|
Mandy Makes No Attempt
Mandy Makes No Attempt
Copyright © November 27, 2020 by Douglas W. Jerving.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the author, except
as provided by USA copyright law.
1
The hills around the house encased them all.
It was as if her family was rounded
Within some ancient rock like petroglyphs
Not yet discovered by the shovel hands
Of diggers or their students with deft palms
Brushing aside the dirt that lay to long
Upon the ruins that proved their empty lives.
“What do you s’pose we’ll find here?” asked Jack May,
A summer student working his Masters
In ethno-biologic archaeology.
The question was directed to his lead,
An ancient man who could have been older
Than the mere forty-five he turned last week.
Johnny Temms was his given name, but he
Was known to the crew as the Incisor
Because no one was better than he was
At chewing out a perfect specimen
From ancient rock and weary earth and clay.
His boss was the professor no one liked,
But Jack May did. At least it seemed that way.
The Incisor grumbled back in half respect
Hoping this upcomer would get the hint.
This was and would be his last and best dig;
That final one that pulled him from the mud
And placed him on the speaking circuit
With a pension that would finally pay
The mortgage on the small castle and home.
“You know already Jack. Y’should not ask.
Just keep the students digging like I did
You ten years ago. This whole thing is yours
Anyway, in a year.” Jack accepted that.
2
But Mandy knew and others guessed about
From round the town that lay just west of her.
Old Hillborough knew what buried there was
Better left unseen, forgotten, rotten.
This hollow below sea level ten miles
From those hills where they all stayed was as still
A fog be-laden land like in “Baskervilles”.
Once a traveler’s car broke down, and there,
He swore to the taverners that next day,
He heard the hound, and not the one from heaven.
The ghost tales still haunted the rill and riff
About her family history. Mandy
Was tired of it all. Let them dig and when
That horrid ghost came forth to betray them
She would have her last say.
“I’ve found a bone!”
Temms figured ancient history was his,
That now the pay-dirt and his papers pay!
Maybe, with hope, and some carbon-dating
This skeleton of some glorious king
From centuries past would prestige him at last.
But it was just a dog and not the kind
A prince would use for hunting; just for sheep.
But then another dog was found that lie
Quite near his fellow in bogs below a kairn
With tags that spoke of some dark misery.
This was no more the fifteenth century.
They were just dogs! Dead dogs, but what reason
Could be made for them ’til a finger bone
Disinterred the shepherd from his short rest,
His scull crushed with a mallet or a bat
Then quickly buried in the fog-down peat.
Their dig by law would have to stop. The scene
Was now a criminal investigation.
3
Mandy’s Mum was young when she married Heard.
She at seventeen, and he was forty-five.
Heard was a lot of men; a jack of trades
From sailor, warrior, farmer, trader, jail
Intern guard and later an attendee.
She married hoping to reform him by
Application of the cross and Word of God,
But he would have none of it unless bed.
And Heard was cruel to her even there.
He was always jealous and would beat her
For the slightest glance from a man from town.
Any man. She was not the prettiest thing,
But caring souls concerned themselves for her.
Then after matins one spring day she fell
While preparing a chicken for dinner
Slipping in the blood on the stoop headfirst
Breaking her neck and smashing in her head
On a garden group of stones recently placed.
Heard buried her beneath those same kairn stones.
She’d married him to avoid the convent
And the loss of the child in her belly.
He married her to take over the bog
Property of her aging Mom and Dad.
The child was not even his own, but he
Would, he promised, give it a chance in life.
Mandy upon her mother’s death was ward,
And now fifteen to a perverse man she feared.
4
“We’ve found another body!” The officer
Announced almost with joy at the new dig.
The forensic evidence proved it was Heard.
His scull was crushed but still the teeth bore true:
His dental records from the prison proved.
The story was that he had gone away
After his wife had died and daughter saddened,
Reclaimed as an adult from him the deed
In court so that now the property was hers.
He had that head wound. But arsenic bones
Showed he had died before his head was crushed,
And a strangled chicken left along his neck
On the opposite of the shepherd’s kairn
Convinced them Mandy was his murderer.
5
The young man fell for Mandy right away.
He fell in love if falling’s what you do.
She loved him too so deeply and so hard
That baring her soul to him was easy.
He learned her horrid plight and vowed to save.
As soon as she was of age, he would
Rescue her by marriage from the brute,
And he, that Heard, could have the property.
It was just the bog, not worth the sweet girl.
Heard abused her Mum and was the same to her.
He hoped to be her deliverer. She,
Convinced in hope, announced matrimony.
Heard’s jealousy was more than he could bear.
Heard caught him in the bogs. He bashed his head
And killed the dogs just for the added pleasure.
The sheep were scattered, and Mandy, destroyed,
Returned dissolute to the prison lust;
Interred by the monster again.
6
Mandy
Made no attempt to deny the charge against her.
She would do it again. The courts found her
In self-defence, but still premeditated.
The dogs still howl quite late at night the bogs.
Mandy listens and hears her shepherd call.
The archaeologists, no long-lost king
Was found.
Get up to the day!
But Mandy makes no attempt.
------------------------
Doug Jerving is the publisher of the NewEdisonGazette.com. You may contact him at
djerving@newedisongazette.com.
=================================
Return to The New Edison Gazette main site.
|
|