best beginning for today’s trip? There’s so very much to choose from that it’s bewildering. No, I must not say that, mustn’t use words like bewildering, confusing, perplexing. I won’t use words, thoughts, signs that track the dark road down, down with no end known. Not to say such things. Today is the time to be strictly positive. So what’s my choice among so many memories to fill out in the last detail? A dance around the Maypole one bright spring day to celebrate rebirth? A dance till midnight? A tea dance? That’s the one! Yes, a tea dance!
Not just any, but the very first one on a dark, rainy day early in March before the longer daylight hours had come. We danced one late afternoon in that dark-paneled room with its gray, polished soapstone floor, yet we made it light, filled it with bands of crepe paper in an array of pastel colors, violet to daffodil, much like the colors of our dresses. Streamers arched from the ceiling and draped on tables laden with sweet fruit punch, brightened with a few green sprigs of mint. The mild winter had kept it green for us. We sipped tea, ate dainty party sandwiches, cookies, mints and more refreshments than I could ever remember.
And, oh, the dresses that had given our mothers sore fingers in exchange for their hours of attention, then also sashes, crinolines to the extent that we could afford in those days of scarcity. But still my parents managed new shoes for me. Dancing in my new patent leather shoes, I won’t forget that as another proud notion.
What a wonderful occasion. The boys wore suits in darker colors to contrast with us, for they were not yet ready to greet that spring day with more festive attire, but that was back in the days when they wouldn’t have anyway. A little drab or not, they were still on the way to becoming handsome when all of fourteen and fifteen. Maybe sixteen. I forget. I do, so much. I believe that was our age. Mine and his. Tom, Thomas! No doubt, he was someone else that day from the usual sight of him in the neighborhood. I could tell in the feel of his smooth cheek on mine before he was old enough to grow a man’s rough cheek, but his voice had already changed to a man’s. What a surprise it was to Father to hear him for the first time over the telephone before he identified himself. Why, even Father grudgingly confessed he sounded as much like a thirty-year-old man or more. Of course, he had already made himself properly known by full introduction to Father at the door and by Father’s searching questions in our living room weeks before.
All that despite the fact that we were families knowing each other for years, but that was not the point for Father to convey. He needed to make his presence stand before Tom as an example to live up to as long as any young boy was spending time with me, his daughter. That first formal appearance for Tom left him so anxious, and me too, nearly as nervous as I was at the dance, waiting to receive my dance card and wondering whose names would appear in some mother’s fancy script as the most dedicated, intense manipulation of the entire event. Every one of us knew almost the entire range of possibilities, but I ached to be certain about which particular boys they would be with their arms around me. And would there be one or two dances left blank on the card for free choices?
The lemons. That’s how it was done. The boys who wanted to break in for a dance each had a lemon to pass to the boy who was bound by the rules of the occasion to politely relinquish his partner. Or, at least, so thought our mothers. Sometimes with a small pocket knife they would start eating part of the lemon or squirt the juice in another boy’s face when the chaperones were distracted from their charge. Tom didn’t have a trace of lemon on his breath. Instead he had the light smell of fruit punch and mint on his lips as he whispered, and I did too, the lyrics pouring forth from records of romantic songs deemed fitting for the occasion. We knew so many wonderful ones in those days and committed them to memory. My one bright treasure of today. Memory.
I’m sure there’re a few other particles to recall. Let’s see, there must be. But it’s not coming to me anymore. Guess that’s all for now. And I’ve come to accept that happening to me. Also come to realize there are different kinds of intelligence. Some of them never appear on the surface for others to see. That’s my condition day in and day out. If summer comes, if I can get as far as into summer. Is it possible? And who knows how deep a stupor will trap me then?
I try to remember every season in her distinctive ways. The camellias, queen of the winter flowers, have their spent blossoms fall to the ground, and most fade to soft brown, while some others decay black in the quiet little pools born from winter rains. Then a very few of the black ones take on an iridescent sheen in those cool waters. Little winter rainbows in the dark petals. My memories are like them, few and iridescent.
Oh, no, please don’t take my gaze from the few bright memories. I can’t help what I’ve become, don’t want to leave those past days, happy, healthful, but I see someone, I don’t know who, persuading me back to the here and now. No, it’s more like inflicting a bitter medicine for me to choke on. No matter how old, the child within never forgets cod liver oil. Now I can detect the culprit. An attendant in the hall peeking through the doorway. And that’s not the worst of it, for I feel, oh, how I do feel, like a flood from the depths, a call about to come out from me.
"Ca… Ca… Call Ol… Ol.i..ver."
"Oliver. Not again? Ma’am, please. Remember? We’ve told you any number of times before. Not the slightest idea. We don’t know who Oliver is to call him for you."
"No, no. Me, Oliver, Mary. Mrs., …. meee. Yes, Oliver."
"I’m so very sorry. We don’t know what you mean by that name.
"Oh, Oli…. Oliver!"
"There, there, ma’am. Calm down, you’ll be all right soon. Can I get you anything?"
"Oliver. And Ty, too."
No, it’s hopeless, can’t say any more to her. Nothing to anyone he