Another Snippet From Luna City 12 – Secret Life of the Brownies

04. January 2025 · Write a comment · Categories: Chapters From the Latest Book
(Letty, Douglas, and Stephen with their other friends have decided to investigate the mysterious brownies…)
It took the two girls merely fifteen minutes, exploring the first three gaps in the sagging wire and the wandering trails beyond, beaten into the hard summer earth.
“They went this way,” Letty announced with confidence. Yes, there they were – the straight tracks of narrow wheels, and the footprints of someone whose’ shoes were about the same size as Letty’s were marked in the pale dust between patches of low-growing weeds. “Towards the old Sheffield place. I wonder if …” She left that thought unfinished, and Retta finished it for her.
“They’re camped out in the icehouse? It’s got a roof on it, for sure. If I wanted to stay hidden, and had a place to hide out from everyone, I’d sure as certain consider the icehouse … I wonder how they found it, though.”
“How did they find out that Mrs. Allison goes on the bus to Karnesville and spends the whole day at the hospital?” Letty replied. The two girls walked on silent cat-feet along the narrow beaten path through the thicket of oak trees and scrub brush, brush which covered a low rise above a bend in the San Antonio River – a rise hardly sufficient to be termed a hill. They had nearly reached where the old icehouse had been dug into that hill, when they heard a small child giggling, somewhere hidden by the thick undergrowth. A girl’s voice – startlingly close to them, but unseen, called –
“Coral! Time for your nap! Don’t be a naughty girl, now!”
Retta looked over her shoulder at Letty, who nodded and gestured that they should walk away. The mystery brownies clearly had set up housekeeping in the thickets around the Sheffield ruins, likely taking shelter at night in the ice house. Retta and Letty hurried away, not daring a sound until they had reached the road.
“Well, we shall have something definite to report, now,” Retta commented, wholly satisfied with what they had been able to discover; that it was a real person, and not a familiar household spirit, doing chores at the Allison home. She consulted the alarm clock – which she had carried with her in her little bag of First Aid supplies. Retta wanted to be a nurse when she grew up, and the aid kit accompanied her everywhere. As a Scout, she was always prepared.
They were only a short distance from the club-house; the girls had a shorter distance to cover than the boys, who need travel the farther distance from Luna City. It was a few minutes after four, when Douglas, Artie and Stephen finally appeared, sweaty, breathless and only moderately triumphant.
“They’re living in the icehouse?” Douglas sounded skeptical, and Letty reassured him.
“We followed them almost there – the girl and the baby. They can’t be anywhere else. What did you find out in town?’
“We went everywhere!” Artie was in full, enthusiastic flow. “Looking for strangers who might be kids like us! Even to Abernathy Hardware – every shop along the Square. I think we talked to everyone … Sgt. Drury even asked what we were doing. I told him we were doing a scavenger hunt, and had to get a copy of a newspaper from someplace else. Pretty clever, huh?”
“Yes, but what did you find out?” Letty could hardly contain her impatience. “How did the girl find out about the Allisons … and the old icehouse…”
“There are two boys,” Douglas explained. “They weren’t from around here, everyone is certain about that. Also – the talk different. Almost like city folk, but not quite. One is about my age, maybe a bit older. The other looks to be seven or eight. Everyone we talked to, who noticed the boys says that they’ve seen the older boy running errands and making deliveries for the grocery store. For tips, mostly. And Mr. Mason – that’s the guy who runs it now – he says he don’t bother with asking for a name, since he’s not paying wages. But he lets that boy and his brother pick through the trash and spoiled things that he’s throwing away at the end of the day, ‘cause it’s unfit to sell.”
“Yuck,” Retta made a face. “That’s disgusting.”
“You get hungry enough, you’ll eat what you can that won’t bite back,” Artie pointed out, with feeling. The Vaughns were hard up, everyone in Luna City knew that. Mr. Vaughn, whose little ranch property near Beeville had been foreclosed on at the very start of the crash, made only a pittance as a policeman for the Luna City Police Department – hardly enough to support a wife, Artie and his younger brother Harry. If it weren’t for them keeping hens and a garden out in back of the Vaughn place, and their father regularly going hunting … they’d also be scavenging what they could from the grocery store, like those unnamed boys.
“So, where did they come from?” Letty asked. “Did anyone know that?”
“I went and talked to Manny Gonzalez, at the garage,” Stephen answered. “I thought that he might have seen something, since so many travelers go past his father’s place.”
Manny – or Manolo, was an older teenage boy, who was interested in nothing but engines and mechanical things, to the exclusion of practically everything else. Manny quit school as soon as it was allowed, to work in the Gonzalez family enterprise. This was an auto repair shop on the very edge of town, situated – like the Tip-Top Ice House Gas & Grocery – to take best advantage of travel on the main road between San Antonio, Beeville and Rockport.
“Did he?” Retta demanded, impatiently. “Stop keeping us all in suspense, Douglas – it’s not fair. What did Manny tell you? Did he see the boys? Did he know anything about them.”
“He did, indeed,” Douglas replied, with something of the air of Sherlock Holmes explaining something to Dr. Watson. “He told me that a trucker with a busted brake line and a load he had to get to Brownsville stopped at the shop about six weeks ago … and there were four kids with him. Four kids with an old wagon and a couple of bags and an ‘ol suitcase strapped onto it. The two boys, a girl about eleven or twelve, and another little girl – just about able to walk, Manny says. The littlest had curly blond hair and looked sort of like that cute little girl with the ringlets in the movie shorts – that’s how come Manny took notice. He also noticed that the four kids didn’t stick around, until the trucker got his brakes fixed. When he moved on, the kids weren’t with him. Manny thinks the oldest boy is the one doing errands for the grocery store.”
“If he was hanging around there, looking for work,” Stephen had already made the logical deduction, “Then he might have overheard Mrs. Allison talking to the others, waiting for the Karnesville bus. What are we going to do now, Captain?”
Douglas sounded as if he were thinking out loud. “I really think that we should talk to them. These kids. Find out what’s going on. Why they’re on the road, without any family to look after them. I’ve never heard of kids going on the bum, all alone, ‘cept in the movies. Maybe a boy by himself, looking for work and hitting the road. But with his little sisters? There is something odd and curious about this situation. I think we ought to get to the bottom of it, before we tell anyone else. Tomorrow is Sunday … the bus doesn’t run on Sunday, and the grocery store is closed. I think we ought to go out to the icehouse tomorrow afternoon … after church and talk to these kids. Find out what the story is. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Stephen nodded. “Meet here first, then go all together. And not a word about this to the grownups … until we find out what the story is.”
They all agreed, although Letty saw that Retta hesitated.
Finally, Retta mumbled, “Well … with a baby, who still needs milk… we really ought to tell someone. Someone who really cares. And can do something.”
“We will tell someone, as soon as we know that their story is,” Douglas assured her. It was nearly suppertime – and their mothers would all be irate, if they were late to the table. There was no more time to talk about the matter of the family of children living surreptitiously in the ice house: they headed for home, as speedily as their various means could take them – Douglas and Letty on their bicycles, and Stephen on a spry ranch cowpony. Retta and Artie on foot.

From Luna City 12 – The Secret Life of Brownies

01. January 2025 · Write a comment · Categories: Chapters From the Latest Book

(A snippet from Luna City 12, in progress; a story from when Letty McAllister and Stephen Wyler were children in the 1930s … investigating a case of mysterious visitors to a neighbor in need of help…)

“Who – or what do you think is doing Mrs. Allison’s housekeeping, while she’s away in Karnesville?” Stephen ventured. He wasn’t one for believing in fairy stories either. Douglas considered the matter gravely, before he replied.

“I think that someone, or more than one someone – since the note said “we” it must be more than one – who are doing Mrs. Allison a good deed is human, but for some reason, they can’t show themselves.” Douglas looked earnestly at the young faces, gathered in the dim shade inside the tipi-hut, and ventured. “I wonder if they aren’t kids. Kids like us – and for some reason, they are afraid to show themselves. They’re on the road, like all those hobos, looking for work and a meal – and they don’t want anyone to see them. But they have a baby with them. And I find that real worrisome. Kids with a baby – they ought to be able to ask for help. From Chief McGill. Mr. Drury, or our father. The Reverend Rowbottom.”

“Strangers,” Retta commented softly. “If they were from anywhere around here, they’d know to be able to trust Reverend Rowbottom, or Chief McGill … certainly the mayor of Luna City.”

The mayor of Luna City was Letty and Douglas’ father, and there was no man in Karnes County who was a softer touch for the troubled, ailing or indigent, as long as they were truly in the condition and not freeloaders looking for a handout.

“We ought to do something about that,” Stephen said then – very decisively. He was the only son of the richest rancher in the county; a family well-accustomed to doing something positive regarding any matter which attracted concern.

“What ought we do?” Artie looked around the circle of faces. He was not entirely gormless, but one of those children made to be a follower, which is how he had come to latch on to the McAllister siblings and Stephen Wyler.

“I think we out to set a watch.” Douglas sounded as if he had thought a plan out very carefully. Just as Stephen loved movies and books about bold pirates and scurvy dogs on the Spanish Main, Douglas was devoted to the exploits and the logical deductions of Sherlock Holmes, the famous detective.  “Letty and Retta ought to watch Mrs. Allison’s house and see who comes there during the day while she is away in Karnesville. It’s summer; school is out until fall, so no one would think anything of kids just hanging around. Meanwhile, Stephen and Artie and I will go around every business in town and see if there are kids that we don’t know hanging around, looking to cadge work.”

“Everyone around here notes strangers,” Artie Vaughn nodded an assent to the plan. “You should make us up a list, so we can split up and save time.”

“Let’s do it,” Douglas, being an intelligent boy, did not disdain sensible suggestions from other members of the club. He nodded, in slightly surprised agreement, pleased that Artie had been absorbing Sherlock Holmes’ logical methods.  “And meet tomorrow afternoon at four, to compare notes.”

 

Letty told her mother that she was going over to spend the day at Retta’s, once she had finished her daily chores. Retta told her mother that they were going to spend the day outside, and Retta’s mother kindly supplied them with a thermos of lemonade and some sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper. The mothers of members of the Club were well-accustomed to their offspring spending the summertime daylight hours on kid-business of their own.  All the various mothers asked – and not with any real conviction that such requests would be scrupulously observed – was that their various activities not be physically risky, unlawful or likely to involve blood being shed.

Retta and Letty both were working towards Scouting badges in First Aid and had – so far – been able to staunch any flows of blood resulting from various misadventures, without drawing parental attention to them. Douglas and Stephen were quite grateful for this ability.

The girls took some books with them, and a pair of bird-watching binoculars which had belonged to Letty’s grandfather; the architect who had laid out the plans for Luna City and designs for all the public buildings, back in the waning decades of the previous century. Letty had to borrow the binoculars from her father’s study – but he was not a bird-watcher, and in any case, would be in town all the day long at his office, so the binoculars would not be missed. Retta borrowed her family’s wind-up alarm clock, likewise hoping that it would not be missed during the day. Douglas had suggested that the girls keep a log, noting the times, and for that, a clock was essential.

Retta’s father had built a treehouse in the far-distant quadrant of their yard, for the benefit of Retta’s three much-older brothers. Those brothers were now all well-grown and distaining such childish amusements, so Retta had the treehouse to herself and her friends. It was a simple platform of weathered planks with a crude waist-high rail around it, nestled in the center of a many-branched oak tree – a perch which offered a good view of the back of the Allison house across a meadow of unmown grass and the long dirt driveway between it and the mailbox on the main paved road. Since it was veiled by leaves all around, the platform could not be seen by a casual viewer. Anyone coming to or from the Allison house would be seen. It was the ideal position, as Douglas had pointed out, to surveil the Allison’s place. Retta and Letty climbed up the rough ladder formed by planks nailed into the oak tree trunk, emerging through a small trapdoor in the middle of the platform.

They had also taken the precaution of bringing some books and a pair of cushions to soften what they expected to be a day-long vigil. Letty loved spending time in the treehouse, for when the wind strengthened, the platform swayed gently, like a ship in a rolling sea.

“There goes Mrs. Allison,” Retta made a tidy note. “Eight-forty. Just in time to catch the 9 o’clock bus to Karnesville. The milkman already has been – she took in the milk and let the chickens out. And so has Sgt. Drury’s car. He must be going to Karnesville, too.”

John Drury was an older man, once a Texas Ranger, who served as a detective for the Luna City Police Department, at such times as required extra-special detecting skills. Crime did not often wave, in Luna City; such offenses as occurred were most usually quite transparent.

“Eight-forty,” Letty double-checked the time. “I hope this isn’t a day when the brownies don’t show up. I want to be the ones who solve the mystery.”

“Stephen was going to go to all the shops on Town Square,” Retta ticked them off on her fingers. “All the ones who might have hired boys to run errands, or something. Artie was going to Bodie’s, and to the Cattleman Hotel.”

“Douglas was going to the Tip-Top first thing,” Letty continued, “And then to speak to the folks at Gonzalez’ garage. He thinks that because the Gonzalez place is so close to the main road – that was where someone looking for work might go, after asking at the Tip-Top. They’re going to meet up at noon and go around to everyone that they might have missed in the morning.”

“Makes sense,” Retta agreed, as she opened her book. “I think we got the easy part, though.”

“The boring part,” Letty propped the binoculars on the railing, and focused them on the Allison’s back porch. They had agreed to alternate every half an hour.

It hardly had been forty minutes before Letty looked up from her book and spotted the girl, out on the county road that ran past the Allison and Livingston home places.

“Look now – over there, just by the mailboxes,” Letty said, softly. “See that girl? She’s pulling a little wagon … an old Liberty Coaster, looks like …”

“I see her,” Retta swung the binoculars around, and trained the lenses on the girl, walking along the roadside verge, pulling the little wagon after her. She was very obviously a girl, as her light brown hair hung down in two braids, although she was wearing faded denim overalls like a boy’s and a baggy shirt several sizes too large for a skinny frame – all this plain to Letty, even without binoculars.  “There’s another in the wagon … could that be the baby they meant – that they needed milk for?”

The girl, the wagon, and the smaller child in it were lost to their sight, momentarily screened by a thicket of hackberry bushes. Retta continued, almost whispering, “She’s … yes, coming down the drive to the Allison place.”

“If they go inside, they’re for certain Mrs. Allison’s brownies,” Letty whispered in reply. The girl with the wagon and smaller sibling was so far away that they might have conversed in normal tones … but the necessity for discretion compelled whispers.

Almost holding their breaths, Retta and Letty watched the girl go to the back door of the Allison place. The strange girl moved confidently, as if she knew what she was about, and had no apprehension about being there. She bent down and picked up the smaller child. Letty thought the smaller child was another girl, for the mop of yellow ringlets, and a baby smock which once might have been pink. Then the two girls vanished into the house – casually, as if they had every right to be there, leaving the wagon by the back porch steps.

“Nine-thirty-five,” Letty looked at the alarm clock, and made a lot in their watch-log. “The brownies are in the house. I wonder how long they will stay?”

“Depends on what Mrs. Allison has asked them to do,” Retta replied. “Say – what do we do when they go?”

Letty thought it over, very carefully. “I think that we should follow them. At least a little way. That way, we can tell the boys where they are staying.”

“They must be staying somewhere,” Retta agreed.

For some time, silence fell in the tree house, broken only by the faint rustle of turning pages, the metallic ticking of the alarm clock, and the slight scuffle as Retta and Letty handed off custody of the binoculars. The girl they were watching appeared in the Allison’s yard three times – once to open the henhouse and scatter feed for them, then again an hour later to sweep the back porch with a broom, and finally at around 1:30 to chase the hens back into the henhouse. Then, she emerged one last time from the house with the smaller girl in her arms. Retta and Letty noted the time and duration, in between bites of their own sandwiches. When the older girl set the blond child in the wagon, and set off down the long drive towards the county road, Retta and Letty were ready.

They crouched behind a stand of overgrown sunflowers by the Livingston’s mailbox until the girls and their wagon had gone past. Letty wondered if they were sisters, although they did not look much alike, or as nearly as she could judge from a close inspection through the binoculars.

“Not too close,” she warned Retta in a breathless whisper. “We don’t want them to see us following them – but we ought to see where they go, from here.”

It helped that neither of the girls looked behind; the older seemed to have all her attention focused on pulling the wagon, and the blonde toddler with the curls was too little to be taking notice of much. But Letty and Retta still lingered behind cover as they found it – overgrown roadside bushes, bends in the road, as it straggled southwards from Luna City itself, in the direction of the derelict abandoned tourist cabins, the burnt-out ruins of the old Sheffield mansion, and the derelict Mills home place.

“I wonder if they’re staying on Old Man Mills’ land,” Retta whispered, “I’d be scared to death of his pet alligators!”

Letty shook her head. “I don’t think they would dare … even if Ol’ Man Mills is practically a hermit, these days. Mrs. Mills is plenty sharp, an’ I don’t see that she would abide strangers, much. Even if they are kids. Those Millses are the biggest bootleggers in Karnes County – everyone says so.”

The girl and her wagon, with the smaller child in it had drawn somewhat farther ahead, lost to the sight of Letty and Retta around a bend in the road. They were nearest to where there remained a lightly-beaten track toward where the mansion had been – now a pile of weathered stones and timbers burnt to ashes and blackened slate shingles thirty years previously. Locals insisted that the low hill above a bend in the river was haunted. When the two girls ventured stealthily around that bed, the road which stretched out before them was entirely empty.

“We’ve lost them!” Retta despaired, but Letty shook her head.

“Maybe not … they weren’t all that far ahead of us. Look, Retta – there’s gaps in the fence, and all those paths leading away from the road. I’ll bet they went through one of them. We ought to look for the tracks that wagon would make in the dust. There’s plenty of spaces between the weeds where wheels and shoes could leave marks.” Letty smiled at her friend and nudged her shoulder. “We’re Scouts! Remember – we should be able to spot tracks!”

A Snipped From Luna City 12

04. December 2024 · 1 comment · Categories: Chapters From the Latest Book, Luna City

(An adventure in the past, with Letty, Stephen and their childhood friends, during the 1930s. I may continue writing about Luna City in the past, when I finish the 12th chronicle. It’s a place very dear to me, but several present-day story arcs are coming to a natural conclusion.)

From – The Secret Life of Brownies

Letty McAllister was just eleven years old and her older brother Douglas was thirteen, in summer of the year that the brownies appeared in Luna City; 1932. That was the third year of the great Depression, although Letty and Douglas and their friend, Stephen Wyler were barely aware of that. Something to do with a stock market crashing Letty gathered from overhearing adults talk it over, with somber faces and worried voices.

“I think it means the Fat Stock Show,” Stephen Wyler assured them, late in 1929 when Letty and Douglas consulted with their friend. He was the son of a rancher, and fairly familiar with matters to do with cattle and other beasts of the Wyler Ranch.

“Are you certain?” Douglas asked, not entirely convinced. The adults seemed to have been most particularly worried. “I don’t believe there are cattle in New York City.”

“Perhaps it was some other kind of stock,” Stephen conceded.

As it turned out, the depression had nothing at all to do with the San Antonio Fat Stock Show. What it meant to Luna City was that lean times came in, hung up coat and hat and decided to sit for a long spell. It meant that local small ranchers and farmers went bust, losing home and properties to foreclosure by the bank, and then a cascade of failing banks and small businesses shutting up for good.  All that, and for Luna City it also meant an increase of bums and hobos drifting through, looking for work or just a free meal. Since no one had any money to spare to hire farm hands, the hoboes mostly drifted on, although there were some who were agreeable to doing chores by the day in exchange for a few meals and a place under a roof to sleep.

The McAllister siblings and Stephen Wyler, together with a handful of friends from school, had built themselves a clubhouse with odd planks and tree branches brought down by winter floods. They settled on a sheltered declivity in the riverbank not far from the burnt-out ruins of an old mansion on a hill commanding a view of the river, and the washhouse and bathrooms for a tourist camp which had never really gotten off the ground. The owners of the derelict tourist camp had long given up on the property, even before the stock market crash, and left the cabins and the paved space to molder away, baked in the harsh Texas summer sunshine, and blasted by winter winds, perhaps proving that even in good times, the tourist camp wouldn’t have made a go of it. Nothing had lived anywhere near the owl-haunted ruins of the old mansion for decades, although there was a shed, leaning perilously to one side, and an icehouse with thick and insulated walls built into a sloping hillside not far from a pile of burnt timbers and brick, tangled over with mats of wild morning glory vines. Stephen, Douglas, their tag-along acolyte Artie Vaughn, and Letty’s friend, Retta Livingston sometimes dared aspirants to membership in their private club to brave the spiders and other critters who inhabited the ruins of the roofless bathhouse and the icehouse as a condition of membership. The old icehouse was a dank cave, hidden among the brush; so far, no one had accepted the dare.

It was Retta, who lived with her family on a small farm on the outskirts of Luna City, who first mentioned the brownies. Retta and Letty were in the same Girl Scout troop, a troop led by Mrs. Rowbottom, who was the wife of the Reverent Calvin Rowbottom, the minister of the Methodist church in Luna City.

“Mrs. Allison says that she is being visited at night by helpful brownies,” Retta commented one afternoon, when they had gathered at the clubhouse to share out a little bag of penny candy that Stephen Wyler had brought with his allowance money. “Like the story that Mrs. Rowbottom told us about brownies coming in at night to do chores for people who leave them a bowl of milk or something.”

“Who’s Mrs. Allison, when she’s at home?” Stephen asked, flippantly. “And how can she tell?”

Retta regarded Stephen with an impatient expression. “Mrs. Allison lives across the small pasture from us – on the edge of town. Her husband finally got a job helping to build that big ol’ Hoover dam in Arizona and such. They have a little boy – Samuel, but he caught polio this summer and it took him really bad. The doctors said to keep him in in the hospital in Karnesville, he was that bad sick. He even got put in that iron lung machine for a week! They were afraid that he might die of the polio, or be paralyzed for life. Mrs. Allison, she tries to keep real cheerful about his condition, but she told my ma that he might never be able to walk again. Mrs. Allison, she goes to Karnesville purt’ near every day on the bus, so that she can see to Samuel in the hospital. He’s only six years old – the same age as my little brother.”

“What about the brownie visiting?” Letty was fascinated. The bus to Karnesville came by the McAllister house, and the Tip-Top Ice House and Gas around nine o’clock on weekday mornings, ten on Saturdays. (The bus didn’t run on Sundays.)

“It was right curious,” Retta answered. “Mrs. Allison went to Town Square to wait for the bus to come … as she didn’t want to miss it. It stops by Dunsmore’s grocery …”

“Only it isn’t Dunsmore’s grocery anymore,” Artie Vaughn added, rather unnecessarily.

“We know that!” Letty pointed out, “It’s just that the man who owns the grocery store ever since Mr. Dunsmore went to prison and had to sell up never has anyone working there who stays long enough for anyone to remember their names. They don’t stay in Luna City long enough to matter.”

“Well, anyway, there was a lot of people standing around, and Mrs. Allison said that she came away in such a rush that she had forgotten to let the chickens out, and to stack up the cord of firewood that was delivered. She talked about that and so much else … but when she came home after dark that evening … she saw that all the wood had been stacked ever so neatly, the chickens had been let out – and then put away again. There was a little note, left where the milkman had delivered two quarts of milk to the ice-box. One of the bottles was gone, but the note said ‘We took the milk, we needed it for the baby’ and just a little scrawled ‘B’ for a signature.”

“No one ever locks their doors around here,” Stephen remarked. “It could have been anyone, walking in.” He looked around at the ring of faces. They were gathered in the Club – a little ramshackle tipi of branches and odd planks brought down by previous winter’s floods leaned up against a mostly-dead cottonwood tree. Stephen, the McAllisters and their other friends had built it for a secret clubhouse, in an out-of-the-way bend in the river, below Luna City. “Maybe Mrs. Allison out to start locking her doors when she goes to spend all day, every day at the hospital. There are a lot of scurvy rogues on the tramp, you know. Just to be on the safe side.” Stephen had picked up the phrase “scurvy rogues” from an adventure book about pirates on the Spanish Main and used it at every opportunity.

“Well, she does at night,” Retta allowed. “Being that she is all alone in the house, and her husband is away…”

“She ought to have a dog,” Artie Vaughn said. “Dogs are the best guardian. Like Rin-Tin-Tin…”

“Yes, but a dog would chase her chickens, less’n she kept an eye on it,” Retta replied. “And anyway … maybe a dog would chase away the brownies. And then they wouldn’t ever come back.”

“Did they?” Letty was fascinated – it all seemed as if a fairy story was coming to life – and in Luna City! “Come back again to Mrs. Allison?”

“They did!” Retta replied, triumphantly. “She thought at first that one of her neighbors was playing a little game with her, so she left a note on the stoop under the empty milk bottles. She thanked the Brownies for stacking the wood and looking after the chickens, and asked if  they would dust the parlor and hanging out the wet washing for her, as she wouldn’t have time to do it in the morning before she went to Karnesville … and when she came home, the laundry was all dry and folded up neatly, and the parlor was as clean as a whistle!”

“Was it a neighbor, funning with her?” Artie was deeply impressed.

“She doesn’t think so,” Retta answered. “And she says now that she wouldn’t do anything to frighten them or chase them away. The Brownies have been such a help when she is so worried about little Sammy, it doesn’t matter to her who they are or where they came from. She leaves a note for them about the chores that need doing while she is away, and a bottle of milk, every morning. She also leaves them bread, cookies, and other things to eat. And every evening when she comes home, the chores are done, and the milk and food she left for the Brownies is gone.”

“That sounds like a miracle,” Letty ventured, and Retta nodded.

“It’s someone doing a good deed, without wanting any credit for it,” Douglas agreed. He was older than the other children by two years, thoughtful and intelligent. He was their natural leader, because he could see and understand aspects and matters of the larger world, matters that the others frequently found baffling. “But look, guys… (and Douglas used that generic denominator to the Club, although two of them were girls.) … do your brownies in the stories have babies among them? They said in that first note – they needed milk for a baby.”

Letty shook her head. “Mrs. Rowbottom never said anything about baby brownies.”

“I don’t think they do have babies,” Letty replied, after a long pause. “They are just sort of helpful spirits.”

“Look, guys,” Douglas continued. “I can believe in being helpful. Neigborly. I can believe that someone is helping Mrs. Allison, but I don’t believe in helpful spirits – brownies, elves, Santa Claus or any other fancy. That’s not logical in the real world.”

From Luna City 12 – A Brief Snippet

06. November 2024 · 3 comments · Categories: Chapters From the Latest Book, Luna City

(Now that  I am mostly recovered from a ghastly cold, and have managed to finish the notes for West Toward the Sunset, I am back to work on Luna City. Herewith part of a chapter called Fame, wherein Joe Vaughn becomes a literary sensation. For all the wrong reasons, of course.)

“I thought you should know, cher,” remarked Richard’s boss, Lew Dubois, the C-suite level manager who had become at least a much of a friend over the years of their acquaintance, “That Anne’s good friend – you will recollect Madame Creighton Doyle, who writes the novels most romantic and amusing? Her newest novel is to be launched upon her millions of breathlessly waiting fans tonight. Alas, the formal party sponsored by her publisher will be in New York, and not here.”

“Oh, the best-seller. Yes, I recall – and I honestly I can’t say that I mind in the least,” Richard replied. When he cast his mind back to the previous year, he remembered briefly encountering Trish Creighton Doyle on several occasions. She was a woman of certain years, given to wearing flowing, chiffon-laden garments. The customary dreamy expression on her countenance suggested that her mind was most usually occupied somewhere other than the here and now – unimaginably far, far from the mundane here and now. “We are simply full up with guests at the moment! Even with forewarning…”

“This is in the nature of a forewarning,” Lew replied. “But not as it concerns the Cattleman or the Crystal Room, but rather some of our dear friends. First, I am nearly certain that many of Madame Doyle’s readers will fall upon her latest like famished wolves on a tasty piece of filet mignon … and decide that they simply must see for themselves the enchanted circle of stones … that real circle which was made so many years ago. Madame Doyle has put the pictures which she took of the pagan monument on her website as part of the advance publicity…”

It was mid-morning at the Cattleman Hotel, the hour when Richard and Lew could both be found in Lew’s office, confabulating over what to expect in the near future, about any foreseen and unforeseen events affecting management of the ornate boutique hotel which had dominated the western side of Town Square for more than a century.

“The stone circle at the Age of Aquarius? ‘Strewth – I had better warn the Grants,” Richard considered the prospect with a shudder of horror. “It was bad enough the last time that they were mobbed by visitors; treasure-seekers, ghost-hunters and UFOlogists all converged on the place a couple of years ago. It was a mob scene, culminating in a riot, and then in their old place burning to the ground, although the all-hands brawl had nothing to do with the fire. I couldn’t get a decent nights’ sleep for weeks. At least this time, they have a pleasanter place to live in… and Judy will be thrilled no end, having oodles of imaginative visitors to listen to her tales of New Age this and that…”

“Oh, most definitely, my friend,” Lew agreed. “Tell M’sieu and Madame Grant to expect any number of visitors to their magnificent stone circle…”

“Which, alas, looks much more impressive with the aid of artful photography and the cooperation of nature,” Richard replied. “The marker stones aren’t anything like Stonehenge or Avebury, being about a quarter the size. I’m afraid the baying fans will be quite disappointed…”

“But not in another aspect,” Lew was fiddling with his computer, and the printer across the room whirred and clanked into life. “My wife has sent me a copy of the news release regarding Madame Doyle’s book … the cover was embargoed until the very last minute…”

“So, the Grants will get a boost in visitors to the Age,” Richard mused, as Lew collected a sheet of paper from the printer tray. “And likely the good Colonel Walcott’s reenactor group … I do recollect that the Doyle woman was taking pictures of their encampment and costumed reenactors at the 4th of July celebration in the square … what is the plot of the book? I know someone told me once, but I can’t recall. Something about a woman going through the stone circle and traveling into the past…”

Lew nodded in grim agreement. “A woman of the most modern American times … and discovering fulfillment and love in the arms of a fearless Comanche warrior chieftain of almost two hundred years in the past…”

Richard snorted with rude laughter as Lew handed him the paper. “According to some of the stories I’ve heard from the reenactors, that would have been about the last … oh, f**k me running! Has Joe Vaughn laid eyes on this… this … Oh, my god. He will absolutely lose his mind when he sees this, let alone what Jess will think…”

“I suspect that Madame Vaughn will be amused,” Lew observed. “To discover that her husband has been made into the bare-chested hero on the cover of a best-selling romance…”

“Joe will die of embarrassment,” Richard replied. “And he will most definitely do gross bodily harm to the first person who ventures a jesting remark…My god, I suppose I shall have to tell him. I can only hope that he will not reach out and slaughter me, once I show him this abomination!”

“You will be most tactful, revealing this information, of course,” Lew appeared to have been relieved of a dangerous burden. Someone else would take on the fraught chore of telling Joe Vaughn that a casual picture of him, snapped as he came from a turn in the civic dunk tank the last 4th of July and briefly embraced and kissed Jess, had been utterly transformed by a cover artist … transformed every possible detail save Joe’s clearly recognizable dark, hawklike countenance. He was recognizably on the cover as a bare-chested, dark haired Comanche warrior embracing a slender woman with flowing hair and a diaphanous drape of some kind. Now Richard recalled Araceli’s description of Trish Creighton-Doyle’s output – always the studly romantic hero, embracing a woman clad in something flowy … only the period details and setting distinguished one of the Creighton-Doyle oeuvre from another. Lew appeared to have handed off that dangerous assignment to Richard – a case of discretion being the better part of valor.

“Lew, I will be the very soul of diplomacy,” Richard assured his boss, while taking a good long look at the full-sheet picture of the book cover.

A Time-shattering Romance, from the best-selling author of Those Bolyn Girls.

Richard’s heart sank, right down to the level of his kitchen clogs. For a long moment, he wished that he could hand this off to his redoubtable Aunt Myra, she who was unaccountably adept with blades, small arms, and the physical martial arts, ostensibly a traveling international journalist but most likely an operative for a secretive governmental agency designated M-something-or-other.

From “West Towards the Sunset”

13. September 2024 · Comments Off on From “West Towards the Sunset” · Categories: Chapters From the Latest Book

(Yes, getting close to completing this YA novel – I plan to have it released in eBook and in print in time for Christmas. By Thanksgiving, anyway.)

The Kettering party of 1846  is traveling up the Truckee River, approaching the final mountain pass. It is autumn, and they have every chance of getting over the mountain pass before winter sets in. Other parties on the trail have not been so fortunate…)

So we set off, following the river farther and farther up into the hills, with the blue line of the mountains ever clearer every day. I think that we had been a week or more at it, when we came to a place where the hills gave way to a gentle, shallow valley. Rolling meadows of late-summer grass reminded me of those first days on the trail. The oxen were happy enough to spend a day of it, grazing at leisure on another Sunday.

Ma had Henry, Shiboone and I with the Herlihy brothers dipping buckets of water from the river, that Sunday afternoon after Deacon Zollicoffer held Sunday services. She and Mrs. Herlihy wanted do laundry. Mr. Herlihy had built up a good fire for us, with all of our kettles and pots heating water for the washtubs. Shiboone had just hoisted up a brim-full bucket, when she looked down the worn and rutted trail east of our camp.

“Oh, look – Sally – there’s a fellow on a poor shabby horse! It looks as though he is an advance scout for another company! Won’t that be a fine thing?”

“It might be!” I exclaimed, for though the man was at a good distance, I thought that he might be one that I recognized. I thought it was Ginny’s father, Mr. Reed, for his fine elegant horse, fine overcoat and flat-brimmed beaver – all them, horse, man and clothing battered, dusty and sadly worn from the hardships of travel. Still, I was inexpressibly happy at recognizing him, for then my friend Ginny and her little sister Patty and the rest of their company couldn’t possibly be far behind.

I couldn’t abandon Ma and Mrs. Herlihy and the pile of laundry to indulge my own curiosity, but I looked over my shoulder often enough, as we carried water, stirred and scrubbed. Mr. Reed – and it was him, no doubt in my mind – spoke first to Hansel, one of the German boys, who was cutting firewood by the wagon circle. I saw Hansel point toward our wagon, and Pa, who was conferring at our campfire with Mr. Herlihy, Mr. Glennie and Choctaw Joe. Henry Steitler was there too, as he most usually was when we had leisure for a day. Then Mr. Reed slid down from his horse, which Hansel led away. I thought at first Hansel was going to turn the horse unsaddled into the corral made from the wagon circle, all with the long wagon tongues chained to the wheel of the next wagon. Instead, Hansel rubbed the horses legs, and the place on his back where the saddle and blanket had been … and then put the saddle back on the horse!

That was curious, I thought. Did it mean that Mr. Reed would ride back down the trail to rejoin his own party? I guessed that it must mean they were a far bit behind. Still, I was so very happy, thinking their company would soon catch up to us and that I would see Ginny soon.

Mr. Reed spoke to Pa – spoke rather long, and that was when I sensed that something was not right. Pa’s expression was somber and worried. I could see the other men’s faces as well: Mr. Herlihy scowled, Mr. Glennie looked shocked … and Choctaw Joe was shaking his head, almost as if he had been confirmed in his own sad judgement.

But I could not walk away from helping Ma and the other women to hear what Mr. Reed was telling Pa and the others. I thought that I might be able to speak with Mr. Reed – but he was gone again within the hour – his horse rubbed down and saddled again, and it looked like he had been given a tow-sack of provisions.

I heard Pa tell him, “Goodspeed and good luck to you, James – we’ll look for your family, and if we can aid them in any way, be assured that we will!”

Then Mr. Reed was gone, riding up the trail towards the mountains, and Shiboone commented, “Holy Mary, he rides as if the very hellhounds are after him! I wonder what has happened now?”

And so did I wonder too, but I had to wait until that night to hear the full tale. All Pa would say at supper, when I asked, was, “Mr. Reed has ridden ahead to implore aid from Mr. Sutter, as his family and his friends are in dire need of supplies. It turned out that Mr. Hasting’s route was much more difficult than had been advertised. Their party is far behind – very far behind.”

“Ginny – are she and Patty all right?” I was shocked enough to speak out of turn, interrupting Pa and Choctaw Joe and Ma.

“Don’t interrupt the grownups, Sally,” Ma chided men. She sounded so serious and stern that I knew better than to ask any more.

“The girls are fine,” Pa replied, “They are with Mrs. Reed, and the hired folk, and their good friends. There isn’t anything to worry over, Sugar-plum.”

But Pa still looked somber, and Ma frowned in my direction when I opened my mouth to ask another question, but Henry Steitler also shook his head at me. I closed my mouth. Perhaps Henry would tell Jon and I later what it meant, that Mr. Reed went hurrying up the trail, without even stopping for the night. Not for the first time, I envied Henry for being only a year or so older but being an orphan and the owner of a wagon … so it was only a cart, cobbled out of the wreck of his father’s wagon – but when it came to trail business Henry counted as a grown-up, and not a child. He knew what was going on, for all of that, and I didn’t, just because I was a girl and younger, and that simply was not fair!

Instead, I kept pinching myself when we went to bed, so that I could stay awake and listen to Pa tell Ma what Mr. Reed had related to him.

“It was bad, Sue,” Pa said, his voice low and serious. “They hardly had an organized company when Reed left them …”  and then Pa’s voice went so quiet that I couldn’t hear what he was saying at all, just bits and snatches that I couldn’t make any sense out of. “Hastings will have a mortal lot to answer for to the Almighty!” Pa said then, and his voice went soft again.

Well, Mr.  Clyman and Mr. Greenwood had not said much good about Mr. Hastings’ shortcut. But what Pa said next riveted my attention. “… threw him out for committing a murder!”

“Oh, my God!” Ma exclaimed in horror. And her voice went even lower. They spoke in whispers; I couldn’t hear anything meaningful after that. I pulled the covers over my head and shivered in the dark until I fell asleep.

Before I did sleep, I resolved absolutely that I would find out what had happened with the Reed company – Poor Mrs. Reed with her sick headaches, feisty, fearless Ginny, little Patty and their blind Granny Keyes – all alone now, somewhere behind us on the desolate difficult trail to California.  In the morning, I would talk to Henry Steitler – the minute that I could corner him and speak to him privately.

 

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