"Thunderbird"

OK...I haven't written about "Thunderbird" in a long, long, time!  You might need to go back and re-read her storyline!  Check out "Erica" and Glory "Amen" Johnson's entries and then read "Lenora" - June 2011.  Then you'll know what's going on! Happy reading!!!!

Thunderbird was glad that the meeting was finally over.   That she could get out of there. Glad as she said her good-byes, thanking Miss Bessie for her hospitality.  Glad that the Book Woman Club had finally finished The Color Purple.  It was a brilliantly painful and exhausting book!  Thunderbird knew exactly how Miss Seely felt!  A girl....alone.  Fighting off some man, alone!  Thunderbird shivered.  "It's a book!  A book!"  She admonished herself as she stepped into the heat of the day.  "Seely doesn't exist!  You got real troubles to worry over!"

"Damn, damn, damn! she cursed.  "Damn!"  It was obvious.  That crazy loon Glory "Amen" Johnson had seen her fly!  And so had that pathetic Erica; the one always hiding bruises and black eyes, thinking no one could see them!  "I see!"  Thunderbird rubbed her hand over her face.  "I see it all!"   Thunderbird kicked out at one of the garden stones that lined the walkway down to the sidewalk in front of Miss Bessie's House.  She blinked away the sweat that hung from her forehead and gathered herself together.  She then hurried down Shotwell towards James Street, leaving behind the smell of the fragrant flowers in Miss Bessie's front yard.  Her white cotton dress flew around her as she walked past Bessie's neighbors.  They were all out in full force, pulling weeds, mowing lawns, trimming bushes in Syracuse's sweltering summer heat.  Thunderbird's long strands of red, black and green beads around her neck click, click, clicked in rhythm with the pat, pat, pats, of her new black leather sandals as she made her way down the hot sidewalk.

"I'm going to have to move again" she thought.  "Damn!"  Syracuse wasn't such a great place to live.  It was an odd sort of town.  She couldn't quite put her finger on why Syracuse was such a strange place....kind of out of sink with the rest of the world.  Like it existed in a black hole in Space!  Thunderbird sighed out-loud.  But she liked the Book Woman Club.  Liked it's camaraderie, all formed around books.  It was so hard for her to try and make friends over and over again, like some army brat shuffled from post to post.  She liked the odd personalities of the women that attended the Saturday afternoons of reading and words and rich desserts  And the stories!  All those stories just sitting there, waiting for someone to write then down.  History just waiting to be re-told!

"Damn!  Damn!  Damn!"  She would never get to write down any of those sheltered words!  Thunderbird regretfully rubbed her stomach.  Two pieces of Miss Bessie's dark chocolate cake provided a soft padding inside her belly.  Maybe it was good that she had to move!  She'd be three hundred pounds if she kept indulging in those book women's good cooking!  But... all those stories...!

Thunderbird reached the corner of James and Shotwell and turned towards downtown.  "I wonder when they saw me fly?"  Thunderbird thought about it for a moment.  Turned the question over in her mind, one time and then two.  Flipped through the pages of her memory and found the answer!  "It had to be the last time the Book Woman Club met at Miss Bessie's!  "That's the only time I've flown anywhere near any of them!  Flown in the....daylight!"  She began to softly slap herself on the forehead.  "Stupid!  Stupid! Stupid!"  She paused at the intersection and then, after the car passed, crossed Mildred Street.  "Stupid!  You just had to take that chance and fly in sunlight!   You are so stupid"  Her father's admonishment from her youth still played on the record in her head.  "Stupid, stupid, stupid!"   Still, flying in the light was delicious!  Something Thunderbird just couldn't resist.  Couldn't stop herself from doing!  Every once in awhile. Every once in a long while.  To take that glance around!  To see that no-one was looking!  To know that even if they saw, they would convince themselves that they didn't see what they thought they saw!  The risk!  The high!  And now she would have to move, again!  Thunderbird shook her head, hard, took a deep breath and began to accept.  Accept that she would again be on the wing.  Alone.

"Miss Lucifer!"

Startled, Thunderbird looked up from her thoughts, and there, riding slow in the lane next to the sidewalk like some ominous apparition, was Glory "Amen" Johnson!  "Miss Lucifer!" Glory again called out, and pulled her car to  hard stop, the boat sized black Cadillac fighting the brakes that Glory slammed down into it's voluminous belly.  Glory reached into the passenger seat of that Cadillac, picked up her bible and raised it into the air, her arm straining towards the open passenger window. Her words echoed around inside the Cadillac and then spilled onto the bubbling sidewalk.  "With the Word of God as my Armor and of the Light of the True Angels of the Lord, I confront Thee and bind Thee and Thou's Evil with the Power of the Blood of the Lamb, Jesus Christ Our Lord!"  Glory "Amen" Johnson's voice rode up and down on the words she shot out at Thunderbird.

And it was then that Thunderbird saw her opportunity to turn all of this around!  She knew what she had to do! She wouldn't have to move after-all!      

"Kate K"

Kate K. crawled, hand over hand, and knee, and then knee.  Hissing, spitting, her
Aladdin Head rocking back and forth...and the snack drew back.  She feared it would strike; that she would die on this bridge, fall through open spaced floor-boards.  Bounce through the rapids racing beneath this dangled space.  Become a swallowed gulp down the throat of the rushing waters.

But she didn't back off; couldn't back off! She was going to make it over this bridge or die!  She was tired of "backing off".  Tired of being seen as old and therefore being scene as "not able".   The memory of those classroom-childhood days of triumphs beat back her fear.  Beat back reason.  Quickened the beat of her heart and answered a youthful, resounding cadence!  Kate crawled in the memory of crawling into those art classrooms.  Those days of fingers raised to her lips quieting the tattle-talers.  Those days of power over that teacher and his PHD.   And so she continued to crawl towards the snake.  Crawled balanced on the edge of death.  She didn't want to live forever if forever wasn't living!  Hand over hand, and then knee, and knee.  The snakes head remained poised in mid-air it's fangs catching a slither of light that had escaped into that dark bridge.

And then it  backed off!  Inexplicably!  Mystically!  Like a dream that makes you question reality!  Like those dark doubts that haunt the validity of memory.  The snake backed off!   It lowered it's head.  It met her eye ball to eye ball...and suddenly turned and crawled passed her!  Head and then body.  And then rattle.  Kate held her breath, and as it faded into the darkness of that part of the bridge that she had left behind, she breathed.  She exhaled, dripping the remnants of fear from her lips.  Hot spittle cooled on the back of her right hand.  Hand over hand, then knee, and knee.  She crawled toward the light at the end of the tunnel.  Towards the opening of that dark bridge.

The hands of her youthful companions laughed at how her eyes blinked and squinted in the light, one of them saying "Let me help you up, Granny."  His strong hands pulled her to her feet.  Like the snake, her head dipped and then snapped forward for the bite.  "I'm not your Granny!" Kate hissed.  She shoved passed him, walking further into the light.