Additional Scenes to "Strays" by Mark Richard

The assignment for this was to write a supplemental scene to Mark Richard's "Strays" by selecting one sentence from his story, reworking it as little as possible, and using it as a leaping point for another scene. The students were encouraged to pick a fresh perspective from the story and go for it.
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hot lonely

by Malena Larsen

He looked burnin’ hot at me.

I took the Bandaid box from the table and shook it like it was music. I winked at the naked boys standing on the linoleum. Both of them, like string beans, were covered in bumps from the bugs and the cold and I laughed at their tiny wrists and biceps and dicks.

“Don’t ya’ll burn the house down.”

When I said this, the taller one got eyes dark and big and angry like June Bugs and the shorter one puffed out his lips and his eyes got wet like piss. I left the dusty kitchen and outside was getting dark and the pink sun was smeared across the sky. I remembered the cigarette in my back pocket, probably bent and crumbling, and I moved it so it sat between my lips. When I scraped the match against the crusty box it sizzled and fizzed. I lifted it closer to my face and the flame snuggled and pressed itself into my cigarette.

By the time I got to town the crickets were askin’ for attention and I needed another cigarette and a bottle of anything. My tongue was so dry it was about to stop working all together. I saw a pack of men crowded outside a bar, a cloud of smoke over them like a storm cloud. When they saw me comin’, the fat one, whose skin was like the grimy dirt road I took to get to town, yelled, “Did you forget somethin’ Trash?” He said my name, Trash, like it hurt him deep in his stomach.

At sun up, I was up a kiss from the big-titted lady at the bar and some nickels. The sun made my eyelids feel like rocks and my stomach was roaring. I dragged my feet, one by one, over to Cuts where only the poor and the black-folk shop. I got a hunk of bologna and some milk and a pack of cigs. The cash girl asked for my money and I told her I was paying with credit.

I wanted my sister to pay when she got back ‘cus she was making me babysit her little shits. She was probably off running around with her bare soles hitting the hot pavement, tellin’ people she needed to feel free and shootin’ up into her elbow and up her nose. Our Ma wanted her to stop but she said there was nothing else that made life worth livin.’

by Asher Luttinen

                  During the knocking-down nobody notices their mother. She is a flat-footed running rustle through the corn all burned up by the summer sun. No jarred goods or kids’ drawings to guide her this time, she bounds away from the destruction, a more fitting image than the run down house she left the first time, though it’s much harder to run through fields of hot crackling leaves and death than to wade through the green unripe corn of months past. Her ankles are lashed with every step she takes from her family, a punishment either for running away or for getting caught; she doesn’t know which and doesn’t much care anyway.

                  There is a new ache in her lungs brought on by the boiling day, intensified by that burnt plot she never got used to calling home. It was only ever her husband’s house, a place to be a wife, to raise a couple of kids. She always wanted somewhere to drink iced tea on the porch, to someday get fat on cornbread and sorghum. That place was probably as good as any other, but the house creaked like it was afraid of its own existence, and seemed to be too small for how empty it always felt. She didn’t have a family there, really. It was just a couple of children she gave life to and the man that stuck her with them. Only he never stayed around long enough to listen to their cries or change their diapers.

                  The sun starts to set, hot and angry on the horizon, hurting her eyes to look at it, but she can’t break her gaze. There is no warmth in its brightness, only a burning sensation and a loneliness in being the sole existence in an infinite darkness. There is something mesmerizing about its intensity, searing its own image into her eyes. Like a fly that buzzes into neon porch lights, she can only think of how beautiful the danger looks.

                  She wonders whether she should regret leaving her children and husband, wonders if they miss her, need her, want her. After too long she blinks, more painful than leaving her eyes open, and even when she closes them the sun reflects as a white hot disk on the backs of her eyelids, and when she cracks them open they are met with an incomprehensible mess of tan and red and black. Closing her eyes again she sits down, alone in the field, its heat being syphoned by the night sky. A cool breeze runs through the dead corn and brushes at the ruby scratches on her ankles, freeing her from abrasive shackles. She lays down and decides to find comfort in the howling wind and prickling stalks, more friend to her than she had ever known.

by Eve Taft

I pull the preserves off the shelves onto the floor, stick my sons’ Easter Sunday drawings in my mouth, and leave the house through the field next door cleared the week before for corn.

I tell myself: I will run until it isn’t flat anymore. That’s been the worst, the flatness of this place, where even the wind feels aimless. I told myself I would get over it every day for ten years, and it was this morning I realized I never will.

I grew up in Maine, which is mad for its own reasons. There are trees closing in and hills looming over, all of them watching you so you are never alone with yourself. Here there is nothing on any side of you except dust and wind. It unnerved me from the start.

I don’t know why anyone would come here. Had pioneers been like-minded to me, they would never have left the east. There were adventurous pioneer husbands, I suppose, who were as good at convincing as mine, and pioneer wives who were as easily duped as me. I suppose that’s why there was a town without much in it waiting for us here when we came.

I am thinking these things as I run, and I know deep down that I cannot run to Maine. I am already starting to tire.

I slow down and realize I spit the pictures out ages ago and I wonder why I took them with me at all. I know why I knocked the preserves down. It was some sort of rebellion against the prairie wife role I somehow got cast in a decade ago. But the drawings are my boys’ and they have no knowledge of anything other than the wide prairies. They’ve grown up without trees watching over them, so they’re not afraid of their own long shadows. They have done nothing wrong. I was just grabbing things, I suppose.

I walk slow, now, through fields that wait for corn and are surprised by my feet. I am leaving footprints and that worries me too. When I was young, I walked through pine-needle covered forest floors and left no trace, silently making my way under the great canopy of branches. Here my footprints show my weaving line, and eventually, my way to the road. I could see cars coming from the horizon and disappearing into it, but right now it’s empty from end to end. 

Let me explain, I say to the birds pecking at the ground, somehow ten years went by while I was too busy jumping at my shadow and wondering if anything ever happens on the prairie. Anyone would be afraid if they looked up and suddenly the calendar had the wrong numbers.

I find a tree that seems picturesque to lean against, and I pick the paper out of my teeth while I consider my options. I started north, and by the sun I’m still going that way, but I look east. East is where the ocean is, and I miss it. It bothers me to think about how many waves have rolled in and out without my notice.

I will go to the coast. Massachusetts, maybe. Boston, I think. I will settle in the noisy city so that I never go days without seeing anyone.

Once I am settled, I will write, and I will say the same thing he said ten years ago which was come if you want.

I start to think realistically for the first time. I will have to take a bus.

I make it to the next faceless little town, where I check the bus schedule and sit in a café. Ten minutes before the bus is scheduled to come, my husband finds me, driving Trash’s beat-up old car, and I do not bother telling him about my Boston plans. Instead I watch the bus load up and pull away and remember I didn’t bring enough money for a ticket; I didn’t bring any money at all.

by anonymous

 As a good Uncle it’s my duty to try and look after niece and nephew, but the one time I’m here looking for something to fix this damn thirst there’s nothing in any of the cupboards. All I’ve found was dirt and a little more dirt, enough to cover a grown man. There ain’t nothing to be found to help my poor soul out. And to think I even gave their damn daddy my car to look after my no good sister, she ain’t never known how to sit still for long in one place. Making my way towards the door I find the two rugrats playing in the hot summer sun. They’ll be just peachy on their own I think, and I need a drink. Before I leave for a few cold ones, I am sure to tell them not to burn the house down, their daddy wouldn’t be mighty pleased with them.
Trotting down the dirt-covered road the sun is beginning to fade beneath the ground. The crickets are out, playing some sort of sweet tune while guiding me along to the bar. The heat has begun to die down and I wonder what soul is going to be suckered into playing cards with me. I’m feeling a bit of lady luck on my side tonight.

by Elise Hitchens

She pushed the furniture around with a broom and called the children abominations. Mrs. Cuts is cleaning their house, like generations before her cleaning a white person’s house for nothing. Though this was her husband’s fault, betting her like a piece of property. After sweeping, she got down on her hands and knees and scrubbed. It took her almost an hour and a half to scrub that floor clean. Then she moved to the next room.

Mrs. Cuts cleaned until her fingers ached, but the house was still dirty. The people who live there are poor, poorer than herself. Or at least her husband. She cleaned, but she knew she would never get the house fully clean in one day. The boys watched her warily, and when she tried to cut their hair with their uncle’s razor they ran. She got the sense it’s because of the ridiculous rumors some child started about her family. Some child claimed that she and her husband were cannibals, that they lured children in with candy and served them in the sandwiches the store sold.

After the boys ran from her, she called them cowards and started to clean the bathroom. It looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in years. It was tempting to just leave it, but she’d be damned if she did something half way. It would reflect poorly on her husband and their store. She was in charge of cleaning the store, mostly because her husband thought cleaning was women’s work. Her husband had strong opinions about what a woman’s job was.

After scrubbing the floors, she paused and wiped the sweat from her chin. It was a hot day and cleaning was, ironically, dirty work. She checked on the boys. She got the feeling that nobody really looked after them. Their parents were nowhere to be found and their uncle was a drunk. A gambling drunk, and so was her husband which was how she ended up in this mess.

Mrs. Cuts still couldn’t believe she was here. He’d paid no mind to the fact that they didn’t have the money for him to gamble away. He’d had to resort to offering her services. She was just lucky it was cleaning. Men always thought women were good at it, no matter if there was no evidence. Not that she wasn’t but that was because she worked for a living. The ladies that refused to step into her store had probably never cleaned a thing in their lives.

She shook herself; dwelling would do her no good. Her mamma always used to say that eyes look forward for a reason. She grabbed the broom to sweep the kitchen floor. But first she had to pick up all of the jars on the floor and set them on the empty shelves. It was, like the rest of the house, filthy. She’d have to scrub the floors to get the grime off. Mrs. Cuts wondered who took them all off. The boys watched her from a distance, wary as a pair of stray dogs.

She offered to make them something to eat, but they fled before she even moved to the fridge. She shrugged and started wiping off the counters. By the time she finished the kitchen it was dusk. As per the agreement she had to work only until dusk. So she gathered up her shawl and purse then set off. Mrs. Cuts walked the mile back into town.

Her whole body ached but that house was as clean as it was possible to get it in one day. She’d done her duty and made her husband proud. Not that he was likely to actually feel the emotion. Just as her feet started to feel numb she arrived at the store.

When she walked inside her husband told her to clean the store before she came home. Taking a deep breath, she picked up the broom and started to sweep.