Bonus Excerpt from story

"Fable of a Universe"

Terror and humiliation force abused siblings to choose between love and leaving home. 

Except for a few birds it was quiet across miles of wheat fields and pastures, reminding Becky of the peace she wanted but couldn't have because of the fear and hurting at home.

As she wheeled a sickle more than a safe distance from her legs, she looked after the three younger children on her family's Oklahoma farm, and thought how to lure her mischievous brother Charles back to where he put his sickle down. Sometimes Charles wouldn't work no matter what. No one understood him, but at least she could see when to leave him alone, like now, after Pa just whipped him.

"You'll get to work if you know what's good for you," Becky thought of saying to him. The biggest problem with Charles was how kind and nice he was. He was grown up that way. Last week they were roughhousing when Ma and Pa were out visiting, and their brother J.C. broke a window. So Charles ran five miles into town for a new window, and he put it in perfect. Then, they smudged their fingers on it to hide its newness. He saved them all from a bad punishing. And he was always making presents, giving away little things he made.

Becky watched while Charles continued to pass one hand over the other, treadmilling a black and white caterpillar. She knew he wasn't like any of them. He was the only one who could see beyond this boring farm. When Becky was 10, she stole a ride on the mail train to Lawton, stayed on the train when it got there and rode it back to Indiahoma. That was daring. But Charles was more daredevil crazy like climbing to the tops of trees and jumping branches, running on fence rails and trying to juggle knives, but he wasn't brainsick-crazy like the articles she read about those people in institutions.

Charles never learned any good from the strap either. He was already good. Almost. Becky obeyed not because it was right but because she disliked a beating so much. Rightness and goodness had nothing to do with it. When they all got the strap, that was the last time she got a beating. And when anybody else got it she had to hide under the bed and cry.

Becky loved her mother and father always, even though her father was mean sometimes, he wasn't always mean. He was no different than most fathers, better than most. Still, he played bad tricks on them, like hiding the razor strap and making whoever it was to get a whipping hunt around and find it first, then bring it to him. That's bad, she saw no reason for it. He hid it real good for Charles since he was the worst. Sometimes, he hit Mama and made her cry, which made Becky cry and almost not love her father anymore. But he was her Pa, there's nothing without him. Maybe people were almost good, like Charles. Or mostly good and a little mean, like her Pa. Mama, though, she was all good.

"Charlie," she called. He didn't respond. "We gotta get up all these cockleburs today. It'll be trouble now if you don't put down that caterpillar. He won't be going far. Play with him later."

At length, Charles answered, "He won't be the same one."

With patience on her face, she knelt down. She swiped more cockleburs at the base of their stems and dug out their roots, making as much noise as possible. Soon she was rustling the grass, standing up to adjust her bandanna or squint at the sun, or gaze into the powder blue sky, but if anything he strayed farther away.

"Charles Bagby, you'd best come back here and pick up your sickle now. If Pa catches you looking all puny like that he'll put another shine on you."

"He won't neither!"

"He sure will! You get him madder than a betsy bug!"

"He won't! I ain't lettin' him whomp on me like that again."

There was a pause like a tug-of-war.

"He'll be whomping you anyway if you don't do your chores, like you're supposed to be," said Becky.

"He won't if'n you don't tell him so."

"I can't lie to Pa. He knows. Whenever I lie he knows. He'll beat me, too."

For some moments, Charles scanned the sunny stretch of wheat in the next field. The world was yellow and brown and blue, cut by small creeks, wooden plank fences and barbed wire.

He tossed his head around first, then started back to get his sickle, saying, "Aw, awright." He picked up the old sickle and added, "But, Ahh'm only doin it ‘cause of you—not for Pa." He began hacking cocklebur bushes and ripping out the roots. Sunshine flashed like mad off his blade. 

Enjoy the Suspense and Climax of "Fable of a Universe" in

PLEASURE ON THE RUN