Carolyn Osborn - Warriors and maidens: short stories

Cover

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title	:	Warriors and Maidens : Short Stories
author	:	Osborn, Carolyn.
publisher	:	Texas Christian University Press
isbn10 | asin	:	0875650848
print isbn13	:	9780875650845
ebook isbn13	:	9780585378862
language	:	English
subject	American fiction.
publication date	:	1991
lcc	:	PS3565.S348W37 1991eb
ddc	:	813/.54
subject	:	American fiction.

Page i

Page iii

WARRIORS
and
MAIDENS

SHORT STORIES BY
Carolyn Osborn

Afterword by
Marshall Terry

Page iv

Copyright 1991 by Carolyn Osborn.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Osborn, Carolyn, 1934
Warriors and maidens / by Carolyn Osborn; with an afterword by
Marshall Terry.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-87565-084-8
I. Title.
PS3565.S348W37 1991 90-49280
813'.54dc20 CIP

Acknowledgements

Wildflowers I Have Known first appeared in The Paris Review; Overlappings, in New Letters; Cowboy Movie, in The Georgia Review; Letter to a Friend Far Away in Ascent; The Gardener in Shenendoah; The Greats in The Antioch Review; The Grands in Wind; and Songs People Sing When They're Alone, in American Literary Review.

The lithograph of the warrior and maiden used on the cover and on the title page is adapted from the original in the Public Archives of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, C7867.

Design by Whitehead & Whitehead

Page v

Wildflowers I Have Known

Chauffeur

Overlappings

Save These Instructions

Cowboy Movie

Letter to a Friend Far Away

Graffiti

Songs People Sing When They're Alone

The Warrior and the Maiden

The Gardener

The Greats

The Grands

Afterword

Page vii

For Mary Bess Whidden
and Angela Boone

Page ix

Warriors and Maidens

Page 1

All Texas plants, of course, in the strictest sense are wildflowers.

HOWARD S. IRVIN, Roadside Flowers of Texas

MONICA CALLS. There is a confessional tone to her voice and I don't want to hear the confession, the voice, anything. I'm already hung over from the upheavals of the preceding day plus I have a headache from too much dry sherry taken the preceding night. Sherry drinking is preparation for my old age. By the time I'm seventy I'll be able to belt it down with all the other hearty old ladies. I have to be in training for something. Discipline provides a needed order for one who lives alone.

Craig wouldn't stay on the couch last night.

I wouldn't expect him to. Craig will never stay on a couch when there's a bed present. Witness mine. At 7:30 A.M. even on the brightest day, it's indecent to discuss a mutual lover yet Monica complains with the best will in the world and I listen with feigned indifference as I'm supposed to be through with Craig. How is anyone ever completely through with anyone? My ex-husband, Dillard, divorced four years ago, calls me from Oklahoma, or Hawaii, or New Brunswick either New

Page 2

Jersey or Canada; he makes films and doesn't care where he goes when he's drunk or feeling lonely he calls and asks if I've quit smoking yet and what's the weather like in Texas. He says he has an abiding interest in bad characters.

Monica carries on. You've never had three children standing at your door asking for lunch money at 6:30 in the morning. Craig gave it to them.

That was generous. I try not to sound bitter. Craig never gave me anything but a telephone call. I can't say I love him. I'm sure I don't. So why am I sitting on the other end of a telephone holding my sloppy, envious heart in my hands? I know some of the answers, a survival trick I learned during the years I lived with Dillard: Don't ask yourself questions you don't have partial answers to. Monica now has two men, such as they are, a runaway husband gone to L.A. with one of his students and a jelly-like lover who may slip away before she's aware he's gone. Yesterday I had two; George, the overardent Arab professor I don't want, and Craig, a would-be husband who asked me to marry him too late. Now I have none. Today all their negative qualities seem less negative, especially after four years of living alone and liking it less. Yesterday I was brave, and free, and strong. Today I'm the dejected reject. Yesterday I laughed at Craig's proposal and sprayed cold water on George and his mariachi band. (Although he's lived in Texas long enough to get a Ph.D., George exists in a state of cultural confusion. He will use any means at hand to court the woman he wants.) Pursuers drive me away, yet once I'm out there running in front of them I begin to feel they have rejected me simply because they can't keep up. I'm playing the game my instincts have been drilled to play for forty years men hunt, women run and all the other players have gone. Superior staying power as a long distance runner is no compensation for lovers lost.

I tell Monica as fairly as I can that she'll have to deal with Craig and her children as best she can. It's time for me to go

Page 3

open up my shop. I unchain my bike from the tree on the terrace and am off pedalling furiously up and down Austin's hills, working off all kinds of animosities on the streets.

They're not open yet. I give the code knock and am let in. This is Wildflowers, a florist shop owned by my friend Roselle. She and some other nature lovers run the place. Flower power gone to seed, Roselle says. To look at the exterior you wouldn't think so. Huge galvanized washtubs and buckets are stuffed with fresh flowers. Hanging baskets swing from the wooden awning. Everything smells good: an effusion of brightness and joy spreads over the sidewalk.

Inside it's different. A big live pine Christmas tree Roselle couldn't sell and nobody would undecorate has been standing by the doorway since last Christmas. It is now October. The decorations are eclectic camp empty pill bottles, a yellow rubber band, white papier-mache pigeons with chicken feather wings, a swag made of interlocked pop-top rings, a lost key, one ordinary shiny red ball that assumes sexual significance hung next to a clear plastic icicle.

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