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

Bonus Excerpt from story...

"Country Fable"

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 whupped his butt.

            “You’ll get to work if you know what’s good for you!” Becky thought of yelling at him. The biggest problem with Charles was how kind and nice he was. He was almost grown up that way. Last week they were roughhousing when Ma and Pa went 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 as Charles continued to pass one hand over the other, treadmilling a caterpillar. She knew he wasn’t like any of them. He was the only one who could see beyond this boring old farm. When Becky was ten 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 sure was daring. Charles was even crazier, though, climbing to the treetops and jumping branches like some daredevil, running on fence rails and trying to juggle knives. But he wasn’t crazy like the stories she heard about those people in institutions.

            Charles never learned any good from the strap either. He was already good, almost. Becky obeyed not to be good or because it was right, but because she hated a beating so much. Goodness had nothing to do with it. When they all got the strap, that was the last time she took a beating. And when anybody else got it she had to hide under the bed and cried.

            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 the one getting whipped 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 also 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.

            Becky checked her youngest brother J.C. and sister Ina Ruth nearby, who worked slow. She put a hand on her hip. “Charlie,” she called. He didn’t respond. “We gotta get up all these cockleburs today. It’ll be a heepa trouble if you don’t put the critter down now. Play with him later.”

            At length, Charles replied, “He won’t be the same one.”

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

            “Charles Bagby, now you’d best get back here and pick up your sickle now. If Pa catches you looking all puny like that, he’ll be shining you good again.”

            “He won’t neither!”

            “I reckon he will. You make him madder than a betsy bug.”

            “Reckon he won’t. I ain’t lettin’ him beat me like that again.”

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

            “He’ll be whumping you anyway if you don’t do your chores, like you’re supposed to be!” shouted 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. Their whole world was yellow and brown and blue, cut by small creeks, many wooden plank fences, and barbed wire.

            “Charlie, I’m not gonna lie to Pa for you.”

            “Becky...” he said, “remember when you chopped your leg with the sickle that time?”

            “Why?” She sounded annoyed.

            “Nothing. Just thinkin’ on it.”

            “Well you oughtn’t to be thinkin’ on bad things. It ain’t right.”

            “How come, if it happened?”

            “Charles, now please stop being difficult.” She paused to think about it. “Well, it’s because, it just ain’t...nice. Ain’t fit to be talked about in front of youngins or polite company, like Mama says."

           Charlie tossed his head around first, then returned for his sickle, saying with indifference, “Aw, awright.” He picked up the sickle, and added, “But, Ah’m only doin' it cause of you being nice—not for Pa. So he's don’t beat you.” Charles began hacking cocklebur bushes and ripping out their roots. Sunshine flashed like mad off his blade. 

FIGHT OR FLIGHT