Toys, Robert Fuentes larger version
Barren | Tamara Madison
After many months of the mayor’s unsuccessful efforts, the perfect opportunity rode into town in government cars. City-slick officials in their dark suits, stepping quickly in shiny shoes, flashed their badges and tossed around big words. Only their lips moved when they spoke—the rest of their faces remained frozen and numb like their spines and spirits.
Indigo, “a highly recommended domestic candidate,” had been chosen to participate in a medical experiment due to lack of funding to carry out the mission overseas. With a greedy go-ahead from the mayor, a free clinic with some semblance of a doctor and a supposed nurse were placed smack dab at the railroad tracks—in West Indigo, of course. Then, after thanking the mayor and wiping away every speck of their presence, the men rode off as swiftly and surreptitiously as they had come. Pockets plumped and restlessness subdued, the mayor had nothing to do but sit fat and wait.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, no one had much need of the free clinic. The white building housing the white doctor and white nurse clad in bleach-white uniforms did not at all appeal to West Indigoers. Luttie Belle May Hawk Richardson III healed their ailments, and had since anyone could remember. Luttie Belle May was an old, knot-looking woman even when she stood straight and tall. She had been a pretty yaller gal once with the kind of long, wavy raven hair that made men drool. Now, adorned with eagle feathers and shells, her hair still hung long but had not been combed, folks estimated, since before the war—and it looked as though some kind of creature just might live in that nest of nappiness somewhere. Some say she looked like such a knot because she laid hands on folks, absorbed their pain and bore it upon herself.
Luttie Belle May hardly spoke or visited. She tended her garden of collard greens and roots and formulated her potions to be ready for the many troubled souls who knocked upon her door. She was the most respected, most feared soul in town, east or west. Council meetings, town gatherings, holidays, the joining of lives, births and deaths in West Indigo held Luttie Belle May at the helm of all their affairs. She rarely uttered a word, but when she did, folks fell upon their knees and humbled themselves to listen. Luttie Belle May’s house and garden stood as sentinel right near the railroad tracks, directly behind the new clinic.
Mysteriously, only a couple of weeks stood between the clinic installation and the day the rumbling steel birds dove and soared above West Indigo in great display. A sticky, wet, foul-smelling substance sprayed from their bellies, settling onto rooftops, smothering gardens, muffling flowerbeds and drowning wells. Luttie Belle May began hastily making preparations while the Mayor stood safely on his porch, watching with a grimy grin and fondling coins in his pockets.
Within a few days, every man, woman and child had fallen suspiciously ill and desperately ached for healing. When Luttie Belle May’s potions failed them, West Indigoers ignored her warnings and flocked to the clinic for their deliverance. After all, times had changed and Luttie Belle May was getting old; maybe she just wasn’t mixing properly these days. Menfolk, elders and children visited the clinic only on Mondays and Wednesdays. They recovered from the dry coughing, burning rash, bubbling blisters and bleeding noses rather quickly with a few injections and a dose or two of medicine. But although the womenfolk were seen throughout the rest of the week, their wounds did not heal so easily...» next page »