Listen ...Forces of Nature

FORCES OF NATURE
by Marilyn Celeste Morris
Available in Print and All Ebook Formats

It was going to be a two-shoe day.

Howard the Weatherman woke with what he referred to as That Certain Dread and a bad taste in his mouth, to boot. The birthday party for his youngest granddaughter the previous evening was the cause, even though it was just ice cream and cake and no booze, befitting his solid Southern Baptist background.

The feeling lingered on the fringes of consciousness until he was fully awake.

Glancing over at his sleeping wife of forty years, he considered waking her and telling her about his dream. No, he would prepare for work first, and let Neva sleep a while longer.

He eased out of bed and padded into the adjoining bathroom. He allowed the shower head to spray stinging hot water over his face and body, all the while he was reciting his usual morning prayers: “Father, I thank thee for this day that thou hast made. I will rejoice and be thankful in it.”

He continued with his intercessory prayers for his family and friends, and for the nation as a whole. “And so I beseech thee, Dear Lord, heed my prayers. I pray in the name of my savior, Jesus Christ.” Normally, his prayers would have ended at this point with a heart-felt “Amen”, but this morning he added softly, “And Lord, if it be thy will, spare us the agony of this day, and keep us safe from harm. Amen.”

Neva was up and in the kitchen when Howard stepped out of the shower. Wrapping his robe around him and combing his thinning hair, he walked down the hallway past the empty kids’ bedrooms and into the kitchen.

“Morning,” Neva said, setting a cup of coffee at his usual place. “Sleep well?”

Howard paused before replying, “Fine.” There was no sense in telling her now. “You?”

“Fine, until you began tossing and turning. What was that all about, Howard?” She sat across from him and studied him over her coffee cup.

“Nothing. I don’t remember,” he evaded, knowing full well what Neva was going to say next. Why did he even try?

“It’s the dream again, isn’t it?”

He sighed, then nodded. “I knew I couldn’t keep it from you. You know me too well.”

She smiled softly.

“Honey, it’s going to be a bad one today.”

“They’re all bad, Howard. Even small tornadoes that don’t send people to the hospitals, or kill them. Property damage, schools, businesses, all suffer.”

Howard finished his coffee and shook off his wife’s gesture of handing him a plate of bacon and eggs. “I’m gonna be late if I don’t leave now. I should have the official National Weather Service information the first thing when I get to the station. Then I’ll have to butt heads with our new station manager about interrupting the regularly scheduled programs for weather bulletins.”

“It’s going to be that big?” Neva followed him into the bedroom.

“Stay close to home today, honey. I want you close to the cellar.”

Howard wouldn’t have wanted it known that he had a “fraidy hole.” Having been born and raised in southwest Oklahoma known as Tornado Alley, he had spent many hours in the safety of his parents’ cellar while monster winds roared above, snapping power lines, tossing huge trees like matchsticks. To this day, Howard could recall the pungent smells that filled the old cellar: his mother’s canned peaches and preserves, and potatoes by the tow sack full mingled with the faint odor of field mouse droppings.

Howard thought back to one particular day when he was still in high school. He had told his family early in the morning that there would be a tornado that day. His family had come to respect his gift, and they followed Howard’s calm statement of fact: “There’s gonna be a tornado sometime this afternoon.”

He had dreamed of a tornado the night before; he saw dreadful winds ripping huge trees apart, snapping power lines and shrieking its way across the land. Sometimes he woke in a sweat, panicky, while he tried to still his thumping heart and not wake his brother who shared his room. He lay quietly and reviewed the dream, feeling clammy and cold and sweaty all at the same time, until finally he would dispel the feeling – which he soon began to recognize as a certain dread – until it came time for the storm to present itself on the horizon.

Sometimes the Certain Dread came upon him minus the accompanying dream. Or, he had the dream but didn’t remember it. Even as a high school student, he would be sitting in school, gazing at the object of his affections, and scheming a way to get her off to the side in the hallway so he could talk to her. Just talk to her about anything at all except what he really wanted to say, and that was that he loved her and wanted to marry her and live with her the rest of his life, but he was afraid she would laugh at him, because he was, after all, only seventeen.

But while Howard was trying to figure out how to speak to his vision of bliss, the feeling came over him and dispelled any other emotion he may have had. It almost overwhelmed him, causing his head to spin and his heart to pound just as it did in the nightmares. He knew for sure he had to get out of school, go home and warn his family that a twister was on its way and to go to the cellar.

So strong and certain was this feeling that he got up from his seat during French class conjugating verbs, causing Mrs. Dosser to frown and ask him where he thought he was going.

“I have to go home, Mrs. Dosser,” he said simply, and as he passed Neva’s desk he whispered to her to come join him in the hallway. Astonishing both himself and Mrs. Dosser, she did just that.

As she stepped out of the classroom, he told her, “There’s a tornado coming. Don’t ask me how I know, I just know. Go home. Tell your family to get to safety. This is gonna be a real bad twister.”

“They’re all bad, Howard.” Yet she nodded, as if she had known all along about his strange gift. “The others?” She glanced back inside the classroom.

“You think they’d believe me?”

A moment’s pause, then she placed her hand on his arm. “I believe you.”

Listen ...Sabbath's House

SABBATH'S HOUSE by Marilyn Celeste Morris
Available in Print and All Ebook Formats

Prologue

1890 – Ames, Texas

Emily Harris smiled contentedly as she put the last stitch in her embroidered pillowcase.

Emily could hear her three children playing in their attic playroom; every once in a while a shriek pierced the silence of the house, indicating the boys were once again teasing their little sister.

She smiled, set down her needlework and moved to the kitchen where she began supervising dinner preparations. Cyrus would close his office soon and the children would no doubt be hungry within the next hour.

In the attic playroom, Ben and Lewis were indeed torturing their little sister.

“Come on, Lucy. Don’t be a sissy little girl,” Ben taunted. He pulled a large steamer trunk from its place in the corner to where Lucy was standing.

“Here, Lucy. Stand up on this. This is the Outlaw’s horse.”

At ten years of age, Ben’s stature allowed him to dominate most other children, and he took advantage of his size whenever possible. Especially when he towered over his siblings. Now, he easily grabbed a rope dangling from the beam above.

“Yeah, Lucy,” Lewis echoed. “Come on.”

Lucy eyed her brothers with suspicion. Her five-year old instinct told her this was not a good thing for her to be doing; yet she didn’t want to appear a baby in their eyes. Her brothers were not only her playmates, but also she idolized them as being the smartest, best looking children on the block, and she was eager to please them.

She climbed up on the trunk and stood, eyeing the rope Ben held in his hand.

“You mean you want me to put this rope over my head?” She asked Ben.

“Yeah. Put it on, Lucy. Here, I’ll help you.” He moved behind his sister and looped the rope over her head. “We’re playing Outlaw. And how can we play Outlaw if we don’t have somebody to be the Outlaw?”

“Girls aren’t outlaws,” Lucy bargained.

“Yes, there are some girls who were outlaws in the West,” Ben informed her.

Lucy considered this, coming from her smart brother, Ben. If Ben said so, it must be true.

“Okay,” she conceded. “I’m the Outlaw.”

Lewis snickered, mainly to impress his older brother. “Yeah, an outlaw. A girl outlaw, in a prissy blue dress.”

Ben ignored him, as he always did. “Good. Okay, we don’t have a rope hanging from a tree, just the ceiling beam, and you’re not on a horse, but this trunk can be your horse.”“

Lucy’s blue eyes rounded in curiosity. “What’s gonna happen now?”

“This is your horse. You know, the way they did it in the olden days. They would string up the outlaw on his horse, and then they’d whack the horse and make him bolt, and the outlaw would die by hanging.”

“Uh….I don’t know,” Lucy’s voice quavered.

“Sissy girl,” Ben countered.

“Yeah, sissy girl,” Lewis echoed.

“But won’t that hurt?” Lucy’s stance wavered.

“Naw. We’re just pretending. You can pretend hurt, if you want to. You’re a real good pretender, right?”

Lewis nodded at his brother and they both pushed the trunk out from under Lucy’s slipper-clad feet.

“Okay, you outlaw,” Lewis shouted, taking off an imaginary hat and dusting his trousers with it.

Lucy moaned softly, then came a gurgling noise. She raised her hands to her neck, flailed her slipper-clad feet while her eyes screamed in terror.

Lewis, surveying his sister’s plight asked Ben, “Should we cut her down? It looks like she’s not just pretending.”

“Naw. She’s a good pretender. Remember how she got you last week down in the cellar, when she pretended to trip over a box and hurt her knee? She cried real hard, and pretended like she was really hurt, bad. She’s good at that.”

“Well… if you say so.”

Lucy flailed her feet harder, no doubt with her last conscious thought hoping her feet would connect with the trunk, but it was far removed. Her hands struggled with the rope for a few seconds, she continued to make noises, and then her eyes closed and she was still.

Listen ...Sabbath's Gift

SABBATH'S GIFT by Marilyn Celeste Morris

Available in Print and All Ebook Formats


Chapter Two

The rusting gray Chevrolet glided silently down the caliché road, coming to a halt a good distance from the isolated farmhouse. It sat idling for several minutes as the driver, sitting immobile, contemplated the warm, sultry night. In a moment, the driver stirred, then emerged from the car, a shotgun in her hand.

She stalked down the road toward the house; her black, sturdy dress shoes scattering pebbles in front of her. As she walked, she brought the shotgun up to her chest, cradling it like a baby.

Moonlight outlined every shrub, bush and grapevine along the side of the rutted path, illuminating the brightly lighted structure at the end of the road.

The weather had been exceptionally warm for this time of year in the Texas Hill Country. Bluebonnets had bloomed way before Easter, presenting a spectacular display along the highways, into far off fields; these had given way later to Indian Paint Brush and Black-Eyed Susans; abruptly, the wildflowers had faded. Now, cicadas sang from shade trees lining Slocum’s residential streets.

"Early summer this year," old-timers nodded to each other in passing.

"Yep, this summer's gonna be a scorcher.”. The male population of Slocum fanned their beefy red faces with sweat-soaked brims of their "gimme" caps. The women, influenced by Southern tradition, fluttered small white lace-trimmed handkerchiefs in the general vicinity of their powdered, rouged faces, pausing occasionally to pat daintily at exposed portions of their glistening bosoms.

Life in Slocum proceeded in their proscribed ritual. All seasons had their litanies: Masonic Lodge, church socials, Sunday School lessons; all brought a certain measure of comfort in a time of rapid, unwelcome changes around their small community nestled on the banks of the Pedernales.

Wilma Folks had grown up in Slocum, with her sister Wanda. Her church-going, solid-as-a-rock family had been regarded as respected members of the community; however, the reality of life inside the Foulkes' house was harsh and violent. Their God-fearing father beat both the girls regularly, particularly when after he had been drinking. Nobody knew, and nobody would have believed it, if either of the girls had ever told anyone. Why, the Foulkes family appeared in their church pew every time the doors were open; Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday nights, would have been the shocked response.

Fine, upstanding family, everyone agreed; that is, until Wanda disappeared abruptly one spring day twenty-seven years ago.

The gossip began, much of it accurate. “That Foulkes girl, Wanda, is pregnant” Miz Annabelle Parker lowered her voice, as the women in the fabric store measured cotton chintz for their summer slipcovers.

“It’s the Cox boy responsible, I understand,” Miz Habanera nodded solemnly. “The one that never came back from Viet Nam,” she added for emphasis, while Miz Draper and Miz Parker shook their heads, clucking under their breath.

“I heard that boy never even had to go to Viet Nam. His daddy’s influence, you know.” She nodded wisely. “But he surely did go somewhere…so he wouldn’t have to be faced with the responsibility of fatherhood.

“No wonder Wanda had to leave town...heard she went to Austin to have the baby. Poor little thing, baby having to grow up without a father,” Miz Heabner at last decided on the rose-printed chintz. “This will do nicely for my couch, don’t you think?” She held up a swatch for the others’ approval.

“You know there’s another girl, about Wanda’s age. A good, responsible child, that Wilma,” Miz Heabner remarked.

“Not at all like her sister.” Miz Draper tittered.

“Oh, give her time.” Miz Parker sniffed. “The apple don’t fall too far from the tree, you know.”

“What a thing to say!” Miz Draper snorted. “Not when she’s so plain. No, that girl can’t possibly get in trouble.”