This Time With Feeling

Who’s kiddng who. I’m no writer. Look at me in the reflection of my Mother’s sun room window; posed at the patio table with laptop in my lap, bushy beard and sunglasses. I look more like a red neck hunter, or like some conceited fool pretending to be a writer. But that guy in the reflection spends more of his time looking thoughtfully into space, or so he’d like it to seem, rather than tapping away at the keys. He’s really just checking out his reflection with interest. Write something, already:

She got off the train in Fredericksburg, dragging her travel chest behind her on the platform. She let it drop after only a few yards and dabbed her lips with a handkerchief. A young man addressed her with a slight bow. She smiled behind her handkerchief and nodded. He picked up the travel chest and followed her through the depot to a waiting carriage.

Not bad, but what is she doing here? I can’t see her:

She wore an emerald green dress with lace cuffs and a tightened bodice. An exotic black hat perched on her head with peacock feathers and more lace. Deep wrinkles near her eyes, and a mouth with a sharp upturn at the corners that formed a perpetual smirk. None of us knew the color of her eyes; we found that most strange when discussing her later, but then, how often do we note the color of a person’s eyes besides those of our loved ones? Muriel was anything but loved; gossiped about, maybe. Certainly envied and begrudged and estranged, but certainly not loved. A few men had the ill-advised notion of courting her, but they were so peremptorily denied, like she was merely returning a bowl of cold soup to the kitchen with a wave of her hand, that the rest of us learned from their mistakes and kept our distance.

Okay, but why’s she hated? Where’s the atrocity, where’s the fatal flaw of character, the sullied underbelly of what’s really going on here?

She’d been married to a house builder in the neighboring town of Lux’Bourge. Her husband had gained modest wealth building homes for the land prospector, Mr. Griffin. She’d tasted just enough of the good life to covet more. She accompanied her husband to many of Mr. Griffin’s dinners, and through cunning and artifice she asserted her self to private invitations on his yacht or one of his many country homes. Mr. Griffin’s net worth was legendary amongst the townspeople’s talk at the local pub. Muriel soon disappeared into the lavish wealth provided for by Mr. Griffin.

She’d been shunned by the proper townsfolk ever since she’d left her husband. Did Muriel even notice, or care? Mr. Griffins expansive estates were like living on an island, sheltered from the chill of the outside world. Luxury was closer than love to Muriel’s heart. Trainloads of crates arrived from Turkey and France and England, antiques, clothing, jewelry for a queen.

What a bunch of bullshit. Listen to yourself, trying to sound like a writer. Tell it again, this time the plain and simple truth:

Muriel got of the train and stood by her travel chest, waiting for a gentleman to take it up for her. She wore a dress much too expensive for our town; it immediately embittered the townswomen against her, and intimidated the men to a degree where none were willing to approach her. Thompson’s boy finally helped her, but we all knew what kind of a fool he was. Though the women often talked of running her out of town, I think a part them enjoyed—in fact needed—someone to despise so thoroughly. You see, Muriel had been married to a proper man in a modest house; he was a builder. They’d had two boys. Then she gave up everything, even her two boys, to become the mistress of the wealthiest man in the county: Mr. Griffin. Now, for a man like Mr. Griffin, hardly anything was said about his character. His money held him on a level from which he could not be judged. But Muriel, she was of us, so she became fair game. And game she was. What kind of woman would give up her own children, just so she could wear new dresses from Paris and have furniture shipped all the way from Turkey?

If we were still in the habit of burning witches at the stake, Muriel would have been well-done by this time. But in this day and age we only crucified the guilty with gossip and a slow burning hatred. But as in all hatreds, there was a trace of envy, and it was that envy that brought ourselves down a notch. We put up with her. We bided our time. We acquired the habit of walking around town with stones in our pockets waiting for right moment, that hidden signal that ran like a murderous instinct through the town, for the moment that called for blood.