Someday, while skiing on Elk River, you may be attacked by gators. Don’t worry; they are slow eaters. You’ll have time to pray.

Not so with Sarah Bullington. Pray that you don’t encounter her on a dark night at Blue Springs.

She’s been abused, has issues and owns a hatchet. She will split open your skull so fast that you will see your brains spill out before you die. I admire people who excel at what they do.

Athens High English teacher Richard Garth has written his first novel, “Tales from Blue Springs: The Hatchet Woman.” It’s a grizzly tale about a deranged woman who lives in a cave near Buzzard’s Roost. Sarah is a good woman at heart who loves nature and trees, but she’s crazier than an outhouse rat and is armed. (I think I dated her once).

When I read Garth’s novel, I thought about my experience.

In 1984, we lived in an old two-story farmhouse in the hill country of Leggtown. It was isolated. For five years, we didn’t have telephone lines. The old house rang with the laughter of children.

In August, happiness died when our 25-year marriage hit the rocks. Carol and our children moved to Athens. The first few days I felt liberated, then loneliness set in. At night, the old house was quiet except for creaking timbers, which woke me.

When a neighbor saw a man dressed as a woman sitting in the Leggtown Cemetery, I found it amusing. Later, the man was seen fleeing from a nearby house. There were other sightings. I became concerned. After the sheriff entered the case, I was frightened. A witness reported that the man wore a dress and had hairy legs. I locked the doors at night and slid a 38 revolver under my pillow.

I arrived home from the office in the evening and was shedding my coat and tie when a car wheeled into the driveway and skidded to a stop. Seconds later there was a loud, incessant pounding on my door.

“What in the Devil?” I mumbled. I opened the door. It was my neighbor’s wife and she was out of breath.

“Mr. Barksdale…. Uh, I came as soon as I saw your car pass our house. They spotted that man again. And he has a hatchet!”

“GOOD GRIEF! WHERE?”

“Down the road. He ran out of a house!”

I thanked her, grabbed the .38 revolver and decided to search the house. The thought of a crazed man wearing a dress down to his knobby-kneed hairy legs, hiding behind a door with a hatchet in his hand sent chills up my spine. I knew he was in the house. I could feel it in the hair on the back of my neck.

I grabbed a razor and toothbrush and fled to a motel in Huntsville where I stayed for three nights.