This is a sample of one of my short stories. Please don’t reproduce without permission. Feel free to comment and be honest, I would love to hear your thoughts, reactions and feelings on it. There will be more to come soon. I have a ton of these. Thanks, I hope you enjoy the story…
Amanda was a raggedy young girl at age nine, but it was only on account of her pappy. She lived jus’ two houses down from me on Mulberry Street in Cherryville, Alabama. When I went to visit her I only had to count three weepin’ willows, two big yellow rocks, the horse pen and then Amanda’s long path to her old gray house which used to be white. The shutters were once ruby red but now Amanda’s Pappy had let them go pink and the winders were bad dirty too and full up wit’ cracks.
Amanda only had one friend and dat’ was me. I didn’t really have many friends either aside from my lil’ dog Pepper. Pepper was a pug dog, jus’ a little’ scrapping’ doggy wit’ no friends like us. We made a good trio, leas’ dat’ what Momma used to say. She’d see us perched up in a big green tree wit’ Pepper lickin’ on an orange push-up ice cream or somethin’ on a hot summer day an’ she’d say, “Don’t y’all make a fine trio!”
I liked Amanda a lot, in fact, you could probably say I loved her. It wasn’t the yucky kinda’ love like my big brother Hank had with his sweetheart of two years, Miss Rebecca Dempsey. Rebecca went and got herself pregnant one day an’ I don’t think Momma knows about it yet — but that’s a whole other story.
Amanda’s Pappy was a foul, cruel sort. He was the meanest man I ever laid eyes on. When he would walk down da’ dirt road to town folks would get outta’ his way cause’ he was likely to cuss em.’ Long as I live I never knows why he hit Amanda. Sweet little’ girl like Amanda din’t deserve all em’ whippings, but she got em,’ by god, she got em.’
Amanda didn’t have no friends on account of how she looked and all. She was dirty most times because’ dey’ didn’t have running’ water like most folks so her Pappy made her wash up in Flint Creek. That’s if and when he let her out of the house. He only let her wash up ‘bout once a month so she stunk. I din’t really notice much, but kids at school sure did. Called her skunky girl or stinky britches, stuff like dat’. They had a cruel rhyme that said something’ bout’ Amanda smells like a stinky old’ panda. Sometimes it would make her cry, most times she would give the kid a shiner and get sent on home. I don’t think dat’ school principal liked her none neither. Nope, I was her only friend. Me and Pepper.
One day when me and Pepper went over to Amanda’s house to play war she came out the house with a big ol’ cut on er’ lip and she looked sickly. I felt so bad that I jus’ dropped my toy guns and ran up to hug her. I hugged her harder than I’d ever hugged another person in my entire life. She cried some and then she swore to get vengeance some day.
“What’s ven…ven…”
“Vengeance?”
“Yeah! What’s that mean, Amanda?” I asked as I put Pepper in her lap. My dog was as much Amanda’s dog as anybody. He loved her as much as I did and began lickin’ her face. I never saw a dog that could care about someone as much as ol’ Pepper the black pug. He was a true friend.
Amanda giggled from Pepper’s lickin’, “Well, vengeance is when someone vows revenge on someone. You know – aims to get em’ back some day for all the crap they put on em.’ Like Pappy and them kids at school.”
“Oh, I see. Yeah, you should get some of that there re-vengeance!”
We laughed for a spell an’ went for a stroll down by ol’ McBruner’s farm jus’ behind Amanda’s place. I tossed her a gun and said, “You’re the krauts, rat-a-tat-tat. You’re dead!”
“No fair!” she screamed back at me. “I didn’t even get a chance to take off yet and besides – why do I always have to be the krauts?”
“Okay, darnit, I’ll be the stinkin’ Krauts and you can be the Allied supreme commander for once but I’ma’ keeping track, mind you!” I screamed as I disappeared behind a group of small scrubs into the woods. I glanced back after a few minutes and couldn’t find Amanda. She was good at playing war. Better than me. I found a good hiding place behind a dead Oak and I waited patiently for her to come and find me only she didn’t never come.
After about an hour I gave up waitin’ and’ went to look for her. It was fixin’ to get dark and I worried about Amanda an’ Pepper who went wit’ Amanda to hide. It wasn’t like dem’ to leave for so long. I come outta’ da’ woods slowly into a clearin’ and walked carefully toward Flint Creek to the South along the tree line still thinkin’ dat’ I might jus’ get the drop on her. I thought Amanda and Pepper might be holed up somewheres down by the creek.
As I walked along my thoughts drifted elsewhere. I heard crackling limbs and branches on the ground. I had a strange feeling that I wasn’t alone and I began to worry. Sometimes me and Amanda would see hobos and drunks out in dese’ woods and we’d be forced to hide behind a tree and keep Pepper quiet. Out of nowhere a dark figure jumped out from behind a big pine in front of me and I cried out for help. I pointed my gun and hoped for the best.
“Got you! You’re dead you filthy S.S. kraut!” Amanda bellowed in her finest soldier voice. She poked the end of her fake rifle into my stomach and said, “Prisoner, turn around. Prepare to be taken to our camp.” Pepper barked at me and started to gnaw on my rolled up pant leg.
Amanda marched me backward to her headquarters, Pepper followed uniform alongside her Captain. I knew the drill. I was clearly taken prisoner and treated fairly, I had to go along. For some reason, though, we wasn’t walkin’ toward home. Instead we was walkin’ toward the railroad tracks.
“What’s going on, Amanda?” I asked.
“Shut up prisoner! Don’t give me none of that filthy kraut pig Latin!”
“Amanda, really, it’s gettin’ dark an’ you know we gots to be gettin’ home.”
Amanda stopped and put her arm around me. “Jus’ this once, Cleary, can’t we stay out a lil’ while?”
Amanda began to cry hard and stopped marching. “I can’t go back. Not tonight. I don’t never want to go back, Cleary. I wanna’ jus’ stay here wich’ you all night. Every night. Forever. We could run off and take a train to some place excitin’ like California or Colorado! What do you say? We could jus’ live off the fat of the land like em’ there hobos I hear tell about,” she pleaded with me.
I looked down at the ground and tried to think. I knew if I tried to go wit’ her my momma would whip me for sure and then when my daddy found out he’d surely kill me jus’ like Amanda’s Pappy would if he found her.
“I don’t know, Amanda. I gots to eat supper an’ all and what about Pepper? Everyone knows you can’t take a little’ pup like Pepper criss crossin’ round’ country wit’ nothing to chew on or nothin’.”
Amanda was silent for a while as we walked up the hill to the train tracks, pas’ the windmill and the place where they found old’ man Rutledge dead last summer from alcohol poisoning. “Okay, Cleary. I understand. I’ll go it alone. Thanks for always being there for me.”
I was floored. I ran up in front of Amanda and pleaded with her, “You can’t go without me. I mean, what will I do? I mean, I mean, what will we do?” I was all confused. The words were getting’ all mixed up in my head. I couldn’t seem to say the right thing. Amanda just turned away and started pickin’ up heavy iron spikes and lead balls that were scattered down the sides of the tracks, a remnant from many years before when the rails were first built.
I pleaded with her again’, “Amanda, I don’t…I don’t know how to tell you dis’.”
That got her attention. “Tell me what, Cleary?” she said with a whimsical smile.
For some reason I did the only thing I knew how to do at that age to get a girl to listen to me. I picked up a few straggling’ violets that were barely living in the dirt besides the track and handed them to Amanda. “Well, dammit, Amanda, I love you an’ I can’t live without ya! There I said it.”
Amanda started laughing hard. She thought that was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. She was still laughing’ some fifteen minutes or so later. I didn’t think it was funny at all and I was busy kicking rocks across the opposite hill into the ant hills below. “What’s so damn funny, girl?”
Amanda came over to me and put her arm around me. She came real close and prepared to whisper in my ear. I never had a girl get that close to me before and I felt funny inside. Maybe I really did feel the way I said about her and dint’ know it, I thought to myself. Whatever was happening to me, I liked it. I could smell her sweet hair. Even though everyone said she smelled funny I knew it wasn’t true. I never smelled it. I knew she snook off to the creek almost every day and washed her pretty shoulder length auburn hair with lilac soap that my momma would give her. She smelled good.
“You’re sweet, Cleary. Real sweet. I love you too!” And with that she gave me a long kiss on the cheek. I felt like a million bucks in that instant. I didn’t want the feelin’ to end. I was drunk with love and affection and I dint’ know what to do. I thought I might pass out from it. I stumbled back for a second awkwardly and smiled. We just sat down on the rocks for a few minutes, neither one of us sayin’ a word. It was like our relationship was a whole udder’ thing now and it was beautiful. Even Pepper was feeling it. She climbed up in my lap and we both stroked her short black hair. Sometimes our small youthful hands would meet in the middle of the dog’s back and our finger tips would touch. It would send funny little tinglies up my arms and into the back of my neck. Occasionally we would look at each other, smile and then giggle. I could hardly breathe.
After we sat there for a while watching the sun go down cross’ the hills in front of us I knew what I had to do. I looked around beside me for a rock. It had to be a special rock with special characteristics. Not jus’ some lil’ pebble or sometin’ but a nice shiny rock with some weight to it. I was going to fix all of Amanda’s problems with this rock. I got up and started lookin’ hard for this special rock. I ignored Amanda when she asked me what I was doing.
Finally I found it. It was wedged in between some sandstone and a big piece of quartz. It was black, it looked like lava rock. I don’t know what kind of rock it was, but it looked like it had no earthly business being there and I picked it up. It was fairly heavy and it shone in the last bits of daylight so much that Amanda noticed it.
“That’s pretty! What’s that doing here?”
I came over to her and handed it to her. “I put it here for you and forgot to tell you. It’s a magical rock.” I explained.
She cocked her head as Pepper started sniffing the rock. “What do you mean a magical rock? If it’s so magical why would you leave it here?”
“Cuz’” I said, “I wanted to bring you down here and give it to you when the time was right, when you needed it most. You need it now. Take it.”
“What does this magical rock do?” she said in disbelief.
“Well,” I stalled for time and started to balance my feet on one of the tracks by walking carefully and sticking my arms out like a tight rope walker, trying not to fall. “It is a protective rock. Yeah, if you’re Pappy tries to lay a hand on you ever again – dis’ here rock is gonna’ protect ya. Or if dem’ kids at school bother wit’ you – this rock will save you.”
Amanda got up quickly and started to walk away from me. At first I thought she was angry with me but then I noticed that she was examining the rock. She was holding it up in the moonlight to check it out further. “You say it will protect me?”
“Yeah, I know it will. I read about these rocks. They’ve been protecting people for years. Trust me, jus’ take it home and nothing bad can happen to you! I promise. I would never lie to you,” I said confidently with a smile.
But I was lying. I had no idea about any protective rocks and I was only telling her that to get her to go back home and stay in my life forever. I did love her, more than ever, in fact. I didn’t wanna’ lose her now. I know it sounds selfish, but I jus’ couldn’t live wit’ myself if I let her run off on her own. Who knows what could happen to her out there. Now that I look back on it, it probably couldn’t have been any worse than what was going to happen here, but I didn’t see it that way at the time.
We parted ways at the big yellow-green willow on Mulberry street by her old dilapidated house. She was feeling much better with the special rock I gave her and for and I gave her special instructions to hold it close that night just in case. She didn’t look afraid anymore as we hugged good-bye. We didn’t usually do this, but it was a night of firsts and we just felt like expressing our undying love for one another. It’s like I said – it wasn’t grown-up type love, but friends forever, maybe more some day, but not then.
“Bye Amanda! Now, remember, you keep that rock near by jus’ in case, okay?”
“Okay, Cleary. Love ya’”
“Love ya’ too, Amanda. See ya’ tomorrow.”
And with that I watched Amanda disappear down the long path to her old gray home. She turned around once and held up the black rock high above her head to show me she had it close. I breathed deep and thought about what I had jus’ done. My god, I thought, did I do the right thing? Finally, I came to the conclusion that I did. Couldn’t have Amanda running’ off on no train somewhere as far off as California. She might never come back. Or worse yet – she could’ been killed by some nut case escaped from the looney bin!
Later that evening at supper time my momma could see that I wasn’t eatin’ much and that I was real quiet. “You ain’t touched them mashed taters’, son, what’s gotten’ into you?” she asked.
I looked up surprised at momma. I could never lie to my momma or she would know it in a matter of minutes. “Well, I was jus’ frettin’ some bout’ my friend Amanda.”
Momma got up and moved closer. She pulled out a chair. It was just me and her since my brother had a basketball game and my daddy went to see it. “Well, tell Mamma what’s the matter now, child,” she said calmly as she put her arm around me. I wished that Amanda had a momma like her. Her momma got out and never came back.
“Well, Momma, Amanda gets these whippins’ an’ I couldn’t do nothin’ to stop em’ so I kinda’ told her a white lie. It was jus’ a white lie,” I started to explain as tears came flowing down my cheeks and into my mashed taters’. “I didn’t mean to do nothin’ bad by her, Momma.”
“What do you mean — a white lie?” Momma asked sternly.
“Well, Momma, she was tellin’ me how she wanted to run off with me to California on a train like them hobos down by Fern’s Market and up in there…”
“Yeah, go on, child.”
“Well, I told her that we couldn’t do that.”
Momma patted me on the back and gave me a good squeeze, “Good for you, child, I knew I raised you up right. That’s good thinking’ son.”
“Well, so I had to come up with some way to prevent her from hoppin’ no train so I found this shiny black rock by the tracks and I told her it had magical powers and that it would protect her from her Pappy.”
Momma looked concerned. I was worried that I did the wrong thing again. She rubbed her eyes and thought for what seemed like an eternity. She got up and went to the kitchen window and looked out for an answer, “Oh, lord, child. Why did you tell her that?”
“I don’t know, Momma, that’s all I could think of,” I said worried.
Momma went on to tell me that I should’ve came and told her and she would’ve came up with something. She thought the world of Amanda and tried to help her out when she could. She hated her Pappy. She’d known the type all her life, she would say.
“Well, just the same, son, you meant well. It was a fool thing to do, but you meant well. God bless ya,’ you got a big heart, like your daddy! I’ll go over and check on that poor dear first thing in the morning.’ I’m sure she’ll be all right. Somebody shoulda’ done yanked that poor dear outta’ there long time ago. That man got no business raisin’ youngins’.”
I felt better. Momma always had a way of smoothin’ things out like that. I went to bed with the comfort that my world was spinnin’ round right for the moment and that Amanda was safe with her black rock, sleeping soundly in the house up the road. Maybe Pappy got drunk and didn’t even come home. It had happened more than once. I said a quick prayer for her anyway ju’t in case and then went to sleep.
The next morning I woke up right when I heard the ol’ roosters crowin’ in the backyard. Daddy was in the bathroom shavin’ next to my room and I walked past.
“Heard that the Sheriff had to go out to your lil’ friend’s house last night, sport,” he said as he saw me walk by.
I stopped dead in my tracks. “What? Why?”
“Don’t rightly know. All I know is that during third quarter of the ball game — Sheriff Mooney was called away on an emergency to the Weeks place. That’s her last name, ain’t it, Amanda Weeks?
“Yes sir,” I said. “But, oh my god, Amanda!”
I ran down the thick white stairs from my second story home, grabbed the bannister post and spun around to the front door, swung it open with a swish and tore down the road in front of me worried out of my mind and fightin’ back the tears so I could see to run. Never in my young life had I been more horrified.
I made it to Amanda’s house in record time and slowly forced open the sticky front door that Amanda’s jerk of a Pappy never bothered to unstick. I didn’t think nobody was round’. There was no sound, nothing, it was eerie quiet. Pepper brushed up against my leg and barked givin’ me a fright.
“Pepper, where’s she at?” I asked the dog as if he was suddenly a bloodhound sent out to track down escaped convicts. Pepper cocked his head slightly to the right and looked at me like I was nuts.
We turned the corner past the foyer and saw thousands of broken glass shards scattered across the living room floor along with broken wood pieces from the hutch that used to sit against the wall. There was not much light and I could make out a dark figure on the floor next to the glass and a black object. I didn’t know if it was a person or a piece of furniture cuz’ everythin’ was turned upside down. Pepper ran over and started to lick somethin’ in the dark, I couldn’t make out what. I couldn’t help but think the worse. He had finally done it. My best friend in the whole world was gone forever, murdered by her Pappy. I fell to my knees and cupped my face as a storm of feelings came over me. I began to weep uncontrollably and shake. You’d have thought I was having on of dem’ epileptic fits or somethin’.
Suddenly I felt a presence in the room like a heavy breeze goin’ up the backside of my shirt on a windy day.
Then I heard a faint, soft female voice coming out of the darkness.“It worked.”
I turned around and saw Amanda. “Oh my god! Are you okay?” I gasped as I ran over to hug her. “Are you hurt bad?” I asked as I clenched my fists. I was ready to kill her Pappy. “Where is he?”
“I’m okay,” she said quietly. She was too quiet, docile, not showing very much emotion at all. “It worked.” She kept repeating. “It worked! – it worked!”
I saw tears streaming down her face and her eyes were swole’ up like grapefruits. She had been cryin’ a long time, possibly all night. She looked exhausted too. Her hair was all wet and tangled and her dress was ripped and grimy. She had some small cuts on her face and she was real pale. She motioned for me and Pepper to sit on the stairs and she began to tell me what happened.
“I’ve been hidin’ in the fields all night. Sheriff’s lookin’ for me but he couldn’t find me. Looks like I got to get on that train after all.”
“No, Amanda, you jus’ got to come over to my place. Momma says she’ll take care of everything. Don’t worry!” I pleaded with her as I took her hand and squeezed hard.
“He was a no-a-count son-of-a-bitch!” She yelled as she tossed the magical black rock I had given her the night before on to the marble floor of the foyer creating a tiny crack.
I could see blood and what looked like hair on the top of the rock from the light of the front door.
“He never left me no damn choice.”
She went on to tell me how when she had gotten home the night before, Pappy had laid into her harder than ever. He smacked her in the arm, the back of the head, pushed her into the chest hard enough to smash glass all over the place from her falling into a vase. Then he proceeded to stick her head in the oven to almost kill her and went back to his corn whiskey for another taste of the vile liquid that made him enraged so he could come back for more.
When he went to turn his back on her she had it. She was still gripping the big black magical rock in her hand. He turned around and stared at her with fiery yellow drunken eyes. “I’m gonna’ kill you this time, you little bitch! You’re just like your momma – a good-for-nothing’ little bitch!”
He picked up a rolling pin from the counter, one of his favorite beatin’ tools, and raised it up over his head. He looked like a giant hovering over the little girl who was shaking fitfully, fearin for her life like never before. “I’m gonna’ send you to hell where you belong!” he shouted as he hammered down the rolling pin.
Amanda took a deep breath and waited for the precise moment. Just as he lowered the heavy wooden weapon she made a break for it into the living room. She slipped on some glass chunks, though, and cut her bare feet real bad. He was right on her heels and the only thing she could think to do was turn around and swing the magical heavy black rock toward him in a last ditch effort to save her life.
“You was right, Cleary, that rock was magical. You said, if Pappy ever tried to lay a hand on me again that rock would protect me! He won’t ever bother me again!”
