window to the soul
I am going to post a few pages of my book “April was here” everyday. Enjoy
My name is
April, I am fifteen years old and I am up a huge tree. I am clinging
precariously to a branch that is hanging about fifteen feet off the ground. I
am screaming franticly and crying uncontrollably because I am witnessing my
little sister Shelly, being ripped apart by a ferocious bear. He is a Grizzly
and he is killing my little sister. I am hanging onto a branch just out of the
bears reach, screaming Shelly’s name and reaching down for her. I can almost
grab her hand at one point but not quite. She is crying, bleeding, and reaching
for me. She is only six years old and there is nothing I can do to help her.
I am looking for someone to help us
but there is no one. I continue screaming and the bear continues ripping my
sister apart. I yank branches from the tree and throw them down at the bear but
they don’t faze him. His attention is not on me but on the thing I love. The
feeling of helplessness is overwhelming. Shelly screams my name and goes
silent. Only the sounds that the bear make and my incessant screaming are heard
now.
I startle
awake and sit up in bed sweating, crying and terrified. Is it a horrible
memory, or is it a premonition? God, is this just a nightmare?
My mind reels with ghosts from my past. Dreams
and nightmares I can’t escape, heartbreak, sorrow, terror and fear. My nemeses
are the memories that I can not run from. I am screaming on the inside and want
someone to hear me.
My life
started and has continued to be very interesting. There has never been a dull
moment right from the start.
I was born in the spring, in the month
of April that is how I got my name “April.”
The little
town that I was born in was green and full of life. It was not far from the Ozark Mountain’s. It was and still is a very small
town. Baxter Springs, Kansas. First cow town in Kansas is what the sign outside of town
boasts.
It sits on the
border of northeasternOklahoma, twenty miles west ofJoplinMissouri and thirty miles from theArkansasState line.
There are
rivers, ponds and creeks everywhere, so everything there is green and lush. The
fishing there is incredible, from cat fish to big mouth bass and everything in
between. Everyone there fishes, everyone there hunts and everyone there carries
a gun.
There are wild
berries and fruit all over the place, like Blackberries, Boysenberries, little
Wild Cherries, Plums, and Peaches and if you know where to look they are all
free for the picking. We even knew where to find wild Asparagus and wild
Onions. If it didn’t grow wild, then the earth was ready for you to plant it
and make it grow.
It was once a
booming Mining area, but it had eventually been mined out. Just like everything
else we humans take from this earth, we took it all and there was nothing left,
they had over mined so much that a forty mile area under a bunch of these little
towns in all four states is just gone; it is just one big cavern under the
ground. People’s houses would just fall into the ground because there was
nothing under them to hold them up. People have died while they were sleeping,
because there houses would fall into a seventy five foot deep hole that opened
into the ground while they slept in there beds. At one time, they assembled and
flew an airplane under the ground in that cavern.
By the time I
was born in 1956, the mining was over and mostly old miners and there families
were living there in poverty. They were so far behind the times, that in 1956,
they were still living through the depression of the thirties. They even
dressed the part. Most of them had outhouses or didn’t even have indoor
plumbing at all. This included me and just about everyone I knew. In fact, I
always thought that anyone that had an indoor bathroom must be rich.
Today, Pitcher
Oklahoma is a legal ghost town and people still live there just like they did
when I was little. It was simple and earthy and I miss it very much. Not the
poverty, but the greenery and simple way of life.
I especially miss all of the water that is
everywhere. Of course it was only a simple life to a child, not to the adults
that had to try to raise there families there.
When my mom had me she was seventeen and very
pretty, and in the mid nineteen fifties, when rebellion was coming of age
“pretty is as pretty does.” My mom found herself a rebellious young girl with a
great body, good looks and a get me out of here attitude.
North Eastern
Oklahoma was so far behind the times that she still had an outhouse and parents
that were old beyond there years because of the hard life they had lived.
My mom wanted
out, to a place that she had seen in magazines, or heard about from other people
her age. She had no one to tell her that she had worth or potential, because my
grand parents had never been told that they had worth or potential, so they had
never learned how to convey this to there children.
The place she
was in was a hard place and poverty doesn’t breed hope. So, as a young, lost,
beautiful, seventeen year old, thinking that her ability to attract men, was
her way out. She married a good looking young boy, “him self only
nineteen” hoping he was the answer to her problems, but running from your
problems doesn’t work. Not without some knowledge of what your running from, or
where you are running to.
Of course her
life didn’t get any better, or even change very much. Marriage wasn’t the
cure-all that she had thought it would be, but no one could tell her that, that
was something that she had to learn for herself.
The
realization came too late, because she had me at seventeen, so now she was
really stuck. Like quicksand, the harder you struggle to get free, the deeper
you go.
What is that saying? “The rich get richer, while the
poor have babies!”
