1000 Days

“The whirlwind is in the thorn trees.  It’s hard for thee to kick against the pricks.  Till Armageddon no salaam, no shalom.”

Johnny Cash provides musical accompaniment to my morning writing.

Mr. and Mrs. Robert Buchard Frels walked in the morning.  From a distance Buchard looked like he might entertain as a clown at children’s parties.  His hair was quite white and had a tufted quality that might need trimming in a week or so.

One did not need to get too much closer to discover that this man was not entertaining–at parties or otherwise.  Profoundly set lines pointed to the center of his face.  He looked as though he’d been plowing into the setting sun and angry about it his whole life.  His short white eyebrows angled downward and unhappily along with the balance of his countenance. Though they argued equally well that it would be hard to take this short German Texan seriously.  Buchard looked like someone you’d call a zealot, except he wasn’t Jewish.  He most certainly wasn’t Jewish.

Buchard was raised in Schulenberg though he’d been born in New Braunfels.  His father had been born in New Braunfels, but moved east when San Antonio encroached on the immigrant town.  Burchard moved east toward Houston of all places when his son graduated from the University of Texas and got a job with Schlumberger.  His son, who now went by Mark, lived out in Katy, but worked in the city.

Buchard had spent much of his life on a farm or near the earth.  His tan Carhart pants testified to that.  His shirt was crisp and as white as his hair.  His boots were black.  He was dressed more to emphasize a religious gradient from sin to purity than for a walk.  Buchard only ever had one thing on his mind at a time–it was more practical that way.  Currently his thoughts focused on walking.

Mrs. Frels a step behind Buchard wore a blue kerchief.  She had other things on her mind.

Word count: 329

I have a feeling that both the physiological and the metaphorical hiccups will plague me today.  As a side note, I also went to sleep hiccupping.  What follows is not intentionally an extension of yesterday’s Five Times with Water.  Also, nothing to do with hiccups.

To the inexperienced, the uneducated, the mundane it might just be mist–or fog.  That’s all it would have been to Eric a fortnight ago.  Now it was more like a humor.  A seeping vapor of Melancholic rising off the foreign landscape becoming Sanguine.  But maybe that’s just Eric.  Maybe that’s just new-Eric.

Eric traveled with his girlfriend Jill to the [something Chinese] province of China to do some guided backpacking.  They spent two-weeks traipsing the backwaters of the nation discovering [this], [that], and [some other things].  Mostly they discovered that she was pregnant.  And didn’t want to be.

There was a fight in which the phrases, "This isn’t the 50′s.  You don’t have to do the right thing because you knocked me up." and "When did you become such a God damned Feminist?" were exchanged.

Eric brooded on the Feminist thing.  He didn’t really know what it was supposed to mean.  As far as he could recall Feminists were pretty laid back these days and Jill had never claimed to be one nor had she really become a ‘God damned’ one either.  But it did have a rhythm on the tongue as he’d said screamed it.  He’d long ago learned never to use the word cunt unless you were ready to proceed directly to the nearest exit, so he restrained himself–somewhat.  He wasn’t ready to end it.

Word count: 294