When Words Kill

Posted on December 2, 2016 by Carolyn Dennis-Willingham, Author

Cono Dennis, after realizing his father read his private letters.

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Cono Dennis, my father, age 18

I might not have sparred with him but I stopped him cold and I don’t just mean by showing off my defense skills and putting him in a head lock. As sure as a sharp axe can cut through and splinter a log and slice a thin piece of paper, a sharpened pencil can do the same thing. Words are powerful; they can be weapons as sharp as an axe. “Gene, I want to kill my Dad,” words that must have reverberated and Echoed in Dad’s ears just as loud as a sawed off shotgun, or blue lightening bouncing off a cow’s head. And just as loud as his slap across my face. I don’t think I meant for him to find all those letters, but he did.

From No Hill for a Stepper, the novel based upon my father’s life from age two till age eighteen.

Entering the Insane Asylum

Posted on November 27, 2016 by Carolyn Dennis-Willingham, Author

The Pungent smell of an insane asylum.

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From The Last Bordello (voice of Sadie):

My limbs shook. My knees buckled. The men in white held fast to my elbows and pulled me toward a thick wooden door. When opened, the fragrant air vanished and was replaced with the malodorous smells of urine, vomit, rubbing alcohol, and something else I couldn’t quite place.

I saw only a few women, one being dragged in another direction. “Not surgery, not surgery!” the woman wailed.

The driver unlocked another door and pushed me into a small room that contained a stained mattress on the floor and a bucket for excrement. He told me to sleep well. I heard him laughing down the hall long after they had locked the door.

I thought it was a cruel joke, that my mother had followed behind and would now take me home with an “I told you so.” Before the tears had a chance to come, someone unlocked the door again.

Sadie, before becoming a prostitute

Posted on November 25, 2016 by Carolyn Dennis-Willingham, Author

At age fifteen, Sadie Sated Timothy – from The Last Bordello.

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It started the day Timothy and me sat on a gentle slope on the banks of Geronimo Creek between the honey mesquite and Texas spur grass. He’d snuck a bottle of whiskey from home and had been thoughtful enough to bring crackers and a small chunk of cheese to our Sunday afternoon picnic. I was smitten with the boy, the twin to my best friend, Kat.

He spread the blanket and, for the first time, I spread my legs. The weight of him, slight as it was, felt like a made-to-fit blanket.

He was finished before I had the chance to feel him inside of me. “I might only be fifteen,” I said, laughing. “But I don’t think that’s what it’s supposed to feel like.”

Offended at first, Timothy managed a grin. “Then I guess we need to try it again.”

Then I caught sight of the ugly housedress that Lucinda, my so-called mother, wore almost daily. Ugly like her character. Ugly like her words. Stupid like her Bible-mouth that preached how Jesus would protect her yet Lucinda wouldn’t get up on a ladder if her life depended on it.

She split us apart, yanked me up by the hair, and ruined my favorite dress as she dragged me home.

“You miserable bitch,” I screamed. “Just because you couldn’t keep my father at home doesn’t mean I have to be a spinster. I love him! Love him! Any time Timothy wants me to pleasure him, I’ll be willing and ready.”

Lucinda slapped me. I slapped back, harder. She fell on the warped flooring of our kitchen and dabbed a finger at the corner of her bloodied lip.

For the next two weeks, we didn’t speak. Still, I heard her mumble on occasion, “Ticktock, ticktock. They’ll put you under key and lock.” I didn’t pay attention to those words. I should have.

Meeting Dixie Dupree!

Posted on November 22, 2016 by Carolyn Dennis-Willingham, Author

I rarely write a review on Amazon, but after reading The Education of Dixie Dupree by Donna Everhart, I had to. Here it is:

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Readers will learn from Dixie Dupree’s education!

Like every great book, the first chapter of The Education of Dixie Dupree grabs the reader by the collar and makes us yearn to know more. Loved this book!

The author, Donna Everhart, blew so much life and guts into her eleven-year-old protagonist that Dixie Dupree leaped off the page and into my heart from the very beginning. I identified with this young girl’s sassiness and grit, wagged my finger at her mischievous tongue, and, later, screamed at her to speak up and let the words flow.

Set in a small town in Alabama in the late 1960’s, the story revolves around Dixie and her relationship with her mother, father, brother and uncle. Written in first person point-of-view, Dixie shows us the good in her life, and how to survive when it’s anything but.

Some readers may find parts of Dixie’s suffering too troublesome to read. But her suffering is also part of our education. What reader can’t identify with the emotions of guilt, anger, and sadness that may lead to (hopefully temporarily) damaging our being?

But these emotions do not depict the whole story. The Education of Dixie Dupree is also about determination, insightfulness, warm hugs, resolution, and wholeness.

Dixie Dupree deserves a degree for her education—and her creator, Donna Everhart, deserves to be wearing a cap and gown and handed a framed diploma for writing this outstanding novel.

A book launched Texas style…

Aside

Since I have “friends” now, I’m reblogging this post from 2011. It was a special day for me, indeed.

Carolyn Dennis-Willingham

No Hill for a Stepper was launched Texas style with James “Slim” Hand as our special musical guest. Singing the songs of Cono’s era that would have made Bob Wills and Gene Autry proud, the music was the perfect foreground for our hill country setting. What an evening! The word for the evening was “surreal” as I saw the efforts of the last 3 1/2 years come to the end of just a beginning. I cannot begin to thank all of the attendees who supported me although I certainly tried! Plus they donated sacks of coins that I will give to the winners of the students in Bell County for the “No Hill for a Stepper” essay contest. Payin’ it forward as they say.

To the crowd of over seventy people, my heartfelt acknowledgment of my father was this:

“No Hill for a Stepper” is my father’s story. While my mother, during her lifetime, was thirsty for life, she spoke mostly about her present and her future. My father focused more on his past. There were reasons he did so. First, because he wanted my sister and I to know how very different his life was compared to ours. Pat and I didn’t have to pick lambsquarter for our meals and we didn’t have to live in a dugout for our shelter. But the other reason he talked so much about his past, especially in his later years, was that he had something to resolve before he died.

As many of you know, my father was very much aware of this novel. A pen guided my hand in response to the things he recounted to me. Dad talked. I listened and wrote and wrote and and I recorded. Never in my life would I have been able to make up his story on my own.

Cono is here tonight, along with my mother. They are here in the photos and in the songs that James Hand is playing. They are here in my spirit and in my heart. Together, Mom and Dad are where all questions are answered and all things are resolved. They are now where things are no longer discouraging but instead, they are where things are copacetic.

My father did not live long enough to see the final product. So Dad, here it is – the final product I told you I would finish. “If I tell you a rooster wears a pistol, look under its wing.”

And then, my fellow supporters joined me in singing Dad’s favorite song, “Home on the Range,” loud enough for him to hear.