A Day in the Strife (of a tenderfoot scawler)

By Terry W Sako

Short Story


Y’all think it’s just kicks and kornflakes being a writer? Well it ain’t. So listen up.

Saturday morn

I sit opposite my word processor screen staring at the last line, or more precisely, the last period in a sentence. The period representing the decease of creativity and the birthing of another go-round with writers block. I am again the walking-wounded in the war of the words, a casualty to mind cramp.

I hit Save—wondering: Save what? Then Close. In a funk, I watch the computer screen go blank, it and my brain a Zen of oneness.

Hands in pockets, chin on chest, I amble out the front door and head . . . nowhere—just like my attempt to be a writer. I live in farm country and in my aimless wandering on my acreage, I happen upon Winnifred.

She’s my cow.

As I walk by, she gazes at me curiously. "What’s with the long face?" she says. "No pun intended." Winnie can talk. I know you find that hard to believe, but it’s true . My family and neighbors insist that she is just chewing cud, and her lips are not moving to form words. But . . . I . . . hear her speak—and it looks like I am the only one that does. Mr. Ed and Wilbur all over again. The only drawback is that her tongue is twice as acerbic as a mouthful of lemon juice.

"I got a case of writers block," I reply dourly, as I head her way.

"Is that all? Just be thankful it’s not bovine spongiform encephalopathy?"

"Say what?"

"Mad cow disease." She rolls her eyes in exasperation. "It’s in all the papers."

"Oh . . . no. It’s just that lately words and ideas are sparse."

"Just like the grazing around here." Her tail swishes flies as she continues, "Writers block may stem from many factors. One of them being stress. How’s you and the missus getting along?"

I shrug. "Hunky-dory."

Winnie snorts. "Hunky-dory? That’s the best phrasing you can come up with? Maybe your writers block is a blessing in disguise."

"You’re not helping."

"Moo-ve your butt back inside and get moo-tivated. Write something, sell it, and make some moo-ney to keep the cupboard full. Lately, you’ve been looking at me and licking your lips, and that’s making me nervous. I do not wish to end up as Chateaubriand."

"Yeah, but it’s kinda tough when—"

She glares at me, her ears flicking. "Moo moo and boohoo. You think it’s a cakewalk being a cow? Try being on your feet 24 / 7. . . . Now go milk that mind of yours."

"You’re awful bossy."

"See! You’re getting better already. You’ve just uddered a double entente." She claws the ground like a bull about to charge. "Now, hoof it."

I dejectedly head back to the house.

"And refill the trough for God’s sake. Do you think me a camel?"

Saturday afternoon

Chewing greedily on a chicken drumstick, like Henry the VIII, I hear the dreaded question.

"How’s your book coming along, sonny?"

The only drawback to family gatherings is that there is conversation.

"Now gramma," my wife says, "I told you earlier that Terry is having a minor bout with writers block. Remember?"

"More like a knock-down and drag-out, kick ‘em in the teeth, Pier 6 brawl," I murmur.

My Uncle Elmer, sitting to my left, puts in his two cents. "Writing. Harumpf. Pure applesauce. Seems like a big waste of the Lord’s time."

I smile wide, deliberately letting him see the masticated maw of bird meat covering my chompers and gums. "Just something I want to do Uncle Elmer."

He frowns—thumbs hooked around the straps of his bib overalls, red wool lumberjack shirt beneath—then proclaims, "About as practical as teats on a bull. Women write! Not men! What’re you gonna do next, embroider doilies?" He hee-haws, showing teeth that haven’t seen a brushing since the dawn of man, then growls, "Pass the gravy."

Fighting the urge to fling the boat at him, I graciously hand it over.

"What’s your book about, dear?" The question comes from my Aunt Minnie, sitting to my right—hair up in a bun, granny glasses, and Victorian dress.

"It’s based on my experiences in the Vietnam War, barely out of my teens and scared poopless."

Now, dig this. She’s totally surprised. "You were in a war?!"

I nod my head in affirmation, wanting to mention the fact that she used to send me cookies overseas. But, why bother?

"Oh my," Aunt Minnie declares. "Why would you want to write about something as awful as war?" She pats my hand. "Why don’t you write a nice po-em instead?"

She looks down to shovel the mashed potatoes heaped on her plate like a small hill.

"Good idea. Maybe I could do Iliad II: The Sequel. This time ‘As ascribed to Jethro.’"

My attempt at wit elicits no response from her. I look across the table at my wife and shake my head. She winks and smiles at me. "Honey, someday you’ll be a famous fictional writer."

"I’d settle for being a famous functional writer."

"Poppycock! Seems like a big waste of the Lord’s time."

The last, of course, from Uncle Elmer.

The witching hour

Through the open window the fall breeze rustles the curtains, and a ghostly whisper riding the current wakes me.

"Em ot emoc."

And on the night table, the alarm clock digitally flashes its message:

12:00

12:00

12:00

Scary, huh?

I sit up and give forth with a shuddering yawn, then look at the unworldly message hanging in the bedroom air in frosty form, and read it backward.

Come to me

I fluff it away then look over at my wife, dimly discernible in the glow of the night-light. She snuggles under a thick comforter, a mound of sleep. Her breathing a metronome of pleasant slumber. Her rest is always deep, and in the cockcrow she perpetually awakes with a smile.

I lay my hand on her form and gently shake her, sorry for the intrusion. "Sheryl Lynn, wake up."

She murmurs something I cannot make out and then her head pops out of her cozy eiderdown sanctuary like a sprung jack-in-the-box. "Whaazit?"

I breath out a long sigh. "She’s back."

She flicks on the light and stretches luxuriantly, adorned in p.j.’s. "Then let us arise and go pay the piper, shall we?"

"You don’t have to come along if you don’t want to," I say reluctantly. "I’ll face her alone."

She pats my shoulder, looking at me earnestly. "Dearest, you know you are totally intimidated by her—despite the fact she has been dead for over thirty years. In her presence, you quiver like the belly of a Hula dancer. . . . You need me there for support!"

I roll out of bed, joints howling in protest, and grab my garb. "You’re right, I do."

My wife rises and pulls on an oversized, pink terry cloth robe and slips into huge, fluffy slippers adorned with Eeyore heads and tails. "Tell me about . . . what’s her name again?"

"Mrs. Moosejaw. She was my high school English teacher and was a martinet when it came to grammar." I fought a shudder to no avail. "Back then she rode my back like a broncobuster. When I began writing my novel she suddenly began preternaturally appearing at random to offer comment and critique" I grunt in exasperation. "It’s like I’m in tenth grade again, sitting in her class and worrying about my grade."

My wife laughs.

"It’s not funny," I tell her. "The last meeting she said I wouldn’t know a gerund from a gopher."

"What’s a gerund?"

"It’s a verb that acts like . . . never mind. Let’s get this over with."

We walk outside the where the sky is cloudless, and where the Harvest Moon hangs wondrously, a hug orb aglow, mastering starlight. Rows of corn, husks curled and yellowed from enduring the long summer heat, stand tall awaiting the John Deere. Cats meow from hidden hideouts, and a solitary bat wings it way overhead doing swoops and turns like some maniacal carnival pilot. Crickets complain about the nip in the air.

And at the end of a long, sloping driveway she stands, the littйrateur of an offbeat student reunion.

Halfway down I motion my wife to hang back, and walk reluctantly to the thrumming and humming white specter. Turmoil fills me like hydrogen pumped into a dirigible. With an index finger, that is skeletal bone and cobwebby, she beckons me to bend over, then she hisses ghoulishly into my ear, my lobe forming tiny icicles.

I listen, then straighten, and with a Halloween pumpkin grin she disappears into mist.

After a moment’s contemplation, I walk back to my wife and meet her eyes.

"Well?" she breathes.

"She said that before my writers block, my work abounded with a definitive kind of sense."

"And that is?"

"Nonsense."

End of story.