By Marie F Martin

The following are a couple excerpts from the Pinkum Crickers, a novel I salvaged from the bottom shelf in the back of my office closet because I was getting nowhere with a novel I am trying to craft.   This is where a feud begins.

The next morning, October 22^th, 1982, a gray unfriendly Saturday morning, Frankie Ferrell bypassed going to work at the log landing.  He wanted to supply Uncle Ross with the name of who gave marijuana to the twins, but he hungered for the answer, too.  His brother’s missing hand and for young Willie getting beat black and blue had to be paid for.  Frankie would learn who, and then they’d pay big time.  He’d teach those outsiders not to ever screw with a Ferrell.  Just like, someday he’d show those teachers at the town school a thing or two.  Thinking they’re so smart and calling him slow.  Maybe he didn’t do well with their long words in tiny print, but they didn’t know about the important stuff.  Like how he could take a colt apart, oil it and put it back together in the dark.  Or how his family stuck with him and he stuck with them.  He had dropped out of school and was done with them, but someday he’d show all of them that nobody could whip up on a Ferrell child or spike logs that tear off a hand and get away with it.  His mind stewed and sulked over Willie.  Frankie took a comb from his hip pocket and ran it through his brown hair.  He smoothed the beginnings of his first mustache, gunned the motor of his rattletrap pickup and left for Uncle Sam’s

The next is when the heroine moves into a home deep in the mountains along a creek.

There it was.   Arianne Hollis crossed a small wooden bridge that spanned Pinkum Creek and entered her own driveway with its no trespassing sign.  She worked her pickup through the rutted road.  At last she crossed Tumble Creek into her quiet little meadow.  “Hello little house that is all mine,” she said as she unlocked her cabin door.  Her voice carried in the wooded stillness.  She lowered it to a whisper as she added, “I am here.”    As she carried the last box into the cabin, she paused and listened.  Her scalp and muscles tightened as her mind registered.  That’s rifle fire!  She dropped the box and gazed around.  Another shot rang out followed by two more.  Then silence.  She didn’t hear anything.  No birds or wind or anything.  Her senses keen, her stomach knotted, she waited.  A yellow jacket buzzed near her arm.  She swatted at it and returned to squinting through the glare for any movement in the clearing or trees.  She waited, watching.  Finally, she gave up and carried the box inside.  As she firmly locked the door, the roar of a truck carried across the ridge.

Yes, I am rewriting it and it will be on Amazon something in the late spring or summer.

  Marie F Martin