This story took a while. My biggest weakness is my lack of patience, so I decided to slow down and try to provide a better product for everyone. There isn’t a lot of sex in this one.
There’s a little bit of religion mixed in because some of my material is based on people I know who actually met in church. You should write what you know. I was raised in the Southern Baptist and Methodist churches. I’m not trying to influence or convert anyone. That’s only part of the story.
I personally do not support any religious brand. If I had to describe my beliefs, I believe the best would be agnostic Druids.
enjoy.
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Judging by the sound of the stream, he really had to go.
In fact, I heard him before I saw him. Over the past two years I have gotten into the habit of walking quietly. I also started carrying a camera and taking pictures of things that fascinated me. I find that if I walk quietly, I am more likely to take good nature pictures and catch the odd deer, squirrel or turtle. I once encountered a bear and oh my god, we were both surprised. He took off from one side and I took off from the other.
I turned the corner in the road and there she was.
The backside is really beautiful. When she sat down, all I could see was pee spilling on the floor. I didn’t know what to do, so I said, “Hi. Beautiful morning, don’t you agree?”
She yelled, nearly did a backflip, and began squirming, trying desperately to pull up her yellow bikini panties and shorts.
As I picked him up and ran towards the lake, the screams grew louder. He used words I rarely hear and they hit me in the chest. I went waist deep into the water and it was so cold! As I threw him further his screams turned into a roar.
“Hang in there!” When I reached the edge, her shorts and panties were at hand.
I ran home and got a handful of towels and a terrycloth gown. I also have a pair of swimming trunks.
She screamed and cursed the band that echoed across the lake. Too bad no one heard it at the time. I had a headache.
“Shut up, stupid bitch. That’s poison oak you’re wallowing in! The cold of the lake will cause your pores to close. It will prevent a lot of the juices from getting through.”
I stopped yelling and started using a conversational tone.
“Here,” I said, tossing the bar of soap to him.
“This soap contains ingredients that prevent spread and help stop itching. How about your butt? Be sure to clean the delicate area. In fact, you will still feel uncomfortable for a week or two.”
She calmed down and I placed the towel and bathrobe on a big rock.
“When you’re done, use your towel, trunks, and robe. I’ll leave your clothes here, but wrap them in a towel and take them home. If you tighten the drawstrings, the trunks will stay there.”
Eventually she stopped cursing and stood in the water, shivering. I told her to come to shore if she felt uncomfortable after I left. She apologized and asked me if I could give her a towel so she could wrap herself in it.
God, I was soaked, so I got out and gave him a towel. Instead of taking the towel I offered, he snatched the camera hanging around my neck, broke the camera strap, and threw it as far into the lake as possible.
“That’s a nine hundred dollar camera and a four hundred dollar lens! Are you as crazy as you act, or has the cold water numbed your brain?”
A victorious smile spread across his face.
“None of that, you pervert. Now you can’t post the photos you already took, or the ones you were going to take while I was hiding in the bushes when I came out of the lake.”
I was six feet tall, eighty pounds and took exercise very seriously. She was about five feet one inch tall, weighed one hundred and one pounds and was soaked to the skin. I literally pulled her out of the water, lifted her over my head and threw her in the water as hard as I could.
As she pulled out, her bare back could be seen, clearly giving off an alluring look.
“You just…” was all he said before he entered the water.
“See if you can find my camera there, bitch!” I snarled, backing toward the shore. I was shaking with anger as I packed up my things. As I got ready to leave I thought, Fuck her. The only thing that stopped me was the sound of sniffling and crying from behind me.
“Please leave me the robe and towel. Please.”
Well, I don’t want him to catch a cold or hypothermia. The average temperature in the mountains and rivers in mid-May is around twenty-eight degrees. I dumped a lot of stuff on the road and smoked as I walked.
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This little lake hasn’t really been developed yet. Three-quarters of the beach is owned by power companies. The remaining properties were originally owned by five families. I was able to buy shares in two of them, thereby obtaining a large portion of private property. Three other families have vacation homes and I have neighbors from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
There were developers poking around trying to buy the property. I flatly refused him, he indicated the area was coming, and I circumvented that by putting part of my property and some of my neighbor’s property on the historical register. There are three family cemeteries and a small wooden church on my property. I allowed my descendants free admission and even renovated the church. It is often used for weddings. I asked people to use it to donate to the local historical society. The power company property is being sold to the state to expand the park so that part of the lake is protected.
I’m all alone about eight months of the year, and it snows sometimes. If I really have to get out, I have a four-wheel-drive tractor with a scraper. I’ll clear a three-quarter-mile path and take out my 1958 M38A, a one-ton six-wheel-drive Dodge that I completely restored. You can climb a rock with that thing. I’m home most of the time.
My home is solar powered and has a backup generator. I haven’t paid the electricity bill for five years.
Am I a hermit? Absolutely not. I love being with people and travel a lot for work. I had a bad experience six years ago that made me extremely suspicious of people and gave me trust issues.
I am a writer. When I was young I dreamed of writing the great American novel. Majoring in English and minoring in journalism. I worked at a newspaper for a few years, and as my skills grew, I got better jobs at bigger newspapers.
My big break came when I exposed corruption among local officials and state legislators over a proposed four-lane bypass. Bribery, kickbacks, physical intimidation and even attempted murder. I was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and hospitalized for three weeks. The attempted murder is mine.
Of course, I wrote a book about the whole thing, which became a nonfiction bestseller. I was offered a three-book contract, specifying that one of them must be a novel.
The publisher agreed, knowing that if it turned out poorly, it would never grace the page. My second book is a biography of Billy Dixon, a great Western hero who never got his due. I had been working on it for years before I got the book deal, so it took me eighteen months to complete it. It was better than the first one and surprised everybody. One reviewer said he smelled gunpowder and sweat when he read the book.
Both books were made into movies, which received good reviews from Western countries.
My novel surprised even me and remained on the bestseller list for three months. A film was also made on it.
I got a seven-figure advance on my next contract, a three-book deal on any topic I wanted.
I’m putting the finishing touches on a book about the little wars between unions
organizers, the local sheriff’s department, and the National Guard. This was 1929, in a small town in North Carolina. Many of the union organizers were also members of the Communist Party. People on both sides were killed, including the sheriff.
This is fairly recent history and I was able to interview the children of many of the participants and research local newspapers, oral histories, etc. The sheriff tries to put names together, talks deals under the table but fails to reach an agreement, and a love triangle figures prominently in the whole case. Sex and money, politics, murder, tragedy, there is something for everyone, including explicit photos that have never been seen before. My editor and publisher were salivating. The book is due to be published in August and we have made excerpts available on the publishing website.
If I’m so successful why am I alone?
Good question.
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When I discovered corruption in the road deal, I was already married to a local girl. We have been in love for nine months and married for twenty-two months. Newlyweds. We are still getting to know each other.’
I was at a newspaper, a fairly large newspaper for the area. As I said, she was a local girl who worked for her uncle at the local county tax office. Her father is the county magistrate. I always had a good source of quotes on county businesses if I needed them. I got along very well with her family.
Harvey Gantt is the chairman of the Republican Party, a local power broker and the owner of a large beef farm. His uncle is a leader of the Democratic Party. To say these two don’t like each other would be an understatement.
Slander and accusations are frequent. I cover politics and there is never a shortage of stories. My wife, Angie, once told me that when she was eight years old, her dog was run over and her uncle told her it was a Republican who did it. She has hated Republicans ever since.
After years of increasing traffic congestion in the county, the state eventually decided to build a four-lane bypass. Using aerial maps, they had four different possible routes.
That’s when the battle began. There’s a time-honored tradition of acquiring property for the greater good, and that’s what happens in the end. Some landowners have aggressively lobbied to have roads built through their land, while others have threatened lawsuits if they think their land will be affected.
They conducted impact studies, cost estimates, rough measurements and computer mapping to determine the best route. They hold monthly update meetings with the public.
In the end, the state recommended two routes.
After the news was announced everyone was shocked because none of them were selected. The route that seemed the most expensive and least likely was chosen. There was panic among the people.
The highway commissioners held a press conference praising the route, but refused to answer questions, instead handing out press kits. This is one of the funniest fairy tales I’ve ever read. No good reason was given as to why they chose that particular route. What’s the smell? Bad.
This was my field, so I started digging. Without going into too much detail, the commissioners, my wife’s uncle and father, and Harry Gant conspired to approve the route. It nearly destroyed Harry’s biggest agricultural rival, took over almost his entire farm, made an indistinct detour around Harry’s farm and took over worthless bush land. Harry received about twice the value of his land, and the other farmer received about sixty percent of the estimated value.
The second farmer was not a fool, he also had friends in high places.
I covered this story every week, digging deep and uncovering disturbing documents that led to his downfall. Everyone involved got excited when I started getting threat calls and I recorded and saved the calls.
Her father came home to visit me. I often work from home and set up an office in a spare bedroom. I have a slogan that an old reporter gave me, I don’t know who said it.
“The job of a good reporter is to report the news truthfully and create a stir.”
I also quoted a line from Rudyard Kipling’s nineteenth century book, “Rikki Tikki Tavi.”
Rikki Tiki is a meerkat, a small mammal that likes to hunt cobras. They have no immunity and die if bitten by a snake, but they are smart and agile and can usually outsmart the snake. There are no slow, stupid meerkats alive.
It talks about the species’ curiosity, saying that any meerkat’s mantra is “go explore”
Apparently my father-in-law had read this book.
“Be careful Sam. A meerkat can easily defeat a cobra, but what if several attack at the same time? The chances of survival are low.”
I kicked him out of the house. My marriage ended that day. Angie begged me to let it go, but I was like a hunting dog. I found the scent and I had to follow it to the end.
I gave my evidence to the FBI. I don’t trust the locals because we live in a border county where part of a farm has land in both states so they have jurisdiction.
The players panicked. I got a tip-off and set out to meet my source. There was no one. I walked around for a while. I came across a small pond in the middle of nowhere. Bored, I bent down, picked up a flat stone and tried to jump across the water.
That saved my life. They paid a good old boy five thousand dollars to shoot me with a Remington 7mm deer hunting rifle. The bullet passed over my shoulder, broke my collarbone and split in two. One part lodged outside my rib cage, just behind my small rib cage. The other half pierced under my ribs, bruised my lungs and exited above my hip bone. I dropped like a stone.
I was in shock, so I didn’t feel any injuries. Before the pain increased, I managed to call 911 and tell them my location. When it hits, there’s nothing I can do about it.
I was less than two miles from the volunteer fire department, one of whose first aid trained firefighters arrived on the scene in less than ten minutes and stabilized me before the ambulance arrived. When I later had money, both groups received massive donations. I was taken to a hospital in the state capital and put under FBI protection. Over the next week, her father, her uncle, the highway commissioner and his two deputies, Harvey Gantt, and several local employees were escorted out. Angie was arrested as an accessory and actually had to serve a year in prison. She reported on the man who shot me in hopes of getting a lighter sentence.
While I was in the hospital, Angie filed for divorce. Psychotically brutal, if you can believe it. She was the one who convinced the guy to shoot me and made a scene in the bedroom to seal the deal. If this comes out at trial she will have to spend at least eight years in prison. I could have told the DA what I found, but it doesn’t matter to me now. We got divorced before she went to prison. She is twenty-four years old. I haven’t spoken to her since the divorce.
I sued all those who conspired to murder me and received a good cash settlement. It’s not much, but it’s enough to keep me focused on writing my book. Once the money started coming in I never looked back.
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Three days later, I came home and found my swimming trunks, robe and towel all washed and placed neatly on the veranda. No note, no nothing.
Next week, my neighbor is visiting and I want to see his vacation home. We were sitting on the porch drinking coffee.
“What do you think of your new neighbors?”
I looked up.
“I didn’t know I had a new neighbor.”
“Bill’s daughter. Going through a messy divorce and I hear she’s staying at their cabin this summer or until they sell it. Bill is retiring and says he’s moving south. Says he’s tired of the cold, even in the summer.
Interesting news.
“Has he listed it yet?”
He paused to think.
“Not yet, I thought he said he would keep his daughter there until she calmed down in front of him.”
“Do you have his phone number? You know I don’t want this property to go to a developer. I’ll pay fair market value and maybe a little more if he sells it quickly. I’ll even let him have his daughter stay here all summer if she wants.”
The old man smiled.
“I thought you might say something like that. This is her phone number. She said to call anytime after five. Thanks for the coffee and thanks for taking care of my place. In a few weeks I’ll be ready for the summer. My wife wants you to come to dinner because you don’t have a woman, so you have to be ready.”
He has enjoyed watching his wife correct me over and over for the past four years so much that he says it is even better than a soap opera. So far the score is eight-zero in my favor. But I will give her what she deserves, she has perseverance and she does not understand the concept of giving up when she fails. One day I plan to include her in my novels. But I liked the old girl even when she did not want to marry me.
I called Bill and he appraised the house and I gave him ten percent more than the tax value, which was a good price considering the real estate market. I left it to the lawyer to tell his daughter.
About a week after our first meeting, I met her in a small town at the foot of a mountain. Two gas stations, two churches, a small grocery store, a Dollar General and a hardware/feed store (also sells bait and fishing supplies), and the post office. A small restaurant. Beyond that, you have to travel another thirty miles to reach the county seat.
She was gasping for air. As I walked to the other side of the water pump, her face turned almost an octave red.
I said hello, but she ignored me. For some reason this annoyed me, but I ignored it. Fuck her. When I came back she was gone.
The good boys were talking about him.
Bob, who is at least 130 years old, looked directly at me and said.
“She’s pretty, that one. I’m sure she’s all alone, out there by the lake. Too bad she doesn’t have a friendly neighbor or two.”
I laughed.
“Nice try, but she’s like that actress from the thirties. She wants to be alone. What’s that actress’ name? You dated her, right Bob?”
The others laughed as Bob spit in his cup. That thing was going to kill him one day.
He surprised us all.
“Greta Garbo, she never actually said that. She said I want to be left alone. And, she was a beautiful woman. Some people say Marlene Dietrich said it first, but who knows?
Well, you never know. Apparently Bob had a large collection of classic films, as well as a stack of books on movie trivia. When his friends found out, they spent a lot of time trying to stop him, but rarely did.
Next week I will be going on a short promotional tour for my book, doing early morning and late night talk show appearances. I try to put them into a bunch of arrangements and they will air when the book comes out. I neither like nor dislike doing them, they are job requirements, just like a regular job requires wearing a suit or safety glasses. Also, I enjoyed spending time with a local morning show hostess. No big deal, if she is dating someone it is just lunch, but if she is in a relationship it is dinner and then breakfast the next morning. We usually have waffles.
It had been eighteen days since I returned home. As I got out of the car, I sighed, glad to be out of the rat race. I walked through the house breathing in familiar smells, then walked out onto the deck, stopping to grab a beer from the refrigerator.
It looked like there was a real wood elf on my deck, but upon closer inspection it turned out to be a girl, between ten and twelve years old. She wears a green one-piece suit and shorts, has curly black hair and green eyes.
