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    Tilting At The Darkness
    Tilting At The Darkness
    Tilting At The Darkness
    Ebook125 pages1 hour

    Tilting At The Darkness

    By Leslie P García

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    About this ebook

    A diverse collection of short stories, scenes, poetry and essays tied together through the  years and family relationships. From the innocence of childhood to facing a world that has hurt you, Tilting at Darkness is a portrayal of life--from the lightest moments to the darkest. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLeslie P Garcia
    Release dateOct 22, 2024
    ISBN9798227282064
    Tilting At The Darkness
    Author

    Leslie P García

    Leslie P. García is the author of numerous romance novels, including His Temporary Wife, Wildflower Redemption, and A Love Beyond. She lives in deep South Texas, surrounded by her loving family, annoying animals, and a country song for every imaginable situation.

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      Book preview

      Tilting At The Darkness - Leslie P García

      This Writer’s Very Early Life

      These days, I can forget what I’m saying while I’m saying it—yet I have remarkably clear memories from the past. At least I think I do. One of the beauties of being a grandma is that you’re two generations removed from your own parents, so no one can argue that any of your memories are wrong.

      One of the memories that my older sister Stephanie and I share is paddling around in the orange life jackets in the Pacific Ocean next to Roy Rogers’ yacht. Apparently, we had a boat somewhere along the same dock, but I don’t remember ours. I don’t really remember the yacht, except that it was huge, and there was a monkey that ran around loose. Stephanie and I chased it and got lost. I suppose if we were on the yacht, we met Roy, too, but he didn’t become important until I fell in love with Trigger.

      One of the clearest memories I have is that I should have died when I was four. Shortly after we left once beautiful California for Texas, I took a header off a 7-foot corral fence, landing on the top of my head, and blacking out.

      My mom and dad didn’t take me to the doctor, but for 12 hours they made me drink coffee to be sure I stayed awake in case of a concussion. I’m a little surprised now that that much coffee didn’t kill me, and I’ve been an insomniac all my life—but I haven’t drunk coffee since.

      Only recently have I started to wonder what The Fall may have changed. How is it possible that such a hard impact had no effect on my brain? Fortunately, it didn’t keep me from reading at 5—Jane and Dick books did work, guys—and writing.

      The principal at whatever school in Texas I attended posted my first ever story—written in Kinder—on the bulletin board, and just that early I decided I loved to write. The story—one of those details I talked about remembering—was Ricky and Tricky’s Christmas. Two bunnies gave each other gifts. Not a great story, or particularly original—but someone read it!

      By first grade, I was unstoppable, and my sister Stephanie had also begun writing. We both had our first sales at the same time to a quickly defunct magazine called Kids. $1.50 each, for her article and my awful rhyming poem. But that pushed us both into the belief that writing mattered more than anything, and our writing careers were born.

      We had no clue that writing became more complicated and less lucrative after those first sales.

      Like so many others literary figures, we were washed up by second and fourth grade.

      And so, we did what writers do—we wrote anyway. At the time, we didn’t realize that writing is its own reward.

      (We didn’t really learn that for a while, but it sounds better than "we cried as we wrote our next rejection-to-be.)

      When you write, words eventually find you.

      ***

      La Llorona

      Electronic candles flickered and wavered against the back wall of the tent, creating an atmosphere of suspense. Or danger.

      The three six-year-olds sat surrounded by stuffed animals and princess-themed bedding, giggling and enjoying their own silly jokes.

      We should tell scary stories, Reyna suggested. Daddy says when you camp out, you tell scary stories.

      What kind of scary stories? What kind of scary stories? Melissa sounded hopeful. Like the good witch in la pelicula—"

      Talk English, Reyna countered, with grade school superiority. The movie. The one with Dorothy.

      The third girl, smaller and quieter than her friends, pushed dark curls from her pale face. The Wizard of Oz isn’t scary. Not really.

      We’re in first grade. Reyna gave an exaggerated shrug, a cute one like the kids on the sitcoms she watched. She lifted her hands in mock exasperation, palms up, toward Becky. So, what’s scary?

      "La Llorona—the ghost mother."

      Melissa added an over-stuffed turtle to the collection of stuffed animals in her death grip and moved closer to Reyna. And farther away from Becky.

      G-ghost mother? she asked.

      Becky nodded somberly. They say she put kids in the river. Drownded them.

      Why?

      Becky’s thin shoulders hunched. It’s why she’s always crying, though. Why they say she’s the crying woman—

      My mom told me this story once, Reyna interrupted. She called her the weeping woman. Reyna’s eyes grew intent as she remembered. She pointed at Becky "La Llorona—like your mother—"

      Becky looked around the tent, her eyes a little wild, her gaze skittering like candlelight. Then she faced her friends. Her body stilled and her eyes went hard.

      Yes, she said. Like my mother. Then she smiled and reached out to touch Melissa. But it’s okay. She won’t come back. Not tonight.

      Wind whispered and rustled in the mesquite trees and through the reeds reaching down to the water’s dark edge. Alejandra Ortega drew a deep breath and looked around. Nothing moved in the darkness but sweat broke out on her forehead and arms. She forced herself on, careful not to slide down the steep, slippery outcropping that disappeared abruptly into the Rio Grande’s flood swollen waters.

      The rock closest to the water was large and reasonably flat; Alejandra paused there, tensing as she cast another glance around. Silly! she scolded herself. The dangers here were very real—drug smugglers. Coyotes, or alien smugglers. Men who wouldn’t hesitate to rape, kill. Sometimes the river yielded up its victims. Sometimes it didn’t.

      And here she was, looking for a ghost. Afraid, for God’s sake, of finding a ghost. A shudder shook her hard, and she almost slipped into the water.

      Dear Lord, was she crazy?

      Her husband thought so. Jim was supportive and undemanding—usually. But he had ridiculed her interest in La Llorona, the fabled wailing woman of Mexican folklore, for weeks now. Good thing business had spirited him away. If he weren’t in Dallas, he would be here. And if he were here, well—he wouldn’t have approved of his wife and the mother of his child traipsing around a lonely riverbank near midnight.

      The wind shifted, changed subtly. Became more a moan than a steady breath of air moving across the river. Chilled her.

      Legend said that, more than a hundred years ago, the area’s wealthiest rancher set his eyes on a beautiful, but destitute, young woman. Over the objections of family and friends, the man moved into her hutch along the river, insisting that he would live with her in poverty rather than betray his love for her.

      And then—he left. To marry a woman of prestige and money. A woman of his own class, whose children he would claim proudly.

      Alejandra shut her eyes, tried to block out the surreal images that assaulted her. This was what no one understood. Everyone here had grown up with the legend. Parents passed it on to children, to scare, to amuse, to preserve culture and tradition. To them, La Llorona represented nothing more than a scary story on a steamy night, a ghostly figure that haunted the riverbanks in fiction, but not in fact.

      But she felt the legend, lived it, knew what happened.

      Faced with abandonment, the woman snapped. Her harshest critics said that she simply sought revenge. He could have married her, given the children a name and his money, but after using her, he had tossed her away. Sad, but there you are. Hell hath no fury, and so the woman had drowned her babies to avenge her betrayal. As if, they pointed out, he cared—other children would come. And those children he would honor and love. But her children were lost forever—gone in a jealous rage.

      The others, kinder souls who had drawn strength from their own suffering, but not despair, said that the woman couldn’t bear seeing her little ones suffer the poverty and hunger of her own childhood. In a time when the sins of the flesh were condemned, no one came forward to help. Without hope for the wellbeing of those she loved most, she committed a sacrifice born of love.

      A sob tore from Alejandra’s throat as the distraught young woman brought her children to the river’s dark banks. The river raged that night, swollen by recent rains. Not unlike the dark, rushing water this very night. The children were so tiny, so trusting. One by one, they were delivered into the river’s black, black depths.

      Tears streamed down Alejandra’s cheeks, hot and wet even in the summer heat.

      The wind picked up, wailed around her, although the trees and bushes had gone completely still.

      "¡Mis hijos! ¡Mis hijos!" Was it the wind, or the woman wailing into the night, searching for her children as she realized what she had done?

      Shivering uncontrollably, Alejandra took a step forward and down. The river’s dark water covered her feet. She started, jerked away as if she had been shocked. Wading a few steps down along the bank, she found a place where she could scramble out of the water.

      Crazy! She was crazy! What had driven her into those waters, polluted with the

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