I confess. True all week. My head has been in Paris. Having to shout across the Atlantic has caused some difficulty being heard (much less hearing), but the sore throat is well worth it. More challenging still: seeing what I was doing each day, where I was going, what I was 'working on', what I wore, and what I was feeding the cat. Navigating Paris with just a head on the other hand wasn't ... +more+
This is a list of all the people who appear in the Brenlee Story (the original Honestly Kid posts) and the posts where you can find them or things about them. There are others who are merely mentioned who don't appear here, but you don't need to worry too much about them. The principle folks are listed in the order in which they are identified in the course of the ... +more+
It's the same upsetting feeling he's known before. Maybe known all of his so-called adult life. Certainly the last ten years of it. Nothing achieved. Opportunities missed or entirely blown. Friends and so-called friends lost. Success (whatever that means) almost entirely elusive. All the education and what? None of the discipline and hard work? No, there's some evidence of even hard work. Of risks taken. But just the way he can ... +more+
His only dream was an aggressive slideshow full of images of the day behind him and imagined scenes of the day ahead. It repeated itself with subtle variations throughout the night. By 4:30 AM Hernandez felt more tired than he had when he went to bed four hours earlier. He sat on the edge of the bed. He pushed his fingers through his hair and leaned his forehead into the ... +more+
They said Gabriel is dead, but they're lying. They hadn't shown them any pictures. They just didn't want to tell all the kids they didn't know where he went. He went to Mexico. He always said he would. He's probably not there yet, but that's where he's going. He probably just got to the Aquaduct way over past Livermore. That's a couple hours in a car, but not as far as ... +more+
Hernandez looked at his desk. He didn't want to leave. He didn't want to work. There was no more work to do today, anyway. Everything would happen tomorrow. Tomorrow he would have a coroner's report and a report detailing all of the other evidence from the crime scene. He would know what make of tires were on the vehicle that brought Gabriel to the orchard, he would know more about what ... +more+
The following selections appeared in The Brenlee News, first week of September, 1986. The article ran next to a three column photo of an old clapboard house captioned "Sneed home. Mr. Sneed found the boy's body in his orchard yesterday morning."
Brenlee, California -- The body of a 12 year old boy was found in a peach orchard on the northeast edge of town yesterday morning. Mr. Pickem Sneed, a local... +more+