Boom Towns and Relics
Jun. 14th, 2010 09:07 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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monaboyd_monthTwo short companion pieces on the agenda for today. Look for the second after lunch. :)
Title: Boom Towns and Relics
Word Count: ~800
Disclaimer: I am making this shit up.
Summary: It's like one of those old Crosby and Hope road movies, only without the big production number.
Archive: Please ask.
With thanks to Susan and Deb for the beta advice, which I cheerfully ignored on almost every count.
Billy’s gran had a button jar. It was massive--more of a vat, really. He’d asked her, once, where it came from and the answer was a long and rambling story involving Morag MacLean (the wife of a local publican), half of a smoked pig, and the re-stocking of pickled eggs at the Black Briar. The details were a bit hazy.
But the buttons. Oh, the buttons were glorious. All the colors of the rainbow and every size and shape known to mankind. And the history! Gran's jar was seeded with the jar her mother kept. And that one had been started with her mother's collection. Gran could tell him which button came from her father's cardigan and which was once attached to her own gran's Sunday dress. Brass ones from Grandad's uniform. A wooden one from Pippin's trousers.
Billy would bring her buttons that he found on the street, the bus...the playground. Once, he even surreptitiously clipped a beautiful peacock blue specimen from a coat hanging on a hook in a pub in London and mailed it to her express post. He'd lost count of all the times there had been buttons he'd wanted to send back home.
Today, he is standing in an antique shop in Prescott, Arizona and there is an entire shelf of button jars. Dom is off in the corner, eyeing a cigar store Indian that stands at least two feet taller than either of them and, in the back of his head, Billy hears a small alarm going off. There is just no way that thing is going to fit into their rental car--even if they had been able to score the convertible.
Dom's jingling the change in his pocket and peering up into the weathered face and Billy can practically hear him running through a litany of potential names. He knows that, should one be chosen, they will have a staunch companion for the rest of this road trip and will be hauling the thing off the roof every time Dom wants to snap a picture at a landmark. A smart man would intervene and steer him over toward the old postcards and the collection of bowler hats before things got entirely out of hand.
But. The buttons. They’re calling to him. Seven jars in total. That one--the Mason jar--looked to have a whole bunch of antler buttons. (The one from great-grandfather Murray’s sweater had been staghorn.) And the one next to it had a decidedly blue bent--like the original owner might have stored her buttons by color code. The one on the end had marbles mixed in.
“Simon!” Dom declares. “Simon Redfeather!”
“You'll need a handcart,” Billy answers with a sigh. “And some rope.” And a bloody crane, too, you lunatic.
Dom practically skips past in search of the owner. “We're going to the Grand Canyon! Simon wants to have his picture taken with a mule.”
Billy sighs again and squeezes both eyes shut for a long moment. Gran is gone. Margaret has the buttons now; the jar sits on her hearth between a wrought iron candle stand and a horrible sculpture of a cat.
How would he even get them back to Scotland?
Dom pauses on his way back to Simon the Gigantically Inappropriate Indian. “C'mon, Bills. He’s not going to load himself.”
It takes close to twenty minutes and a whole lot of swearing on everyone’s part, but, eventually, they get the massive Indian strapped to the roof of their rented Impala. As Dom and the cashier head back inside to settle up, Billy sinks into the passenger seat and eyes the ceiling suspiciously. It’ll cost them a mint if the roof caves in. Assuming they survive, that is.
But here's Dom, back again. Whistling a merry tune and hopping behind the wheel like there isn’t the slightest thing odd about two men in a car with a wooden Indian strapped on top.
“Mules?” Billy asks.
“Mules.”
And they're off again.
Hours later, in a motel just west of Flagstaff, Dom saunters out of the bathroom and tosses a heavy bag onto the foot of Billy’s sagging bed.
“A gift,” he says, talking around his toothbrush. “From Simon Redfeather and myself.”
Billy glances at the Indian, safely ensconced in the next bed with covers drawn up to his chin and Dom's own eyeshade blocking the light, then turns an eye toward Dom, but he’s already back at the sink. The bag plinks as Billy nudges it with his foot.
When Dom emerges, he is fresh-faced and a bit damp around the edges. He climbs into the empty side of Billy's bed and clicks out the light.
“You're going to need those buttons to trade with Simon's people. I'm told they drive a hard bargain.”
Title: Boom Towns and Relics
Word Count: ~800
Disclaimer: I am making this shit up.
Summary: It's like one of those old Crosby and Hope road movies, only without the big production number.
Archive: Please ask.
With thanks to Susan and Deb for the beta advice, which I cheerfully ignored on almost every count.
Billy’s gran had a button jar. It was massive--more of a vat, really. He’d asked her, once, where it came from and the answer was a long and rambling story involving Morag MacLean (the wife of a local publican), half of a smoked pig, and the re-stocking of pickled eggs at the Black Briar. The details were a bit hazy.
But the buttons. Oh, the buttons were glorious. All the colors of the rainbow and every size and shape known to mankind. And the history! Gran's jar was seeded with the jar her mother kept. And that one had been started with her mother's collection. Gran could tell him which button came from her father's cardigan and which was once attached to her own gran's Sunday dress. Brass ones from Grandad's uniform. A wooden one from Pippin's trousers.
Billy would bring her buttons that he found on the street, the bus...the playground. Once, he even surreptitiously clipped a beautiful peacock blue specimen from a coat hanging on a hook in a pub in London and mailed it to her express post. He'd lost count of all the times there had been buttons he'd wanted to send back home.
Today, he is standing in an antique shop in Prescott, Arizona and there is an entire shelf of button jars. Dom is off in the corner, eyeing a cigar store Indian that stands at least two feet taller than either of them and, in the back of his head, Billy hears a small alarm going off. There is just no way that thing is going to fit into their rental car--even if they had been able to score the convertible.
Dom's jingling the change in his pocket and peering up into the weathered face and Billy can practically hear him running through a litany of potential names. He knows that, should one be chosen, they will have a staunch companion for the rest of this road trip and will be hauling the thing off the roof every time Dom wants to snap a picture at a landmark. A smart man would intervene and steer him over toward the old postcards and the collection of bowler hats before things got entirely out of hand.
But. The buttons. They’re calling to him. Seven jars in total. That one--the Mason jar--looked to have a whole bunch of antler buttons. (The one from great-grandfather Murray’s sweater had been staghorn.) And the one next to it had a decidedly blue bent--like the original owner might have stored her buttons by color code. The one on the end had marbles mixed in.
“Simon!” Dom declares. “Simon Redfeather!”
“You'll need a handcart,” Billy answers with a sigh. “And some rope.” And a bloody crane, too, you lunatic.
Dom practically skips past in search of the owner. “We're going to the Grand Canyon! Simon wants to have his picture taken with a mule.”
Billy sighs again and squeezes both eyes shut for a long moment. Gran is gone. Margaret has the buttons now; the jar sits on her hearth between a wrought iron candle stand and a horrible sculpture of a cat.
How would he even get them back to Scotland?
Dom pauses on his way back to Simon the Gigantically Inappropriate Indian. “C'mon, Bills. He’s not going to load himself.”
It takes close to twenty minutes and a whole lot of swearing on everyone’s part, but, eventually, they get the massive Indian strapped to the roof of their rented Impala. As Dom and the cashier head back inside to settle up, Billy sinks into the passenger seat and eyes the ceiling suspiciously. It’ll cost them a mint if the roof caves in. Assuming they survive, that is.
But here's Dom, back again. Whistling a merry tune and hopping behind the wheel like there isn’t the slightest thing odd about two men in a car with a wooden Indian strapped on top.
“Mules?” Billy asks.
“Mules.”
And they're off again.
Hours later, in a motel just west of Flagstaff, Dom saunters out of the bathroom and tosses a heavy bag onto the foot of Billy’s sagging bed.
“A gift,” he says, talking around his toothbrush. “From Simon Redfeather and myself.”
Billy glances at the Indian, safely ensconced in the next bed with covers drawn up to his chin and Dom's own eyeshade blocking the light, then turns an eye toward Dom, but he’s already back at the sink. The bag plinks as Billy nudges it with his foot.
When Dom emerges, he is fresh-faced and a bit damp around the edges. He climbs into the empty side of Billy's bed and clicks out the light.
“You're going to need those buttons to trade with Simon's people. I'm told they drive a hard bargain.”
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Date: 2010-06-14 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-06-14 04:20 pm (UTC)You're very welcome. :)
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Date: 2010-06-14 06:31 pm (UTC)*quickly slides Monaboyd roadtrip story I was writing for my day under the sofa cushions, where it won't be discovered*
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Date: 2010-06-16 02:21 pm (UTC)I'm really glad you liked them, but I wish to stress that there can never be enough Monaboyd roadtripping! :)
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