Whispered Beginnings



  ©2012 TreasureLine Publishing/Linda Boulanger

  Authors retain copyright to their individual stories

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  The following are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, to factual events or to businesses is coincidental and unintentional. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views or thoughts of the publisher. The author(s) has/have represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

  Writing short fiction based on a weekly challenge is what Clever Fiction is all about. “Mystery Ingredients” are offered and writers mix it up into something creative. The stories are then posted for other writers and readers to enjoy and critique – comments are always welcome. And you are welcome too! The site is open, so if you’re interested in some great reading or even participating, please take a look:

  https://www.CleverFiction.com

  Our thanks go out to Patrick Sipperly – Creative Fiction was his brainchild and his expertise in website design created the site. Without Pat there would be no Clever Fiction. To Laura J. Miller (aka Author Jaimey Grant) and Linda Boulanger for working together to create an amazing cover and aesthetically pleasing interior, as well as stepping in to man the website. And a HUGE thank you goes to Airicka Phoenix for taking over the always overwhelming task of ordering the stories. That part of an anthology is a mind boggling, hair pulling activity. THANK YOU, Airicka!

  And to the many writers who chose to participate.

  You ARE Clever Fiction!!!

  Pick up your pen

  and challenge yourself.

  Table of Contents

  Strangers…..Luc Watelet

  Write Me…..Patrick Sipperly

  Whispers in the Wind…..Cathy Collar

  Compromise…..Heather Davis

  Torrid…..Airicka Phoenix

  When Tears Flow Like Rain…..Patricia A. Hawkenson

  I’m Afraid…..Linda Boulanger

  The Garden of Life…..Laura Walton

  Neath Hollywood Boulevard…..Lorenzo Porricelli

  Driven…..Wayne Harris-Wyrick

  The Nashville Flight…..Rita Durrett

  Spring Restoration…..Todd Naevestad

  The Familiar Secret…..Joshua Spotts

  Eliza’s Epiphany…..Jaimey Grant

  Zane & Delanna…..Void Munashii

  The Photo Album…..MonaLee Wilson

  New Beginnings…..JenniferMcMurrain

  Rain Delay…..Jeffrey Caminsky

  Will Spring Ever Come? …..Katelyn S. Irons

  An Upsetting Package…..Sharon E. Cathcart

  A Sweet Surprise…..Jeremy Dunn

  A Note From The Editor

  Strangers

  Luc Watelet

  Fields and trees go by rhythmically, infinitely, hypnotically. Richard is staring out the window, mesmerized by the view out from the morning train that left Atlanta, Georgia for New Orleans, Louisiana. The trance he’s in reminds him of the cawing crows swirling incessantly above his head years before.

  “Do you take the train much?”

  “Huh?” Richard says quickly, coming back to his senses. “No, you?”

  He notices he’s been traveling over three hours already.

  “No,” the lady says. “I’m Evelyn. I just got in at the Birmingham station.”

  Her light brown hair has red reflections and her green eyes are bright. She wears a long dress with a peach-colored flower pattern.

  “I’m Richard,” he says.

  “Are you going to New Orleans?” she asks putting her luggage down.

  “Mardi Gras …”

  “Me, too. It’s my first time.”

  “Yeah! Me, too! Do you like jazz?” he asks.

  “Zydeco. It gets under my skin like nothing else does. And I like the French culture. How about you?”

  “I just had a conference in Atlanta, and I thought I’d take a break before going back to work.”

  “What kind of conference?”

  “Biostatistics for the pharmaceutical industry. I have a reservation for lunch. Do you care to join me?”

  Walking together to the dining car, she continues the conversation. “You mean, about getting FDA approval for drugs?”

  “Yeah and vaccines. But there’s a whole lot of statistical stuff that comes before FDA negotiations. We work on scientific models and animal studies before we start tests on human beings. Then we set up standards and make sure different labs perform up to those standards. It’s a huge machine and there’s lots of competition.”

  “You like it?”

  “You’d think … I always thought I’d follow my heart.”

  “What happened?”

  “It’s strange. I loved psychology. My dad encouraged me to do psychiatry, but I was not interested in medicine and meds.”

  “And now you’re working for a pharmaceutical company?”

  “Ironic, isn’t it? Well, I also loved abstract math. My advisor suggested I be practical and mentioned biostatistics. I felt the pull of traveling away from home. I had good grades. I got scholarships and I went for it. It’s funny, often in my life I started doing something I loved, but I let it change to something I did not care for that much. Like following a thread for fun, only to find out down the line, something has shifted and it is no longer what I loved. I wonder how to put the fun back into things.”

  “So how do you put the fun back into biostatistics?”

  “The way I interact with people. A mix of counseling and detective work. Most people don’t know what statistics can and can’t do. They make assumptions. A statistician needs to sort it out: what the researcher assumes, what the actual objectives are, and frame that in the language of statistics. Once the data is collected there is fun in exploring what they say and how to best display the results to non statisticians. I love talking with people and helping them zone in on the core of the issue. Not guess, but really know the truth of the matter.”

  “Truth, in statistics? I thought statistics was the art of lying.”

  “Well, it can be, like politics or law, unless you have integrity. Some philosophers say truth does not exist, or truth is subjective. Every worldview, every paradigm, creates its own sets of truth. That’s one argument. But there are truths that come as a result of letting go of a paradigm. When you experience that, there is no turning back. You’ve transcended something. You experience freedom. And you know truth is not just a subjective concept.”

  “I know what you mean. I have a ranch with horses. It’s an equine healing center. A 30 something woman came, Xavier, who was gang raped at 16. She was scared of men and never had a lover. I took her to three of my gentler mares in the field. The mares surrounded her almost immediately and walked in a circle around her slowly. By accident, a stallion was in the same field. They headed toward him and the mares invited him inside their circle with Xavier. He had dignity and poise, stayed close t
o the mares, and grazed, peaceful. The mares remained still. Xavier approached him and he let her pet his long, dark mane and his deeply rich brown hair. He started to move forward and Xavier let him go. But he stopped, moved his large head toward her briefly, and remained still until she touched him again. When she did, he started walking again. She let him go, once more. He repeated this until she started walking with him, holding on to his mane. The mares opened the circle. He first walked, but then increased his speed to a trot, with a spring in his step, and went even faster so she needed to run, holding on tight to his mane, and laughing her heart out with a freedom she had never experienced before. Eventually, he whinnied as he came to a stop. She put her head against his neck and they remained connected for some time. Slowly, he walked her back to me.”

  There are tears in Evelyn’s eyes. Her smile is radiant. She looks out the window. A hawk is flying high in the same direction as the train. “We’re being escorted,” she comments. “Three weeks later I received a letter from Xavier. She had met a man who had asked her on a date and did not run away when she told him about the rape. He waited for her to initiate their first kiss. She was puzzled because years of therapy had not helped her heal. There are truths, deeper truths, and they are not necessarily expressed in words.”

  “How did you get into that?”

  “It started as a child. I hear nature whisper. Everything whispers. When I mentioned it to Mom, she told me I was imagining things. She told me nature does not talk. But it does. I heard the wind. I heard the rustle of leaves respond to the wind. Mom asked me to stop telling her these things. She said if I mentioned this to people, they would call me insane and would shut me up in a psych ward. I did not know what a psych ward was, but it did not sound like a place I wanted to go.”

  “What does the wind say?”

  “The wind urges us all to dance, to celebrate, to lose ourselves in life. I met someone once, years ago. She was at the center of town when it is the busiest, right around noon. She wore a dress, with colorful abstract patterns, and a purple shawl, loosely wrapped around her neck, that flowed with the wind. She blew bubbles into the wind, from a bottle of bubble detergent, and the wind played with them. The joy that came of it was irresistible and I asked if I could blow some too. We blew bubbles together and we lost track of time. Some people watched us, especially children and their parents, and I heard laughs. People smiled at each other.”

  “How did you get your ranch?’

  “Mom gave me horseback riding lessons. Every girl loves that. I saw that the same horse responds differently to different riders. It intrigued me. I talked to the riders and it was clear to me that horses were responding to their energy, horses are sensitive to people. As soon as I had a chance I volunteered to work at a horse farm. With time I was asked to manage it and I made it mine. I call it Whispering Winds.”

  “Did you ever want to leave biostatistics?” she asks.

  “Yes. I tried once. I wanted to change the world. Help end the chaos of lies that fuels wars and oppressions, disconnection and suffering. Big dreams, right? How to make a living at it? How did Mother Teresa go to the street in Calcutta and generate interest in her cause? She simply followed her heart. I quit. But nothing came of it, no career ideas. What to do? One day, hundreds of crows suddenly started swirling above my head, cawing loudly, urgently. I was walking alone. I looked up to see them circle endlessly over me. Their cacophony resonated in my chest as if it was directed at me, urging me back to my job. I screamed, tortured inside; it hit my pride and the only sense of meaning I had in my life. I had resigned two month before and was warned that there would be little chance I would be supported back into the field. It took determination and I was. I have been back in the field for 15 years now!”

  “But you wanted out, why would the crows urge you back?”

  “I wasn’t ready. I was like Don Quixote trying to change things I didn’t like thinking that would clear the way to do what I liked. I didn’t know yet to trust in what I love first.” Richard pauses. “You want to find a Zydeco band tonight and dance?”

  “Lovely!”

  The train stops at the New Orleans station. They take a cab to the Maison Perrier, a B&B where Evelyn made a reservation, and leave their luggage there. They continue with the same cab to eat dinner at Café Degas and a different cab to dance at the Mid-City Lanes Rock 'N Bowl. Evelyn hopes that C. J. Chenier will be performing. He is not.

  Evelyn and Richard soon forget about him as they lose themselves into the dancing. They forget they have just met, that they were just strangers a few hours before. When the band plays the last note, Richard and Evelyn embrace, like long time friends. Richard asks Evelyn if she can hear his heart beat. “You must be kidding, it’s knocking at mine,” she says, her breath soft and warm on his left ear. He sighs. “Is your heart open?” Richard whispers. Evelyn moves her face to look at him. Her eyes are glowing. His are, too. “May I kiss you?” Richard asks her, as if he’d said “May I have this dance?” “Please,” she says, in the same tone.

  In the late hours of the evening, they walk the three or four miles back to the B&B, holding hands and stopping at times to kiss, because of something one of them says, or for no reason at all.

  Around 11 the next morning, they wake up together.

  “How did you get in my bed?” she asks him.

  “How did you get in my life?” he responds.

  They kiss.

  They decide to get beignets and coffee blended with chicory in the French Quarter. They take a cab, sit in the back, and remain silent a long time. The cab driver looks at them now and again through the rear view mirror. “First time in New Orleans?” he asks to break the heaviness he feels. They acknowledge him with a “Hmmm,” and glance at each other, otherwise ignoring him. They talked so freely the day before, and so much more happened than they anticipated. They had to catch up with their behavior and face the lingering question of where to go from there. Weren’t they still strangers? How could they feel as if they’d known each other forever?

  She reaches for his hand with a smile that expresses the whole of it.

  “I’d love to visit your ranch,” he says, in response to her touch.

  “I can always use the help,” Evelyn says, relieved.

  The cab stops at Café du Monde. They thank the driver with a tip. There’s a line which moves quickly and they ask for a table for two, comfortable like old lovers, and giddy like teenagers.