Jennifer Griffith's Blog, page 26

Great Christmas Present for that Special Writer in Your Life

This February is the 21st annual ANWA Conference. It will be held in the Phoenix area, at the Mesa Hilton. It’s open to all and any writers and looking at the lineup of presenters and agents and publishers who will be there, it looks to possibly be their best yet.

For the past several years I’ve been a faithful attender of this conference and it’s been nothing less than inspiring. Not just the workshops (which have been fantastic), but also the people involved, have been a great reason to go. For a writer, because our craft is one that’s rather isolating by its very nature, it’s so nice to go to a conference or a retreat and to realize we’re not alone in talking to the people in our heads and having them talk back!

One of the best opportunities is the lineup the organizers have of agents and the oportunity to pitch our work to real agents and  publishers. Not only that, but early in the weekend they’ll have a pitch workshop where, if like me you aren’t someone who starts out with an automatic knowledge of what the heck to do in a pitch session, you can learn just what to do and sound professional and not like a big weirdo.

It’s going to be that last weekend in February. Thursday night through Saturday. And I hear there will be a “Protagonists Ball,” where attendees can appear at the ball dressed as a favorite literary character. Fun, right? Okay, writers will think this is fun. Maybe not everyone else. But that’s the joy of going to a writers conference.

Here’s the link to the conference, if you’re thinking about giving this as a gift to a writer you love–and possibly including yourself as that writer you love. Yeah! I hope to see you there. I wouldn’t miss it!

Hiding the Presents

With five kids running around a smallish house, there are blessed few places to stash a super-secret Christmas gift that I want to have as a surprise on Christmas morning. Forever I’ve just had to tell the kids, “If you want a surprise, then stay out of my bedroom closet from November 15th on.”

Then last year my brother-in-law and his bride moved around the corner from us. Boom. Instant Christmas hiding places. They’re off-site, and they have a room that the kids simply would never go into, even if they happened to be visiting their aunt and uncle. Problem solved.

I think.

I was listening to the radio and listening to some people on a call-in show tell where they hide the presents. One lady said she has a secret closet behind the toilet in her master bathroom. That’d be nice. I think someone said something about old diaper boxes. But one lady had the most ingenious idea ever:

Hide the presents under the piles of dirty clothes on the kids’ bedroom floor.

They’ll never find them there.

 

Barry Manilow, Robert Goulet, and The Secret, Lurking, Unknown Present I Found on My TV

It’s Christmastime and I love to listen to Christmas music, and I have about 5 old cassette tapes I always pop into my decrepit tape player I bought at a yard sale a couple of years ago for this express purpose. It’s great to listen to The St. Michael’s Boys Choir, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Nutcracker, Barry Manilow (courtesy of my friend Amanda, whose awesome craft blog is here. She’s amazing.), The Preston High School A Capella Choir, circa 1989 (featuring my younger sister and her friends and the songs they sang behind the newly fallen Iron Curtain in Prague and Warsaw, which is an amazing other story for another day), and Robert Goulet (also courtesy of Amanda.)

Lots of great memories, great feelings from Christmas music.

So I was at my other friend Louise’s house yesterday morning and she had me listen to a couple of new favorite Christmas songs she’s discovered lately by a Christian artist named Bebe Norman. Louise admittedly loved “weird” Christmas songs, and these aren’t weird, but they definitely come at the story from a different angle. I loved them!

Which made me think: are there a lot of other Christmas songs I’m missing out on? How would I possibly find out (without wasting YET more time on the internet. I mean, seriously, there are only so many hours in a day to waste online, and I’ve got them booked up with social networking)?

It hit me: Pandora. I’ve had an account for a couple of years but only used it once to find a Michael Bublé song. Since then I haven’t even launched it—mostly because I was *sure* I’d forgotten my password. But I have this Pandora Channel on our Roku box (which, honestly, was the best entertainment purchase we have ever made, hands down), and so I went onto the internet (without even checking my email, be proud of me) and logged onto Pandora.

WEIRD. I was still logged in. After all the multiple system crashes since I first signed up like two years ago. And I set it up on my Roku so it plays through my TV and everything. And I set up “Traditional Christmas Radio” and a few other stations, and now as I make my first of many batches of Grandma Sybil’s best rolls, I have been listening to a bunch of songs that were there waiting on my system all this time.

But it hit me, I’ve had this sitting here waiting for me and never used it. I could’ve been motivating my kids to clean house to the Beach Boys or some kind of showtunes, and I never bothered to even launch it.

It reminded me of this phrase we hear in church pretty often, that we as women need to “live up to our privileges.” I hadn’t been living up to my privilege, something that was free to me because of what I’d already bought, and all I needed to do was tap into it. Meanwhile, it made me think am I living up to my spiritual privileges. Are there things I’m missing out on, things that have already been bought and paid for on my behalf and I’m not taking full advantage of the joy and peace and well-being and enjoyment that are waiting for me if I would simply…tune in. Like, promptings of the Spirit, chances to serve and be blessed, learning or understanding from the scriptures, the peace that comes through repentance and being forgiven—the ultimate gift and privilege that has been bought and paid for for me by the Savior Jesus Christ.

It’s Christmas. I’m going to work a little more on accepting the free gifts, and do better at living up to my privileges as a daughter of God.

Excellent Compensation for the Leaky Plumbing

A couple of days ago I discovered a leak under my bathroom sink. My hot rollers were wet, as was the sweatshirt for my morning run, among other things. My husband couldn’t figure out where the leak was coming from (but at least there was the water to prove I wasn’t just making up the honey-do job for him) so there wasn’t really even a way to fix it.

Later that same day I discovered the bolt at the bottom of the tank of the toilet in that same bathroom has rusted through and is creating a dripping leak. The tank is going to have to be replaced, and part of the linoleum has peeled up behind there, and it’s just a pain and a stupid mess.

But NONE OF THAT MATTERS!

Why? Because last night I got online and had been alerted that my book, BIG IN JAPAN, has been named as…(drum roll, please!)

ONE OF THE 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2012 on ksl.com.

Woot!

I cannot express how exciting this is! And how much it totally compensates for the irritations of plumbing!

You know, writing that book was a labor of love. It didn’t just appear in full form on the page. It was three years of intense focus, including multiple rewrites from the blank page up. I had great help from beta readers and editors. So, to have it recognized for something as sweetly amazing and flattering as that, I can’t say how pleased it makes me. I kind of get that whole Sally Field speech at the Academy Awards now.

SO…thank you to ksl.com and to everyone who has bought and read the book. Or even just bought it and put it in their to-be-read pile. Maybe this announcement will make some of you less hesitant to actually crack the cover of a book about a sumo wrestler, bless his fat Texan heart.

New Motto: Start Slow and Taper Off

So, I ran in this race this summer. It was only a 5K, but it was at a much higher altitude than I live at, and it was kind of…killer. Yeah, I ended up running it faster than last year, but it’s still dang slow.

Tonight I finally checked the results (five months later). There were 116 women in my age bracket, and I came in at #61. Considering my running history, that’s scary-good.

However, since then I’ve kept running, 15 miles a week, and I’m telling you: I’m getting slower. Much slower. Today, when the song on my Mp3 player changed to Level 42′s “Something About You,” and I sped up, that was a telltale sign that I am moving at a slow, slow pace. Yesterday, I saw this lady, probably age 70, who usually walks with a shiny walking stick every morning, and we ended up on the same route. I passed her, barely, and then went around the corner (she is walking, mind you) and we met on the far side. I was roughly 20 paces ahead of her. She’s not a speed walker.

I don’t know. Does it matter if I’m slow? I can’t decide. Part of me thinks I should push myself. Speed up. Take it to the next level.

Another part of me says, this is the only consistent exercise I’ve done in my whole entire life. I’ve been running for about 18 months. This is a long time for me. Some people just love to exercise or play sports or whatever. I love to lounge and read books and be completely sedentary. Running is something I dread–and only do almost out of superstition. Like, if I miss a day in my schedule, I might stop and never start again.

So, then I say to myself, I don’t want to make myself hate it even more than I already do by pushing myself to run faster. Or risk an injury or something. Or give myself shin splints. (I can think of a dozen possible negative consequences to fast running, all of them at least as bad as looking ridiculous.)

For now I’m giving myself a bye. I’m going to tell myself to keep things as Aesop’s tortoise would have them. Be. The. Tortoise. I’m not sure there’s even a race I’m entered in, other than the one race against the calorie intake. So, take that, race organizers at high altitude. Don’t expect me to come in in the top half of my age group. Just know what a stinking miracle it is that I plod through the streets at all. Cheer that we don’t have to call the ambulance. Rejoice in the slowness and steadiness of the race.

Zaneisms

Those of you who know me know I have a son who thinks. And thinks. And theorizes. And philosphizes. And speaks these often.

We call these musings “Zaneisms.”

Here’s one he spouted wandering through the house one day. It’ll likely make its way into the family Christmas letter:

“Why do they always say no two snowflakes are alike? As if anyone could even take the time to check that.”

There’ve been hundreds and hundreds of these over the years. For a while they came fast and furious all day long. Things like, “Why don’t moms know anything about electricity?” While I stuttered my protest, he answered his own question with, “Oh, right. Because they only like shiny things.”

Well, I couldn’t argue too vigorously against that.

Or the time he asked, “Why don’t people live to be 200? Oh, wait. That wouldn’t be good.” Before we could respond, he said, “Oh, yeah. Because they wouldn’t have enough retirement saved up.”

Those were both when he was about 8.

And then when he was 11, “So, I’ve been thinking. When people say, ‘Pick on someone your own size,’ that’s actually not such a good idea. I mean, you could get hurt. If you’re going to pick on someone, it’s much smarter to choose someone smaller than you.”

Or, “I’d hate to be Jimmy Neutron with a migraine. His head is enormous.”

He’s a philosopher through and through. I often “have no response to that.” And now with his newly added obsession with politics, the philosophizing has been taken to a whole new level.

Writing the Christmas letter every year gives me a chance to go back through my journal and pick out a few of his gems to share with family and friends, and I think it’s one of my favorite things about the Christmas season. Of course, I throw in some of the antics of the other kids as well. Like the latest career goals of my daughters (waitresses at Denny’s) and stuff like freak Family Home Evening accidents and making homemade space shuttle fuel.

It’s good to comb through the past, to revisit the rough times I’ve recorded and see how they smoothed themselves out, to see the Lord’s hand in my life. Keeping a journal improves my vision that way. My dad says he writes in his journal the thing that’s troubling him the most at the time. Then he often goes back through the pages to a year (or more) ago, sees what his biggest worry was, and can evaluate how God helped him through that trial or how he’s grown as that test continues.

It’s a good way to live.

And it’s a good way to keep track of the funny stuff and keep the love alive as the memory quickly fades.

Top Ten! (*This* book? Seriously?)

Well, the “By Grapthar’s Hammer, what a savings!” promo of my sumo novel has come to an end, and I am super happy about how it went. A zillion thanks to everyone who either bought the book or shared the promo, or both. The result was that BIG IN JAPAN moved up the Kindle sales charts for the sports genre, finally peaking at #9.

A sumo wrestler semi-romance was in the top ten!

That’s, like, front page when you click on sports novels on Amazon.

Pretty darn stinking amazing. Amazong. Wait, that’s not a word.

So, thank you! And if by chance any of you get time to *read* Big in Japan and would like to leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads or somewhere, that’d be really awesome too. Amazing/Amazong. Whatever.

Thank you!

Now, I must return to the excitement of housecleaning and painting the remaining walls in the kitchen. Woot!

Fine. FINE. Buy the Kid a Gun.

For the past couple of weeks we’ve been in negotiations, my husband and I. It’s our annual pre-Christmas ritual. I make a big, overblown plan for what to get each of our five kids. I write it in my little “Christmas notebook.” Then I look at how ridiculous I’m being and scribble out most of it. Then I take the list to my husband and tell him what’s on it. He nods. I start purchasing a few things. Then he tells me what he thinks we need to get each kid.

It’s never anything I would have thought of.

Most of the time it’s quite insightful, even if it’s sometimes out there.

This year he said, “Let’s get our oldest a gun.”

A gun? Like to shoot things with? (Like, maybe he’ll shoot his eye out, kid.)

“Oh, I’m only thinking something like a .22 rifle. Not like an automatic weapon or anything.”

Right.

He’s turning 15 on Christmas. He’s not old enough to drive. Or date. Or vote. But he’s suddenly old enough to shoot?

I snorted and said, “He’s not interested in shooting.” He’s not. Seriously. He seems like he couldn’t care less. In fact, he went shooting with his uncle (my husband’s brother, who incidentally just bought a gun, so we can see where viruses like this begin). I asked if he had fun. He shrugged.

So, I kind of erased it off the list, thinking I’d probably be hit with some brilliant idea in the next few days and we could just forget this “weapons moment” ever happened. A video game. Could we just do something like Classic Asteroids or something? It has shooting. Perfect.

So I called my dad this week a few times. In one conversation I brought up the gun thing. “I’m with Gary. Sorry, Jen.” My dad was not with me on this one. “A boy needs a gun. He needs to have a gun.”

He’s got an AirSoft rifle. It shoots cute little orange pellets. When it’s not collecting dust. Isn’t that enough?

Fine. My dad might be right. My husband might be right.

THEN…it was date night, which means dinner and a movie around here. (Mostly Taco Bell. My favorite.) And since I’m not a Twilighter, and my husband can only remember the title of that movie as Breaking Wind, we went to the other “Dawn” movie last night:Red Dawn.

Now, I do remember watching the original version in junior high band class. It was long. Took like five class periods to watch it. Maybe we didn’t and we were just talking about it between renditions of “American Patrol.” I liked it, though, so a re-watch was fine with me.

And within the first 15 minutes I’d asked my husband, “That kid is a Marine. Why does he not have a concealed carry permit? Why is his gun not under the seat of his truck? Why can’t he just defend himself? Why is that younger kid so afraid of that gun? Why can’t he hit the broad side of that tree when he aims? Why don’t they have more ammo?” Until my husband was probably shushing me. But, folks–even if the North Koreans don’t invade, there are times when a man needs a gun. He may not have to defend his family or kill his dinner. But he definitely needs to know how. It’s manly. It’s important. I see that now.

Fine. FINE. Buy the kid a gun.

By Grapthar’s Hammer: What a Bargain

Soooooo, folks. My book is on sale cheap-o cheap-o for just the rest of this week on Kindle! Just 99-cents. And for less than the cost of a cup of coffee (or a 72-ounce Diet Coke), you can hold a sumo wrestler in the palm of your hands.

Think of it.

Here’s the link:

http://www.amazon.com/Big-in-Japan-ebook/dp/B008PH7U6C/ref=tmm_kin_title_0

It’s been fun getting feedback from a bunch of people who’ve downloaded it. I always say you can’t be a writer for the money of it. (Unless your last name is Meyer or Grisham or Patterson.) So, for me it’s just really fun to know that my little sumo wrestler story is going to be read by a lot more people. Yay!

And if one of those people is YOU (because, how wrong can you go by spending 99 cents? Seriously.) please let me know how you like the book. Or leave a review or whatever. Because, yeah. Since we writers can’t do it for the money, we have to do it for reader feedback.

I really, really do appreciate the people who read my stories. It’s just so cool of all of you. You’re really nice to me. Thank you so much! Thanks, thanks, thanks!

Oh, and on Amazon you can “look inside” at the first few pages and see if you think the story would appeal to you. Or to your book group. I’ve gotten lots of good feedback from people who have read it as their book-of-the-month selection. And a high school English teacher I know is planning to use it for his juniors in the spring (I think). So, there’s apparently an appeal to a lot of different ages and such.

Annnnnnd, finally, there’s this feature I never even knew about on Amazon that you can send a Kindle book to someone as a gift if you just have their email address. Right below the “click to purchase” button is a “give as a gift” button. That’s cool. Because in hardcover this book is like $30. By Grapthar’s Hammer! What a bargain, right?

So, yeah. Here’s my post of shameless self-promotion. I hope you like the story, friends! Let me know!

 

 

Autumn Scary Romance Throwback Before Christmas

I am getting ridiculously excited for Christmas. It’s carols and twinkle lights and homemade fudge all the time here at Griffith Magna. But there’s no snow. Well, duh. This is Arizona. We are still running the AC most days at least for a while. And definitely in the car. And the color on my backyard nectarine trees is finally beautiful. Oranges and yellows…love it.

So it still feels like fall. Even though we’re singing about sleigh bells and hearing the snow crunch, etc.

And something is still kind of looming–forever ago I was going to post the full text of my sorta-creepy story I wrote for the Jolly Fish Press Creative Frighting Contest (which Teri Harman won with her creepy “wheel” story.) I’ve never been much for Frighting. I remember a really bad date where I foolishly agreed to go with my good friend Lars Larsen (who was about 6’7″) to the haunted house and I spent the whole time with my face buried in the back of his coat.

I was not a good haunted house date.

So…without further ado, here’s the not-so-frightening entry for your lingering autumn enjoyment.

 

Knock, Knock, Scream

            A girl your age shouldn’t live on her own in the country. It doesn’t look right, my parents insisted, frowning at my farmhouse.

It’s the 1950s, I countered. The war is over. A girl can be what she wants to be—a farmer and a school teacher.

Even though Mr. Thurgood was by far the handsomest man on the high school faculty, I wished he hadn’t called me tonight.

“This storm’s going to be brutal, Miss Young.” His soulful voice broke up as the connection crackled. “You’ll call me if the electric goes out in that old farmhouse, won’t you?”

“I’ll be fine,” I insisted. The storm wasn’t my biggest worry, and Mr. Thurgood knew it. Everyone in the school knew it, students and faculty. When the threats started coming, my principal said he would call the county sheriff, but what could the police do, short of putting a watch on my place round the clock?

They couldn’t, but I wished they would.

I fingered the cloth-covered coils in the telephone cord to untangle them, pressing my hand against the wall to steady me. Thunder rolled, and branches were lashing the side of the house as if flogging an infidel.

Back in the happiest apex of springtime blossoms, the McMillan farmhouse had looked like an idyllic retreat, a place where a young school teacher could plant a flower garden, raise chickens, be awakened by a rooster, keep a large dog like my bull mastiff, Voltaire.

In my spring fever I’d bought the house, furnishings and all—from the books in the study to the full zoo of Old Mr. McMillan’s hunting trophies that still littered the house.

My parents didn’t like the idea.

Eventually they relented.

But now in the last throes of fall, the old house lost some of its charm, as did the pesterment of skunks that regularly invaded my henhouse and ate all my farm fresh eggs. This, after Voltaire got the sorry end of a fight with a porcupine. Poor pup.

And that infernal wind! It rattled my soul.

The kettle atop my wood stove shrieked, shaking me from the worries of school and weather. My floors were cold. I shouldn’t go barefoot. I never know when I might need to run. Wind seeped in through the wood slats of the walls. It rattled the front door, whipping back the old screen door and slapping it shut.

Why had Mr. Thurgood called and brought up the threats? Broad shoulders aside, I didn’t need the reminder. Not tonight.

Hot water into the teacup, my emotions astir.

Miss Young. Sophomore thug Giles Beeman’s narrowed eyes had pierced me that morning. You’d better watch your back. His lips stretched so far back I thought the skin might split.

Mr. Beeman, take the criticism and sit down. I’d responded with all the calm I could muster, but I knew a tremor marred my voice.

My cup trembled and spilled a little on the old Formica table. I jumped up to get a dish towel and toppled the rest of the drink, shattering the cup on the floor. The liquid spread like ooze from a wound.

I’m a mess. Shame blotched my cheeks hot. A grown woman should not have these irrational fears. He was a measly sophomore, for heaven’s sake. A child.

Reading. Reading would get my mind off the storm.

Making my way down the hall to the study, I pulled the collar of my bathrobe close to my neck to shut out the drafts.

Light poured bluish green all around. A book would transport me, but mine were still all in boxes. I sorted through the McMillan family’s abandoned tomes.

Aha. This would do.

I brushed a skiff of blue-grey dust off one called “Family Photographs.” The first page was labeled 1934. A bride clutched a bouquet of lilies and lilacs. The groom clutched the bride.

Yes, here’s good medicine: a trip two decades into the past and away from this storm.

Another page, 1935 scrawled across its top. Mother with damp hair, a newborn in her arms, its face all puckered and obviously upset. Proud father, hands on hips, gazes at his accomplishment.

Pages of old cars, houses, family gatherings, a little boy, followed. Then ah, this farmhouse, stately and new. The child, a boy now about six, rolled in a pedal car down the new sidewalk.

I looked again. Something about his picture wasn’t right. His expression unsettled me. I quickly turned the page.

My mind calculated. The boy would’ve been about my age.

I turned the page, expecting to see his sports accomplishments. Instead, I found solemn stares of the mother, her mouth pressed into a flat line, flanked by older people, her husband standing apart, his face also twisted in a frown.

They were standing in front of a small pine box piled high with lilies.

The rest of the pages were blank.

 

I clapped the book shut and shoved it back on the shelf. Branches of the cottonwood thrashed the house as if flogging an infidel. I shot to my feet and paced.

A boy had died. How, I didn’t know, but I knew he’d lived here.

A familiar hostility burned in those eyes.

Giles. His face was the same as the child’s. The two faces merged in my mind. I shuddered and went to the kitchen. From the drainer I took a tin cup, then lifted the pump handle and pumped twice for a drink.

The cold water hit my teeth just as the electricity snuffed out and I was plunged into darkness. Cold water pouring down my throat mirrored the cold chill down my spine.

My emergency candle was upstairs in my bedroom. I felt my way toward the loose banister, another project I’d procrastinated, and let the chair rail guide my fingertips toward my bedroom. Suddenly I stopped.

What was that? It couldn’t be knocking—not here. Not at this time of night.

But it was. And it was persistent.

Fumbling, I found the candle and matches. It took five tries before I could light it. Who would come down my dirt lane half a mile? No one. I thought of the dead boy.

The knocking came more insistent now, almost desperate.

Creeping down the stairs, I shielded the candle so it lit my steps but not the walls or the ceiling, but its flicker made dancing patterns on the wall.

Should I answer? I stood beside the door, torn. I rested my hand on the doorknob and let the door shimmy open a crack.

“Yes?”

No one was there. But the ghost of a dead boy wouldn’t knock. It wouldn’t.

A truck with its lights off tore out of the driveway, spitting gravel. A cold gust hit my neck, and the wind suddenly changed directions, snuffing out my candle once again. I was plunged into inky darkness. A peacock cried from my henhouse, Help, help, help!

I gulped.

Mr. Thurgood. Maybe I should call Mr. Thurgood. He did say to call if the power went out, but I couldn’t remember his number. Something with threes and fives?

Upstairs was another match. I dropped to my hands and knees to feel my way through the parlor toward the staircase.

The darkness disoriented me. I reached for the front doorframe and couldn’t find it. I patted the floorboards, wooden and smooth, reaching for a landmark, the sofa, a chair, anything. Pat, pat, pat. Reaching out, my hand gained purchase on an object—bony and covered with hair.

A head!

I snapped my hand upward, and it sliced against something razor sharp and caught there.

I screamed. Something was biting me! A bat! A creature! A rat infested my house and was eating me alive!

I wrested my hand free and jumped to my feet, careening away, simultaneously stomping at the rat and jumping as high as I could to avoid letting it bite my feet. How many of them were there? My shoulder crunched into a lamp, toppling it onto the horsehair sofa. Springing in terror, I leapt the back of the couch—and then remembered the raccoon hunting trophy back there. I wasn’t being eaten, after all.

Still, adrenaline gave me the superhuman skills to make a beeline up the stairs to my room where I lit the candle and jumped into bed.

Flickering images against the walls made eerie patterns. I wish this night would be over. In the flashes of gold and grey I saw those angry eyes.

Miss Young, you better watch out.

I am your teacher, Giles Beeman. Now, straighten up and fly right.

I know where you live. You bought the old McMillan farm. Where that boy was murdered.

            Nobody was murdered on my farm, now back to work.

That afternoon I bought a deadbolt that afternoon at the hardware store. Why didn’t I make time to install it? It sat in a paper sack on the porch doing nothing. Like the corpse of my mastiff buried in the back cherry orchard. Useless.

My sheets knotted into ropes. I kept seeing Giles, the McMillan boy, Giles. A sinister laugh seemed to emanate from the images, echoing in the howl of the furious wind. I pressed the heels of my hands against my ears to block it out.

A boy had been murdered here. No. It was just something Giles made up to get me off balance. It wouldn’t work.

But the scrapbook did end abruptly. With the pine box and lilies. Tonight the farmhouse seemed intent on telling what it had seen. Whispers arose from the cracks. Murder. Creaking timbers moaned. Avenge me. Violence lurked in the darkness as the peacocks resumed their cries of help, help, help. My pulse doubled. No matter how hard I pushed my palms against my ears, the sounds wouldn’t stop racing through the corridors of my brain.

Knock, knock, knock. Suddenly, the insistent rapping began again, sharper this time.

He’d come. Giles had come. He had come to get his revenge.

Knock, knock, knock, knock! I pulled the sheet up over me, knowing there was no place to hide. Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.

Go away, I muttered. Just go away.

Suddenly from the back yard, an anguished scream pealed, the voice of a small child. It sailed over all the whispered and groans, the cries for help and for vengeance attacking my ears, over all the wind’s angry orchestra.

A child—a little child is in my back yard in peril!

I shot from my bed, heedless of the danger knocking at my door. Forgetting Giles, I grabbed the candle and raced toward the sound, pounding down the stairs, hot candle wax splashing onto the back of my hand, searing it. It would just have to blister because the screaming persisted, filling the whole immensity of space, rattling through the chambers of my soul.

Wait. The knocking at the front door had stopped.

Did it stop before the screaming or after? I didn’t know. Oh, mercy! It didn’t matter. What mattered was saving the child.

I bounded over the top of the stuffed beaver and peccary beside the back door, only stumbling once as the hem of my nightgown caught on the tusk of the hairy pig. It tore as I yanked it away at full speed.

My right hand gained purchase on the back door knob, the cold of the metal sending a chill down my spine, just as the report of a shotgun slammed against my ear.

The screams ceased.

A flutter of wings, followed it, and I threw open the back door!

“No! Don’t shoot! Stop!” I screamed. My eyes scanning the candlelight’s meager circle for evidence of a dead body, or a culprit running away. Wind snuffed out the candle, and all went black for a dead moment. A flutter of wings from one of my chickens came, followed by a nervous clucking and semi-flight away.

“It’s done,” a man’s voice declared.

“Who’s there?” I begged. My heart beat high up in my throat. “What’s done? Please say no one is dead.” My words came hoarse and terrified.

A sudden gale thrust the clouds away from the moon, bathing my yard in silver light.

“I’m sorry, Miss Young. I had to kill it.” It was Mr. Thurgood’s voice, sonorous and regretful. There at his feet lay the body of a skunk, its teeth bloody and chicken feathers all around. Its smell hit my nose like a Massey Ferguson tractor.

“Chickens, Miss Young? Their screams can sound like little children. When I heard it, I came round back. I had to shoot before it could spray me. You said you’d been having problems with the skunks, didn’t you?”

I nodded slowly. My heart rate began to regulate as I stared at the black and white corpse.

“Had a chicken by the neck, but not too bad. I think it’ll live.” Mr Thurgood pointed to a wounded chicken racing toward the henhouse. He was right. It would live.

I couldn’t speak yet, but Thurgood could.

“I came out here an hour ago, but you didn’t come to the door. I figured you were asleep, and then I felt like a fool for pounding so loud. Then no sooner I got home, I had this feeling I couldn’t shake. I had to come back out here and tell you—the Beeman boy’s been sent off to military school. He’s gone.” Thurgood shifted his weight. “I feel like a total idiot for waking you up, now that I see you’re all right.”

My hands stopped shaking, and I looked down at my torn nightgown. The lights in the house suddenly shuddered and came back on, illuminating the back porch and the house and Mr. Thurgood’s handsome face. He really was the best looking teacher on faculty, by a long shot.

“No, I appreciate it very much. I was a little nervous, in fact.” Understatement. I bit my lip. “It’s very late, but I’d like to thank you. Can you come inside for a cup of something?”

His eyes looked me over in the new light. “My, but you’re pretty with your hair down, Laura.” He shook himself and seemed to refocus. “Let me take care of this mess and I’d like to come in for a cup of something. Have you got a shovel?”

And while I found a second teacup in the glass front shelves in the study, I ran across the McMillans’ scrapbooks from the years 1937 to 1951.

The next day I packed them up and took them to his relatives who lived in town. They promised to get them to the son, who had started a law practice in Lincoln. His new bride would enjoy them very much, especially the photos her husband had taken of the family funeral for his favorite bull mastiff, which they’d buried in a pine box covered with lilies, against his parents’ wishes.