Have
you ever wondered where an author gets his or her idea for a story? The stories
in Apparitions: Twisted Tales and Yarns by Jimmy L. Capps and
Linda Capps Fisher are based on family yarns of strange happenings, dreams, nightmares,
personal experiences, or imagination.
Over
the next few weeks, I plan to share the stories behind the stories in Apparitions.
~ Linda
“A Man Called Rabbit” by Linda Capps Fisher
(excerpt)
Rabbit kicked the door open and pointed the gun at the men sitting at
the table. “This is a stick up.
Take off your shoes and britches. Lay face down on the floor.” Rabbit mimicked John Wayne to disguise his voice and lend authority to his words.
Their slowness irritated him, so he prodded them with threats. “I don’t
want to kill nobody, but I will if I haff to. You!” he yelled at a young man
with fiery red hair, “Put the money in this gunny sack.”
Rabbit barked more orders, and
the boy gathered up pants and shoes tossing them off the porch and into the
ravine below.
###
The idea for the
fiction story, “A Man Called Rabbit,” began with memories of a friendly
neighborhood poker game.
We lived in the
Ozarks, twenty miles from nowhere. Neighbors were sparse and miles apart by way
of dirt, potholed roads. There wasn’t much to do for entertainment, so the men
gathered occasionally for a game of poker.
It certainly
never occurred to anyone at the game that somebody would have the audacity to
burst in and rob them. In the first place, guns were commonplace and everyone
knew how to use them. The place was hard to find down unmarked country road and
only a limited number of people even knew about the games. No one who lived in
the hills had much money, and it certainly wasn’t a high stake game.
To think that a robbery could happen
so close to home made an impression on my young mind. Unlike in my fictional
story, the robbery was reported, but the crime was never solved. Who knows, it
may have been the man called Rabbit.
