Written by Danielle Rotella Guerrieri Photographs by Bert VanderVeen & Betsy Blake
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.
By Billy Ingram Photographs
By Bert VanderVeen
This past May, I attended one of the most impressive ceremonies it has been my privilege to witness, the graduating and upcoming senior class honors assembly for Southeast Guilford High School’s Naval Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (NJROTC). Snapped-to-attention teens resplendent in military dress blues and crisp khakis were on deck to accept dozens of awards for distinguished service to their community, academic excellence and individual achievement earned over the school year.
A highlight that evening was the women’s drill team executing the precision routine that solidified their standing in 2026 as one of the finest in the nation. Weaving rhythmically through a cascading series of formations with intense precision reminded me (archaic pop-culture references incoming) of a 1930s Busby Berkeley musical or the June Taylor Dancers from a mid-century episode of The Jackie Gleason Show. In other words, top-tier showmanship.
As the ceremony culminated with the coronation of the unit’s new Commanding Officer, a nattily-attired lady behind me politely — but firmly — nudged me out of the way. “That’s my son,” she exclaimed with pride, moving in closer to get a better photo.
That son being junior Jonathan Vanhook. I couldn’t help noticing that he and his twin brother, Joshua, were frequently called forward that night to receive recognition, advanced rankings and commendations. They, along with Torrie Shaw and Genevieve Canupp, were canonized as 2025–26 Color Guard champions, best in the nation at the ritualistic presentation of flags, accompanied by firearm acrobatics, often reverentially performed at military funerals and formal public gatherings.
When asked about his reason for joining NJROTC, Jonathan recalls gazing behind the middle school cafeteria window. “I would see the male drill team out there spinning their rifles, doing drills, and how structured it was, how disciplined it was. Everything they did was with structure, with intensity and effort.” What he saw was individuals moving together as one. “I wanted to be a part of it simply because I see that everyone here gives everything.”
Brother Joshua insists, “I would have definitely done this even if [Jonathan] didn’t.” He too was magnetically drawn to the curriculum’s exacting standards. “This is going to set me up for a career in general. We have fun and that’s really what I like about NJROTC.” Jonathan agrees: “You put in work and you get a lot out of it. This is a very give-and-take organization.”
Southeast Guilford engaged in competitive skirmishes all around the country, including North Augusta, Georgia, Washington, D.C., and Sacramento, California. Cadets are expected to arrange financing for these excursions. “I wouldn’t call it a problem, it’s just something we have to do,” says Jonathan. “The communities around us help fund things we do, [GCS] has also helped us out.”
While school days commence at 9:30 a.m., JROTC cadets are expected to arrive for practice at 8. But, Joshua attests, “They really mean 7:45.” Weeks leading up to drill league competitions, squads might assemble as early as 2 a.m.
Fortitude and fastidiousness rarely go unnoticed beyond school grounds as Jonathan notes. “I was at my job and they were looking at me funny.” Mannered and exceptionally well-spoken, JROTC students naturally attract attention, desired or not. “So I had to explain to them what ROTC was, where I was in it, how good our school is. They call me ‘Commander’ at work now. It’s just a little awkward but really, it just tells people that they can depend on you.”
Both brothers credit an uncompromising upbringing for their dedication to service, an environment that was, “structured, a very organized household. Our mother brought us up in a way that says, ‘You can do anything you want to do if you put yourself up to it.’”
I later caught up with that proud (if a bit nudge-y) mother, Queen E. Sweeper, who told me about finding herself 41 and pregnant with twins 18 years ago, gripped with the realization that “as an African American mom, I’ll be raising them by myself.” She had her hands full. “I had to keep these young boys under control. I couldn’t take them a lot of places because they were off the chain.” A veteran herself, she issued a royal decree before her hellcats entered elementary school: “You’ll go into the military when you graduate high school, not college.” What if they didn’t wish to enlist? “My answer was, ‘You don’t have a choice!’” This Queen rules.
The Vanhooks could have easily been redirected into athletics. “They played football, baseball, they’ve wrestled, they’ve done it,” Sweeper says. But she had mentally mapped for uneven terrain ahead, swept for cultural minefields torpedoing Black youth, determined to avoid a rudderless voyage for her offspring “because we can still raise excellent young men. And mine have followed that path and look at where we are.”
The National Defense Act of 1916 established JROTC in our nation’s high schools. These days it boasts a curriculum tailored to every branch of the military.
Southeast Guilford’s program is administered by Capt. Frank Shearin (who retired in June of 2026) but most especially under the commanding presence of 1st Sgt. Thomas Hilliard, entering his 20th year teaching NJROTC at Southeast after two decades of service in the United States Marine Corps. The mission? Excavating authentic selves from cadets before life’s gale force winds trim their sails, unlocking unrecognized potential and releasing powerful capabilities and outstanding aptitudes that otherwise might become submerged under superficial peer pressure and society’s suffocating hum of low expectations.
When it comes to JROTC, Southeast Guilford is far and away Guilford County School System’s winningest organization: Distinguished Unit for 17 consecutive years, NJROTC Academic, Athletic and Drill champs for the last three years and, for 2025–26, overall champions in Area 6, which encompasses 30 schools in North and South Carolina and a portion of Georgia. They were last year’s Area 6 winning academic team, securing 13th in the nation in a competition similar to Jeopardy!
“Under 1st Sgt. Thomas Hilliard’s leadership, we were fifth in the nation for our drill team,” Shearin points out. Plus, third place overall best NJROTC team in the nation for 2019–20, placing top five for 2025–26, beating out over 630 competing units. That’s just skimming the surface of the numerous accolades Southeast Guilford earned during just this most recent academic term.
“The Department of Defense has sanctioned Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps for high schoolers and Reserve Officers’ Training Corps in college,” Capt. Shearin explains. “ROTC obligates you to go into the military — Junior does not.” Courses for eighth graders through 12th graders emphasize character development and citizenship. While most units around the nation concentrate on one or two skill sets, “We have full curriculum: a drill team, academic team, orienteering, marksmanship, physical training, cyber patriot information technology and an aviation drone team. There are a number of different teams that kids can be a part of, actually more than anyone could ever take advantage of.”
During the 2025–26 academic year, Southeast’s 133 NJROTC cadets performed 6,875 community service hours. “About 51 community service hours for each student,” Shearin emphasizes. These hours encompass everything from picking up highway litter, doling out meals at churches, stocking food pantries, placing Memorial Day flags and marching in Veteran’s Day parades. Seniors mentor elementary school kids and visit local nursing homes. “We are trying to train young people to care about others, to be good citizens.”
Uniforms provided provisionally are worn at least once a week on campus. You might imagine such sharp-edge students marching through their lives with sticks inserted you-know-where. Not at all. When time comes to rise to the occasion, they’re fully committed but, “out of character,” so to speak, laughing and sly-aside roasting.
That juxtaposition of duty and revelry was exhibited by one of those individuals posing for our spring photo shoot. Lieutenant Commander Barker, class of ’27, is an incoming XO (Executive Officer), meaning, “I am over all of the officers in the unit. I just make sure they’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing. If they’re not, then it’s on me. If they are, it’s on me.” Thriving on that sense of dead certainty “gives me a chance to lead people and it’ll help me for what I want to do, which is enlist in the Marine Corps.”
Following graduation in 2027, both Vanhook brothers anticipate entering the Army, Jonathan aspiring to “aircraft or diesel and gas mechanic,” while Joshua sets his sights on becoming a, “heavy equipment operator, which will be like 12 November” — confusing to me but military speak for horizontal construction engineer. Cadets are required to memorize catalogs of these terms.
NJROTC training doesn’t cease with summer — it’s a year-long stint. While you’ve been sunning and funning, cadets attended a leadership academy and commanding officer courses followed by a four-day-long drill camp, while those rising into uppermost positions recently completed the Capstone Leadership Course. The women’s Drill Team is well under way developing fresh choreography, perfected over months of rigorous rehearsal. Orientation for rising freshmen got underway in July. Given last year’s triumphs, they’ll have big boots to fill.
Principal Christopher Scott, career educator and administrator, is prepping for his fifth scholastic session at Southeast. NJROTC is just one example of the exemplary extracurricular activities this academy offers, but one that carries with it tremendous pride. “It definitely brings out leadership skills that kids didn’t know they had to have or that they even possessed — also the idea that not every leader is the person standing in front of the room.” Scott exudes a genuine enthusiasm for what is undoubtedly a daunting task, “I love our kids. I love our families, our staff, we kind of have a perfect socioeconomic and racial diversity. I think when you believe in students, good things will happen.”
You’ve heard the scuttlebutt: “Today’s young people are our future leaders? This country is so screwed!” Clichéd shade I’ve shamelessly thrown about, but that was before being introduced to this commanding clique of sentient pupils whose eyes are wide open to the challenges and possibilities associated with entering adulthood under choppy waters, yet emerging with leadership authority, armored with discipline, decisiveness, perseverance and accomplishment, all characteristics embedded in the cadets enrolled in Guilford County’s high school JROTC program. Bravo Zulu! OH
Terri Kirby Erickson
Day at the Beach
I’d like to feel again, my six-year-old self
skimming a long, sea oat-surrounded trail
to the ocean like a skipping stone, the wind
in my dark hair, legs pumping like pistons.
And oh, that first plunge into the water, the
squealing — how it felt to be hit by a wave
and tumble to the shore, as light as a shell.
Now, it’s hard to walk the trails to the beach.
Each step works my calf muscles, my bare
feet sinking deep into hot sand. And the sun
is like a blowtorch, not the gentle source of
warmth that I remember, the ocean rife with
dangers I knew nothing about as a child. So
I settle into a folding chair with a book, my
aging body slathered with the highest SPF,
and watch a couple of kids scoop wet sand
into bright plastic buckets while others splash
in shallow pools, their faces the definition of
delight. If only I could snap my fingers, step
out of a body that has become too weary and
cumbersome, and run to the water like I used
to — limbs weightless as a plover, my thoughts
no heavier than a beach ball, a paper kite rising.
— Terri Kirby Erickson
Terri Kirby Erickson is the award-winning author of eight collections of poetry.
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?
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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:
Top three winners will be contacted via email, awarded a monetary prize and their essay printed in a forthcoming issue of O.Henry.
Illustrations by Campbell Pringle
The 2026 induction ceremony for the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame takes place in October at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities. Could there be a better time to devote our Summer Reading issue to the current and soon-to-be members of that exclusive club than now? We’ve asked three members of the class of 2026 to write a letter to one of their favorite fictional characters and, to round out the field, we’ve surrounded them with four current enshrinees. The rules were simple: Pick a character you love, or hate, or even love to hate, and go from there. And we think you’ll agree, the places they went are extraordinary.
From: Clyde Edgerton
To: Manley Pointer, the Bible salesman in
“Good Country People,” by Flannery O’Connor
Dear Manley (if I may),
I got your penitentiary address from Henry Dampier, a character of mine who also sells Bibles. He knows you and I assume you know him.
A few days ago, Henry told me about your recent criminal activities, including getting caught again — stealing boxes of Gideon Bibles and then razoring out the title page (referencing “Gideon”).
I’ve not read the story “Good Country People” in a good while but I remember being drawn to your cleverness in that story, and also, aspects of your appearance — especially your yellow socks rolled down “to your ankles” or something like that. Images get stuck in your head, you know?
I am sending you this letter to let you know that you have been an inspiration to me in at least a couple of ways:
1. I sometimes go to bed at night happily anticipating the next morning’s completion of a scene I’m writing. On the second or third reading of “Good Country People,” when I was still a young writer, I came to realize that heaven for me would be the opportunity to write the last half or so of “Good Country People” — the part that would include your second visit to Hulga’s mother’s house. I realized that to know you were going back to visit again, and that I could write out what then happened, would be a kind of delightful heaven on earth for me. All this (including reading about your relationship to Hulga) fell onto me as I was learning to write fiction.
2. A couple of writers got in touch with me early in this century, saying they were hoping to publish a book-length tribute to Flannery O’Connor, written by different writers — would I contribute?
Of course.
I decided to contribute a short story that included my character, a Bible salesman who was not you (but who knew you). I also wanted to include a “misfit” in my story — one who knew Miss O’Connor’s famous character, The Misfit. I wondered if the writers hoping to publish the O’Connor tribute book would accept a story rather than an essay. I was afraid they’d say no, so I didn’t ask, I just wrote the story, and I liked it so much I eventually made it into a novel: The Bible Salesman. I never heard from the writer/editors again, but was very happy, of course, that they — and you — helped me write a novel.
Thank you for your inspirations and best of luck in your post-prison endeavours. I wish for you the very best in all things. I read that you recently said that you were “going straight” now.
Have you ever thought about entering politics?
Please write back.
Sincerely,
Clyde
From: Daniel Wallace
To: Neddy Merrill in “The Swimmer,”
by John Cheever
Dear Ned Merrill,
This is the last time I’ll write to you. All the other letters have been returned to me, the sole response stamped on the unopened envelope by some heartless machine: OCCUPANT UNKNOWN. MOVED. VACANT. NO FORWARDING ADDRESS. Why do I keep hoping that somehow you will have returned to the house in Bullet Park, and that you will get my letter (the 5th? 6th?) and write back with an upbeat apology, explaining where you’ve been and what happened to you? I wonder if you even know.
I’m a fan, Ned. Maybe not a fan of yours but a fan of your incredible plan — to swim that Sunday morning the eight miles from the Westerhazy’s pool to your own home, realizing you could make it almost the entire way pool to backyard pool. You were not a young man, either, when the idea came to you, and perhaps that’s why you did it: a younger man would not have felt the need to prove to himself (and to all the lesser mortals) that something so incidental could be done, and certainly not with the same heedless and drunken joie de vivre. Only a man who had nothing to lose would do it, precisely because (whether he knew it or not) he had lost everything already. The old man’s still got it I can hear you telling yourself, over and over again, in those pools before the rains came.
You remind me of my father. You were more his generation than mine. I think you would have liked him. So many of the poolside scenes you swim through remind me of those “midsummer Sundays” at our own home, the kind when everyone sits around saying, “I drank too much last night.” I didn’t drink — I was just a kid — but my parents did. This is after we moved from Homewood to Mountain Brook, when my father started making real money and we had the pool in our backyard; in Homewood, we just had grass.
Those were the Sunday mornings the Hurleys would come over. Jack and Mary. They brought the V8 juice and the celery; my parents supplied the vodka, Worcestershire sauce, and Tabasco. By the pool they would shine themselves up with Baby Oil and sip on their Bloody Marys well into the afternoon, as the Alabama sun beat down on them. The Wallaces and the Hurleys drank, laughed, smoked, swam, all at the same time, too, sometimes, ashtrays and glasses balanced on a long yellow float.
As it was with you (there’s a bar beside almost every pool you swim through on your journey home) those Sunday mornings were just as much about drinking as the party the night before may have been. Drinking was assumed. An expectation. No matter how many Sunday morning Bloody Marys they had though (and it was impossible to say how many, because they came to the poolside in a gigantic pitcher) they were never drunken, or even tipsy. They were relaxed. “This is so relaxing,” they said, eyes closed behind their porthole-sized sunglasses. And the sun baked them lobster red.
They all seemed so old to me then, years beyond counting. But no: in 1970 I was 11 and my father was a mere 40 years old. The hair on his arms was going gray though and he wasn’t in the best of shape. Still, he would race me in the pool and win going away. And, like you, Neddy, he had a “simple contempt” for people who did not hurl themselves into pools, and pull themselves out of them by the curb — no ladder for him. He still had it! At 40 he was at the top of his game. That’s what it looked like anyway.
I imagine you were about 40, too, when your story takes place, when you almost seem to figure out how lost you were, and how much you’d lost.
Which brings me to why I’ve been writing to you.
My father died in 1997. He was 67, same age as I am now. And I can’t ask him, obviously, so I’m writing you to ask: When you swam back home, through almost a dozen pools, having a drink at as many of them as you possibly could, and when you made it back home and found that everything you had taken for granted wasn’t there anymore, when you caught up with yourself and the reality of your world — what did you do next? I can ask you that, right? Just because one story ends doesn’t mean they all do. When you finally don’t have it anymore, what do you have? How long can you keep on swimming? That’s what I want to know. That’s what I need to know. Sooner the better too, because summer is almost over. That’s how it feels, anyway.
Thanks, and I hope all is well,
Daniel
From: Joseph Bathanti
To: Colin Smith, the main character and narrator in
“The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner,” by Alan Sillitoe
Dear Smith (Colin, if I may):
I recently reread Alan Sillitoe’s brilliant novella, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, in which you, the inimitable first-person narrator, claim to have authored the tale. Thus, the novella becomes a pedigree of metafiction. Most interesting — and I wish I had Sillitoe to consult on the matter. Is it he who brings you to life? Or are you the agent of that feat? And please stop me, if this gets to sounding like some puffed-up, egghead scholarly treatise.
Your voice is unforgettable. I’ve always had a soft spot for the cheeky and you have a gift for smartassery that would have been cherished in the working-class Little Italy of Pittsburgh in which I grew up, where the art of biting off your nose to spite your face has been empirically perfected. Tough kids with El Dorado-sized, Marxist chips on their shoulders and a viral antipathy for authority to match yours — and not a scrap of remorse among them. In truth, Colin, you’re a revolutionary; the authorities like to keep your sort in stir. You scare the bloody hell out of them. You even allude to Hungary and what I presume is the Hungarian Revolution of 1956; and there’s also the mention of “a big boot . . . likely to smash any nice picnic [you] might . . . make for [yourself].” It seems you’ve studied your fellow Englishman, Orwell: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.” You are a prole, one of the fellaheen, among those the “whip-hand” aims to force to their knees.
But you can take a punch as well as deal one. You throw the big race — the Blue-Ribbon Prize Cup for Long Distance Cross Country Running — so coveted by the “governor,” the borstal warden, a “pot-bellied pop-eyed, bastard” as you dub him — even though you’re meters and meters ahead of your closest competitor and the finish line’s in sight. Like a convict, mere hours from parole, who jumps the fence. Rather than curry favor, you symbolically spit in the governor’s eye, which fetches you his outrage and a goodly dollop of additional hardship in borstal. More than anything, you exemplify so gloriously Albert Camus’ famous injunction from “The Myth of Sisyphus”: “There is no fate that can not be surmounted by scorn.” It’s the gesture, the gorgeous immemorable flourish, that seems precious, near sacramental, to you — that piss-on-everything mentality. It recalls Marlon Brando as he dies in Last Tango in Paris: removing the chewing gum from his mouth and fixing it to the underside of the balcony railing before collapsing. How I admire your flare for self-immolation — Bravo! — though I don’t possess your threshold nor stamina for Purgatory.
But, of course, there’s more to it than that. Isn’t there always? You hail from a withered home where the only things in abundance are neglect, ennui and not enough dollars — and let’s not even broach the subject of love, though it’s there, but in the guise of yearning and desperation; nor should we mention your philandering mam; and your dad, whom you find dead, “ . . . like a skinned rabbit . . . lino and carpet” soaked in his blood. A tram-load of dysfunction. Trauma. Post traumatic stress.
You’ve a heart, Colin Smith, and a capacious one, though you purposefully secrete it beneath the bilious Eiderdown of regret and cynicism. After all, you’ve been — what we call here in North Carolina — state-raised, first in Remand Homes, now in borstal — one joint after another — plotting your next lame caper and committed to the life of a lammist. You’re only seventeen, already “institutionalized.” Your name, Colin, means “whelp” or “young hound.” There it is: the childhood state in which you’re forever immured. Of course, all that’s left to you is scorn. Blessed searing scorn.
I actually have run from the “coppers” a few times and have found myself, along with a gaggle of my mates, in the backseat of a police car — but, just to be clear, for the most innocuous empty-headed schoolboy pranks, and we were released with barked threats of juvie and the legendary rubber hose designed to put would-be juvenile delinquents on the straight. Nothing even close to robbing a bakery and stashing the lolly in a drainpipe where it flows from the spout in a downpour and damningly presents itself at the feet of the suspicious copper at your door. I’ve not the sand for a life of crime and I had the tireless love and guidance of hard-working parents. They dreamt a better life for me long before I figured out how to dream that dream myself — and I continually remind myself of the advice dispended to Nick Carraway from his father in the second sentence of The Great Gatsby: “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone . . . just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages you’ve had.” Again, there it is. More to the point, I’ve never been incarcerated — Grace of God, and all that — though, over the years, I’ve spent considerable time in prisons as a writing teacher. I’ve also been a long-distance runner, though with nary a jot of your virtuoso clout.
Thus, I’ve now twigged you coming and going; and, make no mistake, I strangely love you and your ilk, taking my place in the cellblock, shackled to a prison cot. And I know enough to declare you a poet and contemplative. You offer not only a lyric tutorial on running — I’ve never read a more convincing account of the fabled “runner’s high” — but your metaphysical riff on being the first and last man on earth simultaneously, as you run the dawn “frozen fields,” is the stuff of magic, clearly rooted in holy writ.
So, my iconoclastic falling-down funny brother-comrade, I look forward to your next book, and I pray you’re on the free side of concertina when you pen it. Please: never stop running; that’s how I imagine you — and weeping, perhaps as Jesus wept at the death of Lazarus.
Fingers crossed this missive makes it to you. Penitentiary mail is notoriously unreliable, and I hope this passes the grubby-handed censors.
In peace and solidarity,
Joseph
From: Jill McCorkle
To: Charlotte, the barn spider in Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White
Dear Charlotte,
Salutations! I have loved and admired you for 60 years and never glimpse the shining threads of a web that I don’t think of you. For almost 75 years, you have taught children — young and old — about friendship and the seasons and cycle of life. You have shown us the best and the worst of humanity, from fat greedy rats to innocent humble souls like Wilbur, forever loyal in his love and devotion. Your voice is one of reality and acceptance of life’s journey — a wise observation of grief — and what an individual leaves behind for future generations.
Here in the state of North Carolina, there are 8.2 million of Wilbur’s kind, not counting the additional wild ones roaming and rooting. Imagine the many webs it would take to save them! And especially at a time when there is so much talk about bacon products — soda, toothpaste, lollipops and cologne! — to name a few. I suspect the desire some have for bacon is not unlike what you felt about the many flies you devoured. But still, it is always hard not to think of Wilbur when pork products are discussed. And he was Some Pig; he was Terrific, in fact! And what a lucky guy he was to have you and Fern and your many descendants in his life.
We could use your wisdom these days, Charlotte. You said: People are very gullible. They’ll believe anything they see in print. And oh, what an understatement that is. You would not even believe what people are believing! And it goes beyond print — made-up photos and videos, manufactured voices. There is a widespread struggle for truth. And there are those who make Templeton the fat rat look like Gandhi. Some even tried to use your name as code for a cruel, coldblooded operation designed to harm innocent people. You will be pleased to know that there was great public outrage over the use of your good name. After all, you taught the opposite. When Wilbur asked why you had been so kind to him, you said: By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.
Are there enough webs? Enough words? I like to believe that wisdom such as yours will always be repeated and if said and seen enough, will continue to hatch and grow. Your words to Wilbur are always worth repeating and you, dear Charlotte, are my reason for allowing discrete cobwebs in corners and the eaves of the porch (thank you), and you remain a reminder to stop and admire the intricate and beautiful artwork of nature and declare it a miracle and rightly so.
Sometimes your voice comes to me in the cadence of an elementary school teacher’s voice, reminiscent of all those times after lunch we were told we could rest our heads on our desks and just close our eyes and listen while chapter by chapter, the teacher’s voice would lull us into your world and your final day with Wilbur: These autumn days will shorten and grow cold . . . Winter will pass, the days will lengthen, the ice will melt in the pasture pond. The song sparrow will return and sing, the frogs will awake, the warm wind will blow again. All these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy, Wilbur — this lovely world, these precious days . . .
Your story left me crying and grieving too many times to count, Charlotte. I didn’t want Fern to grow up and choose time with a boy over time with Wilbur. And I didn’t want you to die. How could you die?! But then I learned something incredibly valuable. I could read your book all over again, and suddenly there you were — salutations! — and even knowing what was coming, I could once again get lost as I feared for Wilbur’s safety, marveled at your messages and hoped that Templeton — fat rat that he is — might have a change of heart. In addition to all else, you taught me the power of words on the page.
Thank you for all you have given to millions of readers (no exaggeration), and may your book always grace the shelves of schools and libraries as it finds its way into young hands and changes their lives in wonderful ways.
With sincere love and appreciation,
Jill
From: Jaki Shelton Green
To: Celie, the protagonist and narrator in The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
Dear Celie,
My mother taught me that the color purple was associated with royalty, luxury, power, spirituality, mystery and creativity, but your story taught me that purple was often a bruise, a dictionary version of a common contusion that happens when blood vessels under the skin break from an impact, leaking blood into the surrounding tissue. I became obsessed with the color purple in the 1970s and curated my second wedding in 1979 around shades of lavender, violet, grape, lilac, wisteria, magenta, fuchsia, mauve and plum . . . all juicy luxurious colors not knowing that within a year those lush sensual shades would be prickly stains on my broken heart.
When I met you in 1982 after my “royal purple marriage” withered away, your definition of purple seemed to make so much more sense to me. Thank you for daring me to turn all the wounded flower petals upside down and crawl inside them to explore the other side of breaking skin and ruptured voice.
Thank you for your lessons about reclamation, fulfillment and independence. In the 1980s your presence in the world became a map for many women who were struggling with granting themselves the urgent and necessary permissions they needed in order to begin unraveling the expectations enforced and placed upon us by society, whether it originates from our gender or race.
Our Southern lives are not too far apart. We both grew up in a time period with gender inequality and racial division. We both grappled with expectations placed upon us by male authority figures in our lives, taking on the responsibilities which come with expectations, while our own dreams and desires are muted, invisible, and erased.
Like you, Celie, I broke the bonds of betrayal, emotional impoverishment, self-hate, and began carving a pathway for the self that remembered to remember who she is and who she truly belongs to while re-embracing the color purple inside my gardens. Tiny purple blooms run rampant as groundcover almost choking out the other plants and my thoughts return to your words, “I don’t know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive.” So I allow them to make their own choices about survival and the other plants manage to keep on living.
And like the purple groundcover, you reminded us that we were never the bruises or the myths that someone tried to convince us that we were. Thank you, Celie, for demonstrating how you transformed from a silenced, abused victim to an independent, self-actualized woman. Thank you for demonstrating that female solidarity and “womanist” love are essential for overcoming both racial and patriarchal oppression.
Dearest Celie, you taught so many of us to sing out loud in fields of lavender declaring that we are a full embodiment of spiritual wholeness . . . celebrating how our relationships with other women can heal us and help us embrace the power to reject male supremacy, find our voices, reclaim our bodies, sexuality and cultural identity.
Celie, you may not remember, but my mother and my teenage daughter met you at the same time I met you. One paperback copy of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple was passed back and forth between the three of us. We were three generations in a matriarchal household daily discussing your identity search, racism, sexism and sensitive, often contrasting, generational perceptions about self-worth and double consciousness.
Thank you for being the character that my mother cheered on knowing you would not perish. Thank you for all the questions your character served nightly at our dinner table.
Thank you, Celie, for the uplifting lessons that my daughter and I taught each other about the power of intuitiveness, the power of utterance, the power of silence and witness, and all the grace that we granted each other in order to agree to disagree about your journey to liberation.
I am truly grateful for you allowing the ink’s breath to dream you awake.
With deep respect and admiration,
Jaki
From: Michael Parker
To: Darl Bundren, a character in As I Lay Dying,
by William Faulkner
Darl Bundren
Mississippi State Asylum
Jackson, Mississippi
Alright now, Darl,
I thought of you the other day. I went for a long drive, trying to find some open country. I had to pass by all sorts of places you never, thank God, got to see: storage units, used car dealers, Korean barbecue, nails, nails, nails. I was in search of a landscape you would have encountered on the way to Jefferson with your family. On a backroad that dipped through a stand of pine down to a sudsy river I pulled over and felt, suddenly, your presence. I remembered how, when I first met you many years ago, in college, I didn’t understand you because the professor said I had to. He wanted me to understand his version of you. He wrote on the board some of the things you said: “The hallway looks like a searchlight turned into rain.” He said what the hallway represented and the searchlight and the rain. All of a sudden it was Psych 101.
He barely mentioned the passage that spoke to me the most, the one that, if I had to sum you up (and why should I, how could I, though that’s the sort of thing we did in classes back then, pick a line and slim you down to fit it): “In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I don’t know what I am. I don’t know if I am or not.”
It wasn’t just because I had a hard time sleeping, then and now, or because, around the time when everyone else’s mind shuts down, mine ramps up. The way that second sentence ended in a period instead of a question mark opened something up for me: how a little squiggle of punctuation makes a question more desperate than the way you wrote it, which is just as much statement. But not. That’s what I liked. It is, but not. I didn’t know what I was, I didn’t even know if I was or not. Most days that is still the half-statement, half-question, Darl. See, you stuck with me, even though it’s been forty years now.
This kid who sat beside me in class said, “This mess is harder to understand than calculus if you ask me.” I had not asked him and had no idea how to even spell calculus, but I wanted to say, it’s not that bad if you listen hard and also maybe it’s just hard in a different way.
I do get that some of the things you said took a while to hear, though. You said you heard teeth in your brother Jewel’s breath. And, “In sunset we fall into furious attitudes, dead gesture of dolls.” That one went right over my head. But in that same chapter you said, “If we could just ravel out into time. That would be nice. It would be nice if you could just ravel out in time.” I never heard anyone say “ravel,” always “unravel,” and I too wanted to untwist into time. If I could just. Instead, I got more twisted up. I never forgot to wonder how nice it would be to ravel out. You taught me that also, Darl.
I wrote a term paper on you. I compared you to Hamlet, because, see, I don’t think you were as crazy as everyone claimed. I believe you were faking it sometimes, because faking crazy is a way out of just going along. You never did just go along. The people in Jefferson called you “queer.” They meant odd. I read up on you recently and found a few professors saying you liked men. They said you were queer, as in “a queer,” like people used to say back in high school. Queer was a slur, but over time it has become an umbrella term classifying all kinds of sexual configurations. I like how that word has changed meaning, how it went from the worst thing you might get called in high school to a word people nowadays use with pride. I get a kick out of the professors who don’t understand the original meaning of the word. He’s a queer one, I heard people say about some fellow when I was growing up, but the next time they would say he was peculiar. The professors seemed to believe you were confused about everything; therefore, you must be confused about what you like and who you like to do it with. “I don’t know if I am or not” does not mean you are confused. It means you know way more than the rest of us and are too smart to claim that such things can be figured out one way or another.
A hillbilly Hamlet! Wrote the professor at the end of my term paper. He gave me a B minus. To get an A on any term paper about you (as if our connection had any kind of term limit; as if I didn’t believe you when you said, “it is as though time, running straight before us in a diminutive line, now runs parallel between us like a looping string, the distance being the doubling accretion of the thread and not the interval between”) would have bummed me out big time. I’d as soon my GPA suffer than agree with the professor and confine you to what struck me as another life sentence in the state asylum up in Jackson, where they shamefully sent you.
I ran into the kid who said he preferred calculus on the quad one day. Fuck a bunch of Faulkner, he said. I’m going to see if I can’t take that class pass/fail. I was reminded of what you said about your brother: “Jewel knows who he is because he does not know that he does not know whether he is or not.” Though I liked that kid. I like people like him, for they make me question how they know what I don’t know and whether I even know it.
You don’t have to write back. I like writing to you, Darl. I feel myself raveling right out.
Signed,
Michael
From: Shannon Ravenel
To: Johnny, a character in “Boy and Dog,”
from Facing the Music, Stories, by Larry Brown
Dear Johnny —
There are many reasons to ponder this story about the death of your beloved dog, Bozo. You loved him so much. He was eleven and you are only eight. He must have seemed almost like your big brother. It is very, very sad to think of you finding his dead body run over by a 1965 Mustang driven by a guy who returned to the place where he’d hit Bozo, not to see if Bozo was OK, but to find his car’s hubcap. He didn’t care about having killed your dog. And so you killed him, with a yellow brick. And all hell broke loose after that, which you describe in your unusual literary format (293 one-sentence paragraphs, each sentence in five words), obviously a story emerging from the terrible grief of losing a beloved pet dog.
The double viewpoint — the boy’s and the author’s — captures my attention and makes me wonder. Could an eight-year-old really throw a brick hard enough to kill a grown man in his car? Could a boy that age really cause the hugely explosive scene, observe it, and outwait its end in order to retrieve his beloved dog’s body?
Or could that boy have had an extraordinary imagination? Could he have grown up to be an author? I think I know the answers.
Love,
Shannon
Clyde Edgerton was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2016. He is the author of 10 novels, a book of advice, a memoir, short stories and essays. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and, most recently, a 2025 O. Henry short story award. He lives in Wilmington, N.C.
Joseph Bathanti was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2024. Among his many awards are the Sam Ragan Fine Arts Award, the Sherwood Anderson Award and the North Carolina Award for Literature. He is the author of over 20 books, including poetry, novels, short stories and nonfiction. He was North Carolina’s poet laureate from 2012-14 and joined the faculty of Appalachian State University in 2001.
Jill McCorkle was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2018. Her first two novels were published simultaneously in 1984 by the newly launched Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. The author of seven novels and five short-story collections, her many accolades include the John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature and the North Carolina Award for Literature.
Jaki Shelton Green was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2014 and is the ninth and current poet laureate of North Carolina. Her honors include receiving the North Carolina Award for Literature in 2003 and the North Carolina State University 2026 Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters. Author of 10 books of poetry, an LP and two audio collections, she serves as poetry editor for Walter magazine and is a professor of Documentary Poetry at Duke University.
Daniel Wallace will be inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2026. He is the author of six novels, a memoir, a short story collection and a children’s book. Wallace is the J. Ross MacDonald Distinguished Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, his alma mater.
Shannon Ravenel will be inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2026. Born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, she was editor of the Best American Short Stories series for 13 years and one of the founders of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. In 1986 she introduced the annual anthology New Stories from the South. During her time at Algonquin, Ravenel nurtured and advanced the work of numerous writers from the American South, including Clyde Edgerton and Jill McCorkle. OH
Michael Parker will be inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2026. He is the author of eight novels and three collections of short stories. He has received fellowships in fiction from the North Carolina Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the Hobson Award for Arts and Letters, the North Carolina Award for Literature, and the 2020 Thomas Wolfe Prize.
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
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.
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
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.
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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.
The little boat at anchor in black water sat murmuring to the tall black sky.
A white sky bomb fizzed on a black line.
A rocket hissed it’s red signature into the west.
Now a shower of Chinese fire alphabets,
A cry of flower pots broken in flames,
A long curve to a purple spray, three violet balloons —
Drips of seaweed tangled in gold, shimmering symbols of mixed numbers,
Tremulous arrangements of cream gold folds of a bride’s wedding gown —
A few sky bombs spoke their pieces, then velvet dark.
The little boat at anchor in black water sat murmuring to the tall black sky.
— Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) was a poet, biographer, journalist and editor. He was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes, two for poetry and one for a biography of Abraham Lincoln.
