It`s time for Tuesday Tales.
Today we have an excerpt from Reflections of Cypress, Love’s Journeys #2.
Please do bear in mind that these snippets are unedited so please be kind if you find any mistakes.
This story may have gay erotic scenes, strong social issues addressed and mature language. If those things offend now is the time to move onto another Tuesday Tales blog. Thanks for stopping by!
Row after row after row of trees, most topping out around thirty feet, every one heavy with varieties of Pendolino, Liccino, and Kalamata olives ready for picking, welcomed me home. Harvest would start soon; it was mid-September. The gathering would run through the middle of November. The crews in my great -grandfather’s day would have used ladders, moving from tree to tree, picking each olive by hand. My father and his father before him had invested in massive machines to do the work, the shakers grasping the trees then vibrating them, knocking off the olives that would fall into a large tarp. As a kid I would have a fit if my nanny didn’t take me down to see the ‘dinosaurs’ moving through the groves, as the tarps that spread out around the shaker arms to catch the small green fruit reminded me of the frilled dino in Jurassic Park.
Now, seeing the harvesters gathering for the cultivation of a years’ worth of tending did nothing for me other than fill my chest with the resignation that I’d not see my father for weeks on end, if at all. He was always moving, flying from Italy to home, keeping an eye on his kingdom as if all that gold in his dragon horde could replace his wife. I had news for him, it wouldn’t, I knew that first hand. I’d been fucking trying to fill that void inside me for over fourteen years. And so if he was never home why should I be? Our riches allowed me to stay one step ahead of the memories.
©Copyright V.L. Locey 2023
Fascinating excerpt. Love the description of the olive harvesting machines. Well done.
Such brilliant writing. “Stay one step ahead of the memories.” So well put. Yes, I, too, enjoyed the description of the olive harvesting. I’m a big fan of olives. But then you twisted it around to show another side to his father and how he reacted to the loss of his mother and the contentious relationship between father and son — and in so few words, sparely written, but each word chosen carefully to get across the feeling. Brilliant. Just brilliant.
Moving and chock-full passage. One of my grandsons loves kalamata olives and has gotten me into the habit as well. Must be nice to have a dragon horde to use for flight, but I sense it doesn’t work as well as the father thinks.
What a wonderful scene. So much shared here, diving us right into his heart. Loved this!
Great use of the prompt
I love the description of the olive picking and how he felt they looked like a dinosaur. Intrigued on what happened to his mom. Great job!