update from sparkleup

writing/sawtooth/jump.md

@@ -33,7 +33,7 @@ And poor clerk hears his drawer being yanked free and here he is, his drawers do
 
 "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, troops past the troopers parked on the sides of the road. 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.
+Ursula, she keeps her eyes on the road, troops past the trailer park, troops past the cars, troops past the troopers parked on the sides of the road. 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.
 
 And Sim, he's already jumping from the passenger seat. He's already dancing and twirling around the front of the van, those parking lights catching him only from the waist down --- always such a dancer, that ferret --- but you can surely imagine him pirouetting along between sagebrush and scrub pine with that raggedy-ass tail of his flip-flopping behind him, laughing away.
 
@@ -57,23 +57,23 @@ But still, they had got to earn their keep, hadn't they? That's what Sim said, w
 
 So with the courage of the sun or the moon or a kite jerking tight at its tether, Ursula kept up her routine, still doing her runs in the morning and hauling some big old rocks round here and there just to keep those shoulders from getting too soft and brushing her fur out in the evenings. Still crunching on those carrots we all know she loves and buying cans of beets --- pale imitations of those in her dreams --- to go with cheap chuck so she can cook up a stew on the tailgate of the van, just past the end of their mattress. Still letting Sim push her down onto that very same mattress after every job, cause we all know the ferret's gotta jump every opportunity he gets and the jobs, they make him jumpy, and maybe she makes a sound or maybe not, cause we also know how taciturn our Ursula is, quiet to her core, and we'll never know her thoughts as he hunches and curls above her because Sim hasn't the time to listen after making, he promises himself, love to her, he's too busy jumping.
 
-All we know, all we know of course, all poor Sim knows is that our Ursula's heart beats faster.
+All we know, all we know and of course all poor Sim knows is that our Ursula's heart beats faster.
 
-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.
+And all these things 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. Caught him and he was yelling and wailing and jumping about, but the rest only *we* really, truly know.
 
-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 exist and live and 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?
+Because 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 exist and live and 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 gas stations and foxes and cats. But did Sim know? Did Sim really know just how much she was herself? We can surely say 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 and defined her presence or what he imagined it to be by his very unknowing, we cannot say.
+*We* know she did, of course we do. We really, truly know, and perhaps others did as well. Others, we can suppose, must'a seen her, at least as a shadow, as Sim and t'other, the big'un, who hit up stores and gas stations and foxes and cats. But did Sim know? Did Sim really know just how much she was herself? We can surely say 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 and defined her presence or what he imagined it to be 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.
+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 lucky take 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.
+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.
 
-Not dancing, no, our poor Sim is troubled, we can guess, by the way he stomps and skitters, first one then t'other, cause he was afraid of the Rockies, up where the air gets clean and bright in the nose and the throat and the trees practically shine and there's certainly no hauls to be had or plans to be made. Afraid? Perhaps, though we can be sure one so used to jumping would never say so.
+Not dancing, no, our poor Sim is troubled, we can guess, by the way he stomps and skitters, first one then t'other, cause he was afraid of the Rockies, up where the air gets clean and bright in the nose and the throat and the trees practically shine and there's certainly no hauls to be had or plans to be made. Afraid? Perhaps, though we can be sure one such as he would never say so.
 
 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.
 
@@ -87,9 +87,9 @@ She runs until the trees run out and she has to make a wake through shale and sc
 
 And she lets her arms spread away in a flourish of a bow, a genteel curtsy to no one but the moon, and those arms become stars, they become stars of brightest white because what better color could a star ever hope to be? Stars to wrap around the moon.
 
-And she lets 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 fall away and burn into that crisp brightness, standing stark as stars against the fabric of the night. They burn as bright as her arms, for every rock Ursula hauled or head she knocked, surely she'd ran a mile.
+And she lets her legs drift loose like a garment long past its prime, like those coveralls 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 fall away and burn into that crisp brightness, standing stark as stars against the fabric of the night. They burn as bright as her arms, for every rock Ursula hauled or head she knocked, surely she'd ran a mile.
 
-And she sheds 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 she sheds the mantle of the weight of the world, letting her shoulders drop down as easy as could be, sloughing off weight 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 lets 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 become stars in the sky, burning as bright as anything.