The Hair in Harris

By Dr. Carolyn Ferrante Crymes DBA MBA

The masters bastard children have the run of the plantation and the love of all, including the masters wife and children, until the neighboring masters show their true colors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524526733

Dr. Carolyn Ferrante Crymes DBA MBA

Carolyn Ferrante-Crymes is not just an author and a screenwriter; she is a wife and a mother of three children. While raising her children, trying to be a good role model for them, she has studied acting at Hartnell College in Monterey County, California. She also studied acting and improvisation along with her daughter at both the COCA Center for the Performing Arts and the Black Rep Theater in St. Louis, Missouri. She hosted a TV talk show called Stir Up the Gifts, Focus On You on a local St. Louis cable channel, where she interviewed new artists and local business owners and community service organizations. Carolyn performed in a play in a café in Buckhead, Atlanta, called Cecelia over the Half Moon as the Fat Lady that sings opera (layered in overstuffed clothing). She was also honored with a Blue Ribbon, which is the highest award possible for performing a monologue at a speech meet when she was on the speech team in junior high school. She has written six books for the purpose of movie scripts and is working hard to get those in theaters soon. She is a former student of Flo Valley Community College in St. Louis, majoring in filmmaking and acting. She has been acting, producing, and editing commercials, videos, and movie shorts at school, and she plans to submit some of her creations to film festivals in the Hollywood area and around the world. Carolyn has an MBA (master’s degree in business administration) and a DBA (doctorate degree in business administration). Although her DJ personality name was Dr. C at KCFV Radio (89.5 The Wave) in Ferguson, Missouri, she doesn’t care about a position where she’s called Dr. Ferrante-Crymes, she just wants to inspire and/or make an audience smile via her writings.

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by Dr. Carolyn Ferrante Crymes, DBA, MBA.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016911868

ISBN:        Hardcover                978-1-5245-2676-4

                  Softcover                  978-1-5245-2674-0

                  eBook                       978-1-5245-2673-3

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: 07/21/2016

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Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 1

Maggie Lena Harris walked around Helena, Arkansas, with her hair flowing around her creamy frosted cheeks without a care in the world. She and her cousin Claude would run through the clothes hanging in the yard on the slave quarters end of the two adjacent plantations. Then they would go to the barn where the men would leave their horses to be groomed after riding them. Behind the barn was a large room where the two Master Harris’ would get together for men talk. The two Master Harrises had adjacent plantations and were the largest landowners in the entire county. All of the slaves usually took on the name of their masters. Most everybody in the county had the last name Harris. There were two black kids that were very special to the Harris brothers. You see, Maggie and Claude were the bastard children of the two. Maggie and Claude were first cousins because their mothers were sisters (and their fathers were brothers).

Claude, like Maggie, had thick silky jet black hair that grew so fast that it had to be cut every week. All on both plantations loved both of the children, except for maybe the two Mrs. Harris. They never mistreated the children or their mothers, but there was an undercurrent that kept everybody quiet and avoiding too much contact.

Claude, Maggie, Master Harris called for the two kids to come over to them.

We brought you some chocolates. You sit right over there on the steps, so that you don’t make a mess, OK.

OK, Master Harris, they both echoed each other, and both masters hugged them both. They really loved and cared about their bastard children, and their mothers too.

Years later, many things had changed. Slavery had been abolished and most had moved away. Both Claude and Maggie’s moms had their own cabins on the plantation. One thing that didn’t change was the way all women just loved them some Claude, young and old, black and white. Of course, Claude had to sneak around when he dated white women because most folk knew he wasn’t full blooded although he looked as such. It wasn’t an accepted thing. In fact, it was practically against the law.

"Claude, you’ve got to find one woman and marry her. You git to messing