Flash Friday 4-25-14 "Have some dignity", jangling, crate of stones, Part one (see crab juice etc) in Flash Friday

“I’m maybe ten, feverish, dead center summer on the plains. I’m lying in bed feeling the sweat pooling in my ears. My little sister is out front, her skip rope clickity-clacking on the packed dirt, a counter rhythm to the dry rotation of the fan.

Dust blows against the window and I raise my head, the old 99 coming up the lane. Ma’s riding shotgun, her blind eye to the house, dad pumps the squishy brakes, I mean I can’t see him doing it, it’s just, the 99 … Stops just a foot or two shy of sis. She doesn’t even break stride, she’s always like that. ‘G’won, git, girl,’ pa says then ‘G’won, git gone, girl, g’won.’

And they’s all shrouded in dust, I’m so dry but all the sheets are wet, and it’s like I can feel my sisters pulse hot in my own temples, and I tense like I’m going to get hit and I need to keep the skipping song lyrics straight in my head and …” He just trails off.

“And what?” I have that practiced relaxed look; I mean I have my own. I don’t count many other shrinks among the number of my friends that didn’t throw out all the props once they got their papers. I have a relaxed look when I’m relaxed, too.

“And nothing doc. Shit wasn’t until the first time off planet, 25 maybe 26, I ever saw dirt except in a potting plant, I’m from New Westlake. It’s not like a dream doc, it’s … it’s like a memory. Just not one of mine. You ever heard anything like that?”

“So,” leaning back, legs crossed, hands loose at the wrist and loose at the elbows, “the memory just ends there?”

“It’s not a mem … yeah, sort of. I mean, there’s feelings attached and senses like a dry mouth and a tight jaw and a … a, familiarity?”

I nod.

“A familiarity, like this is more of a composite, like it never ends so bad as, I don’t know or ends well, more like it just happened a lot, and … Am I saying it right? Have you ever heard of anything like this?” I gave him a chit for the commissary, an open script for an anti-depressant as needed. We made another appointment, I put a paternal hand on his shoulder and said something soothing, I mean probably, that’s the sort of thing I do.

Now every Tuesday’s slots were filled with the little sister skipping rope patients. Wednesdays filled up last week with making-out-in-first-rover-getting-caught-by-her dad. The whole third shift kwanset, every man jack, were seeing someone about these things. Made me wonder when I’d start getting them.