8/14/2018 2:17:16 AM
Tony Vance Mason
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ecerpt from The Janie Pridgette Marshall Novels (Book One): A Pin Dropped
Written by Tony Vance Mason
Prologue
“A pin dropped!” screamed Janie Pridgette Marshall as she was unbraiding her long brown hair ponytail and bun in front of the bathroom mirror. She had just turned forty five and was on her way to the grocers in town to pick out a birthday cake for her husband, but she couldn’t quite keep the mystery a secret about what sort of presents he was to receive for his birthday.
“You know,” began Janie’s favorite best friend Sarah Padgett, “There’s more use in a bobbi pin than there is a can of soda pop once in a while. Janie started to cry for some peculiar resaon and black mascara came down her face.
[fade to black]
Iris (the Asian granddaughter): Great-great gray haired Aunt Elbaline in her old fashioned wicker rocking chair in the corner where she was making homemade handkerchiefs: whispered once while arranging the white roses and the orchids in an Asian painted vase, in the midst of a tropical storm, that the wind pelt The House of White Roses quite furiously, back and forth, rocks and moans whilst the rain lasts for a few weeks; who would be there to help poor Penelope; who would help her to become a better painter when she stayed indoors because she was afraid?
Clouds burst and turned gray and so did some elderly people out of shock by all the lightning and the inspirations that, “Elba,” as Charles . . . her husband, that lived in the house next door to Margurite Sanchez liked to call her were absolutely breathtaking landscapes and seascapes.
Inside the house, when Charles first stepped in and met Marguerite was soaping up the kitchen sink and doing the beautiful hand crafted and painted dishes; and there was a living room decorated with art pieces filling up the shelves; and it was such a very old house that needed some new paint, perhaps some new drapes . . . and when Charles and Elbaline came over for Marguerite’s birthday, Elabaline prepared a salad for the three of them; that is until Henry Prose arrived in his old fashioned motorcar to the country manse.
Katherine Hollingford, an Science Professor who lived in the house that was surrounded by all sorts of trees and potted plants, because in her spare time was very much interested in botany . . . stopped what she was doing in the kitchen making fried eggs, toast, and ham and went next door on a Saturday, and found that her neighbor Mr. Prose had just won the professorship to teach French at the local college that was in town; but he refused to take it because he had told Katherine, “I prefer to stay home and write a plethora of books, and I have already earned my college degree; I just need some time off to prepare for something like that.”
A Butterfly with Wings of White sitting on a Red Rose in Elbaline’s Flower Garden through the Open Kitchen Window: “Well so it was that Mr. Henry Prose offered to prune the roses and to mow the yard, but Katherine had already hired her nephew Jake Hollingford who was in the lawn mowing business and that there was no need in any form of home repairs to be done. And surely she wouldn’t hire anyone she didn’t know outside her family or circle of closest friends unless she certainly had to?”
The next day Katherine went over to see her mother Elba who had lived out in the country on the farm estate where there was a horse farm and plenty of woods and a pond that she loved to sit by in a chair with Elba and talk about the day’s events and the sunrise and sunset and how much she adored Mr. Prose’s offerings to do her favors around the house; but suddenly something strange started to happen . . . Katherine was lifting off the ground and her clothes suddenly turned into a bridal dress and she had a veil over her head and just then as someone was lifting the bridal veil, it was Penelope and they were at the Bridal Shoppe in town and Katherine had no memory of being in a rocking chair by Elbaline’s Pond out in the country. Penelope was wearing a pink bride’s maid dress and then her dress suddenly turned also into a white bride’s maids dress and then they both walked through the front door of the Bridal Shoppe. And there the two ladies were . . . out into a cobblestone street where there was a carnival . . . and dear Mr. Henry Prose was there and he was telling Penelope he was her real father and that Penelope should marry William Martin who was a science writer and a poet: because everyone in this story was Marguerite’s birthday present (to have friends finally in life and to be happy to keep them): because when she got home they all had a sweet smelling ice cream . . . a vanilla and chocolate birthday cake . . . set for her at her house way out in the country too, and it was also Marguerite’s wedding day with Henry Prose, for they planned the whole surprise wedding through writing of letters back and forth like the tropical rainstorm, and there love had so much of a great deal of magic in it, because the characters lived on inside the mind of great gray haired Aunt Elbaline who told the tale of her friends that she believed were real when she made those delicious carrot cakes, and the recipes and the novel book she wrote The House of the White Roses up until the time when she moved north someplace. The tales she told though were beautiful enough and reminded one of even out door weddings and tea parties . . . that seemed to tell the tales of imaginary people who may or may not have ever lived there . . . but only in the dream . . . the flowering of the rocking chair inside the house that had a bouquet of blue hydrangeas left there once a year in honor of the women that lived nearby occurred. And the next special day . . . it was Elbaline that opened a blank paged large journal onboard a little wooden boat, sailing out to sea, and she was back home on the farm (actually on a swing and she didn’t fall off), and she was getting married all over again when she entered her private world of making her dreams come true. She turned the next page, and then Iris realized she had never left the farm at all . . . whispered the granddaughter.
“It was always Tuesdays, always Tuesdays and lemon water and fresh catch of the day; when the sun came out over Green Pond, Jeremy (or Mr. Plutodorium) got his full bucket’s worth or plateful of fresh fish for supper. And then we'd have French fries and sodas after our first class. And Aunt Celine, his favorite aunt who was wearing her best white dress to go out by the pond always thought of poems about the river, how it gushed through the stones; and over by the tall Willow tree there were poems waiting in the burst of the awesome breadth of imagination. That is, after we came out of the longboat . . .” said Palter Paten raking the leaves out of the yard.
"Last week I looked out of the window through the telescope; I saw the gleaming stars sparkle again, and I thought how cold it must be to be all the way out there on Pluto; I almost felt sympathy for it, and wished I could send it a flower to cheer it up; maybe even a flower in a paper cup with fertilizer so plants could take root once it got there and seeds dug themselves good into the ether (the soil)," began Great Aunt Dolores Innisham in a scratchy old voice who was sitting on the back a porch in a bench of some friend’s Georgian house in the early memory of the 1980s smelling the sweet smell of ripe corn that she was shucking from the green sheaths and dreaming of making kettle corn from it with her sisters Bethany and Quinn, on the old fashioned wood stove while we all sat around and made chocolate chip cookies in the oven as well which always came out warm and chewy.
"Well, here we are again In the Plutodorium, or the void of one leaf to another flower bud, I guess, in that same ole chemistry class in the 1980s, dreaming we were taking astronomy and studying the solar system or what to wear to class next Tuesday, wondering if prose would expand our minds,” said Bethany when she sat down next to Quinn and Dolores (all in dresses and aprons and their hair done up) . . .”
“ . . . [oh I fell out of a dream and landed in a quagmire, a scoop of the puddle I passed on my way to school this morning made me think how luckily I am to live on a planet where there's lot's to do, and to always have a library of used and new books; I wonder how first cousin Trina Martin is that lives down south is doing today; just look at this letter; Trina sent it with a white rose inside? I wonder why; is she getting remarried? She must be fast asleep under the hay stack by now on the farm all alone by herself with no one to talk to; you know she is just a lamb; oh how I love wild horses white and brown! Sort of reminds me of the following airily description, oh!] . . ,” exclaimed Clare brushing the hemline of handmade skirt that looked like an old purple and white flowered curtain [Clare was Bethany’s friend who had invited the three elderly women to stay at the home her and her husband were staying at] . . .
“Palter Paten! Look in the front row, you sir, look there’s a white butterfly on the window sill; a white butterfly, is like the roll of the sound that mends the waves and the ideas between music and poetry, and you into white buds as you stated last Thursday on break, as the cat that came to the door chased the teacher out of the classroom.”
In a vivid dream that suddenly came over Palter and elderly man at the grocery store he began dreaming of his wife running outside from a dandelion meadow, with bushels and a hatsful of white chrysanthemums, and there's more on the way, when you've made letters and conquered the delightful smell of lemon meringue pie he bought at the grocer’s while he was standing in line; and then, the dreamlike state went on as he reached for the money to pay for his groceries. There were eyes everywhere in the apple orchard, in the apple orchard (he remembered) springing down leaves in the ripening of the fruit, and the accorded wedding to be held there over the weekend; yet, what now, of the long entangled brushed leap of run-through; and Palter (which meant spiritual something or other): which seems and goeth to the heart like a fern? I would have to send Bethany to see Mr. Plutodorium, that gathered the stars as if they had been placed into a rusty tin pail: and for those who tend to plant a few bowls of irises in the backyard for his grandmother Twyla (also a mirror image of Mr. Plutodorium in the beautiful spirit): who pretends to have the beautiful qualities like a Meminsethe (or the equivalent to his great grandmother) I would have to see the royal paper of red, pink and white hearts that Mr. Plutodorium made for his unknown bride behind the house painting a wooden table filled with wax and bees: the finished way they turned into green paper sleeves and string (of woven white, and shear to the greenery of painted embroidery, as if the scene had become the lighting of an audious gala [meaning it was quite wide and extravagant once arrived in London]. And the ring dawning of an opal-star wedding ring in the center: where small flowers may grow, and yet I saw another white butterfly. And all the while the yellow one was praying for its bantering friend: a bright orange monarch landing by a stump on the old farm near the fence once Palter had crossed it’s path to meditate when he was tired of the pasture and the cows; and then at last blueberry pies were wafting in the sky as one of them turned upside down and landed square on the blanket and Palter Paten was just setting out the luncheon baskets remembering his older brother Jeremy Innisham from his tour of the Georgian manors).
“I wish they would stop their business in that old tree out there on the ole Innisham Farm where the dirt roads were once littered with plucks of lilies in their white petals thrown out of carriages. And of course there was the noisome drone of honeybees I mean; and they make me feel like the hydrangeas haven’t got enough water this afternoon even though they smell as blue as sea salt air went through their petals and I feel cordial even for a moment of smelling what I dream of the sugary biscuits with honey.
“For the waterspout that I use is not enough for all the winged-bird like angels and their likened kin of the angels’ castles where they reside; and the nymphs and dryads to think . . . pleasant about in their quandary of mermaids rolling over in the clouds and the small ponds I have traversed past, I love to remember Claude, in his paintings, they made me feel pleasant and at ease with drawing and sketching and then I was painted with oils and acrylics which smell so lovely . . . noticing, I was up in the thicket and the brilliance of tulips and white doves and owls where there is much to do, like to reap or to sew an day and the poetic night, one feels noisome to the marigolds when one writes, plucking and then higher and higher till the house is built of wood and thatch. And in the old days, I would go rushing out to the open prairies and pick the freshest daisies that smelled of their perfumes, and then perhaps a bunce or a bince (which means a lot or a few) of sunflowers and marigolds and poppies, which reminded one of afternoon tea where the aromas filled the grandmothers of crystal and decorative vases, if one were invited to an afternoon luncheon way out in the countryside spread with tablecloths and tea sets brought by the ladies,” continued Bedillia, a rich old woman (the daughter of a jewelry maker) who stopped by just to add into the conversation with Palter and his imaginary brother Jeremey just shortly after a letter came in the mailbox; Bedillia was a brunette woman and Palter loved her so, but only, as his first cousin for he wasn’t interested in her.
“It’s not fair (what the they did to us!), and judged us by the color of our skin and our human identities and culture; have you seen Annabelle today?” asked the elderly Mr. Ethan Cohen who was riding a white horse that reminded Bedilia of Palter’s unicorns when he came to the plantation down in the south and there was not much else to know about Georgia and the manses and the plantation life and the rich cultural and extravagant and luxurious life of a country nobleman or the elite homestead way back when: except for dear old Palter always that wanted to be happy, and especially, now, that he had married a Cherokee woman from the hills of South Carolina named Naomi Dove who was painting her nails a peach colour and having tortillas with beans and rice:
And like the canvas of white billowing clouds a piece of paper fell from Arlene’s hand:
Narrator: Naomi was a very honest woman and there was a lot to do in the river on the mountain side where she lived and so there was one particular gratitude of thanks to a gentleman by the roadside who had stopped to pick the freshest bouquet of weedy and blossoming or perfume of Native American scents of her favorite flowers and her beloved French books where she had kept pictures and diaries written on the back of them about her family and dried white, red, and especially yellow roses in tin cans and books all her life after she divorced her first husband. Then the sunflowers burst and a light from heaven came in; and of course they were both enraptured and were in the midst of the Antebellum weather and painted sky, and Bedillia, was suddenly became the name that Palter wanted to know all his toilsome life as a farmer: a name of on particular heavenly angel that came down out of the sky with a shield and a sword and fought off the breeze when the sword was no longer needed and turned into a jutting pebble; and Naomi Dove finally through the pebble it took she threw into the lake one evening, James Hollingrath was just a memory then. James and Naomi weren’t able to find the silver gem way out in the sunflower field, and just as she passed out into a dizzy spell, James caught her in his arms and gave her breath back to her for a few moments, until he opened her eyes and smiled and said for the first tims to his love, “Breathe my love, and rejoice for the weekend is near and I shall show you the way to my plantation where we’ll talk, of Pluto and the stars for the rest of our lives,” spoke her true beloved James on an summer eve when the sunset drifted them both away to a lovely grove in old Georgia.
edited by Tony Vance Mason on 8/14/2018
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