Beneath Still Waters Read online

  “Your daddy was the best man I knew.”

  “Yes,” Hick agreed grinding out his cigarette beneath his foot. He gazed once more at the slough, lost in thought. It was still a place, vast and unpredictable, but its wildness had diminished with time. Soon it would be just another cotton or soybean field. It would be tamed, and its domestication would deny its former mystery. He couldn’t know as he stood there that he no longer looked weary. Instead, he had the satisfied expression of one who had fought a hard battle and survived.

  The doctor must have noticed this because he said, “You remind me more of your daddy every day.”

  Hick laughed. “You’re forgetting. He was the ‘magic man’.”

  “No,” the doctor returned. “I’m not.”

  Thunder rolled in the distance, faint across the delta.

  “Sounds like another storm’s coming,” Jake remarked.

  Hick turned to go. “There’s always another storm.”

  Acknowledgments

  The publication of this book is a dream come true and it could not have happened without the help and support of so many people. Thank you to those friends who believed in me and encouraged me to not give up … you know who you are. I am greatly indebted to my readers and critiquers: Russell, Paula, Tom, Sharon, Bob, and Katherine. And I am most assuredly grateful to Kristina Blank Makansi and Brad R. Cook for believing in this story. Lastly, thank you to my family for not begrudging the hours spent in the Virginia Woolf suite of our basement.

  About the Author

  As a child, Cynthia A. Graham spent every weekend and vacation in the cotton belt of Missouri where she grew to love the mystery and beauty of the stark, delta plane. Today, Cynthia lives in St. Louis where she graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Missouri – St. Louis with a B.A. in English. She has won several awards for her short stories and has been published in both university and national literary publications. She is a member of the Historical Novel Society and the St. Louis Writer’s Guild.

  Beneath Still Waters is her first novel.