Three Foggy Mornings
Publish Date: May, 2025
Many of the thirty-three stories in Three Foggy Mornings were published in several literary magazines between 1974 and 2020. Many are autobiographical. Some were inspired by travels to Central America and Europe, others by incidents and anecdotes from family, including centuries-ago ancestors, others by the author’s late wife’s long participation in a co-op art gallery, and still others by news and current events. Rick believes that all fiction writers use the canvas of their lives and experiences to create characters, and that all art is self-portrait, even abstract paintings. Asked if he really did all the stuff in his books, the author replies that he did some of it, and made up the rest.
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An excerpt from “The Snake Cane” in Three Foggy Mornings
Despite Mama’s warnings, he led Isaiah through the tangy wetlands choked with marsh grasses and vines, through willows half-sunk in slow-moving black water, and past oaks laden with Spanish moss and cypress roots in ghostly morning mist. Down into the bottoms they trekked, inhaling clouds of tiny insects, feeling cold spongy mud between their toes. Among clumps of sphagnum moss and Christmas ferns, he found bay leaves and crushed them so his little brother could savor the sweet aroma.
They watched white egrets and brown pelicans rise like a whisper from dense thickets of needle grass and float on updrafts in a sky resembling hammered pewter. Joshua, intent on capturing a snapping turtle about to drop off a log perch, didn’t notice when Isaiah ran on ahead. He was reaching for the turtle when he heard screams. Rushing to his brother’s aid, he spotted the danger.
“Don’t move, Isaiah.”
A dull-gold snake with dark spiraling rings, three feet long and thick as Joshua’s arm, was sunning on a rock. It had cat’s eyes and hinged jaws he knew were gorged with poison. This was a cottonmouth, the most dangerous snake in the swamp, and from the way its head was flung back, exposing puffy white lining of gaping mouth and fangs, it was warning them both to stay away.
Knowing an unprovoked cottonmouth would usually slither off, Joshua remained motionless. But Isaiah couldn’t stop shaking, and as he grew more agitated, the snake hissed and vibrated its tail. When it was coiled and began to strike, Joshua stepped forward and with one swing of the cane knife cut the cottonmouth in two, but not before it had sunk its fangs into Isaiah’s ankle. Joshua picked up his brother, who was shrieking, and tore through the swamp toward home with Isaiah in his arms.
Mama took one look at the swollen, discolored ankle and, aware that the venom could be fatal, called for the hoodoo woman, who knew all about herbs, poisons, charms, and amulets, which ones would protect, which would harm.
By the time she arrived in a bright silk head scarf and long flowing gown, Isaiah was unconscious.