How Blue Can You Get?

By Beverlyn Elliott

HOW BLUE CAN YOU GET? These stories originate from a daughter of the south, who summered in the midwest as a child. Having grown up in the birthplace of the blues, the author has a deep and abiding love for that genre of music. The stories she writes share a common theme of difficult life situations that can also be considered a type and shadow of blues. There is an undercurrent of blues that inhabits all of life, the essence of which she has attempted to capture in these flash and short fiction stories: A gentle giant of a black man protects a woman running away from a circus in the post-depression south. A mother and son try to salvage an ailing relationship after the death of a favored son. The first zombie apocalypse occurs during Greek Antiquity. A four year old traverses the vicious circle of life in the hands of neglectful parents. A couple unravels after the delivery of their stillborn child. A woman finally finds the courage to confront an abusive husband.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beverlyn Elliott
• Release date: Dec 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781524286378

Book preview

DEDICATION

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To my husband, Joe, who has never given me the kind of blues the female protagonists in my stories have experienced, and for which I am eternally grateful.

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Table of Contents

KINDRED SPIRITS

CELLULITE

PRINCESS OF TIDES

SMOTHER LOVE

DREAM DEFERRED

THE FIRST ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

HOLY INSANITY

AN UNORTHODOX BEDTIME STORY

VICIOUS CIRCLE

THE DEVIL’S TEARS

AN AMAZONIAN FABLE

VIRGIN STONED

BLUES ICON

MISCARRIAGE OF A MARRIAGE

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

THE SHADOWS OF GENERATIONS

A PRAYER FOR SELECTIVE MEMORY

MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE

BEWARE OF CAREGIVERS WHO COME WEARING CHEAP WIGS

BLUES ON A COUNTRY ROAD

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How Blue Can You Get?

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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I am indebted to Douglas Campbell, who thoughtfully edited this work in preparation for publication.

It would be remiss of me if I did not recognize all the early writers who have given my words a read, and invaluable feedback. I will attempt to name them, but if I miss anyone please accept my apologies and know that it is my failing memory and not my lack of appreciation that caused the oversight:

Michele Milburn

Janine Weathers

Caryn Stevens

Nicole Wolverton

Angel Lawson

Elizabeth De Vos

Aimee Grosso Hadley

Erica Scoles Dugdale

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I would especially like to thank all my colleagues at Zoetrope.com and the members of the Flash Factory who made most, if not all, of the stories in this collection possible through the invaluable feedback you gave through workshops. You are too many to list, but know who you are!

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KINDRED SPIRITS

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The men in sheets warned they’d be back, but that didn’t seem to bother Rufus Moses. A colored man offering refuge to a white female houseguest made him a prime target, but he was a giant of a man who looked as if he could take care of himself. His gentle nature, however, convinced you, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. I’d lived at Rufus’s six months when I was spotted by some white passersby, and the next night we were visited by nocturnal riders.

Startled out of our sleep by a nightmare—dogs barked incessantly, horses hooves pounded like thunder, a horn blared—punctuated by shouted racial epithets, as a cross burned in the front yard.

My mama abandoned me to the white world hoping I would never have to experience the horror of racism. Shaking with fear, I crawled to the window to see a car and a dozen men on horseback circling the cross.

Rufus thought of me first. Don’t be afraid, Miss Sarah. I’m gon’ handle it.

Rufus hid me in a tornado shelter under the floorboards in his kitchen, so I didn’t get to witness how he ran them off.  I heard a commotion of bloodcurdling screams, horses retreating, and the backfiring car, fading in the distance.

Maybe I should go, I told Rufus after they were gone. Then they’ll leave you alone.

I won’t let ‘em hurt you, he said. I wish I was man enough to make you want to stay, but you got a home here as long as you want it.

During the height of the Great Depression, I ran away from the circus with Cyrus, my capuchin monkey, tucked in a straw handbag, and the clothes on my back. My husband, Floyd, a menagerie man for the Ghazvini Brothers Majestic, lured me into circus life from a Catholic orphanage when I was sixteen. The Ringmaster, impressed with my gams, developed an act for me in the show: Sarah Simian and her Amazing Apes. I trained Cyrus and the other primates to perform for the rubes we gypped—until I fell from grace.

Cyrus and I took a bus as far south as the change in my purse would take us, until we stumbled onto Rufus’s farm in rural Rankin County, Mississippi. When Rufus came in from working the fields his dog discovered us, stowed