Libretto…

Libretto

After five poetry books and one of my personal artwork I have begun a new chapter, a new journey into fiction.  With many stacks of drafts it is time to move into another direction of writing.  I hope you all will follow Libretto and thank you for following and for the success of Ann Johnson-Murphree Confessional Writing.  For those of you that have not clicked onto Libretto below you will find an excerpt of one of my stories.

Please visit and follow my new blog Libretto

http://writerannjohnsonmurphree.wordpress.com/

 

The following is an excerpt from a short story about a young man from Atlanta. His first job after graduation from high school was with the Greater Atlantic Life Insurance Company. It was 1940 and jobs were scarce the pay poor; he would get to keep one-dollar for every policy he sold. His territory…the Appalachian Mountains. He did not know that the daughter of a potential buyer would be the wildest thing he would ever encounter in his life.  It is a work of fiction based on real people and circumstances.

 Cotton

Andrew Pritchett walked two miles to reach the run-down shacks in the Tennessee foothills that edged the Georgia state line; he sold burial insurance. He knocked hard on the rough pine boards of the door, scrapped his knuckles, wiped the blood on his pants leg, stepped back and looked at the rotting porch, barrels for sitting, a can for tobacco spitting and a mangy dog swarmed by tiny black flies.  Suddenly a gigantic body filled the opening of the doorway. Moody Cahill wiped his mouth; relocated tobacco scum to the front of his patched overalls and returned his hand to the barrel of a shotgun.

“Mr. Cahill,” Andrew stuck out a trembling hand as he choked back the smell and disgust at the sight of the man he       desperately wanted to sell something.

“Yep”

“Your neighbor down the hill, a Mr. Ragsdale said that you might be interested in some burial insurance.”

“Nope”

Andrew’s eye twitched, the lazy one when he was nervous, he sat the worn leather valise down on the porch; it held his entire life, insurance applications, rate book and envelopes to mail the company their money. Underneath all that was an extra pair of socks, underwear, a straight edge razor and a worn out towel; all he possessed beside his old truck.

“Folks in these parts have been buying up these burial policies pretty good, they come in handy if needed”.

Uneasy he took out a handkerchief wiping sweat off his neck. When he looked back at Mr. Moody a young girl with thread bear clothes and a sweet gum twig hanging through a gap in her teeth was leaning on the doorframe. She smiled at Andrew just before the elder man pushed her back into the rundown shack they called home.

 “You married young man”.

“No Sir.”

      “Cotton get on back out here and introduce yourself properly to this young man, he aren’t married.”

 

Working draft: ©2014annjohnsonmurphree

 

 

 

Ann Johnson-Murphree

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