The Feud Worth Forgetting: Part 12 (the last)

08 Apr 2013 Leave a comment

by C.O. Bonham in Short Stories, The Feud Worth Forgetting Tags: , ,

I apologize for not posting last week. I was really busy working and having Easter celebrations. But I remembered to do one now so here is one more installment of “The Feud Worth Forgetting”. I almost left this part out because I liked the note that part Eleven left off on but if I post this part it makes an even dozen. Plus I already had this written so I might as well use it.

*     *     *

The family, packed into the mini van, was settling for a long drive.

“Mom?” said Harriet.

“Yes dear.” Her mother turned around in the front seat.

“If you wanted to tell us some stories I could write them down for you.” She replied clicking her pen and placing its tip to the notebook in her lap.”

Her mom smiled. “What kind of stories did you have in mind?”

“We’re talking about Colleges earlier. How about starting there? You were an engineering major right?”

“Yes and we had to work really hard just to get in.” Mom turned back around to stare out the windshield.

“So what did you have to do?”

“Sit ins mostly. We just sat around taking up space.” She stopped and looked like she was trying really hard to remember something. She glanced over and saw that wicked grin on her husbands face. The grin she fell in love with. It was a grin that reminded her that she really didn’t want her children knowing everything that she did in college. So forgetting that she was trying to remember something she simply said, “Nothing really interesting happened in College. Just studying and learning.”

“Really nothing at all happened?” asked Carla.

“It was the sixties honey,” said their father, “No one can remember what they were doing back then.”

©  This story and subsequent parts are my own original idea and are protected under United States copy right law.

The Feud Worth Forgetting: Part Eleven

26 Mar 2013 Leave a comment

by C.O. Bonham in Short Stories, The Feud Worth Forgetting Tags: , , ,

“I remembered something.” Said Juliet, standing in the hall door, her mousy brown hair was just starting to grow back in. The ugly scar from the brain surgery was still visible through the spiky follicles. The Chemo might have stolen her hair but it was the surgery to remove the tumor that had left her a past-less and almost lifeless shell for the past four months.

“What do you remember, Honey?” asked her husband.

“It came back slowly at first. It might have almost been a dream,” she angled the recliner toward the couch and sat down. “It was at night. No it was afternoon but there was a terrible thunder storm. I kept starring at my reflection in this glass door watching the rain pour down outside. And I had a canvas, a painting I had done. That one actually.” She pointed above Joel’s head to a pointillism of an old wooden fence in a field of wheat.

“Then you came in the door Jerry. And you asked if I was waiting for a ride. I said ‘no, just waiting for the rain to stop so I could walk home.’ Then you said that I would have a long wait and that you were early anyway and you could give me ride if I was willing. Then I said that I shouldn’t ride with strange men and besides the rain would ruin my painting before I could make it to the car.” Juliet stopped her narrative and rubbed her temples as if trying to coax the memory back to the surface.

Her husband picked it up where she had left off. “Then I said my name is Jerry and I work in the library. And grabbed large garbage bags from the janitors closet and we wrapped the painting in then and I drove you home.”

“Yes that’s it exactly.” She stood up from her seat. And squeezed in between her son and her husband on the couch.

“You remembered the day we first met.”

“and I think I remember when Joel was born.” She reached out and wrapped her arms around her son. “And I remember that I love you so much.”

“I love you too mom.” Tears were beginning to pool in Joel’s eyes.

Her husband embraced his family with tears running down his cheeks. “It’s good to have you back honey.” He said.

“It’s good to be back. Do you still have my painting supplies? I think I’d like to start painting again.”

“It’s all right where you left it sweetheart. I am glad you’re getting your past back.”

“No not the past. My future. I got my future back.”

 

©  This story and subsequent parts are my own original idea and are protected under United States copy right law.

The Feud Worth Forgetting: Part Ten

19 Mar 2013 Leave a comment

by C.O. Bonham in Short Stories, The Feud Worth Forgetting, Uncategorized Tags: , ,

The girls, Harriet and Carla, pulled into the tree shrouded driveway and immediately sensed a grim stillness. They got down from the pickup which now seemed too high. They approached the house via an ever lengthening walkway to the front door.

The screen door squeaked open on it’s hinges. The sisters looked up to see their father placing two suitcases in the front hallway. “Your mother and I are going to Tennessee for a few days. If you’re coming you should probably get packed”

“Grandma?” was all Harriet could say.

Their father nodded and Carla took off to her room to start packing. Harriet was about to follow her twins example when the sound of heavy sobbing came out of her parents room. She pushed the door open and saw her Mom sitting on the bed crying into a wad of tissues. A cell phone was on the bed beside her. Harriet rushed in and wrapped her arms around her mothers shoulders.

“She didn’t even wait for me to say goodbye. Why? First she’s in the Hospital and now she’s gone. Why couldn’t she wait for me to get there?”

“Oh mom. It probably wasn’t her choice.”

Dad was standing in the door way listening, “I’ll go tell Carla that there’s no hurry now.,” he said and walked away.

“I just wish so much knowledge hadn’t died with her.” Mom said wiping her eyes again. “She was trying to find the truth in some of my Grandma’s old stories. At one time she had this great big book of Family History and your grandma had it traced almost back to the Revolutionary War.”

“What happened to it?”

It wasn’t Harriet who asked this.

Looking up from her tear soaked tissue pulp mom saw Carla standing in the doorway, her father’s arm resting on her shoulders. “I can’t really say. Mom must have found something bad in her research. Because she came home and burned it all. She said, ‘Alison remember, some things were meant to be forgotten.’ And then she threw what looked like an old diary into the flames after her family research book.”

“Wow.” Was all either of the girls could think of to say.

“I wish I could remember my Grandmas stories. I should have written them down.” Carla came in and joined her mother and sister on the bed. The closeness of her children started another round of tears in Alison daughter of Carolina Gellervice. “If I had only taken more of an interest in her research. Maybe I could have stopped her from burning our Family history.”

Dad finally entered the room. “Not if she was right.” He stood his wife up and held her in his embrace. “Maybe some things should be forgotten.”

©  This story and subsequent parts are my own original idea and are protected under United States copy right law.

The Feud Worth Forgetting: Part Nine

11 Mar 2013 Leave a comment

by C.O. Bonham in Short Stories, The Feud Worth Forgetting Tags:

Joel Richter slammed his car door. Then he slammed the house door.  “Your mother is sleeping.” His fathers voice hissed from the living room loud enough to compete with the blaring TV set.

Joel entered to the same sight that he entered to everyday. His Father, sitting in front of the TV, history channel on and a stack of papers to grade on the coffee table in front of him.

“Sorry.” Joel said taking a seat on the couch.

“So what’s eating you kid?” his dad asked.

“Just this jerk that cut right in front of me off road five. If I hadn’t been slowing down to turn we would have wrecked.”

“But you didn’t. That’s what I’ve been always telling you. You watch out for yourself. As long as you aren’t at fault the other guys insurance will cover it.”

“It was weird. I had the right of way but this truck it was like the driver couldn’t even see me. It was stopped. Stopped like it was going to let me go but then she just pulled out in front of me. Slowly, as if the intersection was empty, in no big hurry.”

“It figures. There are a lot of Crazy Drivers. You’ve got to watch out for them.”

“I know Dad,” Joel said. He stared at the TV and then decided that it would be better to change the subject, “So have you made any progress on your book?”

“No,” his father said placing the paper he had been reading back down on top of the pile. “I gave up. This morning I deleted everything from my computer and I threw away the rest of it.”

Joel looked at his father with a look of horror. “What, Why, How could you do that?”

“Because your mom was right. If the story isn’t true then there’s nothing to find except a pile of historical anecdotes and bizarre coincidences.” His Father paused and took a deep breath, “and if the story is true then it’s not for us to find out about.”

©  This story and subsequent parts are my own original idea and are protected under United States copy right law.

The Feud Worth Forgetting: Part Eight

06 Mar 2013 Leave a comment

by C.O. Bonham in Short Stories, The Feud Worth Forgetting Tags: , ,

OK the story is starting to wind down now. No more time jumps and not too many new characters.

*  *  *

Harriett’s hair whipped in the wind as she drove with her window down. She looked over to her twin sister in the passenger seat, “Hey why don’t you put in that CD you bought today?”

“ OK,” Carla said enthusiastically. Her enthusiasm waned as she struggled to free the CD from its cellophane prison. Carla eventually used the knife from the glove box.

As the music began playing through the speakers the girls pulled up to a stop sign. Harriett, sitting high in the ford pick up, looked first left then right and then left again before she pulled forward to cross the intersection. Suddenly there was a screech of tires and a blaring horn coming from the passenger side. There out the window was a Black compact car. “Oh My God! Where did that car come from?” Harriet shouted as she continued to drive through the intersection.

“I can’t believe you would just pull out in front of that car.” Carla said.

“I didn’t see him there. He wasn’t there. No one could have been, I looked twice before I pulled out.”

“I’m driving next time,” Carla crossed her arms and leaned back in her seat. The revving of an engine made her turn. “He’s back,” she said.

Both girls watched as the black compact sped past them.

“Did you see him that time?” Carla taunted.

“If you saw him in that intersection, why didn’t you say anything?”

Carla opened her mouth. Then closed it right away. She had no answer.

“I thought so,” Harriet said getting the last word.

The obvious answer that eluded Carla in that moment was that being sisters meant that she too was a descendant of Job Gellervice and of course saw the same nothing that her sister did.

©  This story and subsequent parts are my own original idea and are protected under United States copy right law.

The Feud Worth Forgetting: Part Seven

27 Feb 2013 Leave a comment

by C.O. Bonham in Short Stories, The Feud Worth Forgetting Tags: , , ,

Juliet Richter had finished reading her husbands new book for the fifth time and still couldn’t believe that she was married to a published author. She thought about the long nights that he had been up writing until the very early morning. The hours of research that he had put into every chapter.

The door opened and in walked her husband, a bookish sort of man who’s build might have given off a more outdoorsy impression if it weren’t for the horn rimed glasses and the tweed jacket that he always insisted on wearing.

“Hello honey, you didn’t have to wait up for me,” he said.

“I wanted to. How was your trip?”

He set down his bag and sat next to her on the sofa. “It was alright for the most part. Though the item that I really wanted to see was missing.”

“Oh, what was that?” She asked off hand knowing that her husband’s own excitement would carry him through his story.

“The Antigone historical archives had a Journal belonging to Job Gellervice on file. But when I went in to view it, they couldn’t find the darn thing.”

At the name Gellervice Juliet perked up.  “Why would you want to look at the Journal of a Gellervice for?”

“Because that’s the topic of my next book. The Invisible Feud: The Forgotten story of the Brettsins and the Gellervices.” He spread his hand through the air as if leaving the title floating there in his wake. “I think that the story your Grandfather used to tell you might have some truths to it. For example chapter 13 of Visions in the Smoke.” He picked his book up off the his wife’s lap and flipped through it. “The names Brettsin and Gellervice turn up everywhere I look and often in the most bizarre of circumstances.

“Did you know that I found the diary of Mavis Walker, a prostitute from 1891. She was in Colorado for the second gold boom and she had two clients. One was a Gellervice and the other was a Brettsin. One day Gellervice walks in while she is servicing Brettsin and jumps in bed like she’s alone or something. Brettsin doesn’t notice a thing not even the extra weight on the bed.”

“How could you read such things. A whore’s diary, really!”

“It’s history, There’s nothing wrong with history. Anyway the last name listed by the archives to look at the Journal, was a Carolina Gellervice, about thirty years ago. I‘m going to try to contact her and see if she took the journal.”

Juliet turned to her husband and looked him in the eyes. “You won’t be able to find her.”

“Oh and why not?”

“Because you married me. Whether I changed my last name or not, you are still married to a Brettsin and that makes you a Brettsin too. So if the story is true you won’t be able to have any contact with a Gellervice.”

 

©  This story and subsequent parts are my own original idea and are protected under United States copy right law.

The Feud Worth Forgetting: Part Six

20 Feb 2013 Leave a comment

by C.O. Bonham in Short Stories, The Feud Worth Forgetting Tags: , ,

The Following is fictional and is part of a serial story I have been posting on my Blog. This is not an excerpt from a real book I made it all up.  so sadly you can’t look it up. If by some weird twist there really is a book with this title I will gladly apologize and think of something else.

Excerpt from Visions in the Smoke: Strange and bizarre stories from the Civil War. By Jerry Richter. Published 1997.

It is from the battlefields of Tennessee that we find what can only be the most bizarre case of Friendly fire ever recorded.

Hell had frozen over that January morning and frost covered the ground like a blanket. The Union soldiers were huddled around their campfires trying to stay warm.  There was a shout from William Gellervice who was serving his turn on watch.

He claimed that there was a ghost out on the battle field. It was coming for him he cried. Just the sound of foot steps crunching the frozen ground and a cloud of breath in mid-air leaving a trail of blood in it’s wake.

The captain and others came running to see this specter. But once they arrived all they saw was a fellow union soldier wounded and limping badly in his hand he carried a service pistol and he held it up pointed in the direction of Will Gellervice.

The soldier was yelling, “Stay back specter of hell. I sense your presence and can see your unholy breath.” He gestured to the  to the newly arrived men, “Thank God that you have arrived can you not see this Specter floating in your midst?”

“There is no Specter,” proclaimed Captain John Stanley. “Only a fellow soldier in the fight for unity.” Both William Gellervice and the wounded man turned on him and said that he lied. Then they were reported to look right at each other and the sound of gun fire and death tore the quite of the frozen morning.

The wounded union Soldier was later identified as Lieutenant Thomas Brettsin  the only survivor of a confederate ambush in the small nearby town of Antigone. The sad thing was that Tom’s original, wound was found to be minimal and he would have had every hope of living, if it had not been for the nervous tension that haunted the air on that January morning in 1863.

©  This story and subsequent parts are my own original idea and are protected under United States copy right law.

The Feud Worth Forgetting: Part Five

11 Feb 2013 Leave a comment

by C.O. Bonham in Short Stories, The Feud Worth Forgetting Tags: , ,

The Diary of Juliet Brettsin September, 14, 1967.

Women and girls filled the hall at the University today. More than just college students, Mothers who had been denied their dreams and even teachers and high school students like me. Women from all over town all seated Indian style on the tile floor. A show of peaceful resistance to the University’s policy against women in male orientated fields. I was determined to be a part of it.

I looked everywhere but every inch of floor space was filled. Just as I was about to leave I happened to glance an empty section of tile near a supply closet just big enough to sit in.

Carefully stepping around and over my fellow students I made my way to the open location. Just as I was starting to sit the person next to me started to say something but by the time my brain had processed the sounds I had already felt the warm body underneath me. I jumped up and spun around. The blond haired girl that I had sat on looked indignantly and said,  “What do you think you were doing?”

“Yea,” replied the red headed girl next to her, “Watch where you’re sitting.”

“I’m sorry,” I said carefully backing away. I remembered my grandfather’s stories about the invisible feuders. Could this girl have been a Gellervice?

I turned and started making my way back out over the compact mass of students. Their voices following me out, “Why’d you let her sit on you Alison?”  my face burned with embarrassment. Why should I care about engineering classes anyway? I want to be an artist.

“I didn’t see her coming,” Alison’s voice  said. “It was weird, like these stories my Grammy told me about invisible assassins who stalk our family.”

I risked a glance back over my shoulder. The spot by the closet was empty once again and the red head was animatedly speaking to thin air. I hurried out of the building and ran home.

As a little girl I had always liked the idea that I could be invisible. I used to sneak around the house and be super quiet. Now though, after today, the thought that there is someone that I can’t see and can’t see me – it scares me.

©  This story and subsequent parts are my own original idea and are protected under United States copy right law.

The Feud Worth Forgetting: Part Four

06 Feb 2013 Leave a comment

by C.O. Bonham in Short Stories, The Feud Worth Forgetting Tags: ,

Antigone Historical archives, 1967

Carolina Gellervice carefully tucked the news clipping back into her many greats Grandfather’s Journal and closed the book. She cursed the man who wrote of these events that should have been forgotten. Now she knew only too well what her mother’s family had been talking about all of these years. The weird tradition of making the men who marry in take the Gellervice name and the way her Uncle Phil raved on about how invisible assassins were always trying to kill him.

She bowed her head and prayed, “Dear Lord, I have uncovered a terrible thing. A thing that was supposed to be forgotten long ago. Please Lord I ask that this curse die with me. Let me be the last know so that my Children will not have this hanging over them. In your Name Amen.”

When Carolina got home that evening she started a fire in the backyard and burned the Journal the news article and her entire book of genealogical research on her family.

“Mom, Why are you burning all of your research?”

Carolina turned her eyes from the flames to see them reflected in her oldest daughter’s eyes. She smiled and held out her arm, “Because, Sweetheart, Sometimes the past needs to be forgotten,” She said curling her daughter into her embrace. “Alison, promise me that if you get married you will take your husband’s name instead of making him changes his.”

“Sure, I guess.” Alison paused as mother and daughter watched their heritage blacken into ash. “Mom something weird happened today at the college.”

“Don’t tell me you actually went to that sit down thing?”

“Sit in mom. Sit in. And yes I did.”

 

©  This story and subsequent parts are my own original idea and are protected under United States copy right law.

The Feud Worth Forgetting: Part 3

31 Jan 2013 Leave a comment

by C.O. Bonham in Short Stories, The Feud Worth Forgetting Tags: ,

The Antigone Herald August 26, 1827.

An explosion shook the area today. The large barn up at Job Gellervice’s place was leveled and naught but a crater marks the spot on which it stood. Speculation runs rampant with explanations from Rocks falling out of the sky to Old Job filling his barn with dynamite for use in his war against his rival Hiram Brettsin. But perhaps the most mystifying of all explanations comes from the only survivor of the blast Colt Brantley.

“None of us really believed that they was invisible to each other. So when Mr. Gellervice  paid us to bring Grady Brettsin over and lock him in the barn we just thought it would all be a big joke. So we dropped Grady there in the barn and locked the doors from the inside. We all gave a how do to Jared Gellervice and scurried up into the hay loft to watch the fun. Well the way Jared and Grady kept missing each other and swing their weapons in the wrong direction I was starting to think that maybe they really couldn’t see each other. That’s when the other boys took sides and started hollerin’ directions down to them. Well they kept coming closer and closer to each other when suddenly there was light and a voice spoke just like from a Bible story, it said, ‘Woe to you who defy the Lord. Now you shall be as a spark from the flint is to the gun powder. Leave now and do not touch each other and your lives shall be spared. And let the same be for those who encourage this defiance.’ Then the Angel or what ever it was vanished and everyone in that barn had become very still.

“I was scared out of my mind. Y’all know how keen I am about a good joke but my mama she raised her up a God fearing young man and at that moment I was mighty feared of God. But no one else seemed to care they were either ignoring him or they were defying him because they went right back to encouraging Jared and Grady to have at it.

“Me I was on my way down the ladder when one of them must’ve landed a lucky hit because I was blown clear through the back wall of the barn and safely into a patch of lettuce. Nobody will ever tell me I was just lucky.”

Whatever the cause of the explosion, it seem the result is an end to the deadly feud. Both Job Gellervice and  Hiram Brettsin are taking their families and leaving the area. The only comment from either family was from Hiram’s only surviving son Jonathan, who is quoted as saying, “As for me and my house, from now on, we will fear the Lord.” Hiram’s youngest son Caleb was mysteriously murdered earlier this month by an unknown assailant.”

©  This story and subsequent parts are my own original idea and are protected under United States copy right law.

Previous Older Entries

%d bloggers like this: