O.Henry Ending

O.Henry Ending

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The Student Teacher

A young stranger imparts a universal lesson

By David Spagnola

Illustration by Harry Blair

Pulling my warm, professionally-detailed BMW M5 out of the garage into a freezing storm, I drive down Cone Boulevard past a young man carrying some sort of bundle. It’s gloomy-dark and his back is to me and to traffic. For the life of me, I don’t understand how he made it this far without being run down. Hazard lights on, I roll the window down and say, “Hey.” 

He gives me a nonchalant, “What’s up, man.” 

I lower the window and ask him if he wants a ride. He leans in and looks around like it’s a spring day and says, “I’m all wet.” I reach across and open the door with an, “It’s just a car. Get in.” 

He does. 

“Where to?” I ask. 

“School,” he says. “Page.”

He’s soaked to the skin. 

“Don’t you have a raincoat or anything?” I ask. 

“I do,” he says. “I used it to wrap up my books.” I look incredulous and when he sees it, he says something that maybe he’d been waiting all his life to say: “Man, education is everything. You ain’t nothing without an education.” 

I don’t need to be told that. At 19, I had become a steel worker. The job was OK and the pay was great, but I soon realized what an education would lead to, which it did: being a street cop, then a homicide detective, now a business owner.

I drop him off and tell him that I bet the principal can find him some clothes to wear the rest of the day. Maybe not exactly in his style, but they’d be dry. He smiles and tells me to have a good day.

I do. 

The universe has a lot to teach us, but I am left wondering, “Who are the teachers, and who are the students?” At 70, just when I think I know it all, I meet a guy who, at 15, teaches me something that I didn’t even see coming till he was gone.

For the next couple hours as I watch my passenger seat dry off, I feel the karma a career cop gets from helping someone, especially someone who wants to get to school. But it’s not about that at all. 

When it hits, I realize it is about a 15-year-old kid reminding me that young people will be replacing us some day. And they are already on the job, preparing through thick or thin, whatever it takes, because, hey man, education is everything.  OH

Originally from Youngstown, Ohio, David Spagnola moved to Greensboro to join the police department, where he served for 30 years, 22 of those as a sex crime and homicide detective. He earned his degree in criminal justice from Guilford College. These days, he is a women’s self-defense trainer and consultant. Email him at davespag@gmail.com.

Life’s Funny

Life’s Funny

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Once Upon a Time

An adult finds a secret garden in children’s books

By Maria Johnson

Left to Right: Michelle Osborne, Cary Jackson-Adams, Jill Hare

Sometimes, when I’m looking for a soft and easy peace on a sleepless night, I’ll crook a finger and hook the spine of a children’s book, sweet shelved reminders of my boys’ younger years.

Maybe I’ll sink into the touching and funny Charlotte’s Web by the great E.B. White.

Or loll in the witty wordplay of Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein.

Or delight in A Child’s Calendar by John Updike, who was acclaimed — as in, he won two Pulitzer Prizes — for his serious adult fiction but clearly enjoyed tickling himself and his readers with simple reflections on every month of the year.

Here’s how he begins his ode to August:

The sprinkler twirls.

The summer wanes.

The pavement wears popsicle stains.

Popsicle stains. Can’t you just see the red blotches on asphalt? He ends with this:

The trees are bored

With being green.

Some people leave the local scene

And go to seaside

Bungalows

And take off nearly

All their clothes.

The verse is paired with an illustration of a bare-butt, pale-cheeked child on the beach. Every time I see that, I smile because, you know, butts.

I felt so validated when I read recently that another of my favorite writers, Ann Patchett, recommended reading young-adult books — the non-upsetting kind— if you want to fall asleep and stay asleep.

You bet your sweet Life of Pi.

And I’ll go even further down the literary food chain. I’ve been known to seek the soothing, mantra-like effect of word and rhythm in a toddler’s board book. And I swear on a stack of Dr. Seuss, if you say one word against the brilliant Margaret Wise Brown, author of Goodnight Moon, I will barge into your great green room and personally pop your red balloon.

So I surprised myself the first time I watched the YouTube video of Wonder Together: You & Me, the singalong version of a children’s story published a few months ago by three Greensboro Day School teachers.

One of them, lower-school music teacher Jill Hare, performs the song over a tinkly keyboard tune. She sings the lyrics that upper-school art teacher Carey Jackson-Adams originally wrote as a poem. Illustrations by lower-school art teacher Michelle Osborne flash in the background.

Have you ever counted all the drops in the sea?

Or climbed to the top of a redwood tree?

Have you seen the sky after a cool summer rain?

Or felt the roar of a mighty freight train?

Have you ever tasted a sun-sweetened fruit?

Or pet a new kitten, all fuzzy and cute?

Have you felt someone’s love when they hug you so tight?

Or smelled cookies baking and just wanted a bite?

My grown-up brain had questions — I mean who, really, has ever climbed to the top of a redwood tree? And shouldn’t it be “petted” a new kitten? —  but at the same time, my kid brain smelled those cookies and cradled that fuzzy kitten.

I felt the pinpricks of tiny claws, the cool wetness of a small, pink nose, and the rasp of a sandpaper tongue licking my hand. I heard a scratchy little mew.

I felt myself smile and relax. It was just a whisker of relief, but it was as real as the spray of white bristles on a kitten’s face.

What the Responsible Adult Heck?

These teachers were onto something. A few conversations later, the story of the book emerged.

It started about two years ago, when Jackson-Adams, a veteran art teacher, woke up thinking about the sights, sounds, smells and feelings that surround us every day — a veritable banquet of beauty.

She doesn’t think of herself as a writer, but she picked up a pencil and jotted down some small wonders.

“With so many weird things going on in our world, people arguing, so much negativity and divisiveness everywhere, I think it’s important for everybody to take a deep breath,” she says. “Smell the roses, walk your dog, pet a cozy, little kitten, smell cookies baking and, you know, just take time to be grateful.”

As she wrote, a cadence emerged. She showed the words to her friend, Hare, an experienced composer.

A few months later, Hare shared a couple of tunes that she thought would hook the 4-to-8-year-old crowd. She suggested that their mutual friend, Osborne, illustrate the poem and that they turn it into a book.

“Kids do best when they’re engaged with multiple senses,” Hare says. “So having something visual to pair with the tune helps their longterm memory and overall engagement.”

Hare was recalling the book-song combos — especially Sandra Boynton’s works — that she’d shared with her daughters, now 16 and 18.

“I just gave Boynton’s book Ooo, Baby Baby! to my oldest for her high school graduation,” says Hare, 49. “Children’s books, good ones, often seem simple but can have a very personal and deep meaning.”

Osborne, 43, was a fan of Sandra Boynton, too. She smiles at the thought of Your Personal Penguin; she used to sing the book’s companion song — by Davy Jones, formerly of The Monkees — to her daughter.

She still entertains her daughter, now 19, with silly songs. “She doesn’t enjoy it as much as she used to,” Osborne admits with a laugh.

The artwork and messages in children’s books always impressed Jackson-Adams, 63. Her childhood favorites included Homer Price by Robert McCloskey, A Pickle for a Nickel by Lilian Moore and The Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold.

“There’s a lightness about them, you know?” she says.

Osborne created eye-catching illustrations for Wonder Together with watercolors and paper collages. She dug out wallpaper sample books, given to her by an interior designer friend, and started snipping. She used her orange cat, Daniel, as a model for the kitten page.

Jackson-Adams’ niece, the graphic designer Anna Landewe of Saugerties, N.Y.,  joined the team, contributing her layout and design skills, along with guidance on how to line up an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) and other book-selling minutiae.

To market the book and music, Osborne created an Instagram page and website for the group, who call themselves The Wonder Collective. She included free, downloadable coloring pages and matching games.

As much as the book leans on technology and social media, the GDS teachers hope the upshot will be more screen-free interactions between adults and children — and between children and the real world.

“In my early days of teaching, we didn’t have screens,” says Osborne. “Kids might have played Nintendo or whatever when they got home, but it wasn’t as . . . ”

Jackson-Adams finishes the thought: “Every day, all day.”

So far, the project hasn’t turned a profit for the creators, who paid production costs out of their own pockets. But they have been rewarded in other ways. The day school’s first and second graders performed the song at their end-of-year concert for their families.

“I just sat there crying the whole time,” says Jackson-Adams.

“There were lots of people crying,” says Osborne.

I wondered how that must’ve sounded, an auditorium illuminated by little voices asking people if they had noticed other small things in life, too.

“Their young voices perfectly captured the essence of the song,” says Hare.  OH

Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry. Email her at ohenrymaria@gmail.com.

Tea Leaf Astrologer

Tea Leaf Astrologer

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Leo

(July 23 – August 22)

Well, you’re gonna love this. This month, the solar eclipse in your sign spells all eyes on you. Imagine starring in your own sitcom, navigating plot twists and obstacles with charm, wit and flawless hair. Everyone notices. Dream come true, right? But here’s the kicker: You must drop the performance. It’s raw or nothing, baby. As for the lunar eclipse at month’s end, ask yourself this: Is it retail therapy or a shopping addiction?

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Virgo (August 23 – September 22)  

Two words: early bird.

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

Think of it as an initiation. 

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)

Stock up on chocolate. 

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

Stretch those hip flexors. 

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

You don’t have to do it alone. 

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

Bring a hammock.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

You’re in the weeds, darling. 

Aries (March 21 – April 19) 

Pause before texting back. 

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

Freeze your pesto. 

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

Bookmark the recipe. 

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

Trust your body’s wisdom.   OH

Zora Stellanova lives in the N.C. mountains with her wolfdogs, Venus and Lilith. Although she prefers divining with loose-leaf pu-erh, she recommends a mugwort and passionflower blend for those seeking wisdom and clarity from the dream realm. 

Sazerac August 2026

Sazerac August 2026

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August 2026

JOI DE VIVRE

Summer, not-so-bummer reading: Growing up, reading was always a requirement in our household. “You need to have a summer book,” my mom would say, immediately followed by a groan from both my sister and me. We didn’t hate reading. We actually loved it, but we loved running outside and jumping on our trampoline more — typical kid behavior. After a trip to the library and a few pages into our choice of book, the complaining ceased. My sister’s readings were always young adult and my brother’s, car related, but dark academia and historical fiction always took my heart and still do. I remember one summer choosing The Secret History by Donna Tartt and The Women by Kristin Hannah and being completely bedridden with book fever for a few weeks. The words completely engulfed me. One page led to another and, before July heat even hit, I had finished both books and completed my summer reading. Being the young, energetic kid I was, I was eager to be back outside, but I never forgot how calm and relaxed a good book kept me. Now, as a 23-year-old, whenever I need to calm my mind, I just find a new book and dive in. Between you and me, I guess you could say my mother was right — just don’t let her know that I said that.   

        – Joi Floyd

 

 

 

Window on the Past

Photograph courtesy of the High Point Historical Society

This year, the High Point Library, seen here in 1954, turns the page on a new century. Celebrating 100 years since its 1926 founding, which was greatly supported by the Woman’s Club of High Point, the library invites you and your book-loving fam to several free, fun-filled events. Info: highpointnc.gov/3196/High-Point-Public-Library-at-100-Years

Indie Scene

Photograph courtesy of Damola Akintunde

Staying focused on film: “It was kind of senseless, but it was something I felt compelled to do,” says Angus MacLachlan, indie filmmaker, North Carolina native and University of North Carolina School of the Arts alum. MacLachlan’s latest, A Little Prayer, isn’t just a movie made in North Carolina, it represents the state. It explores the unlikely bond between a young woman, Tammy, and her father-in-law, Bill, determined to protect her from the hard truth of his son David’s affair. After its premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film festival, A Little Prayer made all the buzz and was soon picked up by a distributor to be released publicly in August 2025. Filming in his hometown, Winston-Salem, MacLachlan decided the best neighborhood to use was Konnoak Hills, where a few of his childhood friends grew up. “When I imagined the film, I just somehow imagined it being there,” he says. Other hotspots shown in the film include both Reynolda House and Old Salem Museums & Gardens, two Winston-Salem landmarks.

“I believed in it. Then once we really started going and I got actors at the caliber of David Strathairn and Celia Weston saying, ‘Yes, we’d like to be involved,’ it gave me courage to keep going.” Yes, you read it right, the cast includes both David Strathairn and fellow UNCSA alum Celia Weston along with Anna Camp, Will Pullen and Jane Levy, who received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Tammy. “If you’re from or spent time in the South then you know these characters and these types of people,” says MacLachlan. From quietly snoopy David to untamed Patti, you’ll likely find these personalities wandering around town.

Though the Tar Heel State embraced A Little Prayer, it also received national praise including from IndieWire and USA Today. But it was a hard road to get there. From raising the film’s funding to MacLachlan’s unexpected diagnosis of Stage 4 cancer to the COVID-19 pandemic, he could’ve dropped A Little Prayer, but he didn’t. Instead, with a wing and a prayer, he prevailed. With an eight-week run, the movie turned out to become one of the most played films in 2025 at a/perture cinema, Winston-Salem’s locally owned art house theatre.

Like most people, you’re probably wondering where the title came from. Well, that’s just another Southern touch as well. “I had a lot of different titles but when I’m worried I say ‘Oh well, say a little prayer,” explains MacLachlan. Turns out, he need not worry. Some projects just take gumption, grit, time — and maybe a little prayer.

For those eager to feast your eyes on A Little Prayer, it’s streaming now on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV or Fandango at Home.

Unsolicited Advice

Lately, avid readers have been ditching big-box book retailers and instead hitting up independent bookstores, and — luckily for us — Greensboro has volumes of them. With collections curated for the community, these bookstores are writing their own stories. This month, we dare you to support locally owned bookstores by gobbling up novels, nonfiction or even children’s literature handpicked specifically for Greensboro, by Greensboro, and see what stories speak to you.

Newly opened in June, Unfettered Books is breaking the bindings of big businesses one book at a time. With new and used books to choose from, and a variety of different genres compiled for the people of the city, there’s no better feeling than being a supporting character to their main-character energy.

Reading doesn’t always have to be a solo activity, sometimes it takes a village. Scuppernong Books is an independent bookstore that’s been making waves in Greensboro for 12 years. Bringing together residents with events ranging from book clubs — even hosting a monthly silent book club — to poetry open-mic nights, they’ve shown time and again that community is what keeps the bookworms biting.

Good things come in small packages and the shelves of Modern Monk Books are stuffed to the binds with tomes perfect for those with a soul-searching side quest. Created in September 2025 and located inside Awoo Coffee, they specialize in classical theology, philosophy, culture and history, and is spot-on for inquisitive thinkers — and coffee drinkers. So next time you decide to wander, take a look, it’s in a bookstore.

If you’re itching to venture beyond Greensboro in search of your next great read, we’ve got a couple of indie gems worth the trip. Main & Mountain Bookstore in Kernersville is packed with stories from indie and local authors — proof that a good story can be close to home. And the shelves of Book LOVE in Jamestown are brimming with every genre imaginable, all with a cozy and loving atmosphere — it’s all in the name. And, if you head to the Sandhills, pop into an O.Henry favorite, The Country Bookshop.

2026 Essay Contest

Time’s a-ticking on your PTO — and our annual essay contest! Remember the elementary school assignment about how you spent your summer vacation? Well, we’re reviving it — vacay or staycay? Tell us about a true tale as remembered by you about a trip to the beach or about the time you took a week off to meditate for hours a day wearing nothing but your socks and a bedsheet. As always, there are ground rules:

  • Submit no more than 600 words in conventional form — a PDF, Google document, or a word or pages file works well. Please no secret code that requires a decoder ring. We’ve misplaced said ring. Email entries to cassie@ohenrymag.com.
  • One entry per writer.
  • Deadline to enter is September 30, 2026.

Top three winners will be contacted via email, awarded a monetary prize and their essay printed in a forthcoming issue of O.Henry.

Almanac August 2026

Almanac August 2026

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Almanac August 2026

August is a sunflower labyrinth; constellations of black-eyed Susans; the first yellow leaf, descending.

Summer fades like fawn spots: subtly. It’s hard to notice when you’re in the thick of it. When earth bursts with coneflower and primrose. When the forest floor is flush with chanterelles and electric red-orange cinnabars.

We are cradled by lushness.

Wasn’t it yesterday that we were weaving among wild bramble, plucking warm berries, enlivened by the prickly kiss of thorn? Weren’t the fireflies just twinkling, making magic of these balmy nights? Honeysuckle lingers in the sultry air. Bumblebees bustle as if summer, too, were gaining speed.

The garden continues its wild giving. Thistle goes to seed. Apples begin knocking upon the sweetly turning earth.

Back when the fields were soft with daisies, spotted fawns hid in plain sight, silent as dappled sunlight. Then, they knew only mother’s milk and stillness. Now, they know of woody browse, wildflowers, movement.

Hummingbirds flit among cardinal flowers. The carnival of butterflies delight in all directions. A golden leaf slow-dances toward the forest bed.

In our nectar-drunken state, we are living beyond time. Dreaming, almost. Lulled by the hum of bees and a purple blur of blazing star.

Summer holds us to her chest. We want for nothing. But something is shifting in the soil that we can’t yet name.

Perhaps it’s the tender ache of being weaned. Of sensing the inevitable. Of letting yourself get swept up in the dreamlike wonder of a seemingly endless summer.

August was nearly over — the month of apples and falling stars, the last care-free month for the school children. The days were not hot, but sunny and limpidly clear — the first sign of advancing autumn.

— Victor Nekrasov

Homemade Ice Cream

Watermelon ice cream. Nothing says late summer magic quite like it. Especially when you make it yourself.

And it can be simple.

A quick internet search unearths recipes that require as few as two ingredients: frozen watermelon plus (coconut, almond or sweetened condensed) milk or yogurt. Add a pinch of salt for an added pop. Got a blender? Fresh ice cream in no time.

It’s sweet. It’s refreshing And, c’mon, it’s pink.

Serve with a sprig of fresh mint to take it to the next level.

The Big Squeeze

How to get the biggest squeeze of summer:

Freeze your pesto.

Pickle something.

Make honeysuckle sun tea.

Slice a tomato, straight off the vine.

Drift among flowers as a butterfly. 

Listen for the whippoorwill at twilight.

Let the field crickets lull you to sleep.

Wake up and smell the ginger lily.

Watch the clouds reshape themselves.

Arrange a bouquet of wildflowers.

Dip your feet in a tinkling creek.

Nap in a hammock. OH

Simple Life

Simple Life

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Life in Rabbit Land

Hare, There and Everywhere

By Jim Dodson

Illustration by Gerry O’Neill

Is there anything nicer than a summer evening after a surprise rain shower cools off the world?

I think not. Of course, being in the “evening of life” myself, I am perhaps not an entirely objective source on the matter.

On the other hand, Homer’s grandkids seem to agree with me. Homer is the rabbit that has made my yard his home for several years. Or, at least, that’s what I nicknamed him.

I was sitting here quietly by myself moments ago beneath Old George, our elderly maple tree at the garden’s edge, enjoying the cooler air and an evening drink, when they suddenly appeared — three young rabbits racing directly past me into the front yard, chasing, tumbling and hopping joyfully over each other like a circus troupe of acrobats entering the center ring. I watched them race around until they settled down to nibble grass in the newest section of the yard.    

I call them Homer’s grandkids because young kits appear every spring from the burrow where they reside beneath an ancient oak stump near my east garden gate, a well-protected enclave. I have no idea if Homer was the original patriarch (or, for that matter, matriarch) of the burrow, but a decade or so ago he captured our affections by showing up every morning and evening like clockwork to hang out with our old, gray tiger cat, Boo Radley. The two would often sit together in the garden as evening fell, just watching the day’s peaceful end. Theirs was an improbable “friendship” that went on for several years until Boo passed on and Homer went, well, wherever aging eastern cottontail rabbits go. I was inspired to write a whimsical book for my own grandkids, wondering at the time if I would ever have some. My artist friend, Harry Blair, drew the illustrations.

We live in Starmount Forest, so-named because its former wealthy owner was determined to keep the old-growth hardwoods intact — until he built a country club in the middle of it and passed the forest on to other owners, whose heirs — legend holds — began turning the forest into a postwar neighborhood of attractive suburban houses.

Fortunately, it still retains some of its character as an urban forest of mighty oaks and maples, and remains one of the oldest and most popular neighborhoods in the city. Growing up in Starmount, I have a keen boyhood memory of the abundant rabbits in the yards and gardens of the neighborhood half a century ago. They clearly preceded humans in lovely Starmount Forest. And will likely outlive us all.

My mom, a dedicated gardener, liked to say that we were the “newcomers to Rabbit Land,” hence their natural “nibbling rights” in a special section of her backyard garden she set aside for them. She planted things rabbits love to eat — snapdragons, morning glories, daisies and black-eyed Susans — thereby keeping them away from her beloved peony border and roses. Decades later, I adopted a version of her strategy when I built a large woodland garden in Maine and included a huge patch of hosta plants at the back of our property, designed to keep the whitetail deer out of my flower beds. It worked like a charm. 

Like my mom, I find something comforting and even magical about our neighborhood rabbits. They’re all around us and simply part of daily life here, a reminder that nature is never far away. On an average morning or evening walk around the block, you’re liable see at least a couple dozen of them feeding peacefully in yards or resting under shrubs from the heat of a long summer day.

I’m sure part of my affection for them stems from growing up in a generation of kids weaned on Beatrix Potter’s beloved Tale of Peter Rabbit, the classic 1902 children’s book about a mischievous young rabbit who disobeys his mother and gets into big trouble in Mr. McGregor’s vegetable garden. It ends with Peter making a wild escape during which he loses his clothes and is put to bed with chamomile tea while his sisters, Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail, enjoy a nice supper. It was a fable meant to remind young ones to always mind their mama. I still own my childhood copy of the book, which I plan to soon pass along to my new granddaughter, June Bug. The wee book on Homer and Boo will soon follow.

Another book that will wend its way to her is a beautifully illustrated first edition of Richard Adams’ Watership Down, an allegorical adventure story about a group of brave rabbits who set off to find a safe haven after their rural Hampshire warren is slated for destruction and development — a tale that holds echoes of today’s headlines about immigrants.

Critics uniformly hailed Watership Down as a modern classic by comparing its epic motifs of spiritual faith, flight and survival to Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s The Aeneid. Adams himself described it merely as simple tales he improvised during a long family road trip to entertain his young daughters, Juliet and Rosamund. They pestered him to write down the story, which he eventually did, reading each bit as he finished it to his daughters. Rejected by seven major publishing houses before London-based, independent press Rex Collings published it in 1972, Watership Down quickly became a runaway bestseller in both Britain and America.

I read it the summer before my sophomore year in college and still rank it among my favorite books.

•

It’s no surprise that rabbits have a magical presence across mythology and human culture. The science, lore, mystery and magic of what some believe to be the world’s most misunderstood herbivore have been an integral part of our own evolution as a species.

Rabbits, either hunted or raised domestically, have been revered for ages for their meat and fur. They are also held in high regard for their prodigious reproductive abilities — averaging four to 12 kits per year. Rabbits reportedly flourish on every continent save for Antarctica.

Seen around the world as symbols of fertility, cunning and innocence, they also appear in the mythology of nearly every human society, from ancient Aztec to Asian. Native American peoples regarded the “Great Rabbit” to be the creator of the world. The rabbit is also one of the 12 celestial animals of the Chinese zodiac, where it is the symbol of longevity, peace and prosperity. Someone born under the sign of the rabbit is believed to be vigilant, witty, quick-minded and ingenious.

In Western society, the Easter Bunny evolved from German folklore. It joins Br’er Rabbit, Alice’s White Rabbit and the immortal Bugs Bunny as iconic figures in our narrative lore. In his unpublished memoirs, Bugs’ creator, Friz Freleng, claimed to have modeled Bugs Bunny on Clark Gable’s wily, fast-talking character in the 1934 hit comedy film It Happened One Night.

This may explain why my neighbors in the old Starmount Forest seem to share my affinity for our ever-present rabbits.

Life in Rabbit Land is good. 

In a current world that lately seems out of balance and frequently beyond our daily comprehension, the presence of peaceful cottontails at dawn and dusk reminds us of life’s beauty, brevity and sweet hope of renewal.  OH

Jim Dodson is founding editor of O.Henry.

O.Henry Ending

O.Henry Ending

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George the Wonder Cat

A king of many hearts

By Marianne Gingher

One dreary afternoon, I hear my cat door flap open and glimpse a small orange cat slipping towards the kitchen. My own cat, Dewey Moon, is sawing logs on the sofa beside me. Normally, if any stranger breaches his castle, Dewey puffs to twice his size and leaps to investigate.

I follow the little orange guy, and he notes me matter-of-factly. In fact, I have never met a less intimidated cat burglar. I scoop him up — a featherweight. One eye is blue and one is green. He has a white face, white chest, white paws. Otherwise, he is the pale-orange color of a Dreamsicle. There is immense trust in that little poker face. 

His tag informs me that he lives a few houses away; he has people, but what a cold, rainy day it is, and so I feed him. In my house, if you appear to be waylaid by trouble or weather, I feed you. He eats a bowlful and follows me back to the sofa. Dewey awakes, stretches, rubs noses with the little guy, offers to make him a cup of tea. Little guy says he’s already had refreshments, then makes himself right at home, licking a few remaining raindrops from his fur and nuzzling into a throw-blanket. After his nap, he meows to be let out, and I watch him trot confidently in the direction of his home.

The next day, I walk to his house and find him taking a sun bath on his porch. We wave fondly at one another.

“Do you know that cat?” I ask a neighbor.

“Everybody knows George,” the man says. “He’s feeling displaced these days.”

“Why?”

“There’s a new baby at his house.”

•

The baby’s name is Owen. I soon meet the entire family because George loses his collar over the weekend, and I report it to his mom, Madison. “I’ve already ordered a new one,” she says. “Thanks for looking out for him. Hope he’s not being a nuisance.”

I confess that I fed him, that he is pals with Dewey and that the three of us sometimes nap together. I suggest that, if George became my cat, it would be OK.

“Making friends is George’s thing,” Madison tells me. “He gets free range because we want him to be his authentic self. You’ll love his new collar. It fits a bon vivant like George.”

It is a red bowtie.

•

Everybody who meets George loves him. He shows up whenever I have visitors and glad-hands around the room, like he’s running for office.

•

One Halloween, George is hanging out with Dewey and me when Madison and husband Carr bring their kids by to trick-or-treat. After she sees them together, daughter Ellis starts planning George’s and Dewey’s wedding.

•

George is 18, possibly older. He also has serious kidney issues. But does he ever whine about his ailments? No, siree. Life is for the living, George insists, batting around a cat toy, then jumping on Dewey’s head.

•

When Madison lets me know that George has died (“gone over the rainbow” is how she puts it), after I have wept a good long while, I feel the need to write about him. The writer Sandra Cisneros once told me that the way to write about grief is to write about the presence of a lost loved one, not their absence. And my dear friend George keeps on being present. Through him, I’ve become friends with his funny and spirited family, a gift that endures.

He was not my cat, and maybe he was not a cat at all. You begin to think that way when your doorway has been brightened by a radiant someone who seems to transcend the limitations of their species while making the world a better place.  OH

Marianne Gingher is a Greensboro writer, artist and puppeteer who lives with her beloved cat, Dewey Moon.

Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

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How I Spent the Bicentennial Summer

Stirring up scandal in a sleepy Southern hamlet

By Billy Ingram

“A small town has as many eyes as a fly.”   — Sonya Hartnett

As a 19-year-old in the summer of ’76, I landed a gig as an ensemble player in a new, outdoor drama, The Liberty Cart: A Duplin Story, written by Randolph Umberger. He’d penned another open-air theatrical production debuting that year, Strike at the Wind!, a Lumbee Indian pageant performed in Pembroke. Liberty Cart was set, both in story and in fact, in Kenansville (pop. 900 then, a bit less today), situated between here and the coast. Kenansville was an unassuming hamlet only accessible by traveling down two-lane roads before the I-40 extension was completed in the 1990s.

All of the 10 professional actors hired for Liberty Cart portrayed multiple roles with the exception of one. Tom Hull solely played Phenius Pickett, a wise, old, time-traveling pushcart peddler who wove together oft-told tales of Duplin County lore as seen through the prism of the Kenan family’s Revolutionary War experience and beyond, into war-torn South in 1864. The Kenan family’s claim to fame, so far as I can tell, is that they were fabulously wealthy, thanks to the oil and gas business. To this day, it’s a philanthropic surname splashed across multiple buildings on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus.

Having spent little time in small towns without high and low tides, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Certainly not strutting center stage into a bewildering psychodrama soon surreptitiously swirling around us.

In an art form rooted in North Carolina theatrical tradition, Tom Hull was already a bona fide outdoor-drama star, having portrayed the comical drunk Old Tom in Lost Colony for a decade. Tom, myself and a trio of other cast members bunked together in a three-bedroom house that I christened “Freedom Shack” due to its location directly next door to Liberty Hall, the Kenan family ancestral home, which played a central role in our production. It was the town’s one claim to fame, a historical tourist attraction then and now. Following a month of rigorous rehearsal, Liberty Cart opened on July 29. I was assigned five character parts, including the first boo-hiss villain, Henry McCulloch, a British fop seated atop a luxuriously appointed barge carried aloft by servants. I also played a shady land speculator there to stump for a tax stamp scheme steaming the colonies leading up to the Revolutionary War. The Richlands-Beaulaville Advertiser News described my performance as an “absurdly humorous interpretation of the King’s representative.” On the front page, no less. I wonder now how I was able to finish a single play. Constructed to last for years, those period costumes were woolen saunas in the brutally humid summer swelter. 

During down time, Tom and I were home a lot, content to read away lazy afternoons. Tom, a New York City resident, was genuinely loving the change of scenery and relished serving as de-facto housemother, cooking meals most nights partly out of necessity. The lone restaurant in this no-stoplight town, the Tastee-Freez, had bug sprayers positioned above the dining room tables for spritzing insecticide into the air — RAID raining down on your cheeseburger and fries every few minutes.

There was a quaint little diner across Main Street from Freedom Shack, but it had closed recently, rumored to have been forced out of business because the proprietor was African American. I talked the guy into opening just for us at noon. So every day, this gentleman took our orders — pork chop sandwiches were a favorite — then strolled next door to the Piggly-Wiggly for what he needed to prepare our lunch while we howled with laughter watching The Gong Show on TV.

Along with Tom, my Freedom Shack roommates were Roger Dale Jackson, Kevin Flanigan and David Elliott. With a thick head of red hair, Roger was one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met, intensely serious about acting as were the others. I really looked up to Kevin, incredibly effective in that outdoor setting as the handsome, smoldering young firebrand. Two seasons earlier he’d wowed audiences in a major role in Horn in the West. David was athletic, no affectations, and once brought along his Labrador retriever, who absconded with a roast we left marinating on the kitchen counter.

One of my best friends from college, “Sweet” Val McCaw, was also cast in Liberty Cart. Her dramatic moments are still talked about in Kenansville. No, really, especially her turn as Mammy Till chasing Yankees from Liberty Hall’s kitchen. Because of the time periods depicted, Val was relegated to playing domestics, which ultimately didn’t sit well with her, being a proud, independent, young Black woman.

Supporting players, dozens of all ages, were recruited from nearby Wilson, Warsaw, Rose Hill, Wallace and Beulaville. They were some of the nicest folks I’ve encountered in life, but I quickly became aware of awkward, sideways glances from shopkeepers and pickup trucks when Val and I meandered around the four or five local businesses that constituted a downtown. Unbeknownst to us, it was a downright scandal that the whitest teenager God ever blanched and a Black co-ed were flagrantly lollygagging around town together. A local mechanic having a fling with one of the actresses, their relationship consummated on the back steps of sacred Liberty Hall, informed us that townspeople routinely tracked us via their CB radios. Val was mortified . . . that anyone would consider for a moment that we were a couple!

Val had the last laugh, however. At a cast party meet-and-greet held in Freedom Shack’s backyard, with Kenansville’s hoi polloi in attendance, Val stepped from the house, screen door slapping shut behind her, and announced, “Billy, I left the jeans I borrowed from you yesterday on your bed.” Jaws dropped and eyes popped like beasts in a Tex Avery cartoon.

The only cast member with a car, I had deputies hugging the back bumper of my ’72 Dodge Dart Swinger while driving.

Discovering one morning that someone had sideswiped my Swinger, parked overnight on the street, naturally I attempted to file a report with the Sheriff for insurance purposes. Peering above mirrored sunglasses, fully reclining in his swivel chair like the stereotypical good ol’ boy with a badge in every Southern noir movie ever filmed, he blithely commented that he knew who was responsible but wasn’t going to do a damned thing about it. In the rural South of the ’70s, everyone knew their place; if not, it would be made plain to you at some point.

Whereabouts of most of the cast is a mystery. Roger Dale Jackson was seen in a dramatic role in a 1985 episode of AfterMASH, passing away in 2020. Tom Hull died in 2009. I wish I’d had a chance to talk with him again. Of all the cast members, we were the closest as he was the first openly gay person I ever met. Tom moved to Wilmington in the 1980s, where he had a stellar stage career, appearing in occasional movies like Raw Deal in 1986, a role that found him ruthlessly pummeled by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Pretty funny we both ended up working on that same project, myself as a West Coast movie poster artist for the film. Val McCaw married her high school sweetheart, William, enjoying the love of a warm and close-knit family in Colorado.

In a return visit to Kenansville a few years back, I discovered several changes. The town has an intersection with a stoplight now. Liberty Hall is even more of a tourist attraction today, but our beloved Freedom Shack was long ago demolished for additional parking. Liberty Cart closed in 1990 and the amphitheater is covered over in kudzu, but several locally owned restaurants thrive there today, including a soul food joint that residents rave about.  OH

Born and raised in Greensboro, Billy Ingram moved to downtown in the 1990s after a career in Hollywood as a key member of the design team the ad world has dubbed, “The New York Yankees of Motion Picture Advertising.”

Birdwatch

Birdwatch

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Carolina Newcomer

A summer visitor from down South

By Susan Campbell

The limpkin is not a familiar bird to many in our area, but this good-sized wader isn’t a complete stranger to North Carolina. Over the years there have been plenty of sightings, and there is a good chance there will be plenty more — so much so that the species may be breeding here before much longer.

Although we hear a lot about birds that are in trouble — those disappearing from their usual haunts as a result of habitat loss, climate change, predation by invasive species, etc. — there are some that are actually becoming more widespread. Slowly but surely, the limpkin is one of these.

Limpkins, native to the subtropical region of the Americas, are wading birds that eat a variety of aquatic invertebrates. They are brown with white spangles and blotches, long legs and, most importantly, a relatively long decurved bill. Appearing a lot like a heron or ibis, they are actually more closely related to rails, those secretive smaller birds found lurking in marshy habitat. Their slightly offset bills are specialized for extracting the bodies of apple snails from their twisty shells, but they are equipped to get into a variety of mussels and clams as well. It is thought that the bird’s name originates from its halting gait as well as an odd running style when pursued.

Here in the U.S., limpkins were once confined to the wetter parts of Florida as well as the coastal marshes of the Gulf Coast states. Over the past few decades, however, they have been spotted farther north in Georgia and southern South Carolina. Given that they now even breed in a few locations “south of the border,” it’s no wonder that individuals have been spotted here in our state. The first was reported along the North Carolina coast (no surprise) in 1975, but in more recent years, they have been found in the Piedmont, too. There have also been a handful of sightings in our western counties. I saw my first N.C. limpkin during the summer of 1998 in a marshy water hazard at a golf course community close to New Bern.

The expansion of this species can be connected to multiple factors. First, invasive mollusks such as Asiatic clams and apple snails have become more abundant in freshwater systems across the Southeast in recent years. That spread of a ready food source, coupled with warmer winters, has provided additional habitat for limpkins. Furthermore, increasingly frequent and prolonged drought within their historic range has resulted in more birds roaming northward in search of the wet habitat they require.

With the summer of 2026 likely to be a dry one in the Southeast, it is very likely some limpkins will arrive here in the weeks ahead. A number of individuals showed up late in the summer of 2023 and persisted well into the fall. If you happen to be out at any of the larger reservoirs, or even along a creek or near a retention pond, keep an eye out — you just might spot one of these unusual creatures on the prowl for a meal or a new summer hangout.  OH

Susan Campbell would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photos. She can be contacted by email at susan@ncaves.com.

Chaos Theory

Chaos Theory

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Home Is Where the Dogs Are

And the more the merrier

By Cassie Bustamante

Years ago after our beagle, Charlie, died at the age of 13, I remember my much more practical husband, Chris, saying to me, “Now, we will be a one-dog family.” I nodded in agreement as I, fingers crossed, scratched behind the long, tan, velvety ears of Charlie’s younger “brother” — 10-year-old basset-beagle mix, Jake.

Months later, as the ninth birthday of our son, Sawyer, rolls around, I broach the subject. “What do you think we should get Sawyer this year?” I ask, before blurting out, “He really misses Charlie. What if we found him a rescue — maybe a retriever who can play fetch?”

Scouring local rescue listings, filter set to “retrievers,” my heart does a little flip when I see one puppy’s photo. I make a preliminary visit to his foster home and know this dog is zero part retriever. Even though his litter mates are all mutts, two puppies look exactly like Weimaraners with short, grayish fur and blue eyes, and a couple others clearly resemble Australian shepherds in tan, brown and white. But this little guy? He has a look all his own, a perfect, unique combo of the two. Retriever or not, I’m already head-over-heels in puppy love.

Before long, Chris, Sawyer and Sawyer’s little sister, Emmy, meet — and fall for — the tiny, fuzzy, greige puppy with smiling hazel eyes and white-tipped paws. Even before the pup comes home, Sawyer selects a Jabba-the-Hut stuffed toy, chewy (as in texture, not as in Chewbacca) teething treats and a turquoise-and-red gingham collar. He names him Catcher, excited to toss a ball with his new pal.

A blend of two anxious breeds, Catcher is anything but a retrieving kind of playmate. He’s a velcro dog, meaning he’s always under our feet and won’t explore the backyard — not even with Jake — unless his people are with him. When we walk him, he takes his shepherding job very seriously, barking loudly at all other dogs we come across, clearly an order to fall in line. While gruff-sounding, he absolutely refuses to step in wet grass and will avoid a puddle at all costs, earning him the nickname “Prissy Paws.”

Eventually, we adopt yet a third dog, a small, deaf miniature schnoodle pup named Snowball who follows Catcher around, just as Catcher once did to Jake. And then, at the age of 13, Jake, riddled with spinal arthritis, takes his final walk. Catcher steps into the role of alpha.

Catcher shamelessly does become a sort of retriever, but only of food and ice cubes. When the freezer door opens, he comes running, Snowball following his lead since she can’t hear the action herself. He stands watch as Snowball chows down each morning just in case she leaves any morsel of kibble behind.

We learn to keep all food off the kitchen counters — except for that one very full tray of holiday cookies my mom lovingly baked for us. Headed out in various directions, we accidentally left the dogs alone in the house, tantalized by the smell of butter and sugar wafting out from under its Saran Wrap seal. We return home to empty muffin-pan liners that once housed cookies strewn everywhere, scarcely a crumb in sight. Snowball, who doesn’t hear the car pull up, is gleefully licking the floor when the front door opens. Meanwhile, Catcher hides under the dining table with a look that I assume is guilt but soon discover is intense gastrointestinal distress. One soiled and discarded area rug later, he’s absolutely fine and, I assure Chris, “He will learn nothing from this.”

And so, it seems to us that he will live forever — or at least until 13 like Charlie and Jake. But, just a couple months after his 11th birthday, he falls ill suddenly and there’s nothing we can do. On another hot, late-July day, Chris, Sawyer, Emmy and I once again surround him as we did the day we brought him home. “You are a good boy,” I choke out through tears. We all tell him how loved he is as we stroke his ears, his back, his muzzle. And then we let him go.

Back at home, that afternoon, a bright-white gardenia blooms outside the window where I work. The bush had dropped its last blossom of the season a couple weeks earlier. I point it out to Chris, certain that Catcher is letting us know he’s at peace. I can tell by the look on his face he’s not buying it.

Snowball mopes around the house, grieving, too, but we give her extra treats and snuggles. Chris strokes her fluffy ears, sighs, and says to her, but more to me, “Well, I guess we will be a one-dog family now.”

While I know I need time to process my own feelings, I also know that we are solidly, forever a two-dog kind of family. Or three.

Months later when I begin to put together our bi-annual O.Henry pet issue, the one in your paws right now, I am treading dangerous waters. Of all things, I decide to write about a local monk whose new best friend was just adopted from Guilford County Animal Services (see page 42), which involves emailing shelter employees, researching their rescue services and watching videos they’ve posted on social media. The algorithms do their thing and suddenly my Facebook feed is nothing but sweet snouts in need of new homes. Cue Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” and grab some tissues.

A video of a timid, rust-and-black hound mix catches my eye. I show Chris, fully aware of his soft spot for hounds. A smile spreads across his face and I can tell he’s in — that is, until his logical brain takes over. He sighs. “Do we really need another dog, Cassie?”

“It’s not about what we need,” I answer.

Just a few days later, the morning after Emmy returns home from her first year of college, Cider, our brown-eyed hound, comes home, too.  OH

Cassie Bustamante is editor of O.Henry magazine.