Was it paranoia? Perhaps it was, as the train pulled away from the station which was a three-minute walk from Frazier Street maternity hospital, with the little bundle of joy she cradled, sat looking out of the window. Was she being observed? Somebody had been following her she was sure. A man who looked like he slept on the streets. A scruffy individual of no fixed abode. She didn’t like to stare straight at him. In fact...
Uncle Jeff called them bear berries. That hadn't sounded right to Terrance. Now, so many years later, he recalled that long ago moment and curiosity finally lead him to search online. It didn't take long to find a picture of them. They were salmon berries. That was the succulent fruits he had found growing thickly and profusely on the briars out in the woods so long ago. He couldn't even remember the taste of them. Just t...
Randall was propped against the Formica and vinyl-clad wet bar at the Alverton Volunteer Fire Department Social Hall. At the opposite side of the space, next to a long table of cookies, the polka band had launched into a zesty rendition of the Chicken Dance. Guests wove through a garden of dining tables toward the dance floor. Randall tipped his glass toward a purple-chiffoned bridesmaid who wobbled past his post at the b...
"You've been good today, so when we get home, you c'n have some ice cream."Aunt Charlotte holds his hand as they walk out of the white clapboarded church into the spring air. Up ahead, at the foot of the steps, Brother Pitman shakes a hand, then another, smiling at each face of a sister or brother. His preaching lasted forever today, with lots of rumbling breaths and flipping his bible back and forth in his hand. Gary tho...
They approached the front porch hesitantly, passing between two blooming Rose of Sharon bushes with red flowers. A new place, strange to him, with dust specks dancing in the rays of the sun that flickered through the trembling chinaberry leaves down onto the weather-beaten wooden flooring. Everything had been painted at one time. Now just flecks still clung desperately to the surface of the porch walls and the floor while...
