Weaving Words out of Tangled Thoughts

By Everett Thompson

This is a collection of short stories from first-time author Everett Thompson.  The stories cover many topics to include aspects of heaven and hell, good and evil, life and death along with love and hate. Readers will be treated to a twist or turn at the end of many of the stories and they will be left surprised or shocked but always entertained. The storyteller provides a lot of heart and tear-filled moments along the way too.  Enjoy the journey!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Totem Pole Publishing
• Release date: Feb 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386841685

Book preview

My First Love

We met when she was 18 years old.  We didn’t always see things the same way, but we were closer than any man and woman could be.  I was younger than her but mature for my age.  The first part of our relationship lasted seven years.  When she turned twenty-five, there was a feeling growing inside of me and one night before I went to bed I looked into her eyes and said these words, Will you marry me because I want to live with you forever?  I couldn’t afford a ring, but I was serious, and she knew my intentions were true.  She kissed me and said that she would always love me, but she was not sure if a marriage would work out.  I knew that was true because she was already in a serious relationship with someone else.  We stayed together for another eleven years, but I finally had to leave.  I cried the hardest tears that day.  They were so heavy that they could have broken the concrete sidewalk as I walked away from her.  Years, tears and fears got in the way, and there were no choices but to move on as most men do.  I will never forget those moments, and neither will she.  We still talk from time to time.  There is a great distance between us, but that bond will never break.  She is sixty-three now, and I am forty-five.  Our relationship started at my birth, and my Mom will always be my first love. 

Copyright © 2011 by Everett Thompson

Walls between us

They were both thirteen , and they talked every day for years.  They were inseparable and did everything together.  They were as close as a boy and girl could be.  Relationships change quickly at that age, and something came between them that made them see things differently.  They didn’t speak for years but often thought about each other fondly.  They couldn’t explain why walls came up between them, but they both hoped that things would change someday.  Walls grow wide and tall as time separates us.  It becomes harder to reach back for the past.  They couldn’t be any closer but so far apart from each other.  They thought about each other all the time but couldn’t bring themselves to see each other.  They both grew older but never married.  Twenty-eight years later they finally met again, and it was love and second sight.  They were in their early forties now, and it was 1989.  The wall that came between them came down that year in Berlin.  They were separated by time and concrete but connected by their inner souls.  Helga and Fritz married that same year and had two beautiful children.  Walls never came between them again. 

Copyright © 2011 by Everett Thompson

Jewel

The Levich family was a Jewish couple hoping to adopt.  Their family came from a town named Brody in Ukraine.  They wanted to reach back to their roots to adopt from that area.  Some of their family survived the Holocaust and some, unfortunately, did not.  They would hope to adopt a Jewish baby, but the adoption agencies do not know the religious background.  They were looking for a baby to love because they were unable to have any of their own. 

If the family members lived through the burning of Brody in World War I then it was likely that they were sent off to one of two concentration camps in World War II to Belzec or Majdanek.  Most were never to return to Brody.  Jacob’s grandfather survived in the ghetto by being hidden by an underground resistance group.  One of his sisters survived with him, but their parents, grandparents and older brother and sisters did not.  Jacob’s father and aunt survived by a desire for riches.  The family that saved them traded riches to the German to allow them to stay with them.  Gold and silver coins were given to soldiers not to search their apartment near the ghetto. 

Jacob and his wife Lydia were more than excited on their journey of hope.  Any child that needed a home would do as far as they were concerned.  They arrived the next day, and they had their driver take them straight to the orphanage.  There were more children than they could imagine and all with extremely sad stories and tales to tell.  Lydia noticed a young girl in a crib that pulled her way up the side to get a peek at the Levitz couple.  The little girl’s eyes sparkled like the sunshine on a crisp, cold morning in the winter.  Without saying a word, Lydia slowly walked toward that adorable soul.  The little child couldn’t have been more than 1 ½.  She reached her hands out for Lydia, and the temptation was much too great.  She lifted her out and held her close.  She wasn’t talking yet, but the driver started a conversation with the adoption home’s director.  They found out that the baby survived a house fire, but the parents perished. There were no living relatives, so she ended up in the orphanage.  She was beautiful.  Lydia couldn’t take her eyes off of her.  She turned around to find her husband surrounded by 20 boys and girls of various ages.  Her eyes met his, and he forgot about those who was tugging at his shirt and pants.  He reached down and gave them the chocolate bars that he brought from America.  The children opened the bars and shared them with all that was around.  Jacob saw the look in his wife’s eyes, but there was more than that.  There was something about the little girl’s face.  He didn’t know why but he was overtaken with a sense of joy.  He asked the driver to find out the little girl’s name.  The director spoke out in English that she was named Jewel Brodsky.  Jacob looked back at the little angel of a girl and knew what Brodsky meant.  Many Jews changed their last name to a variation of Brody if they survived the Holocaust.  He knew that she had to be of Jewish descent.  Jacob told his wife, and they so excited at the possibilities.  They were there only five minutes and fate; destiny or divine providence took over.  Jacob held Jewel, and she beamed with a brilliant sparkle.  There was something about her that was so familiar, but he did not know what it was.

They didn’t put Jewel down for even a moment from the time they got there.  The Levich couple needed to know more, but there was not a single doubt that they had found their beautiful baby.  The adoption takes weeks and sometimes even months, but that was but a flash in time for them.  They would have stayed years to have this dear child to be part of their lives.  Days passed, and they spent more and more time with Jewel.

Meanwhile, they hired a translator to research the child and her family.  There was a newspaper article found about deaths in a fire.  It was a young couple named Jonathon and Katherine Brodsky.  They lived in the town of Brody all their life.  The obituary was short, but it stated that they were both without a parent, but Jonathon had a living grandfather.  The address was found to be a home for the elderly.  No man of that age could take care of a baby.  The newspaper stated that his name was Jonah Brodsky which was interesting because Jacob’s great uncle who didn’t survive the Holocaust was also named Jonah.  He was just a few years older than his grandfather.  He was found by the Germans while trying to find food one night, and he was sent away to one of the prison camps.  The Levich husband and wife felt it necessary to visit the old man to get his blessing if they could.  He was a frail gentleman but had all his senses.  He could not stop looking at Jacob, and he called him Isaac.  Jacob responded by saying that his name was Jacob.  The old man again said, Isaac.  Lydia looked over to Jacob and asked why the man would be calling out Jacob’s grandfather’s name.  He shrugged his shoulders and looked over to the translator asking what was going on.  The Ukrainian spoke with Jewel’s grandfather for several minutes, and the translator looked back at Jacob with eerie eyes.  This old man says that you look like his brother Isaac who was separated from him back during the war.  He was sent off to a camp while his brother hid with sympathizers.  This story has repeated throughout time with many families separated in this same manner.  The old man spoke up and said out loud, my name is Isaac Brodsky. I grew up in Brody and lost my family to the war, he explained and then said, my brother’s name was Isaac, Isaac Levich.  My name was Jonah Brodsky after the war, but my name before the war was Jonah Levich, I say.  Jacob fell to his knees and investigated the face of the old man.  He looked around at the room and saw just a few old momenta of the man’s past.  Jacob picked up a picture frame off the nightstand and saw this man named Jonah along with his grandfather Isaac and his Aunt Lynda.  It couldn’t be possible.  He had died at one of the camps.  Jacob turned back toward the door where the orphanage director was standing with Jewel.  She put the little girl down, and she walked across the floor to her great-grandfather.  He picked her up and squeezed her.  The old man looked over to the translator and said a few words.  The Ukrainian spoke these words to Jacob and Lydia.  Jonah Brodsky Levich says that his great-granddaughter named after the one thing that helped him survive so long in Ukraine.  He was taken away one night by the Germans while trying to find food, but he escaped from the train before it made it to the labor camp.  He was taken in by a Polish family that was very rich with no children.  They hid him for several years until the war was over.  They