Ok, not just begging for compliments...(maybe a little...they're all I have, save my feminine virtue) but I really want someone Southern to go over this part. My grandfather was an Okie, but he died when I was nine.
Raylan had mostly chalked up the events of that Halloween party to alcohol, mixed with something transitory and demonic(He planned never to discuss it, but he hoped Dr. Walsh and the guys had stomped the shit out of it.) He'd almost shaken it off like a nightmare after a hard night of drinking, but then he saw her again. Buffy, looking fresh and lovely, and absolutely dominated by the yogurt machine. He realized he hadn't been paying attention to the guys' lunchtime chatter. Suddenly, it was as if he felt, rather than seeing, two pairs of Initiative eyes following his. "I would so hit that," Forrest told him.
“I think she’s too much for you,” Raylan suggested. “But be my guest.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to step on your toes…bros before hos.”
“Don’t call her that.”
“He wasn’t.” Graham said. “He was just making a joke…a bad joke, but still. Personally, I’d be more worried about the intimate relationship she seems to be having with chocolate/vanilla swirl.”
Because Buffy had squirted the yogurt all over her hands, and despite his every romantic instinct, Raylan was reminded of the phone call he got the night before, he stayed silent.
“You sure know how to pick ‘em, Raylan Givens.” Art told him.
“I haven’t picked anybody yet, sir, but I’m guessing something came up in my background check.”
“You’d be guessing absolutely right,”
“Well, you know, I’ve been thinking about that…speeding tickets or underage drinking aren’t really a big deal to me. And the only reason I’d worry about a shoplifter is she might dump me for Arlo.”
“At least you’re over it,” his thesis advisor said lightly. “That’s the important thing.”
“Ok, now I know that there’s something you’re just dyin to tell me, so spit it out.”
“Well, in addition to the high schools, plural, she had some kind of mysterious role in the torching thereof, don’t worry, though, buddy. There’s just two, maybe you can chalk it up to some kind of experimental phase. Like a nose ring, or kissin girls… I don’t know why they say people in LA aren’t friendly…that principal couldn’t say enough about the million ways he hoped your Miss Summers would end up under the jail…we had quite a chat about the permissive nature of the juvenile justice system, wherein he made several noxious assumptions about my level of racial tolerance based on the place of my provenance…I’m telling you, Raylan, the South’s made its mistakes, God knows, but the rest of the country’s lucky to have us to blame…otherwise, they’d have to look in the mirror.”
“You had this conversation about *Buffy* Summers…blonde, pretty, no bigger than a minute…”
“The very same. Look, Raylan, you gave me the photos and stuff y’all secret soldier boys took…there’s no mistaken identity here. She was a cheerleader too, it was a real shock to everybody when she snapped.”
“ I…kinda wasn’t supposed to do that. If Dr. Walsh finds out…”
“Color me shocked. At least now I know it’s nothing personal…I was debating a change in antiperspirants.”
“You always smell fine to me, Art.”
“Now, that’s just cruel, Raylan Givens, makin’ with the sweet talk and being half the country away… you’re a cruel tease.”
“Ha, ha, but, Art, I know she didn’t snap.”
The criminologist turned serious. “You willing to bet your life on that, son?”
“Sir?”
“I swore I wouldn’t say anything about this other part, cause, Lord, you’re a grown man and incredibly smart, and if some barely-legal firebug love is what it takes to get the pressure off, then maybe you should get you some flameproof underwear and go to town.”
“Art?”
“I’m getting to it.”
“What would this story sound like if you hadn’t decided not to say anything?”
“I know, but I know you’ve got a vacancy (continued...)
( continues...) in the advice department…I wouldn’t feel right.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m a fatherless child. And she’s not exactly barely legal…she’s twenty-two.” Raylan lied.
“Ok, what am I worried about? You like your pyromaniac mental patients squarely above the age of consent…well I might as well spit it out. Your girl Buffy was once charged with murder.”
“No! Who of…”
“Mother’s boyfriend. But this is the weird part… and you know how folks in police stations like to talk,so, take this with a grain of salt, but not only weren’t charges filed but this Ted fella was found never to exist.”
“Schroedinger’s vic…interesting."
“Raylan, be careful.”
“You know it.”
It seemed like simple advice, back in the barracks, but it was a different thing watching her stand in line in the student union, chocolate smearing her wrists…he had to admit, he’d thought of her so much the night before, he’d barely slept, and some part of his brain said “ Hell with it,” At least he wouldn’t be the only one with a secret anymore.
“I’m going over there,”
“Fucking finally,” his Initiative brethren said.
Not quite the same, I expect, but you could probably keep me from "y'all" abuse.
Art said "might could" last week...let me tell you, my inner anthropologist and inner grammarian had quite a discussion about that...the anthropologist won. Still kind of hurt to hear that, but if the anthropologist had not prevailed, I might be thinking of Art as a yokel, and that would be wrong.
Interestingly enough, given where he comes from on both the moral line and the economic spectrum, Boyd Crowder has kind of a pretty vocabulary(If sometimes more than the situation requires, a la most of the cast of "Deadwood", sans f-bombs.) and I think his grammar is quite good, too. I worry about getting lost in one of his sentences and not finding the other side.
On that basis, this "stuff y’all secret soldier boys took" does not sound quite natural to me - out of my aunts or cousins, it would more likely be "yew". Then again, there are subtle regional differences and I don't know that character at all, so I don't know if it would be right for him. I'm almost completely certain no one in my family ever said "might could" - that sounds more westerly to me. I can hear Sheldon's mom saying it; whereas I'm pretty sure my gramma would have asked where the hell I learned to talk if I ever called her "meemaw".
I do know at least one ex-Texan that did have a Memaw, but I don't know where she is from.
ETA: to the extent, that using "y'all' as a modifier is a real thing, I either got it from Wire cornerboys or hip-hop, in which case it would make sense that a middle-aged white man from a different region might use it differently. I just switched it "your soldier boys," because I've already slipped in "kinda" and "dyin"...no need to dialect people to death.
I just switched it "your soldier boys," because I've already slipped in "kinda" and "dyin"...no need to dialect people to death.
Good call. I had not been sure whether you intended for it to be Raylan's soldier boys or soldier boys including Raylan. Possessive of "y'all" that I have heard is "y'all's". But now that I think about it, that wasn't so much from my family as from neighbors in Cleveland who had migrated north.
I don't know if I should ask this here or in Natter, so let me know if I should move this:
Broken/bruised ribs.
I have a character who gets in a mild car accident. Bruised ribs. Then days later, suffers a shove to the chest/abdomen and falls. Leading to more bruising or cracked ribs. Not broken, no puncturing of lungs. What is the hour to hour pain like? Physical limitations? Breathing? I'm imagining hours upon days of difficulty breathing in addition to the pain of bruising/fracturing. Is this overdramatic? (This is one of those sort-of contrived situations where the character refuses to go to the hospital). I'm imganing the character in such a state of pain as to be unable to sleep, having to sit up to be able to breathe, and being exhausted from the not-sleeping and just living in a hellish state of not enough oxygen or sleep.
