"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!