WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (2 page)

“They will try to steal what is yours. Be aware children.” Maw Sue’s eyes turned dark and dreadful. “Fight for your life. Your namesake. It is your ancestral birthright to fulfill your destiny.”

At this point in the story, Mag would cut her eyes at me suspicious. She
was capable of thinking what everyone else in the family thought about Maw Sue to begin with.  That she had o
verdosed on herbal concoctions, sleeping pills and hallucinated a wild story.

“That’s just poppycock. Ridiculous. Ain’t no such thing.” She’d say. Mag didn’t care one iota about birthrights, she just hoped her destiny contained designer shoes, handbags and a plane ticket out of this town and she’d be happy as a lark. 

“Girls, no matter what happens in this life, you must fight. Find your way.” 

“Uh-huh.”  I nodded and believed every word. 
She rubbed the stone till I saw the eye bleed and drip wet and run down her neck. 

“Don’t let the enemy win. You are a Cupitor. You come from the blood of seekers. Use your gifts.  And most important—make lovely your losses.”

And there it was.
  Four words that broke my ever loving southern sap heart.  Their unknown meaning crushed my heart with
a heavy burden.  Anytime I asked her exactly what it meant, she’d tell me I had to live life to find out and I had plenty of time to do that.  Regardless, it didn’t stop the words from penetrating my heart time and time again, like
sticky old wallpaper, as if someone snatched a top corner and yanked it down, exposing my heart and no matter how much got peeled off—it left behind a gruesome layer of pain.  
Make lovely your losses
.  I feared a great weeping loss was always at my back and lived on the verge of anxiousness, waiting to lose something—
but what?
 
I was all up in my head when I heard Mag yell. 

“Can’t the Amodgians just steal our shorts instead?
” She stood up and modeled like a silly spoiled brat.  “
They can have these hillbilly britches.”  We all busted out laughing. 

“Now you know Dell made those shorts for you out of love.”  Maw Sue said. 

“Well, it certainly wasn’t for the fashion.” I snickered but it was true. If given
a choice, I’d set fire to them a long time ago.  It still didn’t stop Mag and I
from cringing every time we heard the old sewing machine threading down like a drum beat of warning,  
thump, thump, thump
, on some poor unsuspecting fabric.  We knew in a few restless hours, we’d be the eyesore of the neighborhood. 

“Hey girls, look what I made for you.”  Dell would smile like a jackal and hold up two pair of God forsaken scrap shorts, splattered with every color of the rainbow and hell. I tried to persuade Dell to more charitable works, informing her of the five kids who lived down the street, river trash, starving and half naked.  She ignored my poverty facts and kept on sewing despair.  The pair I have on today is from James Brown’s closet. One side is half black and white polka dots, the other half is purple with dizzy, yellow swirls while a plumage of pink flowers sprout from my crotch. 
Jesus!
And the back side? It’s a runway strip for racecars with wide black stripes interlaced with slim yellow lines.  Mag’s short
s are another sight altogether. 
4
^th
 of July meets Woodstock and had a baby.  Stars, stripes and tie dyed heaven.  When she w
ears them, I rib her to no end. 
I feel it’s my patriotic duty to stand up and salute her 
sorry can’t lose a game
with a rock n’ roll rendition of 
The Star Spangled Banner
in true-blue Jimmy Hendrix style.   I strum my invisible air guitar, ripping out rifts that curl the tree leaves, while my hum of musical chords scatters the tree limbs of small birds. The twang of the last chord held out its note, eeeeeeeeeeinggggggggggggg and echoed across the porch, ending in a loud barraaaannnngggg! And then I threw out a few hand salutes for good measure.

Evidently, royal bloodlines lack a royal sense of humor.  A dark cloud with slanted eyes emerged and it was the war of the states all over again.  Sister against sister, royalty against rebel.  Maggie Storm retaliated against me—
and America
.  Traitor!  Her fingers were like crab claws.  A huge red whelp rose up on my arm and I went to squirming. I realized I would need to seek 
revenge creatively from this point on. 

“Hoo-hah.” I said in triumph slamming down the cards. “One-two-three.”
 
Mag’s weakness became my trump card. “Take—that—sister-sue!” 

In reality, Mag can’t lose.  Not at cards, hopscotch, Red Rover, dodge ball, Chinese checkers, old maid—
life.
  Queen Mag did not get the game player gene, she did however, get the over-reactor gene and plays it to the hilt.  Since she can’t face losing, less she die or someth
ing, she creates a distraction, and not just once or twice, but every single game. 
I saw it with my naked eye. Well,
kinda.
  We had just finished a game of checkers and against my better judgment, I let her win but only because I
was tired of being pinched.  Later on,
we started a game of cards. I was ahead by three and 
had no plans of letting her win.  Unfortunately,
I had not considered the four glasses of water I drank which engulfed my full bladder. I
had to go pee but before I left, I threatened Mag not to cheat.  She hem-hawed around but finally agreed.  I was pretty sure her toes were crossed because it was just too easy. 
When I returned—for the one hundredth and fifty seventh time—
disaster
. 

“Act of God.”  She said all innocent and fragile.   
Act of God, my foot.
  Cards are strewn all over the porch, down the steps and across the yard.  Checkers are littered on the grass and the board is hanging limp in the cleft of a sycamore tree. 

“Really Mag?” 
I said.  My hands on both hips disgusted. 
She just twiddled her thumbs and looked at me all innocent like. The more I interrogated her, the more elaborate the Act of God. 

“It’s my namesake.”  She says trying to explain. The story is, somehow, out of nowhere, a massive wind swept across the porch and disbanded from its swirling vortex a mob of ugly, hairy, big nosed trolls who tied Mag to the porch post, and then proceeded to ransack the game like a bunch of Viking savages. Mag was
as shocked as I was or that’s the way she played it off.  I stared at her in awe,
not that it was unbelievable but because Mag only used her strange imagination
when it was to her benefit. 
Supposedly, before they left, all thirty of them licked her on the cheek with their crusty inflamed troll tongues.

“Really Mag, a mob of trolls?” 

“Yep.” She said. “And they were horrific. Smelled bad too.” 

Mag finally stopped her rant and continued our card game and t
his time I was prepared.  Come what may. 

“I thought you had to go to the bathroom?”  Mag says jittery and nervous.    

“Nope.”  My bladder was empty. Trolls or not, I wasn’t leaving. Mag is hesitant and her shoulders see-saw up and down. I’m cautious because I know better than to underestimate her.  Just when she has a look of defeat—she’ll swell up and flip your world upside down.  And right on time, 
she does
.  The goddess of the south did what she does best—
with or without
 my weak bladder.  She caused a distraction. The player was about to get played.  My weakness—became Mag’s trump card.   

“Hey look!”  She pointed to the leaning rail. “It’s the crackles.”  I was compelled to look before the epic debacle occurred.  Simultaneously,
out of the corner of my eye, I saw several things happen.  My head swiveled towards the
defenseless crackle hanging by its tiny claws on the wooden post and that’s when I witnessed the mishap, the national emergency, the act of God, the tragic destruction.
It was brilliant
.  Mag stood up gracefully and swiftly leg maneu
vered her way across the porch. 
Her big foot desecrated the swordfish and with one twist, the goldfish was all jacked up and disjointed.  A few more karate moves, and the tuna was stuck halfway inside the floor slats with doglegged fins and
an assortment of upturned fish parts.  When it was over,
I was furious. I wanted to throw Mag off the porch and settle things right then and there but my love for crackles overtook my desire to beat the big-L off my sister’s forehead.
Basically, she was saved by a crackle. 

We had always been fascinated with
the strange creatures. 
Their transparent skin left my mind to wander to the empty places inside me, fragile and void, hanging and waiting, and looking for place. Crackles must be handled with care, loose fingers, no constriction, no binding.  If you mishandle them, their thin barrel chest will cave in and their tiny feet will fall off, plus they make the most awful bone crushing sound since the dawn of mankind.  And bugs. 

When we first discovered them, I made the mistake of plucking one off the tree bark and literally thought my spine cracked into splinters. It was a lesson that garnered the creature a change of namesake.  Their official encyclopedia bug name was 
Auchenorrhynchake
 which sounded like a hock of throat spit. For short, they were called Cicadas but that still sounded a lot like French and we didn’t have no
French in the South, so Mag and I fixed it. 
On a hot summer day in Pine Log, Texas, the Cicadas died and the crackles were born.  
And the south rose again.
   

Over the years, we collected armies of crackles and stored them in shoe boxes. Last summer we counted sixty seven gut-less creatures staring back at us. We dressed them up into wild, crazy characters using leaves, moss, pine cones and grass. We had puppet shows, villages and towns of crackles. Two of them had patchwork shorts like us. We even created a town similar to Pine Log.  It had one Dairy Queen, one grocery store, one hundred and fifty Baptist churches, and one beer joint on the other side of the Salt Flats River Bridge. Dad always said Pine Log was the wettest dry county in Texas. When folks said they was going across the river—they were not talking about fishing.

Mag and I are proud to say our best prank involved two ninja crackles, experts at covert missions and willing to die for the cause.  Well,
okay
… actually they were already dead but the shell, it was fully committed. We painted their bubble eyes blood red with a yellow dot in the center and disguised their bodies with black coats of paint. We chiseled a sword out of sticks, painted it silver and glued it to their hands.

Maw Sue finally settled in for her evening nap and we made our move. We tiptoed across the squeaky floor, snickering and giggling, barely able to keep it all in. Mag was a clumsy boob and hit the roll away table beside the refrigerator. The three tiered table squealed out. The statue of Jesus holding a baby lamb went down face first. We froze. The table eek’d in judgment then fell silent. I gave Mag the OH-MY-GOD-THAT-TABLE-HAS-BEEN-THERE-FOREVER look of doom. Maw Sue snorted
and rooted around.  W
e went on lock down.

“We’re going to hell.” Mag lip synced the words.

“We live in Pine Log.” I lip synced back. “I think we’re already there.”

Maw Sue was in a deep sleep again so we moved out. We slithered in like serpents. Looking back on it now, I figure we should have turn coat
and ran when we had the chance.  Heeded
the baby Jesus moment as a sign, instead, we turned heathen and mounted two ninja crackles on the rim of her glasses. The hardest part was not laughing out loud. A few times, she’d jerk her arms or legs and we’d freeze up nearly busting a gut giggling. Mag kept glancing over at Jesus and the squished lamb. I couldn’t take my eyes off the bloody red stone around Maw Sue’s neck. It watched me angrily a
nd pulsating with my every move.  A
few times it reached
out with its wet liquid fingers and I flinched.  Mag looked at me weird but we
moved out fast and swift. On the way out, Mag up-righted the savior and petted the lamb as to get us back in the saviors good graces. It took a while to get out the door without the bell clanging loud and giving us up. We hid behind the chicken coop for an hour, laughing and cutting up. We imagined her waking up from a dead sleep, staring into two bug faces. The enormous zoom on her bifocals would make them triple in size. The more I laughed—the more I saw the statue of Jesus giving me the stink eye.

Just when I started to regret the whole thing, we heard a scream and a loud plunk.  Loud plunks are never good signs.  Maw Sue came barreling out on the porch madder than a
boar hog with his nuts cut off.  A
ccording to dad, this is the maddest any southerner can get and still keep their genitalia.  She paced back and forth a good five minutes, then slammed the washing machine lid down with a loud reverberating clang that made us
shake. 
She reached for the wall and pulled off the whelp maker. At this point, I could hear Mag’s knees knocking together. Maw Sue lifted her flowery skirt and whopped her bare thighs a good one. Her skin sizzled and sent out shock waves
of laughter. 
Mag and I knew what it meant.