And from the prairie a sigh, a cinnamon wind filled with bright butterflies…
Here are some songs and excerpts from the literary works that entailed a gust of collaborative cinnamon wind:
Winnie’s Song – Christie Simmons
A Fine Daughter – Catherine Simmons Niven
“The wind lifts Winnie’s hair. She brings one hand to her forehead, pushing her hair back, and sets to pinning her Fran-scented blouse to the line. Why is she daydreaming today? What is making her drift and meander like this? Winnie pulls her shoulders back. She prefers clear thinking, black-and-white thinking. It’s safe.
“What is your family really like? What are their goals? Their needs?” Room to play for the girls. More Barbie dresses. More little plastic Barbie shoes. Apart from that her girls need nothing. Their clothes are clean. They are well fed. She reads Beatrix Potter to them every single night.
Frank must be happy. Three clean shirts a day if he wants. Clean socks. A wife who wears pearls and knows how to keep her nails long and buffed despite housework. Who has a twenty-eight-inch waist but a healthy thirty-eight-inch bust. Not bad, thinks Winnie, after two children. …
She looks up the hill again and sees Cora still at the top… She tells herself to stop thinking, to go back to her magazines and sleeping pills. But she can’t. Sudddenly Winnie wants the wind to carry her away. Just for now, she tells herself, she’ll leave the laundry. She lies down on the cool grass. Silly, thinks Winnie, but it feels so good.
Frank moves from the kitchen table to the window to see Winnie clearly. Stretched upon the lawn close to the window. Winnie is entirely relaxed, her eyes open. Frank wonders what she’s watching. He looks closely at her eyes, sees movement reflected. Something up there is moving, he thinks. He pours a cup of coffee for Winnie and heads to the back door. He steps outside but Winnie’s gone.
"Winnie!" Frank calls into the wind, wanting the lazy heat that lingers between Winnie’s breasts. "Winnie," he shouts again, the wind filling his mouth with a tast of apples that makes his desire to see Winnie urgent. He leaves the coffee on the step and moves to the lawn, sniffing the turbulent air. Winnie must be behind the white sheets. He’s certain. He pulls back the sheet to find Winnie’s house dress billowing carelessly on the grass. …
The sky is a roaring orange. Butterflies. Yes, the sky thick with butterflies. Orange as a river swollen with autumn leaves. A blanket of butterlies spreads over the whole of Little Cyprus below. Terrifying in its beauty, the swarm churns the air, falters and lifts in the dying wind. Rolling forward, the thick band shadows the entire town….
Naked, Winnie stands with her hands to the churning sky. She reaches up up. Wants to eat the sky. Wants to be more naked than she’s ever been. She feels the wind peel layer after layer from her body…
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Song for Flury – Christie Simmons
A Fine Daughter – Catherine Simmons Niven
From the hill, Cora sees women hanging laundry in their backyards, watches the cool cats who hang around Gorkey’s storefront in the summertime heat. The girls whirl Hula-Hoops – red, yellow and blue – around their hips, lift their hands to their hair, the hoops still circling, until the boys break into a love-me-tender tune.
Words glide up the hill… love me sweet… up up, Cora’s eyes catching sight of the kite which flies high… and never let me go. Voices from the boys below urging her to follow the kite string down down through the sky to the boy who holds it….
Flury’s feet. Cora sees Flury’s white feet in a tangle of wild raspberries, bare and so clean they seem new as day. Laced with veins as delicate as embroidery. The apple-sauce scent of the wind giver her unaccustomed clarity. Cora knows his naked feet are an initial act of defiance.
"I’ll probably be a doctor," he says, spooling his kite strings to the expanse of sky. "Like father, like son." He glances back at her.
Cora plucks wild grass from its thick sheath, eats the white end. "you must feel silly going on picnics with your mother."
"What?"
"Yeah. You must."
"What did you say?"
"You’re too old for picnics."
He taps his foot. "My father tells me these are the hardest years. If I can steer clear of trouble now, my father says, I’ll end up ahead." He looks at her "Y’know. Ahead of the others."
"The kids outside Gorkey’s?"
"Yeah. Them. As my father says,’He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it.’ Eccliesiastes 10:8."
"Oh," says Cora.
"Well, it’s true. People our age need to keep their minds sharp and their bodies healthy. Outdoor activities – "
"Like picnics – "
"Well, that’s better than spending time in the dingy back of Gorkey’s."
"You mean," she says, "where the old lady won’t quit coughing and a mother with no morals has enough fat on her behind to sink a ship? Where Gorkey shuffles around in the dim light like a zombie? That’s what you’ll have heard.” She sakes her head tries not to smile.
He looks toward her in the bright light. "What’s so funny?"
Cora shrugs. "Just fly your kite," she says.
She bites her lower lip, wishes he would quit looking at her so intensely. Cora turns. "Your kite’s dipping."
He walks backward, away from her, his feet shuffling through the raspberries. He lifts a bare foot to the shin of his other leg, wipes the sole of his foot against his trousers. Then he looks down, watching red bleed across the white fabric. He looks up at her, making certain she has seen. Then he smiles.
Flury walks along the path that skirts the edge of the hill, not knowing until he sees her in the distance that he’s been looking for Cora. She stands with the butterfly lady at her side. Elwood circling them.
Flury is disappointed. He was hoping, he realizes, to see her alone. He thinks that he intends to say sorry, but sorry about what? Sorry my dad has opinions? Sorry my dad knows so much?
Obviously, thinks Flury, he’s not clear about why he intends to apologize. He just didn’t like the look on her face when he admitted she was a topic of conversation. He wishes his father wouldn’t have quoted Ecclesiastes, wishes he hadn’e meant, "Like mother, like daughter." So he wants to make amends. But Flury isn’t convinced he should be apologizing for his father. Maybe she is like her mother. He thinks he is definitely like his father.
He watches Miss Charlemaigne step closer to Cora. She stands very straight as though she intends to say something of great importance, dips her head to Cora’s ear. And with her words, Cora lifts her head and looks directly at him. Despite the distance Flury swears that he smells her fragrance. Sweet and fruity. Watermelon and, though he has never smelled it, maybe kumquat. The citrus scent of tangerine.
He stops walking and stares at the threesome. Cora is still looking at him. Miss Charlemaign says something to the boy then starts to laugh. Even from here, with the wind roaring in his ears, he hears her laughter and is surprised by its richness. He knows this is a genuine laugh, not the sort of muffled chuckles his father makes as he reads the newspaper. Nor is it his mother’s controlled hand-over-the-mouth titter when his father shars a joke. No, this is real. The laugh comes from the gut. It lifts from the butterfly lady’s belly to her mouth and from there travels the air to tap and tinkle against his ear. Her laughter in the distance makes his feel like laughing too.
He sets his kite in some nearby bushes. And his feet. Affected by Miss Charlemaigne’s laugh, move toward Cora, straight to Cora and her perfume.
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It’s Not a Secret – Christie Simmons
A Christmas Forecast – Catherine Simmons Niven
"Constance! Puu-leese come up here." Ross, above her, calls out.
Constance calls up. "No. I won’t. I’ll get stuff for you though. You want more nails, a hammer? Here, I’ve got your scarf.” She moves to the bottom rung of the ladder, extends her arm, holding the scarf toward him.
Ross drops to his belly, inches out over the eves so he´s closer to Constance. "I can´t reach it. Come up higher."
Constance takes another step up the ladder.
Ross extends his arm. Exhales loudly with the effort. "Another step, Constance. It’s getting cold up here. I need that scarf."
Constance, pleased that she was right after all, moves up another rung. She watches Ross squiggle forward on his belly, arm out. He reaches…reaches. Then grabs hold, not of the scarf, but of Constances’wrist, his hand warm, holding tight. "Ross! Stop it."
“Come up," he says. “Please. Come up here with me.”
"No - I’ve got more to do here. Mrs. Burnbeck’s been over holding up progress. I’ll give my dad a call to help you if that’s what you need.”
"No," he says, squeezing her wrist. It’s not your Dad I’m needing." He tugs at her arm, looks at her beseechingly.
"Ross! What’s with you?"
He lets go of her wrist, brings his hand to his heart and Constance thinks Okay here we go, on with the song, but he speaks instead saying, "I’m love struck. Your garden, from up here – you’ve taken such care. You’re –"
"Give it a break."
"Please, come up. I’ve got something to show."
"Ross – I’m flattered that you’re love struck. I really am. But would you stop messing around and get the lights up? We don’t have time for this."
Later, showering in silence, preparing for a night of boredom at the Burnbecks’, Constance recalls how closely Ross watched her as she looked to the ground before starting down the ladder. "Did you do that?" She asked.
"Yup," he said, his head up and down, a smile wide as the day on his face. "It’s nice," he said, "the way you care for your garden with winter here and all."
Constance turned and kissed him quickly.
He nodded, but there was more. She could tell he was looking for words. Finall, after some hesitation, he held up the scarf she’d tied around his neck, “Thanks for mulching me,” he said.
Ross held the ladder for her then, and she started down it, reading once more the letters Ross carved with his feet into the snow. I love you, he’d written. Tender words across the belly of her sleeping queen.
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Christmastime Waltz – Christie Simmons
A Christmas Forecast – Catherine Simmons Niven
Under a sky silvered by moonlight, shadowed by the play of clouds, the Burnbecks stand poised. They both glance up, ensuring they have their audience’s undivided attention, then Mr. Burnbeck pulls a clicker from his pocket, extends a hand, and with one quick motion, starts the music.
A quick pulse of drum broadcasts into the night like falling stars. Mr. Burnbeck’s fingers tap against Mrs. Burnbeck’s waist to the beat of the music. And then, in unison, they move. Her right hip lifts, then rolls, together their feet shift to the count of the music. Roll, step-step. Slow, quick-quick, Mrs. Burnbeck’s thighs, bountiful, joyful, press against Old man’s thin legs.
Constance wanys to laugh. Wants to cry. Is uneasy observing this public display of – what?
The pulse of the music intensifies; their movement grows feverish. The hip: O the hip, how it lifts, and lingers then, in a fiery rush, plunges quick-quick down and on they move, Old Man’s hand riding the blaze with ease. Flying through heat, in time with the beat, the skirt of Mrs Burnbeck’s dress snaps across Old Man’s thighs, lifts in moonlight, the hem ablaze. Together they arc and roll, shift and plunge. She slips under his arm, he holds her feverish for a two-count, and quickquick, she flickers free of his embrace. He urges her forward, releases her, over and again with an elegance that takes Constance’s breath away. Mrs. Burnbeck’s surges against his body, hesitates, and in a sizzling of statacco steps prances off again, quick-quick. And now, and now, with a final lift and roll of hip, they are still.
Ross applauds wildly. Constance resumes breathing. Mr. and Mrs. Burnbeck bow with gratitude. Over and again.
Just when Constance thinks the show is fully over, Old Man lifts his palm, staying them. He extracts the clicker from his pocket, points it and clicks. Turns then, to gather Mrs. Burnbeck into his arms.
A light waltz tune lifts and swells along the corners of the yard. Mr. Burnbeck and Mrs. Burnbeck rise up on their toes, step in unison. One two three, one two three, rise and fall, a singular and whirling merry-go-round.
As they turn, as the music swells, without a blush of wind, the sky opens up. Bulbous flakes of snow tumble to the shoulders of the rise-and-fall dancers, Ol’ Man Rumba holding Mrs. Burnbeck in the exquisite light.
Constance leands forward, sees how deeply the fingers of his hands settle into the flesh along Mrs. Burbeck’s spine, sees how unreservedly she presses into him, bringing stability to his dance. Together – flowing, turning, laughing they make of life a larger thing.
Constance sits back, looks up at the falling snow.
As the music stops, as Mrs. Burnbeck’s fluttering Christmas dress stills, she throws her head back to the open heavens and starts to laugh. Her laugh is real, bold. Infectious. …
They leave late. Mrs. Burnbeck and Old Man stand at the door waving, waving, though they, Constance and Ross, are almost home. Finally, the Burnbeck’s door closes and Constance and Ross are alone in the winter’s night, slipping through the deepening snow, fresh and untouched before them. …
She looks up at Ross, at the wonder of his confused brow, considers his undying enthusiasm and the way he gets a kick out of action songs. She smiles, feels a warmth, like an early spring, urging her heart open. Why waste this chance? This one chance. …
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Let’s Pour a Drink Vera – Christie Simmons
Notes for Monday – Barb Howard
That was the night I met Vera. She already had her commission. We always told daughter Rosemary that we met at the bottom of the barrel. In fact, we met on the bottom step in front of the Palliser Hotel on June 11, 1942 at 0200. Vera wore a canary yellow cocktail dress. I offered her one of my special torpedo cigars and she cut the end properly, lit it, and didn’t nurse on it or try to be cute. Then, when my own cigar was about half-done, just when I thought a kiss might be in order, Vera said she felt light-headed. I knew it was the cigar, not my ravishing good looks, that made her dizzy. She inhaled. And I also knew that after an amateur cigar smoker, especially a woman, says they feel light-headed, they often vomit. So I hailed Vera a cab. She didn’t give me a kiss that night. She later told me she hadn’t vomited, either, which I believe since I’ve had about fifty years to observe her her physical constitution. But she did yank my tie, hard, before she got in the cab, and said it would be all right to ring her on the weekend.
Late Saturday afternoon, happy hour, and we’re hosting a humdinger of a party. No, we’re not. Vera and I are doing the same thing we’ve been doing all day. Sitting around with our thumbs stuck up our asses. Fuck it. I’m going to pour myself a honking big glass of Courvoisier. Like Winston Churchill, I indulge in the “absolutely sacred rite of smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after, and—if need be—during all meals and in the intervals between them.” Cheers, Sir Winston.
"Drink, Vera?"
"I’m doing a crossword."
"Doesn´t preclude a libation. I’ve got some Harvey’s Bristol Cream that would go nicely with a crossword."
"No. I´m doing a crossword."
"Your loss."
Doing a puzzle and watching the television. Is that what women mean by multi-tasking? Vera hasn’t filled in a single word on that crossword. She used to complete them in a few minutes. She knew useless terms like "oleo" for “margarine”. That was then. Now, she’s sitting there with more glaze than a doughnut.
"Vera, my bride, I’m in a mood to tie one on. It’s Saturday night and neither of us will be driving anywhere. So let’s get loaded, get in our birthday suits, and go for a romp in the sack. Call it exercise if you like. Call it the Winter Olympics if you like."
"It’s the Battle of the Brians tonight."
"Whatever that is – something to do with Brian Williams, I suppose – it will be replayed a thousand times with all the other sports schlock."
"Brian Orser and Brian Boitano. At the figure skating rink."
"Men’s figure skating? You’re pulling my leg. I’ve finished my first drink, Vera. Care to keep up?”
"I think I´ve met Brian Orser."
"Sure you have. And I´ve appeared in front of Judge Wapner on People’s Court."
"As if.”
"‘As if’ is an incomplete sentence. I’ll be in the den with my friend, Booze, and my other friend, Newspaper. Even though, for your information, I’ve already read the newspaper six times today. I could recite the fucking obituaries by memory."
"I feel like I know him. Don’t I know him?"
"You know Brian Orser as a two-dimensional person on an idiotic box, namely, the television."
To the den. Leave Vera with her screen boyfriends. Who knew she went for tight pants and twirls.
I see her. There down the street. Facing the empty lot. Standing in her purple bathrobe and her sealskin winter boots, arms up like she’s about to be gunned down by the enemy. Shaking.
Why her? Why not an unpredictable old shit like me?
"Vera McBeath, my bride of almost fifty years. Come home. We have a lunch to go to. In my honour."
"I don’t like it here."
"Let’s go home and get dressed and go to the luncheon."
"No, Tommy. Let’s go to the Loopy Duck."
"Now? Vera, you’re wearing a bathrobe."
"I´ll go alone, then."
"Vera, slow down."
"Tommy, speed up."
She´s shuffling down the street in those sealskin boots. Be brave and true now, Tommy…
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More Music
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