Author Topic: Square One  (Read 183 times)

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Offline Maggie

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Square One
« on: December 14, 2017, 07:59:00 am »


Seeing someone you love fall into a pit of addiction is painful but Cathy Wilson isn't one to just give up and throw in the towel when times get tough. To everyone else in the world her love for Ike is seen as misguided and naive, he's always been a bit of a lost cause when it came to cleaning up and getting his act together after all he came from a long line of drinkers and brawlers and just flat out ne'er do wells. Why can't the world see him like she does? If they only could see beyond the booze and the mugshots they'd see him as she does, a kind sweet man who would do anything for the ones he loves. She knows they'll get through this, they're just going to have to start over with a clean slate because love is stronger than any vice.

Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/highlandfling22/playlist/5iporKpZVhX8AaW68bfMhJ



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Offline Maggie

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  • Location: Still trying to rope a tornado
Re: Square One
« Reply #1 on: December 16, 2017, 01:38:45 pm »
Rain softly pattered against the window in the master bedroom. Somewhere down the hall the she heard the faucet in the kitchen dripping or was it the bathroom? A gust of wind rattled the shutters and managed to make the house sound like one of those huge old wooden ships she used to love to read about. Summer storms used to give her a sense of calm and help her drift off, not anymore. They made her edgy and caused a deep ache in her chest as her mind raced. The nights where there was thunder, and lightning were the worst. Those were the nights when he would surely go out and tie one on and wouldn’t make it home until morning, she’d get a call from his brother Buford and she’d end up having to drive all the way over to Twiller Hollow and pick Ike up. The drive home would be a quiet one mostly because he’d be still slightly drunk and sporting a bump or a headache or possibly a combination of all three.  All the times he sat in the passenger seat of her beat up She never once said a word because despite what everyone else in the tiny town they called home she knew him, underneath that gruff exterior was the man she loved and had taken a vow with. She still saw him as the kind sweet gentle man with the heart of gold that had stolen her heart and given her his own in return.  But it was nights like this when he wasn’t here that she worried about him. What if he was beaten and left in a ditch somewhere? What if he’d drank so much he passed out? Or what if he had gotten into some sort of accident? Those dirt roads that made up half the county were tricky at best when you were sober but if you were three sheets to the wind hey were damn near impossible.  All those little catastrophic what ifs clouded her mind and made it impossible for her to drift off. So, she laid awake staring at the chipped paint on the ceiling and prayed that he was alright.

‘Please just let him be okay out there tonight.’

She whispered one last time last prayer as she drifted off to the sound of the rain her face damp with tears. The creaks of the foundation and the drip of the faucet were her only company in the long dark night.

Somewhere in the distance she heard the shrill ring of the ancient rotary dial phone that was situated in the living room. They’d been living in the farmhouse for damn near fifteen years now and they had yet to update the phones or much of anything else for that matter.  Stumbling away from the tangles of bed sheets she found that the day had dawned bright and uncomfortably warm already. Her eyes felt like they had ten pounds of sand of them and she was almost positive that they were red and quite possibly swollen but still she managed to get out to the living room and answer that shrilling phone.

‘Lo?”

“Cath? It’s Buford. I know you’ve ‘prolly been up all night worryin’ ‘bout Ike but he’s over here on the couch. Tess’s n’ me have been tryin’ to sober him up with some coffee but he’d rather just sleep.  I picked him up from the Dew Drop ‘bout eleven last night and we didn’t want you having another panic attack.”

There was pregnant pause and Cathy could almost hear the ‘like the last time.’ that Buford had graciously left unsaid. Cathy shuddered at the memory from last winter. She’d braved a snow storm to go out and find Ike only to end up having to have her best friend Bonnie pick her up and take her to the Emergency Room over in Douglas. She was convinced that she was having a heart attack because she was sure that Ike was dead this time around.  They got back just after sunrise and Cath had been sedated enough that Bonnie had to call her husband Forrest to come and help her get Cathy up the front steps and into the house. This was right about the time when Ike pulled into the driveway slightly worse for wear with Buford acting as his would-be chauffer. Cathy was so out of it that she ended up sleeping off the effects of whatever she’d been given for the next two days and when she did wake up Ike was by her bedside with red rimmed blue eyes and his hands clasped in prayer. Buford had given him a proper dressing down and Ike swore that he wouldn’t touch another drop of the hard stuff and so far, he’d kept his promise. Now it was just beer. Which in Cathy’s book was ranking just as bad but she’d never tell a soul that.

“Thanks, Buford. I’ll be over to pick him up…I just need to get changed. Thank Tess for me and tell her I’ve got that bread she wanted for the church social.”

“Oh Cath it ain’t nothin’ ‘s what family does for family. But I gotta ask…why do ya stay with him? If I’s like him Tess would have left my drunk ass long ‘fore now.”

Without a moment of hesitation, she followed her heart.

“Because I love him, Buford.”

She knew it sounded corny and just the tiniest bit stupid, but it was true, she loved him with every beat of her heart.  She’s already been told by her brother that she was fighting a losing cause with saddling herself to someone that drank like Ike did, but Cathy paid Matthew no mind. Their formative years raised in the house on the backroad out on route five had been anything but conducive to shaping him into a kind-hearted person. Their Daddy, Jimmy Murphy had been a drinker, not a violent one but any money that he’d managed to earn was squandered down at the local bar and that had turned Matty against him at a very early age. Cathy was a bit more understanding and like their Mama had been.

“That damn fool doesn’t know how lucky he is to have you, Cath. He really don’t.”

“Nah..it’s me that’s lucky to have him, Bu. I’ll be by in ‘bout an hour. Don’t forget to tell Tess thank you for me.”

There was a moment of hesitation on the line a Buford agreed. It was Cathy that broke the silence for a moment.

“If he wakes up…tell him good morning for me?”

She heard a slight chuckle and before Buford agreed and they said their goodbyes one last time. Hanging up the phone up Cathy found herself crying once more. She was happy that he was safe and sound over at his brother’s place but didn’t he know how much not knowing where he was hurt her? She knew deep down that he couldn’t help it. Neither could her Daddy. She’d grown up seeing what alcohol could do to a person, make a good man mean. It was the words that hurt the most more than the bruises. Thank God Ike wasn’t like that, he’s just hug you and then trudge off to the bedroom and pass out. Dumas Walker though, he got real mean real quick depending on what he was drinking. If it was anything other than beer you could expect a bruise, if it was beer all you got was a belittled before he passed out. He’d wake up the next morning and break down in tears seeing the damage he’d caused to his loved ones and he’d swear up and down he’d never touch that ‘wicked stuff’ again. He wouldn’t for about five or six days and then he’d start shaking and he’d disappear to the local tavern and the pattern would start all over again.  She ambled into the kitchen and set up the coffee maker knowing that she’d have to pour Ike a mug of something stronger than the powdered flavored coffee Tess offered over at her and Buford’s. Something told Cathy Ike was going to need a Red Eye and a plate of bacon and eggs to go with that coffee. By the way she calculated it Ike had left the house after supper last night around 6:30 and if Buford had been called to pick him up from the Dew Drop at 11 he’d put away more than his fair share of the beer on tap. Especially if that had imported lager he’d developed a taste for a few years ago. She headed back to the bedroom to change into a clean set of clothes and gather up Ike’s work clothes, thank God it was Saturday and he wasn’t on call down at the garage. Her reflection caught her attention, her eyes were red and bloodshot, and her hair was a messy tangle of dark waves. If she squinted she could see the fine lines beginning to crease in her forehead and lines around her mouth deepened by the day it seemed. She honestly wouldn’t be surprised if one day she took the time to examine her locks and find a thick weave of silver strands starting to crop up. These days she didn’t examine her body too closely because she knew she built like her Mama. Slight and fine boned but worry had started to creep in and her appetite had been off causing a bit of weight loss. The glint of the morning sun caught her wedding band, the tiny dogwood flower design glinted and winked back at her. Long pale fingers with finely shaped almond nails were what she saw along with slightly boney knuckles and callused pads from the years she’d spent helping Ike run the small farm they had called home for so long since they took it over from his Great Uncle Delmer.

‘You’ve got your Mama’s hands.’

She thought to herself as she picked up the brush from the dresser and ran it through her hair, pinning it up in a smooth practiced motion without so much as a backward thought as to what else she now had in common with her mother. Grabbing her keys, purse and the loves of promised zucchini bread she’d made for Tess she was off to face the morning.

 

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