Lost Seeds, page 1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2024 by Teresa Mosley Sebastian
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Dominion Asset Publishing, Nashville
www.teresamosleysebastian.com
Edited and designed by Girl Friday Productions
www.girlfridayproductions.com
Cover design: Avital David
Cover illustration: Alon David
Project management: Sara Addicott
Editorial production: Reshma Kooner
ISBN (paperback): 979-8-9884670-3-8
ISBN (ebook): 979-8-9884670-4-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2024915088
First edition
This book is dedicated to my husband, Steve; daughter, Simone; son, George; and granddaughter, Amaya.
Contents
Chapter 1 Soliloquy of the End
Chapter 2 Life and Time—The Old and New
Chapter 3 Living in Darkness
Chapter 4 Jason
Chapter 5 Rosie
Chapter 6 Claire
Chapter 7 Men and Their Barbershop Talk
Chapter 8 The Joy of Summer
Chapter 9 A New Life
Chapter 10 Prepare to Swim
Chapter 11 The Levee
Chapter 12 The First Day
Chapter 13 Victim or Vigilante
Chapter 14 Damian
Chapter 15 The Beginning of an End
Chapter 16 Guardian Angels
Chapter 17 Little Girl Lost
Chapter 18 Another Father’s Nightmare
Chapter 19 The Depths of Anguish
Chapter 20 Construct a New Home
Chapter 21 The Journey Starts
Chapter 22 Revenge
Chapter 23 Jaffee
Chapter 24 New Life
Chapter 25 Execution
Chapter 26 Not Every Loss Is a Loss
Chapter 27 Killing the Dead
Chapter 28 Beau
Chapter 29 The Dungeon
Chapter 30 Crossing the Line
Chapter 31 Chaos Breeds
Chapter 32 Willie Post
Chapter 33 Lost Dog
Chapter 34 Invisible People
Chapter 35 Two Sides of Hypocrisy
Chapter 36 Shifting Atmosphere
Chapter 37 The Not So Obvious
Chapter 38 Sowing Seeds
Chapter 39 The Cigar Box
Chapter 40 Cries of a Foundling
Chapter 41 Lost and Found
Chapter 42 Unintended Consequences
Chapter 43 Facing the Truth
About the Author
Chapter 1
Soliloquy of the End
July 13–14, 1965
“The men respect your wisdom, Dub. Your words will go a long way in keeping things from getting out of hand,” the voice pleaded. Why is it about what I say? What I’ve done speaks for me. I’m not responsible for others, Dub thought. Yet, in the small hours of the morning’s darkness, he gathered with friends in the town of Saline, Illinois—the stifling heat being of no consequence.
Through the fog of exhaustion, sixty-five-year-old Dublin Brisco heard himself rattling off with surgical precision the facts and his thoughts of the past two days. He left for another day, or never, things too painful and revealing. He desired, yet dreaded, the thirty-mile drive back to Abingdon, where his wife, Mae, slept fitfully after attending to the family’s health and bidding the emergency workers farewell.
Almost a half hour later, the gravel beneath the wheels of his black pickup truck provided him comfort at arriving home. Relief that the day’s momentum had ended. He briefly smiled, viewing through the windshield the fifty years of labor to achieve a prosperity that had yielded the grandest house in their community. It allowed them a life of ease, including all the modern amenities they could afford.
Exiting the truck, the void in the property’s skyline caught Dub by surprise. The home’s beauty disguised another existence in the far recesses of the property. Behind a large freshly painted storage barn, nestled among the blackberry vines and branches of tall walnut trees, was the incinerated carcass of a windowless one-room wooden shack. Another small patch of burnt wood signaled where the adjacent outhouse had once stood. The home of Dub’s brother Timothy.
Suddenly, a vortex of fatigue and a flood of darkness pulled Dub to the only apparent source of any connection to reality. Red Adirondack chairs in the backyard had hosted games of checkers with friends over the years. As he folded into the seat, the hot night air hugged his body, bestowing solace, much like it had when he’d lived among the cotton fields in Alabama. Deep breaths of charred-wood odors lulled Dub to sleep, overpowering every scent from the abundant flowers and vegetables that surrounded him.
And as had happened only twice before over four decades, a familiar shadow, a strut he had seen often throughout his lifetime, sauntered up his driveway from the ruins where the shack had once stood. Even sleep could not mask the dichotomy of Dub’s life. Tim Brisco, younger than Dub by seven years, appeared. He looked cleaner and more confident than he had in ages.
“You let me die before your eyes,” Tim said.
“Tim, you had more chances than I did and blew them all. It’s unforgiveable what you did to Mama, despite her faults.”
Pointing behind him to the warm embers of the crumpled structure, Tim said, “You used this to keep me from belonging to your world, Dub. For you to engage in my life meant tainting yourself with my failures. To you, I was a broken man. A drunk.”
“Your choices made that happen. You’re dead, so go away. Go to hell, Tim.”
Abruptly awakening, Dub placed his head in his hands, covering his face as tears took form. A hot breeze from the shack enveloped his body, raising beads of sweat on his chest and face. After yanking off his shirt, he propelled it at the mound of ashes that now demanded the focus of all who observed his life through the constructs of his self-created social status. Dub jumped out of the chair and sprinted into the darkness to the edge of town. His feet became immobilized at a pair of broad wrought-iron gates securing the familiar industrial compound where he’d once worked; the “Tappers Mining Company” sign in bold red capitalized letters, held up by two wooden posts on either side, had remained unchanged since 1924, when Dub had entered the gates for the first time, taking the biggest step toward distancing himself from his beginnings—his parents, Tuttle and Betsey Brisco.
“Why did I want this so much?”
Water flowed from his eyes as he stared through the bars of the gate. Floodlights illuminated the smokestack erupting with white clouds.
He slowly turned around to join Mae in their home.
Chapter 2
Life and Time—The Old and New
1929–1962
After the explosion at Tappers in 1929, much remained the same for Dub. Many coal mines throughout the state closed over the years during the Great Depression or from depletion. Nevertheless, Tappers flourished by automating operations. Dub progressed too, through promotions from janitor supervisor to the mines and then to machine mining crew supervisor.
Finally retiring in 1962, Dub prided himself that one by one, Matthew, Bernie, Amaya, Calvin, Genese, Chloe, and Loretta had each, in birth order, completed an advanced education for which he’d paid the tuition. Only Bernie and Loretta settled and raised their own families in Illinois. Bernie married Travis Miller, a salesman, and had one daughter, Tina. Loretta, the youngest child, wedded the county jock, Waylon Thompson.
The Thompson family encompassed all that Dub and Mae could ever have desired for any of their offspring. Within a year after marriage, Loretta and Waylon gave birth to a girl named Francine, who they called Fran. Three years later a boy, Jason, arrived. After seven more years Rosalyn, who the family affectionately referred to as Rosie, rounded out the bunch. After Rosie came along, Waylon quickly found a new job in Saline, the town where he’d attended high school and college.
The Thompsons moved up the street from Bernie and her husband, Travis, to a community called Arable Grove, or the Grove for short. Its original name fit the dark fertile dirt that amassed at the base of a small knoll bordered by the railroad tracks. Black residents gravitated to the area over time to create abundant gardens. Waylon’s brother, Beau, resided two streets away. The opposite side of town, Hickory Hill, earned the designation because of its tall hickory trees and higher elevation. It housed mostly white and wealthier residents.
The Thompsons’ single-floor wood-frame home had three bedrooms and a foundation made of concrete blocks and posts that spanned the width. Loretta insisted on painting the house sky blue with white trim. A decorative aluminum skirt around the bottom hid the post-and-beam crawl space.
The backyard offered thick, luscious green grass fertilized by the rich black soil. Expansive boxwood shr
***
As for the years since arriving in Abingdon from Renfrew, Canada, in 1928, Tim’s life encountered many aborted starts. None involved a return to Talladega College in Alabama after completing his sophomore year, or any form of additional learning. In Abingdon, no job lasted more than several weeks.
At the age of thirty-five, Tim enlisted in the army to join the fight in World War II, only to disappear from boot camp in the middle of the night after serving only two months. He reappeared in Abingdon one month later, wearing a military uniform. Without a second thought or care, Dub promptly reported his brother to the local enlistment office.
Months in and out of military confinement and fines followed for various offenses, until the government dishonorably discharged him without Tim seeing a day of combat. After three years hopping rail lines and being rejected for housing by other siblings, he found his way back to Dub’s driveway.
The only explanation posed to Dub was “Just traveling here and there, brother. I’m tired of running.”
Dub’s words from 1928 came back to Tim: That’s all I got for you. Nothing more. Get your shit together and stay out of my life.
By this time, as a thirty-eight-year-old man, Tim got food and shelter, and did not ask for, or receive, more from Dub or any family member.
Every day was the same for Tim. In the morning, he reached for a cigar box, tucked safely away, to look at the drawings of a child. Afterward, he opened the door to his home, revealing the outside world, only to find a tray of hot breakfast Mae had delivered to the small stoop. Nothing more.
Sometimes, after the morning meal, he either cleaned himself and found a bench in the neighborhood park to observe life, sat in darkness inside the shack and talked to the ghosts of his past, or cracked the door and examined Dub’s family from afar. More times than not, he chose to voyeur the family. Nothing much had changed from his life in Morriston, Alabama, where, starting at eight years old, he had peered through windows of the more privileged across the tracks with the desire to be seen and belong inside.
Essentially, his world shrank to the small wooden one-room shack sitting on the back quarter of Dub’s property, hidden among trees and vegetable gardens. Dub stayed vigilantly focused on family and prosperity. Beyond expressions of hello or goodbye, or Dub updating Tim on the life of one of their siblings, the brothers’ worlds evolved in separate universes.
Chapter 3
Living in Darkness
1964
Tim never made long-term friends, never socialized, and rarely laughed. The other Brisco family members communed inside and outside, eating, laughing, and gathering without ever inviting him. The familial banishment seemed understood with little verbal expression extending across the generations from Dub to his offspring and to their children too. Corner Tavern, a block from Dub’s house in the Tarboro community of Abingdon, became Tim’s limited social circle, despite patrons taunting him. And on this summer day in 1964, Tim’s encounters with the Briscos and at Corner Tavern were no different.
The grandchildren played outside Dub’s house. The short block held only four houses. Each house with unique features, Mae’s being the most ornate and painted white. The others were simple wood frames with the exterior paint color reflecting the owner’s personality and identity to the world.
Mae’s brother and his wife lived next door. He chose a muted tan color, being a quiet man, and his wife enjoyed baking pies and competing against Mae to be the family’s favored cook.
Situated diagonal from the Briscos was the most brilliant residence. A red house, belonging to Corner Tavern’s owner.
Fran, Jason, and Rosie liked the violet house directly across the street from Dub and Mae the most. First, it was the only home they were allowed to visit with little notice to the adults, and the only limitation was to stay outside where they could be seen. The house also had eight children of all ages, from young adults to infants.
Each of Loretta’s children had another child of the same age to play with in the violet house. Fran had a boy near her age to tell her what teen males thought at that stage, and yet he never invited her to share her confidences. Jason had a set of twins, one boy and one girl, who enjoyed a good game of marbles and playing tricks on the older children. Rosie had a girl her same age to share toys with and engage in make believe.
The homes on the Briscos’ block had similarities too. Each neighbor had a vegetable garden. They all shared the harvest, and no one went wanting or hungry. And each home had meticulously kept flowers of all varieties indigenous to the Southern Illinois climate.
This summer day was perfect for all the Thompson children and the boys and girls in the violet house to take in the sweet floral scents of summer, the fumes of a fresh-baked cake or pie, and the subtle chatter of adults from the white, tan, violet, and red houses visiting on the side of the road as they strolled past their neighbors.
Loretta surveyed her father’s property to note Tim’s presence. Tim heard her say to the children through the crack in the door, “Stay away from Uncle Tim, because he’s sick. He has a bad cold, and you don’t want to catch it.”
Tim lumbered his way to Corner Tavern.
“Hey everybody, here comes Tim, the walking dead! His brain died but his body is breathing,” said one patron.
The entire bar laughed. Tim said nothing, but sat on the barstool, slapped his coins onto the counter, and waited on the usual shots of liquor the bartender provided him each day.
“Hey, dead man, why do you always carry a cigar box? Why don’t you find a woman?” said the bar owner an hour later.
Rising from his chair to approach Tim, a man said, “You haven’t changed in years, man.”
“Betsey better not come swinging at me again.” Tim held his head and widened his blurring eyes darting around, looking for his mother. He rocked himself up from the bar stool on shaky legs and turned in circles searching for the door through fuzzy vision.
“Look at you with them funny-colored eyes and straight hair. What are you? You sure you’re Dub’s kin? Now, he’s a good man. I know what you are—a nothing, you old drunk,” the man said.
“I told you before, Mama, I know I’m not Tuttle’s son, and you already hit me for the last time. Dub told me you were dead. Don’t make me choke you again.” Tim approached the man reaching for his neck, fingers spread wide, and knuckles curled eager to squeeze human skin.
“I’m not your mama,” the man said swinging wildly on Tim.
As usual, after the physical encounter, Tim laid in the corner of the room, bruised from fighting.
Two hours passed. People socialized, paying no attention to the typical sight of a man curled and battered in a corner at the tavern.
“Tim, wake up. You need to go home and clean up. You peed on yourself, man,” said the owner.
Tim held the cigar box tightly in his hand. The vessels in his eyes flooded with blood, drowning the specks of brown and green in the iris. Attempting to speak through lips caked with dried saliva, he labored to stand up, then dazedly started walking the few blocks back to his shack.
As Tim shuffled his way up the dirt road to Dub’s house, he caught a glimpse of Fran and Rosie. They jumped rope behind the white fence, among the flowers and walnut trees. He turned into the driveway, using every ounce of power to steady himself. The ticking of the rope rhythmically hitting the brick walkway abruptly stopped. Tim saw the stares and looks of curiosity from the two girls.
Jason was seriously occupied in the grass near the water well, contemplating a fort and army soldiers with little plastic guns arranged for battle.
Tim paused, blinked, and laughed. As tears seeped from his eyes he said, “There’s that Tim Brisco again, all alone.”
Tim mumbled, struggling to raise his hand and point at Jason. Tall and very thin, he walked wide-legged, slow, and unsteady toward Jason, clutching the cigar box. His lips moved.
