Smoke Screen
Page 20
Today Mama snuck into my cellar room and caught me foolin’ around. Like I got anything better to do! She got the belt and gave me a bad whuppin’ right there on my bed! It really hurt and I got huge red welts all over my bare stomach, my backside and legs. She wouldn’t listen when I cried and said I was sorry. One of these days she’s going to be sorry, and me? I won’t listen either.
Later on she called me up to her room and when I didn’t go up right away, she threatened to whup me again. After a long while, I went up. Then she says she’s sorry, gets all gooey, and wants to hug me and kiss it all better. I guess she misses Uncle; he hasn’t been over for lunch for a long time.
She told me if I did what she wanted, she’d let me go out and build a bonfire anytime I want. She prom¬ised she’d let me build bonfires if I do what she wants. I don’t really want to, but I can’t wait to go out to my fires again. “This’ll be our little secret,” she told me after. “Just like your fires will be our secret, too.”
Do not presume too much upon my love, I may do that I shall be sorry for.
- - Wm. Shakespeare
Mama ain’t never going to hit me again! No siree! Not if she knows what’s good for her!
I gave her a good whack today when she wouldn’t let me go out. “Go to your place - right now!” she told me, when she saw Uncle’s car coming in the drive. I move fast enough so she smacked me on my ear so hard I couldn’t hear nothin’ for a minute. I finally went down to the cellar until Uncle left, mostly ’cause I don’t like listening to the noises they make. Later, when I came back upstairs, Mama called me up to her room. I went up but instead of laying down beside her, like mostly I do, I asked her nicely to stand up. She did, thinking maybe it was a game like she liked to play, but instead, I whacked her. “Don’t you never hit me again!” I yelled at her, then went outside and built me a great big blaze. She’ll never stop me from starting fires again, if she knows what’s good for her! And she’ll have to beg me real hard for what she wants from now on, oh, yes she will! And, maybe I will, and maybe I won’t.
And where two waging fires meet together
They do consume the thing that feeds their fury.
Though little fire grows great with little wind,
Yet extreme gusts will blow out fire and all.
- - William Shakespeare
Don’t have to worry about Mama no more. That dirty great pile of rotten worm-eaten boards went up like a torch, roaring in pain as those great, beau¬tiful, bright flames gobbled it up. I never did hear such a sound as it made, screaming and groaning, until it was all gone. Mama’s screaming didn’t stand a chance inside that monstrous rampage.
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Acknowledgements
I wish to acknowledge the help and support of the following people:
My dear husband, Ron, my ‘keeper of lost words’;
my son, Fred, who is always there when I need him most;
and my dear sister, Wendy-Lynne, proof-reader par excellence
You can download my first book ‘Lost in Long Cove’
In Lost in Long Cove, Marybeth and Tom are challenged by a case of missing children. During their investigations, they come across an injured postmaster, a dead dog, an angry and abusive lodge owner and too many identical boats.
Time is of the essence. While they search high and low for evidence of the children’s survival, they discover their chosen career is perhaps harder than they had anticipated, not only because of the curious circumstances of the case, but also because they are fighting a battle to hide their burgeoning feelings for each other.
Racing against time, they will lose if the children are not found. And if they are found, but not in time, they could lose it all.
Print copies of my books are available from Amazon.com and Amazon.ca
as well as at other retailers
Bio
Suzanne Butler Oliff Ouimet was born in Toronto.
She and her second husband, Ron, moved to
Vancouver Island in 1988.
They reside in a rustic home on the side of a
mountain overlooking the Salish Sea.