Author: Doug Jacquier

Christmas presence

/ Doug Jacquier / 21 Comments

This piece was re-worked from an earlier version for the Six Sentence challenge, with the prompt word ‘presence’.

Who knows how long this will last

but whatever each generation brings,

there will be totems of the past

fixed firmly insistent in each of our minds,

totems with faces carved in the hard woods

that only family trees produce

and set, sometimes poles apart, in the family grove.

Children growing themselves in new numbers each year,

all named and loved and parented in common for a day

with tear-filled eyes, chocolate-coated faces and grinning cheeks,

each hoisted to embrace and admiration,

all feats applauded and all false pride mocked.

Food, prepared as sanctioned by time,

in unspoken, ordained ritual by the women,

the bearers of all sustaining life

while men, surrounded by seemingly unobservant boys,

use beer to shorten stretching distances,

quietly competing every hurdle

until a child clings to a leg

and wins.

Lives past, sitting patiently in reserved and sacred chairs,

coming back to life in anecdotes of bastardry and joy,

as toddlers and crawlers, excited and bewildered,

sit knee-deep in wrapping paper,

while babes at breast, absorb every nuance

through the pores of their clan skin

and the memories encoded in their mother’s milk.

The married-ins and new lovers,

belonging in their separateness to this caravan,

as hopeful as those that followed a certain star,

come bearing gifts,

as the matriarch,

with skills both ancient and subtle,

draws to her these strands unknitted,

so they ever unravel

and pull the fabric apart.

These are our totems,

their presence taking firmer shape with each year,

and living beyond presents shared,

ensuring that in all our futures

we will have at least one day

not alone.

The Powerful Jab

/ Doug Jacquier / 25 Comments

This piece was written for the Six Sentence challenge, with the prompt word of ‘powerful’.

Morgan’s sententious diatribe, elucidating to the assembled dinner party his unsolicited views on a divisive issue, had lasted through the better part of two bottles of wine, the latter of which was the bottle that Morgan had brought to the dinner party, a wine which resembled a particularly watered-down version of raspberry cordial but elicited the epithet of ‘gloriously cheeky’ from Wallace’s wife, Agnes.

Wallace waited patiently until Morgan’s mouth was filled with a water cracker, topped with an obscene amount of cheddar, before launching his powerful strike against his brother-in-law.

‘Morgan’ he began, ‘I have come to the conclusion that there is no more unintelligent organism on the planet than you, and I include in that list the noble maggot and the much maligned pond scum, who at least have the sense to ignore the Murdoch press and Fox News, from which you derive the excreta that passes for commentary in the goldfish attention span of social media.’

Wallace continued, ‘In fact, I think it is safe to say that your contribution to humanity began and ended when you were a baby and realised that regurgitation was a satisfyingly disruptive intervention into any worthwhile conversation and ensured the focused attention of those upon whom you vomited on a regular basis.’

Agnes rose from her seat, her face glowing a vivid shade of red, and threw her wine glass vehemently but inaccurately in Wallace’s direction and in the process destroyed almost half of her imitation Meissen porcelain figures displayed on the mantelpiece.

Morgan took a gulp of his wine and, inflating himself to peak pomposity, responded condescendingly to the other dinner guests, ‘I rest my case; behold a living example of enslavement by vaccine.’

The J curves

/ Doug Jacquier / 29 Comments

This piece was written for the weekly Six Sentence Challenge with the prompt word of ‘rivalry’.

All of her sons (Jebediah, Jared, Jehosophat, James, Japheth and Jonah) stood at the open grave of Judith Johannson (nee Jericho), where she would finally rest adjacent to her late husband, Joshua.

The rivalry between the sons was legendary and they had already begun arguing about who had travelled further (Junee or Jerilderie), who was going to inherit Jacaranda (the family farm), the JBar in the nearest town, and the Jumping Juniper Jin distillery.

The officiating priest was well aware of the antipathy between the sons and had taken the precaution of providing each of them with their own identical shovel so there wouldn’t be an argument about who got to throw the first sod on to Judith’s coffin.

After the requisite amount of God-bothering from the priest, the sons drew lots to decide the speaking order for the eulogies, with each, of course, wanting to deliver their own.

All went well until Jebediah concluded his heartfelt words with ‘… and you always told me I was your favorite son’, and then all hell broke loose as the sons attacked each with the shovels and, one by one, fell dead or mortally wounded into the grave, on top of their mother.

As the priest wept at the carnage, there was a hand on his shoulder and he turned to see a raven-haired beauty in a tight black dress topped with a Grand Canyon-esque cleavage who said, ‘Father, I’m the only daughter, Jezebel.’

A little perspective always helps

/ Doug Jacquier / 36 Comments

This piece was written for the Six Sentence story challenge, with the prompt word of ‘improvise’.

Relativity July 1953 Woodcut 28.2×29.4cm

‘Mr. Moneybags, sorry to call you but I’m having difficulty giving instructions to the crew working on your new home, including the carpenters working on the stairs, especially when the architect’s drawings you sent me provide no measurements.’

‘I fell in love with Mr. Escher’s design, knowing that it was eccentric and ground-breaking but, Bob, everyone told me you were the best builder around and there was no problem you couldn’t fix, for a price.’

‘Mr. Moneybags, I can assure you that this is not some sort of shake down for more money; it’s just that we’re having trouble working out, just as an example, how the servant bringing the bottle of wine is going to be able to serve it to you on the terrace.’

‘Yes, I can see the challenge, Bob, but I think you might be holding the drawings the wrong way round and if you orient yourself to the terrace, which clearly must be at ground level, all will become clear.’

‘Sir, we did that and all we could see was you sitting at the table defying gravity and some poor sod sitting on a box doing the same.’

‘Look, Bob, I’m the one providing the money, Max is the architect and you’re the builder, so you’re just going to have to improvise or we’ll get someone else who can actually read a plan!’

Re: Your proposed contract

/ Doug Jacquier / 9 Comments

This re-worked piece is for this month’s Blog Battle challenge, with the prompt word of ‘proposal’.

Flynn was up early and well gone to his work on the farm, as always. Kate found the envelope on the kitchen table, propped up against the tomato sauce bottle that was already attracting flies in the burgeoning heat of the day. Well, that’s a bit romantic, she thought. Hadn’t picked that up in their limited conversations to date. She put the kettle on and added fresh tea leaves to the pot. They were both old-fashioned that way.

Sitting down at the Laminex table, she opened the envelope and began to read.

Kate (no Dear she noted)

Talking’s never been something I’ve had much use for and the only way I know what I think about anything is if I write it down.

Unless I’m mistaken, and I don’t think I am, you’d like this occasional weekend thing to become a permanent arrangement. I can see the sense in that but I want you to be clear about what that will mean for our future. Women say they want honesty in a man but in my experience they don’t really mean it. Now’s as good a time as any to find out if you’re different.

I don’t want to marry you but I do want to spend my life with you. Instead of getting rubber-stamped by the Government or the Church, we’ll have this contract and we’ll have each other’s word that we’ll stick to it. Without that, life together would be pointless. And, besides, nothing about me will ever change. There will be no negotiation.

I’ll work hard all the rest of my life to keep a roof over our heads and put food on the table. You will be responsible for the household. I’d prefer you didn’t work but if you do, the household mustn’t suffer. I want plain traditional food. You can eat whatever your like.

If you want children, that’s fine with me but you will raise them. I will never mistreat them but I will not coddle them, because the world will not when I’m gone. They will learn tasks appropriate to their age and take responsibility for their actions.

If you have visitors or relatives to our house I won’t be interested in talking to them. You and the children will be all the society I need except for necessary business arrangements.

We will continue to have sex as long as we both want it but I won’t be ‘making love to you’.

I will never say ‘I love you’. I have no idea what ‘love’ is except people say that there wasn’t much of it around in my house when I was growing up. I guess you can’t miss what you never had.

We will be faithful to each other. I know myself well enough to know that will be true for me for all time. If you are ever unfaithful to me, the contract is ended.

I will almost certainly not remember occasions such as birthdays and anniversaries and I will ignore all attempts to rope me into Xmas.

There won’t be any cuddling on the couch and watching TV and I won’t be interested in going anywhere to be entertained.

There won’t be any deep and meaningful conversations about books or what’s in the news.

You must be thinking, “Where are the good things about this contract?”

You will have financial security as long as you live. The farm produces well and is pretty much drought-proof. If I die before you I don’t expect you to keep the farm and the place will fetch a good price.

You will have children (if you want them) to love and nurture as you wish and they will grow up knowing how to be resourceful and resilient, putting them well ahead of the pack.

You will have a faithful and respectful partner that barely drinks, doesn’t smoke, is rarely ill and will stay strong for years to come.

You will live in a community that has kept its values and its connections tight and in that sense you’ll never be alone.

And we will sit on the back porch at dusk and look over our land and not have to say how much it means to us. We will know what we’ve done together and that’s enough peace for anyone.

So, if that’s a contract you can live with for the rest of your life and never reproach me or yourself for the choices you have freely made, let me know tonight.

She put down the letter, made herself a pot of tea, took it out to the back veranda and sat in her favorite cane chair, gazing at the landscape that could be hers forever.

As Kate sipped her tea, she mulled over what she imagined constituted a proposal out here, let the landscape in to her mind until the horizon was clear and mapped out how she would provide her answer.

She returned to the kitchen, poured a second cup of tea, sat at the table and began to write. She didn’t bother with a salutation; who else would she be writing too?

I’ve heard people say that honesty can be a weapon. However, in your case I think you’re using it as insurance or, at the very least, assurance that I won’t try to change you.

Life doesn’t work like that. No matter how we isolate ourselves, the world will have its way and we have to deal with the consequences. Even for people like you who don’t follow the news, either the grapevine or the bank will tell them when there’s no longer a market for what they grow or what stock they raise; at least not at a price that they can live on.

You talk about the farm being drought-proof but you know such a thing has long gone and last year was the driest on record. In that sense, I’m not assured by your promise to keep a roof over our heads and provide well for me and any children we may have. To be blunt, that’s the sort of promise I’d expect from a townie, not a farmer.

Like you, I can take or leave marriage. It doesn’t seem to have made relationships any stronger or otherwise amongst people I’ve known. The fact that you want to spend the rest of your life with me fills me with peace and hope. But I won’t have a life without love from my partner and promising to be faithful entirely misses the point.

You know I don’t mean romance novel love or love that has to keep telling itself over and over again that it exists. That would scare me even more than what you’ve proposed. However, at the very least, I would expect you to look me in the eye and tell me you love me enough to want to spend the rest of your life with me and promise to let me know if that ever changes. (By the way, the sex doesn’t need to change – no complaints in that department.)

But here’s the real rub. We (as distinct from me alone) need to decide if we’re going to have children. And if we decide we will, you will be their father in all the important ways; comforting them, tending to their needs, teaching them patiently and defending them to the death. Don’t worry, I’m perfectly happy to take on the traditional mothering roles but I’m not going to let the cold distance of child-rearing that you inherited from your father and grandfather enter my bloodline.

How you are with others is fine with me. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not much different. Besides, think of the money we’ll save on presents. But we will talk, especially about the important things and we will talk about them at the time it’s needed, not when it’s too late.

I’m all for meaningful silences but when they end I want to know what they mean.

I want this life. Since the beginning I’ve felt I’m coming home when I come here and I feel lost when I’m not. I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, provided you are prepared to accept what I’ve asked for in your ‘contract’ (that word is so wrong my first impulse was to take off, forever.) If that much is too much then it says a lot about our chances of survival.

I think you will because I believe you are the strongest and most honest man I have ever met and that you have finally met the woman that you need to survive what’s coming.

You can give me your answer, face to face, when I come next weekend.

Signed, guess who?

Flynn read the letter several times over, climbed on to the ancient TD-18 International Harvester tractor with its metal seat shined by three generations of ample backsides and drove out to do some ploughing. His plan was for the concentration on straight lines to bring him the peace to think clearly about what Kate had said. What wasn’t helping was the ‘love’ part.

His father had been a hard and harsh taskmaster and he found it difficult to recall any words of praise passing his lips. The most anyone could hope for was the odd grunting nod and a mumbled ‘Not bad’. His mother was only slightly better, with hugs disappearing by the time he went to school and a relentless ticking off of tasks when he came home. He understood they were hard years when they were trying to get the land into the condition that it needed to be in for long-term sustainability and there was little time for anything peripheral. And as he grew older he imagined that they thought that leaving him the legacy of the farm was, in the end, the only love that counted.

Breast cancer (deliberately left untreated he discovered later) took his mother in her late forties and five years later he found his father dead from a heart attack while repairing fences on a boundary paddock. When he picked him up, he half expected to be told to bugger off and get back to his work. Flynn made the necessary arrangements and stood dutifully solemn at their funerals, accepting condolences, but felt nothing. One day they were alive, the next day they were dead. That’s how life worked.

Women rarely entered his mind as he continued to develop the farm, with some occasional hired help. Those he had met at school seemed weak or unapproachable. After he left school, he would see them again in town, usually either flaunting what he imagined were country town fashionable clothes or pregnant or walking along with a tribe of whining kids trailing behind them.

A couple of girls had pursued him (or his property) and once he had found himself suddenly engaged to Cheryl Clarke, not that he could recall popping the question. The next thing he knew was that has being paraded around the district like a prize bull with a ring through his nose. He hibernated for weeks before that blew over.

Then one day, when he was collecting his mail from the post office, in strode a statuesque female stranger. The coat and slacks could only belong to a city type and her long red hair hung in waves down her back. Her face contained eyes and a fixed smile that spoke of openness while still conveying concealed steel.

Having collected her mail, she strode out again, unfolded herself into a dusty, dented hatchback and sped off. In the background he could hear fragments from the tongues wagging. ‘ … new schoolteacher  … not married … bit of a tartar in the schoolroom I’ve heard but the kids seem to like her … asked for wine in the pub the other day… drives like a maniac’. This woman had certainly entered Flynn’s mind and he was totally uncertain as to how to deal with that.

Up until then, he’d go into town for the mail and shop at random times, when the opportunity arose between jobs. Now he found himself on schedule to be there, coincidentally, when she came into the post office. She’d started nodding to him, as country people do, but with an odd, crooked smile on her face when she did it.

Kate made the first move. Instead of nodding, she asked him ‘I’ve heard that sometimes you take animals for agistment.’ After a moment, from the side of a barely opened mouth, he said ‘What did you have in mind?’

‘I have an ageing horse that I’d like to have close at hand.’

‘One horse?’

‘Sum total.’

‘Not sure my fences are high enough to contain a horse.’

‘Oh, her fence jumping days are over. Besides, you could ride her. If you wanted to.’

They pretended to haggle over an agistment fee and then Kate said, ‘I’ll bring her up at the weekend.’

And that weekend became many weekends.

And now here he was, having re-read Kate’s letter a hundred times and still not able to put together a coherent response..

Kate’s traveling car wreck pulled up at the veranda. She emerged, climbed the steps and sat in his Mum’s rocking chair and waited.

‘Not sure where to start’, he said.

She offered no help.

‘I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you’ he blurted, as if fearful that if he didn’t get it out quickly his words would be strangled at birth.

Silence.

‘I negotiate every day, so I don’t know why I said that I wouldn’t.’

Silence.

‘But there’s one thing. I don’t want kids.’ His face froze as he waited for the expected eruption.

Kate laughed and said ‘Thank God for that! The alarm on my biological clock has been driving me nuts but I was prepared to turn it off for you. Confession time. I spend all day with children and the thought of coming home for more was filling me with dread.’

They watched a pair of kookaburras land in the giant redgum that dominated the front yard.

Kate’s voice softened and she said, ‘That’s enough meaningful for one day. Let’s get deep.’

They didn’t make it to the bedroom.

Lost connections

/ Doug Jacquier / 32 Comments

This piece, adapted from an earlier longer work, is a response to the prompt ‘Connection’ in the Six Sentence challenge.

By the time I met the Australian rock legend Johnny O’Keefe in 1977, I was working as a roadie for a middle-of-the-road pub band and the band’s career highlight came when they were booked to back the legendary but fast-fading Johnny O’Keefe at the Marysville pub.

The place was packed, including a large contingent of men with slicked-down ducktail haircuts and women with wide skirts supported by half a dozen starched white petticoats and as our lead guitarist intoned ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the king of Australian rock and roll, Mr. Johnny O’Keefe’, the crowd rose as one as he launched into a strangely stiff and unwild version of The Wild One.

As he progressed through all the old hits like She’s My Baby, I’m Counting on You, Move Baby Move and She Wears My Ring, I could sense an uneasiness in the crowd, as if they were thinking ‘well, he’s here but he isn’t’ but they were tempering their disappointment out of respect for The King and what the tickets had cost them.

His big finale was always ‘Shout’ and he was half-way through the famous opening sustained holler of ‘We-e-e-e-e-e-e-ll’ when his microphone died, spelling disaster for me and for Johnny.

Now scarlet from head to toe, I ran to the stage, and as his vacant eyes looked at the new mike, I said lamely ‘sorry, Johnny’ and he mumbled ‘that’s alright, mate’.

After the obligatory standing ovation and the refusal of more encores, Johnny’s manager bundled him into a car and they sped off into the night, seemingly oblivious to the fact that no-one was chasing Johnny any more.

Let the pawnishment fit the crime

/ Doug Jacquier / 44 Comments

This piece was written for the Six Sentence challenge, with ‘pawn’ as the prompt word.

Bill droned on with a seemingly interminable tale about his grandfather’s prowess at chess and I had reached the point where my eyes had taken on the appearance of glazed doughnuts, so I interrupted with ‘So he was a pawn star.’

Bill exploded with ‘You never listen, really listen, to a damn word I say because you’re too busy working on some sort of pathetic joke or lame pun that you think will make you sound clever and witty and I am absolutely sick of it!’

To annoy him even further, I sat quietly for a while, pretending to be thinking deeply about what he had said, before I quietly offered ‘I’m writing a story about you and I was trying to make you sound more interesting than you actually are and this is the thanks I get, you ungrateful sod.’

Bill’s tone softened considerably as he said ‘Not that you’re famous or widely-read, but what’s the story about and where am I likely to be able to read it when it’s published, just so I can tell my friends and family that the story is based on me?’

‘Well’ I said, with as much as literary ponderousness as I could muster, ‘it will be about a conversation between a boring, pompous old windbag and a writer at the peak of his literary talents who, while pretending to listen to his companion, is quietly composing scathingly witty ripostes, bon mots and puns with which to enrage said companion, who will be known as E. R. Wig.’

Bill’s face had turned puce and his breath had become gale force and I wondered why he was manically opening and closing his fist, and then it hit me.

More bubbly?

/ Doug Jacquier / 28 Comments

This piece was written for the weekly Six Sentence challenge with the prompt word of ‘effervescence’.

After Arabella had finished lamenting the loss of her latest boyfriend, Babs breathlessly unloaded that the trouble with Arabella was that she was insufficiently bubbly, too po-faced, not enough fizz, and that guys don’t want to know about what you think about global warming, and they want to know what you think about warming them up (at least by the second date), whether you’ll laugh at all their stupid jokes, whether you can take a ‘joke’ and, by the third date, whether you have any money.

Arabella nodded but was actually appalled by the idea that she would have to be an airhead to attract a man, so the next time she was out at a social event and a man approached her, before he could speak, she blurted out ‘I’m a committed environmentalist, I hate jokes and I’m as poor as a church mouse.’

The man smiled and said ‘Ditto’ and would she like to accompany him to the Natural History Museum this Sunday because he’d heard there was a very powerful exhibition on the effects of plastics in oceans.

Agreeably stunned, Arabella said she’d love to and then he said ‘I don’t have a car, can you pick me up?’ and she said of course and dutifully arrived in her Mercedes sports car on Sunday at the address he’d given her.

He said he’d had a better idea; a friend had loaned him his speedboat and they could go looking for dolphins, which delighted Arabella, until mid-boat-trip he stopped the engine, dropped his pants and lunged at her, with his willie wagging like a metronome.

Arabella’s self-defense training kicked in instinctively and, while the man was still groin-groaning, she threw him overboard and, ignoring his pleas that he couldn’t swim, she watched him go under with a myriad bubbles rising to the surface and she felt quite …effervescent.

Walking again

/ Doug Jacquier / 37 Comments

This piece was written for the Six Sentence Challenge with the prompt word of ‘walk’.

Two little girls lay in Iron Lung Machines while being treated for Polio. Their family looks in from the window outside.

Photo courtesy Getty Images

It was the 1950’s and a three-year-old boy called out in the night for a ‘gink of water’ and when his father answered his call and handed the boy the plastic child-sized cup which he would normally easily grip two-handed, this time it fell straight through his fingers, and then again.

At the small country hospital an hour’s drive away, the sleep-deprived doctor, called in by the concerned nurses, swiftly diagnosed suspected poliomyelitis and the ambulance sped into the night for the city, a two-hour journey, while in the back the boy stopped breathing three times and had to be revived.

For a while he lived in a tubular respirator machine, an iron lung, with only his head exposed and he had to look up into a mirror to see the medical ward and the staff, and his parents, when they could visit between work and caring for his older sister three hours away.

Weeks went by before he could breathe by himself and the arduous journey for he and his mother, of returning his limbs to functioning like they used to before, began.

Months of being strapped to a board to straighten his limbs, wearing calipers on his legs and daily physiotherapy invented by a Queensland bush nurse brought him back to the world of other children.

If the joy of seeing your child walk unassisted for the first time can be overwhelming for parents, it pales against seeing your four-year-old emerge from a world of ambulances, iron lungs and daily treatments to once again, simply walk and get himself a drink of water.

It’s a little hot in here

/ Doug Jacquier / 32 Comments

This amusement was written for D’Verse’s prompt to write 144 words of prose that must include this line from Shel Silverstein’s poem, Invitation. ‘If you’re a dreamer, come in.’

If you are a dreamer, come in to Beelzebub’s Emporium of Chance here at the Hades Hotel in downtown Inferno. Every day’s your lucky day when you visit us. We’ve got Hot Slots, Ring of Fire Roulette, BBQ Blackjack, Jalapeno Keno and Red Hot Poker (hands so sizzling even Texans can’t hold ‘em). Take advantage of our free drinks service, including Lava on the Rocks, Tequila Sunburn and Devilled Daquiri. When you’re hungry, drop in to our Hara Kiri Curry House or our Eternal Charcoal Grill, at the end of Barefoot Fire Walk. If you need a nap, go up to your Personalised Rack Room and stretch out for as long as you need. Short on cash? Not a problem. Our Soul Seller Tellers will be only too happy to help out. Yes, for that complete Holiday from Hell, we have every taste covered.