Mother's Gift A Novel

Chapter one Gossip is the first language in small Southern towns. Biscay, Mississippi, is no exception. Gossip drifts through the schoolyards in whispers and giggles and seeps through the coffee shops and steepled churches. Gossip makes the world go round in Biscay. Biscay is an itsy-bitsy little place, only ten thousand folks or so. "Biscay is definitely dead" is the usual declaration of anyone under sixteen. And they're kind of right. Biscay's only connection to a highway isn't concrete, but two lanes of grooved asphalt with chuckholes deep enough to rupture a glass-belted radial tire. That old road is the reason that no fast-food chain will ever open up in Biscay. There won't even be one of those major service stations with a food mart and self-service gasoline pumps with slots for credit cards. The biggest business in town, the post office, is the only reason Biscay is even a legal township. There's no shopping mall in Biscay. You have to take two buses all the way over to Hattiesburg for that. Kids who grow up in Biscay don't have much opportunity. Some of them quit school early so they can help their parents farm. A few manage to go away to college. But most of them stay there. Get a job. Get married. Get older. Life doesn't change much in Biscay. One thing Biscay does have is a whispered secret, a nasty rumor that makes mamas shush their children when they mention it. It's pathetic, most agree, that the biggest thing that ever happened in Biscay is the one thing the town wants to forget. People say that once, a terrible thing happened, and people died. That's about all the townspeople will tell strangers. And they tell only those who ask and ask at least twice about the mysterious plot of burned earth still sitting ugly at the edge of Biscay. Maybe, just maybe, the emotional wounds that still run deep will eventually heal. At least everyone hopes they will. Because people are people, with hopes and dreams and faith in their hearts and stars in their eyes . . . even those who were born in Biscay, Mississippi. * * * "Here it comes, Mama," fourteen-year-old Holly Faye Lovell said, bumping the side of the old television set with a practiced hip. The fuzzy gray screen blipped out, then blinked back in wavering color. Holly dropped next to her mother on the saggy yet comfortable old brown couch as the familiar toe-tapping notes of The Haverty Talent Hour's theme song drifted through the small ranch house. Holly's mother, Wanda, reached for some hot buttered popcorn from the bowl on the coffee table. "I wonder what we'll see tonight." Holly grinned. Her mom said the same thing every week. Everyone in Biscay watched The Haverty Talent Hour. It was like a local law or something. Holly thought she'd probably fallen in love with music even before she could walkher mother had always made sure music was a part of their lives. They woke up to Elvis (born in Tupelo, Mississippi, thank you very much), spent the day bopping along with the Top 40, and drifted off to sleep with some easy listening. And they had a regular Friday-night rendezvous in front of the TV. "Sorry, I've got a date tonight," Holly used to tell Tyler Norwood when he had first started asking her to come hang out at the Ten Pin Lanes with his group of friends on Fridays. His face would crumple up each time when she turned him down, and finally she couldn't keep a straight face any longer and had to tell him the truthher big date was her mom. The famous Haverty School of Music and the Performing Arts, located in Hattiesburg, televised a weekly show featuring its best students of music and performancSpears, Britney is the author of 'Mother's Gift A Novel' with ISBN 9780440237990 and ISBN 0440237998.