WELCOME TO

  This sample of how to describe your character and her situation over a number of pages, rather than your description reading like a catalogue, is taken from my story, Maybell's Revenge - one of the stories in my book of short stories, CAN'T YOU HEAR THE WHISTLE BLOWING?

Barely aware of the coming storm, Maybell sat on the front porch, staring at nothing.  She had never imagined anyone could be so alone.  Living by herself, way out here, only added to the feeling she was completely cut off from the rest of the world.  Although she stared at the muddy yellow clay road running off her property to another muddy yellow clay road, all her thoughts were on escaping.

A stubborn, unrelenting all-day drizzle had replaced the thick fog that persisted for the previous week.  Now, churning blue-black clouds piled high and collided all across the sky, unwelcome messengers of much worse weather to come.  Yellow clay dust, churned up by the swirling breeze before the drizzle began, settled in a thick layer on the freshly swept porch and lent its own distinctive odor to the smells of damp, rotten wood, rain and pines.

When Maybell was brought back to reality by the low rumble tumbling across the pine forest, she walked slowly to the end of the porch and looked around the woods, hoping to see at least one friend.  But, even the chickadees and meadowlarks, normally darting about the meadow in search of last year’s seeds, sat on the lower limbs of the trees, their feathers ruffled and heads pulled back against their breasts.  It seemed all the wildlife usually making Maybell’s little piece of Tennessee their home had gone into hiding.  She couldn’t blame them.  Not only was it an immeasurably dismal day, the sky had become dark and scary.  And, Maybell was afraid of the dark.  She was smart enough and had taken enough psychology classes to know she was suffering from depression but, what the heck, she had a right to be depressed.

One more month and she’d be off to Raleigh, but she wished she could leave sooner, like today.  With daddy buried years earlier, since mama died, there was nothing to stay here for.  Not a lot mattered, now, except escape.  A tear slid down Maybell’s cheek and dropped to the weathered gray boards of the porch floor, making its own miniature mud puddle in the dust.  She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and turned to open the ragged old screen door, its squeaky, rusted hinges like the rest of the place, slowly falling apart.

Stopping just inside the door, the same terrible loneliness and hurt enveloped her, as it had at mama’s funeral.  She looked around at the broken-down, worn out furniture and wished mama still sat there in the rocker, reading her beloved bible.  The steady splat-splat-splat of water dripping into pots, pans and buckets provided a haunting serenade of accompaniment to her feeling of aloneness.

Maybell was struck by guilt for the way she felt about the tiny four-room shack.  At least, she considered it a shack.  Before mama died, it would have hurt her deeply if Maybell had expressed her true feelings about their home.  But, it had no sink, no bathroom, no air conditioning or central heat, no telephone, no nothing.  It was, plain and simply, a shack.  What else could she call it?  The only heat in the winter came from the wood cook stove in what could jokingly be called a kitchen.  That same cook stove made the place unbearably hot in the summer, so many summer meals were cooked outside over the stone fire pit daddy built.

Over the years, too many bricks had fallen from the top of the chimney and lay in a haphazard heap on the ground, oblivious to the danger their departure from the chimney had caused.  The coldest winter nights, when the stove glowed cherry red, flames climbed up the soot-filled chimney and beyond its shortened top.  Often, the winter wind whipped the flames dangerously close to the dried out wooden shingle roof.  These same unaware, uncaring winds blew snow through the cracks in the walls, when the weather turned nasty.  Then, Maybell piled everything available atop her bed, including her one coat.  Still, by morning, the fire in the stove would have burned itself out, and she awakened shivering from the cold eating its way through all her protective efforts.

Summer and winter, hot or cold, dry or wet, they had to travel a hundred yards to the outside toilet.  Mama said daddy set it that far away to keep the flies away from the house.  In the summer, when it got sticky and hot, they couldn’t buy enough fly spray to keep the pesky little devils away from the little wooden single seater.  Maybell supposed her mama had been right.  With all its faults and, as much as Maybell dreamed of living in a fine home like her friend, Suzy, the airy little house had been home for as long as she had lived.  The one kind thing she could say for it was its beautiful location in the middle of ten pine-covered acres.  In the spring, when the wildflowers bloomed and the meadow once more turned green, she couldn’t imagine a more beautiful spot anywhere on the earth.  She was sure God had made it perfect, but had done so in the summer, then forgot all about it the other six months of the year.

To mama, the little hovel had been home.  To Maybell, it was a prison - a poor, miserably depressing, dilapidated pauper’s shack of a prison.  It hadn’t seemed quite so bad before mama died, but now, it seemed the house died a little more each day, its ultimate goal, to be reunited with its dead mistress.  The cracks between the loosely nailed board siding grew ever wider, the breeze more easily rattled the windows in their frames, several new leaks had appeared in the roof, requiring an increasing number of pots, pans and buckets during a rain.  The front porch was in real danger of collapsing and sliding down the hill toward Nashville, atop the sticky yellow clay.

Maybell knew there had to be a better way of life out there, somewhere.  After daddy died from the black lung disease, as so many of the coal miners did, mama got a small pension from the miners’ union and a little money from social security but, together, it wasn’t enough to improve their lives.  And, God knows, mama worked herself into the grave trying.  But, having only a third grade education, about all mama knew how to do was hoe and pick cotton, tend a garden and cook.  She never owned even a treadle type sewing machine, mending all their clothes by hand and trying to make a few extra things for her only child when money allowed.  Mostly, she bought flour in big cloth bags with some sort of flowered print on the bag.  When the bag was empty, mama turned it into clothes.  Laundry was done on a washboard in a big galvanized tub and hung on a clothesline to dry, where in the winter, they froze solid into grotesque creatures of all sorts in the moonlight.  As a young child, the frozen ghosts had frightened Maybell out of her wits on many an occasion.  Poor mama had it hard all her life, and Maybell lived in stark fear she might be stuck in the same pathetic, destitute situation, if she didn’t get away from this place.

As she stared at the rocker, Maybell thought about mama coming home after a hard day in someone’s cotton field or garden, so tired she collapsed into the rocker and fell immediately to sleep, the worn old bible in her lap.  It was as if mama prayed every night that she wouldn’t have to return to the struggle the following morning.  Maybell got tears in her eyes every time she thought about mama becoming more and more stooped as the years passed.  Mama was a small woman, and her desperately fragile spine eventually was unable to recover from being bent over all day in someone’s field.

After standing almost in a trance, thinking about her dead mama, Maybell suddenly realized she had little time to get ready for the awards ceremony.  She agonized over going at all, with nothing to wear, and knowing all the other seniors would be well dressed.  As she removed the bib overalls and flour sack blouse and put on the only decent dress she had, it pained her deeply to have to wear such an ugly thing.  Sure, it was the dress mama got married in, but who else would wear an ankle length dress decorated with what seemed like thousands of tiny pink carnations on a mauve background?  If that wasn’t bad enough, pink buttons, the size of half-dollars, ran the length of the front.

Maybell stood before the peeling, framed mirror procured from K-Mart ages ago, and which her mama so happily hung on the back of the bedroom door.  She again wiped away tears, remembering how proud mama was of the five-dollar purchase.  But now, the mirror, like the rest of the house, seemed to mourn its mistress’ passing.  The mirror had, long before, turned a scratchy yellow and distorted everything.  As she looked at the chubby, poorly dressed girl in the mirror, tears continued down her too-fat cheeks.  Maybell covered her face and sobbed softly, silently asking God why He took her mama away and why He made her so ugly.  Why didn’t you make me pretty… like Suzy?

She had hoped she could dry her tears and lose the redness in her only pretty attribute before Suzy arrived.  Despite her homely exterior, Maybell had absolutely beautiful eyes.  Were they but some joke God played on her?  They were the color of new sprigs of pine needles - not a definite green, but a soft yellow-green.  Everyone who wanted to say something kind about her commented on her pretty eyes and beautiful long lashes.  It always embarrassed her, because she knew she was anything but pretty, and they were only trying to say something kind.  Yes, she had beautiful eyes, but nothing else worked with them.  Her chin was too wide, her nose too big and her face too fat.  Sometimes, she stared into her eyes in the mirror and pretended everything else about her matched their beauty.

***

As usual, Suzy showed up early - a half-hour early.  Darn her.  Now, Suzy would know she’d been crying again, and she’d have to listen to her lecture all over - the same lecture she’d heard a hundred times.

Of course, the first remark out of Suzy’s mouth was, “Good God, Maybell, girl, you’re not wearing that damned thing, are you?”

Maybell didn’t know whether to slap her face and run Suzy off, or ignore her unintentionally hurtful remarks.  Sometimes, her only friend really got under her skin.  Suzy had absolutely everything Maybell lacked.  Beauty, money, a daddy, everything.  Finally, Maybell stared out the dirty kitchen window to avoid looking at Suzy and said quietly, “You know it’s the only dress I have.”

“Well, I’m gonna tell you somethin’ for your own good, Maybell, girl.  Someone five feet four and a hundred fifty pounds shouldn’t wear a dress that makes them look fatter.  And, that’s exactly what that dress does.”  As she usually did, when lecturing Maybell about something or another, Suzy stood with her feet apart and her hands on her hips.  When her gaze moved to Maybell’s feet, she shook her head.  “You’re not really gonna wear those ugly red shoes?  My gosh, Maybell, girl, I know you have better looking shoes than that.”  There was the usual, “Oh, man, you look awful.” whine in Suzy’s voice.

Maybell’s entire body stiffened, and she tried to be angry instead of hurt.  She blurted out rapidly, “Dammit, Suzy, they match the red in the dress.  I’m not exactly rich, you know.”  The look she gave Suzy said, “Shut up about the way I’m dressed.”

Suzy turned toward the door and, in a still disgusted tone said, “Well, to hell with it.  C’mon, we’re gonna be late.”

Maybell hung her head down and stared at the floor, not knowing whether to cuss or cry.  Again, she wished her mama was there.  Why’d you have to go and die, mama?  It just isn’t fair!  “I don’t want to go, Suzy.”

“Hell, you gotta go, Maybell, girl.  You don’t show up, they might give your scholarship to some dumb-ass like me.”

As angry as Maybell got at Suzy, she could never stay that way long.  Suzy always had something to say that made her laugh.  Of course, she knew better.  The scholarship was hers whether she went to the awards ceremony or not.  Her friend sure couldn’t qualify for a scholarship with her C’s and D’s.  “Okay, okay, I’ll go.  But, you have to promise, you’ll bring me straight home immediately after the ceremonies.”

“Fer cryin’ out loud, Maybell, I was planning on sneakin’ out to Cemetery Hill with Bobby to git a little.”

Maybell felt her face flush, but managed to get out, “Let’s go, but you forget about Bobby until you bring me home, or I’ll just walk home.”

As Maybell wound the piece of rusty wire around the glass doorknob to hold the front door shut, Suzy opened her umbrella and said, “You’d have to be crazy to walk home in this rain.  It’s six miles.”

Maybell knew she might be laughed at for the way she was dressed, but she didn’t care.  It was she who had the full four year scholarship, because she paid attention and learned all she could in high school, while most of the kids worried mainly about going out to Cemetery Hill to party.  As the Baptist preacher said one Sunday during his hell and damnation sermon, “You can walk from one end of Cemetery Hill Road to the other without stepping on the ground for all the beer cans and used condoms laying about."

Wesco was a small town some thirty-five miles outside Nashville, and a number of small communities in the area used the same high school, so the gym was filled to capacity when they walked in.  And, just as Maybell was sure they would, little chuckles followed her all the way to the stage to receive her awards.  As soon as the stack of awards she’d earned and the letter of commitment for the scholarship were placed in her hand, she headed directly for the side door of the gym.  To heck with waiting for Suzy to finish talking to the half dozen boys in the foyer.  She’d walk home.

The rain came down heavier, and Maybell hugged the large brown envelope to her chest to protect it.  She was getting drenched, but her scholarship papers were more important.  She was nearly out of the parking lot when Tommy Fairfield stepped out in front of her and startled her half to death.  Maybell was reluctant to admit it, but she was afraid to be alone with a boy.  That fear showed in her quick, frightened response to Tommy's sudden appearance. “What do you want, Tommy?”

“Hey, I didn’t mean to scare you, Maybell.  I just wanted to apologize for that bunch of morons laughing at you.  I’m really sorry.  Where you going?”

“Home.”

As you can see, the first few pages of this novel, MAYBELLE'S REVENGE, paints a pretty good picture.  That is what a wordsmith is supposed to do - paint a picture the reader can see in their mind.  

I hope this writing sample will be helpful to you.