Happy Monday everyone. Somehow we are approaching mid December. December is always the month that disappears fast for me. I think that it seems so much shorter because from Christmas to New Years always blends together into one big holiday, thus robbing the moth of about a week’s worth of days. This year i don’t mind it so much. I am very ready to let 2020 slip into the history books. But that day has not yet arrived. This year I have managed to do one writing prompt every week day thus far and we are entering the home stretch. So on with the writing prompt and lets see what pops out of my brain today as it wakes up.
Huh. As I’ve got my feet clad in fluffy socks to keep the chill off my toes I actually hadn’t expected that. Although I’m probably going to be thinking of vampire butterflies all day now.
Monday, December 14th: That was the day he rolled into town.
That was the day he rolled into town. In all reality, I don’t think he had anything to do with the string of calamities that spread through town like a wave that summer. There was no logical way he could have been, but in the minds of the residents, he became inexorably linked.
The day began like any other that summer. What little spring we had, faded quickly under the onslaught of the hottest summer Mason County had seen in nearly sixty years. We all knew it was the hottest because it was mentioned on every radio show from the Gospel Hour to the heavy metal station that wafted through the airways from the city an hour away, on good reception days.
On days of inclement weather the only station that came in clearly was the local gospel station and at those times hymns and sermons were interrupted by the strident tones of the emergency broadcast system advising locals of the weather emergencies and giving the sermons a bit more immediacy. There were days when the end seemed to be upon us.
There hadn’t been an inclement weather since the early spring rains. They came and went lasting less time than usual. Drought was predicted and in an area where agriculture ruled almost everything, people worried. Concerned looks were aimed towards the bright bowl of blue sky with increasing frequency.
On the land beneath, the moisture the rains brought began to evaporate. The ground baked to a hard dusty surface. At first, each step kicked up puffs of the dust so that everyone appeared to kick up little storm clouds with each step. Then even the dust gave up its exuberance in the face of the unrelenting heat and baked into the surface.
There was little difference to be found walking on the hard asphalt of the road or the dry ground beside it. The only difference between them was that the dry earth, being a slightly lighter shade of brown than the grayed out asphalt was somehow cooler on bare feet than the road surface.
It wasn’t much of a difference, but with heat waves radiating up from the asphalt causing your vision to go wobbly while the dry ground sucked the heat from both the air and your feet, the difference was appreciated. Mark Franklin told me that the ground was so thirsty is sucked at your feet trying to get your sweat the same way butterflies occasionally landed on you because they wanted your salt.
From that day on I started measuring the amount of water I drank, trying to find out if I drank more water on the days I went barefoot in the long grass of the yard than I did on the days I wore my shoes. With me it was always a toss-up between which it would be. I liked the long grass slapping at my feet, to feel the prickles as it folded and crunched under my weight. But once it became too dry, it no longer cushioned the soles of my feet from the rocks in the soil underneath and the shoes I cast off at the start of summer vacation were once more pulled out of the closet.
In addition to measuring the water I drank looking to see if the ground did try and drink it down, I also began avoiding the butterflies that clustered at the edges of our woods, thinking of them as tiny colorful vampires. Oddly it was my attempt to avoid their salt sucking ways that brought me to him on the day he rolled into town.
Ten til Midnight 