ISLAY: A NOVEL
Douglass Bullard
Words: 1,122
[Excerpt]

She wished she’d caught on, really she ought to have caught on much sooner and headed off all this nonsense. She’d known all along her husband was a fool but never could she have dreamt he could be so foolish. Yet, there it was, this enormous enormity, entrenched in her home!

It’d happened, somehow, because she’d grown up with a raftful of brothers, and it was a given to her that boys would be boys. She believed, unlike girls raised in homes untroubled by brothers, that foibles of men are better humored than censored. She’d allowed the project to take over the spare bedroom and also his Saturdays; far better to allow the husband to make a fool of himself in the home than out. At first this arrangement appeared to be working out well; at least Lyson was so happy in his project that she couldn’t but allow herself to be lulled into contentment too. That’s the nice thing about happiness: it’s catching.

Now this! Before she’d caught on, his hobby had blossomed into a full flower of scandalous dimensions. She saw that the circumstances left her no recourse but to secure the den with a new lock and to keep close track of the key, to see it to its hiding place with its own key that needed to be hid too.

Mary was adamant about keeping his dream a secret. She guarded the key even from Lyson. He had to ask to be let into his own den.

The trouble with locked doors is they attract eyes. This kind of thing can get your fingers stepped on, Lyson.

“I understand! I understand!”

“Lyson, we must do something about your dreaming dreaming–”

“I’m thinking! I’m thinking!”

Even then, it dogged them everywhere, its shadow as stubborn as the tendrils of a dream whose roots have long been forgotten, yet that continue to grow and grow so that it cannot be let go. Mary sighed at the door.

Mortima saw and wanted to turn for a look at the door. Instead, she turned to Ursula on her side. Mary wasn’t fooled; Mortima could see out of the tail of her eye almost as good as straight ahead.

Ursula was telling her close friend Charity across the circle of friends, “Oh, we’re planning divorce.” Her gestures were strong and bold, purposely large in defiance of Mortima who perked up, her eyes fixed on Ursula rather than on Lyson’s door.

“You see,” Ursula went on, “recently read new book that proves 99 percent of deaf-hearing marriages fail, divorce.” A shrug. “That’s why decided, better divorce now while husband still good friend, still have love.”

Everyone stared, every hand stilled, as Ursula nonchalantly helped herself to a cracker and bit of cheese. Mortima licked her lips.

“Ninety-nine percent!” Janice finally exclaimed, her hands making the gestures in a flurry of jumps.

“Oh yes,” Ursula nodded her fist in the exaggerated manner of confirming an indisputable truth. “Deaf-hearing marriages impossible succeed. Fact, the book said those one percent deaf-hearing marriages that don’t divorce, that’s because hearing suppresses deaf, prevent associating with other deaf–”

“Ninety-nine percent!” Janice exclaimed again. “Never dreamt! You know that my husband, himself hearing, always good to me, better than some”–glancing secretly at her sister Monica-”husbands, themselves deaf but always selfish, trouble, trouble-”

Mortima looked sharply at Monica, and Mary too, to see if perhaps their masks would drop enough for a secret or two to slip through. But she had looked too sharply; Monica and Mary caught her sharpness and held their faces nonchalant.

“I love him regardless,” Monica managed to reply, calmly reaching for a mint.

“Because himself deaf,” agreed Ursula.

“I love my husband, notwithstanding himself hearing,” insisted Janice.

“Thought myself too,” Ursula frowned. “But that book said 99 percent, makes me wonder.”

“Believe book?” cried Janice in astonishment.

“Psychologist wrote,” protested Ursula.

“Ph.D.!” laughed Professor Stumpt. “Wish people read and believe my book about pennies.”

“Psychologist himself deaf? Hearing?” inquired Monica.

“Book says nothing. Probably hearing. But Ph.D.-”

“Ph.D. nothing! Not impress me!” Janice announced hotly. “My husband wonderful, no-matter hearing. I cherish him!”

“My husband too,” Ursula agreed, “but 99 percent!”

“Ninety-nine percent absurd, invented number!”

“Can’t fool statistics-”

“Psychologists themselves confused, divorce, divorce, suicide, alcoholism-”

Mortima’s eyes narrowed. She remembered the secret hidden in her bosom, her plan to catch Lyson at some secret she knew he would succumb into her power to keep quiet.

“That book itself true science! Research! Serious!” Ursula protested.

“Myself counsel deaf all day, every-day,” Charity cut in. “Noticed myself that most percentage marriage trouble truly between male, female. Women suffer too-much frustration, no-matter deaf, hearing. Men too-much macho!”

Doctor Stumpt laughed and said, his signs alive with irony, “Men truly bigheaded. Won’t listen to me, think my book frivolous, not worth reading!”

“Lyson agrees with you,” Mary said dryly. “Kind-of. His own-” She began a cranking motion around an ear but caught herself.

“Gene Owles,” whispered Janice to Monica, her hands low and out of sight. But Mortima was all-seeing and saw all.

“Darling,” giggled Monica. “See him?”

Janice took a quick look around and met the stare from Mortima. She dropped her hands lower and made a remark out of Mortima’s sight that tickled Monica very much.

Gene Owles! That old satyr with the rear half of a horse and the devil’s smirk out front. Everyone knew about him. Broken hearts dumped in gutters drowning in rivers of tears. No shame, no wife to amuse, no more morals than a dog and proud of it too. Mortima well knew about him. He never so much as gave her tail a whiff, let alone deign to look at her. Quite beyond the power of her wagging fingers.

Mortima shivered with excitement. At long last a topic teetering on the edge of scandal, grabbing the attention of everyone–how many here have known him?–now all eyes are upon the one who is speaking of him. The conversation was so hot and riveting, her opportunity finally arrived, the kind that does not arise when conversation is dull and eyes are casting about. And Mary’s were on her whenever possible, but just now, finally, were chasing Gene Owles’s name flying on fingertips about the room. Lyson’s door is where the action is. Mortima knew, just knew, where pay dirt could be found. She slipped out of her chair and despite her bulk and laboring buttocks, glided on tiny steps behind the chair to the door. Her dark dress melted into the shadows at the edge of the room, masking trembling fingers that drew from her bosom the key, and before anyone noticed the empty chair, she was in the den.

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ISLAY is available for pre-order at http://www.clercscar.com/books/preislay.html

ISLAY: A NOVEL
Douglass Bullard
Words: 1,062
[Excerpt]

[This is the first of a series of excerpts.]

I know at last what I want to be when I grow up. When I grow up I want to be a little boy.
–Joseph Heller

There in the den, shut against the world, against Mary as well, though he would never admit it, Lyson C. Sulla spent his Saturdays. Mary was uneasy about this. Uncomfortable also with the semantics by which he called the room a den. She knew there was no such thing as a den in an apartment, but Lyson was obstinate on this point. She would have been more comfortable had he called the room, really a spare bedroom, an office. A nice domestic ring to the word office: bright, airy, dust-free bustle; efficient and purposeful as her own kitchen. Everything in its rightful niche where it can immediately be found.

But a den is where bears go in fat, happy, and warm and come out hungry, disheveled, and irascible with a momentous hangover. Not that Lyson was that bad, really. Just that–that something was going on that must never be allowed out, out in the light of day. She was never satisfied with what was his hobby, exactly, but knew enough to keep it a tight secret. She wasn’t even sure it was wise to refer to it as a hobby as Lyson insisted. She’d have preferred something more dignified, like project, but Lyson explained that men respect hobbies more than they do projects.

If only he could see, she sighed, the mirth in the eyes of her friends as they inquire after the locked door. At first he had thought she could simply say he was out, but that would be a brazen lie. And what if he forgot and opened the door early, before her friends had left? No way! A vexation: he wanted his hobby kept a secret, and she agreed, but she had no way of satisfying her friends’ curious glances at the locked door.

The last time she had played the brave wife, explaining that Lyson took his hobby far more seriously than his job, her friends smiled not so secretly at one another: Don’t all men? All her friends smiled; that is, except Mortima Gooser who saw no humor in the foibles of men. If only men would take their jobs, and consequently women, seriously, she snapped, her gestures sharp and jabbing. And she would glare, her lip curled, at the locked door behind which Lyson hid, oblivious of them, the society of women, ignoring them as if they did not exist. The nerve!

Mary had every reason to be cautious around Mortima. Not for nothing was the name sign for Mortima Gooser synonymous with gossip. Just how such a derogatory name sign got attached to Mortima is not certain, but her old classmates claim that Mortima herself was the one who gave herself that sign. What mattered, though, was that Mortima did not at all blush when referred to by such a sign. She introduced herself to strangers by that sign. She just never thought to be embarrassed by it, not any more than a bull is by the chewed swallowed digested processed and passed remains of hay drying on its rump raising a stink and a whirring cloud of flies.

Once a minister of the gospel dared a bit of Christian sanitization by pointing out to her the impossibility for gossips to ever find happiness in heaven. No sin up there, you see, therefore nothing to gossip about up there, hehehe. But Mortima had returned him a certain stare-blank yet pregnant. So even a minister of the gospel, as did Mary and everyone else, learned to be circumspect around Mortima.

“I am a card,” she liked to tell hearing people. She never said this to the deaf as she doubted they’d appreciate it the way she thought it deserved to be. They’d only curl a lip while the hearing at least had the courtesy to smile. When she was little, her favorite aunt had once gushed, “You’re a card!” Mortima had wondered about it for a long while, until she looked it up in a dictionary. Among other things, it said a card was an attraction and a comical person. She took it to mean she was attractive and funny, and gushed to every new hearing acquaintance, “I am a card.”

So Mary was leery of Mortima and never invited her to the apartment. But such was Mortima’s craft that when she invited herself to the Saturday teas, Mary hesitated to shut the door in her face. Furthermore, it was with uncanny timing that Mortima always managed to arrive at the same moment as the other, more welcome guests. So an armchair, one of the more comfortable in the apartment–Lyson’s, where he’d always presided during the teas–was reserved for Mortima. This was because Mary wanted to locate Mortima facing away from the door to the den. That heavy chair just happened to be the one suited for this maneuver; unfortunately it gave Mortima the impression it was the place of honor. That couldn’t be helped. Better she should think that than be allowed the awful way she could glare at the door, as if she could look right through it at Lyson and discern his secret. This glare also would only serve to draw all the eyes in the room toward the door.

One Saturday Mortima arrived in a strange, incongruous good cheer, with a kind word for all present, and did not protest as was her wont to appear modest when ushered to the chair of honor, the one facing away from Lyson’s door. Mary took perverse delight in the way Mortima seemed to wear her girdle upside down and backwards so that the front was pushed in and down, the rear up and out. Yet this new twist disconcerted Mary: Mortima giggled along with everyone around the little gathering. And her gestures seemed softer, more graceful. Obviously today she had something up her bosom, something big, juicy, delicious. Mary could only pray it was not about some poor husband, hers or any of her friends’. She bustled about, making her guests at home, all the while keeping a secret eye out for any evidence of the hobby Lyson might, just might, have absently left lying about for Mortima to slip into her bosom.

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ISLAY is available for pre-order at http://www.clercscar.com/books/preislay.html