I've written tonight about my lust for seafood. If you read this, I'd like to get your reaction.
James Kneeblood was more than eccentric. He was strange and troubling. For starters, he had four daughters, each of whose mothers had died during childbirth. And that’s not the strangest part. Some of his daughters’ birthdays were fewer than eight months apart. His daughters’ names added to the mystery and fears of those who had anything to do with him. The oldest was Poison, followed in age order by Rumour, Mexican, and Cataclysm. Kneeblood home-schooled his daughters, so no one really knew them well. He rarely interacted with people in town, except when he was buying groceries. Even then, his odd habits and his surly demeanor made people nervous. When he was in town, he spoke to people about his past, acting like he was talking to old friends, but didn't like hearing them talk to him. He was an odd and scary codger, if you asked most folks around town.
No one knew the mothers of Kneeblood’s daughters. No one recalled ever having seen him in the company of a woman; it was only his stories about them that informed them of the wives' unfortunate histories. There were those in town who were certain he was not the father of those girls but, instead, was their kidnapper and tormentor . That was not what the girls said, though, when Child Protective Services came calling at the behest of Mamie Crowder, who said she saw Kneeblood fondling Rumour and Mexican. The girls said he was their “daddy” and they said he was good to them. The girls demonstrated their verbal and mathematical skills with CPS, too, just to be sure the social workers understood how much Kneeblood taught them. The girls’ math skills were uncanny. They could perform exceptionally complex mathematical equations in their heads…they responded to even the most complex problems almost immediately.
The questions, the concerns, the secret whispers about Kneeblood and his girls changed abruptly one day in January. James Kneeblood was attempting to push a huge round bail of hay from his southern pasture across the highway to the north pasture, when he was struck and killed by an 18-wheeler that was delivering toilet-paper to Wal-Mart. He just wasn’t paying attention. Neither was the driver.
When Mamie Crowder heard what happened, she immediately called Child Protective Services to insist that, finally, CPS had good reason to take the girls under its protection. But when CPS arrived, it found the girls were gone. When they learned of Kneeblood's death, they knew what was coming and they went into hiding, just long enough for the frenzy about their care to blow over. They returned to Kneeblood's place and took up where they left off, this time without Kneeblood as teacher.
Poison was only 16 at the time, but she immediately took on the role of family steward. Rumour, who was 15 and a few months, was committed to helping her sister deal with this godawful new world, but she had issues of her own. Banter Brainwater was a neighbor boy who was anything but testosterone-challenged. He regularly tried to engage Rumour, even in public places, in vulgar acts of a sexual nature. Rumour had to carry a hickory switch to use as a weapon against the boy's unwanted advances. She didn’t really like him, but she did enjoy his constant sexual attention. What she liked more than anything was stopping him short...she would simply slap him hard across the face and he would start crying, slink off, and leave her alone for a day or two. Brainwater was another one who people in town considered 'off' a bit. It seemed all the people who lived out there were strange and unnerving to the townsfolk. All of them out there lived in scroungy houses or trailers in sorry repair and all of them had a look of lunacy about them, if you asked Mamie Crowder.
Poison's approach to familial stewardship can be best understood if you understand the attitudes and upbringing of James Kneeblood. His was a sad story, of course, but it was the way he passed his view of the world to his daughters that was most heart-wrenching.
C:\Documents and Settings\John\My Documents\Kneeblood.docnow it's time for some uncharted fiction.
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