THE PRAIRIE DANCERS

Wesley Bell Jonathan

Description

Posie Victoria Vandermark is the most adored young woman in Possum Trot, in all of Prairie Dog County. She is also the wealthiest. Her passion of the time is to become a ballerina, in her white tutu, tiara and satin slippers -- no matter that she is a bit monumental, heftily buxom, tone dead and clumsy. She dreams of Baryshnikov carrying her to the feet of Degas' ballerinas, petit and pastel.

Informations

• Publié par: First Edition Design Publishing
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781622875719
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Prairie Dancers
Jonathan Wesley Bell


First Edition Design Publishing, Inc.
The Prairie Dancers
A Once and Future Stomp
By Jonathan Wesley Bell
The Prairie Dancers
Copyright ©2014 Jonathan Wesley Bell

ISBN 978-1622-875-71-9 EBOOK

March 2014

Published and Distributed by
First Edition Design Publishing, Inc.
P.O. Box 20217, Sarasota, FL 34276-3217
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means ─ electronic, mechanical, photo-copy, recording, or any other ─ except brief quotation in reviews, without the prior permission of the author or publisher.
Cover Design: Linda Wade
The Prairie Dancers

That July is famous now for its drought. Creeks and water holes vanished. The days were dark at noon with blowing dust. In the heat the Kansas earth shrivelled and peeled. Farmers dehydrated in the fields and witnessed extraordinary sights through the smoke and haze over their tractor hoods.
Also, the following notice was printed on page four of the Possum Trot Record.

To my beloved and only child, Posie Victoria Vandermark, I, Louis Mathew Vandermark, bequeath the deeds to my house and property at 508 Commercial Street, Possum Trot, Kansas. I furthermore leave her in full possession of the following: the third and fourth blocks of Commercial Street in Possum Trot, known as the Vandermark blocks; the land, buildings and business holdings of the Possum Trot Milling Co., the Prairie Dog County Stock and Feed Co., the Triple Crown Ranch, and the Vandermark Oil Co., as well as the properties and stock holdings of the Tri‑State Investment Corp. of Kansas City, Missouri. Said estate, including directorship in the Farmers & Drovers State Bank, is to be administered for Posie Victoria Vandermark by Mr John Blake of Topeka, Kansas.

Then the sparrows fell dead, parched little creatures, in the streets. August came and there were grass fires in the hills. On the Saturday night before Labor Day it did rain, at last, but in miserable, steamy gusts.
That very afternoon, a classified ad appeared in bold type in the Record. It was a boxed item placed below a larger advertisement for USDA prime cut–a meat counter bargain at Haggerman’s Market in Possum Trot. The same copy also ran in Kansas City, San Francisco and New York newspapers. It was to be found among the usual cries for work, companionship and help in the back pages of National Dance, Variety, After Dark and Art Forms.
The advertisement read:

Attention–young woman seeks private dancing instructor. Ballet, interpretive. Must have performing experience with national co. Must have studied with top‑ten resident troupe. Position is for long term employment. Salary open. Generous benefits. Must be willing to relocate. Send professional history, references and recent photo to Mr John Blake, c/o Woden, Blake and Crowley, Associates at Law, 2808 State Avenue, Topeka, Kansas.
The Princess of the Prairie

‘Her ass alone must weigh 50 pounds,’ guessed Uncle Willy, as he stood spying in on her from the studio doorway. He blinked, bedazzled by the sight of her amid so much electric light. It was a rare moment for anyone to see this young woman unperplexed, tossing her head as innocently as a little girl.
The men of Prairie Dog County agreed that there wasn’t another female anywhere like Posie Victoria Vandermark.
Of course there was the money, the house, and especially the land, to make her desirable. But it was much more than that, more even than her red hair, her fabulous green eyes, her pink skin. The men were amazed by her carriage, smell and tone. They were in awe of her proportions and size.
They knew she was twenty‑four years old. They figured her height at five feet and eleven inches (carrying herself very straight and therefore as tall as her slouching father). About her weight there was controversy. They’d taken bets on it. Willy himself wagered her at a conservative 185 pounds.
Possum Trot men, including Uncle Willy, dreamed of Posie. She was made for that–Venus hips and tits, more than a fellow’s hand, mouth or imagination could cover.
And here she lay, spread out flat on the floor with her supper plate. She’d flopped down in her lime‑green bikini. She was straight up from the pool, still flushed from running on the stairs, from the swimming. She was disturbingly juicy for such a thirsty night.
Uncle Willy swallowed hard and rapped his knuckles on the back of the studio door. One giant thigh rolled, a patch of tummy peeked forth, half a breast ballooned in his direction.
‘Hey there!’ She acknowledged him loudly in a sweet soprano voice. ‘Come on in, the tuna salad’s great!’
The coats of make‑up had melted in the swimming and her face was a rotund and cheerful watercolor. Rainbows streaked her cheeks.
‘Your aunt sent me over,’ Willy coughed out the words, and the air was too hot, too heavy to stir. ‘I’m supposed to have another “man‑to‑man” with you. It’s about that ad you put in today’s paper ... about that dancing thing.’
He stood apologetically, as far away from her as he could. She made him feel like Commercial Street, hard and dry. He thought vaguely of her touching him, making him young again, supple enough to bend and join her on the floor.
Posie’s middle finger, covered with Miracle Whip, vanished into her mouth. In a grand, quick movement, she lolled back from her supper. It made Uncle Willy flinch, as if he were naked before her.
Now she struggled to her feet, those big legs gaping wide.
He wondered if she was going to do callisthenics–the way her body stretched. It was a prophecy. In the rows of mirrors on the studio walls there were ten more Posies in motion.
Suddenly, inexplicably, her eyes took deeper shades, solemn, the green waters pulling back, strange shapes trembling in them.
He could tell she’d forgotten who he was.
‘My God,’ she gazed up at her own ceiling, rife with cupids and unbelievable foliage. ‘Did you ever think that Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel with the same fingers he used to wipe his ...’
In his dread he croaked to her. ‘Aunt Bertha says she won’t stand for it this time. She says to tell you “enough is enough”.’ All too clearly he recalled the ugly little woman puckering up over ‘enough!’.
‘Yea, I knew she’d be pissed off.’ For a moment Posie pulled back–eyes going as empty as Bertha’s refrigerator.
He nodded, heart racing, thinking that the two women together were more menacing by far than the storm that was about to begin.
‘She says for you to go up to Hays and take lessons at the college. She says for you to get out of town if you want to dance.’
‘It’s really too bad the way we get tangled up in the wrong ways.’ Word by word the girl in the voice receded, tougher tones replacing her. ‘But I won’t do what Aunt Bertha tells me to. I never have! She may be the intellectual, but I’m the artist!’
‘Well, then, maybe she has a point.’ He gave her a shy smile. ‘There are better places for doing that than here. Go to Mexico. I been there. I remember ... You could dance all you wanted to down there.’
‘But this is the centre! The beginning is here. The rest is dying, cluttered up.’ The red in her flared. She stood on her toes.
‘Daddy knew I wasn’t made for ribbons and silk. I’m for feathers and ... and for blood! Tell her that!’
They paused, on the verge of the storm. Lightning lit the night. The wind came up, brushing at them through the open windows.
‘Aunt Bertha’s the other half.’ Posie cocked her head against the music she was hearing in the wind. ‘She orbits us in the dark. She’s always moving into darkness.’
Watching and listening, Willy thought for the first time in some twenty years of the female characters in those school‑book stories about Ulysses–the ones who held men captive or drove them crazy. Edging another step in his dust towards the door, he yearned to be out in the storm rather than trapped inside with the girl.
‘Guess I got to be going’. Fight it out for yourselves. It ain’t a man’s anyhow ...’
‘Tell her I won’t he circumscribed. I won’t have fences around me. I’m open‑range!’ The sadness in her voice stopped him.
She loomed rougher and larger. The bikini slipped down like a rubber band about her hips. At the first roll of thunder she gave a burping cry and skipped towards the windows.
Uncle Willy couldn’t help eyeing the crack of her ass where it showed above the bottom of the swimming suit.
‘Aunt Bertha’s mad because she’s got ingrown toenails and calluses and stubby legs and can’t dance at all!’
Rain came. It streaked the windows with hot, semen‑like drops.
In wonder, Uncle Willy looked from the girl to the first rain they’d had for a month, then back again.
A violent explosion broke over the house, crackled down through its walls. Lightning in the mirrors. Thunder around the girl. The air broke like glass.
She began to dance.
Bertha

Meanwhile, across the street, in the bungalow, in the living room, the little woman waited. She chewed on a pencil, surrogate for her fingernails where nothing at all remained to bite. A brooding eye rolled slowly up to the window screen, roving the dark mass of the Vandermark house that was framed there like a fairy queen’s castle.
The Vandermark house stood tempting her; in particular, tonight, the three brilliant windows of Posie’s studio. Bertha thought of huge pink feet mauling the floors and winced. She imagined the girl wrapped in a dragon‑red dressing gown, net stockings, and trailing herself like smoke.
No cars passed, no one to wave to–no need to ape pleasantness. The rain came, although she didn’t care. Elms thrashed above the bungalow. A limb plummeted to the lawn. Even the lightning meant nothing to her–she who hadn’t cringed before anything in years.
Aunt Bertha hunched closer, gripping the pencil between ach