The Art of the Heart
Dan Skinner
The Art of the Heart is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 201 4 by Dan Skinner
Cover Art by Dan Skinner
Edited by Tina Adamski
Formatted by Laura Harner
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Dan Skinner
ISBN: 978-1-937252-85-4
Warning: All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written permission, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.
Acknowledgements
My special thanks to Laura Harner and Tina Marie Adamski, without whom this book would not be.
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following trademarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
Ford Galaxie: Ford Motor Company
John Deere : Deere & Company
Mobil : Exxon Mobil Corporation
Slo -Poke: Atkinson Candy
M&Ms : Mars, Incorporated
Pepsi : Pepsico
Kool Aid: Kraft Foods, Inc.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Also Available
Chapter One
In 1965, the town of Sweetwater, Missouri was three blocks of paved road pointing North and South in the middle of the state. One end of the road was aimed at Highway 70 that led to the big towns and cities, and the other end abruptly dumped into a gravel road that was Rural W, a serpentine lane that led to six farms, three on either side. Sweetwater, the whole of it, including the one lane of town and six farms, was eight miles wide and ten miles long; popul ation five hundred–if you counted a few of the inhabitants twice. The actual town was called a one-eacher. It had one each of everything: one diner, one gas station, barber shop, general store, grade school and movie theater. Only the movie theater, which everyone called the picture show , had air conditioning in the summer. That made it a popular gathering place during the Missouri heat. More than half of the population was under the age of twenty. Many of those were boys, draft-age, who’d been exempt from the draft because their absence would cause the family hardship. It took every family member of those households to work the farms. The family was what made the farms work.
Back then, 1965 Missouri had a smell: fresh, unpolluted. Green. Earthy. The interior of buildings smelled like the lives of the people living in them. The pipes they smoked, the licorice they chewed, the coffee that percolated in pots on the stoves. Cars were big and metal with motors you could hear a block away. People took time to wash and wax them by hand on Saturday afternoons. Friends and neighbors would gather to watch while trading stories and sharing beers.
The definition of a simpler time could be discerned in the nature of the acts of youthful rebellion. Those came with long hair on the boys, drinking and cigarette smoking. The drug culture that had slowly crept into the bigger cities hadn ’t wormed its way into the rural heartland yet. But moonshine could be found and purchased in the next county of Clarksville. A younger farmer there supplemented his income providing the youth with an affordable, if nasty-tasting vice. Sweetwater’s sheriff turned a blind eye to this minor nuisance unless something big happened. He had one jail cell, no deputy and would have to care for and feed anyone arrested over the weekend when most of the drinking and the subsequent shenanigans occurred. The sheriff, a thirty-five-year old bachelor, was romancing the new eighth grade
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