Voices From A Far Field
by Calvin Bowden

Heck Tennel returns after 65 years to small Texas town from which he fled when 18 to avoid being sent to prison for crimes he did not commit, leaving behind a troubled family and a pretty girl he loved. After becoming a decorated war hero during WWII and living in various parts of the country under an assumed name, he is found and agrees to come home by the good aunt of Gloria DeHavilland, the girl he left behind. The good aunt has died, but her attorney tells Heck he will find the good aunt’s urgent message the next morning in a secret place on the old Vandergriff farm that was known only to him and Gloria in 1934 before she was whisked out of state by Gloria’s vicious Aunt Josephine.

While waiting to go to the old Vandergriff home, Heck reunites with Negro boyhood friend, Cracker, and when he goes to bed that night his mind turns back to May, 1934, when he was struggling to support his dysfunctional family and save his sick little brother Billy. Jobless, he resorts to selling bootleg whiskey on his butter-and-egg route in town and passing the hat at his Saturday night musicals. He meets Gloria, a proper girl to marry who is the granddaughter of the county’s richest family, but the romance is threatened by his coarse neighbor Willa Sproggs who accuses Cracker of rape as a way of striking back at Heck who rejects her. Heck manages several romantic encounters with Gloria before becoming so desperate for money he drives his promiscuous step-mother and his dad’s ex-convict friend to the town’s bank where they made a “withdrawal" while dressed as Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. Their efforts are a disaster, leaving Heck with more troubles and no money for Billy’s doctor bills. The ultimate tragedy occurs when Heck’s romantic encounters with Gloria and a violent confrontation with Gloria’s vicious aunt result in criminal charges being filed on him. Knowing he has to stay out of prison to support his destitute family, Heck flees the area.

Returning to the present in last chapter, Heck receives surprises and gifts in old letters from Gloria and Miss Cilla he never imagined possible. He finds that life can be good for old clodhoppers after all, and that it might have a purpose in spite of all the disappointments of the past.

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Twenty-two year old Helen Kipling’s testimony sent serial murderer/rapist Animal Sadac to prison the previous year but his conviction is reversed, and as he is being returned for re-trial he escapes and returns to Helen’s ranch home to kill her, his only surviving victim. Still struggling to recover from the emotional problems resulting from being brutally so molested and the impact of being seen by men as damaged goods unfit for marriage, she had just undertaken what she hoped would be the final stage of her rehabilitation when she is told of Sadac’s escape upon killing escorting deputies.

Efforts by male officers to arrest or kill Sadac fail, convincing Helen she will die unless she devises a plan of her own to stop her psychopathic stalker. She lures Sadac out of hiding, but when the troope

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r friends guarding her are shot, she realizes that unless she can overcome paralyzing panic long enough to complete her plan, she will be molested again, then murdered.