Short Story

JULY MORNING

Nancy's Notes 🖊️🎶

Trigger Warning: The unspeakable events in Israel this week
have left me numb. This is a very bleak tale.
I hope you will bear that in mind
as you read my story today. Thank you.

© I Goodheir

The church used to be there, across the river.

Rumors were that Pastor Roderick had a squaw named Chenoa who kept house for him. People talked; they agreed the relationship seemed …. peculiar. One October night a few curious boys paddled across the river. Hearing shouting, they crept to the vicar’s cabin and peeked in a window.

Roderick was drunk and yelling at Chenoa. The boys were startled when the vicar threw his glass across the room and reached for a birch cane by the hearth. He grabbed Chenoa and ripped the front of her tunic from neck to hem, leaving her standing naked and trembling. He wrestled out of his waistcoat and began whipping Chenoa’s breasts as she sobbed. Purple welts appeared on her chest and bloody droplets trickled down her belly. Roderick licked the blood, then twisted Chenoa around and entered her from behind. When he was done, he pushed her to the floor.

The boys fled and told their parents what they had witnessed. The next morning the sheriff and a posse rowed out and discovered the church and cabin burned to the ground. Roderick was dead, an arrow sticking angrily out of his neck; he had been scalped. There was no sign of Chenoa.

On a sultry July morning the village women went berry picking by the river. They screamed out in horror at the sight before them: a despondent Chenoa had hanged herself from an oak tree. The papoose on her back cradled a sleeping infant.

NAR © 2023
250 Words

The Unicorn Challenge-13/10/23

If you are unable to view the video, which I understand is a frequent problem, it can be found on YouTube. Sorry for the inconvenience. The song is “July Morning” by Uriah Heep. This is a pic of the version I chose for today’s story:

45 thoughts on “JULY MORNING”

  4. What an awful story.*

    *compliment on engaging the Reader and not allowing us to close our eyes, block our ears or otherwise avoid a story as old as time and one made inevitable from the moment that Lilith was magic-marker’d from the Old Testament

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  5. Open any newspaper and we might read the same. The story – since the beginning of time. Books written and rewritten … just renaming the characters and the setting.
    Nothing wrong with writing about it. Takes courage to do so. Brings it to our attention.
    A week that will certainly remain in our thoughts for a long time.

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    1. Thank you, Doug. I appreciate your thoughtful comments.

      The connection is a personal one, how my dark mood has spilled over into my writing. This is not a political statement nor is it a commentary on what’s been going on in the Middle East for decades. I am referring strictly to the slaughter of children in Israel last week, an act of barbarism that weighs heavily on my heart. That is an abomination that can never be explained or justified.

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      1. Yes, mine too. I ended up at the mall yesterday with my two granddaughters and one needed a new screen procetor for her first phone. I stopped at a kiosk, and a young man helped us, even put it on her phone for her. There was a sign on his counter – Free Palestine. We got into a very heartfelt discussion, and I think the kids went away with a better perspective than one gets hearing the nightly news with glamor anchors dressed in military fatigues.

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