From High in the Mulberry Tree

By Grant Spradling

Moving, funny and intelligent! Reading this collection of short stories is like chatting with an old and treasured friend on a rainy afternoon.

Chloe Pacheco,

FROM HIGH IN THE MULBERRY TREE is memoir told through short stories. In Medicine Show boy is bitten by show business. In Mahogany and 100 percent Rayon Robe a youth feels stirring for far off landsfarther than Oklahoma City or even Tulsa. Night Flight brings together two men who have loved the same man. A guy has an affair with his car in Trans Am. Ivanka is a diva. Chico is a small but indomitable dog who gets involved with a gorgeous red head, drug dealers, a homeless person and an aging gay couple.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 22, 2005
• ISBN: 9781463469399

Grant Spradling

Spradling About twenty five years ago he rented a maid's room in the heart of colonial Mérida, capitol of Mexico's Yucatán. Intrigued by the magnificent Maya civilization, he knuckled down to writing; thus Maya Sacrifice. Spradling has authored From High in the Mulberry Tree, a collection of short stories, countless articles, and is co-creator of two volumes of Imaging the Word. Spradling shares his home in Amarillo, Texas and Mérida with his partner of forty three years and two Maya dogs.

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© 2005 Grant Spradling.All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 01/22/05

ISBN: 1-4208-0785-4 (sc)

ISBN: 1-4208-0786-2 (dj)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-6939-9 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2004098066

Photographs by Clifford A. Ames

To my partner, Clifford A. Ames

and

In memory of: John Judson Dolle

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

FORWARD

RAIN

REFLECTIONS

MEDICINE SHOW

PURPLE FEET

MAHOGANY

ON THE ROAD

THE 100% RAYON MAROON ROBE

ELLIOT

AUNT MILDRED

INVENTION

NIGHT FLIGHT

CACTUS BAR

SOUL THIEF

PASSAGE

CREATION

IVANKA

TRANS AM

SARAH

THE URN OF THE COLARIO

AN INVENTED RECOLLECTION

CHICO: A DOG’S TAIL.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Throughout our long acquaintance, sometimes as colleagues and always as friends, James Milton Buell has always made me appear better and more organized than I am. This collection is as much his as it is mine. It would never have gotten to print without his encouragement and substantial editing. Without knowing that James would someday help me pull things together, I would never have had the fortitude to keep going.

Nor could I fulfill my longing to tell stories without the forbearance of my partner, Clifford A. Ames. The solitude needed for writing would have been unbearable without knowing that he – mostly patiently – awaited me.

My sister Martha Nell Spradling Havenstrite, who said, Buddy never lets the facts get in the way of a story.

The generous caring of the Joy Williams Writers’ Workshop – Joy, Kate Nace Day, Tony Eccles, Kenneth French, Betty Hill, Maryann Suehle and Max Sundusky – who have immeasurably enriched and inspired me.

Friends who have corrected spelling and advised: Jack David Armold, Mike and Judy Blevins, E. T. Brann, Robert Burton, Judson Dolle, Marilyn Estes-Smith, Frederick Haight, John Havenstrite, John Havenstrite, Jr. Mary Ellen Hotchkiss, Deborah LaChapelle, William MacGowen, Arthur and Carole Pogue, Jane Rafal, Mary Ann Scheuhing, Mary Ann Suele and Sally and Robert Wintheiser.

A special thanks to Frederick Haight, who perused the galleys for this book with eagle eye.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission from Picador Press to quote from The Hours by Michael Cunningham.

The time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

Thomas Stearns Eliot

Four Quartets. Burnt Norton (1935) FORWARD

Grant Spradling and I had attended a reading and lecture by a young novelist and university teacher of writing, and I asked the writer, How do you know when to stop writing? How do you know when a piece is finished? He replied, When you spend the morning putting commas in and the afternoon taking commas out.

In the pieces you will find in this book, I had the pleasure of putting the commas in and taking the commas out. Furthermore, I have had the pleasure of friendship with the author for fifty years. During that time – in a variety of guises – I have supplied him with countless commas and deprived him even more. In his turn he has provided me with countless good yarns. Some of which have been collected here, but here also are inventions that grew out of the author's imagination and not his life.

In the spring of 1954 Grant graduated from Boston University School of Theology, and in the fall I enrolled as a first year student. The assistant minister of a Congregational Church in Attleboro, Massachusetts, Grant was producing, directing and playing the role of the son in Tennessee Williams' play The Glass Menagerie and finding it difficult to produce, direct and act at the same time. He called on his seminary professor, mentor and friend Herold Ehrensperger for help. I had gone to Boston University primarily to study with Professor Ehrensperger who had just started a curriculum in what he called religious drama. I was to be the first student and guinea pig. He suggested to Grant it might be useful to invite me to direct the play. And that is exactly what happened. Once or twice a week I took the train from Boston to Attleboro to spend the evening putting the actors through their paces.

Grant and I have spent many of the ensuing years exploring possible relationships between art and religion.

When Grant retired from his position as consultant in the arts within what was then an instrumentality of the United Church of Christ, it was not surprising he would become the first executive director of the fledgling arts council for the Florida Keys where he had become a resident. It was a little more surprising when he gave up the that position and began to write. The surprise — at least to those who knew him well — was that he should adopt a vocation that was based on the use of words. Grant is rather seriously dyslexic and at the beginning didn't know how to type. Grant has always been a virtuoso talker, but on paper many of the words looked much the same to him.

Readers of these stories will find that he has become an able wordsmith. Not without effort. It is difficult to be too much in awe of someone one has known for half a century, but I am mightily impressed with Grant's industry. For quite a few years, he has been at the computer two or three hours every morning recording his memories of Oklahoma, poking at the mysteries of ancient Mayan civilization, reliving the life of a young singer in New York, sharing the flavors of Beacon Hill and Key West, listening to the life story of a small, if long-winded, dog.

It seemed the least I could do was to give him some commas I had kept in an old cigar box for years and was never going to use and take some of his commas out and put them in a safe place in case they were ever needed again. In searching for the commas, I came across a bunch of semi-colons—of which I am inordinately fond - but there is not much call for them in fiction these days. Perhaps in Grant Spradling's next collection of remembrances and inventions I can slip in one or two.

James Milton Buell

Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico

August, 2004

RAIN

The rain comes in Mérida, prickling the pool, not living up to the thunderous overture but just right for the black birds that chatter and ruffle their feathers in the alamo and tamarin trees. This morning, crimson dragon-flies skimmed the pool, and in the pool’s shimmering reflection our garden transformed into a blue Monet.

As I poured a second cup of coffee and returned to my writing, I thought of Socrates’ dictum: An unexamined life is not worth living. I don’t know if that is true, even if Socrates said it, but I realize that for me examining life is the most satisfying part of writing. I am back in the neighbors’ mulberry tree, lips smudged purple from the berries, scratches infected with impetigo, longing to understand everything, especially myself. Of what value is self examination? I was taught to think of others – not of me. Oh, I know if I were a Robert Penn Warren, a Faulkner or an Updike . . . but what of me? Why do I labor to evoke in you the vision I see of giant banana leaves waving at the edge of the pool like a potentate’s fan.

No rain in Oklahoma in the middle of a drought. I run into the house, curl at my mother’s feet as she crochets rag rugs. I tell her I’ve discovered my purpose in life. Have you, honey? she says as she takes a tissue and wipes my nose.

REFLECTIONS

MEDICINE SHOW

It was a time when nobody locked their doors. A time when clouds promised rain that never came, and hot winds scouring the thin soil drove tumble weeds and gritty clouds across the upward slope of the high plains. Deltas of sand formed v’s beneath doors, and people slept with damp cloths over their faces. It was a time when payments were made in halves of hogs and quarters of beef, when everyone had a vegetable garden and a chicken yard, when women put up food for winter, made soap from lye and lard, and smoked only in secret, and men repaired their own cars, and pleasures were simple. It was a time when sharecroppers loaded mattresses, wash tubs, grandfolks, aunts, uncles, and kids into backfiring rattletraps and struck out for the promised land.

A big event was when our father took my brother, little sister and me to see steam locomotives stop to take on water. The great spark spewing, steam jetting, panting behemoths were better even than a picture show. The last time I visited my town, the water tank’s broken spout swung on a rusted chain. It had looked to me like a giant teakettle. It was on stilts at the edge of a vacant lot next to the tracks where the medicine show used to set up. The medicine show brought free entertainment no man, woman or child should miss. Its annual visit was the sole source for many of the cures the town relied upon.

Readily available at any time were sulfur and cream of tarter or sassafras tea to thin the blood in the spring, or a concoction of sulfur and lard as good as carbolated Vaseline to cure impetigo, ringworm, and serve as cow tit balm. But nothing had as many uses as Five-Drops. The potion smelling richly of turpentine was good for cuts, bruises, sore muscles, sprained ankles, and athlete’s foot, ant stings and chigger itch. Five Drops of Five-Drops taken on a spoon of sugar and a similar amount rubbed on the chest relieved coughs and sniffles.

After I promised to polish his shoes, and because Mother needed some Five-Drops, an essential in our medicine cabinet, my older brother agreed to bring me to the opening night of the medicine show.

A faded striped tent stood next to the truck painted like a circus wagon that the day before had driven around town advertising the show. Its side was let down to form a stage and expose shelves containing nostrums for every ailment – remedies containing high doses of paregoric, camphorated tincture of opium, codeine, and other sure fire cures. It was rumored that a lady in Mother’s quilting circle was addicted to one of these elixirs. Between access to patent-medicine and the inaccessibility of alcohol, addiction to cough syrup and paregoric ran pretty high in my town.

Gather around folks, the barker called. We have brought direct from Kansas City, Kansas for your exclusive entertainment tonight, Jazbo and Rufus, the most renowned minstrels in this fair land.

What’s renowned, I asked my brother.

It means famous, dummy.

The mustachioed barker, wore a bowler hat, red suspenders over a blue striped shirt with garters on the sleeves, and spats over his shoes.

And tonight my good people, he said, You’re going to hear one of the most amazing stories you’ve ever heard. See these medicines . . . . He stepped back and waved his hand at the rows of bottles and tins. What you see before you, he spoke in a stage whisper, "every single potion contains a secret formula revealed to our very own Doctor Hans Stromenovsky and only to him.

This great man is too humble to tell you his story, so I must tell it for him. It begins seventy five years ago. Yonder. The barker pointed. Where young Hans Stromenovsaky fled with his family from the fierce Mexican bandit, Poncho Villa. When the family reached the Rio Grand, tragedy struck. The river was high but the pursuing bandit gave them no choice but to try to cross. The barker paused. The audience grew silent waiting for the barker to continue.

Weakened by pneumonia, the barker with sadness in his voice, Hans, unable to cling to his father was swept from their horse into the raging current. All that night and all the following day – the barker stretched ‘all’ into a long trembling word in the manner of evangelists – the grieving family searched until finally they gave up hope of ever finding the boy alive. A mummer rippled through the crowd, and a woman sniffled.

Villa wasn’t even alive seventy-five years ago. I felt people glare at us as my brother spoke. He was only fifty years old when he was killed fourteen years ago.

Do not be troubled, good people, the barker continued. For everything there is a purpose. He shifted to a soothing preachy tone. Two weeks to the day after he disappeared young Hans Stromenovsky walked into his family’s camp, so robust and healthy his own mother hardly recognized her own son. How, ladies and gentlemen, was this possible? Before I go on with the story, let us enjoy the two funniest men you are ever likely to run across – now give Jazbo and Rufus a hand!

The barker removed a flask from his hip pocket as he gave way to a pair of men in black face. They had on suits too small for them and white gloves. Hey Rufus, one said to the other, who was that lady I saw you out with last night?

Why, Jazbo, he replied, that was no lady, that was my wife! The crowed roared as Jazbo and Rufus continued with one familiar bromide after another. My brother groaned.

Aren’t they a couple of knee slappers? The barker said as he returned to the stage. Now would you like to hear what happened to Hans Stromenovsky?

YES! All the audience except my brother responded.

"Well, it seems that the river current pulls Hans tumbling and tossing down stream until he loses consciousness. When he comes to, he’s stretched out on the river bank. He hurts all over. He thinks he’s gone blind, until he realizes a leaf is laying across his eyes. He pulls the leaf away and sees a man hunkered in the shade of the embankment.

"Hans tries to stand, but he’s is so weak. Without saying a word, the stranger lifts Hans into his arms and carries him as if he were light as a feather into the chaparral on the Mexican side of the river until they come to a thatched lean-to at the mouth of a cave. The stranger lays Hans on a straw pallet. Seeming to know right where it hurts, he places herb poultices over Hans’ wounds and bruises. He gives Hans a gourd filled with green liquid. Hans drinks the liquid and sleeps for two days rousing only to take in a little food and drink. When finally he fully awakens, the pain is gone. Until then, he had been a sickly child, but now he feels stronger and healthier than he had ever felt in his young life.

All those drugs, my brother whispered under his breath.

As Hans grows stronger, the Indian takes him out and teaches him the cure for every ailment the good Lord provides in nature. Finally, the Indian said to Hans, ‘The time has come that you must take what I have taught you to your people, for soon I go to the happy hunting ground’

Corny! my brother laughed as people around glared. I read that same story in the fourth grade. My brother was very smart and embarrassed me a lot.

Good people, from that day on, sparing no expense, and at great personal sacrifice Hans Stromenovsky has devoted his life to bringing those precious remedies to all who suffer. The barker spoke as if at any moment he would call for prayer. His voice quivered as he continued. "We have this great healer here today to share his healing potions.

Ladies and gentlemen I am pleased to present to you . . . Doctor Stromenovsky.

The barker directed our attention to the tent at the side of the truck, as a gray bearded man stepped through the flap.

Doctor Stromenovsky, the barker called, please show these good people what your elixirs have done for you.

With seemingly great effort, two men brought out a barbell with fifty marked in big white letters on the ball shaped weights at each end. The doctor stooped, grabbed the bar and gradually lifted the weights clear of the ground. Shakily he raised the bar to his chest