Simon

RICHARD DAVID KENNEDY, The Complete Works ABOUT  Simon The Dunning Of Harley Nesbit The Trip House Of December Love & Similar States Of Insanity The Encuentro (A Children's Story For Adults) Psychophysics: The Point Of Everything Broken Sparrows And Wild Duct Tape JUST LISTEN VALUED ARTISTIC LINKS The Broken Sparrow The Broken Sparrow Magazine- June, 2007 Sparrow- Page 2 FREE Subscribtion Ads Kennedy et al. (Blog) MULTIPLE AND VOLUME ORDERS GUEST BOOK CONTACT

EXCERPTS

The shock of being diagnosed with a terminal disease- one of the cruelest in medical annals, is made even more confusing and ironic by a fantastic gift that accompanies it...You will laugh. You will cry. And you will enjoy one of the most moving love stories ever written...You will never forget the “man-child”, Simon, with his unparalleled joys and his unimaginable sorrows. And you are sure to be exhilarated by a gripping conclusion.

CHAPTER FOUR

     He’d only just closed his eyes when his mother called, “…Simon?...You have a visitor!” There was an all too familiar twang in her voice.
     Opening his eyes, he saw her on the porch. “Yeah?...Who is it?” he lazily inquired, closing them again.
     “…It’s Teagan!” she replied, again with that special twang.
     His eyes flew open, and he sat up stiffly. The tip of one of the crutches lodged in the ground, jamming its padded grip squarely into his neck. Groaning, he clutched at his throat and lurched back sharply, slamming his head into the tree trunk. This in turn sent him lurching forward again into the awaiting crutch grip.
     “Damn!” he shouted, sounding indeed strange, with a crushed wind pipe. Instinctively, he reached for the back of his head. Seizing the crutch, he threw it on the ground where the other one had slipped.
     Apparently having witnessed what at least in part looked like an attempted suicide, Teagan remained partially obscured in the shadows. She stood there giggling with her hand over her mouth, while his mother trotted down the steps. “…Are you alright, Simon?” she asked, trying to shroud a smile.
     Still clutching his throat and holding the back of his head as if he were about to finish the job by twisting it off, he tried to see through the tears in his eyes and otherwise look normal. Waving her back, he anxiously replied, “…I’m okay! I’m okay!” He was still tone-deaf and couldn’t carry a tune, but he suddenly had the voice of an operatic tenor. “…Send her out!” he crooned.
     His mother reluctantly returned to the porch, where she said something to Teagan that was apparently intended for her ears only.
     Still grinning and giggling, Teagan appeared from out of the shadows and began walking his way.
     As she continued to approach, he lowered his hands and made a vain attempt to steady himself. Still wincing, he fixed his gaze on the garden, while still keeping an eye on her. Sitting there as he was with a dazed expression on his face, his bandage dangling loosely, and his crutches strewn out haphazardly on the ground in front of him, he looked more like the unfortunate victim of an automobile accident than the debonair young man he wanted her to see.
     How he’d missed seeing her coming, either from across the lot or in front of the house, he couldn’t imagine. It really didn’t matter because there she was, homing in on him like a sweet-smelling smart bomb.
     In an effort to rearrange, reinforce, reconstruct, or just plain resurrect some sort of an image, he casually draped on arm over the back of the love seat. Mindful of the tree, he kept his head bent forward slightly.
     In spite of his anger and the pain in his head and neck and knee, he forged a smile.
     For some unknown reason– probably in the interest of resurrection, he decided to pretend he wasn’t aware of her and act as if he were blithely unconcerned. So, he continued to gaze placidly beyond the garden, thinking how pleasantly aloof and sophisticated he must have appeared; never mind the sound of his grinding teeth.
     The real world affects he produced for her were something else, however. She looked at him with an air of concern, as if she’d given him a nickel for a dollar and he didn’t know the difference. 
     Meanwhile, in the realm of the unreal the sound of her footsteps grew near and near, until the stopped a few feet away. Still posturing, he held his gaze until it dawned on him that she must have been waiting for him to do something clever, like open his mouth and take a stab at a few words.
     “…Oh, Teagan! It’s you!...What’re you doing here?” he said in his avant-garde voice.


Copyright © 1985, 2003, 2005, 2007 by Richard D. Kennedy. All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the author.


CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

       There was something soothing about the sound of rattling dishes and pots and pans being clanged in the hollows of the kitchen; something soothing about the muffled crowd noises and the sound of whistles blowing on the television; crickets chirping by the porch and lawns being mowed in the not so far off distance; passing cars in the street and the warm, friendly conversation underpinning it all. There was something comforting about the smell of the fresh-cut grass that wafted through the air– its sweetness intermingling with the pungent aroma of mincemeat pie, left over turkey, fresh home-made cranberry sauce and those good old peanut butter cookies; something reassuring about the wind-borne harvest of brightly-colored leaves that spiraled from the trees in fitful gusts of wind- invisible little kingdoms that came and went, rolling the leaves up ahead of them, like breakers on a beach or spinning them off in whirling-dervish eddies; something disarming about the single-minded squirrels that cross-crossed the yard and foraged the rooftops, combing the gutters for pecans and other stores for the winter months ahead. And there was something dulcet about the squabbling, squabbling blue jays; something alluring about the crispness of the air, the blueness of the sky, and the puffy white clouds- headed nowhere in a hurry; something seductive about the afternoon sun and the postcard sheen it sprayed on everything like a laminate.


Copyright © 1985, 2003, 2005, 2007 by Richard D. Kennedy All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the author.


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