02-25-2019, 09:01 PM
It's been trumpeted about by scholars and such that there ain't much within the last, oh, thirty, forty years or so to tell a good tale about.
Seems there's always been this more grandeur-esque mystique, some fabled je ne sais quoi of sorts surrounding the natural acclaim of the lives led by generations 'Lost' through 'Silent' that helped bring about a more awe-inspiring feel to the yarnings of those times.
They really ain't all that wrong either. Shoot. Just a quick glance at the new release section in any bookstore - the few there are of them anymore - you're left with but a banal selection of your typical Grisham, Clancy, Patterson mysterious militant monotony, enough of which to leave one wonder sick. There for damn sure ain't no modern Twain or Faulkner hiding about anywhere among it.
Well, all that's fittin' ready to change. I hope.
The story I'm fixing to unfold for Y'all took place in the winter of two thousand eleven, in the small little Franklin County, Kentucky community called Bellepoint. I was a mere seven years old - a fairly bright, I suppose, wonder-filled little lady in the midst of a long overdue winter break from school.
We all know how cunning and oppressive the educational load of a second grader can be, right? With all the drool-inducing hackneyed pledge routines, language arts gobbledygook and filling out multiplication tables until your hand crooks over. Well, it was just about enough to make me question continuing on this whole dang old life conundrum thing already! But there were some things about school that were able to capture my imaginative attention.
One of those things I had been studying on for a while since...
Just a couple of months before school let out for winter break, we went on a field trip to the Frankfort Cemetery, to Daniel Boone's gravesite. Daniel Boone was pioneer and explorer, one of the original American folk heroes and the man generally credited for discovering Kentucky.
It was on what would have been his two hundredth-something birthday. November second, just a day after my own birthday. I didn't really get much that year. A new softball and mitt, a winter jacket and a used bicycle. Money at home was beyond tight, so I was treating this field trip as an added gift.
The cartoony history of Boone that had been dealt to us in class the weeks leading up to the trip had really aroused my sense of adventure. I mean, heck! Hearing about a boy taking out grizzly bears at the lowly age of thirteen? The feller running for like two hundred miles straight after being captured by the evil Shawnee to warn the folks back at his Boonesburrow settlement of the savage's plan of attack. And then, of course, there was the...
"Treasure, Dolly. I seent it!"
Big Rhonda turned to me on the school bus traveling to the cemetery trip and said. A tremble of excitement filling her vocal cords.
Oh yeah. That's my name by the way. Dolly. Dolly Waters. Sadly I was named after some big tittied country singer who's only real appeal stemmed from her chest, and ain't talking about her singing ability.
And this adorable overweight, blue-eyed, redheaded with a gap-toothed smile matching mine sitting to my right is my trusted road dog, Big Rhonda. That name wasn't by mistake either. See Rhonda had failed kindergarten. Not once, but twice.
Like who in the hell fails the coloring and counting grade? Guess it was more of a behavioral deal. I'd heard folks say she was autistic, but I didn't really understand what that meant. Well that was Big Rhonda though, and so needless to say, she towered over the rest of us second graders.
But I was lucky because I was her only best friend. And she was mine too.
"Nuh-uh! When did you see it?"
I asked her with an incredulous turn of the head and a stiff nudge to her ribs with my elbow,
"YES-HUH! Dylan had a piece of it. He showed me before he left for Fa-lood-ja."
She quarreled,
Dylan Madden. Rhonda's big brother. Dylan was pretty much like the coolest guy ever. In a way, he was a lot like our Daniel Boone. He was full of adventure and mystery, and handsome to boot! Tall, strong and blond with these dark green eyes that lit up every room he went into. He and my father was actually close friends. The two went to school and played football together, except Dylan was an All American. Pretty much, my father and Dylan was like total opposites.
They say this one time Frankfort High was playing in the state championship game things was really looking bleak for the long-suffering Frankfort Panthers. Down five points, fifty yards away from pay dirt and three seconds left on the clock. The evil empire, winners of ten straight state titles, the Newport Pirates, was expecting one last pass play. But the ol' Frankfort ball coach had an ace in the hole. Dylan Madden. He called a fullback blast and wouldn't you know? Dylan ran that ball fifty dang yards with like the entire Newport defensive line on his back! Touchdown!
Yeah, it was pretty amazing. Of course, I wasn't old enough to remember. Yeah, Mom and Dad had me while they was in high school. Well, Dad was still in school anyhow. Mom not so much. But anyway. After school, Dylan Madden stuck around and helped out the community. After the Great Recession of two thousand and eight, folks like us in Kentucky was hit especially hard.
The Fruit of the Loom factory where my daddy and Rhonda's daddy worked, up and moved to Mexico. So Dylan Madden walked out on his full-ride college scholarship and instead helped out at the soup kitchen. Feeding the poor. Building up and working local community gardens so folks could eat off the land. Providing free childcare for moms who suddenly had to start picking up jobs to help out with the bills.
For all of his hard work and community service, on top of already being a hometown hero, the mayor gave Dylan Madden a key to the city! He was a really righteous fella'. About a year or so ago, Dylan Madden went off to fight the evil terrorists in Iraq, there was a big parade for him downtown and everything before he left. For all of the service he provided for us here at home, he was ready to go off and serve his country abroad. I'm not really sure how I felt about it. Betrayed maybe? The world had enough of its own heroes. Dylan Madden was ours.
But anyway, Dylan was always telling me and Big Rhonda about Daniel Boone's hidden treasure. Said it was a big ol' bag of gold coins that Boone had stolen from the Shawnee. Dylan claimed that was the real reason that they had captured Boone and tried torturing him. Payback for him stealing their ancient backing to their bartering system. A savage Fort Knox of sorts if you will.
So, I guess it's pretty easy to see why I had been salivating over the tales of Daniel Boone in school. Especially now that Dylan Madden had run off to fight for Uncle Sam. I was desperate for adventure. Something, anything to break the routine cycle of adolescence amidst southern impoverishment that like, just absolutely kept life at an eking grind of misery. It was like hurrying up to wait for nothing to happen.
Nothing always had a fine way of happening around here.
So many dark nights sitting on the living room floor. The walls dimly lit by the glow of the television screen. Mom out seeing friends and what not. Dad home from work from his second job, but too tired to have any time for me. He was a lovable guy. But he too was up to his eyeballs in the vast nothingness that was Frankfort, Kentucky anymore. It was like he was totally drained, and not just in a physical way.
I'd cover him up on the recliner with his favorite blanket. One of those fuzzy ones with a big picture of a wolf you'd find down at the flea market. And then there I'd be, after having re-read the history portion of my school workbook for like the fifth time in a row, tossing my softball up in the air and catching it in my worn out mitt. The longing for something I hadn't ever really known was quite the motherfucker indeed.
But little did I know then, the whole lot of nothings I'd known was about to stack up into a great big ol' mess of something...
And it all started right when we got off the bus at The Frankfort Cemetery, with what me and Big Rhonda found lying next to Daniel Boone's grave.
-end prologue-
-------------------------------------------------------
Warfare Promo:
"Heart.
It's something you either got, or you ain't got.
In the most literal sense of the doing or the don't-ing there...
Ya' know?
the having or the have-not-ing...
Being in possession of the physical quality of that there organ is the difference between life and death. Well, unless you've got a pacemaker to keep your dying heart working. But seriously, it's the one thing we cannot be without. Even some poor braindead bastard, slowly succumbing to an Arthur Grey promo can be made to breathe so long as someone or some thing is keeping their heart intact.
Awww, too soon? I know. I can be such a cheeky bitch, huh?
But anyway. The figurative sense of all of that previous: 'Yes, Dolly, we know. We get it. Quit rambling now' banality, is almost ironically cliché. Ironic because, well, though it's a sayin' well-stocked and commonplace, it became as such through a deep well of eternal pertinence.
Arthur Grey? This brings me to you, buddy.
In the literal sense? Sure. You're a living, breathing, heart possessing, albeit bland and suspiciously chronic word mispronouncing Columbia student. Kudos to you fer' being right in step with one hundred percent of the population.
But as for the ironically more important, figurative quality? The proverbial backbone? The nerve? The fortitude? The spunk? The resolve? The grit? The gut?
Well Arthur, yer' a heartless little punk. And that's a damn shame ain't it? Especially fer' a newcomer to this fine federation like yer'self. I honestly expected WAAAAY more, dude. But shame on me fer' thinking management got something right. Throwing a rookie into a number one contender's match in his debut? I guess I thought they maybe actually had an eye fer' talent.
Nope. Just the same ol' shit, huh?
And to think! Here you were, Arty, just a week or so ago- after making quick work of the world's most nauseating and long-running dick joke in human form, which by the way is nothing to be running around and clapping about. But here you were on the XWF website babbling about being the contender to The Hart title as if you were proud to have this challenge awaiting you.
And yet, you've not even offered a single word of build toward our contest? What's the matter? Does the thought of facing Dolly Waters leave your heart limp? You get up to fight a homosexual like Dyke, but what? Yer' too busy chain smoking and masturbating to pictures of Morningstars and Battleaxes to even cut one of those ridiculously trite and confusing promos you offered us for Savage?
Well, I'm done waiting for you to show some sack that you obviously don't have. Arthur, after that pitiful display I watched on Savage where you damn near cost Lux in a virtual handicap match- allow me to put it mildly here: you don't stand a fucking chance against me!
You thought you were getting gifted a number one contender's match for The Hart Championship. And literally, you were. Ironic for a heartless piece of shit, I know, but whatever. But for the ironically more important figurative of all of this- you were merely being fast tracked for a tough lesson here in the XWF.
HA!
A teacher's assistant at Columbia being taught a lesson in heart by a fifteen year-old girl.
The 'Hart'...
You either got it like, Dolly Waters. Or...
Yer' too busy fencing.
Fake sword fighting.
Sheesh... where are we finding these people?
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