The Road Back Home, The Bill Hawkins Story

Chapter 1

Life with the Hawkins Family

I looked out the window of the car and watched the tall, stony mountains whiz by as we made the 800-mile trek from Fayetteville, Arkansas, to Fayetteville, North Carolina. It was the year 1940, and we were in a new blue 1939 Plymouth automobile. I was literally pressed up against the inside of the backdoor, due to the fact that there were 10 of us in the car. It was my mother, Linnie Pearl Hawkins, or Mother Pearl as we liked to call her, my four sisters, Margie, Annalee, Christine and Shirley, my three brothers, Bobby, Glen, Ottis and me, Billy. There was also the man who owned the car. My daddy had paid him $200 to drive us the 800 miles and to stop as often as Margie needed to so that she could recover from her carsickness, which was quite often. My daddy, known as Walker, had driven up to Fayetteville, North Carolina, in the family car a few days before. We were moving there on account of Daddy getting a job transfer through the Veteran’s Hospital he worked for. He was the main kitchen manager and chef there.

Darkness at Dawn, The Beebe Family Story

Chapter 1

Unwelcome Stranger

Darrell

I do feel it. A darkness, a sort of heaviness in this place. I can’t quite put my finger on it. When I see the bars on the windows and the heavy padlock on the sliding glass door, it’s a sort of eerie reminder that danger lurked here once and could come again. Safe. It just doesn’t feel safe. Please, God, help me keep my family safe.

Sherri

I could feel it, a subtle awareness that we were somehow unsafe. Shivering under the thin blanket, I glanced up at the barred windows above our bed. Outside, a soft breeze stirred through the palm trees as night descended. Off in the distance, I could hear the faint crashing of waves against rocks.

Our electricity had gone out hours ago. Now only the blackness of the night greeted us as we huddled together.