I haven't forgotten you... well, I sort of did... but with the fluctuating stress of my life, I just didn't have it in me to write anything sensible or creative. But, I'm back!
To fill you in on all the past events of late November until today would be melodramatic. So, I'll pass. I'm still looking for a literary agent and publisher for DAKAR. I'll be like the little engine that could.
I think I mentioned The Persnickety Witch of Fiddyment Creek previously. There is actually a creek close by called Fiddyment. When I first spied it and its name, I repeated "Fiddyment" several times. It rolls over the tongue nicely. At that point, my son challenged me to write a story about it. "YOU write it," I retorted. "Besides... what would I write about?" He came up with the idea and off I took. My first idea was to write a cardboard book -- for little tykes -- but the story grew and grew and isn't finished yet. It is totally fiction and probably more for young adults.
Keep reading. I'm going to post the first few pages... or maybe the first chapter. Be sure to leave me your comments. ~GP
Chapter One
The old General Store was bustling with activity. People from far and wide had heard about this unique, happy place. There really was something for everybody. Flyers had been distributed at school. Newspaper ads beckoned everyone to come enjoy the experience. Children of all ages begged their parents to take them.
“Mama, mama, I want to go there! When can we go? All the kids are talking about it!”
It didn’t take much for the parents to give in because they were just as curious. The locals had begun to thrive and prosper, and enjoyed the tourism trade. Everyone who lived in Fiddyment Creek had become proud of this small town. A quarter section of the lower floor of the General Store had been transformed to be almost magical. The room had been designed as a porch with a hanging swing, and rocking chairs. A resident cat, a very friendly Himalayan named Clover, had run of the whole store, but more often than not, took her cat naps on the hanging swing. The area that might have been the yard was carpeted with green grass. The yard was surrounded by a white picket fence and there was a sign hung on the creaky gate that said “
I encouraged children to find a seat on the Magic Mat for the story hour. Adults stood behind the mat, almost out of the confines of the porch. Mist came in from hidden places. Lights dimmed. Then I began to tell the story with gusto and emotion and feeling.
“Have you ever wondered about the old woman in the funny straw hat who rides a purple bicycle? Her story is amazing, incredible, and almost hard to believe. She’s quite a character and charming if you get to know her. She notices everything, right down to the scabby scratch on your knee or the finest details of a flower petal growing alongside Fiddyment Creek which bubbles and gurgles merrily on its way toward the river. That’s what makes her persnickety.
“If you haven’t seen her or don’t know who she is, let me help you picture her in your mind’s eye. Close your eyes so you can see her. Are they closed? Now, no peeking. I’m not sure of her age, but she’s quite tall and slender and she puts her long, grayish-white hair up off her neck and secures it with hairpins, but strands of it sometimes escape out from under the old straw hat she always wears. She wears a button-up-the-front dress covered up by a bibbed and pocketed apron and she wears an old pair of red PF Flyers. She tucks some petals of lavender into a sachet and wears it with a ribbon around her neck. If you get close enough, you can smell the lavender. There it is! Lavender! Can you smell it? Her face is gently wrinkled and appears to be soft. Wire-rimmed glasses which perch at the end of her nose are almost always ready to fall off, and she has very sparkly, deep blue eyes and one has a teeny-tiny spot with a glimmer of gold. When I was younger — about the same age as you — I heard that she was picky, choosy, finicky, feisty and fussy. Somehow, sometime, little children overheard adults call her the Persnickety Witch of Fiddyment Creek. Why, she didn’t look anything at all like a witch. A witch! But, I’m afraid that name stuck.
Have you ever seen where she lives? Well, my goodness, each time I go past, I notice something new to admire. It’s nothing at all like where you’d think a witch would live. There’s absolutely whatsoever no sign of a cauldron. But, there are lacey curtains at the windows, two creaking rocking chairs on the front porch, and wind chimes — both large and small — hang from carved wooden figures or animals attached to cup hooks on the porch’s rafters. A huge asparagus fern and an enormous Boston fern spill in long waves over the sides of hanging baskets. The only thing witchy about her that I’ve noticed is
So, there you have it. More? You want more? Are you ready for her story? Would you like to know about the Persnickety Witch of Fiddyment Creek?”
I paused and waited for the children to respond. They all nodded their heads up and down. Some whispered “yes,” but they all sat quietly.
“All right, then,” I said.
“Early each morning the Persnickety Witch of Fiddyment Creek plopped a beaten up old straw hat onto her gray, unkempt hair, climbed onto her faded purple Schwinn bicycle, rode past driveways and people out walking their dogs, and dodged newspapers tossed onto the sidewalk by the paper boy, occasionally slowing, but never coming to a complete stop. This morning she was in a hurry. Every so often she pressed the lever of the bicycle’s bell to let everyone know she was coming. A mason jar filled with something-or-other and a small bouquet of flowers from her garden bounced in the bike’s basket attached to the handlebars.
“Morning, Penel…” said the old woman as she rolled past. Her voice trailed off as she pedaled along.
“Morning…” Penelope began, but she never could remember the old woman’s name. And anyway she was halfway into the next block. “What IS her name?” Penelope wondered out loud as she looked up from pouring water from the big metal green watering can.
The old woman was quite a sight with that old straw hat and her usual attire, and you could set your clock by her daily trips. Toddlers liked to stand by the gates of their yards and wave their chubby fingers at her. She would always grin real big and wave back. Children that age hadn’t learned yet to be mean or cruel.
It’s interesting that nobody ever thought to follow her. I did, but that comes later in the story. I grew up in Fiddyment, but was raised by an aunt who arrived soon after my mother died and my father took off to parts unknown. Now I am a mother with a daughter, Cathy, who is in the 3rd grade and loves to learn everything about people and the world, and Jameson, one of the toddlers who enjoys watching her ride past each morning. Fiddyment is a small town where you know everybody by name, you don’t have to lock your doors at night, and you walk in for a visit with a “yoo-hoooo,” but without knocking.
“Good mor…” I yelled with a lilt to my voice as she approached. She raised her right arm into the air and flicked her wrist with fingers extended as her response. I’m sure I made a sourpuss face, but I saw that Penelope was still out, so I grabbed Jameson’s short, stubby fingers and we made our way over to the next yard.
“Hey, Penelope… what’s her story?” I said almost cantankerously as I nodded my head toward the shrinking figure on the bike, watching as she disappeared.
“Bring Jamie over and we’ll have coffee. The boys can play while we visit,” Penelope replied. Penelope’s dark eyes sparkled with the thought of sharing about the Persnickety Witch of Fiddyment Creek. I’m sure I bristled when Penelope referred to my son as Jamie.
“His name is ‘Jameson,’ Penelope,” I said as I rounded the fence.
Stuff like that really irritated me. After all, she had chided me when I called her “Penny” once. We sat in white wicker rockers on the porch that encased the entire front of the mossy green Victorian home, sipped steamy, hot coffee and dunked short bread cookies in the dark brew while our boys, Jameson and Paulie, played with toy fire engines on the immaculate lawn below us. Paulie stood and held up three little fingers.
“I Paulie and I free year ode,” he said quite understandably.
I smiled back and told him that he was a big boy.
“Hey… hey… HEY!” he said louder each time trying to get and keep my attention. “Do you like aldergators?”
Then, quick as a flash, he was back to playing with Jameson. It was about then that Cathy came out of the front door and looked around. I spotted her and yelled that I was at Penelope’s.
“Hey! Cathy! We’re over here!”
She bounded down the porch stairs and I watched her skip over looking oh-so-cute in her dreamsicle-colored shorts and matching halter top. We had named her Kathleen after my mother, but she wanted to be called Cathy with a “C” not a “K.” She was the spitting image of her father with fair skin, bright green eyes framed by full lashes, and long, curly, copper-colored hair. She was full of energy from morning to night. She squatted and looked at the fire trucks, and then sat on the porch stairs pretending to be uninterested, but I knew that she was all ears.
Penelope put down her cup and fidgeted with the flowery cotton napkin in her lap before she continued.
“The witch and her husband (they called him Will, but we’ve called her Persnickety Witch for so long, I can’t remember her real name) came to Fiddyment around the time of the Depression and they built their house up on the hill above Fiddyment Creek close to a weeping willow tree. He thought there was gold in the creek and panned for a while, but nobody ever said that he’d struck it rich. They tilled the soil and planted crops, a small garden next to the house, they had a cow or two and some chickens — and that’s how they seemed to survive. Eventually, others — like Paul Senior’s folks — came to Fiddyment and Will opened a General Store…in that old wooden building a couple of blocks down… it’s been vacant a long time, but you can still make out the initials W.O.W. up towards the roof,” and she nodded toward the south.
“In the front corner of the store, he had a barbershop, which as you know, is where all men like to gather whether they need to or not. Excuse me… Cathy, Jameson, Paulie, would you like a cookie?”
Penelope glanced at me for my approval and I nodded. She met them on the stairs to give them their treat and they squatted beside the trucks and munched away. Cathy counted the chocolate chips in her cookie and then nibbled on it taking very small bites with one of her front teeth.
“One spring after a really bad, long winter, the creek was already up to the top of the banks from the winter snow melting, flowing swiftly, and then there was a terrible thunderstorm. You know, the kind that makes you jump out of your skin and where you can hear the angels bowling in heaven, and gashes of lightning pierce through the sky. It must’ve rained non-stop for a week. The creek was beginning to spill over and flood the area. There was a cold wind blowing… the kind that could bite your skin… and it rained so hard it rained sideways. People didn’t go out unless they had to. Will insisted that he go to the store in case someone had a need.”
I could almost hear him speaking.
“M’dear, I just have this feeling… if somebody needs something from the store, I must be there to help them.”
But she felt uneasy about him leaving. After a moment’s embrace and quick kiss on the cheek, he left. He trudged through the water and mud, opened the store’s doors, and sat out in front watching and waiting. Finally a couple of fellows came by and they went inside and started a game of Chess — or was it Checkers? — and several others wandered in and watched, and then this wet stranger burst through the door and yelled, “Help! Help! My son has fallen in the creek and he got swept downstream! I couldn’t reach him… I can’t swim! He was holding onto a log… but…”
You could hear the panic in his voice. I can hear it now. Jameson and Paulie looked up and both of us told them to finish playing… everything was fine. Penelope was just telling a story.
“That old store down there?” Cathy asked with wonder. She had recently lost a front tooth and her tongue poked through the space when she talked. “Wow…”
“Will grabbed anything that they might need — a rope, a blanket, a pick-axe, a lantern, and a shovel — and off they went following the stranger. Two of the men went to get a row boat. Will suggested that those remaining go further downstream to see if the boy had managed to get ashore, so that’s what they did. As they hurried along, the distraught father told them that his son’s name was Michael. They yelled his name over and over as they heaved weeds and reeds aside glancing up and down Fiddyment Creek now turned into a furious river. Soon, the men with the row boat came. Will got into the boat with them and they went further downstream. Will didn’t recall ever seeing the water move so fast. It was so cold it made your teeth chatter and it chilled your bones. And it was murky from the muddy bottom stirring up. They pulled the boat up onto the creek bank while tree debris, dead animals, and huge sections of a red barn floated past them.
The others on foot arrived and the men stood huddled together and prayed to Almighty God to help them. Then, the unthinkable happened. There was a crack of thunder that sounded like a whip snapping and a jagged bolt of lightning struck a tree across the creek. Limbs and branches crashed to the ground. Before they knew it, light rain began to fall and dampened their spirits even more. It was almost twilight. The sky was already darkened by pewter-colored rain-filled clouds when there was yet more lightning. This jag lit the sky a little longer. One of the men pointed to a form across the creek huddled close to the tree that had been hit only minutes earlier.
“Michael?” the worried father whispered.
Now he yelled, “Michael? Is that you?”
Trancelike, he waded out to the speeding, furious creek trying to cross and Will tried to stop him.
“Wait!” yelled Will. “Let’s take the boat across!”
But the man continued. He was in chest-high water when he stumbled and disappeared below the angry creek. When he surfaced gasping for breath, the swift current carried him away and they could hear the terror in his voice as he yelled.
“Save my boy! Save my boy!”
Will was a strong swimmer and he dove into the murkiness and stroked and kicked trying to catch up to the man. The current was very powerful. The other men stood helplessly watching. They could see a big log heaving in the current aiming itself right for Will. They yelled to warn him, but their voices were lost in the storm. The stranger went under the water at exactly the same moment that the log hit Will’s head and blood streamed all across his head and face and into his eyes and dripped into the water around him. Then Will lost consciousness and disappeared into the darkness of Fiddyment Creek.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!” the men all screamed at one time, as if with one voice.
But it was too late. The remaining men managed to get the boy to the other side of the creek and they searched for Will and the stranger until darkness and the storm stopped them. Two men perished that rainy day in May.
In the comfort of her dry home, Will’s wife had been doing some mending when her head jolted and she had this gnawing in the pit of her stomach. She and Will were so in-tune with each other, she knew something had happened and she put on a cape and started half running, half walking toward town. She met the distressed bunch of them on the muddy road, but didn’t recognize the boy limping from a gash on the bottom of his foot. They all started to speak at once and she listened quietly, absorbing, processing, and watching the mud-covered, rain-soaked boy who had just endured a horrible tragedy. She didn’t cry for herself that day. She would, just not now. Instead, she saved her strength for Michael and wrapped him in her cape and took him home with her to give him some hot vegetable soup and comfort. She noticed everything about him. He was tall and gangly and he looked to be about 15 years old. When he was clean, he had thick brown wavy hair that needed to be cut and his nose and cheeks were covered with freckles. His eyes were greenish-brown, his neck long, his front teeth overlapped slightly. After a day or two, he began to talk to her. His name was Michael Morgan. He liked to read and he liked to whittle. He pulled a whistle shaped like an owl from his pocket that he had carved. He talked about his father. He had no brothers or sisters, he never knew his mother — she had died during childbirth. Now he had no one. Will’s wife told him that he could stay with her as long as he liked.
“Might as well stay here, Michael… you don’t have any place else to go… you’ll be like my son… Will and I …”
Just as she finished saying that, there was a knock on the door. The itinerant pastor was there to tell them that the bodies of Will and Michael’s father had been found.
Three days after the storm passed over and Fiddyment Creek’s wrath ceased and the waters declined, the bodies of Will and the stranger were found floating face down side by side in a little cove about a mile from where they were last seen. The next day there was a funeral service for both of them. The whole community came out to pay their respects to Will’s widow and, even though they didn’t know him, Michael. Michael and the sad woman sat side by side on a wooden pew in the little church. The men who were strangers, but were now linked forever, were buried in pine boxes next to each other in
Even before Willowby died, she would go sit under the weeping willow tree and write in her journal and sometimes play her dulcimer. Now that he was gone, she would grab his weathered straw hat from the hook at the back door and plunk it on her head for her visit to the tree. She spent long hours sitting there, staring out across the water. It was there that she reminisced, cried, and grieved. She had beautiful memories of her years with Willowby and she would move through this grief and live again.
The little town of
After a long day, the widow and Michael walked home and in his thick Southern accent he asked her, “Can you teach me how to cut men’s hair?”
So that night, she cut his hair and told him what she was doing as he watched intently, and then he practiced with the straw on the broom. The next day, Barber’s Corner once again opened for business.
The woman fussed over everything in the general store. She dusted shelves, rearranged canned goods on the shelves, put things where they belonged, examined the old cracker barrel, swept dust bunnies from the linoleum, stood back and looked at everything to make sure it was lined up properly, and then straightened some more. Boldly, she ordered a few unusual things from the warehouses and she gave the store a feminine touch — she even hung curtains on the windows and put a vase of flowers next to the cash register.”
Now it was Jameson’s turn. “Mommy, I want to go home. Mommy, can we go home?”
As you can imagine, I had a million questions I wanted to ask Penelope, but they would have to wait. Our boys had played nicely, but they were getting out of sorts and they both needed naps.
“I think I should get Jameson home… this story about her is so interesting…can we continue … tomorrow?” I asked tentatively.
“Sure,” she said. “The boys get along well, so come over after she waves to them in the morning.”
Cathy walked silently and I could hear her sniffing, then she said, “Mama? Is that a true story? Why did they have to die?”
I explained to her that it was a true story about people in our town and how we all need to watch out for each other.
After Jameson’s nap and him being very picky about how I cut his PB&J sandwich, I put him in the stroller and the three of us walked to town and stopped in front of the old General Store. Cathy stood back on the edge of the sidewalk and looked up and pointed to the fading initials. I stood on my tippy-toes and peered through the dirty windows. It appeared to be a little of everything — hardware, non-perishables, yard goods, fishing poles. There were still canned goods on the shelf, some mason jars, some figures of — what is that? — on the counter… a barber’s chair over there… and, oh my goodness, the Chess set ready for a game!
“What are you looking for?” the woman asked me. She leaned the bike against one of the walls and looked into a window herself.
Oh! She had startled me and my hands flew to my face to hide my embarrassment. I felt guilty for even being there, but she had caught me! My heart raced as I tried to think of a good answer.
“Well, nothing, really. I was just curious about this old building.”
“I bet you are,” the old woman said under her breath. “This is still my building — lock, stock, and barrel. It used to be a gathering place. Used to be quite…” but she stopped and stared into my eyes for an uncomfortable length of time.
I held out my hand.
“My name is Lucy. Lucy Maguire. And this is my daughter, Cathy, and my son, Jameson. Children? Say hello to the nice lady.”
“With a “C,” Cathy said impishly as she gazed up into the wizened face.
She took my hand in both of hers, looked me in the eye and said, “Yes, I know who you are… I knew your mother years ago. You married Thomas, didn’t you?” she asked with an inquisitive look on her face.
She turned her attention to Cathy for a moment.
“Hello, young lady with a ‘C’,” letting her know that she’d been heard. “I think you must look like your papa.”
Then, back to me, “Lucy, it’s good to speak to you again. You have become a fine woman. Your mama would be proud.” She stopped for several moments before continuing. “I’m
There was something about the way she said her name and she cocked her head a little as if she were expecting me to recognize her.
The children, especially Jameson, had been so well behaved for this outing, I felt that a treat was in order and we stopped at Scooper for some ice cream. It was there that I decided what to do. When we got home, I hurried to the kitchen.
“Hi, Becky,” I said into the telephone. “Would you be able to keep an eye on Cathy and Jameson tomorrow afternoon? Good… and could I borrow your bike?”
