A collection of short and shortish stories

Rose Bush

Archiving. Big thick books filled with demographic changes, and obscure sometimes hoaxish history, adorned the walls and alleyways of Mr Honner's prized library; keeper of the town's good graces.

Every nook held small histories within, whisking away reality for a sense of the past. A story which we dare say must have been good old Mr Honner's handpicked, was a peculiar sort.

Within it's brittle yellowing pages contained the tale of dear Miss Kimper. In her youth her focus had been on her studies. None of the boys who thought her a dame could fall to her times not begotten from her soul. She'd usher them out the door as she dove into books on medicine and the minds psychology. Wrapped in studies, her teachers would praise her work, encouraging her to continue. For this was not a women's world, to be seen as a nurse was unheard of, each hand grabbing one of them. Doctors were the sorts to find the economics on each vaccine, not to live in the same house as a distant neighbor. So for her to pursue her work naturally gave way to balking and mocking. Ones who viewed her as marriageable had a veil fixed over there eyes, the appearance was all that mattered to their lonely studies. She took the mockery in stride, showing herself to be above the snide's. She studied Cancers, Typhoid, tuberculosis, Syphilis. She'd manage the births of children under her care, at a hospital that would go down in her name. She'd meet with subjects to discuss their woes and desires. She worked trying to become a positive force to learn and take that knowledge, telling children and anyone who would listen "the mind is a vessel easily tampered with", she'd say. her biography encompassed all these, but strangely no mention of her death.

Mr Honner swore it wasn't fiction, and we believed. We truly trusted the man who had once been the mayor, and the sheriff's deputy. He may live upon his archive upon his hill but his words were gold to our ears. He would ramble on and on, speaking of this and that, the wars and the springs.

During a turn from the seasonal transformations, when the green leaves turned scarlet and breeze's gave us chills; we sat on down with old Mr Honner as he told us stories from his own youth. He gently patted a book in his lap beckoning us forward and saying "I wrote this when I was in that there college". Pointing to an empty corner next to the door frame, when we told him it was empty he waved his hand

He laughed "just like middle School". Giving a grin he peeled open the browning pages, clearing his throat of phlegm. We perked up with excitement as he began.

During a time when our coin purses were empty; the Causten children were pulled to and fro, like migratory birds. They laughed and played in the squalor of the hillside on farming days, and breathed smog filled air, while they begged in their tent city on working days. The Causten children barely listened to Makenna, she was his third wife and they were old enough to guess this wouldn't be the last. The older men would grin with missing teeth, hoping to make some worth out of the young children. Kawdy Causten became a seamstress three days a week, paid a child's wage. McHalelen Causten worked in the mines at the brink of an industrial endeavor. As the older he was less fond of the conditions which he worked. long hours, sour pay. by day's end he'd come home in his ragged overalls, his hair matted with coal dust and face smeared with ashen paint, a tired look in his eyes as he collapsed in a haze upon the hay, overshadowed by the cloth roofing of a beggars hole; cursing the day. Kawdy would come on over disheveled and droopy eyed, her fingers calloused over. Still showing scarring from the many loops and dips under and over the cranked sewing apparatus; made popular by smiling coin squelchers filling their pockets on dirty grime.

Wrinkled Mr Honner paused here wiping gathered tears from his eyes, sighing softly. We held our breath wanting to know more about the Causten's and their lot in life, but not rudely interrupt his reminiscence. He was quiet tapping the page he had left on. "I was but a boy myself then ya know". He cleared his throat giving a mighty cough. "Met em in a diner where we's knew the cook". He paused, fixing his gaze above the fireplace.