Tales from Under the Desert Palm

By Ann Tonnell, Ellen Hoil, Janis E. Mills and 6 more

Nine authors. Nine short stories. These prequels and sequels will lead you further into the characters and stories you have loved.

Nat Burns−And to the Child
Rae D. Magdon−Bombs Just Happen
Kellie Doherty−Dangers in the Daylight
Ann Tonnell−Family of Choice
Toni Draper−Miracle on 34th Street
Janis E. Miles−Out and About
Jazzy Mitchell−Scheduling Happiness
Ellen Hoil−Stand by Your Girl
S.L. Kassidy−Warrior Class Claiming the Stars

All proceeds from the sale of this book will go to helping True Colors United. Their purpose is to implement innovative solutions to youth homelessness that focus on the unique experiences of LGBTQ young people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Desert Palm Press
• Release date: Dec 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9781954213548

Ann Tonnell

Ann Tonnell is a retired RN, having worked in management most of her nursing career. However, her first career was typewetting and composition. It was not until retirement that she found inspiration to capture stories in writing. She lives with her wife in a small community in the North Georgia mountains just yards from the Appalachian Trail. She is a DIY dabbler and avid cloud admirer.

Book preview

Tales from Under the Desert Palm

By Ann Tonnell, Ellen Hoil, Janis Mills, Jazzy Mitchell, Kellie Doherty,

Nat Burns, Rae D. Magdon, S.L. Kassidy, Toni Draper

©2022 Ann Tonnell, Ellen Hoil, Janis Mills, Jazzy Mitchell, Kellie Doherty,

Nat Burns, Rae D. Magdon, S.L. Kassidy, Toni Draper

ISBN (book)9781954213531

ISBN (epub) 9781954213548

This is a work of fiction - names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events or locales is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Desert Palm Press

www,desertpalmpress.com

1961 Main St, Suite 220

Watsonville, CA 95076

Editor: Kaycee Hawn

Cover Design: Mich Brodeur eeboxWORX

Contents

About Tales from Under the Desert Palm

Nat Burns−And to the Child

Rae D. Magdon−Bombs Just Happen

Kellie Doherty−Dangers in the Daylight

Ann Tonnell−Family of Choice

Toni Draper−Miracles on 34th Street

Janis Miles−Out and About

Jazzy Mitchell−Scheduling Happiness

Ellen Hoil−Stand by Your Girl

S.L. Kassidy−Warrior Class Claiming the Stars

About the Authors

About Tales from Under the Desert Palm

Nine authors. Nine short stories. These prequels and sequels will lead you further into the characters and stories you have loved.

Nat Burns−And to the Child

Rae D. Magdon−Bombs Just Happen

Kellie Doherty−Dangers in the Daylight

Ann Tonnell−Family of Choice

Toni Draper−Miracles on 34th Street

Janis Miles−Out and About

Jazzy Mitchell−Scheduling Happiness

Ellen Hoil−Stand by Your Girl

S.L. Kassidy−Warrior Class Claiming the Stars

All proceeds from the sale of this book will go to helping True Colors United. Their purpose is to implement innovative solutions to youth homelessness that focuses on the unique experiences of LGBTQ young people.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the authors for their time and creative energy in making this book happen. All proceeds from the sale of this book will go to helping True Colors United. https://truecolorsunited.org/about/#

Lee Fitzsimmons

Dedication

To the readers. We couldn’t do this without you.

And To The Child

By Nat Burns

Prequel to The Rustle of Leaves (2017)

Shining

THE SHINE WAS HEAVY on her, they said. And it terrified most of them, those God-fearing people in her small Louisiana hometown. Some, like her Aunt Tilda, were impressed, awestruck by the three-year-old’s spot-on premonitions. If she couldn’t see someone’s face anymore, it was time to plan the funeral, a fact proven time and again. When the family got together, for holidays or church socials, Tilda was the one watching young Adaline Sharp, and she was the first to ask what the girl was seeing when she suddenly stilled and stared.

Others in the town of Baster saw the sudden stillness, the visions, as the devil’s work. Their firm admonitions to Ada’s mother were brief and to the point—raise that child in the firm guidance of God. It would be the only way to save the child’s soul from evil. The formidable Edith Mace Sharp had to agree. If she was honest with herself, her second oldest child’s ability to see the dead and predict the future frightened her. This startling ability did not appear elsewhere in the Mace or Sharp family lines and a part of her easily believed an antichrist was indeed influencing her child.

Deacon Jeffrey Sharp was not so afraid, however. He thought that perhaps it was angels who spoke to his daughter, and that their messages might be benevolent. Might be helpful. He also thought that maybe others needed to hear what the angels were saying, so a cottage industry was born in which little Adaline would touch people and tell them what the angels said to her. There was a donation, of course, a fee that would help take care of God’s tiny, inspired messenger.

Adaline learned early on to say what people wanted to hear. Luckily, the shadow folk who spoke to her told her the right things to say. Things that brought smiles to people’s faces and money into her father’s hands.

When Adaline’s mother tried to step in and protest that what the child was doing could be of the devil, Deacon Jeffrey laid down the law with a firm slap of the hand. As the man of the house, he represented everything that God wanted for the Sharp family. He would decide what was evil and what wasn’t. Adaline knew then that she had to protect her little sister, Reese. She, too, had the shine, but it was their deep secret. Adaline taught her how to pretend she didn’t have it. No one, neither father nor mother, could know about it. Mother would condemn it and Father would use it to their advantage.

Adaline understood that she also had to pretend to ignore the messages and visions the devil sent whenever her mother was around. She surely never told her about them or even offered this information unbidden to anyone as she grew older. Sharing the information that was imparted to her meant further trips to the old, ramshackle coal shed behind their house trailer, where she’d be severely caned and locked away. After the caning by her deeply offended mother, the next few hours were to be spent in prayer and reflection, facing the black-smeared coal bin, until it was felt she had pushed away the evil dominating her spirit. Sometimes her mother forgot about her for a goodly length of time and her father or sister would come looking for her. As the slatted door was locked from the outside, her only companions as she awaited her family’s rescue were the toads and salamanders that snuck inside.

And the ever-present minions of the evil one.

Silent Reading

Silence was a tool young Adaline learned to use to her advantage. In the deep silences of her denial, she studied the abilities she possessed. The premonitions whispered to her were amazing in their veracity. Even something as simple as the plate she knew her mother would drop and break at suppertime. Adaline knew what night the gumbo would burn and so ate a larger lunch that day. And those people she saw daily, those dead, shadowy ones, they told her things. They told her what books she should read at the elementary school library and how she should hide them from her parents. How to tuck the books into her bedroom so no one could see the titles on the spines.

The librarians at the school and later at the Crow County Public Library, busy with their own lives, just saw her as precocious. A bit odd, as everyone in town knew, but harmless. Their curious glances flew off Adaline like water on duck feathers, fading in the brightness of her smile as they date-stamped her esoteric book loans.

The dead also warned her about Pastor Ferguson, the elderly cleric at the Light of God’s Faith Holiness Church. They explained why he felt the compulsion to touch her in sacred places when her mother sent her to him for her weekly counseling sessions. They, and Adaline, watched from someplace far away as he touched her then touched himself with harsh, jerking motions. Then they would pray together, and he would weep and beg forgiveness from her and from God.

Adaline knew not to tell anyone about the touches. They had to be yet another secret because telling would, no doubt, bring on more caning and more wasted time. There were no books in the coal shed, books that might have kept the whispering and the premonitions at bay for a short time. Each long, bookless stretch in the darkness of the coal shed had only energized the shadows of the other side, making their God force ever more prevalent in her daily life. They told her that Dawnie Crichton needed her.

Dawnie

Guided by the shadow figures, Adaline found Dawnie in the alley behind the Dollar-A-Day store in downtown Baster. Adaline’s mother was in the dollar store, searching for paper goods for the next meeting of the Benevolent Women of God’s Faith, and this allowed Adaline time to wander out and meet the young girl.

Hey, Dawnie, Adaline said as she approached the pre-teen.

Dawnie had been crouched down behind a large trash bin, smoking a cigarette butt she’d found on the ground. This knowledge disgusted Adaline, but Dawnie dropped it quickly as Adaline approached. She watched Adaline like a feral cat caught in a cage. She clenched a disposable lighter too tightly in her right hand.

How you be knowin’ my name? she asked, her voice hostile. I don’ know you.

Adaline studied the dark-haired girl, noting the hollowed cheeks, the deep set, fearful eyes, the mouth held firm in worry. But I know you, she said slowly. I know that your daddy is first in line every day when the liquor store opens. I know how you hate the smell of it on him when he passes you in the hallway on his way to the bathroom.

Dawnie’s eyes widened. How can…?

I know about your mama. She hasn’t said ten words to you all month. I know about those patches she buys off her friend Immie. How she puts them on her hip so no one will see, not even your daddy when he messes with her now and again. Oh, I know.

Interest flared in Dawnie’s eyes. And speculation about how Adaline, a ten-year-old like herself, could know so much. Could know things that Dawnie had never breathed to a living soul.

I know about your brother, too, and we’re just going to have to fix that, Adaline added.

Dawnie looked away finally. You can’ fix it. He’s too strong and he’d tear your head off soon’s look at you.

Adaline laughed, an odd sound that drew Dawnie’s interest again. She watched as Adaline retreated toward the back corner of the store’s brick wall.

I’m going now, but you and me, we got some planning to do. I know you been missing school a lot, but you come tomorrow. We’ll eat lunch together, all right?

Adaline rounded the corner and stepped back inside the store. She glanced around for her mother. Not seeing her, Adaline moved to an aisle near the back of the store and picked out a set of flowered barrettes that she knew would look good on Dawnie’s dark hair. Tucking them into her sneaker as she pretended to tie it, she hummed a happy tune. She and her new best friend were going to have a lot of fun.

Stan

And there were other friends.

I like the way the hair sweeps back from your forehead, Adaline told him in science class. And the way it curls above your ears. How do you get it to do that?

She studied the youth who’d just moved to Baster. She knew so much about him. He was new to her classes at the John T. Axel Middle School and his shiny newness was very appealing to the twelve-year-old Adaline. He’d been to places she’d only read about. Dreamed about. And he loved witches.

He seemed surprised by her forthrightness. Girls were seldom so forward. I dunno, he responded with a shrug of his slender shoulders. I guess it’s ‘cause I sleep with it wet. Too many at my house tryin’ to shower in the morning so I does mine at night.

Adaline nodded. Sounds reasonable. She extended her right hand. Name’s Adaline. This is Dawnie. She indicated the girl in the desk next to her. Dawnie was silently studying the new boy.

He glanced around to see who was watching before he shook Adaline’s hand limply, quickly. Stan. Stan Willis.

So, Stan, tell me. Have you ever wanted to be a witch?

His eyes grew wide and he glanced quickly at Dawnie. What…what makes you say that?

Well, just so happens me and Dawnie here have us our own little coven we’re trying to grow. I just thought it would be something you might be interested in. It’s all right if you ain’t.

Stan cleared his throat and glanced toward the front of the room, where the teacher had just written the night’s homework assignment on the board. I didn’t say I wasn’t exactly.

Dawnie passed him a small, folded note.

Ten tonight, Adaline said quietly. Do your homework first.

Adaline watched as Stan palmed the note with one hand even as his other hand scribbled the homework assignment into his notebook. She smiled.

Racing Home

Adaline allowed Chad’s abuse of Dawnie to continue for another four months, though she often harbored her new best friend at her house for nightly sleepovers.

Dawnie had seemed alarmed at first by the large number of religious paraphernalia that decorated Adaline’s double wide house trailer, but she soon realized that they were only important to Edith and her husband, the deacon. Oh, Adaline paid due reverence to the central crucifix in the dining room when her parents were home, but her saucy wink told Dawnie how she really felt. On her second visit, Adaline pointed out the large fireplace under the huge portrait of blessed Jesus. This is for them, she said quietly. It would be a few years before Dawnie understood what that meant.

Side by side in Adaline’s single bed, the girls planned their revenge. Dawnie’s brother Chad had to pay for the evil he’d brought to his sister’s world. They discussed many things, especially ways to torture the older teen, but it all came down to one idea. Chad had to die. Evil such as his just could not live on.

What would God do? This was what the girls asked themselves. It was Dawnie herself who said to smite him. Smite Chad dead.

Chad liked to race off-road bikes. That and terrorizing his sister seemed to be his only passions. He and his noisy high school buddies would ride and race on the hills behind Molly Hatcher’s family home. Molly was sweet on Chad and they’d been dating the better part of a year. Even Molly’s father approved of Chad and the two of them, according to Dawnie, worked on the bicycles together. Old man Hatcher, who owned the thrift store in town, even showed Chad ways to make his bicycle the fastest around even with the fat off-road tires slowing it down.

Chad seemed surprised, but obviously pleased when Dawnie and Adaline asked to watch the races that summer. He even gave them rides up to Hatcher’s on the back of his old rattletrap pickup, the girls bouncing around next to his well-strapped down bicycle. They went to every race for two whole months. When autumn beckoned, however, the girls knew that school would quickly take away their chance at retribution.

As soon as they arrived at what would be the last race of the season, they slipped away for a half hour or so. No one missed them. Watching the races for so long had let them know that Chad would be first to speed down Hogswallow Hill.

The word trickled down quickly after they returned, passing like a lit forest fire along the small crowd of people gathered to watch the races. Someone had been hurt. There’d been an accident. Sometime later, the word came across that someone had died. Molly Hatcher had risen from her lawn chair then, her eyes scanning the trail. Her gaze settled on Dawnie and Adaline, and Adaline’s eyes closed as she savored Molly’s knowing.

The Box of Souls

It was quiet in the basement of the old Gleason house. Folks said it was haunted and Adaline heartily agreed. Perhaps that was why she liked being there so much. It felt like home.

She leaned forward and unbuttoned Dawnie’s shirt. It was a man’s shirt that they had taken from the Hatter’s thrift store on Bleacher Street. They stole a lot of items from there. Molly, who worked there, had been girlfriend to Dawnie’s older brother, Chad. When feeling particularly mean, she had even encouraged him to beat up on his little sister. Adaline often wondered what would have changed about that if she’d known what Chad was doing to Dawnie in the bed late at night. Would she have been outraged? Jealous? Or would she have encouraged him to rape her again?

It was a moot point now, just a little mental masturbation. The wire that Dawnie and Adaline had strung across the bike path he’d raced on had taken care of the issue. Chad would never bother Dawnie again. And Molly was definitely still afraid of the two girls. A good thing.

Adaline pressed her palm gently against the center of Dawnie’s bare chest. Dawnie never wore a bra these days and Adaline was glad. It made her sweat with desire just seeing Dawnie stride across a parking lot.

She caught Dawnie’s gaze with hers. They smiled at one another and Adaline licked her lips. She leaned forward for a kiss just as stealthy footsteps sounded on the floorboards above.

Adaline gently licked Dawnie’s bottom lip and backed away. Come to my room later.

Dawnie nodded as she rebuttoned her shirt.

Adaline consulted with the shadows then stood to welcome her dear friends.

There were six of them now, and they’d made it all the way to high school. There was Adaline, Dawnie, and Stan, of course, as the core group. Then there was Lizzie Sinch, a new girl who was good at traveling in certain circles. Her mother was a working girl in Baster and Lizzie had cultivated some valuable friendships among the nighttime crowd. Guns, dope, money. It was all available in her capable hands.

Large, athletic Curt Marcus had been with them a while now and was the muscle of their little group. He was