We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.

On Miscellaneous Mondays, we talk about whatever happens to pop into my head—or any suggestion you may have made for a topic.

Somebody please tell Marcia Richard I didn’t really steal her idea. Fancy insisted on taking over my keyboard today to tell a little bit about herself. I’ll try to get her back under control, but she may not let me until she posts her story.

Hello, readers. I’m Fancy. Well, my name is actually Clara Faye Greene, but no one ever calls me that. When I was a baby, my daddy nicknamed me Fancy, and the name stuck. I’m so used to hearing it, whenever anyone calls me Clara Faye, I look around to see whom they are talking to.

I was the happiest little girl in the world, living on our cotton farm just north of Florence, Alabama. It wasn’t a big plantation with slaves like some of our neighbors had—just a small farm Daddy worked by himself. Well, until I was big enough to help him.

Despite giving me the name Fancy, I think Daddy really wanted me to be a boy. He taught me to hunt and fish and work the farm just like a father would teach a son. And when my mama wasn’t watching, he taught me to play poker, too. He made his living playing poker on riverboats and such before he met Mama, but she made him quit. She said it wasn’t respectable.

You can tell I love Daddy. I loved Mama too, but she died giving birth to my little sister Danni. Okay, Darlene Danielle if you must know, but we always call her Danni.

When Mama died, I sorta became Danni’s mama. I was ten at the time, and I looked after her and did most of the cooking and stuff like that, but I’d get out into the fields with Daddy anytime I could.

As I said, I was the happiest girl in the world . . . until that horrible war came along. I don’t know much about politics and things like that. The Yankees say they’re fighting us to free the slaves, but I don’t know. Most of us don’t own any slaves. Daddy doesn’t hold with one man owning another. Besides, I’ve heard that Yankees enslave their own children in factories where they have to work harder than most Southern slaves do.

Well, that’s neither here nor there. The point is, when the Confederacy called, my daddy, being a patriotic man, answered the call and went off to serve. That left me, a fourteen year-old girl, to plant the cotton and raise the crop by myself, along with taking care of Danni and doing all the housework.

Even though I stayed busy from daylight to dark and went to be dog-tired every night, I still loved my life. I knew Daddy would be back as soon as he could to take over working the farm again. But then one day I got that terrible telegram telling me he’d been killed at some place called Manassas, wherever that is.

I was so grief-stricken I couldn’t do anything for a day or two, and when I told my sister he’d been killed, she went crazy for awhile. While I was trying to get my head on straight and get Danni under control, I started having all that trouble with our parson. And then that low-down skunk Sylvester Fochs—everyone calls him Sly Fochs, and the name fits him—decided to steal my farm from me.

Good gosh. I’m getting tired just trying to tell you what happened. Maybe you’d better get the book and read it. Fancy is available for Kindle and Nook or as a paperback from CreateSpace. Just click on the version you want to order. While you’re doing that, I’m gonna put Danni to bed and see if I can get some sleep, too.

Wow. I thought I’d never get the keyboard back from her. Fancy is a determined young lady when she sets her mind to something.

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For more information about David N. Walker, click the “About” tab above.

For more information about his books, click on “Books” above.

Contact him at dnwalkertx@gmail.com or tweet him at @davidnwalkertx.