Bearlodge Writers

Writing Samples

Andi writes some poetry, more adult fiction, and an occasional newspaper or magazine article -- creative nonfiction is her style preference. Here are tidbits by A. M. Hummel.

 

A favorite poem:

                                         The Black and White of It . . .

 

                                                Seven of them,

                                                and their mother!

                                                Path blocked, do I

                                                retreat or stay?

           

                                                Eager students,

                                                excitement high,

                                                do they learn "hunt,"

                                                or simply play?

           

                                                In black and white,

                                                my question is:

                                                how old are skunks

                                                before they spray?

             

("The Black and White of It" was published in Susquehanna Life Magazine)

​

A fiction piece now underway:

 

                                                Nasty Little Things

 

            This time it had started with a case of homesick that wouldn’t be stirred down.

            Then, ten days ago, her seventy-five acres along Brush Creek burned—that fire taking with it, before it was done, two loafing sheds, the reticulating tractor (damn near new), Simon’s round baler, and half the hay Anastasia Jefferson Taylor had managed to harvest, with the help of a couple of true friends, through the past too-dry summer. 

            And Jack Everson's fuel truck. He’d left it along the barrow pit just off the state highway that separated their properties—A. J.’s two hundred and four point three acres and the more “respectable” spread Jack and his wife Lin owned. One of its big tires had developed a threatening bubble so he'd left the truck sitting and walked home, planning to bring a new tire down when he had the time.

            The explosion had been horrendous. It awakened A. J. from a pleasant-enough dream about fresh oysters and Apalachicola Bay breezes, the gentle wafting of late-night and early-morning smoke having had not quite enough impact on her dreams to do that job. What she’d smelled in those dreams, rather than danger, was a tiny, long-ago fire for which she and Simon had gathered scrub magnolia branches to burn so they could roast their hot dogs and marshmallows and warm their still swimsuit-clad, shivering bodies. Then the flames reached that truck. . . .

            Well, some things do over-ride sleep and pleasant memories.

            The evening before had been filled with exhausting, angry hours after a head-on argument with Albert Breston, her neighbor to the north. Not the first words between them over the past three years. A. J. wasn’t one to cry, but she did throw things, and she did talk to herself and she did, more and more often of late, step out her back door to scream unpleasantries and obscenities at the self-gratifying bastard who lived so far into his one-hundred-and-seventy-nine-thousand-acres-and-still-growing retreat that he wouldn’t hear what she was screaming anyway.

            Couldn’t hear a shotgun blast from her place to his, but A. J. was betting he’d heard—even felt—the fuel truck when it exploded. And he’d damn sure hear her the next time she spoke with him. He’d hear her loud and clear.

                                        

 

And a very rough draft (creative nonfiction) in the works:

 

 

                                                A Schoolhouse Every Six Miles

            Perhaps you hear the sound of laughter on the Wyoming wind, or the creak of swings in a play yard grown high with western wheatgrass, rough rattlesnake root, prairie coneflower, and curlycup gumweed. Careful where you step—the spikes of Plains prickly pear and other rogues of genus cacti/Cactacaea (recipe side-barred?) wait, ready to pierce even a sturdy leather shoe.

            Have you caught a glimpse of a chubby face peeking through a dusty, broken windowpane or felt curious eyes watching as you kick up grasshoppers and Mormon crickets on a dry summer afternoon's excursion? Or maybe there's that hint of wood smoke on the chill of a late fall morning's visit to one of these ghosts of Crook County's past. The schoolmarm has stoked her fire, her students are ready for another day of classes. . . .

 

            Crook County, Wyoming, split apart from Laramie County in 1875 by the Fourth Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Wyoming, was already dotted with small settlements when President Benjamin Harrison signed the bill on July 10, 1890 granting Wyoming statehood. Once the sixth largest county, Crook has been pared to its present size, 2,865 square miles (a little larger than the state of Delaware), and in 2016 boasts a population of

slightly more than 7,000 people