fiction – Page 15 – Joan Spilman

Charlotte Glimmer (a Harshbarger Mills Story)

Part 1 Char Glimmer sits on her porch in a ladder-backed chair, waiting for a familiar face to drive her to the doctor. She is wearing a… Read more “Charlotte Glimmer (a Harshbarger Mills Story)”

He was being branded; the air smelled as it did when they marked the wild horses in the spring.

“My source tells me the bark is odd. Flesh colored with specks of red. The shoots spring up, only to die.”

I don’t know why her father, who is a good man, didn’t walk fifty yards and stop a beating that ended a boy’s life.

“What if the child is already dead?”
“He is alive. Else why would Jah demand that he be rescued?”

For years and years, Iris was the wife of the town’s only mortician. She’s popped in, treating me like a source of income, unannounced and unafraid.

“Here is the message you must take. Read it before it is waxed.”

“You will be fine as long as you remember to stay out of the taverns and pleasure houses.”

He knew nothing about her, save that she was young and clothed in what appeared to be an old-fashioned night rail.

“Agnes, Woody Garrett is a married man.”
Agnes sat straight up. “But he said he loved me!”