Mary, 14-year-old daughter of a widowed mother in very rural small-community Alabama in 1911, is a) psychic, b) a magnet for the Dead, c) wryly sarcastic, d) very very voluble. Mary does not stop telling her story any time, even when I'm trying to a) read, b) study my writing coursework, c) grade, d) write something of my own that is not Mary's story, e) sleep.
No, Our Mary moves right along with or without me. I can't turn her off and I don't think I inspired her to turn on! No, she just appeared in her little filmstrip climbing on to the southern (left-hand) railing of the Old Train Trestle (partially destroyed in the fatal flood of '08) and she and I have been on that runaway train ride ever since: two hoboes sliding back and forth inside an open boxcar, while the train clatters down the tracks to: ???
Well, clearly not oblivion, because The Dead are always very much with Mary:
her brother, her cousin, her other cousin, her despised wealthy uncle; and very probably her Daddy, although she hasn't revealed that part yet.
Oh, and the spinster adulterous schoolteacher from the next town down the river, who was choir leader at Mary's Baptist Church. Mary sees her too, and her married lover. They're deceased, of course.
Yesterday Mary introduced me to the Spiritualist minister that her Aunt has summoned from Birmingham to conduct seances. Mary doesn't like him. I don't think I do either.
Day 3 Total Word Count: 5992
