J. California Cooper - Wild Stars Seeking Midnight Suns

Table of Contents

Dedicated with Love

Joseph C. and Maxine R. Cooper, my parents
Paris A. Williams, my chile

IMPORTANT PEOPLE

Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, People par Excellence, Ricardo and Elaine Hunter, Good Friends, Simba Sana and Lee Mc-Donald of Karibu Books, Kim Johnson, Tulsa, Okla., Esther and Charles Jordan, Portland, Shirley Woodland, Adrienne Carthon, Howard University, Venus and Serena Williams, Champions, Daru Smith, Activist, Angela Mederas, Author, Mary Carter Smith, Dear Author, Christine Amanpour, Media Specialist, Roy Holmes, Taxman, L.A.

SPECIAL IMPORTANT PEOPLE

Barry Scheck, Attorney, and Peter Neufeld, Attorney, both extraordinary. And their entire crew of assistants. For freeing those imprisoned falsely and giving life back to some of the hopeless.

Stories

Acknowledgments

I am a very blessed person to have Janet Hill as my editor. She is brilliant as well as understanding and kind, with a diamond-bright intelligence.

I am also grateful and blessed to have Russell Perreault as my PR person with his caring and astute observation, humor, and beneficial thinking.

I thank everyone at Doubleday for everything they do for me. I truly do appreciate all of you. Tracy Jacobs, you are at the top of the list.

I thank Sharon Elise because whatever you do, I am always improved with your input.

I thank Stephen Rubin for his superlative, generous consideration for all those in his departments. He certainly contributes to the high standard Doubleday has maintained over many years.

To my readers, I can only say, from the bottom of my heart (and it is deep), I love you, I love you, I appreciate you. I respect you; which is why I write as I do. May Jehovah bless you.

Authors Note

Dear Reader,

Since I was a small child, before I could write, I have been telling stories. I was able to talk with my characters, first in the form of pets and trees then in the form of paper dolls. When I put the paper dolls away my imagination and the characters did not stop coming, producing. I love them.

I always loved to read about everything long enough to know if it really interests me. My mind absorbed the life around me; everything living. My imagination seemed to reflect things in the world around me; not just next door or a few blocks or miles away. I am blessed that my mind appreciated places far, far away. A gift from history and fairy tales, I guess.

I love humor... and pathos, drama, everything that is life. But there is not much humor in the world today. There is so much pain, so many mistakes being made by so many people. Many of their choices affect us. As I have said before, you can stand stark raving still and life will still happen to you.

Some of the stories in this book reflect the pain, confusion, ignorance, frustration, and emptiness crashing throughout the world today. I am reading a new book, The Sociopath Next Door, not because I like morbid and frightening things, but because a sociopath lives next door to a lot of people all over the world today. Apparently they are everywhere; in government, churches, schools, anywhere you can think of. If you think I am being too intense about it, just look at the condition the whole world is in.

This book does not talk about the worst things in this world. They are too painful, because I live what I write as I write. These are just a few problems people have. They may not be your problems today, thank God, but even worse ones are out there, all around us.

I would rather make you laugh and be happy. But I am always saying Think! Be careful with your life and your choices. So as the stories came, I wrote them. I have to blush for a few of them (and I dont blush at life easily). Because the Bible told me what was out there. Just listen, four people mentioned in the Bible were in the Garden of Eden. Three were liars, one was a murderer, and the innocent one died. We are way more crowded than Eden now.

I reach out to all of you, but especially to the young, the inexperienced who DO want to know a little about life without having to live some of the particulars in this book. A word to the wise can be critically important.

Wild Stars do not have to be bad stars. Some of these stars were just unwise. But that is what I often write about; peoples problems, their choices. The quality of the life we make for ourselves.

Wild Stars Seeking Midnight Suns. There are billions of stars; there is only one sun. How many wild stars do not find their sun?

I know we all stand alone in this life. Ultimately alone. We have to depend on ourselves to protect ourselves, and knowledge is our armor. I love knowledge and wisdom (they are separate). I hold on to it fiercely. The Bible says the heart is treacherous; your own heart in your own life; whom you may love, whom you may hate, your friends, the people you vote for, it goes on and on.

Freedom is expensive. Your choices can cost you your life. I dont want you to go around frightened; I would like you to go around aware. So this book may not be for people who just want to laugh, but it is for those who really care about what is going on in this nation, in this sad and lonely, desperate world. I prefer to speak of beauty and love. I prefer laughter and will be glad to get back to more of it. But I try to speak the truth in every book. There are so many soothing lies in the world already.

This book is not enough. A few stories can never tell it all. But I send this book out to you anyway, with my love. I mean that! God bless you.

As Time Goes By

This story happened in this small town to a friend of mine named Futila Ways. The people here are the same as any people in any small middlin town anywhere in America, or the world, for that matter. Theres amany of them. Maybe a little poorer than some, with many things less accessible than in large cities.

There are churches galore and a few schools, clothing stores of the cheaper variety. People who happened to have money could afford to go to better places to shop. Womens here have to look out of town for a husband, sometimes, cause you can get sick of the people you grow up with. But, after all, it was a nice, quiet, clean, boring little place.

The town musta had promising beginnings a long time ago. Large landowners had built large proud houses on their land. But, now, over a hundred years or so, their descendants had sold off most of the land to small developers in this part of the town. A few of the large houses remained and several rows of small houses had crept up to them.

Futilas family lived in one of the old, but neat little houses sitting in a row on Coulda Street with a younger sister, Willa, an older brother, Eddy Jr., a domestic-working mother, and a father who was a labor-mechanic at a gas station. He just kept the tools in order in the right places, didnt do much mechanic work on cars. He did his work well and kept a job so they had the bare necessities of life.

Mr. Ways (he doesnt know where his grandfather got that name from) did not have a sensitive turn of mind so he cut down the big, grand black-oak tree, and another tall beautiful tree I dont know the name of, in the front yard so he wouldnt have to rake leaves, umph umph. Then he covered the ground with cement so he wouldnt have to mow it. Just removed all the beauty and close bird songs. He wanted to do the backyard also, but his wife stopped him; she said she wanted to have a patch of land to plant a kitchen garden.