Murder is in the Details: Three Short Stories

By Corlyss Morrel Disbrow

Red Fear was inspired by an actual event that happened when she was four years old. A rabid dog was spotted walking down the street in front of her home. Her mother, Jane, kept calling this mad dog back from where their own pet dog was penned. The last time that Jane called the rabid dog away, it ran under their house where it was shot by her father, Peyton Morrel.


Ta, Ta, Tootsie, Bo-Bo, is quite loosely based on her friendship with her late business partner. His mother had pet-named him Tootsie Bo-Bo. The conflict in her relationship with Tootsie led to this short story. Perhaps we all feel some animosity in relationships. These feelings often develop over time.

In the case of Goodbye to the Wheelman, she usurped some incidents from a close friend’s marriage, which had ended. Disbrow has a long memory for stories, and she embroiders them to fit the story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 21, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462891825

Corlyss Morrel Disbrow

I was born in Macomb, Oklahoma. My first writing was published in School and Community. I had two sons. One of them had "tongue thrust" a residue from his hard birth. He also had an injury to brachial plexus. "Ran's Villains", about his speech problems, and therapy, were written for this magazine. The editor who accepted it, commented that I have an interesting style of writing. I took courses in professional writing from the University of Oklahoma. I also have, hours in journalism from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. I have many things published, from advertisements to articles, "Mechanicsburg Motorhead" in Car Collector and Car Classic. In my own business, D. C. Marketing & Writing Graphics, I have written reports and proposals for clients. I have two degrees in business, the second one is from St. Louis University where I received a master's degree.

Book preview

Copyright © 2011 by Corlyss Morrel Disbrow.

ISBN:          Ebook                                      978-1-4628-9182-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was created in the United States of America.

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Contents

Red Fear

Ta Ta, Tootsie Bobo

Goodbye To The Wheelman

This book is dedicated to my mother, Jane Elinor

Morrel, who is a noted Illinois poet. She has written

two major books of poetry: Wordings Like Love;

and This Paradox Shadow. She has read poems from

these two books at the Vachel Lindsay House here in

Springfield, Illinois.

RED FEAR

Jeanne says Negahnquet misses a lot even being as big as its name—all there is to it, is one main street and two grocery stores, a post office, and a library and my father and uncle run of the grocery stores. There’s a Baptist Church and a Methodist Church. That is the first question a new child is asked at school, "Are you a Baptist or a Methodist?

There’s Little River, red as the red clay it runs through, just full of crawdads making little puffs of dirt in the shallow water near the bank, where the little ripples of sand show through the blood-colored water. You can take a stick and poke where you think he’ll back up. All along the banks grapevines hang from the trees, big around as my arm.

You could swing almost half across the river, drop off and go all the way down until your feet touch bottom all gritty and muddy, and feel the cold bubbles coming up your calves like tiny bites. About half a mile and there is a trestle across the river. You can hold on to the steel beams and walk across underneath—it’s like a cage, but rectangular, not square. When a train goes over, it’s not as loud as you might think, but you can feel the bars vibrating under your hands like a tuning fork.

Sometimes, Jeanne and I walk down to the cemetery at the bottom of the steep hill in Negahnquet. It is very pretty there. It’s lined with weeping willow trees. Some of the graves have bits of colored glass. Bottles that someone thought were pretty. Some had turned blue-orange from the sunlight. Sunlight does beautiful things with glass. Sometimes it bubbles like it has been in a fire. There are vinegar bottles