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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Kids
- Theme: Survival / Success
- Subject: Faith / Hope
- Published: 10/25/2022
No Coincidences.
Born 1940, M, from Morris, IL, United StatesNO COINCIDENCES.
When God sent his second deluge with flaming arrows, down, down to earth, two children were sheltering at the mouth of a rocky cave while they watched the dark sky yield a torrent of rain on their hillside deep in the Ozarks.
They shivered, not only from the rain soaking their clothes but from fear welling up in their souls like night specters. The sky launched white lightning bolts and belched great deep blasts which rolled and then shook the earth. The cave howled behind them and from somewhere deep, deep down in the earth’s cellar, a dank wind rose and stroked the backs of their necks.
The girl, bright-eyed Sarai, small-boned with light brown hair cut short, was eleven years old. She wore denim overalls and a long sleeve faded blue shirt. Still, she was tall for her age.
Even as young as she was, locals said she was going to make something of herself. When she walked through town, she held her head high and greeted people with a smile, at least. She was already trusted by her folks to do most of the buying in Julia’s general store.
Her brother Brock was seven and a rascal. He was what people used to call pudgy, nearly as tall as Sarai with the same color hair and a cowlick that refused to stay put. He also wore overalls and a hand-me-down grey pullover.
Both were barefoot.
The storm came in paroxysms, downpours, shaking the big oaks and bending the willows nearly to the ground, their branches springing back with every pause in the wind. It was as if the air itself had hands that reached out to pull and break other stems that refused to yield. Thunder rattled the land and rolled down the hollers.
Rivulets began to flow from under the brush and soon converged downhill in tiny streams flowing toward the creek that the children had to cross to return home. Their wide-open eyes turned dark, and their skin paled as the rain broke across the cave in great waves. They were soaked and cold.
Sarai and Brock had been out picking blackberries on a beautiful Thursday afternoon. Their mother had told them to pick only the ripe and plumpest berries from the thorny bushes that skirted the deep forest. She wanted to make blackberry pie for supper.
Without warning, the winds and rain had caught hold of them. There was nothing else to do but run to the nearby cave they knew so well and wait for the storm to pass. In the Ozarks, there are countless rocky caves, some just a few feet deep, but others like their cave featured an entrance like the maw of a gigantic beast and no one knew how deep it was.
The children felt safe at the opening of their familiar shelter, though the dank breath of the cave on the backs of their necks made them shiver. They were used to resting for a while after picking on the hill. Whether it was picking berries, or gathering greens or wild apples, they always rested at the cave for a few minutes before they made their way home. This time, however, both of their baskets were only half-filled with dark, plump berries. The baskets rested behind them now against the cave wall as the storm beat down upon the earth.
Suddenly, a hot, white flash exploded right in front of them and split the huge oak tree just outside the cave. Two heavy branches crashed to the ground with the heft of the weight of their hundred-plus years. The children had instinctively fallen back when the bolt hit. It was a good thing they did because one of the severed limbs of the great oak had crashed against the entrance and slowly slipped down, down, nearly sealing off the entrance.
Neither of them could hear their gasps and swallowed screams. They were suddenly deaf to the tearing and howling around them. The loud crack of the lightning bolt had dulled their hearing. The storm eased a bit. Then, a swirling wreath of grey smoke rose from the blackened trunk. And a strong acrid, tinny odor reached their nostrils.
Mom said there were no coincidences, though. Everything was planned and sent by God. Earlier, a hummingbird had hovered and flashed its red throat at them as they were bent over picking blackberries. They thought it was a sign of God’s favor. Why should that beautiful bird linger unless to assure them that all was, and would be well?
Ernie Worth, their father, always said that they should listen to God. That they should watch for Him, too. “The Lord is fixin’ to say something, and we better pay attention," he said.
About two weeks ago, when Ernie Worth was working the corn field near harvest time and the sun was churning the hot air all around him, he had paused and looked at the rows of green stalks laden with huge ears and saw them as rows of ragged individuals standing tall facing the sun their green pockets filled with grain. He was one of them, graced to be there in that field on that day, on that morning, even in the unrelenting heat.
He’d felt that all of it — he, the corn, the sky — all was as it should be. God willed it so. And of this event, he informed his children in detail. They remembered that story now and wondered how God would explain the storm as something that ought to be.
Just across the creek was home. Two hours earlier, when Sarai and Brock had crossed it, the creek ran clear and had just covered their bare ankles as they made their way with their hand baskets. Now the creek was waist high, and the current was strong, muddy with soil and leaves and broken branches. They couldn’t see anything beyond the swollen creek because the rain still came down in cloudy sheets.
The sky was getting darker and was swollen with black-purple clouds that rose in a swirl and then blanketed the sky. It was late afternoon.
They remembered seeing their old broken Chevy pick-up floating down the creek during a similar storm last year. For years, grandpa’s pick-up had been rotting there near the creek with its hood up like it was waiting for something to eat and the tires flat. It became a victim of last August’s flood.
Once cream-colored, now it was mostly rusted, burnt like an overbaked loaf of bread. The flooding from the creek had snatched the old pick-up and sailed it down the holler where the force of the stream had jammed its nose down at a 45-degree angle while the creek flowed around it. But today the creek had nearly swallowed the truck as the water continued to rise.
“I wonder where the birds go when there are storms like this,” said Sarai. Brock yelled, “I don’t know but God’s eyes are on those sparrows. I know he’s watching us, too.”
Ernest “Ernie” Worth was laid up with a broken ankle, an injury from a misplaced step among the rocks of a close-by hillside. The family well had been pumped just about dry and he’d been trying to drive a metal pipe, three inches in diameter, into the side of a hill where he was sure there’d be water.
. While he was trying to maneuver the pipe deep into the hill with a sledgehammer, he’d lost his footing and fell. Something in his right ankle snapped when he twisted it between the rocks.
Well, Ernie Worth had enough water now. Too much. The corn was knocked down, but the soybeans might make it. No use worrying about the tomato plants and squash. He was sitting on the porch with his leg in a cast watching his vegetable garden as it was washed away in the torrent.
Bernice “Burney” McGuirk was a dark-haired, bulky woman with a sense of humor that made just about everything OK. She’d married Ernie while she was a sophomore in High School. Ernie had signed out of school on his sixteenth birthday. Ever since, one way or the other, Ernie and Bernice were together and made things work for their family.
Today, however, was another thing. Both she and Ernie Worth were worried about their kids. She’d guessed that they would be sheltering in the cave just across the creek. Their kids knew how to take care of themselves. They would be soaked and cold but alright. Still, of course, she fretted, anything could happen. “Lord, they’re in your hands,” she prayed.
At the cave, there was a movement in the brush to the left of the children. Someone or something was stumbling through the brush and making for the cave.
“It’s a deer! Brock said quietly. But it was not like the elegant-looking creatures that they’d seen in flocks out in the fields. This deer was old, his dark gray fur sagged where there used to be firm muscle. Still, he was stocky and antlered. A buck!
It stomped once or twice, a pause to consider what it should do next.
“He doesn’t know we’re here,” whispered Sarai. She was not sure Brock had even heard her as the storm went on. And then she said, “He’s coming in here!”
The children quickly moved to the other side of the cave next to the cold limestone pocked with irregular holes. Water poured down the walls, but the incline had the water moving down, down toward the creek. The stag bounded up and into the entrance of the cave.
He was more gray than brown and several of the spikes of his antlers had broken off. He stood there, huge eyed with water running off of him, head bent, mouth gaping, and his sleek, pink tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth as he breathed heavily. He still hadn’t noticed them. They were a coin toss away.
In the next instant, though, he turned his head toward them. His dark brown eyes took them in, and a decision was made: ‘No danger from those two. They are like me.”
The buck lowered his head and his neck followed. He was panting and shivering as he gathered his legs and folded them down into a form that blended in with the grey yellowed rock and the messy underbrush. His breath came and then went with expiratory nasal whistles which Sarai and Brock could hear even with the storm as loud as ever.
The rain refused to abate, if anything the wind was stronger and the sound of it swooshing through the trees was unnerving. So now they were three in the arch of the cave. It made Sarai think of Noah and his ark.
“We are safe here, I guess. We just have to wait ’til the storm is over,” she said. But it was getting late, way past supper time. They might have to spend the night, they and the old stag. The deer seemed to have lost all fear of them as if he had just reconciled himself to circumstances. So did Sarai and Brock.
“Like the deer that yearns for running streams, so my soul yearns for You, my God.” Sarai had thought of those words because just a few days ago Ernie Worth had read those words out loud from the bible as part of their supper grace. He repeated them at grace for a couple of days, so Sarai had them memorized.
Then, the wind and rain stopped as quickly as they had come. It was calm as if some force had commanded silence and creation obeyed. Even a trace of daylight appeared in the West. They forgot about the deer in the same instant as they concluded that they had better get across the stream before another burst came.
The buck had a similar notion. He raised himself by his front legs and stumbled up like an old man grabbing both arms of a rocker. He eased himself upright. The buck shook himself and a squall rained on the children. Without a glance, the buck bounded out of the cave and up the trail opposite the stream. He left the children to make their own decisions.
Sarai and brock could see their house on the next hill across the creek but there was no way across the swiftly flowing, muddy waters. Downstream looked more promising, down where the old truck was lodged with the bed of the pickup sticking up between the banks of the creek. Sarai thought that they might be able to use the old truck as a bridge. They scrambled out of the cave and hurried toward where the pickup was. Mud oozed up between their toes as they made their way to the swollen creek.
When they got there the pickup looked stuck solid as the water poured through the broken windows. Both the driver’s door and the passenger's door were gone. In some places, the metal looked as if it might crumble if forced. The back of the pick-up was rusted but intact. All four wheels were still on it, but the tires were gone.
Brock wasn’t waiting. With his left hand on a scrub tree, he pushed himself up onto the driver’s side of the wreck and grabbed hold of the fender well with his right hand. “He is big for his age but right now he looks so small,” thought Sarai. The current drove the water around and up and through the open side of the wreck.
“Be careful, Brock!” Sarai yelled. Brock swung himself up past the hood where the front door had been. The seat was gone but Brock, hand-over-hand made his way along the bed of the pick-up.
“Brock! Be careful! Don’t let the water push you through!” said Sarai.
“Stop it,” he said as he clung to the upper frame of the truck. You’re always bossing me around! I’m O.K!”
Brocks’s words were nearly drowned out by the sound of the rushing waters. Just then he lost his grip and was sucked under the water and through the open mouth of the stripped pick-up.
“Brock!” screamed Sarai. But Brock emerged on the other side of the wreck almost immediately, in a tangle of branches from a willow that hugged the opposite shore. The force of the swollen stream had pressed him against the bank. If the brush had not been there, Brock would have been swept downstream.
Water streamed off his head and clothes as he clung to the brush and carefully pulled himself up onto the bank. “I’m O.K.,” he yelled. “Now you!”
Sarai yanked herself up along the pickup’s skeleton and managed to hook her feet along the edge of the rusted-out rocker panel. The current was strong and would pull her under if it could. She was shaking.
What made her arms and legs shake was the rushing cold water. Her heart pounded and her resolve weakened as she felt the force of the waters pulling her down, down.
She was carefully making her way along the bed of the pick-up to the far bank when she was struck hard by something solid. It felt like a metal bar pressed against her left leg and she could not move it. She was being dragged under by the force of the object driven by the current.
"It's an old wagon, Sarai! Brock was yelling at her from the safe bank. "Push it away, he said. "You can do it!"
Sarai gave one big kick against the current and broke free of the wagon. Some child's treasured toy from years ago had become junk and was now quickly sucked down-steam.
Brock was waiting for her and helped her up the bank. They were both shaking now not so much from cold but from relief.
Sarai could see Ernie Worth on his old red John Deere tractor coming down the path. It was chugging along, and he was sitting high up with his right pant leg slit revealing his white plaster cast. The tractor threw clods of mud and stones as it came steadily down the path.
Ernie Worth had intended to rescue the children by fording the creek in their old tractor if he could. He would try to drive it across the stream and fetch his kids. But the water was high and the current strong. Then he saw Brock tottering up the creek’s bank toward home and behind him came Sarai. He took the tractor out of gear and idled as he waited — relieved to see his kids safely on the home side of the overflowing creek. Bernice had been trailing along behind the tractor and caught sight of her children safe and sound.
Sarai wanted to tell them about the old buck. Brock was thinking about a hot supper of greens and pork chops. They both hoped they weren’t going to be asked about the blackberries.
Back at the cave, the old stag was picking his way through the fallen branches as he slowly entered its shady coolness. Here and there a drop of water fell from his matted fur and then his huge head shook off the rest of it.
He stopped there in the cave for a moment and then ambled over to the far wall. where he lowered his head in front of the baskets of blackberries. His tongue swept up the dark, sweet berries from Brock's basket and then moved on to Sarai's until the berries were no more.
No Coincidences.(GERALD GLEN WATT)
NO COINCIDENCES.
When God sent his second deluge with flaming arrows, down, down to earth, two children were sheltering at the mouth of a rocky cave while they watched the dark sky yield a torrent of rain on their hillside deep in the Ozarks.
They shivered, not only from the rain soaking their clothes but from fear welling up in their souls like night specters. The sky launched white lightning bolts and belched great deep blasts which rolled and then shook the earth. The cave howled behind them and from somewhere deep, deep down in the earth’s cellar, a dank wind rose and stroked the backs of their necks.
The girl, bright-eyed Sarai, small-boned with light brown hair cut short, was eleven years old. She wore denim overalls and a long sleeve faded blue shirt. Still, she was tall for her age.
Even as young as she was, locals said she was going to make something of herself. When she walked through town, she held her head high and greeted people with a smile, at least. She was already trusted by her folks to do most of the buying in Julia’s general store.
Her brother Brock was seven and a rascal. He was what people used to call pudgy, nearly as tall as Sarai with the same color hair and a cowlick that refused to stay put. He also wore overalls and a hand-me-down grey pullover.
Both were barefoot.
The storm came in paroxysms, downpours, shaking the big oaks and bending the willows nearly to the ground, their branches springing back with every pause in the wind. It was as if the air itself had hands that reached out to pull and break other stems that refused to yield. Thunder rattled the land and rolled down the hollers.
Rivulets began to flow from under the brush and soon converged downhill in tiny streams flowing toward the creek that the children had to cross to return home. Their wide-open eyes turned dark, and their skin paled as the rain broke across the cave in great waves. They were soaked and cold.
Sarai and Brock had been out picking blackberries on a beautiful Thursday afternoon. Their mother had told them to pick only the ripe and plumpest berries from the thorny bushes that skirted the deep forest. She wanted to make blackberry pie for supper.
Without warning, the winds and rain had caught hold of them. There was nothing else to do but run to the nearby cave they knew so well and wait for the storm to pass. In the Ozarks, there are countless rocky caves, some just a few feet deep, but others like their cave featured an entrance like the maw of a gigantic beast and no one knew how deep it was.
The children felt safe at the opening of their familiar shelter, though the dank breath of the cave on the backs of their necks made them shiver. They were used to resting for a while after picking on the hill. Whether it was picking berries, or gathering greens or wild apples, they always rested at the cave for a few minutes before they made their way home. This time, however, both of their baskets were only half-filled with dark, plump berries. The baskets rested behind them now against the cave wall as the storm beat down upon the earth.
Suddenly, a hot, white flash exploded right in front of them and split the huge oak tree just outside the cave. Two heavy branches crashed to the ground with the heft of the weight of their hundred-plus years. The children had instinctively fallen back when the bolt hit. It was a good thing they did because one of the severed limbs of the great oak had crashed against the entrance and slowly slipped down, down, nearly sealing off the entrance.
Neither of them could hear their gasps and swallowed screams. They were suddenly deaf to the tearing and howling around them. The loud crack of the lightning bolt had dulled their hearing. The storm eased a bit. Then, a swirling wreath of grey smoke rose from the blackened trunk. And a strong acrid, tinny odor reached their nostrils.
Mom said there were no coincidences, though. Everything was planned and sent by God. Earlier, a hummingbird had hovered and flashed its red throat at them as they were bent over picking blackberries. They thought it was a sign of God’s favor. Why should that beautiful bird linger unless to assure them that all was, and would be well?
Ernie Worth, their father, always said that they should listen to God. That they should watch for Him, too. “The Lord is fixin’ to say something, and we better pay attention," he said.
About two weeks ago, when Ernie Worth was working the corn field near harvest time and the sun was churning the hot air all around him, he had paused and looked at the rows of green stalks laden with huge ears and saw them as rows of ragged individuals standing tall facing the sun their green pockets filled with grain. He was one of them, graced to be there in that field on that day, on that morning, even in the unrelenting heat.
He’d felt that all of it — he, the corn, the sky — all was as it should be. God willed it so. And of this event, he informed his children in detail. They remembered that story now and wondered how God would explain the storm as something that ought to be.
Just across the creek was home. Two hours earlier, when Sarai and Brock had crossed it, the creek ran clear and had just covered their bare ankles as they made their way with their hand baskets. Now the creek was waist high, and the current was strong, muddy with soil and leaves and broken branches. They couldn’t see anything beyond the swollen creek because the rain still came down in cloudy sheets.
The sky was getting darker and was swollen with black-purple clouds that rose in a swirl and then blanketed the sky. It was late afternoon.
They remembered seeing their old broken Chevy pick-up floating down the creek during a similar storm last year. For years, grandpa’s pick-up had been rotting there near the creek with its hood up like it was waiting for something to eat and the tires flat. It became a victim of last August’s flood.
Once cream-colored, now it was mostly rusted, burnt like an overbaked loaf of bread. The flooding from the creek had snatched the old pick-up and sailed it down the holler where the force of the stream had jammed its nose down at a 45-degree angle while the creek flowed around it. But today the creek had nearly swallowed the truck as the water continued to rise.
“I wonder where the birds go when there are storms like this,” said Sarai. Brock yelled, “I don’t know but God’s eyes are on those sparrows. I know he’s watching us, too.”
Ernest “Ernie” Worth was laid up with a broken ankle, an injury from a misplaced step among the rocks of a close-by hillside. The family well had been pumped just about dry and he’d been trying to drive a metal pipe, three inches in diameter, into the side of a hill where he was sure there’d be water.
. While he was trying to maneuver the pipe deep into the hill with a sledgehammer, he’d lost his footing and fell. Something in his right ankle snapped when he twisted it between the rocks.
Well, Ernie Worth had enough water now. Too much. The corn was knocked down, but the soybeans might make it. No use worrying about the tomato plants and squash. He was sitting on the porch with his leg in a cast watching his vegetable garden as it was washed away in the torrent.
Bernice “Burney” McGuirk was a dark-haired, bulky woman with a sense of humor that made just about everything OK. She’d married Ernie while she was a sophomore in High School. Ernie had signed out of school on his sixteenth birthday. Ever since, one way or the other, Ernie and Bernice were together and made things work for their family.
Today, however, was another thing. Both she and Ernie Worth were worried about their kids. She’d guessed that they would be sheltering in the cave just across the creek. Their kids knew how to take care of themselves. They would be soaked and cold but alright. Still, of course, she fretted, anything could happen. “Lord, they’re in your hands,” she prayed.
At the cave, there was a movement in the brush to the left of the children. Someone or something was stumbling through the brush and making for the cave.
“It’s a deer! Brock said quietly. But it was not like the elegant-looking creatures that they’d seen in flocks out in the fields. This deer was old, his dark gray fur sagged where there used to be firm muscle. Still, he was stocky and antlered. A buck!
It stomped once or twice, a pause to consider what it should do next.
“He doesn’t know we’re here,” whispered Sarai. She was not sure Brock had even heard her as the storm went on. And then she said, “He’s coming in here!”
The children quickly moved to the other side of the cave next to the cold limestone pocked with irregular holes. Water poured down the walls, but the incline had the water moving down, down toward the creek. The stag bounded up and into the entrance of the cave.
He was more gray than brown and several of the spikes of his antlers had broken off. He stood there, huge eyed with water running off of him, head bent, mouth gaping, and his sleek, pink tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth as he breathed heavily. He still hadn’t noticed them. They were a coin toss away.
In the next instant, though, he turned his head toward them. His dark brown eyes took them in, and a decision was made: ‘No danger from those two. They are like me.”
The buck lowered his head and his neck followed. He was panting and shivering as he gathered his legs and folded them down into a form that blended in with the grey yellowed rock and the messy underbrush. His breath came and then went with expiratory nasal whistles which Sarai and Brock could hear even with the storm as loud as ever.
The rain refused to abate, if anything the wind was stronger and the sound of it swooshing through the trees was unnerving. So now they were three in the arch of the cave. It made Sarai think of Noah and his ark.
“We are safe here, I guess. We just have to wait ’til the storm is over,” she said. But it was getting late, way past supper time. They might have to spend the night, they and the old stag. The deer seemed to have lost all fear of them as if he had just reconciled himself to circumstances. So did Sarai and Brock.
“Like the deer that yearns for running streams, so my soul yearns for You, my God.” Sarai had thought of those words because just a few days ago Ernie Worth had read those words out loud from the bible as part of their supper grace. He repeated them at grace for a couple of days, so Sarai had them memorized.
Then, the wind and rain stopped as quickly as they had come. It was calm as if some force had commanded silence and creation obeyed. Even a trace of daylight appeared in the West. They forgot about the deer in the same instant as they concluded that they had better get across the stream before another burst came.
The buck had a similar notion. He raised himself by his front legs and stumbled up like an old man grabbing both arms of a rocker. He eased himself upright. The buck shook himself and a squall rained on the children. Without a glance, the buck bounded out of the cave and up the trail opposite the stream. He left the children to make their own decisions.
Sarai and brock could see their house on the next hill across the creek but there was no way across the swiftly flowing, muddy waters. Downstream looked more promising, down where the old truck was lodged with the bed of the pickup sticking up between the banks of the creek. Sarai thought that they might be able to use the old truck as a bridge. They scrambled out of the cave and hurried toward where the pickup was. Mud oozed up between their toes as they made their way to the swollen creek.
When they got there the pickup looked stuck solid as the water poured through the broken windows. Both the driver’s door and the passenger's door were gone. In some places, the metal looked as if it might crumble if forced. The back of the pick-up was rusted but intact. All four wheels were still on it, but the tires were gone.
Brock wasn’t waiting. With his left hand on a scrub tree, he pushed himself up onto the driver’s side of the wreck and grabbed hold of the fender well with his right hand. “He is big for his age but right now he looks so small,” thought Sarai. The current drove the water around and up and through the open side of the wreck.
“Be careful, Brock!” Sarai yelled. Brock swung himself up past the hood where the front door had been. The seat was gone but Brock, hand-over-hand made his way along the bed of the pick-up.
“Brock! Be careful! Don’t let the water push you through!” said Sarai.
“Stop it,” he said as he clung to the upper frame of the truck. You’re always bossing me around! I’m O.K!”
Brocks’s words were nearly drowned out by the sound of the rushing waters. Just then he lost his grip and was sucked under the water and through the open mouth of the stripped pick-up.
“Brock!” screamed Sarai. But Brock emerged on the other side of the wreck almost immediately, in a tangle of branches from a willow that hugged the opposite shore. The force of the swollen stream had pressed him against the bank. If the brush had not been there, Brock would have been swept downstream.
Water streamed off his head and clothes as he clung to the brush and carefully pulled himself up onto the bank. “I’m O.K.,” he yelled. “Now you!”
Sarai yanked herself up along the pickup’s skeleton and managed to hook her feet along the edge of the rusted-out rocker panel. The current was strong and would pull her under if it could. She was shaking.
What made her arms and legs shake was the rushing cold water. Her heart pounded and her resolve weakened as she felt the force of the waters pulling her down, down.
She was carefully making her way along the bed of the pick-up to the far bank when she was struck hard by something solid. It felt like a metal bar pressed against her left leg and she could not move it. She was being dragged under by the force of the object driven by the current.
"It's an old wagon, Sarai! Brock was yelling at her from the safe bank. "Push it away, he said. "You can do it!"
Sarai gave one big kick against the current and broke free of the wagon. Some child's treasured toy from years ago had become junk and was now quickly sucked down-steam.
Brock was waiting for her and helped her up the bank. They were both shaking now not so much from cold but from relief.
Sarai could see Ernie Worth on his old red John Deere tractor coming down the path. It was chugging along, and he was sitting high up with his right pant leg slit revealing his white plaster cast. The tractor threw clods of mud and stones as it came steadily down the path.
Ernie Worth had intended to rescue the children by fording the creek in their old tractor if he could. He would try to drive it across the stream and fetch his kids. But the water was high and the current strong. Then he saw Brock tottering up the creek’s bank toward home and behind him came Sarai. He took the tractor out of gear and idled as he waited — relieved to see his kids safely on the home side of the overflowing creek. Bernice had been trailing along behind the tractor and caught sight of her children safe and sound.
Sarai wanted to tell them about the old buck. Brock was thinking about a hot supper of greens and pork chops. They both hoped they weren’t going to be asked about the blackberries.
Back at the cave, the old stag was picking his way through the fallen branches as he slowly entered its shady coolness. Here and there a drop of water fell from his matted fur and then his huge head shook off the rest of it.
He stopped there in the cave for a moment and then ambled over to the far wall. where he lowered his head in front of the baskets of blackberries. His tongue swept up the dark, sweet berries from Brock's basket and then moved on to Sarai's until the berries were no more.
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Gerald R Gioglio
10/28/2022Nice Gerald. Loved it. Hey, I got two true deer stories here, Animal Attraction & Look of Love. You may want to check 'em. Best, JG
ReplyHelp Us Understand What's Happening
GERALD GLEN WATT
10/28/2022Just read "Animal Attraction." Nice job! And thanks for your comment! G. Watt
Help Us Understand What's Happening
Help Us Understand What's Happening
GERALD GLEN WATT
10/28/2022Kevin -- Thanks for the comment and for taking a moment to let me know that you liked it.
Help Us Understand What's Happening
BEN BROWN
10/28/2022Wow! That was amazing and adventurous. I've had dreams about being in great storms with rapids and tremendous waves.
I like the image, which you have included too. Well done.
Help Us Understand What's Happening
BEN BROWN
10/30/2022Thank you for complimenting me on my story.
Help Us Understand What's Happening
GERALD GLEN WATT
10/28/2022Thanks for reading my story. Glad you enjoyed it.
Just read "The Artist's Eye" -- nice job! I've learned much from artists. They've helped me see what I could have easily missed. Blessings, GW
Help Us Understand What's Happening
Lillian Kazmierczak
10/27/2022This was a great story, lots of suspense and well-written! Congratulations on short story star of the day!
ReplyHelp Us Understand What's Happening
GERALD GLEN WATT
10/28/2022Thanks, Lillian, for taking the time to let me know you enjoyed my story. Blessings, GW
COMMENTS (4)