A Brief Glimpse Of Shadow

By Everly Hartland

A collection of short stories for the hurried modernaire. It includes:

Incident on Twin Bridges Road,
Vegitus Humanus,
Bird Shadow,
Company Man,
A Golden Blue Tomorrow,
Hero On The Wire,
The Last Life of Ogden Karr

• Language: English
• Publisher: Everly Hartland
• Release date: Apr 20, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452350257

Everly Hartland

I have lived many hats so far (yes, I meant to say that). I've worn farmer, teacher, artist, rancher, builder, parent and lover, among other. Sometime you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you but it gives me something to write about either way.My family, critters and I live in the woods, near a lake in the country. Thank you for taking time to read me.

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A Brief Glimpse Of Shadow

Short stories for the hurried modernaire

Copyright 2010 by Everly Hartland

Cover photo copyright 2009 by Roberta Humiston, used with permission

Smashwords Edition

License Notes

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This book contains profanity.

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This collection includes:

1. Incident On Twin Bridges Road

In 1932 three boys went for a motorcycle ride in the Ozarks. Only two came back.

2. Vegitus Humanus

A man, unable to move. A machine, his caregiver. Eternity in every direction.

3. Bird Shadow

A boy, his dad, an airplane crash. Oh, and thirty years in prison.

4. A Company Man

Loyalty.

5. A Golden Blue Tomorrow

Two kids, best buddies. Inseparable.

6. Hero On The Wire

 Some battles never end.

7. The Last Life Of Ogden Karr

Orphaned, he receives an inheritance that changes his life. Or was it really his life?

Plus, excerpts from the new novel Beneath A Pagan Sky, also by Everly Hartland

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Incident on Twin Bridges Road

When my grandfather Everett passed away a few years ago, my mother could not bring herself to go through his personal effects for a number of years. Last summer she finally divided his few things up and passed them along to each of her children. My brother got his old Marlin .22 rifle, my sister his Mexican saddle and I, his knife.

Now, lest you think I got the short end of the stick, you need to understand that this was no ordinary knife. No, indeed. She sensed what it meant to me and she was right. God bless her, I could not have wanted anything more.

I learned of that knife many years earlier, when I was a small boy and came across it on my grandpa’s dresser.  He let me hold it and  took me outside to the porch swing and told me the story that I’m going to tell you now. As that afternoon turned into evening and the locusts began their song, I was swept away into another time and one of the most powerful tales I’ve ever heard.

This is how he told it to me.

I was born 1915 and grew up in the Ozarks which are actually mountains although most people think of them as big hills. Some folks just came here from somewhere’s else. They came to work it, to cut the timber or dig out the ore, to kill and skin the game or what have you. But to me, it was home and I wanted no other.

We lived in Ozark County, along the White River near Mary’s Hollow where the hills roll high and wide, so close to heaven  every day was like a dream. Oh, life was hard, sure enough, but we were happy with it just the same. My daddy farmed as best he could on the rocky soil and raised some hogs and chickens too, of course, everyone did. I mostly helped out or worked with Mr. Wall at the feed store in Dora. 

I was about fifteen, I suppose, when I got to know Eli Wickham. Eli was about my age and I just thought he was a pretty special kinda guy. Nicer’n hell, smart too and just a lot of fun to be with. Mature for a seventeen year old.

We were classmates after his school was combined into ours for some reason. We hit it off right from the get go. Many afternoons we’d go fishing in the creek or hunting rabbits or squirrel deep in the woods.  We were at that age when girls were interesting and Eli was real handsome, you know, so wherever he was there was likely some girls not too far off. That was another reason I liked Eli.

He called me Spike for some reason. Maybe something do with the way I would get in a jam and refuse to back down. A billy goat chased me up a tree once and Eli was laughing his butt off, hollerin, All right, Spike! I think you got him just about where you want him!

Anyway, I had another friend at that time, a skinny little guy named Fred Katz. His last name was really something longer but everyone just said it ‘Katz’. Freddie and I were somewhat alike, in that we were always getting picked on by the bigger kids. I was too dumb to back down and took my lumps because of it. But poor Freddie was a coward, I guess you’d say, and was known to actually run away from a fight, often chased home crying and terrified. Lotta kids called him Fraidie Katz.

You could say I felt sorry for him, because it just wasn’t right the way they treated him. He didn’t deserve it and was no harm to anyone, but the more he shied away from trouble, the more it came looking for him.

So it was with some surprise that summer afternoon in ‘32 when Freddie, now sixteen, rode up to our house on a beat up, smoking, but highly desirable Harley Davidson 45! He had worked afternoons and weekends at the dry goods store in Branson for two years, saving every penny, until he could afford the forty dollars it cost to buy Roger Baskins’ old motorcycle.

Why, hell, I tell you, I was impressed! The silence was deafening after he shut it off. I could barely speak, just walking around it as it ticked and clinked, cooling its hot steel in the afternoon shade. I can still see it, the red paint chipped and faded, patches of rust subdued beneath a skim of coal oil, the leather seat cracked, the tires scuffed and tired, fender braces bent and re-straightened, a spoke or two missing from the wheels. But God almighty, it was beautiful. No, it was so damned exciting, so different from anything that either of us was familiar with, we both just stood there under the Elm tree, grinning and twitching, walking around it saying Whadya think? and Damn! and I love it and Yeah, me too!

Daddy came out and joined the slow dance around the machine, adding comments and admirations, pointing out this and that, cautioning against certain practices and urging for others. He congratulated Freddie, who he had never met, and invited him to stay for supper. Daddy was like that, mama too.

Freddie said thanks, but he was off to Eli Wickham’s and wanted to know if I could go too. Daddy said sure, he reckoned. Didn’t we want to stay for supper first?

It was about that time that Eli had begun to take Freddie under his fraternal wing, much the same as he had done me two years earlier. Eli wasn’t into that pecking order stuff that went on at school, he was just what you’d call a good old boy that liked everyone except Danny O’Neil and his thugs. They were the school bullies.

Danny and his boys didn’t mess with Eli cause Eli was bigger than they were. Not really bigger, I guess, just more mature and hard as he needed to be. On the one occasion Danny and Eli had butted heads over Doris Bryant, Eli just slapped Danny so hard he didn’t get up and that was the end of that.

So anyway, Eli liked me for some reason and I liked Freddie, so Eli liked Freddie too. Freddie liked me because he didn’t have any other friends and he really liked Eli because he knew that no one would screw with him anymore if he was Eli’s friend.

Thus, Freddie wanted to show his new old motorcycle to Eli and take him for a ride. Eli had an Indian Chief he was fixing up so Freddie knew he would appreciate the Harley. And off we went down the twisty dirt roads seven miles to Eli’s daddy’s farm outside Siloam Springs. 

Eli’s family was mountain folks although they were more sophisticated than you might imagine. His daddy was a blacksmith and poet that played fiddle at the county fair dances. His mama was an attractive woman whose face once graced Ivory soap box labels and who made clothes for the ladies at their church.

We found Eli in the back yard, in the work shed actually. He was very talented and made some of the most beautiful fishing lures and flies you’ve ever seen. His corn knives and machetes were preferred by the farmers in the area for their ability to hold an edge and he could always sell a few when he wanted a little pocket money.

It seemed like the Wickham’s were a happy family and that Eli was a loved son. He could box, chop wood like a maniac and run faster than anyone in the county but also had a nice singing voice, wonderful sense of humor and a real artistic ability. He came walking out when we rode up.

Eli too, did the manly slow dance around the Harley, saying many of the same things Freddie, Dad and I had just said at my house. It was good though, to say them all over again. He put his arm around Freddie’s shoulder and said ‘Good for you, Freddie, you got a damn good one here!’ and I know Freddie probably couldn’t have been happier, prouder or more grateful to Eli for the comment and for his new friendship. Freddie must have just loved Eli - in a manly way, of course. 

After a while Eli told us to come look at what he was up to. We followed him into the work shed and a wonderland of colorful lures and flies, some fantastic and some so realistic they looked like they had just been plucked off a birch tree. On his work bench were several lengths of steel cut from wagon springs. He had heated them red and beat them into rough knife blanks.

Two of them he had ground and shaped into handsome finished knives. The blades were sleek and smooth, blue black from the forge, polished by sand in