I love days like today. Days when the sun is bright and hot and shining down on you like a grand stand spotlight. You can hear the creek giggling in the woods well before practically walkin slap into it if you don’t watch where you’re goin. It’s cool and inviting and the rocks are smooth, weathered by the current. Tall blades of grass bend from the banks and sway desperately reaching out at the teasing ebb and flow. The sand feels like velvet under your bare feet as you step gingerly around the rocks, deeper and deeper gently allowing your body to get used to the temperature. Until you finally get the nerve to just lean back and submerge yourself neck high.

     Leanin back I can just get my fingertips into the sand to keep from floating down stream, especially after a heavy rain.

I like to close my eyes with my face to the sun and balance my body like a star just under the surface. Floatin in simple peace I listen closely to the sounds around me. It’s like I’m waitin to discover a secret but I never can quite hear it. When I start to feel pruney I like to get out and dry on the swing under the pecan tree in Meemaw’s backyard. The sun peeks through the enormous branches glittering and warmin my sand smoothed skin and dryin my hair in a tangle of earthly waves. This is my happy place. Where I feel free. Where my heart is allowed to beat as wild as it wants to. Makes the world feel smaller somehow. People seem better than they really are and life’s problems not so problematic. Yes, these are my favorite kinds of days.

     Swingin out I point my dirty bare feet to the moon that’s already a silver sliver in the sky by four o’clock and close my eyes feeling summer on my face. As I glide back I feel my wet hair brush my cheeks and taste the dirt in the wind. The horses snort and blow out air in between mouthfuls of grass in the pastures as they graze with the sun baking and shimmering off their red clay coats as the flies dodge their whipping tails.

     I forget about them when I’m like this. My parents. In fact I forget I ever even had any. In these moments it’s just me in my special place under the pecan trees. I’d like to say it’s just me and God, but I don’t know if He’s really there lately. Don’t tell Meemaw but sometimes I wonder if He has ever been there -- at least for me -- so I try not to think about Him too much just in case He’s listening to my thoughts, which Meemaw assures me He is. I figure maybe I can avoid His wrath this way. The wrath according to Meemaw that is surely heading my way.

     But I think maybe if I can just find this ambiguous place to exist where I’m neither good nor bad, maybe God won’t smite me. Maybe He’ll just forget about me all together. For me and God it’s like we are too people avoiding each other in a crowd of mutual friends or something. Like we know we’re at the same family reunion but don’t have much to say to each other. Or maybe we just don’t know what to say to each other. So instead of confronting each other and ruining the party for everyone, one of us hangs by the punch bowl and one of us hangs by the dip.

****

     “Bryla Camilla Moon! I know you are not out there half neked on that swing for the whole free world to see what the good Lord gave you! Especially not when it’s time to come on in and warsh up for Sundee super at church! You better getcher ba-hind in this house right now before I come out there with a hick’ry and stripe them legs!”

Meemaw slammed the screen door leaving behind a strong scent of catalogue perfume that drifted in the breeze killing every mosquito in its path for fifty yards.

     Sunday night supper didn’t start until six but Meemaw was always ready early in the same dress she wore to Sunday school that morning. She would take it off as soon as she got home and before she made lunch so it didn’t get wrinkled and then put it back on for Sunday night. Bryla often asked why she didn’t just change her dress or dress casual like most of the congregation at church supper.

“Because Bryla, aint no use in wastin a good church dress when it’s still perfectly clean and pressed! Sides I’m not about to show up for supper at the Lord’s house in my koolots and summer blouse lookin like I aint got no raisin! Neither are you now get your church clothes back on!”

     Bryla came through the back door into the kitchen and plucked a blackberry from the strainer of fresh washed berries. Meemaw popped her hand causing her to squeeze it and stain her fingertips purple, “Meemaw!” Bryla laughed.

     “You’ll spoil your dinner!” she snapped turning around, “Zip the rest up for me Hun.”

     Bryla wiped the juice on her leg and finished up her grandmother’s dress, “Where’s Pops? He comin to church tonight?” she grinned.

     “Well you know he’s not!” Meemaw spun around narrowing her eyes at her granddaughter, “Mmm hmm you just love to aggravate me dontcha?”

     Bryla giggled reaching for another blackberry, “Where is he?”

     Meemaw smacked her hand again, “Out in the barn with the rest of the asses on this farm. That’s why he can make himself a sandwich for dinner while we go pray for his black soul. Now go get dressed for I tan that hide!”

     Bryla smiled, “Yes ma’am.”

     “Make sure you warsh your arm pits and dry your hair good too, I don’t need you catchin your death of cold and runnin up bills in the hospital that we can’t afford to pay!” Meemaw called out popping a blackberry into her mouth.

     “Yes ma’am!” Bryla called turning on the shower in the hall bathroom.

****

     At church everyone gathered in the dining hall which was downstairs in the basement. The congregation had worked hard to finish it last year adding a full kitchen to for making meals for holidays, church events, and families in need. Meemaw volunteered in the church kitchen quite a bit because she liked to brag that she was the best damn cook in Cherry Springs but really it was because she enjoyed cooking for folks, especially folks who went hungry. She was always telling Bryla the best way to show your love is with a hot meal that warms a weary heart.

     The kitchen smelled like hot rolls and honey, salted ham, green beans, and chocolate cake. Bryla’s mouth watered as she got in line with Meemaw to fix herself a plate and a glass of sweet tea. She made sure to make a plate with two helpings of everything, one for her and one for Pops. Meemaw said she would not be bringing him leftovers if he refused to congregate with the Lord and his flock of good Christian men and women, but she never said Bryla couldn’t make him a to-go plate. Meemaw cut her eyes at Bryla every Sunday evening as she loaded heaps of food onto her plate only to state she was full half way through dinner and needed to wrap up the rest.

     She knew what she was up to.

     When everyone was seated Pastor Harvey Tumlin stood up and thanked everyone for coming out and to all those who had contributed to supper, “I can’t wait to try that cake Selma!” he grinned wiping his brow with a handkerchief that he always kept in his pants pocket. Pastor Tumlin seemed to sweat every time he opened his mouth even in the winter.

     Meemaw pursed her lips and smiled at Selma Archer across the way. Bryla smiled to herself and shook her head as she could only imagine the things Meemaw was silently thinking about Selma’s chocolate cake, certain it was no way near as good as her chocolate fudge mountain cake she was so proud of.

     After grace and thanks were given, everyone had eaten, and some of the menfolk had inconspicuously loosened their belts, the adults gathered to sip coffee and have a little impromptu Sunday schoolin, polite gossip, and farm tip sharin while the kids were all shoo’ed outside to play on the church makeshift playground that consisted of two tire swings and one homemade wooden see saw.

     Bryla quickly walked out of the cool dining hall and into the warmth of the late afternoon. She was one of the few kids that were in the double digits and ever since she had turned thirteen last year she made an effort to dodge the parents with small children for fear of being politely forced to babysit after Meemaw had announced her services free of charge to the entire congregation. She spotted an empty picnic table that had been moved out into the field during the last church picnic and decided to seek solace in the sunset alone.

     Lying on her back with her knees up she watched the pink clouds drift by and wondered about the people in the graveyard across the street. She wondered who they had been and how they had lived, how they died, and how long they’d been out there in a deafening silence. Death was something she didn’t like to think about too much and not because she was scared of the unknown, but because she thought too much about the tiniest of details of things, and if she thought too long about them she would get carried away and maybe have to breathe in one of the brown paper sacks Pops kept in the barn. But the thought that she always came back to was that to try and understand even just one person, to watch one person’s whole life from birth to death, in most cases would take a whole lifetime in itself, and there were just so many people out there. Just gone. Alone. Eventually forgotten. So many it took her breath away.

     Her thoughts were interrupted by footsteps coming up behind her in the dry grass. She looked backwards shielding her eyes at the dark silhouette coming towards her.

     “Hey Moonie,” said the shadow.

     Bryla squinted, “Don’t know any Moonie.”

     “Really?” said the voice, “She’s this girl I know. Kinda goofy lookin. Loud and mean as a striped snake!”

     It was Justin Cascade. He was the only one who ever called her Moonie and he was two years older than her. His parents dropped him off to stay with his grandparents every summer while they went on some exotic vacation without him. He was an only child like Bryla but not on purpose. He had a younger brother who died when Justin was seven. Bryla wasn’t sure what exactly happened other than it had been an accident at the family’s lake house and the Cascade family didn’t like to talk about it and she never pushed Justin for the details.

****

     Justin Cascade was standing over me like a tree casting a shadow on my face in the last of what Meemaw calls the Jesus light piercing the clouds. I gasped a little when his green eyes caught the sun and flashed gold before returning to a dull olive. Something was very different about him. He would be 16 in August and he wasn’t so scrawny and freckle faced as last year. I mean he still had freckles but they weren’t such an obnoxious explosion on his face and his jaw was sharp and square. He was taller and he even had muscles. I felt myself blushing a little as he smiled down at me and I hoped my sun burn hid the fire in my face.

     “Is that any way for a lady to be displaying herself in a church dress? All sprawled out on the table like a Thanksgivin turkey?” he raised an eyebrow pointing to my bent knees.

     I grinned and yanking my dress up to my waist as he turned away shocked, “Who you callin a lady?” I laughed revealing the shorts I always wore under my dresses and skirts no matter what Meemaw said.

     “Oh yeah, I forgot,” he laughed flashing his perfectly straight teeth and pushing my knees over to sit down next to me.

     I’d been playing and fighting with Justin since the first summer he started coming to Cherry Springs after his brother died. His grandmother decided he needed as much Jesus as she could give him and put him in the same Vacation Bible School class as me every summer. We attended youth group together and played together on Wednesdays at my house when Meemaw and his Nana got together with several other ladies from church for prayer and quilting circle that always took place on Meemaw’s screened in side porch. We were never allowed to be on the porch or in the house when they had quilting circle so Meemaw would set aside some cookies or pound cake and lemonade for us in the kitchen and as soon as we were finished we were expected to play and stay outside until time to go.

     The first time I met Justin Cascade he was 9 and I was 7 but I was eyeball to eyeball with him in height which he hated. He had crazy brown wavy hair that he never brushed, or at least it never looked brushed to me, and his hands always seemed too big for his little body. We were always competing to see who could run faster or jump higher. Sometimes we’d play truth or dare daring each other to do the scariest thing we could think of to see who would chicken out first. Whoever lost had to be the other’s slave for a week.

     Once he dared me to jump off the highest point in the barn loft into the hay because he knew I was scared to death of heights. I was so mad I almost cried getting up the ladder, but I wasn’t about to be the chicken or his slave that week, so I made my way to the top and inched over to the edge holding my breath.

     Justin stood below with is hand up shielding his eyes from the sun coming in through the open window behind me, “You scared Moonie?” he taunted.

     “No! And quit callin me Moonie!” I snapped back feeling my whole body shake from the inside out. I was pretty sure my bones were rattling.

     “You look like a beautiful angel descendin from Heaven Moonie!” he giggled.

     “Oh shut up!” my voice cracked as I tried to regain my composure.

     “Oh okay,” he said taking pity on me, “I guess you can have a do over if you want.”

     “I don’t want your stupid do over. I’m not a chicken!” I shouted.

     Just as Justin started clucking at me I jumped into space. There was a loud WHACK that seemed to knock me silly and everything went black.

    

When I opened my eyes I heard Justin crying asking someone if I was alive and Nana assuring him I was, and of the belt whuppin that he was gonna get as soon as they got home for playing in the barn, which we both knew was off limits.

     Meemaw lightly slapped me on the cheek, “Bryla, come on back to us baby,” she said gently however with authority. She wasn’t foolin me with her good Christian woman voice, I knew she was mad as hell.

     I opened my eyes and they focused on all the bad dye jobs that belonged to the other buxom women standing around Meemaw with looks of frowning concern as she revived her near dead granddaughter.

“Just what in the ever lovin tarnation were you thinkin jumpin out of that loft? Have you lost your mind? You’re lucky God gave you such a hard stubborn head girl or you might not be with us!” she handed me a kerchief from her bosom, “hold that to your nose now.”

     I winced feeling a knot rising on the back of my head and something warm coming from my right nostril.

     “It’s my fault!” Justin blurted out startled by the blood, “I made her do it! I dared her to jump but I didn’t know she’d hit her head! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean it! I’m so sorry Moonie!”

     I looked at him confused and unnerved by the depth of his upset from just a bump to the head and a bloody nose; I acquired one or both pretty regularly on my own. But there he was suddenly very small and frail and almost hysterical with a fear in his eyes that I might not be okay. I didn’t even think he liked me most days and here was beside himself worried for me. I felt something sort of move in my heart. Seeing him like that hurt me and I didn’t know why. I felt my eyes getting warm with tears welling in some sort of comradery. I couldn’t be mad at him anymore.

     “It’s not his fault,” I said sitting up slowly and holding Meemaw’s boob crack tissue to my nose, “he dared me but he gave me a do over. I was just showin off. The game was my idea,” I lied.

     “Bryla Moon!” Meemaw snatched me up by the elbow and smacked me on the seat of my shorts, “I oughta give you the belt for good measure!”

     I gritted my teeth at Meemaw and turned, “Just please don’t give Justin the belt Mrs. Cascade,” I asked as sweetly as I could, “it really wasn’t his fault.”

     She looked down at Justin who was finally calming down but starring at the dirt clearly somewhere else.

“Well, I guess we will just be due a good talk with PawPaw then when we get home,” she said tussling his hair, “let him decide what to do with ya hmm?”

     I smiled. Everybody knew Justin’s PawPaw didn’t hand out the spankins in the Cascade house, he was a big ole teddy bear that sounded gruff but bought us ice-cream down at the bait shop where he worked part time. Everybody loved PawPaw.

     The women bustled around us praisin the Lord for not takin me on up to Heaven (or straight to Hell) as they made their way out of the barn and back to the house. Justin and I followed behind them in silence. I knew he was embarrassed for crying like that in front of everyone and I decided not to tease him; for now.

     As we trudged up the porch steps we sat on the top step while the women gathered their pocket books and quilt totes. Justin’s green eyes quietly found their way directly into mine despite the bloody rag covering half of my face and said, “You really did look like an angel Moonie.”

     I knew right then and there we were soul mates.

****

Title: Pecan Moon

Genre: Southern Writing

Age Range: Adult

Word Count: 3224 (submission – currently writing)

Author Name: Stephanie Wullimann

Why it’s a good fit: I feel like my story, and I as a writer, would be a great asset to Trident Media Group because I have a lived quite a bit of life in just my 35 years and I’m not afraid to write about it. I write from a place of humor but also of pain and life lessons often learned a bit early and more times than not, the hard stubborn angsty teen way! I have always been able to connect well with people in life as well as in my writing. People are always expressing how much they love the way I write because it reaches them. Whether I am making them laugh or cry, I love to connect, and I love the magic of a good story and I would absolutely love an opportunity to work with you.

The Hook: “…I think maybe if I can just find this ambiguous place to exist where I’m neither good nor bad, maybe God won’t smite me. Maybe He’ll just forget about me all together. For me and God it’s like we are too people avoiding each other in a crowd of mutual friends or something. Like we know we’re at the same family reunion but don’t have much to say to each other. Or maybe we just don’t know what to say to each other. So instead of confronting each other and ruining the party for everyone, one of us hangs by the punch bowl and one of us hangs by the dip.”

Synopsis: Pecan Moon is about unjaded first love, deep loss, and how sometimes the search to find ourselves in tender early spring years of life can follow well into the winter of our life. It’s centered around a country fried humorous family with a heaping side of good ole Southern fear of Jesus raisin, and nestled in the small town of Cherry Springs. Its summertime in the Deep South and Bryla Moon is turning 14. She lives with her grandparents and hasn’t seen or heard from her parents since they dropped her off with them when she was just a baby. Meemaw, her feisty grandmother, is a fire and brimstone red headed beehive wearing Christian woman who is determined to save the soul of everyone around her and especially Bryla’s. This summer will be different than all the summers before under the pecan trees as Bryla finds love for the first time along with her first heartbreak. She struggles with loss, forgiveness, and lessons learned from a life she has been sleeping through until now. For Bryla life is about to change in ways that she could never imagine and will be forced to let go of her fears that have been holding her hostage for years. She will find that sometimes the people who matter most are not the ones we are waiting to return or to save us, but those around us who are already our biggest fans; especially the Meemaw’s threatening us with hickory switches.

Target Audience: I feel this story will speak to Southern women and really anyone who grew up in the South. I hope to bring back memories of Meemaws everywhere. But I also think it will entertain everybody else in the North as well!

Bio: My name is Stephanie Wullimann, I was born in Gadsden, Alabama and greatly influenced by my own Meemaw and PawPaw along with the rest of my grandparents who regularly put a whuppin on me and my little sister. My dad moved our family to Atlanta, Georgia when I was five and I grew up in the metro area until I graduated high school. I left home at the all-knowing age of 17 and have been on my own ever since. I met my future husband six months before we graduated high school and we have been together now 18 years. We’ve been married for 14.5 years and have 4 amazing wild rompus children together. We moved back to my hometown of Gadsden 8 years ago but have recently relocated to South Carolina where we live in the tiny town of Blacksburg, population 1847 plus 6 new Wullimanns. I’ve been a writer my entire life; it’s a blessing and a curse! I am an artist and love all things glittery, musical, and theatrical, and the Alabama Crimson Tide of course!

Platform: I am a barely sane stay at home mother of four. My platform is hollering through the house and threatening butts with flip flops.

Education: I graduated high school in 1999 and attended the University of West Georgia in 2001. Then I “took a semester off” and did not return to school until 2008 when I enrolled online at Kaplan University. There while birthing and raising babies, I obtained my Bachelor’s degree in Child Developmental Psychology and later attended The University of Southern California where I completed several courses towards my Masters in Social Work.

Experience: I have been writing since I could hold a pencil and used to write and illustrate books on paper stapled between the cut out sides of cereal boxes. I was legitimately published by The Readers Guild in their Celebration of Poets in 1997 and then later in the State University of West Georgia’s annual Eclectic Magazine in 2002. I founded and ran my own theatre group in Gadsden Alabama called Birdhouse for 2.5 years. I wrote, directed, and produced both our original shows and headed up all of our events including an open mic night for writers. I also taught acting classes for kids at Starpower Performing Arts in Attalla Alabama.

Personality/Style: My style of writing is humorous however I incorporate a lot of sensitivity in my writing that provoke emotions and hopefully makes people think. I write from personal experience as a slightly wine soaked braless mother and president of crazy town raising four children from ages 12 to 3. I feel like my writing is easily relatable and my goal is to reach or touch people in places that they didn’t realize they still hung on to and to bring humor to the things (and people) that drive them most crazy!

Likes/Hobbies: I am an artist and I love to make things, paint, and now that I know how to use a few power tools I like to build things! I am a self-proclaimed rock star at Monday night Karaoke, I love to act and dance in a most ridiculous fashion with the children. I have no formal training unless you count the clubs in Atlanta in my years when I could drop it like it’s hot…now it’s more luke warm. I love wine, rescuing animals against my husband’s grumpy will, and laughing until I almost pee which is not too hard to accomplish after four babies fired out of the hole. I love hanging with my kiddos and decorating for holidays, I am known as the official Clark Griswold of our family.

Hometown: Gadsden, Alabama

Age: 35

Stephanie Wullimann

He rode a Harley.

He was a long haired country boy rebel without a cause.

He swore he would get out of here.

He even took me with him,

Even tho I'm not sure he really wanted to.

We left Lay Springs Road in the fall.

He was taller than the skyscrapers in Atlanta.

He pointed out the Capital was gold.

He was tan and wore jeans with holes in the knees.

He inflicted pain.

He smelled like beer and cigarettes and summertime.

He hated me.

I loved him anyway.

He blamed me.

He accused me.

He asked me to sing.

He was cruel.

He made me laugh.

He set the bar for love incredibly high.

I fell short,

but I loved him anyway.

I ran away

but he left me first.

A cigarette hole burned in my fragile heart.

I craved the pain.

I was too much for him.

I tried to save him.

He lost touch with himself and his mind.

Found an imaginary cause for the rebel.

I was a reminder of something that did not belong to me.

I found him on a balcony in the dark,

We didn't have to speak.

The truth is not trite but gentle,

tho blame is a heavy shield.

He said we didn't care.

He said we moved on with out him.

He said we left him alone.

He sad no one came to see him.

He said he had no friends.

He didnt say it was my fault.

He didn't have to.

I'm still here!

I screamed inside.

I'd always been.

I watched the skyscraper crumble under the moon,

The Capital was tarnished.

He disappeared the next morning.

He broke my heart.

He had broken it years ago,

When he was the first man to make me love him.

When he was my Dad.

His ghost forever leaving Lay Springs Road.

<p>Someone was getting sick in the bathroom.&amp;nbsp;She didn't&amp;nbsp;remember how she got home or when she fell asleep. Wearing only her heart and one earring, her contacts blurred and burned like hot ash when she blinked. She slid off the bed and gingerly and pushed open the door to find him broken over the toilet in the harsh light retching up moonshine cherries. Shame filled the space between. He threw her against the bed again and again while she screamed. With hatred he exploded coming down against her left eye killing the light. Leaving stars to weep for him in the dark.</p>