Novel Treatments / Octavia Pompeii, Chapter One
Octavia Pompeii
Chapter One
Fuse pushed the barn door open and found a girl sleeping on the hay. He blinked, staring at her, not believing his eyes.
After a moment he walked over and nudged her foot with the toe of his boot. “Hey, wake up.”
The girl curled into a ball, shivering from the cold, but didn’t open her eyes.
She wore patched overalls, baggy on her small frame, and a gray canvas jacket. Her shoes were the shiny patent leather kind, but worn out, with no laces, like something from the trash dump. She had no socks.
”Ransom,” Fuse said to the miniature horse. “Why are you sleeping with her?”
The little horse rolled away from the girl and scrambled to his feet. He went to Fuse and nickered as he bumped his head against the boy’s hip and sniffed his hand.
”No.” Fuse shifted the metal bucket to his right hand and scratched the horse between the ears. “I don’t have a candy cane for you this morning.” He turned back to the girl and noticed a battered old suitcase with a leather belt cinched around the middle to keep it closed.
”Where did she come from, Ransom?” He tilted his metal bucket so the horse could get at the oats inside.
”You have to get out of here,” Fuse said, raising his voice to wake her. “This is not a Gypsy hotel.” She might be a Gypsy, Fuse thought. Dark tan complexion, tangled raven hair.
The girl jerked awake, sitting up in the hay. She glanced around, apparently trying to remember where she was. When her eyes fell on the small suitcase, she grabbed it, clutching it to her chest.
”What are you doing here?” he asked.
She shook her head, glaring up at him. Her eyes were a dark brown and seemed to smolder with defiance.
He watched her breath make quick little clouds of mist as she exhaled in the freezing December air, the way Ransom did after galloping away from a pack of dogs.
She didn’t answer his question.
”Well, you have to go. We don’t need beggars sleeping in our barn.” His words made bigger clouds than hers. He pointed toward the door.
She glanced that way and stood, holding her suitcase by the strap.
Fuse watched her brush bits of hay from her shoulder and then she raised her chin and held his gaze. Her dark hair was long and straight, reaching below her waist. He admired her determination and wished she would talk to him. She was shorter than he and maybe a year younger—thirteen or so, but she wasn’t backing down, not a bit.
”All right, don’t talk,” Fuse said. “But I don’t have time for a staring contest. Come on, Handsome Ransom.” He turned away from the girl. “Let’s see how Stormy’s doing.”
Ransom ran ahead of Fuse, toward the back of the huge barn. Pigeons cooed in the rafters and fluttered around, then settled on their lofty perches, cocking their heads to watch the little horse below.
Fuse paused beside the Model T Ford and checked to see if any of the tires were flat. The car was only four years old and in excellent condition, but it hadn’t been on the road since his father’s accident. Fuse drove it around the farm twice a week to keep the engine from seizing up, but never out on the road. Only one tire was flat, but it would have to wait until he got home from school.
The little horse galloped back to Fuse and pranced around him, kicking up the dirt.
”Go on, I’m right behind you.”
Ransom ran to a closed half-door leading into one of the stalls and jiggered the latch with his nose. The bolt slid out of the catch and the stall door swung open.
”Hey, when did you learn to do that?”
Another miniature horse, a palomino female, stood beside a pile of hay, breathing hard.
”How you doing, Stormy?” Fuse knelt and stroked her huge belly. “I bet you’ll have your baby today, you know that?” He glanced over his shoulder, toward the stall door behind him. “If she had any brains,” he whispered, “she would have slept in here, where it’s warm.” He stood, went to the small kerosene stove mounted on the wall and unscrewed the cap on the fuel tank. “Half full. Enough to keep you warm all day.” The mare nuzzled his hand and he stroked the thick blonde forelock hanging over her soft eyes.
”I see you ate all your oats.” He emptied his bucket into the wooden trough and stepped away so she could get at it. “I’ll clean out your stall and then I have to go help Papa before I go to school. Ransom, I don’t know how you learned to open that latch, but you better leave Stormy alone today. I think you’re going to be a daddy pretty soon, but she won’t need you in here bothering her.”
Ransom busied himself eating from the trough beside Stormy.
Fuse took the water bucket to dump it behind the barn. He filled it with fresh water and then raked out her stall. After he pitchforked a fresh layer of straw into her stall he checked the heater once more.
”Come on, Ransom.” Fuse stroked Stormy’s back and patted her hindquarters. He latched the door and Ransom galloped ahead, toward the wide front door of the barn. The horse stopped at the pile of hay and sniffed around.
Fuse glanced at the body-shaped depression in the hay and then back at the horse. “Well, she couldn’t stay here, right? We have twenty-five hungry creatures to feed as it is.”
Every day, before dawn, he put out a bushel of corn for the pigs, two coffee cans full of scratch for the chickens, plus a bale of alfalfa for the three milk cows. He fed the two draft horses and then milked the cows while they were busy eating. His last chore was to run the milk through a hand-cranked cream separator and then place the five-gallon milk and cream cans out by the road to be picked up by the Virginia Rural Milk Co-Op.
Ransom lifted his big brown eyes to Fuse and tilted his head.
”Beside that” Fuse said, “she probably eats like a horse, anyway.”
Ransom snorted and turned for the door, perking his ears toward the outside.
Fuse picked up a armload of toe sacks and dropped them beside the pile of hay on his way out the door. “But she was kind of skinny, wasn’t she?”
The first rays of bright morning sunshine sparkled off the frosted grass. The girl’s tracks led from the barn door toward the back of the house. Halfway to the house, she made a sharp left turn.
”Now why’d she do that?” Fuse followed the tracks to the point where she turned left. He knelt down and studied the imprints in the frost. They led to the board fence of Ransom’s paddock, where she apparently climbed the fence and then walked across the field toward a line of trees, a half-mile to the west. “I figured she’d go down to the road and try to hitch a ride. Why did she go to the woods instead of heading for town?” He reached down to touch one of the tracks. “She’s got a hole in the sole of her left shoe, too.” He shook his head and stood to follow Ransom toward the gate leading into the paddock.
The horse nuzzled the latch, but couldn’t get it open.
Fuse worked the frozen latch free and opened the gate for Ransom to go inside. Fuse followed him. “You stay in here and don’t cause any trouble. I’m going to fix Papa’s breakfast and then I’m leaving for school.” Ransom galloped toward the water trough. “I’ll be home by 4:30. Maybe by then we’ll have a new little stallion. I wonder if he’ll be a palomino like Stormy or buckskin like you.”
The layer of ice broke easily under the edge of Fuse’s fist. He tossed the chunks of ice out of the way so the horse could drink.
”See you later, Handsome Ransom.”
##
Across the field, just inside the trees, Rajani turned her collar up and huddled against the trunk of a tall pine tree, trying to escape the icy wind. Her body shivered as she watched the boy toss some things into a wire basket attached to the handlebars of his bike. He pushed the bike off and ran alongside until he gained speed, and then jumped on, swinging his leg over the seat. He stood on the pedals to pump down the long driveway.
She wished she had a heavy coat and warm gloves like his.
At the end of the drive, he skidded sideways on the loose gravel. She caught her breath, but he put his foot out and leaned into the turn, smoothly swinging around to the left. He stood again and pumped with strong, measured strides, flying down the center of the country road. She waited until he rode over the hill and out of sight before she picked up her suitcase and ran back toward the farmhouse.
##
Fuse usually rode the four miles to his high school in twenty minutes, unless rain muddied the road, or snow—that was the worst for riding a bike.
He pumped to the top of Caroline Bell Crest where the gravel gave way to a smooth blacktop pavement and then he coasted downhill toward the town of Wovenbridge, Virginia.
He slowed and then skidded his bike to a stop when he came to Harvey Winchester country club. The tennis courts were empty, but sometimes he saw people out playing when he rode by, even in the cold weather. There were six courts, all neat and well maintained, the nets tight and straight. What a contrast they were to the old cement court at his school—cracked in several places, with faded white stripes on the cement and a tree limb propping up the net in the center.
What I wouldn’t give to play out there, just once. He glanced at his old wooden racquet in the basket of the bike, sighed and hurried on down the road.
Fuse’s fourteenth birthday had been three weeks earlier, on December 1, 1927. He didn’t receive any presents, but that didn’t bother him—there wasn’t anything he really needed, except maybe some new tennis balls and one particular book, “Physical Diagnosis and Clinical Procedures”.
His father always embarrassed him in the past when he bragged to the other farmers about his son being the youngest kid in his senior class of forty-seven students. In fact, the youngest senior ever at Monroe High. The last time he earned less than an “A”, his father told the other men, was in Mrs Caldwell’s third grade—she gave him a “B” in penmanship.
Sometimes he wanted to slip away and hide when his dad went on about him. But now, he would be happy just to hear a simple “Hello” or “How are you, son?”
He raced down Winchester Avenue and glided onto the schoolyard, already halfway dismounted when he nosed his bike into the rack. He grabbed his books, lunch pail and tennis racquet, then ran up the steps, dodging kids and teachers. Once inside, he turned right, down the main hallway, and into the library. He slid into a chair, quietly put his gear on the floor and whispered, “Go!”
Benjamin Clayton moved his white king pawn and slapped the button on the timer, stopping his clock and starting Fuse’s clock. Fuse moved his black king pawn and hit the button.
Every morning, Clayton set up the chessboard and had the clocks ready. They usually had time for three or four games of speed chess before their first class at nine.
##
Rajani made it halfway across the pasture before Ransom galloped out to meet her. He raced around the running girl and then ran along beside her toward the farmhouse. When they reached the board fence, she shoved her suitcase under the bottom plank and climbed over. She grabbed the suitcase and started toward the house.
Ransom whinnied and she turned back to him. “Shh.” She put a finger to her lips and patted his soft nose. That seemed to satisfy him, so she ran for the house.
She eased the screen door open and stepped onto the enclosed porch, where she saw another screen door leading into the house. She pressed herself against the wall by the door, listening.
Her breathing slowed and she strained to hear the sounds of any movement inside. Several moments passed. She heard nothing.
The spring on the second screen door screeched like a strangled chicken. She gasped and squeezed her eyes shut, listening for a voice or the sound of footsteps coming toward the door from inside. But there was not a sound. She held the screen door in place with her foot and reached for the doorknob. It wouldn’t turn. Her hand shook from fear and cold. She held her stiff fingers to her lips to blow a warm breath on them. She gripped the knob and tried again.
She heard a loud click when the knob turned and the bolt pulled back. She slipped through, gently closing the door behind her. The warmth of the kitchen wrapped around her like a soft blanket. It seemed as if she had been cold forever.
The first thing she saw was a plate of biscuits on the table. She tiptoed softly over the floorboards, toward the food. Still, she heard nothing. Does the boy live here alone? She put her suitcase on the table, grabbed a biscuit and wolfed it down. Oh, how good it is to eat again. There were five biscuits left. Across the kitchen, a metal pitcher sat on the counter beside a plate covered with a tea towel. She went to the pitcher and peeked inside--water. As she drank from the spout of the pitcher, she lifted the tea towel to check the plate and almost choked on the water--there were six strips of bacon on the plate. She grabbed one and ate it in two bites, not caring if it was beef or not. She washed it down with more water.
She took the bacon and the water to the table, where the biscuits were. She ate all the bacon, four more biscuits and drank half the pitcher of water. Even back home in India, food never tasted so good.
With the last biscuit in her hand, she slipped over to the doorway leading to the front part of the house. She peeked around the corner and instantly jerked back—someone was in there!
“Hai Rama, meh margayi!” she whispered-Dear God, I am found out!
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I liked it a lot. The writing style is very professional, but doesn’t draw attention to itself. The descriptions are vivid and believable. I came away wanting to know more about what happens to Fuse and to the girl.
A couple of minor textual suggestions:
“Fuse picked up a armload…” “A” should be replaced with “an” here.
“What I wouldn’t give to play out there, just once.” The first person sounded weird to me here. I guess I would have replaced “I” with “he”.
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First of all, the title intrigued me, which is always good. Then I was pleasantly surprised, or intrigued, I should say, as I read on and was told the setting was 1927 AD.
I even liked the story itself. It just seemed to get going. But does it end this suddenly or did you forget to post a part of it?
Cheers!
You plunge the reader right into the scene with refreshing deftness. Excellent. In general, you describe this scene very well. At about page 4, however, I’m wondering where the girl has gone. Is she gone? Is she still waiting in the barn? The reader’s knowing that she is still hanging around would intensify Fuse’s musings. Further on of course, I discover that she has (sort of) gone; but as I read it, Fuse never actually sees her go.
The change of perspective is well executed. Characterization of Rajani very good.
Your placement of this is fine under “Novel Treatments”. I wish Urbis had the category “Literary Fiction”. Your prose style is excellent, easy to read, and beaming with talent.
Proofreading notes:
seemed to smolder (why not simply smoldered with defiance? Why seemed?)
toe sacks (tote sacks?)
she made a sharp = she had made
I like the premice of this story, and I think, depending on where you go with it, it could be great. I’m intrigued because there were so few teenage Hindu girls living in Virginia at that time with even fewer of them on the run. It got my attention. The problem is that it doesn’t get there fast enough. I had to patiently wait for it to unfold. Had I picked this up in a bookstore, I would have put it down before I finished the first page. It’s just I’m a sucker for the pretty face of a carefully crafted hook. I assume that Fuse will have additional dealings with his univited house guest. I also thought that a fourteen year old boy’s reaction to finding a sleeping girl in his barn might be more along the lines of thankiing God for his great good fortune, but he has no reaction. It’s almost as if he forgot all about her. That doesn’t seem likely.
Here are additional impressions that may or may not be of any use.
“and found a girl sleeping on” You may want to add additional information about the girl up fromt. Was she a little girl, young woman. That she’s the same age as he adds tension.
“breath make quick little clouds” I got hung up here. You might explain how clouds are quick, or just get rid of quick.
“came to Harvey Winchester country club” vs. came to the Winchester country club. Unless Harvey is somehow important, his Christian name is not needed.
“Her breathing slowed and she strained to hear the sounds…” if she ran across the pasture her heart would be pounding in her ears. Also, you can add more to disclose her nature. Was she used to sneaking into peoples homes?
“Does the boy live here alone?” At 12 or 13 she would know that he doesn’t.
“of bacon on the plate. She grabbed one and ate it in two bites, not caring if it was beef or not.” Bacon does not come from cattle, at her age she would know that, too. It does disclose the fact that she’d Hindu, but that could be worded, since she knew it did not come from a cow.
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