First published here

Annabel stood in the spare room, cluttered with boxes and assorted junk, and struggled for inspiration to help transform the mess into a snuggly nursery. She absent-mindedly stroked her burgeoning baby bump. The monotone of CNN was white noise in the background. Until the key words blared clearly: Camp Leatherneck, Helmand Province, Afghanistan; shooting; Afghan police trainees fire on Americans; two Marine instructors dead; others wounded; names withheld pending notification.

Annabel found herself in the living room, seated on the coffee table, fixated on the news. That’s where Josh is. That’s his assignment. He – and others from here – are instructors. CNN said that, upon being handed a loaded weapon as part of the training exercise, an Afghan police trainee turned the weapon on the Marines, wounding several, killing two.

… Continue reading.

First published in Steel Toe Review

If it hadn’t been for Daddy’s sickness, Opal Pratt might have worked a lifetime at the shoe factory no matter what had happened there.

It probably started at Opal’s high school graduation. Two of her mother’s sisters, three of her father’s brothers and one of his sisters, their spouses, and assorted, slow-witted cousins arrived to celebrate her accomplishment. She was the first from both sides of the family to graduate from high school. The aunts hoped she would be an inspiration to their broods. The uncles only hoped their brats would go to work.

… Continue reading in the Steel Toe Review

First published here

Olivia Clark couldn’t find it. The punch for her Braille writer had rolled off the counter and apparently into oblivion. She was on her knees, feeling the floor, foot by foot, grumbling. Woofy, her ever-happy dog, thought it was a game. He danced around, nuzzled her neck and generally got in the way.

“God, Woofy. Go away someplace. You’re not helping.”

The screen door admitted plentiful sunshine, but it would never be enough. What it did admit this afternoon was the sound of a man’s voice calling her name, probably from the back gate that opened to the alley.

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First published in Deep South Magazine

The once-grand house now drooped in urban shabbiness, as did the rest of the neighborhood. At the turn of the century, the area had boasted Memphis’ carriage trade in graceful French Victorian homes. There had been glossy, black carriages, liveried servants, ships’ captains and cotton traders, ladies in velvet and silk who owned twenty pairs of gloves, elaborate parties, and spoiled children. Since that time, the gentry moved east. In the first wave of change, the houses remained neat, but clearly less than their former selves. They were occupied by large, noisy, extended families, multiple families or elderly remnants of the old life who were just hanging on to the pretense of long ago. In more recent years, some of the beauties were leveled for cheap apartment buildings. Others became boarding houses for the downtrodden. And some stayed in families who loved them despite their rapid decline. Seraphina’s house was just that.

… Continue reading at Deep South magazine

First published in Deep South Magazine

Lunchtime. The one hundred seventy-three students at Warren County Consolidated High School were in the cafetorium. They’d gone through the cafeteria line or brought their lunches from home and settled at the long tables with their buddies for the forty-five minute lunch break. Jocks sat together. Cheerleaders and their pretty wanna-be friends were at a different table. “Nerds” were in one group because no one else understood them. Kids who didn’t know where they belonged formed loose, shape-shifting groupings. Alvaline Turner never fit in anywhere and she didn’t care.  As usual, she made her rounds of all the tables, eating chips at this table, part of someone’s sandwich at that one, some fruit at another. She never bought or brought her own lunch and no one ever denied her.

She was only in the eleventh grade, but she’d been the talk of the school since the ninth grade when her figure bloomed. The good girls wore skirts that brushed their mid-calves. They topped the skirts with white, puffed-sleeve blouses. A few, from families that couldn’t afford decent clothes, wore dungarees, loosely fit, with blouses or sweaters that barely acknowledged their femininity. On the other hand, Alvaline’s dungarees clung to every curve and cleft of her beautifully rounded body. Her blouses and sweaters did the same. The female teachers clucked at her appearance and regularly requested that she be sent home to change, but the principal was a man and her mode of dress was never officially questioned.

Alvaline’s curly, copper-colored hair touched her shoulders and always looked as if she’d just climbed out of bed. She gave wet dreams to all the boys in school. Everyone thought she put out. Some boys claimed to have personal knowledge, but no one could really prove it.

… Continue reading at Deep South magazine

First published in China Grove Magazine

As Opal Pratt pushed her grocery cart to the Piggly Wiggly exit, she saw the clump of other shoppers bunched up and staring outside with exasperation. From the sound and scent, she knew before she saw it that another fall downpour was gracing the parking lot. The left side of the wide set of doors was crowded intermittently with shoppers running in, wet and yelling, from the outside. Opal never understood why the yelling was necessary, but obviously it was. She was too far back in the outward-pointed group to get out of the store easily, so she waited. Every few minutes, one or two shoppers in her group became either brave or impatient and made a dash for their cars. More yelling. A man and woman two shopping carts ahead of her laughed loudly and made a run for it. Opal saw something small, a paper of some sort, float out of their basket as the couple sprinted through the exit. The gust caused by the opening doors gave flight to the paper that crash-landed just three feet from Opal. She looked around and … Continue reading

First published in Belle Reve Literary Journal
Nominated by Belle Reve for a Pushcart Prize

It sounded like a gang of hooligans had surrounded the house and was throwing pebbles on the roof in an increasing assault. But as Opal Pratt lay in bed, she knew the truth. It was late January in Warren County, Mississippi. It was sleet. The sound was too dainty to constitute hail, but the dit-dit-dit had grown heavier and it would likely graduate into a full-out ice storm. The electricity would go out when the coating of ice on electric lines thickened until they snapped. The telephone would go out, too. Her little bedroom space heater would be inoperable. Good thing she had ample wood for the living room fireplace. She should move some from the outside pile to the porch to protect the wood from the coming storm. Wet wood won’t burn, and it would be impossible to retrieve logs after the ice piled up. She needed to take care of the animals, too. She needed to get up.

Opal was not a woman to lie in bed in the middle of the day. If Momma were alive, she’d call Opal a lazy girl. But Momma had been gone for several years and the bed was the only place where Opal could ease the pain in her side. Or was it in her belly? Her chest? It seemed to move around. Maybe it was the entire middle of her ample body. This ache was more intense than it was yesterday, and that hurt more than the day before that. Opal also wasn’t one to run to a doctor for every little thing, but today it didn’t feel like a little thing. Her forehead sizzled with heat and her mouth felt sandy dry.

“I have to get up. Nobody’s going to do this for me,” Opal said out loud.

… Continue reading