ozarque (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} ozarque) wrote,@ 2007-12-07 08:46:00 |
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Wandering back through fictional time; part two (final)...
4. "Tornado" [In the March 1989 Fantasy & Science Fiction]
This story is one I'm reasonably certain I wouldn't be able to find a market for today -- it's anything but fashionable. I'm fond of it, nonetheless. Because (a) it introduces two elements from my "alternative Ozark folklore" project -- the Ozarques, who are my "guardians of place" for the Ozark area, and the Quindaw, who are my Ozark "little people"; and (b) it includes parts of the lyrics to one of my filksongs, also titled "Tornado." Here are excerpts, one from the story and one from the song...
"At four o'clock in the afternoon, maddened past caring who saw or heard her, heartbroken with the guilt of having hit her daughter -- who had, after all, done no more than speak the truth her parents did not have the guts to utter -- Jo-Ellen marched grim and scrawny in her jeans and an old blue shirt out into the pines around Pleasant Refuge Trailer Park, her yellow hair flying every which way and her fists clenched at her sides. And in a favorite spot, a spot where there was a respectable tall cedar presiding over a boulder you could sit on and put your feet up on and lean back against in comfort, she threw her arms around the cedar's great trunk and laid her face against its back and filled her lungs with the perfume of the gold-green needles and looked up to where the sky wheeled above her, and she howled, 'Oh sweet Jesus, something come and get us out of this cursed place!' "
"I am Tornado, I come when you call me, I come whirling down at your cry....
I am Tornado, my surname is Whirlwind, I come on black wings from the sky!
My sister the Lightning, in letters of splendor, she writes out my name on the sky;
my brother the Thunder, he reads the inscriptions, announcing my name as I fly...."
5. "What the EPA Don't Know Won't Hurt Them" [In the March 1990 Fantasy & Science Fiction]
This story is a prequel to my Ozark Trilogy, and it is online, at http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/e
" 'You women!' he shouted at her, never mind that she was nearly ninety years old and owed great respect. 'You know a whole lot more than you'll tell! You could help, but you don't, for pure meanness and spite! ... All of you, you get a kick out of watching us men flounder around trying to get things done with only half the facts we need! Damn the lot of you!"
He'd thought she might hit him, or kick him, or bite him. .... He didn't care. He was that mad. ... And then she reminded him of the time when he was maybe eight or nine years old, and he'd accused her -- and 'you women,' talking just like he was talking now -- of being able to make it rain. 'Remember, Johnny Beau Motley, what I told you that time?'
'Yeah, I remember,' he said sullenly. 'You said you don't make it rain, you let it rain.' "
6. "Lest Levitation Come Upon Us" [In Perpetual Light, edited by Alan Ryan, Warner Books 1982]
This is my favorite of all the stories I've ever written; it took me more than ten years to write it. It's about a woman -- Valeria Carterhasty Cantrell -- who becomes a living saint without having any desire to be one, and who does her very best to rid herself of that status. [My original title, overruled by the editor, was "Lest Levitation Come Upon Us Unawares."] In this scene, she's consulting a Catholic priest.
"He looked at her dubiously, for which she could in no way blame him. And then the look in his eyes changed abruptly, and his fingers flicked through the sign of the cross, mutter-mutter-mutter, and she assumed she must have begun doing something convincing. Glowing. Rotating. Levitating. Whatever.
" '--and the Holy Spirit. Amen,' said the priest. Adding, 'Oh dear. Oh dear me.'
" 'Why, Father?' asked Valeria, as reasonably as she could after the dreary recital of her humiliations, and feeling as if she had a bit part in one of those Italian movies about devout peasants with flocks of goats. ...
"The priest, to her astonishment, lowered his head to his hands and gripped it fiercely, all ten fingers buried deep in the thick black curls of his hair, and he moaned. Moaned! ...
[And then the priest says...]
" 'Either you are a visitation of the Dear Lord, in which case I have good reason to be afraid -- I was never in the presence of a living saint before, you see, and I don't have the remotest idea how to behave. Or you are a visitation of the Evil One, in which case I have good reason to be terrified right out of my cassock, if you'll pardon a feeble joke.' "
7. "Weather Bulletin" [1999]
This story -- which I think has only been self-published, and if I'm wrong about that, I apologize -- is online at my SFWA site, at http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/Weath
"I objected because it wasn't fair. Why should Elizabeth get to go off to Washington and be some kind of big deal while I had to stay here and learn to run a laundromat, or something? If I'd known they were going to federalize the weather I'd of practiced harder!
"Of course, I'd only been a euphoric, and they were a dime a dozen -- not like Elizabeth. Your basic mix, what Uncle Hamp called 'generic weather,' was a quartet: two euphorics, a tranquillary, and a melancholic; however big the choir got, you kept that mix. With -- if you were really lucky -- an ecstatic to do your solos. Most choirs had to make do with synthetics for the ecstatsy parts, and they didn't really work very well. Our county choir had known how lucky they were to have Elizabeth..."
There.
4. "Tornado" [In the March 1989 Fantasy & Science Fiction]
This story is one I'm reasonably certain I wouldn't be able to find a market for today -- it's anything but fashionable. I'm fond of it, nonetheless. Because (a) it introduces two elements from my "alternative Ozark folklore" project -- the Ozarques, who are my "guardians of place" for the Ozark area, and the Quindaw, who are my Ozark "little people"; and (b) it includes parts of the lyrics to one of my filksongs, also titled "Tornado." Here are excerpts, one from the story and one from the song...
"At four o'clock in the afternoon, maddened past caring who saw or heard her, heartbroken with the guilt of having hit her daughter -- who had, after all, done no more than speak the truth her parents did not have the guts to utter -- Jo-Ellen marched grim and scrawny in her jeans and an old blue shirt out into the pines around Pleasant Refuge Trailer Park, her yellow hair flying every which way and her fists clenched at her sides. And in a favorite spot, a spot where there was a respectable tall cedar presiding over a boulder you could sit on and put your feet up on and lean back against in comfort, she threw her arms around the cedar's great trunk and laid her face against its back and filled her lungs with the perfume of the gold-green needles and looked up to where the sky wheeled above her, and she howled, 'Oh sweet Jesus, something come and get us out of this cursed place!' "
"I am Tornado, I come when you call me, I come whirling down at your cry....
I am Tornado, my surname is Whirlwind, I come on black wings from the sky!
My sister the Lightning, in letters of splendor, she writes out my name on the sky;
my brother the Thunder, he reads the inscriptions, announcing my name as I fly...."
5. "What the EPA Don't Know Won't Hurt Them" [In the March 1990 Fantasy & Science Fiction]
This story is a prequel to my Ozark Trilogy, and it is online, at http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/e
" 'You women!' he shouted at her, never mind that she was nearly ninety years old and owed great respect. 'You know a whole lot more than you'll tell! You could help, but you don't, for pure meanness and spite! ... All of you, you get a kick out of watching us men flounder around trying to get things done with only half the facts we need! Damn the lot of you!"
He'd thought she might hit him, or kick him, or bite him. .... He didn't care. He was that mad. ... And then she reminded him of the time when he was maybe eight or nine years old, and he'd accused her -- and 'you women,' talking just like he was talking now -- of being able to make it rain. 'Remember, Johnny Beau Motley, what I told you that time?'
'Yeah, I remember,' he said sullenly. 'You said you don't make it rain, you let it rain.' "
6. "Lest Levitation Come Upon Us" [In Perpetual Light, edited by Alan Ryan, Warner Books 1982]
This is my favorite of all the stories I've ever written; it took me more than ten years to write it. It's about a woman -- Valeria Carterhasty Cantrell -- who becomes a living saint without having any desire to be one, and who does her very best to rid herself of that status. [My original title, overruled by the editor, was "Lest Levitation Come Upon Us Unawares."] In this scene, she's consulting a Catholic priest.
"He looked at her dubiously, for which she could in no way blame him. And then the look in his eyes changed abruptly, and his fingers flicked through the sign of the cross, mutter-mutter-mutter, and she assumed she must have begun doing something convincing. Glowing. Rotating. Levitating. Whatever.
" '--and the Holy Spirit. Amen,' said the priest. Adding, 'Oh dear. Oh dear me.'
" 'Why, Father?' asked Valeria, as reasonably as she could after the dreary recital of her humiliations, and feeling as if she had a bit part in one of those Italian movies about devout peasants with flocks of goats. ...
"The priest, to her astonishment, lowered his head to his hands and gripped it fiercely, all ten fingers buried deep in the thick black curls of his hair, and he moaned. Moaned! ...
[And then the priest says...]
" 'Either you are a visitation of the Dear Lord, in which case I have good reason to be afraid -- I was never in the presence of a living saint before, you see, and I don't have the remotest idea how to behave. Or you are a visitation of the Evil One, in which case I have good reason to be terrified right out of my cassock, if you'll pardon a feeble joke.' "
7. "Weather Bulletin" [1999]
This story -- which I think has only been self-published, and if I'm wrong about that, I apologize -- is online at my SFWA site, at http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/Weath
"I objected because it wasn't fair. Why should Elizabeth get to go off to Washington and be some kind of big deal while I had to stay here and learn to run a laundromat, or something? If I'd known they were going to federalize the weather I'd of practiced harder!
"Of course, I'd only been a euphoric, and they were a dime a dozen -- not like Elizabeth. Your basic mix, what Uncle Hamp called 'generic weather,' was a quartet: two euphorics, a tranquillary, and a melancholic; however big the choir got, you kept that mix. With -- if you were really lucky -- an ecstatic to do your solos. Most choirs had to make do with synthetics for the ecstatsy parts, and they didn't really work very well. Our county choir had known how lucky they were to have Elizabeth..."
There.
