CORDELL

CORDELL

Armed with a simple slingshot, he was barefoot and wore britches patched over patches and short enough to reveal hairy ankles. Frayed cuffs of a once-white shirt peeked from the too-short sleeves of a tattered suit coat. A limp bowtie that seemed to be anchored in place by the boy's Adam's apple completed his attire. While his apparel attested to a life of too little, his gaze was that of one who'd witnessed too much…too much beyond the death and poverty that were normal occurrences in these hills. War, perhaps.

Aunt Nell's eyes misted. "Cordell is everybody's son and nobody's son. Cordell is just Cordell and he's God's child. It don't matter more'n that." 

 

A Shelter in a Weary Land

WIP rewrite by Julane Hiebert

 

Aunt Nell

 

This is Aunt Nell. 

Plump as a feather tick.

Wears men's boots too large for her.

Eyes big as marbles behind wire-rimmed spectacles

Frilly bonnet tied under a ruffle of chins

She carries a Henry Repeater rifle

AND

She smokes a pipe--although it's never lit and is void of tobacco

You will meet her in the rewrite of A Shelter in a Weary Land.

 EVERYONE NEEDS AN AUNT NELL 💕