The Yorkville Public Library will be hosting its first annual Author Event, Saturday, March 28th, 2015 from 10am-2pm. If you're in the Yorkville, Illinois or Chicagoland area and have some free time, stop by and say hello. Just posting this as a reminder that I'll be there signing and selling copies of my books. A list of all participating authors is provided below...hope to see some of your smiling faces there.
Author ~ Photographer ~ Artist ~ (Actively Blogging Since January 10, 2012)
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Sunday, March 1, 2015
Old Norse Gale
"Old Norse Gale" is a short story I recently finished. I've shared over a dozen original short stories and poems on this blog, which can be found in the links to the right. Thanks to all who take the time to read the stories, musings and such. As always, all work is copyright protected (©Veronica Randolph Batterson).
Old Norse Gale
By Veronica Randolph
Batterson
(©Veronica Randolph Batterson)
The wind
howled. Its force shook the walls
and rattled the old shutters, which barely hung on as they slammed against the
house. The lights flickered in the
dark, dimming then illuminating, fighting to stay lit as the nor’easter battered
the coast with ferocious strength.
Waves pounded the shoreline, leaping high over trees and flooding the
earth.
He huddled in the
corner waiting for the water to seep under the door. It would slip in and then recede, before invading the wooden
planks like a snake creeping across the ground. The aftermath meant a musty and fishlike smell that lingered
for months.
They told him he
should sell the place and it was in times like this that he wished he’d
listened. But the old homestead
meant too much to him to part with it; the walls held secrets close to his
heart. So he dealt with Mother
Nature’s hell and fury, cleaned up after her and lived the rest of the time
isolated with his thoughts. He’d
die in the place, he was sure of it.
Thunder bellowed,
fighting to be heard over all the angry sounds of the storm. Lightning accompanied it, the sudden
flash causing him to jump. He
pulled the coat tighter across his chest, as if doing so would provide protection
against the battering gale. It
caused him to think of his grandfather.
His ancestor relished storms such as this one; the man’s Scandinavian
blood toughened him for it.
Denmark had been his native country and he often spoke of their Viking
heritage with reverence.
“Never you worry,
these storms are galinn, a voice from
God,” he remembered the man saying, the Old Norse tongue slipping as it often
did. He never understood his
grandfather’s language, but he loved the sound of it. The burrs and the rolls slid from his tongue, creating the
oddest resonance, but it was soothing.
And the man’s reference to “God” varied, sometimes using “gods” instead,
a nod to the pre-Christianity ways of his ancestors.
He had never felt
afraid when his grandfather was near, a feeling he’d missed for decades. Now he was an old man himself, with
nothing much to show for it and no one left to remember his time on earth. He’d been stubborn in his life, loving
passionately only one woman, and caring little for the rest. His grandfather, the man who had raised
him, chastised him for his ways.
“Ye’ll regret
your choices, mark my words,” came the man’s retort, “a lesser man wouldn’t
care, but I know ye do.”
He did care and
he hated himself for it. Caring
meant feeling so deeply that all of life’s hurts wounded your soul. Love and compassion were words that
wrecked havoc with a person’s life; physical pain was an easy fix, but not your
core, he reasoned. And he learned
a lesson with the woman he had loved.
“Not your heart,”
he muttered, as the storm raged and tree limbs brushed the roof. “Too much disappointment there.” So he spent a lifetime of numbing
himself to the world’s ways, of feeling nothing and getting by day to day.
A sudden crack
then a loud boom filled his ears and shook the foundation of his house. He guessed lightning had just struck a
tree, bringing it down and by the sound of things, it barely missed falling on
his roof. He figured if a
tree had taken his home but spared him, he’d viewed it as rotten luck, even
though he would finally be rid of the place. There would be no rebuilding after that.
“That wind is
beastly, son,” came his grandfather’s voice. The memory brought a vision of the old man standing outside
during a hellish storm, his gray hair wild about his head and a smile plastered
on his face. Soaked but standing
tall, his grandfather was calm and at peace during chaos and the elements. He wished he could’ve been more like the
man.
No matter how
hard he tried to emulate the strength and kindness he’d been shown, he
couldn’t. Put simply, he was weak
and hot-tempered and no amount of numbing himself from emotions doused the
simmer inside of him. He’d been
hurt by the woman he loved and in turn he hurt the others who followed
her. The resentment built a wall and
nothing could tear it down. He’d
never allowed it.
“Ah, my John,
open your heart, son,” his grandfather whispered. He heard the voice over the bellowing wind. “Let it feel.”
It was as if the
elder man’s soul had returned, fighting to be heard over the storm but falling
on ears that were too old to change.
“But wait for me,
Grandpa Jack,” he heard himself say, running after the bearded and larger than
life man. He’d been about seven
and wanted nothing more than to go fishing with his idol that day. But dark clouds hung low and the water
grew choppy.
“Ah, we’ll not
fish today,” replied his grandfather.
“But why?”
“That color in
the sky is not good for fishing.
And the water is fussing a little too much.”
“What is it
fussing about?”
“Well, let me
see,” he began, rubbing his chin. His
whiskers slid between his fingers as he looked toward the ocean. “It could be she’s a little tired. It’s a lot of work providing fish for
us to eat and water to sail upon.
Sometimes she has to remind us to appreciate her.”
“Then can we fish
when she’s done reminding?”
His grandfather
had thrown back his head and roared with laughter. The sound carried across the wind and echoed through the
trees. “Ye’ll be the death of me,
lad,” he’d said, adding, “yes, we’ll fish when the reminding is over.”
A pane in the
front window shattered, bringing his thoughts to the present, while the lights
flickered one last time before losing the fight with Mother Nature. He sat in the darkness, the flashlight
and lantern at his side. He made no
effort to use them. He didn’t need
to see the inevitable.
The old house had
been his refuge, a place his grandfather built. It stood as sentinel more decades than he had been around;
it weathered the storms outside and those within him. He observed and learned from his ancestor the way to be a
good man, while the walls watched his struggles to follow in the man’s
footsteps. He could never desert
it. The very gales his grandfather
loved would claim it and then it would be right.
“Are ye ready,
lad?” the tired voice asked.
“I’m ready,” he
replied to the empty room. He
could feel the water at his feet and hear the boards creaking beneath. The wind continued to fist its anger,
seizing anything in its path; a tree branch broke through another window. His Viking gods were telling him to
find safety but he couldn’t move.
Then he remembered the man, standing tall in the storm, face uplifted to
catch the ocean’s spray upon his skin.
Calm and at peace. He felt
strength for the first time in his life.
“Can we fish
today, Grandpa Jack?”
“Aye, today will
be good.”
“I’ll catch the
biggest fish for supper.”
“Will ye now?”
“I promise!”
“Then are ye
ready, lad?’
“I’m ready.”
He opened the
door, letting the storm enter. It
seized the house, as if reclaiming something long lost. And it was right.
©Veronica Randolph Batterson
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