Some Short Stories

By Spencer Spaulding

The book is a series of unrelated short stories based on the authors experiences and various news events. The stories are fiction, although some are suggested by actual events.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543429978

Spencer Spaulding

The author is a retired theoretical physicist with an employment history of electronics and space work with RCA, laser printer work for Xerox and communications satellites with Comsat Corporation.He enjoys writing and has a published book of poems entitled Inverse Thoughts.

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Copyright © 2017 by Spencer Spaulding.

Library of Congress Control Number:                2017909461

ISBN:                        Hardcover                              978-1-5434-2999-2

    Softcover                                 978-1-5434-2998-5

                                  eBook                                       978-1-5434-2997-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 06/14/2017

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CONTENTS

Lobo and the Spirit

Sister

Our Song

Wembly

Impact

Monkey Island

Lobo and the Spirit

Lobo and the Spirit

Quietly looking out the trailer’s kitchen window, Phil Norby gazed at the cloudless fall sky and the setting sun. The new gold letters that he had glued to the mailbox reflected the fading rays of the sun. That job was off his list and he felt good, knowing he had spent an extra two dollars for the thicker gold. It will last a lifetime, the hardware man had said.

Phil Norby was not a praying man, but he was acquainted with the Holy Spirit and had even felt His presence on several occasions. It had been a day much like today, and about the same time, when the Spirit had last come to visit. Phil called it the Spirit, but he knew from after-church Bible School that it was really the Holy Ghost, or the Holy Spirit. Phil found himself remembering all the events relating to the Spirit and how he now, somewhat restlessly, awaited the next visit.

The first time he had become aware of the Spirit’s presence was a late spring afternoon, when Sunday school classes were being promoted. The church door had been left open to bring in the cooler air and dissipate the food smells from the halls. Traffic sounds from the nearby street had modulated the quiet proceedings within the sanctuary as the young offspring clutched their new Bibles, beaming at parents.

During the lull that simultaneously silenced both the traffic and the inside proceedings, the Spirit had appeared. Phil had felt the Presence and had known exactly where the Spirit was standing. He had been shapeless and invisible and had radiated a sense of contentment, with a faint trace of urgency. Before Phil could respond, the Spirit had left. No one else seemed to have noticed that brief manifestation of the Spirit.

Over a period of time, Phil had sensed that the Spirit was expecting more of a commitment from him. As the sexton, he took care of the church facilities and did all the outside work, and for this, he was provided a trailer on the back corner of the lot near the manse. The church budget carried a line item of seventy-five dollars a week for sexton services. The arrangement provided him with all that a fifty-five-year-old bachelor really needed, and he supplemented that with a small vegetable garden behind his trailer. What bothered Phil was the feeling that the Spirit expected a greater commitment of self, of soul. He somehow felt he was expected to give his life to the spreading of the Gospel and to the teaching of others. Phil had never learned to do that.

Some people taught that God was mean and that He would send you to Hell if your record was blemished, but Phil had tried to explain to them that God was not like that. Most of them had not believed him and had not taken him seriously. As a result, he had stopped trying to teach them or to change their ideas.

It had been a Sunday after-church services that Lobo had appeared. Phil had been eating dinner at a little table in the dining room end of his trailer, with the inner door open, when a faint scratching on the screen door had finally penetrated his thoughts. He had gone to the screen door, and there was a small gray dog, standing quietly,