Separate Realities
by
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Chapter One
Sam was dozing on the porch. He had not slept all night. The mid-morning sun warmed his back and the spring air was rich with the fragrance of new growth. The quiet was interrupted only by the bickering of a committee of sparrows from the edge of the woods. Sam had suffered through the night, heart-broken, worried, and confused.
His tired, burning eyes slowly blinked open and focused on the empty road that wound down from the hill a quarter mile away. Lifting his weary head against the hand that hung from the rocking chair, he glanced at the man seated there above him and moaned. The ancient chair swung and groaned as the breeze gently moved it. Thought was absent. Sam's brain was silent, receptive to instinct and some strong sense sent a flutter of hope to his young heart. He struggled to his feet as an unconscious yearning whine escaped his open mouth. The next instant he jumped from the porch and was running, flying, stretching out in long leaps for the figure striding down the hill toward him.
The large silhouette carrying a pack stopped, shed it's shouldered load and hollered, “Sam!” Ezekial caught the dog as he leaped into his arms and hugged him close as they fell beside the road. Sam licked Ezekial's face and barked joyously as they rolled on the green Carolina grass.
“Sam! I missed you buddy. I'm glad to see you too.”
“You're skinny boy. And almost full growed. I missed you buddy. Where's Gramps? Has he seen me?” Zeke asked as he peered down at the weathered farmhouse.
Sam whined and lowered his head, then looked mournfully up into Zeke's eyes. He trotted toward the farm house, then looked back to ensure that Zeke would follow.
“What is it Sam?”
Ezekial gazed at the farm down in the small valley, then picked up his pack and began walking toward it. Sam trotted ahead, stopped and whined, then trotted ahead again looking back. Zeke began walking faster, then trotting with Sam. He dropped his baggage and broke into a run, yelling “Gramps!”
Before he reached the porch he could see the dear old body slumped in the rocking chair. The great head was bowed as if in thought, the cleft chin on his chest. He walked slowly, reverently to the body of his ancestor, his last living kin. He knelt beside the ancient rocker and lifted his grandfather's head. He held the wrinkled, noble face gently, peering into the open, glazed blue eyes of his precious Gramps.
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About the Book
Ezekial Robertson went to war before he was old enough to shave. He fought and killed those he learned too late were not his enemies. Returning from the insane and confusing war, there was no family left for him at home in Carolina so he left for Texas in search of a cure for his chronic loneliness and unrelenting yearning. Along the way he met other pilgrims searching for their lives and through the miles and struggles they melded into a tight-knit family of misfits. Together they stood against bandits, reconstruction conditions, Comanche and Kiowa and built a home together in the Wild West Texas wilderness. Each member of this family of friends struggles with life and their own sorrows. Some were blessed to learn that sorrow’s cure was there beside them, in God-given friendship, as each lived through and toward their own separate reality.
About the Author
W.W. Worley was born and raised in west Texas where Texas heroes and Confederate generals are revered even to the naming of streets and schools. From an early age he wondered about these names, like Beauregard and Twohig, Crockett and Lee, Travis and Lone Wolf. 200 years ago it was a wild and woolly land. Worley's imagination dwelled there in his formative years. Perhaps this yearning toward wild and uncivilized contributed to his own untamed nature, but whatever the cause, his life in prison has largely been spent in the study of those yesteryears, those seemingly simpler times that truly were not so simply at all. He blends history with imaginings to recreate a world long past, a world of our beginnings. Worley is a prodigal son, a struggling Christian who reads his Bible daily and like the good thief, Dismas, he asks for grace and mercy, not justice. Using the means available to him, often meager in prison, he earned four college degrees. He enjoys painting in oils and drawing. He is an avid reader and still, in his aged years, a curious student of life. He hopes to climb the mesquite covered hills and walk over the wind-blown west Texas plains again someday. In his mind and writing, he walks there every day.