March 18, 2017 – Writing Group monthly exercise

My group’s writing assignment this month started as follows:

                        Write down a color

Without writing the color name – write about it somehow.  500 words or less.  When read out loud to the class, others should be able to guess the color you were trying to convey.

          It was midafternoon now as I saw flashes of vivid color from patches of wildflowers growing along the edges of farm roads and wheat fields.  Those sudden bursts of color zipping by had kept me good company.  I shifted in my seat restlessly. The scuffed suitcase was under my feet and my frayed duffle bag was jammed into the seat beside me.  

Hours ago at dawn, my Daddy had directed me to the seat behind the bus driver for safety when the bus was empty.

Tucking a flatten roll of money in the driver’s shirt pocket he said,

          “Take care of her.  There will be someone waiting”

          Then, Daddy bent down close to me saying,

          “I got to go now.  Remember what I told you.”  He gave me a quick hug and buckled me in and stared into my eyes as he rubbed noses with me for a moment. 

“Be good,” he said as he left me.

He waited outside the bus near my window as it finished loading.

As the bus swung slowly out of the station we exchanged our traditional salutes to each other. I gasped trying to hold back the tears.  I didn’t crank my neck around to see him as I didn’t want Daddy to see my tears. I wanted to be brave as he had asked.

          I saw the driver’s stern look in the mirror. Our eyes locked for a moment.  I learned the meaning of “be brave” in that instant. Those first painful minutes eventually slipped into empty, long hours.

When the bus picked up or dropped off passengers the driver would glance in the mirror.  If he caught me looking at him he’d smile at me and nod and I tried my best to smile back, but I felt empty. Is this what ‘brave’ means?  Most of the time I would just be looking out the door hoping to see those vivid flowers closer. 

But none came closer until miles out of Molene, Kansas, when the bus slowed and then stopped

“Your stop young lady,” the driver announced as he looked in the mirror.  He reached back and grabbed my duffle bag and tossed it out the bus door at the feet of a white haired old woman in a fresh apron worn over a faded shirt dress. There was a field full of those wildflowers behind her.  I scrambled out of the bus tugging my heavy suitcase.

I stepped down onto the dirt road and she pulled me into her arms and kissed my forehead.  I looked up into her eyes which were the same color as Daddy’s.

“My brave one,” she said.

Quickly we put my suitcase and duffle in the bed of the dusty pickup truck and I climbed into the passenger’s side. On the seat between us was a handful of those vivid flowers that had swept past me in the distance most of the day.

 

“What are these?” I asked picking them up.

“Cornflowers”

“They are the color or your eyes.” I said looking at her.

She smiled, “And yours too, my dear.”

If you haven’t guessed – the color is blue

This is complete fiction – except I know this landscape from having lived in the beautiful state of Kansas years ago

and my mother always ends her telephone

conversations with:  "Be good."