Broken Bones and Filling Quivers

My weekly writers critiquing circle yesterday took their red pens to my newest chapter in Defiant Honor,  the third and concluding book in my McBee Civil War saga. This chapter contained nothing but Major McBee in the battle of The Wilderness, which was another of those mega-battles during which the fate of the Confederacy hung by a thread.  Borrowing the over-quoted words of the Duke of Wellington after the battle at Waterloo, The Wilderness was also “a near run thing.”

Anyway, the good news about the chapter’s peer review was that my fellow writers all said nice things about it. They did not even object to my including a few paragraphs focused on a cannon ball.  It was a small cannon ball, but I still fretted that the group members would lose their bearings when I shifted my narrative from the main character they’ve come to know, to a chunk of iron.

The bad news is I fear that after two and a half books of battle after battle, I may have jaded my critique group members and they are really saying, “OK, that’s fine, another battle, I get it. Now take me back to the ladies and the personal conflicts.” I’ll just have to trust they really did get involved with the drama of the battle. 

To finish the chapter, I spent an hour researching the history of Plaster of Paris as a medical technique used to treat broken bones. The gooey stuff really does apparently have a provenance in Paris, France.  It seems that after the Napoleonic Wars, during the ongoing violent rioting in Paris, a few military doctors experimented with wall-plaster-soaked-gauze as a wrap to hold broken bones in place. The British army then picked up the technique during the 1850’s Crimean War.

By the time our Civil War started in 1861, word of Plaster of Paris’s success had crossed the ocean, and a few forward-thinking doctors began trying it. Of course, awareness of Plaster of Paris wraps didn’t slow down the standard treatment of amputating damaged arms and legs, hands and feet. And I doubt any of the plaster casts were red, blue, or green like our son’s leg cast was once upon a time.

Last weekend, Nita and I attended a Christmas play at the local community theater. It’s a purely Texas play, west Texas, at that. The name is “A Tuna Christmas.” It was written some 25 years ago and first performed by two Austin actors who grew up in very small towns in west Texas. All dozen or so of the characters, including women, were done by the two men in the original performances in Austin.

We saw it, loved it, recognizing too many of our own small-town family members in the Tuna, Texas characters. We howled and chuckled. Damned clever. Damned insightful. So much so, A Tuna Christmas left Austin and went to Broadway where it gained national acclaim, and now A Tuna Christmas is done all over the country. I reckon small towns, north, south, east, and west, share a lot of traits.

We also loved our local amateur performance, even if it took a lot more than two gifted actors to pull it off. It helps that one of the original two writers and actors, Jaston Williams, moved to our little town of  Lockhart a few years back. He and his partner had gone to China and adopted a son, and likely wanted to shift to life in a small town. They have become welcomed “Lockhartians.” Jaston didn’t act in our amateur production of his own play, but he did show up at rehearsals from time to time to cheer them on.

One of the first things I noticed in A Tuna Christmas this time was an oft-overlooked eccentricity of small town dialect that happens when the two conversationalists know each other very well. The second speaker doesn’t need to say much, but understands it would be rude to say nothing in reply.

Person One: “It’s colder than a well digger’s ass out there.”  Second person: “It is.” That’s all. “It is.”

Or, first person, “That boy is dumb as a stump.” Second person, “He is.” Of course, if it were a girl being called dumb in the South, “Bless Her Heart,” would follow just sure as stink after a fart.

Leaving Tuna, Texas behind, I hope you all are shopping for that just-right gift for your sweetheart and family members. I hope you all are remembering the gift of a donation to any of the deserving charities in your part of the world.

In this season, where we pay homage to the child of a teenage mother who miraculously had a son, even though a “virgin,”  it seems a good time to reflect that families grow in all sorts of unconventional ways. 

Nita, the love of my life, is an adopted daughter.

We have a grandson who came into the world through an “in vitro” pregnancy.

Two months later we gained two wonderful granddaughters when our other son said, “I do,” to a beautiful young woman whose first marriage didn’t work. 

Finally, just yesterday, our nephew and niece and their three biological kids who live in Atlanta, Georgia, returned from China with an adopted fourth child, a son named Caleb. 

All of those "second-chance" means of filling the family quiver are wonderful things.  They are.