Sweep of the dragon's tail | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Sweep of the dragon's tail | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
03/14/17
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Understanding isn’t the forte of a child and I was no exception. One thing I never figured out was a saying of my grandmother. As long as I can remember growing up, whenever things went wrong, she’d shake her apron and look up saying “the sweep of the dragon’s tail.”

It isn’t that I didn’t know things. I learned plenty from my classmates in a little one room schoolhouse on the prairies. I realized this truth when I was sorting through the attic of our small family farm after my grandmother died this winter.

The dust inside that attic seemed about as thick as the snow heaping up outside. The spider webs framed the roof beams as densely as the icicles on the gutters outside.

The intricately carved flowers and leaves on a Walnut table’s curved legs, adorned with moldings and friezes, brought back memories of wild turkey dinners, blackberry pie and freshly baked pastries - and laughter. I had traced the patterns on those table legs with my fingers a hundred times each dinner while waiting for dessert.

I found my grade school picture stuck to the back of a notebook. Twenty-one students were lined up the same way as if we sat in the classroom. Little ones in front – big ones in the back. I was in the middle although on my tiptoes I was tall enough to be with the boy one grade older. I scanned the face of each child. Three names stood out in grandma’s shaky script.

Beside me was a grinning Cherokee, arm around my shoulder. Samson Eaglefoot taught me the importance of making peace with people who did you wrong – even if you don’t have a peace pipe or a smudge pot to fill a room with smoke. He was the first of his family to want to be a lawyer even though his cousins told him he’d never make it. Through him I learned to never give up.

Benson Harper was the only black kid in our school. He was two years older than me and stood right behind me in the picture. He knew the strangest things. He told me that “Peter Pan’s Wendy was the first Wendy ever” since her name was made up. He also told me that God had a new name for every one of his children. We were all one of a kind.

Maggie Hooper taught me more than I can remember. She showed me kindness when the Newton brothers whooped on me for showing them up with Teacher Charlotte. I knew about dozens of eggs and acres of wheat from farming so I couldn’t expect town boys like the Newtons to know all the answers. The problem was that the older brother was sweet on teacher Charlotte and he didn’t like her praising me. Maggie soaked a hankie and cooled my black eye.

At the bottom of the picture my grandmother had scrawled the names of twelve of my classmates. On the back she had written “the sweep of the dragon’s tail.”

I flipped over the picture and examined the faces for each of the children mentioned. I felt my neck stiffen and my brow furrow.

Daniel, Janey, Wyatt, Hanson – all in the row behind me - died with the fever the year after this picture. A shiver ran down my back when I remembered grandma singing to me while I sweated through my turn with the shadows of death.

I bundled up and trudged through the knee deep drifts toward the tiny building where I’d learned about a world so big. I stood on the stairs examining the handmade boards my own father had helped to saw and plane. One of the square nail heads had popped half way out as if wanting to leave with the children who had moved on.

I kicked away the snow and dragged open the door. The potbellied stove stood alone where it always did even though now it lay cold from having been starved of wood. Several windows were broken and the snow had found its way into small piles along the walls.

I was about to turn away when I spied the familiar scrawl on the chalk board. “The sweep of the dragon’s tail.”

Any other day I would have taken it for a teacher sharing a wonderful tale of princesses and knights – of daring adventures. Today, I knew what my grandmother knew. A dragon had swept away our town. A shepherd had saved my life.

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