The Drumming Circles

 The wedding set me back a bit on my writing class.  I'm not pointing fingers, but R and K... please never get married again. 

The prompt was kind of odd this week.  Take something from your writer's notebook and turn it into a poem or story.  (I chose story).  Then pick 3 or 4 words from your piece.  Look up these words in the NYT archives, choosing dates close to when you actually wrote the piece.  Cull some sentences or phrases from the archived articles to put into your piece.  

What???  

Anyway, it worked out okay.  Here's a story you should read if you feel like it.

Drumming Circles

by Lee Heffernan

 

            Mildred Gravier and her maltipoo Belle heard the drumming in Congo Square from blocks away.   When they reached the square, Mildred sighed. Under her favorite live oak, a circle of drumming, field tripping children pounded out a racket of rhythms.  Their teacher danced outside the circle, tapping shoulders and shouting vague encouragement like, "Yes!" and "Feel it!"  

            "This must be that social emotional learning nonsense we've read about," Mildred muttered to Belle.

 

            Mildred's usual bench was covered with a line of backpacks, so she stood watching the lead drummer, a man wearing a shirt patterned with bright red and yellow leaves, steering the music like a captain. Mildred didn't know how he signaled beat shifts, but every few moments rhythms from the children's drums broke loose and took off in new directions. Mildred shouted to the teacher, "Can some of these backpacks be moved? Benches are for sitting." The teacher smiled and danced over to make a spot for Mildred.   

 

            Mildred lifted Belle to her lap, stroking her fur. Once Belle settled, Mildred held up her phone to make a recording. Her crafting club would appreciate this clear proof of woke indoctrination and waste of taxpayer dollars, but before she could click the red dot, the teacher bee-lined toward her, shaking her finger in the air, displaying the universal sign of No, No, No.  Mildred's eyes narrowed, but she dropped the phone back into her sweater pocket.  The children paid Mildred no mind.  Their eyes were focused.  Their hands kept drumming.  

 

            Belle barked when figures from the bronze sculpture in the center of Congo Square caught the energy.  Stepping off the platform, they danced and sang their way to the circle. Mildred held Belle in her arms, seething at the impertinence of these strange, out of place, figures, but the astonished drummers widened their circle, their lineages intertwined. The drumming grew louder. Belle whimpered and Mildred straightened up, alert. She yelled to the teacher, "Excuse me.  When will you finish up here?" but the drumming drowned her out.  

 

            When the live oak, Congo Square's living monument, let go of the beats it had been storing for centuries inside its coiled branches, Mildred jumped up, holding shivering Belle in her arms. The pulsating pushed Mildred backward, sending her out through the gate with a mighty gust of wind, like a dancing marionette.

 

            Mildred set Belle on the sidewalk of Rampart Street.  She brushed the wrinkles from her sweater and straightened her hair clip.  She clutched the bars of the wrought iron fence and glowered in at the drummers. She could no longer hear their drumming, or any sound at all for that matter.  Fit to be tied about the possible damage to her hearing, she hurried past the yellow school bus and walked on home.