Raw Spots

A young African-American girl walks home from church through the woods. A neighbor jumps from behind a tree into her path, slings her to the ground, and expresses his new manhood. She cannot escape.

The girl walks home along the public road. An elderly Caucasian man, who lives as an eccentric recluse, shoots at her feet. His goal is to coerce her into following him into his hay crib for his casual pleasure.

Like wind whistling through the trees, the adults around me in my childhood spoke of such events. Although I never saw or heard what was described in hushed tones, I had the assurance of actuality. It was as real as bare spots in my father’s cornfield where lightning changed the electrical charge so crops wouldn’t grow there.

I saw scars in brown flesh as devastating as the tracks of tornados along the edge of the highway . . . children without fathers . . . mothers ripped from their dreams of advancement in life . . . anger glazed over with sugary submission.

Trudy, the brave and mischievous child of The Dream Bucket, lives in her rural Mississippi world, in an earlier time than mine. She knows tragedy. Like the black fish-net veils draped over faces beneath women’s hats at church, the adults try to keep the raw spots of life from Trudy’s sight.

After the conclusion of The Dream Bucket, Trudy makes friends with an ethereal young woman named Manuela Blayne.

Since some of the scenes in Manuela Blayne occur on the front porch of the old house where the Cameron family of The Dream Bucket have lived, both of these stories now can be obtained in one book with the haunting image of the cabin featured on the cover.

For a short time, it is a #freebie on Amazon.com as a Kindle book. Please read these stories together. Maybe you’ve already finished The Dream Bucket. You may want to take another look at it, as Trudy tells Manuela Blayne, her latest story in her own voice.

All I ask is your reaction. Please share your honest opinion as an Amazon review. The fictional accounts told in Covington Chronicles III and IV are not literal facts, but they have a level of truth based on childhood in rural Mississippi. I will be grateful to hear from you.