Johnny Blake
by
Richard Leland
 The master weaver of tales of the
paranormal, Mr. Richard Leland presents an electric summer in a small town and changes that merged the past with the present and future.
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.............an Excerpt...............
In my last year of high school our August summer arrived in April and overstayed its welcome. You could pull water from the air, day or night, by rubbing two fingers together.
A lot of people said the weather was too hot and humid and caused uncommon events nobody could explain. Most of
the kids spent the mornings working part-time and
swimming in the new pool in the afternoons and evenings.
City workers were nearly finished converting the old
soldier’s cemetery into a memorial park to honor soldiers
of all wars.
People were kept out of the park’s North end
where they had laid concrete foundations for the new
football stadium that eventually would seat nearly 10,000
people.
Some evenings, after swimming in the park pool, we
passed time sitting on the concrete steps of the new
high school football stadium, watched the stars come out and ate candy bars.
We talked about the excitement of going back to high school,
sports and girls.
One hot and muggy night, none of my friends wanted to go sit and talk, they wanted to get home. It was dark and the
temperature and humidity were in the nineties.
As I walked
up to the stadium bleachers, I noticed a man sitting alone, and he
wasn’t eating anything. He appeared to be thinking
about a serious problem.
I walked up to him and said, “Can I sit here with you?”
He said, “By all means, youngun.”
“My name is Danny,” I said. “What is your name?”
He hesitated as though he was thinking about my question and wrinkled his forehead, “ . . . Johnny. . . .
Johnny Blake. . . . Or, leastwise I was.”
I laughed and asked, “What do you mean by saying, I was?”
“I don’t know what I mean. Somehow, it’s akin to a
situation I can’t explain.”
End of the Excerpt from Johnny Blake
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