update from sparkleup

writing/sawtooth/jump.md

@@ -7,17 +7,17 @@ Sim was quick to jump at any opportunity, you see, cause when Sim sees an opport
 
 Sim jumped when there was that convenience store. He jumped cause the gun was under the seat in that shitty beater van and the convenience store had a completely empty parking lot and the lights were on and he couldn't see the clerk. Hell, it wasn't just empty, it was nigh on abandoned. Isolated. You know the type. One of those buildings that sits squat by the side of the road and probably a ton of truckers come through there and the clerks are busy from something like seven to eleven, but it's not big enough to actually be a 7-Eleven. But then the truckers' clocks run out and they all go pull over at one of the big TransAmericas down the road where they've got the showers and the hot meals and the reasonably attractive waitresses in that homey, no-nonsense way,who smirk but never flirt back.
 
-See, one of those places, after the day truckers' clocks run out and before the night truckers come by, there's these few hours where everything's quiet and the clerk is just sitting behind that counter, behind that plexiglass or whatever they put up there, and he could call the cops or state patrol, sure, but he's far enough away from everything that he was basically told in training to let robbers take everything and trust the cameras to get the plate details and only then call.
+See, one of those places, after the day truckers' clocks run out and before the night truckers come by, there's these few hours where everything's quiet and the clerk is just sitting behind that counter, behind that plexiglass or whatever they put up there, and he could call the cops or state patrol, sure, but he's far enough away from everything that he was basically told in training a week or two back to let robbers take everything and trust the cameras to get the plate details and only then call.
 
 Sim saw the opportunity, Sim jumped, just how he's built.
 
 And where Sim jumped, there was Ursula. Sim was the brains, he'd say, he'd run the plan by Ursula three times whether or not she got it on the first time through, and she was the muscle. Big old bear like her, nothing getting past if she needed to block the door, and if she need to knock heads, Sim said, she would just have to knock some heads.
 
-But here, this convenience store, something had happened there. Sometimes you just gotta go, you know? Clerk'd been holding it for until all those truckers' clocks ran out because you were too busy and the owner was too cheap to hire anyone else, so he had to steal a moment of quiet at eleven thirty or whatever, and he ran off to the bathroom out around the back of the building.
+But here, this convenience store, something had happened there. Clerk'd been holding it for until all those truckers' clocks ran out because you were too busy and the owner was too cheap to hire anyone else, so he had to steal a moment of quiet at eleven thirty or whatever, and he ran off to the bathroom out around the back of the building. Sometimes you just gotta go, you know?
 
-Sometimes you forget. Ever forget? Happened to me. Only this time he forgot to lock the front door and forgot to close out the drawer.
+Sometimes you forget. Ever forget? Happened to me. Forget the little things. Only this time he forgot to lock the front door and forgot to close out the drawer.
 
-And this is the time when a ferret and a bear come barreling down the highway and slipped right up to the front of the store all nice like, quiet, no uncouth squealing of tires. They hopped out like maybe they got just a quick errand to run, and clerk, he figured he's got enough time to finish up, but they're in and out real smooth.
+And this is the time when a ferret and a bear come barreling down the highway and slipped right up to the front of the store all nice like under those bright lot lights and the moon beyond, quiet, no uncouth squealing of tires. They hopped out like maybe they got just a quick errand to run, and clerk, he figured he's got enough time to finish up, but they're in and out real smooth.
 
 "Shit, Ursula," you may imagine Sim saying with that reedy tenor that can cut through anything like it was paper. "How fuckin' perfect is this? All laid out for us."
 
@@ -31,7 +31,7 @@ A mumble.
 
 And poor clerk hears his drawer being yanked free and here he is, his drawers down around his ankles and he cusses and cusses and cusses and maybe starts crying, but at this point it's just too late, so he keeps sitting his skinny ass down on the toilet until he hears the rev of an engine, the thrum of something with a couple hundred thousand miles on it, maybe got fifty more in it, and then he hears it fade into the dark, and only then does he call.
 
-"Do you *see* this? Hah! Did you get a load of that take?" says that weasel as the unassuming minivan trundles down the road, no more'n five over the limit. "Shit, poor fella in there probably didn't even have time to hit the safe after his shift, and where was he anyway?"
+"Do you *see* this? Hah! Did you get a load of that take?" says that ferret as the unassuming minivan trundles down the road, no more'n five over the limit. "Shit, poor fella in there probably didn't even have time to hit the safe after his shift, and where was he anyway?"
 
 Ursula, she keeps her eyes on the road, troops past the trailer park, troops past the cars, turns once, turns again, and then they're up in the Rockies, poking along through the scrub and the sand and the high desert. Nothing out here, course, not even a tent or trailer. Just a place to park that big old van of theirs.
 
@@ -61,7 +61,15 @@ All we know, all we know of course, all poor Sim knows is that our Ursula's hear
 
 And all these parts we all heard before in the papers and the gossip and the chatter cause they caught old Sim, poor fella, caught him in the end, but the rest, of course, only we really, truly know.
 
-Sim, too busy jumping, never kept the batteries in the flashlight charged, so it's a damn weak light that bobs and bounces its way up the dirt trail from where they'd made their camp however many days or weeks or months later, that camp an hour or so outside of Sawtooth, and it's not bobbing from his endless dancing now.
+But they never caught our Ursula, never caught the bear and her dreams and her brawn and all her unspoken words and all her unsmiled smiles. Never caught her, and if they never caught her, did she ever really ride along all those heists? Did she ever really let Sim push her back onto that mattress? Did she ever haul rocks or run miles or knock heads or crunch her carrots?
+
+We know she did, of course we do. We really, truly know, and perhaps others did as well. Others, we can suppose, must have, at least as a shadow, as Sim and t'other, the big'un, who hit up stores and foxes and cats. But did Sim know? Did Sim really know just how much she was herself? We can suppose he saw her and that he felt her and that he fucked her and that he must be talking to someone, but whether or not he only jumped around her, defined her presence by his very unknowing, we cannot say.
+
+Neither can we say when it was she snapped. We can't know how many times she'd dreamed the dream of gardens and beets and moons and freedom any more than we can know just how many times before that Sim promised her they'd go straight, had bit her ear, made promises, and kept on jumping, how many months he'd promised her years free or how many years he'd promised decades, had told her that he, he promised himself, loved her.
+
+All we can do is jump, just like Sim, just like the ferret, and dance around that very unknowing and divine by ping-ponging around a hidden center that she must have, at some point, craved her garden and beets and the moon and freedom more than she might have cared to haul rocks or run miles or knock heads, more than she cared even to crunch her carrots, defining an absence by walking its muddy shores.
+
+And so we imagine that Sim, too busy jumping, never kept the batteries in the flashlight charged so it's a damn weak light that bobs and bounces its way up the dirt trail from where they'd made their camp however many days or weeks or months later, that camp an hour or so outside of Sawtooth, and it's not bobbing from his endless dancing now.
 
 Someone down in town told him they'd seen Ursula heading up into the mountains. Someone there said the bear'd been wandering a fair piece away from where they were camped.
 
@@ -69,7 +77,7 @@ Not dancing, no, our poor Sim is troubled, we can guess, by the way he stomps an
 
 Also afraid, perhaps, of what folks down in town would say, seeing that big oaf tramping up through the trees. Afraid of what that'd do to their safety if they were to keep making their keep.
 
-"Big dummy, trespassin' up these hills, I'm sure this's someone's land," he says to that dim circle of light on the ground and to the moon up high. "Imagine a big girl like her needing to go for a nature hike, taking those big-ass feet of hers to bury them in pine needles or --- hah! --- bearberry. Imagine needing to take a vacation from bein' stronger'n I'll ever be. Imagine needing to take a break from having a life so easy as the one I bought for her. Big dummy, I swear.
+"Big dummy, trespassin' up these hills, I'm sure, this's gotta be someone's land, just gotta be," he says to that dim circle of light on the ground and to the darkling trees and to the moon up high. "Imagine a big girl like her needing to go for a nature hike, taking those big-ass feet of hers to soak them in streams or bury them in pine needles or --- hah! --- bearberry. Imagine needing to take a vacation from bein' stronger'n I'll ever be. Imagine needing to take a break from having a life so easy as the one I bought for her. Big dummy, I swear.
 
 "Just you wait--" Though who this 'you' Sim imagines is we'll likely never know. Maybe that very same moon. "Just you wait. She'll be comin' back looking all peaceful and full of the light of the stars or maybe she's up there meditating on a rock like some golden Buddha you see in all those shows I'm sure she likes. Just you wait! She'll come back with a big dumb grin on that big blank face of hers, and I'll jump up and say, 'You been rollin' around in needles again, girlie? You been out there having a romp with the deer? You climbin' trees and howlin' at the moon?' And I'll say, 'You look a fool like that, pine-cones in your ears. You look a total fool thinkin' all your peace is bound up in quiet and not in the life I'm buyin'.'"
 
@@ -77,15 +85,15 @@ But far out, far out by now, Ursula ran. She plowed through the trees because sh
 
 She ran until the trees ran out and she had to make a wake through stone and shale, through pebbles and snow, and our Ursula keep on running. She ran until the mountain beneath her feet ran out and the earth yawned open beneath her and all she had to make waves in was stars and the good clean black of the night.
 
-And her arms fell away in a flourish of a bow, spread in a genteel curtsy to no one but the moon, and those arms became stars, they became stars of brightest white because what better color could a star ever hope to be? Stars to wrap around the moon.
+And she let her arms spread away in a flourish of a bow, a genteel curtsy to no one but the moon, and those arms became stars, they became stars of brightest white because what better color could a star ever hope to be? Stars to wrap around the moon.
 
-And her legs fell away like a garment long past its prime, like those overalls that fit just so, the ones she'd been mending years and years now, darning by camp stove and headlight and in plain light of day, suspending that baseness. They fell away and burned into that crisp brightness, standing stark as stars against the fabric of the night. They burned as bright as her arms, for every rock Ursula hauled or head she knocked, surely she'd ran a mile.
+And she let her legs drift loose like a garment long past its prime, like those overalls that fit just so, the ones she'd been mending years and years now, darning by camp stove and headlight and in plain light of day, suspending that baseness. They fell away and burned into that crisp brightness, standing stark as stars against the fabric of the night. They burned as bright as her arms, for every rock Ursula hauled or head she knocked, surely she'd ran a mile.
 
 And she shed the mantle of the weight of the world, letting her shoulders fall off as easy as could be, as easy as the skin of beets boiled just long enough, as easy as Sim dancing in the lights of the van that night out in the foothills. Shoulders falling away as easy as it was to jump.
 
 And thus let her belly fall away like an apron full of boulders, that ever-soft curve no longer held taut to keep Sim from poking fun at it as he fucked her, hunching and curling above her and pretending like she was with child or fat as could be. Those boulders, too, they became stars in the sky, burning as bright as anything.
 
-And at long last she was able to reach up to the moon, reach up to the moon that one last time, and give the face held within a kiss, leaving behind a twinkle of her eye, one last star, shining bright as all get-out, to show her love for the night and for the moon and for the good clean earth below.
+And at long last she was able to reach up to the moon with the stars that were her, reach up to the moon that one last time, and give the face held within a kiss, leaving behind a twinkle of her eye, one last star, shining bright as all get-out, to show her love for the night and for the moon and for the good clean earth below.
 
 Nothing left of our Ursula but her yearning, insatiable shadow cast upon the ground as the moon rose ever higher and Sim cussed his cusses and the lights of the town twinkled below, and all we can do is hope that at last she gets to bury her feet in good clean earth and sow her carrots and beets, and if ever someone hunches and curls above her in labor or in lust or in pain or in joy, all we can do is hope that it will be out of more than a mere promise of love.