Rebecca Barrett

My granddaughter is quite the artist. She has gone through many phases in her artistic education. For a time everything was about fashion. With numerous Barbie type dolls to dress for the runway, we spent a small fortune on fabrics, netting, ribbon, beading, and hair products.

She dabbled in oil painting. This was her Chagall period as evidenced by the self-portrait shown here.

But my favorite expression of her creativity came at the age of eight (she is now sixteen) which we call the Purple Cat period. Water colors were all the rage. It was at this time that she created Reneaux.

Looking at the painting you might assume that Reneaux is a handsome cat. He certainly is the picture of contentment. But what you don’t see in this rendering is that he is a superior cat in the way that only a cat can be. He is a font of important information, i.e., purple and gold are the correct colors for any occasion because purple is for royalty and gold…well gold is for gold.

Never wear socks with sandals. Better your toes freeze off than make this fashion faux paux. Curly hair cannot be contained nor should you try.

If these were the only lessons to be learned from Reneaux then one would consider themselves well rewarded for having known him, but there are many things beyond mere matters of appearance that he has imparted. He has taught us that a nap is always appropriate, regardless of the situation and it quite often heals a world of heartache. Being alone isn’t lonely, especially when you have a creative mind. Work (creativity) is its own reward. Knowing your own worth and standing your ground when it comes to your values is hard but it is the right thing to do. Kindness to every living creature costs you nothing but the rewards are great.

Reneaux is no Cheshire cat. His messages are not cryptic. He has been a good friend and guide to a little girl who has had to survive the world of two older brothers, friendships that aren’t always what they seem, and the whole coming of age angst.

My granddaughter, the chicken whisperer, is a talented, creative, kind, self-assured young woman and brave in many ways. She has learned a lot from Reneaux and, through her, so have I.

Rebecca Barrett writes historical fiction, short stories of the South, and children’s stories. Her novel, Road’s End, is an historical novel set between WWI and WWII and is available on Amazon.

She is a cat lover, first and foremost, although dogs hold a special place in her heart. Cats have distinct personalities and abilities and anyone who is possessed by a cat is fortunate indeed, even if it is only in their imagination. Over the years, the many cats she has loved have formed the basis for the cozy mysteries she writes.

EARLY MORNING, fog shrouding all the out-buildings and vegetation, ready to make the early morning run into town. That’s when she saw them. Spots of light flickered through the swirling white dawn, dancing in jerky movements all along the pasture fence line.

What the heck?

As my sister-in-law pulled out of the farmyard she saw the first patrol car. She lowered the window and the officer shown his light all through the interior of her SUV.

An escaped convict, he said. From up around Selma. Stole a car. State law, local law, and Sheriff’s Department all hot on his tail. He cut off 69 onto their dirt road. Didn’t figure on the loose gravel, he reckoned, and crashed down by the cattle crossing.

Keep your doors locked, he said. We got dogs coming. Should be able to catch him up pretty quick.

Back at home from her errands she told my brother the details. He got down the shotgun and checked it, loaded it. Went out and sat on the front porch.

She called her son who lives over the rise on the other side of the road. He had seen him, running across the pasture in his orange jumpsuit.

By this time there were more police cars up and down the county road. Everyone was keeping their dogs in because of the tracking hounds. The farm yard was filling up with law enforcement and vehicles.

About lunch time my nephew spotted him again. He had shed the jumpsuit over in the pasture. The dogs started up and my nephew looked out the window. He was dressed only in orange prison-issue boxers. He was running through their back yard, spurred on, no doubt, by the five confined dogs objecting to his presence with a chorus of baying and barking.

We can only assume this uproar was what gave him the burst of speed as he plunged straight into the briar patch situated where the pasture meets a little stand of trees.

At this point my sister-in-law called to fill me in on all the hi jinx. Everyone was exchanging a blow by blow of the unfolding drama as the number of vehicles and officers grew, huddling together in small groups, strategizing.

I decided to call my younger brother who lives a couple of miles, as the crow flies, from the epicenter of all that action.

My other sister-in-law informed me that they knew nothing about the great chase but that she would tell my brother. He would want, she was sure, to get his rifle and his one bullet and sit on the front porch, too.

I thought it was a Barney Fife witticism but she informed me that, no, he only had one bullet. The hardware store can’t seem to keep ammunitions on the shelves these days. He was down to his last bullet. But that’s all he would need, she assured me, if it came down to it.

Like the rest of the little rural community, my younger brother gleefully loaded his rifle with his single silver bullet and took up his post on the front porch.

The day rocked on, interest in the great chase waxed and waned. The grand baby was dropped off and the vigil moved inside to the recliner.

In the late afternoon my sister-in-law sat in the middle of the floor playing with the grand baby. My brother kept guard from the recliner, the quiet disturbed only by an occasional snorting snore.

Suddenly, my brother brought the recliner up-right and struggled awake as he got to his feet.

“Get outta the way!” he said as he stepped over the grand baby and headed for the hallway.

The convict, tired, sweaty, scratched and scraped, sat on the front porch steps. It’s uncertain how long he’d been sitting there or why he had risked capture with such a reckless act. It’s only known that by the time my brother returned with the gun, he was gone.

Well, I’ve made a long, shaggy-dog tale out of this little farce. Suffice it to say that at around eight that evening the man in orange was back in custody. Though I can’t speak for him, I imagine he was about as glad about that as the law was. All of which brings me to the question of choices.

As entertaining as this great chase was to all the local folk, you can’t help but wonder, what was he thinking?

Was this all the result of a fortuitous opportunity and a lapse in judgment? We can’t know what prompted the urge to run. And perhaps the decision to cut down a narrow, red clay road in the middle of nowhere where every man, woman, and child is as proficient with a gun as a mosquito is at finding me from half a mile away, was a valid choice to evade the police. But to strip down to your orange boxers defies logic, in my opinion.

We can guess, of course. Did he think he would become a less conspicuous target by shedding the jumpsuit? Was it the heat of clambering through scrub growth and racing across open fields that caused him to disrobe? Or could it be that he had his eye on the concrete storm bunker in my nephew’s back yard to hole up in that inspired his fashion decision. This is my sister-in-law’s favorite theory. I can’t quite see the logic of it.

Regardless of the motivation for his choices, in a certain neck of the woods in Marengo County, orange is definitely entertaining. Whether or not orange is the new black remains to be seen.

I couldn’t find the garden fairy. She was nowhere to be seen. Normally she rests ever so lightly on the lip of a flower pot that contains a rather unruly butterfly plant. Concerning, yes, but not a cause for true alarm. It was several days later when the plant ties disappeared that I began to worry.

It’s true that I had been careless and left them on the patio table while gardening. What was going on in my back yard? It’s secluded, you see. There are two wrought iron gates but both are closed and locked. I sat in the glider under the ceiling fan in the Taj Mahal carport and pondered, my coffee growing cold.

Miss Marple slipped through the iron bars of the side gate and came to join me. She lives next door and occasionally drops by when I’m out and about in the yard. I guess you could say we have a comfortable relationship. She will lounge on the concrete floor, or choose one of the patio chairs and stretch out along the seat. I think she finds the woven metal mesh a good air conditioner. We don’t speak on these occasions, nor do we go in for anything touchy feely. We respect each other’s space.

The next day when I went out to sit in the glider and drink my morning coffee, I discovered that one of the tassels was missing from my seat cushion. It’s a pretty coral color and I absolutely adore the peacock design with bold blues, greens, and a touch of mustard. It’s my new favorite summer thing and I’m disheartened to see that it has fallen victim to the mysterious thief in the night.

This could not go on. I needed to get to the bottom of things. As I sat trying to devise a plan to catch the thief, my neighbor appeared at the garden gate. I invited her in for coffee and as we sat she drew three items from her pocket: the garden fairy, a small bundle of plant ties, and a coral tassel. She informed me that she had been vacuuming Miss Marple’s bed and found them.

You can imagine my relief. I may never know who slipped into my garden and made off with my valuables or if such acts against me will be repeated but I am relieved to know that, true to her name, Miss Marple is on the case and what is lost will be found.

William Shakespeare famously asked…

“What is in a name…”

Quite a lot, actually, especially if you’re a writer. I had the most wonderful English professor, Father Doyle. Yes, it was a Jesuit College. He and my eleventh grade teacher, Mrs. Sullivan, instilled in me the love of language and a desire to write the stories that were always intruding on my thoughts.

Perhaps it’s, in part, due to the fact that Father Doyle chose my name for one of his dissections that I find the subject so fascinating. Did the author of the short story we were studying choose Rebecca for its significance in biblical history or for the place it holds in literature? If you name your character Rebecca, does the reader subconsciously associate her with the mother of Christianity or a woman in peril as in the classic Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier?

My friend Greg Herren reads Rebecca every year. Was she a woman in peril? He says the meaning changes with each reading. That’s the beauty of good literature. The meaning resides with the reader in the moment that they are reading the story.

But back to the naming of characters, the process of choosing. It’s an important aspect of telling a good story. It’s also tricky. The thing that set me thinking on this subject recently was a debate on the merits of a character in my latest manuscript, Trouble in Paradise, the sixth book in the Familiar Legacy Mystery Series. The male protagonist is named Trout. I thought this a very fine name, a nickname, of course, but very telling of his character, his identity. He is, after all, a charter boat captain living in Key West, Florida.

His proper name, however, is Armentrout and that’s a whole other side of the spectrum. The name is Germanic, formed from the words “army” and “man.” Further explanation says it means bold, inquisitive, a planner, and interested. Since Trout’s former life, the one he escaped to Key West to forget, is that of a psychologist for troubled teens, it now seems a truer fit than ever. I’m amazed sometimes by how my subconscious works. Or I’m lucky.

Either way, I still like Trout just fine, thank you very much. It fits the character and the story. Trouble in Paradise is in the final editing stages and we’re sticking with Trout. It will be released May 7, 2018. Trouble, the Sherlock of black cat detectives, is the star of the show, naturally. But Trout just might surprise you with his sleuthing skills. You’ll have to read the story to see.

If you hear someone say “I was thinking about how to commit the murder as I was leaving home,” let’s hope you’re listening to a mystery writer on a panel at Murder in the Magic City in Birmingham, AL, or Murder on the Menu in Wetumpka, AL. That’s exactly what I was doing at the Wetumpka Civic Center when I reached down in my purse with every intention of buying this guy’s book. To my surprise, my wallet wasn’t there. Then I remembered I’d left it in the microwave.

Like Lucy, I’ve “got some ‘splain'” to do.

My friend and fellow writer, Susan Tanner, and I had driven up to Birmingham to attend Murder in the Magic City with a lot of other talented writers, a good number of which were members of The Cat Women Collective. As with any gathering of writers, there was a fair amount of adult beverage consumed. Not that I’m making any excuses, mind you.

On Saturday we had a wonderful time talking our craft and characters to a great gathering of readers at the Homewood Library. When we returned to our hotel we were informed that there would be barbecue in the meeting room Margaret Fenton had arranged for us to use to congregate and smooze. I decided I didn’t want to lug my purse around all evening so I left it in the room.

In my lifetime I’ve traveled quite a bit so you might say I’m a seasoned traveler. I wasn’t about to leave all my valuables sitting in my purse in my room while I was elsewhere enjoying myself. My dilemma? What to do with my wallet. There was no safe in the room so naturally I cast about for a good place to stash my cash. Et voila, the microwave. I’m a writer, accustomed to hiding dead bodies, so it seemed perfectly logical.

The problem with being a writer, particularly one sweating a deadline, is that our mind tends wander to thoughts of red herrings, choices of poison, and body parts. Make of that what you will. Since I was on this excursion in the face of a looming deadline and a woefully low word count, I let my mind turn to Babs, the first ex-wife of the dead wife’s dead husband. I know, I know, that’s confusing but you’ll just have to read the book.

I left the merry makers telling tall tales and whopping lies and went up to my room in my own little literary fog of lies. I had to get Babs on the page, never sparing a thought to the wallet in the microwave.

The next day, the writers caravanned down to Wetumpka for Murder on the Menu, another excellent event to help fund the library. It was then, after a delightful lunch and mingling with a lovely group of true book people, that I sat listening to this panel of professional liars and remembered the wallet.

When I called the hotel to explain the situation, the woman manning the desk almost choked. They immediately sent someone up to my room and recovered the lonely wallet. Not only did I have to tell my friend that we would be adding almost three hours drive time to our trip home, I had to walk into the lobby of the hotel where, I kid you not, the entire staff was awaiting my arrival. Apparently leaving your wallet in the microwave isn’t as common as I would have thought.

So, if you were traveling by air Sunday evening or early Monday and the person in the seat next to you started snorting with laughter for no apparent reason, she or he was probably a writer returning home from Birmingham. Without doubt I shall have to listen to the admonition to check the microwave anytime I’m traveling with my writing friends. What can I say, my job is to entertain and I take it seriously.

In September I went on a grand adventure with my best friend. I’d always wanted to travel across the country by car and see what this great land has to offer, so we set off. Destination: California’s Napa Valley and the Wine Train. The best way to get there, of course, is due West along the various roadways that make up the famed Route 66.

As a history buff I know the stories about the great migration west of America’s early days, the escape to the land of plenty during the Depression, the flight of the Great Dust Bowl era, and the lure of Hollywood that continues to draw a steady stream of aspiring actors and actresses looking for their close-up.

There are a number of ways you can see the USA. Our Interstate highway system is a marvel of engineering and efficiency. With air travel, you can hop from city to city and see what’s unique in any given community.

When my grandson was little, probably about three, he was on an errand with his other grandmother. They were stopped in traffic and a truck was in the lane next to them. “That truck’s been to the country,” the apple of our eye said. Other grandmother looked out the side window to see it was covered in red clay from the underbelly to almost the level of the windows.

To him, red clay meant the country. It still does. The last few days of July, I had quite an adventure in the country. It involved a lot of red clay.

I had gone to the country to take care of a little business and piddle with some honey-dos I’d been putting off for a while. My early departure from home didn’t happen. I got bogged down with last minute issues involving my current book. So, by the time I crossed Horse Creek bridge and turned onto County Road 41, it was late. I was anxious to get in and settle before nightfall, to crank down the air conditioner so the place would cool enough for sleep.

Usually I go the long way around. It’s paved for all but about a hundred yards from my front porch and, I have a white car. But, as I said, it was late. I wanted to be there already. After weeks of rain the car needed a good wash anyway, I reasoned.

Fifty yards in, I knew I was in trouble. The car slowed of its own volition as the tires became so caked in red mud they couldn’t get traction. As I tried to maneuver to the middle of the road, hence higher ground, the mud had different ideas. I was on a trajectory toward the ditch and the woods beyond. Flooring the gas pedal and turning the wheel to correct for my slide did no good. I came to a stop, tried to reverse. The result was a slide even closer to the ditch. There would be no rocking back and forth to break free.

What to do? Fortunately, I had noticed a vehicle at the lone house just after the turn onto County Road 41. The people who own the house don’t live there, they just visit back and forth from Louisiana to do a little gardening, and, I expect, enjoy the quiet of country life. They would be my salvation, I decided.

I turned on the blinkers and turned off the ignition, my car balancing on the very edge of the road and nosing the dense vegetation. When I opened the door to get out I realized my second problem. I was wearing flip flops. Now, that’s not an uncommon thing for me to do ten months out of the year. But as I surveyed the red clay beneath my open door, I knew they would become part of the roadbed if I stepped out in them.

Well, I’m a country girl and I confess that when I’m home and inside, I’m usually barefooted. So, I slipped off my flip flops and stepped ankle deep into the mud. I was wearing what a dear friend used to call high water britches, known as pedal pushers in my youth, and today called cropped pants.

I took my purse that contained my phone and locked the door, hazard lights flashing. My reasoning for taking the purse was that maybe I wouldn’t look so threatening if I arrived on a stranger’s doorsteps, barefooted, my feet caked in red mud, and pounded on their door. Who knows how my mind came to that conclusion. I guess I wasn’t thinking too rationally at that point.

The red clay sucked to my feet like a slug on the bowl of my water fountain. I kicked and scrubbed my feet against the grass of the neighbor’s yard to little avail. I found a twig and was able to pry a little of it from between my toes. In the end there was nothing for it except to walk across their front porch, muddy feet and all.

So, there I stood, knocking on their door, my nice designer handbag on my shoulder (yes, I confess, that is my weakness, lovely handbags), my high water britches, and my bare feet covered in mud up to my ankles.

Although I woke the lady of the house from her afternoon nap, she was very kind. She let me use her cell phone to call my brother. My cell phone doesn’t work up there. (No, Verizon, I can’t hear you now.) And, bless her heart, she never batted an eye at my attire.

Just as I got my sister-in-law on the phone, I heard a vehicle turn onto the dirt road and come to a stop, obviously blocked by either my car or the good sense not to attempt to go around it.

I hobbled back to road as quick as my bare feet and the red clay would permit to find none other than the county commissioner surveying the situation. I was informed that the road had just been graded and a new culvert put in to correct the issues the neighbor was having with access to his driveway. The commissioner tried to hook my car to the cattle catcher on the front of his truck with a chain he had but the hook wouldn’t fit. The rope he had in the bed of the truck was old and didn’t hold up to the weight of my car and the unrelenting grip of Marengo County red clay.

The neighbor came to help on his four-wheeler and about that time my brother and nephew arrived. My brother got behind the wheel, red clay caked boots and all, and the others pushed until we broke free. We pretty much hydroplaned until we reached my front porch for fear of settling once again into the roadbed.

My brother was quick to tease me as we waited for my nephew to follow behind us and pick him up. I’d lived away from the country too long, he said, I didn’t know how to drive on the dirt roads anymore. After a bit we started wondering where my nephew was. Finally, he pulled into the driveway. The county commissioner had gotten stuck in the same spot and they had had to pull him out of the mud with the Jeep.

Lessons learned. Follow your better judgment, and when you don’t, be sure no one has a camera to record the results. More importantly, don’t let anyone tease you that you don’t know what you’re doing. It may be true but all of us have lapses once in a while and we should be allowed to let them, like sleeping dogs, lie.

Spring and new beginnings, how they lift us up and make anything seem possible. Yet here we are in the doldrums of a wet, hot summer. It’s hard to be inspired when the humidity exceeds the temperature.

I’ve been writing most of my adult life. The simple act gives me pleasure and the exercise helps me figure out who I am and come to terms with life’s circumstances, good and bad.

The past few years have been difficult. People I care deeply for have been lost or suffered terribly. This week marks the closing of a chapter in my life. The home where I lived with my dear husband, where we raised our children, sold. It is a bittersweet occasion. I am no longer weighted down by the responsibility of a house too big for one person. Yet, as I sift through the contents, keep this, give up that, I feel a deep loss.

It’s the old photographs that do the healing. They contain our history, tell our story. Though is it faded with age, there is a snapshot of my husband against the backdrop of masses of apricot trees blooming at the peak of their flowering. We were in Pakistan, having traveled from Karachi all the way to the Kyber Pass. It had been an arduous trip, minimal facilities, terrible roads, even a river crossing by fishing boat. As we came around a sharp turn in the road, there they were, the trees loaded with flowers, more abundant than the cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C. in the spring.

“Well,” my husband said, “was it worth it?”

It was all worth it. I’ve had a very good life and I know in my heart there is still more to come. The good and the bad. So I’m setting forth with gratitude in my heart and hope in the future. It is time to dedicate myself to my writing. It has been relegated to the back burner for a long time. As my dear, departed, friend Eugene Walter would say, “Life intervened.”

I hope you will join me on my pursuit of something that once again feels fresh and exciting to me. I’ve written a number of books, most of them in boxes deep in the back of the closet. A precious few are available to readers. I write historical fiction (Road’s End), short stories (www.rebeccabarrett.com), post apocalyptic fiction (The Blessing of Hannah, under the pen name Campbell O’Neal), children’s stories, and now I’m writing romantic mysteries.

Trouble in Dixie is my contribution to the Familiar Legacy series of romantic mysteries. Together with several other fiction writers (Carolyn Haines, Claire Matturro, Susan Tanner, Laura Benedict, to name a few) we are up to all kinds of high jinx featuring Trouble, the black cat detective. Take a trip to Savannah, Georgia with Trouble as he adeptly deals with old money and fresh murder in pursuit of an art thief, a missing insurance adjustor, and love in the air.