The Storm
By
Gerald Arthur Winter
“I’ve been calling for two hours . . . Hello . . . Are you there?”
“Hmm . . . I had to charge my phone . . . I forgot.”
“You had me worried sick . . .”
“Hmm . . . sorry.”
“. . .”
“No, really . . . I am sorry . . . it’s the storm. It’s had everyone on edge.”
“It’s not the first time you’ve done this.”
“Done this? You think I have control over the goddamn weather? For Chrisake,
gimme a break.”
“Whoa! What’s with the temper? I’m the one who should be pissed. I’ve been calling
you for three effing hours!”
“You said two hours. You always have to exaggerate. I said I was sorry.”
“That’s all you have to say lately.”
“Get off it, will you . . . please.”
“Are you okay?”
“Hmm . . . I took a sleeping pill at ten o’clock last night hoping to sleep through
the storm. It was supposed to hit the coast at 2 a.m. and come inland with hundred-mile-an-
hour winds and twelve inches of rain. What time is it?”
“8 a.m. The eyewall hit the shore at 1 a.m. I fell asleep but woke at 6 a.m. and I’ve been
calling you ever since to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m fine, just groggy from the sleeping pill . . . so it was only two hours—not three--
that you’ve been calling.”
“I guess.”
“Exaggerator.”
“It makes me crazy when I don’t know if you’re okay or not.”
“I’m fine.”
“Have you looked outside to see if there’s much damage?”
“Not yet.”
“You should check your car . . . the winds could’ve brought a tree down on it.”
“The car’s ten years old—almost 200,000 miles on it—who cares?”
“How would you get home?”
“Home?”
“Here with me. It’s too short to fly and too far to take a bus.”
“I’m looking out the window . . . the car’s fine. You’re such an exaggerator and a
worry wort. It’s your mother . . .”
“What’s she got to do with anything?”
“Everything.”
“I called because I was concerned for your safety. It was a Category 4 for Chrisakes.
You could’ve been hurt.”
“But I’m not . . . and I’m still so tired from that sleeping pill.”
“I hope you didn’t drink wine last night, too?”
“What if I did?”
“Jesus! That could be a lethal combination . . . you could end up like Marilyn Monroe.”
“That would be cool . . . I’d be rich and famous with handsome guys wanting to screw
me. Powerful men, too, like the Kennedys.”
“Are you still drunk from the wine?”
“Every time I say what I think, you accuse me of being drunk.”
“Not drunk . . . but, ya know . . . under the influence.”
“I’m under the influence of my intelligence and independence and that just bugs the
hell out of you, doesn’t it?”
“There goes that temper again.”
“So what! It’s my temper and I’ll do what the hell I want with it!”
“Maybe I should call back after you’ve had something to eat and the sleeping pill has
worn off. Have you checked the label for side-effects? That and the wine together seem to make
you nasty.”
“Nasty? You’ve no idea how nasty I can be when pushed to the edge!”
“I’ll call you back at noon . . . okay?”
“No. I’ll call you.”
“Keep your phone charged.”
“Up yours!”
BLIP!
* * *
“What the hell! I’ve called three times since noon . . .”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Busy? Busy doing what?”
“It doesn’t really matter.
“Of course it matters. I was worried sick over you in the storm last night and you
didn’t answer. Okay-okay, so your phone went dead . . . but now you’re too busy to call me?
You said you would . . . or had you forgotten?
“. . .”
“Are you there? Don’t hang up on me!”
BLIP!
* * *
“Okay . . . I got your effing voice-mail . . . and I’m tempted to explode . . . but I’m not
. . . please, just call me back as soon as possible . . . I know you’re busy . . . whatever that’s
supposed to mean . . . you haven’t worked since your company down-sized . . . I know—I know.
You’re probably setting up a job interview for Monday. What could I be thinking? Of course you
are . . . Good luck!”
BLIP!
* * *
“Have you been watching the weather reports?”
“I told you, I’d call you.”
“Then you haven’t been watching The Weather Channel. The storm was just stalling
on the coast, but now it’s moving again and it’s having a nor’easter effect bringing tide surges
with the full-moon tide where you are. You need to evacuate.”
“I know.”
“Then load up, get in your car, and head inland over the Intracoastal.”
“I’m staying.”
“You can’t! The warnings!”
“I’ve known the warning signs . . . for some time now.”
“Then get out while you can!”
“I am.”
“But you said you were staying.”
“I am . . . we are.”
“We? Like you and me? But I can’t. It’s too far and too dangerous.”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t get it?”
“You never will.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Us.”
“What about us?
“There is no us, maybe there never was.”
“What are you saying?
“Good-bye.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’d never joke about something as serious as wasting five years of my life.”
“That makes no sense.”
“To you, I’m sure. It makes perfect sense to me . . . to us.”
“Us?”
“You didn’t think I’d stay in the path of a Category 4 hurricane alone, did you?”
“What the hell?”
“I’d seen it coming for some time, just like the storm. I regret the destruction it’s caused,
but it’s time to rebuild, start fresh.”
“Then?”
“We’re done.”
“We’re getting married next year. You can’t do this!”
“It’s been next year for the past five years—that’s it. I took the sleeping pill and drank the
wine so I’d sleep soundly on it. When I awoke with your call this morning I knew—it was over.”
“But—”
“No buts.”
“Who is he?”
“No one you know.”
“How long has this been going on behind my back?”
“Nothing’s been going on behind your back. I just met him last night.”
“You were with him while I was calling you, worried sick, hoping that you were safe in
the storm?”
“He didn’t have to worry—he was right here with me through the storm.”
“In your bed?”
“In my heart.”
“Bitch!”
“Go home to your mother.”
“But—”
BLIP!
END
Charles Dickens
Bleak House
Novel Excerpt
Chapter 1 — In Chancery
LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.
Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.
Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time — as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.
The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.
Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds this day in the sight of heaven and earth.
On such an afternoon, if ever, the Lord High Chancellor ought to be sitting her — as here he is — with a foggy glory round his head, softly fenced in with crimson cloth and curtains, addressed by a large advocate with great whiskers, a little voice, and an interminable brief, and outwardly directing his contemplation to the lantern in the roof, where he can see nothing but fog. On such an afternoon some score of members of the High Court of Chancery bar ought to be — as here they are — mistily engaged in one of the ten thousand stages of an endless cause, tripping one another up on slippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, running their goat-hair and horse-hair warded heads against walls of words and making a pretence of equity with serious faces, as players might. On such an afternoon the various solicitors in the cause, some two or three of whom have inherited it from their fathers, who made a fortune by it, ought to be — as are they not? — ranged in a line, in a long matted well (but you might look in vain for truth at the bottom of it) between the registrar’s red table and the silk gowns, with bills, cross-bills, answers, rejoinders, injunctions, affidavits, issues, references to masters, masters’ reports, mountains of costly nonsense, piled before them. Well may the court be dim, with wasting candles here and there; well may the fog hang heavy in it, as if it would never get out; well may the stained-glass windows lose their colour and admit no light of day into the place; well may the uninitiated from the streets, who peep in through the glass panes in the door, be deterred from entrance by its owlish aspect and by the drawl, languidly echoing to the roof from the padded dais where the Lord High Chancellor looks into the lantern that has no light in it and where the attendant wigs are all stuck in a fog-bank! This is the Court of Chancery, which has its decaying houses and its blighted lands in every shire, which has its worn-out lunatic in every madhouse and its dead in every churchyard, which has its ruined suitor with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress borrowing and begging through the round of every man’s acquaintance, which gives to monied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right, which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope, so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart, that there is not an honourable man among its practitioners who would not give — who does not often give — the warning, “Suffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come here!”
Who happen to be in the Lord Chancellor’s court this murky afternoon besides the Lord Chancellor, the counsel in the cause, two or three counsel who are never in any cause, and the well of solicitors before mentioned? There is the registrar below the judge, in wig and gown; and there are two or three maces, or petty-bags, or privy-purses, or whatever they may be, in legal court suits. These are all yawning, for no crumb of amusement ever falls from JARNDYCE AND JARNDYCE (the cause in hand), which was squeezed dry years upon years ago. The short-hand writers, the reporters of the court, and the reporters of the newspapers invariably decamp with the rest of the regulars when Jarndyce and Jarndyce comes on. Their places are a blank. Standing on a seat at the side of the hall, the better to peer into the curtained sanctuary, is a little mad old woman in a squeezed bonnet, who is always in court, from its sitting to its rising, and always expecting some incomprehensible judgment to be given in her favour. Some say she really is, or was, a party to a suit, but no one knows for certain because no one cares. She carries some small litter in a reticule which she calls her documents, principally consisting of paper matches and dry lavender. A sallow prisoner has come up, in custody, for the half-dozenth time to make a personal application “to purge himself of his contempt,” which, being a solitary surviving executor who has fallen into a state of conglomeration about accounts of which it is not pretended that he had ever any knowledge, he is not at all likely ever to do. In the meantime his prospects in life are ended. Another ruined suitor, who periodically appears from Shropshire, and breaks out into efforts to address the Chancellor at the close of the day’s business and who can by no means be made to understand that the Chancellor is legally ignorant of his existence after making it desolate for a quarter of a century, plants himself in a good place and keeps an eye on the judge, ready to call out “My Lord!” in a voice of sonorous complaint on the instant of his rising. A few lawyers’ clerks and others who know this suitor by sight linger on the chance of his furnishing some fun and enlivening the dismal weather a little.
Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit. The little plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee-house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless.
Jarndyce and Jarndyce has passed into a joke. That is the only good that has ever come of it. It has been death to many, but it is a joke in the profession. Every master in Chancery has had a reference out of it. Every Chancellor was “in it,” for somebody or other, when he was counsel at the bar. Good things have been said about it by blue-nosed, bulbous-shoed old benchers in select port-wine committee after dinner in hall. Articled clerks have been in the habit of fleshing their legal wit upon it. The last Lord Chancellor handled it neatly, when, correcting Mr Blowers, the eminent silk gown who said that such a thing might happen when the sky rained potatoes, he observed, “or when we get through Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mr Blowers” — a pleasantry that particularly tickled the maces, bags, and purses.
How many people out of the suit Jarndyce and Jarndyce has stretched forth its unwholesome hand to spoil and corrupt would be a very wide question. From the master upon whose impaling files reams of dusty warrants in Jarndyce and Jarndyce have grimly writhed into many shapes, down to the copying clerk in the Six Clerks’ Office who has copied his tens of thousands of Chancery folio-pages under that eternal heading, no man’s nature has been made better by it. In trickery, evasion, procrastination, spoliation, botheration, under false pretences of all sorts, there are influences that can never come to good. The very solicitors’ boys who have kept the wretched suitors at bay, by protesting time out of mind that Mr Chizzle, Mizzle, or otherwise was particularly engaged and had appointments until dinner, may have got an extra moral twist and shuffle into themselves out of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The receiver in the cause has acquired a goodly sum of money by it but has acquired too a distrust of his own mother and a contempt for his own kind. Chizzle, Mizzle, and otherwise have lapsed into a habit of vaguely promising themselves that they will look into that outstanding little matter and see what can be done for Drizzle — who was not well used — when Jarndyce and Jarndyce shall be got out of the office. Shirking and sharking, in all their many varieties have been sown broadcast by the ill-fated cause; and even those who have contemplated its history from the outer-most circle of such evil have been insensibly tempted into a loose way of letting bad things alone to take their own bad course, and a loose belief that if the world go wrong it was in some off-hand manner never meant to go right.
Thus, in the midst of the mud and at the heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.
“Mr Tangle,” says the Lord High Chancellor, latterly something restless under the eloquence of that learned gentleman.
“Mlud,” says Mr Tangle. Mr Tangle knows more of Jarndyce and Jarndyce than anybody. He is famous for it — supposed never to have read anything else since he left school.
“Have you nearly concluded your argument?”
“Mlud, no — variety of points — feel it my duty tsubmit — ludship,” is the reply that slides out of Mr Tangle.
“Several members of the bar are still to be heard, I believe?” says the Chancellor with a slight smile.
Eighteen of Mr Tangle’s learned friends, each armed with a little summary of eighteen hundred sheets, bob up like eighteen hammers in a piano-forte, make eighteen bows, and drop into their eighteen places of obscurity.
“We will proceed with the hearing on Wednesday fortnight,” says the Chancellor. For the question at issue is only a question of costs, a mere bud on the forest tree of the parent suit, and really will come to a settlement one of these days.
The Chancellor rises; the bar rises; the prisoner is brought forward in a hurry; the man from Shropshire cries, “My lord!” Maces, bags, and purses indignantly proclaim silence and frown at the man from Shropshire.
“In reference,” proceeds the Chancellor, still on Jarndyce and Jarndyce, “to the young girl—”
“Begludship’s pardon — boy,” says Mr Tangle prematurely.
“In reference,” proceeds the Chancellor with extra distinctness, “to the young girl and boy, the two young people,”
(Mr Tangle crushed.)
“whom I directed to be in attendance to-day and who are now in my private room, I will see them and satisfy myself as to the expediency of making the order for their residing with their uncle.”
Mr Tangle on his legs again.
“Begludship’s pardon — dead.”
“With their,” — Chancellor looking through his double eye-glass at the papers on his desk, “grandfather.”
“Begludship’s pardon — victim of rash action — brains.”
Suddenly a very little counsel with a terrific bass voice arises, fully inflated, in the back settlements of the fog, and says, “Will your lordship allow me? I appear for him. He is a cousin, several times removed. I am not at the moment prepared to inform the court in what exact remove he is a cousin, but he is a cousin.”
Leaving this address (delivered like a sepulchral message) ringing in the rafters of the roof, the very little counsel drops, and the fog knows him no more. Everybody looks for him. Nobody can see him.
“I will speak with both the young people,” says the Chancellor anew, “and satisfy myself on the subject of their residing with their cousin. I will mention the matter to-morrow morning when I take my seat.”
The Chancellor is about to bow to the bar when the prisoner is presented. Nothing can possibly come of the prisoner’s conglomeration but his being sent back to prison, which is soon done. The man from Shropshire ventures another remonstrative “My lord!” but the Chancellor, being aware of him, has dexterously vanished. Everybody else quickly vanishes too. A battery of blue bags is loaded with heavy charges of papers and carried off by clerks; the little mad old woman marches off with her documents; the empty court is locked up. If all the injustice it has committed and all the misery it has caused could only be locked up with it, and the whole burnt away in a great funeral pyre — why, so much the better for other parties than the parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce!
"Mangia!"
By Jerry Vilhotti
The night of the supper for the two most prosperous people in the neighborhood - and two good potential prospects of becoming godparents - the children fought even more vigorously knowing that since company was present no beating was going to fall all over their bodies. It was the mother who did the spanking not the father. The boys six and seven years old,
Tom and Lenny, wrestled by the table - almost knocking it over twice - as sixteen year old Tina was constantly trying to kick their heads in when they were on
the floor or attempting to rip their arms off while they were standing. Ten year old Alice kept busy by setting the table but every once in a while would join her brothers in warding off an especially savage attack by their big sister Tina who was doing her best to maintain discipline; believing the two visitors were going to take the baby home with them - if they had a good time. Through all this the baby Gianni slept. After a delicious supper beginning with ante pasta: salami, pepperoni, Asiago cheese,
black olives, red bell pepper, green bell pepper and tomatoes; followed by two home made pastas with real red gravy made from the juices of several meats of sausages, beef ribs and steak that would join the food as steak pizzaiola on the side - and not a sauce - with meatballs almost the size of tennis balls, a salad drenched in olive oil joined with a bit of vinegar and thick slices of Arthur Avenue well done Italian bread and as they were having coffee with Italian sweet biscuits and a neighbor's home made cream puffs with a bottle of anisette and little glasses and another big bottle of home made wine with large glasses, the boy's father resumed his goal of placing their last born, who would become his favorite with blond curly hair and smile, into the safety zone.
"So André! André! André, my good friend!"
André tensed visibly; feeling something bad was coming on - for why had they been invited by these very poor people? He did believe like the New York politician that these kinds of people were essential for if it weren't for the wretched among them - how would they really know they were well off? He was a "What's in for me guy" which encompassed ninety percent of politicians.
"We have no mon"- André began to say.
"André! André, my little man child has hair the color of the sun and his smile makes dark days become bright and his cry is like a tune that brings to mind the song
''Serenade in the Night". Eat! Eat!"
Francie his brand new world wife - replacing the white widow he left behind with their two daughters in the old country - shouted: "Yes! Yes! Yes!"
They were going to be Gianni's godparents but Andre would dislike the boy forever yet remember the meal.
Pot Luck
By Gerald Arthur Winter
“Are you gonna make that friggin chickasee again, Mary?” he asked.
“Chicken frickasee!” Mary shouted from the kitchen. Watch your
language. It’s Sunday, and Pastor Tom will be shocked enough just to see
you in church. No cussin’ from you at the Annual Pot Luck Picnic. Okay.”
“Screw him and the wave of righteousness he rode in on. I liked that
lady pastor who was in the running to replace Reverend Michaels. Too bad
that old buzzard died of hypothermia that winter. He was okay at the pulpit,
but if you go ice fishing, Jesus, you should know how to swim.”
“Don’t remind me about her,” Mary said. “The ladies in my quilt-sewing
group decided she was a lesbian, so we blocked her out of the running for
senior pastor.”
“She was no lesbian, darlin’, not the way she grinned at me when I
complimented her on that outfit she wore so snug around her butt.”
“Are you going to behave today or not? Because that’s what got you
in trouble the last time you showed up in church.”
“That was many moons ago, sweetheart.”
“Don’t you dare mention moons!” Mary shouted above the stove fan
fan set on HIGH. “I can’t believe you mooned Pastor Tom on his first Sunday.
I hope he’s forgotten about it.”
“Not likely, precious. Some people have faces you can’t forget, but in
my case it’s—”
“Never mind!”
“I’m just sayin’—”
“Another word and you’re staying home!”
He shrugged. “That’s fine by me.”
She stuck her head out from the kitchen with her hair in curlers and
glared at him. “You’re going, and that’s final!”
Al put his thumb and forefinger to one side of his lips and dragged them
across his mouth beneath his bushy, black moustache and full beard as if he
were zipping it shut. He loved her chicken frickasee, and the Pot Luck Picnic
seemed his only way to get a taste.
“That’s better. Now go shower, then put on your blue suit I laid out for
you on the bed.”
“Suit? We’re goin’ to a picnic. “I ain’t wearin’ no suit. It’s September and
it will be eighty degrees by the time church lets out. Then I’m goin’ fishin’.”
“I want everyone to see you at your best. Is that too much to ask, Al?”
“Well, I—“
“Well, you better wear it. Everyone will remember your bare butt flashing
Pastor Tom, but I want them to remember you at your best . . . in your blue
suit of course. It almost helps you pass as a gentleman—until you open your
foul mouth. So you’d better behave. You know . . . people will act the way they
dress.”
“You sound like your mom. Anyway, you can’t go by that from our
president at a press conference. Even with thousand-dollar necktie, he still
talks shit.”
“And don’t you start talking politics at church either, Al.”
“Can’t a person say what’s on his mind anymore?”
“If his mind isn’t full of . . . of—”
“Go on, honey, say shit on a Sunday and go to hell for all eternity.
Believe that garbage, and I’ll tell ya a good one.”
“If you’re not ready to shower, I’m going ahead of you.”
“You go right ahead,” he said, then waited to hear the shower running
upstairs and popped open a beer. He opened the oven and eyed Mary’s
casserole. His mouth watered as he inhaled the familiar aroma of her
chicken frickasee, the same dish she’d brought to the Pot-luck Picnic
every year since her mother, on her death bed, had given Mary her recipe.
Al noted the handwritten recipe in his mother-in-law’s familiar scrawl.
Mary had taped the yellowed note to the stove-stop’s hood where it fluttered
from the exhaust fan’s breeze. Though he’d always loved the taste of that
dish, it reminded him of Mary’s mother who’d never approved of him and was
ashamed of him that day he’d come to church with a buzz on.
Al thought, Nothing makes me want to drink more than when someone
tells me to stop.
“You need to go to AA,” her mother had said that morning, which had
really put him on a binge.
He didn’t even remember mooning the new pastor that morning. It had
been one of his blackouts. He remembered that he had to take a leak so bad,
that he couldn’t make it across the church cemetery, and his damn zipper had
jammed. He could only remember the pain from his swollen bladder and that
prostate thingy his doctor had warned him about. There had been no choice
with the men’s room three hundred feet away, so he dropped his trousers
to his ankles and let ’er rip. How was he to know that Pastor Tom would be
taking a tour of the old cemetery? Everyone said he’d mooned him, but
that was their misperception.
“Misperception!” Mary had shrieked at him the next day.
“Would you have preferred I’d have given him the full-Monty? I was
turning away! Covering up, for god’s sake!”
Mary had been told by the church consistory not to bring Al to church
again. But apparently the statute of limitations was five years for a mooning
episode, and time alone had exorcized the Mooning Devil from his soul. So
Al was purified this morning, just in time for another Pot Luck Picnic at the
“Dutch Deformed” Church, as Al had tagged Mary’s church where she’d
attended Sunday School and where they’d been married ten years ago.
Al had told Mary’s parents that he considered himself a reformed
Roman Catholic, which they let ride for a month or two before her mom
cornered Al at the beer cooler for a backyard picnic to celebrate his and
Mary’s engagement.
“What exactly is a reformed Roman Catholic?” Mary’s mom had asked.
“That means I no longer go to church. I’m what you’d call a free thinker.”
Her mouth had dropped open, but Al had heard her say under her
breath, “A free drinker is more like it.”
Al shrugged off that recollection and popped open another beer. Ten
minutes later, he heard Mary coming out of the shower so he got undressed
and squeezed past her as she came wrapped in a large towel out of the
bathroom.
“Got time for a quickie, m’ love?”
“Gargle, Al,” she huffed. “Damn it you smell like a brewery.”
“Of course, sweetie. Anything for you.”
* * *
The drive to church was silent, but Al sensed Mary was sniffing for
the redolent scent of beer on him.
Al broke the ice by teasing Mary about her conservative Dutch
Reformed upbringing. “I promise to bring my mooning down to an absolute
minimum, darlin’.”
“You’re incorrigible,” she scolded then couldn’t hold back her giggling.
Al was that boy in grammar school and high school, who always got
in trouble, never anything serious, but always enough to get detention and
mostly C’s with an occasional D except for Phys. Ed., where he would have
gotten an A if he hadn’t been caught smoking in the boys’ room every week.
Mary wasn’t the best looking girl in school, but she’d been a cheerleader,
and was President of Student Council.
Mary had gone away to college where she excelled scholastically, and
she became realtor in town. Al did a four-year hitch in the Navy after high
school, but now he had his own lawn mowing and snow removal business.
But every summer recess, when Mary had come home from college, she’d
find Al sitting on his Harley in her driveway ready to take her for a windy ride
down the Garden State Parkway to the Jersey shore.
For all his mischief and bad habits, quite simply, and as she’d told her
mom, she loved the guy, though she doubted she could ever change him.
She’d given up trying until this Sunday morning celebrating Pastor Tom’s
fifth-year anniversary as their senior pastor. She was hoping for a change
in Al, because she’d learned that she was pregnant last Friday and hadn’t
told him yet, because she wasn’t sure how that would fly with Al.
They pulled into the church parking lot between the cemetery and
Fellowship Hall. There were over two hundred attending church and staying
afterwards for the Pot Luck Picnic. The casserole dishes and aluminum pans
of steaming home–made dishes were lined up on a stretch of folding tables
twenty feet long on the lawn outside Fellowship Hall. The appetizing aromas
of everything from salads, casseroles, fried chicken, Swedish meatballs, and
pot roasts permeated the humid air, especially Mary’s chicken frickasee.
Al wished he could just skip the church service and eat. He wanted to
go fishing later and was impatient to get to the lake.
Why do they call it a service? He thought. I’m not getting any service in
this joint. Where’s the keg of Bud?
Seated in church, Al had to lip sync the Gloria Patri from his memory
as an altar boy, but that had been in Latin. He’d had little exposure to church
ceremonies. His father had died of a heart attack in his late forties leaving a
bitter taste of unpalatable religion in Al’s craw.
Pastor Tom announced from the pulpit, “We’re happy to see some new
faces here today along with the regulars.” He paused seeing Al next to Mary
in the third row. “And even some irregulars.”
Al squirmed when all heads turned in his direction and a few clusters of
old biddies grumbled under their Poli-grip-scented breaths. Al imagined he’d
heard that dreaded four-letter word—moon.
Pastor Tom went on, “I think we owe a debt of thanks to Mildred, our
church secretary, for posting the announcement about our Pot Luck Picnic
in the Bergen Record. Regardless of how you heard about our picnic after
the service this morning, we’re all glad you’ve come to break bread with us.
Please don’t feel uncomfortable if you haven’t brought any food to share. We
have more than enough for everyone, a veritable feast.
A few loaves of bread and a couple of fishes, Al thought with a grumble,
recalling how Jesus had fed the crowd. “More likely myth than miracle.”
Al gave Mary dagger eyes as he removed his suit jacket in the picnic
area and draped it over the back of his chair. He was the only man wearing a
jacket in the late summer heat and felt ridiculous.
Mary said, “I just thought that—”
“Fugetabowdit,” he said under his breath. Just give me a double portion
of your mom’s friggin—you know—the chicken, then we’ll be even and I can
go fishin’.”
The church ladies uncovered their dishes and nodded for the
congregation to begin filling their paper plates. When all had taken their
seats, Pastor Tom said the blessing before they began to eat.
After his blessing, Pastor Tom asked for a minute of silence in memory
of the 9-11 victims sixteen years ago. During the silence, a breeze rustled
in the tall oaks and maple trees with their canopies high above the picnic
tables. Al could hear several stomachs growling and a fart or two from some
of the elderly. A few of the young kids giggled, but Al fought to hold back his
own laughter, but crossed his eyes at Mary. She kicked under the table.
It felt more like five minutes than one to Al, impatient to eat and leave.
His bait and tackle with two fishing poles were in his car trunk ready to go.
As he dreamed of pulling in a trout for dinner that night, three vans flashing
yellow lights pulled into the church parking lot. The screech of their brakes
turned all heads as six in uniforms, four men and two women, carrying
equipment came briskly toward the picnickers.
Al thought they looked like some sort of cops, so he grumbled, “I paid
that damn speeding ticket, so what the hell do they want?”
“Don’t anyone eat this food!” one of the uniformed men shouted at the
crowd. “Who prepared those dishes for all these people?”
Pastor Tom waved for the murmuring crowd to stay quiet and said,
“We all did. This is our annual Pot Luck Picnic.”
“Not anymore it isn’t. Only a licensed chef or catering service can
serve food to the public, that’s a statute passed in the state legislature early
this year.
The other uniforms went around the table sticking thermometers into
all the covered-dish entrees.
“All these casseroles are beneath the state temperature standard and
subject to confiscation.” The other five uniforms rolled up carts and began to
take all casseroles and salad trays to their vans. One grabbed Al’s plate of
chicken frickasee as he was about to savor his first bite.
“What the—?” Al stood from his chair. “This is bull shit!”
Some of the men of the church also stood to complain.
“Sorry, pastor,” the uniformed leader said. “From now on, you’ll have to
hire a licensed catering service for events like this. It’s the law.”
“We’ll pray for those in the state legislature to be forgiven for passing
such an unreasonable law,” Pastor Tom said.
“Whatever. But if one of your congregation got sick from any of this
home-made food, the state could fine you enough to own your church—what
is it two hundred years old? Obey the law then you’ll have no problems.”
“Are you cops?” Al shouted to the leader.
“No, sir. We’re State’s Food and Drug enforcers. We just collect
evidence to support rendering a fine. The county will give the church a
hundred–dollar fine for this first offense.”
“In that case, I think you forgot to test the pork butt I brought today.”
With that, Al stood up on a picnic table and dropped his pants and mooned
the uniforms in their departure. On the right cheek of his butt was a tattoo of
a cross entwined with roses, an addition since his last time in church.
Despite the shrieks of shock, and a couple of old biddies whispering
I-told-you-so’s about Al, Mary gave him a hug. Pastor Tom came toward him
with an undecided look of mixed emotions. He extended his hand to Al.
“I’m glad to see you back in church today, Al. I hope you’ll join us next
Sunday, and many Sundays after that. We have an opening for a deacon with
elections next Sunday, I’m personally inviting you to toss your hat in the ring.”
Though some of the old standard bearers grumbled, many of the
younger members of congregation applauded, and so did Mary.
Al said, “Some of these little kids and those old folks over there are very
hungry. I always keep a couple of loaves of bread and a few cans of tuna fish
in my trunk when I go fishing. So tell everyone who’s hungry to come over to
my car and I’ll spread some tuna on the bread for them.”
The congregation lined up and half an hour later all the congregation
had sampled Al’s humble offering. On the ride home, Mary put her cheek
against Al’s shoulder.
“I was so proud of you today,” she said.
“Was nothing,” he shrugged. “Maybe if it had been four or five thousand
lined up to eat from my car trunk, and all got fed . . . well, that would really be
something . . . maybe a miracle . . . but even if I did that, sooner or later it
would just become a myth.”
“Al . . . I have something to tell you before you go fishing.”
“What? You think I don’t know? I know my darlin’ better than any
doctor. You’ve had a glow about you these past couple of days.”
“If it’s a boy, shall we name after you?”
“Nah. I really liked that old pastor we had when we got married.”
“Reverend Michaels?”
“Michael is a good name, you know, angelic. But our Michael will learn
how to fish and swim.”
“What if it’s a girl?”
He shrugged. “What’s the difference? We’ll name her Michelle.”
“Will you take me fishing with you today?”
He pouted with furrowed brow then blurted, “Hell, yeah!”
With his kiss, she tasted her chicken frickasee on his mustache. He’d
snuck a taste before the goons had snatched his plate. She’d have to bake
another batch tonight if they didn’t catch any fish that afternoon.
END
Mystery
By Alexandra H. Rodrigues
Had aliens inhabited the earth? Nothing had changed with one exception. All over the world, people were tattooed with a 6-digit number on the left forearm.
Nobody had felt the branding.
The thin numerals, etched into the skin, were impossible to erase. Was that a way aliens wanted to let us know that they consider us their prisoners?
George’s number was 061652, his wife Erika showed 011267 and their little son, only 3 years old proudly displayed the number 090999. Had aliens wanted to make it easy for the kids to remember the number? Hardly. So what did all that mean? There was no clue.
The phones lines, e-mails, Facebook and Twitter buzzed with people comparing the numbers they had gotten. No answer was to be found.
Life went on, no better nor worse than before. The year 2016 was knocking on the door when George’s family was informed that a good friend of theirs, Herbert Stein had succumbed to stroke. The viewing was scheduled for Wednesday December 23. George and Erika were very sad. They organized a baby sitter for their son and went to the viewing.
The last rays of the afternoon sun kissed the stiff body of the dead. Playfully it circled around the arm with what by now had come to be called the tattoo. His number had been 122115. In a flash a disclosure surfaced in George’s mind. That number matched the date on the death certificate. No coincidence for sure!
Suddenly it had become clear to everybody. That it was the date of their death. No more guesswork. Commotion ripped the world.
A flash of awareness, never having been known to mankind, planted itself into each and every human mind, worldwide. Every child, every adult, male or female, suddenly knew their time of death. In the beginning, everybody thought it to be an illusion. Could it be the stress of time that played tricks on the human psyche? However, the knowledge spread and everybody was able to report their own date when to expect death.
With this realization, mayhem resulted. People, whose date of death was in the distant future, became daringly cocky; while people with close impending death dates fell into depression. Life Insurance companies, hospitals and the entire medical society were suddenly forced to look for other income sources. Why would one want to go to a doctor, when all was pre-programmed? Any disbelievers were soon convinced by the facts of occurring deaths, foretold by the tattoos.
One of the persons to whom death was foretold to be in the very near future, was Mr. Robert Richi, a young philosopher, born and brought up in New York. It had been June 16 when everybody had been enlightened and the D-Day for Robert Richi was to be May 12 of the following year.
Like many other people he did not tell anybody what was in store for him. Maybe if one did not make the date public, there was still hope. Unfortunately, it became quickly known that there was no such thing as avoiding the truth. Already a few days after that ominous June 16, some people were dying, having known that for only
a couple of days. On the other hand there were those who had been diagnosed with incurable illnesses, prior to June 16 who could now look forward to a long life ahead. Those gave praise and thanks to the new situation at hand.
Scientists searched in vain for an explanation to what was happening. Religious men read and reread the Bible word by word but could not find a clue.
Robert studied the old philosophers to find some peace of mind in their wisdom -- but in vain.
Factually nothing much had changed. The date of your death, which you now knew, was most likely the date that had been assigned to you by destiny. Now one could be scrupulous, face perils without fear, engage in dangerous endeavors and take chances, which really were no longer chances because one knew one would survive.
Just like before June 16, death could come by natural causes or as the result of a crime, accident or even suicide. If you tried to commit suicide, while your destiny date was in the far future, you would not be successful.
Then, in September, on a rainy, murky day, a newsflash came over the air. A man in a steel suit, wearing a radar helmet, had been picked up in New York’s Central Park. That afternoon, Robert Richi had been walking down to the Tavern for a cocktail, when he saw a creature sitting on the grass. It was not so much the steel outfit that caught his attention; it was the shape of those square eyes and the thousands of miniscule fireballs that seemed to explode in them when the creature looked at Robert. He had walked over to the man or creature or whatever the being represented. No need to be afraid as he knew he had till May 16 to live and he had greeted the being with, “Hi, what are you doing here?” And he was amazed when he got an answer in a well-modulated, mellow voice, “I am taking a rest, can’t you see!”
“Where do you come from?” he ventured. “From a faraway other world. None of your business.”
With that, the being turned his head away from Robert. Robert’s curiosity spiked; this was so weird.
“When did you get here?” he asked. The creature was apparently getting annoyed at being questioned and his answer was short and unfriendly, “June! Who cares?”
Robert’s mind made a quick calculation. Could it be possible that this creature had something to do with the weird new situation on earth?
“Where do you live?” Robert asked, and to his amazement the being pointed to the sky.
“Join me for a cocktail,” Robert coaxed in an effort to be friendly and get more information. The creature shook his head.
“Don’t drink and don’t eat.” Right then Robert noticed a police car driving by, and he motioned to the officer to stop. He was lucky; the officer had noticed Robert and the car had stopped.
The creature readily told the policeman that his name was Jack and did not resist getting in the police car.
At the station Jack explained that he had come from far away. He supposedly had just taken a walk: no spaceship, no mission. He sounded rather like a guy who had had too much wine and was now giving an account of things that happened a while ago.
Robert had been watching the interrogation carefully and he could tell from the way things were going that Jack purposely, but very politely, avoided giving any explanation at all.
“Officer, would you leave me alone with Jack for a bit?” Robert asked. The constable agreed hesitantly.
“Now Jack,” Robert opened the conversation again. “I instinctively know that you are involved in the new concept about death on earth. You can trust me,” he added and tried to touch Jack’s hand with a friendly gesture but Jack pulled his hand back immediately and angry little fireballs shot out of his eyes.
Robert acted unperturbed. “Tell me some more about your involvement with our death schedules.”
Jack’s mannerism became fidgety and he asked in return, “How much do you know?”
Robert did not let on what satisfaction he just had gotten but answered cordially, “Well, for one thing, I know that I will have to die early next year and I can assure you, I do not like that one bit. Also I do not believe that these dates of death which everybody has in their mind now and occurring on schedule are the dates the divine God had had in mind before that ominous date of June 16.
More fireballs sped out of Jack’s eyes. “You are a philosopher or such?” he asked. Robert had no intention to deny that.
“You are absolutely correct and my theory is, that you Jack, whoever or whatever you are, you seem involved in some kind of mind-over-matter set-up.” Jack did not comment. Robert silently tried to figure out the next step to take. “Come home with me, learn about our ways. My children will be excited to play with somebody from another world. It will fit perfectly into their imagination of Star Trek and such.
To Robert’s surprise, Jack agreed. He was now sitting a little awkwardly in an easy chair, while little Bobby and Willy sat a safe distance from him -- just staring. Robert was on the phone with a friend, “Hey Joe. Can you rush over your new gadget? The one that can detect dreams. It is truly and matter of life and death. I will tell you later.”
Just as Robert had hoped, about 10 p.m. Jack’s fingers went to his eyes and with delicate movement he extracted one of the light bugs, put it into his mouth and swallowed. He yawned. “This will put me to sleep immediately, hope you do not mind.” Jack mumbled and seconds later his figure slumped further down into the chair.
Joe arrived with the detector under his arm. He looked questioningly at Robert and the strange figure in the chair. Joe connected the apparatus to Jack’s brain while Robert explained the situation. They both sat next to the alien all night, never closing an eye.
At 5 a.m. Jack stirred and they quickly disconnected the gadget and hid it. Jack fell asleep again and the two friends connected the detector to the translator and began to study the entries the needle had made.
It read: The rays in my helmet hold the unique powers of the Master of hell. They execute his will about life and death. They are indestructible unless separated from me. I must go back into hiding. Luckily my helmet is invisible so I avoided being questioned about it. Robert is a smart guy and I have to be careful. He is on to it, that the new dates are not God’s will. He might get on to it that it is now Satan’s power that influences the earth.
Robert and Joe turned pale upon reading the transcript. “This is so unbelievable but it is happening,” Robert whispered. We must get a crucifix. Run over to St. Mary’s church, hurry. I’ll keep an eye on Jack, the devil’s advocate.”
Joe had not yet returned when Jack awoke. “I need to leave,” Jack said motioning toward the door.
Willy, still in his pajamas, had come into the room and Robert quickly put him into Jack’s lap. Willy began to cry and struggled to get away. Jack was annoyed, too. “What is this all about?”
“Do you have children?” Robert asked, trying to stall Jack’s impending departure.
“No,” came the monosyllable answer. “Take this brat away from me.” By now Jack sensed that something was going on. He got up, walked to the door, stepping over Willy who was now sobbing on the floor, and walked out the door.
Just then Joe returned with a crucifix. “Hit him with it!” Robert shouted. Thanks to his quick reactions, Joe swung the crucifix hitting the invisible helmet, pressing down on it like a maniac. Jack fought to get away but his body began to disintegrate and moments later nothing was left. Only a few light bugs went up into the air.
When Robert went back to the police station, nobody believed him at first. Nothing had changed. Everybody still knew the day of their death. But slowly the tattoos began to fade and reports trickled in of people who had believed they would die but found themselves quite alive, while others were dying ahead of “schedule.” A big news report went out. People crowded the churches. The Bible again became the most read book on earth and life returned to its old ways.
By Alexandra H. Rodrigues
Had aliens inhabited the earth? Nothing had changed with one exception. All over the world, people were tattooed with a 6-digit number on the left forearm.
Nobody had felt the branding.
The thin numerals, etched into the skin, were impossible to erase. Was that a way aliens wanted to let us know that they consider us their prisoners?
George’s number was 061652, his wife Erika showed 011267 and their little son, only 3 years old proudly displayed the number 090999. Had aliens wanted to make it easy for the kids to remember the number? Hardly. So what did all that mean? There was no clue.
The phones lines, e-mails, Facebook and Twitter buzzed with people comparing the numbers they had gotten. No answer was to be found.
Life went on, no better nor worse than before. The year 2016 was knocking on the door when George’s family was informed that a good friend of theirs, Herbert Stein had succumbed to stroke. The viewing was scheduled for Wednesday December 23. George and Erika were very sad. They organized a baby sitter for their son and went to the viewing.
The last rays of the afternoon sun kissed the stiff body of the dead. Playfully it circled around the arm with what by now had come to be called the tattoo. His number had been 122115. In a flash a disclosure surfaced in George’s mind. That number matched the date on the death certificate. No coincidence for sure!
Suddenly it had become clear to everybody. That it was the date of their death. No more guesswork. Commotion ripped the world.
A flash of awareness, never having been known to mankind, planted itself into each and every human mind, worldwide. Every child, every adult, male or female, suddenly knew their time of death. In the beginning, everybody thought it to be an illusion. Could it be the stress of time that played tricks on the human psyche? However, the knowledge spread and everybody was able to report their own date when to expect death.
With this realization, mayhem resulted. People, whose date of death was in the distant future, became daringly cocky; while people with close impending death dates fell into depression. Life Insurance companies, hospitals and the entire medical society were suddenly forced to look for other income sources. Why would one want to go to a doctor, when all was pre-programmed? Any disbelievers were soon convinced by the facts of occurring deaths, foretold by the tattoos.
One of the persons to whom death was foretold to be in the very near future, was Mr. Robert Richi, a young philosopher, born and brought up in New York. It had been June 16 when everybody had been enlightened and the D-Day for Robert Richi was to be May 12 of the following year.
Like many other people he did not tell anybody what was in store for him. Maybe if one did not make the date public, there was still hope. Unfortunately, it became quickly known that there was no such thing as avoiding the truth. Already a few days after that ominous June 16, some people were dying, having known that for only
a couple of days. On the other hand there were those who had been diagnosed with incurable illnesses, prior to June 16 who could now look forward to a long life ahead. Those gave praise and thanks to the new situation at hand.
Scientists searched in vain for an explanation to what was happening. Religious men read and reread the Bible word by word but could not find a clue.
Robert studied the old philosophers to find some peace of mind in their wisdom -- but in vain.
Factually nothing much had changed. The date of your death, which you now knew, was most likely the date that had been assigned to you by destiny. Now one could be scrupulous, face perils without fear, engage in dangerous endeavors and take chances, which really were no longer chances because one knew one would survive.
Just like before June 16, death could come by natural causes or as the result of a crime, accident or even suicide. If you tried to commit suicide, while your destiny date was in the far future, you would not be successful.
Then, in September, on a rainy, murky day, a newsflash came over the air. A man in a steel suit, wearing a radar helmet, had been picked up in New York’s Central Park. That afternoon, Robert Richi had been walking down to the Tavern for a cocktail, when he saw a creature sitting on the grass. It was not so much the steel outfit that caught his attention; it was the shape of those square eyes and the thousands of miniscule fireballs that seemed to explode in them when the creature looked at Robert. He had walked over to the man or creature or whatever the being represented. No need to be afraid as he knew he had till May 16 to live and he had greeted the being with, “Hi, what are you doing here?” And he was amazed when he got an answer in a well-modulated, mellow voice, “I am taking a rest, can’t you see!”
“Where do you come from?” he ventured. “From a faraway other world. None of your business.”
With that, the being turned his head away from Robert. Robert’s curiosity spiked; this was so weird.
“When did you get here?” he asked. The creature was apparently getting annoyed at being questioned and his answer was short and unfriendly, “June! Who cares?”
Robert’s mind made a quick calculation. Could it be possible that this creature had something to do with the weird new situation on earth?
“Where do you live?” Robert asked, and to his amazement the being pointed to the sky.
“Join me for a cocktail,” Robert coaxed in an effort to be friendly and get more information. The creature shook his head.
“Don’t drink and don’t eat.” Right then Robert noticed a police car driving by, and he motioned to the officer to stop. He was lucky; the officer had noticed Robert and the car had stopped.
The creature readily told the policeman that his name was Jack and did not resist getting in the police car.
At the station Jack explained that he had come from far away. He supposedly had just taken a walk: no spaceship, no mission. He sounded rather like a guy who had had too much wine and was now giving an account of things that happened a while ago.
Robert had been watching the interrogation carefully and he could tell from the way things were going that Jack purposely, but very politely, avoided giving any explanation at all.
“Officer, would you leave me alone with Jack for a bit?” Robert asked. The constable agreed hesitantly.
“Now Jack,” Robert opened the conversation again. “I instinctively know that you are involved in the new concept about death on earth. You can trust me,” he added and tried to touch Jack’s hand with a friendly gesture but Jack pulled his hand back immediately and angry little fireballs shot out of his eyes.
Robert acted unperturbed. “Tell me some more about your involvement with our death schedules.”
Jack’s mannerism became fidgety and he asked in return, “How much do you know?”
Robert did not let on what satisfaction he just had gotten but answered cordially, “Well, for one thing, I know that I will have to die early next year and I can assure you, I do not like that one bit. Also I do not believe that these dates of death which everybody has in their mind now and occurring on schedule are the dates the divine God had had in mind before that ominous date of June 16.
More fireballs sped out of Jack’s eyes. “You are a philosopher or such?” he asked. Robert had no intention to deny that.
“You are absolutely correct and my theory is, that you Jack, whoever or whatever you are, you seem involved in some kind of mind-over-matter set-up.” Jack did not comment. Robert silently tried to figure out the next step to take. “Come home with me, learn about our ways. My children will be excited to play with somebody from another world. It will fit perfectly into their imagination of Star Trek and such.
To Robert’s surprise, Jack agreed. He was now sitting a little awkwardly in an easy chair, while little Bobby and Willy sat a safe distance from him -- just staring. Robert was on the phone with a friend, “Hey Joe. Can you rush over your new gadget? The one that can detect dreams. It is truly and matter of life and death. I will tell you later.”
Just as Robert had hoped, about 10 p.m. Jack’s fingers went to his eyes and with delicate movement he extracted one of the light bugs, put it into his mouth and swallowed. He yawned. “This will put me to sleep immediately, hope you do not mind.” Jack mumbled and seconds later his figure slumped further down into the chair.
Joe arrived with the detector under his arm. He looked questioningly at Robert and the strange figure in the chair. Joe connected the apparatus to Jack’s brain while Robert explained the situation. They both sat next to the alien all night, never closing an eye.
At 5 a.m. Jack stirred and they quickly disconnected the gadget and hid it. Jack fell asleep again and the two friends connected the detector to the translator and began to study the entries the needle had made.
It read: The rays in my helmet hold the unique powers of the Master of hell. They execute his will about life and death. They are indestructible unless separated from me. I must go back into hiding. Luckily my helmet is invisible so I avoided being questioned about it. Robert is a smart guy and I have to be careful. He is on to it, that the new dates are not God’s will. He might get on to it that it is now Satan’s power that influences the earth.
Robert and Joe turned pale upon reading the transcript. “This is so unbelievable but it is happening,” Robert whispered. We must get a crucifix. Run over to St. Mary’s church, hurry. I’ll keep an eye on Jack, the devil’s advocate.”
Joe had not yet returned when Jack awoke. “I need to leave,” Jack said motioning toward the door.
Willy, still in his pajamas, had come into the room and Robert quickly put him into Jack’s lap. Willy began to cry and struggled to get away. Jack was annoyed, too. “What is this all about?”
“Do you have children?” Robert asked, trying to stall Jack’s impending departure.
“No,” came the monosyllable answer. “Take this brat away from me.” By now Jack sensed that something was going on. He got up, walked to the door, stepping over Willy who was now sobbing on the floor, and walked out the door.
Just then Joe returned with a crucifix. “Hit him with it!” Robert shouted. Thanks to his quick reactions, Joe swung the crucifix hitting the invisible helmet, pressing down on it like a maniac. Jack fought to get away but his body began to disintegrate and moments later nothing was left. Only a few light bugs went up into the air.
When Robert went back to the police station, nobody believed him at first. Nothing had changed. Everybody still knew the day of their death. But slowly the tattoos began to fade and reports trickled in of people who had believed they would die but found themselves quite alive, while others were dying ahead of “schedule.” A big news report went out. People crowded the churches. The Bible again became the most read book on earth and life returned to its old ways.
The Summoning
By Tushar Jain
"Where... Why is it so dark here?"
"It worked! This is unbelievable! It actually worked!"
"Hey, who said that?! Who's there!"
"It's me, sir! You can't see me but it's supposed to be that way according to the instruction manual that came with the planchette."
"Damn it, annoying voice, identify yourself! And where in God's name are you?"
"I'm Masu, sir. I've summoned you after a very long and tedious séance. I'm talking to the William Shakespeare?"
"What – Shakes... So, you were trying to get old Shakespeare, were you? Hm. Well... yes, yes. Why not! This is him."
"Oh wow! Incredible! You can hear me, right?"
"Loud and clear."
"Yes, they did say the planchette has great audio. I still can't believe it's you. Even though you're just a disembodied voice, this is uncanny."
"You can't see me?"
"No. They had a planchette with an attached LCD. But it was way beyond my price range."
"That's a relief."
"Relief?"
"Oh. Er. Nothing. It's just that you woke me up after some four hundred years of sleep. I'm not exactly having the best hair day."
"Mr. Shakespeare–"
"Call me Billy."
"Mr. Shakespeare, I don't have words to express what your work means to me. And I'm just one of your millions of fans around the world!"
"Yeah, yeah, Shakespeare's got his public and – Wait... Did you say millions?"
"Yes! You don't know, do you? Your work's got a lot more recognition since your day. You're probably the most famous literary personality of all time!"
"What! Damn rotten lucky sonofa–! Uh, I mean, that is... very good to hear. But, um, I'm sure some of my contemporaries and their work must also be relevant still. Especially the plays of one –"
"Haw haw haw! Let me stop you right there, you modest man. You're very kind, Mr. Shakespeare, but time isn't. Today, none of your contemporaries come even close to your genius and greatness."
"Well, aren't we a regular Mister Know-It-All! Ahem. I mean, why have you disturbed my peace, boy?"
"Yes. Coming to the point. Um, Mr. Shakespeare–"
"Feel free to call me Billy anytime now."
"Mr. Shakespeare, I was wondering if you could help me out with... a girl."
"A girl?"
"Yes. She's really something. I was wondering that you being the great bard and all, having written all those neat pick-up lines like 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?', could you give me some truly solid tips?"
"Hm. How old is this girl?"
"Thirteen."
"Thirteen?! I hope to God you're close to the age yourself!"
"She's in my class. I'm thirteen too."
"And thank God for that. Also, what in the world gives you the idea that I'm some kind of expert on thirteen year old girls?"
"Er, wasn't Juliet thirteen?"
"Oh, leave me alone!"
"What is light, if Anahita be not seen? What is joy if Anahita be not by?"
"Shut up."
"Mr. Shakespeare, she's beautiful!"
"Beautiful, sure. But maybe – hear me out here – you aren't seeing things in the right light. You love and yearn for her but has she noticed you? Has she so much as tried talking to you? No. All she's done is injure your self-confidence."
"Actually, she did try to talk to–"
"Sh! Don't be deluded. Nobody wants to talk to you. I've been talking to you for five minutes and I can't wait for this to stop. No... Listen. What you really want to do, deep down, is to exact an unforgettable revenge!"
"No, I don't!"
"It's pretty deep down but it's there. The scene is set. You invite this girl into your home the first chance you get. You trick her into coming up the staircase–"
"I live in a one room apartment on the ground floor of a single storey building."
"And once she's upstairs and distracted, you push her, straight down into a hot, sizzling vat of acid!"
"Acid!"
"Yes! Acid! Oooh. She screams deliciously and you cackle like a maniac and the flesh melts off her bones–"
"Mr. Shakespeare, stop it!"
"Shakespeare...? Oh, yes, yes! Sorry. I tend to get carried away. Yeah, as I said, so that's the plan."
"It's horrible!"
"Well, duh. It's rough at the moment. I'll need an hour or two to–"
"I don't mean that! I'm not tossing Anahita into a vat of acid!"
"Oh... So that's how it is. You're one of those."
"And I'm beginning to think that you, sir, are not Mister Shakespeare."
"Of course, I'm Shakespeare, the Beard himself!"
"The 'Bard'! Okay. If you really are him, tell me how did you, Mr. W. Shakespeare, die?"
"Ooooh! It's a tale of utmost gore and sadism."
"No, it's not."
"I was climbing up a staircase–"
"No, you weren't."
"But my villainous sister pushed me–"
"Oh God."
"Into a sizzling vat of acid! It licked at my bones and the liquid engulfed my–"
"Eew! Cut it out! That confirms it. Who the hell are you?!"
"Too invested in the truth, are we? You're one of those as well, I see. Okay, then. Get ready to be dazzled, boy. Are you ready? You've been talking to none other than the one and only John Webster."
Brief Pause.
"Who?"
"Insolent child! John Webster! The great revenge tragedian!"
"I don't know who that is."
"Dammit, you little–"
"Wait a minute. Aren't you the guy who wrote all those disgusting murder plays?"
"Aha! You got it! I'm him and he's me!"
"That's it. I'm done here. This was the most pointless idea ever. Before I go, will you at least tell me why the hell did you pretend to be Shakespeare?"
"Mainly? It sort of passes the time. Half the people here won't talk to me. They say I creep them out. And what's so 'special' about your bloody Shakespeare! Let me tell you something!"
"Please don't!"
"Michael Drayton told me, and Marlowe told Drayton, and Jonson told Marlowe that, unbeknownst to poor lady Hathaway, he saw your Shakespeare walk into a brothel."
"I make it a point not to pry into the personal lives of Elizabethan playwrights."
"With a chicken!"
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me. Old Billy was committing adultery with poultry!"
"So says you!"
"So says half the staff at the Globe!"
"That's it! Goodbye, Mr. Webster."
"Bak-bak-bakak!"
"Goodbye!"
Sounds of candles being blown out, a planchette being gathered up.
"Not 'goodbye', young rascal! Say it like they do in a play! Exit ghos–"
Silence.
SIMIAN
by
Gerald Arthur Winter
“I want you to find my father. I don’t know who he was or is—or if he’s still alive.”
Matt Pershing took the young woman’s statement as she sat facing him stiffly
in a hard wooden chair. He sat slumped back casually at his desk.
Through the blinds, sunlight made a harsh, cage-like grid of shadows across
the her plain, expressionless face. She fidgeted in her ill-fitted, grey pants suit, leaning
forward to sip from a plastic bottle of water.
Her broad shoulders made Matt feel like an NFL quarterback facing a defensive
center ready to blitz. She was neither mannish nor butch, but taking notes on a legal pad,
the best euphemism Matt could doodle was big-boned. She looked like a kid masque-
rading on Halloween with her satchel--trick or treat.
“The New York Post said: ‘Matt Pershing will go where angels fear to tread.’”
Matt grinned and said with a shrug, “A blind search could be costly.”
“I’m a millionaire, but I don’t feel rich without a family.”
“I require a five-thousand-dollar retainer and a grand a week plus expenses.”
She didn’t even blink.
“My secretary will send you a monthly itemized statement. I accept money orders,
certified checks, and cash—no credit.”
“Frankly, I thought it would cost more, Mr. Pershing.”
He didn’t blink either, feeling no regret that he hadn’t asked for more.
Shuffling through her bag, “I don’t expect you to find my father quickly. Consider
this an advance.” She handed him a crumpled, certified check from her trust account.
“I’ll take your case, but do you have anything other than names to get started?”
“I was born April 7, 1987,” she said. “My mother’s name was Beatrice Cart-
wright, but I have no documentation that she ever married. My birth certificate says I
was born at this address in Florida, but it doesn’t say if it’s a hospital—perhaps it was a
clinic. I don’t know if it still exists.”
“Where did you get this information?”
“I wasn’t supposed to know anything about my mother, but the trustee of her
estate was an attorney in Florida. When he died last month, a carton arrived at my condo
with information about my mother—nothing about my father.”
“Tell me about your trustee?”
“The only contact I ever had with him was by phone and from the checks he’d
sent.” She scratched her left shoulder then the back of her head. “The return address on
the checks was a Miami P.O. Box.”
She handed him an envelope postmarked a week ago from Miami with the
address she described and its contents inside.
The check from the trust was signed, “Guenther Wolf, Esq. Trustee.”
“Will this be your last check?” Matt asked.
“The benefit from the trust will outlive me,” she said, raising her round chin,
pouting with a roll of her bottom lip, and emphasizing her under bite.
Leaning closer, Matt detected a musky scent, nothing from a bottle. He noticed
fine wisps of facial hair running along her jaw to her full bottom lip.
“May I hold onto your birth certificate?” he asked.
“Certainly.”
Her physical appearance posed a conundrum. Who was Denise Cartwright--
as her birth certificate read—and why didn’t her mother want her to know her father?
She handed him a photo of a young woman. “That’s my mother— dated on the
back—August 21, 1986.”
Beatrice Cartwright looked about twenty with a pretty face and an upturned nose,
unlike her daughter’s—wide, almost bridgeless. From the thinness of her mother’s arms,
legs, and neck, he assumed she was normally slender. From her abdominal swell, she was
surely pregnant with big-boned Denise.
“I don’t look like her. Do I?” she said.
His expression agreed.
“Maybe someone will recognize her from that photo and link her with some man
to give you a lead,” Denise said.
“Where have you been living for the past thirty years?” he asked.
“Foster homes,” she said with a shrug. “There were three different families before
I turned eighteen.”
“Do you have a job?”
“Ocean County Library—Exit 81. Breaks up the boredom. I have no social life.”
He gave her a receipt then examined the birth certificate. From the Bureau of
Records, Department of Health, Miami-Dade County, the document said “Denise B.
Cartwright.” SEX marked “F.” DOB was “2 A.M. April 7, 1987.”
The box marked RACE was blank. The PLACE OF BIRTH said “Miami-Dade
County.” Name of Hospital or Institution, was just an address—“595 West Rte. 41.”
All of the boxes had been left blank regarding the name and information about
the father. The same boxes indicating the mother’s information gave her name as
“Beatrice Anne Cartwright.” The Usual Residence of Mother said “132 Weeping Willow
Lane, Sweetwater, Florida” Occupation—“STUDENT.”
A statement for witness had two choices: M.D. and MIDWIFE. Respectively, the
signatures read: Heinrich Schmidt ,M.D. and Angela Buenavitas..
Matt noticed two boxes at the bottom of the document. “I’m surprised you haven’t
mentioned this,” he said turning the document around and pointing to the information.
“What does it mean?” she asked.
“Total number of children BORN ALIVE PREVIOUS to this pregnancy . . . the
answer is ONE. The last box asks for Number of children born PREVIOUS to this
pregnancy and NOW LIVING—the answer—ONE.”
She gave Matt a vacant expression, like a prim evil mask.
“You have an older sibling . . . please, drink some water,” he cautioned, thinking
she might faint.
She finished the bottle and crushed it with a toss into a waste can. “I had no idea,
but if you can find my sibling, I’ll double your fee. Where will you begin?”
“I’ll follow the money. I’ll fly to Miami first thing in the morning, Ms. Cartwright.”
“Please, call me Dee?”
“If you recall anything else, Dee, you have my number.”
He led her to the door and watched her walk toward the elevator down the hall.
Something wasn’t right about her, but her check crinkled in his grasp.
* * *
Matt studied the photo of Beatrice looking pretty and serene, but her expression
was like the Mona Lisa’s, putting a wall between him and the truth. He wondered if her
serene expression concealed the story of her untimely passing in Florida thirty years ago.
Along Rte. 41 West, he stopped for lunch at an eatery with the weathered façade
of a popular truck stop called ERNIE’S EATS. Battered pick-ups in the dirt lot surrounded
by the Everglades told him locals might know about the occupants at the address he
sought.
“Where’s my effin’ club on whole wheat, Ernie?” shouted the sultry counter
waitress, a Cuban-Seminole mix with a mouth that snapped like a gator.
Ernie popped his head out from the kitchen’s swinging doors. A deep scar
traversed his craggy face, from his left temple across the bridge of his sharp nose, and
down to his right jaw line.
Ernie rasped, “That club’s past history. I put it out myself. Stop your damn
flirtin’, Chika, or take a hike!”
Ernie caught Matt staring at him with a grin. “Somethin’ funny?” he snapped,
coming toward Matt.
“Hard to get good help these days, Ernie.”
Ernie looked him over, taking measure of his chances to toss Matt’s wise ass out
the door without adding another major highway across his well-traveled face. Since
Matt’s shoulders were broad and angled straight to his earlobes with an eighteen-inch
neck, Ernie decided to talk first and fight later, maybe with a little help from the gruff
looking yokels chowing down before their night fishing excursions into the Glades.
“What’s it to ya, stranger?” Ernie snapped.
“My mom used to work as a nurse at this address down the road.” As Matt handed
him the address from Dee’s birth certificate, he recognized a tattoo from Vietnam on
Ernie’s forearm. “I was a just a kid fighting in Nam when my Mom died, but she saved
enough money to put me through college when I returned Stateside. I’m headed west to
see where she used to work. Do you know the place down the road at 595 West?”
“That place closed a while back—some kind of clinic. I figured they were doing
abortions for illegal Cubans, but I heard it was more of an experimental lab testing cancer
drugs. Didn’t your mom tell you?”
“I never got the chance to ask her before she died.” Matt took the photo from his
jacket. “Does she look familiar?”
Ernie squinted. “You liar, that’s not your mom. It’s Bea-bee!” Ernie reached for a
long carving knife.
“Whoa, before anyone gets hurt for no reason.” Matt waved his pistol. “I represent
Bea Cartwright’s daughter. Her mother died during childbirth thirty years ago. She hired
me to find her father. I could use your help.”
“Were you in Nam or was that bullshit, too?”
“101st Airborne Rangers. After my first nine months, I was picked to go Stateside
for Recondo School, but I shattered my knee on my last patrol. Never made it to Frisco
for LRRP training. By the time I could walk, I was fluent in Korean after a year’s
physical therapy in Seoul.” He gestured to Ernie’s tattoo. “You?”
“25th Infantry, Air Cavalry, Cu Chi.”
“Centaur?”
“Gunner on a Huey, but trained to fly choppers.”
“Still fly?”
“Got a Glades custom job out back. My amphibious dragonfly takes me to my
secret fishing holes. I assist fire rangers in the Glades.”
“You called the woman in this photo Bea-bee.”
“You ought to take that photo to Chief Dillon in Sweetwater. Bea went missing
over thirty years ago . . . never found. They closed the case in ’93. Dillon’s first year as
Police Chief was the year she vanished in ‘86. He’s retired.”
“This photo was taken in 1986, just before she gave birth. What was the name of
the clinic down the road?”
“Odd name. . . Scientific Institute of . . . Mind Illumination and—Nature.”
“How did you know Bea?”
“Bea-bee was my first waitress . . . spoiled me.” He frowned at Chika glaring
at him from the end of the counter. “She was a smart college girl, no Miss Universe,
but cute. You know—the-girl-next-door.”
“Was she pregnant when she was working here?”
“If she was, it didn’t show. She never said nothin’.”
“I guess she needed the job to pay for college.”
“Nah. Her family was well-off, but she wanted her independence. She was a nice
girl—respectful.” He glared at Chika. “No foul language from Bea-bee.”
“Was she still working here when she went missing?”
“No. She said she got a job—some kind of intern for the next school year.”
“Doing what?”
“Mm . . . anthropology? Animal science? Something like that. ”
“Do you think she might’ve taken a job at that clinic down the road?”
“I never thought of that. But if she did, I would’ve thought she’d stop by.”
“Did Chief Dillon follow that lead?”
“Couldn’t say.”
“When did Bea-bee stop working here?”
“Hmm . . . July 1985.”
“I’ll pay Chief Dillon a visit on my way back to Miami, but first I’ll check out
595 up the road. They might have information about the former occupants.” Matt put a
fifty on the counter. “Do you have Dillon’s home address?”
“Sorry, no. Check at the station.”
* * *
The former clinic displayed a yellow sign with red lettering—MIKE’S USED AUTOS.
Matt spotted a burly man coming toward him through the maze of auto inventory. The
aroma from the man’s illegal Cuban cigar stopped Matt in his tracks as he braced for a
bargaining assault.
“Not a lemon on the lot!” he called out to Matt. His white dress shirt was still
crisp in 95 degrees. “Mike Flynn, at your service. I’ll pay seventy-five percent of Blue
Book Value, cash for your trade—as is.”
“I’m a private investigator willing to pay for information. How much is an hour’s
worth of your time to walk with me around the premises?”
The armpits of Flynn’s white shirt dampened under the heat of Matt’s questions.
“Here’s two hundred for now. I’d like to look inside.” He nodded for Flynn to
head to the air-conditioned showroom from the car lot with its inventory baking on the
gravel lot like muffins fresh out of the oven, but not so appetizing with the pungent
smell of burnt rubber and oil. “Tell me about the previous occupants?”
“Nature nuts from what the realtor said. Sold through a testamentary trust
represented by a shyster named Guenther Wolf—weird bastard.”
“The trustee. He died,” Matt said.
“He was anxious to unload the property so its sale could pay out to the beneficiaries.”
“Beneficiaries?”
“Two minors, Wolf said.”
“Names?”
“Adam and Denise Cartwright.”
“Did you level the old building and start from scratch?” Matt asked.
“I kept the original superstructure to get a tax break. I’d wanted to use the basement
to store my records, but it’s too creepy down there.”
“Show me.”
“I couldn’t take out the bars without the building collapsing.”
“Bars?”
“Floor-to-ceiling to cage animals,” Flynn said.
Flynn led Matt down dim stairs to a musty basement. Mice scattered. It felt cool
with overhead fluorescent lighting from the high ceiling. There were four cages along one
wall and sinks with water spigots beside four gurneys and two operating tables that might
have been used for surgery or to deliver a baby--or two.
Matt’s nose twitched from the pungent stench of the cages.
“Gives me the creeps,” Flynn said. “Like a mid-evil dungeon for torture.”
“Did Chief Dillon ever come here during your reconstruction?”
“Patty Dillon?” Mike squinted. “I ain’t done nothin’ illegal, so why would he?”
“Curiosity?”
“He’s retired now, but if anyone tried to push a stolen vehicle on me, he’d have
been the first to know.”
“I need to talk to Dillon about the clinic,” Matt said. “Mind if I take forensics?”
Flynn shrugged. “No problem. That lawyer was creepy, maybe a white slaver.”
“Whatever they were doing, it’s connected to my client.”
Matt entered the first cage where he found dried stool. He took out a forensic
toolkit and with a flat spoon, put the small dung sample into a Ziploc baggie he marked
“1-A.” In the opposite corner he spooned loose sand into another baggie marking it
“1-B,” hoping for a urine sample. He followed the same procedure in the other three
cages . . . or maybe cells, depending on what they contained.
He figured if he found enough forensic evidence linked to Dee’s mother, CSI
could be more thorough later. He’d done reciprocal favors with Miami-Dade CSI in the
past. He’d cash in his marker to run the samples through their lab.
Matt shut the dungeon behind him and the bright afternoon sun made his head
ache until he put on his sunglasses and walked across the lot to his rental. Flynn waved.
“Dillon bought a boat and lives on it at the Sea Horse Marina in Coral Gables.
His skiff’s called the Sea Bea. When Dillon retired earlier this year he bought a used car
from me, an old bug to save on gas since he only drives to the food store and goes
everywhere else by boat.”
* * *
Matt dropped off the forensic samples at CSI. He had assisted Lt. Rush a few
years ago pursuing a drug dealer suspected of kidnapping and hiding out in Key Largo.
“We’re overloaded, could take a couple of days, Matt,” Lt. Rush said.
“No problem. If I have to go back to New York beforehand, we can talk about
the results by phone.”
With that kettle of soup simmering, Matt drove to Coral Gables. At the Sea Horse
Marina he found a maze of yachts docked along a long bulkhead.
Matt stopped a few slips short of Dillon’s mooring and parked. He opened the car
window and heard a dog barking. He took off his sports jacket and carried it over his left
shoulder as he approached the Sea Bea’s slip. A spotted pit bull barked from the deck.
A gruff voice shouted from the cabin, “Shut up, Corky!”
The dog wouldn’t stop. Dillon emerged, wearing a Rays’ baseball cap, a grease-
stained, grey wife-beater, and khaki shorts riddled with holes. He squinted then grabbed
the dog by the collar and pulled him back to the cabin. The dog yelped once, before
Dillon latched the cabin doors.
“Hi, Chief. I’m Matt Pershing, PI from New York. I’d like to ask you some
questions about the missing person’s case from thirty years ago—Bea Cartwright.”
No response.
Matt took out Dee’s birth certificate and the photo of her mother. He held out
each with hands spread in surrender and slowly approached.
“Bea wasn’t murdered. She died giving birth. Her daughter hired me to find her
father. Will you answer a few questions about your 1986 investigation?”
Matt stepped onto the boat.
“Did you search the basement at the Scientific Institute of Mind Illumination and
Nature? Her daughter’s birth certificate gives that address as her place of birth. Someone
held her captive there while you were searching elsewhere.”
“I’m reti-i-ired,” Dillon drawled.
“I have Bea’s photo taken days before she gave birth. You could help me reopen
the cold case to find more answers about her disappearance.”
“Ya deaf? I said I’m reti-i-ired.”
“You named your boat Sweet Bea. Were you the father of her child?”
“No. Her name’s just a reminder to keep me from getting’ lazy, force me to
remember how I’d screwed up in my prime. Sweet Jesus. Now you show up with this
crap.”
“Are her parents still living at the same address in Sweetwater?”
“Her dad died,” Dillon said. “Her mom, Amy, wasn’t the same after Bea wasn’t
found. She still lives there but rarely leaves the house. Her husband’s insurance and
pension left her comfortable, but she’s still tormented by her loss. I’d pay my respects,
but I’m afraid I might drag up bad memories of that time when we had to give up the
search. You leave her the hell alone”
Dillon’s advice was more of a threat, but Matt knew that once the pieces to the
puzzle of her daughter’s disappearance led him to the identity of Dee’s father, he’d
have to reunite Denise with her grandmother to provide closure.
“You haven’t answered my question about the clinic,” Matt said. “The birth
certificate connects Bea to that location for her delivery of her daughter at the same time
you were still searching for her.”
“Sure, but we had no evidence for a warrant. No one had ever witnessed Bea near
that location, so all I did was ask the director for a walk-through and showed Bea’s photo
to the staff. They were accommodating, so I had no reason to go back.”
“Ernie out at Ernie’s Eats told me Bea had left her job at his place to work as an
intern in her professional field. Did you think she went to work at the clinic?”
“Ernie was on my short list of prime suspects. From what folks told me, Ernie
was sweet on her, so I wondered more about something he’d done to her after work one
night. I figured he might’ve killed her when she turned him down, then used her for chum
at one of his secret fishing spots in the Glades.”
“There were four cages in the basement. Bea might have been held captive there.”
“They were monkey cages,” Dillon said. “They had a chimpanzee, a smaller
monkey, and a young gorilla. Their permits and licenses were in order.”
“There were four cages.”
“They were expecting a delivery, so I figured I was wasting my time and
concentrated on other suspects. I came up empty.” He slapped the back of his hand at
her photo. “Now you show me this.”
“The lab is gone, but the cages are still intact in the basement. I’ve got forensics
to find any leads to who my client’s father was.”
“You put on quite a road show, Pershing.”
“The delivering physician was Heinrich Schmidt, and his assistant was Angela
Buenavitas. Ring a bell?”
Dillon seemed exhausted by the burden he’d been carrying for thirty years.
“I interviewed them both. She called him Dr. Schmidt. I asked if he was a PhD.
and what was his field. He was a medical doctor, his specialty was research. I asked what
he was researching. He said he had a grant to study genetics searching for a cancer cure.
He showed me the grants and offered me the tour. I found nothing suspicious.”
“What did he say about the primates in the cages?”
“He showed me licenses to house the animals.”
“Who was the director?”
“Another squirrely German with an accent out of Hogan’s Heroes.”
“Guenther Wolf?”
“That’s it,” Dillon said. “He was an attorney and handled all the legalities so the
doctor could concentrate on his research. He was accommodating and seemed relaxed
about my questions, so I didn’t push it.”
“He was the trustee of Bea’s estate,” Matt said. “Her daughter, Denise, got a
bundle of money to make the rest of her life comfortable. What about Angela Buena-
vitas?”
“A Cuban illegal, but that wasn’t my purpose. I had no reason to return. They’ve
closed down and sold the property to Mike Flynn’s used car dealership.”
“Mike gave me the tour of the basement. I have friends at Miami CSI running
forensics. Take my card in case anything else pops into your head.”
He took Matt’s card and signaled that their meeting was over by heading to the
cabin to let Corky out. Matt quickly debarked from the Sweet Bea and walked briskly to
his car. He thought a drive-by in Sweetwater might quell his curiosity. On his way, he
called his secretary.
“Last night my client drank from a water bottle at the office. It’s in my waste can.
Pack it for forensics and overnight it to Lt. Rush at Miami-Dade CSI.”
Matt called Rush. “Got any results on the other forensics?”
“Three different male DNA confirmations, all simian primates.” Matt pictured the
monkey, chimpanzee, and gorilla described by Dillon.
“That’s three.”
“The fourth’s a puzzle.”
“How so?”
“The sample in D is an 80% match to C, which means they’re related by blood.
The sample is male, but . . . that other 20% is a mystery.”
“I need answers, not mysteries.”
“Some kind of hybrid or mutation, nothing seen before.
“Can you determine age from those samples?”
“The Rhesus monkey was about seven years old, the chimp ten, and the gorilla
five. The age on the hybrid is about thirty.”
“Does that mean the hybrid was around long before the others?”
“No. The samples you gave us from the first three are decades old. Given their
life expectancies, those simians are dead. The hybrid is from a few months ago.”
“I have one more sample on a water bottle coming to you overnight from New
York. I need it cross-referenced with all four. One small favor, I’m going to 132 Weeping
Willow Lane in Sweetwater. If you don’t get a call from me tonight by 10 P.M., call me
at this number. If I don’t call you back in five minutes, send your boys—I’ll be in trouble.”
“I’ve covered you marker. But I’m not you’re backup, shamus.” Rush hung up.
* * *
She stared at her granddaughter’s birth certificate. “My daughter didn’t want us to
know she was pregnant—found a doctor to deliver her baby for adoption. Bea died giving
birth—baby died, too. This person Denise must be a con artist after my money?”
“She doesn’t need your money,” Matt told Dee’s grandmother. “Bea’s estate
made her rich. She just wants to find her father. Do you know who and where he is?”
Coming through the backdoor, Sheriff Dillon pointed a .38 revolver at Matt.
“I warned you to leave her alone, Pershing. Don’t worry, Amy. The Glades will
make him disappear.”
“What did they do to your daughter?” Matt asked.
“Studying evolution at college was sinful,” Grandma said. “But she kept pursuing it.”
“We’re taking a boat ride, Pershing.”
Dillon cuffed Matt’s wrists in front—no blindfold—a one-way trip.
* * *
Dillon lowered Matt into a dinghy with an outboard and they headed toward
Alligator Alley down a narrow tributary with tall swamp grass scraping both sides of
the boat. Ahead, red lights darted—gator eyes, jaws snapping as they passed.
Matt challenged. “You’re Denise Cartwright’s father.”
Dillon grinned. “You’re not half as smart as you think.”
“Why get rid of me? I just need to prove you’re Denise’s father and my job is done.
As long as Bea died of natural causes during the delivery, I have no reason to contact the
police—case closed.”
“Bea was my daughter, but I could never see her. I promised I wouldn’t. Amy
Cartwright is a good woman, but we had an affair. I had to keep our secret to protect
her reputation. Her husband thought Bea were theirs, not ours.”
“So when Bea went missing, it was personal. You had to find Bea for Amy.”
“Amy confided in me that Bea was volunteering in a scientific experiment. I’m a
God-fearing man. When Amy told me what Bea had agreed to do, I had to stop her.”
“From what?”
“Last thing you’ll ever see, Pershing. For Amy’s sake, no one must ever know.”
Dillon headed toward the light through tall swamp grass and slowed down to pull
up to a rickety dock in front of a log cabin. Something in the backroom screeched and
panted, thumping wildly about. Matt used the distraction to head-butt Dillon, knocking
him off balance and the gun from his grasp. Though handcuffed, Matt got the gun.
“Hands high!” Matt shouted. “Back up . . . slowly.”
Dillon’s eyes darted as he backed into the cabin dimly lit with kerosene lanterns.
Someone has lived a minimal existence here, Matt thought, then asked, “Where’s
Dr. Schmidt? Is he hiding out here?”
Dillon grinned. “He over extended his doctor-patient privileges. Nature got the
best of him.”
Matt nodded toward the darkness behind Dillon. “What’s in that cage?”
“See for yourself.”
“Put your hands on top of your head and back up slowly.”
Dillon complied. The screeching subsided and whimpering grunts came from
the dark cage behind Dillon.
Matt took a lantern from the counter and motioned with the gun for Dillon to
continue backing up.
“No further!” Dillon shouted, but two huge, hairy hands reached out between
the bars with brute force.
Dillon’s legs kicked straight out, knocking Matt to the floor and shattering the
lantern. The kerosene splashed across the wooden floor igniting the room. A wall of
flames blocked Matt from Dillon with his head twisted 180 degrees and his eyes bulging.
The unseen creature in the cage shrieked and snorted.
Unable to penetrate the flames, and the smoke making him choke, Matt retreated
to the dinghy and started the motor with his hands still cuffed.
He looked back at the cabin ablaze against the black sky. Through the crackling
flames, he heard a crashing sound then saw a hulking figure silhouetted against the bright
orange inferno. With a loud shriek, the simian specter stood erect and pounded its chest
before lumbering on all fours and vanishing into the Glades.
When Matt reached the canal the sound of a helicopter hovered above him. When
it landed on the water, Matt was glad to see Ernie peering at him from his amphibious
dragonfly.
“You know how to find trouble!” Ernie shouted over the flutter of his chopper as
he helped Matt aboard. “Your friend at CSI had me looking for you since ten o’clock. I
had no idea where to look until I saw the fire. Feels like I’m back in Nam. Love the smell
of gators cookin’ in the morning.”
Matt was glad he’d paid for the damage at Ernie’s Eats. Seemed like a week ago,
not at lunch that same day.
* * *
Matt stalled his meeting with Denise Cartwright for a week, telling her that he
was no longer on the clock.
Since Amy Cartwright knew only half the truth about her daughter’s fate, Matt kept
it that way, appealing to her softer side from that glint of hopefulness in her expression
when he’d told her that Dee was truly her granddaughter.
When he returned to New York, he told Dee that her mother had been pregnant
by someone no one knew. He’d say her mother, Beatrice, had died during delivery and
had willed her body to cancer research at a medical clinic called the Scientific Institute
of Mind Illumination and Nature. He didn’t point out that the clinic’s acronym was
—SIMIAN—which had provided the funds for her trust. But when Matt met Dee face-
to-face, he couldn’t help but see her in a different light with close circumspection.
“I have good news and bad news,” Matt told her as she sat across from him in
in his office, and in the same awkward, ill-fitted fashion of their first meeting.
“Please, the bad news first,” she said, trying to grasp what Matt was telling her.
“Your father was a sperm donor for cancer research. If there were any records of
his identity, they were lost in a fire.” Matt admired his own choice of alternate facts.
She took a deep breath, seemingly relieved. “I suppose getting to meet my father
was too much to hope for.”
“What we do know about your father is clinical,” Matt said. “Your father had a
genetic defect which, I’m sorry to tell you, would be deadly to any child you have. If you
marry, it’s essential that you bear no children.”
He watched the wave of desperation cross her face, the resolve of loneliness.
“What good news can there be?” she asked, slouching with defeat. Suddenly, she
perked up. “My sibling! You’ve found my sibling!”
“No. You had a twin brother, born just before you, but he died shortly after your
mother. You were the only one saved.”
“But you said there was good news.”
“Your grandmother in Florida wants to be your family now.”
“Thank goodness! I can’t wait to meet her.”
Elated, Dee left Matt’s office with a bit less awkwardness in her gait. Despite his
lies, Matt was convinced that he’d done his best under the circumstances with the hope
that Dee would take after her mother in the nurturing home of Amy Cartwright.
Matt lost many hours of sleep over the missing link in this chain of events. Dee’s
twin brother from the same simian father haunted Matt endlessly with visions of Adam’s
hulking figure lumbering into the Glades against a hellish background of black smoke
and orange flames in a fetid fury. To what end, he dared not imagine.
The Submission
By Tushar Jain
Phone rings.
"Hello?"
"I'm speaking to Tushar? Tushar Jain?"
"Yup. That's me. Who's this?"
"This is Stuart Gill."
"Sorry. Don't know any Stuart Gill."
"I –"
Phone is disconnected. After a moment, it rings again.
"Hello?"
"Why did you disconnect the phone?"
"May I know who's speaking?"
"I just told you! It's Stuart Gill."
"And I just told you that I don't know any Stuart Gill."
"Wait! I –"
The phone is disconnected. A beat later, it rings again.
"Tum ta-tum tum. Hello?"
"Don't you dare hang up this time!"
"Oh. Why all the temper? And don't shout like that. I have sensitive ears."
"Just listen! You submitted a poem for The Brat Review, didn't you?"
"How did you...?"
"I'm Stuart Gill, the co-editor of The Brat Review."
"Wow! You people do personal calls? Most magazines just stick with emails. So... you're publishing the poem?"
"No. But thanks for sending us 'Sense and Suggestibility'. We appreciate the chance to read your work but we'll be passing on this poem. This is not a reflection on your writing. We pick perhaps one out of a hundred submissions. So, it's not you, it's us. We hope you'll find a good home for it soon. Sincerely, Stuart Gill, The Brat Review."
"What the... Are you reading this out?!"
"No. I had the template memorized long back."
"And you called me to tell me my work's been rejected? Heartless piece of–"
Phone is disconnected. Rings again.
"Didn't I tell you not to hang up!"
"What do you want now? I got the message, okay? Leave me alone. I need to sulk. I mean, sleep."
"Not so fast. I have to discuss this poem you submitted."
"I don't want your critical evaluation."
"And I'm not giving you one. This poem 'Sense and Suggestibility'..."
"What about it?"
"I have reason to believe it's about me."
Pause.
"Stuart, I don't know where you're calling from but it's pretty late here. I really want to go back to sleep. Why don't you go pester some other poet?"
"'Some other poet' didn't write a poem attacking me. You did."
"That's ridiculous! I've not attacked anyone!"
"Can you categorically say that you didn't write this poem attacking me? I'll leave you alone and let the whole matter go."
"Of course I can't say that!"
"Aha!"
"Aha nothing! Didn't you read the poem? It's Cubist! Its whole aim is to reject the singleness, the oneness of meaning. Haven't you ever seen a Picasso? A Braque? Read Cummings? Faulkner? Cubist works are meant to throw off the reign of meaning. They mean nothing and everything at the same time. If I say the poem doesn't specifically attack you, I might as well say the poem doesn't exist."
"Bullshit. Cubism's a bloody excuse! This poem is a targeted attack on me, my wife, my daughter and my dog!"
"Jesus!"
"In the fourth stanza –"
"Wait a minute! Even if the poem offends you, you cannot blame me for it. It's already written. It exists independently of me. If you have a problem, blame the poem! Take its meter into a dark alley
and break its legs. An artist is not always his art, Gill. Sometimes he's just the brush or the pen or the paper."
"An artist is always his art! And nothing but."
"Oh really? By that logic, Jackson Pollock must've been a spaghetti fetishist."
"In the fourth stanza of the poem, this wide, almost four inch gap between the letters 'S' and 'M' quite obviously is meant to poisonously mock the growing distance between me and my wife! 'S' is Stuart. 'M' is Meredith."
"Your wife's name is Meredith?"
"How the hell do you know my wife's name?"
"Stuart, in 'Sense and Suggestibility', language is scattered, fractured and tossed around. That doesn't mean–"
"In the third stanza, in the word 'expels', the 'S' is italicized. Oh, I know what this is, you foul, cruel pig! The 'S' clearly references my seven-year-old daughter Sadie's expulsion from school for the possession of a hand grenade, a Bushmaster QRC Tactical Semi-Auto Rifle and an expanded edition of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer."
"Your daughter's name is Sadie?"
"You know my daughter's name too! Who's feeding you this information about my family? I've had enough of you, I tell you. Here. Talk to my wife."
"Your wife?!"
"Her name's Meredith. But I guess you already knew that!"
The phone changes hands at one end.
"Hello?"
"Fils de pute! T'es un salaud! T'es rien qu'un petit connard!"
"Meredith, please calm down. I'm innocent! I –"
"Je vais te casser la gueule si fort que tu vas cracher toutes les dents!"
Stuart takes back the phone.
"Okay, Meredith, dear. Have a sip of water, love. You heard all of that? She meant every word!"
"Why did you hand the phone to your wife?"
"The poem's about her too, isn't it?"
"The joke's on you. I haven't the slightest idea what she said."
"You don't understand French? Wait. Here. Talk to the interpreter."
"You have an interpreter!"
"I always have an interpreter with me. I don't understand French either. And I've been married for fifteen years."
The phone changes hands again at one end.
"Hello, sir. I am Ingrid. Ingrid the interpreter. I'm so sorry for all this. You sound like a very nice man. Madame gets a temper at times. I hope you will not take this personally. So, first she called you a 'son of a bitch'. Then, a 'bastard'. Then, how do you say it in English? An 'asshole'? I believe that is the correct expression. Finally, she said she was going to hit you so hard that you'll end up spitting out all your teeth. I think that's all. Wait, did I mention 'asshole'?"
"Oh, you certainly did, Ingrid."
"Merci. Have a good day, sir! Please talk to my employeur."
The phone is returned to Stuart.
"Hello, this is Stuart here again."
"Enough is enough!"
"You're absolutely right. Enough is enough. I completely agree. But wait. Here. Talk to my daughter."
"What?!"
Phone changes hands. A child squeals.
"You're a very bad man!"
Phone changes hands again.
"Hello, it's Stuart again. That was Sadie."
"That's it! No more of this! I'll confess! Just stop handing the damn phone over to people. I'm dog-tired and I really need to get back to sleep. You want the truth? Here's the truth. The poem is targeted at you."
"I knew it!"
"The Brat Review has rejected three of my submissions. You think a writer will never hit back?"
"So – so, in the poem, the word 'limp' in the third line–"
"It's a taunt about your flagging sex life. I did my research."
"You evil shit! And in the fourth stanza, the three-legged footstool is–"
"A metaphor for your limping, three-legged dog, Trudy."
"I'm going to kill you! But first, here. Talk to Trudy."
"No! Don't hand the phone–"
The phone changes hands. A series of angry barks and furious growling is heard over the line for a time. Eventually, it is returned to Stuart.
"It's Stuart again. Trudy isn't happy with what you wrote about her."
"Yeah, I got that feeling. Now, I'm going back to bed. I'm done with this."
"I'm not! You know what? I think I'm going to kick your ass. Yeah, I feel like kicking your ass for this poem!"
"Good luck with that. I'm all the way in Mumbai, India! Haw haw haw!"
"I know that, poet. So am I."
Brief Pause.
"What did you say?"
"I'm staying in the hotel right opposite your building. It'll take me all of five minutes to come over to your place."
"How did you even get here? You can't afford to travel by air! You're the editor of a literary magazine! More importantly, how the hell did you find me?"
"You submitted your address along with the poem for contributor copies, you greedy imbecile. I'm headed your way as we speak."
"Wait, okay, tell me this much! You said you are the co-editor, right? I vaguely remember this but in the picture on the magazine's webpage, both of you editors are standing close together. It's difficult to make out who's who. Are you the squat four foot nothing or the beefy, muscle-bound, six foot seven man covered in tattoos?"
"You'll find out in exactly one minute."
"No! Wait! Listen! It was all a joke! Come on! I didn't actually mean–"
The phone is disconnected. A doorbell rings.
By Tushar Jain
Phone rings.
"Hello?"
"I'm speaking to Tushar? Tushar Jain?"
"Yup. That's me. Who's this?"
"This is Stuart Gill."
"Sorry. Don't know any Stuart Gill."
"I –"
Phone is disconnected. After a moment, it rings again.
"Hello?"
"Why did you disconnect the phone?"
"May I know who's speaking?"
"I just told you! It's Stuart Gill."
"And I just told you that I don't know any Stuart Gill."
"Wait! I –"
The phone is disconnected. A beat later, it rings again.
"Tum ta-tum tum. Hello?"
"Don't you dare hang up this time!"
"Oh. Why all the temper? And don't shout like that. I have sensitive ears."
"Just listen! You submitted a poem for The Brat Review, didn't you?"
"How did you...?"
"I'm Stuart Gill, the co-editor of The Brat Review."
"Wow! You people do personal calls? Most magazines just stick with emails. So... you're publishing the poem?"
"No. But thanks for sending us 'Sense and Suggestibility'. We appreciate the chance to read your work but we'll be passing on this poem. This is not a reflection on your writing. We pick perhaps one out of a hundred submissions. So, it's not you, it's us. We hope you'll find a good home for it soon. Sincerely, Stuart Gill, The Brat Review."
"What the... Are you reading this out?!"
"No. I had the template memorized long back."
"And you called me to tell me my work's been rejected? Heartless piece of–"
Phone is disconnected. Rings again.
"Didn't I tell you not to hang up!"
"What do you want now? I got the message, okay? Leave me alone. I need to sulk. I mean, sleep."
"Not so fast. I have to discuss this poem you submitted."
"I don't want your critical evaluation."
"And I'm not giving you one. This poem 'Sense and Suggestibility'..."
"What about it?"
"I have reason to believe it's about me."
Pause.
"Stuart, I don't know where you're calling from but it's pretty late here. I really want to go back to sleep. Why don't you go pester some other poet?"
"'Some other poet' didn't write a poem attacking me. You did."
"That's ridiculous! I've not attacked anyone!"
"Can you categorically say that you didn't write this poem attacking me? I'll leave you alone and let the whole matter go."
"Of course I can't say that!"
"Aha!"
"Aha nothing! Didn't you read the poem? It's Cubist! Its whole aim is to reject the singleness, the oneness of meaning. Haven't you ever seen a Picasso? A Braque? Read Cummings? Faulkner? Cubist works are meant to throw off the reign of meaning. They mean nothing and everything at the same time. If I say the poem doesn't specifically attack you, I might as well say the poem doesn't exist."
"Bullshit. Cubism's a bloody excuse! This poem is a targeted attack on me, my wife, my daughter and my dog!"
"Jesus!"
"In the fourth stanza –"
"Wait a minute! Even if the poem offends you, you cannot blame me for it. It's already written. It exists independently of me. If you have a problem, blame the poem! Take its meter into a dark alley
and break its legs. An artist is not always his art, Gill. Sometimes he's just the brush or the pen or the paper."
"An artist is always his art! And nothing but."
"Oh really? By that logic, Jackson Pollock must've been a spaghetti fetishist."
"In the fourth stanza of the poem, this wide, almost four inch gap between the letters 'S' and 'M' quite obviously is meant to poisonously mock the growing distance between me and my wife! 'S' is Stuart. 'M' is Meredith."
"Your wife's name is Meredith?"
"How the hell do you know my wife's name?"
"Stuart, in 'Sense and Suggestibility', language is scattered, fractured and tossed around. That doesn't mean–"
"In the third stanza, in the word 'expels', the 'S' is italicized. Oh, I know what this is, you foul, cruel pig! The 'S' clearly references my seven-year-old daughter Sadie's expulsion from school for the possession of a hand grenade, a Bushmaster QRC Tactical Semi-Auto Rifle and an expanded edition of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer."
"Your daughter's name is Sadie?"
"You know my daughter's name too! Who's feeding you this information about my family? I've had enough of you, I tell you. Here. Talk to my wife."
"Your wife?!"
"Her name's Meredith. But I guess you already knew that!"
The phone changes hands at one end.
"Hello?"
"Fils de pute! T'es un salaud! T'es rien qu'un petit connard!"
"Meredith, please calm down. I'm innocent! I –"
"Je vais te casser la gueule si fort que tu vas cracher toutes les dents!"
Stuart takes back the phone.
"Okay, Meredith, dear. Have a sip of water, love. You heard all of that? She meant every word!"
"Why did you hand the phone to your wife?"
"The poem's about her too, isn't it?"
"The joke's on you. I haven't the slightest idea what she said."
"You don't understand French? Wait. Here. Talk to the interpreter."
"You have an interpreter!"
"I always have an interpreter with me. I don't understand French either. And I've been married for fifteen years."
The phone changes hands again at one end.
"Hello, sir. I am Ingrid. Ingrid the interpreter. I'm so sorry for all this. You sound like a very nice man. Madame gets a temper at times. I hope you will not take this personally. So, first she called you a 'son of a bitch'. Then, a 'bastard'. Then, how do you say it in English? An 'asshole'? I believe that is the correct expression. Finally, she said she was going to hit you so hard that you'll end up spitting out all your teeth. I think that's all. Wait, did I mention 'asshole'?"
"Oh, you certainly did, Ingrid."
"Merci. Have a good day, sir! Please talk to my employeur."
The phone is returned to Stuart.
"Hello, this is Stuart here again."
"Enough is enough!"
"You're absolutely right. Enough is enough. I completely agree. But wait. Here. Talk to my daughter."
"What?!"
Phone changes hands. A child squeals.
"You're a very bad man!"
Phone changes hands again.
"Hello, it's Stuart again. That was Sadie."
"That's it! No more of this! I'll confess! Just stop handing the damn phone over to people. I'm dog-tired and I really need to get back to sleep. You want the truth? Here's the truth. The poem is targeted at you."
"I knew it!"
"The Brat Review has rejected three of my submissions. You think a writer will never hit back?"
"So – so, in the poem, the word 'limp' in the third line–"
"It's a taunt about your flagging sex life. I did my research."
"You evil shit! And in the fourth stanza, the three-legged footstool is–"
"A metaphor for your limping, three-legged dog, Trudy."
"I'm going to kill you! But first, here. Talk to Trudy."
"No! Don't hand the phone–"
The phone changes hands. A series of angry barks and furious growling is heard over the line for a time. Eventually, it is returned to Stuart.
"It's Stuart again. Trudy isn't happy with what you wrote about her."
"Yeah, I got that feeling. Now, I'm going back to bed. I'm done with this."
"I'm not! You know what? I think I'm going to kick your ass. Yeah, I feel like kicking your ass for this poem!"
"Good luck with that. I'm all the way in Mumbai, India! Haw haw haw!"
"I know that, poet. So am I."
Brief Pause.
"What did you say?"
"I'm staying in the hotel right opposite your building. It'll take me all of five minutes to come over to your place."
"How did you even get here? You can't afford to travel by air! You're the editor of a literary magazine! More importantly, how the hell did you find me?"
"You submitted your address along with the poem for contributor copies, you greedy imbecile. I'm headed your way as we speak."
"Wait, okay, tell me this much! You said you are the co-editor, right? I vaguely remember this but in the picture on the magazine's webpage, both of you editors are standing close together. It's difficult to make out who's who. Are you the squat four foot nothing or the beefy, muscle-bound, six foot seven man covered in tattoos?"
"You'll find out in exactly one minute."
"No! Wait! Listen! It was all a joke! Come on! I didn't actually mean–"
The phone is disconnected. A doorbell rings.
Summer
Excerpt from a novel
By Edith Wharton
A girl came out of lawyer Royall’s house, at the end of the one street of North Dormer, and stood on the doorstep.
It was the beginning of a June afternoon. The springlike transparent sky shed a rain of silver sunshine on the roofs of the village, and on the pastures and larchwoods surrounding it. A little wind moved among the round white clouds on the shoulders of the hills, driving their shadows across the fields and down the grassy road that takes the name of street when it passes through North Dormer. The place lies high and in the open, and lacks the lavish shade of the more protected New England villages. The clump of weeping-willows about the duck pond, and the Norway spruces in front of the Hatchard gate, cast almost the only roadside shadow between lawyer Royall’s house and the point where, at the other end of the village, the road rises above the church and skirts the black hemlock wall enclosing the cemetery.
The little June wind, frisking down the street, shook the doleful fringes of the Hatchard spruces, caught the straw hat of a young man just passing under them, and spun it clean across the road into the duck-pond.
As he ran to fish it out the girl on lawyer Royall’s doorstep noticed that he was a stranger, that he wore city clothes, and that he was laughing with all his teeth, as the young and careless laugh at such mishaps.
Her heart contracted a little, and the shrinking that sometimes came over her when she saw people with holiday faces made her draw back into the house and pretend to look for the key that she knew she had already put into her pocket. A narrow greenish mirror with a gilt eagle over it hung on the passage wall, and she looked critically at her reflection, wished for the thousandth time that she had blue eyes like Annabel Balch, the girl who sometimes came from Springfield to spend a week with old Miss Hatchard, straightened the sunburnt hat over her small swarthy face, and turned out again into the sunshine.
“How I hate everything!” she murmured.
The young man had passed through the Hatchard gate, and she had the street to herself. North Dormer is at all times an empty place, and at three o’clock on a June afternoon its few able-bodied men are off in the fields or woods, and the women indoors, engaged in languid household drudgery.
The girl walked along, swinging her key on a finger, and looking about her with the heightened attention produced by the presence of a stranger in a familiar place. What, she wondered, did North Dormer look like to people from other parts of the world? She herself had lived there since the age of five, and had long supposed it to be a place of some importance. But about a year before, Mr. Miles, the new Episcopal clergyman at Hepburn, who drove over every other Sunday—when the roads were not ploughed up by hauling—to hold a service in the North Dormer church, had proposed, in a fit of missionary zeal, to take the young people down to Nettleton to hear an illustrated lecture on the Holy Land; and the dozen girls and boys who represented the future of North Dormer had been piled into a farm-waggon, driven over the hills to Hepburn, put into a way-train and carried to Nettleton.
In the course of that incredible day Charity Royall had, for the first and only time, experienced railway-travel, looked into shops with plate-glass fronts, tasted cocoanut pie, sat in a theatre, and listened to a gentleman saying unintelligible things before pictures that she would have enjoyed looking at if his explanations had not prevented her from understanding them. This initiation had shown her that North Dormer was a small place, and developed in her a thirst for information that her position as custodian of the village library had previously failed to excite. For a month or two she dipped feverishly and disconnectedly into the dusty volumes of the Hatchard Memorial Library; then the impression of Nettleton began to fade, and she found it easier to take North Dormer as the norm of the universe than to go on reading.
The sight of the stranger once more revived memories of Nettleton, and North Dormer shrank to its real size. As she looked up and down it, from lawyer Royall’s faded red house at one end to the white church at the other, she pitilessly took its measure. There it lay, a weather-beaten sunburnt village of the hills, abandoned of men, left apart by railway, trolley, telegraph, and all the forces that link life to life in modern communities. It had no shops, no theatres, no lectures, no “business block”; only a church that was opened every other Sunday if the state of the roads permitted, and a library for which no new books had been bought for twenty years, and where the old ones mouldered undisturbed on the damp shelves. Yet Charity Royall had always been told that she ought to consider it a privilege that her lot had been cast in North Dormer. She knew that, compared to the place she had come from, North Dormer represented all the blessings of the most refined civilization. Everyone in the village had told her so ever since she had been brought there as a child. Even old Miss Hatchard had said to her, on a terrible occasion in her life: “My child, you must never cease to remember that it was Mr. Royall who brought you down from the Mountain.”
She had been “brought down from the Mountain”; from the scarred cliff that lifted its sullen wall above the lesser slopes of Eagle Range, making a perpetual background of gloom to the lonely valley. The Mountain was a good fifteen miles away, but it rose so abruptly from the lower hills that it seemed almost to cast its shadow over North Dormer. And it was like a great magnet drawing the clouds and scattering them in storm across the valley. If ever, in the purest summer sky, there trailed a thread of vapour over North Dormer, it drifted to the Mountain as a ship drifts to a whirlpool, and was caught among the rocks, torn up and multiplied, to sweep back over the village in rain and darkness.
Charity was not very clear about the Mountain; but she knew it was a bad place, and a shame to have come from, and that, whatever befell her in North Dormer, she ought, as Miss Hatchard had once reminded her, to remember that she had been brought down from there, and hold her tongue and be thankful. She looked up at the Mountain, thinking of these things, and tried as usual to be thankful. But the sight of the young man turning in at Miss Hatchard’s gate had brought back the vision of the glittering streets of Nettleton, and she felt ashamed of her old sun-hat, and sick of North Dormer, and jealously aware of Annabel Balch of Springfield, opening her blue eyes somewhere far off on glories greater than the glories of Nettleton.
“How I hate everything!” she said again.
Half way down the street she stopped at a weak-hinged gate. Passing through it, she walked down a brick path to a queer little brick temple with white wooden columns supporting a pediment on which was inscribed in tarnished gold letters: “The Honorius Hatchard Memorial Library, 1832.”
Honorius Hatchard had been old Miss Hatchard’s great-uncle; though she would undoubtedly have reversed the phrase, and put forward, as her only claim to distinction, the fact that she was his great-niece. For Honorius Hatchard, in the early years of the nineteenth century, had enjoyed a modest celebrity. As the marble tablet in the interior of the library informed its infrequent visitors, he had possessed marked literary gifts, written a series of papers called “The Recluse of Eagle Range,” enjoyed the acquaintance of Washington Irving and Fitz-Greene Halleck, and been cut off in his flower by a fever contracted in Italy. Such had been the sole link between North Dormer and literature, a link piously commemorated by the erection of the monument where Charity Royall, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, sat at her desk under a freckled steel engraving of the deceased author, and wondered if he felt any deader in his grave than she did in his library.
Entering her prison-house with a listless step she took off her hat, hung it on a plaster bust of Minerva, opened the shutters, leaned out to see if there were any eggs in the swallow’s nest above one of the windows, and finally, seating herself behind the desk, drew out a roll of cotton lace and a steel crochet hook. She was not an expert workwoman, and it had taken her many weeks to make the half-yard of narrow lace which she kept wound about the buckram back of a disintegrated copy of “The Lamplighter.” But there was no other way of getting any lace to trim her summer blouse, and since Ally Hawes, the poorest girl in the village, had shown herself in church with enviable transparencies about the shoulders, Charity’s hook had travelled faster. She unrolled the lace, dug the hook into a loop, and bent to the task with furrowed brows.
Suddenly the door opened, and before she had raised her eyes she knew that the young man she had seen going in at the Hatchard gate had entered the library.
Without taking any notice of her he began to move slowly about the long vault-like room, his hands behind his back, his short-sighted eyes peering up and down the rows of rusty bindings. At length he reached the desk and stood before her.
“Have you a card-catalogue?” he asked in a pleasant abrupt voice; and the oddness of the question caused her to drop her work.
“A WHAT?”
“Why, you know——” He broke off, and she became conscious that he was looking at her for the first time, having apparently, on his entrance, included her in his general short-sighted survey as part of the furniture of the library.
The fact that, in discovering her, he lost the thread of his remark, did not escape her attention, and she looked down and smiled. He smiled also.
“No, I don’t suppose you do know,” he corrected himself. “In fact, it would be almost a pity——”
She thought she detected a slight condescension in his tone, and asked sharply: “Why?”
“Because it’s so much pleasanter, in a small library like this, to poke about by one’s self—with the help of the librarian.”
He added the last phrase so respectfully that she was mollified, and rejoined with a sigh: “I’m afraid I can’t help you much.”
“Why?” he questioned in his turn; and she replied that there weren’t many books anyhow, and that she’d hardly read any of them. “The worms are getting at them,” she added gloomily.
“Are they? That’s a pity, for I see there are some good ones.” He seemed to have lost interest in their conversation, and strolled away again, apparently forgetting her. His indifference nettled her, and she picked up her work, resolved not to offer him the least assistance. Apparently he did not need it, for he spent a long time with his back to her, lifting down, one after another, the tall cob-webby volumes from a distant shelf.
“Oh, I say!” he exclaimed; and looking up she saw that he had drawn out his handkerchief and was carefully wiping the edges of the book in his hand. The action struck her as an unwarranted criticism on her care of the books, and she said irritably: “It’s not my fault if they’re dirty.”
He turned around and looked at her with reviving interest. “Ah—then you’re not the librarian?”
“Of course I am; but I can’t dust all these books. Besides, nobody ever looks at them, now Miss Hatchard’s too lame to come round.”
“No, I suppose not.” He laid down the book he had been wiping, and stood considering her in silence. She wondered if Miss Hatchard had sent him round to pry into the way the library was looked after, and the suspicion increased her resentment. “I saw you going into her house just now, didn’t I?” she asked, with the New England avoidance of the proper name. She was determined to find out why he was poking about among her books.
“Miss Hatchard’s house? Yes—she’s my cousin and I’m staying there,” the young man answered; adding, as if to disarm a visible distrust: “My name is Harney—Lucius Harney. She may have spoken of me.”
“No, she hasn’t,” said Charity, wishing she could have said: “Yes, she has.”
“Oh, well——” said Miss Hatchard’s cousin with a laugh; and after another pause, during which it occurred to Charity that her answer had not been encouraging, he remarked: “You don’t seem strong on architecture.”
Her bewilderment was complete: the more she wished to appear to understand him the more unintelligible his remarks became. He reminded her of the gentleman who had “explained” the pictures at Nettleton, and the weight of her ignorance settled down on her again like a pall.
“I mean, I can’t see that you have any books on the old houses about here. I suppose, for that matter, this part of the country hasn’t been much explored. They all go on doing Plymouth and Salem. So stupid. My cousin’s house, now, is remarkable. This place must have had a past—it must have been more of a place once.” He stopped short, with the blush of a shy man who overhears himself, and fears he has been voluble. “I’m an architect, you see, and I’m hunting up old houses in these parts.”
She stared. “Old houses? Everything’s old in North Dormer, isn’t it? The folks are, anyhow.”
He laughed, and wandered away again.
“Haven’t you any kind of a history of the place? I think there was one written about 1840: a book or pamphlet about its first settlement,” he presently said from the farther end of the room.
She pressed her crochet hook against her lip and pondered. There was such a work, she knew: “North Dormer and the Early Townships of Eagle County.” She had a special grudge against it because it was a limp weakly book that was always either falling off the shelf or slipping back and disappearing if one squeezed it in between sustaining volumes. She remembered, the last time she had picked it up, wondering how anyone could have taken the trouble to write a book about North Dormer and its neighbours: Dormer, Hamblin, Creston and Creston River. She knew them all, mere lost clusters of houses in the folds of the desolate ridges: Dormer, where North Dormer went for its apples; Creston River, where there used to be a paper-mill, and its grey walls stood decaying by the stream; and Hamblin, where the first snow always fell. Such were their titles to fame.
She got up and began to move about vaguely before the shelves. But she had no idea where she had last put the book, and something told her that it was going to play her its usual trick and remain invisible. It was not one of her lucky days.
“I guess it’s somewhere,” she said, to prove her zeal; but she spoke without conviction, and felt that her words conveyed none.
“Oh, well——” he said again. She knew he was going, and wished more than ever to find the book.
“It will be for next time,” he added; and picking up the volume he had laid on the desk he handed it to her. “By the way, a little air and sun would do this good; it’s rather valuable.”
He gave her a nod and smile, and passed out.
DROP DEAD GORGEOUS
by
Gerald Arthur Winter
The scent of her auburn hair intoxicated me that summer from morning
till night. Her glistening cleavage on dog day afternoons and muggy August
evenings had become as familiar to me as the cleft of my chin reflected in the
mirror as I shaved. I hadn’t tried to put a name to her face, feeling that would
spoil the mystique of my fantasy. The thirtyish woman, who shared the elevator
at my East Side Manhattan apartment, was surely by any statistical beauty
evaluation—a “10.”
Whenever my secretary Mona caught me daydreaming at my desk in a
lull between cases, she would ask, “What’s this distraction?” When I turned with a
blank stare as if caught with my pants down, she rolled her dark Jamaican eyes and
pursed her full lips. “When are you going to introduce yourself to Gorgeous?”
For the past year, Monday through Friday, Gorgeous got on the elevator at
the 32nd floor and descended to the lobby at 8 a.m. A taxi was always waiting to
pick her up and would bring her home each night at 6 p.m. In the summer she’d
often take the stairs one flight up to the roof to sunbathe till dusk. On sunny
summer weekends it was a crap shoot, never predicable when or for how long
she might ascend to the roof to bask in her thong bikini.
Not that I paid attention to these details with any prurient interest—as
a private eye, I was naturally observant. I’m not shy or reticent by nature, but
I didn’t want to shatter my illusion of this perfectly gorgeous woman by hearing
her voice reject my advances. I avoided speaking to her in any casual manner and
buried my face in my newspaper whenever we rode the elevator together, in case
she might catch my eye and murmur a neighborly greeting.
“Neighbors” were for The Village or Upper East Side, not Midtown near
United Nations Plaza, so I was off the hook. When we got off the elevator
together I held back to check my mailbox so I wouldn’t overhear her verbal
exchange with the doorman or cabby. God forbid I should have Singing in the
Rain traumatic shock and hear a squeaky, nasally shrill come from her gorgeous
lips. That would have destroyed her image, like a westerly witch with a splash of
water in her face. So long, my pretty—my Gorgeous…going…going…gone.
I would often set my alarm just to make the 8 a.m. descent with Gorgeous
and carry the scent of her hair with me like a hallo all day.
Since my last romantic entanglement ended over a year ago, my Gorgeous
fantasy helped bridge the gap during that passion drought. By the time summer
came around again, and I was longing for a hot, sunny weekend to curl up in a
chaise lounge on the roof. I would read a good book and sneak a peek at Gorgeous.
She’d be lying on her flat tummy with her bikini top unfastened to avoid strap
marks. I was starting to feel like a perverted 900-caller, so I decided it was time
to talk to Gorgeous and deflate the pressure from this infatuation bubble.
Realizing the honeymoon would soon be over, I rehearsed a variety of
clever approaches of imagined repartee with Gorgeous that might end with a
deep freeze, repulsion, a slap in the face, or perhaps the best sex ever. Nothing
ventured, nothing gained. I’d go for the night ride ascent so she wouldn’t have
all day to think about what a creep I seemed to be. If our encounter went well,
my ceiling and her floor were all that separated us with either of our apartments
as a safe strip for the inevitable love landing.
What I didn’t expect from Gorgeous after a year of her perfect consistency,
was a no-show on the morning before I planned to approach her. I’d hoped to see
her when she came home that night. I felt queasy when the elevator door opened
and she wasn’t there. I checked my watch to be sure it hadn’t stopped and cross-
checked the time with my phone.
I took the descent to the lobby and asked the doorman if a cab had
stopped for a pick up in the last few minutes.
“No, Mr. Larkin. No pick-ups this morning,” Wilson the doorman
said with a wink. “I wouldn’t have missed Gorgeous.”
See. I’m not alone. Even the hired help refers to her as “Gorgeous.”
A hollow feeling in my gut told me she might be in trouble, so I took the
elevator back up to her apartment on the 32nd floor and pressed my ear to her
door. It was raining, so I knew she wasn’t on the roof sunbathing. I heard a TV
news commentator from inside her apartment saying it would rain heavily for
the next two days. I rang her bell and thought I heard shuffling inside. I felt that
she could be watching me through the peephole so I straightened my tie.
When the door swung open I was shocked to see a burly man in his
fifties wearing a white wife-beater and dress slacks held up by suspenders
with green shamrocks the size of quarters. Since it wasn’t March, I assumed
he was Irish and not just a St. Patrick’s Day leftover. He glared at me and
wrinkled his red, whiskey-weathered nose as the whites of his sky-blue eyes
turned pink.
“What the hell do you want?” he rasped.
We looked each other over like two heavy weights listening to the
referee’s rules before the bell.
“I must have the the wrong apartment,” I said, but over his right shoulder
I saw a framed photo of Gorgeous on an end table.
“Oh. Who you lookin’ for, fella?”
“Someone with your blue eyes, but a lot prettier.”
He must have caught my glance over his shoulder at the photo
because, before I knew what hit me, I was taking a standing-eight-count
with shamrock suspenders between me and the exit as he chained the
door behind him and stood firm to take another swing.
“Whoa, pops! No mas!” I held up both hands. “Like I said, I got the
wrong apartment.”
“How much has she been charging you?” he asked.
“Yo! I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I cleared my vision
and tried diplomacy since the United Nations was across the street. “I live in
this building and had a dinner date with a friend. I rang your bell by mistake.”
“Don’t bull shit me or I’ll pop ya again,” he said, making a fist.
I could see he meant it, so I decided to stymie him with some half-truths
and suck some wind out of him for a KO. “I’m the private investigator she hired.”
I lied, nodding toward her photo and handed him my card with the same address.
“I live in this building, and she hired me because she thought some creep was
stalking her. I know her routine. She came in last night as usual at six o’clock,
but hasn’t left the building yet as she usually does each morning at eight.”
Though he was quick with his fists, I was quicker with my Glock 33 pistol
pulled from my ankle holster before he could take a forward step.
“So now it’s my turn—who the hell are you?”
“Private dick or not, you’re saying you’re not her John?” he asked.
“No, but what are you saying, she’s a call girl?”
“You’re the shamus. You tell me.” His posture slumped as he explained.
“I’m her uncle looking out for her for my dead sister’s sake. I took care of her
for a few years after my sister died in a car crash. Her husband had deserted her
and my niece ten years ago, a fanatic prick. Rumors say he went back home to
hook up with the IRA.
“She was a teenager when her mom died, a real looker—as you know.”
We both nodded. “Once she turned twenty-one, I couldn’t keep track of her. She
came to New York from Boston a year ago. She called me to say she was a model,
but I had my doubts.” He shook his head. “She stopped returning my phone calls
and hadn’t written to me in months. I had her address, so I decided to pay her a
surprise visit—for her own good, of course.”
“Of course.” I smirked, unsure where he could be going with this.
“Look. I didn’t just barge in on her,” he explained. “I called from Penn
Station with a little warning.”
“And?”
“She said she had a modeling job last night and would be staying with a
friend. She left the key with the doorman. She told me to make myself at home.
She didn’t give me the name of the person she would be with. You don’t think
something happened to her, do you?”
“I think we need to have a chat with the doorman.”
“I’ll get my shirt.”
“No need,” I said. “I can talk to him over the intercom.”
“In that case, would you mind taking that rod out of my face?” He shrugged.
“I could use a drink. How about a Tullamore Dew?”
“It’s not even 9 a.m.,” I said, holstering my pistol “But don’t let me stop
you from brightening your day.”
He poured himself an Irish whisky as I buzzed the doorman. “Wilson, this
is Mr. Larkin.”
“Congratulations. I see you’re in 3201—lucky man.”
“Not really. I’m here with her uncle. You gave the key to him, but did she
leave the building after she left the key with you?”
“If she did, it was on the late shift,” he said. “She never left while I
was here.”
“No distractions—you couldn’t possibly have missed her?”
“I’m positive, Mr. Larkin.”
“Who was on the door last night?”
“Silvio.”
“Do you have a number where I can reach him?”
“I suppose,” Wilson hesitated.
“There’s a sawbuck in it for each of you, if you can fill in the gaps between
six o’clock last night and when her uncle picked up the key.”
“She left the key with me at six when the cab brought her home,” he
explained. “She was blasé about it, saying her uncle was coming from out of
town and to give him the key so he could go up whenever he arrived. She didn’t
say she didn’t expect to be in. It was still evening, so she might’ve had plans to
go back out, but she never left.”
“What time did you give her uncle the key?” I asked.
“I didn’t, Mr. Larkin. He must have come for the key when Silvio was on
the door. Silvio never said anything to me about it, but the key was gone, so I just
assumed he gave them to her uncle.”
“It’s an emergency. I need Silvio’s number.”
I called, but the uncle couldn’t hear Silvio’s side of our conversation.
“The uncle picked up the key about 8 p.m., but he didn’t go up,” Silvio
explained. “I watched him head up the block to Billy Munk’s Pub. She never came
down, but he came back about ten o’clock, a little tipsy but cordial. I didn’t buzz
her to let her know he was coming, because my instructions were to just let him
up with the key. Ya know, maybe she just calls him ‘uncle.’ I had no idea if she
was still in her apartment when I came on at 7 p.m. but I know she never came d
own while I was on till 7 a.m.”
“Why are you and Wilson working twelve hours?” I asked.
“We’re short-handed with guys on summer vacation and one out sick,”
he said. “It’s only for a couple of weeks and the union pays us overtime. She
must still be in the building. Did you check the laundry room in the basement?
How about the garage? She wouldn’t be on the roof in this weather.”
Her uncle eyed me as if aiming through the sights of a gun. “What did
he tell you?”
“They’re sure she hasn’t left the building since she left the key in the
lobby last night. You didn’t go up at seven o’clock when you picked up the key
from Silvio. She was still in her apartment, but you went up the street to Billy
Munk’s. Were you there the whole three hours before you returned at ten o’clock,
or did you go elsewhere?”
“Only to buy a paper and a Lotto ticket at the corner newsstand.”
I saw the newspaper and the lottery ticket on the coffee table, but wondered
as the uncle sipped his drink, “Where did you buy that whiskey?”
“The Emerald Isle flows through my niece’s veins as well, so Uncle
Sean didn’t need to go shopping.” He nodded to the full liquor cabinet above
the wet bar.
“Well, Uncle Sean, your niece must be a successful model because
this building is high rent. The living room furniture’s worth a small fortune,
and I haven’t even seen the bedroom, but, no one else has either,” I said with
confidence. “Believe me, if your niece was an expensive call-girl, I’d know it.
But that’s the good news—if she never left this building, she’s in some kind of
trouble.”
“Should we call the cops?” he asked, cocking his head like a canine.
“Before forty-eight hours we’d need a body. We’ve got the door
covered, so we just need to check the laundry room and the garage,” I
said. “I’m not too hopeful, because by nine o’clock, someone would have
seen her if she hadn’t run into foul play.”
“What about that creep she said was following her—the reason she
hired you?”
I gave him the respect of my father confessor. “Uncle Sean, truth be
told, a shamus needs to lie to get at the truth sometimes. If she reported
any creep following her, it probably was me. She never hired me, but I’ve
been smitten by her and reluctant to even talk to a young woman that
gorgeous, and now probably a supermodel. I wouldn’t know,” I admitted,
“because I never read magazines, only the paper. I don’t even own a TV,
but I am a detective and I know her routine. This morning was the first
break in her schedule, which could be nothing, but I think you’ll agree it’s
worth some examination to be sure she’s OK.”
“I don’t have her cell phone number,” he said with disappointment,
“only her land line in this apartment, so I can’t track her down that way.”
“Has she called you on your cell?” I suggested. “Her cell number will
be stored in yours.”
I took his cell and ran down the list of calls. “What’s her home phone
number?” He told me. “OK, I see that from your call yesterday. You’re from
Boston. Did you call any other 212 numbers in the last few weeks?”
“No. I’m sure.”
“This one called you last month. Try it.”
He dialed the number, but he got a message. “It’s her voice mail.”
I grabbed the phone from him and caught her last words, “Leave your
name and number and the time that you called, and I’ll get back to you as
soon as possible.”
Now I knew that Gorgeous had a voice to match her looks. I left her
a message: “Your Uncle Sean is concerned about you. Please call him.”
After ten minutes of receiving no response from his niece, Uncle Sean
went with me to the basement. I asked some of the maids doing laundry if
they’d seen the woman in the framed photo that I brought along. No one had
seen her.
In the parking garage there was only one exit and no one to be seen.
The building’s super, not wanting any bad publicity, let us watch the security
tape of cars leaving the building. Her black Mercedes SL-500 convertible was
where she’d left it.
“Definitely a supermodel—not the wheels—your niece. That’s a
fine vehicle.” He was impressed as well. “It’s getting close to noon. Let me buy
you lunch while we wait for her call.”
On our way out through the lobby, I asked Wilson, “Does she have any
friends in the building, maybe a guy she’s been dating?”
“No. She’s a loner as far as I can see,” he said. “Until her uncle showed
up yesterday, she had no callers, always left alone and returned solo.”
I checked my watch and was shocked to see we’d spent most of day
hypothesizing various scenarios, all but the worst case, because no one that
gorgeous should ever die. We’d skipped lunch, and it was after 5 p.m. At
least the first 48 hours was getting closer for me to call my friends at the
precinct about a missing person. My stomach growled for dinner.
“If she shows up,” I said to Wilson. “We’ll be at Billy Munk’s.”
We stopped at the newsstand first. Glancing at the headlines, I saw there
were more U.S. casualties in the Mid-east conflict. Isis was running rampant,
the DOW didn’t know which way was down, but with a rise in the prime rate
was still a caution and crude oil was on the rise again. The Yanks and Red Sox
were vying for 1st place. The biggest tourist attraction of the week was a visit to
Manhattan by Great Britain’s Duke and Dutchess of Cambridge. Prince
William and Kate were taking a limo tour from The Waldorf down Broadway
to 23rd Street then would cut eastward across to pass the United Nations on
First Avenue before sunset and a dinner reception at Trump Tower. The rain
had finally let up and the sun was low in the west starting to descend behind
a Hoboken horizon.
Lucky, I thought. Good timing to put the top down on the Royal limo for
the crowd anxious for a glimpse of Will and Kate.
We sat at the dark wooden bar with a cedar-and-brew scent permeating
the joint. Beside the antique cash register, my sallow bar tabs were stacked three
inches high—two inches higher than the other regulars’ unpaid tabs. It was August
in Manhattan, vacation time and no cases. With any luck I’d start to make ends
meet again after Labor Day.
I asked Patty the bartender to turn on the news. He glared at me, looked
at my stack of unpaid bills, and slid the TV remote down the bar to me. Sean
had the Billy’s bacon-cheeseburger with fries, and I had two inches of rare roast
beef sliced thin on pumpernickel. I held off on the fries visualizing myself in a
sleeveless undershirt with a beer gut flanked by suspenders with shamrocks
like Uncle Sean’s. The ole boy could put ’em down.
Surfing the channels, I stopped at CNN and saw a live broadcast showing
Prince William and Kate in a motorcade coming eastward down 42nd Street and
passing Bryant Park near the New York Public Library. Apparently their tour had
been delayed by the earlier rain and their path to Trump Tower had been detoured
to adjust to their schedule.
Uncle Sean scowled. “Put on the game, shamus. I don’t want to spoil my
appetite watching those bloody royals making a grand display.”
I took one bite of my sandwich and was about take a swill of Guinness
when it hit me in the chest like a sledge hammer. I nearly choked on my sandwich
as I darted for the door.
“Hey, you two-bit shamus!” I heard Patty shout at me as I hit the street.
“You’d better pay up next time!”
I dodged cars and bicycle messengers crossing 45th Street to the north
side. Wilson was talking to another tenant as I burst into the lobby. I got into
the elevator and hit 32. On the ascent I dialed Lt. Paul Dicker at homicide.
“What’s up, Larkin?” he answered.
“I’ve got a potential homicide at 333 East 45th Street on the roof. I need
back-up.”
“Back-up, my ass! You leave this to the NYPD or I’ll—”
“No time, Paul. Just get here.”
I hung up on Lt. Dicker still sputtering, but I knew I could depend on
him to have a car there in two minutes. Catching up to me on the roof was
another story.
I took my Glock from my ankle holster when I reached the top of the
stairs to the roof. I knew the metal door to the roof would make a squeaky noise
when I opened it. It always did.
I put together everything I’d learned over the past year and the last
few hours to give me a visual. I could be dead wrong, but there was no time
for any Plan B.
I rolled as I pushed open the door with a creak and saw my worst fear
as I came up on one knee and fired a single shot, taking down the shooter
with a shattered right knee.
When the shooter staggered on one lame leg to take aim again, I had no
choice but to shoot to kill. I shouted, “Drop it! It’s over!”
Before I fired, the door creaked behind me. I thought it was Lt. Dicker’s
back-up, but it was Uncle Sean with a pistol.
“Finish it, Darlin’!” he shouted to the shooter. “I got the shamus.”
“You’re really her father, right?” I glared, but the door creaked again.
When he turned to fire, a round from Dicker’s detectives killed Sean.
“Drop the rifle!” one detective shouted to her, but determined to hit
her target for Daddy’s approval, her hands shook from the blood loss as she
tried to steady her aim.
Not knowing her intent, the detectives were startled when I pulled
another pistol from inside my shoulder holster and shot her through the right
temple before she could get off a shot.
One officer held his weapon on me as I dropped my pistol, and the
other checked to see she if she was dead. When he looked over the balcony
ledge and saw the Prince’s motorcade passing below, he realized what I must
have prevented.
“Tom Larkin, Private Eye,” I said. “I put in the call to Lt. Dicker.”
When I showed them my ID, they took my weapons. “I think you’ll find the
ole guy on the FBI’s wanted list as an IRA terrorist,” I said, as they called
Lt. Dicker for conformation. Looking at the grin on “Uncle Sean’s face, I
realized he’d been one up on me in the half-truth game from the start.
“What about the shooter?” the detective asked.
“Mind if I have a closer look?” I asked, and got the courtesy nod.
As they pulled off her mask, her long red hair blew and matted in
the blood streaming from the hole beside her right eye. Except for her static
voice-mail, I never got to put a live voice with her face. Now I never would.
It was only mid-August, but summer was done for me. My heart wasn’t
in it. Walking alone in the city later that same night, I recalled what one of
the cop had said when I’d removed her mask. It was the only thing I knew
about her for sure: “Damn! This shooter was drop dead gorgeous.”
END
Shadow Lives
By Henrietta Ross
I opened my eyes onto red brick. Long since I had opened them onto anything more. I pulled myself upright, which was somewhat difficult and stared across the road at galvanised steel. Nothing. A spider with a body like a tiny black pin prick whispered across the grey, concrete step and disappeared into a hole. The bricks were full of them: holes and indents, broken corners and worn edges. I'd loved the coarse, uneven surface of bricks as a kid. The rugged exterior of the outside juxtaposed with the more streamlined interior within. My head throbbed and my thin legs hummed with cramp. No surprise, shut-eye for even a couple of hours, disturbed at that, involved making yourself as small as possible, trying to hide, to be unseen, to be invisible. I'd slept with my knees dragged up to my chest in a red sodden canvas bag for three hours, an old peach towel, damp too, for a pillow. The bag was sodden because nothing dries out, not out here, damp a tapestry seared into your skin. Rain was always the worst to contend with, worse than long cold spells or snow blizzards. Even when streets were puffed up with snow, you could find a doorway, a small, square patch, clear in which to get some shelter. Snow as a kid always seemed a treat. We waited for the temperature to drop then warm up ever so slightly, staring up into white, compacted clouds, waiting for the first dusting of magic. Perfectly crisp snow without dirtied footprints seemed virginal and innocent and mysteriously silent like the streets of a Christmas morning. Now everything was different, my life had moved on like a snow drift, just not to a better place. Rain, unlike snow, was different. Tenacious, persistent. It ran down walls, trickled between bricks, seeped into cracks and slopped at doorways. It soaked sleeping bags and rucksacks, stiff thin blankets, old sheets and spare dirty clothes. It made a mockery of cardboard.
Needing a moment to rub the cramp from my knees, I twisted this way and that, pushed a leg against the glass facade of W.H Smith's. My worn and battered Reeboks, no laces, seemed an affront to their crisp, bright window display. Shiny new books showing off their jazzy front covers and decorated spines: a biography of Prince William, an A-Z of the Kings and Queens of England, a book comprising a selection of aerial photo's of the Monarchy's royal estates, another, a sort of pop-up book of the inside of Buckingham palace. Expensive teddy bears with tiny white t-shirts covered with red St Georges Crosses, packets of bunting, playing cards, tacky mugs with the soon to be king and Queen on. Can't remember the last time I bought anything from a shop; the odd packet of cigarettes and matches from a newsagents, a can of cheap, sweet cider from Tesco, hoping for a few seconds of respite. Consumption is a luxury and so is time, so I stopped working out the cramp, legs and feet still twisted like an arthritic old woman's swollen limbs. Pushing everything into my torn blue rucksack, I hobbled across the road, and round the back of the fast food joint. At this time of a morning, they usually throw out stuff. Stale bread and round buns, thin soggy chips, sugary cakes hard round the edges, sometimes greasy burgers. We all rush around and grab what we can. It can be a bit of a free-for-all. I have been whacked in the face numerous times. Fought on the floor, all arms and legs trying to hold on to my breakfast. Ripping apart a burger with metallic tasting blood running from your nostrils and smearing your lips is a exquisite sort of agony.
“Adu, aar kid.” This is Bob. He pulled open the bin. I looked inside. It smelt bad. Really bad. Bob was six foot with peppery grey hair and a pink fleshy scar on his forehead. He wore faded black trousers, scuffed brown boots, and an old green parka with a dull orange lining. The bin was mostly filled with boxes, wrappers and reams of cellophane, though I did find a half box of soggy looking chips which we shared together sitting on a low brick wall as rain pricked at our faces. They were wet and soggy but would have to do.
“Yow werkin'?”
“Yeah, going up. Made quite a bit yesterday at the back of House of Frazer.”
Bob shuffled his feet. “Geaus nowt. “
“A lot will stay in today I reckon, watch it on television.” I hadn't watched a television in years, wouldn't even know what I was watching now. Mum used to like soaps: Corrie and a hot cup of tea, a couple of ginger nut biscuits on a white saucer. Dad pretended to like everything but really he would be asleep behind his perfectly straight newspaper.
“Wernit Balham?”
“London originally. But yeah, Balham.”
“Daynt ave accent.”
“Been on the streets, it washes it away.” I laughed to myself and hitched my rucksack up onto my shoulder.
People always assumed streets were quiet during the night and in the early morning. Believed because they put their own little lights out, crawled into warm beds with dry sheets and plump pillows, everyone else was on lock-down, too. It wasn't true. Streets in a city: places of reinforced concrete and glass fronted exteriors, multi-storey car parks, sprawling department stores, hotels and pubs, shops and sloppy fast food were never quiet. People fell out of pubs, often drunk, wanting to fight someone, anyone, couples clip-clopped to hotels for the night, taxis left and returned on a constant loop, there were ever-growing rowdy queues for chips and burgers. Girls screamed after too much to drink, boys fought over the same hysterical girls, as if intoxicated belligerence was a win. There were fights and screams, whoops and loud banter, jagged threats and shuffling feet and often running feet and by the time it all stopped and you hoped for a moments lull, a moments sleep, the sun unfurled itself from behind doughy, white clouds and birds, those little Avian Dinosaurs that I adored as a kid, would break out into high-pitched song, fill the air with repetitive melodies that felt like fire to the senses.
It's even noisier today. All night the bunting had whipped and crackled on the wind and road sweepers were out earlier than usual unclogging gutters. We might not be in London, but we were still making the most of it. A enormous silver screen stood outside The Bullring attached to a giant steel scaffold and parts of the pedestrianized area had been cordoned off. Soon, it was obviously thought, hundreds would arrive, directed by police and security in high-vis to appropriate areas. It made me feel mildly optimistic. I might make some more money; the quiet calm of perhaps ordering a milky coffee in a Cafe or buying some chips or even making enough to get a night in a hostel.
“Wat time you goin up, Dom?” Michelle bounded across from behind a cookie shop. She wore a white shell suit with pink stripes, holes in both legs and a grey baseball cap on her head. Her hair beneath it was brown and curled with grease.
“On my way, I'm early but have nothing else to do.”
Michelle jumped in front of me and poked me with a bitten yellow finger nail.”Got any?”
“I've stopped doing it, six weeks.” I had. Weed was starting to make me feel paranoid, off kilter. It was better to try and quit, although being homeless and 'with it' was harsh emotionally.
“I need sum, though.”
I laughed. “Honestly, I've stopped.”
“What ya laughin at?”
“Nothing, don't believe me, but I'm not lying.”
“Yow always doin' it, I see ya at the back of that shop, lightin' up one the other day.”
“That was a roll-up a passer by gave me, just tobacco.”
“Nah, Dom, ya lyin to me. To me?” Michelle clicked her teeth and stalked about in a circle. I wasn't bothered by Michelle but the others she hung out with could get tricky, especially if she told them I had weed.
“Look I have to go. I haven't got any, I will try and find some for you though, deal?” She stared at me intently, came right up in my face so I could smell her breath. The smell of beer coupled with the fusty stink of tobacco. Time seemed to stop, would she accept or scoot off to get the others. My heart strummed with anxiety.
“Well, okay then.” Her voice had softened and she hugged me, patted me on the back. It didn't make me feel better.
We would pick the magazine up from behind the Catholic church, an old factory converted into offices. You would buy what you could afford then make so much on each copy you sold to the public. I got to the church at 8am. The offices predictably stood in darkness, except the top windows, silver beneath the sun's cool gaze. I crossed the road to the park. It looked empty. Yellow grass stubbed with crisp packets and pop cans. A water feature no longer a feature. There were swings, slides, a sew-saw and a climbing frame encircled by a cracked painted blue fence. It all looked tired and depressed, as if childlike joy had lost its footing. Maybe too many teenagers sat on the slide smoking weed, one two many drunks had licked the wood chippings on a hot summers day.
Waiting is hard, so I sat on the swing, focused on the doors opening whilst I tried to forget. When I first landed on the streets in the Summer of 2006, I had no idea what it would be like. All kids struggle with their parents. They want the best for you long term, you want the best for you in any given moment. My father was an accountant. If you think they are dull, you're right. He walked around with a frown all day, in a cheap grey suit and wore his black hair in a side parting which made his scalp look alabaster white and only ever conversed about numbers. My mother worked part-time as a receptionist at the local doctors surgery. She became so proud of her phone voice, she took to speaking like it all the time, a sort of shrill accentuation of every word that gave everyone a headache. Mum was nice though, until she kicked me out.
I scored fifteen, a mammoth victory, compared to the eight I usually picked up. They came in a transparent button-down folder which I shoved under my arm as the others jostled in the queue behind me. A sort of low-level sense of threat that made your head buzz. The magazine had been going for years, started out as just a pamphlet, black and white, two sides. Never thought about everything having a trajectory before the streets, everything changing from thing to another, but not always in a linear fashion.
Trudging back the way I came, in my worn trainers, feeling the cold sensation of sweat under my armpits, the greasy sliver across my ribs, I chose a spot, right outside Primark. If it rained, - an elbow of leaden cloud was on the move in a white-washed sky, the sun all but gone - I could get some shelter. No point, anyway, selling a left-wing magazine outside high-end shops and boutiques, they think you're a cockroach, hardy and common, creeping into flawless homes and sterile lives. No, stay with the working class, try and crack through their cheap, faux leather. I had imagined crowds, masses, thought I might make a killin' but people were too interested in Prince William. His head bald like the souls of my shoes, but he had a crown to hide his threadbare scalp.
“Please don't stand here.” A women wearing a black raincoat skewered me with her stare. She had silver Dior glasses and a mardy looking face.
“Just tryin' to make a living”.
“You are not here to celebrate the coronation though, are you?”
“Look. I'm selling these.” I pointed at them, gave her a twirl of my transparent folder. Her eyes bounced off the corners of the magazine as if she might catch something.
“I will have you removed.”
'Love, it's all legit. Give me a break.” This happens all the time. I feel like saying “You dirty Slag” in a loud cockney accent but I don't or at least I didn't think I did.
“Excuse me, what did you call me?”
“Nowt, Bint.”
I did get a small, milky coffee and a carton of chips that day but didn't make enough for a bed. Wound up in the doorway of W.H Smith again. Cramp in my limbs and wet through the skin. Weird what you get attached when living like this. When the coronation was over, screens taken away, bunting removed, I missed the energy, the people; the palatable sense of excitement and expectation that thrummed the air. I had nothing to look forward to, every day the same as the one before, a perfect replica of monotony and pig-headed survival.
“Dom, a man, he came, looking he was, for you.” This is Paul, has some sort of mental illness, talks to himself a lot. I don't know whether someone is looking for me or it's all occurring inside his head.
“Who's that then?” He stumbles around as if the voices are so chaotic they prevent him from having any physical coordination.
“A man, a man.” Paul seems excited. He can be often upset, sometimes agitated, nice to see him lit up with a grin. He attempts a sort of skip and trips over his too long, corduroy trousers, ends up tangled up on the floor. Let's out a groan.
“C'mon mate.” Pulling him to his feet, he gives me a wide grin and his cheeks glow a sort of washed-out pink.
“Daddy, he's coming.”
Making sure Paul is okay, I head off. My head has started hurting again, and I have to go and get my days copies.
Time slows down on the street, passes by in the slowest of increments, takes on a monster like guise, grows bigger and bigger in your head as you wait for it to pass. You don't realise how important routine is when you have it, how it manages all your hours and minutes and seconds, spooning out just the right amount of activity from one moment to the next. When I was younger, when I had homework to do after school and had started going out with mates to play football, I found my parents too strict, felt hemmed in and manipulated by the time restraints and demands they imposed. I wish I had them now, would give anything to write an essay in one of those little exercise books whose back cover I would graffiti or go for a kick about over the field.
It could have been a Tuesday, I think it might have been. I had been up to get my magazines in the pouring rain, had wrapped myself in a black bin liner I found stuffed in a bin. Only managed seven, so knew I would be struggling, but I wasn't too bothered. Maybe once I'd have been vexed but you become hardened out here, like the weather I suppose. I met Gareth, another homeless guy, he'd been out here
longer than me, fifteen years. Years that had ruined him, the exuberant optimism of youth crushed like rose petals beneath a time-worn, heavy foot. We shared a smoke sitting on his crumpled makeshift bed and he gave me a bottle of sticky orange pop which I wrapped in the bag and stuffed in my rucksack. Six years ago, the arches were my dumping ground too, but I'd got beaten up one night, new face I guess, and even though they welcome me back now, I prefer to stay away, the jagged scar under my chin a stark reminder. Better on my own.
“Dom?” I heard the voice. The sort memories are made of, the sort that carve you up inside if you let them. I turned, slowly, really, really slowly and looked at him. Six years had blended his face, made it less distinct. Rounder now and redder except for the jowls that hung like a flat tyre. His moustache had turned on him, grey flecked with white and his side parting had no side to take care of any more, just a smooth egg with a few grey wisps that waved in the wind.
“What can I do for you, old man?'
He came towards me with a smile. I never knew he could smile. I didn't even know him any more, just another face in a crowd and this saddened me and released me at the same time. Maybe it would be easier now.
'It's your mum.”
“Yeah?” Always the Achilles heel.
“Look, I've been searching for weeks, Dom, asking around, you know.'
“Yeah, someone said.”
“It's cancer.”
“What is?”
“Your mum, Dom..”
“Mum?”
“Yes, look I know it's hard, but when she became sick she asked, begged me in fact, to find you. Bring you home.”
“Why?”
“She wants to say goodbye and --”
“I've been waiting six years for a simple hello.”
THE ROAD FROM LETTUCE AND BACK
By Roy Dorman
“So, where we goin’, Robert?”
“I’m taking you for a ride.”
“But why am I locked up in this cage?”
“You’re my prisoner,” said Robert. “You’ve been eating more of the vegetables in my garden than I have. That cage is more than just an animal carrying case; it’s a trap. I put it in the middle of my garden, right between two rows of lettuce. You walked into it to eat the lettuce and shaved carrots -- the little “salad” I placed in there as bait.”
“Rabbits call that a salad too, Robert. Except we don’t gather the ingredients together and put them on a plate, we just browse from one section of the garden….”
“And that’s why you’re in the trap and that’s why you’re going for a ride. I’m taking you far enough out into the country that you’ll no longer be able to pillage my garden.”
“But I’m a town rabbit, Robert; I could get killed out in the country. Foxes, feral dogs and cats, hunters… Maybe you could just let me out at the next town. How about that? I’m not even asking you to take me back home; we both know I’d just be back in your garden again.”
“So honesty comes from getting in locked a cage,” said Robert. “No remorse, but honesty.”
“If you drop me off in the next town, I won’t even try to make my way back to your garden. Even if there aren’t any gardens as good as yours.”
“Are you saying if I drop you off in the country instead of the next town you’ll come back to eat in my garden again?”
“That’s it, Robert. You got it exactly. We rabbits aren’t usually known for having a mean streak, but let me tell ya, if somebody messes with us, we can get ugly.”
Robert looked over his shoulder at the cage in the back seat and snorted. He didn’t see how that little fur ball could get ugly. “Forget it; I’m not driving all the way to the next town.”
“I just pissed on your car seat, Robert. Now I think I’ll take a shit and moosh the pellets through the mesh floor of this damn cage. How do you like…. Robert! Look at the road, would ya? You’ve drifted into that semi’s lane….”
***
“Eddie, you call the EMTs and tell them not to rush; the semi driver’s okay, but this guy’s dead.”
“Hey, look, he had a rabbit in a cage. I wonder what’s the story there. Should I let it loose?”
“Nah, I’ll take it back into town and let it loose in the park. It probably wouldn’t live very long out here; foxes, feral dogs and cats, hunters…”
Opera Lions
By Joseph Addison
Dic mihi, si fias tu leo, qualis eris?
Mart., xii. 93.
Were you a lion, how would you behave?
There is nothing that of late years has afforded matter of greater amusement to the town than Signior Nicolini’s combat with a lion in the Haymarket, which has been very often exhibited to the general satisfaction of most of the nobility and gentry in the kingdom of Great Britain. Upon the first rumour of this intended combat, it was confidently affirmed, and is still believed, by many in both galleries, that there would be a tame lion sent from the tower every opera night in order to be killed by Hydaspes. This report, though altogether groundless, so universally prevailed in the upper regions of the playhouse, that some of the most refined politicians in those parts of the audience gave it out in whisper that the lion was a cousin-german of the tiger who made his appearance in King William’s days, and that the stage would be supplied with lions at the public expense during the whole session. Many likewise were the conjectures of the treatment which this lion was to meet with from the hands of Signior Nicolini: some supposed that he was to subdue him in recitativo, as Orpheus used to serve the wild beasts in his time, and afterwards to knock him on the head; some fancied that the lion would not pretend to lay his paws upon the hero, by reason of the received opinion that a lion will not hurt a virgin: several who pretended to have seen the opera in Italy, had informed their friends that the lion was to act a part in High Dutch, and roar twice or thrice to a thorough bass before he fell at the feet of Hydaspes. To clear up a matter that was so variously reported, I have made it my business to examine whether this pretended lion is really the savage he appears to be, or only a counterfeit.
But before I communicate my discoveries, I must acquaint the reader that upon my walking behind the scenes last winter, as I was thinking on something else, I accidentally jostled against a monstrous animal that extremely startled me, and, upon my nearer survey of it, appeared to be a lion rampant. The lion, seeing me very much surprised, told me, in a gentle voice, that I might come by him if I pleased; “for,” says he, “I do not intend to hurt anybody.” I thanked him very kindly and passed by him, and in a little time after saw him leap upon the stage and act his part with very great applause. It has been observed by several that the lion has changed his manner of acting twice or thrice since his first appearance, which will not seem strange when I acquaint my reader that the lion has been changed upon the audience three several times. The first lion was a candle-snuffer, who, being a fellow of a testy, choleric temper, overdid his part, and would not suffer himself to be killed so easily as he ought to have done: besides, it was observed of him, that he grew more surly every time he came out of the lion, and having dropped some words in ordinary conversation, as if he had not fought his best, and that he suffered himself to be thrown upon his back in the scuffle, and that he would wrestle with Mr. Nicolini for what he pleased, out of his lion’s skin, it was thought proper to discard him: and it is verily believed to this day, that, had he been brought upon the stage another time, he would certainly have done mischief. Besides, it was objected against the first lion, that he reared himself so high upon his hinder paws, and walked in so erect a posture, that he looked more like an old man than a lion.
The second lion was a tailor by trade, who belonged to the playhouse, and had the character of a mild and peaceable man in his profession. If the former was too furious, this was too sheepish for his part; inasmuch that, after a short modest walk upon the stage, he would fall at the first touch of Hydaspes, without grappling with him, and giving him an opportunity of showing his variety of Italian trips. It is said, indeed, that he once gave him a rip in his flesh-colour doublet: but this was only to make work for himself in his private character of a tailor. I must not omit that it was this second lion who treated me with so much humanity behind the scenes.
The acting lion at present is, as I am informed, a country gentleman, who does it for his diversion, but desires his name may be concealed. He says very handsomely, in his own excuse, that he does not act for gain; that he indulges an innocent pleasure in it, and that it is better to pass away an evening in this manner than in gaming and drinking: but at the same time says, with a very agreeable raillery upon himself, that if his name should be known, the ill-natured world might call him “the ass in the lion’s skin.” This gentleman’s temper is made out of such a happy mixture of the mild and the choleric, that he outdoes both his predecessors, and has drawn together greater audiences than have been known in the memory of man.
I must not conclude my narrative without taking notice of a groundless report that has been raised to a gentleman’s disadvantage, of whom I must declare myself an admirer; namely, that Signior Nicolini and the lion have been seen sitting peaceably by one another, and smoking a pipe together behind the scenes; by which their common enemies would insinuate that it is but a sham combat which they represent upon the stage: but upon inquiry I find, that if any such correspondence has passed between them, it was not till the combat was over, when the lion was to be looked upon as dead according to the received rules of the drama. Besides, this is what is practised every day in Westminster Hall, where nothing is more usual than to see a couple of lawyers, who have been tearing each other to pieces in the court, embracing one another as soon as they are out of it.
I would not be thought in any part of this relation to reflect upon Signior Nicolini, who, in acting this part, only complies with the wretched taste of his audience: he knows very well that the lion has many more admirers than himself; as they say of the famous equestrian statue on the Pont-Neuf at Paris, that more people go to see the horse than the king who sits upon it. On the contrary, it gives me a just indignation to see a person whose action gives new majesty to kings, resolution to heroes, and softness to lovers, thus sinking from the greatness of his behaviour, and degraded into the character of the London Prentice. I have often wished that our tragedians would copy after this great master in action. Could they make the same use of their arms and legs, and inform their faces with as significant looks and passions, how glorious would an English tragedy appear with that action which is capable of giving a dignity to the forced thoughts, cold conceits, and unnatural expressions of an Italian opera! In the meantime, I have related this combat of the lion to show what are at present the reigning entertainments of the politer part of Great Britain.
Audiences have often been reproached by writers for the coarseness of their taste; but our present grievance does not seem to be the want of a good taste, but of common sense.
Life on the Other Side of Anything
A Short Story by Charles E.J. Moulton
I don’t know if it was the background music by Johann Strauss or the meal that rested in his belly. I don’t know if it was the mellow Manhattan warmth of an April evening or the performance of La Gioconda that we had just seen at the Metropolitan Opera. I just knew that he was happy. For the first time in a long while, my dad was happy.
He had heard God sing.
What a good reason to become philosophical.
“Chilean Wine is like the abstract art of Frantisek Kupka,” he mused in the low rumble of the bass I had come to adore ever since my childhood. “The taste is in the pallet of the beholder,” he continued. “Colorful.”
“Who’s Frantisek Kupka?” I responded.
“An abstract artist. A work of his is at the National Gallery in Washington D.C. There is a painting there from 1912 called Localization of Graphic Motifs II,” he said and then pointed at the wine. “This wine has an equal amount of flavors.”
“Your voice has just as many colors, dad,” I mused. “I’ve always said that.”
He laughed. “No. My voice is old, dear. Old and shot like a running monkey.”
“You’re still the best bass baritone around, dad. Even when you speak. You know that.”
Memories of the old Broadway tunes he sang to me at my bedside now emerged up from the depths of my soul. Embrace Me, I Got Rhythm, If Ever I Would Leave You, Speak Low, Camelot, I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face. Whenever he sang or spoke, whether it was day or night, many a time memories of goodnight stories came flooding back, bringing a smile to my face.
“No, you,” he boomed back at me. “You are the best.”
Lifting the glass to his lips and letting the grape-juice trickle down his throat, I pictured his favorite wine from the Chilean Andes actually making his old rumbling Broadway voice go even deeper. What an amusing thought. What a faithful daughter I was. How I loved him. I would love him even if his voice rumbled lower into the subcontra-octave. How happy I was to see him smile. How happy I was ...
If only I could hope for something good to happen.
I had to think of something else. It was too much to hope for.
“You and ... her, you are the two best singers I know,” he sighed. “La Gioconda.”
“That’s so sweet, dad,” I crooned. “Thanks.”
I carefully listened to the sound of the wine gurgling in his mouth, his sighs and chuckles, the soft chatter of the couples nearby, the waiter walking so softly across the red carpet that it sounded like the seductive stroke of the bow on the violins way in the distance of the hidded stereo. The wine, the food, the laughter, the love, the memories of the opera we had just seen, the pain behind all of this, it mingled. God, how painfully it blended together.
“This chocolate mousse feels like heaven on a Sunday,” I answered, quietly.
“It is Sunday, dear,” my father said, happily. I realized he was only half at leisure, a portion of his savings giving him a daily dose of luxury, a part of him beating around the bush. I am sure he would go back to singing Off-Broadway or take a summer gig at some Shakespeare festival, if he only could. Right now, my father Chuck Rule glanced, inside himself, at a smiling Christ in the form of the operatic memory we had just created.
“As much as I want to stay here, I can’t put off my appointment tomorrow. It is too much of a good chance to pass. And you should go to bed, dad.”
“I know.”
I nodded, knowing that we had been trying to keep the conversation going for a bit now, avoiding the fact that he was sick.
“Where is it? What are you auditioning for, I mean?”
“Well, third time’s a charm,” I answered, elusively, trying to read his reaction. “You know where. Same old place.”
He waited for a moment, trying to decipher what I meant.
That proverbial lightbulb lit above his head. He raised his eyebrows, his cheeks turned red, he laughed a few times, cocked his head in that annoyed way.
“He keeps on wanting to hear you, doesn’t he?”
“He’s been insisting on making high notes flow better,” I added. “I hit them and hold them and make them soar, but Velucci wants me to make love to the high notes.”
“To him or the notes?”
“Oh, dad, stop it,” I spat. “Velucci is gay.”
“Velucci? Gay?”
“Mmm-hmm,” I nodded.
“Then go make love to your notes,” he rumbled. “But no wet dreams, okay?”
I giggled, actually feeling awkward having my dad speak to me in that way.
I lift my head and waved toward the blackhaired man that now had arrived back in his corner, waiting for someone to give him a slow wink. He looked up, twitched and blinked, for a second looking like an elegant weasel. My red dress swayed as I shifted in my seat. I took out my lipstick and let the Revlon kiss my lips. When I looked up again, my dad seemed to be dreaming, still closing his eyes and smiling.
“Your mind still in the Met?” I asked, trying to pull him out of his vision.
He opened his eyes and giggled at me. I saw that his soul no longer lingered among physical beings. His experience in the opera had been one that transcended eternity. He had called Lucilla Tracciatella a ... what was it again?
“She is a gift of God,” he mused. “Her voice must have been created by Jesus.”
I smiled, letting my make-up frame my ivories, giving that supersoft L’Oréal skin an extra run for its money.
“Well, I’m happy I could give you that experience,” I said, actually waiting for him to join me in my exit, worried daughter that I was. “Happy birthday!” Something else kept me here, though. I didn’t know what it was. “Are you going home soon, too?”
My indecisive father nodded, shook his head and shrugged simultaneously. I have no idea how he did it, only that he was able to wave away the waiter, that now had arrived at our table, at the same time. The waiter nodded siedways, cocking his head in the process, and left.
Men are capable of multitasking, after all, I thought to myself, for one moment forgetting about how sad my dad’s situation was right now.
“I’ll have another glass of my strange abstract Chilean wine.”
“You don’t have to pay for this meal,” I told him. “Really.”
“You paid for the tickets,” he rumbled. “I’ll pay for the food.”
I shrugged, standing up and giving his cheek a kiss.
“If you say so,” I agreed apprehensively. “It was fun.”
“Fun?” my dad inquired, his voice now rising to an amazing low C, which was high for him. “Disney World is fun. This was ... I don’t know what to call it. Divine. Yes, that’s it. Divine.”
“God must have a voice like that,” I said, lifting my napkin off the table and giving it an elegant French fold, “which proves that God is a woman. That’s why she made me a woman. I am heavenly.”
“So you are,” my dad laughed. “I’ve always loved your voice.”
“It will have to be lovely tomorrow or Madame Lisonka will not be as lovely to me.”
“Neither will Signor Velucci,” my father responded, giving me that odd tongue-in-cheek-like gaze that I had learned to fear. “That’s who you want to impress. Lisonka knows you since you were a baby. She knows me. She always wanted to turn me into a soprano. Didn’t quite work, though. So, I got stuck with playing King Arthur in Camelot. Damn it. I always wanted to sing Queen of the Night.”
He made a long pause and I looked at him, waited, smiled, nodded, finished the last drops of my Chilean wine. I realized that my father had been right about the taste of that grape juice. It really felt like drinking a painting, maybe a Holden Caulfield cubistic experiment, sold for a fortune and a half at some big auction. Cuisine and art had something in common.
“I would be a fabulous coloratura soprano, don’t you think?”
I nodded, gazing at the door and what lay beyond it.
Fifth Avenue lured me to enter its luxurious reality.
Then, my Park Avenue penthouse wanted me to slip inside its walls.
“Your Arthur was a cult phenomenon,” I said, disappearing into my thoughts for a bit.”
My dad chuckled and let that bubbly mirth trickle down his spine for a bit, making me believe he had actually managed to get drunk for the first time since mom’s death.
“That wine is the cult,” he said as I gazed back at him. “That wine will make forget my name. What’s my name? Joe, Jim, Johnny?”
“Stop it, dad,” I chuckled. “One could almost think you weren’t ...”
The sentence I had begun speaking actually got physically stuck in the middle of my throat. Now, I closed my eyes, not being able to believe that I had been so tactless. My face turned red. As it did, I felt my heart beating faster, thumping like crazy.
“God, I am sorry, dad,” I said, sighing. “Gee wiz, I am so stupid.”
“No, no, no,” my dad said, bravely and very quietly. “Say it.”
I bent over, caressed his head and kissed it.
“I meant to say that one almost ... couldn’t think you were so sick.”
“I don’t feel sick, Becky,” he said. “But my doctors say I am.”
He sighed, his expression turning confused.
“I am so sorry. We will find a ...”
“Stop it, Becky,” my dad spat, his voice now turning gritty. “That is not my strong daughter talking. Be brave. I taught you that, didn’t I?”
I nodded.
“Then go home and sleep,” he added. “And be fucking brilliant tomorrow,” he said, pointing his finger at me. “Or else!”
I smiled, nodding like the good girl I was, standing where I was, lifting the glass, pretending there was a drop of wine left, realizing there wasn’t, feeling silly, stalling, as if my soul waited for something. Waiting. Waiting. For what? God, for what? I feared leaving him. A parent’s death will do that to you. Two parents? Well, that was another matter entirely.
He leaned against my chest and I embraced his head, closed my eyes and tried to calm down. We had spent a good evening together. Why did this evening suddenly turn so painful? Because the evening was over and we now had to face being alone. Alone, letting that horror of demise creep into our hearts.
“I don’t want to die, Becky,” my dad said.
“You won’t,” I answered, caressing his cheek. “Just keep breathing, that’s all, and we will find a solution. Somewhere, there is an answer to our problem. Somewhere.”
As I bent over to kiss his left cheek again, his eyes seemed to shift in a way that I had rarely seen in my life. I had seen it when he tasted a really delicious birthday cake, preferably baked by his wife, or when he woke up one morning without the excruciating pain in his back. Now, the wonder in his eyes displayed nothing less than a miracle.
I saw him gazing at the opening doorway. When I, myself, let my eyes drift over there I only saw a blackhaired woman my age in a very expensive coat.
I gazed back at my father, laughed and shrugged.
“What?”
My father giggled.
“Jesus just decided to grant me a peek at how life looks on the other side,” he said.
I winced, waited again and then looked back at the doorway.
The door of the restaurant had closed from the inside now and the woman in question was heading our way.
She spoke briefly to the waiter that my dad had waved away just a minute ago.
That man bowed in an exact 45 degree angle and waved his hand in a gesture that looked like the half movement profile of a champion swimmer. The woman followed him and glanced at us in a very fleeting way. Half way across toward the next table, however, the woman stopped. And then, in one extraordinary moment of realization, I realized who she was. Those high Italian cheekbones, those red pouting lips, those blossoming cheeks, those sparkling brown eyes, those black curls, that half-smile and a complexion that was vanilla mixed with nougat, a bosom that leaned on the size of decently small watermelons. That kind of a buxom look would definately make any woman, including me, hate her. It would also make any man love her. My dad was in love with Tracciatella’s voice. Her looks were just a nice bonus. Her voice. That chocolate-rich soprano with its brilliant timbre, warm like a Rioja-grape. If her soprano-voice were a dessert, hers would be a Tiramisu, richly rum-flavored.
The woman took a moment to look at us, while the waiter behind her gestured eagerly for her to sit down by her chosen table. She shook her head, fervently, now deciding to actually take her instincts seriously.
My father stood up out of his seat, erect like a tin soldier.
“Miss Tracciatella,” he said, laughing. “May I say that you were glorious tonight? My daughter and I heard you sing. I was,” my father laughed, “... in heaven.”
The soprano smiled. “Thank you, Mr. ...?”
“Rule,” my father said. “Charles Edwin Rule, Singora. Your greatest admirer.”
The soprano lift her hand and caressed my father’s cheek. It was a small gesture, just a young hand caressing an old man’s cheek. So gentle, so fleeting, so kind.
“May I tell you a story, signora?” my dad inquired.
The woman took a few decisive steps toward us and smiled. “Of course. Go ahead.”
My father cleared his throat and began.
“I feel like I am invading your privacy, but you have a right to know this.”
“Well, I was just on my way to a table for a solitary glass of wine. I like some privacy after all that hullabaloo. But I am on my own, Mr. Rule, and you seem to be nice people. There is no reason why I cannot spend some time with you, no?”
The charming Italian accent sing-songed for a bit, but the moment of silence that followed told both me and Tracciatella that my father was about to say something serious. I feared the worst.
“I don’t know how to say this, Miss Tracciatella, so I will just say it. My son tried to kill himself a couple of months ago,” my father said. When my father uttered these words, it felt as if I was going to sink through the floor. “What stopped him from doing that was a recording he heard, by coincidence.It was you singing an aria from the opera we heard tonight. La Gioconda.”
I don’t know why, but I had the feeling that this would embarrass one of the greatest opera divas of our century. The pain inside me, brought on by these words, flung me slowly back towards the recollection of my brother standing on that ledge.
I looked away, my lip trembling, my teeth sinking into my tongue in order to control the sobs bubbling inside me.
“Miss Tracciatella,” I said. “My father rambles on ... forgive him.”
“I don’t ramble,” my dad spat, angrily. “Miss Tracciatella saved my son’s life. She has a right to know this.”
At that moment, I realized why I had stalled and why I had waited.
This was fate at work.
Miss Tracciatella lift her hand and looked at me. “You are ...?”
“Rebecca Rule, a colleague,” I said, closing my eyes humbly, actually feeling silly for calling myself a colleague. “I am a soprano, like you, but struggling to get somewhere.”
I waited, stalled again, felt those sobs now jittering in my throat, threatening to explode onto my tongue.
“Miss Rule,” she responded, batting her long eyelashes, her lucious Italian voice meandering into a soft Puccini-like tranquillity. “I am very interested in your father’s story. Let me listen to it.”
I smiled at the woman, realizing that it didn’t matter anymore that I maybe could profit from this situation in my career. She looked at me and I saw a woman who felt sympathetic toward us, who cared. Famous or not, she cared. Miss Tracciatella, whose voice had filled the Metropolitan Opera just now, sat down at our table, gesturing for me to sit down again and join my father as he shared the anecdote.
My father fiddled with his hands a bit, played with his napkin. His eyes danced back and forth for a few seconds, he held his breath and there was a moment when I am sure both Miss Tracciatella and I wondered what would happen next.
Then, my father exhaled, speaking in that low Lee Marvin-like rumble that I had learned to love. There was a serenity to his words, a restfulness that obviously affected Miss Tracciatella as well as me. And I wondered why I had been embarrassed by my father’s story at all. It was natural for him to want to share the tale with her.
And I listened just as intently as the diva obviously did.
My embarrassment had disappeared with Miss Tracciatella’s reprimand.
“It began a few months ago, when I was diagnosed with cancer,” my father began. “That was enough to make my son devastated, of course, knowing that my tumor was the size of a tennisball. It was located in a very bad place, which made matters worse. But my son’s grief became even deeper when he fought with his girlfriend over his lack of care for me. My son’s girlfriend left him in the middle of the night, claiming that she had made a serious mistake in starting the relationship with him at all. If that were not enough, he was also fired from his job. To make matters worse, a shopkeeper screamed at him during a very busy shopping day. My son was at the way back from a social service institution. Soon enough, he found himself on the edge outside on the ledge of the third floor of my daughter’s apartment building. But then, out of nowhere he heard music. Strangely beautiful music coming from a stereo somewhere in the distance.”
My father looked at me. I knew what was coming and my father now cried silent tears full of pride. I began crying, too, and Miss Tracciatella now lift her eyebrows, knowing in her heart that her admirer actually longed to embrace her and tell her how wonderful life was.
“He recognized that voice as yours, Miss Tracciatella,” my father said. “He had always been a fan of yours, but this situation was so fateful and so uncanny that it had to be God’s finger showing him the way. It was a voice from heaven and you were singing that famous aria Suicidio from Act 4, where La Gioconda stabs herself to death. Mark my words, Miss Tracciatella, La Gioconda has lost a parent and she was singing ‘it is a beautiful day to die’. You would think that would make him want to jump?”
The Italian diva nodded.
“It didn’t.”
I saw my father’s eyes move like they had when Miss Tracciatella came into the restaurant, when he tasted a delicious cake or when the pain in his back disappeared.
“He realized that if someone could write such beautiful music about committing suicide, then life was worth living. That’s strange, isn’t it?”
Tracciatella shook her head. “No, it’s beautiful. I saved someone’s life.”
My father cried, sobs now exploding through his throat and over into his face. The grimace of his facial features turned his mouth into a tremolo of desperation. Seeing how he cried, I cried along with him. The whole scenario became clear as a bell. I had taken my dad to La Gioconda to hear his favorite singer, on his birthday, only to distract the attention from the horrible memory of his son wanting to jump. Now, he chose to face it.
“Miss Rule?”
I looked over at Lucilla Tracciatella and saw that she cried, too.
“Yes?”
“Did the music come from your flat? Did you know your brother was about to kill himself?”
That bubbling sadness now exploded even further into my eyes. Not being able to control my tears, I buried my eyes in the napkin and sobbed. Signora Tracciatella reached out her hand and took mine, caressing it.
I shook my head. “No. I had no idea.”
“My dear,” she said. “Your brother chose life. You should be happy.”
I looked up at my colleague and nodded.
“The fact that my brother had chosen my apartment building to kill himself was difficult enough,” I began. “But I could have been away or I could’ve chosen another aria to listen to or could’ve sung myself. I don’t know. Whatever it was, it saved him.”
“Then be happy,” the Signora said. “Your brother is alive.”
“He stepped off the ledge, went to his girl and patched the whole thing up,” my father continued. “Now, they have decided to marry. He is still looking for work, but he is alive, engaged and happy. Which proves that there is always hope.”
The woman sitting opposite me now was no longer a famous opera star. No matter where she came from or what she had done to get there, the woman was simply a soul whose art had made someone choose life. And so, her runny mascara covered half of her face and her lip trembled. The smile that appeared on her face turned into a sad cry, one that twitched and became a laugh again.
“The difficult thing is,” I continued, “that my father’s tumor now has turned malignant. His doctors are unsure how long a time he has left.”
The Italian woman, that happened to be a famous opera star, lift her hand and caressed my father’s cheek again. She smiled at him. My God, this famous star really cared.
My father looked at me, insecure about his own demise.
Lucilla Tracciatella sat back in her chair, ignoring the looks of the other guests. To come to think of it, the other people weren’t only looking. They were staring. Somehow, it mattered little to us crazy artists. We were crying our eyes out, this famous star sitting at our table, the waiter now back at his position in the corner, the Signora obviously thinking very hard about something rather important. The slight similarity to the look in my father’s face sent shivers down my spine. What was this? Fate? Yes. It was.
“May I say that you are wearing the same expression my father always sports when he is thinking very hard about something?”
The star’s absent minded gaze met our eyes, but didn’t really penetrate our souls. The look lingered there, a half-smile bringing it sweet company.
“Uhm,” she said. “I don’t know if it will work.”
“What?” my father rumbled.
“I mean, I don’t know you that well.”
“Just tell us what is on your mind, Signora,” my father resounded.
Now, the diva made a decision. One that felt good. I had no idea at the time what that decision was, only that my soul told me it would change my life. She sat up in her chair, positioning her elbows on the table.
“I am a survivor, as well,” she said, closing her eyes, apparently stabbed by painful recollection.
“What do you mean?” my dad mused. “Survivor of ...”
“Cancer,” she said. “Malignant cancer.”
My eyes drifted back and forth between my dad and Miss Tracciatella. The clear insecurity that came shooting out of the star at that moment made me insecure and I think it had the same effect on my dad.
“You? When?” I said.
“My agent is probably going to kill me for telling you this,” her voice danced, consonants overpronounced in a clear Milano way. “But this has to be fate. I would not be here, hearing you say these things without a reason.”
She leaned even further over toward us, probably in order to avoid any other guests overhearing our conversation.
“The press called it Lucilla’s Sabbatical Year,” she said.
“That was it?” my dad said. “You left the opera world to cure cancer?”
The diva now opened her eyes wide, waving her hands around. “I am entrusting with secrets here, so please don’t tell anyone. Okay?”
We both nodded and I think that she knew we could be trusted.
She now laughed, a look of hope spreading across her entire countenance.
“Why do you think my hair was so short when I returned to the Met?”
“You mean, you were cured of a brain tumor?”
Sighing and leaning back in her chair, she knew her risk could cost her jobs, if her agent disagreed with her about her honesty or the press somehow found out about it.
“My doctor has his practice in San Diego,” she began. “He is famous for curing cancer patients. If you want, I can introduce you to him.”
My father looked at me and I looked at him.
When we looked back at the Signora, she had already ordered to replace the empty bottle of Chilean red wine with a full one.
When our three gazes met, no tears flooded our sweet faces.
We all knew what we wanted to do.
Call my brother and tell him that we might have found a good doctor for his father.
Maybe, just maybe, I could convince the Signora to join Velucci and Lisonka.
Maybe, just maybe, I would be able to audition not only for them, but also for Tracciatella. Not that it mattered anymore, but it felt damn good.
A year later, at the moment of writing, I am sitting back in my Park Avenue apartment in New York City after my initial premiere as La Gioconda at the Metropolitan Opera. I think it quite unprecendented that two sopranos have worked so well together in sharing one role with each other. The oppurtunities are endless. No more Callas and Tibaldi-like rivalry. Just two gals singing the same role in the same opera house and going shopping in the teabreaks.
Killing myself on stage, while singing that aria, has become extremely difficult, though. At the curtain call, however, I got my reward. I didn’t have to walk out a hundred times and bow before the crowd like Pavarotti did once or twice. I counted twenty-two curtain calls. Someone else counted twenty-five. That’s okay for an emerging star.
Oh, yes. I have to add that my dad is San Diego now. I sort of paid his hospital expenses with my money from this gig here at the opera. But that’s also okay. My brother says that once these performances become routine, I could pay for five more operations. I hope I don’t have to. My dad should remain healthy.
I keep asking them when they are both returning to New York.
They say that the climate is so good over in San Diego, they might just stay there.
So they should. After all, my brother’s girlfriend went along for the ride. Although I think, personally, she only did it because she loves going to the beach so much. But my brother is happy with his Jennifer. Jennifer and John. Sounds cool, doesn’t it?
It also sounds cool that my family is alive.
If only mom was alive, too.
Well, she is looking down at us from heaven.
Now all I need is a boyfriend.
But that is another story.
Anyway, I got to go to bed now. Lucilla is coming over tomorrow. She is here in Manhattan, singing Elisabeth in Tannhäuser. I am not quite ready for that yet. Regardless, we both have our first free days in three months tomorrow. She has spent hers mostly in Milano, I have spent most of my time here, but now we have decided to spend a day together. Cooking? Talking shop? Talking men? Talking about agents? Taking my Porsche on a spin around the country? We don’t know yet. Maybe we will just be avoiding the press.
Whatever we decide, it will be fun.
I still have to pinch myself, though. I really can’t believe I am living this dream of a lifestyle. Especially since I was just a struggling artist last year. Okay, a rich struggling artist living on Park Avenue. Still, nobody knew who I was this time last year. Now, it seems that the expectancy the press has had in hearing the new Gioconda, meaning me, has created a hype that I wonder if I am capable of facing. In any case, I am happy that my father is alive.
And I know now what life is like on the other side.
Of what, you ask?
On the other side of anything. Life, death, obscurity, fame, happiness, desperation.
I am on the other side of pain. I can now appreciate joy, because I have know what pain is like. I can now appreciate fame, because I know what obscurity is like. For where there is a light in the darkness, there is hope. And so I will tell Lucilla when she comes over tomorrow to keep breathing and never give up, even if her cancer does return.
My father is alive. That is the main thing.
Thank God. Thank Lucilla Tracciatella.
If she ever needs me, I will be there for her, to hold her hand, to sing with her, on the same stages, for the same crowds. And to show the world and the press that it is possible to cooperate, even if you happen to be two bitchy sopranos aiming for world stardom.
What is fame anyway?
Fame is fickle.
Creativity rules.
If fame arrives as a result of that creativity, that’s fine.
Ah, wait. There’s a text message on my phone.
Lucilla’s plane just landed.
She’s looking forward to seeing me tomorrow.
That’s what I always say when I get up in the morning, before I look at myself in the mirror, that is. Just kidding. If there’s one thing that helps, it’s self-irony. Good friends come in special packages. Lucilla’s package is a special one.
I will go to bed now.
What will I dream about?
I will dream about life on the other side – of anything.
A ROSE OF THE GHETTO
By Israel Zangwill
One day it occurred to Leibel that he ought to get married. He went to
Sugarman the Shadchan forthwith.
"I have the very thing for you," said the great marriage broker.
"Is she pretty?" asked Leibel.
"Her father has a boot and shoe warehouse," replied Sugarman,
enthusiastically.
"Then there ought to be a dowry with her," said Leibel, eagerly.
"Certainly a dowry! A fine man like you!"
"How much do you think it would be?"
"Of course it is not a large warehouse; but then you could get your
boots at trade price, and your wife's, perhaps, for the cost of the
leather."
"When could I see her?"
"I will arrange for you to call next Sabbath afternoon."
"You won't charge me more than a sovereign?"
"Not a groschen more! Such a pious maiden! I'm sure you will be happy.
She has so much way-of-the-country [breeding]. And of course five per
cent on the dowry?"
"H'm! Well, I don't mind!" "Perhaps they won't give a dowry," he thought
with a consolatory sense of outwitting the Shadchan.
On the Saturday Leibel went to see the damsel, and on the Sunday he went
to see Sugarman the Shadchan.
"But your maiden squints!" he cried, resentfully.
"An excellent thing!" said Sugarman. "A wife who squints can never look
her husband straight in the face and overwhelm him. Who would quail
before a woman with a squint?"
"I could endure the squint," went on Leibel, dubiously, "but she also
stammers."
"Well, what is better, in the event of a quarrel? The difficulty she has
in talking will keep her far more silent than most wives. You had best
secure her while you have the chance."
"But she halts on the left leg," cried Leibel, exasperated.
"_Gott in Himmel!_ Do you mean to say you do not see what an advantage
it is to have a wife unable to accompany you in all your goings?"
Leibel lost patience.
"Why, the girl is a hunchback!" he protested, furiously.
"My dear Leibel," said the marriage broker, deprecatingly shrugging his
shoulders and spreading out his palms, "you can't expect perfection!"
Nevertheless Leibel persisted in his unreasonable attitude. He accused
Sugarman of wasting his time, of making a fool of him.
"A fool of you!" echoed the Shadchan, indignantly, "when I give you a
chance of a boot and shoe manufacturer's daughter? You will make a fool
of yourself if you refuse. I dare say her dowry would be enough to set
you up as a master tailor. At present you are compelled to slave away as
a cutter for thirty shillings a week. It is most unjust. If you only had
a few machines you would be able to employ your own cutters. And they
can be got so cheap nowadays."
This gave Leibel pause, and he departed without having definitely broken
the negotiations. His whole week was befogged by doubt, his work became
uncertain, his chalk marks lacked their usual decision, and he did not
always cut his coat according to his cloth. His aberrations became
so marked that pretty Rose Green, the sweater's eldest daughter,
who managed a machine in the same room, divined, with all a woman's
intuition, that he was in love.
"What is the matter?" she said, in rallying Yiddish, when they were
taking their lunch of bread and cheese and ginger-beer amid the clatter
of machines, whose serfs had not yet knocked off work.
"They are proposing me a match," he answered, sullenly.
"A match!" ejaculated Rose. "Thou!" She had worked by his side for
years, and familiarity bred the second person singular. Leibel nodded
his head, and put a mouthful of Dutch cheese into it.
"With whom?" asked Rose. Somehow he felt ashamed. He gurgled the answer
into the stone ginger-beer bottle, which he put to his thirsty lips.
"With Leah Volcovitch!"
"Leah Volcovitch!" gasped Rose. "Leah, the boot and shoe manufacturer's
daughter?"
Leibel hung his head--he scarce knew why. He did not dare meet her gaze.
His droop said "Yes." There was a long pause.
"And why dost thou not have her?" said Rose. It was more than an
inquiry; there was contempt in it, and perhaps even pique.
Leibel did not reply. The embarrassing silence reigned again, and
reigned long. Rose broke it at last.
"Is it that thou likest me better?" she asked.
Leibel seemed to see a ball of lightning in the air; it burst, and he
felt the electric current strike right through his heart. The shock
threw his head up with a jerk, so that his eyes gazed into a face whose
beauty and tenderness were revealed to him for the first time. The face
of his old acquaintance had vanished; this was a cajoling, coquettish,
smiling face, suggesting undreamed-of things.
"_Nu_, yes," he replied, without perceptible pause.
"_Nu_, good!" she rejoined as quickly.
And in the ecstasy of that moment of mutual understanding Leibel
forgot to wonder why he had never thought of Rose before. Afterward he
remembered that she had always been his social superior.
The situation seemed too dream-like for explanation to the room just
yet. Leibel lovingly passed a bottle of ginger-beer, and Rose took a
sip, with a beautiful air of plighting troth, understood only of those
two. When Leibel quaffed the remnant it intoxicated him. The relics of
the bread and cheese were the ambrosia to this nectar. They did not dare
kiss; the suddenness of it all left them bashful, and the smack of lips
would have been like a cannon-peal announcing their engagement. There
was a subtler sweetness in this sense of a secret, apart from the fact
that neither cared to break the news to the master tailor, a stern
little old man. Leibel's chalk marks continued indecisive that
afternoon, which shows how correctly Rose had connected them with love.
Before he left that night Rose said to him, "Art thou sure thou wouldst
not rather have Leah Volcovitch?"
"Not for all the boots and shoes in the world," replied Leibel,
vehemently.
"And I," protested Rose, "would rather go without my own than without
thee."
The landing outside the workshop was so badly lighted that their lips
came together in the darkness.
"Nay, nay; thou must not yet," said Rose. "Thou art still courting
Leah Volcovitch. For aught thou knowest, Sugarman the Shadchan may have
entangled thee beyond redemption."
"Not so," asserted Leibel. "I have only seen the maiden once."
"Yes. But Sugarman has seen her father several times," persisted Rose.
"For so misshapen a maiden his commission would be large. Thou must go
to Sugarman to-night, and tell him that thou canst not find it in thy
heart to go on with the match."
"Kiss me, and I will go," pleaded Leibel.
"Go, and I will kiss thee," said Rose, resolutely.
"And when shall we tell thy father?" he asked, pressing her hand, as the
next best thing to her lips.
"As soon as thou art free from Leah."
"But will he consent?"
"He will not be glad," said Rose, frankly. "But after mother's
death--peace be upon her--the rule passed from her hands into mine."
"Ah, that is well," said Leibel. He was a superficial thinker.
Leibel found Sugarman at supper. The great Shadchan offered him a chair,
but nothing else. Hospitality was associated in his mind with special
occasions only, and involved lemonade and "stuffed monkeys."
He was very put out--almost to the point of indigestion--to hear of
Leibel's final determination, and plied him with reproachful inquiries.
"You don't mean to say that you give up a boot and shoe manufacturer
merely because his daughter has round shoulders!" he exclaimed,
incredulously.
"It is more than round shoulders--it is a hump!" cried Leibel.
"And suppose? See how much better off you will be when you get your own
machines! We do not refuse to let camels carry our burdens because they
have humps."
"Ah, but a wife is not a camel," said Leibel, with a sage air.
"And a cutter is not a master tailor," retorted Sugarman.
"Enough, enough!" cried Leibel. "I tell you, I would not have her if she
were a machine warehouse."
"There sticks something behind," persisted Sugarman, unconvinced.
Leibel shook his head. "Only her hump" he said with a flash of humour.
"Moses Mendelssohn had a hump," expostulated Sugarman, reproachfully.
"Yes, but he was a heretic," rejoined Leibel, who was not without
reading. "And then he was a man! A man with two humps could find a wife
for each. But a woman with a hump cannot expect a husband in addition."
"Guard your tongue from evil," quoth the Shadchan, angrily. "If
everybody were to talk like you Leah Volcovitch would never be married
at all."
Leibel shrugged his shoulders, and reminded him that hunchbacked girls
who stammered and squinted and halted on left legs were not usually led
under the canopy.
"Nonsense! Stuff!" cried Sugarman, angrily. "That is because they do not
come to me."
"Leah Volcovitch _has_ come to you," said Leibel, "but she shall not
come to me." And he rose, anxious to escape.
Instantly Sugarman gave a sigh of resignation. "Be it so! Then I shall
have to look out for another, that's all."
"No, I don't want any," replied Leibel, quickly.
Sugarman stopped eating. "You don't want any?" he cried. "But you came
to me for one?"
"I--I--know," stammered Leibel. "But I've--I've altered my mind."
"One needs Hillel's patience to deal with you!" cried Sugarman. "But
I shall charge you, all the same, for my trouble. You cannot cancel an
order like this in the middle! No, no! You can play fast and loose with
Leah Volcovitch, but you shall not make a fool of me."
"But if I don't want one?" said Leibel, sullenly.
Sugarman gazed at him with a cunning look of suspicion. "Didn't I say
there was something sticking behind?"
Leibel felt guilty. "But whom have you got in your eye?" he inquired,
desperately.
"Perhaps you may have some one in yours!" naively answered Sugarman.
Leibel gave a hypocritic long-drawn "U-m-m-m! I wonder if Rose
Green--where I work--" he said, and stopped.
"I fear not," said Sugarman. "She is on my list. Her father gave her to
me some months ago, but he is hard to please. Even the maiden herself is
not easy, being pretty."
"Perhaps she has waited for some one," suggested Leibel.
Sugarman's keen ear caught the note of complacent triumph.
"You have been asking her yourself!" he exclaimed, in horror-stricken
accents.
"And if I have?" said Leibel, defiantly.
"You have cheated me! And so has Eliphaz Green--I always knew he was
tricky! You have both defrauded me!"
"I did not mean to," said Leibel, mildly.
"You _did_ mean to. You had no business to take the matter out of my
hands. What right had you to propose to Rose Green?"
"I did not," cried Leibel, excitedly.
"Then you asked her father!"
"No; I have not asked her father yet."
"Then how do you know she will have you?"
"I--I know," stammered Leibel, feeling himself somehow a liar as well as
a thief. His brain was in a whirl; he could not remember how the thing
had come about. Certainly he had not proposed; nor could he say that she
had.
"You know she will have you," repeated Sugarman, reflectively. "And does
_she_ know?"
"Yes. In fact," he blurted out, "we arranged it together."
"Ah, you both know. And does her father know?"
"Not yet."
"Ah, then I must get his consent," said Sugarman, decisively.
"I--I thought of speaking to him myself."
"Yourself!" echoed Sugarman, in horror. "Are you unsound in the head?
Why, that would be worse than the mistake you have already made!"
"What mistake?" asked Leibel, firing up.
"The mistake of asking the maiden herself. When you quarrel with her
after your marriage she will always throw it in your teeth that you
wished to marry her. Moreover, if you tell a maiden you love her, her
father will think you ought to marry her as she stands. Still, what is
done is done." And he sighed regretfully.
"And what more do I want? I love her."
"You piece of clay!" cried Sugarman, contemptuously. "Love will not turn
machines, much less buy them. You must have a dowry. Her father has a
big stocking; he can well afford it."
Leibel's eyes lit up. There was really no reason why he should not have
bread and cheese with his kisses.
"Now, if _you_ went to her father," pursued the Shadchan, "the odds
are that he would not even give you his daughter--to say nothing of the
dowry. After all, it is a cheek of you to aspire so high. As you told me
from the first, you haven't saved a penny. Even my commission you won't
be able to pay till you get the dowry. But if _I_ go I do not despair of
getting a substantial sum--to say nothing of the daughter."
"Yes, I think you had better go," said Leibel, eagerly.
"But if I do this thing for you I shall want a pound more," rejoined
Sugarman.
"A pound more!" echoed Leibel, in dismay. "Why?"
"Because Rose Green's hump is of gold," replied Sugarman, oracularly.
"Also, she is fair to see, and many men desire her."
"But you have always your five per cent, on the dowry."
"It will be less than Volcovitch's," explained Sugarman. "You see, Green
has other and less beautiful daughters."
"Yes, but then it settles itself more easily. Say five shillings."
"Eliphaz Green is a hard man," said the Shadchan instead.
"Ten shillings is the most I will give!"
"Twelve and sixpence is the least I will take. Eliphaz Green haggles so
terribly."
They split the difference, and so eleven and threepence represented the
predominance of Eliphaz Green's stinginess over Volcovitch's.
The very next day Sugarman invaded the Green workroom. Rose bent over
her seams, her heart fluttering. Leibel had duly apprised her of
the roundabout manner in which she would have to be won, and she had
acquiesced in the comedy. At the least it would save her the trouble of
father-taming.
Sugarman's entry was brusque and breathless. He was overwhelmed with
joyous emotion. His blue bandana trailed agitatedly from his coat-tail.
"At last!" he cried, addressing the little white-haired master tailor;
"I have the very man for you."
"Yes?" grunted Eliphaz, unimpressed. The monosyllable was packed with
emotion. It said, "Have you really the face to come to me again with an
ideal man?"
"He has all the qualities that you desire," began the Shadchan, in a
tone that repudiated the implications of the monosyllable. "He is young,
strong, God-fearing--"
"Has he any money?" grumpily interrupted Eliphaz.
"He _will_ have money," replied Sugarman, unhesitatingly, "when he
marries."
"Ah!" The father's voice relaxed, and his foot lay limp on the treadle.
He worked one of his machines himself, and paid himself the wages so as
to enjoy the profit. "How much will he have?"
"I think he will have fifty pounds; and the least you can do is to let
him have fifty pounds," replied Sugarman, with the same happy ambiguity.
Eliphaz shook his head on principle.
"Yes, you will," said Sugarman, "when you learn how fine a man he is."
The flush of confusion and trepidation already on Leibel's countenance
became a rosy glow of modesty, for he could not help overhearing what
was being said, owing to the lull of the master tailor's machine.
"Tell me, then," rejoined Eliphaz.
"Tell me, first, if you will give fifty to a young, healthy,
hard-working, God-fearing man, whose idea it is to start as a master
tailor on his own account? And you know how profitable that is!"
"To a man like that," said Eliphaz, in a burst of enthusiasm, "I would
give as much as twenty-seven pounds ten!"
Sugarman groaned inwardly, but Leibel's heart leaped with joy. To get
four months' wages at a stroke! With twenty-seven pounds ten he could
certainly procure several machines, especially on the instalment system.
Out of the corners of his eyes he shot a glance at Rose, who was beyond
earshot.
"Unless you can promise thirty it is waste of time mentioning his name,"
said Sugarman.
"Well, well--who is he?"
Sugarman bent down, lowering his voice into the father's ear.
"What! Leibel!" cried Eliphaz, outraged.
"Sh!" said Sugarman, "or he will overhear your delight, and ask more. He
has his nose high enough, as it is."
"B--b--b--ut," sputtered the bewildered parent, "I know Leibel myself.
I see him every day. I don't want a Shadchan to find me a man I know--a
mere hand in my own workshop!"
"Your talk has neither face nor figure," answered Sugarman, sternly. "It
is just the people one sees every day that one knows least. I warrant
that if I had not put it into your head you would never have dreamt of
Leibel as a son-in-law. Come now, confess."
Eliphaz grunted vaguely, and the Shadchan went on triumphantly: "I
thought as much. And yet where could you find a better man to keep your
daughter?"
"He ought to be content with her alone," grumbled her father.
Sugarman saw the signs of weakening, and dashed in, full strength: "It's
a question whether he will have her at all. I have not been to him about
her yet. I awaited your approval of the idea." Leibel admired the verbal
accuracy of these statements, which he had just caught.
"But I didn't know he would be having money," murmured Eliphaz.
"Of course you didn't know. That's what the Shadchan is for--to point
out the things that are under your nose."
"But where will he be getting this money from?"
"From you," said Sugarman, frankly.
"From me?"
"From whom else? Are you not his employer? It has been put by for his
marriage day."
"He has saved it?"
"He has not spent it," said Sugarman, impatiently.
"But do you mean to say he has saved fifty pounds?"
"If he could manage to save fifty pounds out of your wages he would be
indeed a treasure," said Sugarman. "Perhaps it might be thirty."
"But you said fifty."
"Well, you came down to thirty," retorted the Shadchan. "You cannot
expect him to have more than your daughter brings."
"I never said thirty," Eliphaz reminded him. "Twenty-seven ten was my
last bid."
"Very well; that will do as a basis of negotiations," said Sugarman,
resignedly. "I will call upon him this evening. If I were to go over
and speak to him now, he would perceive you were anxious, and raise his
terms, and that will never do. Of course you will not mind allowing me a
pound more for finding you so economical a son-in-law?"
"Not a penny more."
"You need not fear," said Sugarman, resentfully. "It is not likely I
shall be able to persuade him to take so economical a father-in-law. So
you will be none the worse for promising."
"Be it so," said Eliphaz, with a gesture of weariness, and he started
his machine again.
"Twenty-seven pounds ten, remember," said Sugarman, above the whir.
Eliphaz nodded his head, whirring his wheel-work louder.
"And paid before the wedding, mind."
The machine took no notice.
"Before the wedding, mind," repeated Sugarman. "Before we go under the
canopy."
"Go now, go now!" grunted Eliphaz, with a gesture of impatience. "It
shall all be well." And the white-haired head bowed immovably over its
work.
In the evening Rose extracted from her father the motive of Sugarman's
visit, and confessed that the idea was to her liking.
"But dost thou think he will have me, little father?" she asked, with
cajoling eyes.
"Any one would have my Rose."
"Ah, but Leibel is different. So many years he has sat at my side and
said nothing."
"He had his work to think of. He is a good, saving youth."
"At this very moment Sugarman is trying to persuade him--not so? I
suppose he will want much money."
"Be easy, my child." And he passed his discoloured hand over her hair.
Sugarman turned up the next day, and reported that Leibel was
unobtainable under thirty pounds, and Eliphaz, weary of the contest,
called over Leibel, till that moment carefully absorbed in his
scientific chalk marks, and mentioned the thing to him for the first
time. "I am not a man to bargain," Eliphaz said, and so he gave the
young man his tawny hand, and a bottle of rum sprang from somewhere,
and work was suspended for five minutes, and the "hands" all drank
amid surprised excitement. Sugarman's visits had prepared them to
congratulate Rose; but Leibel was a shock.
The formal engagement was marked by even greater junketing, and at last
the marriage day came. Leibel was resplendent in a diagonal frockcoat,
cut by his own hand; and Rose stepped from the cab a medley of flowers,
fairness, and white silk, and behind her came two bridesmaids,--her
sisters,--a trio that glorified the spectator-strewn pavement outside
the synagogue. Eliphaz looked almost tall in his shiny high hat and
frilled shirt-front. Sugarman arrived on foot, carrying red-socked
little Ebenezer tucked under his arm.
Leibel and Rose were not the only couple to be disposed of, for it was
the thirty-third day of the Omer--a day fruitful in marriages.
But at last their turn came. They did not, however, come in their turn,
and their special friends among the audience wondered why they had
lost their precedence. After several later marriages had taken place
a whisper began to circulate. The rumour of a hitch gained ground
steadily, and the sensation was proportionate. And, indeed, the rose was
not to be picked without a touch of the thorn.
Gradually the facts leaked out, and a buzz of talk and comment ran
through the waiting synagogue. Eliphaz had not paid up!
At first he declared he would put down the money immediately after the
ceremony. But the wary Sugarman, schooled by experience, demanded its
instant delivery on behalf of his other client. Hard pressed, Eliphaz
produced ten sovereigns from his trousers-pocket, and tendered them on
account. These Sugarman disdainfully refused, and the negotiations were
suspended. The bridegroom's party was encamped in one room, the bride's
in another, and after a painful delay Eliphaz sent an emissary to say
that half the amount should be forthcoming, the extra five pounds in a
bright new Bank of England note. Leibel, instructed and encouraged by
Sugarman, stood firm.
And then arose a hubbub of voices, a chaos of suggestions; friends
rushed to and fro between the camps, some emerging from their seats in
the synagogue to add to the confusion. But Eliphaz had taken his stand
upon a rock--he had no more ready money. To-morrow, the next day, he
would have some. And Leibel, pale and dogged, clutched tighter at those
machines that were slipping away momently from him. He had not yet seen
his bride that morning, and so her face was shadowy compared with the
tangibility of those machines. Most of the other maidens were married
women by now, and the situation was growing desperate. From the female
camp came terrible rumours of bridesmaids in hysterics, and a bride that
tore her wreath in a passion of shame and humiliation. Eliphaz sent word
that he would give an I O U for the balance, but that he really could
not muster any more current coin. Sugarman instructed the ambassador to
suggest that Eliphaz should raise the money among his friends.
And the short spring day slipped away. In vain the minister, apprised of
the block, lengthened out the formulae for the other pairs, and blessed
them with more reposeful unction. It was impossible to stave off the
Leibel-Green item indefinitely, and at last Rose remained the only
orange-wreathed spinster in the synagogue. And then there was a hush of
solemn suspense, that swelled gradually into a steady rumble of babbling
tongues, as minute succeeded minute and the final bridal party still
failed to appear. The latest bulletin pictured the bride in a dead
faint. The afternoon was waning fast. The minister left his post near
the canopy, under which so many lives had been united, and came to add
his white tie to the forces for compromise. But he fared no better than
the others. Incensed at the obstinacy of the antagonists, he declared he
would close the synagogue. He gave the couple ten minutes to marry in
or quit. Then chaos came, and pandemonium--a frantic babel of suggestion
and exhortation from the crowd. When five minutes had passed a legate
from Eliphaz announced that his side had scraped together twenty pounds,
and that this was their final bid.
Leibel wavered; the long day's combat had told upon him; the reports
of the bride's distress had weakened him. Even Sugarman had lost his
cocksureness of victory. A few minutes more and both commissions might
slip through his fingers. Once the parties left the synagogue, it would
not be easy to drive them there another day. But he cheered on his man
still: one could always surrender at the tenth minute.
At the eighth the buzz of tongues faltered suddenly, to be transposed
into a new key, so to speak. Through the gesticulating assembly swept
that murmur of expectation which crowds know when the procession is
coming at last. By some mysterious magnetism all were aware that the
BRIDE herself--the poor hysteric bride--had left the paternal camp, was
coming in person to plead with her mercenary lover.
And as the glory of her and the flowers and the white draperies loomed
upon Leibel's vision his heart melted in worship, and he knew his
citadel would crumble in ruins at her first glance, at her first touch.
Was it fair fighting? As his troubled vision cleared, and as she came
nigh unto him, he saw to his amazement that she was speckless and
composed--no trace of tears dimmed the fairness of her face, there was
no disarray in her bridal wreath.
The clock showed the ninth minute.
She put her hand appeallingly on his arm, while a heavenly light came
into her face--the expression of a Joan of Arc animating her country.
"Do not give in, Leibel!" she said. "Do not have me! Do not let them
persuade thee! By my life, thou must not! Go home!"
So at the eleventh minute the vanquished Eliphaz produced the balance,
and they all lived happily ever afterward.
“Ice Cream Man”
by J. Eddie Edwards
I’m shaking my head, peeking out my wife’s new and expensive horizontal blinds in our Ikea-made living room. Charlene closes her eyes so I can’t see them roll at me. Her lips purse like she is sucking on sour candy. I know she agrees with me but her mom’s stubbornness and her dad’s fake positivity prevails over reality. That reality is Chad, that son of a bitch.
One year, four months, two weeks, and three days we’ve been neighbors with a good fence and solid, simultaneous waves from our porches. But that’s it.
His ’71 Camaro sits on his front lawn. He parks it there instead of the driveway like normal suburban folk because it is closer to his front door in case someone tries to steal or repossess the hunk of shit. I imagine if he still owed the bank money for it, they wouldn’t repossess it. They would just set it on fire as a warning to other white trash deadbeats. The lime paint mixes well with the rust to give it an almost-planned camouflaged motif. I have yet to see it run farther than the end of our cul de sac, but it has kept me from sleeping most Saturday mornings past eight o’clock for one year, four months, two weeks, and three days. Saturday is when Chad likes to “hear his baby purr.” It rumbles the way I imagine an industrialized fart machine or alien garbage disposal would.
Charlene mocks me, asking how I know what those things sound like. I don’t have the time to entertain stupid questions. She knows damn well the sound I am complaining about. How our Nazi Homeowner’s Association can complain about a small brown spot on my lawn and not go after the massive turd on his in the shape of a rusted piece of shit ’71 Camaro is incomprehensible.
It has been quiet the last three weekends. Chad bragged that he was traveling between Miami and some place in Africa for gigs as a caterer. He says he also promotes his local ice cream parlor on Baker Street. I never heard of such a thing. I can’t imagine African dignitaries outsourcing for American caterers or particular flavors of ice cream. I doubt he is that good. I can’t imagine him in a chef’s uniform or any uniform as I watch him stand outside, shirtless as always, showing off his bony
frame and tribal tattoos. He looks like Iggy Pop’s stunt double. His emaciated composure also brings to question his chef-ness. I only trust fat chefs who obviously enjoy food as a general rule of thumb.
I am almost certain this whole catering gig is a front for smuggling blood diamonds or something in exchange for heroin, marijuana, pills, stolen artwork, cocaine, meth, drugs I’ve never even heard of, sex workers, laundered money, dirty money, small arms, big arms or whatever else one uses blood diamonds for. I’m not even sure what a blood diamond is or looks like, but I’m sure he’s doing something with them, the son of a bitch.
Charlene flips from channel to channel, loudly scrambling my head, preventing further planning in my response to Chad’s proposal. “Well are you or not?” she asks. I stare at the Evil Eddie’s poster sitting in my pathetic closet-sized man cave down the hall. Eddie is staring me down, stretchy black leather pants, long frizzy gold hair, bright white guitar and all, seeing if I will do it.
Chad really is a son of a bitch. He somehow knew the Evil Eddie’s were my favorite band since high school. I cried the day they broke up and I rejoiced to the metal gods each of the five times they announced their triumphant one-time-only reunion. Chad somehow knew it was physically, spiritually, and mentally impossible for me to turn down a ticket to witness their final tour, billed to be better than their last final tour. Some say this really is the final tour but it is upsetting and I can’t think about that right now. It is possible unless the singer divorces again and the guitarist reengages in his usual, expensive death-defying habits. The band probably knows all about blood diamonds, the drug triangle or rectangle, and how bullshit my neighbor’s catering business sounds.
“I’m going.” Her eyes are fixed, trying to unlock a code, calculating my calculations thus far. “Are you?” she laughs, walking off to the kitchen to finish overcooking the spaghetti into mush.
After a final pause and a loving glance at my wife’s attempt at cooking, I return in my black Evil Eddie’s 1999 Farewell Tour t-shirt. It fits like the burnt casing to the sausage Charlene is serving with the stringy mush. It is a little snug, but the shirt tells everyone I’m not one of those posers that came late in the game. It says I have been a fan since their first farewell, their second singer, and fifth
album. That kind of street cred you just can’t get out of one of these non-faded t-shirt reprints you see the losers wearing. Can they name a song not on their three greatest hits albums? Doubt it.
I say goodnight, slowly kissing her on the cheek not painted with spaghetti sauce. I tell her I love her and I have my cell phone on me. It’s important for her to know this in case they need to triangulate my position or whatever it is they do with cell phones after someone’s gone missing. “Have great time,” she says oblivious to the danger awaiting me. I stop at the door and say to her, “Whatever it is about him, I’m going to find out tonight. Remember, I love you.” She flips the channel. “Okay.”
I tell her I can’t predict how tonight is going to go down. She says it is probably going to be similar to the last farewell tour, just more pyro. I take a deep breath and hold my tongue as I see Chad through the blinds waving at me.
Tonight I will see first hand what a son of a bitch he is, endangering my own well-being, to finally get to the bottom of who he is. She laughs. I don’t know if it is at something I said or something on the television. I leave without further argument. It is best she doesn’t worry about me.
As I head to his friend’s decrepit black minivan, I see his two buddies inside it. The company you keep says a lot about you, so the more, the merrier. The van is covered in thick layers of dust and bird shit, like it just finished a cannonball run across the Mexican desert with bails of marijuana trying to evade the border patrol and circled the local elementary schools to sell everything off before a night out transporting bodies to dump in a ravine for the cartel. I don’t know where a ravine is and I don’t know if the cartels work out this way, but Chad likely does, the son of a bitch.
“Hey, brother,” Chad says welcoming me into the van with one of those cool handshakes tattooed bikers and the sort give each other. It’s like a manly half-hug. The thick flowery perfume of a car scent sticker is desperately doing battle against the car’s rich history of smoke and farts. Chad introduces me to Tony, sitting behind the wheel with the braided goatee and the Blues Brother sunglasses. He nods his head in the rearview mirror as I jump though the sliding doorway into a busted bucket seat with rips in the tan upholstery. The guy in the seat next to me is Guy. Unlike Tony, Guy is
super-excited to meet me and ready to begin a prepared barrage of funny stories. Maybe as the night goes on, Guy will say too much. At that point, I hope they already accepted me into their confidence or we’re heading to a ravine.
The van pulls through it’s own thick cloud of gray exhaust and onto the highway. The twenty-two minute ride is consumed by three stories, courtesy of Guy. I keep my lips sealed tight and nod, listening to every word for that inadvertent revelation, confession, or explanation. I wait for punchlines that will make me a witness to some horrific, or at least moderately-illegal, activity. “That’s when I took the drugs out of my ass because I had a feeling that would be the first place they’d check, so I placed them in the kid’s diaper bag next to me in line. I felt bad for the mother when she got busted and taken away,” I was waiting for him to say or, “that’s when Chad killed the fat general with the AJAX he mistook for the stolen cocaine, we took the blood diamonds, and ran for the border on those fucked up llamas that couldn’t stop shitting.”
Instead, I heard three stories about how Chad once made an ice cream with Fireballs and sour candy that made a little girl cry, how Guy once got his penis caught in the pool suction line, and another about Chad and Tony backing the ice cream van into a State Trooper’s vehicle. All stories were disappointing except for the one about Guy in the pool. It was moderately interesting to hear about how the Fire Department used syringes of lubricant to free him from the pipe while his embarrassed wife looked on and got shitfaced.
They are clearly warm up stories to test me, to see if I can enter their confidence. Once I do, I fully expect better stories about Chad and whatever he’s got going down with the blood diamonds, hookers, cocaine, and money laundering through his supposed ice cream business.
For your average conservative, white male, tonight is like going into the jungle in one of those war movies. I’m not saying I’ve been in war, but this is not the average night in the Butterfield’s household. It’s exciting, dangerous, and I am proud I said yes to tonight. I have an okay career, a wife that loves me when she’s not glued to her smart phone, a nine-year old son that shares my hatred for
pop music, an intimidating, but controllable, mortgage, and just three payments to go on a gray SUV with a really cool third row that flips up, though I never use it. But tonight, I’ve got my warpaint on and I’m gonna go down that rabbit hole. I’m gonna finally figure out what kind of a son of a bitch my neighbor is.
As we roll into the parking lot, Chad turns around and nods his head. “Gentlemen, it’s time,” he says with a smirk. I expect him to suddenly roll out an oversized doobie that would make Bob Marley blush. I would of course refuse, but risk my next piss test just from seeing it. Any secondhand smoke would certainly do me in… I think. Instead, they all hop out of the vehicle. We grab our chairs and head for the cheap lawn seats. We proceed through the security checkpoint surprisingly without incident. They checked us thoroughly, so whatever contraband we have must be up someone’s ass.
“I’m buying,” I say to the fellas in front of the beer stand. “I’m good, brother,” Chad says holding up a bottle of water. Tony and Guy also pass on the beer. I grab one for myself to break the imaginary seal in my head.
Shortly after marking our territory with our fold up chairs, the lights go out and the Evil Eddie’s start on time. In their older years, they are either realizing their fans are too old to tolerate their usual bullshit or have a greater appreciation for their bedtime. Like every concert I’ve been to since ZZTop in 1987, the smell of a burning controlled substance magically drifts in with the first strummed chord of the guitar. I immediately look to Chad, then Guy, then Tony still sporting the sunglasses. They smile back. It is coming from somewhere else.
Throughout the night, I keep checking. I keep waiting for Chad to start a moshpit, grab some old lady’s tit, do a line of coke off the arm of his plastic chair, or hurl acid from his bony structure. But no. He dances a little. He stares from time to time at the stocky forty-something lady in front of us. Her skintight white roll-up shorts creep up with every shake of her thick apple bottom. He’s staring, but no more than the rest of us guys behind her throughout section 18.
The concert ends. There are zero casualties, zero arrests, zero fights, and zero illegal activities. There wasn’t even a shout from someone behind us to tell the dancing lady in the white shorts to “sit the hell down.” It was as if all spectators in lawn section 18 of the amphitheater telepathically agreed to be courteous, stay seated, and just enjoy the show. Other sections stood most of the show on account of two jackasses up front insisting they stand. No one ever likes those types. Every section has them.
It was a great show. It was so good, I doubt it is really their last tour. The singer is sober, the guitarist appears less insane, and they sounded the best they have in decades. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have another album and final reunion tour in them. As always, I’ll be ready to show my support in my ever-tightening black 1999 tour shirt/ sausage casing. I got at least four full nods of respect tonight for that shirt and it felt good. I saw one naturally faded shirt from the 1987 tour, back when no one really listened to them and they were a still just a terrible opening act. That is hardcore. Much respect.
An hour into the half-mile per hour roll out of the crowded parking lot, we are finally on the highway and on our way home. Everyone is still on a drug-free Rocky Mountain high from a great show. Guy is telling me about the concert, every song, and every time the singer pretended he was happy to be with the guitarist putting his arm around him smiling. Guy reenacts the finger dabbling solos that he enjoyed the most. It is possible Guy forgot I was at the concert with him, but I don’t want to stop him. He is harmless and on a roll.
Chad turns and looks back at Guy. He smiles at me and then to Tony driving in his sunglasses. “You boys aren’t in a hurry to get home are ya?” Chad asks. Tony nods. Guy says he’s game. This is it. I waited all fucking night and here we are, eighty miles per hour down the Highway to Hell, ten seconds to midnight.
“Let’s do it,” I say. I could have said “no” or “I can hang a little later” or ask “whatcha got in mind.” But I think “Let’s do it” makes it clear that I’m cool, that I can be trusted, and I’m down for whatever the night has in store. Tell my family I love them.
I made the circle of trust to even be asked. Tonight I am going to finally figure out what this son of a bitch is up to, what he does in his off time, what he is like when the gloves are off, and maybe he will even ask me to join him in whatever criminal venture he’s got going on. I would obviously say no, but it would be nice to be asked.
After that, I’d go home, tell the wife victoriously, “I told you!” We would then have to sell the house and try this neighbor thing again somewhere else. I would be better informed and hopefully able to avoid moving in next to a blood diamond smuggling, cocaine-selling, money laundering kingpin moving product back and forth between Miami and Africa disguised as a caterer. I missed that episode of Miami Vice, but now I am educated, or about to be, in the mysteries of the underworld.
Flipping his eighties bad guy blonde hair, Chad smiles at my cool, measured, response. He nods to Tony. The vehicle veers onto the exit ramp at forty-five miles per hour even though the sign clearly says to do thirty-five. We pass through the green light, taking a right, moving swiftly through the dark back roads. Silhouetted rows of warehouses fly by draped in pale yellow streetlights. These men have not asked me to don a blindfold. I am in the circle. But just in case, I am looking for ravines.
Another turn and we continue past the wharf, which looks shady in the day, nonetheless at night. Beyond the wharf, past the church, across from the endless row of car dealerships, we see the line of competing strip clubs; Goldfingers, Xcalibers, the MegaOdyssey, and the shadiest of them all, Tim’s. I wait for us to pull into a dimly lit parking lot and walk through one of the brass and neon lit doors like hailed kings. We would get free non-stop lap dancing because Chad is everyone’s pimp or dealer. Lap dance after lap dance I would patiently watch Chad go in and out through a secret door or disappear behind some massive curtain of beads. A different woman would enter the room every twenty minutes. Eventually he would come out and invite me to go in there. Numb from hours of lap dancing by a naked woman named Jasmine, Jade, or Diamond, I would politely decline as a married man, but thank him for the offer of hospitality. I would later explain to my wife that he’s not loyal to his wife, is a sex-addicted, drug-dealing pimp, and we need to move.
But the vehicle is still going, past the strip bars. Is there an establishment even deeper down the avenue? I imagine anything beyond this leads to the woods where a tribal orgy is being hosted by a mad colonel named Kurtz. Soon, we will know. “Where are you going?” Chad laughs at Tony lifting his sunglasses onto his shaved head. He squints and takes a sudden turn back onto a main road. He pulls off and turns off the lights as we roll to a stop behind a run down strip mall. Everyone jumps out and heads to the darkened backdoor entrance by the dumpsters. This is it.
The door will open and there will be no going back. I will be a lookout or keep the van running as I assume that is what the greenhorn of a criminal gang does. I will do it, despite having a family and a mildly satisfying career, to finally know the truth. It will then be my duty to turn him in for smuggling blood diamonds and weapons, take the reward, and move. It will be harder now I know Chad a little better.
Chad turns the lock. He stops, looks back and smiles at the three of us. Guy nods his head, anxious like a kid to bust inside the joint. Tony’s eyebrows lift slightly above his sunglasses. I grin back to let him know I’m ready.
“Any flavor, fellas,” he says opening the door. Guy and Tony barge past me into the shop while Chad turns off the alarm. I stand at the door staring past the empty white buckets, the two large mixers, a large freezer, and the boxes of ingredients to the front of the store. My eyes are fixed onto the long, lighted, lineup of flavors of ice cream. I patiently interrogate each of them, searching for the right one. “No need to settle for just one, brother!” Chad says handing me a plastic sample spoon of his newest creation, the “Mama’s Cherry.” I settle on “Funky Chocolate Donkey” with an extra scoop of “Manila Vanilla Amaretto Coffee” and a scoop of “Red Chile Pistachio Toffee Swirl.” Chad explains to me “Mama’s Cherry,” as simple as it is, is really one of his tastiest recipes. The secret, he says, is more lard. It is to die for.
Like bandits in the night, we leave his shop and head back onto the highway. We’re going eighty, windows down, taking in the dry desert summer night, singing to the Evil Eddies and enjoying
our little take home cups of assorted ice creams. Chad even threw in a chocolate covered waffle cone made by Tony and it is nothing short of awesome. Tony is a madman on the chocolate sprinkles to Chad’s annoyance but knows it’s why kids keep getting them.
As the van rolls quietly by my house, I leave Guy my trash, thank them all for a great night, and pop out. I run up my driveway and stealthily enter my house. The light on the stove says it’s almost three in the morning. I successfully tip toe past my son’s room without disturbing his annoying Chihuahua, Sparky, sleeping comfortably beside him.
Charlene sleeps gently on her side of the bed. She obviously did not stay up for me. I quietly pull off my car-perfumed and smoky sausage casing and slide into my side of the bed. I pull up the cover with a bright Red Chile Pistachio stained smile across my face.
She turns on the lights. “And just where the hell have you been all night?” she says sitting up staring at me. “What’s that smell? And what’s that on your lips?”
She will never believe me. Son of a bitch.
The Garden of Yellow Butterflies
By Karen King
She walked into a garden in her daily exploration. So much so see and do, but she had time. She watched yellow butterflies fluttering past and later landing on a multitude of flowers. The green leaves tickled her nose as she sauntered past. The bird song was torture to her ears. She loved their various melodies and it brought back good memories, but she was not as quick as she once was and the birds always escaped her, later laughing at her ineptitude.
It was a warm day and her legs were tiring little, so she found a bush and sat in the shade a while as the sound of the birds drifted into the distance… She was awoken with the sound of her name being called and was surprised to see an old, wrinkled face in front of her and a bowl of water. Mona was surprised, but gratefully accepted the offering. The old lady with the orange hair spoke to her in soothing tones. She purred in response and staggered out of the bush to visit her new friend. Mona realised she was quite hungry, but the old lady offered nothing, so she stayed awhile and then, reluctantly, sauntered home.
She entered her empty house. There was never anyone there. It was a lonely life. Cats were supposed to be independent, but this was just too much. Mona had had enough of being “independent” and would have given anything to have a friend. Her human family were out all day and virtually ignored her when they returned. She could only assume that it was because she wasn’t as cute as she used to be. Her fur was matted and dull and she was thin.
The children had left home and the adults had lost interest as she was old and slow. Mona went to her bed, sad and rejected. She started dreaming about the old lady she met, cuddles and treats… Her brown ears twitched and she snored as her pleasant dream continued.
Mona awoke to the sound of a door slamming and shoes being thrown across the floor. Nervously, she staggered out of bed and went to see her owner. Her owner gave a cursory look, threw a bowl of food down and turned on the TV. Mona took a few bites, her tail between her legs and wondered away. Her owner noticed and, angrily, snatched the food away, throwing it in the bin. “I’m sick of all the food you waste. Day after day. So much washing up and so much money wasted. I suppose it must be because you’re old now and you’ve lost your appetite!” With that, the owner got a beer, put his feet up on the settee and fell asleep. Mona couldn’t eat. Unloved and forgotten, she went back to her bed and her dreams in order to escape the ongoing nightmare.
The next morning, Mona awoke to the sounds of the fledglings as the glorious sunshine shone through the window onto her fur, warming her up. She yawned, stretched and walked towards her food bowl. It was empty! It was clean, but it was empty. Her tail swayed back and forth; she was really angry. She scratched her ears and washed, but still it did not appear.
Irritated, she scratched her ears again. Eventually, she left the house and found her way to the garden of yellow butterflies and the house with the old lady.
The butterflied danced in jubilation and the fountain spurted in celebration. There seemed to be magic in the garden. The wind chimes played their melody and the windmills turned. The bluebells’ perfume became stronger and Mona felt love all around her.
Suddenly, she saw the old lady. The old lady smiled in pleasure and then vanished for a moment, only to return again with a small bag. Treats were sprinkled on the floor in front of her, which she ate greedily. The old lady’s face was a strange mixture of relief and concern. Mona was surprised to see the old lady disappear again and thought she was going to be forgotten. Once more, the lady reappeared, but this time with a tin of cat food and a bowl. Mona couldn’t believe her luck and bolted the food down. Next, she was called in and encouraged to jump on the settee. Blankets had been placed there but, try as she might, her back legs wouldn’t work and she couldn’t jump up. Hesitatingly, the old lady bent down and picked her up and put her on the blankets. Mona purred in delight and closed her eyes and gently drifted off to the land of dreams, this time to a place where dreams meet reality. She found herself in a warm place with warm people, beautiful birds and yellow butterflies. She thought she was in Heaven and wondered if she were dead.
Shocked, she felt cold wetness of the back of her neck. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes and saw her new friend’s hand behind her head. She knew this feeling and hated it, but at least it would treat the dreaded fleas, which were driving her mad! She shut her eyes once more so she could visit the other world.
Later, she awoke to find all was silent and dark. Panicking, she managed to get down, then returned to her “home”. Her owner saw her, scolded her and then proceeded to put some flea treatment on her. Mona tried to back off, put her claws out to scratch her owner to try and tell her and hissed, all to no avail. The flea treatment was put on her, then she hid in the darkness of the room. It was good not to feel the beastly things moving around on her, nipping her, but she felt decidedly strange, in shock even. She closed her eyes to escape the feeling.
This time she found a place where there were many beautiful, young cats, agile and playful. This cat world brought back memories of younger days. She felt a sense of loss at what once was, but was told she could be young and playful again. Mona found this unbelievable, but was both surprised and delighted to discover she had fur like satin, the pain had gone and she could be playful again. She enjoyed this cat world, where her problems no longer existed. All she knew in this world was happiness and peace. Mona was told it was her time and she could stay. She found this a strange comment, but decided to stay anyway.
Her owner returned home from work, to see a bowl of food that hadn’t been touched, a cat sitting still in her bed and a cold body. Mona’s soul had long departed. The owner only felt relief that this costly, inconvenience had died…
Meanwhile, the old lady waited in vain for the return of the cat. She waited day after day, but her friend did not return. One day, there was a knock on the door. The owner said he knew that Mona had been visiting her, but she had died in her sleep of old age. The old lady was distraught, but reluctantly accepted this. It could well be true. Or, I wonder was it the extra dose of flea treatment that was a terrible shock to her old, tired body? Was Mona loved too late?
Karen King Copyright 17 May 2017
Johnny B. Goode
By
Gerald Arthur Winter
I saw the headlights at a distance where the dual exhausts from his Caddy Eldorado were just black wisps backlit at dawn as the sunrise peeked its fiery arc at the purple horizon of rolling hills. As the sun rose and his Caddy wound on the dirt road’s “S” turns toward me, I saw his convertible top rise then fold back. Only the whites of his eyes and brilliant smile identified the man I’d come to idolized as much as his fans. His pomped-up black hair was slicked back and the gold chains around his long neck sparkled from the sunlight reflecting off puddles along the road from last night’s rainstorm. It was December, almost Christmas, and unseasonably warm for winter in Missouri.
He raised one arm and waved to me, but as he did, another figure rose from the passenger seat, probably waking after the all-night drive from the last gig.
I figured it might be his drummer, but with two hands, she fluffed her long hair and stretched.
“Hey, Frankie!” he called to me as he turned off his headlights.
“Chuck!” I called back, seeing the young girl seated beside him.
Crap, I thought, what can he be thinking?
“Meet Janice,” Chuck said. “Janice, meet Frankie.”
I waved him toward me in confidence as the girl remained in the car brushing her long black hair, too straight to be a “sista,” no matter what hair product they were selling that year.
I voiced my thoughts: “What the hell are you thinking, Chuck? She’s just a kid. A goddamn white girl.”
“She ain’t white, Frankie,” he assured me with a hand on my shoulder. “Janice is an Injun princess of the Apache persuasion. She’s a rebel with a cause, just like me.”
“She might as well be a Daughter of the Revolution because she’s Snow White compared to your sorry black ass if a trooper pulls you over.”
“Whacha talkin’ about? I’m a rich man now, got my own club in St. Louie. The man can’t touch me now.”
“Wanna bet?” I warned him. “You could blow your chance of a lifetime with this little queeny.”
“Not a queen, just a princess,” Chuck said. “But I like that tag, Frankie. Maybe I’ll write a song with that title. I got the beat goin’ in my head already.”
“You’re gonna get your head beat by the fuzz if you don’t drop Janice off and walk away.”
“That wouldn’t be gentlemanly, Frankie. You know I’m always a gentleman, even when I’m wailin’ and rockin’ and rollin’ my ding-a-ling.”
“You’ve been in jail before, Chuck. Are you asking to go back in?”
“Look, Frankie. Janice had a drunk dad who beat ‘er everyday just for the hell of it. I’m gonna give her a job as a hatcheck girl at my club.”
“How old is she?” I asked.
He rolled his eyes. “Almost fifteen but goin’ on forty.”
“Your ass is grass if you don’t walk away from her now,” I advised. “You’re in a golden situation with Elvis in the army. He and the Colonel don’t know diddly about live performances—only studio recordings. But the Colonel’s wise and he’ll catch on and have The King ready the day he’s discharged.”
“Maybe, Frankie, maybe. I hear through the grape vine that the Colonel wants Elvis to stick with the movies. More money to be had in Hollywood than Nashville or Memphis. Speakin’ of which, I want my upfront pay for tonight’s gig.”
“I got it in my trunk,” I said, then backed my ’58 Chevy up to his Caddy’s trunk.
Chuck opened his trunk first and took out a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun. With a broad grin of pearly whites, he pointed the weapon at my gut.
“Slowly, Frankie. Count it out in thousand-dollar bundles of twenties as we discussed.”
“Sure, sure, Chuck. Just point that away from me so I don’t miscount.”
“You miscount and you’ll be the headless horseman.”
The five grand I stacked in his trunk was only a fifth of the combined total from his other gigs driving coast to coast.
“See you tonight, Frankie, eight-sharp.”
“Your concert starts at eight.”
“No sweat,” he assured me. “I’ll be groomed and tuned for my walk-on. Duck-walk that is.”
Chuck was always a man of his word. He began with “Maybelline” as usual, peaked with “Roll Over Beethoven,” then finished with the crowd’s favorite for his encore. The song still echoes in my mind as I recall watching his Caddy vanish over the horizon toward St. Louis with Janice beside him.
I remember thinking . . . Please, Chuck . . . “Johnny B. Goode” tonight.
Chubby
by
Gerald Arthur Winter
His longtime friends in the biz affectionately called William Goodrich “Chubby.” There was nothing diminutive about him from head to toe, thus his screen name, “Chubby Chase.” He had been discovered by producer-director Mack Sennett in 1913 to costar with Maude Netherly in Sennett’s “Maude” series, which included twenty-three films over fifteen years. Chubby had missed the first “Maude” film the year before, but Sennett quickly measured the onscreen chemistry between Maude and Chubby as box-office gold. Thus came their crowd-pleasing pairing in silent films.
Though their visual onscreen rapport was often reported in Variety as romance, Chubby and Maude were no more than good friends. Off-set she was a home body, more drawn to her horses and dogs than her first and only husband, an investment banker who provided a lavish life which she could retire to whenever she wanted.
Initially married and faithful to Mrs. Goodrich, they had no children, so when Chubby got his beg break with Sennett on “The Keystone Cops” bandwagon, he became a playboy and was soon divorced. Not a Valentino or a Fairbanks, Chubby’s choice was comedy because his size was a threatening attribute at six-feet-five and three hundred pounds buck naked. He confided with Sennett that he feared playing villains, because movie theater audiences tended to believe that film personas were no act, but rather revelations of a performer’s true nature.
“Really, Mack,” he told Sennett. “On the other side of the coin, Americans have no idea that William S. Hart is a royal prick who’d stiff his mom given the chance.”
“OK—OK, Chub,” Sennett laughed. “You’ll be my funny guy. But I hope the hell they bring in that sound stuff they keep talking about because no one has any idea what a beautiful singing voice you’ve got.”
“Thanks, Mack, but how would you know? I’ve never sang for you.”
“Enrico told me you were second only to him if given the chance.”
“The Great Caruso is known to brag about his Italian sausage, too.”
“Now you sound like those New York Vaudeville comedians that are just a four-letter word short of burlesque,” Sennett warned with a frown. “No smut in our subtitles, now or ever. “Make it funny, Chubby, but keep it clean.”
“Look who you’re talking to, Mack,” Chubby shrugged. “What do I know from schmutz? I’m a clean-cut American boy—Mom and apple pie.”
“I know that better than anyone, Chub, but some of the stockholders are concerned about what they read in Variety. Nothing good ever happens after midnight, and you’ve been drinking and carousing a lot more than a year ago. Just saying. How about giving it a rest this weekend?”
Chubby took a deep breath, his means of controlling his temper, which, though congenial ninety-nine percent of the time, had a trigger point few had ever seen, least of all his fellow cast members over the past dozen years. Though essentially a happy-go-lucky guy, Chubby had a dark side that was occasionally augmented by his alcohol consumption as a catalyst to brutish reaction to little more than a slight.
Though speakeasies were his usual haunts in the wee hours, Chubby had been hanging out with one of his actor cronies since they had both been in Chubby’s first “Maude” flick a decade ago. There had been so much undercurrent about what those in the biz called “talkies,” that some actors had become paranoid about the idea that an audience might actually hear their voices in a movie theater.
Edgar “Slow Burn” Kennedy more than often played a cop in the silent movies. He’d be one of several who’d make a smooth transition to talkies and be better for it. His steaming attitude with his hand against his red face and a double-take of disbelief was his trademark that became perfected by the time he got to the talkies with a verbal exasperated expression of: “Doh!”
Kennedy introduced Chubby to another acting friend who had adapted a nickname from the newest New York Yankees sensation, “Babe” Ruth. Like Ruth and Chubby, “Babe” Hardy was a man of considerable girth. Like Chubby, Hardy wanted to act in silent comedies, but had been miscast as villains in his first appearances. He hoped to change that screen image. Hardy had a fine tenor voice and a cheerful personality. The party girls that the threesome had met at speakeasies jokingly referred to them as the “Three Tons of Fun.”
Kennedy resented the tag, went on a crash diet, and stopped hanging out off-set with the other two. However, Kennedy did make many films with Hardy, even after “Babe” became the comic heavy in the classic Laurel and Hardy duo.
Losing the late-night companionship of Kennedy and Hardy, Chubby became a big box office draw on his own, and got to write and direct as well, but he continued his wee-hour drinking habit and some of the more aggressive and salacious women of the night began rumors about his manly prowess as much more than his nickname — Wee Willie portended.
Champagne had become Chubby’s consumptive weakness, which often led to promiscuous encounters, sometimes as many as five women between midnight and dawn. Whether one-on-one, or as one rumor had it, literally a sextet, complete with brass, woodwinds, and percussions, but for all concerned—no strings attached.
News of the inevitability of talking pictures coming to the screen within a year, put Chubby on edge. Despite the compliments he’d often received from co-workers and his female companions about his voice, he just didn’t believe that anyone could be interested in such a novelty on screen. Live theater gave that to audiences, not only sound, but a living experience as if they were on the stage. How could two dimensional movies, even with sound, ever duplicate that experience? Why would anyone waste their money trying to do that? Why would anyone pay to see or hear it?
“You probably think the world is flat,” his date told him.
He sneered at her over his champagne glass. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, motioning toward the speakeasy’s cloakroom. “I’ve got a private party at 2 a.m.”
“Who’s coming?” she asked.
“Everyone,” he said with a wink, but she didn’t catch his double entendre.
She seemed bored with him, which bothered him more than anyone poking fun at his weight. Chubby was intelligent, well-read, and might have become a doctor had the draw of Hollywood fame not captured his imagination. For him, it was like a schoolboy running away from home to join the circus. He hadn’t realized those many years ago, that besides a circus having trapeze artists, lion tamers, and clowns, the Big Top also had a freak show. He’d recently begun to wonder if his stand against talkies was turning him into the freak show’s main attraction.
Chubby felt a sense of dread about his hook-up that night. Alice Grimley had a sordid reputation of entrapping men for money. She’d have sex freely then say she was pregnant, get an out-of-court settlement and get an abortion. Rumor had it that this had been done no less than half a dozen times. Her uterus was worn as thin as her dignity. Assuming she once had some pride, Chubby found their conversation depressing, especially when she so outwardly mocked his steadfast belief in the fine art of silent films and his inner satisfaction that he’d become one of that medium’s all-time greats.
Chubby often thought of his costar, Maude, who’d since retired from the biz. He entertained ideas of their romance portrayed on screen becoming a reality, but any hope for that had long past.
At 4 a.m. the private party was still in full swing but several cases of bootlegged rum had been delivered to the hotel concealed in a junk wagon pulled by a mule.
Chubby and several of the other male party goers met the wagon behind the hotel where they planned to bring the cases on the service elevator up to Chubby’s room. Chubby flashed his wad, tipping hotel personnel as if it were Christmas, so he was provided with a wheelbarrow to transport the rum to the elevator. While they offloaded the rum from the wagon, one of the men took the fedora off the mule’s head and tried to pull his own ears through the holes in its brim like the mule. When the driver complained, Chubby slipped him a sawbuck and all was well.
Another man asked, “How much for the mule?”
“What do you want his damn mule for?” Chubby asked.
“I noticed who you were with tonight, so I figured Alice would rather make love to the mule than a fat-ass like you.”
Three bottles of champagne down the hatch, Chubby felt that switch go off in his head, that one percent of total darkness that separates man from beast. He lifted the man off his feet with one hand and hit him so hard with his huge fist that his head snapped around. The man fell to the ground like a ragdoll.
The other men tried to make Chubby calm down, but he waved them off and took that long deep breath. One didn’t work so he took another and finally the pounding in his head subsided.
“Better get an ambulance,” one man said. “I think you broke his jaw, Chub.”
“I did,” Chubby said. “I heard it crack . . . no talkies for that sucker.”
The other men just tried to humor him but decided to forego the rum and go home. Left alone with the buggy driver he gave him one hundred dollars for his mule and his silence. Not about to leave any evidence for the cops, Chubby with his great strength, pushed the wheelbarrow to the elevator himself and led the mule into the elevator as well. He brought the mule with the cases of rum to his hotel room. The heated incident with Jimmy seemed to sober him up. The hotel room was a wreck, which he’d been too drunk to realize before. Word must have gotten to the women at the party about the violent incident behind the hotel because they all had left.
The room was dead quiet as Chubby plunked down on the sofa and popped open a bottle of rum. He poured some rum into a silver bowl and put it on the floor for the mule to drink. The mule took one slurp of the rum and snorted his disapproval. Chubby took three long snorts of rum then a deep breath for good measure.
The rum was glowing sweetly in his big belly when he heard it . . . a woman sniffling and gasping intermittently from the bedroom. He found Alice Grimley half-naked on the king-size bed. Her eyes were rolled back in her head like a zombie. At first, it looked like her lipstick was smeared across her pale face, but when he came closer, Chubby saw it was blood.
“Sweet Jesus!” he said, his melodious voice echoing across the hardwood floors of the hotel room. “Alice! Alice! Wake up! You’ve got to get the hell out of here. Party’s over.”
She groaned incoherently.
“I’ll get you some water.” He couldn’t find a single glass that hadn’t been broken, so he emptied the rum from the dregs in his bottle then filled it with water from the tap. He tried to help her sip it, but she couldn’t hold up her head, so he awkwardly straddled her half-naked body. Then he saw the blood on the sheet and streaks of blood across her naked thighs.
“Oh my God!” he shouted.
Apparently his party cronies had tipped off the police about Chubby breaking Jimmy’s jaw. Just as Chubby was putting the rum bottle to Alice Grimley’s lips, police rushed into the bedroom along with reporters whose photos would make the front page of every Hearst publication coast to coast.
There was Chubby Chase with naked Alice Grimley bleeding from her mouth and uterus caused, as the news articles would suggest, from brutal insertions by Chubby, the rum bottle, and—God save us—the mule.
Had Alice recovered, perhaps Chubby’s reputation would have been spared by her testimony of his innocence. Alas, she was DOA at County General. Rumors, backed by the news photo declared Chubby Chase—guilty as charged. Prosecutors charged him with first-degree murder easily seeking the death penalty to be hanged in the state of California as the order of the day.
Mack Sennett’s words echoed in Chubby’s mind as he sat in his cell awaiting trial: “Nothing good ever happens after midnight.”
Over the course of the next year, Chubby endured two mistrials. The first was due to a hung jury. In keeping with his sense of humor, Chubby said aside to his attorney: “I prefer the jury’s hanging to mine.”
Despite his façade of levity, Chubby suffered from depression in his cell. He was kept in solitary confinement because of internal death threats from both inmates and prison guards. Newspaper columnists’ articles ran the gamut pro and con regarding his innocence or guilt. One Hearst headline said: “Chubby Chase wants to pin his tale on the donkey.”
After another six months of imprisonment, Chubby was told by his attorney that he would request another mistrial based on published interviews with one female juror who admitted she felt that the heinous acts committed by the defendant were uncontestable and that hanging was the only means of proper justice for “such a grotesque beast of a man.”
His attorney used a list Chubby had given him of both men and women in the movie industry, which included actors, directors, producers, and screenwriters who would vouch for his good character. When Maude Netherly came out of retirement, even against her banker husband’s best advice, the press took notice. Many were hoping Maude would seal a guilty verdict with stories of Chubby’s off-screen sexual eccentricities, including the use of narcotics to take advantage of naïve starlets fresh off the Greyhound bus from the Mid-West. Maude emphatically came to Chubby’s defense.
In essence there was no basis to any accusations against Chubby Chase other than his bad temper triggered by alcohol indulgence. As far as anyone could prove, Chubby’s violence had only been directed against men rather than women. His victims had publically insulted him as a catalyst to his outrage. Though there could be no excuse for such vindictive public behavior, a death or life sentence would be undue punishment for such an offense, which would be limited to a monetary fine and short-term incarceration of no more than thirty days with good behavior.
The next retrial took less than one week. The verdict was “not guilty.”
Many of those who testified in Chubby’s behalf were his friends for two decades in the silent movie industry. The twelve jurors, including one woman, approached Chubby after the trial with handshakes, hugs, and regrets over his ordeal in court and the newspapers. Regardless, Chubby’s reputation would remain soiled for all time.
He was questioned by reporters before he got into his attorney’s car in front of the courthouse. His statement was broadcast on radio stations throughout America.
With the resonant tone of a great orator, Chubby said: “Justice won out today. I never did any of the horrible acts I’d been accused of. I thank the state of California for its just verdict and will spend the rest of my life as God sees fit to repair the damage that has been done to my character and credibility. That’s all I have to say, gentlemen. God speed.”
One reporter shouted, “Will Chubby Chase make talkies in the future?”
Chubby turned back to face the reporters surrounding the car. He opened his mouth as if to comment then thought better of it. He put his hand to the corner of his open mouth and, like a zipper, dragged his fingers across his closing lips.
William Goodrich, aka Chubby Chase would use only his birth name as a film producer and director in Hollywood of the 30’s. Some of his films were of critical
acclaim, though no public credit was sought other than the required on-screen credits. No one knew who “William Goodrich” was anyway.
Chubby Chase never appeared in film again, though ironically, many of his female companions wondered why William Goodrich didn’t seek film parts with such a “beautiful” voice and big, shimmering blue eyes”.
“Blue eyes?” he said laughingly to Oliver Hardy and Edgar Kennedy after Prohibition was repealed. “As if color could ever be transmitted to the silver screen.”
Hardy and Kennedy clicked their glasses with Chubby’s in harmonic agreement:
“Never happen.”
On the other side of town, a teenage singer name Frances Gumm was having a screen test that would prove them wrong, that Hollywood was nothing like Kansas.
Life Can Trip You Up …
By Karen King
Once upon a time, there was a boy who was dissatisfied with the uninspiring house in which he lived with his Mum. The house was small and badly designed. All his Father had done was to buy big units, gigantic shelves and have a bubbling, green, gaseous aquarium in the corner of the room. The paving stones and shed had been laid and built by workmen and paid for by his Dad’s Mother. The shed, like everything else in their three-bedroomed-semi, was too large, making their miniature garden even smaller. They boy was left to pick up the pieces of their ruined relationship, the remains of which could be seen in their house.
His Mother had been left the house upon his Mum and Dad’s divorce. Unfortunately, the lack of interest from his Dad meant that a lot of money needed to be spent on the house replacing and repairing items that had been left for ten years. The cracks of their relationship had developed into big chasms in their house.
The boy had had enough. He repainted the walls, put on new door handles, built shelves and a unit for the garage and insisted on new carpets and flooring. A tiny fridge for the dining room to allow more space in their cramped kitchen, along with a new washing machine to replace their fifteen-year-old model, which hadn’t been spinning the clothes properly for years was also purchased – and not before time!
He had several projects on the go – a new cat shed and a unit, along with ideas on how to improve the kitchen – LED lights to eliminate the shadows and a corner unit to hold items for the dining room table for starters …
The decorating needed to be finished as the house was too small to hold all his tools. Every room was a mess. Saws were left on the dining room table, screwdrivers on the floor and tool boxes were left abandoned in doorways. His Mother wondered if she would eat saws for dinner, or maybe a nail?
The boy had his reasons. While his Mother saved some money to buy a bigger house which they could redesign and have enough space to work, he would improve their current house, so he could keep himself busy whilst improving his skills. He was almost entirely self-taught and hoped he could help his Mum get more money for their house. His Mother appreciated the thought and admired his ambition, but was fed up with the mess.
She wasn’t as slim or as nimble as she once was and, one day, tripped over a hammer left at the top of the stairs. She tried to catch herself, but her arthritic knee let her down and she went tumbling down…
She saw bright lights amidst the darkness and wondered where she was. The shapes with loving eyes and generous smiles held out their hands to her and told her she was plugged into a respirator in hospital and they were monitoring her, for she had taken a nasty fall. Whilst her breathing was plugged in on her ward, she was also plugged into the light on the other side.
The doctors told her she had bumped her head hard and dislocated her hips. They told her that her Son was at her bedside, feeling guilty and wretched. She needed to get back as soon as she could, but things would not be the same. Her life would change irrevocably. The beautiful beings hugged her and disappeared into the light, whilst waving goodbye…
Worriedly and reluctantly, she opened her eyes, but was glad to see her Son holding her hand. He told her he had made extra shelving to accommodate his tools and he had tidied up the house as best he could. She tried to move, but couldn’t. The nurse rushed in, telling her off. She should lie still to allow her hips to mend. She would be bed-bound for a bit. She had had a nasty fall and was lucky to be alive. With that, the nurse smiled sadly and left the room. Her Son told her he had almost finished the work as he had put his energies into the house to keep his worries at bay. His Mother squeezed his hand in delight and told him he had learnt a hard lesson, but she was sorry she was in such a state.
Week after week went by and the ceiling was becoming more and more boring to examine. She had memorised the cobwebs in the corners and was fed up with the same old faces, the squeaking of the trollies on the floor and the cries of the agonised ladies in the nearby maternity ward. She felt weak and numb, both physically and mentally. Life was depressingly lost to her and she was pushed into the geriatric ward as they needed the space in her ward. There had been a lot of deaths in the geriatric ward recently as many of the patients had lost patience with life and decided to move onto to a better life.
She read, she wrote, she listened to music and she counted time, watching the second hand slowly move, as if it were an hour hand. She slowly managed to move and got herself to the toilet in a wheelchair, then with support and, finally, on her own. She asked to go home and they agreed. It had been a slow journey, but she had finished the chapter and she was allowed to go home to start the next chapter of her life.
A taxi took her home and her Son was pleased to see her. The house looked clean, smart, well-designed and seemed infinitely bigger. The Mother smiled and, day after day, did the housework and, eventually, managed to drive to the shops. After several months, she was jogging and enjoying the peace of solitude of the countryside. She started slowly, thinking she was unfit and just needed time. Time was all she had had for months – too much time. It had been so slow for so long and it seemed she would have to wait yet again while time dictated her life. She persevered, but her hips and knee ached too much and just wouldn’t co-operate for her. She realised her life had changed, but not for the better…
She stuck to basic chores and a humdrum life. No more dreams of a better house. It seemed they would be stuck in their tiny house forever, all because they had hoped for better and been careless. Her Son was depressed and disillusioned.
They both realised they were fortunate to have each other, but their plans would have to be changed. Instead of his workshop and acres of grounds in which to build his own house, he built his Mum a chair lift and an electric wheelchair, whilst working in their tiny garden.
After all, her progress had taken many steps backwards and she could hardly move, let alone walk fast or jog. The woman’s Son modernised their kitchen and bathroom to make it disabled friendly and built a summerhouse for himself in the corner of their garden.
Life doesn’t always work out in the way you plan and things can unexpectedly change, then your path turns to rubble and changes forever. Sometimes we have to be adaptable, resilient and work with our qualities and imagination. Make the most of what you have in life and try and be strong and accept life’s detours, for life is a miracle and the earth a classroom in which we are all learning.
Foreword:
It is a fact that Rodrigo de Triana saw land first that night between the 11th and 12th of October that year of 1492. At around two A.M., as the lookout on the ship Pinta and a part of Columbus' crew, he was the first official European to see the Caribbean and call out the famous words: "Tierra!" ("Land!")
The following short story resembles one of Liszt's improvised pieces on a theme by Rossini (most of these were on the spot improvs). There's truth here and fiction.
So I am inviting you to a quiz. What is fact and what is fiction here? Are you sure what you think is fiction is not fact? After all, none of us were actually there. Well, maybe in a previous life we experienced it. But that, as they say, is another story.
Now, enjoy the ride. You are back on the Pinta.
You are a sailor and about to rediscover the universe.
TRIANA'S SALVATION
A Short Story by Charles E.J. Moulton
Rodrigo de Triana watched the foam of the waves crash against the Pinta. His thoughts were elsewhere, at home, with the people he knew, the inquisition and the fact that Columbus had saved him from certain death.
The waves in comparison seemed so tranquil right now. So calm. It was almost as if they were approaching land. But that couldn't be, could it? Land. What a word. He almost couldn't remember what land looked like.
Rodrigo took a deep breath and tasted the salty air. It felt like a sickness by now. Yes, there was a tranquility to everything here at the moment, but too many sailors had fallen ill. Martin Alonso Pinzon, who was the Captain of the Pinta under Columbus, really was a capable man. But Rodrigo already ached. If and when they reached India he would search for fruit. Fresh fruit.
What if they did not make it? What if all those stories about sea monsters were true?
Rodrigo heard the voices of two of the sailors, probably talking of their women at home. And so, Rodrigo found himself looking at the water again trying to find that strange light he had seen yesterday. Had that been an angel? Perhaps even a monster? The surface had glittered, he could recall that.
The glitter of the moonlight on the water looked like a painting. The ship seemed to plough through the tranquil sea like a shark towards a moon so white it looked like the gateways to heaven.
The splash Rodrigo heard made him think a whale or some big fish rose from the deep. His instinctive twitch toward the noise had him think of sea monsters. But the thing that rose from the deep was no fish. It glittered. It looked like a round jewel shooting up from the deep, a diamond, almost. God's diamond.
Rodrigo looked around, desperately trying to find someone else who saw what he saw. No one. Not a soul.
He glanced back at the thing that soared before him.
"Signor Commendatore?"
No answer.
When the angelic presence lifted out of the hovering diamond ball, Rodrigo felt himself shiver. Had he gone to heaven? No. This was life on Earth, all right. But fear came bouncing up from beyond the deep. It felt like a black hole revealing itself to him. Was the creature a killer or an angel?
"Rodrigo," the creature whispered. "You will soon see land. You will discover a new continent."
"Who are you? What do you mean, new? I thought we were sailing towards India."
"Keep it to yourself, Rodrigo, promise me you will tell no one you saw me. Just try to be nice to the natives. There are people who won't be."
"Hello?"
The mysterious ball and the creature within it vanished, only to leave Rodrigo baffled.
Rodrigo kept his experience a secret. After he discovered land that night, he changed history. He also kept his promise. He eventually became a sea captain and treated everyone with respect.
He always believed he saw an angel the night he discovered America. Columbus kept saying he had been the first, but Rodrigo knew the truth and that was enough for him.
In any case, Rodrigo did what he intended to do once he arrived on land. The fruit gave him the same sensation the angel had given him: it brought him salvation.
Priceless
by
Gerald Arthur Winter
The American couple would usually be recognized and pursued for their autographs,
but in the jungles of the Yucatán where they’d escaped from the paparazzi for several
weeks, no one knew any more about them than what they observed firsthand. They
were beautiful people. She had cosmetically-enhanced full lips, a sculptured nose,
and a face-lift, though she was barely forty. She was tall and lithe with
dancers’ legs and natural breasts of ample sway. Though her continued attractiveness
would require further extensive work toward her fifties and sixties, for her, character
parts would not suit her acting skills, which solely depended on her drop-dead-gorgeous façade for as long as it would last.
She envied her husband, who, at forty-two had not reached his prime. Tan and
ruggedly athletic, he did most of his own stunts in the series of thriller flicks that had
made them financially invincible against anything but ill-health, which even if
catastrophic, would not render either spouse financially inept. Her jealousy came from the attention from younger women drawn to him. The slight graying of his sideburns and the strategic character creases of his aging face made him even more attractive. In his fifties and sixties his acting would improve and his film parts would become more meaningful, enough to compete for an Oscar if properly cast.
The waning of her allure and the increase of his had begun to drive them apart.
Though they had no children of their own, they’d adopted several from Third World
nations. They’d been in their early twenties back then, and those children had grown
and were attending Ivy League colleges back in the States. This jaunt to the Yucatán
had been a peace offering from him, a way to take time apart from Hollywood and
consider no film roles, to be just the couple they thought they had been two decades
ago when they were still hungry for stardom and all of its perks.
“Our guide is going to take us to a place that has been virtually unchanged
for over two thousand years,” he told her, knowing she loved the spirit of adventure,
which was what had first drawn them together when she’d co-starred in one of his
thrillers set in the Australian Outback.
“Pre-Columbian,” she said piqued by the notion. “I’ll bring my digital camera.
Won’t be any cell towers to connect with my smartphone.
“Good idea,” he said. “We’ll leave in an hour by mule. No vehicles can penetrate
the jungles we’ll be going through to get there.”
She grinned unabashedly as they stared at each other silently sharing the same
thought—Maybe this can revitalize our marriage. This kind of journey together won’t be enhanced by our good looks, but rather our physical fitness.
Their trek over the mountains was difficult despite their fitness and the heat in the
lowland jungle was suffocating, but they endured by encouraging each other along the way. Their guide, Pablo, told them he’d never brought tourists to this area before.
They’d paid him the equivalent of five times his annual Mexican income. For them it was a lark, but to Pablo it meant the possibility of college for his oldest son in Mexico City. Along their three-day inland trek, they’d seen a few caimans, a jaguar, and an
assortment of monkeys and colorful tropical birds. The wife took numerous photos, but it was nearly dark by the time they’d arrived at a small village along a narrow tributary of a distant river. As the sun vanished behind a dense canopy, it was the darkest evening either the husband or wife had ever experienced, as if they were blinded by black ink.
As they made love in the hut provided by the village elder, the sound of insects
and predators became a cacophonous symphony that seemed to swallow them like a
giant anaconda. As they shuddered in mutual climax, the sounds of the jungle suddenly hushed. The last utterance was the wife’s quivering sigh, which seemed to ripple through the humid night air like the wake from a stone dropped into a thick porridge. A serenade of birds awakened them stuck together like glue in the fetid morning mist. They looked at each other in silence as if to tell the other just that one night had made their whole trip worthwhile. But as they kissed, a new sound, as if floating on the mist, entered their hut.
They withdrew from their embrace and cocked their heads as if
wishing to fill their minds with the melodious chords from the distant guitar.
“What the hell is that?” she asked.
“I’ve no idea, babe”
“Jesus, it sounds magical.”
“Like nothing I’ve ever heard,” he said, jumping to his feet. “Come on. Let’s see
where it’s coming from.”
She seemed reluctant, so he extended his hand to help her to her feet.
“I hope we don’t get our heads shrunk.”
“I’ll protect you, babe.”
They quickly dressed and emerged from the hut.
Pablo greeted them. “We will have a light breakfast and go to the Mayan
ruins. Only Mayans have ever seen this pyramid. It’s sacred ground. Be respectful.”
“But that music, the guitar strumming, where does it come from?” he demanded.
Pablo stared at him as if he hadn’t heard it. “Oh. That’s coming from the supreme
elder’s hut.” He pointed toward the river.
“We must see this instrument.”
His wife nodded, clung to his arm, then smiled at Pablo. “We simply must.”
Pablo appeared conflicted, knowing his clients’ foibles of assumption based on
their willingness to pay whatever was required. He knew these isolated villagers and
how the norms of civilization never applied here.
“These are pure Mayans, uncorrupted by the Spanish invasion which never
reached this place. There had been so much gold and other spoils of the Aztecs
and Mayan culture near the sea that there was no need for the Europeans to subject
themselves to this harsh environment. I don’t fully comprehend their language. It’s
Yucatecan, linked to other ancient languages of the Yucatán by trade.”
“Try your best,” the husband insisted. “I must see this guitar.”
“There will be a bonus,” the wife said, caressing her husband’s waist where her
slender arm wrapped around him like a constricting serpent. “Comprendes?”
“Si, señora,” Pablo said with a humble bow as he backed away toward the sound
of the guitar. “Please, wait here while I make your request.”
Pablo disappeared for longer than the couple expected, so when he returned a
half-hour later their anxiety was piqued with hope.
Pablo said, “We’ll spend today exploring the ancient ruins of which I’ve spoken.
The elder will give you his answer in the morning.”
His explanation didn’t sit well with the husband, but the wife stroked the back of
his broad neck as if to soothe a savage beast. He’d always gotten his way, at least
since his notoriety as a box office attraction. The postponement of his request soured
their exploration of the ruins.
“I just want to see his goddamn instrument,” he grumbled to the wife. ”What’s
the big effing deal?”
“Easy . . . easy, baby,” his wife put a long finger to his lips. “We’ll see it tomorrow.
Patience, love. You need to be more patient and respectful. These people have no idea
who we are. Treat them kindly . . . like children.”
He huffed and tried to shake off the bad mood he’d been in all day, but it
lingered, hovering over him like a black thunderhead before a storm.
“What’s this?” the wife asked after they’d climbed to the top of the Mayan
pyramid, and Pablo had given his insight to the meanings of the relief sculptors
predating Columbus and the Conquistadors by five hundred years, perhaps a thousand.
She was pointing to a deep hole, a hundred feet across and overgrown with thick
jungle flora.
“I’ve seen this before at other Mayan ruins,” Pablo said.
“It looks like a sinkhole,” the husband said with a shrug.
“Whether by nature or design, this great pit was where a virgin was sacrificed
annually to begin the spring season of fertility, growth and prosperity.”
“Sacrificed how?” the wife asked with displeasure.
“According to studies, a young virgin, usually considered the most beautiful of her
litter, was thrust alive into the deep pit. She would be blindfolded, but unbound. Some experts question if this society was that brutal, and posed the idea that she may have been drugged with no idea what was happening to her.”
“Is that supposed to make me sleep at night?” the wife said with sarcasm.
The husband seemed more intrigued by the concept, perhaps thinking how the
movie hero he portrayed might save the innocent girl before her violent fate.
“It seems bottomless,” he said to Pablo. “How deep is it?”
“Estimates have been anywhere from five hundred to a thousand feet,” Pablo
said, peering over the edge. “We can see the tops of trees growing from the bottom,
but those types of trees can be as tall as a skyscraper. Without seeing the bottom
from here, those tall trees might be rooted from the walls of the cavern, rather than
from the bottom . . . if there even is a bottom. Ancient storms have eroded underground caverns that connect
to the Caribbean to the east and the Pacific to the west.
Earthquakes have altered these pockets over thousands of years. It is also the natural
burial place for the aged, ill, and unfortunate due to accidents and diseases.”
“A natural compost heap,” the wife offered with a smirk. “Perhaps you’ll push me
over the edge when I become too wrinkled and dry to suit your needs, babe.”
“Never happen, darlin’,” he said with a shrug. “Even if I were tempted, you’d
find a way to take me over the edge with you.”
“Togetherness,” she said with a smirk. “I’m in for that.”
Their trek back to the village was silent and uneventful. After a light supper and
a couple of ounces of tequila, the couple retired when their fire dwindled. Exhausted,
neither was inclined to make love. She lay her cheek against his abdomen as they tried to sleep beneath the mosquito netting, but the haunting, almost hypnotic tones of the village elder’s guitar floated to their hut like puffs of smoke from a bong altering their states of mind till dawn.
Awakened by chirping birds, they felt refreshed after being lulled to sleep by
the mellow strings of the elder’s guitar. The morning mist lifted, and the jungle came
alive with varied creatures’ shrills and roars.
“I wonder if Adam and Eve would’ve felt this way when they awoke each morning
in the Garden of Eden?” she posed a quandary.
He grunted with amusement and nodded toward the clearing where Pablo was
approaching them.
“The elder has invited you to listen to him play his guitar, but you must remain
respectfully silent.
His son is more versed in communication outside this remote village,
but even with that, it is an effort to understand
even his exact meaning when we confer.”
“We’ll do as you advise,” the wife said. “Won’t we, baby?”
He nodded and motioned Pablo to lead the way.
They sat in a circle on the ground inside the elder’s hut. His wife, with bare,
wrinkled breasts that hung nearly to her waist, served them a bitter porridge. They
nodded and smiled, but couldn’t bear more than one mouthful, which caught in the
wife’s throat. The liquid from a gourd that the elder’s wife offered seemed to do the
American more harm than good as she coughed for several minutes.
The elder remained silent, staring at nothing until her coughing subsided. He
reached behind him and placed the guitar across his folded legs. He paused until even
the birds outside the hut seemed suddenly to hush.
With tan hands weathered by time and the harsh jungle life, the elder struck a
melodious chord that the couple couldn’t recognize,
though it continued to hum in their
minds even after the elder put his hand across the strings to stop their vibration. He
handed the guitar to the husband with a nod for him to play the instrument.
His wife was thrilled and nodded for him to try. He struck a familiar chord, but the
sound was different from anything he’d ever heard. The tone was fuller and more
resonant with a texture beyond his scope of understanding.
He tried another chord with
the same result. His wife seemed transfixed by its sound. They stared at each other.
“Tell him we want it,” the husband told Pablo.
Pablo shook his head, but the husband insisted.
After some guttural exchanges, the elder snatched the guitar from the husband’s
grasp and stood. “N-wits-a!” the elder said emphatically.
The husband looked to Pablo for his meaning.
“He says the guitar is his.”
“Tell him I’ll pay him whatever he wants for it,” the husband said with
dismissiveness.”
Pablo sighed then tried, but the elder folded his arms and shook his head,
and said, “No t-wits !”
“He says it’s not yours,” Pablo said.
“Of course it isn’t, but I’ll pay him well for it.” The husband nudged Pablo.
His wife stroked his neck with empathy, knowing how much his obtaining the
guitar would mean to him.
When Pablo tried again, the elder shouted a word Pablo didn’t know. The
Elder’s son whispered to Pablo, “It’s priceless to my father. It can’t be bought.”
“That’s ridiculous,” the husband said. “How can anything in the godforsaken
jungle be priceless? He can make another guitar when we buy this one.”
The Elder’s son explained that it took ten years to make this guitar and it will
be a gift to his grandson when he dies.
“As you know yourself, Pablo,” the husband said. “My price for his guitar could
put his grandson through four years of college and a doctorate in Ivy League schools in the States.”
Pablo shook his head and said, “No monetary price will be considered. That
issue had been closed yesterday.”
The negative result of his bargaining left a bitter taste
in the husband’s craw. He grumbled throughout the day spoiling the adventure for his
wife. When they returned to the village
at dusk after exploring another Mayan ruin, the
elder and his son stood in front of their hut
with their arms folded in front of their puffed
out chests. After a brief exchange between Pablo and the son,
Pablo returned to the American couple.
“We must leave in the morning,” Pablo told them. “We are no longer welcome.”
Frustrated and angry, the husband grabbed his wife by the wrist to return to their
hut for the evening, but as he did, his wife caught
an expression in the elder’s eyes and
a twist of his mouth that detected a weakness she was familiar with. She’d come to
learn the darkness of men’s souls
in her journey toward getting her name on a marquis.
Unable to sleep with his pent-up anger, the husband took four shots of tequila,
but his wife took only one. Within an hour, he was asleep and loudly snoring with
occasional mumblings about the guitar in an imaginary debate with the elder over his
so-called priceless guitar.
“Priceless?” The wife whispered.
In their world there was no such thing. There would always be a price that could
test anyone’s resistance.
Their marriage had been strained before this trip, but now her
husband revealed his greatest desire, to possess this guitar. The magical instrument
could be what she’d use to fulfill him and seal their commitment
to each other forever.
She poked her husband to be sure he was soundly sleeping. She took a deep
breath and left their hut. She listened outside the elder’s hut, but did not hear any
snoring. There was a full moon just above the jungle canopy, so when she opened
the door to the elder’s hut, the moonlight cast across the elder’s glaring face. His
eyes were wide open and he clutched his guitar firmly to his chest as if he knew
someone might try to steal it from him.
The elder’s wife slept soundly in the far corner of the hut, so the American
woman put her index finger to her full lips to urge him to remain silent as not to wake
her. She crossed the hut like a
predatory cat until she knelt before him. She opened her
blouse and pressed his face against her breasts.
He pulled back from her for a moment,
but she nodded to the guitar and
caressed its strings with her long slender fingers. She
took the elder’s chin in her hand
and looked deep into his eyes to make him understand
her proposition.
He nodded repeatedly.
She took the guitar by its neck and leaned it against the wall of the hut and fell
backwards pulling the elder on top of her.
She hadn’t expected the elder to be so ardent
or his testosterone to be so fluently aggressive at his age, but she was determined to
fulfill her husband’s need for the guitar.
The morning birds were starting to chirp before
the elder separated himself from her.
She nodded to the guitar and he nodded back
in agreement.
“Later,” she said, though he wouldn’t understand her language. She pointed to
the sky, made a circle with both hands
and motioned upward with her hand
to indicate sunrise.
He nodded in agreement understanding that her husband couldn’t know why
he’d changed his mind about the selling the guitar.
She indicated with a counting gesture of her hands that the elder must accept
some payment from her husband to avoid any suspicion.
He nodded, made a prayerful gesture with his hands, then she left his hut before
his wife awoke. Her husband was still sleeping so she let him rest, nuzzling beside him
and listening to his snoring and knowing she had done her best to make him happy,
that this trip would accomplish what they had set out to do. Their possession of the
guitar, she felt, would become more binding than their wedding vows.
They could play
it often as a reminder of their mutual dedication to each other.
When the husband awoke, he found his wife sleeping soundly beside him.
Pablo called to him from outside their hut, “The elder has changed his mind!
Come and he will make an exchange for the guitar!”
Excitedly the American couple quickly dressed and came to the center of the
village where they were greeted by an assembly of fifty villagers of various genders
and ages. All had turned out for the exchange.
“What does this mean?” the husband asked.
“His son tells me this is an important pact between you and the elder which
requires the witnessing by his entire village,” Pablo said. “Come, we must follow them
to their scared place.”
The American couple shrugged at each other and followed. Only a ten-minute
walk from the center of the village, but in the opposite direction of their recent
expeditions to Mayan ruins, they came to a wide crevasse much like the one they’d
seen several days ago. In full headdress and with a chorus of woodwind instruments
made from hollow jungle flora, the elder, holding the guitar with outstretched arms,
came to the edge of the crevasse.
With his wife at his side, the husband stood face-to-face with the elder, who
uttered a chant in his ancient Mayan tongue that was echoed by the villagers
surrounding them. The elder nodded to the husband, then to the wife, and bowed his
head. The elder’s son nodded to the husband’s Rolex watch.
“He wants your watch,” his wife nudged him.
The husband removed the watch and placed it in the Elder’s son’s outstretched
hand. Then his son pointed to the husband’s gold wedding band.
The husband grumbled under his breath, but his wife put a hand on his shoulder
and nodded with her approval.
Then she pulled off her diamond ring and placed it in the
son’s open hand with a gesture of personal sacrifice.
“We must have this guitar at any cost,” she said under her breath.
The son nodded to the wife’s digital camera, which made her hesitate, wanting
her photos of this memorable trip of a lifetime. The son glared at her, so she removed
the SIM card and handed the camera to him.
He slung the camera over
his shoulder by
its strap.
“What more could he want?” the husband stammered.
The elder smiled broadly with a sallow grin of crooked teeth that gave the
wife a chill, recalling last night. Before the Americans knew what hit them, the elder
threw his guitar into the crevasse. The instrument made several discordant sounds
as it bounced off treetops below then lay atop one tree’s canopy in clear sight from
above.
The villagers let out a prime-evil shrill as Pablo and the son exchanged a heated
discourse.
“What the hell!” the husband gasped.
His wife glared at the elder.
Pablo took the Americans aside. “He says if you can get the guitar, it’s yours
for the taking, and he’ll return your trinkets as well.”
Through the husband mind ran all the stunts he’d accomplished in his movies.
The enchanting sound of the guitar echoed in his head.
“You can’t!” his wife pleaded. “It’s too dangerous. It’s not worth it.”
“It’s priceless,” he retorted. “I can do this. I must have it.”
Over the next hour, she watched along with the villagers as her husband
courageously climbed down the side of the crevasse. More than just a movie star,
he was resourceful and took the chance that the tree’s canopy would support him
from a short height when he jumped off the side of the crevasse just ten feet above
the broad leaves.
Oohs and aahs came from the villagers over his remarkable determination. When
he took the guitar in hand they cheered him. He stroked a chord that rang as true as the
night before, but with that strum, the branch he sat on broke. He let out a scream that gagged his wife.
She peered over the edge with hope that her heroic mate would make a
remarkable escape as he always had in every film. She trembled with her back to the
villagers, wondering if she had the courage to jump, joining her husband before she’d
be forced over the edge.
She had to have her last say and turned toward the elder. “We had a deal!” she
shouted, but he just nodded for his son to toss her husband’s watch,
their rings, and the camera over the side of the crevasse.
Last tangible reminders of her husband.
When Pablo pleaded with the son, three villagers grabbed him, lifted him off
his feet, then swung him by his hands and feet and threw him far over the edge with
a scream that reverberated from the depth of the crevasse.
Horrified, the wife backed away from the edge of the bottomless pit. She felt
certain of her fate, but prepared herself not to go without a fight.
Having concentrated
solely on her husband’s efforts, she hadn’t paid much attention to the other villagers
gathered around her. She was sure she would be quickly grabbed and tossed over
the side just like Pablo.
Then a promenade of female villagers was led by the elder’s wife toward
where she stood. The old woman bowed her head to the American, then the other
women surrounded the elder’s wife.
The movie star assumed this Mayan culture thought less of women and the
elder’s wife would have the lesser honor of shoving her over the side to complete
the ritual . But the village women led the old woman to the edge of the crevasse where
she gracefully took a long swan dive on her own. There was no scream of terror, only
the sound of braking branches from her impact below.
The long silence that followed was suddenly broken with a musical chord of
great volume that reverberated through the jungle. The American woman turned to
the villagers and saw that each had a guitar like the elder’s. All had the same
unmistakable sound that she’d hoped would be the unique sound she’d share for the
rest of her blissful life with her husband recalling this wonderful adventure.
My husband, she thought, surely he isn’t dead. Either I’m having a bad dream
or he’ll soon be back to rescue me from this nightmare.
For the next month, she was awakened with wishful thoughts that her husband
would emerge unscathed from that pit of hell and come to her rescue. But the vultures
that circled the crevasse and swooped down and returned to flight with strands of
carrion from their sharp beaks told her otherwise. A rancid smell of decay wafted daily
from the crevasse and would until the rainy season came to wash the crevasse clean.
She thought about how this trip of a lifetime had not turned out like any of her
husband’s thriller flicks.
Sometimes the elder would mistake her laughter as joy clutched
as she would be nightly in his embrace,
but she was laughing maniacally about how this
wonderful vacation had turned into a bad joke
that none of her
Hollywood friends would get.
She laughed and blubbered simultaneous, disappointed in herself that she’d
never have the courage of the old woman to jump on her own into the crevasse.
The elder cocked his head and just stared at her with curiosity when she had
these daily hysterical mood swings.
She said the same thing every night,
but in a language the elder couldn’t understand:
“It’s a bad joke on us, babe . . . truly priceless.”
THE LITTLE BLUE FROG,
THE AZTEC LEGEND OF CHOCOLATE
An Aztec Folktale Retold by Dianne de Las Casas
© Copyright 2008 The Story Connection
The Sun God, Nanahuazin, smiled as he looked at
his precious treasure on the banks of the Great Pond.
It was the cacao tree, from which the cacao pods grew.
Hidden inside the pod was the secret food of the Gods, the cacao bean.
Every day, Nanahuazin enjoyed his cacao.
Rich and dark, Sun God savored the flavor of his cacao. “This is delicious,” he said as he ate. Nearby, Quetzacoatl, the God of Delight, watched as Sun God devoured the cacao. “So that is where he keeps his cacao,” Quetzacoatl said. Quetzacoatl approached Sun God. “You should share your cacao treasure with the people of the earth.” Nanahuazin laughed, “Ha! Never! This is food meant for the Gods only. I will never share.” Quetzacoatl said, “Earth’s people deserve to taste the divine.” Sun God became angry. “Go, Quetzacoatl! The cacao is not meant for humans!” Quetzacoatl left and transformed himself into a little blue frog. He hid near the banks of Great Pond and watched as Sun God scraped the cacao from inside the pod.
The little blue frog said, “If Nanahuazin will not share his treasure, I will tell Earth’s people about it.”
The little blue frog sat by the edge of the pond near some children and sang,
“Rrrrrreeeeep. Rrrrreeeeeep. Sun God hides his treasure deep. By the pond, inside large pods He hides the secret food of Gods.”
The children heard the song of the little blue frog. They ran to their village. The children returned with their mothers and pointed to the little blue frog. He sang again, “Rrrrrreeeeep. Rrrrreeeeeep. Sun God hides his treasure deep. By the pond, inside large pods He hides the secret food of Gods.”
The children and their mothers heard the song of the little blue frog. They ran to their village. The children returned with their mothers and fathers and pointed to the little blue frog. He sang again, “Rrrrrreeeeep. Rrrrreeeeeep. Sun God hides his treasure deep. By the pond, inside large pods He hides the secret food of Gods.” Listening to the song of the little blue frog, Earth’s people began searching for the treasure. They found a large tree next to the Great Pond. Near the trunk of the tree lay several large pods. Upon opening the pods, they discovered the delicious, secret food of the Gods, the cacao bean. Nanahuazin, the Sun God, was furious but there was nothing he could do. His secret was now known to all of Earth’s people. The Aztec people delighted in the rich, delicious taste of the cacao bean. They cultivated the seeds and grew more trees. They learned to make a delicious hot drink using the cacao bean, which we now call hot cocoa. The Aztec people named the tasty dark substance from the cacao bean Xocoatl.
Today, we know this divine food as Chocolate.
The Healing Shock
By Alexandra H. Rodrigues
“Please give me three yellow roses, extra long,” Heinz told the shy girl with the blue apron and bare, red arms. For a second she just stood there looking at him, then she hurried into the back room to get the flowers. She marveled what girl it takes to have a man, so handsome, tall, dark-haired and hazel-eyed and quite young, buy her roses. Girls were instantly attracted to Heinz Gormann. He however was not a playboy and knew how to keep his distance while they thought that he admired them. Sure, he liked pretty girls but also the less stunning ones, if they were reasonably intelligent. As plastic surgeon he had helped many an ugly duckling to become attractive. His delicate, sensuous hands were able to produce beauty and therefore he was well aware how superficial it was. He valued character in people far more than outer appearance.
He had always steered away from going steady. Self established for several years, he had no financial problems. His luxurious bachelor apartment was located in Vienna, on the Ring, near the Stephansturm. An exquisite neighborhood. It was kept polished like a mirror, by a maid who came in daily while he was working at the hospital. He dined out alone most of the time as he valued solitude.
Recently a friend had taken him to the Press Ball, while he was on a short visit to Berlin. He had gone to do Kurt, an old friend from the years at the university, a favor. Truthfully he got quickly tired of making meaningless conversation. Waltzing around with exquisitely dressed ladies, the wives of lawyers, editors or journalists, bored him. Many of them were letting him feel that he was welcome to put his shoes under their bed. The ways of modern society did not please him. He had been raised in Innsbruck, a charming village in Austria, surrounded by mountains. His profession frequently exposed him to the liberal trend from which the society today got its kicks but he’d been always careful not to fall for it.
Ruth Weide was different and maybe this was what awoke his interest that day at the ball. She had been sitting at the same long table he and Kurt had joined. She did not take part in the flirtatious competition that was going on. She sat there sipping her coffee, her back quite erect. Obviously she did not want to be bothered. Her light brown, pulled up hair. complimented the pale green of her dress. A small gold pin was the only jewelry she wore, Heinz noticed. Her eyes took in everything, in what seemed an ironic manner. If a man came her way and she sensed that he might ask her to dance, she’d bend her face deep over the coffee cup or started digging for a hanky, pretending to be in thought and thus discouraging the beau.
Heinz had moved down the empty row of chairs, everybody else was up and twisting on the dance floor. He held out his cigarette case to her.
“May I offer you a cigarette?” She’d looked up but her eyes went straight past him, her body kind of motionless.
Her voice was clear and well modulated, “No thank you, I do not smoke.” He’d shrugged, gotten up and asked a red headed beauty to dance. When he returned, Ruth was still at the table, a fresh cup of coffee in front of her. He asked Kurt, who had also returned to the table
“Do you know that girl?” He did not.
“Sorry buddy, never saw her before, seems not much to look at anyhow. I heard her being called Ruth. She seems to be a sour puss. The redhead however, the one you just danced with. Wow. She is the daughter of Mr. Kabiak, the editor of The Star. She is devouring you alive with her looks, better stick to her.”
Then Heinz watched Ruth getting up and with her little evening purse clutched to her body, leave the table. There is rhythm in her walk, he remembered thinking, she has an immaculate figure, slim and well proportioned. She did come back, as he had hoped she would. In the meantime he had become engrossed in a conversation with Mr. Brocker, a well know publisher. Mr. Brocker was inquiring if Heinz had ever written a book on his expertise in the field of Plastic surgery.
“Oh, there comes Ruth” Mr. Brocker had said, “I don’t know what is the matter with that girl; I understand she is a wizard at the office but it seems she does not know how to have a good time.” Mrs. Brocker had come to take her husband over to the bar while Heinz had taken a rain check when the invitation had been extended to him. When the band began to play “Yellow Bird” one of his favorite tunes, Heinz tried again and asked if Ruth wanted to dance. Like in a trance Ruth had gotten up and had let him lead her to the dance floor. He had held her tight and she had not resisted. Her little figure seemed weightless, her movements mechanical but in perfect rhythm with the music.
Heinz had said, ”You don’t have much fun, do you? Do you wish you hadn’t come?” Again he had noticed those ironic lines around her full lips. “It is always the same, I really do not belong here and truthfully I really want no part of it anyhow. I only came, so I won’t lose my job. One has to pretend to be sociable ever now and then.” For the first time she had lifted up her head and looked fully at him, and at the same time a change occurred in her. She’d kept looking at him fascinated. The astonishment and admiration in her look made him feel nearly embarrassed, he hurried to introduce himself. “I am Dr. Gormann. I am here on a short visit. My friend Kurt brought me along.”
“Oh you are a doctor, what kind of a doctor?”
“A plastic surgeon, something you would hardly have any need of.”
She had blushed and it had made her look very sweet. Then back came the irony and the mask. “I am glad you are no an internist. I have lost faith in those. My father passed away two months ago. He was just having what was called a simple operation, but he died under the knife. My mother passed away last year. The doctor was not willing to make a house call and she had a hemorrhage.
”I am sorry to hear that.”
Heinz was surprised how matter of fact she had informed him. The band had played its last tune. He had felt sorry for Ruth. Those unpleasant memories most likely caused her solemn demeanor. “You are alone here, so may I take you home?” he had asked. She had not answered for a while, just continued looking at him and suddenly tears had started running down her cheeks.
“Yes please take me home” she had agreed. He had put his arm around her shoulder and without making any conversation they had made it to Ruth’s building, not too far away from where they had met. She had not asked him to come in when they got there but had given him her phone number.
He had called her the next evening, only to see if she was all right and when she had invited him over then he had not wanted to hurt her and had gone. Then it had happened. Ruth had confided in him that she had been engaged but her fiancé had found a better life in America and married abroad. She had held back on nothing and while she was talking she changed from the wise girl he had met to a woman in despair, short of begging for love. Again afraid to hurt her, he had made love to her but he certainly had not ever mentioned that he loved her, after all he hardly knew her. He did not love her; actually he hardly was any longer interested in her. It had been hard to convince her to stay in Berlin under the pretext that she would feel lonely in Vienna as he always had a very busy work schedule. She was willing to give up her job having suddenly snapped out of her numbness. He was not be so blunt as to tell her that he had absolutely no feeling for her. That the fling they had had was just a gesture to calm her. Twice since then had he been back to Berlin to see her and now what?
He took the yellow roses which the girl had arranged nicely with fresh, green sprigs and hailed a taxi. “Hotel Sacher, please.”
Vera will like those roses he thought; probably she will comment on the color. It had been quite on purpose that he had chosen yellow and not red roses. Vera was the girl who stimulated his erotic senses. He had met her a couple of months ago at the farewell party for Ellen, one of his patients. It had all been so uncomplicated, so natural. Vera had come with him after the party to his place and they had made love, two grown-ups, knowing exactly what they wanted from each other. Vera was absolutely undemanding. Never did she ask him if he loved her. She worked as a model for Herzmanski on Maria Hilfer Street. She didn’t seem to put any value on sentiments and that suited him fine. Whenever they were together, they had a good time and laughed a lot. He had not much time but Vera made herself available as often as possible. Her black hair would fall in gay little curls over her shoulders and jumped dancingly along her back when he told a joke or story from his day at the hospital. She would understand when he had no time, and she too had an erratic schedule. She knew about Ruth but did not ask any questions.
As usual Vera had picked the hidden nook at the back of the café. Again she looked like a picture in the forest green suit with matching beige shoes and handbag.
“How sweet of you to bring me flowers,” she greeted him when she saw him coming. “Yellow?” she smirked. “Not sure if you are courting me?”
He kissed her lightly on the cheek. Her exotic perfume tickled his nostrils and was promising more of the excitement that was always prevailing when they were together. They both had Campari with soda and a twist of lemon. Vera was bubbling as usual. Full of stories about buyers, photographers and her boss, who was an old geezer, like she described him. As a rule Heinz enjoyed to listen to those rather amusing anecdotes but today his heart was not in it when he laughed. He waited for a pause in one of her tales and then decided to better get it over with.
“Darling.” he began, “I have to make a confession. Funny, you actually never ask me to confess, he tried to joke. You know Ruth, that lonely girl in Berlin I had mentioned to you, she is clinging to me although I never gave her a reason to believe that she meant anything to me. We had a fling and as far as I am concerned, that was it. Nothing serious at all. Well this morning I got a letter from her that she has vacation and is coming here, to Vienna, tomorrow to be with me.”
Heinz was relieved that Vera had not interrupted him. She was sipping her Campari, looking into the glass, fishing for the lemon wedge, not looking at him. So he continued.
” She cannot compare to you. She leaves me totally cold erotically. To be honest, we did sleep together a few times. She so much seems to need the feeling of being loved but I am not the one to give that to her. I am just waiting for the right time to tell her that it is over, that it actually never was.” He stopped. Vera looked hurt Was she jealous after all?
“Why do you tell me all that? You know you are free. I never ask you.” She pushed away the now empty Campari glass and shook her head, when he asked, “Want another one?” There was no emotion in her voice, it sounded crisp and harsh when very quietly she said:”You probably tell your Berlin chick a sentimental story about me too. Don’t bother to explain further, I will get out of your life right now.” She got up. Threw over her leather coat, while pushing his hand away, as he tried to help her and while already leaving called out to him: ”I know you don’t mind to pay for the cocktails, although it is a waste today.”
He did not rush to follow her, instead he picked on some of the leaves of the roses that had remained laying on the table. This was not the reaction he had expected from her. So she was jealous. She too had wanted to hold him. Maybe it was better like this. He’d loved her body and her spontaneity but besides that … He had no desire to spend his time figuring out female emotions. They always choose him. He liked it, but he never was the first to make an advance.
His career was his love. He was on his way to become a top authority in his field. It satisfied him to be borderline brilliant in his work. Creating beautiful specimens of noses, breasts and chins for the female race satisfied his emotions.
It was Vera’s fault that she had taken it so seriously. He would have liked to stay with her. Possibly one day it might have gotten to be a deeper relationship. For Ruth, well that was truly nothing but pity. He did not want her to fall back into that stereotype lingering she had displayed when he met her at the party. So she would be here tomorrow. What a nerve to come so out of the blue. He would not be able to pick her up from the airport. When her plane landed he would
be busy performing a face lift on the rich Mrs. Bozena. He could send some flowers to the hotel to greet her. But no, better not. No use making believe he was delighted to see her. She would have to face the facts soon enough.
Ruth was holding on tight to the armrest of the economy seat in the 737 aircraft that brought her from Berlin to Vienna. Flying was not her cup of soup. She could not understand how so many pretty girls, like that stewardess who was serving the cocktails right now, enjoyed to make a living in such a dangerous job. Heights scared her. At home she did not even dare to climb on a ladder for fear of falling. She took a little rhinestone-covered mirror out of her purse. The face that looked at her did please her. Methodically she had picked a navy blue dress with white buttons. A quite youthful, playful style. She was always conscious of her age when with Heinz. She was a year younger than he, but he was so vigorous that she always felt too set in her ways. It must have been his influence that had made her do what she had done. To just pack and go was so not at all like her. By now he must have gotten her letter. She had not phoned, afraid he might have an excuse to make her change her decision. She was proud of him, he always worked so hard. Whenever she had mentioned that she would come to Vienna to stay with him, he had been so evasive; always it was his work he wanted nothing to interfere with. She would not be a burden to him. On the contrary, she would keep his apartment clean; he could get rid of the maid. She would cook for him and spoil him when he comes home from work. No question she was looking forward to make herself useful. She could even type his reports. She wanted to move in with him. He had not proposed yet but he would come around. She had not mentioned anything to him other than that she was having vacation. No, he did not know that she had quit her job to be with him for good. He would be so surprised. She wasn’t really the career girl he thought her to be. They would get married soon and she would be there for him only and – maybe for their child, if they were meant to have one soon. Ruth was so old-fashioned in her mind that it never occurred to her that Heinz might have completely different ideas. Her upbringing had been that of a sheltered only child. The facts of real life had only recently come into play for her.
Heinz was not at the airport but she picked up a message at the Hotel desk informing her that he would come over as soon as he finished at the hospital. She ordered a snack and then sat in the somewhat stuffy room waiting for him. The three hours since she had gotten here had passed very slowly. It was five o’clock now. Couldn’t he have called her? Shouldn’t he have called her? She stared thoughtfully at the telephone. Now, now calm down she told herself. If he is performing an operation he could not just run out and call her, he was a doctor, not an office worker. Nevertheless, she was getting nervous. Her body felt shaky. She had gone thru that quite often lately. Maybe it was because she missed him so much when he was not with her. She took a little blue pill out of her purse and went into the bathroom to get a glass of water. That would help. A doctor had given that medication to her after her father’s death, when she had been close to a nervous breakdown. She opened the window and the fresh air felt good. She inhaled deeply the scented autumn air. It was a nice day, mild and sunny. The clock from the Church Maria across the street chimed six. She got some more water, and when she glance into the mirror over the double sink, what she saw did not flatter her. She looked pale; the waiting was wearing her out. She dabbed on fresh lipstick and passed the brush thru her soft hair.
There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” she called and her heart started singing – It must be him, it must be him.
At about the same time Vera was sitting in her quite elegant apartment. Dressed in a long, flowing Chinese robe, loose gold slippers on her manicured feet. A cocktail in her hand, she looked extremely comfortable. To tell the truth it only looked like it. Ever since yesterday, since the breakup with Heinz, her pride, her usually always evident self-confidence, had suffered. Still convinced that she had done the right thing to walk out on Heinz, it hurt more than she would admit even to herself. He was such a good looking man, so intriguing, his touch so gentle yet his love making so powerful. He had – masculinity – written all over him. Why had he told her about Ruth? He could have used any old excuse, business, an out-of-town meeting where his presence was requested or something in that line. She really did not care about the other girl. Only yesterday, after the break up had she given their relationship a serious thought. He had all the qualifications she had always looked for in a man. Together they were a stunning couple. They were competitive on most levels. He would have been quite a catch, but she too was the dream for many an eligible man. She mixed herself another Martini. So since she thought he was worth fighting for, why didn’t she? Suddenly she no longer wanted him just on a casual – sex maybe today, maybe tomorrow level -- now she wanted him for a husband. Was it that second Martini? Anyhow she was going to find a way she told herself. It wouldn’t hurt to apologize to him, for a start. Men liked that. Then she would work at proving to him that he could not find a better match but her.
When Ruth woke up the next morning it took her a while to recognize the surroundings. Oh yes, she was in Vienna, at the Hotel Gerber. Why Hotel Gerber, why not in Heinz’s apartment? Slowly the night’s sluggishness left her and she remembered. He had been happy to see her. He had been very tired. Most important she had gotten the feeling that something was missing when he had kissed her lightly on the lips. There was no passion, none of the excitement she had pictured. Then they had gone out for dinner, just in the restaurant downstairs of the hotel. A nice but hardly cozy place. He had told her about his latest successes. He’d been attentive, chivalrous, had even ordered a bottle of champagne but he had not asked her to come with him but shortly after desert excused himself with being extremely tired. He had left. Not even took her up to her room again. She had come up to this room herself, alone, had taken three more of the blue pills and must have fallen asleep instantly.
Well today was another day and they had agreed to meet at eleven. What time was it now? Oh, only seven thirty. Heinz was taking the day off for her. So everything was good after all. They would go mountain climbing. – Mountain climbing?! The realization went thru her like an electric shock. It turned her stomach. She had agreed, had not wanted to appear chicken. She had come to Vienna to share his interests -- but mountain climbing of all things. It was his favorite sport he had told her. Of course, he had been brought up with the mountains at his fingertips, used to go up those monstrous hills with ropes and spikes. One could rent the equipment at the foot of the mountain one planned to conquer. Maybe she could make an excuse and tell him she didn’t feel good. But no, she better learn to like what he liked, even if she only pretended. A maid brought the breakfast she had ordered but she could not make herself eat anything, all she did was sip on the coffee absentmindedly.
Later that morning Ruth went to the store. which Heinz had told her to go to and rented the boots she would need. Even on the polished floor of the shop they felt like clumsy alien weights, and Ruth was wondering how she would ever be able to even take a single step in those monsters when on the mountain. Back in her room she threw the package with the boots on a chair and sat down quickly on the bed. She felt shaky, her hands and legs were trembling and the more she thought about the pending excursion, the worse it got. Heinz must not catch on about that fear was her biggest worry, and to calm down, she took a blue pill.
It was a lovely, clear day with just the slightest breath of fog hanging over the Semmering Valley. Heinz put down the backpack with all the equipment. Aware that Ruth was unusually quiet, he put his arms around her and pointed her face upwards, “I know you have never done that before. You will see it is a big thrill once we get up high, you’ll enjoy it. All you have to do is follow into my footsteps and hold on tightly to the rope. I’ll be ahead and do all the securing. There is nothing to worry about. Just make sure you get good footing with each step. Don’t shift your weight till you are sure the spikes have caught in the ground. It’s child play right now, the grounds are not slippery. I have gone up there several times in real bad conditions and then it was quite a challenge.
It took them about an hour to get through the fog layer. Ruth felt paralyzed and was moving as if in a trance. But she advanced, mechanically, step by step, her gaze fixed on Heinz’s athletic figure ahead of her. He was the only reality in that evil dream. She was so afraid. Too afraid to open her mouth and ask Heinz to stop for a minute because her ankles hurt from the uncommon foot wear. She was afraid to look back, afraid to stop, afraid, afraid -.
Then the fog lifted and glaring sunlight caused Ruth to turn her head. She stared down to the valley, far away, deep beneath them. A queasy sensation filled her stomach and her head began to spin. She did not hear Heinz call out for her to look ahead and not down. Her left foot slipped. She grabbed the rope that was tightening around her waist, with both hands. The knot loosened. The rope slipped up her chest toward her neck. She tried for a hold on the stones, digging her hands into them, but missed. The rope stopped at her neck, tightened and she choked, her body going limp.
It could not have taken more than a split second when Heinz felt the pull.
“RUTH!”
No answer. Slowly, as there was no other way, he crawled back down to where Ruth’s body was hanging, lopsided along the mountain wall. Quickly he untied the rope.
“Ruth, Ruth, oh no Ruth!” All the while his hands were patting her face that was tinged pale and green. It hammered in his head. She is dead, dead, I have killed her.
Like in a mental fog he started his climb down. Why, why had it happened, how had it happened? There had been nothing complicated about this climb. He had been up those mountains as guide for friends on many much more complicated tracks. It always had been fun, never the slightest mishap had occurred. Carelessly, like drunk, he continued his way down. His goal to get help as he could not help Ruth anymore. It’s your fault, his brain hammered. No, not
that she slipped, or had she even slipped. He should not have taken her along. He should not have asked her to dance with him at the ball. She should not have come to Vienna. The stress of the situation overwhelmed him. His hands went numb, his feet gave way. He tumbled and lost consciousness.
“Dr. Weinstein, please tell me how he is! Can I see him?” Vera was standing in Dr. Weinstein’s office. She was wearing no makeup but her brown eyes were intense and begging him for a cheerful answer. Dr. Weinstein looked approvingly at the young woman. She was very attractive. Then his face clouded.
“Ms. Karann, I understand you are a close friend of Dr. Gormann and maybe you can help me. We do not know what caused Dr. Gormann to black out. He is known to be a good and cautious climber. As a matter of fact I have gone with him myself. He also has written an article in a sports magazine about a very complicated excursion he had been on just recently. Where he was found was very close to the plateau and truly not that steep.”
He shook his head and Vera felt that she would hear no good. It seems that we have to do with a preliminary shock or stroke before the fall. Vera thought her heart was skipping some beats.
“Please God, let him get well,” she prayed silently. Then she told Dr. Weinstein, “I have not seen Heinz for the last few days. He had some company from Berlin, a girlfriend. I wonder where she is now. I found out about the accident when I called his office.” Dr. Weinstein asked:”Do you know the name of the girl?” “The first name is Ruth, I do not know more but I recall that Heinz mentioned she would stay at the Hotel Gerber. The thought of Heinz behind one of those closed doors to the right and left where they were standing in the hallway made her terribly uneasy. “Doctor, may I see him?” she pleaded.
Ruth’s body had slipped downward and come to rest on a tree stump, the left-over of one of the small mountain pines that can be found sparingly at the lower levels. She opened her eyes, using all her willpower to do so. With a deep breath she filled her lungs with the fresh mountain air, then, noticing her surroundings, she nearly fainted again. What had happened? How had she gotten into this spot? Where was Heinz? She gave out a little cry, “Heinz.” Then she saw the rope that had been thrown carelessly about two arm lengths away from her and again she cried, in panic, “Heinz, Heinz!” No answer. There was absolute stillness around her, nothing but mountains with the sun sinking in anemic light and hiding behind some peaks. It seemed quite far up. She could make out some of the houses in the valley and to her the distance stretched into endlessness. Everything hurt; she was shivering with fear and cold. Heinz must have climbed down for help, she thought trying to calm herself. If I just stay here and don’t move, I’ll be safe till he comes back. It was getting dark fast, and Ruth wept and shivered.
The wooden chair in the white hospital room on which Vera had been sitting for, she didn’t know how long, was hard and uncomfortable but she did not care. Her eyes never left Heinz’s face for a second. He was lying motionless under white, unwrinkled sheets. His usually so telling face, expressionless. There was some dried blood near his forehead and a scar was beginning to form.
“Heinz,” Vera whispered and went over to his bed. He gave no sign that he heard her. A nurse came in to give him an injection.
“Are you his wife?” she asked. “No, a friend, he is not married,” Vera answered. She felt no reaction to the question. She was his friend. The nurse pulled the sheet up to his chin and left the room. “Heinz?” again no answer.
Dr. Weinstein came in after a little while and told her:”We called the hotel. Miss Weide, that’s the ladies name, had only reservations till this afternoon. It seems she left this morning but all her belongings are still in the room, she had not come back by the time I called and there was no message from her.”
Vera’s mind worked feverishly. “Was it possible that Ruth had gone with Heinz?”
She suggested to Dr Weinstein. He shook his head. Then she would have been around to help him, right? But it had been a tourist, a Mr. Rhein, who had found Heinz and alerted the ambulance. One of the few, who care about other people. Dr. Weinstein went over to Heinz to feel his pulse and remained standing at the bedside thinking about what Vera had mentioned.
“On the other hand something must have caused the accident,” Vera suggested. “Could it be that something had also happened to her?” No, Dr. Weinstein did not think so but he agreed “Well, it’s a very small possibility indeed but since you brought it up…” We better send some mountain police to search the area. I would not want to have missed something. With that he left the room and went to make arrangements.
When Vera came back into the hospital room, after grabbing a small bite of food for dinner in the cafeteria, she thought to detect a slight twitching of the right eyelid. “Heinz?” He did not open his eyes but Vera seemed to have heard “Ruth, Ruth, oh please help. Too late.” The coma closed in on him again.
Dr. Weinstein came back. “I’ve made arrangements and a search group is going to the mountain right now. I’m afraid though that they will be out of luck one way or another, it is getting dark.” Vera interrupted. “Heinz came to for a second and she repeated what she believed to have heard. Dr. Weinstein smiled. He was obviously satisfied that there had been a sign from his patient. “That brings us closer to your theory. Usually when people awake from a shock, unless they are in amnesia, they remember the last thing that happened before they blacked out.”
Ruth could not stop shivering. As pleasant as the weather during the day had been, the sweater she was wearing did not give enough coverage from the cold night that was starting to roll in. She must have dozed off from fatigue because now the lights in the little houses in the valley were on and the mountaintops had disappeared in the darkness. Where was Heinz? Why hadn’t he come back? She coiled together to absorb some warmth from her own body. If only anybody would come and help her out of this nightmare, anybody. What did she really know about Heinz? Nothing, and yet for the last couple of months he alone had been all she’d cared for. He had pulled her out of her agony. Weird that in the situation she was in, life suddenly became so
desirable. With or without Heinz. She did not want to die. To be alive, alive was all that mattered.
Vera was still sitting across the bed, when darkness sat in. How selfish she had been. She had wanted Heinz to be there for her and for her alone and now he could not even take care of himself. “Please God,” she prayed again, “let him come out of his unconscious abyss. Let him get well. Let me see him walk and talk and laugh. I’ll be his friend. He is free to decide what direction his life should take. Just let him live!”
Heinz’s eyelids twitched again. This time he fully opened his eyes but his look was blank. He said: “Where is Ruth? Ruth? God no she is dead.” Then his eyes closed and so did his lips. Vera was shocked by what she had just heard and she rushed to find Dr. Weinstein.
It was about noontime the day when Dr. Weinstein entered Vera’s room at the hospital, where she had retired late last night to take a short nap which had resulted in a solid eight hours sleep. “Good morning to our girl with the seventh sense,” he greeted her. Still drowsy Vera looked at him questioningly and she could sense from the cheerful manner that the news he had, was good news. “The lady, Ruth, was stranded up on the hill, she was brought in late last night, close to fatigue but well otherwise, just a few scrapes.” Vera was glad to hear that but how was Heinz. “And Heinz?” she asked. “Well, the medicine we gave him let him sleep some more, his pulse and other vital signs are quite normal again and the nurse just told me that he is awake now. So let’s go and surprise him, shall we? Get yourself pretty.” Dr. Weinstein had a plan and Vera agreed.
Heinz was lying on his back apathetically staring at the ceiling, when Dr. Weinstein came in.
“Well Heinz, I think you are well enough for a surprise,” Heinz turned his face just enough to be able to focus on Dr. Weinstein. He had no use for surprises but how could the doctor know that? The recollection of yesterday made him wish he could fall back into that black nothingness. No, he had no use for surprises.
The door opened a tiny crack and Heinz could see Vera. Dear Vera, so that was the surprise. How had she found out? It was nice of her to come and visit him. He put his hand to his cheek. It hurt where the scar had begun to form. He wished it would hurt harder, hard enough to block out even an iota of the mental pain he was suffering. Seeing Vera made the guilt feel even more real. She knew he had wanted to get rid of Ruth but, God in heaven, not getting rid of her in such traumatic way. My fault, my fault it kept hammering in his mind while visions of a lifeless body of Ruth made his brain blurry. What did Vera know or not know? Heinz was praying to lose consciousness but that of course did not happen.
Now the door was flung all the way open and – wow I am slipping back into the coma Heinz imagined, because behind Vera he saw Ruth’s face, pale but smiling at him. Smiling, breathing, alive – oh merciful illusions stay, please stay it spun thru Heinz’s mind. Then he heard Dr. Weinstein’s voice, clear, loud. “So, you like surprises after all, right?” A never before gratefulness swept over him, the voice of the doctor sounded like precious crystal. All Heinz could do, was nod.
Was it Ruth who had taken Vera’s hand or Vera who had taken Ruth’s? Hand in hand they came over to the bed and simultaneously they bent down and placed a kiss on his healthy cheek. I don’t deserve either one of them, Heinz thought. If I could marry them both, I would do so on the spot. The future is not ours to see, that lesson he had now learned in a very short period of time. He looked at the two women and he meant it when he said: “You both are the Best, thank you.” and quietly he promised himself to never hurt the feelings of either one of them. It may not become easy but he would find a way.
A Novel Excerpt
The Lost Book of Annabella ©
by
Gerald Arthur Winter
The sound, like distant thunder, shook the cave.
“Did you hear that?” Ted asked Ellen.
She stopped interpreting the text of the papyrus script to look in the direction of the
sound echoing down the cave’s entrance shaft. Both jumped to their feet.
“Khalil!” Ellen called in the direction of the explosion.
There was no reply, only the trickling sound of spring water down the cave’s walls and
the heaving of their breath.
“Khalil!” Ted shouted louder, but with no reply from their Jordanian guide.
“Maybe a rock slide?” Ellen offered, but she and Ted knew that a cave-in at their
excavation would be more dangerous than uninvited intruders.
“Hope not,” Ted said, taking his lantern. “Better have a look.”
Ellen sensed Ted’s anxiety. Though she wanted to go with him to check out the source
of the explosion, she stayed back clinging to the papyrus scroll they had unearthed from the
cave. Intuitively, she sensed the value of the ancient script and what it might unveil.
Ted disappeared up the shaft to the next level which meandered for almost a quarter
mile to the surface overlooking The Dead Sea from a high cliff. Ellen’s mind was more on the
preservation of the scrolls and what they contained than any physical dangers she might face.
In her interpretation of the Aramaic, she empathized with the young girl, Annabella, half
Hebrew and half Roman, in her flight from Jerusalem pursued by the Roman guards into the
desert wilderness.
Like Annabella, Ellen had avoided the attentions of men. Ellen’s intimacy was with her
search for knowledge and truth.
Ted had not returned from the shaft after fifteen minutes, so rather than panicking,
she let her mind drift back into the ancient world she had been reading about from the
scroll. Ellen could not see herself standing up to her accusers from the Roman court as
Annabella’s Hebrew mother, Amanda, had. She could not imagine making the sacrifice
of marrying a terrible man like Jozabad just to save her daughter.
Ellen read, wondering what Amanda would do if the stallion, Zoar, was not reclaimed
From the Roman before Jozabad returned from horse trading in Arabia? Jozabad would soon
return after months in the desert with his mind set on Amanda giving him a son. If he found
his prize stallion was missing, what would he do to Amanda?
Ellen brushed her fingertips across the delicate papyrus and tried to visualize Jozabad,
a burly man with a jet black beard and spiraling moustache. His large-lobed ears would be
pendulous from the weight of gold earrings. His eyes would be black, deep-set, with dark circles
around them. His voice would be gruff and phlegmatic when he spoke Aramaic. It would be a
charming voice when whispering into a potential customer’s ear, but harsh and curt when
forcing his will upon Amanda. Despite the oriental fragrances he donned, Jozabad would
remain redolent of hay, horse sweat, and manure.
Ellen heard scuffling from the shaft, expecting Ted’s return, but her mind remained on
Amanda, and what she could be thinking when Jozabad returned. The threatening image of the
horse trader would fill the doorway when he entered. The sordid glare in his dark eyes would
make Amanda quiver, Ellen thought, but approaching steps and lantern light came from the
cave’s shaft as Ellen nestled guardedly over the scroll.
“Did Khalil bring fresh water?” Ellen asked, then she saw the fierce scowl of a Palestinian
with a colorfully-patterned burnoose cocked on his head. “Who are you?” she asked. “This cave
has been protected by the Israeli Antiquities Authority.”
Ted came from the shadows into the lantern’s beam with his hands raised. An automatic
rifle was pressed to Ted’s ribs.
“Israel will be no more,” the Palestinian said. “America is at war with the Muslim nations.”
Ellen stood, cradling the scroll in her arms. The Palestinian pushed Ted against Ellen and
motioned for them to sit.
“What are you doing in this cave?” he asked them. “Spying on us?”
“This is an authorized dig. I have the documents to prove it,” Ted said, reaching for a
handkerchief in his breast pocket to wipe the grime from his glasses.
“Don’t!” he warned Ted, pointing the rifle at his head.
“I just want to clean my glasses. We have no weapons,” Ted said. “We’re archaeologists.
We’ve been on this project for months.”
“Where’s the rest of your patrol?” the intruder asked.
“Patrol?” Ellen said. “We’re scientists not military.”
“Undercover CIA,” the Palestinian challenged.
“We have a right to be here,” Ellen protested. “Who are you?”
With a twisted grin that reminded Ellen of her conjured image of the horse trader,
Jozabad, he said. “I am your worst nightmare, blessed by Allah to take infidel hostages to trade
for our own.”
“You’re just a just a terrorist,” Ellen said, surprised by her courage. “Where do you
intend to take us?”
“He can’t take us anywhere,” Ted said. “There was an explosion of some kind at the
entrance to the site with a cave-in that’s trapped us here.”
“Where is your patrol?” Ellen asked.
“Not far, I assure you.”
“The cave-in has completely shut us off from the surface,” Ted said.
“Even if you had a hundred soldiers on the other side of this cave-in,” Ellen said,
“no one can get to us for days, maybe weeks.”
She saw the look of panic in Ted’s expression, having confided in her from the start
of their expedition that he was claustrophobic. His anxiety shortened his breath.
“Even if we had enough oxygen to last us a week, we’d die of thirst or starvation
before anyone could dig us out,” Ted said.
“You might as well put that rifle away,” Ellen said. “We wouldn’t know what do
with a gun anyway.”
“You are my hostages!” their captor shouted firing a shot over their heads, but the
bullet ricocheted off the cave’s wall and struck him in the thigh. The gunfire echoed through
the cavern followed by another tremor from another cave-in close by.
Ellen moved toward him but their would-be captor pointed the rifle at her with one
shaking arm and the other clutched his wound.
“Smart move with the gun,” she said. Another shot like that and we’ll be buried alive.”
“She’s right,” Ted said, “If you don’t let us stop your bleeding, you’ll die.”
Lifting his bloody hand to his face, the Palestinian’s eyes dilated and he fell to the
ground in a faint.
“Get me the first aid kit, Ted,” Ellen said.
“First, I’ll take his rifle.”
“Just toss it over there,” she said. “We’ve got to stop his bleeding.”
As she applied a tourniquet, Ted rummaged through the man’s backpack.
“He’s got plenty of rations,” Ted said, taking a swig of water from the man’s canteen.
“Hey! Take it easy with that water,” Ellen said. “We’ve got to start rationing supplies
if we hope to last till someone digs us out.”
“There’s no more than ten days’ worth of food here,” he said. “I never thought this
canned crap could ever look good to me and . . . I don’t believe it. This is U.S. government
issue. Must have stolen it off one of ours, unless . . . I hope we’re not feeding the enemy.”
“Yes, that’s just what we’re doing, Ted.”
“What are you saying?”
“We have to ration food and water for three.”
“You’ve got to be kidding! He’s a terrorist.”
“You don’t know that. He just tried to intimidate us with a warning shot. It’s pointless
to bind his would if we intend to let him starve.”
“Good for your sense of decency, but yes—pointless. We’d be fools to share the food
with him.”
They glared at each other.
“Let’s get back to work, Ted.”
“Work? You must be kidding.”
“It’s what we came here to do. It will help pass the time until someone finds us. Reading
the scroll takes less energy than arguing. I’ll read my translation aloud to you. Just hand me the
canteen so I can wet my lips first.”
Her lips barely touched the canteen then she licked them. Ted nodded for her to drink
more, but she shook her head. Her determination shamed Ted. He swallowed hard, eyeing the
open mouth of the canteen, but tightened the cap without drinking. Proud of his gesture he
looked to Ellen for praise, but she wouldn’t applaud him just for doing the right thing.
Ellen recapped where she had stopped reading: “Jozabad had left Amanda to tend to his
horse trading business in Jerusalem while he went to Arabia to bring back more horses to sell
for Roman chariots. Amanda had made a deal with Justin, a Roman from the court, allowing
him to borrow Jozabad’s prize stud, Zoar, in exchange for her freedom from prosecution in
Rome where she had killed her father-in-law, Senator Antonius Valens, in self-defense. Being
a Jew, her guilty verdict in trial was certain. Her teenage daughter, Annabella, had witnessed
her mother’s transaction with Justin, realizing the worthlessness of a woman in Roman society.
Fathered by a Roman, Annabella was a Roman citizen, though she’d never left Jerusalem where
she was born. Even as a Roman citizen, she could lose her reputation by slander and be stripped
of her virtue by word of mouth as easily as her physical violation.”
“Aren’t you taking poetic license with your interpretation?” Ted charged.
“It’s a paraphrased summary. The text is in Aramaic,” Ellen said, continuing her
reading and transporting her back to 18 A.D. . .
Amanda’s repulsion of Jozabad’s grotesquely distorted face was masked with a purpose.
She approached him with open arms then faced Annabella with confidence.
“Come daughter, embrace your step-father after his hard ordeal and abuse at the hands
of thankless Romans. We’ve much to celebrate with his return and our new fortune.”
Annabella shuttered at the touch of Jozabad embracing his new wife and his step-
daughter in each arm.
“I’ll celebrate when I’ve seen Zoar,” Jozabad said, squinting his one good eye at Amanda.
“And so you shall, first thing in the morning,” Amanda said. “But now you must bathe,
eat heartily, and seal our partnership in the flesh as well as with silver.”
Annabella was horrified at her mother’s offer to this repulsive man, but Amanda gave
her a wink to assure her she had something cunning up her sleeve. Jozabad eyed Amanda with
question, measuring the sincerity of her offer.
“I will believe you when you bear me a son, not a moment sooner,” he said. “But be
quick with soap and water and prepare yourself for me. Your Roman courtier will return from
Samaria tomorrow by midday. Pray he doesn’t realize your treachery and deceit. As you can see
from my scars, his violence in behalf of his sponsor, the emperor-to-be, he will show you no
mercy if you are found out.”
“So be it, wise Jozabad,” Amanda flattered, playing into his hand, but merely stalling for
time. “We will conceive your heir this evening then make our run with a fortune of Roman silver
into the Arabian desert led by you astride the fleetest stallion in the land, your precious Zoar.”
“Then Zoar is near?” he asked.
“As close as your feet are to the ground,” Amanda said with a grin. “But he is closer to
our exit from the city, so to move him here tonight when we must journey there tomorrow
would be impractical.”
Jozabad conceded to her reasoning, but as Amanda prepared his bath, she whispered
her true intentions to Annabella.
“While I distract him, you must make your escape with our hidden sack of silver and
your proper Roman papers. I will seek you in Jerusalem one week hence at the entrance to
the temple. If I don’t come, sail to Rome and seek a new life there as a citizen. Forget your
connection to my Jewish blood. It has not served you well.”
“Mother, I can’t bear your making this crude sacrifice to Jozabad just to prolong the
truth about Zoar’s death.”
They embraced and Annabella fought off tears as she ran to the stable to retrieve their
fortune. She knelt in the straw, tossing bails aside to find the sack of silver. As she dug, her
heart fluttered realizing the sack was gone.
“Looking for this?” Jozabad’s gruff voice startled her.
She swirled around to see him dripping with lather from his bath and holding the sack
of silver. Before she could scream, he covered her mouth with his huge hand and clutched her
jaw painfully shut. She fainted.
When she awoke, she found herself gagged and tied to a hitching post. Jozabad
whispered his pungent breath in her ear. “I want you to listen as you mother makes her
fruitless sacrifice to me. She foolishly believes that you have already escaped from me.”
Annabella’s screams to Amanda were muted by her gag, and her twisting to free herself
was for naught.
Jozabad’s phlegmatic laugh wheezed in the darkness as he went to Amanda’s room
where she had a surprise for him. Amanda watched his silhouette at the window and
anticipated her mother’s fate and waiting for her screams across the livery yard.
Amanda watched for Jozabad to come through the bedroom door as she displayed
herself enticingly on their bed. The scented oil lamps flickered as Jozabads’s hulking shadow
cast against the wall.
“I did not see Annabella as I left my bath,” he lied to bait her.
“I’ve sent her ahead to join us with Zoar outside the city wall upon our early departure,”
Amanda responded. “Come, take your pleasure with me before the Roman returns to punish
me and completes his unfinished business with you.”
He took her without ceremony with less tenderness than a beast in the field. He
slumped off of her and fell asleep. She slithered out of his grasp and went to the kitchen to
fetch a sharp knife. She paused to bathe her soiled loins with repulsion of Jozabad’s seed in
her. The she went to the stable to see that Annabella had done as she had been told.
Annabella remained tethered where she could see her mother going to the hiding place
for her sack of silver in the stable, but she couldn’t call out to her or attract her attention since
Amanda’s mind was hard-set on her next task.
Seeing the sack of silver was gone, she was relieved, assuming Annabella had escape
with it. Amanda returned to the bedroom with the long knife clutched in her grasp. She
approached the mound of Jozabad’s slumbering hulk silhouetted beneath the blanket against
the moonlight cast from the window.
From across the yard Annabella watched Amanda raise the knife, but her hope for her
mother’s escape with her was lost when she saw Jozabad standing behind her mother. With all
her effort, Annabella chewed her gag off and shouted just as Amanda thrust the knife into
the mound in the bed.
“Mother!” she shouted as the knife struck the mound, once, twice, thrice before
Amanda stopped and recognized her daughter’s shrill.
Amanda pulled the blanket away to see a bound sheep, its white fleece crimson with
pulsing blood. Before she could scream with surprise, Jozabad grabbed her by the throat with
one hand and took the knife with the other. He dropped the bloody knife on the floor.
“Is there no end to your double dealings, woman?” Jozabad grumbled. “Where is my
pride, my Zoar?”
Amanda spat the truth hoping her barbs would cut deep into Jozabad’s black heart.
“Dead and buried. By God’s hand, and not by my design.”
“Cursed woman!” He struck her with the back of his hand. “Don’t twist the truth to save
your own. It’s her fault. Your thankless wench of a daughter who thinks she is better than me,
just because of some piece of paper she carries, a document of chance.
He picked up the knife from the floor and pointed it at Amanda.
“I now bear your seed,” she defied him. “Kill me and kill your heir.”
“Kill you? Better your eternal silence,” he said. “Your words of Zoar’s death have broken
my spirit worse than the Roman’s blows have broken my flesh. Now in silence, henceforth, you
will nurture my offspring from your breasts but never from your loathsome lips.
Annabella cried out with a whimper witnessing Jozabad’s cruel justice upon her mother.
With a twist of the knife, he cut out her tongue then stuck the knife into a wooden beam.
“Now your worthless babble will fall on deaf ears,” he said, taking from the sack of silver
Annabella’s proclamation of Roman citizenship. He laughed as he burned it in the flame of an
oil lamp and stomped it out into fluttering ashes.
With Amanda’s shawl stuffed in her mouth to stop her bleeding, her eyes went wild.
Jozabad’s sharp attention to the burning document allowed Amanda to pull the knife from the
beam. She was no match for Jozabad’s strength, so she struck back with the greatest damage to
his spirit. With both hands she fell upon the knife, then went limp as Jozabad turned her over.
With contempt, he spat into her glazed eyes for taking his unborn child with her.
“You haven’t won, wretched woman!” he cursed her. “Now your daughter is my chattel.
Hear me, daughter of Rome!” his voice echoed across the livery yard, making the horses kick
and whinny and the camels sway and bray with agitation.
“Your flesh is mine now, precious Annabella! Mine to trade for a dozen of the swiftest
Arabian stallions, mine to do with whatever I choose.”
X
Ellen collapsed with exhaustion when Annabella’s plight seemed more than she could
endure. Their would-be captor remained unconscious. His shallow breathing was counter-
pointed by Ted’s erratic snoring.
Ellen reached over to wake him.
“Wake up,” she said, her throat dry and her voice hoarse from lack of water.
It hurt to swallow before Ted could speak. “It’s starting to get to me, the close space.
I feel trapped, short of breath.”
“Pull yourself together,” she said.
“I helped you with him, and against my better judgment.” Ted pulled his forearms into
his chest then clenched his fists under his sinking chin. He pulled his knees up to his chest and
slumped against the cave’s wall. “I’m losing it, Ellen. Really, I can’t breathe.”
“Breathe through your nose, not your mouth or you’ll lose the moisture of your saliva,”
she cautioned. “We need to conserve water.”
“I can’t,” he said, panting like a dog in a summer scorcher. “I need more water!”
He lunged at the canteen on the ground between them. She tried to stop him, but he
slapped her face with the back of his hand. She fell back long enough for him to take several
long gulps before handing it to her. His posture slumped in shameful repose.
Ellen shook the canteen with about six ounces left. She just wet her lips then dampened
a handkerchief to pat the Palestinian’s lips with it. She did not judge Ted, because his penitence
could not refill the canteen. Ellen would not look back, only ahead. She put it behind her,
cleared her throat, and began to read the scroll aloud, so that Annabella’s ill fate might make
their predicament seems less than hopeless . . .
Hurriedly, Jozabad put his five talents of silver into sacks then onto five of his best
camel’s backs. He freed Annabella from her bindings so that she could embraced her mother’s
corpse. A woman of many words, Amanda had chosen her self-inflicted end rather than writhe
painfully with the shame of having her tongue cut out by the likes of Jozabad.
The next day, Annabella cowered behind one of Jozabad’s horses as the great sheik,
Sadaq, wound his caravan around the rocky cliffs and dunes toward the oasis where Jozabad
had encamped for the night.
“Don’t hide, girl!” Jozabad grabbed her by her long hair and pushed her in front of him.
“Show your wares to the great Sadaq. His lust for your beauty will rattle his silver coffers. But
when he learns of your purity, his generosity will flow into my waiting arms.”
“My Jewish blood curdles at the thought of ever tainting my life with swine like you.”
“Whinny all you like,” Jozabad said. “You’ll replaced my lost stallion, the prize of my
stable with your mongrel blood. I swear by tomorrow, step-daughter, I’ll be free of you and
become rich. You will learn to adapt to the role of women and no longer assume the rights
of men. Then, your dead mother’s sharp tongue will be silenced in you as well.
Tears welled in Annabella’s eyes at the thought of Amanda.
Sadaq’s musicians’ flutes and tambourines subsided their trill and clamor as the caravan
prepared to water their livestock at the oasis and refresh his company on their westward
journey. Jozabad held his arms above his head with open hands in gesture of surrender to
Sadaq nobly mounted on his black Arabian stallion. Sadaq’s steed snorted, waiting for his
subtle gesture with his knees to command his direction. Sadaq raised his right hand to halt
his two Ethiopian eunuchs armed with spears and leather shields.
“Hail the great Sadaq, ruler of the wind and sand!” Jozabad called out, then fell to
his knees and bowed his face to the sand. He motioned for Annabella to do the same and
whispered. “Do as I do or we’re dead.”
Silent, Sadaq looked down at them from his stallion.
From his prone position, Jozabad called out, “Oh, greatest of Arabian sheiks! You
blessed me three years ago with your purchase of an exquisite black colt from the seed of
my beloved stud Zoar! Please honor this humble horse trader with your permission to spend
the night at this oasis in the protective company of your caravan. I have a trade to propose
to you, sire. A trade that will surpass the bargain I made with you for the stallion you
ride today.”
“Jozabad, you worthless scoundrel!” Sadaq shouted back. “I would prefer to stand
downwind from your mangy horses than sit beside you when I dine tonight. The eastward
wind has whispered tales of your death, yet now you call to me like the foul stench from a
polluted well. Are you a mirage, Jozabad? Or do you have an even better horse for me than
the one I ride today?”
Jozabad rose to his feet and tugged Annabella to hers.
“I am alive and well, great Sadaq,” he said approaching him, though intimidated by
his seven-foot guards in long feathered headdress and with shiny black skin like ebony by
moonlight. “But alas, the Romans have disfigured me and taken my precious stud Zoar as
well.”
Sadaq squinted to focus on Jozabad approaching with Annabella behind him. Sadaq
was a man of extreme sensitivities, repulsed by the maimed horse trader, but curious about
the nubile girl shying behind him.
Peeking from behind Jozabad’s girth, she saw that Sadaq was handsome, his face
bronzed by the desert sun. His white raiment distinguished him as the leader of the caravan
mounted on his shiny black steed. He looked no more than thirty, a middle-age man in this
time, but attractive by his stature and command. His insults to Jozabad amused Annabella.
When Jozabad stood aside, Sadaq had a better look at her. She felt the sheik’s dark
eyes caressing her with a penetrating gaze, a sensation that was foreign to her, because
Amanda had shelter her to her current age of eighteen.
“If Zoar is gone from you, Jozabad, what use could I have of you?” he reared back on
his horse. “Perhaps you have a deal for goods more precious than livestock?”
“Surely precious, but she is my chattel just the same,” Jozabad tugged Annabella by
the wrist to present her to Sadaq. “This is my daughter, Annabella, bequeathed to a Roman
patrician in Samaria, the very same who did this evil deed to my formerly stunning counten-
ance. But now my myopic perception tells me the Roman is undeserving of this fair prize. I
would prefer to honor a nobleman of my own kind with her maidenhood as a gift to a fellow
son of Ishmael.”
“Your daughter?” Sadaq grinned and shook his head with disbelief, and his stallion
seemed to agree with a shuddering whinny punctuated with a snort. “If she is your daughter,
I think you must have raped a goddess while she slept.”
Never short of words, Jozabad said, “Annabella, as you can see, takes after her mother
who has left this cruel world before her natural time.”
“Does this swine speak the truth, Annabella?” Sadaq asked. “Speak up, girl! I know this
horse trader’s ways. He must have lied to the gods just for permission to be born. Jozabad has
passed himself off as a pig, spending every day living up to that image, lest the Fates realize
their mistake and smite him dead.”
“Jozabad knows but one truth,” Annabella spoke boldly. “The value of his livery. My
mother proudly served him as his wife and business partner. But if you are as wise as you
appear, great Sadaq, you can see that none of Jozabad’s blood runs through my veins. I am
his step-daughter. My father was of the house of Valens in Rome, my mother his father’s
Hebrew slave. But with my grandfather’s influence in the Senate, their marriage was
accepted, but my father was banished from Rome to serve Emperor Tiberius in Jerusalem.
But my father did not survive the voyage from Rome to Palestine and died at sea leaving
my mother without means to care for me. My mother, Amanda, took her own life rather
than subject herself to this pig. My Roman citizenship cast by my Valens blood gives me
privileges no man of flesh and blood can deny me regardless of his faulty stature among
his own.”
Even the breeze through the palms at the oasis were dead silent. Neither horse nor
camel stirred anticipated Sadaq’s rebuke of Annabella’s brash words. Sadaq dismounted his
horse and approached her. Jozabad lay prostrate but Annabella stood proudly erect. Her
eyes followed Sadaq as he walked around her, eyeing her up and down. He stood face to face
with her but the tip of his black beard came down to her eye level. She kept her eyes staring
down so that he could not see her terror.
“Do you always dare to say what is on your mind, girl?” he asked.
“I am a Roman citizen with that right.”
He smirked, flipping the end of her shoulder-length curls. “Am I to accept such an
absurd proclamation from . . . not even a woman, but a girl? Or do you carry some written
documentation, perhaps a letter from Caesar with his imperial stamp?”
“You mock me at your peril, sire,” she said with a quiver. “I was raised to speak only the
truth, the way of my mother’s god, the only God, Yahweh.”
“My peril?”
“To publically humiliate or put a Roman citizen to death without a trial is punishable by
death, or even to trade me as a slave when I am born free.”
“Look about you, girl. Do you see any Roman centurions on the horizon coming to your
rescue? As far as we can see, there are no Romans in sight. Perhaps the one eye left in
Jozabad’s ugly face is the only justice you deserve. What do you say horse trader? Is your
chattel for sale?”
“If it pleases you, great Sadaq,” Jozabad said crawling to Sadaq to kiss his sandal.
Sadaq kicked him away and tilted Annabella’s chin to look into his eyes. “I will add
you to my harem tonight, girl, and train you to follow my command just like my horse.”
“I’ll follow no lead, sire. I would be so damaged by your whip that my appeal will
forsake you. Pray, take me to Jerusalem where I might seek refuge with my father’s kin.
Set me loose. Though I have no papers, thanks to Jozabad’s thievery, it is my birthright to
be free.”
“Assuming I spare your life, Jozabad, even after you’ve allowed your chattel to
speak to me with disrespect, what price must I bid for this amusing girl. I must admit her
spirit makes me laugh.”
Jozabad rose to his feet. “With my stud Zoar lost, I need your best horses to rejuvenate
my breed, sire. But I can offer you something greater in the bargain, something that will avenge
me for my disfigurement. The chance to win great wealth at the races in Samaria. You see,
these Romans believe that they have the fastest horse in the land, Zoar, but that great stallion
is dead. We, knowing better, already have the odds in our favor.”
“Nothing could please me more than to best a Roman. What do you propose?”
“In exchange for Annabella, I ask you to come to Samaria with me and enter your
horse against the Romans’. I ask for only a tithe of your winnings and the horse you now ride
to begin my breed anew. What say you, sire?”
“I will sleep on it. You are welcome at my camp tonight. I will entertain you with my
latest find, a remarkable boy with powers of sorcery not found in men four times his age.
Come to my fireside as the sun descends and we shall enjoy the boy’s magic.
The word magic echoed in Annabella’s ears, something she may need for her escape.
X
“Water . . . I need water,” the Palestinian whispered, regaining consciousness.
Ellen soaked her handkerchief at the mouth of the canteen and squeezed most of the
water back into it. She put her handkerchief to his cracked lips. He sucked at the cloth like a
nursing animal. It made Ted thirsty to watch.
“That’s all we can spare now,” Ellen said, dabbing his forehead with the cool cloth. The
spring water was channeled away from this area after the cave-in. The canteen is all the water
we have for the three of us to share.”
He shifted his eyes searching for an answer to a question Ellen read in his expression.
“Your stray bullet wounded your leg. You’ve been unconscious. We have your rifle. We
told you the truth about our purpose here. We are archaeologists. Ted, take the bullets out of
his rifle and give them to me. Reluctantly he ejected the magazine from the rifle and handed it
to her. She tucked it under her blouse.
“I have some knowledge of these caves,” the Palestinian said. “You have made a foolish
error.” He pulled a concealed double-edged knife from his boot.
“I told you not to trust him,” Ted said, grabbing Ellen by the wrist and pulling her out
of the wounded man’s reach.
“You misunderstand me,” he said weakly, turning the knife around with the handle
toward them. “You must have given me an antibiotic or I’d already be dead, but you can’t
leave the bullet in me, or I’ll die by tomorrow.”
“We’re not doctors,” Ellen said. “We don’t know what to do.”
“I faint when I have to remove a splinter,” Ted said.
“Then you hold the light and I’ll show her what to do.”
“I could hit an artery,” Ellen said. “Our bandage supply is limited. You could bleed to
death.”
“Better to bleed to death than face the slow agony of infection and the loss of my leg.
As Allah wills it, I shall live or die at your hands.”
Ellen took the knife and unwrapped the dressings on his thigh. She turned her head
away from the rancid smell mixed with the musty confines of the cave.
“Bring all the lanterns close so I can see better, then the peroxide. Bring the torch so I
can cauterize the wound with the knife after I take out the bullet.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Ted said. “If you have trouble don’t ask me to help. I
can’t even watch.”
“Fine, Ted. If that’s all you can do then just do it and shut up.” She started, then
faltered. “Oh, God. I can’t do this.”
“You must, woman!”
“Don’t call me woman!” she said, thinking of Annabella in the scrolls. “My name is
Ellen.”
“I am Eli. I pray for Allah to give you courage. Do it now, Ellen.”
Ellen told herself that she was just cutting into an eggplant, but then with the first cut
white matter sprayed against her cheek and she felt faint. Eli gasped with the release of
pressure from the purple swelling. She shook her head and took a breath then poured peroxide
into the reopened wound. Sand fleas surfed on white foamy rivulets from the volcanic center
where the slug had lodged. She used gauze pads to clear the wound of debris. She felt Eli
trembling, maybe going into shock.
“Hold his hand, Ted.”
“What?”
“He needs to grasp your hand. Do it!”
Neither Ted nor Eli dared to look at the wound where Ellen was groping to the remove
the slug with as few cuts as possible, but it was like an excavation rather than surgery. It took
her an hour to remove the bullet and cauterize the gaping hole in Eli’s leg. He was unconscious
so she had no idea if she had succeeded, only that she had done her feeble best. She fell asleep
dreaming of long ago when Annabella lived during the early years of Christ, but of all of her
wildest imaginations, none could match what she read aloud to Ted as they kept their vigil over
Eli.
Ellen prayed that the penicillin would now do its wonders in God’s hands. Though the
three had been briefly united, Ellen knew that Eli was committed to be their mortal enemy.
They kept just a dim light burning for Ellen to read from the ancient scroll. She knew they were
just trying to make the time pass by losing themselves in Annabella’s story. As the past came
to life through her lips, Ellen wondered—to what end . . .
Jozabad made certain Annabella wore her finest garments to please Sadaq. The sheik
invited them to supper on the west bank of the Jordan River where the night air would be cool.
“Keep your wagging tongue still tonight,” Jozabad told her as they approached the
glowing fire centered in the encampment. “Be thankful Sadaq has been so lenient with your
defiance. Think of what will be best for both of us. I will have riches and you will have the
attention of a powerful man who will not bow to the Romans. He is a fine looking man and a
powerful sheik who will ride circles around Rome’s best equestrians. It will be a good union if
you bear him many children. Your mother would approve.”
“You dare speak for my mother? You boast of returning to Samaria, but the Roman
courtier who justly flicked your evil eye from your beastly face will kill you on sight.”
“He thinks I’m dead,” he wheezed with laughter. “Unless this Roman swine, like your
mother’s Jewish Pharisees, believes in an afterlife. What fool would ever believe that I, Jozabad,
would earn another life, even after leading such a noble existence in this one? I doubt that
Roman, Justin, would recognize me now, even if he stared directly at arms’ length into my
good eye.”
“How can he not know you on sight?” she asked.
“Do you think a Roman dandy would soil his toga over the likes of me? He hired a band
of Samaritans to do this evil deed.” He pointed to the red cavity on one side of his sharp nose.
How I will love winning this race and taking his silver. I’d gladly repay that Roman, eye-for-an-
eye.”
She shuddered. “Talk of vengeance has no appeal to me.”
“Hah! Given the chance, Annabella, would you not ask Sadaq for my tongue on a silver
platter?”
“Given the chance? Yes. But what chance have I of such a wish to be granted?”
“That spirit will appeal to Sadaq. Let your anger at me influence him to that end.
Win the sheik’s heart in any manner, then he’ll pay me well. Even without a tongue, I can
gladly count my silver in silence.”
They sat around the campfire and Sadaq clapped his hands to bring out a feast of lamb
and herbs with hearts of palm and figs. He clapped his hands again and a pinkish cloud
exploded from the campfire.
Sadaq shouted, “I present for your entertainment, the incomparable Sebastian!”
The pink vapor swirled from the fire and spiraled into the form of a young man, perhaps
eighteen, Annabella’s age. He wore a turban, a sleeveless vest and puffy, long pants with
pointed shoes that curled upward at the toes. He had dangling gold earrings, a nose ring, and
thick golden bracelets around his biceps. A triangular amulet dangled from a gold chain around
his neck.
As Sebastian approached Annabella, his intense glare made her uneasy. He suddenly
breathed fire in an arcing flame above her head. She shrieked and covered her face but felt the
heat on the back of her hands. He spat another flame at Jozabad who fell to his knees and lay
prone trembling with his face in the sand.
Sadaq laughed heartily. “Open your good eye or you’ll miss the sorcery. He’s merely a
boy with a bag of tricks. If he were dangerous, wouldn’t I keep him bound in chains?”
Jozabad rolled over and squinted his eye at the boy. Annabella glared at Sebastian, but
he returned her warning with a mischievous wink.
Jozabad huffed, getting to his feet. “Would that I had an extra eye to waste on winking.”
“So be it, horse trader,” Sebastian said with a bow. He slapped one hand over Jozabad’s
empty eye socket and mumbled some mysterious babble. He pulled his hand away with a
closed fist and covered it with his other hand. “See for yourself,” he told Jozabad. “Your wish
has been granted, but only for a fleeting moment.”
Jozabad leaned forward with caution as Sebastian uncovered his clenched fist. Between
Sebastian’s thumb and forefinger he saw an eye staring back at him. The eye winked, sending
Jozabad falling backwards with a gasp. Sadaq bellowed over the trick and Annabella covered
her mouth to keep from laughing aloud.
Annoyed, Jozabad regained his feet and challenged the magician. “Amusing, but can
you restore something severed from man or beast to its full capacity?”
“Be more specific,” Sebastian said.
“Do you need the whole to restore the part, young sorcerer? The tongue of my
wretched wife.”
Annabella squirmed at such a notion, perhaps more evil than her mother’s fate.
Sebastian looked at Annabella with sympathy, but Sadaq resented his familiarity,
declaring, “If Sebastian could truly restore anatomy, he would make himself a man again.
Do you think I would keep such a handsome boy in my camp if his manhood could violate
my harem? With such power, he could surely make himself whole again.”
To everyone’s surprise, Sebastian said, “Even if I’d have such power, I would never
dishonor my master by undoing his will. I can accept your guest’s challenge, sire.”
An explosive green cloud engulfed Sebastian then he emerged with both hands cupped
together. The muffled voice of Amanda emitted from his hands.
“Curse you forever, husband, for cutting out my tongue! Now you offer my daughter
for silver in my absence! Give Annabella to the great Sadaq and make yourself his slave to repay
for your wicked deed!”
“Enough, Sebastian!” Sadaq had to catch his breath from laughing so hard. “Your
entertainment never disappoints me. If you were whole, you would surely be a danger to me
and to all you confront with your sorcery.”
Sadaq dismissed Sebastian to his tent. The sheik exchanged glances with Annabella. She
pitied a boy with such talent fated as the slave of an Arab nomad. Sebastian in turn felt sorrow
for such a beautiful girl with obvious intelligence and will, who would become no more than
one of his master’s playthings to bear him sons for his defense and daughters to trade as
chattel.
“Come Jozabad. We shall strike an agreement in regard to your daughter, but I think
she’s too skinny. Can she dance?”
Annabella jumped to her feet in protest. “I cannot be sold!”
“Control her Jozabad, or I will!”
Jozabad shrugged with a shake of his head. Sadaq clapped his hands and one of his
seven-foot eunuchs forced her to the ground and held her down with his huge foot on the
nape of her slender neck.
“Now, horse trader, how will these Romans wager in Samaria?”
X
Ellen sighed as she put down the scroll. Ted was exhausted from his turn digging at the
cave’s wall. Eli, the Palestinian, took the pickaxe from Ted and crawled to the place where Ted
had barely made a dent in the wall. With his wounded leg stiff and difficult to maneuver, Eli put
his weight on the knee of his good leg and examined the cave wall.
“There is moisture on the floor here,” he said.
“Is that good,” Ellen asked.
“Maybe.” Eli shrugged. “I think it will be safer to dig at the floor. The wall is porous, so
any water nearby could filter toward us. But if it comes in too fast, it would be best for us to
give it some place to flow. I think it wisest to dig downward first.”
“Then there’s hope for us?” Ellen asked.
Eli smiled. “If Allah wills it.”
“All this talk of water is making me thirsty,” Ted grumbled. “There’s definitely dampness
in that corner where the wall meets the floor. Let’s put some cloths there to absorb the
moisture. When we’re thirsty we can suck on the cloths to save water.”
Ellen smiled. Ted was thinking rationally for a change.
“Good idea,” she said.
Eli looked over his shoulder with a nod then started hacking at the floor. From Eli’s
rations, Ellen divided small portions of bean paste and saltines among them. They wet their
lips from the remaining water in the canteen. Ellen swallowed hard then dozed off for an hour
before resuming her reading to Ted and Eli . . .
Annabella listened to Jozabad bargaining with Sadaq for the sale of her flesh. Her wrists
were bound behind her as she sat on a pillow beside Sadaq. A eunuch towered over her with
his huge feet straddling her pillow. Sadaq had warned her that if she continued to babble about
her Roman citizenship, a burr from a desert bush would be put under her wagging tongue to
keep her silent. She kept hush but attentive to the unfortunate resolve of her fate.
“Then we have an agreement,” Jozabad said.
“Not until we have a contract,” Sadaq cautioned.
“But, sire, my hand is my contract as it has always been in our past trading.”
“That was for horses, not human trade. I live my life like the wind across the desert, so I
must have some firm foundation for my decisions regarding people, slaves or not. That’s why
I paid so highly to obtain Sebastian.”
“What has the young sorcerer to do with our agreement?” Jozabad asked.
“The boy is a Greek, learned in writing as well as magic. At the age of twelve, Sebastian
was the scribe to a Persian Caliph I killed in battle. He was born a Roman slave before that. It
was when his Roman master’s wife took more than just a fancy to the precocious lad, that he
had Sebastian castrated and sold at auction in Tyre. From there he was brought east to
interpret oriental languages for Roman troops. A Persian band raided that Roman encampment
and gave him to a Persian priest. It was there that he learned his sorcery from an old sage, and
I bought him in exchange for three of the youngest girls in my harem, all virgins and of remark-
able beauty. I hated to part with them, but Sebastian has served me well as more than enter-
tainment. He has made up for what I’d lost one hundredfold. Sebastian will write our contract
for Annabella.”
With a clap of his hands Sadaq summoned Sebastian to sit at his feet and write the
contract which would give Annabella to Sadaq upon the winning of the horse race in Samaria in
exchange for one tenth of the winnings for Jozabad and ownership of Sadaq’s stallion, the last
descendant of Jozabad’s stud, Zoar.
Upon the journey west to Samaria, it was agreed that Annabella, along with Sebastian,
would be the couriers of Sadaq’s challenge to the Roman stables. Though Sadaq put his trust in
Sebastian, Jozabad was leery of Annabella’s cunning ways inherited from her mother.
“They might run off!”
“Sebastian will never flee from me. Even when that Roman objected to his wife’s
attraction to him, Sebastian never betrayed his master. It was the Roman’s wife who wanted
Sebastian castrated so no other woman could have him in the future.
Annabella searched Sebastian’s dark eyes for a clue to his thoughts. She wondered if
there could some spirit left in him to help her escape on his steed. With all his sorcery, could he
ever imagine himself free, as anything other than a slave to his master? She wondered if her
only hope remained with Sebastian as they departed from Sadaq’s encampment.
Later that day, they entered Samaria to challenge the Roman courtier, the same who
had dealt with her mother for the stud services of Zoar, and had disfigured the abominable
Jozabad so brutally. Her confrontation again with the Roman made her tremble. She wanted to
challenge Sebastian’s acceptance of his slavery to Sadaq, but held her tongue, thinking her
mother had told the Roman courtier about her Roman citizenship through her Valens family
bloodline. She would wait for a chance for that advantage.
“Halt! Who goes there?” a Roman stable guard stopped them at the gate.
“I am Annabella, daughter of Jozabad the horse trader. You must recognize me. I’ve
been here before. I’m here to speak with Justin.”
“Yes. But who is this boy with you?”
“He is my slave.”
She held up her wrist to show that though they rode separate horses, they were
manacled by the same chain. The guard nodded and left them at the gate to summon Justin.
Sebastian turned to her. “You’ve treachery in mind, Annabella. Don’t do it. Your plan
is ill-timed. If with nothing else, trust me with this. If you seek your freedom now from this man
Justin, you will fail. When the time is right, we will know. I don’t want to remain a slave, but I
do not wish to die so young. Set up the terms of this horse race as instructed, and when the
time to flee is at hand, we shall do so together.
“Why would I listen to you?” she said. “Justin has influence with the heir to the Roman
throne. I have dealt favorably with him before. If it’s your freedom you want, perhaps I shall
request it. I have established you as my slave. If I return to Rome, as I should as a citizen and
heir to the Valens family fortune, you may serve me there.”
“Ah! So you think less of me without recognized parenthood and because I am a eunuch
who must survive by my wits and sorcery to please any master who possesses me,” Sebastian
challenged. “I am Greek and remember my proud parents, though Roman society does not.
They were forced to surrender me to Roman schooling though my Hellenistic heritage made me
trilingual by age ten in Greek, Latin, and Aramaic. I too seek my freedom, but have spent the
past eight years in captivity. Heed my warning. The right time will soon come.”
Justin entered the yard where Annabella and Sebastian remained on their mounts. His
attention was focused more on Sebastian than Annabella. I trust my five talents of silver has
served your mother well. Your slave boy is beautiful.”
“Thank you, sire,” Sebastian bowed from his mount.
“And well-mannered, too. How is your mother?”
Annabella paused as Sebastian eyed her reaction to the question.
“She is well, sire,” she lied. “And how is Zoar, the fastest horse in the empire?”
“Great. Young Caligula has taken a fancy to him, so I dare not interfere with Ceasar’s
heir. Your mother may regret parting with Zoar for fifty talents of silver, but a deal is a deal.
Did Amanda have a problem with her husband . . . what is his name?”
“Not yet. Jozabad hasn’t returned, and we fear he may have run into foul play in Arabia.”
“Once outside the perimeter of the empire, anything can happen. But why have you
come? Does your mother fear I won’t keep my word by not silencing rumors of her father-in-
law’s untimely death at her hands in Rome?”
“She trusts you, but I am here for another reason. Her success has allow her to breed
another strain that can challenge even Zoar. She wishes to prove that to you by presenting the
finest stallion from that blood to challenge your imperial stable in Samaria.”
Justin broke his dumbfounded silence with a burst of laughter. “Your mother sells me
the fastest horse in the world then challenges me to a race with another. How could there
be any contest?”
Annabella drew a blank, but Sebastian interjected, “If I may remind my mistress,
her mother offers a handicap against the presumed unbeatable Zoar.”
“Leave it to Amanda to find some devious means in her attempt to defeat the
undefeatable. Out with it!”
“Each owner will choose the other’s rider for the race,” Sebastian said. “The choice of
riders will be made the moment before tomorrow’s start an hour before dusk outside the track
where Samaritans may gather to enjoy the spectacle.”
“Why such a request?” Justin asked Sebastian, testing the boy.
“It is known that the Emperor’s great-nephew has been riding Zoar in Samaria and he
enjoys such fanfare for his amusement,” Sebastian said. “What better way for you to gain favor
with your sponsor than by giving him a taste of public adoration that he will know when he
rules the empire after Emperor Tiberius. Samaritans, you must know, will give their loyalty and
even lie in bed with their enemies to avoid conflict. Ask any Jew and he will confirm what I say
about these people. Caligula will have their full attention and support without danger to
himself among that crowd. When Zoar wins this race, these Samarians will hail him as Caesar
with no chance of Tiberius getting wind of it until after he is dead and buried.”
You speak with wisdom beyond your years, boy,” Justin said. “But what have I to gain
from this wager?”
“When Zoar crosses the finish line by ten lengths,” Sebastian said, “you will have
Sadaq’s horse and me, the great sorcerer Sebastian, as your loyal servant.”
Though obviously excited by his attraction to the boy, he bargained. “Surely there must
be more to gain for me than such folly.”
“Certainly, sire. Annabella will relinquish her claim to Roman citizenship and do your
bidding as well.”
Though she withheld her gasp, Annabella’s expression of repulsion was obvious.
“Words pour from this boy’s mouth like warm honey, yet you cringe, Annabella,”
Justin challenged. “Neither of these two horses are worthy, so where is this horse that dares
to challenge Zoar?”
“The stallion is with my mother,” Annabella lied.
“Intriguing. I shall speak with Caligula and have his answer by morning.”
“But, sire,” Sebastian said. “You haven’t asked what we want if Zoar should lose?”
“I shall not give up Zoar, even if he loses.”
“Of course, not, sire. We want fifty talents of silver and our choice of your five best
horses, but not Zoar. That bargain was sealed.”
“You must add six talents to our winnings from Amanda,” Justin said. “She knows I’m
tough to bargain with and will understand. It would be an ultimate victory for me over her by
keeping Zoar and winning back the five talents I’d paid for him plus one talent. That extra talent
is for you, Sebastian, for guaranteeing my win and not embarrassing the Emperor’s nephew
with a loss. That would be an unforgivable offense to young Caligula, which I could not contain.
Upon our victory, you shall become my slave, but I will treat you with utter kindness and
affection. I shall grant free use of your talent to do with as you wish.”
“Is there any way you can assure me now that Caligula will accept our challenge?”
Sebastian asked. “My mistress is a hard woman and will consider this mission a failure if I
return without a firm agreement. If I’m to rouse the Samaritans before a morning race, I’ll
need to announce it tonight. But if I announce the race and it doesn’t happen as claimed, they
will stone me in the square. But perhaps you don’t have as much influence over the Emperor’s
nephew as you claim.”
Justin sensed he had found an equal in Sebastian to challenge his mind. He reached
down and handed Sebastian his sandal. “Amanda will know that this confirms that we shall
race tomorrow.”
Sebastian nodded and pressed the sandal to his chest. Then Annabella and Sebastian
rode back to where Sadaq and Jozabad waited, but Annabella argued with Sebastian about his
dangerous liaison with Justin.
This treachery will cost our lives,” she said. “You foolish boy. “Do you imagine Sadaq
would part with you so easily. Sadaq’s stallion will surely beat the horse Justin still believes is
Zoar. I know both horses, and with Zoar dead, your master’s horse cannot be beaten.”
“Unless his rider is inferior to that of the lesser horse,” he reminded her with a wink.
“Last minute ingredients added to a boiling kettle can change the outcome of the flavor when
served. Who knows what aroma this broth will emit once the Fates dish out the final portion of
this stew we are in together?”
“You leave a bitter taste on my palate already, you conjurer of paths I dare not travel.
Why am I your accomplice in this folly?”
“You’ve had the free will to stop me at any time,” he said. “So I must assume I have
your trust in some degree. Or is that possibility beyond the scope of a stable girl with dreams
of Rome clouding her shrewder choice of our immediate escape?”
“It’s as if you know my thoughts,” she said. “Some voice inside my head forces me to
comply with your plan, though my better judgment tells me this idea of yours is foolhardy.
You must have hypnotized me or have cast a spell on me.”
“Annabella, the voice of which you speak has hold of me as well. I have no will to resist.
I am compelled to convince you to follow me, whichever way it leads us.”
X
When Ellen stopped reading, she offered to take the pickaxe from Eli. Ted had fallen
asleep while she’d read the scroll. Eli offered her the handle of the pickaxe, but when she
took it in hand he yanked it toward him. She fell forward into his arms. His musky beard
prickled against her neck as she raised her head and peered into his dark, sullen eyes.
Not to wake Ted, he whispered softly, “Careful, woman. There may be one eunuch
trapped in this cave, but he is not me. Death is at my door . . . and perhaps Allah has offered
you to me as a gift for my dedication before I die.”
“How easily you abandon the precepts of your faith when your own mortality is at
stake,” she said. “Mohammed was a holy man, a great prophet to your people, but you forsake
the memory of his prophecy with adulterous threats. If Allah sent me to you as a gift, use me as
intended—to bring the story of this scroll to the modern world.”
“You are a fanatic about these scrolls,” Eli said. “Even your friend sees it. These ancient
stories have no basis, no authority.”
“They precede Mohammed by fifteen hundred years,” she said. “Ted proved that with
a carbon test on the papyrus last week. My ability is to interpret the Aramaic script.”
“You emasculate me and your friend with your strong will,” Eli said.
“That’s not my intention,” she said, taking the pickaxe in hand and going to the wall.
She prayed as she dug, but her thoughts were of the ancient past, wondering how the scroll
about Annabella had been left in this cave. That question pervaded her mind like an underlying
stream when, from the base of the cave wall a steady trickle of water dripped into the three-
foot pit they had dug.
“Wake up, Ted! Eli, we have water!” she shouted.
Knowing there was no industry in this protected area and any water would be naturally
filtered by the sand and porous shale, they all scrambled on their knees and cupped their hands
to drink the cool water. So refreshing was the taste of life. Ellen drank moderately while both
men’s thirst seemed unquenchable. She dampened her cloth and cleaned her face and neck.
She pressed the cloth to her lips. To her, the water was holy, God’s answer to her prayer,
and served as a baptism of her soul, a rebirth of hope and faith.
Then, as quickly as the water had come, it stopped.
“It can be!” Ted shouted. “There must be more water!”
“It may have been just a small pocket created by the cave-in.” Eli said.
“Then we must keep digging if we hope to survive,” Ellen said.
“There could be other pockets,” Eli said. “They may contain even more water than this
one.”
“Slim chance,” Ted huffed.
“Be thankful it was not enough water to fill this cave,” Eli said. “We’d have drowned.”
“There’s still some water left in the pit,” Ellen said. “Quick, fill our vessels before it filters
through the floor. It could give us a few more days to find more water.”
Reasonably quenched and bathed, Ellen turned back to the scroll and read aloud to the
men as they dug . . .
“What do you mean by—the rider of the other’s choice?” Sadaq asked Sebastian.
Jozabad rushed at Sebastian, his good eye flushed red with rage, but Sadaq tripped
him and put his saif to the horse trader’s throat. The Arab’s scimitar’s blade shimmered in the
moonlight.
“Speak!” Sadaq told Sebastian.
“The Romans have accepted your challenge, master. They will pay you the fifty talents
upon your victory, but insist on ten talents if you lose.”
Annabella raised an eyebrow with Sebastian’s shift in the stakes to suit himself. How
could she let herself be influenced by such a habitual liar? Perhaps because she had been raised
by such a liar as Amanda. Then Sebastian told him that not only would he lose his horse in a
defeat, but also him and Annabella to the victor.
“If I were to ride Raven there would be no question of my victory, but these Romans
thrive on deceit.” He looked to Sebastian for reassurance.
“Your victory, may then depend on your choice of a rider for the Roman’s horse.”
Jozabad said, “We must consider this with care to seal the fate which we have designed
for our purses and our honor.”
Annabella spoke out, “It might be best to withdraw your foolish challenge to the
Romans and return to the desert where your Ishmaelite pride can blow across the sand without
resistance from the civilized Roman world of structure in the West.”
“You’ll lose your tongue like your mother, yet,” Jozabad warned.
“I turn my back to no opponent,” Sadaq said with a swirl of his cape. “I shall have it all
tomorrow—victory, wealth, vengeance, and pleasure.”
Jozabad eyed Sebastian then looked to Annabella for some hint of conspiracy.
Sadaq told Sebastian, “Take one of my horses and announce the race to the Samaritans
as a great spectacle for their odds makers. Tell them my horse, Raven, merely hopes to make a
good showing against the invincible Zoar of the Imperial Roman Stables.”
Sebastian rode off without looking back. He had to trust his influence over Annabella
that could keep her true to their mutual cause, though she found no practical rationale for
this trust in the sorcerer.
“Let us confer over tomorrow’s choice for our rider for the Roman’s horse,” Sadaq told
Jozabad. He nodded for his eunuchs to take Annabella to his harem.
She quelled her inner rage just to bide time until Sebastian returned. The other women
in the harem were exotic with features and pallor unfamiliar to her. None spoke the same
language but had adapted hand signs to converse with one another. They tried to teach her
how to sign, but she was too intent to overhear Sadaq and Jozabad’s conversation. Slighted by
an interloper, the other women tugged at her hair and garments, and like a pack of jackals, bit
her arms and legs. Her screams alerted Sadaq to return her to his side.
“What am I to do with you, girl?” he said. “I hoped to make you my number one
concubine, yet you make havoc among my chattel. Perhaps losing you to the Romans will be
a blessing.”
“Pray no, sire,” Jozabad groaned. “When you win tomorrow I shall gladly take her off
your hands since you find her such a nuisance and keep her for my own amusement.”
With penetrating assessment of Annabella’s beauty, Sadaq’s words made her tremble.
“If I trade this one off, it will be as damaged goods. After my victory tomorrow I shall have her.”
X
Ellen stopped reading to see how Ted was progressing with the digging.
Ted complained, “It would be nice to have a sorcerer like Sebastian with us to conjure a
way out of this hell hole.”
Eli took his turn at digging as Ted slumped to his corner of the cave.
“I’m not doing my fair share of the heavy labor,” Ellen said.
“When you stop, I feel trapped,” Ted said. “Keep reading. If Eli and I drop dead from
exhaustion and starvation, you’ll get your chance to dig.”
“Allah put me here,” Eli said. “If He wills it, I will get out.”
“You? What about me and Ellen?”
“If Allah wills it. Her reading helps to see the sky in our minds, the sand, and the horses
racing with the wind in their manes at this race the young sorcerer has arranged.”
They stared for a moment at one another in silence before Eli’s pickaxe shattered the
rocks. When Ellen read aloud, the smell the horses and Sadaq’s campfire flared in their nostrils
as they considered the fate of Annabella and wondered about their own . . .
“Assemble your wares, Samaritans!” Sebastian shouted, galloping through the narrow
streets of Samaria. “Tomorrow we shall challenge the Roman stables in a race!”
By late afternoon the next day, Samaritans gathered outside the city’s walls in
preparation for the festivities. Sadaq’s caravan wound in single file from the surrounding
countryside of rolling hills toward the starting point of the race. Annabella watched in awe
from the back of Jozabad’s swaying camel. The city was backlit by the sun beginning its descent
and inflaming the sky with splashes of mauve and crimson.
The first time Annabella had come to Samaria had been to retrieve Zoar on lend to the
Roman courtier, Justin. She had stumbled on the rough terrain at the cost of the precious
stallion’s life. It had been that same night when she had encountered a strange boy her own
age. He’d called himself Yosh, and was on his way to Qumran Kirbet, where a sect of Jewish
priests hid from the Roman legions. Then last night, she and Sebastian had come to proclaim
Sadaq’s challenge to Justin. Near dusk, she now could appreciate the natural acropolis of
Samaria with Herod the Great’s basilica at the highest point on the hill within sight five miles
from any direction.
Justin greeted Sadaq at the head of his caravan flanked by his two Ethiopian eunuchs,
“Welcome to our Arabian friends of the Empire in behalf of Caesar. Where is Amanda, the girl’s
mother? I can’t imagine she would forgo this chance to make us victims of your challenge.”
Jozabad nudged Annabella to speak up.
“My mother is not well, but expects me to return with her prizes.”
“We come with one purpose,” Sadaq said to Justin. “To defeat your horse with ours.”
“Well said, Arab. First we shall draw straws to see which of us will have first choice of
our opponent’s rider.”
“Agreed.”
With that, Justin presented young Caligula riding the horse presumed to be Zoar, the
fastest Arabian horse known throughout the empire. Only Annabella knew better. Sebastian
prompted the Samaritan crowd to chant, “Hail, Caligula!”
With the crowd’s chants growing louder, Caligula picked up the pace of his horse’s
stride. A boy of pride and short temper, but shrewd awareness, he flaunted his equestrian
skills by making his horse go up on its hind legs and pivot into a sprint. The crowd applauded as
Caligula brought his horse to Justin and Sadaq. They drew straws.
Caligula badgered Sadaq,” Come, Arab! Show us your stallion that dares to challenge
Zoar!”
Sebastian appeared mounted on Raven, Sadaq’s stallion. Several Romans surrounded
Raven feeling his flanks with judgment. One Roman said to Justin, “A fine stallion, but no match
against us. Looks are not enough. We ride on Zoar’s reputation.”
Justin chose the longest straw and announced to Sadaq’s shock,” I choose our opponent’s
rider to be Annabella Valens. Her loss today would put her in jeopardy of becoming Caligula’s
slave as would your courier, Sebastian, who brought your challenge to me.”
Annabella gasped as did Sadaq, but Jozabad scratched his beard. He knew Annabella
was a capable rider, but he distrusted her motives.
Sadaq looked to Sebastian for wisdom. The sorcerer whispered in his ear, “Choose
Caligula.”
Sadaq turned to Caligula. “You need not dismount. I choose Caligula to ride Zoar.”
Caligula was amused by the announcement but Justin protested. Then Sebastian gave
a signal to those he had planted in the crowd with bribes who chanted, “Hail, Caligula! Hail,
Caesar!”
The chants drowned out Justin’s protests and Caligula answered the challenge by
rearing his horse up into a spin.
Annabella felt as if she were swept away in an absurd dream. Even as she was lifted
onto Raven, she could hardly believe what was happening until she was flanked by Sadaq and
Jozabad with warning jeers.
“You must win this race girl, or I’ll cut out your heart,” Sadaq said.
Jozabad told her. “You know the feel of a stallion’s speed against your loins. You must
win, or we’ll leave your corpse as desert carrion for the birds.”
She turned to Sebastian for reassurance. Their eyes met in silence, but before she
could consider her options, Caligula with the horse he thought was Zoar bumped against
her mounted on Raven. The crowd hummed with anxious chatter waiting for the flag to drop
and start the race.
X
Ellen had fallen asleep.
Weary, Eli collapsed with exhaustion from his dig then handed the pickaxe to Ted and
asked him, “Do you believe there is any truth in this scroll she reads to us?”
“She’s a Christian,” Ted said. “They make up fairytales instead of accepting hard facts.
If we don’t find water soon, I’ll give you back your gun so you can shoot me. I don’t want to
know what’s happening as I’m dying.”
Ellen stirred and shouted, “Enough of that!” Her voice echoed off the cave’s walls.
“We will survive! I can feel it.”
“Shout again,” Eli said. “It’s the high pitch of your voice.”
Ted shook his head and frowned at Ellen to indicate Eli must be losing his sanity.
Ellen ignored Ted and screamed as loud as she could, which was deafening within the
confines of the cave. The high pitch of her scream sounded as if it were winding through a
tunnel.
“What does it mean?” she asked.
“Two things,” Eli said. “Another open space that could be accessible through these
walls or . . .”
“Water,” Ted said. “Like clicking two stones together underwater so your friends
can hear it from the other side of a lake.”
“What equipment do you have in your medical kit?” Eli asked.
“Only enough to dress your wound, maybe three more times,” she said.
“Do you have one of those things to check your heartbeat?”
“A stethoscope? Yes, from when Dr. Rheinholt first accompanied us on this dig. He had
a heart condition.” She shuffled though her duffle bag. “Here it is!”
Ted listened against the wall as Ellen shouted. He took turns with Eli until they agreed
where to concentrate their digging. They continued digging at the wall until some water seeped
through again. It took several hours before they could do any more than wet their lips, but
they were able to fill one canteen by the next day. They gathered enough water to superficially
wash themselves before the water ceased to flow again.
“It’s like manna,” Ted said. “When the Jews escaped from Egypt, Jehovah gave them
manna, a food source that was good for only one day. Searching, they would find just enough
to keep them alive until the next day. They wandered in the wildness searching for the
Promised Land for forty years.”
“I thought you were an atheist, Ted.”
“I guess my roots are still kosher.”
Eli said, “We must keep digging in this direction. There could be a lengthy tunnel on
the other side of this wall that could lead us to the surface. Meantime, keep reading the scroll,
Ellen. It gives us hope to imagine others living on the surface and not buried alive.”
Fact or fiction, the story of Annabella seemed to hold them together with hope in
their tomb-like confine, while the world above seemed oblivious to their fate . . .
The marked course traversed the city in a winding path which began at a platform
erected for the ceremony and ended outside the city at the southeast gate. A Roman soldier
was chosen by Justin to drop the flag to start the race. Sadaq chose Sebastian to hold the finish
flag to wave and declare the winning horse.
Sadaq’s plan in the event that Raven would lose was to mount Raven at the finish and
grab Sebastian to flee the Romans without making his payment. Annabella would be of no con-
sequence to him in defeat. She would be all the Romans could collect. As for Jozabad, let the
Roman take out his remaining eye for conjuring such a race. Still, the proud sheik believed his
own Raven would beat the stallion believed to be Zoar decisively.
Jozabad also wanted Sebastian in clear view at the finish in the event of some treachery
and collusion with Annabella. Even if he lost the wager, someone would pay dearly for that
calamity.
Justin agreed with putting Sebastian in clear view at the finish. With Amanda curiously
absent from this wager, he chose Annabella to ride Raven where she would be a clear target if
there were any attempt to alter the obvious outcome of the race.
As the flag was raised, the crowd went still. The flag fell to the thunderous uproar of the
crowd echoing throughout the city. Both horses bolted with fury. Annabella nearly lost her grip
on Raven’s reins, but quickly recovered out of fear of falling beneath thundering hooves.
The principals, Justin with his Roman soldiers, and Sadaq with his spear-wielding
Eunuchs, went quickly toward the finish line where Sebastian stood on a platform with flag in
hand, awaiting the first horse to cross.
The horses ran neck-and-neck around the first turn. They headed toward the descending
sun rapidly meeting the western horizon. The sky was aflame at sunset as were young Caligula’s
eyes glaring at Annabella galloping within his reach as he guided his horse even closer to her.
He raised his crop and struck Annabella’s thigh with a sharp sting that took her breath away. His
next blow drew blood. She felt woozy with her vision of the hateful boy blurring as she lost con-
trol of Raven.
Caligula shrieked with glee as he took the lead, but dissatisfied with a half-length lead,
he raised his crop again. Moving back on the inside, he viciously struck Annabella, tearing
through her tunic and cutting a deep gash in her other thigh. She let out a whimper as she
struggled to hold on to Raven’s mane. The stallion, confused by Annabella’s lack of control, fell
another length behind.
Annabella’s pulse pounded in her head to the rhythm of the tumultuous chant, “Hail,
Caesar! Hail, Caligula!” Through watery eyes she saw Sebastian four furlongs ahead waving the
red flag from the platform to guide them to the finish. She kicked Raven with her heels and
snapped the reins with determination to avoid her slavery to the winner. In the last furlong
she gained on Caligula, inching ahead and seeing Sebastian in clear view. He turned to strike
her again, but she blocked his next blow and yanked the crop from his grasp.
She turned the crop around and struck Caligula on the knee. As he whelped in pain,
she shouted, “God spare the Empire from this cursed boy!”
Raven burst two lengths ahead. Nearing the finish, the Arabian challenger seemed
certain to beat the Imperial champion in the last hundred cubits, but Annabella turned him
toward the stand and brought him to a controlled prance. Sebastian leaped from the stand
and mounted Raven behind Annabella at the reins.
Caligula crossed the finish line ahead of them, but that was of no concern to Annabella
and Sebastian realizing the fulfillment of their reluctant collusion by escaping on the fastest
steed in the land. Raven bolted southeast toward the rolling hills leading to the Jordan River
and the desert wilderness near the Dead Sea.
It was nearly dark, just as Sebastian had planned. Raven was faster than any other horse
that pursued them. They had a head start of several furlongs before anyone realized they had
been tricked. The Samaritans crowded around Caligula in his victory, so the Roman guards had
to shield him rather than chase after two runaway slaves.
Sadaq jumped on one of his other stallions and motioned one of his eunuchs to mount
behind him in pursuit of Sebastian and the troublesome girl. Hoping to take revenge another
day, Jozabad shrank quietly into the crowd.
When Caligula gained his composure long enough to confront Justin, he commanded
his obedient courtier, “I want that black stallion! I won, so he’s mine! I want that girl back, too.
She’ll face me one last time before I cut her throat. She dared to strike me, the heir to Caesar!
The boy is yours to do with as you will.”
“The Arab has run off, too,” Justin said.
“He’s left behind his other slaves and treasures. I can’t be bothered with him. He’ll not
dare show his face in Samaria again. Take no more than a dozen mounted soldiers. You must
lead them, Justin, but do not dare return without my stallion and that horrible girl. Did you
hear them though? It seems the Samaritans are a wiser race than you give them credit. They
saw my greatness. Today was a good omen. I felt the power. I am destined . . . born to rule the
Empire . . . to become Caesar . . . to be their god.
X
Ellen woke to the touch of a damp cloth to her cracked lips. She was unsure if the story
she was reading to Ted and Eli was from the scroll or just a dream. Then she sat up with a start.
“It’s here!” she shouted as Ted and Eli waved their hands to quiet her with the cave’s
walls shaking from the echoes of her voice. “This is where they had come to escape from Sadaq
and Justin and his Roman soldiers. This scroll is the chronicle of their escape.”
“Or their bitter end like ours,” Ted said.
“Perhaps the path to our escape might be found more quickly from the scroll than from
our digging, Eli said.
They looked at one another, nodding in agreement.
Ellen said, “Sometimes reading can be more fruitful than just digging . . .”
Dinnertime Orchids
a novel excerpt
from
The Knight and the Unicorn ©
by
Gerald Arthur Winter
El Oriente, Ecuador
The jungle stank and the miasmic river banks gurgled with unquenchable thirst at the peak of the dry season on the Rio Napo at the headwaters of the Amazon River east of the Andes. A helicopter fluttered in the distance from where they hid camouflaged high in the trees. The huge chopper landed on a grassy knoll beside the receded river. Its propeller blades came to a gradual halt bringing the palm trees’ fan-like leaves back to their previous still-life baking in the scorching sun.
An Ecuadorian commando was first out of the chopper then seven others followed. Armed with AK-47s and machetes, the soldiers surveyed the area with the same security ritual as if they were landing in highly populated Quito. In the past five hundred years, few human beings had ever seen this isolated jungle. The commando lieutenant waved to the chopper that it was safe for the passengers to disembark.
General Quijada came out of the door with his emaciated, manacled prisoner. Quijada was under six-feet tall, dark, and barrel-chested with sharp features, typically Serrano, an ethnicity which dominated the military and high government officials of the capital. Even Quijada’s best posed smile was a scowl as he squinted scanning the area. His gaunt prisoner fell to his knees and sobbed at Quijada’s boot tips.
Taking a deep breath, Quijada glared at his prisoner. “It has the smell of death.”
His commando chief nodded with a sniff.
“The scent of death,” Quijada said, “like the scent of a woman, foreshadows an ultimate gratification.”
His prisoner groaned with pangs of hunger and pain from daily beatings.
“Can you smell her, Fajardo? Can you taste her on your lips,” Quijada tormented
his political prisoner who had receded gums and ribs visible through his pale, translucent skin.
A hundred yards across the river, two camouflaged figures observed from the treetops with a video camera. A speaker was remotely connected to their target where a microphone had been hidden in the thick undergrowth the day before. Despite their loose camouflage fatigues, the shorter figure could not hide the curves and swells that betrayed her gender. But those who knew Malicia Fajardo best feared her deadly skills taught to her from age three by the man scheduled to die in a matter of minutes within her telescopic sights.
Mali, as her comrades called her because she was such a bad-ass killer, had tucked her long black hair beneath her cap to avoid entanglement in the jungle’s flora. There were no fauna, from caimans to jaguars, that she feared. With her face blackened to make her identity indiscernible, her dark, almond-shaped eyes glared. Her hatred for General Quijada turned the whites of her eyes red with fury.
“That’s Generalisimo Quijada,” she told the hulking figure beside her. “My father was our last hope for the rebellion. Look at him now. His starvation has made him a mere shadow of what he had been.”
“We could save him,” the man said gruffly. “They’re no match for the two of us, even with all their weaponry.”
“If only they’d just leave him here to die,” she said. “We could save him without Quijada knowing we’ve found his stash of victims to report back to your CIA.”
“True,” the man said. “We can’t let Quijada know we’re onto his plan to make Martino Yepez his puppet president with American financial support. We’ll need more than circumstantial evidence.”
“Recording my father’s death is all we’ll need to get support from the States.”
She shocked even her hardened partner with her cold-hearted assessment.
“That’s you final decision?” he asked.
“Siˊ, Eduardo. We must stop this butcher by learning what interest an American billionaire has in my country’s politics. Why is he backing these pigs?”
“Yepez is the weakest link in their financial pipeline,” Eduardo said. “If I can lure him to come to the States, we can trap him and make his connection to the funding. It will take time and patience, because there are necessary federal channels and I—“
“Do what you must, but soon,” she said.
Both spies continued their surveillance from their distant perch.
Across the river, Quijada asked his lieutenant, “Where is this special place you’ve spoken of?”
“Beyond this knoll, sir, where the jetty formed by the receded river has left shallow ponds of murky depths.”
The general and his patrol followed the lieutenant dragging Fajardo towards their desired place of secrecy.
Back in the trees, Mali said, “If we are to record this political execution, we must get closer with a clear view, or our effort will be wasted.”
She and Eduardo took their equipment and cautiously waded across the shallow river. The jungle foliage became so intense that Quijada’s patrol used searchlights to see the ground for safe footing. Disturbed by the searchlights, butterflies with fluorescent wings fluttered all around them.
The lieutenant said, “There, sir! See their glow.” He pointed toward a cluster of rare orchids which were growing at the base of a fallen tree into a shallow pond. The tree’s rotted roots in the middle of the pond provided decayed bark as fertilizer on which the orchids thrived. The mossy, black log of the fallen tree trunk extended to the bank of the pond where Quijada and his patrol stood with amazement at the gleaming light emitted from the orchids.
Quijada took his prisoner by the neck and pointed to the orchids. “Do they draw
you to them, Fajardo? They will be your last source of food before you die here alone and forgotten by your family and allies.”
“They must be poisonous, “Fajardo said with faint breath.
The lieutenant reached into his shirt for a sealed container from which he removed a huge orchid bloom with glowing pedals. He handed it to Quijada. The general wheezed with pleasure as he inhaled its fragrance.
“Poisonous?” Quijada laughed. “On the contrary, these special orchids nourish testosterone, which you obviously lack.” Quijada thrust the orchid into his mouth, chewed for a moment, then swallowed with the sound of a draining tub of water. “See, Fajardo, delicious and nourishing. The Auca natives of this region call them ‘dinnertime orchids. Perhaps they will keep you alive for some time, but where you can no longer do harm to our new regime. Go!”
Fajardo crawled precariously onto the log’s slick, mossy trunk toward the glow
of the distant orchids in the middle of the pond. Weak from the arduous trek on bony knees, he grabbed a fistful of orchids and stuffed them into his mouth with gusto. General Quijada’s wheezing laughter startled Fajardo as he reluctantly swallowed with a painful gulp, thinking he’d been tricked into believing the orchids weren’t lethal.
“The orchids aren’t poisonous, Fajardo!” Quijada shouted across the pond as the lieutenant pounded the buttstock of his weapon against the tree stump at the shoreline.
“They are called dinnertime orchids, not for you, but for the great one at the bottom of this pond!”
Quijada’s patrol backed away from the edge of the pond.
Trembling, Fajardo tried to crawl back across the log to the pond’s shore. Weak from starvation he slipped off the log into the pond. Hidden in the mud, a giant anaconda looped its thick coils around his neck and pulled him under without a struggle or cry of terror.
Quijada waited for the last bubbles of Fajardo’s dying breath to break the stagnant surface of the putrid pond. Documenting the bizarre execution of her father, Mali turned to Eduardo. She was about to express her personal remorse that her father had to die without dignity to verify their claims against Quijada and Yepez, who were a threat to Ecuador and the United States.
Then one of Quijada’s commandos guarding the perimeter jumped Eduardo from behind. Eduardo outweighed his assailant by a hundred pounds, but the commando got off one stray shot before Eduardo broke his neck. He exchanged knowing glances with Mali as Quijada’s patrol came toward them. She ejected the thumb-drive from her camera and tossed it to Eduardo. He nodded for her to follow him, but she shook her head. He understood the need to sacrifice for the cause so he could escape with the evidence.
Mali threw the camera and her weapon into the quicksand bog sucking both into oblivion. She removed her cap and shook her long black hair loose to her waist and unbuttoned her shirt to reveal more of her full-bosomed cleavage. She nodded to Eduardo with a thumbs up and he vanished unseen toward the far side of the river.
“It’s a woman!” one soldier shouted. “She’s unarmed.”
“Careful!” the lieutenant shouted. “It could be a trick to surround us.”
Quijada emerged from the thick brush. He gleamed at the sight of her and said,
“Hmm, what have we here?”
“She wears the uniform of Peruvian guerillas,” the lieutenant said.
“I am alone,” Mali said. “I was separated from my patrol last year during our border conflict. I’ve been trying to survive in the jungle with only my knife to find my way back. Crossing Auca territory, I feared the headhunters. Much of this part of the jungle is impenetrable without landing a helicopter along a receded embankment. Your man surprised me so I killed him to get his weapon.”
“She lies, General,” the lieutenant warned. “This soldier’s neck is snapped clean through. How could she—?”
“I am well-skilled,” she said with a sneer.
“Your man was incompetent,” Quijada said with a grin at Mali. “But still, you don’t appear to be starved after a year of surviving in the jungle with just a knife.”
“I was more robust before I lost my way.” She lifted her shirt to show her ribs.
“Are you hungry now?” Quijada taunted ogling her ample figure. “You must be tired of eating grubs and lizards.”
She whipped out her knife putting it to her own throat. “Before you can make me eat the orchids like that man, I’ll slit my throat to deprive you of the pleasure.”
Quijada barked with laughter. “You have become as fierce as a jaguar. I could have great use for a woman like you. But you would have to become attuned to my ways.”
“And what are your ways?” she asked.
“Whatever I desire, whenever I want, including yourself.”
“Hmm. I see . . .”
“And?”
“I’m not a child and have no wish to eat another snake.”
“Then you shall join us in our flight back to Quito where I will enjoy watching your daily return to your more enticing, robust stature of a woman.”
As they departed in the chopper, down river Eduardo waited till dark before making his connection with a helicopter to Iquitos, Peru then on to Miami, Florida. He thought about Mali’s stone façade of determination for several months before he made his connection in New York City. Mali was a woman of character and daring, a true patriot to Ecuador willing to make any sacrifice for the good of her country. Ed Dykstra knew that even with all of that going for her, and with his willingness to use all of his resources to support the effort, one key element to assure their success was still missing. He’d have to pull every string and call in every marker from his past, if he hoped to win against the odds of treachery and infinite wealth. Only one name came to mind, Jeremy Stark, a lone wolf, who could toss all the government red tape into the trash. Dykstra’s only concern was Stark’s one weakness, but he’d attempt to use that to his advantage by providing a chance meeting for Stark with Mali Fajardo.
Ed had gotten word from Mali that she had escaped from Quijada and would arrive in Manhattan tomorrow to continue their joint effort to reveal the source funding Quijada’s cruel regime. The scent of dinnertime orchids remained a reminder that with beauty and a sweet scent comes a greater need for caution, the one thing Jeremy Stark often lacked when it came to beautiful women.
ONCE MORE FROM THE TOP
By Roy Dorman
The blast of the explosion dragged him from a deep sleep. The sound that followed was of people screaming and the shrieking of an impossibly cold wind.
The wind made it hard to catch his breath and he noticed the screaming around him was starting to gradually become muffled.
Then there was silence except for the wind.
Through slitted eyes, he saw the oxygen mask waving above him just out of reach.
Eyes closed tightly now because of the intense cold, he pictured the flight attendant giving the spiel regarding the masks and flotation devices.
Just as blackness overcame him, he struggled to remember what her face had looked like….
“It’s almost like he’s trying to get a look at his surroundings.”
“He’s two months old now; he can probably make out certain images.”
“When his little brow furrows up like that, it looks like he’s thinking. Oh, now he’s smiling about something. But that’s probably just gas, right?”
“Well, maybe not. Scientists studying reincarnation think we may remember bits and pieces of our previous life for the first few months. After that, the memories fade and we only know the life we now live.”
“Well I guess that puts a little perspective into déjà vu. You know, those strange little hints.”
“He’s smiling again. I hope he’ll be as happy in this life as he was in the previous one.”
What’s On Your Plate
by
Gerald Arthur Winter
The old man let the nurse prop up his pillows so he could have his dinner in bed. He hadn’t been able to walk, one foot in front of the other, for more years than he cared to count. She placed the bed tray across his thighs and put the plate on the tray before him. He inhaled the enticing aroma of kidney stew, one of his favorites as a child. The thick gravy steamed to his nostrils with the sweetness of carrots and the bulk of potatoes with the kidneys and onions interspersed throughout.
The nurse turned her head away with her hand over her nose and asked, “How can you eat that?”
“It’s not a matter of choice, young lady,” he said. “It’s what’s on my plate.”
She handed him her cerebrum receptor and scrolled down the screen for him to see.
“You have an infinite number of choices with meat, fish, or fowl,” she pointed out. “You can choose from the spectrum any vegetable or fruit from three planets or from our lunar greenhouse. Potatoes, rice, tofu, or any shape of pasta from a dozen space farms. So why would you want to ingest such a prehistoric combination of what is no longer considered food which is sure to shorten your life by decades?”
“It’s all of those choices which have shutdown many of our brain functions over the past half-century,” he said putting a spoonful of stew to his lips and blowing on it so he wouldn’t burn his tongue.
“That’s a matter of constant argument from the minority,” she said with a huff. “But the general consensus of the Bureau negates such backward thinking.”
“The Bureau has disregarded the natural Law of Diminishing Returns,” he said with confidence taking his first mouthful of kidney stew. He swallowed with a gulp and grinned at the nurse.
“You’re allowed to make these indiscriminate food choices, only because it’s your final days,” she said. “The minority narrowly passed that amendment because some majority members still had sentimental feelings for their grandparents, but of course knowing that within a decade you’d all be gone and any future protest by the minority would, by attrition, become a mute argument.”
“How old are you?” he asked her.
“It’s still not proper to ask a woman her age,” she said. “That may be the only ancient tradition to which we still abide.”
He squinted at her and huffed.
“OK. Out of respect for our elders,” she said. “I’m two furloons-seven, so you probably think I’m young and foolish. It’s that kind of disrespect for youth that put your generation in disposal mode.”
“I’m of that minority of my generation who still respects all ages, classes, races, and religions,” the old man said.
“There are only two classes,” she said. “The Bureau and the rest of us. Generations are separated by furloons of which only seven remain, and yours is soon to terminate. There are only two races now, the pale Bureau and the mongrels like us. There is only one religion—loyalty to the Bureau. All else is heresy.”
“I’ve heard from informants that I’m the last of the seventh furloon,” he said.
“That makes no sense,” she said. “If you are the last, you have no living allies. The sixth furloon is a bitter lot. Perhaps they want to keep you alive so their turn as the last furloon will not begin their termination process. They call themselves ‘The Boomers’ in mock tribute to a generation of an ancient millennium, a self-important group of entitled citizens in pre-Bureau history when in their tenth decade of life they tried to end the reproductive process of youth that would compete with them for food and water on primitive earth.”
“I knew many of them in my past existence,” the old man said. “They weren’t evil, not in the Satanic sense, just greedy by nature. The generation before them, my parents’ lot, had made many sacrifices to provide them with world peace and prosperity, but they took it all for granted, just as they would take for granted this delicious kidney stew from a natural breed of fauna that no longer exists, but can be conjured through your cerebrum receptor if the Bureau regulator switch is turned off.”
“You have little time left,” she warned. “My Bureau regulator light is flashing, so they will know that I’ve bypassed their acceptable menu for your last meal.”
“I’ll tell them that I took the regulator from you by force,” he said. “That might spare you.”
“They won’t believe that in your frail condition,” she said with a smirk. “But thanks for thinking of my safety—an admirable characteristic of your furloon—selflessness.”
“You flatter me, child.”
“Since there will be no hope for either of us when they come,” she said. “Let my last meal be what you’ve long for but have been denied by the Bureau.”
“It was my mother who prepared kidney stew for me in my youth, but I never knew when it would be for dinner. Neither that nor fried liver and onions, corned beef and cabbage, fried chicken, or marrow sandwiches, all reminders of my youth when parents controlled children’s desires for gratification without providing choices. That forced children to use their minds for more meaningful
aspects of human existence. When I’d ask my mother what was for dinner, she’d say: “What’s on your plate.”
“My furloon would take a sharp knife and cut her throat for such cruel denial of a youth’s rightful desirable choices.”
“It wasn’t cruel or meant to be,” he said. “But to toughen a child to accept the harshness of life by starting the first lesson within the home.”
“The home,” she sighed. “I’ve only read of such a concept in smuggled journals that had been found in a lunar time capsule near Jupiter.”
“Ask me what’s for dinner,” he said.
“What’s for dinner, Grandpa?” she asked.
“What’s on your plate,” he said, placing a bowl in front of her. Its contents were completely unfamiliar to her, so he presented her with the can it had come from, which read: SpaghettiOs®.
Knock Knock
Flash Fiction by Jerry Vilhotti
My old father and I sat down for lunch and by its end, I was wondering
who I was. Who I really was. Was this old gentle man in his
early eighties my real father - though he had nurtured me like a good
father would - or was it that former middleweight champion, who before
he went to reform school in New York State had gone out with my sixteen
year old sister, who was considered the knockout of The Bronx, for a
whole six months and rumor had it shrouded in whispers and double
meaning words that she had become pregnant with a baby that had gone
away just before I was born; according to many whispers that were just
beyond my full understanding for most of my life but I was told by my
older brothers when I was three years old and called by them "the little
bastard" that before I was born the man we called father had gone with
gun in hand to retrieve my oldest sister who was holed up with the
future champion and his brother by Mount Carmel Church where I was
baptized and carried like a baby all the back to our Arthur
Avenue tenement and not allowed to go out with guys like Jules Garfinkel
who would become the philosopher actor who would say "everyone dies" in
the movie where a body was searching for a soul and a Tammi guy who
would fight the great Joe Louis only to lose hearing the word ten
shouted into his ear at the end of the first round and many other guys
who always made sure our father was not home when they came knocking and
when I asked this sad old man why I was the only one among all my older
siblings born in an apartment and not at the Fordham Hospital, he said:
"Johnny when I was fourteen years old, I killed a sixteen foot snake
with my long knife in a rain forest the likes you have never seen."
Like I said: we sat down for lunch and by its end, I felt like an old born baby
A Wonder of Nature
by
Gerald Arthur Winter
The last time Jack Stark had seen Soonja Wu Han was across the DMZ through 10-power binoculars. She had grinned at him over her shoulder in dramatic escape from his covert security team. That was in ’88 when she was seventeen.
When they had their one-night-stand, Soonja, by Western standards had been jailbait, and he had been old enough to know better at twenty-three. All is fair in love and war, but this was both, or so he had rationalized his lack of emotional discipline at the time.
Jack’s emotions were mixed. He was curious about how Soonja might have endured physically since then. Had she sustained her beauty and grace? But his need to even the score had compelled him to keep looking for her. Jack’s assumption of her naiveté as a teenager had allowed him to fall victim to her charm.
Now she would be forty-five—a matured man-eater—unless her failed mission had cost her life. If not, she would have been in prison and left to starve in P’yongyang. There she would surely have been raped daily by North Korean guards. That would have been the mere preamble of her punishment of inefficiency as her Dear Leader’s perfectly honed weapon of death and destruction.
If so, just a bullet between her alluring almond-shaped eyes might have seemed a blessing to her. She had been a precocious teen who had gained access to the Summer Olympics as a North Korean gymnast with five other young girls.
The others had served merely as decoys, so Soonja could not easily be picked out by American security operatives assigned to the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul.
Could it possibly be true, as Colonel Yoon’s sources had claimed, that she hadsurvived? Jack wondered if Soonja had weathered well over time, especially after she had done her lethal dirty work before escaping back into North Korea.
Rather than a just failed effort, Jack’s mission had been aborted. He was supposed to capture the North Korean operative assigned to kidnap the only son of a high-ranking South Korean general. The purpose of the capture would be a warning to show General Oh his vulnerability. Then he could be manipulated to let down South Korea’s military guard and pave the way for a coordinated offensive across the DMZ during the international celebration of the Olympic Games.
Colonel Yoon’s text echoed through Jack’s mind on his flight: “Rumors say Soonja lives in Chejudo, at a small fishing village known for its haenyo.”
Jack knew that Korean word for women deep-sea divers who can hold their breath for six minutes and dive sixty feet below the surface then ascend quickly without suffering from convulsions, which Americans call the bends.
Jack and the colonel had worked closely together for the South Korean chaebol, so Colonel Yoon had known about Jack’s obsession to find Soonja. Though he knew about Jack’s motive for revenge, he knew nothing of Jack’s need to feel Soonja in his arms again, to brush her soft cheek with the back of his hand and to look deep into her dark eyes for an answer to the question: Why had she chosen to return to North Korea when he could have paved the way for her asylum in the States. She held valuable intelligence to both his Korean employer and the United States’ CIA. Now, the slightest chance that he might see Soonja face-to-face drew Jack to Chejudo like an unwary bug to a Venus fly trap.
In 1988, Jack’s six-man special security team had been a one-on-one, man-to-girl defense against the North Korean’s six-girl gymnastic team—an even match. Jack’s intelligence data had told him to concentrate on the female gymnasts because the men’s team from North Korea seemed too obvious. A South Korean military detail would be watching the North Korean men’s team while Jack’s special ops would concentrate on the seemingly innocent teenage girls who had been afforded a rare opportunity to smile in public. Jack knew the girls’ cold, militaristic grimaces lay beneath their masks of mirth to the crowd, the press, and the international judges. Jack knew only one of the girls would be the well-honed tool of terror, a ruthless killer.
Jack remembered the moment his eyes first met hers. Soonja had been on the balance beam and had just done a smooth back flip on her way to a perfect score of three 10s across the board when she had caught Jack’s glare and faltered in her landing. The crowd sighed in support of her excellent performance prior to her dismount, which had drawn 8.5s from the judges, one from South Korea with a smirk that would one day cost his life when he least expected.
That is when Jack saw Soonja’s child-like demeanor as a dark cloud that seemed to pass between them. With instant recognition, Jack had his killer and Soonja had met her most formidable adversary. Only then were the true games about to begin, but without the ceremony of passing torches and colorful pageantry. The invincible force in Jack was determined to break through the immovable fortress, Soonja, like the Great Wall of China prepared to stand up to both his passion and rage.
* * *
Once in Chejudo, the salt air and cool sea breezes of Sogwipo awakened feelings about the past that Jack had not surrendered to for decades. On the waves of the turquoise East China Sea, he recalled the throng of the opening ceremonies in Seoul in 1988. With the flashes of bright colors and the sound of a distant gong, he saw the dark eyes of the teenage girl who had tried to kill him in her escape back to North Korea. If she were now hiding out in a fishing village, he would soon flush her out. She would have been programmed to kill, so it would be just a matter of time—even now, decades later—before she would strike her assigned target from her new, baby-faced leader, Kim Jung Un.
Thanks to Colonel Yoon’s friendship since they had been young men working cooperatively with U.S. and South Korean securities forces at the Summer Olympics, Jack had learned about Soonja’s current location on Chejudo, but off the record. Only Jack and the colonel shared that information so Jack would have first crack at her without the usual red tape and approvals to take her out. Though Colonel Yoon had never indicated any awareness of Jack’s personal feelings for Soonja, Jack knew the colonel was sharp with instincts beyond the norm of even the most experienced agents in the field.
“She is hidden among us, Jacko,” he said, calling Jack by his special ops nickname. “I regret that she had slipped by us long ago and has found the perfect niche for her treachery where we’d least suspect. Not in the cities of Seoul or Inchon, but day laboring among the local fisherman in Chejudo.
The colonel had a gold incisor that flashed like a starburst when he grinned, accompanied by a high-pitched chortle that sounded like a turkey gobbling. He was rarely amused since the tragedy in 1988, but the idea of killing Soonja at last appealed to Yoon’s dark side, a place few would care to visit. He was a short, wiry man with deep crevices in his face and a harsh attitude carved in granite. Jack was glad to be Colonel Yoon’s friend rather than his enemy. His loyalty to the colonel’s agendas, military and personal, had paid off on this lucky day with Soonja at long last within his reach.
During his taxi ride along the one-lane gravel road with twists and turns high above the crashing sea below, Jack wondered who Soonja’s next victim would be. With South Korean politics shifting several times since 1988, he doubted her target was military, but rather corporate—a preferable target for Kim Jung Un’s new Communist regime where the inexperienced, dictator might be taking a Twenty-first Century approach in line with 9/11 by striking where capitalist’s power lay—in their wallets.
Jack knew this better than most. His past American military security experience had placed him in the employ of a phantom cartel, known on the street as “Kun Adilil,” simply translated—“The Big Boys”—who controlled the flow of domestic crime and wealth as well as between South Korea and other international crime syndicates. They were openly for hire by the highest bidding chaebols.
With no family ties and twenty-five-years security ops experience, Jack brought his Western thought to the burgeoning South Korean market place at a time when most Stateside pundits thought the South Korean economy was sliding rapidly downward. But from the inside, Jack knew better. Sure, the peasants in the fishing villages, like the one he was now approaching, and the average farmer and civil service worker were far worse off than any lower middle-class Americans, but the wealth of top Korean cor porate executives far exceeded the typical Wall Street hedge fund manager—by a decimal point and was continuing to rise exponentially.
As ruthless as corporate America has been portrayed, to South Koreans, the company and God were one, regardless of their spiritual preference. Ultimately, any professed allegiance, other than to Kun Adilil, was doomed to fail. Loyalty to “The Big Boys” guaranteed success with wealth and power. They were protected by Korean gangs that would provide the Asian art of not-so-subtle persuasion. Colonel Yoon had risen from those street gangs to the military, an unusual career fast track. Though he could never rise above the rank of colonel because of his humble roots, among his peers he was the most feared officer who had learned the art of street persuasion as a pimp and narcotics dealer when he was fourteen.
Getting out of the taxi and scanning the quaint fishing village with his professsional eye for danger, Jack thought Soonja’s target must be corporate. He figured she could hang out here with nonchalance and just wait for some top executive on a golfing tour to kidnap or kill.
He wondered if she would be alone this time or if she would use decoys to distract attention as she had in the past. He thought maybe the haenyos she dove with might serve that purpose.
He headed down the dirt road towards the sea where he would act like an American executive looking to score points and make some deals with Koreans of high corporate stature. After all, that had been his cover in Seoul for the past ten years. Soonja must have known that, because she had chosen the soft belly of the Korean peninsula at Chejudo to inflict her unsuspected blow. Colonel Yoon had prepared a special abode for Jack converted from a Buddhist temple. The stark structure overlooked the sea a hundred feet below where the Korean diving girls brought up seaweed, shellfish, and sponges every morning. They never dived after sunset, as Jack had been warned, because that’s when sharks would feed along the shore. He would have to explore at the time of least probable detection, when most villagers were sleeping and ready to rise refreshed for their daily diving routine at dawn.
* * *
At nine o’clock that night, dressed in black, Jack turned out the light and quietly slipped out to the screen porch. The hinge to the exterior door creaked, but he paused for only a moment to see if anyone had stirred from the sound. He continued with skillful stealth towards the edge of the cliff overlooking the surf crashing against the rocky coast below. The high-pitched chirping of toads in the underbrush faded as he repelled the rocky escarpment by rope. The hiss and pounding of the waves nearly drowned out his thoughts.
Colonel Yoon’s street informant had told him that a new haenyo diver had come to this village about ten years ago, but although local tradition and superstitions usually forbade newcomers, this young woman had shown remarkable skill and could not be denied when local seafood merchants were awed by her productivity. Women diverse ranged in age from fifteen to fifty, so that would put Soonja on the higher end, making up for her lack of experience with inborn skill and her remarkable ability to adapt, the key to effective espionage and treachery.
Even before North Korea had utilized her competitive gymnastic talent, Soonja had performed in China as a ballerina on tour when she was only ten. Her mission there had been to assassinate a Triad boss hogging proceeds in the flesh trade from North Korean operatives in Shanghai. Her silent skills with a knife and her lithe speed in a crowded theater had put Soonja on stage in a pirouette moments before her target was found dead in the third row with a knife threw his throat.
Jack figured Soonja must have adapted her gymnastic strength from the vaulting mount and uneven parallel bars to the depths of the East China Sea—a Darwinian evolution on fast-forward.
Some of the other women divers had been jealous and resentful at first, but their complaints had been abruptly silenced. Perhaps the wealthy corporate merchants from the Korean peninsula had put pressure on them to concede to the newcomer’s copious intake from the sea. But Jack knew how intimidating Soonja could be when she pulled back her gentle, subservient veil and showed her true Medusa-like face that could turn well-trained men to stone—dead in their tracks.
Though Soonja may have quietly made a new lair for herself, Jack was determined to stifle her progress the only way possible. Once he had satisfied his curiosity, and perhaps seduced her one last time, as a matter of professional honor and to save face among his peers, he would kill her.
* * *
A mile east of Sogwipo, Jack heard the churning of Chonjiyon Falls cascading from the cliffs above him into a gorge of lush orchards that would provide concealment for his trek towards the humble thatched hut that Colonel Yoon’s source had tagged as Soonja’s dwelling. If she had become a haenyo, she would be sleeping, rejuvenating her lungs and tired muscles after her deep descent and rapid ascent after holding her breath more than twice as long as most divers. It would take extraordinarily powerful kicks to repeatedly carry a net sack heavy with her catch from the sea’s depths.
There was still a dim light glowing from her open, glassless window, and the light danced erratically from twenty yards away. Jack assumed it was from flickering candle-light, probably scented with jasmine to soothe Soonja’s mind in restful sleep as she had done in Jack’s arms so long ago. He still associated jasmine with the scent of her silky black hair that had hung below her thin waist when it was not tied in a bun as she performed in international gymnastic competition.
As he moved closer, always checking peripherally for any sign that his approach had been detected, he heard the hypnotic woodwind trill from an iPod playing near her bed, traditionally hard and less than three inches thick on the stone floor. Knowing she had the keen predatory instincts of a reptile, he wondered if her dark eyes were now wide open and staring at the ceiling as she sensed his approach.
He needed to get closer to see if she was in the bed. At most, he might have three seconds to come through the window and cut her throat with one swift motion. If there was so much as a glimpse of her face before she choked on her own gurgling blood, she could stop him cold with one blink of her eyes.
He had loved her, even as a teen, but now she was a mature woman and a seasoned killer. He would have to strike first. Only then could he hold her head in both hands and admire her blossomed beauty. He would respect what she had become— more than just his equal for the past twenty years—until tonight if he could get the drop on her.
On tip-toes he stretched to see over the sill into the dimly lit room. She lay in bed on her right side facing away from him. A strong scent of jasmine stopped him cold. He noted the direction of the breeze then listened intently for her breathing, but the flute’s trill was too piercing. The breeze came from the sea at his back, so he wondered why Soonja’s scent wafted so strongly towards him. Fortunately, he could attack her from behind without seeing her face. Too many years had passed to repeat the same mistake of being hypnotized by her kaleidoscopic stare, which had dizzied and confused him in the past. As he coiled to spring in attack, she stirred. Her movement alerted his tightly wound spring as he leaped through the window and came at her with the knife’s double-serrated blade flashing the candle’s flickering light.
Instantly, she faced him. He froze, unable to follow through. Her shimmering eyes stunned him, but her face was unchanged after so many years, perhaps wizened, but as youthful looking now as she had been as a teen.
He grabbed her by her slender throat and came down with the knife into the hard matt that was her bed. He could not kill her, not yet.
She whispered hoarsely, unable to breathe with his tight grip around her long, slender throat, “I am not the one you seek,” she said in Korean, but with a Chinese accent typical of the northern regions, which he could still understand.
He stared into her eyes, which were somehow changed. He was mesmerized by her youthfulness. He could not help but wonder if the North Koreans had found some new wonder drug, maybe a Fountain of Youth from the region called Manchuria. Could his mind be playing tricks on him? Was it his subconscious wish that he would find Soonja just as she had been before? Or had she taken such good care of her health that now she appeared surely younger than thirty?
He grinned at her and tugged her beautiful, smooth face closer to his rough chin. A tear glisten in the candlelight as it ran down her cheek.
“Americans can never figure out the age of an Asian woman,” he said with heated breath in her pained face. “Have you been waiting for this face-to-face moment to weaken me? Are you trying to convince me that you’re the same innocent teen who’d been programmed to kill? Had you just been following orders from your
Supreme Leader by no choice of your own?
Grunting, she shook her head, but couldn’t speak as his grip tightened on her twisting neck and her lithe body quivered spastically.
“Any last words, Soonja, before I send you back to the pit of hell you’ve come from?”
It felt as if ice flowed through his veins as a woman’s voice in Korean came from the shadows behind him: “Would you kill your own daughter?”
His fist clenched tighter on the young woman’s neck as he slowly turned and squinted to discern a figure in the shadows of the room alongside the open window that he had come through—the source of the jasmine scent.
A decoy, he thought, another damn decoy.
He could not see her face concealed by shadows, but the candlelight showed her small feet and her legs to her waist where she sat in a wheelchair and pointed a pistol at him. He heard the safety click off with a downward motion of her thumb as the red laser danced around the side of his face in her quivering grasp.
He turned his head back towards her to see a Berdysh Ots-27 pistol equipped with a silencer. Like the woman who held it, the Russian weapon was made entirely of cold steel, a double action semi-automatic pistol with an 18-round capacity. At close range, she could put a hole in his chest that a Pekinese could jump through, or just blow his head clean off.
Fortunately, he thought, such a mess would draw too much attention to her clever cover—now a disabled, middle-aged women of little threat?
Her voice was still the same, high and child-like with a rhythm and Korean inflection that played with his mind, drawing him in for the kill like a hunter’s duck call in a serene meadow to distant, unsuspecting fowl.
“Release her, Jack,” Soonja said with a creak of the wheelchair as she used her free left hand to move closer to the bed and reveal her face. “See, Jack . . . her eyes are blue, like yours, but otherwise, she’s my exterior clone. In her heart, she’s as innocent as you’d hoped I had been when we met. She’s the best haenyo on Chejudo, able to hold her breath for ten minutes—a wonder of nature.”
He eased his grasp on the young woman’s neck, but remained cautious as Soonja pressed the muzzle of the pistol to the base of his spine.
“This is Jung Hye, our daughter,” she said. “You seduced me as a teenager and
foiled my mission, which cost me my legs when I returned across the northern border.
For my failure, the prison guards broke my legs irreparably. I’d thought I’d kidnapped my intended target, but you’d led me to the wrong boy, Colonel Yoon’s son rather than General Oh’s son, a perfect decoy with my mind still clouded by my first and last passion for any man . . . for you, Jack.”
“When you saw you had the wrong target, you didn’t need to kill the boy,” Jack said, wearily recalling the funeral for his best friend’s adolescent son, an innocent volunteer to protect the intended target, General Oh’s son, whose kidnapping with the threat of murder might have moved the DMZ a hundred miles south by coercion from the north.
“Haven’t you ever wondered, Jack, how that must sit with Colonel Yoon today?”
she said with a grin. “He’s known where I’ve been for years. So ask yourself, why would he suddenly share that information with you now?”
Jack’s mind spun. “I’ll be missed if you kill me,” Jack said. “Colonel Yoon has my back.”
“He led you to me, Jack . . . at long last.” Soonja chortled like a pigeon. Yes, the colonel has since become one of us,” she said with a nod. “You had tricked me into killing the wrong target, for which I had to pay dearly.” She gestured towards her twisted legs. “But they let me keep our daughter . . . on one condition, that I return to kill the one person who could keep us from succeeding again—the only one who might prevent Jung Hye from completing her mission here.”
Jack pushed Jung Hye aside and lunged at Soonja. Before he could reach Soonja’s throat with his knife, Jung Hye’s concealed knife passed through his back and protruded from his chest for a split second. Jack looked down in shock.
Not realizing they would be his last words, Jack glared at Soonja and said, “Now you’re just a bitch on wheels, but I’ll pay you back—”
Soonja’s face faded from his vision as she responded. “Don’t hold your breath.”
* * *
Before the break of dawn as the village still slept, Soonja watched from the cliff a hundred feet above as her blue-eyed daughter sliced bait on the rocks and fed the sharks before her morning dive. She was the only haenyo who could stretch the depth of her dive to over a hundred feet where she would weigh down Jack’s body where no one would find him, and still have enough breath to return to the surface.
Jung Hye had held her breath for more than five minutes taking Jack to the bottom, and now had both arms and legs free to reach the surface and look up to see the proud smile of Soonja, her oma on the high cliff above the East China Sea.
What Jung Hye had not expected to see was her mother with her arms and crippled legs strapped to her wheelchair. Soonja had been gagged, so it was a silent plunge until the wheelchair hit the water from its one-hundred-foot descent. Jung Hye saw Colonel Yoon standing where her mother had just been at the edge of the cliff. He was staring down at her with a gnarled grin that flashed his golden incisor with a starburst at sunrise.
Though there were still a few sharks cutting the surface, Jung Hye took a deep breath and dove back into the water. Her mother was descending rapidly to the depths of the sea, but a trail of bubbles gave Jung Hye hope that she could still save her. She followed the bubbles down to seventy-five feet where the wheelchair settled on a sharp coral ledge.
She found her mother’s limp body tied to the wheelchair, and unfastened her shackles. She removed her gag and didn’t think twice about exhaling into her mother’s mouth, even if it would be a futile attempt to save her.
With no air left in her lungs, Jung Hye knew her chance of returning to the surface alive would be one in a million, even swimming alone. With Jack’s weighted bones below and her mother’s corpse in her embrace, she looked up at the distant surface where the morning sunrise cast shimmers of golden light from a world she had been brought into without a choice, but to which she seemed destined now never to return. Regardless, she pushed off the sharp coral surface with her calloused feet.
Colonel Yoon’s grin remained fixed in her mind. But she was hallucinating, and unsure if she were swimming to the surface or surging downward into the rapture of the deep. Her lungs felt as if they would collapse after slowly exhaling for three minutes. She was trapped in that limbo with the horizon separating life from death.
Her only hope was to keep kicking her legs, but an echoing voice in her mind gave her strength and will. She heard her mother’s voice assuring her, as she often had--
“You can make it, dearest daughter.”
When Jung Hye gasped at the surface, she looked up to see that Colonel Yoon was gone from the cliff above. Her mother’s voice was part of her now, revenge incarnate, assuring her, “You will find him. You will kill him.”
If there were some place where Jack’s and Soon-ja’s best intended souls might ever join in harmony, Jung Hye was certain it could be only in that purgatory between the ocean and the sky where all else was void and her parents could treasure what they had begotten, a wonder of nature.
Strangers
By Alexandra H. Rodrigues
Ellen parked her red Buick sports car in the yawningly empty parking lot of Robert Moses Beach, one of the numerous sandy beaches along the south shore of Long Island. On a summer afternoon it was a great challenge to find an empty spot. Today, on this clear, breezy November afternoon, not a soul disturbed nature’s peace.
For protection against the wind Ellen pulled the fur-lined hood of her coat deep over her bouncy, auburn hair and tightened the belt on her coat. She was joyfully aware of the smell of iodine and salt infused in the ocean spray. The fine, damp beach sand glistened like coral. The surf wetted her knee-high rubber boots. White- caps rhythmically gurgled and splattered against the beach.
Bending her head backwards Ellen admired the sky. An anemic sun competed lazily with an upcoming silvery moon. A few fringed clouds had appeared on the horizon and were sailing the sky. A look at her wristwatch showed Ellen that it was already past three o’clock.
It had been a madhouse at home. Ingrid, her 11-year-old daughter, had lingered excessively over lunch. She was picking the peas one by one and stabbing each one dead center; a tactic which allowed her to delayed her next task -- namely homework. Seven-year-old Johnny had t o be put into fresh clothes. He had come from playing with George, the boy next door. His pants and sneakers spoke clearly of a mud-throwing contest.
There was rarely a quiet moment at home. Even late at night when Ralph, her husband, was relaxing after a tiring day as insurance salesmen, Ellen had to still prepare chores for the next day.
Caring and tending for her loved ones fulfilled her. She was an exemplary housewife and would have made her German ancestors proud.
Coming to the beach quite regularly every Tuesday from the start of fall to early spring, was one of the few luxuries she allowed herself. It was a time to herself that she needed. Ralph called her outings “romantic escapades,” and Ingrid said, “Mommy goes hiking.” After a few hours spent at the beach, Ellen always felt rejuvenated. No matter if it was cold, rainy or windy, it elated her to face the elements. Slowly she loafed along the beach. Playfully she kicked up sand into the air with her boot tips. Her warm breath condensed into a grayish smog when mixing with the Ocean air.
The wind was picking up now. With her head bent down, using the hood as a windshield, Ellen measured her steps carefully to stay just a few inches from the incoming tide. Too late did she notice a young man who was standing motionless, statue like, staring past the high-rising waves. Ellen bumped into him, tripped and lost her balance while her right knee was digging into the dunes. Stunned she looked up at the man. He was tall and skinny, possibly about her age, around 30. He was a well-tailored suit, fashionable tie and a Mackintosh raincoat. Not an outfit for a beach walk, Ellen’s mind registered. More like Wall Street attire. His clean-shaven face was flushed.
Ellen waited for him to say something. Had he seen her come? Then again, how could she have missed seeing him? Miles of empty beach and she would bump into the only other human in sight. She must have been absorbed in deep thought. Right now, however, she could not even recall what it was that had occupied her thoughts. With what seemed a big effort,, the man bent down to her and offered her a cold, ring less hand to help her up. Her lips started to form a question or rather a “thank you” but as if hypnotized by a strange although kind expression in his brown deep-set eyes, she remained silent. Although his hand grabbed her hand, he didn’t really seem to notice what was taking place. His mind appeared far, far away. Even more unreal was that Ellen felt awkwardly drawn to this stranger. She was much too realistic to believe that this encounter was anything but a coincidence but it held a thrill she was not used being exposed to. Danger – not at all, her mind assured her. Meeting of two entities searching for a confirmation? Could they be soul mates? What does that actually mean, why did this expression come to her mind just now, Ellen wondered.
As if they had agreed upon it without any words they began to walk and in hand, their steps burying any sound in the sand. Not for a moment did she think about pulling her hand away. His grip was firm. The skin of his hand was smooth. He has beautiful hands, she thought. For a split second, she wondered how those hands would feel on her naked body. Nothing but the splashing of the water, distant cries of hungry seagulls, and the dim howling of the wind accompanied their footsteps. He bent down and picked up an exquisitely shaped seashell. He held it in his open palm of his right hand, never letting go of Ellen’s hand. Was he going to show it to her? His face had the expression as if he saw a seashell for the first time. Ellen made no comment when he put the seashell in his coat pocket without a comment.
They had walked for about 20 minutes when they reached the old moldy hull of a turned over fishing dinghy. It was here where Ellen usually decided to turn back. Again it was odd – he seemed to know. Momentarily he released her hand. She sensed gratefulness in his gaze as his eyes met hers for one fleeing moment. Then again without a word, he continued ahead – alone.
On her way back, Ellen tried to step into each of his foot prints . She did not turn her head once but knew intuitively that he was not looking either.
Only when the cozy warmth in her car enclosed her, she felt like slipping out of a cocoon,. The seats had been warmed by the sun shining through the T-roof. Her thinking cleared but no explanation would come. . Who was that man? Where did he come from? What had made her act so submissive? So out of character for her! Measured by normal standards, it all seemed ridiculous. Still while it had lasted, it had seemed totally normal. The only way. Then she noticed a beat up Chevy parked just a few feet away. It was probably his car. Should she get out and write down his license plate? What for, she chided herself. She shook her head. It was not like her to act like a teenager. Resolutely she started the engine and drove off. Maybe I will meet him again another time, she hoped.
Ellen did not mention anything about this encounter at home. How could she have explained it and what was there to tell? However she allowed herself to think about those questioning eyes and those elegant hands often.! She nourished the hope of maybe meeting this stranger again. And yes, she fantasized how it would be to know him better and that thought aroused her usual cool blood.
She was back at the beach the following Tuesday. She wished to meet her stranger. At the time she feared that the uniqueness of their first encounter might be spoiled if she did. . Again she walked all the way up to the old moldy boat. The day was gray and the smell of snow hung in the air. Up on the boardwalk two boys were playing ball. No sign of the stranger. Ellen shivered by the time she reached her car. She started the engine and turned on the heater. What’s the matter with me? Why am I so disappointed? I’m a married woman. A mother. It’s not that I am waiting for a prince on a white horse. About ready to drive off, her eyes fell on a folded piece of paper stuck under the windshield wiper. She got out of the car and fetched it. The small piece of paper, evidently torn out of a little note book, read In big generous letters “thank you.” No signature. Only two words. Thank you. There was no doubt in her mind that the stranger had left this note for her. Thank you For what she wondered.
Ellen kept this little note among other treasures she collected. For many weeks she carried the hope of meeting the stranger again. Then life’s daily events made her forget about him. Only 23 years later and through one of the twists of destiny was the episode to be recalled in her mind. It was then, when it was to play a decisive role in her life.
For hours Robert had walked aimlessly through the busy City streets. How could people be so gay he thought Irritated by the giggling of some passing teenagers. Death was so final, so irreversible. He expected everybody to point fingers at him, but nobody in the buzzing lunch crowd even gave him more than a casual look. Suddenly he knew what was left for him to do after the events of this morning.
As a child Robert had lived near Robert Moses Beach. An only child, he was slow in making friends because of a sensitive personality and over protective parents. He had found pleasure in conversing with imaginary friends and watching the elements. He gained strength from nature . On this Tuesday he felt that he could no longer face
people. He did not want to live anymore. For a last time he would let the rolling waters befriend him till they would close over him. Only this way, could he make sure to never, ever kill anybody again. With his parents dead, nobody would miss him and if God would forgive him, he might soon see them again. He hardly remembered how he had gotten out of the city. His beat up Chevy took him along the Parkway until he reached the parking lot at Robert Moses Beach and parked alongside a little red car. While he walked down to the beach he shivered but his face was flushed and covered with sweat of anxiety. This very morning a life had depended on him, the newly graduated doctor. It had been the life of old Jim Butler who suffered from a ruptured tumor in the lower intestines. Robert had been glowing with pride when he pulled on the sterilized rubber gloves, handed to him by a young nurse with open admiration in her cute face. The operating room smelt of ether. He, Robert, would be in charge of the operation. For the very first time, he could call himself a surgeon. He would soon prove his ability using all the knowledge gained during years of hard study and internship.
Everything had gone quite well. He removed the tumor with a swift incision. Then, when he was scraping some of the existing tissue to avoid spreading of malignancy the nurse had made signs indicating emergency status. Salt, syringe, oxygen, heart massage. Robert had shouted out all the commands for such an occasion, as he heard learned in med school. In vain – Jim butler had died. Robert was called into the chief-surgeon’s office and was told, “You performed a good operation. I’m sorry you had back luck the first time around. But don’t blame yourself. It probably was old Butler’s time to bite the grass.” Those words had fallen like rain on polished glass. They did not sink in, did not console. Robert had lit a cigarette, the first one in many years, and walked out of the hospital.
Thoughts like, you killed him, you failed, you’re not a doctor let alone a surgeon, haunted him. With logic, he too could e3xplain that he done all possible but that did not matter to him now. Jim Butler had died under the very knife that was to make him, Robert a full-fledged surgeon. He had taken up medicine with a true conviction to help and through years of hard study and hurdles that often upset his sometimes tender psyche he had kept on studying and maintaining a healthy enthusiasm. What just had happened in the operating room meant total defeat.
While he was standing at the beach, gathering courage for that final step, that would silence his conscience, Ellen had caught him off guard. After she had fallen down, her startled look had penetrated his gloom. He had held out his hand to her and she had not retrieved hers after he had pulled her off her knees and out of the sand. He did not want to talk. There was nothing left he wanted to say to anybody. Oddly enough that strange woman seemed to sense it and she did not say anything or ask anything. With her hand trustingly in his, he felt as if positive messages were being transmitted to him. With an interest which a few minutes before he had thought to be no longer capable of, he had picked up a seashell. Its shape and beauty made him think of life not death. Of life complicated, unpredictable yet beautiful.
The woman had turned back after he had let go of her hand, when they had reached the old fishing boat. She had not spoken at all. It seemed they had both agreed mutually to part at that very moment in time. He had continued walking in the direction they had come. Without looking back he thought to know instinctively that she – he did not even know her name – had not looked back either. That day he walked for a long time, engulfed by an increasing wind. Amidst the rising tide and the onset of darkness he made up his mind. He was going to give life another try. Unconsciously he fingered the sea shell.
The next day and every day till the following Tuesday, he came back to the beach. A fascination had built up in his mind with the woman he had met. Then finally on the Tuesday following their encounter, he saw the little red car again, in the same parking spot it had been last time. He had meant to go and look for her or wait for her but suddenly that seemed too banal, it might break the ominous spell their meeting had had. Resolutely he pulled out a little note book, ripped out a page and wrote “Thank you” on it. Nothing else. Then he got out of his car and put the note under the windshield wipers of the red car. Having done that, he went back into his car and drove away to another parking lot, several miles away.
Fast forward 23 years. Ellen was now a widow. Ralph had died from a massive heart attack 2 years ago, only a year after their son John had been killed in a car accident. Five youngsters had been on the way home from a party.
There was a crash, John had been the only one killed. He was not the driver and not drunk. His friend, the driver however had had a few drinks and John should not have gone into the car with him. Ifs and buts do not help. John was dead. Her daughter, Ingrid was married and had moved to Australia. Although the advanced Technology of Internet, Skype and the like helped somewhat to keep them close, a physical meeting between mother and daughter seemed destined for the very far future. The t6wo trips to the two funerals had eaten up much of any reserves available.
Depression had gotten hold of Ellen. The day her little Sea Ray hit the sandbank in the Great South Bay and the malady happened to her, her mental state was at Zero. No, she had not actually planned suicide but when the impact happened she had no energy nor desire to hold herself up. When she went overboard, her head apparently hit the railing and she ended up with a concussion. Later she was told that a Dr. Gehring had noticed her boat being in trouble and had informed the coast guard. They had saved her and he had had her admitted as his patient, to St. Vincent, where he was practicing as Chief Surgeon. For a moment, before she had blacked out, the picture of an exquisite sea shell had swept thru her inner vision. She did not connect the image with the day, over twenty years back, when she had had the strange encounter with a man she never saw again but the picture of the sea shell was of the one from that day.
The next Ellen knew was that she was lying in clean, white sheets. Where am I? She thought. Why could she not hold on to that blissful blackness she just had come out off. So she had not been allowed to die, it had only been a temporary reprisal from her present unhappy being. She fell back into a restless sleep. Next time she woke, she saw that her arm was tied down on a board and a needle was stuck in one of her veins. She had the urge to pull the needle out. She felt sweat on her forehead. She was crying and nearly choked with the effort to not make a noise. She did not want anybody to know that she was awake.
There was another woman in a bed next to her. About 50 or so, just like her, she would be 53 next month. A nurse came into the room. Ellen did not want to talk, so she closed her eyes and made believe to be asleep. “The doctor is on his way” the nurse said. Oh well, Ellen opened her eyes in dismay. She could not fake it any longer. A good looking man, middle aged with piercing but friendly brown eyes had come in. Obviously the Doctor. He came over to her bed and took her hand, the one without the needle in the arm. “You are doing fine, Mrs. Decker, he said.
“If you keep progressing like this you’ll be home in less than a week.” Ellen held back more tears. There was no home for her. Sure, there was a three bedroom ranch with teak floors and Persian carpets but it meant nothing to her but a roof over her head. A place to vegetate and mourn her loss. She saw her chart across from the bed - Mrs. Ellen Decker. Age 53. Admitted to St. Vincent Hospital following rescue by the coast guard. Diagnosis – concussion.
Ellen acknowledged the doctor. “Thank you doctor for going thru all that trouble. It isn’t your fault that you are not really doing me a favor by bringing me back into reality.” Dr. Gehring looked at her quizzically. “ Now, now Mrs. Decker, you mustn’t talk like this. Do you mean to say that it was not an accident that your boat capsized?”
How perceptive he was and yet she had not really planned it or intended suicide. “No, no it was an accident only – being in a blackout zone afterwards – well it was peaceful.” “You do your job doctor and I promise to cooperate for the time being. Ellen forced a little smile trying to be polite. Dr. Gehring let go of her hand and Ellen suddenly realized how comfortable she had felt while he had held it. Dr. Gehrig left with a cheerful “I’ll see you to-morrow”.
She was looking forward to Dr. Gehring’s visit the next day.
She was sitting up in bed when he came in. With a friendly greeting he took her hand again to check her pulse. There was something so familiar about him, about his hands. Ellen could not figure out what it was but it calmed her.
Then, quite matter of fact he pulled something out of the pocket of the white gown. A sea shell. The sea shell.
Had he recognized her? Unlikely. “Look at all the beauty nature produces for us in abundance. We owe it to be around to admire its treasures.” He said. It was obvious that he wanted to help her with her depression.
A cycle was closing. Ellen knew nothing of what had been on Roberts mind that day in the past but he had never forgotten. The sea shell and Ellen were both accountable for him being alive. He did not recognize Ellen now but he felt her desperation and he hoped the sea shell would do for her what it had done for him.
Ellen had recognized him when he showed her the sea shell. Not to break the spell she had not mentioned it to Dr. Gehrig.
Back in her house a week later, she searched for the note from the stranger, she had kept all those years. It now was yellow and a little brittle. She completed in her normal handwriting: You are welcome! And “Thank You”
No name.
The following day she drove back to the hospital and gave the note to the receptionist for Dr. Gehring.
Forward another 20 years. An elderly couple was walking hand in hand along the dunes of Jones Beach.
Their names?
Treadmill
By
Gerald Arthur Winter
It was Tuesday morning after Thanksgiving. Heavy traffic crept
through the Holland Tunnel at a snail’s pace. Chuck Spingler realized
he’d be late for the CEO’s conference meeting. He’d forgotten the
Rockefeller Plaza Christmas tree lighting ceremony would be
televised that evening. Christmas shoppers would be heading into
Manhattan for the full-Monty of commercial holiday exposure.
In the middle of the tunnel a delivery truck hit the car in front of
it. In chain reaction Chuck jammed on his BMW’s brakes. Though he
avoided rear-ending the car ahead of him, his Starsbuck’s mocha
grande splashed across his crisp white shirt and bright orange power
necktie. He kept a box of fresh dress shirts in his trunk, and an
assortment of silk ties in the backseat, never knowing when a crisis at
the bank might necessitate an overnight stay in Manhattan.
Arriving a half-hour late, Chuck got a glare from the CEO’s
secretary, Connie, as he emerged from the men’s room with a fresh
shirt and tie.
“Have they started?” he asked, Connie.
Her response was a dismissive huff as a warning that Chuck’s
tardiness could cost him dearly.
She would know, because the CEO had cancelled her year-
end bonus for not arriving at the office last Friday until 10:00 a.m. Her
husband had been in a near fatal collision on the FDR Drive. For
Connie’s tardiness, CEO Woodburn had cancelled her five-grand
bonus and sent a two-hundred-dollar bouquet of roses to her
husband’s hospital beside instead. For Connie, that floral fragrance
lingered to remind her against future tardiness. That bitter-sweet
scent was counterpointed by the cadence of her husband’s IV drip
in the ER.
When Chuck opened the Conference Room door, seven VPs
didn’t acknowledge his tardy entry, but sat frozen like trained bird
dogs waiting for their master’s signal to retrieve the kill.
CEO Woodburn gave him an icy stare then nodded for Chuck
to take the only empty seat at the long mahogany table. Its sheened
surface reflected Woodburn’s and the VPs images where Chuck
imagined a Bizarro Financial World existed. On the worst of days,
Chuck wondered if he would prefer that adverse universe, that
those reflections in the table might be a world of empathy and equity
to which he could escape.
The only empty seat directly to Woodburn’s left, was often
referred to as “the ejector seat,” and with good reason.
“The vote has been cast,” Woodburn said without turning
towards Chuck. Closing the folder in front of him, he added,
“Unanimously, in favor of Treadmill.”
Chuck raised his hand for acknowledgement.
Woodburn huffed, giving Chuck a perturbed nod with
permission to speak.
Chuck asked, “So we’re not taking the bail-out?”
Woodburn frowned. “Of course we’re taking it.”
Chuck said, “But I pointed out last week, sir, that we won’t need
the bail-out if we adopt my proposed plan, Treadmill.”
“We’ve just adopted Treadmill,” Woodburn said with a sneer
like a feral cat about to disembowel a helpless rabbit.
Thinking aloud, Chuck blurted: “Then why would we take the
bail-out?”
Woodburn grinned.
“Oh, I get it,” Chuck reasoned. “We’ll get the jump on our
competition and expand our Human Resources here and abroad
with the government’s money, then we can balance our books at the
same time we’re expanding our global operations.”
Chuck’s voice faded as the other seven VPs rose from their
seats. With respectful nods to Woodburn, they departed leaving
Chuck in the ejector-seat.
Woodburn cleared his throat and leaned back in his high-back
leather chair at the head of the table, then turned to Chuck and said,
“Treadmill was brilliant . . . but what else can offer that could justify
your missing this morning’s executive vote?”
“I got stuck in the Holland Tunnel and—”
“You mean your mother didn’t die, Spingler . . . or one of your
kids?”
“I’m not married—no kids. I just—”
“You just have no excuse. If a meeting is set for nine o’clock,
then sleep over in the city if you have to, but be here on time. Only
Treadmill has saved your butt, but what have you done for me lately?
You came up with that plan six months ago when our home loans
tumbled into an abyss of bad debt. We hadn’t activated Treadmill
because we were waiting to see if we, too, would fit the bill: too big
fail. We have, so now we’ll have a billion dollars to play with and
we’re going to activate Treadmill the moment the government puts
that money into our reserves.”
Chuck said, “Wouldn’t it be better for our public image to use
Treadmill, then stand tall without taking the federal bail-out? We won’t
need it—that was Treadmill’s intent.”
“Treadmill’s conception was yours, Spingler, and you’ll be
immediately gratified with a six-figure bonus—but Treadmill’s
intent is my call.”
“I get it,” Chuck said. “We’ll use that billion to hire more people
to staff our global operations and stay ahead of the competition--
we’ll lead the way for others to follow our example. We’ll be hailed for
boosting the lagging economy and putting the Great Recession
behind us.”
“There will be no hiring in the foreseeable future,” Woodburn
said. “On the contrary, we’ll be closing five hundred domestic
branches and half of our overseas operations, reducing our entire
labor force by two hundred thousand. We’ll pay back the feds’ billion
dollars, but after we’ve doubled it in the Chinese market as they buy
off our bad debt.”
“But then you won’t need Treadmill. It was just a failsafe plan
to keep the bank from going belly-up. The depositors will be outraged
if we raise their banking fees and deposit limits.”
Woodburn grumbled, “De-pos-i-tors? I don’t ever want to hear
the D word in my presence. Go soft on me, Spingler, and you won’t
make our next cut. I’m downsizing our executive staff from nine to
seven. Don’t become one of the two VPs I’ll fire before Christmas.”
“Isn’t that cruel, sir, firing someone just before Christmas?”
Woodburn shrugged. “Crueler yet to let an employee charge his
expected bonus on gifts he can’t afford on unemployment.”
Chuck let that logic sink in, knowing the bills for those gifts
wouldn’t come in January. His plan would generate the late fees from
the frozen credit piling up for thirty days. Treadmill was designed to
save the bank from default, but the executive staff had voted to
release Spingler’s plan with a shot of speed and greed.
Woodburn said, “VPs are only two employees among the two
hundred thousand we’ll fire, but we’ll make sure our executive staff’s
reduction gets the most publicity, just to quiet the outcry against us
for taking tax-payers’ money to invest. As if they’d ever know what to
do with that much money.”
Wooburn rose from his chair as a move of dismissal, but added,
“We won’t have to wait until January to begin your clever idea within
Treadmill. You called it: ‘Return to Sender.’ With the holidays slowing
down the mail, it will be less obvious, but the late fees for non-pay-
ments in January will make us another billion dollars just by failing to
mail those credit card bills this month—we’ll even save on postage.
The fine print on the back of their bills will cover our butt with the few
who’ll lawyer up for any class-action suits. Whatever little crap slips
through the grating can be easily paid for from our profits.”
Woodburn led Chuck to the door then watched the doors close
on his youngest, up-and-coming Vice President.
Chuck descended to the next floor where he envisioned his
new corner office with a view of Battery Park—another perk in the
offing for conceiving Treadmill.
Woodburn turned with a nod to his secretary, “Send a dozen
roses to Spingler’s mother.”
Connie’s back stiffened at the mention of roses, thinking of
those Woodburn had sent to her husband. But she’d still cling to
Woodburn’s whipping post just for her health insurance to cover her
husband’s mounting medical expenses.
She’d take whatever crap Woodburn would throw at her, but at
least her skills had preserved her job into her fifties, despite her faded
good looks since she’d been hired thirty years ago as Woodburn’s
convenient grab n go.
Connie shook herself from that memory with disgust, but asked,
“What’s the occasion?” Thinking: God, Spingler—what did you say in
that meeting to piss off Woodburn?
“No occasion. Make it anonymous,” Woodburn said.
“Anonymous?” she blurted, realizing she’d posed a question--
an unacceptable punctuation when addressing Woodburn. The last
time she’d posed a question was back in the 80s, asking: “You and
me . . . and Ingrid?”
At least Connie wasn’t married then, and neither was he, so the
price she’d paid was a threesome in the Hamptons with Woodburn’s
most recently hired MBA of choice—Ingrid, a Valkyrie who’d ravished
her more than Woodburn.
Connie realized Woodburn was still staring at her. She blinked
and repeated with double-jeopardy defiance, “Anonymous . . . why is
that, sir?”
Woodburn grinned. “Just a reminder to Mrs. Spingler’s son, not
to be late again—not unless she croaks.”
For a moment, Connie imagined she saw a Valkyrie flying past
the office windows and wished she had wings. After thirty years of
service, she still hadn’t evolved that far and remained a creature of
the mire.
She wondered if there was still hope for Chuck Spingler with
his defiance of authority. Maybe . . . hmm—maybe not. There was
always too much money at hand to ever say “no.”
Witless Protection
By Gerald Arthur Winter
If I’ve learned anything in my travels, there’s one thing that holds true— you’re on one side or the other. You can’t walk the fence and expect to survive. Maybe if I’d seen the direction Susan was taking, I might have set her straight. With 20/20 hindsight, I imagine she would have told you her story like this: I never had a chance to reverse the momentum, to pause for a moment to consider the consequences. There were mutual glances across the table when we dined at an eastside haunt after work in Manhattan, but when he touched my hand and caressed my wrist with his thumb, I could think only about how happy we’d be. I do love him. I suppose that’s my excuse.
I can’t recall the precise moment it began. It wasn’t a thunderbolt, and certainly not love at first sight. I’d known Jack for as long as I could remember, a given when a guy is that much your senior. Perspective is a funny bird that makes you laugh or cry. One moment he’s bouncing you on his knee as you’re weightless—“Susie, Susie, Susie Q!” he’d sing out as I laughed and squealed with delight at age four.
Twenty years later, I’m still bouncing and squealing with Jack deep inside me. He’s nearly out of breath, but his song still rings clear in my head:
Susie, Susie, Susie Q!
I suppose you’re thinking—dirty old man. It wasn’t that way. I blame myself. Yes, he was older and probably should have known better, but we both weighed the ripple-effect of pain our love affair would cause all who cared. In retrospect, we might easily have given in to our feelings ten years ago. I knew he was the one when I was fourteen. Jack knew it, too, but his moral strength kept anything from happening. He said nothing, but his light, hazel eyes told me our love could hurt me more than anyone else if I fell in love with a man over forty when I was just a first-year high school student.
“I’ll wait as long as it takes,” I’d whispered in his ear when he carried me up to my bedroom after driving me home from my senior prom. “No one will ever touch me, but you,” I’d promised him.
My prom date was the varsity quarterback, but I pretended I was drunk when he made advances, and I said I was ill. My mom called Jack to pick me up and bring me home safely. I wanted so much for Jack to make love to me that night, but when I tried to say more, he put his index finger to my lips, shook his head, and left. I cried for hours before falling asleep. Jack traveled abroad for his job when I was in college. As an exchange student in my junior year at Syracuse University, I spent six months in Paris.
Mom asked him to visit me there in April to make sure I was OK that I was eating enough and no Frenchmen had seduced me. Jack had taken the Orient Express for his most recent business trip. It was that air of mystery about Jack that had drawn me to him. Now that I was no longer jailbait, that mysterious nature of his business abroad drew me to him from my core.
Expecting Jack’s arrival from the train, I sat chilled for an hour in the drizzle at an outdoor café watching the station platform. I hadn’t seen him in almost a year, so my heart fluttered with vignettes of subtitled, black-and-white French art films going through my mind. Jack got off the train with a newsboy cap pulled down and his trench coat collar pulled up as he avoided puddles on the cobblestone street to join me. I saw myself as Jean Seberg in Bonjour Tristesse, by not taking responsibility for my actions to achieve the passionate result I so desperately desired. Jack stopped dead in his tracks when he saw me. He removed his dripping cap revealing his frizzed silver locks with Superman-like curl on his forehead. He grinned with one dimpled cheek.
“How’s it going, Susie Q?” he asked, and my heart melted.
“Take me to your hotel and make love to me all afternoon,” I said. “No one will ever know.”
Jack sighed, took my hand, and caressed my wrist with his thumb. Looking me straight in the eye, he said: “But we’ll know, Susie. That’s two people too many. Let’s go inside and have some wine and bouillabaisse. I want to hear all about your Paris adventures, especially the young men whose hearts you’ve broken.”
I rambled on for several hours, but it was all an echo in my head. I couldn’t stop staring at Jack and wondering if my perfume, or the bumps in my sweater from my taut nipples were arousing him. I paused several times as I spoke with my mouth open and the tip of my tongue inverted to see if he could resist kissing me, putting his hand beneath my sweater, and giving in to my wish to go back to his hotel room.
“I’ll tell your mom you’re doing just great,” he said after our dessert.
He stood, paid the check, and put on his hat and coat. “It was great to see you,” he said, and turned to hail a cab.
“Please, don’t go,” I said, and hated myself for the pitiful tone in my trill.
He grinned and winked, then said: “There’s one hell of a lucky young man waiting for you out there, Susie Q. With your looks and smarts, don’t do anything to ruin that chance.”
I was so dumbstruck when I came out of my fog that his cab was gone before I realized I hadn’t even kissed him good-bye. I spent the afternoon crying, realizing Jack was the only for me. Though I cried all night till late the next dismal morning, I realized Jack and I had to be together, no matter what. Patience, that would be the key to my happiness, so I concentrated on my studies.
Graduating summa cum laude the following year, I entered Harvard Law School, where I excelled again. I saw Jack only at holiday breaks, when I’d decided to keep him off guard. When the ritualistic hug and kiss came among friends and family, I turned my cheek to Jack. He must have become used to my stifled swoons and seemed surprised, though not apparently disappointed, that I might be losing interest.
“Everything OK, Susie Q?”
He cocked his head with a boyish, don’t-you-love-me-anymore look.
“Great, Jack.” I shrugged. “How about you?”
“Never better, kid.”
He winked, but seemed pensive as he greeted others at the holiday party.
There was never a doubt in my mind that I loved Jack with all my soul, but I finally felt his responsive vibe, and not just a midlife crisis so typical of the male species. Jack loved me, but if we decided to make it work, there were so many issues, so much we’d have to give up. After all, Uncle Jack had been married to my mom’s sister, my Aunt Sally, for fifteen years. We weren’t blood relations, and he was Sally’s second husband. They had no kids, and there were no cousins to condemn us to hell for our outrageous affair. He wouldn’t have to marry me. I decided to become an attorney with a career that wouldn’t include kids of my own. I needed a lover, but not just any lover. Only Uncle Jack could do it for me. In conversations with Aunt Sally, I found out Jack was staying in Manhattan on business, so I decided to surprise him and lure him to my apartment on East 45th Street. When he came to my table at La Manganette, I recalled when we met briefly in Paris and I was still an undergraduate. His manner was different now, more relaxed. He looked at me, not as his niece, but as a woman. He used no “Susie Q” quips this time, but sat, took my hand, and kissed it.
“You look great, Susan,” he said. Then that dimple creased his cheek.
“You make me sorry I didn’t take you up on your offer in Paris. When was that? Seven years ago?”
“Another time . . . another place,” I said.
“And now?” he asked.
“No, Jack, only the right time and the right place,” I assured him. “I’ve waited this long for you. It has to be perfect and everlasting. It could take a year, maybe two, but we’ll be free of the stigma of families’ and friends’ contempt.
It’ll be just us . . . forever.”
“How are we going to pull that off, Susan?” he asked raising an eyebrow.
“Trust me, Jack. Are you in?” I challenged keen to any pause in his response.
Then his lovable dimple and a wink said it all. “You’re the boss, Susan.”
He grinned. “Will I have to kill anyone?”
“You have my permission to kill me if I blow this for us,” I promised.
“OK, Babe. It’s your call,” he conceded.
We left it at that and didn’t speak again for months while I worked my plan. I hung out at the right clubs in Manhattan till I made the contacts I needed. Within six months I was Tony Piano’s main squeeze and right up close in the clubs when he ordered hits on his enemies. I passed their body-cavity searches whenever I entered their inner sanctum because I didn’t need a wire. It was all up here in my pretty little head: victims’ names, locations, and times of their hits. What I couldn’t provide were the hit men’s names. That didn’t matter because the DA and the Feds often caught the guilty
parties in the act because my information was so accurate. One of the nameless killers seemed always to be a step ahead of the cops, so they tried to pressure me to continue my undercover charade to weed out his name. Though Tony Piano spoiled me, everything was a means to an end. The loss of my virginity and not seeing Jack for a year would be worth it. As long as Jack and I would be together in the end, it didn’t matter what I had to do to get there. It was time.
I told them I had to stop and was ready to join the Witness Protection program they’d promised me. But I told them my husband had endured hell while I was their informant, and their program had to include new identities for both of us as a married couple, or I wouldn’t give my final deposition that would put Tony Piano away for life.
I told Jack to close the cover on his past and be ready to begin his future as my husband, where no one would know us or find us. He told my Aunt Alice that he was going on a business trip to France again. Dumb bitch, I thought. She even packed his bags for him. We didn’t hook up till several days later in Paris with our new IDs, including passports. We’d take the Orient Express west, where no one would find us.
Jack surprised me, having booked a private car where we were served champagne as the train left the Paris station towards Prague, where we planned to begin our new life together. We made love all night to the soothing sway of the train. When I awoke I saw Jack at the window silhouetted against the glow of sunrise.
“Last night was great, Jack.” I sighed. “We’ll have a lifetime of nights like that. The Feds will provide our Czech IDs in Prague.”
As Jack turned from the balcony, I saw he was wearing a jacket and tie, but he showed me that dimple as he came over and sat on the bed.
“What’s with the digs, Jack?” I asked, but the touch of his hand and his thumb caressing my wrist mesmerized me for the moment. Then Jack suddenly pushed the silken pillow over my head.
As we pulled into the station in Prague, the last words I heard him say were: “Sorry, Susie Q. There was no other choice than you—or me. With all due respect, Tony Piano sends his best . . .”
Who by Fire
By Andrew Lee-Hart
1900
I looked at the pornographic picture in front of me and shuddered. What kind of mind could have produced such a tumescent, disturbing painting? Who would have thought that a still life could be so lustful and passionate?
Miriam looked at me, and smiled. In front of us was her startlingly grotesque painting; the apples and pears were overripe so you could almost see the juices seeping through the skin, whilst the bananas were unashamedly phallic. Everything dripped with fecundity and passion. She certainly had talent, but she intruded herself onto everything that she created, rather than keeping herself at a distance. She was only a housewife after all, attending my basic art course, for something to do in the evenings whilst she waited for her children to come along, which assuredly they would.
I coughed, feeling myself going red. “It is good” I told her, “you paint very well and have a great feel for colour. But you need to keep somethings hidden; your paintings are indecent, almost obscene. Sometimes I don’t know where to look”.
Her appearance hid her passionate personality; she always looked demure, smartly dressed in a dark blouse with her long brown hair held back with pins. She had dressed thus from the first day she turned up at my art class one Monday afternoon at Leeds Art School and the subsequent Mondays and Thursdays that she attended.
There was something about her I found unsettling; a cynic would say it was because she had far more talent than I could dream of, and perhaps that was the case. But then my paintings sell and I get invited to exhibit my work, and I doubted hers would. She was just so emotional; every time I stood close to her, examining what she was painting (still lifes mostly, and occasionally people, although fully-dressed of course), I could feel that passion, as if she poured out everything in her heart onto the canvas.
We bumped into each other one afternoon at the Leeds city art gallery. I was exhausted having walked along The Headrow; carriages and horses splashing me in the Autumn rain. It was only two o’clock but I could feel the dark coming on. I only had come in to get some shelter from the rain and dry off, but whilst I was there I had a look around. It was sometime since I had been in there, although I spent much of my rather alienated childhood in the gallery.
She was sat on one of the benches, looking at some Dutch master or other.
“Don’t you think this is a great work, Mr Smythe,” she called over. I wanted to avoid her, finding her so overwhelming, but I could not be that rude. And she interested me. Well more than that. I had often found myself thinking of her, and it was perhaps fate seeing her there. I smiled and sat down beside her, and we talked of art.
“I have never seen your paintings” she said, “I know you paint. Are there any here, in this gallery?”
I explained that this gallery regarded me as too modern, but in some of the smaller galleries there was some of my work. We talked some more, and then she left as her husband was due home from work; he taught Classics at the university.
“I come here a lot” she told me before she departed; “early afternoons. I look at the art and copy pictures. I know I am not very good but I want to improve, and that is the way apparently.”
And then she was gone, with a faint smell of perfume still hanging where she had sat close to me.
And so we became friends. I saw her in the art class, but there we had to be formal, whereas outside the class we could talk more freely. Any afternoon that I was free I would come into the gallery and invariably there would be Miriam. We would sit together as she sketched the paintings she liked and we would chat about art, Leeds and her home life. And afterwards we had a cup of tea in a tiny café hidden away behind the gallery.
I did worry about our being recognised, after all it is not done for a married woman to be seen munching on scones with an artist, however she did not seem bothered. But then she never gave the appearance of being unduly bothered about what people thought of her, unlike me, who worries about it all the time.
I discovered she was in her early twenties, only slightly younger than me, and as we came from the same part of Leeds, it was a wonder that we had not come across each other before. She was Jewish; her mother and father had come over from Odessa to escape the pogroms
in the late 1870s, and she was born shortly after they arrived in Leeds becoming part of the city’s Jewish community. But there had been a rift after she married a gentile.
“I met my husband at a concert; nobody approved of us, I was marrying out so my family were extremely angry, whilst his family do not like me, presumably because I am a Jewish although I go to their church and act the part of a good Christian wife.”
“Do you want more than that?” I asked her. She shrugged, and started talking about Rembrandt van Rijn. I could sense discontent in her. But perhaps it came out more in her paintings than in her appearance and in what she said. Was it her husband? Was she missing her family and her community? I felt that she must miss her people and her traditions. Certainly, when I was close to her I could sense her longing so strongly that it almost overwhelmed me.
The last Thursday that she attended the art class she was remote and seemed tense. Her painting was nothing like the still life she was supposed to be painting; there was no skull or guttering candle on the table in front of her, and everything in her picture looked sinister with a sense of foreboding. I looked at her working; her concentration was palpable. She said no word, and then as soon as the class had finished she was gone; she had not spoken to me once.
That evening I had just gone to bed, my thoughts of her as they so often were. And then there was a loud rapping on my door, and I froze, for a moment scared, wondering who had come to drag me away, but then I remembered where I was and put on a robe and went down to see who was at my door. Miriam stood there in the dark, a reticule over her shoulder, a
Gladstone bag by her feet. It was cold and raining. As soon as I opened the door she pushed her way passed me and into my house.
“What are you doing here?”
“I am leaving. Off to France to become an artist.”
“Are you mad, woman?” I asked her.
But no, she was not mad; she wanted to get away from her husband, the Leeds Bourgeois society. She was frustrated and bored.
“I thought I would say goodbye” she said, “there is a train due in a couple of hours, to London, and thence to Dover. You can come with me if you like” she laughed as she gazed into my eyes. I said nothing, just stood there, and then she was gone, soundlessly and without complaint.
1910
For a while I often thought of Miriam; imagined her living in a garret in Paris; chatting in restaurants on the left bank and sitting in the Louvre. I wondered if she would become a famous painter. Or perhaps she had given up and gone home, back to her academic husband. Most of all I wondered if I should have gone with her. But after ten years she had started to drift to the back of my mind; new lovers and friends had come into my life, and someone I had known only for a short while inevitably became less important.
I had soon stopped teaching art; most of my students’ paintings were execrable, and those who had talent soon learn to despise me and then quit. And none of them had the talent of Miriam. My paintings did okay, and I was featured in a couple of exhibitions in Leeds, but I could not rely upon them for money. After some indecision, I turned to book illustrating to make my living.
I was recommended to the publisher Chatto and Windus and they used me as one of their illustrators. It was not a great job, but the money was okay and at least it was art. And through them I started to illustrate some French works that they had commissioned, mostly editions of medieval French poetry which were very popular at the time. There was a new edition of poetry coming out and I went to Paris to meet the editor, Jean Boucher and to discuss how I would illustrate it.
We sat in a small room, part of the offices of Hachette publishers, in a rather obscure part of Paris. Boucher, was an older man who knew exactly what he wanted from his illustrator. I made notes as he spoke and gazed out of the window at the fog bound city below. I felt rather Bohemian being here and briefly imagined staying here to live. Could I survive? I had few ties in England and perhaps I would be inspired to get on with my painting.
“Oh” said Jean after we had finished talking about the volume of poetry, “a friend of yours works here, Madame Ullman. When I mentioned you were coming she asked me to send you to her. She does religious work.”
I had no idea who he meant, but walked into a large office at the end of yet another corridor, to see two men and a woman sat round a table with paper scattered about them.
“Welcome to the Roman Catholic press of France” said one of the men as I walked in, then the woman looked up and it was Miriam.
“Roman Catholic press? I thought you were Jewish.”
“I can be who I like; anyway it isn’t my only job. I only go in twice a week and illustrate various magazines and propaganda sheets they put out. Mostly I do my own painting.”
We were sat drinking wine in a homely café nearby. She had hardly changed in the last ten years; still smartly dressed, her skin still flawless and those eyes, ready to submerge you without warning.
“Don’t they know you are Jewish?” I asked curiously.
“Oh no. Well they don’t ask. I wear this crucifix, so it probably doesn’t occur to them.”
“Have you been back to England?”
“I visit my mother on occasion. She is a bit disapproving, but at least she does not talk to my husband so I do not need to worry about that.”
She took me back to the office where she worked, it smelt of polish and French tobacco. I looked through some of her illustrations. Garish I thought; lots of blood dripping from martyred saints, eyeless sockets and austere men and women being roasted alive. All rather macabre. She looked at me with an amused smile as I gazed at her work.
“What do you think?”
“Not what I expected, but you always could draw. Too much emotion though. You need to be distant. I have always told you that. You are too involved with what you paint.”
We arranged to meet that evening at a rather fancy restaurant near the Notre Dame. She walked in looking beautiful in a red dress and her hair up and pinned. We chatted between courses and she told me of her life.
“I lived with someone for a while, an American but then he went off. He was a writer, mentioned me in one his novels. I think he was married, but it did not matter. I am on my own now and have a small apartment.”
I loved being with her, and was in wonder that we were sitting together after all this time; eating a meal together and chatting like old friends.
She took me back to her apartment and we sat together on the sofa, drinking wine; her perfume was more sophisticated now, and her make-up subtler than when she was a Leeds housewife. The front room where we sat was austere with a few books on shelves and a large painting above a fireplace. The smell of paint was everywhere.
Miriam then led me through a door and into her studio where paintings hung in various states of completion. Some still lifes, I was glad to see, but also nudes. There was one in front of me; large, almost life size. The model looked at me directly with blue eyes; her skin pale, and her breasts surprisingly large.
“Do you like it?”
“Oh it’s you.” It was Miriam, beautiful and sexual. I was overwhelmed with it and with her; I wanted to look at it, but could not bear to do so.
We went back into her sitting room.
“Take the pins out of my hair” she commanded and I sat down next to her on the sofa. Ever so softly I touched her hair as my fingers gently searched. I came across a metal pin and slowly pulled it out with my right hand, holding her head steady with my left. I was very conscious of her body next to mine, and I gazed down at her pale neck, with a slight greyness close to her ear.
There must have been thirty or forty pins, and cautiously I drew each one out, not wishing to hurt her or to spoil the moment, I then put each pin on a small table beside me. I was careful and she never once winced although I must have caught her hair once or twice. There was a faint scent of lemon coming from her hair; maybe her shampoo or some kind of pomade or scent. I felt as intimate with her as I had ever felt with anybody. I loved feeling her head, slowly touching it as if I was her mother or her lover.
“I have finished” I told her, and she ran her fingers through her hair and found a pin I had missed and our fingers touched as I helped her to pull it out and put it with the others. I felt close to her but also self-conscious.
“I had better go?” I told her, “it is getting late”.
“Yes” she said getting up, “I am expecting a guest.”
The following morning I was on the train to Dieppe.
1922
The third time I did not see her; well not in the flesh. Her body, however was all over the walls of the very modern Galerie Bugada in Paris. In many of the paintings she was naked and unprotected; twisted on a cross, with a crown of thorns upon her head. In one a German soldier stuck a rifle with a bayonet on it into her side, in another a couple sat weeping below her feet.
Other paintings showed her being beaten by men with sticks, as she crouched down trying to protect herself, and one showed her carrying her cross whilst bystanders jeered at her and threw things. The largest painting; the focus of the exhibition, was another crucifixion; a stream of blood pouring down her legs, the sky a dark blue above her. On either side was another woman on the cross, both nude. I realised that they were also Miriam. Hung around Miriam’s neck was the star of David.
Crowds of middle-aged men looked at Miriam in her nakedness; some peered close pretending to be examining the brush strokes, whilst others leered and laughed. I heard the words “disgraceful” and “pornography” from a couple of young men, which surprised me. I was not sure what I thought. I found it very unsettling, and felt protective towards her.
There was no catalogue, and I wished there was, as I wanted to know what had happened to Miriam. I asked Monsieur Vachoux, the owner of the gallery, if he knew if Miriam lived in Paris, but apparently she did not. She had been into the gallery when the display was being put up and at the opening, but he had not seen her since.
“No doubt she will be here when the exhibition ends, in a month’s time. I believe it is going to Berlin where she lives.
Her lover is a German writer I understand, nobody famous.”
I spoke to my friend Adele about the exhibition. Whenever I came to Paris to get away from my wife and children I would meet up with Adele and spend my time, when not meeting book publishers, naked in her bed. She had been to the exhibition two days earlier and did not like it.
“So how do you know her?” she asked me. It was towards the end of my stay, and I was beginning to remember why I would never leave my wife for her.
“I taught her, believe it or not. Feels like another lifetime.”,
“All very Jewish” Adele said, biting into some kind of pastry, with a slightly disdainful look. Suddenly her perfume smelt too heady and her lips looked too red. I could not think of a sharp rejoinder, so finished my coffee with a gulp and walked off, leaving Adele to follow me if she could.
I thought about the paintings a lot when I was back in Leeds. And I had a longing to see Miriam, to be with her and to talk to her. It was as if she possessed something that I needed, only she had a key to my secret self.
The Present
Her second husband was the German writer Franz Kurzweg, not read much nowadays or perhaps during any days. He was revolutionary and liked experimentation. Underneath it all there was probably a good writer trying to get out, but he never quite managed it, certainly not judging by the few books by him that I have found, but then my German is poor, so what do I know, and I cannot imagine anybody wanting to translate them into English.
I was a teacher by the 1930s in a grammar school in Leeds; teaching art and occasionally French when the French department needed a hand. My opportunities for going abroad were fewer, and I did not particularly want to travel as that part of my life was over. I was late middle-aged and respectable and if my married life was not brilliant, it could have been worse.
I enquired about Miriam from anyone I thought could know anything about her. I heard about a couple of exhibitions she held in Berlin and Cologne in the early 1930s. And then a friend told me that her paintings had been denounced as “degenerate” and “foreign” (code for Jewish) by a man whose name I cannot bear to speak or to write. And then I started to fear for her safety and hoped that she had got out. But she didn’t escape, she was one of the six million.
After the war ended I watched the documentaries and saw the pictures showing what the Russians found when they liberated Auschwitz and other death camps. Each skeletal figure could have been Miriam, or the bodies piled up like trash, ready to be disposed of. Presumably she was gassed or starved, or made to dig her own grave and then shot in the back of her head, all because of who she was. All because of who we both were.
When I left my parents’ house as a young man I had realised that nobody need know who I was; nobody need know that I was Jewish, who my parents were, anything about my past. I deliberately lost touch with friends from my youth and immersed myself in Leeds and the art world. I wanted to be free of my heritage.
I changed my name from Goldberg to Smythe and with a bohemian beard and relatively light coloured hair nobody ever guessed my origins, I managed to develop a posh Yorkshire accent and completely hid my Polish tones. On the few occasions that I bumped into someone I knew from my childhood I avoided them and was never recognised. I felt guilty about my parents, but they seemed immersed in the past; still speaking Yiddish and following their silly superstitions as if they were still in Poland rather than in a modern city in England; I wanted away from all that, and to an extent I was successful.
I was ashamed of having been born a small village in Poland and a member of an old-fashioned religion; of having been a poor immigrant, coming to Leeds in rags. After I left home I became respectable and a churchgoer, and later I married a gentile wife who gave me gentile children. All very well and at least I was safe, but it was not me, I had ripped out an important part of who I was.
I am not sure if Miriam guessed. When we spoke it was as if she knew, but she never asked me directly. It certainly did not occur to my wife, despite my being circumcised, and by the time I had met her my parents were dead so I did not have to lie about them.
One Friday night, the time was right, and I told my wife who I really was, and the following morning, and for the first time since I was a teenager I attended the synagogue. I wept as the ancient tongue was spoken, so familiar and yet mysterious. Some of the ceremonies might seem silly, and I certainly could not believe in a kind God, who loved his people, not now and not ever. But I was Jewish and these were my kin; I had rejected them for long enough.
SCENTED FLUFF
By Charles E.J. Moulton
This story from 2010 is an excursion into the changes that occurred with the instigation of the first world war. The old world tumbled and a new one rose. Kingdoms tumbled and with them a lot of the dignity the old world possessed disappeared.
I examine these changes by comparing two different times and places through the eyes of one lady who represents everything that the old world was: grand, lovable, decent and articulate. This story is dedicated to my fantastic grandmother Anna Julia Sofia Kronzell, the grandest Grande Dame of them all.
***
Lucienne Arcienne–Mayfield sat in her mansion with assorted members of her family. There were twelve of them all in all still gathered around her within the large dining room. As they were all listening to grandmother speak of old times, a few of them were also recollecting how their own time was in a turbulent change and how that would affect them later in life.
It was Lucienne’s eightieth birthday, so naturally she was the centre of attraction. There had been superb meals, garden parties, musical entertainment in the form of a chamber quintet playing waltzes and polkas and a range of speeches held by assorted members of the press. Tennis and golf had been played and there had been spectacular presents on display.
Fifty family members had arrived, not counting the wives and the husbands. Her five children, twelve grandchildren and twenty-five great-grandchildren had been there. Three cousins, two brothers and three nieces. Some of them had already left, some of them were sleeping in one of the mansion’s twelve bedrooms. Some of them were reading in the library and a couple of youngsters were playing chess. One young couple were making drunk love under a tree, but Lucienne didn’t know that and neither did anyone else. If Lucienne had known, she would’ve reprimanded them in the strictest of manners. Premarital sex was a thing too taboo to think of.
The mansion’s lot had been smack full of Rolls Royce cars, Bentleys, Jaguars and Benz vehicles. There was even a Fafner among them, owned by Lucienne’s third youngest grandchild Benjamin, a twenty five year old bon vivant and also the boy under the tree mentioned before. He had bought the car although German cars were not so popular right now. He didn’t want to keep the car, not with that man in Germany having become leader of the country that had made the car. Many British people were afraid that the man might become more powerful than he should be.
The year was 1933 and Lucienne’s family had been spared losing all too much money. The crisis had been very bad, but the depression had been even worse in the U.S. and so Lucienne had been smart about her money and luckily no one could take away her house, anyway. Her husband Gordon Baxter Mayfield had been dead now for ten years and his smarts and his textile empire had brought them fame and fortune.
Her grandson Theo Gordon Mayfield had just signed a contract for a film with Chaplin and he hoped that he could transcend into talkies. No one knew who would make it after the silent movies became obsolete. Chaplin was one of the few who still made them, the old silent films. The business was a different one now and the key selling factor was a good film voice. Musicals was en vogue and a man named Busby Berkley was very popular, choreographing thousands of girls in luminous violin costumes. Theo hoped to land one of the Broadway Melody films.
Behind Lucienne was a large portrait of King George V. It had been a gift from the royal court as a thank you for her financial assistance in the international conference for economic aid in the crisis on June 2nd this year. That painting had just been hung up there today by one of the court’s personal assistants. He happened to be Lucienne’s fifty-five year old son and had brought the painting from Windsor Castle himself yesterday morning in order to present it now.
It was the year of films like Duck Soup, The Invisible Man, King Kong and 42nd Street. In the charts were songs like Night & Day, Stormy Weather and Easter Parade. Sweden was ruled by Gustav V and America had Roosevelt. It was the best of times and the worst of times. It was the year of The Marx Brothers and Adolf Hitler.
Lucienne was speaking about her life two years before Paris was occupied by Germans and when everybody listened to Johann Strauss instead of Harry Warren and Chopin instead Dick Powell. Her new record of Mozart music played by the London Symphony, a present from her grand daughter Ethel, was spinning at the old turntable gramophone a meter away and somebody had to go and wind it up now and then in order for the music to keep playing.
The room as such was quite lovely and the large doors lead to a terrace that had an overview over the landscape that eventually could admire Stonehenge. It was beautiful to see the sun rise over the English countryside.
Here were instruments, a grand piano and a cello and two guitars, as well as countless original paintings by English masters. The chandelier hanging from the middle of the room was a sparkling and beautiful sight in this approaching dusk.
The company of relatives were sitting in the corner next to the game room that lead to the library. They were facing the dining room, gathered upon the range of red velvet sofas whilst grandmother sat with two of her great-grandchildren in her lap and told everyone about what life had been like back then.
“In those days,” she claimed in her melodic mezzo, “there were no talkies or automobiles, no telephones or Marconi machines. We didn’t have any radio receivers or phonographs. We had newspapers and books. That was good enough for us. Gordon always loved to read and so we spent many evenings reading books aloud to each other.”
Twenty-three year old Ethel, who was influenced by modern women’s liberation in society as well as in romance, had been chewing on a question for a bit. She had no idea how her grandmother would react this time. It was a bit of a teasing factor. Apparently, Lucienne had met her husband during the German occupation of Paris 1870 – 71. This German-French war had been devastating for the city. In the middle of an attack by a general named Moltke on the 15th of September that year, Gordon Baxter Mayfield, one of the England’s wealthiest textile tycoons, courted the daughter of the steel magnate Remy Arcienne. The two men had become friends during a visit to Madrid five years ago and it wasn’t until last year that love had actually blossomed between the hearts of the 21 year old girl and her thirty five year old gentleman caller. This man had inherited his fortune and position from his father Mortimer Mayfield. This man had built his textile empire up from scratch the year of Queen Victoria’s coronation 1837 and now his son Gordon was madly in love with a French steel tycoon’s daughter.
The question that Ethel had was: had grandma been courted by anyone else previous to grandfather? She had always dismissed the question with the answer: yes, of course, dozens of men had courted her. That was the proper and dignified answer to a tricky question. Case closed.
Young people being what they were and are, they wanted to hear the story of how she met and lost one particular gentlemen caller in 1869, two years before Gordon took Lucienne to England and married her in Westminster Abbey.
“Tell us about the gentleman caller,” Ethel demanded.
Lucienne pretended not to understand.
“Gentleman caller?” she asked, raising one eyebrow.
The entire ensemble joined in a chorus of wails and laughter.
Lucienne waved her arms about, her elegant, lace decorated gown tingling with light from the setting sun.
“I do not know why you want to hear this story over and over again,” she said in her high British English coloured by the French idiom. “It is just fickle. It is … uh, how shall I put it … scented fluff.”
“Nooo,” her thirty five year old granddaughter Laura protested, “it’s romantic and so very lovely.”
“All right,” Lucienne nodded, “I shall tell you the story again.”
“With all the naughty details,” her forty five year old daughter Victoria demanded.
Lucienne smiled, although she disliked having to accept the fact that it was seen as having been naughty, whatever that was. We must remember that being naughty in those days was a kiss on the cheek.
“This was 1869, the year of the Suez canal. Ulysses S. Grant was president of the United States and Napoleon III ruled France,” she began. “A song named Little Brown Jug was popular that year and at every possible occasion there was a vernissage with romantic paintings or a soirée with Johann Strauss music. I went waltzing with so many diplomats that I have forgotten their names. Gandhi and Neville Chamberlain were born that year and Queen Victoria had locked herself up in Windsor Castle for eight years now. That was because of the death of her beloved Albert and a certain Mr. John Brown.
Anyway, Paris was a haven of parties and dinners for me in 1869. I was young and pretty and rich. Many young men took long walks with me, hoping to win my love. Now-a-days, you youngsters go to the talkies. We danced, went to the theatre or walked about in the fresh air. I used to have my parasol in my hand and my white spring hat on and I would take the man’s arm and we would walk and talk and pretend to be in love. Either I met the man again or I didn’t.
England wasn’t all that popular with Parisians, but we had lots of friends there and so my future husband kept on courting me as well. I fell in love with him first in 1870, so now I was just into Parisians.”
Ethel interrupted: “What made you fall in love with grandfather?”
“His eyes, his smile and his flowers,” Lucienne said and suddenly she was a young girl again. There was a look of dreamy love in her eye that transported her family back to when she had been young. She waved it away suddenly just like she would a silly bee buzzing around her. “That was real, my fling before that is just … what did I say … scented fluff? Yes.”
“We like scented fluff, don’t we, Laura?” Lucienne’s 14 year old great-grandson Peter said.
Laura smiled and patted her son on the knee and shook her head, then leaned against her husband Robert’s shoulder.
“That particular day, it was a day in July just like today, there was no gentleman caller to walk with me. So, my brother André had to serve as my date. We walked and walked and my brother taught me about art and theatre and checked my skills on reading and writing. He always kept a note pad and a small writing tool with him and so our walks would be lessons. That day we passed a house I had never seen before. It was very well kept and had a large iron gate leading up to a gorgeous English garden.”
“Grandmother always loved the English,” young Penelope said and her sister Emma laughed.
Ethel asked them to be quiet.
“The amazing thing was the man kneeling down next to the rose bushes. He tended to them with such care that I had to convince my brother to stop and wait before we went on. He spoke to them. He even sang to them.
Well, eventually we walked on and spoke about other things. But that man never left my mind. I was thinking about that man all the time. That was enough reason for me to go there again. I convinced my brother to take another walk again with me and lead him to the house. Sure enough, there he was again singing to his roses.
I stood there a long while just looking at him. He didn’t turn around toward me, although he must’ve noticed me. Maybe he thought I was just a very nosey little brat.
Anyway, this little girl, namely me, had been standing there a long while when the man turned about in my direction anyway and asked me if I liked the roses. My brother said nothing, but knew that I was happy to be offered a rose.
Of course, we all thought that this strange man was a simple gardener. We had only seen him in his garden and people are stupid, even rich people like us were judging only by what we saw and not by what lay beneath the surface.
So to us, he was a gardener.
We spoke of the weather and of the political situation in Paris, of our King and of current French artists like Corbet, Manet and Rodin. We even mentioned the slaves in America and how they had been freed by Mr. Lincoln and that Mr. Grant was doing a nice job, considering that he was actually leading a country torn apart by a civil war. The gardener was very well read and I really wondered who he was. Well, soon my brother lead the conversation to another topic, namely our house and eventually we said that we needed to go home.
We did so, but I kept on blabbering on about this gardener who never ever mentioned that he was anything else but a gardener. All our questions about the house never referred to himself. He spoke of the rooms and of the garden and of little chores, never that he might be a wealthy man. We were stupid, as I said. I was in love, but in love with someone just like you might be in love with an animal, someone of a lower class, someone that you might want to cuddle and caress.
Anyway, I could not ever stop talking to this man. I went there every day. One day my father joined me and as we returned he was sure he had seen him somewhere. The hard part was that I really couldn’t ask him what his name was after three months of idle conversation.
The horrid thing was that I became more and more in love as time passed. My family really were going crazy.
I tried my best to occupy my time with other things like inviting other prospects of marriage and writing my diary, practicing piano and arranging dinner parties.
No matter what I did, I couldn’t get my thoughts away from this man, whose name I did not even know.
Then finally, one day, I told my father that our garden actually needed a brush-up and that we might want to hire a professional gardener. My dear father, a very busy man, smiled knowingly and was aware of my love.
He was also aware of the fact that he knew that he wanted someone of social stature as a prospect for marriage and that this man may not be the right choice. I disagreed. He might be rich and famous.
The next day, we agreed to invite the man to tend our garden, We would come to his house the same time of day and ask him if he was interested in working on our bushes, so to speak.
When we arrived, the man was not in his garden and I was devastated. We looked for him in other parts of the mansion, but we didn’t find him. Finally, we rung the bell and a very handsome older man opened the door. We told him that we had seen a gardener take care of the roses for the last months and that we had been speaking to him. We would like to hire him to take care of our grounds.
The butler, who called himself Gilbert Aznavour, claimed that this man was Yves Polenc and that he, most certainly, was not the gardener. He was the master of the house. Being an heir to an immense fortune, he had actually founded a publishing house on his own and spent his evenings reading and courting possible new writers.
His other big interest was gardening.
My father, who felt that it was his duty to defend my future, asked the butler if M. Polenc was married. He wasn’t, but he was seeing many young ladies.
He loved dancing and eating out and was doing so today.
Well, first it was very interesting to hear this and I immediately saw myself as his wife.
We both went home and I think for days we said nothing about this man and his celebrity.
I felt completely silly, not because I had been impolite. I had been very nice. The problem was that I had tried to convince myself that I had the right to love this gardener, because he was a simple man.
What had I thought? That a person was only valuable if he was rich? That was preposterous. Anyway, we met and the courting began. We went dancing and eating out and he told me about gardening and I told him about my summer hats and about travelling to the Provence in the springtime. We had a great deal of fun and it was a wonderful experience to know him.
However, the secrecy was more intriguing than knowing everything about him. It was exciting to wonder where he was from and who he was. He finally married another rich girl and I married Gordon, but we kept contact for a decade or so. It was fabulous to have danced with him and called him my fiancée for a while, but when I realized that he wasn’t a mystery for me to discover it became tiresome.
Two things were vital here: people were valuable no matter their social stature. Still, keeping the mystery within a relationship would keep it alive. It could remain exciting if you surprised your partner once in a while. Remaining mysterious was excellent. I tried to remember that even when Gordon and I were older and a bit bored with one another.
What I found interesting is that Gordon later told me that Queen Victoria had been seeing one of her servants five years before my relationship with Yves. The difference was that John Brown really was Victoria’s servant. Polenc wasn’t. Me and Victoria have something in common, after all.”
With that, Lucienne patted her grandchildren on the knee and walked up to pour herself a brandy.
Theo Gordon Mayfield, the talkie star, came into the room as the family were blabbering on about grandma’s romance. There were questions posed as to where Yves was now and Lucienne responded that he probably was still married to his woman and lived in Paris.
“Are you telling them your story about the scented fluff again?” Theo asked provocatively.
Lucienne laughed. “A bit of perfume and spunned sugar is necessary in life … once in a while,” grandmother added with the lifting of one eyebrow.
Theo laughed. “Well, grandma, I’m off to bed. Will you come with us to Ascot tomorrow?”
Lucienne nodded. “If you join me for tea in the morning. Who won the chess match?”
“Kenneth,” Theo answered.
“See, movie stars are not good at everything,” Laura chirped.
“My brother has a little more chess experience than me,” Theo giggled. “My Freudian vanity only extends on screen.”
And so, Chaplin’s new colleague was off to Mrs. White’s party.
Ethel sat and mused over how Lucienne had been so in love with this gardener and that it had a little bit of Jane Austen to it.
Lucienne knew that these range of jokes would be coming up now for an hour, but it was nice to be laughed at by young people.
She drank brandy and ate some cheese and listened to some Mozart. It reminded her of Gordon.
Finally, to top off a nice day, they all stood there on the terrace watching the moon rise over England getting tipsy. Good old Ethel was humming the current hit Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Lucienne was contemplating her choice of hat and dress for the races at Ascot tomorrow and Laura was probably wondering how long Ethel would be tapping her feet to the rhythm of the song.
The conversation again meandered onto the topic of grandmother’s romance and somebody joked: “Who knows what other skeletons are buried in grandmother’s closet?”
Lucienne drank down her brandy in one swift gulp and smiled:
“Mmm-mm,” she protested. “No skeletons. Just scented fluff.”
Then, she announced that she was going to bed and she was leaving them with trying to solve this strange mystery. They now had a puzzle to solve and that was good enough for her.
A Good Bedtime Story
Column by Charles E.J. Moulton
My mother's effort to calm me down at the end of another day included weaving in the dramatic events of that day into a good-night-story, giving the hero of the fairytale the possiblity to turn the event into a success. I learned how to internalize my pain, not being afraid of it, but turning the pain into a funny eccentric friend. A kindergarten bully reappeared as a clumsy forest-creature that had to be reasoned with in order to be vanquished. A stern and unfair first grade teacher turned into an evil magician that had to be negotiated with fairly in order to be convinced. The greatest thing about these innovative tales was that there were no pointing of fingers and no lectures. It was a free and honest, fair enterprise, deeply spiritual and loving. It was all about inspiring fantasy, care, sympathy, family, imagination and it was about telling a good story.
At the same time, I bonded with my mother, we turned that evening event into a creative extravaganza. This tradition all started with the daily adventures of the Scandinavian trolls Uggel-Guggel and Klampe-Lampe. These funny and furry friends travelled to China on the back of a whale in order to meet Ching Chang-Chao, welcomed the space bear Bakimbe, flying in on camels. The trolls also journeyed back in time to see the baby Jesus being born in a crib.
These stories transformed into my first acting experience back in 1980. Under my mother's direction, my parents' play "Long Live the Trolls" turned into a massive success with lots of kids cheering to see more of my interpretation as the funny young troll Klampe-Lampe. Now, 35 years later, this play is seeing the new light of day as a current puppet theatre for children that will premiere in 2016.
All of these things are happening only because my mom took the time to tell me a story before I went to sleep. Stories that included my stuffed dog Ludde, his friend Linus, rediscovering their visits to London and a few actionpacked trips, joining their magic lunar girlfriends New and Full. Snoopy and the Snoopies came along quite soon, coming to play along with the travelling magician Macadabus and his friend, the talking dog. This good-night-story turned into short piece of mine, published by Pill Hill Press back in 2011.
My artistic opera-singer mother Gun Kronzell's imagination inspired me to invent stories myself. My father Herbert Eyre Moulton's professional work as a published author triggered the need in me to make this a vocation myself.
I am now a father myself, a hard working actor, a singer, an author and a proud husband. Needless to say, when I bring my daughter to bed, my mother's tradition continues in my daughter Mara's sweet, inventive heart. We have many different teams in our good-night-story-repertoire. There is the brave hedgehog Rajiv, who turns himself into a beautiful unicorn, and his friend, the wise Snake. The seal Robbie joins the smart little girl Lisa on courageous missions in order to help the Sea King Neptune with problems he can't solve, but Lisa can.
Mara knows my now deceased mother as "the Viennese Grandma" and we honor her by continuing her fairytale tradition. In fact, Mara is taking my mother's concept to a new level. Every time we tell a mutual good night story, and it really is a joint effort every time, a new fantastic team is invented. We have the bunny and the squirrel, the butterfly and the moth, the fox and the cat. Just recently, a new brave team joined our great gang: the mermaid and the dolphin. These teams meet because of a mutual interest and move in together, mostly into a comfy and cozy cave.
This story-concept was Mara's own creation, born during a five hour car ride back from my parents-in-law's house. Mara made sure that Snake and Rajiv moved in together. Probably because she knew that we, our family, had met before in a previous life.
I am sure that "the Viennese Grandma" influenced my daughter to find the new transformed version of her concept.
What I basically am saying is this: inspire your children. Teach them to be creative. Teach them to form and transform their own opinions, inventing new and fantastic ways to improve their world. Future generations will thank them for it.
All it takes is a good bedtime story.
Christmas Testimony
By
Gerald Arthur Winter
Eight years old, Sara O’Neil sat alone in her bedroom with her favorite doll she called “Maureen.” The décor of her bedroom was ruffled and pink, but the plain dressers and home-sewn curtains and spreads reflected her family’s humble economy. Through a single-dormered window, treetops were visible outside her room. The second story of the O’Neils’ home had a pitched ceiling and Sara’s closet space was the eaves of the attic and a standing wardrobe. From her open bedroom door, she could see the banister of the stairs leading to the first floor.
Still in her pajamas, Sara played with her doll. Maureen was her most intimate companion. She folded Maureen’s arms across her chest and laid her gently in a shoebox in a mock funeral.
“Now I lay me down to sleep,” Sara said to her doll. “I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”
She paused. “What’s a soul, anyway, Maureen? Sister Katherine at school says you don’t have a soul, but I’m supposed to have one, and I’m not even sure what it is. What am I going to do, Maureen? I can’t stop thinking about dead bodies. What will it be like to see one? I figured maybe in twenty years somebody I know might die, like Granny O’Neil. She’s nearly seventy.
“I never figured Mom would want to drag me along to see Mr. O’Toole’s dead body, especially three days before Christmas. You see, Maude O’Toole, Seamus O’Toole’s widow, she’s Mom’s best friend¾just like you’re my best friend. Mom says it’s time I learned about my Christian duty to mourn with her and Maude at Mr. O’Toole’s wake. I can’t even figure why they call it a wake. Mr. O’Toole won’t be awake. I’m closing my eyes if anybody makes me get close enough to the coffin to see his dead body.”
Her mother called from downstairs, “Sara! Sara Jane O’Neil! I won’t take no for an answer, young lady. Your dad’s working the Saturday-morning shift at the plant, so his absence can’t be helped. You’re going with me to Mr. O’Toole’s wake. That’s final!”
Slumping her shoulders, Sara fell back on her bed and clutched Maureen for support.
“I heard you, Mom! I’m just trying to convince Maureen she’s got to go, too!”
“Stop that nonsense and put your mourning dress on!” Mrs. O’Neil called up the stairs.
“There’s still time to have some oatmeal before we leave. Hurry up!”
“I’m coming!” she called back then turned to Maureen. “Mom knew I was faking a tummy ache, so I’ll have to go and see Mr. O’Toole after all. Dad said even though he’s dead as a doornail, Seamus O’Toole will never look better than when he’s lying in his coffin at Flynn’s Funeral Home.”
She sighed and picked up her black mourning dress laid out at the end of her bed and her black, veiled hat hanging over the end of the bed stand. Reluctantly, she put them on as she spoke to Maureen.
“You know how much I appreciate your support in this. I’d do the same for you. I just want you there with me if I have to look into that coffin. It makes me all jittery thinking about it.” She sat on the bed with her black dress on and took Maureen’s dress off as she held her in her lap and put a black dress on her doll, too. “You’re lucky you don’t have a soul to worry about.”
Mrs. O’Neil called up the stairs, “Sara! Your oatmeal’s getting cold and lumpy. Get down here this instant!”
“I’m coming!” She hopped up from the bed and straightened Maureen’s hem as she confided, “Mom’s seen dead folks before. Grandpa O’Neil and her own parents died before I was born. I guess she’s scared, too. I suppose she needs to have us along. Gosh. Mr. O’Toole was only a few years older than Dad.” She tucked Maureen under her arm and headed downstairs and heard Christmas carols on the radio. She smelled an apple pie baking and the scent of cinnamon made it feel more like Christmas season, but only for a moment with death at the door bringing on a deep gloom.
* * *
Though the entrance way and foyer to Flynn’s Funeral Parlor were decorated with white lights and poinsettias, red and white flanked the halls, only two tall candles on pedestals gave a dim aura to Seamus O’Toole’s casket. Scarlet wallpaper, a rose carpet, and rows of empty folding chairs faced the casket, and with all the flowers, drew a stark contrast with Seamus O’Toole’s stark, humble life. Flanked by the two candles, the casket was open for viewing, but was empty in Sara’s mind for utter fear of seeing the corpse of the deceased. Maude O’Toole, the grieving widow in her early forties, stood to the right of the coffin facing the empty folding chairs. Sara’s mother, Margaret O’Neil, also in her late thirties, stood beside her best friend with an arm around her. Both wore black mourning dresses and veiled black hats concealing their tears.
Sara sat in the last row of folding chairs. She faced the entrance keeping her back to the coffin as she held her doll. Sara saw that her mother and best friend often spoke to each other as if no one else was present throughout their intimate play-by-play of the mourning ritual.
Maude said, “Thanks be to God that Aiden Flynn was the undertaker of my Seamus’s choice, Margaret. They were close friends,” she whispered aside, “drinking cronies . . .
Seamus wasn’t of an industrious lot, but he possessed a kind heart and was always ready to
help a friend in need . . . unless he’d been drinking, which may’ve been too often, but not
nearly as often as some other men in the neighborhood.
Margaret assured her, “But as a father, your Seamus was second to none. He was there
every Sunday. We’d see Seamus and you in the second pew with all six of your children? That’s more than I can say for many others we know.”
“My Seamus was the most we could expect from a decent man nowadays. Doesn’t he look peaceful in his navy blue suit?”
“Oh, yes,” Margaret agreed. “Most dignified . . . just as it should be.”
Maude sighed. “He was a dear and faithful husband.” She leaned over the coffin and flicked a piece of lint off the lapel of his suit.
Margaret nodded. “You can be thankful for that, dear. We’ve known of those who weren’t. Isn’t that suit the same he wore to the Murphy wedding? Leaning down to inspect the fabric closely, she confirmed, “He looks so good in that suit. I remember Seamus at the Murphy wedding, looking so dignified.”
“I thought it fitting. He rarely wore it other than at weddings and funerals. Looks almost new.”
“You aren’t alone, Maude. Is there a dignitary among our lot? Not much call for dressing up.”
“Well, it’s put to good use now. Seamus looks fine lying there in it. Don’t you think?”
“Never better. Grand’s the word for such a fine figure of a man . . . even now.”
Sara turned cautiously to see the two strong women as they stood shoulder to shoulder inspecting Seamus from head to toe.
Maude sighed and patted her heart. “He’s with God now.”
“That he is, dear.”
Maude wiped a tear aside. “How happy he looks.”
“Indeed, he does. He’s in the hands of God, Maude.”
Sara held her breath when she saw Maude lean over and gently smooth Mr. O’Toole’s carrot-colored hair.
“His hair looks thin,” Maude said. “I’d never realized how thin it had gotten. Do you think Flynn . . . you know . . . did something to it?”
Margaret assured her, “He looks just fine, like he’s still with us.”
“Yes. Thin hair or not, he looks elegant lying there. God bless him.” Satisfied with her inspection of the coffin, Maude took one step back and slowly scanned the setting. “Do you like the flowers, Margaret?”
Joining Maude, Margaret looked over the flower arrangements placed on both sides of the coffin. The larger groupings stood on their own metal frames. Below them, smaller, but equally elaborate arrangements hid the metal frames from view, creating a bank of flowers. The rose carpet and red flocked wallpaper combined with the flowers to dazzle the eye. Silk sashes slashed diagonally across each floral piece, with words like Deepest Sympathy, Peace, and Dearly Departed in gold block letters. Some identified the donors, such as Holy Name Society, Springfield Volunteer Fire Department, Plumbers Local 749, or just His Friends. Maude took great pride in the large floral display, but the Christmas decorations drew less attention the bleakness of the O’Toole family’s means.
“Such a wonderful outpouring . . . a great tribute to my Seamus.”
“As well it should be,” Maude said. “If they don’t remember him now, when would they ever? Such sorrow at a time of joy and celebration in town for the holidays.”
Maude took Margaret’s arm and moved her one step to the side. “I bought some of them myself used. I was afraid there wouldn’t be enough. They’re left-overs from yesterday’s funeral. Flynn gave me a good deal. Can you tell which ones are used?”
“They’re beautiful blended together like that. No one will ever know.”
“I didn’t want Seamus to be without. His friends aren’t exactly generous, if truth be told. Dignity is important in death. Poor Seamus. I was worried.”
“You did the right thing. Don’t breathe a word. No one will know. Bless you, Maude.”
Margaret sighed as she leaned to hug the widow. They turned and smiled at Sara as she smiled half-heartedly back and waved. Sara folded her arms around her doll and drooped her head. The two women walked to Sara then, standing on either side of her, squeezed her between them with sighs. Sara sighed, too, feeling it must be required.
They released Sara and returned to the front of the room to pick up their purses from the front row seats. They blew their noses into tissues as the first guests arrived to pay their respects.
Maude and Margaret took their proper positions in the front two seats on the center aisle facing the coffin. Sara remained in the back row. First to arrive was Seamus’s brother Billy in his forties, and with his wife Clara, five years younger.
Maude and Margaret exchanged whispers.
Maude nodded. “Seamus’s brother, Billy . . . he’s been drinking.”
Margaret huffed, “Wouldn’t you know it?”
“It’s not sorrow drinking, mind you, nor Christmas party drinking either. Billy never liked Seamus. They didn’t get along at all.”
Margaret raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
Whispering behind the back of her hand, Maude rolled her eyes. “Clara’s got her hands full with that one--
always with a snoot full. ”
“I can see that.” Margaret nodded, staring at the O’Tooles’ backs while they kneeled praying in front of the coffin.
After a respectful interval, Billy and Clara stood and turned to pay their respects to the widow.
Maude pulled her head back from Billy’s whiskey breath.
“Hello, Maude. Terrible thing. So damn sudden. How are you holding up?”
Clara shook her head while reaching for Maude’s hand. “So sudden.”
Maude remained composed. “I’m fine. Thank you both. You know my dear friend, Margaret O’Neil.”
Billy made a sickly smile. “For a hundred years.”
After a belabored exchange of forced cordialities, there was a strained pause as they glared at one another.
Billy broke the silence. “We’ll sit . . . for just a while, Maude.”
The O’Tooles turned, walked several rows down the center aisle, sat in the middle of the row then stared in silence.
Aside, Margaret remarked, “Clara looks old.”
Maude elaborated, “Not well. Doctors daily. One thing and another. Just in her head, if you ask me.”
She nudged her to turn and see Willie Brogan, volunteer Fire Chief. He came towards them with three of his finest, all in full uniform. They removed their hats and marched down the center aisle, nodding to Maude as they passed. The four firemen formed a standing line in front of their fellow firefighter’s coffin. They stood in silence awhile with their hats tucked under their left arms. Their ill-fitting uniforms spoiled any dignity of an honor guard. They couldn’t hide the bulges and paunches from their shared lifetimes of drinking.
“A motley lot,” Maude said aside. “Probably spent all afternoon at O’Lunny’s saloon across the street from the firehouse full of Christmas cheer. ”
Margaret huffed, “Why should this afternoon be any different?”
On Brogan’s signal, the blue-collar workers posing as firemen turned in unison and formed a single line in front of Maude to pay their respects.
Maude extended her hand. “Thank you for coming, Chief Brogan.”
In his late forties, Brogan gave her a crusty smile, took her hand, and said, “Seamus was one of the best, Mrs. O’Toole. Me and the boys will never forget ’m. We’re makin’ a plaque to hang in the firehouse to his memory. I'll be notifying you to come down for the ceremony.”
“That’s lovely, Chief Brogan. Thank you. I’m sure Seamus would have appreciated it.”
Brogan grimaced as he brushed flakes off his red, bulbous nose. “Sorry we have nothin’ for ya, Mrs. O’Toole, because Seamus didn’t die in the line of duty. Otherwise, the Firemen’s Fund would’ve taken care of ya. We take care of all our men’s families if they’d died in the line of duty. Seamus didn’t though, so . . . we have nothin’ for ya.”
Steely, Maude responded, “I’m aware of how Seamus died. Nothing was expected from the firehouse. Thanks for coming.”
“Think nothing of it. Our pleasure, Mrs. O’Toole. Well, not our pleasure exactly. Do ya know Tommy Shannahan here?”
Tommy took one military step forward, bowed, and shook the widow’s hand.
Maude nodded and said, “Thank you for coming.”
Shannahan kept pumping her hand. “Hello, Maude. Sorry, Mrs. O’Toole, about Seamus and all. Hope you’ll be OK.”
“I’ll do fine. I’m strong,” Maude said.
“That you are,” Tommy said. “Seamus always said what a tough old bird ya were to put up with the likes of him that is.”
Maude couldn’t contain a smile as Shannahan bowed and backed away to let the next fire-fighter step forward. Brogan introduced O’Leary, a rosy cheeked fellow in his twenties.
“This is the O’Leary lad, Maude, Seamus’s favorite drinking buddy, like the son he’d never had.” Brogan smiled broadly and patted O’Leary’s back.
O’Leary had tears in his eyes as he said sniffling, “I’ll miss him, Missus. He was my pal. Very close we were. He was always good for a laugh or an ear, just when ya needed it. Good old Seamus. I miss him already. Without Seamus, it just won’t be the same. You must miss him as much as me and the boys here.”
Maude grimaced. “It’s comforting to meet Seamus’s friends and to know how much Seamus will be missed.”
O’Leary took out his handkerchief and was about to blow his nose. As Brogan gave him a slight shove, O’Leary’s nose honked, and he moved away without saying good-bye.
Brogan moved to the next fireman, Buster Whelan, in his fifties, five-feet tall, and wearing a uniform two sizes too big. His face had a perpetually sad expression etched in stone.
Brogan blurted hurriedly, “Do you know Buster Whelan, here, Maude?”
“For over thirty years, Chief. How are you, Buster?”
Whelan shrugged. “Gettin’ old, Maude. I ought to be in there instead of Seamus. Guess I’ll have to wait till the good Lord calls. He’ll call any day now, I expect. Any day for sure.”
Maude touched his arm. “You look fit to me.”
“It doesn’t go by how ya look,” Buster said. “Look at Seamus lyin’ there. Never looked better. Fit as a fiddle, but dead as a mackerel. Can’t go by how ya look. Ya just never know. When the Lord says it’s time, that’s it. Yer outta here in a blink.”
“Well, it was good of you to come,” Maude said. “I appreciate it. Thank you.”
“You’ll be visiting me here one day soon. Hope they’ll have something decent to say about me. God bless ya, Maude.”
She nodded as Whelan shuffled away but she said aside to Margaret, “Thanks for that good cheer.”
Holding his cap with both hands in front of his beer belly, Chief Brogan bent close to Maude. “All the boys down at the firehouse wanted to come. Some had to tend shop, ya know.
Otherwise, all of us would’ve been here. Seamus was one of us. As ya can see, we’re gonna miss him. He was a fine lad. None finer. God bless ya, Maude.”
He straightened, snapped on his fire hat, and marched down the center aisle, his duty done. Seamus O’Toole’s insurance agent, McCassian, in his fifties, approached Maude with his head bowed.
Maude grabbed Margaret’s arm. “It’s Mr. McCassian, the insurance agent. He must have a check for me.”
Sara looked up when she heard the Holy Name Society in the next room saying the rosary softly in chorus, but gradually becoming louder as McCassian came towards Maude.
McCassian nodded to Margaret and bowed to Maude with a toothy smile. “I assure you, my poor, grieving lady, even as we speak, your check is in the mail.”
“I expected so, Mr. McCassian. Thanks for coming to give me some assurance.”
He leaned in closer to whisper. “You know it won’t be the face amount. Seamus had taken out a loan to buy that used Oldsmobile with the running boards a couple of years ago.”
Maude seemed to stop breathing as Margaret felt her hand clench hers.
“That Olds didn’t last us a year,” Maude said with a shudder. “Couldn’t afford the engine repairs when the carburetor blew. How much is left for my family?”
McCassian grimaced and mumbled the amount, which no one else had heard, but the expression on Maude’s face, even from the back row where Sara watched in silent dismay, said that the amount would scarcely cover the funeral, used flowers and all. As McCassian put both hands around Maude’s the rosary chorus reached a high pitch. She withdrew her empty hands from his and held them open for Margaret to see as the chorus faded to silence.
* * *
After two hours of fidgeting uncomfortably on her wooden chair in the last row, Sara whispered to her doll, “Mom and Maude must’ve greeted three hundred people today. Could you believe Mr. O’Toole’s mother? She’s eighty-five, but still has enough energy to compete with Maude for the grief award. I guess they figure it’s the saddest one who must’ve loved him the most.
“Most of the O’Tooles’ other friends forgot their rosary beads. How embarrassing. Did you see those other kids bowing and curtsying to Maude? Some stared right into the coffin to see the dead body. Did they expect him to blink or scratch his nose? Even I know better than that, but I’m still too scared to look in the coffin.
“This could’ve been my big chance to stare directly into the face of death with my mother at my side and surrounded by a crowd in daylight. I just can’t do it. One of those nasty O’Toole cousins dared me, but I was too chicken to look, even with one eye closed.”
She watched Maude and Margaret sit before the open coffin as other guests took their seats. Seamus’s sister, Eleanor Lynch, in her forties, rose from her seat.
Maude whispered to Margaret, “Here comes Seamus’s sister, Eleanor. God, she’s been here only ten minutes, and she’s coming to say good-bye.”
Eleanor shook her head and postured apologetically, “It’s such a long drive back to Philadelphia, Maude, and it was hard for Stanley to take the day off from the bank just before Christmas.”
Maude forced a smile. “Surely. Happy you could come at all.” Then as Eleanor and Stanley departed, she said to Margaret, “Couldn’t tolerate the old neighborhood for long. Look at them scooting out, escaping the riffraff to get back to high society in their Mercedes Benz.”
Margaret remarked, “Eleanor looks lovely, though.”
Maude nodded with a grimace. “Yes . . . always every hair in place.”
“Swell of her to come all this way,” Margaret said.
Maude smirked. “An imposition, I’m sure.”
Margaret conceded, “Nonetheless, quite a journey. Nice of her.”
“Too bad she couldn’t stay though . . . for her only brother.”
Margaret reminded her, “Long trip back.”
Maude frowned. “Probably on their way to one of their highbrow cocktail parties.”
“Good to see Stanley come as well.”
“Who?”
“Stanley, Eleanor’s husband, isn’t that his name?”
Maude huffed, “Oh, yes—him. Don’t know him very well. They’re married twenty-five years, but we’d rarely seen him. He’s so busy, I take it. An investment banker . . . very successful.”
“Look, Maude. There’s Father Griffin,” Margaret motioned to the back of the room.
Father Griffin, the old Irish priest, ambled down the center aisle, waving and shaking hands with guests as he progressed towards the front. His rumpled suit and scuffed shoes gave his clerical garb a threadbare look of humility. He was an old and friendly priest who’d endured in the parish for forty years. He was suddenly showing his age. Maude stood in the front row with Margaret at her side to greet him. He spoke with a smooth, comforting tone as he took Maude’s hand and turned to look at
Seamus: “Mabel, my dear child, what a wonderful turnout.”
Margaret said under her breath, “Mabel?”
Maude kicked her gently without blinking.
“It does an old priest’s heart good to see the love of the church the body of Christ as solace in your hour of need. God bless them, and you, Mabel . . . and certainly Seamus.”
Maude responded, “Thank you, Father Griffith.”
“It’s Griffin, my dear Mabel. Father Griffin. Of course, you’ve been under duress.”
At a distance, Sara said to her doll: “What’s Father Griffin’s excuse for not knowing her name? Mom said Maude hasn’t missed a Sunday Mass in the more than thirty years, not sincemshe was a little girl and had the influenza. Mom and Mrs. O’Toole have been best friends since third grade.”
“Ah, yes. God has blessed him,” Father Griffin said. “He’s in the Lord’s bosom, we can be sure, the final resting place for all of us.”
He drew Maude up to the coffin, where they stood side by side as he made the sign of the cross over Seamus and whispered his blessing. Then he took rosary beads from his pocket, kissed the cross, and pressed it to Seamus’s lips. Blessing the beads, he placed them in the coffin and said, “Seamus goes with God.”
He escorted Maude back to her seat. With a wave of his hand, he moved Margaret over one seat and sat between them. Facing Maude, he looked over his shoulder to acknowledge
Margaret with a nod. “God bless you, too, Mildred.” His attention returned to Maude. “How can the church be of service to you, Mabel?”
“Prayers, Father, for Seamus and for me and our six daughters.”
“Prayers, indeed. Prayers we have. Prayers aplenty. That’s the mission of the Holy Mother church prayer. You’ll not be without prayers, I assure you.”
Maude replied wearily, “Thank you, Father.”
Father Griffin stood, stretching to his full height and declaring, “We’ll recite the five sorrowful decades of the rosary for our dear departed brother, Seamus.”
All but Sara froze in silence as she said under her breath, “But the Holy Name Society said the rosary just before he showed up.”
Margaret turned and shook her head to hush her before Sara could speak loud enough for others to hear. The guests resumed their animation as the priest’s announcement met with
disbelieving stares and coughs, though no one contradicted the wishes of the priest. The rosary chorus reached a crescendo then faded as Sara looked at her Mickey Mouse wristwatch with a yawn.
To her doll, Sara said, “Can you believe we had to sit through that again? Why do they put up with that silly old man? I don’t want to be a grown-up if that’s what it takes.”
The yawns and sighs of the faithful didn’t dissuade the old priest when he stood to say a few words at the end of the second rosary. The tension among the exhausted mourners was obvious by their fidgeting, coughing, and loosening of neckties and scarfs.
Father Griffin said, “Considering the hour, I will make my remarks brief.”
An audible sigh of relief came from the faithful.
Then the priest continued relentlessly, “It would be a travesty, however, for us to assemble and take note of Seamus’s life before we’re about to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ without saying a few words of praise in his behalf. Ah, he was a fine man the stalwart of his family, no doubt. He was true to the end, a man of the church and a friend to all. Not a modern man, but a man of principle. You might say he was from the old school. Oh, he had his short-comings, plain for all to see, but then, who doesn’t? He who is without sin may cast the first stone. We won’t be casting any stones at poor Seamus today, I assure you. We are, none of us, sinless. Sin infests this world as the devil does his evil work. No, there’ll be no stones cast here. All we can do is pray for one another and for Seamus’s soul, with hope that his time in the fires of purgatory might be brief.”
All froze except Sara, talking aside to her doll, “Maybe Mr. O’Toole isn’t in that coffin after all. Father Griffin thinks he’s being tortured somewhere until God forgives him for coming home drunk after spending the grocery money at O’Lunny’s Saloon. I’ve heard Mom tell Dad all about it.”
Maude gulped then whispered to Margaret, “Purgatory? Tell me I’m not hearing this in front of all these people. My Seamus? What could the old bird be thinking?”
Patting Maude’s elbow, Sara’s mother assured her, “He means well, I’m sure.”
Father Griffin stirred the crowd with, “No one goes straight to heaven. Like Seamus, we’ll all spend our time in purgatory repenting for our sins. Only the prayers of the faithful will get
Seamus out of the fires of pain and into the arms of God. It could takes years, maybe centuries.
We cannot judge. Only God can judge. Pray for Seamus!”
He became more animated and louder.
“Don’t leave him in the damnable pain of purgatory where he is right now. God bless you and thank you for coming!” He raised his right hand high then, making the sign of the cross, he blessed the mourners already heading hurriedly for the exit.
As the priest walked towards her, Maude said, tongue in cheek: “Thank you, Father, for those inspiring remarks.” Before he could reply, she gently took Father Griffin by the arm and guided him to the side exit. You’ve lightened my burden with your assurances about Seamus’s faith. I can’t thank you enough.” At the door, she abruptly nudged him out. “Good night, and God bless you, Father Griffith!” she called out, nearly closing the door on his heels.
Muffled outside the door, the old priest shouted back, “Grif-fin, Mabel! It’s Father Griffin! You tell her, Mildred!”
When all of the guests had left and only two dim candles on pedestals brighten the reception room at Flynn’s Funeral Parlor, Maude and Margaret sat lumped together in the front row and faced the open coffin. The other chairs were empty except for Sara, seated in the rear row with her doll. Some of the flower petals had fallen from the arrangements that were quickly wilting.
* * *
The next evening Sara returned to Flynn’s Funeral Parlor with her mother to comfort Maude O’Toole again for her last good-bye to Seamus.
Sara spoke to her doll: “So much for the so-called friends of Seamus O’Toole, Maureen. After all that talk of purgatory, all the men went to O’Lunny’s Saloon and stayed till four o’clock
in the morning. No one’s seen that O’Leary boy. Gosh. Someone wanted to drag the pond in case he’d stumbled in on his way home from that God-awful saloon. Poor Maude. Everybody came yesterday, but no one’s come back today. With nobody else here, I might have to look in the coffin. Maybe Maude will close it soon, then I won’t have to. I just can’t bring myself to look at the dead face of Mr. O’Toole. I hardly knew him. Time’s running out and I feel trapped.”
Maude broke the silence to let off steam: “All afternoon, and no one’s come at all. Drunk, the whole lot of them. Not even Father Griffin showed up. Probably worked himself into a stroke
with all that talk of purgatory yesterday. Purgatory, mind you! My God, has he no sense? I’ll not have him or anybody discussing Seamus’s purgatory in public. So what if my Seamus didn’t go directly to heaven? Maybe he did. Anyway, his wake is no place for speculation. No wonder no one came back today. That old priest should retire. I think he’s getting a little daft. Don’t you think so?”
“He’s always been that way, if you ask me. But he is our priest, so I suppose we should be more charitable.”
“Mabel, for God’s sake! He called me Mabel.”
Margaret kidded her, “He was so persistent, I’d begun to think maybe I’d had it wrong all these years. He called me Mildred.”
“It wouldn’t be so bad if Mabel Flannery wasn’t the one Seamus had almost married just before the war. That was a barb I could’ve done without, especially now, of all times. I think that old fool called me Mabel on purpose.”
“Father Griffin may be an old fool, but don’t let him upset you. He meant well, I’m sure.”
Maude wearily shook her head. “Oh, he may mean well, but when will he get any sense?”
“If it’s sense you want, you won’t find it here, Maude. Not in this vale of tears.”
“You’re right. I’m just so tired that I’m talking fool’s talk.”
The best friends walked slowly to Seamus’s coffin and stood there silently, finally letting his death sink in. Maude realized she would never be awakened at 4:00 a.m. again to the sound of
Seamus stumbling through the door after a Friday night session at O’Lunny’s with the firehouse boys. She’d miss his snoring till midday and the moans from his hangover.
Maude sighed as she and Margaret held hands. Sara felt uneasy, silently watching the backs of their identical black dresses leaning shoulder to shoulder. Their heads were motionless.
Their grip tightened as each took faltering breaths, the only ripple in the cloying solemnity of the silence void of the Christmas cheer outside and all around the town the day before Christmas.
Finally, Maude released Margaret’s hand, leaned over, and rested her hand on the coffin for a moment, then she turned and embraced Margaret. Without a word, they stepped back, straightened their dresses, patted their hair, coughed then sputtered. They straightened their postures, turned, and walked down the center aisle to where Sara was sitting alone with her doll.
Margaret said, “We’ll get some tea before we return for our last good-bye.”
Sara nodded, and with the coffin left open, she was relieved to be leaving the room. The three were walking towards the door of the funeral home just as an old, hunchbacked, toothless woman in ragged clothes, opened the door and leaned her head in. She peered this way and that. The two women and Sara stopped aghast a few feet from the door and froze.
Sara whispered to her doll, “Golly, Maureen. Look who’s here Humpback Hattie, the homeless woman who scares all the kids in the neighborhood. She growls, spits, and cusses at them. Some kids even heard her say the F-word once. What’s she doing here? She’ll upset Maude and Mom if she starts cussing in the presence of the dead.”
Maude and Margaret anxiously waited for Hattie to identify herself, though they surely knew who she was. Hattie looked at them, then at the empty room, and back at them. Hattie sputtered and snorted, wiping her nose on her tattered sleeve.
Maude said, “Excuse me. If you’re looking for the Catholic Charities Food Bank, it’s at Saint Mary’s back in town.”
“Ain’t lookin’ for no charity!” Hattie squawked. “Ain’t this the O’Toole affair?”
Taken aback, Maude quivered, “Why, yes. It certainly is.”
“I don’t wanna intrude,” Hattie grumbled with a shrug. “I suspect I’m too late.” She hesitated with just her head sticking through the open door.
“Did you know my husband?”
“He was a friend to me,” Hattie said hoarsely.
Maude was puzzled. “Do you want to come in?”
“If I might. Just for a minute, mind ya. Don’t want to be a bother.”
Maude smiled. “You’re not. If you made the trip, you’re most welcome.”
Hattie stepped awkwardly through the door. Shaking her head, she said, “And what trip it was. Walked all the way from town. Saw the notice posted at St. Mary’s and had to pay my respects. Thought I’d get here sooner, but the old legs are failin’. Too damn slow. Took me half the night.”
Hattie was wearing a tattered, green sweater and a flowered dress that was a decade out of fashion and drooped to the top of her mismatched socks. Her shoes were wrapped in tape to hold the uppers to the soles, and her hat was moth eaten. One of her eyes was milky and blind and the other had a cataract’s glaze. She limped and was clearly destitute. Maude, Margaret, and Sara moved aside as Hattie slid awkwardly past them, bowing slightly to the women holding their heads away from her emitted odor.
Hattie said, “I’ll just say good-bye to him and be gone.”
They watched her shuffle towards the coffin and take out a handkerchief then peer into the coffin. She bowed her head and kneeled with a groan of pain in prayer. Maude and Margaret looked at each other with a shrug. Sara held her breath.
Margaret nudged Maude, whispering,” Do you know her that well?”
“She’s Humpback Hattie. Everybody in town knows who she is, but do I know her? I’ve never spoken to her in my life. She looks too old to be a friend of my Seamus. In difficult circumstances for sure.”
Margaret nodded. “That she is, poor soul. Looks like she could stand a square meal. Wonder how she could possibly have known Seamus?”
Maude shook her head. “Just can’t imagine.”
Hattie propped herself up off her knees with her cane then stood silently staring at Seamus awhile. She sighed, shrugged, and blew her nose in her handkerchief as she limped with her cane down the aisle towards the exit. She nodded before passing the three sitting on the aisle.
Before Hattie left, Maude called to her as she reached the door, “Excuse me, Ma’am. How did you know my husband?” Hattie said, “I’m sorry for your loss, Missus. He was a fine man.”
“Did you know Seamus’s family? His mother, perhaps?”
“Seamus, is it?” Hattie made a jack-o-lantern grin. “A fine name, too. Didn’t even know his name till the moment ya said it. Just overhead some drunk talk when some firemen were coming out of O’Lunny’s last night . . . more like morning.”
“May I ask why you came? Why you’d walk all the way from town?” Maude asked with puzzlement. “You’re very thoughtful.”
“He was a friend to me—dropped me a dime every day for more than thirty years. Never missed a day. Looked me up in the homeless shelter a few years back when we had the blizzard. Said he’d worried when I wasn’t out on my corner as usual. Too sick to weather the elements for a while. Never told me his name, but he never missed a day—called me Miss Hattie. ‘Good morning, Miss Hattie,’ he’d say. ‘Lovely day we’re havin’, Miss Hattie. Keep well.’ Then he’d flip me a dime. ‘Your business prospers, I hope. Good to see you looking well again, Miss Hattie.’
“Respect, you see. He never called me ‘Humpback Hattie’ like the others. Not even when he was a snot-nosed kid playin’ Kick-the-Can in the junkyard by the railroad tracks. He couldn’t have been more than eight years old, deliverin’ newspapers, when he gave me that first dime. Surely wasn’t my looks that charmed the li’l rascal. Ha! I’ve scared the crap out of most every kid in this ol’ town since the end of World War Two. That’s when I lost my own boy, over there in France . . . Normandy. That was the day my hubby an’ me started drinkin’. Hadn’t ever touched a drop before. My husband’s liver lasted only a coupla years, so I been on my own for a hell of a long time. ‘Except for your Seamus, I never had a friend. Your husband was a special man. He showed everyone respect, even the likes of me.”
Hattie paused with a sniffle as she looked at the floor. The others audibly gulped.
Hattie mumbled, “Won’t miss the dimes, but I can’t go on for long with no respect. We all need some, even if it’s just a little.” Hattie turned and walked out the door.
Maude and Margaret exchange understanding looks. Hattie’s revelation about Seamus O’Toole mesmerized Sara. Silently, the three walked back down the center aisle to the coffin. Sara approached the open casket,
but turned her head aside.
“I think she’d said the final good-bye to my Seamus better than I ever could,” Maude said, nodding for Margaret to help her close the coffin’s lid.
Sara followed behind her mother and Maude to the exit. As they closed the door behind them, Sara suddenly call out: “Maureen! Mom, I’ve got to go back and get her! I must’ve left her on the chair. I can’t leave her in there alone!”
Tired, Margaret huffed, “Then go back in and get her.”
Sara’s eyes widened. She croaked, “Alone?”
“Don’t be silly, Sara. Go get Maureen while I wait here with Maude. We’ve said our good-byes. Go on. Hurry, now!”
Sara stood shivering alone in the doorway. Reluctant, she went to the closed coffin. She paused with indecision, her hands on the lid, then she eased the coffin open with her arm extended. For the first time, she saw Seamus O’Toole at peace in his grand navy blue suit. She reached under her black shawl and took out her doll, concealed with her all along. She kissed her doll like
Father Griffin had kissed the cross. She clutched Maureen while she pondered over the deceased and noticed his lips were turned up at the corners in a smile. She held up the coffin’s lid with one hand and placed her doll beside Seamus O’Toole.
“Take good care of him, Maureen, so he won’t be lonely. He was a good man. Good-bye, Mr. O’Toole. Good-bye, Maureen.”
Sara closed the coffin lid and ran for the door, which she swung open with a new appreciation for the chiming Christmas bells and distant carols cutting through the cold night air.
Happy New Year
By Alexandra H. Rodrigues
Bored Jane listened to the popping of the corks from the Charles Heidsieck Champagne, one of the most famous French bubble waters there is, here and now meant to send off the old year in style. The gayety displayed by the mixed group of guests, lounging around in the luxurious Greenwich Village penthouse, failed to give her a lift. Her brocade dress was extremely short, although much in style. She did not dare to cross her shapely legs when sitting down, for fear her panties might show. To say the least, Jane was uncomfortable and depressed.
“What’s wrong sweetheart? This is great champagne,” Jim Butler touched her hand as she reached hesitantly for the glass. He added, ”Dinner will be served shortly. We are waiting for a chap they hired for the service. He is scheduled for 10 o’clock.” Jane’s eyes followed Jim’s imposing, muscular figure. He wore an immaculate sharkskin suit, Brooks Brothers written all over it. He had left to join a group of equally well-dressed men. The group was most likely exchanging shady jokes, as their throaty laughs sliced the smoky air.
Jane had met Jim about six months ago. On the train ride to Massachusetts, where she was to attend Mount Ida College. It was her first trip alone, away from home. Tom’s kiss had still been lingering on her lips. Tom and Jane had become very close the last year before graduation. Now their ways had parted. Tom stayed behind to work in his father’s garage. His parents were less off than Jane’s family. For him a college education was out of question. He would have to contribute to the family’s income.
While she had been thinking about what the future might hold for her and Tom, a gentleman now known to her as Jim Butler, had taken a seat across from her on the train and offered her a cigarette. He had gray temples, bushy eyebrows, a very acceptable, mature figure and was dressed like a successful business man. Soon she knew that he worked in New York and that he was on his way to his ranch house at the outskirts of Massachusetts, also that he was recently divorced, that money was no object and that his prime residence was in Manhattan. A neighbor, Jane thought, as she was from Long Island. Jane had been pleased with the diversion as it had interrupted a rather uncomfortable daydreaming about her future. She had given her new acquaintance her address at the college and he had sent her off, saying, ”You are a very charming young lady. ”
A week later Jim had shown up at the campus, driving a Mercedes and presenting her with 12 pale orange Gladiolas. They had spent some fun hours over dinner at a small local restaurant. Jane had been impressed by Jim’s polished, cosmopolitan conversation skills. He was ten years her senior but she saw no cause to turn down an invitation to a party planned at the house of
one of his friends on New Years Eve. There had been no reason to refuse. Very conveniently for Jane, the festivity was to be on Fire Island.
A romance had started. Like a princess in fairyland she’d sipped cocktails, while lounging on a velvet couch and smelling the enticing aroma of dark red roses, which had been delivered to her in a strange hotel room. She felt so grown up. She was stimulated and intrigued and yes she’d fallen for Jim. It did not feel like the big love she had dreamed about in the past but it was so new and tantalizing. She liked Jim’s persuasion and chose not to think about Tom, who up to now had been the only man she had shared sexual favors with. Tom Boyd was simple, tender, rather uncomplicated in his personality but also no real challenge to her. She side swept any thoughts about what her parents would say if or when they found out.
With studying and fun the first semester had passed quickly. For X-mas, Jane had gone home for a few days and talked a lot about the college and new friends but avoided to make any mention about Jim. She had left the exquisite Aquamarine ring he had given her for X-mas in the safe at school. Her excuses not to be alone with Tom became plentiful.
New Years Eve had come. Luckily Tom had a work assignment someplace. Jane had told her parents that a girlfriend was giving a party to which she was invited. It all seemed to work out smoothly.
When Jim had introduced her to Nancy, the lady of the house, a mundane woman in her fifties Nancy had said, “Well Jim, what a charming young girl you brought this time. I see you pick them younger every year.” Jim’s answer, ”I take them as they come,” had not really been meant for her ears but she had entered the conversation at just that moment .The comment hurt Jane and suddenly she felt cheap.
At ten o’clock the doorbell rang. A voice, that Jane knew only all too well, said, ”Yes, thank you for asking me to help out.” She would have been able to detect that calm, re-assuring vibrato anyplace. Tom!
Jane was shaking as she put her hand on Jim’s shoulder. He was in an animated conversation with a redhead and hardly turned, when Jane said, ”Jim, I don’t feel good. Let’s call it quits for today, I am sorry, please take me home.” Irritated Jim responded, ” Want to spoil my fun? Just go upstairs and lay down in one of the guest rooms. Maybe you had too much to drink. You feel better soon.” With that he turned back to the redhead and continued the flirting with that woman.
The cool satin covers of the twin bed cooled Jane’s face.
She could not tell if it was a temperature or a flush of shame that blushed her cheeks. She cried silently. Tom was outside, so close. She would have given anything to erase the past months and her affair with Jim. Why had she fallen for that man? She had been blended by his lifestyle. His morals were alien to those of her family. It was all her fault, she had played the role of a flirty girl and not considered any of the possible consequences.
In the distance one could hear a brassy church bell ringing in the New Year. From the Living room came the echo of kissing and giggling. It must have been more than an hour since she had come up to this bedroom but Jim had not bothered to even once check on her. She was alone, beginning a New Year. Suddenly the door opened – Tom! His slinky, youthful figure moved slowly toward her, his face vaguely illuminated by the dim light. A frown on his forehead. He sat down at the rim of the bed and said, very matter of fact,”I knew you were here at the party. I saw your coat.” His large, water blue eyes held hers, questioning, sad.
“You are here with that guy, Jim Butler, I heard.” The tone in Tom’s voice conveyed that he did not have a great opinion of Jim. Jane wished she could throw herself into Tom’s arms but she was too ashamed to do so and he seemed to be in no mood to make it easy on her. She had no right to blame him. Instead she pressed her face deeper into the satin pillow and only whispered,” Tom, I – I do not know how to explain. I am truly sorry.”
At that moment Jim appeared in the doorway. In a demanding voice he queried, ”Jane?” Then he must have seen Tom, who in a reflex had put his arm around Jane’s shoulder. For a minute, Jim’s face expressed anger but quickly a broad grin spread over his alcohol-reddened face and he shouted jovially, ”All right Baby, Happy New Year. Sorry I interrupted. I see you are learning fast.” It was obvious that what was happening did fit into his plans.
Jane stared at the door, which had closed with a loud, although unintended bang, behind Jim. Tom’s arms released her and fell limp to his sides. Without looking at Jane, he did get up and began to pace back and forth with long strides.
Tom did not utter a word till Jane got up and held a hand out to him, pleading tears in her eyes. He took her hand and she felt him squeeze it just a tiny bit. “Let me take you home,” he said. “I am finished here and it looks to me like you are too.”
The Xmas
By Jonathan Fenn
Huck Fenn for pen name.
Huckfenn13-on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WordPress
The flash of bright headlights with the screeching of brakes then broken glass flying in the car while I’m trying to cover my beautiful girlfriend. Just seemed too real to me again which caused me to wake up in a cold sweat again. I look over to her sleeping without a scratch on her caramel brown skin. I had to get up and dry off being I was soaked so I rolled out of bed then quietly crept to the bathroom. There I stared at the reminder that I got from the crash on my chest. To tell the truth, I was glad that I was one to cut on my chest. I run my fingers down my smooth scar when her hand comes up from behind me. She lightly squeezes me. “I know, it’s close to that time.” She said while half asleep.
“Go to bed, Alex,” I said. “I will be back in there in a minute,” I told her calmly before turning around and kissing her lips. She walks out of the bathroom then I quietly sneak down to the kitchen for a cup of hot chocolate milk being I can’t just fall back to sleep after reliving that night. When I’m in the kitchen, I turn on the radio to quietly listen to some Christmas music then I poured a glass and put in the microwave. I stop the microwave with a second left being I don’t want to wake up everyone else. The snow falls lightly while taking a sip of the hot cholate milk. It becomes very relaxing to me then I head up to bed to fall asleep next to Alex.
***
While getting ready for a day at the office, the smell of bacon and pancakes hits my noses. I grab my briefcase before heading down the stairs. “I was going to tell him last night,” Alex said while I entered the kitchen to see Phil, Nicole, and Tommy sitting around at the table. Nicole has been our friend since college, and they lost their apartment due to water damage.
“Tell me what?” I asked before kissing Alex.
Nicole stands up. “Phil, grab Tommy, and we should give you some space.”
I chuckle. “Stay eat while it’s hot and it can’t be too bad.” Alex shakes her head no. “What is it?” I asked.
“I’m Pregnant,” She said excitedly.
“Really?” I asked stunned. Alex shakes her head yes. “I’m going to be a dad,” I said excitedly while I hugged her. “Don’t cook, we are going out tonight” I looked at Nicole. “Y’all are coming, right?”
Nicole shook her head no. “We don’t want to be a bother.”
“Y'all haven’t so far, my treat.” Nicole shakes her yes then I look at the time. “I got to get.”
***
My job is boring, but I got a lot of security there being I’m an investment banker that comes in every day of the week, so I’m up on the ladder. I was in my office looking over the files when my gray-headed boss comes in. “I got the files right here. I was about to send them to you.”
“Thanks for coming in on short notice.” My boss said.
I smiled. “No problem anything else?”
“Just keep up the good work, and you will be all right.” He said turning to walk out.
“Can I cut out?” I asked.
He looks at his watch then back at me. “Going to pop the question?”
I chuckle. “No, that’s Christmas. She having a baby.”
A smile creeps on his face. “I remember my first kid, my door is open, get out of here.” He said before walking out of my office.
***
There we all were sitting at the busyness steakhouse in town on short notice. “What are you getting babe?” Alex asked.
I smiled being the answers was evident. “Chicken” I replied.
Phil looks at me. “Don’t you get tired of that?” He asked. I just shook my head no being chicken hasn’t done me wrong yet.
“So we are going back to the east coast for the holiday so can y’all give us a lift to the airport?” Nicole asked. I just shook my head yes.
***
I was sitting back in my office when my boss walks in. “Hello, Sir?” I said while looking over the numbers.
“So are you and your girlfriend leaving for the holiday?” He asked. I shook my head no. “Well, I own a beach house in Hawaii. Headquarters are there as well and there a yearly wrap up meeting that you need to attend if you do go.”
I stopped then looked up at him. “You want me to participate in the yearly wrap-up meeting on your behalf?” He nodded his head yes. This was a big step for me but was huge for my career. “I will talk it over with Alex.”
***
Alex wanted to the trip more than what I expected, but that made my big surprise even sweeter on Christmas. I hope that she says yes while not thinking that it’s because of the rug rat that’s growing inside of her. She is the love of my life, and I don’t know what I would do if I lost her.
***
After I had left the office, I wanted to suspire Alex with some flowers. Granted, they were going to be dead by the time we got back, but it’s worth it to see that smile of hers. I don’t know why I walked to the flower shop in the light cold snow, but I’m kinda glad that I did. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t of saw them playing in the alley. They were having the time of their lives, but they didn’t fit which caused me to stop while everyone else passed by. “Hey,” I yelled. The two of them stopped then looked at me. “Where’s your parent’s,” I asked. I couldn’t place an age on them being they was wrapped up.
“Inside” The one them yelled then the other one smacked them. I didn’t know what they meant by inside being one building was under construction while the other one was vacant which was caused by a massive fire.
“Can you show me where?” I asked, but they took off running. I followed them into the building that was under construction. It was a perfect spot for homeless to hide during this harsh winter. I found them in the corner with their mother. She was in front of them with a knife pointed at me.
“Get back” She yelled.
I threw my hands up. “I’m just looking to help. How about a hot meal at my house?” Their mother lowers the knife. “I can put y’all up at a hotel afterward for the holidays,” I said. Their mother lets her guard down. “Please come with me.”
***
It’s was an odd feeling having so many people at my house to eat while not being a major holiday. If anything, that was part of the Christmas spirit. A knock came on the door while the cookies were finishing, we need to fix them before the end of the year anyways. So I open the door to see a group of eight or so Christmas carolers. “Joy to the world” They started singing then everyone else began to gather around. After a couple of songs.
“Come on in, it’s cold, we got some cookies in the oven,” I said. The carolers came in while I took the jackets. The party just grew, and it felt more like Christmas even though it was the 19th. Everyone was laughing and having a fun time.
***
I woke up to a knocking at the door, I was in the middle of my empty living room with a pounding headache while empty whiskey bottles and a stocking was beside me. As I sat up, I reached for my chest and felt the ring than my scar. I grabbed the stocking then headed to the
door. Frankly, I didn’t care who was on the other side of the door, but I opened it and peeked out to see a smiling Asian. She is beautiful. “Merry Christmas, Joe,” She said. I didn’t know who in the hell she was, but she knew me. “Can I come in, I brought hot cocoa” I opened the door then just walked back into the living room. “What do you got in the stocking?” She asked while shutting the door. I dropped the stocking.
“Who in the hell are you caused I don’t remember you,” I said.
She lost her smile. “Joe, it’s me. Lily, from the flower shop. I helped you after the crash.” I reached for the stocking. “what’s in the stocking?” The material from the stocking shocked my arm as I slide it in. “Joe,” She said louder. I started to drift off. I was the only one to get out of the crash alive. Alex, my unborn child, a van full of carolers, the two families of three and the trucker all died. I don’t know how I didn’t, being I tried to shield Alex. My head was just inches away from the hunk of metal that killed Alex. Bang. The gunshot brought me back to my empty living room with Lily holding my hand above my head. She has tears rolling down her face. “I see them all the time too.” She said as I lowered my arm. The stocking and gun fall to the floor before I wiped a tear from her face. I wasn’t the only one dealing with the pain, maybe she could help me.
CHRISTMAS: AN ANCIENT GHOST STORY
By R. B. Ejue
The people who live in the forest of the Western Protectorate of Nigeria have always feared spirits. The most feared of these spirits is the one called Ewure Fufun. Three hundred years ago, the ancestors of these people did not rear sheep. Then one day, their chieftain decided that he would explore the northern lands on his own. He was away for eight months, and when he returned, he brought along a flock of sheep, gifts from Fulani herdsmen he’d encountered during his adventure.
Every sheep in the flock was white, with no stain or blemish on their fleece. For three months, the villagers regarded these new creatures with awe and wonder. None of them had encountered animals with fur so pure that it could outshine a piece of white chalk.
The chieftain was proud of his flock. He saw to their care himself, and liked to show them off, parading them in the village square every evening, and boasting that they were a sign from the gods, showing his right to rule. The sheep soon mated among themselves, and produced a new flock. Although none of the lambs had pure white fleece – some born black, others white, with patches of black on various parts of their coats – they were strong and healthy, and the chieftain was pleased with them.
His happiness was short lived though, because soon the older sheep began to disappear one by one, until one day the chieftain woke up and went to the pen he’d made his people build behind his hut, only to find that the last of the white sheep had been stolen.
He was pained by this. He called a meeting of the town’s people, where he asked the high priest to make everyone swear an oath that none of them had stolen his sheep. When all of them had done this, with no one confessing to the crime, he drew out the dagger that had been passed along his bloodline as a symbol of their royalty, and stabbed himself in the heart, muttering a curse with his dying breath on the villagers and their offspring for their treachery and lies.
Ever since then, no pure white sheep has ever been born, and towards the end of the year, a white sheep appears to someone in the village as a ghost-like apparition, which only the person it appears to can see. After which there is a thunderstorm at night, and the person who has seen the ghost sheep dies in his sleep.
The villagers lived like this for three hundred years, and then the white people came. They came first with their bible, as missionaries, and set about converting the villagers to Christianity. And then more of them came later with their riffles, as colonizers, and this time made the people their subjects.
Christianity has its by-products, and one of these is Christmas, which is to be celebrated the next day. It is because of this that the boy’s father sends him into the forest to hunt birds. A year ago, his father had taught him how to handle a sling made of animal hide, but he has been unable to kill a single bird with this sling. So he does not like hunting.
His father tells him to go to the forest in the morning, when the birds aren’t alert, easy to hit with a stone. But he dawdles with his friends, first at the stream, where he takes off his girdle, which holds his sling and hunting knife, before diving into the cold water, and then at the village square where they crack palm kernels to extract the fruit inside, which they then chew to grind out its sweet nectar.
He does this until it is evening, when the birds are returning to roost, then he says goodbye to his friends and goes into the forest.
It is dark inside the forest. The branches of tall trees have overlapped to form a canopy that not only blocks out sunlight, but also traps cold and vapor, to form a fog blanket.
The boy knows that the fog would migrate during the night and spread over the village, settling on the ground in flighty tufts of condensed vapor. Tufts he likes to play with in the morning. Grabbing them and watching them melt in his hand.
He goes deeper into the forest as he searches for birds. He finds only a few, and these he misses with shots fired from his sling. He doesn’t notice when it grows dark, not until he realizes that he can’t see more than two feet in front of him. The forest temperature drops.
Then the forest becomes luminescent in front of him, and when he looks, he notices the image of a sheep come into focus. The animal’s coat is of the purest white he’s ever seen, and from it emanates the light that brightens the forest.
His father has told him that never in the town’s history have they bred a pure white sheep. His father has also told him about the curse of the white sheep.
He looks at the sheep, which also regards him with interest. The boy assumes that this is his fate, to die at the hands of the ancient chieftain’s curse. He believes this is all well. After all, he’s a useless son, one who hasn’t been able to slay a single bird with the sling his father made for him. His father would no doubt be happy to be rid of him; his birth right would be passed unto his younger brother.
The sheep regards him with a stony face. It stands on the pathway, resembling a primed colonial in starched khaki. It is here to kill him. But from what the boy remembers of the story, he is supposed to return home and lie down to die in his sleep. He goes towards the sheep. It moves. This is an action that the boy didn’t anticipate. Ghost sheep aren’t meant to retreat, are they? The boy moves forward again, and the sheep stumbles backwards. The boy takes out his sling, fixes in a big, round stone he’s been holding in his left hand, takes aim, and swings at the sheep. The stone catches the creature square in the face. Its hind legs wobble, and it falls. The boy pounces on it with his hunting knife, and in a few minutes it is dead and bleeding on the ground.
When the missionaries first arrived, they’d been given sheep as gifts by the town’s people. They secluded their flock of sheep inside the bamboo fenced compound that also held their living quarters. The boy assumes that the sheep had wandered away from that flock. This is the story he tells his father when he returns home with the dead animal on his shoulder.
His father isn’t bothered by this. He doesn’t like white people. He has his own sheep pen, so no one can accuse him of stealing anyone’s sheep. The boy’s family butchers and roasts the sheep that evening. It doesn’t rain at night.
The next day, after attending mass in the karaboot church built by the missionaries, the boy’s mother serves the mutton. Everyone enjoys their meal, and gives thanks to the boy for bringing them this meat. The boy finishes eating before everyone else, and goes outside for some fresh air. He looks back into the mud-brick house through the window, and sees his younger brother seize the last piece of mutton from the meat tray. As he raises it to his mouth, another brother snatches it from him and dashes out of the house.
The Miniature
By Vance Alexander
At midday, Veronica Ardmore opened the heavy oak sliding doors into the second parlor. The usually dark, overly decorated room looked bright and cheerful today. It was the Christmas tree. She was annoyed looking at the giant green monster, which was taking up so much room and presenting itself with a delicious aroma and great beauty. The servants had done a splendid job trimming the tree with strands of threaded popped corn and cranberries. The additional decorations were: paper chains, cut out stars and cornucopias in silver and gold foil made by the children. Tonight the candles would be lit but she wasn't feeling happy or festive. It was the day of Christmas Eve and she would have to put on a brave face for the sake of four year old Toddy and six year old Emily. Veronica had done her motherly duty providing presents for the youngsters. At the Emporium, she purchased a bisque doll from Germany for Emily; it was beautifully dressed, had real hair and eyes that opened and closed. Toddy would be the recipient of a carved Noah's Arc filled with twenty pairs of animals, a delight for most boys his age. Under the tree would also be presents for Ezra and Liza their dear and caring domestics.
Veronica moved around the tree in a somnolent state making small unnecessary adjustments, straightening candles, draping a sagging popcorn strand or moving a decoration for a better affect. Too mentally drained to do anything more, she closed the doors and met Liza dusting in front parlor.
"Miss Veronica you look quite ill, is there anything I can do?"
"No thank you, Liza, I think I just need to rest before dinner and the festivities with the children. Mr. Todd's parents are due to arrive at six, please wake me at five if I should fall asleep."
"Very well, you get some rest, Miss. Ezra and I have everything in order for this evening."
"Thank you Liza, I don't know what I would do without you."
Climbing the stairs seemed a monumental task. In her room, reclining on the chaise lounge, Veronica picked up the letter from the war office. She had read it a dozen times since it arrived a week ago. The words "has suffered serious injury in the line of duty" had shaken her world. She had no idea how badly he was injured or where he was. Veronica paced most of the night in her room, and when she wasn't pacing, she slept fitfully and awoke with a tear stained pillow.
Completely exhausted, she fell into a deep black sleep; it was then that she was in the back parlor. The Christmas tree had been replaced by baskets of flowers exuding a powerful scent as they surrounded a velvet draped bier upon which lay a wooden coffin. Veronica, near hysterics, hesitated before approaching and looking into the sheet lined coffin. Her head pounded, her body shook, and she could not breathe, but she forced herself to look. There was an empty space - empty space; no body, no Todd! To her this was a good sign. But, to her great consternation, there lay the gold locket. When Todd had been conscripted into the army, Veronica had a miniature portrait painted for him to carry as a talisman. She had presented it to him on the last Christmas Eve they spent together three years ago. Now the flood of tears and screams began, her arms flailing as she fought to claw her way from the blackness, her throat burning from the screams.
"Miss Veronica, please, please wake up!" Liza was gently shaking her shoulder, "you're having a bad dream."
"What, where am I, oh yes, it was a dream, only a dream. Liza it was awful." She clung to the older woman trying to gain strength from her. What's done can you repeat no
"You'll be all right, Miss, but now it’s late and you must get ready for dinner."
"Yes, Christmas dinner, I don't know how I'll get through it. Liza, I had a dream; it was awful." and then her choking sobs began.
The older woman felt an overwhelming pity for her young mistress whom she thought of as a daughter. Her practical nature knew she had to do something quickly. Taking Veronica by the shoulders, she shook her until she had her attention. Looking directly into her tear filled eyes, she said, "Listen to me child, there are your children to think about; don't destroy their Christmas. And you have Hanna and Johnathan Todd too entertain. No parent wants to think about the loss of a child, besides you don't know anything yet about Mr. Todd."
"But Liza the dream..."
"Yes, it was a bad dream, but only a dream." Taking Veronica's arm, she led her to the ornate dressing table, unpinned her hair and began to brush it in long soothing strokes. "You are going to look your most lovely tonight."
Leaving Veronica to put up her hair, Liza selected a gown from the armoire she knew to be Mr. Todd's favorite. She laid out the skirt and four underskirts on the bed. Just as she had everything organized, they heard muffled yelling from the children through the door.
"I had better go and check on the youngsters, it's probably the arrival of their grandparents. I'll be back shortly to help you dress. Meanwhile, you can finish your hair, and you might add the tortoise combs, they are so becoming."
Left alone Veronica looked into her mirror and saw a sad woman seemingly drained of life. Oh my, the children have seen me like this for a week, Liza is right, I cannot appear this way tonight. Very carefully she applied powder to her face and pinched her cheeks to bring out a little color. A few moments later, Liza returned.
"Are the children all right? Why were they being so boisterous, was it their grandparents arrival?"
"Indeed it was, now we must get you dressed."
After Veronica had stepped into her crinoline and been tied off, she stood quite still while Liza began to layer on, first a flannel underskirt, then one of muslin and another of cambric. Finally, the silk over skirt was put in place followed by the low cut bodice jacket, which was laced up the back. Standing in front of the cheval mirror, Veronica was pleased with the reflected image.
"You look beautiful Miss Veronica, here are your gloves, you are ready. Your in-laws and the children are in the front parlor. After you greet them, Ezra asked that you check the tree before anyone sees it; I took the liberty of having him light the candles when Mr. and Mrs. Ardmore arrive."
"But I checked it this afternoon, and it looks wonderful."
"It will only take a moment, and Ezra wants to please you. Will you do it, Miss?"
"Of course, and Liza, thank you."
When Veronica glided down the staircase, she felt better knowing that she would try to make this evening special for everyone. Hanna and Jonathan Ardmore greeted their daughter-in-law warmly, and the children were excited seeing their mother smiling and looking so lovely.
After the greetings and exchange of pleasantries, Veronica excused herself and opened the doors to the back parlor only enough to squeeze in, not wanting to spoil the effect of seeing the tree for Emily and Toddy.
The gigantic tree looked spectacular, the candles were like glowing stars and the decorations looked to be in order, but something was out of place. From one of the branches, she picked up the small object and became misty eyed thinking about that other Christmas when she gave Todd the miniature. The miniature. Could the dream, could it be coming true?
"Oh Todd, my Todd, where are you?" Her voice was filled with anguish and tears ran down her cheeks.
"Here my darling," the deep baritone voice said. "Here waiting for you!" Captain Todd Ardmore limped from behind the tree to gather his wife, into his loving arms.
SHADOWS
By
Louis Sisto
The Magician was perched comfortably in his recliner, the eraser end of his stubby pencil tapping lightly on his chin as he searched for grammatical inspiration. The creation of poetry always helped him return to a state of mental equilibrium following one of his “contracts.” A “contract”, dear reader, was a pivotal piece of his chosen career field. The Magician’s real name was Theodore Sauer, but to his cronies in the underworld, he had a vast array of colorful nicknames: Teddy, Teddy Numb Nuts, Teddy the German, or, his best known moniker, The Magician. Looking at the slightly tanned, brown-haired gentleman of no more than five feet, eight inches in height, one would reasonably assume him to be a well-to-do, nine-to-five embodiment of ordinary life in the Midwest. The Magician earned his particular title because of his uncanny ability to make others disappear, at times in the most horrid ways imaginable. He was damn near forty years old and had tarnished his soul with the cold embrace of organized crime since his early twenties.
He rubbed his feet together as he slid a bit lower in his recliner, his faded cotton socks creating a warm, relaxing friction. The light, powdery scent of the barbershops of old drifted up to his nostrils as his Skin Bracer aftershave made its presence known. He nibbled on the pencil’s eraser as his thoughts skipped back to the piece of work he had completed just a few short hours ago. The union official and his wife never even opened their eyes and saw him. They died together in the bedroom, their hands still clasping each other’s, their bodies entangled in the black, silk sheets as the Magician interrupted their peaceful slumber. He departed the house as casually as he had entered, almost whistling to himself as he returned to his vehicle. He had ten grand coming his way from the higher-ups.
Another day, another dollar for Teddy
The Magician’s mind was a carousel of various thoughts and emotions. He scribbled on the small notepad resting on his lap as he relived the events from a few hours ago. His work gave him a peculiar sense of creativity, neither rational nor irrational, but harboring somewhere between the two. He had been writing poetry for years as a method of mental catharsis, to the point where it just became a part of his daily routine. Maybe he was just being artistic in his own, indefinable way. After all, he could have inherited the quality from his parents. His eyes floated up from his notepad for a moment as he thought about his deceased mother, Giuliana. She came from the Puglia region of Italy and was as vivacious of a woman as you could ask for. He remembered sitting at the kitchen table for hours as a young boy, his hands gently folded in front of him, listening to his mother sing along with Mario Lanza on the radio. She had a soft, soothing voice that could melt the wings of an angel and force open the gates of Heaven. There were plenty of instances where her singing would reduce her to tears, often for reasons unknown, even to herself, as a young Magician sat curiously nearby, flooded with a mixture of
understanding and confusion, an all too common dilemma for a boy in that age frame. His father, Sebastian, immigrated to the United States from Germany with his parents at the age of four. The Magician could recollect many conversations with his father about being his own man one day and living life on his own terms. His father had been an avid artist, at times leaving the young Magician in unmatched awe of the various shapes and vibrant colors that decorated the canvas. He remembered when his father would take his brush, lightly dab the end of it with a color of the Magician’s choosing, and playfully swipe at the canvas, making a mark of no particular distinction. Then all traces of levity would vanish in an instant as his father would peer into his eyes, the message resonating loud and clear:
“Teddy, you make your own mark on this world.”
His parents had always made time for him, even though they were constantly attending to the drudging responsibilities of daily life. The Magician had an older brother of three years, Ralph, with whom he had a very close relationship while growing up. With a voice as beautiful and encouraging as his mother’s, the strong, consistent discipline bestowed upon him by his father and the camaraderie and affection given to him by his brother, one could have only surmised at that time that the Magician (or Little Ted) would have nothing less than a proud, successful future, full of all of the treasures of life that a man could ever dream of.
***
The roaring of a car engine on the street below shook the Magician out of the daze he had seemingly fallen into. The fragmented memories of his mother and father, their cherished lyrics and works of art, dissolved from his consciousness as he glanced at his watch. It was a quarter to five. He would be leaving soon to meet his brother, Ralph. They had grown apart over the years,
for what appeared to be a thousand different reasons. Ralph had been aware of the Magician’s descent into criminal life long before anyone else. Ralph sought refuge and solace in his faith, distancing himself slowly from the Magician over time. He moved out west to Nevada eight years ago with his wife and children following the death of their mother. Their father had died of a sudden heart attack many years ago, shortly after the Magician started high school. For the past eight years Ralph made it a point to return to the Midwest to visit his younger brother, almost out of a feeling of pure obligation, as opposed to any real desire to have even a general friendship, let alone a sibling relationship. They always met for a few hours at a tiny outdoor café on the outskirts of Chicago to catch up on each others’ lives. The discussion was always civilized and proper, with the two even sharing an audible laugh at times, reminiscent of their time together as young, naïve boys, not having a care in the world. Underneath it all, however, lurking like a hungry, angry predator, was awkwardness so profound that the Magician felt he could sometimes see it, touch it and cut it right in half.
The Magician lifted himself from his recliner with a small grunt and rose to his feet. He tore off the page in his notepad he had been scribbling on and shoved it nonchalantly into the pocket of his lavender-colored dress shirt. The apartment slowly became a shade darker as shadows engulfed the living room from all directions; the previously sunny and vibrant sky was now being invaded by unrelenting, unwelcoming clouds. He walked calmly over to a nearby coffee table and poured a half glass of red wine for himself. He drank it down rather gracefully, feeling his muscles loosening up as the alcohol warmly blanketed his esophagus. There was no point in delaying the visit with his brother. Time to get this over with. The higher-ups would no doubt have more business for him to attend to later.
***
“Two coffees, please,” Ralph said to the waitress as he enthusiastically wiped the powdered sugar from his lips. He and the Magician were in the process of indulging in some scrupulously baked dessert cookies on the outside deck of DiNella’s Eatery, a small, family-owned café bordering on the city limits of Chicago.
The Magician smiled mischievously at the waitress. “Actually, Ma’am, I’ll take an espresso.” He glanced smugly in Ralph’s direction. “These Nevada boys forget what real caffeine is,” he said, trying his best to stifle a small laugh in the process.
The waitress, an animated young lady in her early twenties, put her hands on her hips for a second, as if preparing to scold the brothers. She shook her head as she headed for the patio door, amused at the petty, but good-natured, insults the two had been hurling at each other all evening.
“Speaking of Nevada,” Ralph said, thumbing at a thatch of gray hairs in his beard, “when am I gonna get you out west?”
The Magician toyed with the band of his watch for a moment and then looked toward the darkened road in front of them as a steady rain continued to fall. He couldn’t walk away from his life in the Midwest. He knew a lot of bad things about a lot of people. They would find him and it would all be over. He didn’t need to put Ralph and his family in any danger.
Ralph’s voice returned, this time with a solemn tone of complete sincerity: “Teddy, I worry about you every single day.” He exhaled deeply, the entity of frustration even more apparent than it had been in past conversations concerning the same topic.
The Magician could hear the underlying tone of helplessness in his brother’s voice. He had a mental image of a lever being pulled inside of him all of a sudden, shutting down his emotional capabilities. During moments like this, he had no choice but to do that to himself. There were just some things that he would not allow his cognitive domain to process. He preferred to be a shadow, quick and abstract, not possessing any predisposition for human emotion. A man in his position could not afford to be lead by emotion like a stray dog was by the temptation of tattered remnants of food. The higher-ups, his bosses, had told him from day one that emotion could ruin a man entirely, if he let it. Without warning, his father’s voice suddenly flashed into his consciousness for a brief moment:
“Teddy, you make your own mark on this world.”
He had chosen his life, or his mark, if you will, and Ralph needed to accept that. End of story.
“Ralph, lemme ask you something,” the Magician said, trying to keep his tone as amicable as possible, “did we come here to visit or did we come here so you could start with all this bullshit again?” He surprised himself for sure; he asked the question a hell of a lot nicer than he thought he would. Wonders never cease.
“Look, Teddy, don’t get angry with me. Please.” A slight quiver could be detected in Ralph’s voice. He wanted to keep the peace. He knew what kind of man his brother was…and could only imagine some of the things he had done. He could only imagine.
“Teddy, do you think I would travel all this way to see you if I didn’t care about you?” He paused as the waitress returned to deliver the coffees…well, one coffee and one espresso to be exact.
The Magician waited until the waitress was out of earshot before responding. “I know you care, Ralph, but I gotta do what I gotta do.”
He felt justified in defending his position, regardless of his lifestyle. A brief slideshow of some of the atrocities he had committed toward others over the years began playing through his head; for a moment, he thought he could actually hear the hum of his mental projector, before he realized that it was the air conditioner turning on behind him. The things he had done to others were the very things that he kept in the shadows, away from everyone else, even himself, in a way. It all came down to the way he had personally conditioned himself over the years. The natural world moved on every single day without him. Other men his age were taking their bratty kids to zoos and theme parks, changing shit-clustered diapers and loving every minute of it. He lived on the outer limits. He was the monster that the “normal” people read about in their morning newspapers as they sipped their tea and wrapped their klutzy bathrobes around themselves just a little tighter. He was, essentially, a man without a face.
Ralph tinkered with the small glass handle of his coffee cup for a few moments, trying his absolute hardest to muster up the courage to talk man-to-man with his brother. A stray rain droplet splattered the right leg of his tan dress pants as he looked up toward the Magician.
“Teddy, do you remember the lessons we had in school, as kids, about God?”
The Magician’s eyes remained fixated on the dark, deserted road sprawled out before him. He said nothing, his mouth instead occupying itself with the blunt aftertaste of the espresso.
Ralph continued, “This may not mean much to you, Teddy, but have you ever given any thought to what happens to us all in the end?” He sipped his coffee slowly, his eyes harboring a pleading fervor that the Magician had never quite witnessed before.
The Magician remained a stone fixture of silence. He listened closely to the melancholy anthem created above as the raindrops pattered the roof.
“I firmly believe that a man has to answer for every single thing that he’s done in his life,” Ralph said, anxiously rubbing the palms of his hands together. “I think that-“
The Magician’s left hand abruptly shot into the air, cueing Ralph to terminate his inevitable sermon. His temper was unique; the Magician never became outwardly angry. He always had a way to contain the negativity. For as long as he could remember, he always pictured his dark energy resting inside random, discarded liquor bottles, perched on a dust-ridden, rotted wooden bar top. It was in these pathetic, forgotten bottles that the darkness could hide away, never to be looked upon by the eyes of ordinary men. Some would call it a defense mechanism; the Magician’s explanation was always a bit simpler, coming off with something along the lines of ‘not having time to think about that shit right now.’
“Now that’s where you’re wrong, Ralph,” The Magician said, his thick Chicago accent echoing powerfully in the evening’s strange silence. He took a quick sip of his espresso before continuing, “You know what the most honest moments are of a man’s life?”
Ralph shook his head. He was curious as to where his brother was going with this one.
“Yeah, I knew you’d shake your head,” The Magician said as he sat forward in his chair. “You wanna know something, Ralph? A guy is at his most honest when he shaves.”
Ralph, not in a particularly humorous mood at the moment, found himself somehow smiling just a little. His brother had him quite intrigued now.
“Why is that, Teddy?”
“What do you mean, ‘why is that, Teddy?’” To a pair of innocent nearby onlookers the Magician would definitely have solidified his position as the older, wiser brother, based solely on his body posture and the conviction in his words. Yet that was not true. The Magician, the baby brother, felt like he was bestowing upon Ralph the basic life wisdom he should’ve acquired long ago.
“When a man shaves, he looks into the eyes of nobody but himself; not even your God.” The Magician pointed emphatically at Ralph as he finished the last part of the sentence, as if giving his brother complete ownership of all of the world’s misconceptions. “A man looking into his own eyes has no choice but to own up to his actions. The most honest pair of eyes in the world, Ralph, are the ones in your own reflection, like it or not.”
The waitress returned briefly, humming nonchalantly to herself as she tossed another handful of napkins on the table.
“You boys ok?”
The Magician offered a pleasant, reassuring smile in return.
“We’re fine, honey.”
The Magician and his brother sat beside each other for the next several minutes, neither man speaking, both of them lost to the world around them, thinking of the cruel uncertainty of the future. The steady, forceful rain eventually transitioned to a dreary, uninspired shower. A passing car’s headlights briefly illuminated the brothers as they remained glued to their chairs. The few other inhabitants of the patio began dispersing little by little, random fragments of
conversation infiltrating the ears of the Magician and his brother. Another few agonizing minutes passed before the Magician stood up.
He tossed a crisp fifty and twenty dollar bill on the table in front of Ralph. Ralph’s body remained motionless, only his eyes carefully studying the Magician’s movements.
“I got some business to see to, Ralph. Thanks for the visit.” He leaned over to embrace Ralph, the random, misshapen shadows of the night swarming his field of vision as he looked over his brother’s shoulder. A clumsily-folded piece of yellow paper fell from his shirt pocket as the two brothers released their grip on one another. It landed innocently on Ralph’s shoulder. The Magician turned and began strolling toward the patio door as Ralph called after him.
“Hey, Teddy, you lost your paper here,” he said, waving it casually in his right hand.
The Magician turned his head slightly in acknowledgement. He pondered his writing session from just a few short hours ago. He remembered every single word he had written, almost as if he had taken a photograph of it and copied it into his consciousness. He smiled as he responded:
“Why don’t you keep that for yourself, Ralph? When the time is right, you can read it and let me know what you think.”
With that being said, the Magician was gone, leaving Ralph and his weak coffee as the sole occupants of the patio.
***
Ralph Sauer stood at the edge of the patio deck, staring out at the bleak, empty road as the other patrons of DiNella’s Eatery sang and laughed around him, the joy and gratitude in their
voices a haunting reminder to him of what he would never have again. Images of Teddy and him sitting on the patio from last year, bantering jokingly about coffee, played through his mind like an old, familiar videotape as he watched the last rays of the sun lose their vibrancy with the progression of the evening. He turned and glanced futilely at his table, a half-eaten cannoli and a glum cup of coffee decorating the top of it. Teddy would have scolded him like an unwanted stepchild, yet again, if he saw that his brother’s preference for bland coffee had not changed. Teddy’s chair was cold and aloof this particular evening, as it had gone unused the entire time that Ralph had been skimping his way through dessert. Teddy had been murdered four months ago. Ralph had made very few inquiries about what had occurred. The most common version of the story he heard in their childhood neighborhood consisted of Teddy being found slumped over in the passenger seat of his Cadillac. His body had supposedly been lying in the brisk, below-zero temperatures for several days, finally spotted by a sanitation worker who noticed that the vehicle hadn’t been moved for awhile.
It didn’t matter; not anymore. Whatever really happened was insignificant. The harsh reality of the situation settled into Ralph’s heart like a grotesque tumor when their waitress from last year inquired about Teddy.
“He passed away unexpectedly,” was all Ralph said. Nothing more, nothing less.
The crumpled piece of yellow paper that had fallen out of Teddy’s shirt pocket during their final embrace the year before now rested in Ralph’s left palm. It had been tucked away in his money clip for an entire year, scrunched between an old credit card and a shoe repairman’s business card. He opened it carefully, taking extra precaution as the page was already torn and nearly falling apart.
For every shadow there is one final act. One final emotion, one final pact.
Nowhere seen and nowhere heard, these shadows have concurred.
Only in your faith is truth undeterred.
Ralph’s concentration was broken by a highly energetic round of applause at a nearby table. A young boy, donning a black, plastic top hat, was putting on a magic show for his peers at a birthday party. Ralph studied the amazed and amused expressions of the toddlers as they observed the spectacle before them. The last line of Teddy’s poem resonated loudly in his thoughts.
Only in your faith is truth undeterred.
He walked slowly back to his table, placing the crinkled poem back into his money clip. His waitress met him upon his return.
“Anything else for you?”
“I’ll take an espresso to go,” Ralph said, as the magic show continued, unabated, behind him.
THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE
By
JAKE COSMOS ALLER
Ever since that fateful night when I was indoctrinated into the “True Knowledge” I have looked at the world in a different light. They say that the "Truth shall set you free". They also say, "Knowing the Truth, the so-called "True Knowledge" usually kills you for as Jack Nicholson so aptly put it, "You want the truth, well you can't handle the truth." Ain't that the truth my friends, and ain't the truth a real first class bitch?
It all went down so fast. After learning the secret history of the last five thousand years, I saw everything in a different, more sinister and dark light. Knowing what I know now - that the end times are close approaching - left me with dread, apprehension and yes paranoia. As Kissinger put it, even "paranoids have real enemies." And boy, does mankind have sinister enemies living amongst us, plotting our utter destruction for thousands of years.
The list of people who have been brought into the conspiracy reads like a list of the most prominent political and business leaders of world history. You often wonder how so many smart people can create such disasters like our current fiasco in the Mideast? Now I know. Nothing happens without a cause. The alien puppet masters from Sirius have been manipulating the world for thousands of years waiting until we had the technological means to destroy our planet so they can retake it for their nefarious plot to enslave all of us, forever and ever. However, I am getting ahead of my story. Let's begin at the beginning of my involvement. After reading my story, you will know the truth. Knowing the truth will either drive you mad, get your foolish ass killed, or give you the knowledge needed to survive the coming horrors.
I work for the government, just one of the army of white-collar “govbots" who float in and out of the Metro system every morning commuting to their jobs with the government and back home to their suburban townhouses. The day my world came crashing down on me began as I picked up a brochure from the "Lyndon LaRouche Group" at the Foggy Bottom Metro in downtown D.C. I commented to my colleagues on the way home that I enjoyed reading it, although I did not believe most of his conspiracy theories but he had a point, many good points. We laughed it off as a big joke.
A few days later I was getting on the train, when a middle age non- descript white man, with brownish hair, about 6 feet talk, dressed like any other middle age white suburban federal employee in a conservative suit and tie - probably on his way home to his suburban home in Virginia, bumped into me. He apologized and slipped me the following note. I saw the note when I got home and connected it with the strange incident at the subway.
The note read, "Lyndon used to work for us. He knows most of the truth but not all of it. When he found out what we were really up to we had to marginize him, discredit him as we do with anyone who gets too close to the truth. We are able to ensure that no one takes his writings seriously. He is a useful idiot though and we feed him disinformation on a regular basis.
My job is to prevent knowledge of the truth; the so-called "true knowledge" gets out. Anyone who appears to be taking his stuff seriously has to be followed and either brought into the game, or neutralized. Be very careful. Our agents are watching you like a hawk and have your internet connections under constant surveillance. Your phone and house is tapped. We have enough already to get you into serious trouble with your bosses as we know you are a dissenter, and don’t buy into the current government propaganda. You are too much of a free thinker for that. The authorities are also monitoring you but for now you are considered safe enough to leave alone.
We know that you like pornography and we know about all of your affairs and we have copies of e-mails you sent to various women with shall we say suggestive comments that could be misconstrued. We have even faked a few photos and video tapes of you engaging in some of your fantasies. By the way, you are a good writer!
Next time we contact you, make sure you come to the meeting spot. I will meet you and explain further. Momentous events are about to happen and you can either be on the inside on the winning team, or on the outside or probably end up dying like most of your fellow human beings. It will be your choice, my friend. We believe that you could be an asset, - you can
write persuasively, you can speak persuasively, you have many loyal friends and most importantly, you are probably intelligent enough to know that being on the winning ticket is usually the right choice to make for you and your family. Remember tell no one about this – not even your wife."
Agent Spartacus X
I am of course intrigued and freaked out. I thought of the X files and numerous SF thrillers I had read over the years. I said that this could not be happening must be some sort of vicious joke. In any event, I am intrigued enough to get out the Lyndon pamphlet from the trash and read it. I finally decide to try to sort out what he is saying and come up with the following schematic based on the pamphlet and looking at his web page and other web pages that have similar points of view.
Lyndon posits a grand conspiracy of British and American big bankers working together since the 15th century to dominate the world. The roots of the conspiracy dates back to the Knight Templars of the middle ages, which morphed into the Freemasons, then the fabled Illuminati. They were behind the Opium war as the British Royal family is among the inner circle of the conspiracy.
Most recently, they have been associated with the Council on Foreign Relations, The Bohemian Club, and The Project for a New American
Century. They are often now often called the Vulcans or the Neocons. However, the Neocons are just a small American inner circle of a much broader interrelated international conspiracy.
They had almost succeeded in their plans when the Great Depression came along and wiped out most of their plans. In response to the Great Depression, they took advantage of the chaos, engineered the rise of Hitler, Mussolini and Togo, and were working to bring Britain and US into the fold. Their goal – a Pan Germanic-Anglo dominated world fascist system to fight against the evils of Communism and Socialism. They thought that the U.S. would fall into place and eventually Hitler would unite the Germanic and Anglo worlds into a grand empire that would control the world forever. They would run the Empire through charismatic fools like Hitler. They would have continual wars, which are good for business, and they would have periodic depressions to ensure that they can continually buy up their competitors. Franklin Roosevelt disrupted their plans, as did Truman, Kennedy, Carter and Clinton. Nixon, Ford and Bush 1 were part of the Conspiracy. Reagan and Bush 11 were merely useful puppets. Obama is a useful idiot and not part of the conspiracy. Trump is an outlier – and dangerous to their plans. Hillary is part of the conspiracy.
Donald Trump is merely their latest puppet. Their mission is to bring fascism to America and then use America's military muscle to impose Pax Americana on the world. They plan to bring back a Neo-Nazi party to power in Germany and they plan to launch World War 111 against the Islamic world. Once they have secured the Islamic world for the West they will have to take on China and perhaps Russia. India they think they can make a junior partner like Europe and Japan.
That briefly is the Lyndon conspiracy. I still did not buy it. I did not think that any of our leaders were so corrupt and evil. I thought perhaps they were stupid, ignorant and making wrong decisions but I also thought like most Americans that they were genuinely interested in doing the right thing and were looking out for American interests in an increasingly dangerous world. And yes, I considered myself to be a bit of a dissident but I did not want to lose my job so I kept my thoughts largely to myself, my journals, my unpublished poetry and stories.
Therefore, I wrote down what had happened in my journal, and decided to be careful. I thought that perhaps the Lyndon people were trying to scare me in to joining them.
Just to be prudent I kept my journal entry on a diskette that I carried with me at all times. I quit writing anything in my computer that could be compromised. I installed some additional spy ware and did daily checks.
A few more weeks went by. I saw the Lyndon people at the subway and gave them a wide berth. I even denounced one of them in public for being a paranoid conspiracy freak. I wanted to give anyone watching the impression that I did not buy any of their crap.
One day I see Agent Spartacus on the subway. I go up to him and ask him how is doing, acting as if he is a fellow employee that I have not seen in a while. He responds, "Just fine." He then whispers, "Check your phone for a message in 10 minutes." He jumps on the Orange train and I wait for the Blue train. At King Street station, my phone beeps with a message.
"Meet me Friday night at 'Coyote Ugly' at 6 pm. Be on time. We will have a drink there and then find some place we can talk quietly. Be prepared to spend a couple of hours. Your wife will be out of town on business. Remember we are watching you and monitoring you. Good move on your part on writing your journals on diskettes. Bring them unaltered. If you alter them, we will know. BTW, I know you like sushi so we will have sushi in one of our affiliated businesses, sort of a 'safe house' so to speak in
Chinatown. Spartacus. We also know what porn you watch, that you like anal sex and oral sex and are not getting enough oral sex with your wife although getting a lot of anal sex. We can arrange a partner for your every need. "
I was freaked out after reading the message. My wife had not mentioned any business trip. I go home and she tells me she has to go out of town on Friday for a weeklong trip to Ft Hood on TDY. My wife was in the military, I was used to her constant TDY's on short notice, and I knew that sometimes she could not tell me what she was really up to as her clearances outranked mine by an order of magnitude. However, how Spartacus knew bothered me. Was my wife part of the conspiracy? I knew that I had to meet him. What he was hinting was monstrous. Moreover, the possibility that my wife was involved even more horrible. I knew if I told her my suspicions, she would laugh it off and tell me to lay off the Science Fiction novels for a while. The possibility that she could be working with them also entered my mind and stayed there like a stubborn weed that would not die. The offer of an extra marital partner turned me on although I knew it was a honey trap and I should turn it down but boy did it turn me.
And if she were part of this conspiracy would she tell me or them? I thought that I could not go to the authorities because it seemed clear that many of the senior officers were part of this dark conspiracy and no one would believe me. I would be dismissed as a nut case, possibly hauled to a psychiatric hospital or just made to disappear or even declared an enemy combatant and sent to Gitmo or some other secret detention center. Since they have also strongly warned me to be quiet I knew the risks would be pretty high so despite my burning desire to talk things over with my wife, I kept quiet.
I went to work and try hard to pretend that nothing is bothering me. A few people noticed that I am not my usual chipper self and I laughed` it off, saying that Angela is out of town and therefore I am usually a bit gloomy when she is on TDY.
Friday night I go to Coyote Ugly. I sit down. Spartacus is not there. A beautiful Korean woman wearing skintight blue jeans, a tank top with long black hair running down her back and lovely almond shaped eyes, and a cute face sits down unasked and tells me that Spartacus sent his regards but could not make it. She would go to dinner with me instead. I am suspicious
that some sort of honey trap was being set up against me. I looked around for cameras and surveillance but realized that they would probably be hidden. I resolve to keep my wits about me, not drink and not give into temptation, although when she went off to the restroom her luscious ass tempted me. I starred at her until my eyeballs began to hurt and she knew that I was starting at her world class ass and could not help it.
The old blues standard by Junior Wells, "Everyone Getting Some but Me" starts playing on the jukebox. I listen to my favorite line, "A girl in skin tight pants walk on by, with an ass so fine my eye balls hurt" and I said to myself. "Damn. They are good. They even know that I am an ass man, love the blues and this song in particular, and I love Asian women. Damn."
I pay my bill and Miss Lee and I walk down to China town and enter a sushi place. They seem to know her. We order some sushi. A message comes into my phone.
"Jake. Could not make it. Miss Lee works for me. She will give you a letter. Read it and leave or stay and have fun with her. She will do anything and everything you ever wanted from a woman sexually. She has been instructed to seduce you as a honey pot approach. Not my idea, but my superiors. I would rather play you straight up with the facts. But if you do
go with her know that it will be recorded and used against you if you step out of line. On the other hand, she is good and we know what you like as we have read your sex fantasies. You are a good writer, my friend. So if you do it, enjoy. We will meet next week after you read the letter and survive this first test. Spartacus"
I ask Miss Lee in Korean if she knew what was going on. She laughs and said that she was told to give me a letter, and then to show me a good time. She also said that she was told what I liked and wanted me to have her anyway I wanted her.
I thanked her, and asked her for the letter. I take the letter, and then decided to not go forward with the rest of the planned events as I thought showing a little independence might be a good insurance policy. I apologize to Miss Lee. She asked me why I did not want her. I told her that I felt guilty being with her and had to go home. She told me to take her home. I ended up kissing her, and taking her phone number and e-mail address. She told me she knew that she would succeed in seducing me as no one has ever turned her down before. She laughed and said, "You'll see. No one has ever resisted my charms, before the week is over you will be eating my pussy,
and your cock will be in my ass and in my mouth. I guarantee it. Read the letter and then decide."
I leave the restaurant and read the letter on the yellow line subway home:
The letter was as follows:
"By now you should be aware of our power and reach. Your wife is part of the conspiracy but not yet a member of the inner circle but we will approach her if you decide to join. We think she would be also an excellent choice. She suggested Miss Lee who is one of our top operatives and one of your wife’s friends. Play along with us and you can have her and you can have a threesome with her and your wife. Your wife says hello and have fun with Miss Lee.
However, each approach is different as you can well imagine. By now, you either have decided to have a good time with Miss Lee or have decided to decline in a mistaken impression that showing a little independence would be a good move. Either way would result in the same thing – either you will have some great sex which we will film or we will
take pictures of you and Miss Lee and morph them into a nice porno movie which we will send to your wife, your boss and your security folks one week from today unless you agree to the following:
Meet me Sunday night at the sushi place. Bring flowers for Miss Lee. If you turn her down, she will be miffed, as she does not take rejection lightly. She is determined to seduce you, you know. You were the first to turn her down. Took a lot of guts to do that. Oh well.
When we meet, I will then tell you the whole story. You can then go with Miss Lee or not. Your choice but remember the video is already being produced so you might as well enjoy her while you can. We have lots of work to do soon so I have to bring you in sooner than we usually do. Consider Miss Lee as a reward for joining. First of many as the members of the inner circle can have anything they want and will after D-day. Join us in being masters of the universe. D day is coming soon."
Spartacus
I call her up and she comes over and strips and tells me to eat her then she will let me have her ass. As I go down on her she tells me she is my
wife’s secret lesbian lover and they were planning to surprising me with a threesome on my birthday. I have the best oral sex and anal sex of my life as she is just perfect in bed.
I wanted to call my wife and confront her over Miss Lee but I was not at all sure she was telling me the truth. I knew all my wife’s friends and she had never mentioned Miss Lee. And my wife having a lesbian lover on the side while a big turn on for me seem sort out character for my wife. And she would have told me knowing how much that would have turned me on. So I suspected that Miss Lee did not know my wife but then again it seems she knew my house. Perhaps she was part of the surveillance team?
Sunday evening, I meet Miss Lee at the restaurant. I give her flowers and we have dinner. She is flirting up a storm and I was looking forward to round two and the subsequent threesome.
Spartacus shows up and the mood turns serious. Miss Lee is now totally professional and serious. The flirting was all an act of course and she was a true professional. Spartacus looks tired. He takes me into the back room and begins his tale of woe. I listen and don't want to believe any of it. It was so monstrous and evil but I knew he was telling the truth. And boy the truth did not set me free let me tell yah.
Spartacus starts off,
"Lyndon was one of our operatives. He was a rising star, but had an attack of guilt and left us. We debated whether to kill him or not. I suggested that we let him go, discredit him but use him as bait. Anyone who reads his stuff can be identified and those who show signs that they believe it and might be persuaded to join us we could recruit. The others can be eliminated. So we persecuted Lyndon, made him look like a paranoid idiot and we kept feeding him disinformation which he would disseminate.
What he writes about is only part of the truth and is the most visible, most documented part of the story and mostly true with some disinformation in it. For example, Lyndon misunderstood Hitler's rise to power. Hitler was a stooge, a "useful fool" in Lenin's phrase and Lenin and Stalin were part of our inner circle as was Mussolini and Togo. Roosevelt was our enemy as has been most of the Democratic leadership. That's why we are hard at work to destroy the Democratic Party and install a right wing republican one party state under our control but with "useful fools" like Bush as figure heads. Bush is not one of us, but we control him because Rowe, Cheney and the
Neocon cabal are all part of our inner circle. Most are human, but some are fellow Sirians.
I had to stop him and interrupted.
"What do you mean by Sirian? I mean this seems like a long-term conspiracy dating back centuries. Are you guys from some ancient Middle Eastern cult?"
He looks at me and laughs.
"I mean the Planet Sirius, the so called dog star. I will clue you in just listen. Anyway, the aim of our plot? Total domination of the world, then a planned destruction of the worldwide civilization through nuclear, and biological warfare where 90 percent of humanity will be destroyed. We will clean up the pieces and establish a worldwide dictatorship. Then the invasion begins and humankind is enslaved forever to the power of the master race, the Sirians.
Most of the people who work with us do not know that they are working for the Sirians. However, it does not matter. If you are with us, you will be rewarded with power, wealth, and access to Sirian medical technological wonders including life extension treatment which will allow you to live almost forever. If you oppose us, you will be thrown out into the world to be destroyed along with most of the rest of your dismal race.
I am a Sirian. We came to your planet five thousand years ago. We set up a colony, which you know as Atlantis. It was destroyed in a nuclear war between two factions of our race – the progressives who wanted to establish their version of democracy and what you might consider fascists or realists, as we like to think of ourselves. When you see the real me you will see that the progressive and realist groups are actually different races of Sirians. We are red in color and much more muscular and frankly more intelligent and realistic. They are darker, green in color and smaller and filled with useless compassion. They still exist and occasionally cause us trouble. We are always watching to make sure that they do not try to approach our human agents and corrupt them with pernicious "liberal or progressive" ideas - to use the current phrases - nonsense.
However, I digress. The realists won the war but Atlantis was destroyed. Most of the Sirian race on earth was killed in the war. Those of us realists left formed a tight little group and decided that we would bid our time, build out forces, take over the planet, and when the earth had achieved sufficient levels of technology contact our home world, and await instructions.
The progressives formed their own group and disappeared spending their time trying to enlighten humankind. What a load of crap. They just got misunderstood and killed for their troubles. Jesus, Buddha, Mohamed, Confucius, Sai Baba – all Sirian democratic losers every one of them.
The progressives formed their own group and disappeared spending their time trying to enlighten humankind. What a load of crap. They just were misunderstood and killed for their troubles. Jesus, Buddha, Mohamed, Confucius, Sai Baba – all Sirian democratic losers every one of them.
Some of the progressive Sirians disappeared into the wilderness and their descendants gradually intermarried with the natives and their descendants became the Cherokee, the Incas, the Mayan and other civilized American Indian tribes, and they also intermarried with the Jews becoming one of the so called lost tribes of the Jews and the Pharsi of Iran and India as well. Although intermarriage between our species is difficult, it is possible,
the descendants of such a union can marry either a human or a Sirian equally well. Most of the progressives intermarried and many of their descendants most if fact have no idea that they are part alien. The alien DNA is detectable if you know what to look for and we can tell if we are dealing with a half breed. Many of our agents are half breeds.
The progressives actually believed that we should all take native wives and inter marry and form a new race. Most of the progressives alive today are only half Sirian. The progressives once they took that step lost their immortality. The pure bloods did not and have kept the aging technology alive. If you are your wife join us, you will both be given the treatment. All of the fascists are pure blood.
None of the Cherokees knew that they were actually descended from aliens from Sirius and native people, although the Cherokee and Hopi have legends that their ancestors came from the Stars. Thus in a way you are part Sirian as we know your mother is half Cherokee. We actually tested your DNA and yes, you have traces of Sirian DNA in you.
The question of what to do about humans became the key issue dividing us then and now. The so-called fascists to use modern terminology
thought that you earth people were hopelessly backwards, superstitious and barely capable of intelligence. We felt that we should kill most of you off, then enslave the rest. That is still our plan. Besides, on our home world we rose to power by killing off a rival species that were humanoid looking. Ever since then Sirians have had it in for humanoids and primate species.
The progressives thought that they should work with you, bring you up to civilization and educate you and then have you join us as equals. They also felt guilty about wiping out the humanoids on Sirius and several other planets and wanted to prove that our species and humanoids can live in peace. They had a lot of admiration for your species. Why I could never figure out.
In any event, the damned progressives have never learned a damn thing from our history. The Sirians have conquered 25 planets; in every case, they enslaved the native races who were always inferior species. There is nothing different here. You are a particularly interesting race though – all of your sub-races, and your religious passions. The Sirians are materialist and are atheistic. We do not worship gods. We are the gods of the universe. We are the master race. However, I digress.
Well, as you can imagine, it was very difficult hiding amongst your people for all of these thousands of years. You see Sirians are by nature very long lived, and the life extension technology extends our life even further. The average Sirian lives 10 thousand years and we therefore have a long historical memory. Most of us are now what you would consider early middle age. Since we do not age as humans do, we have to kill ourselves off on paper every 50 to 70 years. That was easy to do in the old days, much more difficult to do nowadays which is one of the reasons why we moving up our time tables. In any event, the constant need to change our identities makes it difficult to keep our conspiracy going.
Until very, recently we were limited by your technology as our space ships and most of our technology had all been destroyed in Atlantis. Only 100 of our race survived, mostly of the Fascist side. We lost track of the progressives who have gone deep underground. We have managed to reproduce and now there are about 10,000 of us scattered around the world, most in senior levels of government and business. And we estimate that there are several thousand pure blood Progressives mostly working in religious or academic institutions and perhaps five million part sirians such
as yourself none of who knows they are a Sirian. There are a few half breeds who are aware of their ancestry though and most are on our side.
Keeping the conspiracy going has been difficult due to our constant need to change identity as we have discussed. Among other difficulties, we are hidden within human bodies that are artificially created skins. Our real appearance is not human at all. We look like birds or reptiles in our real selves. Few humans have ever seen us as we really look. We have the ability to manipulate thoughts and thus few are able to see us as we really look, even when we are out of the suits.
We wear the suits whenever we are around humans as maintaining thought control is very tiresome. HP Lovecraft saw us as we were trying to recruit him. After he saw us and learned the truth, he went mad and wrote his 'Cthulhu' stories about us. We left him alone as we thought his stories, which were close to the truth, were both amusing and would never be taken seriously. Others have seen us on our retreats in the woods and we have been called many names through the years, 'werewolves, vampires, ghouls, ghosts, demons, goblins, trolls, Satan, the devil, witches – you name it we've been called it. Bad for our self-esteem don't yah think? ' but perhaps satanic
does our most credit as we look like little devils. In fact, that is a pet name we call ourselves the Sirian Devils.
The damn progressives get better press and are often seen as 'angels'.
We have tried intermarriage with your race and have found for the most part it does not work, as our two DNA structures are incompatible. Those stories of alien abductions etc. are true for the most part as are stories of UFO's. We have been able to rebuild space ships but they are not interplanetary, as we do not have technological resources to do so since most of our technology had been destroyed and those technicians who knew how to maintain the ships and build them all died in the war anyway. Besides our Sirian leaders back home don't trust us. They want us to stay here and do their bidding whether than return home.
We communicate with each other in Sirian through secure communications now through the internet. The NSA and other government snoops keep picking up strange language chatter on the internet but since we control the spooks they never follow up.
We have been in touch with Mother Planet. Our instructions are to set off Armageddon and destroy human civilization while keeping the planet
habitable after a few years of nuclear winter. The invasion begins after the nuclear war is over, nuclear winter has died down and most people have been killed and your technological infrastructure destroyed. We will wait out the nuclear storms in underground compounds along with our human allies. It will take ten years before the earth recovers enough for us to reemerge.
We are launching WW111 very soon. Once the war has been launched, nuclear winter will ensure and most of the earth will enter an ice age. We will then invade and take over the habitable areas and use slave labor to mine for minerals etc. under the ice. Sirians like cold icy planets as that is like our home planet. Your planet is too hot for our liking anyway. So we needed to terraform or should I say Sirianform? it anyway. "
At that point, the invasion fleets arrive and we rebuild a Sirian civilization on earth. We will then take over and enslave humankind. Those humans who helped us will be given top jobs in the Sirian administration and eventually given full citizenship rights for them and their families. Most people will be killed or enslaved. Think what happened to the Indians? That was a Sirian plot from the beginning.
Most of human history has been the result of Sirian plots. The problem we have is that you humans are so hard to predict, rule, control etc.
And our biggest problem is with intellectuals. Once they know the full story either they go mad, or they try to warn their fellow humans, or they kill themselves. The 10 percent who survive after hearing the true story usually join our movement. Moreover, on course the damn progressives are always watching us, trying to warn human kind of the impending danger. Nevertheless, as you know few will ever believe the truth. If everything you have known is a lie, you usually cannot survive that knowledge and as I said, most humans when exposed to the truth by either side go mad and are useless to our cause.
So your choice today: Join us, resist us and die, or walk away and keep quiet and wake for death.
I stopped him and ask him many follow up questions. I was having a hard time believing this, kept thinking it was some sort of elaborate joke, perhaps an episode on "Pinked" TV. On the other hand, maybe I really was going mad. I did not want to believe him. Finally, I tell them the only way they could prove they were telling the truth was to reveal themselves as they really were.
Agent Spartacus said,
"Very well. Agent Lee is only part human. She is one of the few successful hybrids. She looks human but a blood test would reveal alien DNA. I am pure Syrian and have long opposed the inter-species experiments as being anti-natural and degrading to the Sirian race. I really do not give a rat's ass about you humans. Follow me and you will see. But you do take a risk that you will freak out and become a mad man."
We walk into the back room. Agent Spartacus removes his skintight clothing. Underneath it laid a hideous, repulsive ugly reptile like biped creature minus a tail. Dark red with black strips on both sides. His face looked like a bird's face with sharp beaks, beady red eyes, and a mouth full of sharp teeth. The top of his head had horns on it. He laughs, and said,
"See why most humans believe in a real devil?"
I could see why most people would freak out at the sight. He was just hideous to look at. Must be something in-bred in humans to instantly fear
and loath their real appearance. I am having a hard time coping and want to throw up.
He gets dressed again. I ask him if it was difficult to be enclosed in a human skin costume, as it must be difficult to fit into it. He admits it was difficult. He says that they all live together in various safe houses, where they run around naked when there are no humans around. It is impossible thought to fit their face into a human mask so they employ a holographic projection. Only a few humans have seen them as they really are. He concluded by noting that I should consider it an honor that he has shown me his true self.
Agent Lee had also stripped revealing even more alluringly beautiful women that I had imagined. I was tempted but knowing that she was half-alien and in league with these evil creatures turned my stomach.
I tell agent Spartacus and Agent Lee that I had to think about it and went home. I wrote this all down and sent it off to my best friends and of course my wife. I hope that this does not result in a death sentence for me, but so be it. I have to do the right thing. I have resolved to search out and
join the resistance led by the progressive Syrians. I hope there is still time to derail "Armageddon" but I fear that time is running out.
Jake Lee
E-mail sent by Jake Lee moments before nuclear attack on DC that ushered
in WW111.
Marriage on Edge
By Alexandra Rodrigues
Was it a web we had spun around ourselves?
Had we both put on a show for eight years of marriage? A marriage that was jealously looked upon by outsiders. Is it that human nature resents peaceful relations for any extent of time? All of a sudden the spell of our confidence in each other, our trust in each other through the years, was broken.
We had gotten married eight years ago and from the very day that we had said “Yes” to each other, we both convinced ourselves over and over again that this was exactly what we wanted. It had gone so far that during intimate conversations we had confided in each other that if either one lost the partner, life would be meaningless. My husband had told me, “If anything should happen to you, I would follow.” I myself had become so dependent on him, that on the rare occasions when we were separated, I would get jittery and frightened. As a rule, we spent 24 hours a day together; our jobs as flight attendants for an airline facilitated that. There had hardly been an argument in all those years.
This was the way I, Angela, had started a first chapter to a novel. During the last year I had taken up writing and now was working on my first short story. I just tried to get some ideas, taking some real facts and characters like in this case out of my own marriage. When it came to the point where I was to introduce a plot, I got stuck. I took the initial attempts and left the piece of paper I had taken out of the typewriter on my desk. Never had I dreamt that a plot so fabricated by my imagination would shape my reality. I couldn’t figure out why all of a sudden my husband’s playfulness ceased. Bill was no longer telling me at night, “I’m not sorry I married you.” Politely he tried to cover up for his behavior by pretending to feel sick. “I feel miserable,” he would say and I knew he did, but I also was aware it was not physical pain that was bothering him. The sparkle of joy in his brown eyes was gone. A deep wrinkle had developed over his nose and his movements lost vibrancy. He, who would have been found washing the boat, painting the furniture, or making dinner for us, was now moping around spending his time in front of the TV or flipping listlessly through magazines. Only on flights, when working together, did he chipper up a little.
Always trying to give people a good time, he would forget about what was bothering him and even laugh occasionally. Once off the plane and alone with me again, he would withdraw back into his shell.
To me those were very strenuous weeks. This was a side of him I did not know. I tried several times to make him talk about what was bothering him, but every time he said, “Oh, it’s really nothing.” A coolness had crept into our relationship. When my attempts to ease his foul moods failed, I became stubborn. There was nothing I could think of that would justify his changed behavior. All kinds of motives entered my mind. Had he lost interest in me? Why all of a sudden? I hadn’t changed. Was there another woman? But it was nearly impossible since we were together most of the time. Did he go through a natural depression? But no, if that was the case, he would turn to me, let me help him. We always had managed to pull each other up during occasional letdowns. Every now and then I felt his eyes on me questioningly. I tried to accustom myself to the new situation. I refrained from making an effort to be especially nice or go out of my way to please him. Why? What for? I was not guilty of anything, so why should I make up? I concentrated on writing, but it did not help me much. Before, when I was writing would first think, “Will Bill like it?” And only then, “Will the public like it?” Will I make money? Now my pride forbade me to let him read what I was writing since he obviously had lost interest in me. So my writing did not come along very well during that period.
It is complicated to explain what exactly had changed. We still worked together, ate together, and slept in the same bed. In the beginning I had tried to entice him to make love. He pretended not to feel well or being too tired. So I shrugged my shoulders and let it go. It was obvious that the bond that had made our marriage so special, the understanding each other without words, was gone. The strain was catching up with me. My nervousness escalated and an old thyroid trouble developed anew. I had to go and see a doctor.
Dr. Gordon, who had been recommended to me by a girlfriend, was very nice. Too nice and too good looking. Having been slighted by Bill, I was now longing for recognition and when Dr. Jack Gordon made it clear to me that his liking for me was more than a doctor-patient relationship, I was flattered. My complexes which had developed due to Bill’s coldness dwindled. I was young, only 29. My figure was enticing and my mind hungry for compliments. When Jack Gordon said, “You are beautiful, you have such a flair.” It felt good.
I never gave it a thought that this little flirt might develop into something serious. I was in love with Bill despite what was going on. I had gone along with the flirt to regain a hold of my self-esteem, which Bill was undermining constantly, but that was all. I was hardly interested in Jack Gordon physically. All I was doing was using him to build me up. I went to his office several times when Jack had no consulting hours. We sat on his heavy oak desk. I sunning myself in his attention and compliments. He was probably waiting for me to yield since conversation was not all that he was looking for. Thinking back on it, I know now that I played unfair. Jack wasn’t married. His interest in me seemed genuine and I believe honest. Since I had told him that there was uneasiness in my marriage, he must have gotten the idea that sooner or later I would leave my husband. He was considerate enough to play the “getting to know you game” first.
Bill never asked me where I went or where I was. In the past, we had had known every minute of each other’s whereabouts. What had made him change so much?
It was a Monday in spring. The buds on the roses were beginning to show and the blossoms of our cherry tree already had fallen off. But my thoughts were closed to the beauty. I was just preparing dinner when the telephone rang. I went to answer it. “Hello, this is Jack.” It was the first time he had called me at home. Bill was moping in front of the television. I went into the bedroom where I could talk more freely. Not that I thought Bill would care. “Hi Jack. Nice to hear from you,” I said and I meant it. Maybe a little joking over the phone would give me a lift. But I hadn’t expected what followed. “Angela, darling, what happened yesterday, why didn’t you come, you had an appointment you know?” Darling? He had never called me darling before. “Oh sorry, but yesterday I was still in London, you know in our job…The weather was bad, so we are a day late.” And then Jack said, “I missed you terribly. I have to tell you... Darling, I love you.” His voice had become a whisper at the last sentence. It had been great to listen to his compliments, to have our glances intermingle in something more than casual exchange. But when I listened to his truly passionate outbreak on the phone, here in my own home, with Bill, my sulking yet beloved husband in the living room, the thrill was gone. I didn’t know what to answer, but I had to say something. So I said, “Don’t Jack, please.” Then because everything seemed so silly, the man I loved sat in front of the TV or so I thought and here Jack who only meant something to my pride but not really to me confessed his love. I said,
“Jack please forget about me. I am sorry.” I couldn’t explain any further, but what I meant was I am sorry I played with you, used you, evoked those feelings in you only to pacify my hurt pride.
I never went to see Jack afterwards. Never talked to him again. But I am thankful to him, thankful that he got annoyed and mad. As he said “You are a Sphinx. You made me believe that our feelings are mutual and now all of a sudden you are not interested. All that sweet talk and now you are chicken.” I didn’t blame him. He was right. He had every reason to believe I too had wanted more than just talk. Again I said, “I am sorry.”
Then I heard a click in the receiver and slowly I hung up too.
I sat at the edge of the bed wondering, “Had it been the right thing to do?” I had made it final. When I turned around to look at the clock on my dresser, I saw Bill standing in the room. I could tell he was excited by the twitch in his right eye and by the way he was trying to clear his throat. The grudge he had carried around for months came to the surface. He came closer to me. It must have cost him a lot of effort to make his point. He swallowed a couple of times and then in a raised voice, something very unusual for him, he said, “Now what? Here you had your chance to get out of the web.” I looked at him uncomprehending. I did not understand. “Why do you still go on with the show,” Bill demanded. Without thinking, just to answer something, I asked, “What show? What web?” He came over to me and his hands clamped down on my wrists. All the emotion he had tried so hard to cover up during the past weeks now surfaced: “The show our marriage has been. The broken spell of confidence in each other.” This rather poetical way of putting things was so very unlike Bill. Those were not his words. And then suddenly I remembered, I had used that phrase in one of my stories. I tried to think which one. In that instant it became clear, it was the story I hadn’t finished, the one I had hardly begun. Where was it? Oh yes, I had left it on the table in the study. He must have read it and thought I meant US. All those weeks I had hoped he would tell what was bothering him. But now that I understood the ridicule of it all: I was speechless. But now Bill had made up his mind to talk about it: “Why didn’t you say something? So you were bored. You were lying constantly. It didn’t mean a thing to you from the beginning, but because you’d said ‘yes’, you figured it was best to play the game.” I started crying. I couldn’t help it. It was all so idiotic. How could I reason with him? How could I make him
understand that one had to make up situations, feelings and beliefs when one wants to write? I screamed, “It’s fiction! Fiction, fiction! You understand? Fiction!”
Bill was sensitive, too sensitive as he had proven, and the naked honestly of my outcry made its point. It took us some time to get back to our old ways. And I am sorry to say it was the end of my career as fiction writer. I changed to writing nonfiction. Maybe a small doubt remained in Bill’s mind and I wasn’t going to take any chances.
Letters in Blood ©
a Tom Larkin thriller excerpt
by
Gerald Arthur Winter
Depths of Deceit
At Manley Airport in Kingston, Larkin waved to Mona across the tarmac where she sat in her red Porsche with its top down. Chief Barnes made last-minute security arrangements with Major Theo Witt of the Jamaican Constabulary for Larkin and him to fly to Guantanamo to coordinate their report about Larkin’s niece Dawn’s kidnapping and the sinking of the Marie-Galante in the hurricane. Barnes and Theo seemed satisfied with the arrangements for the small propjet chartered for their flight.
“Walk good, Tom,” Theo said. “A part of me goes with you, Larkin.”
“I’m sorry about Chanteuse, Theo. You understand how I felt about her.”
“The same way I felt about her mother, Carmen, but that’s like trying to lasso the wind.”
The only passengers aboard the eighteen-seat propjet were Barnes and Larkin. From his window seat, Larkin waved to Theo, who returned the gesture then turned to three men with their backs to Larkin. Taking a sip of his coffee in a paper cup, Larkin offered the rest of it to Barnes. The chief nodded and finished it in two gulps.
“The trauma team has done a great job with Dawn,” Barnes said. “She’s a tough kid but, as you’ve admitted, she’ll be better off apart from you and staying with your sister and her family.”
“Yeah. I need to put all of this behind me for a while,” Larkin agreed.
Barnes grimaced. “Damn! This coffee’s raising hell with my stomach.” He handed Larkin the empty paper cup. “Feels like it’s going right through me. I’ve got to use the john in back.”
He walked to the toilet in the rear of the propjet and flipped on the “OCCUPIED” sign as the door locked behind him.
Larkin felt uneasy as the plane taxied and turned to take off. Heading slowly towards the runway, he saw the faces of the three men with Theo. He thought, for a moment, they were the Mexican hit men from his nightmares. But when a luggage trolley passed between them, blocking his view for a moment, he then saw Theo standing alone and still waving to him. He shrugged it off as nerves, but sniffed the dregs left in the paper coffee cup as the plane took off.
He shook his head and laughed for feeling so suspicious then soon dozed off . . .
Larkin awoke when the flight attendant called to him from the food and beverage station several rows behind him. Staring out the window, he asked for a beer, feeling he deserved it after saving Dawn and ending the threat Chanteuse had posed. He took out his wallet to tip the flight attendant. The cracked photo of Chanteuse in a bikini, which he’d taken from the Rabelle mansion on their first encounter, fluttered from his wallet into his lap. He unfolded the photo and stared at her haunting face. Visions of Chanteuse passed through his mind recalling her yacht, the Marie-Galante, shattering in the waves and sinking to the bottom of the Cayman Trench.
Then he remember Captain Hurley’s words: “The mini-sub is fine in open sea, even in the worst stormy weather.”
He thought about the radar operator’s sighting of a reef or fifty-foot debris under the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Flamboyance. Breaking into a sudden sweat, he began to peel off the back of Chanteuse’s photo and saw the words le roi le veut in one corner—the king wills it. He took out his cigarette lighter and lit the corner of the last letter of mark—sealed behind her photo all the time he’d had it, but didn’t know. He watched her face distort as it burned, a vision of her multiple personalities crumbling in flames.
He looked out the window and realized when he saw the Cayman Islands below that they must be flying off course.
The attendant’s hand touched the back of Larkin’s seat, and she said, “Sorry, no smoking—Thomas.”
“Old habits die hard,” he admitted, turning slowly to see Chanteuse dressed as a flight attendant. One eye was still puffy where he’d punched her, believing she was Maman-chere, the spectre of her dead mother. She wore a parachute pack and aimed a pistol at him. Her other hand was just a metal hook, which she used to snag his collar.
“The Marie-Galante was a disposable shell on the deck of a mini-sub,” he said. “A brilliant plan, Chanteuse, I must admit.”
“You’re clever enough to figure that out, so you must know what I want,” she said.
“This is all that’s left of your damned inheritance.” He blew the ashes from his food tray into her face.
Chanteuse kept the gun aimed at him as she opened the side hatch. “Come with me, Thomas. There’s only one parachute to share. It’s not too late for us.”
He felt himself moving towards her. Her sweet essence flared in his nostrils, and her long, corn-rowed hair draped over both their shoulders as he put his arms around her. She fell back, pulling him with her and free-falling in their passionate embrace. At first, he felt wonderful as they floated down and kissed several times. The soft, slow beat of reggae music in his head gradually increased to a frantic tempo when the chute wouldn’t open, even when he yanked the emergency cord.
Chanteuse grabbed him, pulled him close, and opened the parachute.
Grinning seductively, she said: “Just wanted to excite you, Thomas.”
They floated peacefully again to the calm music in his head. They embraced with a lingering, open-mouthed kiss but, when he opened his eyes, he saw her mother, a cadaverous Maman-chere with a white streak in her dreadlocks. Her horrible, zombie-like face glared at him as she shrieked with hideous laughter exposing her bright gold incisor tooth. She pushed him away letting him fall.
He plunged far with her shrill scream still in his ears. Anticipation of his deadly impact into the Caribbean woke him with a jolt to the sound of Chief Barnes banging the door from inside the john . . .
Larkin sniffed the dregs of the paper coffee cup again and crumpled it. Getting up to see what was wrong, he noticed the plane’s half-open side hatch. As he looked out, he saw the billow of a descending parachute below.
Barnes’s banging and shouting distracted him. He shut the hatch and went to the rear of the plane, where he removed a wedge jammed beneath the lavatory door.
“Try it now, Tim,” Larkin said.
The lever slid sideways and the sign read “UNOCCUPIED.” There was a loud whoosh as the plane tipped forward. When he opened the door, suction from inside pulled him forward until he saw Chief Barnes clinging precariously to the sink with his pants still around his ankles.
The john’s floor had opened like a trapdoor.
Larkin struggled until he pulled Barnes back through the door and jammed the door closed again, which steadied the plane from its awkward descent. Barnes pulled up his pants and removed the wedge to the cockpit door where the co-pilot was banging on the other side.
“Are we OK?” he asked the pilot.
“We’ll be fine. I’ll contact Captain Harddacker to let him know all is well. We should land in Guantanamo in half an hour.”
Larkin went to the window and saw the speck of the white parachute still descending to the turquoise sea. He turned to Barnes, without mentioning the parachute he’d seen. Then said, “Caught with your pants down this time, huh, Chief.”
“Just when we’re finally square over you saving my life in Mexico,” Barnes grumbled.
“Damn it! Now I owe you again.”
“Forget it, Tim. I was the cause. That death plunge was meant for me.”
Barnes noticed Larkin’s distraction and squinted out the window. “Who did this? Did they get away? Do you see anyone down there? I lost my glasses when the floor dropped out from under me.”
Larkin took out his high-powered binoculars he used on stakeouts and looked below. He shook his head. “There’s nothing to see, Tim. Ever since Mexico I’ve been seeing things that aren’t there.”
But Larkin saw the parachute floating on the water and someone swimming. Then a white mini-sub emerged from the turquoise Caribbean and picked up the swimmer. He said nothing to Barnes about what he saw, and just remarked in his usual glib manner, “Nothing a little R and R won’t cure, Tim, Nothing at all . . .”
R and R
Tom Larkin knew of no one he could trust to listen to his story, but all the grim details
still remained clear in his head if the opportunity ever came to confess.
Months after leaving Jamaica, and before he returned to the states, he was riding the brown, shallow current in a twenty-foot motorized canoe. Its engine purred just enough to avoid any natural hazards protruding from the river. It was a three-hour trip eastward on the Rio Napo, headwaters to the Amazon at the eastern base of the Ecuadorian Andes called El Oriente by the natives.
Retired from the DEA after his wife Vera’s murder, he needed some R and R before starting his second career. Chief Barnes had finally sent him the FBI file on Vera’s murder containing all the grim details. He’d put that thick manila envelope in his backpack under the canoe seat. He hadn’t opened it yet, and probably wouldn’t for a few days, not until he’d sucked dry a couple of bottles of Stoli and collapsed in a jungle hammock. Maybe he’d be up to reading those gory accounts by then, but perhaps not. Maybe he should put his old life behind him and start fresh with amnesia concerning his past mistakes.
He felt subliminal reasoning for his coming to El Oriente. It was a vast jungle of receded riverbanks at the height of the drought just days before the rainy season. Any day the river could flood every village within hours. At the depths of his soul lay his reason for coming here at such a time, but his mind hadn’t told him why—not yet.
If there were any emotion attached to this exercise, the only clue his mind conceded was its similarity to a family’s need to camp on the beach where their loved one’s plane had crashed offshore. The people they mourned weren’t there, and hopefully neither were their souls, but going to the site connecting them to the tragedy brought needed comfort to the bereaved by showing respect for the ones lost, simply by attending.
The receded river since the last rainy season, had left levies and stagnant ponds where piranhas bred and anacondas lay in wait for unwary prey. Native children waved to him from the banks as he passed, so he waved back. When he docked his canoe at the Hotel Jaguar, set on a crest fifty feet above the receded riverbed, the hotel manager, el maestro, greeted him.
Larkin had known him from years earlier when he’d worked for the DEA in Guayaquil, Ecuador. With guests rare at this time of year, el maestro was glad to see his old friend again after so many years.
“We need to carry your canoe up to the hotel, Señor Cabal,” he said, calling Larkin by his former undercover name. “We never know at what hour the rains will come, but we can be certain they will be upon us soon.”
“No problem. Let’s do it,” Larkin said, glad to exercise his stiff legs after the three-hour canoe ride.
He put on his backpack, and the two of them carried the canoe across fifty yards of dry, stony riverbed and up the steep fifty stone steps to the hotel. A simple wooden balcony overlooked the river, with a sheltered bar and kitchen behind. Farther back were a half-dozen connected stucco rooms with tin roofs. Not meant for luxury, the Hotel Jaguar was a rustic retreat, a place for an escape from whatever you had left behind.
After climbing the jagged, rocky steps to the hotel, Larkin was exhausted, not just from the long day’s journey downriver in sweltering heat but from months of intense negotiations in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands with Chief Barnes testifying in his behalf. From the start, the Guy Jasparre narcotics case had prematurely ended his career with the DEA, but now it opened the opportunity to begin his venture as a private-eye.
“Give me one hit before I take my siesta,” he told el maestro.
El maestro set a frozen bottle of Stoli on the bar and poured it into a frosted brandy snifter, then he poured the same for himself. They clicked their glasses together and nodded with a toast, “Salúd!”
Larkin winked with a nod for el maestro to hit him again.
He felt sweat trickling down his forehead to his neck, and all the way into his shorts as the icy Stoli started to kick in, flashing memories of his stintin Jamaica like the rush of Dunn’s River Falls—vibrant and titillating.
“To good friends!” he offered.
They turned to the mirror behind the bar, where several genuine shrunken heads hung from beaded chains like dried fruit in a market place. El maestro handed one to Larkin, which he put around his neck with a nod.
Then el maestro leaned across the bar and quietly said, “Your guest arrived yesterday and is sleeping now. Shall I wake her?”
That news came to Larkin’s mind like a surfboard gliding and twisting on a great wave, but the wave was vodka, and the information, though anticipated, came with a jolt that suddenly toppled him into the thunderous surf of his mixed emotions, churning him downward breathlessly.
A third shot was a charm as Larkin swirled the frozen Stoli like syrup lacing the snifter. He winked at el maestro and whispered, “Let her sleep. I need rest, too. But later . . . this is what I need you to do for me . . .”
In his twelve-by-twelve room with a narrow shower stall and a sink, he dropped his backpack on the cement floor and took off his sneakers. He couldn’t remove his damp socks without falling back onto the soft bedding. He pulled the mosquito netting closed around him and drifted into slumber, still sensing the river’s flow winding through his tired limbs like a nest of squirming anacondas.
Birdcalls and a monkey’s screech were counterpoint to his heaving breath. Then a woman’s shriek from the adjoining room interrupted his solace. Not alarmed, he knew the hotel’s pet peccary had snuck up on her in the shower in the adjacent room. With its wet porcine nose parting her buttocks, the peccary had given her its customary welcome with a vigorous snort from behind.
Envying the peccary, Larkin muttered then rolled over on his side into a deep sleep uninterrupted for hours . . .
When he woke then showered, Larkin took the FBI file from his backpack and leafed through the dozen pages. Pausing to reflect, he spread the pages on his bed in an order that posed the most-logical sequence to him. The facts were there for him to see clearly for the first time how his wife Vera’s murder and other events before and after that tragedy, suddenly made other, seemingly unrelated information, stir his imagination. That mix and its obvious conclusion with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight fueled Larkin’s anger as he heard a light rap on the door.
“Señor Cabal!” el maestro called. “I’ll be serving cocktails on the balcony before dinner if you wish to join your companion there in half an hour. She’ll be expecting you.”
“Thank you! Larkin called back to him. “I’ll be there!”
Later, when Larkin came to the balcony overlooking the river and facing west where the bright red sunset silhouetted the Andes, he found her leaning against the railing. Her dark skin shimmered from sunlight reflecting off the river below. Her open-backed gown came to just above her knees, and her spine made a serpentine curve from the base of her long neck to her pelvic perfection.
Her ocher eyes shimmered when she turned to him with a swish of her long, black hair. The auburn highlights of her silky drapes of hair in the last moments of dusk radiated a warmth in her face that Larkin had never seen before.
“Salúd!” she toasted, touching her glass of red Campari against his frosted glass of
Stolichnaya swirling on impact with a high-pitched chime.
He noticed that she’d replaced the clumsy metal hook with a graceful prosthetic hand that served her well.
She stared over the brim of her glass and remarked, “Your reputation had preceded you in Jamaica, Thomas. Yet, despite our differences, you’ve always treated me with utmost respect—as your equal.”
“You’re a woman of the highest caliber and, according to reports I’ve just read, you still remain, shall we say—unspoiled territory. The chicken blood on my sheets and a prerecorded phone message was meant to make me believe it was you calling me. But you were still in bed with me at the time pretending to be your mother.”
“I don’t understand what that’s supposed to mean,” she said, wide-eyed and playing innocent as if she were unaware of her many masquerades and deceptions. “I suppose with
us on opposing sides that our passion for each other would never make sense to anyone but us. But if our mutual attraction hadn’t prevail, neither I nor you would have bothered to travel this far. We’ve each kept our promise to come to this godforsaken jungle just as we had agreed in Jamaica. Though our mutual feelings may remain the same, our positions remain as adversaries. After retiring with honor, you’re free to do as you please—hail the conquering hero!” she said sarcastically with a wave of her arm. “But I’ve been reduced to an international fugitive with a price for my head if anyone learns that I’ve survived.”
Feeling her desperation, he gave her a look of concern assuring her, “You can be certain your secret is safe with me, Chanteuse. You’ve played a hard game and lost. So have I, but I wish you no harm.”
“To the victor belongs the spoils, Thomas,” she sighed. “But what possible attraction could you feel towards me, now?”
He took a deep breath. “Maybe I just need to know what goes on behind your incredible eyes—”
“Incredible or unbelievable, Thomas?” she asked with a squint.
“Both. Maybe that’s been the attraction all along. We can’t say, ‘We’ll always have Paris,’ but we’ll always have the Cayman Trench. Won’t we?”
“Paris might be the only place left where we could share a life together,” she said, staring pensively into space. “I spent my four college years at the Sorbonne. Do you want to live in Paris with me, Thomas?”
“I want to know what makes you tick.” He grimaced. “That’s a mystery I need to solve.”
She pursed her lips and squinted at him. “As is often the case with men; when the mystique is lost, so is his interest. I won’t become your victory’s booty, Thomas.”
He couldn’t help being glib, but at least with a dimpled grin to deflate her swelling anxiety with: “You, Chanteuse, are the quintessential diva of the booty call.”
But as if she hadn’t heard a word, she pointed downriver and remarked, “A few years ago, five oil-prospecting engineers were killed ten miles downriver from here. Their prospecting was illegal, but they had paid off the right Ecuadorian officials.”
He listened attentively as she spoke.
“Six months after they had declared those engineers officially missing, a search party found their video camera, which showed them trading with an Auca tribe. That’s the last anyone has seen them, but DNA tests on one shrunken head retrieved from the Aucas’ village by the oil company determined the fate of at least one of them. The Aucas had killed him then shrunk his head as a trophy. The manager here at Hotel Jaguar told me that story when I arrived this morning. I suppose that’s supposed to excite and frighten his guests.”
With a nod, Larkin stared off at the meandering river and remarked, “Just ten miles downriver from here, so they say. Hard to believe we’re sipping cocktails just an hour away by canoe from such terror.”
As they reflected about el maestro’s story, they turned to look at each other, but a brilliant blue butterfly with lemon yellow polka dots suddenly appeared on Larkin’s shoulder.
“Perhaps an hour,” she said, “but only in the dry season because—.” She halted, seeing the butterfly. “Don’t move!”
She cupped her hands around it gently to observe its beauty without touching it.
“Perhaps you think of me as this beautiful butterfly, only to satisfy your eyes and not your burning passion to possess it.”
“Ow!” Larkin flinched with pain and slapped his shoulder.
“Thomas! You’ve killed it!” she shrieked.
“Killed what?” He winced. “Something stung me.” He pulled up his short sleeve and revealed a red welt on his shoulder.
The manager came hurriedly onto the balcony. “What’s the trouble?”
Larkin showed him the swelling.
“It was only a harmless butterfly,” Chanteuse said, wrinkling her nose.
Larkin fell to his knees.
“Where is this butterfly?” the manager asked with concern.
When she pointed to the crumpled blue wings on the floor, el maestro lifted Larkin to his feet and hoisted him over his shoulder with a groan, then carried him to his bed. Closing the mosquito netting, he turned to Chanteuse waiting nervously in the open doorway.
“You have little time,” he warned her.
“Time for what?” she asked with agitation.
He waved her towards the bar, where she saw various reptiles, insects, and dangerous flora preserved in jars. “Mariposa Apasionada,” he said with authority. “Most rare, and its sting usually fatal.”
“Is there no antidote for this passion butterfly?” she asked.
“Yes, but it is almost the rainy season. You are my only female guest. There’s just my wife, my twelve-year-old daughter, and . . . you. Only you can save him.”
“Tell me how?” she pleaded.
“Within an hour, the victim must--forgive my crude expression, Señorita, but he must—you both must—together. You cannot deceive nature. Legend has it that back to the days of the conquistadors, men who tried to save themselves, alone, still died—and most horribly. Only your perfect union can neutralize its venom. Timing and chemistry must be precise, otherwise, he will surely die before daybreak.”
“But look at him. He’s nearly unconscious,” she stammered.
“Only his mind,” el maestro nodded knowingly, pulling the mosquito netting aside for her to look. “See how the venom has begun its evil fate for him. If it is true that a man’s—you know—has no conscience, then perhaps it has no memory as well. There’s little time. Will you save him?”
She nodded.
“Then you must act quickly,” he implored.
“Go, now!” she said, pushing el maestro to the door then latching the chain behind her and whispering, “Thomas, I will do my very best to save you.”
Larkin shuddered when her warm, supple loins strode his naked flanks. Then he mumbled in delirium, “Wha—what’re you doing?”
“Sparing your life, my darling Thomas,” she said, surprised by his ardent, physical response . . .
Later that same night, the season’s first rain rumbled on the metal roof and deafened Chanteuse so that she couldn’t hear el maestro’s boisterous laughter from the kitchen. He was telling his wife about Larkin’s charade, so she could share his amusement as they counted the wad of money Larkin had paid him to stage their performance.
Regardless, their torrents of passion flowed beneath the mosquito netting for several hours as Larkin watched her silhouette gyrating tirelessly against the strobe light effect of flashing lightning. She used her tireless prosthetic hand to grasp the beam above her for leverage. Clutching that beam, she rode him like a bucking bronco until her arm went numb and they collapsed embraced moistly in deep slumber. Convinced that she’d saved Larkin’s life, Chanteuse’s lips curled in a satisfied smile.
Well-pleased with his deception, Larkin’s mind flat-lined into a void of complete guiltless
Disconnection . .
Kiss of Death
By morning the river raged and rose to the hotel’s balcony. Abruptly awakened to take the motorized canoe upstream against the roaring current to safety, Larkin and Chanteuse scrambled to dress and pack the few necessities they’d brought to El Oriente. Larkin jumped into the canoe first. His backpack felt cumbersome as he extended his hand to her. He briefly flinched at the touch of her prosthetic hand, but it was an improvement over that cold metal hook. Her luggage between her legs served as ballast in the center of the canoe while Larkin sat in back and controlled the powerful outboard motor at the stern.
As they roared against the driving current upstream, she turned to him to avoid the driving rain that made her mascara and eye shadow streak down her face, reminding him of her past charades.
“One of those oil company engineers was my DEA partner, Billy McCann!” he shouted above the engine’s roar and the hiss of driving rain. “Billy was undercover, trying to stop drug smuggling into the United States on oil carriers. One of his informants led him here.”
Chanteuse turned her head away from him and into the gale of rain stinging her face, as if she didn’t want to hear what he had to say.
”It was a trap for Billy, with two of the other four men backed by an unknown source who’d been arranging the cocaine transports in barrels of crude oil.
“The two legitimate engineers suffered simple executions by the other two, but the two decoys who killed them tapped into Billy’s good nature and youthful inclination for adventure by leading him downriver to the head-hunting Aucas. He was only twenty-three. The rest, Chanteuse, you know because you had been his informant. At eighteen, you’d beguiled Billy into believing your every word while dangling your charms to lead him to a horrific end. You even handled the camcorder yourself. That’s why you were never scene in the videos. That’s how you learned everything about me ten years ago from Billy, that if anyone could stop your drug trafficking from Jamaica to the U.S., I was the one. That’s how you got to my wife, Vera. With Vera gone, you kidnapped my niece, Dawn.”
Chanteuse remained silent with her back to him as the rain pelting her stone-face that neither water nor time could ever soften.
“Billy was proud to talk about his best friend, his mentor, and his family, because he thought that as his informant, you were one of us—surely not the enemy.”
Still looking away from him, she shouted above the roar of the river, “I thought your DEA partner had shot himself.”
“You of all people should know the misleading effects from trauma over the death of someone close,” he said with a healing tone as foreign to him as it was to her, but referring to her as much as to himself. “It becomes a jumble, especially if you drink too much, as I often have. Then the pain becomes a mire, dragging you down and choking out all sense and reason, as it must have for you, when you realized you’d killed your own mother.”
She said sullenly, “How could I know he was your friend when I didn’t even know you then? Your friend was a casualty of war. Can’t we put all that behind us, Thomas? There are much more important matters for us to talk about than old friends and family—dead or alive.”
He couldn’t hide the crease that cut between his eyebrows. From the middle of his forehead, across his wrinkled nose to the cleft of his rough chin propping up his pouting bottom lip, his facial roadmap betrayed his rage.
“What the hell else could be so fucking more important than the loss of a partner?” he shouted.
“Really, Thomas, you must stifle that sort of vulgarity from now on,” she said, dismissing his outrage as trivial, then turned to face him. “Although I can’t be certain, yet, it is possible--
after last night—that I could be pregnant with your child. You’ve taken my innocence and you’ve stolen my heart.”
He heard her, but ignored her as his thoughts rose to a higher level. “I caught up on
some reading yesterday, Chanteuse. I saw the FBI reports on a case back home. If I hadn’t stopped Peter Quigley in Jamaica, we could never have had any DNA to connect him to my niece’s kidnapping. Even though he’s dead, he was the only one we could place at the kidnapping crime scene.”
“What else did you expect?” she snapped. “I didn’t kidnap her. It was never my idea.”
“Granted, but you weren’t so careful at the real estate office, Chanteuse.”
“What real estate office? I don’t know what you mean.”
“You killed Vera, but I don’t understand why?”
“Not me, Thomas. Maman-chere killed her.”
He saw she genuinely believed what she was saying. He felt conflicted by seeing someone who was even more screwed up than he was. Chanteuse no longer had clue about who she was or her impulses to inflict terror on anyone who opposed her.
“There’s the not-so-small matter of thirty-nine lives of cadets killed by your bomb at Quantico,” he bluntly stirred her memory.
She gave him a blank stare. “That was Jasparre.”
“Not sure how you did it, but the massacre was a favor to the Triad for providing your marine biologists for your Owen Island research center. You were the missing female cadet,
Chanteuse. All of it was you!”
She remained deaf to his insinuations. “I may no longer have my letters to take what is rightfully mine, but I’ll eventually become impeccably legitimate in all my businesses. That’s something we have to share in our future.” She caressed her belly, “in our child’s future.”
He tried, but couldn’t hold back his anger. “I can’t figure how all this began, Chanteuse, but it has to end badly.”
“No, Thomas. Don’t say that.” She moved towards him with affection, blocking his view upstream. “I’m yours now, only yours—”
Without warning, the canoe hit a large drifting log, and she fell overboard into the raging river. She tried to grab the side of the long canoe, but her prosthetic hand kept slipping off the side until she floated past his outstretched hand.
His instinct was to dive in after her, but something held him back. He tossed her luggage overboard to see if it would catch up to her and serve as a life preserver, but the strong current dragged it down immediately. Knowing his backpack would float, he threw it towards her where she struggled ten yards behind grasping onto a stationary log. The backpack bounced towards her on the crest of the fast current.
When she reached desperately to grab the backpack, she lost her grip on the log. Still clutching the backpack the current pulled her downriver and around the bend, quickly out of sight. Her last word was her shrill scream for help: “Tom!”
He wondered if he’d heard her right, calling out his nickname, which she’d never used before, as if she actually trusted him to save her. Or was it Vera’s voice he’d imagined in her final desperation? Was Vera’s soul trying to remind him what Chanteuse had done to her?
What he’d read yesterday in the FBI report, but could hardly believe. That Chanteuse had decapitated her with a machete then ritualistic had shrunken her head as a charm just as the Aucas had done to Billy years ago.
Chanteuse is a resourceful woman, he thought, so her chances of survival would be better than most, even in this hostile environment. She had that fierce maroon heritage to sustain her, just as in a dream he recalled.
He felt as if he’d just set a pet alligator free by flushing it down the toilet. Though a cold blooded reptile might thrive in the sewer, there was always the long shot that such a resilient creature could also return to bite him in the ass.
“A much better chance than you gave, Vera.” Larkin recalled the lab report he’d read, matching DNA from Chanteuse’s saliva at his home where she’d bitten his shoulder with the DNA at the real-estate office in DC, where she’d thrust her tongue in Vera’s mouth in a parting gesture before brutally killing her. Had Chanteuse actually believed she was Guy Jasparre when she committed these heinous acts of violence, or Maman-chere—anyone but the noble and charming triple threat, Chanteuse?
That was the kiss of death, he thought, but yours, not Vera’s.
He opened his shirt and from around his neck took an object the size and texture of a kiwi berry, but with a scrunched-up face.
“She could be in Auca territory in much less than hour, Billy,” Larkin said to the shrunken head, as he continued upriver against currents of the flood. “Perhaps in just minutes. But who’ll be worse off, Chanteuse or the Aucas? So, much for R and R, Billy—Revenge and Restitution.”
The Thief is Me
By Alexandra H. Rodrigues and Jenny McCain
This is the story that somebody felt. She had sent it to me as I wanted to write a story with her as we had once done in the past.
When I read it I decided it is too beautiful but also too personal for me to muddle with it by adding and changing anything about it. So I declined and did explain the reason.
However, this particular write has stayed with me for quite some time now. Last night, when turning restlessly in bed I decided: I owe it not only the author but also the conveyed thought itself to let it enter the limelight.
So here it is! Let me give it birth by which I allow myself to claim a slight share in it.
The title of the write in question is GRIEF, a reason why the word THIEF appears in my title.
Grief
Pain echoes this lonely path along with me. Silent & guilt ridden, like a parasite leached to my back. She drains my exuberance & spirit with her quick soul-sucking breath. She leaves nothing but a painful clarity in her wake
The clarity lays waste to my innards, flutters in my stomach, consuming, expanding and leaving me sick & breathy with knots
I’m doubled over wishing for something anything to make pain leave when I hear the knock.
As if invited he walks in without asking. A tiger-like grace about him as his eyes survey my domain. His cold calculating eyes finally alight upon me & he kneels down. Cupping my chin with his hand he stares hard into my bloodshot eyes and wills me to obey. Speaking softly he says, “I am Grief, and you will know me well.”
Grief’s dark soulless eyes are deep. Deeper than the darkest corner of the ocean. It is the ocean, it’s everything within & without
And I struggle valiantly in Grief’s steel vice like grip
Still struggling I’m somehow finding the energy and
I am dodging left
Ducking right
Twisting and turning Grief & I are dancing to a long-forgotten song
As the slight strains of a melody, soft sad & sweet reach mine & Grief’s ears… I remember
And I ache inside. Almost lay down my battle armor and concede the fight with Grief’s ever-reaching tenacious fingers & talon-like claws
But something holds me back
This song – I do know it!
And its sprightly tune has me jumping & leaping with joy
Limbs remembering long forgotten dance moves
I jump and dance my way out of Grief’s grasp–
Remembering the one who sang this song to me nightly to comfort and soothe my weary head
I’m empowered, emboldened I blaze a path far from Grief’s prickly fingers
Dancing, singing & remembering a time before Grief’s & Pain’s unwanted arrival
Happy memories invoked by the power of song
Cause Grief’s tightly wound grip to loosen
His tethers fly off me
And for this moment in time I’m free of him
Did it touch you? Do you agree that it would have been insulting to this writing to forget it and possibly let it rot away in a drawer of a basement cabinet? I am satisfied. I gave “Grief” life and the opportunity to make its way in a world that is dominated by myriads of taste, likes and dislikes. You are free to judge!
In Memory of Keum Suk Lee
December 14, 2002
The Black Chemise
by
Gerald Arthur Winter
She had seen the dress in a custom tailor shop on Boulevard the week before. The dress was in the store’s window and worn by a mannequin with its arms and legs cut off at the elbows and knees where it was displayed like Venus de Milo on a pedestal.
“Is it a shift,” I asked as we stood outside the dress shop. I’d heard my mother use that term for my girlfriend’s prom dress back in high school. It was strapless with translucent lace across the bust and at the hem a few inches above the knees. All black, it was alluring but simple, and meant to draw attention to the curves and swells of the woman who would shape it.
“It says chemise on the sign,” she said as we huddled that cold December, and almost dark before five o’clock. Multi-colored lights flashed around the window—the holiday season in full array.
A handwritten sign, more like a note, was pinned to the waistline and written in both English and Korean. I understood only the English but Para understood both. She was neither fluent nor literate in her second language after a decade of living in America. However, our intimacy in nose-to-nose conversations for hours for the past year had vastly improved her uptake outside her sheltered Korean society within America. Since leaving Seoul, she had come here by way of California then had lived in Flushing, New York for a year. After that, she had found a basement apartment in Palisades Park, New Jersey where most store front signs were in Hangul characters and English. We had been sharing her apartment for almost two years.
“There’s no price on it,” I said with my words emitting vapor in the frigid air.
“The sign in Korean says, ‘price negotiable according to tailoring.’ I want to go inside,” Para said.
I couldn’t imagine trying to learn a language that could say so much with so few written strokes. She’d told me that Hangul doesn’t express words but rather ideas and emotions. I imagined they were much like Para’s facial expressions, subtly concise. I’d once asked her if she was angry with me for doubting her love. I’d made a jealous gesture over her friendships with other men when we’d first dated. She’d continued those friendships after we’d expressed our love for each other and I’d objected. Her face had revealed no expression at my request that she cut off those men from ever calling her again, but her silence had made me think she was angry.
“Are you angry because I’m jealous?” I’d asked.
“I could never be angry with you,” she’d said, easing my concern, but only for a moment.
“But I am disappointed.”
In a second I’d realized I’d prefer her to be angry with me. Disappointing Para because of my behavior felt like a knife through my heart. I’d vowed never to disappoint her again and always to trust her and our love for each other as the truest truth we would ever know.
“Love is not possessing,” she had said. “True love is letting go.”
“You say that,” I’d said in jest, “but wouldn’t you be angry and jealous if you learned that I had made love to another woman?”
“If you did it only to hurt me, yes,” she’d said. “But if you needed to, I would never object or love you any less. Men are weak when it comes to this. I won’t lose you by trying to change the tides of a thousand seas. As I shall endure, so will our love.”
I’d felt a hollowness in my heart, telling her, “But you must expect the same from me. I couldn’t endure your unfaithfulness. I’d be angry.”
“Men are selfish,” she’d said with a shrug. “I have no control over how you would feel, but I do over how I would react to how you feel. Consider yourself already forgiven. Our love is forever. Foolish things we may say or do during our journey have nothing to do with our love or who we really are. Not if we won’t let them. I won’t let foolishness change our true course.”
“Me neither,” I’d vowed, but wondered if I’d have the strength to keep that promise.
* * *
Inside the dress shop, Para bargained with the elderly Korean woman about the black dress. She measured Para and jotted some notes in Hangul and took the dress on the mannequin from the window and marked it with chalk according to her notes. Para smiled broadly at me, her perfect teeth like brilliant pearls. She prided herself for never having had a cavity at age forty.
She said she owed it to tofu, brown rice, and kimchi. She hadn’t tasted cheese until age thirty when she had arrived in L.A. and studied nursing and worked at a hospital in Korea Town. She’d followed a boyfriend to the East Coast and had settled in northern Jersey. She hadn’t spoken much about her former boyfriend, only occasional references to “Joe.”
Occasionally her cell would ring and she’d say hello in Korean and head towards the bathroom in our apartment. When I’d start to say something, she’d put her index finger to her lips and shake her head. Seeing the quandary in my expression, she’d cover her cell and whisper, “It’s only Joe.”
She’d close the bathroom door behind her and turn on the fan. All I could hear was her muffled tone in Korean through the door. When she’d come out of the bathroom twenty minutes later to see my look of frustration, she’d nestle beside me on the sofa and say she was sorry, that it was only Joe, no reason to be upset. Joe had been her friend for twenty years. They’d met in Korea when he had worked there and he had convinced her to come to America where she would find a better life. She loved America, but her soul would always be Korean. We’d been together for a year when I asked her to marry me. She said she didn’t want to be married, that she wanted to be a free spirit, that marriage often spoiled true love. When she saw my pain, she embraced me and told me her family story in Korea when she was known by her birth name—Keum Suk . . .
Yoju, Korea
When Keum Suk heard her father’s harsh tone to her mother, Sun, she covered her ears and curled her knees to her chest as she lay on the thin floor mat she called her bed. For months Keum watched her mother’s decline with her father’s lengthy absences and stormy returns. Sun sought comfort in her daughter’s arms. Keum embraced her mother as they both shuddered and wept. Alone in the dark, they rocked and Sun sang to her, caressing Keum’s head and wiping her tears till morning.
Keum’s father, Kim Jae Lee, farmed his fertile land in Yoju southeast of Seoul. The eldest son of a middleclass family, Kim had inherited fifty acres when his mother died in 1952.
Keum’s grandmother was a strong woman, but the hardships of war and the separation from her two sisters in North Korea had aged her quickly.
Though Keum’s grandmother did not live to see peace come in 1953, Sun told Keum,
“Your father’s mother was too attached to her sisters in the north to appreciate her son’s hard work here on the farm. Her heart was no longer in this world, but she is at peace in Buddha’s garden, so don’t fret for your grandmother. If you wish to be happy in your life, you must find peace from within yourself. Joy and love come from within, not from this harsh world.”
As an adolescent, Keum thought long about what her mother had said. She sensed no bitterness in her mother’s words, but rather resolution. Keum did not understand the conflict between her parents until a woman ten years younger than her mother came to their farm house with a boy at her side, both carrying luggage. Keum watched curiously from the chicken coopwhere she gathered that morning’s eggs. Keum knew this young woman came from the city by her dress and manners—polite but curt. The boy had no manners and grimaced at the rural surroundings with his nose scrunched in offense to the farm’s stench of dung. Keum picked a bouquet of wild flowers and draped them in her egg basket as she brought them to the house as a peace offering to her mother’s guest who gradually revealed her belligerence. Though Sun remained cordial, Keum noticed her mother’s hands shook with the high pitch of the intruder’s grating tone.
“My son must have his own room,” the young woman demanded. “You must share with your daughter – I will share the main bedroom with Kim . . .” She paused as Keum shyly presented the wildflowers to her.
The young woman looked down into Keum’s wondering eyes and took the flowers.
“Your daughter has a good heart. Kamsamnida.” She thanked Keum with a brush of her hand under Keum’s chin. Keum liked the unfamiliar floral scent of the woman’s hand, so different from her mother’s aroma of rice and dumplings and the tang of kimchi, offensive to those who didn’t eat the spicy pickled cabbage every day.
Sun pulled Keum away from the woman and hugged her close to her bosom. Her bottom lip quivered as she spoke. “I can only hope Kim will tire of you . . . but it is not for me to interfere with his desires. I expect some help inside the house, but I know you are unaccustomed to the labors of a farm. My daughter and I can manage, but your son can be of use—Kim would want him to learn how to farm the land.”
“Perhaps you are right, but Kim will direct Yung, not I, and certainly not you. He is our son, not yours,” the younger woman said with disrespect.
“Then bring in your luggage. I have already moved in with Keum. There is fresh fruit if you like, but Keum and I must finish our duties before dark. My hus—,” she caught herself.
“Kim will be back from the market in two hours. We’ll prepare the rice and kimchi? He will be hungry.”
She nodded and directed Yung to bring in their luggage. As Keum passed him to complete her chores in the field, Yung stuck out his foot and tripped her. She fell scuffing her knees and elbows to protect the basket of eggs in her hands. Only one broke, and Sun whispered that it was all right, but Keum glared at the smirking Yung. When he glared back, she experienced fear for the first time. This young woman and her son toppled Keum’s world, but when her mother shuddered beside her in bed that night to the sound of her father’s panting
and the young woman’s shrieks from the next room, Keum’s outlook had changed forever . . .
* * *
In Palisades Park, the old Korean woman at the dress shop told Para that she wanted ninety-five dollars for the black chemise, including the tailoring and accessories, which included a small, lacquered black purse with a thin shoulder strap.
“How much?” I asked Para as we came a week later to pick up the dress.
As I took a crisp new Franklin from my wallet, Para grasped my forearm. After a lively exchange between the shopkeeper and Para, the old woman nodded with a crooked grin. Para leafed through my wallet with nimble fingers taking four twenties and handing them to the shopkeeper. We bowed to one another with expressions of thanks in both languages, and I carried the box containing the dress and the purse under one arm as Para clung to the other. The I sidewalk on Boulevard was hazardous with patches of ice from a snowstorm earlier that week.
Mounds of snow still lined the street where parking spots had been carved out with shovels. Our breaths blew back in our faces with crystalized vapor that stung our faces. As we walked back towards our apartment against the wind, we heard Christmas carols from the shops along the way. We stopped to the chime of a skinny old Korean man dressed as Santa Claus and slumped beside a cardboard chimney for Salvation Army donations.
I thought I was generous reaching for my last twenty-dollar bill to put into the chimney, but Para’s gloved hand grabbed me by the wrist as she nodded to the Franklin I’d intended to give the old woman for Para’s black chemise. With a sigh I dropped the c-note into the chimney, and said to Para,
“I thought you’d agreed to pay her ninety-five dollars for the dress.”
“She’d be insulted if I didn’t bargain for a better price,” Para said. “If I’d let you give her that hundred dollar bill, it would have been an insult to you. We settled on seventy-five. The rest was a tip for her kindness and skill. I also told her that you were a bestselling American writer so she should be flattered that you saw her dress in the window and came into her shop to buy it for me.”
“Selling? Maybe. But Best? Only because you love me. The old woman seemed pleased.”
“Of course,” Para said with a chortle. “She would have settled for sixty dollars.”
We laughed squeezing each other in our overcoats with our scarves wrapped around our necks. She saw from my expression how much I wanted to kiss her, but she squinted one eye to remind me that public demonstrations of affection, even between husbands and wives, was unacceptable in Korean society. For all intent and purposes, Palisades Park was Seoul, Korea. What Para held back from me on the street was more than made up for as we thawed out in our apartment drinking hot green tea with honey. Our table Christmas tree was lit and the smell of blue spruce permeated the room as we played Christmas carols on CDs and cuddled beneath the silk sheets in our king-size bed. Our red noses were still cold as we kissed, making us laugh. Hours later we were hungry and Para prepared a special doku soup with shrimp and tofu and dumplings which made our stomachs growl. After the soup we returned to bed with her cheek resting on my chest and her long black hair draped down to my thighs. I felt as if we’d become one person, that life could never be better than that moment.
We dozed off for an hour, then when we woke, Para kneeled on the bed and looked towards the black chemise hanging from the door and her shiny black purse with its thin leather strap over the hook. A pair of designer black heels stood at the base of the door. All that was missing from that image was Para. She cocked her head back and forth as if taking measure of the dress.
She spoke my thoughts: “I’ll wear it tomorrow when you take me to Radio City for the Christmas Show and The Rainbow Room for dinner and dancing till Midnight. It will be the best Christmas ever. I’ll feel like Cinderella. I’m afraid the black chemise will turn to rags at the stroke of midnight and the best day of our life together will be lost. I don’t ever want to lose that day. I want to wear the black chemise forever. I want you to always see me that way . . . promise that’s how you’ll always see me.”
“Of course,” I said, pulling her close. “I’ll love you forever.”
* * *
We enjoyed the Christmas Show at Radio City and we walked around the skating rink at Rockefeller Plaza to take in the beauty of the enormous Christmas tree with the sounds and scents of Manhattan turning our special day into a winter wonderland to remember forever.
In The Rainbow Room, Para was glad to remove her overcoat so she could display her black chemise on the dance floor. We ate and danced from eight to eleven that night, then she whispered as we danced cheek-to-cheek, “We have to make it home by midnight.”
I started to object, but when she pulled away I saw her earnest expression.
“Hurry,” she said as we turned off Boulevard onto our side street. It was 11:55 p.m.
“We’ve had a bottle of wine,” I said, patting her knee beside me in the car. “I don’t want to celebrate Christmas with a DUI. I have to be able to drive you to the doctor tomorrow for your checkup.”
“Quick! Into the apartment,” she said as I parked. She didn’t wait for me to open the car door for her.
“Take it easy,” I cautioned her. “Especially in those heels. The sidewalk is icy.”
She kicked off her heels and scampered down the steps to the apartment and hopped
on the “Welcome” Christmas rug to keep her stocking feet from freezing. She shivered as I unlocked the door then burst into the warm apartment. She’d dropped one high-heeled shoe on the Christmas rug behind her, making me laugh as I picked it up and thought—Cinderella.
She removed her dress and hung it back on the door. She took her cell phone, lipstick and a package of tissues from the purse and hung it on the hook with the dress. It was Christmas Eve and we made love for an hour before she fell asleep in my embrace. Moonlight shone through the bedroom window giving the black chemise a bluish caste where it hung on the back of the bedroom door. I blinked imagining Para in the dress, so full of life that evening. The image of the dress hanging on the door remained in my mind as I drifted into slumber.
* * *
The aroma of an omelet cooking stirred my senses the next morning. My mind had kept the memory of the black chemise on the door, but it quickly faded to my view of the empty hook.
“Choen achime!” I called good morning to Para where she was busily preparing our breakfast and setting the table. I got out of bed and put on my bathrobe then embraced her from behind at the stove. “Where’s the dress?” I asked.
“Turned to rags at the stroke of midnight,” she said, bumping me with her hip. Then she turned and saw my frown. “I put it away for next Christmas.” She laughed like a child. “It will take years, but eventually it will turn to rags. I am Cinderella, really I am.”
Later that afternoon, we sat in the waiting room for our appointment to see her doctor. She wouldn’t consider seeing an American doctor even though Dr. Kim smoked at his desk as he asked her medical questions in Korean. Then he turned to me to say the same in English.
“There could be a problem,” he said.
I turned to Para and saw tears in her eyes.
“I told her about the calcification on her X-ray three months ago, but she’s ignored my recommendation. The results of her mammogram from a week ago show what may be Stage 4 cancer in her right breast. She needs to see an oncologist this afternoon. Here’s the information for your appointment at three o’clock . . . I’m sorry.”
* * *
Memories of Christmas quickly faded. A mastectomy followed by radiation and chemo took up all of spring and most of the summer. Wearing her wig, Para rode her bicycle beside me in Overpeck Park and showed regaining strength from the ordeal. There were autumn leaves in full color on Korean Thanksgiving celebrated in the park with many smoky barbecues stirring our appetites. After that celebration, Para didn’t want to sit around the apartment everyday worrying about her condition, whether it would continue to metastasize or go into remission.
She took a job as a receptionist for a Korean chiropractor within walking distance of our apartment. Getting out on weekdays for six hours brightened her spirits and gave me time to write without watching her every move to be sure she did everything her oncologist said for her to do. Except when she took off her wig at night or changed clothes and her surgery scars showed where her breasts had been, Para seemed perfectly healthy. She hadn’t vomited from nausea in weeks and had been eating normally. Color had returned to her often smiling face.
Before we knew it, December had come again. Though at minimum wage, Para’s meager salary was off the books, so she was preparing envelopes with cash as gifts to her Korean friends for Christmas. She marked each envelope with a friend’s Korean adapted English name so I’d know whom each envelope was for.
“This one’s for Alice,” she’d say. “You know her as Grumpy Girl. This one’s for Yuji, Ugly Girl, and that one’s for Stacey, Boring Girl.”
I laughed at her serious expression as she told me this, which reminded me of her English Study Manual with the sedate Korean woman on the cover, apparently a well-known actress in Seoul. When I’d helped Para practice her conversational English lesson, I’d asked her to give me the English expression to excuse herself to use the bathroom.
With her bright smile, Para said, as if she were at a cocktail party at the White House:
“Pardon me, but I have to take a dump.”
My mouth dropped open. “No way!” I said. “Let me see that.”
Sure enough that was the translation in the manual. Every time I saw that Korean actress’s face on the cover, I couldn’t keep from laughing till my eyes teared. Para would punch my shoulder and say with inflection, “Please excuse me, I want to use the ladies’ room.”
From the pain in my shoulder from her punch, I felt confident that she was surely regaining her strength in remission.
Two weeks before Christmas, Para bought a wind-up Christmas toy of a fluffy stuffed rabbit the size of a teddy bear with dangling ears. Wound up, the rabbit would play "Auld Lang Syne" on a saxophone as it gyrated to the melody. Whenever I wound it and played the song, Para would mimic the rabbit’s gyrations and we’d both laugh joyously. It became our foreplay to making love for the holidays.
The week before Christmas, Para hung the black chemise on the back of our bedroom door with the purse by its strap and the high-heeled black shoes at the base of the door.
“I want you take me dancing again,” she said, nodding to the dress. “This time on New Year’s Eve.”
“Of course,” I said. “When ever you want.”
* * *
The Monday after Christmas we waited in the oncologist office for the results of Para’s scan taken the week before. Usually spirited and often whistling in past visits, the oncologist seemed glum in his silence. Then his five words hit me like the thuds of nails into a coffin: “It’s metastasized into her liver.”
When I translated for Para, she said, “But I feel fine.”
“I’m sorry,” the doctor said, “but it won’t be long before you don’t.”
“What can we do?” I asked with a lump in my throat.
“Enjoy yourselves for as long as you can,” when the pain begins there’s hospice.”
My head jerked back and forth from him to Para as she wept.
“How much time does she have?”
He just shook his head. It was anybody’s guess.
I clutched her prescription for pain as we headed to the car, wondering if I kept from filling it, maybe the pain would never come. I put it off until the next day because she hadn’t complained of any pain and just smiled with watery eyes. We spent the next day in bed just holding each other and staring at the black chemise hanging on the door. She had no appetite and neither did I.
The day before New Year’s Day she stared at me when she woke. Her eyes were glassy and her pupils were dilated.
“I’ll get the prescription filled,” I said. “Should I call for hospice?”
She shook her head. “Don’t be long,” she said with shallow breath.
It took me no longer than twenty minutes to come back to our apartment with the pain-killing drug. The drapes were drawn in our bedroom so it was too dark to see our bed when I first opened the door. As light poured in from the hall, I saw that the black chemise was missing, but the purse and the shoes remained.
“Para,” I called softly to her, but got no response from the bed. I pulled the drapes open just enough to see. My heart fluttered and I was short of breath. I lifted her to sit up and leaned her against my chest. The satin sheets were soiled and dried blood from her nose ran down to her chin.
“Keum Seuk!” I shouted. “Para!”
Para was her Christian name given to her by the nuns when she’d become a Roman Catholic in Seoul at age twenty-seven.
She had told me over the past two years much about her life before we had met. Her disappointment with her father when he’d brought his mistress and their children into her home, and when he had, how her mother had died young of a broken heart. She’d feared her stepbrothers when her mother had passed, but her father had given her enough money to leave the farm and get a college education in Seoul.
In Seoul, she became a kindergarten teacher at the Catholic school where she’d met a young priest named Joe. A virgin in her late twenties, she’d thought of becoming a nun, but Joe had convinced her not to.
“Joe had opened my heart,” she’d told me. “I’d feared men because of my father and my older step-brother, and my two younger half-brothers. Joe was so kind and gentle. We fell in love and I became pregnant. He was going to leave the priesthood to marry me, but I lost the child. I saw it as a sign from God that Joe was meant to be a priest. He is such a good man. I vowed that if he remained a priest that I would never marry. I had kept that promise till I met you. Joe may have opened my heart, but you have stolen my heart forever.”
I heard her voice telling me this again as if she were still alive and we were dancing on New Year’s Eve. Then I noticed that her dresser drawer was open and she’d taken a bound notebook from it and left it spread open on top of the dresser. I kissed her forehead and eased her head back onto the satin pillow. I went to the dresser and read the notebook. She’d printed very concisely, obviously some time ago. There was Father Joe’s address and phone number in upstate New York, and she wrote that he had her last will and testament and her instructions and the funds to pay for her Catholic funeral and cremation.
She’d written:
JOE WILL KNOW WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU CALL HIM. HE KNOWS I LOVE
YOU AND THAT I ALWAYS WILL.
PLEASE BE KIND TO HIM. HE WILL GRIEVE FOR ME AS MUCH AS YOU.
DON’T MOURN FOR ME FOREVER. SPREAD YOUR LOVE. OTHERS WILL NEED IT. I WILL BE WAITING FOR YOU. UNTIL THEN, YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO.
SARANGEEYO YANG HAN WEE,
I LOVE YOU FOREVER.
PARA
XOX
I hung my head and wept. I took a deep breath and slammed the heel of my fist on the top of the dresser. The impact shook the dresser and the floppy-eared rabbit sitting on top of it began to gyrate. I gasped for breath as the maudlin melody of "Auld Lang Syne" on a saxophone poured into our bedroom like smoke from smoldering cinders. My feet felt like lead with each belabored step towards the bed. I lifted Para from the bed into my arms. Her bare feet dangled in the air as we swayed to the music as if it were New Year’s Eve on Times Square and the ball had dropped down declaring Happy New Year.
I would put off calling Father Joe until tomorrow on New Year’s Day, meantime Para and I would continue to dance till dawn, me in black tie, she in the black chemise.
The End
Painting below by Gene McCormick
Friend Request
By
Joshua Britton
Ray sent me a friend request and a message. It said nothing special; he was wondering what I’d been up to all this time. I hadn’t thought of Ray in years and hadn’t seen him in even longer. As children, we lived on the same street. Back then, we didn’t need a better reason to be friends.
If childhood ends with puberty, we were knocking on the door. Matt, Tobin, and I had just lost our best friend after his family moved to the rich side of the city. We were still in mourning when the new kid arrived. This put Ray at a disadvantage from the start. Ray never fared well in comparison to others.
He certainly didn’t make a strong first impression. He was smaller than Matt, Tobin, and me. He spoke with saliva, and he laughed inward, as if it didn’t come natural, he didn’t actually think something was funny, and he was just trying to fit in. He was an odd little runt. And we
couldn’t make sense of his Jacksonville Jaguars clothes. They don’t like the Jaguars even in Jacksonville, so why was a kid in upstate New York telling people he rooted for an expansion team?
Ray’s mom and Sal lived together even though they weren’t married. That was unusual. My parents had recently separated but at least they used to be married. And Ray called him Sal, not Dad. Maybe Sal wasn’t Ray’s real dad. I never learned for sure.
Sal yelled. Nobody had air conditioning so windows were always open during the summer. Tobin lived next door to Ray, and from inside Tobin’s house we could heard Sal screaming at Ray. Sometimes we heard a bang or a crash. After those outbursts, his mother answered the door to tell us Ray couldn’t come out to play. Come September, Ray missed time at school.
We were not destined to be lifelong friends, Ray and I, though for a while I ran into him here and there. He made the news when he was a high school senior. After school one afternoon he and a friend were racing to Burger King. Burger King was at the bottom of a hill down a stretch of road where everyone had gotten a speeding ticket at least once. The road narrowed from four lanes to two, which was good news for Ray because he was winning. But the cars in front were slowing down, and for Ray slowing down meant risking the lead. There wasn’t any oncoming traffic, and, because he couldn’t imagine anything worse than pulling in last to Burger King, he changed lanes to pass the slow pokes. The reason for the slowing, however, was that at the front of the line an elderly woman was about to pull into her driveway. She turned left just as Ray tried to pass. To his credit, Ray was wearing a seatbelt, and he suffered minimal injuries
when he slammed into the driver’s side of the turning car. The woman didn’t make it. Ray was eighteen, and he did some time.
*
In the mornings, Matt, Tobin, Ray, and I would bid our parents farewell until supper and race out of our neighborhood, across the expressway on-ramp, over cars screaming and eighteen-wheelers roaring underneath the bridge, with a quick stop at the gas station to buy pop and slushies, and down the boulevard a ways before finally veering off to the right into a labyrinth of dirt bike trails. The trails were well-worn and mostly easy to navigate, though in one spot, a log had fallen, leaving only a ten-inch gap to thread bike tires through. After all our practice, only occasionally would anyone wipe out.
A mile in any direction we might’ve been run over by a minivan, but the woods felt like wilderness. There were even fish in the creek. I never saw one more than a couple of inches long, but we tried hooking them anyway. Away from the water there were hills that were great fun to bike down, especially after some bigger kids piled up a dirt mound at the bottom where, going full speed, we could get serious air. And in the winter, the four of us simultaneously raced down on sleds. The objective was to create the greatest sledding collision ever. If someone made it to the bottom of the hill unscathed, he would look back at the mess of sleds, snow, and limbs, and feel sorry for himself.
Unless someone’s parent happened to be going for a run through the woods, we went hours without adult contact. Nobody was ever kidnapped. We swore with the best of them, but we never did drugs or smoked cigarettes. Pretty much everyone suffered bloody noses, bruised ribs, and mild concussions, but nobody died.
What we needed Ray for most was two-on-two football. With only three people, we were limited to Murder the Man With the Ball, which was fun, but not authentic enough. Nobody wanted to be paired with Ray, but Matt, Tobin, and I used a steady and tactless rotation to decide who was stuck with him on any given day.
It was hard having Ray as the only option. Matt, Tobin, and I were pretty evenly matched; I can’t say one of us was better than the other two. But Ray couldn’t catch or throw. He could hand off to someone all right, but handing off to him proved more interesting.
“Ok, Ray, you’re going to line up in the backfield to my left. I’ll yell `Hut!’ and you go in motion, cross over to the right. Then it’s `Hut! Hike!’ and I’ll pitch the ball to you. You’re the Jaguars’ running back, all right? What’s his name?” Ray looked at me blankly. “Never mind. Anyway, they’ll be following you so cut back towards me immediately. I’ll block the way and you take it in. Ready?”
We broke the huddle and I held the ball out to where I best guessed the line of scrimmage to be. Matt was in front of me, ready to count to five Mississippi before he could blitz. Ray lined up to my left but in front of the ball – off sides.
Tobin was lined up opposite Ray. “I think you gotta back up,” Tobin said.
Ray took a step back.
“More,” I said.
Ray took another step back.
“Back up like ten feet, man,” I said.
Ray was a deer in headlights so I called “time out” to go over the instructions again. This time I blatantly pointed to the spot I wanted him to stand, and to the route I wanted him to run. He appeared to comprehend so I took my position back at the line.
“Hut!” I yelled. Ray didn’t move. “That’s your cue, dude,” I said. Ray jogged to his right, behind me. “Hut! Hike!”
I lateraled the ball back towards Ray. He held out his arms but the ball hit him in the face.
“Fumble!” Tobin yelled.
A loose ball meant Matt and Tobin didn’t need to wait for five Mississippi before crossing the line. Matt was the first to the ball and bent over to pick it up and take it the distance, but his feet got in the way and he booted it out of reach.
“Jump on it, Ray!” I yelled, breaking after the ball behind Matt and Tobin. Ray was quick and had a beat on it. He lunged but his aim was off and the ball squirted inches away. I put my arms up and took out Tobin. It might’ve been an illegal hit, but we were both laughing before we hit the ground.
With Ray on his belly, Matt tried to jump over him to get to the ball, but Ray rose just as Matt was midflight and tripped him. Matt fell on his face while Ray yelped in pain. Tobin and I got up to catch up with them. Ray army-crawled to the ball and got a hand on it just as Matt arrived. Tobin dove through the air, landed on the two bodies, kneeing them both in the back, and pronounced, “I got it!” Not wanting to be left out of the pile-up, I jumped on top.
When we got the ball back, I made Ray quarterback. I didn’t mind taking handoffs, but it got boring, so I told him to throw it up. He had no aim, but if he got the ball high enough, I
thought I’d have a decent chance of making a play. The first attempt was remarkably successful, which I guess gave us false hope because Ray’s next two throws somehow went backwards. Tobin pointed out that an incomplete backwards pass was the same as a fumble. I decided not to risk Ray throwing backwards again. I took over at quarterback and stuck the ball square in Ray’s gut. It took him a second to secure the ball, long enough for Matt to meet him in the backfield and take his knees out. We had to punt.
I stuck with the conservative game plan each time we had the ball. Occasionally Ray wriggled away and picked up a couple of yards. Then we slapped fives as if we just won the Super Bowl. More often than not, though, either Matt or Tobin barreled into his chest and drilled him into the ground. One time Ray tried an ill-advised leap into the air, as if he could fly over his would-be tacklers. Matt caught him and, with Ray and the ball in his arms, ran the length of the field for a safety. Tobin brought to our attention the “forward progress” rule, which prevented such defensive plays, but I let the safety stand anyway.
This went on for a good half hour in Tobin’s and Ray’s backyards. Ray never complained. He took handoff after handoff, and big hit after big hit. When he didn’t rise right away, I held out my hand to pull him up. He seemed to like that, and he smiled. Then I gave him the hand-off, and he got leveled again. The score was as lopsided as ever, but it sure was hilarious.
Ray was tackled for roughly the thousandth time that afternoon when we heard Sal crash through the backdoor of their house.
“Get off of him!” he yelled, instantly upon us.
When Sal said something, we listened. His tone of voice was familiar, except we were used to hearing it from a distance. Matt, Tobin, and I backed away, eager to avoid a beating.
“I don’t like the way you’re playing!” Sal said.
“It’s ok, it’s ok,” Ray insisted.
“It’s not ok.” Sal glared at us. “You’re just hitting him over and over. Some friends you are!”
He grabbed Ray by the arm and pulled him toward the house. Ray moved his feet as fast as he could to keep from dragging. “Ow,” Ray referred to Sal’s grip on his arm. “Ow ow ow!” he cried.
*
I think Ray is doing okay now. He’s out of jail and was working at one of those instant oil change joints. Before I moved away, I saw him there every three thousand miles. He was happy to see me and spoke fondly of the good old days. He wished we were kids again. He used to ask about Matt and Tobin, but those guys haven’t kept in touch. I never asked him about Sal, though it was never far from the tip of my tongue.
*
While we played football in our backyards, there was more to do in the woods. We built fires but quickly put them out before a grownup could get us in trouble. We waded in the creek and caught crayfish in a bucket. We fished for hours without hooking anything but weeds. After rain, we went down mud slides climaxing into the deepest parts of the creek.
We rode our bikes a lot. Sometimes we took the straightest and most direct path so we could build up the highest speed, but sometimes we went out of our way in search of obstacles, which was slower but more challenging. Either way, we always ended up flying down the big dirt hills, slamming the brakes at the bottom so hard that the back tire spun us around and we finished facing the other direction.
Ray was the least stable on a bike. He was able to build up a good pace on the paved streets in our neighborhood, but he didn’t come close to the same speeds in the woods, where he was convinced the trees, logs, and bends were out to get him. Eventually he built enough courage to go down the big hills, but never before coming to a complete stop at the edge, and then inching forward with his feet on the ground before he couldn’t control it anymore and rolled the rest of the way down, pumping the hand brakes as he went. At the bottom he coasted off to the side, and, before coming back up top to join us, paused to catch his breath and calm his beating heart.
The speed bump at the bottom of the hill turned up randomly one day and instantly added another dimension to our shenanigans. I was already going a healthy speed around the bend before even getting to the top of the decline, and by the bottom I went so fast that the wind in my face almost stung. I hit the bump and leaned back, and the bike and I catapulted high into the air before bouncing back to earth. After that it was a wobbly and mildly terrifying twenty feet before I regained control and avoided the patch of trees that were inconveniently too close. Then we all raced back to the paths to build up speed and do it again.
Tobin was the first to lose control. His aim was off and he went over the speed bump too far to the left, where it was uneven. The bike tipped over midair and crashed to the ground on its
side. Pinned between the bike and the ground, Tobin slid for several feet before flipping the bike off and hopping up.
“Wow!” he exclaimed. The rough dirt had scraped a good bit of skin off of his legs just below the knee and there was already some blood visible even from the top of the hill. “Man, that hurt!” he said, clearly in pain, but relishing it. He got back on his bike, howled briefly as he pedaled back up top where he bypassed my turn in line, sped down the hill and over the bump, picked up some air, and skidded to a stop a few feet in front of a large tree.
“That was your best one yet!” I called down to him.
“All right, killer,” Matt said to Ray. “You’re up.”
Ray stood with Matt and me at the top and peered down the hill towards the bottom, where a little mound of dirt, a mountain to him, stood in his way.
“I don’t know, guys,” he said, with tiny saliva bubbles collecting at the corners of his mouth. “It’s a little scary looking.”
“It’s not scary,” Matt said, rolling his eyes.
“You don’t have to do it,” I said. “But we’ve all done it like twenty times already. It’s easy.”
“You just saw me fall,” Tobin said. “And I’m fine.” Ray glanced warily at Tobin’s bloody leg. “It doesn’t even hurt,” Tobin insisted.
“Just do it,” Matt said. “Or else you’re a baby.”
“It’s fine, man,” I said. “Go for it. It feels really cool.”
Ray looked down the hill again, and then back at us. He sat on his bike and, with his toes still touching the ground, inched forward, as if to the edge of a skyscraper.
“All right!” Matt said. “Now we have a show!”
And Ray pushed off! It was one of his more daring trips down the hill. He didn’t even try to slow down with his feet, and if he was pumping the hand brakes, I couldn’t tell. It was the most confident I’d ever seen him, or would ever see him again. He looked like he was having fun, like he felt good about himself, as if he fit in.
He may not have been pumping the brakes downhill, but once he reached the bottom he slammed them hard. His body’s momentum pushed him forward and he leaned over the handle bars. The front tire wedged and jammed the bike, and inertia sent Ray through the air and crash-landing shoulder first into the ground.
Ray’s screams were heard throughout the woods. Matt, Tobin, and I were down the hill in seconds. Tobin grabbed ahold of Ray’s arm to help him off the ground, but Ray’s shrieks only grew louder.
“I’ll go get help!” Tobin said with an air of responsibility for his neighbor. He tore off on his bike and out of sight. He couldn’t have been gone more than ninety seconds before Matt and I started wondering what was taking so long.
Ray had a broken collar bone, we would later learn. Matt and I did what we could to console him. We told him that Tobin would be back soon with his parents. We told him a doctor would set everything right. We apologized for making him go down the hill. We told him how
brave he’d been, and how good he looked as he approached the bottom. It didn’t matter what we said; the sobs, tears, and mucus kept coming.
Matt couldn’t take it any longer and made up some crap about how Tobin must’ve gotten lost.
“Can you walk?” I asked Ray once Matt had disappeared.
Ray nodded silently and got his feet under him to stand up. I balanced our two bikes on either side of me and, with one hand on each set of handlebars, slowly rolled them up the hill. The pedals banged and scraped against my shins. We walked for ten minutes, Ray’s whimpering and sniffling my only clues to his presence, before we and the bikes emerged from the woods onto the sidewalk along the four lanes.
A familiar car screeched as it pulled to a stop at the side of the road.
“Oh my God, Ray, honey,” Ray’s mother said as she got out of the car and rushed to her son’s side. Ray’s crying had sedated, but he let loose again in his mother’s bosom.
Tobin got out of the car, too, and stood sheepishly by my side. Sal had driven. He popped the trunk and picked up my bike.
“That’s mine,” I said.
He put it back down, glared at me, picked up the other bike, and threw it in the trunk. Ray’s mom helped her son into the back seat of the car and buckled the seatbelt for him.
“See you later, Ray,” I said.
The grown-ups got into the car without saying anything to me. Ray didn’t look up from the back seat. Sal violently glared at us once more before pulling away from the curb, into traffic, and down the road. I still had my bike as Tobin and I began walking home. It was rush hour and the road was loud with speeding cars inches from the sidewalk.
“You all right?” I said to Tobin. He’d been silent since he returned with Ray’s parents. His lips moved but I couldn’t make out any words.
Sal hadn’t said anything but the look he’d given us more than made up for it. I remembered him scolding us once before, and I was sure Tobin was thinking, too: some friends we are.
Gothado
by
Gerald Arthur Winter
The old man stirred from a fretful doze and wrapped the blanket around his shoulders as he sat in his comfy easy chair before his stone-faced fireplace. Only remnant embers crackled in the hearth, and through his bay window a full moon gave a bluish cast to the snow-covered ground. Leafless trees hung their limp branches encased in shimmering ice that weighted them towards the ground. Some broken limbs were scattered across the hard crust of the foot of snow that had fallen between Christmas and the New Year. A stiff north wind blew some of those branches across the crest of that holiday snow, twice thawed and refrozen by mid-February. His aching bones made him hope that the groundhog had been right and this would be the last of winter’s bitter harvest of gray and gloom.
He shifted his weight in the chair and put his slippered feet up onto the hassock. His reading glasses had slipped off his nose onto his fluffy down bathrobe, which he pulled snuggly around his neck to ward off a chill. Beside him on the side table was the book he’d been reading before he’d fallen asleep. The dregs of a fine single malt scotch wafted a peaty aroma towards his flaring nostrils. The grandfather clock in the hall chimed eleven times. After its final chime faded, he thought he heard a rustling coming from behind his easy chair and figured it could be a field mouse seeking warmth from the tundra icescape outside.
Live and let live, he thought. It’s cold enough without having a cold-blooded heart.
Then he felt a tickling sensation at the back of one ear. He turned and stretched in
that direction, but as soon as he did, he felt the same tickling on his other ear.
“What the beejazzuz!” he shouted, but soon heard a high-pitched giggle like a squeaky wheel that needed oil. “Who’s there?” he demanded. “Show yourself.”
“It’s just me, Grampa,” she said, coming from behind the easy chair and standing before him with her teddy bear in one arm. She was wearing the one-piece, green pajamas with the snuggly feet coverings that she had to step into and have her mom zip up before going to bed. They were her Christmas jammies with snowmen and reindeer patterns.
“What are you doing up, Sophie?” he asked. “I promised your mom you’d be fast asleep by nine o’clock. Are you OK? Do you have to go to the bathroom?”
She just shook her head and giggled.
“Then you need to go back to bed,” he said. “C’mon. I’ll tuck you in.”
Sophie just shook her head and said, “Uh-uh.”
“You’re gonna get your grampa in trouble if you don’t, Sophie. You know how your mom can be.”
She nodded repeatedly.
“Let’s go then.”
She shook her head again.
“OK, my lil’ darlin’,” he sighed. “What’s your grampa have to do to make you go back to sleep?”
“Story, Grampa. Tell me a story.”
“I haven’t told stories to little girls since your mom was your age,” he said with a sigh.
“I’ve probably forgotten how.”
She shook her head, not believing such an excuse. “Mom said you used to tell her lots of stories.”
“I suppose I did,” he said scratching his chin. “But I’m sure I’ve forgotten them all.”
“Did your mom tell you stories when you were little?” she asked.
“I was never little, Sophie, I was born just as I am now.”
That absurdity, even to a six-year-old, made her jump up and down and laugh till she nearly fell onto the floor.
“I guess I can’t put one over on a smart little girl like you,” he said, and motioned with both hands for her to come up onto his lap.
She snuggled against his warm chest and cradled her teddy bear as she waited for him to tell her a story.
“I really can’t remember any stories I’d told your mom, and my parents only read me the stories that all kids have heard, like the three little pigs and the big bad wolf, or Goldilocks and the three bears. But when I was five years old, my Great-aunt Georgina used to tell me stories she knew from England when she was a little girl. They weren’t like any stories I’d ever heard before or since. I’d never even thought about any of those stories again till now.”
“Why not, Grampa?”
“Not sure, but I think it’s that cold winter weather out there that just reminded me of one tale she’d told me. It’s not a story about cold winter or snow and ice, but about a forest that had been laid to dismal desolation where nothing would grow anymore because of a curse.”
“What did Aunt Georgina call the story?”
“She called it Gothado.”
“I never heard that name before.”
“And I daresay, you never will again.” He took a deep breath and began his tale just as he remembered his Great-aunt Georgina had told it . . .
He wasn’t a giant by any stretch of the imagination, but to George, his best friend since their chance encounter as young boys in the Gnarly Wood, Gothado, had the biggest heart in all the land.
You wouldn’t think they’d have a thing in common. George had reddish, straight hair down to his shoulders. Only when he bathed would George remove his pointed, brimmed hat donned with a scarlet plume. His belted shirt had sleeves that flowed loosely down to his elbows. His tights defined his well-toned, muscular legs from the hem of his untucked shirt to his boot tops, which extended to just below his knees. He had three leather outfits all told, brown, blue, and green, depending on his mood.
Gothado had once told him he preferred the blue—that it made George look like
royalty.
Both had laughed, rolling on the ground over such an odd notion, because the Gnarly Wood had no royalty, not since the Quadraque had torched the castle. The only remnants of the royal fortress were charred, moss-covered stones—a reminder to those who’d fancied commanding others whose dignity they’d disregarded. The Quadraque was a four-headed, bloodless, reptilian-like quadra-ped that could generate fire from its foul breath whenever it detected any aura of human bliss, expression of glee, or even a notion of goodwill.
Gothado had survived the Quadraque’s torch by his might while George’s diminutive stature had frequently provided opportunities to become unseen. Unlike George’s fine tailoring, Gothado’s attire was crudely stitched and patched where worn through over time by his habitual brawling fueled by alcoholic consumption. Gothado and grog were attached at the lip rather than the hip. His frock, when new, had been corn yellow and his loose pants were maroon. But his attire had become so worn that it was like a rainbow collage of patches with varied textile textures.
“You look like you’re wearing a goblin’s quilt,” George told him.
Gothado rebutted, “My mum said my great-uncle on my father’s side had goblin blood flowing through his veins. It may give me strength unlike yourself who hides in fear of the Quadraque’s monstrous footsteps sending tremors through the Gnarly Wood.”
“What I lack in bulk,” George huffed. “I more than make up for with my resourcefulness.”
“Hmm,” Gothado pondered. “My strong grip had once choked the Quadraque before it could spark its fiery breath.”
“My trickery confused the dragon into believing I was a mere slug rather than a pixie.”
“Haw-haw-haw!” Gothado’s guffawing shook the ground, making Jack fall to his knees.
“That time I’d swallowed a slug, you’d barfed when you saw me do it. Stained your fine blue shirt. Made you look more like a mini-troll than a pixie.”
George blushed recalling his embarrassment, then he broke into his high-pitched shrill of amusement. “Then you puked up the slug when the Quadraque approached. You’d wrestled the fiend to the top of the fiord and tossed it into the sea before it could set you afire.”
“Uh-huh, that I did, George.”
Though they’d had their differences over the years, whatever the rub, they’d soon shrug, laugh at themselves, and shake hands. That was until Gwendolyn fluttered through the Gnarly Wood. The mighty Gothado and the resourceful George had never seen the likes of her before—not in the flesh. Their great-grandparents had spoken of fairies from their youth, creating an imagined fantasy of lithe beauty in their simple minds.
Gwendolyn, however, stretched the bounds of both of their minds and they were bedazzled every time she blinked her almond-shaped, azure eyes and fluttered her diaphanous wings with obvious flirtation.
“You may call me Gwen,” she told the befuddled twosome.
Both blushed and tugged nervously at their shirts for gwen was the common word for passion within the Gnarly Wood.
“I have a secret treasure which I must deliver to the king without the Quadraque’s interception,” she said. “May I depend on your confidence in this dyer matter of epic consequence?”
George nodded, but Gothado was confused by Gwen’s fancy words and fluttering manner, which made him feel dizzy. He turned to George with a blank expression.
“She needs our help to avoid the Quadraque,”George said, then waved him close to whisper in his huge, floppy ear. “She may be lovely, but I think she’s daft. She believes we have a king in the Gnarly Wood.”
“A wha—?” Gothado started to blurt, but George pinched his earlobe making him roar.
George put his index finger to his lips then bowed to Gwen as he removed his feathered cap. “We are at your service Maid Gwendolyn. Where is this treasure that you want us to protect?”
She snickered with a shrill. “I carry the treasure in my heart, but none but the king can see it.”
George and Gothado exchanged glances with expressions of resolve.
George assured her, “We will guarantee your safe passage through the Gnarly Wood, but you must tell us your final destination . . . so where does this king reside?”
She turned to Gothado, ‘Does this little one always speak in your behalf? Have you no words of your own?”
Gothado removed his cap and stuttered as he shuffled his feet and stared at the ground. “George is smarter than I, so whatever he says is OK with me.”
“What if George says the Gnarly Wood has no king?” she asked.
“Then you already know,” George said.
“Let Gothado answer my question,” Gwen said, frowning at George.
Even when she frowned, Gwen was beautiful as only a fairy could be, emitting charms and essences that made pixies, giants, and even goblins and trolls quake in her presence.
“The Witch of the Netherland has told me that you have wrestled with the Quadraque,”
Gwen said to Gothado. “Is this true?”
Shyly, Gothado nodded, shifting his great weight from one foot to the other.
“But the Quadraque still lives,” she said. “Why didn’t you destroy that wretched creature?”
“No one can destroy the Quadraque,” George said. “It’s a bloodless dragon that will live forever.”
“I wrestled it to the far corner of the Gnarly Wood and threw it off the fiords into the frozen sea, but its fiery breath melted the ice and it returned to shore and still roams the Gnarly Wood looking for a rematch.”
“This time you must destroy the Quadraque so the king can return to rule his domain,” she said as if she were reading a prophecy from an ancient scroll.
“That’s a death sentence,” George argued in behalf of his friend.
“I ain’t ascared, George,” Gothado said smiling at Gwen. “If you want me to kill the Quadraque, I’ll give it my best.”
“He’s just saying that because he thinks you’re pretty,” George said. “You’ll get him kilt with your unwise proposal.”
“If you don’t kill the Quadraque, Gothado, we’ll all be dead by the next full moon. The witch has told me so.”
“Maybe it’s just a trick,” George said, “and the Witch of the Netherland wants the
Quadraque dead so she can rule the Gnarly Wood herself, perhaps forever.”
“She’s a distant cousin . . . my great-grandmother was a witch,” Gwen said. “She speaks the truth—fairies always know a lie, even before it’s said.”
“I wanna do it, George,” Gothado said. “Just point me in the direction to the king.”
“Your feet already know the right course,” she said. “Just put one in front of the other and we shall follow.”
George stared down at Gothado’s big feet as if they had minds of their own. He looked at Gothado, but the giant just shrugged. His feet moved forward and he smiled broadly at Gwen and George as i