While writing The Legend of Stuckey’s Bridge, the main character came across a young boy. The boy ended up being nearly as creepy as the main character, and I received tons of emails asking me to elaborate on the boy’s life. No one is that creepy without having some sort of lurid past. So, I penned Stuckey’s Legacy. The boy’s name is Levi, and he is a dark character. Creepy doesn’t quite describe him…
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The starlit night was perfect for a romantic walk, and it would have been pleasurable to stroll the streets for a while in the balmy night air, but Levi had more immediate plans for his escort. He marched her to the nearest hotel and checked in under the name Thomas Stuckey.
“I thought your name was Joe.” The girl giggled as she entwined her arms in his.
“It is Joe, but I don’t want to put that on the hotel register.”
They kissed as they staggered up the stairs, laughing all the way up to their room on the top floor of the three-story hotel.
Following their lovemaking session, Grace lay in Levi’s arms and listened to him tell her all about the fancy people he was going to be friends with on Jekyll Island, about Cornelius Bliss’s death, and about the New Year’s Eve Gala tickets he’d found when he broke onto Mr. Pulitzer’s yacht.
She rolled over onto her stomach, crossed her arms across his bare chest, and looked at his face. Her blonde ringlets danced across her face and he softly pushed them from her temple.
“You’re really quite pretty, you know that?”
She blushed. “Then why don’t you take me with you?”
“Oh, that’s out of the question, dear. I’m going to meet wealthy society people, and I don’t think you’ll fit in.”
“Well, what makes you think you’ll fit in?” she teased.
“Don’t you think I’m one of them?” Levi frowned.
“Mister, I grew up in the Charleston Orphan House. I know a poor orphan when I see one.”
“Well, I never lived at the Charleston Orphan House, but it’s true I’m an orphan.”
She looked at him like a lovesick schoolgirl and waited for him to elaborate.
“I was orphaned years ago. My father was a drunk. He killed my mother right in front of me when I was eight years old.”
Grace gasped.
Levi continued. “He strangled her after he caught her fooling around with a man from up the road. He murdered both of them in a fit of drunken rage.” Levi looked away from her and stared at the ceiling.
“I’m sorry. You probably loved her very much, huh?”
“I don’t know. I thought I did for a long time, but my father pounded into my head that my mother was not worthy of my love. She was a whore.”
Grace grinned. “Well, I’m a whore. It’s not all bad.”
He looked at her with surprise. He didn’t think of her like that, but it was true. “I guess you are, aren’t you?”
“What happened to your father?”
“I killed him,” Levi said flatly and looked back at the ceiling.
After a few uncomfortable seconds, Grace giggled. “No, really, what happened to your father?”
He looked her in the eye. “I killed him.” He paused to watch her expression and was satisfied with the look of fear in her eyes.
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Stuckey’s Legacy is available at Amazon.
Sarah Elizabeth “Bettie” Brown was born to William Lafayette Brown Jr and Sarah Ann Elvira Dollar Brown in Lauderdale County, Mississippi. (photo: transcribed family Bible) There were ten children in her family, seven boys and three girls, one of whom died at birth. Five of the children were born just before the Civil War began, and her father was a sharp shooter guarding the railroad bridges at Chunky, Mississippi, so her mother was home with a handful of children under the age of eight at the start of the war. When her father returned from the war, the next child was born in 1865. They wasted no time!
You may also want to pick up a box of Kleenex.
Lori Crane 