Twitter Fiction Festival Flash Fiction #2. Epitaph by Jennifer Dukes Lee; and  Nicole Saylor, Michelle Daugherty, Colin Weinshenker, Gena Philibert Ortega. Fiction by Jennifer Wilson. 

Survived the musket and the Bowie knife. The war was more civil than his savage wife. — Jennifer Dukes Lee

“You ain’t no better than the dirt you standin’ on!”

Clarabelle was in a state again, Isaac couldn’t help but notice. The booze always got her this way. She’d been such a curly-haired cherub. Red hair. That always got to him. Curled like ribbons, that hair of hers.

It had gotten him through the war, in fact. He kept a hank of it in a locket around his neck. Been shot at, stepped on, pretended himself dead in a pile of men at the Battle of Franklin, down to Tennessee. This was years ago, back in ’64. A lot of men died there.

“Remember the Maine!” Clarabelle was yelling in the kitchen. Goading him. “Too damned old to go fight for what’s right.”

She’d only loved him when she was a soldier, he was sure of it. Now, with that trouble in Cuba, there would be war with Spain. She was so disappointed. She hadn’t anything but a soldier man, and now hers was too old. She was shamed. He had to feel for her. He loved her. He always did.

She slammed down the frying pan. “I ain’t cooking eggs for no one tonight!” She said it, and he knew she meant it. He’d known her when her daddy was cruel to her, unspeakable cruel, and he’d sworn to her he’d save her. He did, got her a real pretty ring too, but her nightmares never stopped. She’d never be over it. He hunkered down. He’d nearly died at Franklin. It was harder at home.

“No eggs tonight,” she muttered low, like a haint in that kitchen. They’d never had babies. Maybe it would have softened her. Poor Clarabelle. Didn’t have anything the other girls had. They couldn’t even afford a horse. He’d bet on one once, trying to make better for them. He nearly hung them by losing. Isaac absorbed the acid, hoping it would leak out of her quick.

It didn’t.

He was long and tall, and he could lean into the shadows. He thought he’d lean right out the door, but Clarabelle caught him. “I said Remember the Maine!” On her tiptoes, straining red and sweating, her face so close to his. He could reach out and touch those red ribbons, just traced with gray. She’d gone fat, too.

“I was only a private, love,” he said in his quiet way. It usually calmed her, his voice like this. “I couldn’t serve now anyway.”

Again, it didn’t.

“You don’t do nothing but take. You’re no soldier. You’re no better than the rest.” She spoke through her teeth. A hiss.

He placed his hands on her shoulders. “Clarabelle, get to bed now,” he said. “You’ve had far too much of that terrible stuff.”

He hadn’t seen it coming. He surely hadn’t. That hot frying pan was worse than the muskets he survived. The Bowie knife that Southern boy brought to his neck, then cried and ran away from him. God spared his life that day. Spared the boy’s, too. He believed in God, if there was a God in war.

She’d screamed when she brought it up side his head, something he couldn’t hear, probably some nonsense that wasn’t her true soul. He died and still knew her, the pure girl defiled, and hit the ground with her, clutching those red ribbons like salvation.

Join me in the Twitter Fiction Festival: You write epitaphs based on grave photos I post daily at @WriterJenWilson. I turn the best into stories here. Join me today at 12pm-1pm EST (11 CST) and you’ll be featured on the Twitter Fiction Festival Page– four grave images per hour and you tweet the epitaphs. Use the #TwitterFiction hashtag. Let’s make stories together … and tweet the dead. 

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