Link to Felkins POISONING THE WELL
ANTHOLOGY:
Madeline Lucille Felkins Copyright 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 All Rights mf
Hotsheets.org "ANTHOLOGY" Copyright 2000 All Rights
Madelinefelkins.com "Desert Song", "Water
Running", "Leaves Falling", "Poverty Pig and
Other Great Bores", "Fruit of the Earth",
"Poisoning the Well", "Angel Baby" and
"Angel Baby Memorial" , "Hotsheets"
*copyright; mf
DESERT
SONG
Link to Felkins FRUIT of the EARTH
She wanted to cry when she saw him bend over and curl
his foot and toes toward himself while standing up in order that
he could remove the stickers embedded in his bare foot. It hurt
him so bad while they were walking that he actually stopped
talking to her. She hated to see him in any pain and had no idea
whatsoever about how to help him. He was bigger than her and
older, and he was the one who always was teaching her new things.
She did not know what to do at all. She had never been to a movie
in her life. Her family did not have a television or a telephone.
She didn't know anything about movies, telephones, or television.
She had brothers and sisters but didn't spend any time with them
because she was too little and had no idea what they did all day.
She would take a bucket filled with hard little things and throw
it at the chickens to feed them until one day, she saw The Hand
with a chicken and he chopped of its head and it kept running in
circles with its bloody stump hitting the ground with thump,
thump, thump, trying to peck the food she had thrown out there by
the yard at the coop, still trying to eat without its head. The
Hand was horrified to discover that she had witnessed the killing
of the dinner, and yelled, "Get her out of there, get her
out of there", but it was too late, she had seen it and was
paralyzed and horrified at the same time. She had so many
nightmares after that and some bad days, but she loved The Hand
so much because he played the guitar and sang to her; he knew so
many songs and she didn't have any idea about what he was singing
about, "jimmy crack corn and I don't care", but she
loved the way he sang and because he taught her, oh, so many
songs. The Hand saved her from destroying her doll because she
was so angry and she didn't know why, but she took it out on her
poor doll, and he stopped her from screaming and swinging the
doll against the wall before she broke its face entirely into
pieces. The poor doll's face was cracked for the rest of its life
and forever scarred.
She was never alone since her dad hit water when he went away and
drilled the wells. People came from everywhere, more people than
she had ever seen before in her life. The Hand was a minister's
son and he came working every day but always had time to teach
her new songs. Somebody told her his name was Ron, but she didn't
believe it: Somebody always said, "Give me a hand", and
there he was fixing things and always doing interesting things;
the most interesting of which he ever did was to bring her the
love of her life, and what a shock that was to her who had
dreamed and sang while playing alone for so long until her father
hit water. The Hand brought a boy to her one day who was staying
with his family and while he was staying there, The Hand was
teaching the boy guitar, and my God, how the boy loved to play
that guitar.
He would come looking for her with his bare feet and such
interesting things to do, and more interesting things to discover
and study, and always, he had his guitar. He never talked to her
when he played; he had to concentrate so very hard on what he was
doing, and he played all day long until The Hand came to walk him
back home to dinner or wherever it was that they went. Sometimes
The Hand and the boy would play guitar and sing at the same time
which was absolutely fascinating to the little girl. The boy was
older and had seen many movies and televisions and things she
knew absolutely nothing about, so he was incredible magic to her.
He would come walking over to see her and never smiled, and said,
"Come on", and would walk her down to where the water
drained and where the clay was so dry and cracked, the earth
could be lifted into big chunks like giant Hershey bars,
sectioned off, piece by piece.
The boy entertained her by playing guitar, and she would listen
to him and watch him grimace during his absolute concentration,
but one day, he came over to get her and he played and sang for
her that day, but he had to stop many times while playing in
order to wipe something off the strings and neck with his whole
hand, and then he kept wiping the strings with his hands but he
didn't play much that day. She missed him so much, and the next
time he came, he did not have the guitar. She was shocked and
said, "where's the music box?", and then she almost
fainted when she saw how cut up his hands were. "I can't
play", he said, and then showed her the fingers of his hand
were all cut up and purple and swollen. "My fingers are all
cut up, but they'll get better. C'mon."
She had no idea what they were going to do, because without his
guitar she was worried about what he would do, she knew he was
somehow burdened to keep her company, and she was so worried that
without his guitar he would be very sad and not know what to do
during his visit with her. He sang anyway and also showed her a
treasure from his pocket, which was a chicken foot, while saying,
"Look, I can make the foot move," and would pull on the
top of the chicken's foot and it would move around as if it were
alive, curling and spreading its foot, digging and scratching at
earth that was not there and no longer necessary for the chicken.
She had never seen anything like that before in her life, and it
was almost as amazing as were the stars he taught her about at
night while teaching her how to draw them in the sand. She
learned one day about where it was that the boy and The Hand went
to each day when they left her, and while she worried during the
nights they were gone about whether or not she would ever see the
boy again because she had no idea where they went, and sometimes,
it seemed like it was forever and evermore until she saw him
again.
The Hand came with the boy this day, and told the boy to take her
to the minister's home to get the books to read.
"Read"? She thought aloud, but she was with the boy and
they walked and walked and walked in the heat, and he would stop
and pound on his chest and yell, he informed her, she who knew
nothing about the movies or Tarzan, or swinging by vines, he,
stopped yelling to inform her with great authority, that it was
the yell of Tarzan which absolutely amazed her, and still does to
this very day. The boy taught her how to breathe underwater while
getting air through wooden tubes he somehow manufactured while he
was gone; they walked to the pond created by her father's
drilling and sat underneath sage overgrowth, underneath the
water, bringing the tube to the mouth, blowing out any water that
entered the tube during the trip from the ground by the brush,
and they both sat there for God knows how long, breathing in air,
blowing it out, and breathing air again and again. How long they
remained there is a mystery, but it is long enough that she never
forgot about those tubes and that breathing and that it wouldn't
have ever happened it he hadn't hurt his fingers so bad playing
the guitar all day long.
He told her all about the crazy people in the movies, but she had
no idea what movies or crazy people were and this upset her; he
explained to her that they needed straitjackets because there
were many crazy people in the movies, and especially in the movie
about which he was trying to describe to her. She was so upset
about not knowing what a straitjacket was that she became
frustrated over not being able to describe to him her concern
about which she knew nothing. She was upset about that
straitjacket thing for days until one day, the boy came over
and knocked on the door and told her to come along with him and
they walked to the minister's house and he went inside as she
waited for him to come back outside. He came back to her in a few
minutes, barefoot as before, but with a parental attitude, and
said, "See, this is a straitjacket."
He had a large plaid object with him which he unfolded and which
she recognized as a huge grey plaid shirt. He told her to come
back inside with him and they went inside the minister's house
while he put the plaid shirt on, buttoning it all the way up to
the top despite the overpowering desert heat. The boy then pulled
and crossed his arms across his stomach as if he were hugging
himself, and then told her to tie the big, loose, oversized
sleeves of the shirt into a knot at the back of his waist. After
she had finished tying the knot being instructed by the boy about
how to do it the whole time, he then turned to her and said,
"This is a straitjacket and this is what they do to crazy
people in the movies." To her astonishment, the boy then
fell upon the floor, rolling around with his straitjacket
making noises that he said, "crazy people do this," and
he kept rolling around and making noises, showing her the whole
time that he was trapped within the plaid shirt.
"That is a straitjacket, and that is what they do to crazy
people," he told her as he instructed her to unbutton him so
that he could be freed from the straitjacket plaid. They
started to go back outside from the minister's house while the
boy stopped to pick up a bag of books. "These are for
you," he said, dumping them all on the ground outside the
house in the yard. "This is a music book," he said,
"And it has the words to songs so that you can learn to read
them." He picked one up and said, "This is how you read
this," and he turned to a page with a drawing of blind mice
and read to her about them, and then the boy sang about them to
her, but there were so many words there she had never heard
before that she couldn't focus on what he was teaching her, and
she couldn't remember the song because she didn't understand it. "Why did she cut off their
tails," she demanded to know, further demanding to know time
and again "Just what was a carving knife, anyway?" He
finally became very angry with her and said, "It's just a
song, it's just a song, just sing it, it's just a song." The
boy became so angry with her she was afraid that between his loss
of the ability to play his guitar and how angry she made him that
day, that she would never see him again. She couldn't sleep and
was so worried when she didn't see The Hand or the boy again for
what seemed like forever. She was taking a nap one day in the
back room when The Hand quietly walked through the room to get to
the kitchen, thinking that she was asleep, while he was so quiet
while carrying a shotgun and had a long rabbit draped over his
other shoulder. The rabbit was so long she always remembered that
it draped down past his knees when he was walking through the
room. The boy arrived
and that night the whole family and the boy had rabbit for dinner
but neither she nor the boy would eat any of it. The little
girl's mother went ahead and gave them both Stuart's Formula
anyway that night and again the next morning she made them milk,
bananas, and a little bit of ice cream in a blender and had them
drink it and chase it down again with Stuart's Formula. This day,
the boy came to see her and they went walking and he showed her
his latest treasure of what he called then a shrunken head with
stitches on the top of it stitched through real long, thin, black
hair that he had got at a carnival, and he described to her in
great detail how heads became shrunken by the cannibals and then
he also showed her what he informed her to be a "Lucky
rabbit's foot." She said she must have one too because she
loved the boy so much that she thought it would be magic for her
and that it would mean they would be together forevermore. She begged him for a lucky rabbit's
foot and then, The Hand arrived with the boy's guitar. The Hand
had his guitar too, and they sang together until it got dark, and
she begged The Hand for a lucky rabbit's foot too. "You
don't want one of those things," He said, but she insisted,
and then The Hand and the boy left; now she was so upset and
afraid thinking that now both of them were angry with her. Both
The Hand and the boy came back that night and said they were
taking her to the carnival and so now she knew why her mom and
dad got her dressed again after her bath which was very unusual,
and she went to the carnival with them. They
went into a tent with a loud speaker and little horses on tables
with a great loud voice talking the whole while about a horserace
she could not see. She could only watch the boy and the stars on
the way home that night during the drive and when he walked her
to her door and gave her a purple-dyed rabbit's foot with a gold
chain and a little bronze horse. They were the most beautiful
things she had ever seen other than the boy when he played his
guitar. There was a terrible earthquake in San Jacinto but she
didn't know that; she knew nothing about earthquakes. All she
knew was that her dad was gone drilling water and that all of a
sudden he was back and so was her uncle, and there were no lights
while she watched them move the refrigerator outside in front of
the back door to the kitchen. Her father and uncle wore
handkerchiefs across their mouths and noses and it scared her
more than not having any lights. Almost everything had been moved
outdoors and then in a truck with her dad, and then when she woke
up again, she had the bag of books with her which were fairy
tales, Aesop's Fables, and some songbooks which were given to her
by the boy at the minister's house but she was in Mira Loma
instead at her grandmother's house where her uncle and now her
family lived as well. 
She was not in school as the other
children were and all day long when she was playing she would
also set out enough toys, or books, or whatever she was playing
with for the boy and she would talk to him while she played. She
talked to him everyday and it was just like he was there with
her. She believed with all her heart that he was with her, and
she talked and talked and talked to him each and every day no
matter what she was doing, she talked to the boy and included him
in whatever she did no matter where she did it. "Who are you
talking to", asked her mother or grandmother and she would
reply, "I'm playing with the boy." She never stopped
thinking of him or talking to him because she loves him so much
still.
"Angel Baby" and
"Angel Baby Memorial" Copyright 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 M.L. Felkins All
Rights
"HOTSHEETS" Madeline Felkins 2000
ANGEL BABY and ANGEL BABY MEMORIAL
Stardate 10.06.2000
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