The Blog

When autumn air is crisp and sunlight reflects off red and yellow leaves, fans are drawn to the nearest football game like children to Halloween candy. For Margaret Sumner, however, a force greater than the season or the weather pulls her to the local high school game. Usually she sits alone in the bleachers. She prefers the solitude, but one day a stranger sitting near her makes a comment about the coaches that Margaret can’t ignore.

In the small town of Tanner, North Carolina, Margaret knows most people by their appearance if she doesn’t know their name, so to meet a stranger at a high school football game is rare. Margaret’s not interested in making new friends. After her brief conversation with the stranger, she tries to avoid him, but he approaches her at the game the next weekend. At first she rebuffs him, but then feels guilty about being rude and finds him in the bleachers so she can apologize.

As they watch the game together, Tanner’s sophomore quarterback is brutally sacked and taken off the field by paramedics. The incident unleashes a flood of emotion in Margaret that she can’t explain to the stranger, and he doesn’t press her. She refuses his offer to drive her home after the game, but the next weekend she’s surprised to realize she’s glad to see him. “Something about him appealed to her. Maybe it was that he didn’t look at her with pity like so many others did.”

Just as she’s warming up to him, she finds out why he’s attending so many Tanner High School football games. It’s a reason she doesn’t like.

“Come September,” my most recently published short story, tells Margaret’s story of sorrow, grief, and the seeds of healing. It appears in the 2013 edition of Bloodroot Literary Magazine. I hope you’ll give it a look, along with the other stories and poems in the magazine. “Reading Bloodroot Literary Magazine is a one-hundred-proof taste of literary craft and personal pleasure,” says Martin Tucker, executive director of Confrontation Publications.