From the Chateau d'If

Rabies

2010-12-12T06:42:00.000-08:00

Rabies

By

James Strauss

The brothers crouched under their queen-sized bed. They slept together because
they were kids and they’d been in the house only a couple of months. Grandma had ‘passed on,’ as everyone told them, although nobody ever told them where she’d gone.
The house deep in the country was their house now. In time, their father said, they’d get beds of their own and eventually rooms too when their older sister went off to college.
They didn’t like sleeping together although hiding out under the bed was okay.
Their room had the thickest best rug in the house and grandma’s old bed left plenty of space for them to create a real clubhouse underneath.
“Close the window. It’s getting too cold in here and a bat will fly in, or something,” Clark told his six-year-old brother Peter.
“You do it. I’ve got my blanket,” Peter answered, clutching the tattered blue rag to his chest, as if that would keep anything warm.
“This place doesn’t even have screens. Dad’ll have to cut a lot of wood in the mill to buy screens and everything else we need,” Clark complained, making no move to get out from under the bed and close the window himself.
“I like the cold,” Peter stated, as if explaining why he wouldn’t leave to accomplish the simple chore.
Clark sighed. His brother was impossible. At nine, Clark wasn’t more than an inch taller than his brother and certainly not nearly as thick or well muscled. The six year old was a baby version of Andre The Giant and it was disconcerting for an older brother to have to deal with. He smiled, thinking about the difference between the two of them.
Clark was fast and nimble, and smart. His brother was thick and slow of thought. Clark would have laughed but he was afraid his brother might figure out what he was thinking.
Peter wasn’t really slow, Clark knew, but he preferred to think of him that way.
There was a scratching from the wall of the room into which their single window was built. Both boys looked at one another in question.
“What’s that, Clark?” Peter whispered, clutching his blanket closer with both hands, having put the stolen cookie back into its cellophane package with his free hand.
Suddenly, he wasn’t hungry.
Another, deeper series of scratches penetrated the silence following Peter’s question, which Clark had not responded to.
A great thud on the floor was the next sound both boys heard. Something was in the room. Clark and Peter automatically drew together, clutching one another and staring at the side of the bed near where the sound had come from. Neither boy dared to breathe.
Something was in the room with them. The early morning darkness prevented them from seeing far enough to guess what it might be, but it didn’t belong there. That much they knew.
“Santa?” Peter whispered into Clark’s ear. Clark was too afraid to speak or even tell Peter not to speak. The six year old was a child. Clark had been brought into the adult world the season before when his father had taken his aside to tell him that there was no Santa Claus. It was part of Clark’s job to assure that his brother remained the child he was so he couldn’t tell any of what he’d learned to him.
It was Christmas morning. Or it would be if it ever got light. Clark thought intently about Santa and the myth. The scratches had been real, however, and there was definitely something in the room with them. He prayed fervently that his dad had gotten it all wrong, and there really was a living Santa Claus.
They should have closed the window. They should have had screens. They should have stayed in the city where they belonged, not moved to the middle of a forest in wintertime. But if it was Santa, Clark wanted to see him. Slowly prying himself loose from Peter while holding one finger up to his lips, he eased to the overhanging blanket on the window side of the bed. He got no chance to peer out.
A large animal slid under the bed from behind the opposite side. Clark winced in fear as he turned, and then threw both of his arms around his brother and kicked back toward the head of the bed at what he saw.
Both boys stared into huge unblinking eyes of gold. Clark pressed their bodies against the back wall, finding no resistance from Peter. Neither boy made a sound, although tears had begun to run down over the younger boy’s cheeks.
“Don’t move,” Clark said, not knowing what else to say. The animal was a cat.
Not a regular cat, but a huge cat of the forest, at least twice the size of either boy. It was light brown in color, even in the low light. It flicked its tail as it stared at them from only a few feet away. The tail was black at its tip. It flicked slowly back and forth behind the animal, as if a snake’s head waiting to strike. The words ‘mountain lion’ came to Clark’s mind as he stared in terror.
The three of them remained frozen in place for several moments, only the boy’s breathing making any sound at all. The tail moved silently. Finally, the cat blinked, and then yawned.
“Are you tired?” Clark asked the wild beast, tentatively, but only got the ominous golden stare in return.
“You’re scaring us,” Peter said to it, making his older brother shake his head in disgust.
“Of course it’s scaring us. It eats meat. We’re meat.”
“I’m not meat. I’m a boy. He can’t eat me if I’m a boy, can he Clark?” Peter whimpered out, trying to wipe away his tears with his blanket but having no luck.
“I don’t know,” Clark replied, tentatively. “He hasn’t eaten us yet. He would have eaten us already, I think, if he was going to.” He let his brother go and reached for the cookie package. The cat’s great head turned minutely to track his movements.
Clark took out an Oreo, put the package down, and then extended his hand out toward the creature’s muzzle. The cat looked at the cookie, then back at the boy, and then the cookie again. Clark dropped it in front of him.
The cat sniffed the cookie. With one whip of a long pink tongue, the cat swept the cookie into his mouth, moved his jaw around and then returned his head to its staring position.
“Cat’s like this shouldn’t eat cookies,” Clark murmured in wonder. “They don’t have any sense of taste for sugar. It was on Sponge Bob. I remember it.”
“Sponge Bob isn’t real,” Peter said, his voice weak but without a waver.
“Not true,” Clark instantly said, impatiently, taking another cookie from the Oreo pack. “David Hasselhof is real, only the rest of it’s animated.” He tossed the cookie through the air. The cat quickly opened its mouth and caught the black and white wafer. It was gone in a second.
“This cat’s eaten cookies before. I think he likes them. Like a game,” Clark went on, tossing one cookie after another to the same effect.
“What are we going to do when we run out of cookies?” Peter asked, bringing his blanket up to his mouth and chewing.
“We both asked for a pet from Santa,” Clark replied. “Dad said we could at least have a pet for living way out here. He didn’t say what kind of pet.”
“What pet?” Peter asked, as Clark held up the last cookie.
“Him,” Clark laughed for the first time. I think he was somebody’s pet out here.
We can have him. He has collar.” Clark followed the last cookie, moving slowly closer to the animals chewing muzzle.
“R-A-B-I-E-S,” Clark spelled out, reading from a metal tag attached to the cat’s thick leather collar, and then backing away when the creature’s head turned to focus it’s huge eyes on him again.
“What does that mean?” Peter asked, trying to repeat the letter sequence but not getting it right.
“I don’t know. But he eats cookies, not boys, and he has a collar with a name on it. Rabies must be his name. The cat blinked at the word. Clark repeated it again. The cat put his head down at the boy’s feet.
“See?” Clark said, in triumph, reaching his right hand out to touch the cat’s fur atop its head. Two great ears twitched but the cat did not move. It closed its eyes.
“C’mon Peter, we can pet him. He likes it.” Clark stroked the animal while trying to convince his brother to join him.
“I’m afraid. He’s too big, too furry, and his teeth are sharp. I’m afraid. I want mom and dad,” his brother responded, making no move to leave his place, pressed against the back wall, blanket up to his mouth.
“Great idea. It’s Christmas. We always wake them up early. Let’s go,” Clark moved as he spoke.
The cat slept, snoring mildly. Both boys crept around it, Peter dragging his blanket by it’s left paw. The blanket caught on one of the animal’s sharp claws.
Peter pulled but it wouldn’t come loose. The cat did not move, even though he pulled several times.
“He’s got my blanket Clark,” Peter complained, unwilling to let go.
Clark reached around his brother and shoved backwards on the blanket, pushing it in the direction they’d come. It broke free.
“Gosh, it like’s my blanket too,” Peter said, as they clambered out from under the bed.
Both boys ran as silently as they could to their parent’s bedroom. Opening the door, they eased into the near darkness. Clark bent over his dad, who was sleeping on his back.
“Dad, dad, dad, dad,” he repeated, leaving five seconds between each word. Peter chewed on his blanket at his side. On about the twentieth “dad,” his father opened his eyes. His facial expression was not one of happiness.
“It’s too early. Go back to bed until its light out. We always do Christmas when its light out. He tried to turn over.
“No, dad,” Clark whispered urgently. “Not this year. You said we could have a pet and Santa brought him. You said there’s no Santa but only Santa could have brought a special pet like this,” Clark went on.
Something in the boy’s tone caught his father’s attention. He came fully awake.
“A pet? A special pet? We didn’t get you any pet, much less a special one?
“No Santa Claus?” Peter asked, his blanket coming out of his mouth. “You said, there’s no Santa, Dad?” Peter inquired, his eyes wide with disbelief.
“Oh God,” his father said, sitting up and messaging his head.
“C’mon Dad,” Clark said, pulling on his father right arm.
They slowly moved to the boy’s bedroom, not turning on any lights. Clark lead his dad into the room near the bed.
“What pet?” his father said. “I don’t see any pet.”
“He’s a Christmas present,” Peter said, up to him. “You can’t wrap a pet so Santa
put him under our bed.”
“Well, what is he, this pet?” their dad asked, looking from one to the other.
“He’s a cat, Dad. We call it ‘Rabies,’ from the tag on his collar. But he’s real different and special.”
“And he’s so big,” Peter said, expanding both arms out to his sides with hands up.
“Okay,” their father said, “but when you’re small everything appears really big. I guess a cat, even a different and special cat, will be okay, and this one apparently has his shots.”
“Merry Christmas,” Clark smiled across to his brother. “This is the best Christmas ever.”
“Let’s see what your little friend looks like,” their father said, getting on his hands and knees to peer under the bed.

http://www.jamesstraussauthor.com
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"Checkers"

2010-12-07T21:04:00.002-08:00

“Checkers”

By

James Strauss

The hike was not a real challenge. It would’ve been impossible without his mom’s last gift, the special aluminum snowshoes. Thomas floated across the top of the pure white surface even though his backpack weighed more than half as much as his own ninety pounds. He counted one out loud every forth thrust of the webbed shoe, keeping track on fingers inside both of his mittens. With the day beginning to wane, and his count reaching ten thousand, he flowed between the huge pines, knowing he had covered just a bit more than nine miles. Nine miles of deep snowy pines, leaving the horror of his life behind, all the while knowing that even the large state of Maine wasn’t big enough to hide in. Only the hugeness of Canada could do that. Thomas knew that from his intense study of old geographic maps collected by someone who’d left them at the bottom of the cabin’s firewood box before he and his mom moved in.
In two days Thomas would be twelve, big and strong enough to make a successful escape, but not big or strong enough to confront his fake step-father. The thought of that man made Thomas count louder, until Harold began to protest, raising his meow with each voicing attempt. Although the sound was not his loudest complaint, the cat’s muzzle was squeezed through a crack in the pack’s cover right next to Thomas’s right ear.
“Alright Harry, we’ll call it a day. I’ve got to gather some dry wood from under the trees and you have to sniff everything in sight.” Thomas knew he wouldn’t lose Harold, as the fifteen-pound predator absolutely refused to step on snow. Thomas searched for the biggest pine among the giant evergreens until he found what he was looking for.
It was a great wide branched pyramid of a tree, with extremely wide branches spreading at the bottom. Covered with over a foot of snow from the night before alone it looked to Thomas like a colossal gingerbread cookie with thick frosting. It was not a Christmas tree really because it had no lights or decorations, but it would have to do for both of them. There had been no real Christmas since his mother had died.
Thomas crawled under the lowest of the branches, Harry complaining at the jostling. Once underneath the boy laughed. It was wonderful. He laughed out loud.
“Plenty of old dry branches right here, “ he informed the cat, before gently unstrapping the pack and easing the animal out. Before letting him loose, Thomas messaged the scarred lines of missing fur, six of them in number, one for each time Thomas had run away in the past. Releasing Harold, he then removed the snowshoes, as the cat climbed inside the center of the tree, winding upward around the trunk until the boy could only hear him.
“Don’t stay up there. As soon as I get a fire going you’re going to want dinner. The only mice here are out under the snow and you know how you are,” he yelled quietly with cupped hands. It would not due to have anyone hear, as both of his last two attempts to get away had been thwarted by well-meaning strangers. But this time, Thomas just knew, it would be different. It was why he’d decided to take Harry. They were going to make it together or die together in the wonderfully beautiful forest of Maine. There would never again be a terrible punishment delivered by the man his poor sick mother had thought would take care of Thomas when her disease became final.
Before unpacking any of his supplies Thomas took out the roll of tin foil stored vertically on the side of the big pack. He unwrapped four long sections, approached the trunk of the tree, and then began to work the material up against the bottoms of the lowest branches until he had what he thought resembled a flattened silver umbrella.
Thomas read a lot. A lot. His mother said it was the people of the past teaching the people of the present about how to do things. You didn’t have to learn everything yourself. The ‘Terrible Times Survival in Hell Guide’ had given up all of its information to the boy’s prodigious memory. He gathered and stacked pieces of wood, the smallest at the bottom. His stack eventually resembled a short thick Eiffel Tower, just as the guide said it should. With his Swiss Army Knife blade extended, he opened a small can of Sterno, gouged out a good sized chunk, and then shoved it carefully through the slots at the bottom of his ‘tower.’ Unscrewing the back of his stolen knife handle, now his and not his fake stepfathers, Thomas took out a single waterproof match. He scratched it once, firmly on the haft of the knife. Quickly he pushed the burning sulfur tip into the Sterno. In moments he had a blazing small fire, with its ascending heat drawing the cat back down to his side.
Thomas was nearly exhausted from his long escape. After consuming four cans of Vienna sausages, with Harry assisting, he unfurled a cut piece of old rug, covered himself with a shoplifted space blanket and instantly fell asleep. His last thought, with the cat lying on top of his small chest, that he should have put more wood on the fire.
An inner alarm awakened the boy. It was too warm. He opened his eyes and adrenalin shot through him. Frozen to immobility with fear he could only lay and stare upward. A man sat, legs crossed, only inches away from him, one hand feeding small pieces of wood into the fire, the other stroking Harold’s back.
“You’re awake,” the man said, “that’s good. The snow’s so thick on these trees that carbon monoxide from your fire can be dangerous.”
Thomas stared at the huge man, his eyes unwilling to blink.
“What’s his name?” the man asked, smiling softly at the pleased animal.
“Harry,” Thomas squeaked out, trying to come to a sitting position as far from the man as possible.
“Named after Harry Truman?”
Thomas shook his head, having heard the name in school but not remembering.
“No, after Harry Houdini. Harry can get away from almost anyone or anything.”
“Hmmm,” the big man observed, “seems like he’s had a few close calls.”
“My fake step-father hurt him,” the boy replied, surprised at himself for answering the stranger truthfully. Thomas clutched the unwilling cat back to his own chest, dislodging his shirt and sweater. He quickly pulled the material back into place, noting the man’s eyes having glanced there.
“What’s your name?” the man asked, looking away to stare deeply into the fire.
“Thomas.”
“I suppose that’s after somebody famous too?” The man inquired.
“Thomas Aquinas,” the boy responded.
“Who’s that?” the big man asked, frowning.
“The famous saint!” Thomas said, forcefully. “Haven’t you been to school?”
The man smiled, “that’s quite a fancy moniker.”
“They call me by my nickname at school. Checkers. How’d you find me so quickly?”
The man frowned again. “Find you? I wasn’t looking for you. I’m hunting.” He pointed toward a nearby branch, against which a rifle leaned. A rifle like none Thomas had every seen. It looked more like a machine gun from a television movie than a hunting rifle.
“What are you hunting,” Thomas asked, a glimmer of hope beginning to glow in his chest.
“I don’t know. I’m trying to learn to hunt again. Just can’t seem to do it. So I’m out here trying. Maybe I’ll shoot a Christmas buck,” the big man answered, scratching the top of his totally bald head.
“How can you forget how to hunt? Nobody forgets something like that. That’s just dumb,” the boy shot back.
The man moved his hand to massage his forehead for a long moment, until Harry pawed him for a bit more attention, which surprised Thomas, as the cat did not normally take to any humans but him.
“I was in some places you’ve probably never heard of. I was in something called Desert Storm, and then Afghanistan. After I got home I went out to hunt, which I always loved, but found I couldn’t do it.” The man shrugged with both long arms extended when he finished, revealing a blue tattoo atop his right wrist.
“Don’t you just aim that rifle at something and pull the trigger?” the boy inquired, pointing at the menacing weapon.
“Yeah. But I can’t do it. I can’t pull the trigger anymore. And its like the animals all know. Earlier, just after dawn, a big buck walked right up to me, snorted, and then walked away, like he knew.”
“He did know. Like Harry knows,” Thomas concluded. “It’s okay though, cause I’ve got plenty of Vienna sausage. Harry and I love Vienna sausage.” He rummaged through his pack pulling out two cans before handing one to the man.
“What’s your name and how’d you get that tattoo?” the boy asked, as he and Harry rapidly consumed the small canned sausages.
“I was with the French Foreign Legion, but I wasn’t a Legionnaire. I was a Marine, but they liked me so they gave me the tattoo.” He held out his wrist for the boy to see. “Names Jim Nelson, but they call me Hugo.”
How’d you get your scars?” Jim asked, keeping his tone light.
Thomas ignored question. “After the author, Victor Hugo?” he inquired instead, proud of himself for remembering.
“Nah, ‘You Go,’ Jim said, spelling it out, “not Hugo.” They looked at each other for a few seconds and then began laughing.
“The scars. Where’d you get ‘em? That why they call you Checkers?” Jim asked,
his tone turned back to serious.
The boy nodded with a sigh, unconsciously rubbing his stomach. “My fake step-dad takes hangers and straightens them out. When you get hit by the end of the wire it leaves a very small mark, like a little ‘v’ or check-mark,” he held up us hand very close to Jim’s face so he could see. One of my teachers said that the marks would probably fade over time, so I’m just waiting. He put his hand down and finished eating what Harry had left of the sausages.
“What are you doing for Christmas?” Jim asked, to change the subject.
“Goin’ to Canada,” Thomas answered, wiping his mouth with one sleeve of his sweater. “We’re staying here for Christmas. This’s our Christmas tree,” he waved one hand up and around at the tree surrounding them. Harold jumped up and crouched down on a branch just over their heads.
“What about music, decorations and presents?” Jim asked, in an interested but analytical tone.
“We don’t need any of that, and I brought this.” The boy hauled out a thick two-piece flute and started screwing it together. “My Mom taught me,” he went on with a great smile. “And we’re not going back. Not ever. Even if we don’t make it.” Thomas’s smile left his face, as he stopped his labor for a moment to look Jim in the eyes. “We’ll just stay out here in this wonderful forest.”
“Okay,” Jim said, after a moment’s reflection. “Okay. We can do that. You can come with me. Karen, my wife, is back at the cabin a few miles from here. She’ll think you’re just great and she loves cats. Her cat died awhile back so you’ll have to watch Harold or he’ll run off with her.”
The boy looked at Jim with a frown, then laughed when he realized that the big man was teasing him.
“My fake step-dad will come looking for me. I’ve got to keep moving,” he said, in a whisper, his expression turning to one of dark foreboding.
“Why do you call him fake?” Jim asked.
“Cause he’s not real. He and Mom never got married. Never did the adoption thing they’d talked about. But nobody really knows that.” He finished assembling the flute and blew a few experimental notes. Holding the instrument like a professional, he delayed for a moment. “You can’t help me. He’s real tough and he’ll hurt anybody who helps me. Said he would kill them.” The flute sank to his crossed legs in surprise as he watched the big man across from him start to laugh.
“Oh, that would be so wonderful,” Jim said, when he settled down. “I haven’t gotten to do anything like that for some time. That’d be such a great Christmas gift from God. And you won’t have to go to Canada, I’m thinking, unless we want to. By the way, Checkers isn’t your nickname anymore.”
The boy stared at the smiling man, seemingly so elated at the idea of meeting his brutal step-dad. He took him in, eyes sweeping over to the automatic rifle leaning against the branch, then down at the man’s tattoo. Suddenly a warm feeling began to flow through his entire being. Being with the man made him feel safe. He realized that he had not felt that way since his Mom died. And the man had said “we,” not “you” about going to Canada.
Thomas started to play the flute, moving through the haunting notes of the entire piece without error until he was finished. The man before him brushed a tear from one eye, turning his head slightly in an attempt to hide the fact.
“What was that song? I’ve heard it before, but I didn’t know it was a Christmas song.”
“Mom said it was the best one of all. It’s called Greensleeves. It’s about not being loved and being sad about it, but how everything will turn out alright anyway if you keep on going.”
Jim nodded, putting a few more sticks on the fire. His life had changed again and he knew it. They’d leave the Christmas tree soon but he wanted to stay under it, with the boy and Harry, for as long as he possibly could. Besides, he thought to himself, it would take some time to work out a new suitable more nickname.

http://www.jamesstraussauthor.com
http://www.themastodons.com
http://www.antaresresearchanddevelopment.com

The Christmas Skirt

2010-12-04T19:39:00.000-08:00

The Skirt

By

James Strauss

There was nothing extraordinary about the outside of the retail store. Maybe the varnished wood of the single residential-sized front door. “Fine Textiles,” in big black letters was scrolled across the single front window. The shop was narrow, but very deep, passing all the way through to a back alley. Christmas decorations blinked behind the glass from an assortment of small fake pine trees in the elevated display, late afternoon’s sinking sun allowing for the lights growing brilliance.
Snow drifted down, settling on Tim’s bomber jacket. The jacket was new. Not a Christmas present. Tim knew no one well enough or close enough to present him with a holiday gift work several thousand dollars. He’d bought it for himself. Money had flowed almost endlessly for years from his computer business in California and silver mine in New Mexico. He had a touch for investment, but absolutely none for management of people, always reading them the wrong way. As long as he stayed out of his businesses they prospered and checks flowed in.
“O Holy Night,” sung by an wonderfully voiced male opera star trickled from two Bose speakers set up above the window under a small eave. Class music played through class equipment by the class man inside.
Will owned the fabric store. He’d been Tim’s best friend, only friend really, until the weekend before when Will’s wife Sarah had received a special Christmas card with a letter inside. What had possessed Tim to send the card escaped him entirely, as he looked at the sweaters and shirts from Paul and Shark that Will carried because material didn’t sell very well during the holiday season. Tim brushed his collar under the thick shearling of his coat. The shirt had come from the store. But it would be his last, at least his last purchased at “Fine Textiles.” Will had been clear about that. Tim was no longer welcome at the family’s home or at the business. Of all of it, Tim knew that not seeing the kids, aged from six to ten, would hurt most. The wrapped Christmas presents he’d found for them this year had been received with great joy by the three boys only days before. They considered Tim the best uncle anyone could ever have. But that was before the event. The event of the letter.
Sarah, Will’s beautiful wife, suffered from depression aggravated by the pressures of holiday obligations and requirements. Will and Tim had talked about it often. And the quieter more hidden pressure of money. A great lack of money Tim knew. He’d overheard them discussing the fact that they needed a huge Christmas season just to make ends meet. Fine Textiles products sold at the very top end of the market. A market all but evaporated in the country’s severe economic downturn.
Tim had thought about Sarah’s problem, and then impulsively sat down and written out a detailed list of the reasons why she should be able to conquer her depression. He’d been lavish in his praise of her beauty, her dynamic personality and her ability to make all about her smile when she felt like it. He’d never stopped to consider anything but the smiling brightness she would have to feel upon reading such a complimentary letter, slipped inside a terrific custom Christmas card. And then it all went terribly wrong.
Only a few days later, when Tim bashed his way through the store’s front door, reminiscent of Kramer in Seinfeld, he’d been met with a cold-faced stare across the single low counter. Will stood, with hand extended, a piece of folded paper in right hand.
“What’s this?” Tim said, his tone so deadpan that Tim literally shivered.
He slowly took his own letter from his friend’s hand. He didn’t need to open it, as the high quality Italian paper gave away its origin. He couldn’t think of anything to say. They stood staring, unblinking at one another for many seconds, until Will broke the silence.
“You, my supposed best friend, proposition my wife, comment on her personal situation and discuss our confidential discussions about her?” Tim stated, his voice rising as he spoke.
“Proposition?” was all Tim could whisper out, staggered. He considered Sarah the most honorable and wonderful woman he’d ever met. He’d meant to uplift here for Christmas. The letter had been completely misinterpreted.
“You’re outta here,” Will said, his voice not a yell but penetrating Tim to his very core. “Don’t come back and stay away from my home.”
Tim replayed the scene, as he had over and over again, while snow accumulated on the top of his head. His mind then went back to a meeting in front of the store only days before the event of the letter.
A figure had appeared at his side that day, coming up from behind.
“Hey Boss, nice town you got here,” the man said, in his heavy downtown Chicago accent. “Sorry I’m late but it is a hundred miles and the snow’s a bother.”
Tim didn’t respond to the small talk. Max was on the payroll of Tim’s computer company in California but worked in Chicago as a direct representative to the city, the company’s largest single client.
“What do ya want me to buy?” Max asked, wisely not bothering to ask Time any questions about why he had been required to travel most of the day to make the purchase.
“ A single piece of Holland and Sherry. All that cloth he has. It’s the most expensive material in the world so it’s going to be expensive. About four grand a yard, so don’t show surprise if the bills fifteen to twenty grand. Doesn’t matter. Use the Platinum Amex card.”
“Whatta ya going to make?” Max laughed.
Tim slightly shook his head. “I’ll be over a the coffee shop around the corner.
Bring it there before you head back.
“What’ll I tell ‘em if they ask why I want it?” Max followed up, his expression one of open curiosity.
“He won’t.” Max told him, before departing.
Tim’s mind snapped back to the present. He didn’t need to be seen standing in front of his former friends store. Without thought he wiped away a layer of snow from his bald spot. The same bald spot that was so popular with Will and Sarah’s boys.
The last of week of Christmas passed slowly. Tim went to the coffee shop every day but Will never showed up. They’d once met there each morning before the shop opened, then communed together inside the store several times before closing. Will’s home, besides his own, had been the only residence he’d ever gotten used to simply walking in when he dropped by. No knocking or doorbell. Like family.
Christmas Eve had become part of a seasonal ritual that had developed after his own wife had passed on many years before. Tim lit the final Advent tree set up alongside the main road running along the back of his property. Four pines each with 3000 little white lights, and then a fifth with 5000 colored, to celebrate the baby Savior’s arrival. He put on Holiday Inn, the Crosby Astaire movie, lit the fireplace loaded with sixty pounds of dry hewn oak, turned on his special CD of Christmas songs and set out to pass the evening. He didn’t drink anymore but poured two ounces of single malt Scotch
into one of his wife’s leftover Waterford glasses. He didn’t smoke but set aside a single Kent cigarette, which had been her cigarette of choice.
The perfectly decorated Noble next to him was lit, the movie playing and the fire radiating warmth as he sat buried deep inside his favorite leather chair. His doorbell rang distinctly through the music and movie sounds, just as Bing Crosby tapped his pipe stem against bells hanging from a Christmas tree branch.
Tim jerked forward in his chair. Who could possible be calling at the front door late into the snowy night of Christmas Eve? It made no sense. Tim’s house sat alone in the country, far from town, or other homes. Bing tapped the bells with his pipe a second time and the doorbell rang again. Tim made for the front door. He opened it apprehensively to discover Will standing and holding out a wrapped box.
“The kids made this gift for you and, no matter what, we thought you should have it, you know, for the holiday.”
Tim took the shoebox-sized gift, the wrapping job obviously having been done by childish hands. The door stood full open, snow swirling around the stoop. Will stared into the warm interior of Tim’s house.
“What’s that?” he asked, raising his right index finger up to point. Tim turned his shoulders to follow the man’s gaze down the corridor.
“What?” he blurted out, his brow furled in question.
“The tree,” Will said, his voice louder, still pointing.
“The tree?” Tim asked, turning back to look at his friend.
“I sold that last week to a crude man from Chicago,” he finished emphatically.
“The tree?” Tim asked again, in true wonder.
“Not the tree. The skirt.”
Tim turned back around to face down the hall, and then set the boys present on a small table nearby. He realized his mistake. He’d had no use for a twenty thousand dollar piece of woven Vicuna cloth, so he’d thrown the piece down to be the Christmas tree skirt surrounding it’s base. When he turned back Will was gone.
Tim closed the door, feeling the cold wind and icy bits of blown snow.
He walked over to the huge dining room window from which he could view his driveway. Will’s SUV sat running, its exhaust visible in the glow of small Christmas wreath lights radiating out from the front of the home. A barely visible figure stood in the dark next to the driver’s side of the door. The man did not move and Tim could not.
The only non-Christmas song Tim had recorded on this special holiday CD began to play. The slow singing and haunting melody of the song beat the words physically into Tim’s body. “Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot and auld lange syne?”

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Fully Functional

2010-10-17T13:40:00.000-07:00

FULLY FUNCTIONAL
BY
JAMES STRAUSS

Lieutenant Howard never ran with the lightening. He was more controlled, as befitting his rank of police shift commander. He moved with a glow across the spectrum of his small town fiefdom. Twenty-five thousand citizens under his care, all asleep as he only ran the midnight to eight shift. He took his first dose of the stuff in his cruiser down at the beach. Storm waves blasting in from some Alaskan nightmare up north. The cold winter wind through open windows made him shiver, even as the stuff began to build a small nuclear fire deep inside him. He smiled into the face of blown spindrift.
“Forty-six, six seventy three,” scratched forth from his Motorola speaker.
“Shit,” he murmured, his smile beginning to fade.
“On two,” he said, pushing a small button to talk, then hitting a switch to go to the personal frequency.
“You there Lou?” Bobby, shift dispatcher asked.
“Yeah,” he answered, knowing his voice would transmit his unhappiness at being disturbed but not letting on as to why. The glow helped calm him. While he waited for Bobby to come back he replaced his rig inside a special handcuff case he’d reworked for it.
“Some cycles at north end limit. The gas station on PCH. No one can break away. Would you mind drifting by and making sure their okay?” Bobby framed the question using his most wheedling tone.
“Ten-four,” the lieutenant answered. Normally he liked hands on fieldwork, but on this stormy night he just wanted to enjoy the junk, the waves and his glow.
Nobody was out so he didn’t have to use Code Two, which was flashing lights only. They didn’t use Code Three, with sirens, unless they had to. They protected the sleep of their citizens.
Howard took three corners gently, and then pushed his accelerator to the floor as he hit PCH. It was a two-mile straight shot to the closed gas station. Breaking down hard from a hundred and thirty-five his Ford moved in toward the pumps like the black land shark it was. Four Harleys filled with chrome sparkled brightly back form his headlights.
Automatically Howard hit the radio transmit button.
“Ten seven,” he told Bobby, letting the man know he was at the scene.
He turned the small key that locked the Remington Twelve Gauge pump
to the dash. He’d never used it off the range but it was always nice to have as a back up.
Four ragged but rugged bikers were gathered around one of the bikes. Howard walked over, setting his nightstick through the ring on his Sam Brown belt.
“You boys have a problem?” he inquired when he was a few yards away.
“We ain’t boys, asshole,” the largest of the men whispered as he turned. The man was huge, Howard realized surprised by his size and nasty attitude. Not many people, except druggies and drunks confronted a uniformed police lieutenant which such disrespect and ferocity.
“I asked what the problem was?” he tried again.
“Not your problem,” the big man stated, this time quite loudly, before smiling broadly.
“This is private property and you’ll have to move on,” Howard replied to the affronting comment, keeping his own cool, his calm, his glow still going for him.
“This fucker’s high as a kite,” the huge man laughed openly, pointing at the lieutenant’s chest. The other three bikers stood from their couches and stared at him.
“Fuck, not every day you get to see a police lieutenant totally fucked up on the job,” the big man went on.
Howard was shocked beyond his ability to truly comprehend. The man had not only recognized the fact that he had fixed, but he was taunting him with the information. His face went totally red. His glow vanished. A stillness came over him.
He realized in that moment he was in the shit. He hadn’t been in the shit since the Nam. He smiled back at the huge man. A sense of relief flowed through his body, replacing the glow with a white noise softness of titanium steel. Molten density
poured through his entire body.
“Get the fuck away from us. We want nothing from your shitty little town,” the big man yelled as Howard back to the passenger door of his cruiser.
“Chicken shit country bumpkin,” the huge man yelled, cupping his hands because Howard’s upper body had disappeared inside the car.
“Shit,” he breathed quietly when Howard reappeared. The sound of the first round of double ought buck being cranked into the chamber of the Remington froze all four of the bikers. Howard stood near the right front fender, just outside the
glare of headlights to enjoy near invisibility as well as superior firepower.
“We’re fucking going,” the big man said, all four bikers moving to the their rides. “We’re outta here. Keep you faggot town, you fuck.” The huge man started his Harley, his friends following suit. Four cycles rumbled loudly but not nearly as loudly as the sound of the twelve gauge going off.
Howard fired five feet over the gang’s head.
The huge man screamed, grabbing his ears.
Howard waited, cranking another round into the chamber.
“Don’t shoot man, we didn’t do anything,” the big man cried out, grabbing the handles of his Harley and pulling away. He was followed by the other three bikes.
Howard waited until they hit PCH headed north. He gauged the opening distance very carefully, stepping to the back of his cruiser and then fired six more rounds at the fleeing backs of the men. He gauged the distance at about two hundred and twenty meters, perfect for the right effect.
The cycles swerved crazily but none of them went down.
“You’ll be picking out some choice bits and pieces from your backs over the next few months boys. You all come back and visit any time you want now.”
The Remington went back into its locking holder after Howard carefully reloaded it. He’d have to clean the gun after the shift, but it had been worth it.
“Fucking “A” functional. I can do the job. But how did that fucking asshole know I was taking my stuff?” Howard said the words into the darkness, surf booming far in the distance, calling him back. Adrenalin destroyed the effect of the junk, but he’d brought two hits, just in case.
“Forty-Six Six Seventy Three, did you hear shots fired near your location?” Bobby asked over the radio.
“Just the surf here. Ten-eight from this location,” Howard replied, letting him know that he was done with the assignment and there was no further activity needed.
Sitting back at his special location, windows once more down, he again faced into the moist cold wind.
“Can’t do my job and feel good while I’m doing it? Who says? Perfect judgment. I could never have measured the distance to those Harleys so carefully if I wasn’t adjusting with the glow.” He pushed the stuff into him and waited.
“One fully functioning patrol lieutenant protecting you this night” he said out the window, to the sleeping citizens of his small town. Before the magic carpet swept him above the wind and waves he wondered about how the huge cycle rider had been able to see the junk inside him, and if maybe others might be able to see it to.
Those thoughts faded as he went up up and away.

Biting The Clouds

2010-10-04T18:12:00.000-07:00

Biting The Clouds
By
James Strauss

The door slammed. Mighty steel edifice, but like the others in the African prison, set into rickety wooden walls that you could run through given a proper set back and some sort of cover for your head. There’s not much rationality in Africa. And none whatever inside it’s prisons. Sierra Leone’s a pretty bad place, but only bad because it’s dirt poor. Prisoners are at the very bottom of that meager food chain.

Needles were shoved under the door with surgical tubing attached. No drugs. No nothing else. The H was everywhere, already there. The tough part was getting it into you. Needles rolled nicely under the door crack. A member of the African tribe (Loko) rolled the needles from his side. A member of the Kissis tribe
received each. The Kissis ran Stack’s cube. A white guy in an African prison. Called doctor because Stack told them he was an anthropologist. He heard them whisper many times about the ‘Mgeni’s’ (foreigner) education of ‘apology’ and what it must mean.

Stack was the only ‘doctor’ ever to enter the prison, they said. And so a weird respect was assigned, especially between the many warring tribes trapped inside the huge prison complex.

Stack took the needles, about ten of ‘em, and tossed them inside a little heater he was allowed. Allowed because he had a commissary account, which was funded from home. Inside, a U.S. dollar was worth over 400 Leones. A small fortune.

He boiled the needles for five minutes, rubber attachments and all. The ‘rigs’ or ‘paras,’ as they were called locally, would be sterilized, as was now the custom from dorm to dorm, since Doctor Stack had advised. Needles went under doors throughout the prison after night meals and final count. The needles meant sleep. Escape. “Biting the clouds’ as they said in Swahili. The surgical tubing was filled with liquefied heroin of unknown origin (smuggled into the facility inside female visitor vaginas).

Tubing was knotted, needle set into a vein, tube squeezed and the night could be endured into next day.

Stack grinned as he handed the sterilized rigs to the Kissis commander.

“You laugh, Stack, as you always do. Why do you laugh?” the huge black man asked, laughing himself.

Stack left the smile on his face, but responded with an answer he knew would satisfy the powerful man. A man who allowed Stack’s life to be lived with bare comfort and acceptability.

“The sterilizing of the needles will assure that the women you are with in the future will not become with child.”
Stack had learned, through hard won experience inside, the natives not only had areas where they were extremely limited in knowledge, but also had areas where they refused understanding whatsoever. Sterile needles was one of those problematic areas. AIDS was another. They didn’t accept the disease, instead choosing to believe that dying form AIDS was simply God removing himself slowly from your body.

AIDS was disappearing from the prison. Stack knew that from simple observation while serving his two year sentence. The Warden took note of it as well, but only recognized it by finally calling Stack doctor when addressing him. It was enough.

Cold Rolled Steel, Chapter I

2010-06-27T18:25:00.002-07:00

COLD ROLLED STEEL
by
JAMES STRAUSS
CHAPTER I
Night is a relative word when used to discuss a level of darkness. Minnow looked nowhere. With no light at all the word look didn’t really apply. The vault that imprisoned him was tightly sealed. It was possessed of cold metal walls over a foot in thickness. Minnow had noted that thickness, the polished smoothness of rounded lugs, as well as the unusually beautiful locking action, which had been visible through a clear glass panel that covered the door as he’d been pushed in. There was no light inside. There was to be no breathable air at some future time, not far distant either.
They’d not killed him like they had the others. Minnow had been terrified of being killed, until the vault had been discovered open, and he’d seen the cruelty come to the surface of black paint-slashed faces surrounding him. They’d coldly killed the only people on earth he’d known or cared about. They’d acted with no evident expression of emotions, but that had changed when they’d found the vault.
Minnow pressed his right ear against the cold glass to listen. There were not more sounds. The Zigzag horde had remained in the sub-basement of the fallen building for a long time, occasionally tapping on the side of the vault to let their captive know that life continued and would go on long after the air was gone and he was dead. All was silent, not that it mattered.
There was nothing to do. Debris covered the floor of the vault. Old papers of some sort, files, metal drawers and even some coins. Minnow sat and thought. The fear of death had receded from his mind. Dying alone in the dark was more preferable than being shot or gutted by the lunatic Zigzag gang among the bodies of his family. They hadn’t been real family. Minnow had no real family. He had no memory of where he’d come from or how he’d come to be a part of the group he was with. They had just seemed to always be there, although they’d never let him forget that he was an outsider taken in because of their generous nature.
Nobody had searched him, probably because he wore only a ratty “T” shirt, torn shorts and flip-flops on his feet. He took out his single prized possession.
The Zippo clicked open to his thumb, the wheel rasped as he brought the same digit back down across it, and there was light. Minnow, even at fifteen years of age, knew that the lighter would burn up whatever remaining air was left in the vault all the faster but he also knew that it didn’t really matter. Death was not to be measured by ‘if’ thinking. Death was ‘when’ kind of thinking.
The Zippo had an insignia on its side: “1st Mar. Div.” A raised globe and anchor protruded from beneath the insignia. None of it made any sense to Minnow. He liked the flicker flame and the ability to start a fire any time he wanted. His reflection wavered back at him in the polished glass of the door. His hair was long, curly and unkempt. He liked his bushy eyebrows and long eyelashes. His ‘sister,’ while she was living, had told him that his face was too round and his body too stocky to be a real member of the family but Minnow didn’t care. He was fast, tough and healthy. They all said that there was something wrong with his head because he was too quick to laugh at things that they didn’t think were funny.
He couldn’t put the lighter out. He wouldn’t sit and die in the dark, even if it meant that he’d die much sooner. With one hand Minnow wound some papers together to form a tight cone. He lit the cone. As soon as it ignited he clicked his Zippo shut. Light and warmth filled the small chamber.
Listlessly, he went through the empty metal drawers. There was nothing. Under the last door there was a dully-black tube, however. Minnow pushed at it with his foot but it didn’t move. The tube was about the size of his forearm. Minnow kicked at it until finally it budged a bit. Reaching down, across the top of the small fire, he worked at it with his fingers until it came free from the crease it had been wedged into.
Minnow held it up to the fire. It was very heavy for its size. He hefted it up and down, and then coughed deeply, dropping it to the floor. He tried to breath in and out deeply but found that that was no longer possible. The air was too think and smoke was beginning to dim and hurt his vision. Without thinking, in anger and frustration, he picked up the bar and slammed it against the glass pane covering the gears and levers located behind.
The glass shattered into a million pieces. The fire was instantly extinguished.
Minnow fell against the exposed gears and levers. With his eyes closed tightly he felt the smooth oiled surfaces with his fingers. One lever had crosshatched cuttings over the end of its surfaces. With both hands Minnow pulled the lever down.
When the lever moved deep clicks sounded from all around the edges of the door. Minnow pulled the lever all the way down. The door cracked open.
With all the strength of his legs, Minnow pushed against the back wall, forcing the door further and further open, until his small thick body was fully extended. He rolled out of the vault onto the concrete floor of the sub-basement, and then slid a few feet brushing small chunks of glass from his hands as he went.
The place was a mess of blood, dead bodies and torn up mattresses. The canned food they tribe had collected so laboriously was all gone, which was the first thing Minnow focused on when he stopped coughing. He lay on the floor and sucked in air. He had not realized, until he’d slipped through the crack of the door, that’d he’d been so close to suffocation.
The Zigzag’s, with their characteristic black slashed faces, were gone.
The attack had been about the food. The family was followed, and then put under surveillance by the gang. Life was mostly about food, Minnow knew.
“Little one,” a voice from somewhere nearby squeaked.
“Who’s there?” Minnow responded, gathering his feet under him to flee.
“I’m here, under the bodies,” the deep slow voice intoned back.
Minnow searched the broken terrain around him. The light, shining down through broken pieces of cracked concrete slab above, provided little recognition assistance. There was no movement.
‘If you’re there, then say something I recognize,” Minnow said, finally, after about ten minutes had gone by.
“Mameluke,” the small deep voice intoned.
Minnow immediately jumped up upon hearing the word. He searched through the strewn wreckage and body parts, looking for the man whose voice he’d heard but couldn’t place. The word was all he needed to know. The voice was not from a ghost or an enemy. Mameluke was the name of the sword the family leader carried at his waist. It was the symbol of their family strength.
The body was under a body, but it wasn’t the body of a man or boy. It was a girl he found, when he pushed aside the ‘father’ of the family covering her. He knew it was a girl because her top was torn and twin breasts pointed up at him.
“What are you lookin’ at,” the girl said, pulling the tattered remains of a shirt over her bare chest.
Minnow remembered her. She never talked. People called her Truck, because she worked ferociously hard at anything she did. In his years with the family he’d never spoken to her. Several times he’d been bumped aside by her but that was it. The family had not been much of a social unit. Food scavenging, moving rapidly from place to place, and watching had been what the family had done.
Truck stood up, her height about the same as Minnows, but her body much thinner, her face much more pointed and attractive.
“Get the sword, it’s the only weapon left,” she pointed at the waist of their dead ‘father’ when she spoke, holding the shirt together with the other hand.
Minnow worked the sword and belt free of the dead man. He strapped it around his own waist, but the thirty-eight inch blade dragged on the ground once he had the thing on.
“My name’s Mar from now on. You call me Truck, just once and that’s it. You understand?” She said the words as she walked toward the ladder, the only way to enter or leave the sub-basement. “You want to be something other than Minnow, speak up.”
He looked at her with his brows knit did not reply.
“You got yourself into that safe to escape, I presume,” she said, looking back at the vault’s gaping door.
Minnow followed her eyes but again said nothing. His cowardice, or the truth, didn’t really matter and he understood that. Mary and he were the only survivors and they were all they had, until the cat screamed.
Both of them turned at the loud sound. Minnow remembered.
The cat had been trapped days earlier. Their ‘father’ had said that cats made good eating although they were very hard to catch. At one time people had kept them as pets, but Minnow didn’t understand at all why they would have done that.
The cat in the cage weighed at least twenty pounds, and did not fit the description the family had given him of a domestic pet at all. The thing was all spotted and seemed to be made of coiled muscle.
“Let it out?” Mar asked.
Minnow shrugged, went over to the cage and hit the mechanical release latch. The cat leaped out, feinted a run at him, making Minnow cower back, and then ran up the ladder and out the door at the top.
“Nice pet,” Minnow said, sarcastically, to cover his movement of fear when the animal had leaped out.
Mar didn’t say anything. He followed her up the ladder and out into the sun filled day outside. The Mameluke bounced and clattered at his every move. Once outside he sat down on the concrete steps and began working on the leather harness. It took several minutes to convert the waist belt into a shoulder belt so the sword would sit across the flat of his back and not drag along the ground.
The idiot cat had not run away. Instead it sat about five feet from him, licking its front paws, one after the other.
“I think its wild. Crazy, or something,” Mar said, sitting on the stair next to him.
“Who?” Minnow asked, stupidly.
“The cat, idiot.” She replied. “I think his name should be Mameluke, like the sword, which is also useless. We need guns not swords. The Zigzags shot everyone in the family. They didn’t use swords. We need guns. The cat can be Mameluke.”
Minnow turned to look at Mar, his sword finally strapped securely to his back.
“I don’t understand you. I didn’t think you talked. Now you talk all the time but I don’t really understand what you say.”
“I said the cat’s name’s Mameluke,” she said, and then leaned out to stroke the creature.
The cart’s response was invisible it was so fast. Mar let out a short gasp. She drew her hand back bleeding. Mameluke went back to grooming his paws.
“Mameluke it is then,” Minnow stated, trying not to laugh at the appropriateness of the cat’s name.
“We never talked, in the family, about what happened to the world. What do you think happened?” Mar asked, still massaging the scratch on the back of her hand.
“I don’t know,” Minnow answered. “I don’t remember anything except waking up one day with the family. There are all these ruins.” He waved his around all around them. “All the stored foods and stuff we find in different places. I don’t know. Something happened. People didn’t used to live like we do now.”
Mar stood up, one hand still securing the torn shirt across her chest. “We have to find one of those places that has clothes, if we can. I can’t go around like this or we’ll be in even more trouble.
Minnow couldn’t imagine being in more trouble, except maybe being locked in the vault, than they were already in. They had no food, no water and no supplies at all except the Zippo and the Mameluke. The car meowed.
“And Mameluke here, I guess” he said back to the cat as he raised himself up to follow the girl down the steps.

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Cold

2010-06-27T18:25:00.001-07:00

Daisy

2010-05-31T07:29:00.000-07:00

Daisy
By
James Strauss

I came back from Vietnam on a hard white gurney, flown in by one of those planes they called Starlifters at the time. Those wounded of us in that fuselage had all been pinned up in plastic sacks to the walls and the center divider, like the drugged and damaged larva of some huge insect phylum.
Now. Phoenix, Arizona. The airport here. In one of those little bar kind of restaurants they have out near the spoke-ends. Nameless. Marginal food. But a place to sit and not be among all the fidgeting, staring passengers on the black faux-leather seats near the gate.
I don't have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, even though I go to group every week at the VA. I am not suicidal, and they know that. No, I don't really want to be alive anymore, but that is different. Suicidal is weak, and I'm not weak. I'm here. And I'm okay. I don't think about Vietnam much now, or my lost boys, or the other people who died because I was there. But I am hyper-vigilant, the psychologist says.
I notice things. I notice a lot of things. The license plate of the car driving behind mine. My mind converts the backward image automatically. The people around me. Whether they have noticed me. Whether I have seen them before. What they are wearing. What they are buying. It never stops. I don't want to be afraid of them, so I want to have never seen any of them before. I had great courage once. People think I do now. But I don't.
I don't share my fear. But there’s also a physical manifestation which is hard to miss. I shake a little. When that happens, I move. Like Michael J. Fox with his problem. You don't shake if you move around a bit. He knows that.
My small table is outside the eating facility but inside a short metal fence. My back is against the wall. That's automatic. I toy with my bad Buffalo wings, but really watch what is going on around me. Then I’m surprised.
A GI comes through the outside door. He's dressed out in full Iraq mufti. The new desert kit, with the cool buff boots and velcro patches. I don't notice what's on the patches because I was a Marine. I don't care. He's Army. He's okay, but he's Army.
He sits down. He has nothing with him. Not even a ditty bag. Unusual. I note that. He looks too good, and with nothing. He could be a phony, just looking to make believe for awhile. He sits at the next table. His back is against the wall too. He watches the people, like me, but does not look at me, or I at him. I just take him in from the side. He orders. The waiter comes and goes away. Then the G.I. starts singing aloud.
"Daisy, daisy, ....give me your answer do....I'm half crazy....all for the love of you..." His voice is soft in the singing. Very soft. The words come out one at a time, with spaces.
I remember where I first heard the song. 2001 A Space Odyssey. Kubrick. The GI is singing, just like the computer in the movie. The song plays, I recall, as Keir Dullea gets back inside the space ship and slowly removes the brain parts of Hal, the computer gone bad. The more parts he removes, the slower the computer sings the song. Like the GI. I don't turn, but I am struck hard.
Then, as he is singing, his knees start a rapid drumming up and down. He takes both hands and pushes and holds his legs back down, but continues to sing. He's real. And he's just come back. From over there.
I take out a twenty from my money-clip and put it on my table. I get up and wheel my roller back into the main bar, and then out the side to the main area, where people mill. I move directly toward the restroom and into a stall. I sit on the john with my clothes on. I'm vaguely reminded of the weird Senator Craig story, so I keep my feet well inside the stall.
"What am I going to do?" I whisper. I cover my face with both hands.
I breathe deeply inward, and then out again. I decide to help the G.I. I get up and leave, dragging the roller behind me.
But the G.I.’s gone. His food is on the table. The waiter is standing looking around, wondering whether his client has run off. I walk back along the outside of the metal fence. I take out another twenty and motion to the man. He frowns, looks at the uneaten food, but takes the twenty. I move through the spoke to my gate and get on the flight.
I have a middle seat. After take off I notice my seat-mates turning slightly to view me better. I realize that I am very quietly singing. That song. I stop immediately, take off my belt, and climb over the aisle passenger. I start moving. Just a little will make it all okay.

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Ralph

2010-05-18T18:54:00.000-07:00

Ralph
By
James Strauss
The game was five-card stud. One card dealt face down, then four more, one at a time, face up. Betting between each deal of the cards. Military Pay Currency, not real money from home. You could only spend MPC back in the rear Muncey reflected, and new guys did not get to go back to the rear, so there was no point in having the stuff. You stayed in the field until relieved, as a company grade officer, which generally did not happen until you were six months in country. One month was all he had, but it was his third time visiting regimental headquarters.
The 5th Marine regimental HQ was also in the bush, as well as the Bird Colonel Commander, Thomas Pointer. “Three Tits,” as everyone called him behind his back, because he’d gone through West Point before choosing the Corps to serve in, plus he used a ‘III’ designation after his name. Derisive sexual humor was always big in a combat zone, as Muncey’s own NCO’s, some dating back to Korea, taught him. His nickname was ‘Muncher,’ which he didn’t much appreciate but could do nothing about.
He was only a Second Lieutenant, yet served as temporary Company Commander of Echo Company. The Marines had killed the previous allotment of officers before he’d been assigned. The Gunny told him that such things happened all the time in the Nam. The unit had a racial problem. It had taken three weeks for Muncey to fix that problem. You can’t have a racial problem if you only have one race. That 'fix' had also resulted in Echo having the highest casualty rate in the regiment, however, which was why, Muncey thought, Three Tits had called him in.
His first days in country had been the worst. Why he had ever lipped off to the Division General that first afternoon he would never know. In those first days and nights after being assigned he’d begged God to let him go back and fix things. He couldn’t possibly survive, he knew, in a company where the men had killed their own officers. His going in as a replacement for the lot of them could only end one way. So he hadn’t slept. At all. He’d learned that everything he’d read about sleep was just not true. You could go without it. Maybe a few hours of half-closed eyes every few days or so. His .45 out, safety off, cradled in his lap. The forty-five was a part of him now and he loved it. When you shot someone they went down. Then you could take your time in shooting them again. He cleaned the weapon four or five times a day, but only broke it down into parts when he could get away from everyone for a few moments.
His Marines just looked at him. They seldom talked to him at all, except for the Gunny. He gave orders and they did what they were told. The Gunny told him what orders to give them so they wouldn’t kill him for giving wrong ones. That part of Marine Officer training had been left out in Quantico, at the Basic School. Without the Gunny he’d have been dead already, and he knew it. Even with the Gunny he was not going to make it for six months. Echo was losing ten men a day from the enemy alone. With two hundred and seventeen ‘swinging dicks’ in the company it didn’t take a mathematical genius to figure things out.
He’d written to tell his wife about that, only days before. She was a wonderfully beautiful Irish girl. She’d find another, better, man. He’d written a list of the twenty things she needed to do when his body was returned. Putting that letter on a medivac chopper had been the only relief he’d felt since arriving in Da Nang so long ago.
The Five Stud hand closed out. He’d lost half his MPC. It was Muncey’s deal. He gathered the cards in and began to shuffle. Professionally. His dad had once been a dealer in Reno, and a demanding detailed son-of-a-bitch at home. Muncey thought as he shuffled.
After the Gunny had told him everything about Echo he’d not known what to do, except maybe lie down and die. Crying to himself in the hot fetid nights, slashed open by white-hot tracers and bellowing with high explosive muzzle blasts had not worked for him. Twice he’d run away, under the cover of all the fire. The Gunny’d found him each time. “Ya don’t get to run away when you’re the commanding officer,” he’d said, planting him in the mud back at their makeshift command post.
Then there had been the coffee stop along the rice paddy trail. Sitting there with the command and artillery radiomen. Drinking awful instant crap from a fire tab heated canteen holder. The guy. The leader of the pack. Purple sunglasses like a hippy. No rank on his cruddy utilities. No nametag. He’d squatted down facing the three of them.
“You fucking try any of that stateside leadership crap here and you’re dead when the sun goes down. We don’t fight, my guys and me. This is your fucking war so you people fight it. We do what we want. We won’t give you any trouble unless you fuck with us. You got it?”
Muncey presumed that the man was staring with beady eyes, unblinking, waiting for some positive response. He moved his canteen holder to his left hand, drank down most of what was left, and then tossed the remainder aside, off the narrow trail. At the same instant as the coffee flew Muncey drew the forty-five, brought it level, clicked the left side thumb safety off and shot the man three times in the chest.
The man was blown backward onto the path. Muncey rose up quickly, walked forward and shot the man in the forehead right above his glasses, which were unaccountably still in place.
“You going to deal the cards or sit there shuffling all day?” one of the other lieutenant’s said.
Muncey passed the deck for cutting, and then hit each man quickly with a card. The man across from him was a square jawed First Lieutenant wearing a bush hat back on his head, like Gabby Hayes. He had aged crinkly eyes for an officer so young. They exchanged glances into each other’s eyes as the third cards fell around, but neither smiled.
Muncey didn’t care about the hand. He was waiting to get his ass chewed out by Three Tits, once again. He didn’t really care about that either, as he knew he wasn’t going home anyway. He wasn’t getting out of the field for any reason so what punishment could Three Tits dispense? He did like being at the HQ however. It was as safe a place as one could be in, other than in the rear with the gear.
His mind was not on the game. As he dealt the last card, the card under it, on top of the deck, fell to the surface of the makeshift table, face up.
“Mis-deal,” one of the lieutenant’s yelled, then immediately flipped his hole card atop the MPC piled in the center. The other officer’s followed his lead.
“I’ll re-deal,” Muncey said, starting to gather the cards together again.
“Double the pot,” the offended officer who’d first thrown in his money said.
“That’s the rule here. You mis-deal, you double the pot out of your own pocket.”
Muncey stopped moving, his hands frozen in mid-air, holding the deck in his left hand and some of the discarded cards in his right. He looked from man to man around the table. Everyone, except the square jawed First Lieutenant, nodded, although nobody said anything.
“I don’t have any more currency,” Muncey said, truthfully. All his money was on the table.
“Who gives a shit? Double the pot. Money’s your problem,” the man to his right stated, anger causing his voice to squeak a bit.
The cards in Muncey’s right hand fluttered to the table. The forty-five appeared as if by magic. The automatic’s safety made a sharp metallic snipping noise when it was pushed. Nobody moved. Even the jungle seemed to grow quiet, at least to Muncey.
He stared deep into the First Lieutenant’s dark eyes across the table.
“Everyone put your money on the table,” he said flatly, his voice little more than a whisper. Slowly, he dropped the card deck, and then removed his helmet.
He placed the helmet atop the MPC in the center of the table.
“I’m taking all your money,” he said.
“What, you going to shoot us if we don’t give you our money?” the complaining officer asked in amazement. “Right! In the regimental Headquarters you’re going to shoot five officers over a game of cards?”
“Yes,” Muncey answered. “I’m going to shoot you first, then the rest of them, but each of you only once. You’ll have a chance if they get a medivac in. Army though, as the Marine choppers won’t fly five of you out of here in one load.” Muncey moved the barrel of the gun to point at the offensive officer’s chest, “You ready?” he asked, his voice and the automatic flat and steady.
“You want us to put all the money in your helmet?” the First Lieutenant across the table asked. Without waiting for an answer began to fill the helmet first with the money on the table and then with MPC from his pockets.
“Yes, that’d be okay,” Muncie replied, simply, regarding the unusual man.
“Get your money out. Put it in his helmet,” The First Lieutenant said forcefully to the other officers.
“Jesus Christ Web, you going to let him pull this shit on us?” one of the other men inquired.
“Yes, I am, and so are you. Get it out.”
The men backed slowly from the table when the helmet was full. Muncey scooped it up with his left arm. He slowly lowered the forty-five to point at the ground near his right foot. The First Lieutenant smiled at him for the first time. He had a nice smile, Muncey realized. He could not smile back even though he tried.
“The Colonel will see you now, “ Web followed up, pointing at a large tent located near the edge of their small clearing.
Muncey walked inside the tent. The C.O. and his Executive Officer sat at small folding desks facing him. Muncey just stood before them.
“Come to attention and salute the commander,” the X.O. commanded, his black rank insignia indicating that he was a major.
“Not covered, Major,” Muncey answered, “Got my poker winnings in the helmet, sir, with respect, can’t put it on.” You did not salute in the Marine Corps, without your cover on, ever.
The major sneered, but said no more.
“Some reason you got that hog iron out, Lieutenant?” Three Tits himself asked, pointing at the Colt still hanging down in Muncey’s right hand.
“Dangerous in the bush sir. I get scared when I’m this far from my men,” Muncie answered.
The Colonel and the major exchanged a quick meaningful look, then stared back at him.
“Know why you’re here?” Three Tits asked.
“Again,” the major added.
“No, sirs.” Muncey replied.
“I’m not going to repeat this. This is it your last warning. If you fuck up about it again, I’ll have your ass. Do you understand me? “
“Yes, sir,” Muncey responded, in his best junior to senior submissive voice.
“The X.O. is writing you up. If you use foul language on the combat or artillery nets again, that will be it. I don’t care if you’re in contact. Everyone’s in contact at night around here. No more profanity over the radio. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Muncey replied, his eyes boring into the tent wall behind Three Tit’s head.
“Get the fuck out of here,” the major ordered.
Muncey did an about face, slowly so as not to spill the currency piled high in the helmet and also because the .45 just didn’t swing that smoothly in turning. He walked from the tent. All the lieutenants were gone except the square jawed one with the crinkly eyes.
“That your tracked carrier down by the paddy?’ he asked of Muncey.
Muncey nodded.
“Mind if I walk with you?” the other officer went on.
“Okay,” Muncey answered, sliding the Colt back into its leather holster. He grasped the helmet before him in both hands as they walked.
“I’ve heard some things about Echo. You know. Scuttlebutt. Seems that things have been a little rough over there for quite some time. Lot of casualties. Lots of social problems. Bad morale. Stuff like that.”
Muncey said nothing, but walking a bit faster.
“Why’d you help me back there? I mean with the money?” Muncey asked him.
“Because you were going to shoot us. They didn’t know, but I did. They’re not bad guys really. Thanks for not shooting us, by the way.”
“Oh, that’s okay. You were good about getting me the money.”
“This is a tough combat zone so nobody’s quite right,” Web said. Do you know that you’re not quite right, Muncey?”
Muncey stopped walking, leaving Lieutenant Web to move a few steps before he too stopped. They stood facing one another. Neither man blinked.
“I know,” Muncey finally answered, sighing deeply, blinking, and then looking away. “I know I’m not quite right,” he said, more definitively.
The First Lieutenant nodded and smiled. “That’s good. Very good. If you know, you can do something about it. You can’t go back to the world like this. I know it doesn’t look good right now, but you may well see round eyes again some day. I’ve never seen anyone get dealt a worse hand, from the get go, in this mess, than you. But here you are, still alive. Unfuckingbelievable.”
“Ah, thank you,” Muncie said, in surprise. “What do you think I should do?” They began walking toward the armored personnel carrier again.
“No more killing anyone that does not need to be killed,” Web said. “No killing over poker, bad pay, loose women or because somebody won’t do what you want them to do. If you run into trouble with anybody just send him over to Delta Company. We’re in First Battalion on the far flank. Can you do that?” The First Lieutenant looked over at him with his smiling eyes when he finished.
“I think so. And then I’ll be okay? I’ll be alright?” Muncey asked.
“Yep, and you mind if I have that money? Those other lieutenant’s will think more kindly of you if you let me give it back to ‘em.” He stopped and held out both hands.
Muncey gave him the helmet, and then put it on his head when it was empty.
“You want any?” Web asked him.
Muncie shook his head. They had arrived at the tracked vehicle.
“You’re going to be fine. Just remember what I told you,” First Lieutenant Web
said, with a big smile, holding out his hand. Muncey shook it warmly. Then the other man hugged him. “Did you read Lord of the Flies by Golding?”
Muncey was surprised by the question, backing away from the embrace.
“Yes, I read it. About some boys stuck on an island. They killed each other and lost all semblance of civilization.” Muncie recited what he knew. Lord of the Flies had bad been one of the most perplexing books he’d read in high school. Simple yet strangely complex.
“You’re Ralph in that novel and this place is the island. Think of it that way and you’ll survive. Stop fighting and keep running until you’re rescued,” Web said, before turning and walking up the trail.
Muncey climbed to the top of the tracked vehicle. Officer’s rode on top, in case the personnel carrier ran over a booby trap, which was much more likely than being the target of sniper fire.
The Carrier Commander, also a Second Lieutenant, made a place for him in the webbing that stretched across the surface of the vehicle.
“Who is that guy?” Muncie asked, his eyes still on the First Lieutenant’s departing back.
“Him? You mean the First Lieutenant? They call him The Web. Once you get caught in his net, he’s got you for life, they say. His men love him. Wish we had him as our C.O.”
“I can understand that,” Muncey said.
“What’s your name?” the Commander asked him.
There was a long silence. The vehicle’s diesel started, and then clattered as the exhaust blew black smoke.
“Ralph,” Muncey finally answered.

Cotopaxi

2010-05-08T19:40:00.000-07:00

Cotopaxi

By

James Strauss
The road from downtown Quito out and around to Cotopaxi, Ecuador’s highest peak, takes about an hour and a half to negotiate. Actually there are several dirt roads that branch off when one begins to near the national park, but they all lead to the same base camp of the nearly twenty thousand foot high volcano. Ben had been assured that the last eruption of the monster had occurred somewhere back in the eighteen hundreds.
The Besta Bongo van took the weather beaten roads badly, jostling the four of them together. They’d been hastily assembled and flown in for the mission. Ben checked out his companions. All there were too young, too white and too big for the job, but team leadership of Agency missions did not extend to selection of personnel. That happened only in movies, like the appearance of scantily clad beautiful women. Ben had known it was going to be a rough ride just by looking at their vehicle. The Besta had large wheels on the front and dual smaller ones on the rear. The geometry was bad for any driving not performed on smooth tarmac. Besta also translated, appropriately, to the English word for ‘beast.’
The diesel clattered away. The van had to be a diesel. Cotopaxi was so high that most gasoline car motors would not run up to the last rest station located before a technical climb was required to get to the peak. The little turbo diesel would sound like it was popping corn near their goal but would get them there, or so everyone said.
Their driver and guide was named Jelisco. Jelisco wasn’t pronounced with the silent ‘j,’ like most Spanish words. Jelisco was supposed to be spelled with an ‘x’ which meant it stood for ‘sandy place.’ People knew that so made it sound like an ‘x.’ The driver droned on and on about his name, where he lived and where they were going, all of which bored Ben to death, but there was to be no nodding off on the trip up. They were headed for a meeting with followers of the FARC rebel group. The group had Bolivian origins but overran all over the countryside parts of Ecuador. Ben knew that the bands were composed of amateurs. Farmers and junk peddlers. Which made them very dangerous. Except for lacking the best equipment, armed amateurs were among the most dangerous opponents Ben faced. Mentally ill opponents were worse, but in the business he was in, the difference was a tough determination to make.
Ben moved up next to the driver while the other men remained in back. Huey, Luey and Duey sat sprawling across the two bench seats behind him. He could hear them chatter but not make out what they were talking about. From their expressions, when he bothered to glance back, he assumed the discussion had something to do with his geriatric age. Fifty was over the hill for field operations. Sixty, unheard of. Yet here he was.
None of them could be over twenty-five, Ben reflected, but then their work was of a more actively violent nature. Somebody back at Agency headquarters in Langley had once asked him if he really hurt people while involved in field operations. Ben had told him no, that he had people who did that sort of thing. Such men rode with him toward Cotopaxi in the rear of the van.
The Besta stopped and idled when they reached a fork in the road. A triple tined fork. The driver asked which road they should follow, giving the merits of each, ad nauseum. Since it didn’t matter, Ben pointed at the tire tracks to their right. Jelisco jammed the transmission into first gear, without seemingly using the clutch, which made Ben flinch with discomfort. He shook it off. The van belonged to the driver. The vehicle, as long as it got them back and forth, didn’t matter.
The road swung around a shallow crater, which appeared to stretch all the way to the base of the conical peak in the distance. Spirit Lake, run dry during the last eruption, was nearly the same as the Spirit Lake, which had been located below Mount St. Helens before that blow up, Jelisco stated. Ben doubted that the name was accurate, being they were in Ecuador, but he let it go, as with the rest of the verbose man’s dialogue.
The lake disappeared as they entered one of the high dry forests of Ecuador.
Kapok trees became dense, their purple blossoms giving away the spring season. Thorns dotted the trunks up and down, except for the older trees which shed them completely.
Ben had been told that the thorns were to keep animals from going after the moisture trapped inside the younger trunks. The thorns were not necessary when the trees were older and their bark much harder.
Two bands of small children appeared ahead of them, one band on each side of the narrow tracks the van was negotiating. As they approached closer Ben saw a string or rope extended out from each band. It curved down across their path.
“These child banditos, “ Jelixico said, with undisguised contempt, “shall I drive through their stupid string?”
“No,” Ben replied, “Stop right here.”
Ben climbed out the door to confront an approaching child. All of them he could see appeared to range in ages from about ten down to five or six. All were thin, serious faced and wearing “T” shirts and torn off trousers. None of them wore shoes.
A small boy walked up and extended his right hand, palm up.
“Ten dollar to pass check point,” the boy said, unequivocally. His hand was steady, as was his gaze. Ben could not remember back to when he had seen larger or sadder eyes regarding him with such patience . The boy’s “T” shirt had the word Zorro written across it in red lettering.
“So, you would be Zorro?” Ben asked, reaching into his pocket. He heard the sliding door of the Besta opening, and the rest of the team exiting the van behind him.
“Si,” the boy answered. “I take for the poor.”
“Well, that’s not exactly it, but what the hell, close enough.” Ben searched for a ten-dollar bill in his wallet. American money had been adopted by Ecuador as its currency ten years before. The canvas pack inside the van was loaded with Agency money, but there would be nothing in it as small as a ten.
“Where’d you learn English?” he asked Zorro, conversationally.
“American School in Quito. Mother sick. No work. No school,” the kid replied, not a hint of emotion in his voice.
“Sorry about your Mom being sick, and I hope this helps,” Ben said, about to take two fives from his wallet.
“You want me to handle these assholes, sir?” a voice whispered behind him.
Ben flipped his head around. The team, arrayed behind him, looked like the A-Team from old television, although none of their exotic weaponry was in evidence.
“No, I think I can handle this one,” Ben whispered back, rolling his eyes involuntarily as he turned. He then gently placed the two fives in the boy’s hand. The money was gone before he saw the kid’s hand close.
“Thank you, sir,” the boy stated, formally.
“That’s okay, ten bucks isn’t that much,” Ben responded.
“No, I meant for my Mom,” Zorro said back, then ran to join his friends by the side of the road. The back of his shirt was stenciled with two large letters, obviously put on by hand. The letters were an E and a P, almost run together in black ink.
They got back inside, the string was lowered, and all the children waved enthusiastically. Jelisco ground the van ahead in first gear.
Ben broke the silence when they were again moving smoothly through the trees.
“You’re here to do what you’re told,” Ben said, his body twisted around to view the men in the back, “and I won’t put up with suggestions from any of you.
We don’t do children, which you’re not far from being yourselves, and we certainly don’t mess with locals over ten dollars. You know why you’re here. Just do your job.” The men remained impassive, looking back at Ben, but not responding in any obvious way to what he said. Jelisco raised his eyebrows, glanced over quickly, but then returned his attention to driving.
The van dropped down gear by gear, the road steep but the lack of air pressure was the real problem. The turbo screamed but could only do its job of ramming in more air if it was rotating at its highest rate. By the time they reached the fence down from the base camp the diesel was knocking about two or three times a second. A man could walk faster than they moved, but at eighteen thousand feet above sea level the effort would hardly be worth it.
The van gasped to a halt, the engine dying without being shut off. The gate to the fence was closed. Several climbers and hikers milled about, but no one attempted to get through. A poorly painted sign hung from the metal gate. It said “Cerrado FARC.”
Closed by the Revolutionary Army of Colombia was not a notice to be taken lightly.
FARC had operated in Ecuador for years, generally in silence, but every once and awhile blood flowed in small rivers. The four letters were commonly seen about the countryside, but actual confrontation with FARC members was an uncommon but terrorizing experience.
Ben told Jelisco to remain where he was until they returned. The driver, for once, was without words, his widened eyes going from the sign, and then back and forth to the three men getting into their kits outside the open door of the vehicle.
“I’m going right in,” Ben said to the men, “Johnson, you’re in charge. What do you do if you hear nothing at all from me and the fail safe device does not go to alarm?”
“We do nothing for an hour, and then we make our way up to the building to see what we can find there. If we find nothing we leave. If we find bodies, we photograph and then leave.” The man read his instructions from the morning’s five paragraph combat order perfectly, from memory. Ben was impressed.
“Your mission?” Ben inquired, feeling better about the three wet workers who’d been assigned.
“To provide security and cover for the team, and the victim, until we’re all safely extracted from the country,” Johnson intoned, again perfectly.
“Good, no heroics. No assaults. You have the Naval Commo?”
Johnson produced a small hand held radio that looked like it should be in some science fiction movie rather than a tool of the present. Somewhere way above their heads, beyond eyesight and hearing, two F-18’s orbited above the maximum altitude of Ecuadorian fighters. Each was armed with two Maverick smart bombs capable of delivering three hundred pounds of high explosive using pinpoint electro-optical accuracy. Johnson controlled the radio in case the F-18’s needed to be used to assist in their retreat, flight or escape, once the kidnapped American was exchanged. However, in the event that Ben and the American were killed, no combat action was to be taken. Ben hadn’t been happy about that part of the mission plan, but he understood its wisdom. If both of them were dead then trying to blow up scattering rebels in the forest would probably be counter productive. FARC did not know that they had captured a CIA agent held for ransom. They thought they had an oil executive, because that’s what the idiot had been passing himself off in the bars of Quito, attempting to get laid. They knew that they didn’t have much, however, as they had been reduced to fifty-five thousand in cash during earlier negotiations with State.
Wilbur Morrison was the man’s name, which, as far as Ben was concerned, was a completely appropriate moniker for idiot.
The mission was easy. Simply exchange the cash for the man, walk back down the hill from the rest camp, get in the van with the agent, drive back to Quito, put the man, and themselves, on a C130, and get the hell out of Dodge.
Ben was nearly ready. He carried no weaponry, just the canvas bag filled with bundled hundreds, an Iridium 9555 satellite phone, and personal identification with wallet and passport. The Knuckledraggers carried heavier stuff they’d had delivered by diplomatic pouch to the US Embassy Quito. Ben punched an auto dial button on the 9555. Johnson answered without their being a ring. The phones were set to vibrate only.
“Com check,” Johnson said, before Ben could say a word.
“Five by five,” Ben answered, before hanging up and sticking the slim phone into his right hip pocket. None of the team was wearing paramilitary gear. Although it was more functional, it was too aggressive looking and too revealing to anyone who might see them along the way.
Ben pushed open the unlocked gate, jostled the FARC warning aside and began his ascent up toward the rest station. The five hundred meters should have been as challenging as a quick stroll in cool windy mountain air, but it was nothing of the sort at eighteen thousand feet. By the time he reached the stairs up into the low log building he was taking half steps and gasping for air after each one. He stopped to rest before ascending to the wide long porch.
The door opened and an AK-47 pointed thought the open space. The barrel of the weapon motioned impatiently. Ben breathed in deeply, and then staggered through the opening. Two unarmed boys quickly felt over his entire body, including running their hands through his hair and checking the soles of his boots. The search was nearly professional. They returned his satellite phone without even opening it, however.
The inside of the building was in good shape. No mess anywhere that Ben could see. An array of angry looking Ecuadorians stood against the walls, each with some kind of assault weapon. Only two men were seated, one of whom Ben instantly identified as Agent Wilbur Morrison. The other man was much older, at least Ben’s age, or even older. Ben was relieved to see that. The chances for violence would be less with a weathered veteran at the controls. Wilbur would not look at Ben, instead staring down at his own hands. That was not a good sign.
“The name’s Ben Strasser, late of the U.S. Who might you be?” Ben held out his right hand.
“Juan,” the man said, adding the honorific of senor a few seconds later. But he stood and extended his hand. They shook with the table between them. The man’s grip was perfectly firm, his hand dry but tough and calloused. It was a good start, and they were speaking in English. Ben spoke Spanish, but not well. English would lessen the likelihood of misunderstandings.
Both men sat. Juan eased a cigarette out of its pack. He then took almost a full minute to light and inhale deeply from it. Ben waited until their eyes met again.
“The money’s in a sack, down the mountain, as you requested. How about I go back down the hill, get the money, take Wilbur here and get out of your hair,” Ben said, hoping to conclude the deal without any further negotiation. Quick exchanges led to the most successful and by far the safest exchanges.
“The man’s one of your agents. He says you come all the way from what is called Operations in your Central Intelligence. He says you are a dangerous man. Are you a dangerous man?” Juan blew smoke, but not toward Ben.
Ben stared, keeping his face impassive. Wilbur had spilled his guts, probably out of boredom or for some small reward, like a padded cot.
“Not here. Not now. Not today,” he replied, having no choice but to follow the FARC commander’s lead.
“Fifty-five thousand is not enough for such a find. We want five hundred thousand for our cause.”
Ben sat and thought. He had no authorization to meet any further demands, other than that he had brought a full hundred thousand in case of incidental problems. It was all in the bag. Even if he had to reveal the extra money, its presence would only act to lessen any probability of violence taking place. He was not tied to it. As was being proven, a hundred grand was a cheap price to extricate the agent and get him out of the country, and hopefully, out of the Agency as well.
“There’s a hundred thousand down there,” Ben said, hooking one thumb back over his shoulder, toward the direction he’d come up from.
Juan smiled a smile that showed a full set of very white teeth. It was a striking smile against the backdrop of his weather-beaten brown skin.
“I like people who think ahead,” he said, “but the information we have from your friend here is far too valuable to keep quiet about for anything less than four hundred thousand, so let us stop here. No more of this play. Go and get three hundred more from one of your banks. Return tomorrow.
“You seem like a reasonable man,” Ben began, but was immediately interrupted.
“I have seen the Godfather movie. Don’t take me for a fool,” Juan’s smile changed to a deep frown as he spoke.
“The sea is large and your boat is small,” Ben replied, his face remaining impassive. “Have you also read Hemingway?”
“Three hundred thousand more,” Juan stated, grinding his cigarette out, then tapping the half-empty cigarette pack to pull out another.
“I don’t have that authority,” Ben replied. “I’ll have to call in from down by the fence. I’m sure you saw the other men with me. They have the satellite phone,” he lied, “But one last word here, por favor.” He looked Juan straight in the eyes, and then waited for permission.
Juan nodded, igniting the tip of another unfiltered Camel.
“I don’t care about the money. It’s not my money. I don’t care about Wilbur here. He’s a piss poor example of an agent. But I’ve done this before. And I kind of like your style. Take the hundred and go fight for your cause. You were doing fine at what you were doing here, but this stuff changes the game. The new players you will meet are not going to be anything you’re ready for. One pro to another.”
Juan considered him over the cigarette, not bothering to remove it from his mouth as the ash grew longer and longer. One of the young armed men behind Juan stepped forward to whisper in his ear. Juan shook his head ever so slightly.
“Thanks for the advice, but come back with three hundred. Go get permission then return with the hundred now, for security. We will share some bread and wine before you leave for the rest of the money. The agent is worth only a hundred but what he has told us is worth much more. I will share that information with you over wine. You will understand my position then.”
There was nothing more to be said. Ben got up, shook Juan’s hand again and promised to be back in a few minutes. Once back down the mountain and through the gate he walked to the far side of the van. Jelisco was sleeping in the drivers seat, his upper body draped over the wheel. Ben was impressed. The driver had seen the FARC sign and watched the team’s preparations. He was either a tough man or a fearful one. Men slept before combat if they were frightened or hardened, sleep being an elixir for future action.
Johnson appeared as if by magic from the brush.
“What’s the situation?” he asked.
“Our man spilled his guts. They want another three hundred thou. I need to call it in and then go back up there and take what we got.” Ben talked while he was extricating his satellite phone, pausing for a second to pull the canvas sack with the banded twenties in it from the van.
“Why go back?” Johnson asked. “Why don’t we just leave and come back with the additional money?”
“Morrison blabbed something that grabbed these guy’s attention. Juan up there is going to talk to me about it over wine. I don’t know what our man was involved with or what he’s told these clowns but it would be helpful to have it for our report.”
“I guess that’s why you’re leadin’ this show,” Johnson replied. Ben was beginning to like the way the man thought.
Ben distanced himself form the van by walking over to the brush where Johnson had come out. He hit the auto dialer for his control at Langley. It took only minutes to lay out the entire situation to the man.
“Your team will remain where it is, a quarter mile distant from the target, until you receive further orders. We’ll call you back in less than fifteen minutes. This operation has to move to a higher authority.”
Their instructions were clear. He relayed them to Johnson, and then crouched in the bushes to be close to the other members of the team. He couldn’t see them but he knew that they were nearby. Something bothered him right at the edge of his mind. He replayed his discussion with Langley from memory. The word ‘target,’ his control had used was out of place.
Ben peered thought the brush to study the log building. He’d just decided that he’d proceed back up at a much slower pace than he’d covered the ground the first time when he saw the missile. It came in extremely fast, almost as fast as a bullet, but it was so large it was visible for a mere instant. There was no time to duck. The flash was tremendous. The sound felt more than heard. Ben was thrown backward into the base of a tree. Johnson was beside him. Both men pressed their hands against the sides of their heads. The compression wave had been unbelievably painful.
Ben stood up after a few moments, finally able to drop his hands from the sides of his head. He stared at the curl of smoke coming from the ruins of the building. There weren’t really any ruins, he realized. There was just a hole with smoke coming up out of it and debris strewn almost all the way down to the fence.
The van lay on its side, a splintered log sticking out of its side. It was a surreal scene. Ben snapped out of shock, and then knelt to help Johnson to his feet. The other two men came through what was left of the battered brush.
“What the hell?” Johnson said.
Ben only vaguely heard him, his ears ringing and still in pain.
“A bomb?” one of the men asked.
“End of mission,” Ben said, “let’s see if we can salvage the vehicle.” He knew what had happened. Whatever information Wilbur had blabbed was no longer available for negotiation. The Agency did not kill its own, at least not openly. Which meant that Johnson was going to become a ‘person of interest’ when they reached the embassy, and likely be taken into custody. He possessed the fail-safe pickle device. It would be determined that the switch was thrown and button pushed. Johnson didn’t have a clue.
“Gimme the pickle device,” Ben commanded Johnson. The man looked at him with a great question mark on his forehead but handed over the device. Selecting a place at the base of the largest tree near the fallen fence, Ben piled brush over it.
“That’s how they knew we were a quarter mile from the target. Got to be a GPS transponder in that thing,” he said, by way of explanation, a plan beginning to form in his mind.
Jelisco was standing next to his van when they approached. Ben was relieved to see the man uninjured.
‘My truck is destroyed,” he said, his tone one of agony.
“Don’t think so,” Johnson replied. The three Knuckledragger’s got on one side of the vehicle and then slowly lifted the top up to shoulder level. It was an amazing feat of raw strength. From there the van bounced onto its wheels, and then sat rocking for a few seconds. “Give a try,” Johnson said, wiping his hands on his pants.
Jelisco climbed in. The van started. The two other men worked on trying to pry the thick spear of wood from its side.
“Leave it,” Ben told them. “We’ll get in using the front door.”
Jelisco did not shut up about the damage to the van until Ben pulled two stacks of twenties from his sack and handed them over.
“Buy another god damned van, but shut up about it,” he said brusquely to the shocked driver.
They took a different dirt road than the one they’d taken up, but it didn’t seem to matter. The kids were there in the open waiting for them, just like before. The same rope was strung across their path.
“Blow past them,” Johnson instructed the driver, “things have changed.”
“Stop. Now,” commanded Ben. The driver braked before the string, as before.
Ben stared at Johnson until the man looked away. He climbed out of the passenger door to confront Zorro.
“The EP on the back of your shirt, what does it mean?’ he asked, as the boy walked over.
“Ejercito del Pueblo,” the boy replied. “Army of the People,” he translated, turning to show the lettering. Other boys began to come forth from the edge of the trees.
All carried AK-47’s almost as big as they were.
“Been a little tough to run through that string,” Ben murmured, glancing back at Johnson, who looked away.
“There was an explosion,” Zorro began, but Ben cut him off.
“Yeah, there was. It was a mess up there. Some of your brothers got killed.
I’m sorry. Got a proposition for you.”
The boy stared up at the plume of smoke, which was visible all the way down where they were. He looked back into Ben’s eyes, but said nothing.
“Back up there,” Ben pointed up toward Cotopaxi Peak, “There’s a big tree just to the right of the beaten down fence near the rest stop, or what was the rest stop. Under the brush is a thing that looks sort of like this,” he pulled the satellite phone from his pocket, “ but a little better. I want you to find it, run it ten miles, or so, down the mountain through the forest along the backside, away from Cotopaxi, and then I want you to destroy it. Shoot it and dump the remains in a river.” Ben stopped to observe the boy.
“Why?” Zorro asked, after a moment.
Ben moved to the van, reached in, and then guardedly pulled three packs of twenties from the sack.
“Here’s thirty thousand U.S. dollars. For your Mom. For your education.” Ben put the money on the ground between them, so the other more distant children couldn’t see it.
The boy looked at the stacks of money near his feet, and then turned his face up to Ben.
“Why?’ he asked again.
Ben massaged his forehead with one hand, before coming to a decision.
“For him,” Ben pointed at Johnson, sitting in the back seat of the van.
“The mission went bad. Some of your people died. He’ll be blamed. It wasn’t his fault. That device by the tree would cause him to be sent to prison, at the very least.
He’s a good man. A warrior like you. With a good heart, like you. Take the money for your Mom. You can always fight for the cause later, when you’re bigger, when your Mom is healthy and you’ve got an education.”
Zorro leaned down and scooped up the small thick bundles. He shoved them into the waistband of his pants, letting the “T” shirt hang over them.
“How to thank you,” the small boy began.
“By remembering,” Ben said. “Remember that most warriors are like us. Like you. Most people in the world are like us. Like you. Do what you can to help. You’re Mom will tell you.”
Ben got in the van. Jelisco drove jerkily over the rope and headed the vehicle toward Quito.
“I heard that,” Johnson said from the back seat. “All of it. I didn’t think about what might happen. What about the fifty thousand that’s left?”
“There’s no money left. It all blew up with the basecamp. Not our fault. Fifty thousand may be the retainer you need to have a life. Let’s go see how it plays out.”
They rode the rest of the way in silence, only the clattering of the diesel engine and the whirring caused by wind over the tree stump sticking out from the side of the van making any noise. Ben thought about what it was like to be a team leader for the Agency. About what a giant lie his report would have to be. About what the other two Knuckledraggers might say when questioned. About whether Jelisco could keep his mouth shut even to the tune of a twenty thousand dollar bonus. The only thing that finally brought a smile to his face was thinking about Zorro, and what he might grow up to be because of it all.

Egress

2010-04-30T14:51:00.000-07:00

Egress

By

James Strauss

The decision was the fastest and most fateful he had ever made, but living with the result was going to be problematic, even if the life he had left was to be very short in duration. Josh stood with his back pressed into the hard cold granite. He was balanced on a small triangle of rock hanging out from the wall of a thousand foot cliff. He could not even look down, as the slight leaning might cause him to topple forward and plunge five or six hundred feet to the surf smashed riprap below. The wind was attempting to pry him loose from his precarious position, as well. Somehow it was able to wedge itself between his back and the surface of the unforgiving surface. Josh could only put a little pressure rearward without losing his balance.
The large rock had passed by him without a sound. If Josh hadn’t craned his head upward in a useless attempt to see his teammate, located three hundred feet above, he wouldn’t have spotted it in time. He would only have caught the whisper of air as it passed, doing more than a hundred miles an hour, and then glanced down to see what it was, before being jerked from the wall to join it on the rocks below.
The other end of his climbing rope had been tied around the rock. With no conscious thought at all he’d reached to his waist and clicked open the carbineer the end was attached to. Less than a second later the piton he’d looped the rope through, and the rope itself, were jerked free and gone.
He breathed with difficulty, the adrenalin of fear and shock coursing its way through his body. He was used to the feeling. Josh knew what to do. He was a pro.
He did nothing. He waited. He thought about doing nothing and waiting, knowing that any formation of ideas in his electrified and chemically stimulated brain would be counter productive and might lead him to do something that would kill him. Although training was not that far behind him, he considered himself field experienced.
The wind was a nagging source of bother and discomfort. Josh pressed back as best he could, trying not to shiver. His precarious position, facing out toward the Straits of Magellan, was tenuous at best. He could not stand in place waiting for rescue. There was going to be no rescue. The rope could only have been tied to the rock and tossed over by his teammates above. He had not been intended to survive. The team egress following the mission had been to descend the rock face in three hundred foot increments, drive pitons in to take the weight, then descend again until they reached the bottom. Once there they were to have congregated, uncovered a pre-positioned Zodiac, and then made the sixty-mile run into Punta Arena.
There was no Zodiac below. That was Josh’ first rational conclusion. The second was that he had no rope, other than a short ten-foot connector coiled around his shoulder. The third was that the face of solid granite wall he balanced against had no seams on its surface.
The piton he’d driven into a small crevice had taken five minutes of pounding with his Bongo hammer. He hadn’t been worried about balance then, as he’d been attached to the rope. His natural fear of heights had not been much of problem either. But all that had changed in less than two seconds. Josh tried to relax and think. He did a quick mental inventory.
He had his Bongo hammer, curved like a hook on its back, with two holes for running line through, up at the hammer and down at the base of the handle. It dangled from his left hand. He had the ten feet of rope. He had his belt, dark sweater and black canvas climbing trousers. He had good boots with long laces and thick socks. He had a few extra pitons and some carabineers on a leather belt. He had about a dozen cigarettes and a lighter. That was it. No hat. No coat. No water. No food. No communications.
Josh brought up his free hand to look at it. He’d missed the gloves. Supple leather gloves. He had those.
He also had no way out. He couldn’t go up or down. He couldn’t even turn around, balanced as he was. He couldn’t bend to access his boots or laces. He could do nothing but stand in place, trying not to be forced from the wall by the ever -increasing wind, until he could longer stand up. Josh new that his time was very limited. He was in the best shape he was going to be in. Every minute, exposed as he was, would lead to the degradation of his condition.
He could not turn around to drive in another piton. He knew that if he could he would only delay the inevitable. There was no percentage in moving. There was no percentage in staying where he was. He turned his head to the left and studied the wall opposing him. The face he was backed up to was curved. A narrow canyon indented to his left. Out from the other side of that shallow indentation was another wall. It ran out a good twenty feet farther out than his own. Its surface was covered by clinging bushes and vertical pines of some sort. Pines with thready looking branches, which extended horizontally along the cliff but not outward. The wall was a good fifteen feet from him.
Josh knew he was looking at his only chance. He began to calculate the distances and the physics. It was entirely possible for him to make the fifteen-foot leap, he knew. He was six feet tall and his arms went out another two and half feet or so. If he launched himself toward the wall he had only to cover seven or eight feet to make contact, snag a branch or root and then secure himself.
Gravity, he thought. Thirty-two feet per second per second was the formula for the physics of a falling body. His falling body. He would have to crouch down to give himself the spring power to make the jump, which meant he would have to leap farther. He would fall about fifteen feet down, he knew, just in getting across. By that time, his body would be moving toward the opposing wall at speed plus almost twenty miles per hour, straight down from the draw of gravity. He weighed two hundred and twenty pounds. He wouldn’t be snagging anything. He wouldn’t be able to hold onto anything. He’d hit the far wall and then plunge to his death, probably with handfuls of needles and roots griped tightly in his hands. A shiver of near terror ran up and down his body.
He thought about tossing the Bongo away, but then swung it up to his face.
The back of the Bongo hammer was a hook. A well curved strong hook. As smoothly as he could manage it, without allowing the wind to pry him loose from the rock wall, Josh worked the coiled rope from his shoulder. It was a harder task than he thought it would be. His hands were shaking from fear and the cold.
It took almost fifteen minutes to wind and fasten all ten feet of the rope around and through the holes in the Bongo, and then around his wrists and forearms. He could not secure the end of the rope so he used his mouth to wrap it around and around the final loop securing his arms. He breathed deeply and began preparing for the jump. His arms were joined together from wrists to elbows as one triangular hook. At the end, grasped firmly between his rope-coiled hands was the reversed Bongo.
He sprang from the small outcrop he’d balanced upon, his concentration fully focused on a root system located fifteen feet down the opposing wall. His leap was not spectacular. His balance had been bad and the small triangular outcrop had not allowed his boots great purchase on its edge. He plummeted across the chasm and down, extending his ‘hook’ as far out before him as he could stretch. The hook caught. Josh’s body swung down and smashed into the cliff face.
The impact didn’t knock him out, but he was stunned for several minutes, his breath coming finally in great wracking sobs. Pain radiated down from his hands and arms, pinned tightly together by pressure from the rope. The hook had caught upon one of the larger roots radiating across the solid rock wall, and his body hung down, the full weight of it concentrated near the Bongo.
Josh stared at the end of the rope in front of him. He realized at once that if he had been able to tie the end off, as he wanted to, then he’d never have been able to get the knot out in his current predicament. His feet had no purchase under him. His full weight hung suspended from the hooked end of the Bongo. Working as fast as he could with his head and mouth he unwound the rope. He knew he had to move quickly or he’d lose the feeling in his hands. Without warning the rope began to give way, unwrapping itself from his wrist and arms. Josh grabbed the root with his right hand, and then flipped the Bongo down to the clip on his belt. The rope hung dangling from his side.
There was only one way to go. The rocks and straits over five hundred feet down led nowhere. The cliffs fronted a breaking sea that went on for miles and miles. The water was too cold to swim in. There was nothing to burn. Going down was merely a choice to die more slowly than a fall would have allowed. But he had pitons, the hammer and a good chunk of rope. Even more importantly, he had hope.
Three-foot gains were all he could manage on the open spaces of bare unbroken rock. Where there were roots and branches he did better. Driving the pitons into the slimmest of cracks was hard work. He quickly warmed. There was no margin for safety. He suspended himself from one piton while pounding another, something he would never have considered, given time and almost any other circumstance. If one piton failed to hold he would know only a few seconds of rushing air before a terribly short spot of pain.
But the pitons held. It was almost dark when he reached the upper edge. The climb had taken hours. His hands and arms lacked the strength to pull him up over the edge. He had to drive one more piton on top of the cliff itself. Once there he laid down a few feet from the precipice, his face pushed against small pebbles and tufted grass. He couldn’t believe he was alive. He couldn’t believe that it felt so good to simply be alive. He finally gathered himself together and stood to look out over the Magellan Straits. It was a beautiful vista. Harsh and gray in the light of a setting sun, but wonderfully filled with the movement and aroma of life itself. Josh breathed it in deeply.
He was surprised to find his rucksack sitting near the edge nearby, until he pulled open the zipper and looked inside. He was not surprised by the tools of his trade. He was an Explosive Ordinance Disposal expert. The charges he hadn’t used at the refinery, as well as the timers and remote detonation devices, were old hat to him. It was the British Passport that stunned him. A British Passport with his photo and information inside its burgundy covers. Josh was a U.S. citizen and had been one all of his life. He had to sit down to consider. His parents had been British citizens. He’d never held a British Passport. He stripped off his gloves and massaged the document, opening and closing its crisp pages. Instinctively, he knew it was real. There was a London address listed as his residence. He somehow knew that that would turn out to be real, as well.
It took moments for all of it to come home to him. The refinery was right across the unguarded and unmarked border of Chile. He had wondered why the team was assigned to blow an American refinery on Chilean soil. The British and the Chileans enjoyed an enmity that had long predated the Falklands war, and remained following it. Josh realized then that he had never been intended to survive the mission. His rucksack was left, with the damning passport inside, to assign blame. Josh was to be the ‘lone assassin,’ like Lee Harvey Oswald, or Sirhan, or any of the rest of them. People believed in lone assassins. They did not exist in the real world, but the reality of the modern era was controlled by television and movies.
Josh took out a cigarette with steady hands. He puffed, letting the smoke be sucked over the edge of the precipice that had almost claimed him. The team had hired a van in Punta Arenas. It had dropped them near the very tip of Chile on Argentine soil. Puntas Dungeness. That had been their ingress. Josh had wondered why the egress, or departure, was by Zodiac. Why were they required to use the words ingress and egress anyway, when entry and departure would serve? The Agency was an arcane labyrinth of codified and mysterious words and phrases. Josh thought deeper.
How could they ever enter the harbor of Punta Arenas without suspicion, in a Zodiac? He had left such questions unasked of the team leader. He wondered what would have happened if he had asked any of them.
The team had assembled in Ushuaia, further down toward the tip of
Tierra del Fuego. They’d come in on a private Pilatus turbine. That had surprised Josh too. There is plenty of commercial traffic at the world’s southernmost airport, located just three miles outside the city proper. Why had they flown in on an expensive and distinctive private plane? The reason for all of the abnormal mission activity was answered by the passport. There was simply no need for much secrecy or cover on the part of the remainder of the team. Josh had been intended to suck all suspicion up with his damning rucksack contents and broken, very dead, body. He realized also that there might indeed be a Zodiac at the base of the rocks. It would fit. It wouldn’t be operational, but it was likely to be there.
Josh flipped the unfinished cigarette over the clip, looked up once to thank the great creator for his extension of time on earth, then grabbed his gloves, the ruck, and headed for the road. He shredded the passport as he walked, thankful that his U.S. document had been left in the plane. He had three twenty-dollar bills in his pocket. It would have to be enough.
Techni Austral ran the bus and ferry service from Puntas Arenas to Ushuaia.
Twenty-one dollars later he was stretched across the back seat, his beaten body down for a rest. The truck traffic on the highway had not been a factor in hitching a ride into town.
The first truck had stopped. Once language difficulties ensued, the ride had been very quiet. There’d been no attempted discussion about blown up oil depots.
Josh slept most of the ten hours it took to get to Ushuaia. His original enjoyment, crossing the other way on the ferry, was no longer a factor in his travel. He’d spent twenty more dollars to overnight in Puntas Arenas, waiting for the only bus, which left every other day at seven a.m. But he had not slept. The adrenalin and fear had not let him. He was headed for Ushuaia but he had no plan. No plan to do anything there, and no plan for conducting the rest of his life.
Getting a cab to the airport from Ushuaia had only taken a few more dollars. The plane was in the hanger, where they’d left it. Their team leader was a pilot as well. Josh vaguely wondered why he could no longer remember the names of the team. Their treatment of him as terminally disposable had effected his own thinking about them.
There was nobody inside the hanger at all. Josh walked around the exterior. The place was deserted. Ushuaia Airport sprang to instant life when there was a commercial flight in or out, but just lay there, as if dead, when nothing was happening on the tarmac.
Josh fished a small silver key out of his pocket. He’d found it in a drawer in the bathroom when they’d been on the long flight in. Pilatus 12C aircraft had tremendous range but flew slow to achieve such figures. Josh tired the key in the door’s lock.
It turned. He smiled for the first time since going over the edge of the cliff.
“Thank you, God,” he said, looking up to his higher power.
He went aboard with his rucksack. His stuff was in the pocket behind one of the plush seats where he’d left it. He took the credit cards, his U.S. passport, but left the rest, including a wonderful Ghurka wallet. He worked at the back of the plane for almost an hour before deplaning. He wanted there to be no chance that his former teammates would discover that he was still among the living.
He deplaned, locked the craft back up, stashed his ruck behind a pile of spent fuel drums at the side of the hanger, and jogged back into the city. The jog did him good. In less than a half an hour he was standing across the street from a pub called The Galway. It wasn’t very Irish, the place, but it prided itself on being the southernmost Irish Pub in the world, similar to claims for the airport.
Josh hunched down in the parking lot adjoining the pub. He knew what he was looking for and spotted them almost immediately. They were being creatures of habit, which was counter to all operational training. The three American’s sat in the outer bay window, drinking and carrying on. It was the same pub and table they had assembled at when they’d been a foursome, prior to kicking off on the mission. Josh watched the blond team leader sip from a coffee cup.
“Ah, yes,” he said aloud, but to himself. The team leader drank Jamison’s whiskey in neat shots when he was not flying, but only coffee prior to going aloft.
Josh didn’t wait any longer. He slowly walked away before beginning his jog back to the hanger. He passed no one along the way. Once there, he settled in with his rucksack behind the barrels to wait. The men did not come for hours. Josh had not fallen asleep but he had nearly nodded off a few times, pinching himself to stay awake and using the fear of being defenseless if the men were to find him before they departed.
They had firearms. All he had was a bag filled with high explosives.
But they didn’t. There was no preflight check-up of the plane. The men simply opened the hangar doors wide, pulled the chocks from under its wheels, and pushed the aircraft out. Unaccountably, they returned inside, once the hangar door was closed again.
“What do you say, guys” the team leader intoned, standing next to barrel that had been cut in half and upended. He lit something. Smoke began to rise from the barrel.
Josh, from his hiding place, smelled the aroma of incense. It took him back to his Catholic childhood.
“We commit the soul of Josh to your care, oh God,” the blond said. “We hope that he will forgive us our transgressions against him when we cross over to join him.”
“Amen,” the three men said together.
“He wasn’t a bad shit, you know,” the team leader said, flatly.
“Bit of a dumb fucking new guy though,” one of the other men commented.
The three walked out without extinguishing the incense. Josh watched it curl and float inside the hanger until they switched the lights out. He heard the plane’s engines stutter, and then ignite. In only seconds the plane was revving loudly, the sound growing quieter as it distanced itself down the taxiway from the hangar.
Josh stepped outside the door. He stood watching the lights of the Pilatus as it turned at the end of the runway. The team leader gave the powerful turbine full power. The expensive plane needed only half the runway to lift off. Once it was fully in the air it banked sharply south, as if headed to Antarctica, not far away. Josh knew it would hold that turn until it came to a North heading, as the team made it’s way back to Miami.
Josh held a small remote control device in front of him. He stared at the banking plane for several seconds before flipping up the fail-safe lever and pushing the red button. His eyes never left the plane. There was a brief spark in the air, and then the plane’s lights began to spin slowly, around and around.
“Kind of hard to fly without a tail, isn’t it, you seasoned veteran bastards,” Josh breathed.
He didn’t stay, instead returning to the inside of the hangar and flicking on the lights.
“Your transgressions are not forgiven guys,” he intoned, standing at the half barrel from which incense still issued forth. “And I do so hope you are around when I cross over.”

Sunday

2010-04-27T15:22:00.000-07:00

Sunday
By
James Strauss

The boy sat on the sand atop the low rocks, staring down into clear lapping water. He carefully lowered his small hand down until it was just beneath the surface. He waited. There it was again. A solid thrumming vibration. It lasted for a few seconds before it was gone. The boy pulled his hand out, and then carefully wiped it on his “T” shirt. The shirt had been a gift from his grandfather on his eighth birthday. In big red letters on the front it said ‘NEVER ON SUNDAY…” which only made sense because of his name. When he’d been a child, the boy and his twin had been called ‘two scoops of an ice cream Sundae’ by someone. His brother had been Ice Cream for a while after, and he’d been Sundae. Nobody called his brother Ice Cream anymore, but the Sundae nickname had never gone away. He finger signed to people that his name was Peter, but they called him Sunday in spite of his communications. The confection had somehow changed to the day of the week, over time.
He watched a dark shape flow through the beautiful lagoon. It swam underwater most of the way. Occasionally there would be a flourish at the surface, and then it would continue moving back and forth across the lagoon, under the surface.
Peter was not afraid. He knew they would come back for him. It was his own fault, being left on the island. The boat had been crammed with families, with kids all over the place, and his father had one room while his mother had another. The vacation plan had been made that way because his parents were getting a divorce. Peter had stayed in his Dad’s cabin, but not really. It was too hard to not cry about what was happening to his family, and most of the kids aboard played and slept all over the boat, anyway. Plus he was a twin. He could understand how they had not missed him. He was used to it, being both a twin and deaf. He lived in his own world his mother said, in spite of her having taught him to read lips and use sign language years before. His brother had not gotten sick when he was a baby so he could hear just fine, whatever hearing really was. Peter understood hearing, just as he could remember never having ‘heard’ anything, but he couldn’t understand what it was like. People could feel vibrations with their ears like Peter could see with his eyes. He knew that it must be really neat to ‘hear’ but he also didn’t feel bad about being deaf. Peter noticed things other people didn’t, like the vibrations in the water. The dark moving shape in the lagoon was talking to Peter. He knew it. He just didn’t know what the animal was or what it was saying.
The sun wasn’t very hot and he had a tan, so he stayed by the lagoon. He wasn’t going to make the mistake of crawling into the thick undergrowth that ran like band across the length of Green Island. Doing that had caused him to be left behind. Peter knew the boat would come back. He was just afraid that they wouldn’t remember what island they’d left him on. The boat had made many stops the day before. It was on a special excursion up into the unexplored northern islands of the Hawaiian chain.
The night hadn’t been so bad. Peter loved Hawaii. It was warm and the soft winds and rough sand were wonderful. The water was so clean he wished he could drink it. But he knew better. Being thirsty was no excuse for drinking seawater his Dad had repeated to him when he’d tasted it a couple of times. But there was no fresh water on Green Island, not that Peter had found, and he couldn’t go back into the bushes, unless it was just the edge to relieve himself. He knew he needed water. He was hungry but his Dad had once told him that a survivor of a shipwreck, not too far from the island he was on, had gone over a month without anything to eat. The boat would be back long before a month went by, Peter just knew.
He stuck his hand back in the water. The moving animal ‘talked’ to him right away. Peter signaled hello back by folding his right thumb into his palm and then waving outward under the water. He pulled his hand out quickly when the thing swam toward him. It was so big. Peter cringed away from the water, wondering if the sea animal could come up onto the sand and get him. But it didn’t.
It was a dolphin. The boy had seen them on television and once at Sea Life Park on the island of Oahu. It was bigger than he thought it should be, but then he’d never seen one up close. The dolphin stuck its head out of the water, half of its body really, and then vibrated wildly at Peter. It backed up and sank as it vibrated. It did the same thing, over and over again.
“What do you want?” Peter signed, using both hands, but the dolphin didn’t change what it was doing, or the vibration it was sending.
“I don’t understand,” he signed in resignation. After awhile the animal left to swim in circles, before returning.
The afternoon came and went. Peter grew thirstier. He knew the heat and wind were drying him out but he didn’t know what to do about it. He felt so alone and tired. The dolphin was all he had. At the park people had been swimming with the dolphins. They had all looked so happy, but his Dad had said he was too young when he’d asked to try it. Before the sun began to set Peter made a decision. Waving hello with his right hand under the water, he moved off the rocks to stand in the lagoon. The water was only up to his waist. He shivered as the dolphin approached. Then he lurched backward in fear when it brushed against his right knee as it passed.
Peter slapped the surface of the water. The dolphin swam quickly to the other side of the lagoon where it could not be seen. Peter watched for many minutes, but the animal did not come up for breath. Peter began to worry that it might somehow be gone, although the lagoon was closed in by a reef and didn’t seem to have a way out.
All of a sudden, from nowhere, the dolphin swam rapidly by the boy, leaped through the air and landed on the sand atop the rocks. It vibrated rapidly, bobbing its head up and down while craning around to stare at the boy with one big eye. A sizeable fish fell from its mouth, flopping onto the sand. With a few twisting shifts of its great bulk the dolphin jerked itself off the sand and fell with a huge splash back into the lagoon, where it disappeared with a multi-colored flashing of reflected light.
Peter climbed to where the fish lay, still moving, as if it was trying to imitate the dolphin’s escape maneuver. The fish was bitten almost in half. Peter’s salivary glands filled his mouth with liquid. He was terribly hungry. The meat of the fish looked just like the sushi his Dad had introduced him to at Nick’s Fish Market on Oahu. The chef there had really liked Peter. He’d liked him even better when Peter kept asking for more of his small chunks of wrapped Ahi and raw crab bits.
He waited for the fish to stop moving. Then he poked it several times. Satisfied, Peter grasped the back part of the fish, separated it from the front, and then washed it thoroughly in the water of the lagoon. Finally, and very gingerly, he held it up in both hands. He took a bite of its flesh. Once he began he could not stop. He chewed, clawed, and then scraped pieces of the flesh free of skin, bone and other stuff on the inside.
He didn’t sit until he was done. His little stomach swooped outward like a beach ball when he finally lay down to watch the sun set. Peter made sure the top of the fish was near his foot when he closed his eyes, but his last thoughts before sleep took him were about the dolphin. It had given him a fish to eat and it had provided him with company. His last thought was about how he might be able to teach the dolphin sign language, even though the animal had only flippers, not hands and fingers.
Another day passed. Another fish was provided by the dolphin. During the long daylight hours Peter learned to swim with the rapidly moving animal. Actually, he didn’t swim. He held onto the dolphin by grasping one fin firmly with both of his small hands. The dolphin took him around the lagoon many times. Somehow it knew just how fast it could go without him being forced from it by the pressure generated by their speed. Peter’s face hurt from grinning while on the rides. In spite of his tan he was sunburned, but he was no longer dehydrated or hungry. Somehow, he realized, the fish the dolphin provided had enough water in it to keep him from being too thirsty.
The lagoon was a closed in body of water. Riding on the dolphin had proved that. Peter realized that the animal was trapped inside the lagoon. There was no way out. A storm must have somehow thrown the animal high enough to go over the reef.
“Maybe you got left behind like me,” Peter signed, when he was once more sitting in the sand by the side of the pool. The dolphin floated contentedly nearby, poking its head out of the water every once and awhile. Peter liked signing underwater. He’d never done that before becoming friends with the dolphin.
The helicopter came on the morning of the third day. There was no warning, except the dolphin raced away for no reason and disappeared into the deepest part of the lagoon. He felt the awful presence of the machine before he saw it. Peter's whole universe shook wildly, and then the sand around formed into a tornado and spun madly about him. Peter cowered, wrapping his arms about his body, burying himself in what was left of the beach.
He peeked out under his arm when the pain and shaking began to subside. The big monster of a helicopter filled his field of vision between the lagoon and the thick band of vegetation. The giant rotor on top of the thing continued to spin, but generated no more wind. A man in a helmet and rough looking green uniform walked out from the helicopter.
He held out one hand to Peter.
“You must be Sunday,” he said, confidently.
Peter read his lips easily, and then nodded, thinking that it was not a good time to correct the man about his name.
The man motioned with one hand for Peter to approach. Peter shook his head. He stood and pointed at the lagoon. The man said something back toward the helicopter that Peter could not understand, and then turned to face the boy again.
“I know you can’t hear me,” he mouthed the words, slowly. “We know about the dolphin. We could see it from the air. We’ll come back and get it out of the lagoon after you come with us.”
The big smiling man held out his hand.
Peter shook his head as before, and pointed at the lagoon, as before.
The helicopter pilot thought for a moment, the lower part of his forehead, revealed under his helmet, wrinkling into a deep frown.
“I’m an officer in the United States Marine Corps. Have you heard of the Marine Corps?” the man asked.
Peter nodded his head vigorously, smiling for the first time.
“I promise you, on the word of the United States Marine Corps, that we’ll come back and get your dolphin out. Is that good enough?”
Peter thought for a few moments before taking the man’s hand with his own. With his right he signed with a bent thumb toward the lagoon to say goodbye, then patted his mouth and gestured outward to thank the animal for all it had given him.
From the door of the departing helicopter Peter looked down upon the lagoon. The dolphin was a visible blur near its center. Instinctively, the boy looked at the side of the pilot's helmet. Without looking back, the pilot raised his fist, then let his thumb slowly rise up into the air.
Peter smiled down toward the swimming dolphin as the helicopter flew him away.

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Herschel

2010-04-26T19:38:00.000-07:00

Herschel
By
James Strauss

The ground didn’t seem wet at all from six feet higher up. But Tom wasn’t that high up from it anymore. Instead, he was on it, moving slowly through the forest in short scrabbling bursts. He rested the right side of his face against the surface. He felt the sharp prick of pine needles, but he made no move to brush them away. The needles were damp, like everything else a millimeter, or so, beneath the ground cover. He fleetingly thought about how much the surface changed entirely along such short distances. Leaves and small broken branches in one area, and then smooth prickly needles and cones just a little further on. The reality of his situation came crashing back as pain surged upward from his damaged thigh. The condition and appearance of the flora had been much more interesting to think about before. Before he’d been shot. Before he’d been forced to flee by crawling along weakly on this stomach. Before his life, little left that there might be, changed forever.
The leg burned, like it was caught inside some horrid oven. The bullet had taken him in the thigh as he’d turned to run. It had gone clean through, leaving a small hole in the front and a larger one in the back. Tom knew that if it hadn’t gone straight through he wouldn’t have survived as long as he had. He also knew, in spite of tying the wound off with a severed strap from his backpack, that he was leaving a trail of blood for his pursuers. He could do nothing about that, except to keep moving.
“Please God, get me through this. Don’t let them find me,” he gasped out, surging forward another ten or twelve feet, dragging the damaged limb along. The three men after him were hunters. It wasn’t likely in the least that they’d somehow fail to be able to track down a bleeding man who couldn’t walk, much less run.
Tom dug both hands deep into the needles before him, in preparation for making another lurch forward.
“How about a little help here Lord,” he said out loud, his face pressed against the earth. He looked up slowly to get his bearings or find a place to hide, before moving. A bear stared back at him.
The bear was about the size of one of those small pick-up trucks made by the Japanese. The bear grunted. Steam seemed to come out both of its nostrils. Its head was no more than two feet from Tom’s own. They stared at one another until Tom buried his face back in the pine needles.
“Thank you Lord,” he whispered, “very painful but very quick. He closed his eyes to wait for the end. In and out he breathed, his chest heaving atop the wet ground. He counted to sixteen. One full minute. He brought his head up, and then squinted through narrow slits to see if the bear was still there, which it was. With a great grunt the bear sat down, its head rising up to six or seven feet above Tom’s own. Tom sniffed the things fur, it was so close. He was surprised that it smelled like pine and berries. The bear leaned down and sniffed back. Tom almost choked in fear.
“Okay,” he said, “you smell just fine. I know I smell like blood. So what are you going to do? You’re a predator and I’m the prey. Well?”
The bear regarded him, its body facing away. First one big black eye looked into Tom’s own, then the bear turned its head so the other could do the same. Tom was trying to come to terms with what he knew of bears, for the move seemed totally unbearlike, when the cub stuck its head around the big bear’s stomach.
The thing stared at him too, resting its jaw comfortably on its mother’s stomach.
“Oh great,” Tom muttered in resignation, “a mother bear with her cub. I’ve heard about this. Can things get any worse?” He turned his head up to try to peer between the branches of the trees toward where he knew God had to be watching and laughing.
The cub raised itself up and eased around the monster bear’s bulk. It trotted on all fours over to Tom. It sat down by his face, and then stretched out a front paw, pushing it once against Tom’s head.
“Human,” Tom said, weakly, but unable to keep from smiling. “The enemy.
Destroyer of forests, worlds and even bears,” he went on quietly. The cub stared down, and then pushed Tom’s head a few more times.
A distant sound came through the silent forest. Tom wondered if it was easier to hear because he was so close to the ground. He made out the sound of a human voice.
“There’s big trouble coming this way,” he warned the bears, but the big bear had already come to full alert. Moving so fast it was hard for Tom to comprehend, the huge animal pushed him aside with one great paw, then slid its cub up against the base trunk of the full grown pine. It then ran directly toward the direction from which the sounds had come.
Tom groaned in pain. He had been thrown a good ten feet he figured, and the process of travel had not been gentle. He curled into a ball, trying to somehow minimize the agonizing pain in his thigh. He rocked back and forth, grasping his upper leg firmly with both hands. The bear cub mewled at him plaintively.
“Great, just great,” Tom intoned, when he could get out words, “I get to babysit you until your Mom comes back to eat the stored meat. Helluva deal.”
The cub left the trunk of the tree and ambled to his side. It sat next to him and began to lick the blood from his suppurating thigh wound.
“Now I’m being consumed by a bear cub,” Tom forced out between grated teeth. “My epitaph is not going to be very macho,” he said. The cub stopped licking, and then curled up to force its way under his arm.
Tom let the little animal have its way. He was powerless to do much of anything accept deal with the pain, he knew.
“I was a Marine once, you know,” he said to the cub. “I coulda taken you with one paw tied behind my back,” he tried, quoting from The Wizard of Oz. The cub was unmoved by the humor, closing its eyes to nap.
Three loud cracks penetrated the forest, followed by a human scream. The cub pressed itself deeper into Tom’s side, but did not open its eyes. Instinctively, Tom hugged the bear closer. He then waited and watched. The forest had become still, once again. Minutes passed before there was sound. A soft wind preceded the breaking of boughs and flying of broken branches.
There was no stealth in the huge mother bear’s return. When she stopped and fell to the earth the ground seemed to bounce and move. The bear lay on her side, both eyes boring into Toms. A long groan issued up from her lungs. Tom could tell that the bear was laboring badly. A trickle of blood began to stream from the side of her great muzzle. Tom shifted uncomfortably. The cub remained under his arm with its eyes closed.
“Sorry,” Tom said, looking into the big mother bear’s soulful eyes.
“I was fishing by the side of the lake back there. Another fisherman was out in a boat, about a quarter mile offshore. Three hunters came to the edge of the water, laughing and making all kinds of noise. They were drinking. One fella said to the other two that he bet he could hit the guy way out in the boat. The others said he couldn’t do it. I just stood nearby, my rod over the water. The one guy put his rifle up. Way up he pointed the thing. Then he fired. It seemed like so long before the man in the boat fell sideways into the water. I stood frozen. I couldn’t believe what I’d seen. Then the hunter’s spotted me. And now here we are.”
Tom stared into the bear’s eyes for any glint of understanding, knowing he would find none. He wondered why he had had to say what he’d said. The big bear blinked slowly once, which caused Tom to physically wince. Red froth came from both of the bear’s nostrils.
“They got you in the lights. Lung shot. You can’t survive that out here in the wild,” Tom remarked, wondering why he could not stop talking to the animal.
The sound of breaking branches and human voices came over the rise in the direction the bear had come back from. The sounds awakened the cub, but he didn’t move from Tom’s grasp.
“If you could do something about those clowns there, then I’d be happy to care for your cub,” Tom said, tentatively, like he was bargaining with the devil.
“What do you think?” he said up to the broken sky above him, reflecting for a few seconds about how he had never spoken to bears or God before in his life, and yet, in only a short period of time such conversation seemed completely normal.
More and closer sounds came from the closing hunters. The great mother bear lurched to her feet, twisting around as she came up. Tom saw at least four bloody holes in her fur. She glanced briefly over toward Tom and the cub, and then took off straight into the bracken before her, toward where the sounds were coming from. In seconds there were more shots, then a scream, and another longer scream. And then there was silence. No birds, no wind, not even a whisper of sound could be heard. Tom clutched the cub closer to him. The cub did not resist.
The normal sounds of the forest returned slowly. Tom waited with the cub but nothing happened. After awhile, he disengaged himself from the small bear, and then fashioned a crutch by breaking small branches from a larger one. Using the pine for balance he got himself erect and found he could limp. With great pain, but he could get by.
It took a long hour to reach the place he’d left the rover. The cub followed along, exploring here and there but always returning to his side. It took another half hour to reach the bait shop in the small town.
He got out of the car, and then leaned against the side to gather his energy.
The cub stared through the back window into his eyes. It sat on the seat, both paws up against the pad under the window, as if it was a small thick and well furred human. He smiled at the animal, shaking his head, before limping badly into the store.
A young man greeted him from behind the counter. Tom used the counter to for support, relieving his agony a bit.
“What happened to you mister?” the young man asked, leaning out to take in Tom’s bloody thigh and filthy exterior.
“I don’t really know,” Tom told him, “some trouble back at the lake with the fishing. I need two gallons of milk, the whole stuff, and some baby bottles with the junk it takes to use them.”
The boy ran enthusiastically to gather up the items. While he was gathering Tom pulled a first aid kit off a nearby shelf along with some extra tape and bandages.
“What’s the milk for?” the kid asked, once he had returned and finished bagging all the items. “You gotta baby with you?”
“Ah, no,” Tom said, not having thought about being asked such a question. “I got a pet. Of sorts. Kinda like a cat, a big cat, but not a cat, if you know what I mean.”
“A pet? Milk for your pet cat? What’s its name?” the boy asked.
Tom stared at the boy, taking in his open and honest appearance. A nametag was centered along the middle of the top of his crisply clean apron. The boy’s name was Herschel Stanton.
“Herschel,” Tom blurted out, his face suddenly breaking into a faint smile. “Its name is Herschel.”
“Herschel?” the boy repeated, in question and with a bit of awe, “that’s my name too.” He fingered his nametag when he said the words.
Tom gathered the plastic bags holding all the gear in his left hand, put the crutch carefully under his right arm and started for the door. He could see the bear through the glass of the door and the rover. It sat as before, confidently expecting his return.
“Hey mister,” the kid at the counter said. “Where’d you get the name for your pet? Did you read my name tag?”
Tom didn’t turn back, but his smile became bigger as he made his way.
“Nope. Got the name from God,” he said over his shoulder.

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The Spider

2010-04-22T23:00:00.000-07:00

The Spider
By
James Strauss

They had left two days before. Lynn’s job was to care for the house while everyone was gone. It was an easy task, or series of tasks, unless something went wrong. The generator ran all by itself, fueled by two huge tanks of diesel in the garage. It was barely audible. In fact, unless she thought about it, she didn’t hear it at all. If the generator quit, there was nothing to be done. Lynn was not mechanical. Not in the least.
Her husband and son had gone after their daughter. Both Tom and Mike were mechanically talented, in almost every area. The basement was nothing more than a series of specialty shops covering such mysterious areas as electronics, electric, and plumbing. All areas that Lynn did not even want to think about. She worried about them though. She briefly thought back to the days, not long ago when, if something in the house failed, she could simply call some expert and have that person come fix whatever the problem was.
The freeze had changed everything. One day everything had simply stopped. The electricity had gone off, never to come back on. The gas to the oven and range had quit. And people had gone into some sort of cave mentality. Almost everyone stayed home, unless they had to get something really bad. What television they could get told of a temporary downturn brought about by energy shortages and economic failure of the banks and insurance companies. There was hope if one watched television, which they didn’t do much because the generator only produced enough electricity for necessities. They could watch some television during the day because no lights had to be on.
Her husband and son would be back with their daughter by the end of the day, which was half gone. All Lynn had to do was get through another four or five hours. She stared out the window on the front room, the library, and sipped from a cup of coffee. It was her seventh so far. She knew she was wired, which explained why her hand shook so badly when she brought the cup to her lips. She spilled small drops, time after time.
Their home was situated in the country, about five miles from any other town. Farms surrounded them, which wasn’t pleasant when the farmers fertilized their fields in the spring. But spring had passed. Her husband said the house was perfectly placed for the trouble they were in. Her husband was paranoid. He called it hyper vigilance though. Desert Storm had done that, followed by Iraq and Afghanistan.
Lynn looked down the drive to the circular cul de sac down the gentle hill.
The cul de sac was there so other lots could be built on, but nobody had yet to attempt that. A stream ran along one side of the house, paralleling the driveway.
With the pines they had planted a few years ago, and the open areas of grass, now too long because the John Deere took too much fuel to run, it was a beautiful scene. She sipped more coffee, and then gently patted the table with a kitchen towel after a few drops fell. She sighed, holding the cup out over the sprawling canvas in front of the window.
Her husband had thrown the canvas over their gun. Before the gun they had had a beautiful table with a custom chess set laid out upon it. Before the gun the front window had never been opened. It flipped up on hinges, operated by a single lever on the far wall side. Lynn had never liked the window but her husband had told her that you couldn’t fire a gun from a house very easily, unless you have an open field of fire. She’d just shaken her head, at the time, and then ignored the strange construction effort.
Lynn had had one lesson with the gun, and it had not been pleasant. They couldn’t even shoot it, her husband said, because the bullets were too hard to get and too expensive to buy. She’d tried to absorb the lesson but her mind had strayed. Guns were boring and useless, in her opinion. But they seemed to always make men happy. She ignored guns as best she could, without letting on that she felt nothing in regard to them. Lynn had learned when she was young that it was better to act interested in such things as hunting, fishing, sports cars and guns rather than let men know how she really felt.
It was two o’clock exactly when they drove up. Lynn had just come back from the kitchen with another cup of the Hawaiian Kona coffee, her favorite. She’d sat down and wondered what things were like out in Hawaii and if she’d ever see the place again.
She heard the cars drive up before she saw them. Two pick-up trucks and some sort of military looking S.U.V. She new instantly that it was not her family returning. Her husband would have driven over the fields nearby, just as he had left. Driving over the field saved almost half a mile when headed for town.
The S.U.V. led the two pick-up trucks in making slow circles around and around the cul de sac. Lynn sat frozen, the coffee cup in her hand, half way down to the table. She stared. She felt no fear, only open curiosity. She questioned herself. Should she go to the door or open the window and yell out? Or do nothing? She decided to do nothing. Foreboding began to form in the pit of her stomach when the vehicles stopped and nobody got out. She heard the motors die, one after another.
Lynn could not see through the windows of any of the vehicles. It was like they had special dark coverings over them. Slowly, she placed the coffee cup on the flat arm of her chair. Still, she didn’t move, her eyes glued to the three trucks. The S.U.V. was dull black while the pickups were red and silver. None of them looked new. They looked intimidating and threatening. Fear began to work its way up her body. Lynn’s shoulders began to shake. She worked on controlling her breathing, which was close to becoming panicky gasps.
The window of the S.U.V. slid half way down. A man held one hand to his mouth and yelled.
“We’re coming in. You have a generator. We can hear it. You have fuel, food and things we need to survive. Don’t attempt to stop us.” The man’s hand dropped enough for Lynn to see a large white face sporting a full beard.
She stood, and then ran to the side window. There was no old Range Rover
coming over the rise or through the fields. Her husband was not coming to her rescue. She let a long breath out feeling tears run down her cheek. It was better that her family was not driving right into the situation and she realized it. She moved to the front door of the house just adjacent to the library. She opened the door fully.
“Don’t come up here,” she screamed, her voice coming out broken and ragged with fear. “I’ve got a gun.” She slammed the door, leaning against its cold surface. She relocked the deadbolt, knowing that the small metal device was just about useless against what was down at the end of her driveway.
Lynn walked shakily back into the library over to the far wall. With both hands she pulled smoothly on the overly large window lever. For the only time in her memory the long horizontal window eased open. She pushed down until it was angled upward, leaving a nine-foot gash along the full width of the library wall.
She heard laughing. The two pickups had lowered their own windows and the men were talking.
“She’s got a gun. The lady’s got a gun. Not a man to be found. What kind of idiots would go off and leave a MILF like that alone.” It went on and on. Instinctively, Lynn knew that the men were talking to build their own sense of
confidence. She also knew that she was in deadly danger.
“We’ll see your gun and raise you,” the same voice said, as had spoken the first time. Suddenly great explosions issued forth from the trucks. Lynn dropped to the floor, unaware that the move had been automatic until her face rested against the hardwood. She watched chunks of the front door fly backward into the hall. Her anniversary door. The special carved door had been her husband’s gift to her earlier in the year. It took minutes for the shooting to stop. Lynn knew that there was nothing left of the front door. There was no barrier between her and the men in the vehicles. She also knew that that fact would be readily apparent to them.
Lynn crawled to the stereo cabinet, pulled a pair of Bose earphones from between some CD boxes and put them on. She began to turn but then stopped. Turning back she hit the ‘on’ button to the amplifier, punched in the numbers one one four on the CD player panel and plugged the hanging cord into the machine.
The canvas lay before her as before, with a few coffee stains atop its gray surface. She pulled it off and pushed it aside. The spider sat in front of her, looking hideous and evil. She went to the back of it. The thing had three metal legs, a great protruding antenna and a metal belt hanging off its left side. The metal belt was filled with pointy rounds of different colors. Plain polished brass, brass with red tips and then brass with black tips. Those were the only colors the insect displayed.
Lynn sat behind the thing, like her husband had showed her. She gently pressed her hands around the two wooden handles at the back, while her thumbs fell, almost by themselves, onto the tips of a centrally mounted metal butterfly. She looked out over the thing’s snout. The men in the vehicles were still carrying on through open windows. She couldn’t really see any of them, however.
“It fires from an open bolt,” she said out loud, releasing her right hand from the wooden peg-like hold to grab another lever along the side. Lynn pulled the lever all the way back, and then let it go. The sound of a very solid metallic whack somehow made her feel better.
“I have a gun,” she screamed out through the open window again.
“You already said that,” a deep male voice boomed back, so loud that there was no problem hearing the words right through the Bose earphones.
Lynn shivered. The sound of the man’s voice was so frightening. She felt malevolent violence roll right up through the grass and into the library with her.
“I hope this works,” she whispered, putting both of her thumbs back on the butterfly lever. She looked with one eye through the back sight.
“You look through the little hole and out over the front bar,” she said to herself, squinting with her left eye until the side of the S.U.V. filled her vision.
She waited. She didn’t know what she was waiting for. Pachelbel’s Canon in D began to play in her earphones. The tone poem began to double up as it continued. She loved that part.
There was a distinctive click from in front of her. Through the Pachelbel Lynn identified the sound as that of a car door opening. She pressed down on the butterfly with both fingers.
The gun began to fire. It moved on its own in little jumps. Lynn fought to hold it down and get the barrel pointed the right way. There was gray dust everywhere and bright flashes in front of her. She could barely see anything, but she held down on the butterfly tips. The gun seemed to sweep back and forth of its own accord.
And then there was only Pachelbel. Lynn sat inside a thick gray cloud, the smell of cordite so strong that her nose seemed permanently wrinkled. Shell casings were all over the library, along with a vast number of clip-like things. The last strains of the Canon played out. Lynn removed the earphones and set them at her side. Suddenly her legs ached and her hands hurt. She remembered holding the wooden handles very hard.
The gray cloud was smoke she realized. She could still see nothing. Gingerly she rose to her feet, being careful not to touch the spider. It sat smoking on the floor
“I don’t know how to reload you,” she said to the thing, looking around the room for ammunition but not seeing any. She went to the hall, stepping over the parts of front door that lay strewn in her path. She went all the way to the back of the house. She opened windows along the back wall, and then went to the kitchen.
A cold cup of coffee sat on the counter next to the coffeemaker. She picked it up.
The library was clear of smoke. She could see out the window. The trucks sat as before. Lynn squinted. Looking very hard and carefully she thought she could make out holes in the sides of the trucks, but she wasn’t sure. She drank cold coffee.
She had no idea how long she sat drinking the coffee in very small sips. She noted that her hand did not shake at all, and she was surprised by that.
The Rover made its presence known before she heard it. Across the front yard grass it flew, straight to the top of the driveway. Doors opened and slammed.
Her husband was there, and her son, and her daughter. Lynn did not get up.
“I don’t know where the ammunition is,” she said to all three of them.
“We’ve got to reload the spider. I’m not sure that the bullets didn’t bounce off those trucks. Those men haven’t said anything since though.”
“Oh Mom,” her daughter said, kneeling among the brass cases and spent clips, trying to pry the empty coffee cup from her hand.
“That was a hundred rounds,” her husband mused, staring out toward where the trucks sat silent and unmoving, “and that’s a fifty caliber Browning machine gun, not a spider,” he went on. “Those black tipped rounds were armor piercing. They didn’t bounce off. They probably moved on, right over into the next county.”
“Well, you better go down there and talk to those men. They’re probably pretty mad, but you need to reload the spider first,” Lynn said, finally letting her daughter have the cup.
“Yeah, I guess I better see to that,” her husband responded, unable to suppress a small smile.

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Head

2010-04-21T20:36:00.000-07:00

Head

By

James Strauss

Zack prepared himself for the confrontation. Winter had been hard. So very hard. He had not really been ready for that kind of cold. He’d thought he was ready, but it was the wind off that lake that nearly did him in. He’d been saved by the boathouse. But everything was over. The owner of the big house up at the end of the old runway, which led directly down to the boathouse, had come back early. Zack looked over at the electric barbecue grill, which had kept the small space, occupied by himself, the cat and a wooden Streblo boat, warm.
The cat, a feral gray thing, drifted in right after Christmas. One morning Zack awakened to the loud cracking sounds of thick lake ice breaking up and discovered a heavy weight on his small chest. He opened his eyes, terrified. Two hazel eyes stared into his own, inches away, unblinking. It had taken many moments to generate enough courage to move. The cat, however, did not hurt him. Instead it leaped away and disappeared, not to reappear until Zack was once again asleep.
A week passed before they confronted one another, and then come to terms. Zack fed the thing, let it sleep on him, and was allowed no closer than three feet from it. In return, Zack got nothing. Except company. And that was enough.
The wooden boat had the name ‘Big Al’ on it’s stern. Streblo was inset along the side of its hull in small metal letters. Zack liked the name, although he thought it a dumb name for a boat. So the cat became Streblo.
“We’ve got to go Streblo,” he said.
Streblo regarded the eight-year-old boy, from his place draped over the bow of the boat, one paw and tail hanging over each side. It flicked its tail once.
“Well, I have to go anyway. That man up there is waiting. I can’t cross the lake. The ice broke up. I can’t go along either shore. It’s too open.” The boy took a break from gathering his small canvas pack of goods to peak through one of the windows facing up toward the big house. A huge man sat on a chair, staring down the brown grass runway. The man had approached moments earlier, knocked on his own boathouse door, and then yelled through it. His instructions had been clear. Whoever was in the boathouse could get his or her things together and be up at the house in half an hour or the police would be coming.
Zack didn’t have a watch, but he knew how long half an hour was. He delayed the coming confrontation because of the heat. He would miss the heated space. He’d miss the storehouse of canned foods he’d yet to go through completely (the canned chicken soup was his favorite), but most of all he’d miss the cat.
He put his pack on, adjusting the straps. The pack was heavy because it was topped off with a load of sardines and crackers, which were Zack’s favorites after the soup. He squared his small shoulders, leaned to balance the pack, and then turned to approach the cat. Amazingly, the animal did not shy away when he breached the normal three-foot perimeter. Zack held out his left hand. Streblo sniffed it. One brief pat on top of the head was allowed before the animal disappeared under the blocked-up boat. Zack smiled to himself, staring down in surprise at his uninjured hand.
“You take care, Streblo,” he murmured out into the remaining space of the boathouse, before going to the door and stepping outside. Slowly and carefully, he closed the door behind him, once again thinking about how the cat got in and out without using the door. It was an unsolved mystery. Zack had been up and down the Eastern side of the lake, checking out boathouses. He’d found just about everything imaginable but never another cat. Most animals did not do well in weather colder than twenty below zero. It had been a cold hard winter.
The dead grass of the runway was wet and soggy. The incline was gentle but steady, so he was breathing heavily when he walked up to the huge sitting man. He had to take his pack off to rest. He made a big deal about unstrapping the thing, more to hide his nervousness than because he was tired. The big man said nothing. Zack noted his calm face, totally devoid of expression. He knew that that was not good. Finally he readied himself by straightening his thin body and throwing his small shoulders back.
“How old are you?” the man asked, his eyes slitting slightly as he got out the question. Zack stared into twin black pools. He knew that his usual lies were not going to work on the man.
“I’m sorry, I don’t have that number for you right now,” he answered, in as flat a tone as the man had used.
The man brought one large hand up to massage his jaw. Several seconds passed. Neither the man nor the boy blinked during their passage.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that answer before,” the man said, his voice evidencing disbelief. “And I thought I’d heard it all,” he went on. “I’m an attorney. A great attorney, for Christ’s sake, and some little kid waltzes up and gives me an answer I’ve never heard before. I don’t have that number available right now? Wow!” The man’s hand dropped back to his side.
“Who the hell are you, anyway?” the attorney inquired.
“My name is Zack, and I’m no little kid,” Zack responded.
“Well, I take that back then,” the big man said. “So you’re a minor runaway with an invented name. Why Zack?” he asked.
“What’s your name?” Zack countered, then added, after a small delay “Sir.”
“I’ll ask the questions. You’re trespassing on private property and doing I don’t know how much damage to my boathouse,” the big man replied.
Zack said nothing. He could not keep from staring straight into the big man’s hypnotic eyes.
“Jerry. Name’s Jerry. And this house used to belong to the governor. He died so I got hold of it.” The man glanced behind him, as if to assure himself that the house was his and still there.
“I can’t call you Jerry, sir,” Zack said.
“Why not? Oh, I get it. You have manners. Common burglar living off my land for nothing, but having high-class manners. I don’t believe it. Strain. Mr. Strain, like in a strained knee. You can call me Mr. Strain.”
“Why do you weigh so much?” Zack asked.
“Well you little…” the big man began, then sighed deeply before going on. “I’ve lost sixty pounds. I used to be fat. Now I’m just hefty.”
“Like in the bag?” Zack asked.
The big man started to laugh.
“Have you ever heard of Joey Bishop? How do you deliver those lines with such a straight face? Hefty bag. I’ve gotta tell my wife that one. In the mean time, what am I going to do with you?”
“I’ll just go home on my own,” Zack asked, hopefully.
“I wonder how long you’ve been down there,” Mr. Strain mused, his voice barely audible. “All winter? And what kind of price does that portend?”
“Portend?” Zack asked, blinking his eyes a few times.
“Doesn’t matter,” the attorney waved his ‘hefty’ hand. “What matters is what happens to you. What do you want? You wanna go home to a home you don’t have? You want to run to somewhere else until it warms up? Or you wanna stay in the boathouse for awhile?” He stared at Zack when he was finished, with his cold black eyes. Unblinking. Waiting.
Zack tried to think deeply about what he’d heard. He couldn’t believe that the man might be giving him a chance to stay. Adults did not give chances for much, he had observed during his hard eight years.
“What the hell is that?” the attorney said, in a low voice, his arm raised with pointing finger.
Zack whipped around. A gray object raced toward him, jinking right, then left, before arriving to crouch next to him. The cat had stopped just over three feet from the boy, his normal distance of comfort, but his eyes were riveted on the attorney.
“That’s Streblo, my cat,” Zack said, acting as if the wild animal was his domestic pet.
“Streblo? You named that mangy thing Streblo? After my expensive boat?”
the attorney asked, in disbelief.
“Big Al’s a bad name,” Zack answered as best he could, hoping that Streblo would not attack or do something dumb. The offer for staying in the boathouse might be withdrawn for any reason he knew. Adults could not be depended upon, almost at all.
“Don’t tell my wife,” Mr Strain said. “Big Al was her Dad. It was his boat. Now hers. I don’t know about that cat. He doesn’t look like anybody’s anything, but if you want him then he’s all yours.”
Zack almost said thank you, but stopped himself. Nobody owned Streblo, so the cat wasn’t Mr. Strain’s to give away. Zack had been around. Adults constantly gave away stuff that wasn’t theirs. They were much stingier with their own stuff.
“You wanna stay in that boathouse until we come up for the summer, well, you gotta do something for me,” Mr. Strain stated, his right index finger turned inward to point at his own chest.
“What do you want?” the boy asked, his voice guarded.
“Hell, I don’t know. I’m bored. Stuck in this goddamned inherited pigsty for the weekend. You come up with something. I’ll be in the house later, drinking fine Malbec wine. When you think of something, knock. If you don’t then goodbye, to you and that feral fellow traveler of yours,” the attorney finished by rising slowly from his chair.
“C’mon,” whispered Zack to the cat, grabbing his pack with both hands, and then turning to run back down the overgrown airstrip.
“Surprise me,” the big man yelled after him, “nobody surprises me anymore,” he said, his voice beginning to fade behind the running boy, “I’m sorry, I don’t have that number for you,” was the last thing Zack heard before he got out of range.
Streblo reclaimed his spot across the bow of the wooden boat. Zack broke open a can of Campbell’s soup. He ate it cold, tossing the noodles down by tipping the can up and tapping the bottom with his fingers, once the yellow liquid was gone.
“I think that’s the strangest man I’ve ever met, Streblo,” Zack said up to the sprawling cat. He opened a can of sardines, and then placed it carefully up by the animals paw. Streblo just looked at him.
“I know, you’ll get it later,” the boy said wistfully, “It’d kill you to actually accept something when I gave it to you.”
Streblo’s tail swept down once, before returning to the top of the boat.
The boy sighed.
Zack peered out the side window of the boathouse. He had to think. What could the big unhappy man living in the big unhappy house possibly want? He tried to look around the concrete statue to see more of the broken lake ice. Then his eyes were drawn back to the statue. The thing was bigger than a human, except it lacked a head. Only the body, in flowing stone robes, stood facing out toward the lake.
Something nagged at the edges of the boy’s mind.
“I think I have it,” he yelled so excitedly at Streblo that the cat jumped up to all fours, before settling down to eat sardines straight from the open tin.
Zack hurriedly emptied his pack, then immediately raced to the boathouse door and was gone. Dragging the empty pack with one hand he ran the distance to four boathouses down the lake. When he got there he stopped behind some pines to wait. Slowly he checked out the entire area for movement, but there was none. He approached the structure. The door was closed, as he had left it a week before.
Zack turned the knob. The door was unlocked.
Once inside he searched the shelves until he found the big yellow pail he’d remembered. Pulling it from the low shelf he set it on the concrete floor and removed its contents. Inside the pail was a large concrete head. Carefully, the boy placed the object into his pack, and then returned the pail where he’d found it.
The head was heavy. Zack had to strap the pack to his back. He could not run with the weight so he walked bent over all the way back to the statue. He looked up at the headless figure. He knew that he wasn’t strong enough to put the head back up on it. Even if he could, he realized, he had no way to make it stay.
Part of the boathouse stuck out into the lake. It was the part that some service would come along and erect a wooden pier out from, Zack knew. But it was still too early in the season for that. At the end of the concrete he removed his pack, then rolled the head out as gently as he could. He set it up on the flat part of the broken neck so it faced the boathouse, then he tossed his pack inside the boathouse door before running all the way back up to the house.
Zack didn’t knock. He saw the big man sitting at a table inside, through the back door glass. The man was drinking his Malbec from a dark bottle, not even using a glass. Zack sighed. He’d seen adults drink like that before and it made him uncomfortable. He went inside, closing the door behind him.
“I have it,” he said to the man, who seemed to take no note of him.
“Have what?” the attorney asked, taking another great swig from the open bottle, dribbling a little rivulet of red down onto his white shirt.
“The surprise,” Zack answered.
“You are one piece of work, you know that boy?” the attorney said, not making the question a question at all. Zack said nothing.
“Well, where is it?” the man asked.
“You gotta come down to the boathouse,” Zack answered, “I mean, if you can.”
“Ha, come down to the boathouse. You think I’m infirm or something. I’m just big, not disabled. C’mon,” Mr. Strain said, as he laboriously rose from his chair.
Zack followed the big waddling man through the house into the attached garage. The man hit a switch and the place lit up, while a garage door started to go up.
“Here we go,” the attorney said, slipping into, and taking up the whole front seat, of an electric golf cart.
Gingerly, Zack moved behind him, sitting in the middle of the back seat, but holding on to the sides with both hands. The cart lurched forward. The trip down to the boathouse took only seconds it seemed. The silent cart appeared to float over the dead grass.
The cart stopped right beside the door.
“Well?” the big man asked, turning to face the boy.
“There, at the end of the stone,” Zack pointed.
The man looked, and then did a double take before removing himself more quickly form the car than Zack would have believed if he had not seen it. The man got to the stone outcrop before Zack.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he breathed, “you found my head.”
Zack stood next to Mr. Strain, but was as shocked as the man was when a fast moving gray object raced by both of them. Adroitly and smoothly, as it the move had been choreographed and practiced many times, Streblo ran out along the concrete, performed a short leap, touched the stone head with two front paws and then returned, running back through the open boathouse door.
The head tumbled into the water with a splash.
“Oh no,” the big man yelled. Zack raced to the end of the concrete, knelt down and peered into the water. The ice had moved out from the nearer shore areas. He could see straight down though the clear flat liquid. The head lay with its face staring back up at him through four feet of water. Zack’s eyes widened.
“It’s you,” he said, transfixed by the head under the water. “It really is your head,” he went on, before turning to look up at the attorney. “Why is it your head?’ he asked the man.
Zack watched the man’s features soften for the first time since he’d met him.
“I just liked the idea,” the big man said, looking away.
Zack stared first at the headless statue, then down into the water. He thought about what the man had said, and then turned to look back up at the house.
“The house is the governor’s, even though he’s dead,” Zack intoned. “The boat is your wife’s boat, still with her dad’s name on it. None of this is yours. You put your face on the statue to make it all yours,” he said. The words had all come out of him of their own accord. He was as surprised to hear them as was the attorney.
“No. It wasn’t that. It could not have been that,” the big man said, still looking out across the lake.
“I’ll jump in the water and get your head,” Zack offered, moving to take off his coat. He was working on taking his shoes off when the man spoke.
“No. Leave it. It kind of looks better down there, don’t you think?”
Zack walked back over to the edge of the concrete to stand next to the big man.
“I like your real head,” Zack said, softly.
“Me too,” the big man said, after a moment, still staring down. “You, and that mangy cat, can stay as long as you want

Algiers

2010-04-04T18:13:00.001-07:00

Algiers
By
James Strauss

He said he’d been in Algeria. Algiers, Algeria. I’d asked him how a country could have a city named the same thing as the country, but he’d ignored me. He was smoking an ugly smelling foreign cigarette, and wearing a pair of pants that were bloused into shiny black combat boots. Paratrooper boots.
“Why are you smoking those here? And why are you wearing those boots?” I’d asked him, as we were standing in the foyer of an expensive restaurant right under a no smoking sign.
“Can’t stop. Was there,” he blew out a big puff of obnoxious white smoke,
“It was bad. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t stop. The cigarettes, the boots, they make me feel right.” He’d stared at me, the smoke between us fading slowly away, before finishing our discussion with a question. “I’m alright,” he asked in a deep French accent, and then stared for seconds before going on, “Aren’t I?”
I’d been a child when that had happened. I’d never forgotten that man, nor the haunted look of his deep black eyes. But it was the tone of his voice that had indelibly burned everything else into my young mind. It had been a dark tone of pathos driven despair. The tone had riveted my attention, like the deep single play of a very low piano note.
Although I’d not forgotten that time, I also had never associated with it.
I looked down at my boots. Desert boots. The new cool ones. The one’s with inserts. Not like the old French Paratrooper boots. His had been polished to a high shine.
My desert boots would never know the touch of anything except a brush. They were the most comfortable things I’d ever worn on my feet, which was why I always wore them. Sitting alone on the park bench, my long legs sprawled out before me, I breathed out slowly, watching smoke play down over my body and feet. I ground out the cigarette, not even half done, on the stone handle of the bench support.
It’d been years since the war. The wars. First Vietnam, then Desert Storm, and finally Afghanistan, with some little inconsequential actions in between. I’d been tested several times for post traumatic stress. I didn’t have it. Not even a touch of it.
But I could not get the Algerian-serving Foreign Legionnaire from my mind.
Had that old guy from Algeria killed any of his own men? Out of pure necessity?
Because they were too badly wounded to get Medivac’d in time, or because they were going to kill the commanding officer for their opinion of his poor leadership (the C.O. being him)? Had that guy been shot, knifed and fragged? Had that guy spent a full year in the hospital, being told he would likely die at any moment, being force-fed with morphine until informed he was an addict, and then delivered back to his family wherein they walked right by him at the airport because he was a mere shadow of what he once had been?
No, I would have bet not. The poor son-of-a-bitch probably had seen some people killed, their guts left drying in the sun. The French Two-Rep bastard had probably shot a few people and then had them ask him why he had done that while they died in front of him. Not exactly tough stuff. Not normal stuff, but not that bad, in the scheme of such things, either. French Paratroopers of the Legion were notoriously emotional anyway. They fought at the drop of a hat, or Kepi in their case, at the least insult, not like Marines at all. United States Marines could take it. Whatever it was. Oooorah, was the expression. It said it all. One Marine to another. One Marine against the world. Fuck the Army of One thing. It was Marine Corps. All the way, up the hill, and on to the next one.
A film was out called The Hurt Locker. What a joke. Who the hell is dumb enough, in the modern world, to try to defuse bombs? Nobody. Blow the fuckers in place and move on. Done all the time. You don’t need idiots wearing dog collars and armor to do it for you. Just place the composition ‘B’ and move out. Boom. Problem over.
The movie should have been made with Marines, and it should have been called Troub City. The City of Hurt. The City of Pain. The place where real Marines spent time, knowing that they were cutting years from the sentence they would have to spend in purgatory. Then going out and screwing every woman they could find, in order to balance the books.
I shifted uncomfortably on the bench, looking down at my watch.
I had twenty minutes before I went on. I was going to give a speech in front of a thousand people, about life. About truth, lies, justice and mythology. I’d become a published author of thriller novels. And here I was sitting on a park bench looking out over the Santa Fe downtown plaza, wearing an expensive suit, desert combat boots and smoking a cigarette. Smoking was totally stupid, with what was known about lung cancer and all, and I knew it. The boots were so out of place with the suit, and the occasion, that they didn’t even bear consideration.
I field-stripped the cigarette. I tossed its remnants into the warm winds of autumn. They flitted away across the newly sodded grass surface. I was wearing the boots and smoking because those things made me feel right. I closed my eyes, trying to keep my world from spinning about me.
I felt the wind sweep across my body, then die out to sudden stillness. I saw myself standing in a foyer, looking down at a little boy.
“I’m alright, aren’t I?” I whispered, but the boy just looked back at me in silence, his eyes large, his body motionless.

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Intense

2010-04-04T15:03:00.000-07:00

Intense

By

James Strauss

Six years old is not old, or so they told her all the time. When the nurse came out it was the first thing she asked.
“How old are you, my dear?” she said, bending down over her.
“I’m eight, and my name isn’t dear. It’s Alice,” six-year-old Alice lied up into the woman’s unsmiling face. The woman wrote something on her clipboard, and then sniffed.
“Where are your parents?” she asked in a demanding manner, her large black eyebrows coming together above her nose.
“You’ve got my Dad inside there,” Alice pointed at the green double doors the nurse had come into the waiting room through. “My Mom’s coming from work.”
“Yes, I know about your Dad, but who’s taking care of you?” the nurse inquired, with one of her dark eyebrows arching up above the other.
“You are, until Mom get’s here. My babysitter just dropped me off,” Alice lied again, with a fake smile plastered across her little face. Alice knew that it was unlikely that the nurse would know she lived only half a mile away and had walked herself. The police officer who’d left the message on their home machine said that her Dad was in the emergency room at the hospital. He didn’t know that Alice was home alone. Her parents had schooled her well about how all outsider’s would feel if someone only six years old was left alone, even if was because they didn’t have enough money for daycare. They called it being a latchkey kid. Alice liked being a latchkey kid. And she loved her parents. And Winston.
“You can’t have a cat in here,” the nurse said, spotting Winston under one of the cloth-covered chairs.
“Not my cat,” Alice said, ignoring the small beast, which had stuck its furry head out to peer up at the severe looking nurse.
“Fine,” the nurse said, “then I’m calling animal control and having him removed.” The nurse walked back through the doors. Alice had not lied about that. Winston was her father’s cat, not hers. Winston adored only one human on the planet, and that was her Dad. He had raised such a ruckus at home when she was about to leave for the hospital that she had had to let him out. Then he’d followed her. Like he knew. Alice didn’t tell anyone that she talked to the cat. And she believed that he talked back. The words he missed, Alice filled in.
“She doesn’t mean it. She was just trying to get me to admit that I’m a latchkey kid and that you’re mine,” Alice said quietly, toward the bottom of the chair.
Winston meowed once, then slunk back as some people walked by.
“Oh bother. You don’t mean that. We don’t even know her,” Alice said to him, trying to stick one hand under the chair to pet him. He scratched her, lightly. She yelped softly, pulling her hand back, as if in terror. She knew from long experience that Winston loved to terrify people.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” Alice asked the cat. But Winston said nothing. People walked in and out of the waiting room. Nobody stayed for long.
Alice listened to their conversations, while making believe she was watching the television. Words scrolled across the bottom of the flat screen, but Alice couldn’t read yet.
“Intense thing,” she heard, distinctly. “They took him to that intense unit. He’s in pretty bad shape, but he’ll recover. They do a pretty good job here with the intense thing.”
Alice stared at the television while she thought. She didn’t know what the intense thing was, but it must be pretty good for someone in trouble.
More people came and went. Every once and awhile Winston would stick his head back out to view them, and then quickly retreat. Several people tried to pet him but Alice warned them off.
“Winston scratches. He’s here for rabies,” she told them, her face held to its most serious pose.
The petter’s pulled back and retreated without further comment. Some stared at Alice as if she was the one who had the disease. Alice didn’t know what Rabies was but her Dad had warned her about it many times when she wanted to pet a stray dog or a wild cat herself.
Three whole television shows later the strict looking nurse came back out. She didn’t have her clipboard with her this time.
“I’m sorry dear, but you’re father has been hurt in a traffic accident. You’re Mom called us and will be here shortly. Do you want anything to drink?” She said, her sweet tone faked, her smile unpleasant.
Alice looked up at the nurse, like she was from another planet. “My name is Alice, not dear, and why would I want something to drink? Will that help my Dad? Can I see him? Is he back there somewhere?” Alice pointed to the green doors.
Winston reached one paw out and slashed the nurse’s ankle with a single claw. Alice saw the move out of the corner of her eye and tried to head it off, but was too late. The nurse screamed, leaned down and grabbed her ankle with one hand.
“That animal just attacked me,” she yelled, her face screwed up in pain.
A man appeared instantly, seemingly from nowhere. He loomed over both Alice and the nurse.
“I’d have that looked at right away if I was you,” the man said in a flat voice.
“I heard that cat is in here to get some kind of rabies shot,” he finished, then walked away.
“Rabies?” the nurse said, her eyes growing wide, “Rabies? What’s this about Rabies? That cat has Rabies?”
“Ah, I don’t know him,” Alice said, smiling sickly, as Winston stuck his tail out and wrapped it around her small right leg.
The nurse turned and limped back through the double doors, slumped over and trying to nurture her ankle with one hand while she moved as quickly as she could.
“That was just plain dumb,” Alice hissed down at the cat, who’d retreated once more to the wall at the back of the chair.
Winston meowed three times in quick succession, and then purred loud enough for Alice to hear.
“I don’t care whether or not she’s mean, and I don’t care if she doesn’t like us. You can’t go around scratching people just because they deserve it.”
Winston continued to purr loudly from his retreat.
The double doors opened again. A tall woman wearing white coat came through. She held a clipboard like the nurse’s. She stopped to look around, until she spotted Alice.
“You’re John Martin’s little girl?” she asked with a bright smile.
“No, my name is Alice,” Alice responded, instantly.
Winston’s purring silenced.
The door at the other end of the waiting room slammed open with a bang. A young woman crashed through, limping, carrying a high heel in one hand, trying to run, but not doing it well. She dragged a large purse along as she limped.
“Mom,” Alice breathed, rolling her eyes. Alice’s mother was always histrionic, even for the most mundane of things. Alice sat down in the chair above Winston, as the doctor turned to the arriving woman.
In a heartbeat Winston moved from under the chair into Alice’s lap. Alice sat frozen. In all her years the cat had only ever sat in the lap of one person, and that person was her Dad. The cat wasn’t purring. Winston looked up at the doctor. Alice followed his eyes with her own, feeling a sense of bottomless fear.
“I’m afraid I have some bad news Mrs. Martin,” the doctor began.
Alice’s heart sank. She felt tears beginning to form from somewhere deep down inside her. She felt that Winston knew something terrible and that everything good in life was somehow going to change terribly.
“You’re husband has been badly hurt,” the doctor began, “and he’s in intensive care….”
That was all Alice heard before burying her face deep into Winston’s fur. The cat did not move, but he began to purr again.
“The intense thing,” Alice whispered to Winston, her mouth right next to the cat’s ear, “Dad’s going to be alright. They do real good intense here.”

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U 459

2010-02-26T19:12:00.000-08:00

U 459
By James Strauss
Holder didn’t engage the man because he had a kid with him, not that the son-of-a-bitch didn’t deserve to be properly encountered in spite of the child. Coffee shops suck in Boston. They aren’t the warm fuzzy places that dot Seattle’s landscape, where people are running around, talking and generally being friendly. No, the Boston Common coffee shop, in what they call the North End, is a cold place where riff-raff gather in numbers. Unemployed young people, looking for some place to hang other than home, low life Irish annealing themselves for the day against terrible hangovers from the night before, and Italian would-be Soprano actors filling the shop every morning.
Holder had come in, set up his Mac on a window facing counter, waited for a cheap small coffee, and then come back to do a bit of work. He hadn’t noticed the creep until he tried to wedge into his corner space. The guy pressed him against the wall, making it appear accidental. No “sorry,” or anything like that came from his lips, however. Holder ignored him by simply sliding along the wall until he was onto his stool.
The guy got on his cell phone. His loud talking was irritating. Then the clown moved Holder’s coffee. Actually picked it up and moved it with one idle hand while he talked. Holder stared, but again did nothing. He was a professional, after all. A professional killer of refined distinction. He didn’t kill people in the United States. That was home and the statute of limitations never ends in the USA for murder. He’d had never killed U.S. citizens abroad either, except when the situation had truly merited it.
Being a hit man was easier if the people you killed really needed the killing pretty badly. If they did then it was merely a process of conversion. Moving meat to fertilizer, he’d once told a would-be friend, but the man hadn’t gotten the humor.
In short, Holder was an International Pro. He wasn’t proud of it because there was nobody to be proud to. He simply knew what he was, and he knew he was really good at it.
The loudmouth cell phone creep got louder. He did it by moving to sit sideways on his own stool. Holder sighed, hands frozen over the keys of his laptop.
He decided to fight fire with fire. For months he’d been searching for a ringtone download for his iPhone. The score from the television show Magnum P.I. Holder loved Magnum. The producer’s of Magnum had done a great job of portraying post traumatic stress. Holder had been in the Nam and had the syndrome. Not that he jumped from loud noises or woke screaming from bad dreams.
Holder starting scanning ringtones from the internet. Slowly, listening to different tune, he turned up the volume. Soon the laptop was singing away, completely drowning out the voice of his obnoxious neighbor. Holder was about to smile to himself over handling the situation so well when the guy punched him on the shoulder. Holder twisted his head instantly, in shocked surprise. The blow had only marginally hurt so he didn’t react further.
“Hey, turn that damn thing down,” the creep said, “I can’t hear my cell phone.”
Holder couldn’t believe his ears. He moved to rub the offended shoulder while looking in to the other man’s eyes.
“I turned it up because of your phone,” he replied to the man, his voice flat and level, while his hand massaged his shoulder. “It’s rude to talk in here on a cell phone.”
The guy ignored him, saying some more idiot things into his phone. Holder appraised him. The guy was not much more than a kid, maybe twenty-seven or eight, he guessed. Good build. Not too tall. Thin-waisted. He’d be quick, most probably, if athletic, and his appearance was fairly fierce. Big black eyebrows penciled thick above his eyes. His facial planes were Slavic with the kind of jaw muscles that bulged, and moved constantly. He glanced into Holder’s eyes with a derisive expression. Holder saw himself in the guy’s eyes. Old. Short. Weak, with clothing way too delicate to indicate any kind of threat.
“Turn it down,” the guy said, flipping his phone closed and dumping it hard onto the counter, so that it struck Holder’s laptop.
Holder liked his Mac. A lot. He looked down at it, his arms having dropped to his sides.
“No, I don’t think so,” he responded softly to the man’s demand, pushing the offending cell phone a few inches away from the Mac with his left index finger.
“Fine, asshole,” the man said, his voice going up in scale and volume, “let’s go outside and settle this.” He climbed off his stool, retrieving the small phone with one hand while grabbing for a coat draped over the back with his other. He bumped into Holder again.
This time Holder was ready, with his shoulder out protecting the .410 Public Defender. He didn’t want the young predator to have any idea that his harmless seeming ‘prey’ was armed.
Holder congratulated himself on his choice of weaponry. Only hours before he’d sat in his hotel room considering. There was no mission, as he was between jobs. He’d decided to go out among the citizenry with a five shot Taurus revolver. It fired only four-ten shotgun shells. Holder had loaded birdshot rounds. At close range the little pistol could not miss, and the birdshot would scar and disfigure rather than kill. There was just no sense having wild-eyed Boston Police personnel angrily in pursuit of some murderer. Not if the object of their intent was Holder, anyway.
Holder let the clown get out the door before he made his own preparations. He looked through the glass at the unsuspecting young man, who was once again on his cell phone.
“What the hell is it with this new generation?” he whispered to himself, stepping down from the stool. He was packing the laptop up and getting his coat on before the unintended question was answered.
“You going to hurt my dad?” a nearby voice asked.
Holder looked around, and then down in front of him. A child was wedged in between the nasty young man’s stool and the front wall. He was under the overhanging counter. Nearly invisible. The words of question had come over the top of the man’s vacated stool.
“You going to hurt my dad?” the boy said again, this time thumping his chest with his clenched fist when he spoke. Holder stared down at the young boy, squinting, and then bending a little closer. He noted that the boy’s eyes were huge pools of deep shiny brown. When the child blinked he did so with lashes almost an inch long.
“Ahhhh,” Holder said, snapping his glance up to keep track of the pacing man on the other side of the coffee shop window.
“U,” the boy said, more loudly, striking his own chest again.
` “You?” Holder asked, his eyebrows coming together in question.
“U,” the little boy repeated patiently, his tone indicating exasperation.
“U is a letter of the alphabet,” the boy thumped himself again, “see?” he inquired.
Automatically, Holder’s hand struck his own chest weakly, in imitation. Then he did a double take. The boy was trying to teach him how to talk.
“I know how to talk,” he said to the little boy.
“Oh,” the boy answered, this time making an ‘O’ with the index finger and thumb of his right hand.
Holder laughed. He couldn’t help himself. The kid was so damned cute, and so serious.
“Are you going to hurt my dad?” the boy repeated, not smiling back at him.
“I don’t know,” Holder said, realizing that he was telling the truth. He didn’t tell the truth very often. He didn’t have anyone in his life to tell the truth to.
“My dad is mean to people,” the boy went on, no longer signing with his hand.
Holder nodded, his gaze still going back and forth between the man outside and his son under the counter.
“Why do you suppose that is?” Holder asked.
The boy stared, without responding. Holder enjoyed watching him. He could see the little boy’s mind work. Holder knew that ‘suppose’ was not a word that a little boy was likely to know. Not even a smart little boy.
“My Mom said that he had a hard childhood,” the boy answered. Holder was impressed that that the boy had chosen to simply ignore the big word he didn’t know. The kid was very smart. And funny, even though he probably didn’t know that.
“Where’s your mom?” Holder inquired.
“Dead. She got sick, went to the hospital and died. My dad said she got sick from Roughie, so he put Roughie down.” The boy’s eyes seemed to grow bigger as he talked.
“Roughie was your dog?” Holder asked, pulling his eyes from the boy’s with effort.
“Is my dog. He’s down, not dead. Mom’s dead.” the boy answered, his voice more forceful. “Are you going to hurt my dad?” he repeated, when Holder did not speak.
“I’m old,” Holder said, after a time. “Your dad’s young. He’s tough. I’m weak. Why would you think I could hurt your dad?” Holder asked, wanting to get as far away from the word ‘down’ as he could.
“Statue,” the boy said, his answer coming instantly.
“What?” Holder asked, the boy again making him feel like he was a complete idiot.
“Statue of Michael, the angel, in church,” the little boy said, making both hands flap at his shoulders behind the stool.
“What’s that to do with me?” Holder asked, not understanding.
“The angel’s hard. I touched him. He’s cold. He’s strong. He’s not alive. Like you.” The boy thumped his chest once, when he said the word ‘you,’ as before.
Holder drew back from the stool. He felt a cold draft, although he knew there wasn’t one.
“Do you want me to hurt your dad?” He asked, his voice feeling a strain he didn’t understand, and wasn’t comfortable with.
The boy didn’t answer, instead producing a sheaf of papers stapled together. He plopped them on top of the stool before him, as if tired of holding them.
“What’s that,” Holder asked, staring down at the rows of print on the many pages.
“Text. My dad has to learn text for his job. I’m helping him,” the boy answered.
“Text? For his cell phone? You can read?” Holder asked the questions one after another, his voice registering amazement. “I need to learn to text too. Life is passing me by,” Holder went on.
He picked up the sheaf of papers, and then idly flipped through them, his eyes still keeping track of the man outside, pacing and talking into his cell phone.
“Of course I can read. I’m five,” the little boy answered. “You can have that, if you want,” he pointed at the papers. “Dad’s got another more at home. We use flash cards too.”
“What does your dad do?” Holder asked, absently, while he scrolled through
the list of text acronyms.
“He’s trying to get a new job. He has to learn to text to get it,” the little boy answered.
“What’d he do before?” Holder asked
“He was a…., he took care of animals,” the boy finally got out.
“You father was a veterinarian?” Holder said, more to himself than the boy, “Jesus Christ.”
He watched the boy’s father pace back and forth outside. He watched him walk right into the side of a pedestrian. The contact was brief but apparent. The man he’d run into stopped. He swung back. He was wearing a black leather coat with a black turtleneck sweater under it. All of a sudden he was not alone. It was like he’d been cloned. Four men stood around the boy’s father. Holder watched the argument grow rapidly more heated. Unwittingly, the boy’s father had run into one of the little mafia don’s who inhabited the North End. There were teams of the macho scruffy creeps all around. Holder avoided them carefully.
As if sensing what was going on behind him, the boy climbed out from under the counter, got onto the stool and stared out.
“My dad’s in trouble again. I think those men are going to hurt him before you do.”
Holder watched the situation deteriorate. The men encircled the boy’s father. At any moment the pushing and shoving would begin, Holder knew, which a brutal beating would follow.
“Do you want me to help him?” Holder said to the boy’s back, surprising himself. The words came out without any volition on Holder’s part. He shifted his gaze back to the developing scene in front of them. Everyone had disappeared off the street on both sides, as if they had things of vital business to do elsewhere.
“It’s really none of my business,” Holder said, after another minute.
“I don’t have a Mom. I need dad to get Roughie back up,” the little boy said, not looking at Holder.
Holder stretched, extending his shoulders out, and then pulling them back in. He felt familiar heat flow through his body, as if somebody had poured hot water into an opening at the top of his torso. He carefully folded the texting papers before putting them into his coat pocket with his right hand. That same hand traveled casually up to the left side of his chest. A very faint snap came from under his arm.
“For Roughie, then,” he whispered softly, not looking at the boy.
Once outside he rested his rip-stop nylon case against the side of the building, and then walked over to the only gathering on the street. The four tough looking men were bouncing the boy’s father around, from one to another, as if he was a large rag doll. The man still clutched the offending cell phone tightly in his right hand.
“I say, what seems to be going on here?” Holder said, very loudly, as he walked up. Then he laughed out loud, allowing some of his personality to flow out before him in a strange joyous wave. He knew by experience that he would draw the group’s full attention.
“Well, what have we got here?” the biggest of the men said, shoving the boy’s dad to land in a heap at Holder’s feet. Holder helped him up, the smile never leaving his face, and his eyes never leaving those of the leather coated leader. Smoothly, he brought the younger man’s head close to his chest, letting the coat fall slightly open. The man’s eyes bulged as he caught sight of the nasty looking revolver, only inches from his nose.
“Your son needs you inside,” Holden said, then pushed him on his way toward the coffee shop entrance.
“Some kind of aging tough guy?” the leather-coated North Ender began, an evil smile coming to his face, “Think your Lloyd Bridges or somebody.”
“Bridges is dead. You oughta know that. I think he died like this.”
Holder reached in, disengaged the Taurus from its high riding holster, and then dropped his filled hand down at a forty-five degree angle to the ground.
“This thing’s called a Public Defender. Never shot it before. Carries only shotgun rounds. Got double ought buck loaded just now. If I was you guys, I’d move on up the street.” The smile was suddenly gone from Holder’s face. He thought briefly of the Archangel the boy had mentioned. He thought about being cold hard and dead.
“You brought a gun to our neighborhood?” the lead Italian hood said, “You crazy? We live here? You’re a dead man.”
“Maybe that’s true,” Holder said. “I waited a respectful time, since your local, but I also lied. The gun’s only loaded with birdshot.” He fired three quick rounds into the concrete among the men, making sure to hold the muzzle down. As expected, the birdshot rebounded from the hard surface, scattering as it bounced, before hitting them in the legs. The effect was like that of a flock of birds taking off. They ran screaming, limping and dragging themselves as best they could.
Holder watched them run for a few seconds before holstering the weapon. His ears rang terribly from the muzzle blasts at such close range. He turned back to the coffee shop and recovered his laptop bag from against the wall. When he leaned down he saw the boy, clutching his father tightly. The man seemed to be crying.
The boy pulled away, and then thumped himself once on the chest. With his right hand he signaled with his fingers. Four fingers, then five fingers, and then nine with both hands out.
Holder sat alone in his room back at the Battery Park hotel, staring out to the wintered Coast Guard ships across the slip from his window. He looked down to examine the list of text acronyms the boy had given him. Four Five Nine, in numbers, was among the first items at the top of the list. Holder laughed.
“I love you,” Holder interpreted, thumping himself on the chest for the ‘you.’ The boy’s text message was clear.
“Sorry about Roughie,” he murmured, the smile slowly leaving his face, his gaze returning to the frozen tableau beyond.

http://www.jamesstraussauthor.com
http://www.themastodons.com
http://www.from-the-chateau-dif.blogspot.com

On The Job, a short story...

2010-01-28T19:14:00.000-08:00

On The Job
By
James Strauss

Forty-Second Street combines thousands of semi-repaired potholes to run it’s multi-lane misery past the Hyatt Hotel. Some call it the Grand Hyatt, but they’ve never stayed there. Traveling veteran’s call it the TAS, for ‘That’s A Shame,” which is the expression one hears cross the front desk when guests complain about having no hot water. The hotel’s water pipes run through the subway tunnels built directly underneath the structure. For some reason, unknown to any city employee or private plumbing contractor, the hot water to the hotel is almost never hot, nor delivered at any acceptable pressure level.
The subway station, and the TAS attached above it were on Hobson’s beat.
He’d been a New York City cop for eleven years. It had taken him almost that long to get a street beat instead of motor patrol. Mostly he spent his time inside, drinking coffee, rousting street people, or writing the numerous petty theft reports for the gallery owners who suffered continuous losses from shoplifters. Hobson never caught shoplifters. He’d had a variety of young partners over the past two years of running his beat, however, and it had taken some time to teach them that there really wasn’t much shoplifting to police. The reports written were for insurance claims. The shop owners made a bit of extra profit by juicing their insurance companies by making up claims.
Hobson liked partners. He had somebody to talk to when he had a partner. Metro was a comfortably safe job but it was boring as hell. The people who flowed through the hotel and underground station moved all the time. Fast. They did not stop to converse or pass social time. On top of that, all of the employees of the hotel worked like beaten dogs. They had no time to stand or sit around and be interesting. They were respectful, but not social.
Hobson’s only regular acquaintance was a small time crook and shoeshine expert named Kevon. The man had a whacked out expressive personality and almost never stopped talking, unless it was to listen to one of Hobson’s numerous stories about when he’d been a parking enforcement officer. Kevon, pronounced ‘Kee-von,’ loved the ridiculous excuses people sometimes tried to get out of a parking ticket, only one of which had ever worked. A beautiful woman had lifted her blouse to show Hobson her breasts once. That had worked. Hobson still saw the breasts sometimes when he lay in bed smoking his last cigarette of the day.
Kevon shined Hobson’s shoes for free. He gave him his best ‘before and after’ shine. A digital photo of scuffed boots before the job, and then another when the boots shined bright enough to see things in. Hobson had never found out what Kevon did with the photos, as his procedure was always the same; take the shots, show them once, and never produce them again. Kevon claimed he was maintaining a vast collection for his ‘constituency.’
Kevon ran cigarettes as a sideline, gambled to the point of complete poverty, and occasionally showed up drunk as a lord. People loved him, no matter what his vices, and Hobson did too. But he loved Kevon’s boy, Tyson, even more. The kid had just turned ten the week before. Hobson had found him one of those solar system projectors he’d found at the Anthropologie store in mid-town. He hadn’t considered the gift much, but had almost been brought to tears when Kevon informed him that the boy could no longer go to sleep unless the projector was on. The boy was going to be on the job one day, Hobson just knew, and he’d be sergeant material, unlike Hobson himself.
Ty could shine shoes better than his dad, but he didn’t work the shoeshine booth on 42nd Street very often. He never ran it alone. Although 42nd wasn’t dangerous, as far as New York City streets went, it did have it’s crazies, drug-addled peddlers and mean-spirited vagrants hanging about, especially into the evening hours. Although Ty’s crack smoking Mom had moved out years before, Kevon had proven to be a devoted and dependable father. Hobson counted the man’s treatment of his son as a wonderful asset to their friendship.
Whenever Ty was there, Hobson found some excuse to be nearby. He was convinced that only two beings on the planet really loved him. His cat, Tigger, and the boy, Tyson. Children and cats could be trusted to let you now what they really felt, or so Hobson fervently believed. He had never married because no woman he’d dated and asked had ever said yes. Secretly, he believed that the women he’d put the question to had exercised impeccable good judgment. Hobson was not very intelligent, far less than good looking, and had only one thing going for him. That was his tenuous relationship with the New York Police Department.
His own sergeant had confided in him one day, informing Hobson that his beat would protect him until retirement. No self-respecting cop on the force would take the job, no matter what the department threatened.
Hobson bought an egg and sausage filled croissant for his breakfast from Hidey-Ho, the street vendor on Lexington. He got his coffee from the underground joint called Brio. They didn’t give him his coffee “on the arm” however; instead they allowed him to tip a dollar for each cup. They were stealing Brio coffee at three bucks, and making Hobson pay one dollar to them in cash. He’d bought into the system for a year before he’d figured out their illegal trickery. By then it was too late.
Hobson went up toward 42nd Street.
He had no partner. His latest partner, Wilson, had had the Swine flu, then pneumonia, then migraines. No one had replaced the man in three months. His sergeant told him to ‘endeavor to persevere,’ like from the movie ‘Josie Wales.’ Hobson rented the movie but hadn’t been able to figure out the reference.
When he got to the street he looked for Kevon, who should have been at his usual place, standing in front of a bank of three raised shoe-shine chairs. Tyson’s smaller bent over body stood there in his place. He was working on one man’s shoes, while another filled the far chair.
“Morning Ty,” Hobson murmured, between bites of his thick croissant. He was worried, not seeing Kevon, Ty being there, and it being a school day, but he didn’t show anything.
“Good morning, sir,” the extremely well mannered young man answered, while he kept working polish into his customer’s shoes.
Hobson waited for several minutes, until it became clear that the youngster was not going to say anything else.
“Where’s Kevon?” he finally asked.
“In the precinct, “ Ty answered.
Hobson’s coffee cup stopped in mid-air. ‘In the precinct’ meant that Kevon was locked up. Saying nothing further, and in spite of the fact that he didn’t want to leave the boy alone working the shoe shine stand, Hobson walked back to his cop kiosk just inside the 42nd Street underground entrance. He called his dispatcher. Hobson was Metro, not City, so it would take some time to find out what had happened to Kevon. He put the word out, and then returned to the street.
The boy worked like a maniac, shining shoes, handing out the free newspapers Kevon distributed as a sideline and giving people directions. Long ago Hobson had stopped giving directions. If asked he just said he wasn’t from that part of the city. A police officer in uniform, standing at an underground entrance, could spend all of his time giving directions. He didn’t consider such contact befitting his status as a crime fighting police officer.
The call came in at mid-afternoon. Kevon was inside on Federal hold. The ATF had filed a complaint. Kevin’s bootleg cigarette operation had been uncovered.
His bail was ten thousand, when meant a thousand cash and a promise for the rest, if Kevon didn’t show up for court.
Hobson considered, sipping from his cold coffee cup. Cops didn’t bail Skells out of jail. Cops put Skells in jail. A Skell being a crook. But Kevon was one of his people. He worked Hobson’s beat. He was his only friend, and father to Tyson. Hobson concluded that Devon, although damaged and scarred, was not a Skell. And the ATF guys were Feds. Feds were lowlife creeps who lived and worked by their own arcane rules, almost all of which were stupid or wrong. Every Metro cop knew that. If you worked with Feds, you told them nothing and expected less,
Hobson used his cell to call downtown. Within ten minutes he made contact with a member of his old academy class. The thousand had to be paid soon, as Kevon would be transferred the following day to Riker’s, the only place Federal holds were kept. He hung up, went to the street to see how Ty was doing, and then crossed to Chase, where his money was. He had just over a thousand in his account.
Hobson didn’t call for a patrol car. He took a taxi to the jail. He didn’t want to explain what he was doing or let anybody know that he was temporarily abandoning his post. Everything went smoothly at the jail, until he found out that Kevon would not be released until the following morning. The Federal Court had to clear the bail, not City. There was nothing to be done. Hobson’s mind was so centered on the problem of Tyson being alone that he didn’t see his own sergeant.
He ran right into the big man’s jutting stomach.
“What the hell are you doing here, Hobson?” the man yelled. “And who’s standing it at your post?”
Hobson bounced back from the huge man, his mind frozen. He stood panting.
“Well,” the sergeant hissed down at him, bending slightly forward.
“Wilson’s covering,” Hobson got out weakly, “and I’m just visiting a friend.”
“Bullshit, you little maggot,” the sergeant stated, his voice more moderated, but filled with a tone of distasteful resignation. “You just paid the bail on some Skell. You think I’m an uninformed idiot? And Wilson’s back from sick leave? I didn’t know that.” He looked closely at Hobson’s shiny shoes then not so shiny uniform. “I don’t know what the hell you’re up to, but I don’t like it. Get outta here.”
Hobson nearly ran back to the street. He grabbed the first cab that came along. The exchange with his sergeant had been frightening. The man had not known that Wilson was still sick. That Hobson had left his post without approval or replacement was a potentially terminal act. But at least his sergeant had known about the bail, and had not seemed to care. That was a plus.
The boy was working when Hobson made it back to 42nd. Hobson breathed a sigh of relief. There were not patrons waiting for a shine, and snow had begun to fall, cutting passing sidewalk traffic to almost nothing.
“You’re Dad won’t be home until tomorrow morning,” Hobson mentioned, softly, looking out at the passing cars and trucks.
“Okay,” the boy answered, his tone uncertain.
“I live in Brooklyn. We can take the subway there when my shift is done.
We’ll have prime burgers and watch television, then come back tomorrow.” Hobson stopped talking, not knowing what the young boy might say.
“Will I get to meet Tigger?” the boy asked.
“Yes,” Hobson replied, with a big smile. “C’mon with me and we’ll get my stuff from the kiosk. You can have a hot chocolate from Brio while we wait the clock out.” Together, they covered and zippered up the outside shoeshine chairs.
Hobson didn’t notice his sergeant until they were almost to the kiosk.
“Oh Jesus,” he whispered, but it was too late, the sergeant had seen them
approaching.
“Get rid of the kid,” the big man said, his voice ominous in tone.
Hobson fumbled for some change at the bottom of his pocket.
“Here, get the hot chocolate,” he said, shakily to Tyson. The kid grabbed the money and ran toward the coffee shop with a grin.
“So what have we here, Hobson,” the sergeant said, leaning forward, propping one elbow up on the flat surface of the kiosk desk. Hobson didn’t know what to say. He moved to stand at his station on the inside of the round counter area.
“Wilson isn’t back form sick leave. You abandoned your post. You bailed out some low-life Skell shoeshine guy for a grand. You couldn’t get him away from the Feds today so you’ve taken up with his ten year old kid until he gets back.” The sergeant stopped talking. He stared intently into Hobson’s eyes for the first time Hobson could remember.
“Have I got any of that wrong?” He said, when Hobson didn’t talk.
“No sir,” Hobson finally said, his heart sinking to the bottom of his well-shined boots.
The sergeant shifted from one leg to the other, and then turned his head to look up and down the underground corridors.
“You took care of the people today Charlie. You went right at the Feds, and you lied to me in doing it. And you’re not done. You’ve got the kid. You represented today. I underestimated you. For the first time since you’ve worked for me I’m impressed. You’re part of what not many people understand about the New York Police Department. You’re on the job.”
The big man straightened himself, and then turned and walked out to 42nd Street without another word or look. Hobson stood in shock behind the counter.
“He called me Charlie,” he whispered to himself. Nobody on the force had ever called him anything but Hobson.
The boy came back, whipped cream covering his mouth. They went home to Hobson’s cramped apartment in Brooklyn. Tigger was overjoyed to have a new admiring friend added to her extensive collection. When they got into Hobson’s lone double bed, the boy was uncomfortable, until Hobson switched on his own illuminated solar system. They stared up to watch the planets and moons slowly revolve around the sun until the three of them fell into deep sleep.

http://www.jamesstraussauthor.com
http://www.themastodons.com
http://www.from-the-chateau-dif.blogspot.com
copyright 2010

The Morning Calm, a short story...

2010-01-27T15:09:00.000-08:00

The Morning Calm
By
James Strauss

Acid-laced coffee. Tawdry imitation 60’s décor. Indian music drifting down from worn out ceiling speakers. The Route Sixty-Six diner, ironically located on 56th Street. New York.
Wayne stared out through the long expanse of windows fronting the busy street. In spite of a punishing wind and beating rain, people flowed back and forth by the window in amazing numbers. He was the restaurant’s sole customer. ‘Late lunch,’ his new acquaintance had suggested, hours earlier.
The opening of an alley directly across the street attracted his eye.
The alley was unusual, from what Wayne had seen so far in New York, in that it extended only half way through the block, and ended in a brick wall. Also, it appeared clean, well lit, devoid of the usual collection of crumpled trash cans. A small white sign with black lettering was placed high up near where the walls met the sidewalk. It read simply, ‘Korea.’ Just beneath were letters hand-done in red paint; ‘Alley of the Morning Calm.’ Tiny Christmas Tree lights ran row upon row up and down along the bricks, twinkling brightly in the rain. A single business had been built into the wall at the end of the alley. A blue awning stretched across it’s top. In a window next to the door a malfunctioning neon sign occasionally blinked “Izumi Maru,” right above a crossed knife and fork.
Wayne smiled to himself, his face remaining expressionless. Korea, translated roughly from the language, did mean ‘ land of the morning calm,’ and Izumi Maru, in Japanese, was close to ‘fountain of life.’ There was a warm serenity to the entire scene, only slightly diminished by pounding rain. He drank some of the bad coffee. A young make-believe American kid tried to offer a warm up. The boy’s coloration and accent indicated Filipino heritage.
“Nothing more yet,” Wayne told him.
The server began to walk away.
“By the way,” Wayne inquired, stopping him. “What’s down that alley, across the street?”
The kid’s gaze followed Wayne’s.
“Jappo restaurant. Run by Korean. Koreans hate Jappo’s. Serve poison fish. Jappo’s eat, get crazy, but always come back.”
“Puffer fish,” Wayne said, not looking at the server’s departing back, instead his eyes fastened on the uncommon street scene before him. Puffer fish were filled with a neurotoxin that was among the most poisonous in the world. The flesh of the fish was prepared at restaurants all over Korea, however. In Seoul, the places were required by law to post a sign indicating the number of people who’d died from consuming the poison during the year before. The most popular restaurants were those that posted the largest numbers. Wayne had never eaten the delicacy, but he’d known many Korean’s who had. When prepared properly by a master chef, the Puffer meal gave it’s gourmet consumer a ‘high’ much more intense than cocaine, and one that lasted far longer. Most of the world outlawed such restaurants, including the United States.
Wayne wondered whether the kid was right. It seemed unlikely that some rogue Japanese restaurant was serving the illegal meals in the middle of a place as heavily policed as New York City.
“Korean Yakusa,” the kid said from behind him. Wayne lowered his right shoulder, then leaned back, twisting his head to face the boy. He didn’t like people approaching him from behind. The Filipino server walked past, however, to stand facing the broad expanse of clear glass. The rain was abating with the wind, but everything outside remained shiny and cleaner looking. A group of young men had appeared from nowhere, taking up residence half-way down the abbreviated alley, crouching, bending over and motioning to one another with weird hand signs.
“Fake phony cowards, they are…fake cowards they are…” hissed his server, like he was repeating a line from a twisted Dr. Seuss story.
“Yakusa is the name used for Japanese mafia, not Korean gangs,” Wayne corrected him.
A homeless man passed the alley opening. He wore a tattered and torn version of Wayne’s own outfit. Irish tweed coat with worn blue jeans. Wayne noted the similarity, and then shifted uncomfortably.
There was no retirement plan for hit men. No Social Security. No Medicare. It was a lonely business, without any social support network, and it didn’t pay anything near what people had come to believe it paid from movies and television.
Wayne had a few dollars invested and a solid chunk in his checking account, but every once and awhile he worried about what might happen in his later years.
The street person pushed a shopping cart piled high with unidentifiable junk, the outside of his cart festooned with plastic bags tied all around it, like old tires circling the hull of a harbor tug. The man and cart moved very slowly past the opening of the alley mouth.
The boys from the alley moved, like a single rippling stand of willows. One moment they were crouched down in the alley, the next they were surrounding the old man and his cart, as if blown there by a great gust of invisible wind,
One boy pitched things from the vagrant’s basket onto the sidewalk and street, while another opened a folding ‘sling-blade’ style of knife and cut slits up and down all the bags tied to the cart. Trash spilled into piles, some of it blowing about in the remains of wet stormy winds.
At first the homeless man attempted to defend his belongings, but soon gave that up as the pack descended fully upon him. He ran, but only made it a step or two before being brought down by a blow to the back of his legs. Once down, the boys began an obviously ritualized ballet of martial arts movements. Dancing and twisting, they delivered kick after kick into different parts of the agonized man’s anatomy. The gang’s enjoyment was palpable, even from well across the street and through a pane of thick glass.
The gang ended their onslaught as they had begun it, running lightly, like interlacing lemmings, to recollect back at their lair, half way down the alley. The vagrant’s body twitched, while his arm’s and legs fought for control. He got up shakily, then tried to assemble something from the piles of junk surrounding him. He lacked the strength to refill the basket completely. Finally, grasping the cart by it’s bar handle, he glanced once into the alley, before staggering away down the street.
“Assholes,” the Filipino server said aloud.
“What about nine one one?” Wayne inquired, quietly.
“None of my business,” the boy responded, instantly, spinning about, and then walking away toward the kitchen in back.
“Mine either,” Wayne whispered, but the kid was gone. Averting his eyes from the hypnotic scene, he checked his wallet. He put a twenty on the tabletop.
His ‘late lunch’ was not coming. He’d guessed that when they’d made the date. Wayne was used to it. He had no friends. People found his company vaguely disconcerting in some fashion no one had ever taken the trouble to explain. He’d never expected the guy to show up, but he’d gone through the motions anyway.
Outside the Route 66 he stood for a moment next to the entrance. The rain was gone. A low afternoon sun was trying to penetrate between the buildings further down the street. Wayne stared at the alley mouth, breathed in deeply several times, and then walked to the corner for a cab.
Sitting on the side of his bed at the Waldorf, he looked at himself in a mirror perched above the clothing drawers next to an overly-large plasma T.V. He inventoried the image staring back at him. He was sixty but looked forty-five. He was ‘born-again’ hard, mentally and physically. He was still quick as a striking snake and agile as a Lynx. But, deep inside his blue eyes there was a haunted lonely glint
he was not surprised to note.
The young Catholic priest had effected him deeply. Wayne was a Catholic but had fallen away in his youth. He’d gone back into a church, just to talk to somebody, the week before. It had not gone well. Unbelievably, the priest had refused him absolution for his sins. Wayne had not thought that possible. The priest had come out of the confessional to tell him, in a hushed whisper, that Wayne would have to find some other redemption from God for the things he’d done. He’d said that it was simply not within his power to forgive, or offer further advice.
“Well God, what do you have to say?” Wayne asked the mirror, “or do I have to do this on my hands and knees?” Nothing happened. God remained his usual silent self.
The television was filled with idiotic sports games and awful news, so he turned it off and paced. Finally, he decided to take a walk. Three blocks from the Waldorf, on Lexington, he ran into it. The rain was gone but a brisk wind remained. The wind drove an empty shopping cart right into Wayne’s path as he walked. He pushed the thing away with an irritated shove, and then walked on. After only a few steps he stopped dead in his tracks. What was an empty shopping cart doing on the sidewalk of a busy downtown street? Wayne looked back. The shopping cart waited, unmoving in the center of the concrete walkway.
Pushing the cart before him, Wayne made his way back to the Waldorf. The cart felt right, as if it was rolling on well lubricated ball bearings. He left it jammed against the side of the hotels’ granite entrance. A doorman looked over at him, then at the cart, but said nothing. Wayne went up to his room.
An hour later he returned, exiting through the same door. The cart was right where he’d left it, as he’d known it would be. Wayne threw an armload of used towels, a trash bucket and some extra rolls of toilet into the basket. He pushed the cart toward 56th Street. He knew he didn’t really look his part. He was not properly filthy or seedy enough in his disguise, but was counting on the dying light of early evening to cover a multitude of sins. Nobody paid any attention to him at all, as he made his way the mile and a half, or so.
The yellow lit opening to the alley was even more welcoming than before, when he rounded the last corner. It beckoned warmly. The thronging masses of a busy metropolis had withdrawn with the fading light. Wayne checked his shoulder holster. The factory-suppressed Ruger, in twenty-two short for less sound, was there and ready, loaded with nine rounds, one in the chamber. The weapon was designed for close, nearly silent, work. It was all but useless beyond ten feet.
Wayne’s hand swept down to brush past the forty-five taped to his right ankle.
As opposed to the Ruger, it was terribly loud, devastatingly destructive, and good for much more than ten feet, as any proper backup should be. He was ready.
The shopping cart moved before him, almost of it’s own accord. Wayne bent forward, beginning to drag one leg behind, as if he was crippled or injured. His main concern was not based on either his appearance or his preparations. It was in attendance. Was the deadly flock of predatory animals going to be waiting when he rounded the corner and entered the alley, or was he merely to arrive there, abandon the cart, and enjoy the first Puffer meal of his life?
He felt their attention before he was even under their full gaze. Slowly and deliberately, he turned the cart to direct it down the alley while, at the same time, bowing his head further down so the smile he could not suppress wouldn’t alert them, His right hand sought out the warm comforting butt of the Ruger. He unsnapped the hoster release with his thumb.
Wayne heard the gang’s near silent approach and thought of the priest. How correct that agent of God had been to deny him absolution. God Himself was so much more generous in His allowance for Wayne's redemption.

The Flip Side, a short story...

2010-01-21T13:24:00.000-08:00

The Flip Side
By
James Strauss

My eyes opened to dim gray filth. The ceiling above me looked like it hadn’t been painted since the Civil War. Intricate cobwebs rounded the corners of the bedroom, while dirty clothes littered all open spaces on the floor.
My head hurt with the kind of pain that neither aspirin nor Tylenol could come close to touching. I groaned out loud. Escape, a Russian Blue cat, lay comfortably on my chest, long whiskers close enough to tickle a cheek, but not intrusively so. Escape answered my groan with a strange sound of his own. I stroked him, more to make him move than to satisfy any need he or I might get from the act. He wasn’t into the physical ministrations of species Homo Sapien, so it worked.
I got out of the bed. The mattress was the only decent thing in the room, being of aged but quality lineage. Beautyrest, the tag said, when I infrequently changed the sheets. I found the name humorous. Only in the movies did anybody have any beauty when they got up from a night’s sleep.
I went into the bathroom and began my habitual preparations for the day, grimacing with pain radiating from the core of my brain, thankful that the hangover was not worse. One full fifth of expensive Vodka the evening before should have left my body in much worse condition.
“Thank you, God,” I intoned to the awful image that stared back at me from the cracked mirror. I ran the hot water, beginning the process of filling my ancient tub. If I hurried, I could shave, floss, and brush by the time it was at the perfect level for a quick bath. The much more convenient shower had quit sometime back, but since Gordy, my landlord and best friend, never complained about months of back rent owed, I was duty bound not to say anything about anything, especially when it came to upkeep.
Escape sat near the heating vent, absorbing warm air, waiting for me to climb into the hot water. When I was ready I plopped myself in, cutting the tap off with one foot. The tap only produced water up to a medium degree, not hot enough to burn skin.
The cat jumped up to the rim, slowly bent his front legs, and then began drinking from the water. It was a move I had never come to understand. What possible interest could the very hot water hold for him when he had a perfectly good bowl of fresh water next to his food dish. I had to wait for him to finish before soaping up. I didn’t want to the growling that would ensue if I fouled the clear hot water. For unknown reasons my being in the water was not a violation.
The damned cat, a beach stray, had somehow wormed its way into the apartment building one day, and then selected Gordy and I as it’s victims. He cat liked to walk on Gordy’s computer keyboard, deliberately step on the ‘escape’ key, and mess up everything on the screen. After awhile the key word became his name.
Once out of the tub, dried, and deodorized with my hair brushed, I was ready for the day. I fastened my Mont Blanc watch bracelet to my wrist. The watch was my single most expensive possession, as I’d lost my car in a bet the week before. Gambling had swept over me when I had taken a leap of faith, with respect to the Mayan prophecy.
Gambling and drinking. I was in the act of considering where I might find a drink, to get through the morning, when I looked down at the face of the Mont Blanc. My eyes came back up to the mirror. I peered at my shocked image.
It was December twenty-second, of the year two thousand and twelve. I surprised myself by smiling at my own pained image.
“It is the evening of the day….” I stared, singing the Maryanne Faithful song happily. I rushed into my shorts and polo shirt, throwing on flip-flops. I headed for the front of my apartment at a run.
I beat on Gordy’s door. He had a patio which overlooked the whole beach. Pacific Beach was right on the ocean, and at our fifth floor ‘penthouse’ level we could stand and look far out to sea.
“Jesus Christ, hold your horses. It’s seven in the fucking morning in here,” he said through the wood.
Escape and I waited for Gordy to unlock the door, he sitting patiently while I fidgeted, rubbing my head with both hands.
Once inside, I rushed by the scrawny little man, bumping him aside to get to the exposed deck. Escape moved to his back up bowl near the sink.
“Got something to drink?” I threw back at Gordy over my shoulder.
“You smell like you’re still drinking already. It’s seven in the morning, for Christ’s sake. You’re killing yourself. I’ll make coffee, he answered.
I stood on the deck and looked out across the open ocean. The sun was coming up behind us on the backside of the apartment building. The horizon to the west was dark. I listened to Gordy bang things around in his kitchen. He lived as alone as I did, both having gone through a succession of decent women before they’d found about us. In spite of the fact that he had nobody on earth that gave a damn about him, like me,
he wasn’t a believer in the Mayan prophecy.
Moments later he appeared at my side with a hot cup of coffee. He had one of those machines that was always on, always ready to produce a single cup from a neat little plastic container. At one time, before I had become a true believer, I had had such toys, but now they were all gone. My apartment was a gutted shambles compared to Gordy’s showplace.
“What are you looking for,” he asked, both of us drinking from ceramic cups while leaning our forearms against the deck railing.
“It’s the day, idiot, the Mayan calendar day,” I responded, a lilt to my voice, headache fading into the background. “We should be drinking booze.”
“Not that crap again. The world is going to end today. The Mayan prophecy says it’s all over. Niburu, the red dwarf is going to strike. An asteroid is going to hit the center of the Pacific. Phooey! It seems pretty normal out here to me.”
We sipped in silence for a few minutes. The day was coming on, the sun climbing ever higher behind our building. I peered intently at the horizon. There was a darkness rising higher than darkness should be out there.
“Look at that,” I declared, pointing at the horizon.
“Hmmmm. Looks a little weird, I’ll give you that,” Gordy responded.
`We waited. The darkness grew higher, the bottom of it turning black. Something was moving at us, across the full length and breath of the horizon. It was coming fast, and it was terribly ominous. Escape appeared, and then leaped up to sit atop the narrow railing, his side uncharacteristically pressed into my forearm. He too stared into the coming darkness.
“There it is. I just hope it’s what they predicted. Our problems are going to be over soon.”
“Great, just great,” Gordy intoned, his voice leaden. “You got yourself fired, blew every dime you had, lost what you didn’t sell, all in the hopes that the end of time was coming today. What kind of sick mind do you have?”
“Ha, you don’t get it at all. I’ve never been right about anything. But I’m about this. That counts for something,” I replied, my voice not nearly as enthusiastic as before. Escape turned his head to look into my eyes.
“Well, it’s not my fault,” I tried to explain, shaking my head.
The three of us stared into the approaching wall of blackness.
“See you on the flip side,” Gordy said through clenched teeth.

Closer To God, Kurushimi Maru, Chapter XII

2010-01-18T19:00:00.000-08:00

Closer To God
Kurushimi Maru
Chapter XII
Burt took less than a minute to throw his heavily pocketed over-layers back on before we pulled from the prison lot. The Range Rover ride to the Beach Africa was filled with pain and chatter. Mr. Owili didn’t know the meaning of the word silence, and the bruises I’d suffered at the hands of prison guards throbbed with each movement of the big SUV. Sam Hill’s driving style had been honed somewhere along the infamous stretches of the Baja One Thousand off-road race, or so it seemed to me.
“You do not understand how much my family will be happy when they learn of your assistance to me. You must come for the dining. It is only a short drive. It will make you very happy. You will be immensely rewarded!”
I glanced over at the animated little man, wearing what was left of his tattered blue suit. His faux English accent, distorted by an underlying native tongue, was cute, but annoying. Mr. Owili’s effervescent enthusiasm for life bounced all over the interior of the Rover. Burt, sitting in front of me, remained as silent as Sam.
The Beach Africa parking lot was half full when we pulled in, parking out front. There was no reason to believe that the Rover was being looked for by anyone.
Five women were gathered in our banda when we arrived there. As the four of us wedged in, I immediately noted that Wendy and Joan were not getting on. It was nothing I could pin down, but I sensed a subtle distance between them. From somewhere, a couple of bottles of wine had appeared. A blouse covered Helen’s bandage, and she seemed in no pain, her wine glass almost empty.
“My name is Mr. Owili and I am very pleased to meet all of you,” the Indian said, going from person to person, shaking hands.
“Are these all of your family?” he inquired, bowing ridiculously in front of me.
I looked around the room, standing straight, making believe I felt just fine, when in reality I wanted everyone out of there so I could lay curled up in bed.
“Yes, I guess so,” I intoned. Anything else would have called for a long explanation, and I was just not up to it.
“You should look after those wounds,” Mr. Owili said, pointing at my loosely hanging arms. “The contusions could be serious,” he went on, in his irritating dialect.
“What contusions?’ Joan asked, crossing the room to stand before me.
Wendy followed close behind her. I looked from one to the other, wishing I was somewhere else. And alone.
“Let me see,” the DCM said, taking my right wrist in her hands, and then unbuttoning the sleeve. Wendy did the same to my left sleeve.
“I trained as an emergency medical technician once,” Joan said, matter-of-factly to Wendy.
“And I slept with him last night,” Wendy replied, in a similar, disinterested tone.
The room went silent. The smile on Mr. Owili’s face faded for the first time since I’d seen him inside the prison.
“How nice for him,” Joan purred, “he does seem to do really well with young girls.”
Wendy said nothing. I closed my eyes and grimaced with the discomfort their handling, and the pain of their conversation, was giving me.
“We didn’t sleep together. We just slept in the same bunk,” I offered, by way of explanation. Sam and Burt both started to laugh at once. I glared across the room at them.
“That wasn’t the way it was,” I said, raising my voice in anger.
“These have to be wrapped. You’re still bleeding into the muscles. Pressure wraps and ice might allow you to use your hands tomorrow, otherwise they’re going to swell like ripe melons,” Joan said, ignoring the comments.
“Take Mr. Owili wherever he wants to go, in the general area of course,” I said to Sam.
“Oh no, I cannot go home like this,” Mr. Owili said. “I must get cleaned up. My family is very formal you know. They think highly of me. I have a very important role. And I have to get the money I owe you first. It would not be fitting to go home deeply in your debt. We are to be great friends!”
Wendy and Joan wrapped my forearms while Anice went for ice.
“Stay,” I said. “Hell, stay as long as you want. In the morning we’re going to
the ferry to have a little talk with one Rafiq Salim.”
“Rafiq?” You know Rafiq?” Mr. Owili said, in his expressive style. “There are three ferries. The Salim’s have only one. I know this man. My family sells fuel.
He is not a generous man. Bantu. A Lebanese who speaks Bantu. Not a good thing.”
I brushed Joan and Wendy aside.
“You know Rafiq?” I asked, having a hard time believing what I’d heard.
“We are not friends, but yes, I know him well,” Mr. Owili responded.
“Maybe you can help us. The man appears masterful at lying. I need
to know some things, to help us all.” I said, including the group that was not really a group.
“I would be particularly grateful,” Joan chimed in, taking Mr. Owili’s hand in one of her own. I watched the Indian melt under the heat of her charm.
“Of course. Of course I will help you. I am a big supporter of the United States and its people, and now all of you.”
Anice came in with the ice. I brushed everyone aside as I made for the bed.
Lying there, ice packed about my arms, I willed them all to go away. My chest hurt, and my back ached. I needed to recover myself.
“Do you want me to stay with you?” Wendy asked. I watched Joan, behind her, almost break into laughter.
“No,” I answered, my eyes already closed. You guys stay together. Burt can see to me just fine.
I woke several times during the afternoon but never saw Burt or Sam.
Only Joan was there, sitting in the single chair in the room, reading some thick novel.
I slept on through the afternoon, awakening when I heard the door. I sat up. My body was stiff, but everything felt better than it had. The sheets were soaked through from melted ice. I unwrapped my arms. Black and blue welts ran from wrist to elbow on both arms, but would be invisible once I put my shirt on again.
Sam strode through the door that Burt had left open.
“Nice security,” I commented, but neither man paid any attention.
“What time is it?” I asked. Sam showed me his Citizen watch face. It said eight o’clock. “You got something against mix for the coffee?” I asked the Marine.
“Gay coffee? No, got nuthin’ against it, sir, or them,” he replied.
Once again, I found the young man surprising. He had an edge I just could not quite place. It was as if he respected me hugely but did not like me at all, or just the reverse. It was anything but complete and open acceptance.
“You replaced the rental I had in Nairobi. The new one is the same color.
Same everything. How’d you do it? And why? And what happened to the other one?” I drank from the paper cup when I was done, and waited.
“I drive what they give me,” he answered. It was the answer I expected. It was the Marine way of telling me that he was not going to tell me anything. It was how enlisted Marines handled officers when I was on active duty. They didn’t lie, but they wouldn’t tell the whole truth either, even if survival depended upon it.
I would have to figure things out for myself, or find another way to get the information.
Joan walked into the room. She’d changed into something nice for the evening, as if we were staying in a four star hotel.
“You slept alone. How surprising, for you,” she commented, standing over all three of us looking like a million bucks in her recently pressed outfit.
“I thought I woke up and saw you here with me,” I replied.
“Dreamer,” she answered. “What’s the plan?”
“Where’s Mr. Owili?” I asked.
“With the girls,” she responded instantly. I realized that Joan never referred to the other four women as anything but girls. I was surprised, but not to the point of saying anything.
“Sam, Burt, Mr. Owili and I are going to the ferry. We’ll pick up Rafiq, if he’s there, take him somewhere and ask him a few pointed questions. That’s it.
Some guys are coming over from the consulate to lend us a hand, and report back, no doubt. They’ll be there around nine.” I looked up into her eyes. “You want to come? The Rover won’t feel right without a full load.”
She shook her head. “No, I’ll hang out at the beach here. But thanks for asking, this time.” She turned and strolled out.
“Doesn’t anyone close a door in this place? It is a hotel,” I said, moving to take care of the chore myself.
“Hostel, it’s a youth hostel,” Burt said. “Not like a hotel at all. More like a Boy Scout encampment. About the same price too. Where the Agency guys going to meet us?” he went on.
“I don’t know. The ferry landing, I suppose. They won’t be hard to miss. They never are when they’re on their own. But they’ll be on time.” I saw Burt grimace at the insult to knuckle-dragger’s in general, but then his expression softened. He knew, as I had found out, that he was anything but the average Agency enforcer.
“What about Dingo, and the rest?” Burt inquired.
“Look, they have to go,” I replied. “To wherever their next stop or adventure is. We can’t have them around. We’ve been lucky so far. The Kenyon authorities are slow, but they’re not that slow. This had become a traveling circus.”
Burt didn’t reply, but the expression he wore would have been more appropriate on a spoiled brat’s face.
“Lay out weapons, communications, ingress and egress for tomorrow,” I said into the silence between us. “I wouldn’t normally put that on you, but then things aren’t normal, and neither are you.” I hoped the compliment would cheer him up, but he didn’t respond with anything more than a weak nod. “We’ll assemble at zero seven hundred for a Sitrep,” I finished, heading for the door. “I’ll be out with Sam before dawn, looking for an appropriate site.” I didn’t wait for a reply. The tasks assigned were one’s that I would normally have attended to myself, except for the weapons, but it felt uncommonly good to have someone I could count on.
I slept on the bed, having found extra sheets in a locker near the empty front desk. I kept the lone mosquito net. Burt had been able to beg or borrow a sleeping bag from the Earth Mothers while thin hostel mats served to be the floor padding for Sam Hill and Mr. Owili. It was warm, without air or moisture control of any kind, so we all slept on top of whatever we had.
I had gone to bed alone, the others enjoying the always-open student bar near the pool. I awakened long before dawn. Sam Hill was already up and gone. I was surprised, not by his absence, but by the stealth of his departure. I was a light sleeper, and had been since the Nam. I moved to the small bathroom with a bit of quiet embarrassment and anger.
“The little prick,” I breathed, as I stepped over Burt.
“Thanks boss,” Burt whispered up, embarrassing me further.
I shaved, washed as best I could, as there was only a sink and toilet. My arms were black, my chest red and I couldn’t tell what my back resembled. But I felt okay and I hadn’t lost mobility.
Sam was waiting for me in the Rover, parked idling in front of the hostel entrance. I got in. We didn’t murmur morning greetings. It was barely light enough to see. Two cups of hot coffee, half full, steamed in the dash holder, without tops. I took the one closest to me, amazed at the efficiency and politeness of the young Marine.
“Go back the way we came out. Once you get over the bridge, follow the water up. It’s called Mbaraki Creek. If I remember correctly, there was a ship laid up and abandoned some years back.” Sam drove, but not at his usual breakneck pace. There was little traffic so the Range Rover stood out. I knew he was responding to that fact. Mission orientation seemed to be firmly embedded in the young man, yet I knew he couldn’t have had much experience at such things. He was a natural, I concluded.
“Whom do you really work for?” I asked. He took that opportunity to grasp his own paper cup and take a loud sipping drink. The coffee was hot as hell.
“The Corps. All the way up the hill. Uuuurah,” he answered.
“What possible interest could the Corps have in all this?” I inquired, this time looking over at him with real interest.
“I don’t know,” he replied.
I felt he was telling the truth. At the very least his answer was an admission that the United States Marine Corps had some sort of cards to play in the hand I’d dealt myself.
“And Burt, and the rest of ‘em,” I said, before drinking more coffee.
“Say again, Sir?” Sam inquired. I ignored him.
A ship appeared along the shore. The stern of it was huge, rounded and rusting to the point where pieces were hanging all over the superstructure and hull.
“Pull over close, then get as far up to the bow as we can,” I pointed, unnecessarily, at the front of the old dead hulk. I’d used it once before. Nobody every came near the thing. It was a death trap, but the mid-ship’s deck was still serviceable. Well sort of, I thought, looking at it as we went by.
The Rover came to stop just before the bow. A name was painted under the rust. I had never gotten close enough to read it before.
“Kurushimi Maru,” I intoned, very slowly. “Maru means circle in Japanese,”
I stated, not having any idea when or where I’d learned the fact. “It can also mean world. I haven’t a clue about Kurushimi though.” I finished my coffee. Corporal Sam Hill surprised me again.
“Kurushimi means pain, or hurt. We used to have to say it when we finished the last rope climb of the obstacle course at Parris Island.”
I wondered why Marines finishing any obstacle course anywhere would have to yell something in Japanese, but I let it go.
“World of hurt,” Hill said, like he was tasting the words. I could tell from his expression that it was not a good taste.

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Closer To God, Happy Valley, Chapter XI

2010-01-11T07:49:00.000-08:00

Closer To God
Happy Valley
Chapter XI
There was no security inside the entrance to the court complex. Off to the side a metal detector sat pushed against the wall, and there were a couple of blue uniformed police officers lounging around, but that was it. I motioned at Burt to take one side of the filled room.
“See what you can find out,” I said, moving toward the right side of the completely filled space. There was a long counter that divided the room horizontally across the center. A long row of men and women sat behind the counter handling thick unruly lines of waiting people. It was not quiet. The room was a teeming sea of seething sound. It seemed like everyone was talking at the same time, to the people behind the counter, to the people in front and behind them in the lines, and then across to other people waiting in nearby lines.
We were the only white guys in the room. I thought that our race would gain us plenty of unwanted attention, but we were totally ignored. Whatever system of administration or justice being practiced in the court was running right across racial lines.
I worked the room, attempting to move past some of the people to get closer to the counter, and possibly talk to one of the clerks, but it was useless. Unless I applied some intense physical force there was just no way the waiting people were going to let me through. Going violent was not an option, so I eased toward the center of the room, looking for Burt. He wasn’t hard to find. At the far side he surfaced above the masses and locked eyes with me. The message was clear. He was having no more success than I. I motioned my head toward the entry doors. We met just inside of them.
“There’s no joy in Happy Valley today,” Burt intoned, which momentarily shocked me. Happy Valley was a place from memory. Not my memory, as I’d been a Marine further north while in the Nam. Happy Valley, sometimes called Dodge City, was down in Quang Nam Province. Burt didn’t appear to be old enough to have been in Vietnam, but the expression, which meant ‘no luck,’ was not normally used by non Vietnam Vets. In fact, I’d never heard it used by a civilian in the ‘real’ world.
We stood by the center set of three double doors that led into the courthouse. After examining Burt more closely, to see if I could figure out if he’d been a Marine or not, I looked around wondering what could be done about our situation.
I came to no conclusion on Burt. He was an enigma, like the mess we were in.
“Those two, where they goin?” Burt said, his eyes directed toward the far outside wall behind the long counter. Two female clerks were laughing while they walked. One was going through her purse as she moved, just as both passed under a huge sign that read ‘No Smoking.’
“Smoke break,” I replied, absently. Seconds later I connected the dots. “C’mon.” I said to Burt. “Maybe there’s a side entrance back along that wall. With no security, we have a shot.”
I moved quickly, leaving through one of the doors, and then walking rapidly to the corner of the building. The two women exited out through an unmarked door near the back of the building, as I’d hoped. There was a picnic table set under a tree not far from the door. They walked in that direction.
“Come on,” I said, over my shoulder, then made for the table, moving at a casual, non-threatening but rapid pace.
The women seated themselves at the table, facing one another and lighting up. A bright morning sun beat down, the day setting out to be a hot one. A low spreading palm gave plenty of shade but only for those at the table itself. Burt and I waited to be noticed, standing in the sun a few feet away, which didn’t take long.
We were the wrong color, and it was obvious we didn’t belong.
“Jambo, bwana,” one of them said, between puffs.
“Jambo, M’wali,” I responded, using a common Kiswahili greeting response.
I bowed slightly, before placing four of the five thousand shilling bills between them on the wooden surface of the table. They both puffed and stared down, unable to take their eyes from the huge offering, but making no move to pick it up either.
“What want?” the one who greeted me asked, not looking up at me. Her eyes were glued to the money.
“White man came through this place some time back. Not long. Like us,” I offered.
The woman flicked her eyes up to run them quickly over us, and then returned to the shillings.
“What can you tell me about him?” I asked.
Both women shifted uncomfortably. “Nothing,” the same woman said.
We know nothing. No one know nothing.” I moved my hand slowly, as if to take the bills back.
“One thing only,” she said quickly, stopping my hand in mid-air.
“Mr. Owili,” she said, her voice dropping to just above a whisper.
“Mr. Owili?” I echoed, in question.
“Mr. Owili cellmate, not long. He still in. No bail money. No fine money.
Inside.” Her eyes met mine for the first time since I’d walked up. I blinked. She swept the bills from the tabletop down to her purse in less than a second.
“How do I get in there?” I asked, wondering whether an attempt would prove worth the effort or not.
“Shillings. My brother inside gatekeeper. Have note.” The woman took a scrap of paper from her purse. She rummaged around for something to write with.
I looked over at Burt, raising both my eyebrows.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“Go tell Sam what’s up, then come back and hang around the main prison building and see what happens.” I took the paper, but couldn’t make out what was written on it. It looked like Sanskrit. But I folded it and thanked her.
Standing back in front of the courthouse, I watched Burt walk to the Rover. I’d given him all of the money I had, save four of the big notes, just in case. He also had my wallet and passport, which I’d thought seriously about. The prison proper might want some sort of identification, but I couldn’t afford to lose my passport. The cell phone came out of my pocket last. We had to have communication. I couldn’t risk its loss.
I approached the front of the imposing prison structure. People were milling around the outside. It looked like most were trying to communicate with prisoners inside, either cupping their hands to yell toward upper windows or using hand signals. I moved through them to the entrance.
The main door to the prison was made of steel. The huge bars were criss-crossed with smaller construction rebar welded in after the fact. The steel was painted a bright blue color, while the walls had been done in some sort of bright white. There was a small solid window set into the middle of the bars. I knocked, not knowing what else to do. The little door opened.
“Entry?” a voice asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“How many?” the voice asked.
I almost laughed. It was like a routine out of Monty Python. I could see through the bars that surrounded the window, so I knew the guard could too. There was no one standing anywhere near me.
“One,” I said, feeling stupid.
The big door swung open with a huge creaking sound. I stepped through. I had never seen a Hollywood movie with a better prison door scene.
The heavy thing slammed behind me. Inside, the huge inner room was empty, except for the guard I’d encountered through the window.
“You a self-surrender?” the man asked, placing himself directly in front of me, so close I had to take a step back.
“I don’t know, “ I answered, not knowing what a ‘self-surrender’ was. I handed him the note the woman had given me. He took it, and then held it up in front of his face, as if trying to determine authenticity.
“Hmmm,” was all he said, lowering the note. We stood looking at one another for a few seconds until remembered the money. I pulled out the small roll and handed it over. It went straight into his pocket. He didn’t bother with counting.
“Owili. Put me inside with Owili,” I requested. He nodded with a smile.
“Come,” he answered. He took me to another steel door, this one solid and the color of steel. It was even more imposing than the outside door. The guard removed a short black rod from a belt loop.
“Baton,” he stated, smiling. He held out the strange looking thing with a proud smile. “Rubber, with fiberglass inside. Good bruises, but no broken bones.” He laughed while using the thing to beat four times on the outside of the door. Four thumps came back from the other side immediately. The guard unhinged an articulated locking device with his left hand, adroitly returning the baton to his belt loop while doing so.
“Put him in with Owili,” the guard stated to several men who stood on the other side of the open door. I noted that the inner guards did not wear the distinctive pressed blue and white uniform of the outer guard. Their khaki shirts and shorts were soiled and tattered, but each carried a copy of the rubber baton in a belt loop. I stepped into the darkness, very hesitantly. They grabbed me, pulled me harshly forward between them. The heavy door slammed shut behind me.
Things were not going as I had hoped.
They didn’t let go; instead I was moved forward, a guard grasping me firmly by each of my arms. There was no light at all and the place smelled like a sewer. I saw faint light ahead, after being guided roughly around several turns. We came out of a corridor into a large room of solid concrete, lit from above by a single light bulb.
“Wait here,” the guard who’d held my right arm said, pushing me against one bare wall. I moved to stand inches out from the filthy surface. I surveyed my fellow inmates, all native, all restless and moving about, except for a few crouched down along the walls. A small group was gathered in the corner furthest from me, casting furtive looks my way. I smelled trouble coming, above and beyond the aroma of raw sewage. Suddenly the group moved, as one, toward me. Two large Africans in the front, with a snake of men trailing behind. I turned slightly to the side, exposing the outside of my left arm, minimizing my silhouette and preparing to defend myself. I had made a mistake coming into the prison without more information. I knew I was about to pay a substantial price for that mistake.
The two guards returned through the side door they’d left through, right into the middle of the moving band. Instantly, their batons were out and swinging. The men near them screamed, while others ran and cowered. I breathed a great sigh of relief, until the guards reached me. One swung a baton into my stomach, while the other brought his down on my upper back when I bent down from the first blow. The pain was disabling. I wanted to shout at them that I was a visitor, not a prisoner, but I couldn’t get a word out.
Rough hands grabbed, half-dragging me through the door, and on into another concrete room, similar to the first but marginally cleaner, and with only a few inmates inside. The guards pushed. I stumbled forward, and then regained my balance. When I turned I was expecting anything but to be struck again. Both guards attacked, both aiming for my head. I took several blows on my arms as I covered up. Finally, I went flat to the floor on my back. Both guards were bending over, screaming down at me.
“They want your shoes. If you do not give them your shoes then they are going to strike you some more,” a calm voice, right next to my ear, said. I turned slightly. A man, not a native, but dark complected, lay on the floor next to me.
Scrunching up, I reached down and quickly pulled off my shoes. I pushed them away, and then pulled my feet back up. The guards went for the shoes.
“What’s the deal with shoes?” I asked the man crouching next to me on the floor, while trying to rub the agony from my forearms.
“American leather. It is the finest in the world. We are in Africa and there are no good animal skins. Is that not very very funny?” The man laughed.
“Thanks,” I said, my lips still stretched too thin with pain to smile
at the irony. “Who might you be?” I inquired.
“I am Mr. Owili. I am here for drunk driving, but they will not tell my family I am here so that I cannot pay the fine to get out. I have been here for some time. I am from India,” he finished.
“Well, Mr. Owili, what’s your first name?” I asked.
“It is not pronounceable. Everyone calls me Mr. Owili. You can call me by any name you like, but let us rise up from the floor and get some air.”
I mimicked the man’s crawl across the floor. “Air? What air?” I asked.
“Here,” he said, propping himself next to a huge crack in the concrete.
It was at least four inches wide, penetrating all the way through the wall’s great thickness. A breeze blew in. It was fresh air. Mr. Owili knew his way around.
I had only been inside the prison for less than half an hour but yearned terribly for the outside. I breathed slowly in an out, my back and arms still throbbing.
A voice spoke through the crack. “Donner? You in there?” I couldn’t believe my ears. It was Burt. Part of his large face blocked the light and the breeze, not more than a foot from where I sat.
“Burt! How the hell did you find me?” I asked, amazed.
“Don’t know, just walking around, checking everything out, like you said,” he replied, as if it had been nothing at all. “You find the guy?” he asked.
“Yeah, he’s right here. Can you get some shillings in through this crack?
I need some serious help in getting the hell out of here.”
“Sure. I’ll get a stick. What kind of a budget you want to put on this?”
Owili, listening to our exchange, began to laugh.
“This man Burt is a very funny fellow,” he said, between laughs.
Burt pushed through ten of the bills. I was pleased that who ever Tony was sending from the consulate would be packing cash. Our supply of shillings was dwindling rapidly.
“I’ll go around front and start bribing from there,” Burt stated gruffly.
The light and wind came back through the crack with his departure.
“Will you help me to get free of this?” Owili asked, as I gathered the money together. There seemed to be no modesty or restraint in the man.
“Tell me about the white man they brought in a few days back to stay with you. What did he say?”
“What?” the Indian said, his eyes growing larger. I waited.
“There is nothing to tell. He was dead when they brought him in. They put him over in that corner. They came back later and took him out. He was missing his private parts and was terribly bruised. But it was the many bullets in his chest that killed him, I am almost certain.”
It was the last news I expect to hear. I rubbed my face with my right hand, trying to think. Why in hell would anyone bring a dead man into a prison, leave him there for a while and then allow his body to be repatriated? Nothing seemed at all plausible, but I didn’t believe for a second that the Indian was lying to me. He didn’t seem to care one whit who I was or might be. He just wanted out, and I fully understood.
“Let’s get out, if we can. Here, see what you can do with these.” I gave him four of the five thousand shilling bills. He was up and moving toward the door before I got the notes fully into his hand. Once there, he stood, beating quietly, but patiently, on the thick solid wood. After a few moments, the door opened.
The trip back to the front of the prison building was worse than the trip in. I had no shoes, and the floor was littered with unknown debris. The guards led us, as before, by holding our arms. More guards had assembled as soon as they found out that money was changing hands. When we reached the front room the huge steel door was already open, and through we went, as before, but this time among a full entourage of guards. The same men who had beaten me clapped me on the back, laughing, as if the brutality had been some sort of rough joke. I grimaced with pain. I wondered what my body was going to look like for some days to come.
Standing outside, with the blue door closed behind us, Mr. Owili and I simply enjoyed the open air and the sun. A sudden urge to get as far away from the area as I could swept over me.
“Get Sam here with the Rover, now. I’m not walking anywhere without shoes,” I informed Burt. He waved both arms in the air, and then returned to the front of the building to beat on the metal window in the center of the door. Sam drove up. Mr. Owili and I climbed in.
Seconds later, Burt came running, jumped in the through the back door behind Sam, and then tossed my shoes into the wheel well in front of me.
“Another ten thou, but what the hell, there’s no Allen Edmonds around here.”

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copyright 2010

Closer To God, Forlorn Hope, Chapter X

2010-01-09T21:29:00.000-08:00

Closer To God
Forlorn Hope
Chapter X

The Beach Africa hostel was nothing like other beach hotels I had frequented, up and down the coastal regions of Africa. We drove into to a collected bunch of what seemed like high school students, waiting for their school bus. Our Pajero was missing a lot of glass, which attracted a little attention, but, as we climbed from the vehicle, no one questioned or interdicted us. I opened the back hatch, intending to help Helen from the vehicle. I saw immediately that that was not going to work. She was just too messed up, mentally and physically. Some piece of feminine clothing was tightly wrapped and knotted around her upper left arm. She smiled weakly up at me. I felt guilty. The four women were not road warriors. They were just regular kids, tougher and more experienced than most, but still kids. And I had used them for our own purposes to a bloody outcome.
Leaving Anice to look after her, the rest of us waded through the crowd to arrive at some desks set against the wall of a large tiled room. African artifacts, looking like Walmart imitations, adorned the walls. I noticed that everyone was white, and frowned. I didn’t really mind, but it seemed uncommon for where we were. The small fishing village we’d had to work our way through to get to the hostel had been just the opposite. All local. No whites or foreigners.
The young lady checking us in was Irish, and cute as a button. An eighteen year old button, if that. Everything was ‘grand.’
“This is grand. Almost everyone has checked out. How many banda’s do you want?”
“Three,” I said, a bit taken up with all the youthful good cheer going on all around me. I looked over my shoulder when I handed her several of the five thousand shilling notes. It would be hard for the police to get a line on us where we were, but any of the residences nearby the recent shooting would be able to describe the Pajero with a missing windshield.
“Can we park around back to unload? I asked the Irish lass, returning my attention to her. When we came in I had noticed how thick the brush grew, just beyond the the Beach Africa compound.
“That’ll be grand,” she replied, “and each banda is only three hundred shillings a day, sir,” the woman said, holding out several of the notes in her right hand.
“Keep’em,” I responded. “We’ll be staying a while.” We wouldn’t be but I wanted no money problems from the hostel haunting us while we were there.
She handed me three forms to fill out. I scrawled across all of them using the writer Ben Johnson’s name, artist as occupation and Great Britain as country of origin.
When I completed the forms I handed them back and waited, hand in my pocket, in case there was going to be a need for more shillings. But the young lady didn’t ask for any identification or proof.
“Where are the rooms?” I asked. The Irish lass looked up at me without responding. “I mean, how do we find the bandas we’re staying in?” I re-phrased.
“Oh, grand, here’s a map.” She quickly circled the three northernmost small squares on a poorly copied piece of printing paper. I was relieved. We could drive the Pajero through the bush, and then unload out of sight, unless there were obstacles I was unaware of.
I turned to the group assembled behind me. “Back in the car, we’ll drive around back and unload.”
“You can do what you want. I’m walking,” Joan said. “Sam will get my bag.”
Sam beamed, as if he had received some sort of high compliment. Joan headed out the back of the building toward the visible pool and beach beyond. Her expensive slacks and day coat marked her as out of place and overdressed, but attractive as hell.
The rest of us loaded back into the SUV and drove through the brush. It was thick brush but no match for the brute force of the big vehicle. It took half an hour to unload everything and get Helen into one of the bandas. The single rooms, each with a bathroom and running water, were not large, but after packing into the cabin on the train they seemed bright and spacious.
Sam, Burt and I gravitated to the innermost of the bandas, automatically understanding that the women would arrange themselves in ways we neither understood nor cared about. Once settled I motioned both to sit and listen.
“We need a new vehicle. They’re going to be looking for our’s and we can’t move anywhere quickly with no windshield. We’ve got to make it over to Shimo la Tewa prison, then down to the ferry. Rafiq is probably on the ferry running back and forth.” I stopped, waiting to see if both men were getting what I was saying.
“What of the woman?” Burt stated, his voice flat, his distaste for Joan palpable.
“We need the DCM,” I replied. “She’s a major diplomat and not to be screwed with by the authorities. We also left a little mess back there in town.”
“You left a mess,” Sam said, unexpectedly, then cleared his throat, as if he had spoken out of turn. I noted his failure, for the first time, to use the word ‘sir.’
“Yes, I left a bit of a mess, following a single shot that could have gone right through your cranium instead of Helen’s arm.”
“Yes, sir!” Sam said, falling back into the rigid behavior required by the Corps when in the presence of an officer. Except I wasn’t a officer in the Marine Corps. The edge to his voice when he’d made the first statement made me uncomfortable, as if his opinion of me from other knowledge was significantly less than what he’d led me to believe earlier. I filed away my thoughts and feelings about the subject for later reference.
“And I’ve got to call in. We can’t proceed further without the Agency. We just don’t have the assets and we’re going to run into the local authorities at some point. The Agency doesn’t have a clue about any of this. I’ve got to bring them in. People are dying over what this is about. The Agency comes in or we get the hell out, no matter how we felt about Smith.” I took a seat on the edge of the bed to wait. I wasn’t running a real mission and I could only make believe for so long. There was terminal risk for all involved, as had been graphically proven. The players deserved to be heard.
“I’m in,” Burt said, almost before I was done speaking. He pulled out the nine millimeter and then disassembled it on the rug in front of a canvas drawer dresser. I looked at Sam.
“I ride for the brand,” he stated, his eyes boring into my own. The expression seemed self-explanatory, but I wondered what he considered the ‘brand’ to be. There was a depth to the young man I could not plumb, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sitting in a banda on the beach. He seemed awfully young to be as cool as he appeared. The blowing out of the Pajero’s windshield hadn’t affected his driving one bit, and he’d been completely emotionless about Helen’s violent injury. Both of those reactions didn’t seem to fit behavior when stacked agains Sam’s age or innocent demeanor.
Burt moved to the sink, cradling the pieces he had laid out on the floor. He threw them into the basin, then ran hot water and started to scrub them. Hot water and soap.
I hadn’t seen an operational weapon cleaned with soap and water since training, although it made complete sense. I presumed that the huge man had a bottle of gun oil squirreled away somewhere in his wrappings. Walking to his side I pulled the AMT out and set it next to the sink. I knew he’d want to clean that as well. It was nice to work with another thinking professional, but I said nothing, knowing that Burt would not want to hear a compliment about something he so took for granted.
“I’m taking a walk on the beach. I’ll be back after the call.” I looked at both men after I spoke. Sam leaned down to go through his pack. Burt worked away on the gun parts, ignoring me.
The beach was not much of a beach. Further north there was a real hotel called the Serena. I could see where the beach expanded and grew into a thick strip of white sand in that direction. I walked on sand that was mixed with small chunks of rough rock. The water breaking along the shore broke on hard flat rock, not sand. The Beach Africa could have been more aptly described as the Rock Africa, but, of course, that would never have worked. I dialed the international number.
I was put straight through to Tony, my control officer.
“What do we owe the privilege of this communication?” he inquired.
“This isn’t a secure line,” I began, telling him something I knew he already knew. No cell phone discussions anywhere in the world were secure. I was alerting my control that there was more information backing what I was going to say than I could communicate. I filled him in, omitting the name of the organization of the men who’d opposed us, as well as the train incident. I did mention Sierra Leone, and later diamonds, in a passing way. He caught the connection right away, however.
“Alright, he agreed. Pursue this stone thing. I’ll send a couple of drones down from the consulate in the morning, for your ferry transit at nine local.”
Ferry transit meant the isolation and questioning of our Lebanese contact, Rafiq, I knew. His mention of that interrogation without my bringing it up told me that he was closer in touch with our situation than he was telling me. And his mention of ‘stones’ told me what the Agency was really interested in. Smith was dead, but the diamonds were part of a living mystery to be solved.
I asked for more money.
“Twenty, but no more Charlie Delta. Do you understand me?” he asked. Charlie Delta was alphanumeric code for the letters C and D. Collateral Damage. Twenty meant that the men he was sending would bring twenty thousand in U.S. cash with them when they came.
“You want me to play this or do you want me to whistle Dixie?” I asked. I hated collateral damage although it seemed to follow me around like a recurring case of the common cold. Tony and I liked one another for different reasons, although neither he nor I appreciated our respective senses of humor. He hung up without responding.
I passed in front of Joan’s banda. I knew it because she was sitting outside of its sliding glass doors in a cheap plastic chair. I walked up, and then sat in the chair next to her.
“What are you planning?” she asked, without preamble.
“Visit the prison today. The ferry tomorrow. Need a rental car.
You’re the obvious choice. You’re not going to be on anyone’s radar. Not yet, at least.
Got a credit card?”
She looked at me like I was an idiot.
“Where do I go down here to get a rental?” she asked.
“You and Sam can catch a cab back to the Intercontinental. They have an agency right on site,” I answered. “Why are you really here?”
She didn’t say anything for a minute or so. I waited, watching the waves impact on the rock shore, and then wash up to the thin layer of sand, time after time.
“I don’t know. There’s something about all this. Something about you.
How do you assemble all these people to do your bidding? Those women think you’re some sort of heroic figure. How do you do that?”
It was my turn to remain silent for awhile. I had no good answer. A sales guru had once told me that the most effective salesperson was a conscious competent person.
Most people were unconscious incompentents. I didn’t like the feeling that, about what Joan was speaking of, I might be an unconscious competent. But I had no ready answer for her question.
“The cause is just. People follow a just cause,” I finally answered. And the answer felt good, until she spoke again.
“They don’t have any idea what the cause is. It’s a hell of a lot more than a just cause. How are you going to get rid of them? Even shooting them doesn’t seem to dim their enthusiasm.”
“I’ll work on it while you’re gone,” I replied, avoiding further discussion altogether by changing the subject. “You can’t come to the prison. A woman, like yourself, would stick out like a sore thumb. Burt and I will be bad enough.”
“Where is the prison?” she asked, not arguing with my decision, at least.
“Two miles from here, if that, by the inlet to the north. It’s about the most modern structure on this part of the coast. There’s a courthouse attached. We’ll go there to see what we can rake up, for a bit of cash.”
“I’ll get a car. If you keep building this entourage we’ll need a bus.” She smiled for the first time when she said the words.
“So you came down here for me?” I ventured.
“You’ve changed something in the fabric of the universe here. I don’t know what. I still don’t like what you do. I think your heart is good, however, yet I’m not altogether happy with that conclusion. Sometimes you seem so directly dumb, and then you seem brilliant.” She raised one hand in a gesture of helplessness.
“Idiot Savant, I think its called,” I interpreted for her.
“There’s nothing idiotic about you at all, so no,” she replied, rising from her chair.
“I’m going to check on Helen. I think she’s fine though. Happy to have been shot during an adventure in Africa. You’ve twisted her mind in some god-awful manner.”
“Like yours?” I asked, to her departing back. She didn’t turn.
It took almost three hours for Sam to show up at the banda with a rental rig.
I was impressed. It was an aging Range Rover. V8 power. Large and Heavy. The gas mileage of an Abrams tank but air conditioned and extremely comfortable. Sam, Burt and I drove the short distance up Highway B8 to the prison. There was no missing it, as it was the only multi-story structure along the highway.
Same wheeled the Rover into a parking lot the size of two football fields, that sat in front of the main building. Most of the cars parked were clustered near the far end, closest to the bridge running in a high arc over the inlet.
“That’s got to be the court building,” I pointed out to Sam. He pulled the vehicle in among all the other cars. There were no Rovers. It was far too expensive a vehicle for most indigenous citizens to own, or even rent.
“Well, sir, what now?” he asked, turning the ignition off. I twisted in my leather seat to look back at Burt.
“We go in, find a contact, and then pursue whatever lead he might be able to give us. I don’t know what we’re looking for. Better strip down. No weaponry. They might have detectors all over the place in there. It’s pretty modern for this part of the world.” I looked at the structures we were in front of. The place looked modern for almost anywhere we might be in the world, I realized. It had to be American built. America builds great prisons.
“Stand by, nothing more. Stay alert. Use your head,” I said to Sam.
I waited for Burt to strip down in the back seat.
“Ready,” he said, finally. “When small bands of English soldiers were sent into the breach against the French cannons, what were they called?” he asked, getting out of the passenger door of the Rover.
I thought for a moment. Cornwell’s Sharp series came to my mind.
“The Forlorn Hope,” I answered.
“Roger that,” he whispered, as we walked together toward the imposing structure.

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Closer To God, If One Would Dance, Chapter IX

2010-01-04T18:49:00.000-08:00

Closer To God
If One Would Dance
Chapter IX
The view in front of the train was wide and clear when seen through the huge open space at the back of the engine. It was windy, however, as our speed was about forty-five. Dawn was moments away and visibility was less than a quarter mile, but it was enough.
As we came in toward the area of the station, according to the engineer standing at my side, the track would curve left to head in around the outer edge of the station. He showed me the small radio console that controlled four switches in the yard, the left most of which was the one that, when thrown, would allow us to proceed straight into the yard.
“We’re going in hot,” I said, seeing the buildings of the yard appear out of the morning gray.
“Hot?” he asked, his voice rising an octave.
“There’s nothing there. We can see. Hold the speed,” I replied, keeping my eyes on the tracks, noting how many more spread out further ahead. I slipped another five thousand shilling note from my pocket, this time passing it directly to the man’s squatting wife, who grasped it quickly, smiling again. I saw the track curve away to our left.
“Hit the switch,” I instructed, but the engineer shook his head.
“One more moment. We must give them no time to switch it back.”
The man’s hand hovered over the board. We were only feet from the curve when he eased down on the small lever. I watched the track ahead break and spread, and then we were over it.
“How far to Moi Road?” I asked. Both of us peered intently ahead, not moving our heads to look at one another. If there was something ahead there would be no stopping in time to avoid a collision.
“Kilometer. Minute. Two,” he clipped off, his voice tense, both hands braced to push back on a huge lever rising from the steel floor. I presumed the lever to be the brake, not that it might matter. There were at least twenty cars behind us. The inertia of the train was tremendous. We blew by the yard buildings, one man running out to watch us go by, a look of wonder on his face.
“Better slow this thing down,” I mentioned, as if I knew anything about stopping a train. “Where does the line end?” I asked.
“Used to be the Lakoni ferry, but we don’t go that far anymore. Don’t think there’s any track,” he answered. I recalled that the Lebanese and his family ran a ferry at that location.
The train began to slow, the engineer reaching for a cable that ran along the top corner edge of our small space. I caught his arm.
“No whistle.”
The man returned to his position, gently pushing on his big lever.
Jack saw cars crossing the tracks ahead. A lot of cars for so early in the morning. The intersection had to be Moi. I heard the universal ding ding ding of the railroad alarms signaling, as wooden guards descended to the block the road.
“You’re doing fine,” I said, my voice calm, although I didn’t feel calm at all. Had Burt received and properly interpreted the message? Was there going to be a Pajero waiting, or were we on our own? I punched the auto dial butto for Burt on the cell phone. He answered after the first ring.
“Hot, high and dry,” he said, and then hung up.
It was flight talk. I had not known that Burt was a flier. Hot, high and dry referenced the most dangerous kind of landing for an aircraft, outside of an emergency. If conditions were hot in temperature lift was less across the wing. High meant high altitude. There was less lift in thinner air. Dry finished the description. Dry air had less density than moist air, and ergo less lift. Using the expression as he had, meant that the Pajero was coming in but it was going to be a very risky landing.
“Gee, like I wouldn’t have guessed that,” I said to nobody, the engineer fully taken up with stopping the train. We were moving at about fifteen miles per hour when we approached to within fifty yards of Moi Road. I climbed around the rear guard of the engine, then jumped ten feet down to the slanted earth next to the tracks, using a series of Aikido rolls to minimize damage to my body as I decelerated.
The Pajero pulled around traffic, then came right down the railroad right of way, bouncing to near where I was rising, patting the dust from my shirt and trousers. The train’s air brakes gave off a huge whooshing sound, up and down the sides of the long line of cars. Burt and the Earth Mothers ran toward us from that direction.
Sam jumped from the vehicle and opened the back door. The Pajero was big but it was going to need all of its space for the six of us getting aboard. It would have been much simpler and safer to leave the Earth Mothers behind, but I knew they would have nothing to do with that. Burt and I would have to ditch them when we found some place to stay, and get our act together.
I ran to the passenger side of the vehicle and opened the front door.
Joan smiled down at me.
“What?” I asked, in total surprise and confusion. “What are you…” I began, but got no farther.
“I thought it would be a good idea to provide a little guidance. My ex-husband has had a hand in all this, and its my responsibility to make sure no more mistakes are made and that there’s no more violence.” She slammed the door in my face when she finished speaking. I got in the back.
Wendy was wedged between Burt and I, while the other three were crammed over the back seat into the cargo area. Sam hit the gas and rocketed around in a tight circle, throwing us roughly about the interior of the car.
“Where to?” he asked, looking back with a huge smile, obviously enjoying the driving and our obvious discomfort.
“We need a place out of the way where people won’t think to look,” I said to Wendy.
“The Beach Africa is it. Student hostel. About three hundred shillings a day
and okay. No air conditioning. You get a paraffin lamp and a mosquito net in a banda built for two. We got the sleeping bags though,” she said. “Go North on Moi,” she went on, leaning forward and pointing her finger for Sam to follow.
The wood crossing guards were still down. The engine had come to stop in the middle of the intersection, the engineer having delivered accurately for his money. Sam careened around the barrier, narrowly slipped between several cars and then accelerated in the direction Wendy had indicated. There were no cars in our way, as the barrier behind us blocked them all.
Wendy held to her center position, body wedged between the front seats, instructing Sam as to our direction. I peered over Joan’s right shoulder and grew ever more uncomfortable. We were headed back into the center of Mombasa, which was built on an island. The rail station was close to the center of town.
“Just head north and we’ll hit D eight, the highway and get off island. It doesn’t matter what road we take,” Wendy said.
We crossed another major road. There was little traffic. Sam did not bother to stop for the stop sign, and my worst fears were confirmed. A Maruki four wheel drive drove right past the rear of our Pajero at high speed, narrowly avoiding a collision, before screeching to a halt, and then spinning around to pursue us. Sam hit the gas. There was a sharp crack from behind us. Our windshield turned into biting little chunks of safety glass, and blew inward. European safety glass, not the good stuff used in America, which has a thick sandwich of gooey plastic in the middle, to prevent just such catastrophic failure.
There was a scream from the back at the same time. I turned, with glass pieces cascading from my throat and shirt.
“Helen’s hurt,” Anice stated, loudly, but not in panic. “I think the bullet hit the outside of her arm.”
“Get some material on it and apply pressure,” I instructed, hoping the projectile had not hit bone or an artery. We were in no condition to make for an emergency room, and we were not in a country where there was any decent medical care anyway.
I had not been angry since entering Kenya for the mission. I was not angry when we had been shot at earlier, and I wasn’t mad about the attempt on the train.
Those were the risks that went with the business. Fear I had experienced but not anger. However, I was getting sincerely pissed off that the Aegis people thought it was just fine to fire away at anything that moved.
“Give me the nine millimeter Burt,” I said, pulling the AMT from my pocket. I had one in the chamber and five in the magazine of the little back-up gun. The short barrel, and therefore lower muzzle velocity, would not allow for much penetration of the heavy .45 rounds however.
Burt handed me his gun.
“Loaded to fifty thousand C.P.I., one plus sixteen, “ he said, pushing the butt of the weapon into my open hand, behind Wendy’s back.
I examined the automatic for a brief second. The side of the slide read ‘F.N. 65.’ I knew the manufacturer. Belgian. The gun itself was made in the U.S. I liked that. Burt only seemed to carry American armament. Fifty thousand units of chamber pressure meant that the bullets, one third smaller than the .45 rounds, would launch from the barrel very fast indeed. Penetration was not going to be a problem.
“Take the next right hard, and then slow enough to drop me. Flip around
after a few more blocks and pick me up. Unless I go down. Then leave me and proceed.”
“Yes sir,” Sam replied crisply, veering the vehicle into a ninety degree turn. I loved the Marines. The vehicle slowed as we passed a wall. With the AMT back in my pocket and the FN in my right hand, I operated the handle with my left hand, opened the door, and leaped out. Sam had slowed to the perfect speed for my egress.
I was able to run a few paces and stop, without having to go down and roll out. I pulled out the AMT, flicked the external safety off by pushing it with my right palm, as the sharp little lever was made for right handed use.
The Maturi rocketed around the corner. I stepped to the edge of the crumbling curb holding up the FN. When the SUV was twenty feet away I opened up, shooting at the front glass, then the passenger doors as the car drove by.
I emptied the gun, brought up the AMT and waited. The Maturi slowed to a stop.
I moved into the street and steadied to take down anyone stepping from one of the
four doors, but nothing happened. The car just sat there.
The Pajero braked to a halt next to me. The passenger door was thrown open right at my side. Sam Hill was one hell of a driver, I realized, jumping in.
The door slammed as Sam accelerated us away from the scene.
It had all taken only seconds. My ears rang from the gunfire. The FN had been loaded to the maximum and the vibrations generated had caused some damage to my ears. The AMT was back in my pocket. I handed the used up FN back across to Burt.
“What happened back there?” Joan asked, twisting back to face me, her eyes wide, her lip quivering, but just a little.
“If one would dance, one must expect to pay the piper,” I answered. “Those clowns have been getting away with murder, or at least trying to get away with murder for days. I gave them something to think about.”
Joan turned, giving me her back again.
“Are they dead, the guys in that car?’ she asked.
“I have no idea,” I answered, truthfully. That I didn’t give a damn I kept to myself. Citizens were, after all, citizens, and it did not pay to attempt to bring them into the real world Burt and I lived in world. The Earth Mothers had come into our world for a brief visit and one was already wounded.
I checked the rear cargo area. Only Dingo was visible.
“How’s Helen?” I asked.
Anice spoke from the floor. “She’s got a slice out of her outer left arm, but he bleeding has stopped. A bit of shock. She’s real tired. But its so cool. Helen’s got a bullet wound.”
I rubbed my face, noting the bleeding cut across my right hand when I did.
The safety had cut right into the meat my palm. I had not noticed. The adrenalin of combat had cut the pain receptors and quite possibly the bleeding. Now I had both.
I grimace, clenching the hand to apply pressure. We had to get cleaned up, both Helen and I, before we entered any kind of hostel. Blood gets reported to authorities, and there was going to be some kind of very active investigation over the mess I’d left behind us. Possibly, there were no dead bodies in the Maturi, but I doubted that that was true.
Burt methodically replaced the empty magazine in the handle of the FN, pulled back on the slide, and then seated a round in the chamber. It took him another minute to take out the magazine, squeeze an additional round into the top of it, and then reset it into the automatic. The gun disappeared back into his multi-faceted outfit. He looked over at me. We both communicated the simple fact, it was good to be working with a real professional, without word or expression.
I looked out the window and watched our vehicle pass over the bridge. Mombasa was behind us. My clenched hand shook. I caught the wrist in my left hand, securing it. I wasn’t used to shooting people, and it didn’t feel good, even when the people getting shot had it coming to them in the worst way.
Wind blew with gusto right through the Pajero. I didn’t realize that the vehicle was a different one than the one we’d rented until that moment. How had Stevens and Sam come up with a vehicle of the same type and color? At the Safari hotel we’d lost the driver side passenger window and the rear glass. Either the damages had been repaired in extremely short order or we were riding in a different car. I tucked the information away for later consideration.

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Another Chance

2010-01-03T11:51:00.000-08:00

Another Chance

By James Strauss

He was the first out for the season. The lake had iced over days before, which was uncommon so early in the year, but he’d taken the opportunity to beat any other ice fisherman and establish his fishing hut in the best location. Ten degrees below zero for three days was sufficient to form an ice layer thick enough to drive his truck across, tow the shack out, then park back at the edge of the lake and walk. He trudged back toward the run down ‘out-house’ looking shed he’d left near the middle of the lake. Inside the clapboard structure was a propane heater, six-inch ice drill, fishing equipment and half a case of Bacardi Rum. It was Saturday. He would have two whole days to do nothing but ice fish and drink, with a strong emphasis on the drinking.
When he arrived at the shack he turned around, and then studied the shore of the big lake for signs of other ice fishermen, but there was not a soul about. Smoke came from a few chimneys and he knew, even at six in the morning, his presence out on the ice was noted by many of the people who lived year around in the lakeside cabins. Several binoculars were probably sighted in on him, he thought, as he studied the shore. That conclusion did not give him any discomfort. Quite the opposite. If anything happened, like the ice not holding, then help would be only minutes away.
In past years many fishermen had gone through, one guy had even lost his Porsche, but all had been saved due to the ‘watchers’ on the shore and their quick actions. Because of the Porsche, and the potential pollution such a sinking might have on the lake ecosystem, no vehicles were allowed to park out on the ice during the frozen winter months. All the fishermen hated the discomfort and inconvenience that the rule caused, but they all understood the need to keep the lake pristine. Without the freshwater fish population there would be no ice fishing, and certainly no place to get as securely and quietly drunk as most ice fishermen loved to be.
Once inside, he turned the knob of the propane tank to full open and started the heater, making sure to pull down on the vent lever. Propane was clean but in a small enclosed space even the small waste of carbon monoxide it produced could be deadly. The next order of business was to mix a Rum and Coke, his favorite drink. Two parts rum and two parts coke mixed, without ice, inside a small ceramic cup.
He finished off two cups in as many minutes, warming him to the point where he could remove his heavy sheepskin coat and hat. The propane heater was extremely efficient. The thermometer read sixty degrees and he could see it slowly climbing.
He checked the ice surface around him. He had never built a floor into the shack. He preferred the walls to contact the ice directly, allowing him to pull fish right from the hole instead of up through a hole in a wood floor. He was a purist and proud of it.
Mixing a third drink, which he momentarily set aside, he worked on this fishing rig. A short flexible rod, light line and leader, two small hooks and a heavy sinker. He was going after bottom feeding bass. They were all fairly small, no bigger than nine or ten inches in length, but he loved their taste. Many of the other fishermen went after perch, a milder fish. The propane heater had a side burner. If he cared to, and was lucky enough to catch something early, he would have grilled bass for his breakfast. The thought made him smile. Downing the third rum and coke added humming to the smile. Auld Lang Syne. It was, after all, New Years Day, and he was dead set on changing his life. He was going to visit the children who’d gone away so long ago after the divorce. He was going to stop drinking after this last season of ice fishing. He was going to go back and get a real job, one more in keeping with his college diploma, rather than continue being a vacation cabin caretaker and handyman.
He set the prepared rod and line aside, built a back up, and then took hold of his powered ice drill. The guys at Home Depot said that it would drill a six-inch diameter hole through two feet of ice in one minute. Placing the point of the drill in the exact center of his small space he balanced the tip on the slippery ice, holding the machine perpendicular with his left hand while pulling on the rope handle sharply with his right. The machine screamed to top speed instantly, jerking him a little off balance with its torque. The blade bit into the ice, bounced upward, then slammed back into the ice, grinding in with great crunching sound.
He was under water. The impact of entering the thirty-two degree water was stunning. He body screamed in pain, and then flashed with a deadly numbness. He surfaced, dropping the drilling machine into the depths. He treaded water for a few seconds. Debris was all around him in the water. The heater, flame gone but gas bubbling from the tube, floated next to him, along with his hat and coat. Even the small stool floated inside the confines of the shack, bobbing among all the chunks of broken ice. He twisted around. The ice had broken under the shack he realized, his brain slowly recovering from shock. It had broken perfectly,
He moved to one wall of the shack and tried to lever himself up, grabbing hold of a cross-bracing two by four. The shack pulled down. He did not rise at all.
He paddled to the door. He pulled the shack downward, and then tried the handle. The door opened outward, designed to save as much of the shack’s small space for occupancy as possible. But it opened only two inches, and then jammed against the edge of ice outside. He started to panic. He was already losing the feeling in his hands, and strangely, in his hips and midsection. His legs still worked. His frog kick still kept him afloat, along with his weak grip on the wooden supports of the shack wall. He had to think, so he calmed himself. Help was not far away, if he could just maintain himself, get free of the frigid water and make his way outside. Simply waving his arms out in the open would bring immediate assistance.
More attempts at climbing failed. He fell back. A bottle thumped against his arm. He looked down. It was the half empty bottle of Bacardi. Treading water for a few seconds using only his legs, he grasped the bottle in deadened hands, got the cap off and took it to his lips. He drank the half bottle down in continuous swigs, and but could not release it from his frozen hand when it was empty. Instant heat blossomed from his stomach. He could feel the heat move slowly up to his head. He could only prop his hand on the wooden support of the wall, his fingers no longer usable for grasping anything.
He half lay against the bobbing wall, wondering what was going to happen to him.
“Please God, help me. I’ll quit drinking. I’ll take care of my kids. Just give me another chance.” His last words were slurred, even to his own hearing. He tried them again, but he couldn’t improve the pronunciation. He had to rest or he was not going to be able to help himself, he knew. He closed his eyes for a second, to take a break.
On the shore William and Harriet Barrow stared across the mile of ice and snow that separated them from the shack.
“The damn thing was four feet higher, I swear, when he set it up out there earlier,” William said to his peering wife, “and I’d bet a season ticket to the Cubs that its moving around somehow.”
“Nope,” Harriet said, in finality, “that’s the wind and the temperature differential caused by sun reflecting off the ice. “That guy is in there, probably sitting in a drunken stupor, waiting to catch a fish he’d pay three dollars a pound for at the Sentry.
“We ought to call it in, just to be sure,” William said, still staring out across the lake with his binoculars.
“Nah, we’ll have us some hot coffee and consider. If you think its still moving then, we’ll call.”
Half an hour later the couple returned to the great window. Both agreed that the shack was not moving at all.
Inside the shack, ice sealed everything over, catching all the debris and broken chunks in a jumbled frozen setting. The highest thing to rise above the surface was a man’s arm. Thrust upward, almost from the elbow, was a plaid covered forearm ending in a hand tightly clutching an empty Bacardi bottle.

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copyright 2010

Closer To God, Silver Streak, Chapter VIII

2010-01-02T16:01:00.000-08:00

Closer To God
Silver Streak
Chapter VIII

The train seemed to take forever to reach its maximum velocity, as dinner came and went inside our small cabin. We prepared for the night ahead. I sent Burt off to check on the men we had left in custody, while the Earth Mothers prepped our area for sleep. I moved into the top bunk, by direction. The laws of sociobiology reigned, much as I knew they would, and Wendy declined to join me, preferring the company of her friends on the floor. Burt would be relegated to the bench seat, which would suit his overly large body badly, while Dingo would remain zipped in below.
Women do not have sex for sport. No women. Men believe they do, because women perpetrate that myth, just as men claim to be in love in order to enjoy sex.
Each gender gets mad at the other when it is time for real cards to be turned over on the table of life. My card was the empty upper bunk, but I was not upset about it. Sex always comes with entanglements. No matter what is said going in, the old phrase: “will you respect me in the morning?” has true merit. Plus there was the group phenomenon. Women do not like to perform in front of their peers. And I was bone tired, which had to be close to Burt’s condition. You do not get shot at, or play the fugitive, without substantial psychological, and emotional, energy output.
Burt returned, but motioned me from the door.
“Secret stuff?” Wendy intoned. “I thought we’d thrown in together.”
There was a silence in the room following her remark. Burt had closed the door, no doubt pacing up and down in the outside passage. Whatever he had to say I knew I was not going to want to hear.
“I think Burt’s afraid to come in. I better go reassure him,” I said, getting some small snickers, but nothing from Wendy. I didn’t feel guilty. The Earth Mothers were bright, tough, and had been around the Horn, but they were not equipped or ready to deal with what was facing Burt and I. Collateral damage was acceptable, but I did not want it to be any, or all, of these women. I stepped out, closing the door carefully behind me. I didn’t say anything, leaning back against the hardwood.
“They’re gone. Room’s empty. None of the porters or the conductor is saying a word. What do you think happened?”
I could tell from Burt’s tone that he already knew what had happened.
The Aegis men had used the money I’d given them to bribe the train people. They had skipped right over the custody issue they’d committed to and gotten off while the train was still stopped. I had underestimated just how tough they were. I pictured the two guys with broken wrists trying to support the broken ankle off the train, and across the quarter mile, or so, of rough country to Mombasa Road. The passage would have been a physical nightmare to go through. But those guys had nightmares every night anyway, I knew. We were all brothers in Post Traumatic Stress.
“My mistake,” I said, seriously. “We’re now more than likely to have company at the station when we arrive. They don’t have cell phones but they might just find a willing soul passing by on that road tonight.”
Burt stared out of the window into the fading light. The sun was already down, but the play of evening sunset splayed through the tops of the Baobab trees.
Our movement magnified the great beauty of the Savannah.
“I don’t know. Three white guys, rough looking, damaged, and trying to thumb a ride on that road at night? We might just get lucky here.” Burt turned to meet my eyes. We both knew that we had been ungodly lucky just to be alive to ride the train.
Could our string last? But there were no options. We could stop the train and bail out ourselves. That would put us in the same pickle as the Aegis team. Our odds were best if we continued on down to Mombasa as we were doing, and rested for the day ahead.
“You’re on the bench. I’m up in the top bunk. Both alone,” I said, opening the door behind me.
“Figured. Life just isn’t that good,” he replied.
I didn’t know what time it was when a poking finger in my right side awakened me. I looked down at my wrist in the dark, but the Omega was long gone.
“Can I come in?” Wendy’s voice said quietly, near the edge of the bunk.
“Just to sleep. I haven’t slept with a man for years. I’d like that. Just too sleep?”
“Okay by me,” I replied to her request.
She settled in next to me, her back pressed into my side. I stared up into the dark, seeing nothing. Her body felt comforting and protective. I hadn’t slept with a woman in years, but I would never admit that to Wendy, or anyone else.
Kenya is one of only ten countries in the world through which the equator passes, and Mombasa was about a hundred kilometers from that imaginary line. Dawn was always, year round, at about six forty-five in the morning, and the sun set around seven at night. It was dark when I awakened to the sounds of the Earth Mothers preparing for a new day. A paraffin lamp burned atop what passed for a dresser inside the tiny cabin, sending an eerie wavering light flickering off the lacquered wood of the walls.
I checked my non-existent watch again, grimacing at the thought of not having one.
“What time is it,” I asked, noting that I was alone in the bunk.
“Five,” Burt said, his voice penetrating up from among the girl’s moving bodies. Burt appeared to be making believe he could fall back into sleep.
“What’s our plan?” Wendy said, her head popping up from below, chin
resting on the edge of the bunk. She looked like the portrait of a beautiful angel, backlit by soft yellow light from the lamp.
I slung my feet over the side of the bunk.
“What do you think, Burt?” I asked.
“Mmmmm,” was all he responded.
“They’re likely to be waiting at the depot in Mombasa, Wendy. We can’t exactly get off with everyone and get lost in the crowd.” I massaged my unshaven chin. I hated not having a shave in the morning, or brushing my teeth and a shower, for that matter.
“Silver Streak,” Burt mumbled from across the cabin, Dingo having pushed him into a sitting position, then hugging him closely.
“Yeah, it was a movie, what about it?” I shot back, impatiently.
Burt frowned at the girl, uncomfortable with her physical attention. I wondered if he was one of those people who hated any contact with humanity just after rising in the morning.
“In the movie the train ran out of control, right through the station. We could try that,” he said, massaging his temples with both hands. There had been a lot of wine consumed the night before.
“ I’m not even sure we can reach the engine on this thing,” I replied, thinking about his idea. “And the depot is just a side building along the tracks, like the one in Nairobi, but maybe the tracks continue somewhere for shipping purposes.”
I climbed down to the floor, and then put my shoes on. “We’ve got a lot of shillings. Let’s see what I can find out. Wendy, you see if you can get hold of some coffee from the dining car, maybe something sweet to get the blood flowing. I pulled out a five thousand shilling note. She took the money. We both headed for the door.
“Be right back,” I said to Burt. “Maybe you can handle all these women on your own.” The light was sufficient for me to see that Helen and Anice, unlike Wendy and Dingo, were dressed in only panties, as they prepared for the day ahead.
I followed Wendy through the dining car, and then went on into the fourth class carriages until I found the conductor. I wondered, as I shelled out another five thousand, whether he also held some of the money I had given the Aegis guys. He informed me that the engine could be reached, but it would be a climb, as the thing was attached backwards. I would have to jump down to a catwalk, and then make my way back to the engineer’s small capsule on the other end. He didn’t bother to ask why I wanted to reach the man. The conductor was having a rewarding run down to Mombasa, no matter what I might be up to.
When I got back to the cabin, coffee steamed up from a pot set next to the paraffin lamp. Everyone was eating some sort of pastry, including Burt, who had grown more accustomed to Dingo having attached herself to his right side. The women were dressed, and all the packs were lined up near the door. Things could not have been more organized on a Marine Corps operation.
I explained the plan over coffee, standing with my back pressed against the door. Wendy poked a hole in the plan immediately.
“Right past the station the rail ends. We could only get fifty or sixty feet past it, which wouldn’t be enough to help at all. Unless the train didn’t switch tracks to run into the station, I mean.”
“What switch?” I asked, my coffee ignored in my left hand.
“The train storage facility and turn-around is right there, on the other side of the station. We have to switch tracks to curve into the station or we go right past on the other side,” she answered.
“Time?” I asked the room.
“Six,” Burt said, checking his watch. The window next to him was beginning to give off faint light. Dawn was minutes away. We were supposed to arrive in Mombasa at dawn. I wondered if the engineer had run faster because of our stop or whether we were going to be late, not that it mattered.
“Wendy, what’s the first major road the train would cross if it went through the storage facility?” I inquired.
“I don’t know Mombasa that well,” she answered, but Helen has a Michelin map.”
Helen of Troy opened a zipper in her pack, and then began unfolding a large road map. Mombasa took up on whole corner. Anice brought the paraffin lamp to the floor, holding it just above the flattened paper. I peered at the map.
“Moi,” I said, pointing at the only main road to cross the tracks after the depot. If we can get to that interchange, then we’ll be a good mile or more from the station, and I’d be willing to bet the Aegis people will take a while getting organized before they figure out what we’ve pulled, anyway. If we pull it off.”
“I’ve got to go forward, see if this can be done, then come back,” I went on. “If we can do it then you’ve got to call our Marine on the cell and have him meet us. If he’s made it himself, that is.” I pointed at Burt’s chest when I spoke.
“You have to go back up there if we can,” Burt said, after a moment. “You can’t just pay the engineer, then expect he’ll do the job. Our lives are riding on this.”
I did not miss his slight inflection, the words left unsaid, the words that would have stated my complicity in risking ourselves so badly.
“Yeah,” I replied, simply, gulping my coffee down, then went through the door. I checked my pockets filled with shillings and the small automatic. One way or the other we were going to Mombasa, but not to the station, not if I had anything to do say about it.
Standing on a small platform outside the passage car, I realized that the job I had taken on so casually was going to be fairly challenging. I stood at least eight feet above the coupling that connected us to the engine. There were no handholds to use in climbing down, or back up on the engine on the other side, if I was able to get there. The catwalk that ran around the noisy diesel was not open at the end. The only way to get over was to jump six feet through the air, catch the rail at my waist as my feet found purchase under it, and then vault over the top. Everything was made of very hard looking metal, and the light was so slight that I could not fully make out the far end of the engine. The jump was three feet down to the engine’s catwalk level. There would be no jumping back. I was a field agent in pretty good shape. I was not a gymnast. I returned to the cabin.
“Here it is,” I said, grabbing another cup of coffee from Helen. “The trip to the engine is one way. You’re right Burt, I can’t leave the man to change his mind, if this can be done. And I can’t make it back. We have to gamble that we can do it. Bailout is that I have him stop before we hit the station.” I motioned for the map again.
“There it is,” I pointed. “Makande. Quite a ways before the station, and in a lousy area, but it’ll do. If we have to bail there we’ll be running across a lot of tracks, then some through some swamp and cardboard housing. I know that area.
Give me the extra throwaway cell,” I said to Burt. He handed it over. The phone only had half a charge left. We had no charger. I checked the autodial screen.
The other phone was the only number listed. I hit ‘send.’ Burt’s phone rang once and I hung up.
“I’ll call. If I don’t, then I’ll use the train’s whistle. Three short means Plan A is a go. Two means Plan B. If there’s no call, and no use of the whistle, then you’re on your own.” I looked around the brightening room. I noted that the Earth Mother’s no longer seemed as certain of the adventure, as they’d been the night before, but there was nothing to be said. Mortal danger was upon us, and nobody sane ever took that lightly.
I wanted to grab Wendy, bend her over for a kiss and say something like “Here’s lookin’ at you kid,” but that feeling quickly passed. I headed back to the front of the car. We were operational. My body and mind were running on all twelve cylinders. I was doing what I lived to do and I felt the adrenalin kicking in to help.
The leap to the engine was not as difficult as I had considered earlier. The pain of hitting my hips on the single pipe, which served as the rail, was worse. I almost bent over the rail and fell into the face of the engine’s metal cover, but I caught myself. It took a few seconds sitting on the catwalk to get my breath back, and let the pain lessen to a tolerable level.
I made my way to the angled window where the catwalk ended. A small door was cut into the side of the engine cover just forward of the window. There was no handle on the outside. I breathed in and out deeply, considering. Finally, I took out the automatic, and then smacked the window several times hard, but not hard enough to break it. I quickly put the gun back in my pocket, took out a handful of shillings and pressed them against the glass. The engineer’s face appeared over the splayed bills. His eyes grew large. He disappeared and the door opened.
Once down inside the small enclosure I realized that the engineer and I were not alone. A woman crouched in one corner, clutching two small children to her with both arms. The children stared at me as if I had landed from outer space.
“My family. They ride for free here. You not notice. I not notice you.”
The engineer smiled a big smile, extending both arms out wide. I looked at him and smiled back. His family’s illegal presence might help me. I told him what I wanted.
“Yardmaster and switch operator control everything in the yard. I can use the remote control switches here when we get near the yard, but the yardmaster will be very very angry. The switch operator there may change the track back. He knows we are supposed to go to the station, and we don’t know what is on the tracks up ahead. There is terrible risk.”
I produced thirty thousand shillings. More than the man made in a year of operating the train.
“If you don’t tell them, go very slow, and we make it to Moi Road,” I said, handing him ten thousand. “The rest when we’re there. You can tell them what you want, but not about me.” Kenya took its railroad system very seriously. I did not want the authorities to pursue us with any kind of zeal. The engineer took the two bills, and then handed them to his wife. Her face lit up. I stared into the darkness ahead, hoping that I’d made the right decision. If we hit something, the engineer, his family, and I would certainly be among the earliest fatalities.
I pushed the button for Burt on the cell phone. He answered on the first ring.
“Three quick blips on the whistle,” I told the engineer. He complied, a look of question on his forehead.
“Got it?” I asked into the device. The sound of the engine was too loud for me to hear anything. I imagined it was the same for Burt on the other end, but there could be no misunderstanding the signal from the engine’s whistle.
The Silver Streak was headed on in to Mombasa, come what may.

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Chameleon, Line of Sight, Part IV

2010-01-01T17:11:00.000-08:00

Chameleon
Line of Sight
Part IV
Peter stayed on at Rendezvous for a full week, learning something new each day about the art of a mountain man’s daily life, and his survival. He did not get his rifle back until the day he was ready to leave. On his second day at the encampment, the day Johnson, discharged by Bridger from his service, left with a small band of followers, Peter ran into an armorer while practicing at the shooting range. The man was trying to sell a newly invented device called a telescopic sight. It consisted of a brass tube with lenses running its length. It magnified any target about four times normal size, or so the armorer said. He asked the armorer why nobody else used them, but the man replied he had only one and nobody at the rendezvous would pay the twenty dollars for purchase and installation.
Peter had not been sold until the man had taken him down range. The range ended at two hundred paces, about as far as a man could see a fist sized target. He demonstrated how an imaginary line from the tip of the barrel, two hundred paces away, to the center of the target was called the line of site. Line of site always remained the same. Then he pointed to the tree line, about five hundred paces distant, and asked Peter what he could make out from the bark of a tall oak.
“Can’t make out a thing,” he told the man, honestly.
“That’s right. The line of site to any spot on that tree, however, remains
the same. It’s straight and true, but what you really see is called the line of sight, and you don’t have any sight of that tree trunk at all. Now look through this Chapman device.” He handed a long brass tube over.
Peter squinted, staring with one eye through the tube. He could make out almost all the detail of the oak’s bark.
“That there beautiful Percussion you got can shoot accurately all the way to that tree and beyond, but your line of sight is lacking. This here invention fixes that, and its got regular blades atop it for short stuff.”
Peter was convinced. He handed the man, almost unwillingly, his rifle.
“I got one double eagle. You can have it if you’re done by the end of the week.”
The armorer left with his rifle. Peter was happy that the man trusted him for the money, until he reflected upon the simple fact that the man also his rifle, while he himself had nothing.
With his rifle once more comfortably positioned, hanging from his shoulder, Peter hefted his pack, loaded with powder, shot, beans and flour, plus a folded supply of calico material covered with a pleasing floral print for Neema. He planned to return later to pick up the beaver traps he’d ordered along with some Castor lure. He’d never trapped a thing, but he figured he could learn during the long winter. Beaver pelts were bringing top dollar. Peter didn’t need the money but he’d found out how easy it was to spend at Rendezvous. He was leaving four double eagles lighter than when he’d gone in.
If you bought traps, then you had to have a sled to tow them, and, nothing was cheap to buy at Rendezvous. Most mountain men were constantly indebted to the operation they worked for, drinking away whatever profits they might make.
He was three days in, about half way to the camp along the side of the river when Cat joined him. He could hear it in the brush nearby for hours before it revealed itself. He knew it had been making all that noise on purpose, but he couldn’t figure out why. The animal was well capable of moving through any terrain with the silence of death. Peter could not help but smile at its loping presence nearby. Before he encamped for the night, Peter noted something else. A number of men were traveling the same trail before him. Their tracks criss-crossed back and forth but they were definitely headed south, through the exact same valleys he himself was following.
By the fifth day a knot began to form in Peter’s mid-section. There was not going to be any way that the troop of men before him, if they continued to the river, could miss the encampment. The thicket of birch and willow would conceal it somewhat, but he now had a healthy respect for the perception and capability of mountain men. They would not miss it.
When he came to the top of the hill, overlooking the camp, he was immediately able to ascertain that the cache was intact. The snows were long gone, even from the higher altitudes, and there was no beaten path. Neema was smarter than to leave one. Peter stopped at the very edge of the ridge. The cat stopped with him, sitting erect, staring down toward the river below, where Neema stood naked, tied between two trees by her wrists. Peter knew it was she, even from the distance, as it could be no one else.
He confirmed his fearful angry suspicion using the Chapman device. Even in such a state, he still felt a great pang of longing when he stared through the scope at her naked body. One of the men he had been following came through the thicket. He was as naked as Neema. He took her while Peter watched.
He pulled the rifle down, then, with shaking fingers, unstrapped and opened his pack. He’d purchased the new paper cartridges. No more pouring powder down the barrel. And the paper was marked with the number of grains it held. He took out a half dozen marked ‘hundred,’ for the one hundred grains of powder it held.
It was the longest-range cartridge the store sold. One was already set at the bottom of his rifle’s barrel.
Peter lay across the top of the hill, using his pack to brace the rifle. The cat lay next to him, about five feet away.
“Its tough to estimate range, Cat,” he told the animal, trying to calm himself down. You could not shoot long distance with the kind of shaking he was doing. He breathed in and out deeply, sighting the glass cross hairs, then adjusting the knob that raised and lowered the brass tube above the barrel. He set it for seven hundred yards and hoped he was close.
“Windage is even harder than range, Cat,” he murmured, trying to gauge the wind, but the air seemed completely still. He waited for the man to step back from Neema. It was an agonizing wait.
When the man finally stepped back, Peter squeezed right through the trigger. The gun bucked and the cat raced away with the blast. Peter didn’t try to see through the billowing smoke. He stood and reloaded in his now automatic fashion.
He dropped and lay as before, studying the terrain. Neema stared out toward where he lay. He wanted to wave, but did not. The naked man was down, not moving. Two clothed men rushed to his side. When they stopped to consider the downed man, Peter fired. Again he reloaded as the smoke cleared. When he returned to his position he could see that one of the buckskin clad figures was down next to the naked man. He was moving, but not much. Nobody else was visible.
Quickly, he picked up his pack, backed from the edge of the berm, and then ran east for about two hundred yards. He set up, as before, the warming rifle across the back of the pack. Two men came into view. He knew that one of them was Johnson. The man had found another garish coonskin cap. Peter resolved never to wear his own again. They stood, peering through the bracken of the thicket, trying to see their attacker. Both men had their rifles braced against the sides of willow trunks. Peter heard the cat behind him.
“Not much of a shot this time, Cat, they’re in the trees,” he said, his voice now smooth, his breathing steady. “Looks like seven hundred was right on, for the range, I mean.” The cat made some kind of purring noise behind him, as if in assent.
Peter fired at the tree one of the men was braced against. He reloaded,
this time hearing an awful scream from below, as well as the first return rifle-fire.
He smiled to himself, coldly. Unless those men had a Chapman device and had invested in paper cartridges, which was most unlikely, then they were firing out of fear and frustration. Seven hundred yards was well beyond their line of sight.
He stared down through the smoke and trees. Both men were down.
“Now how did that happen, Cat?” he asked the animal, knowing it was just behind him. There was not answer.
“Wood splinters,” he whispered, after observing for a few more moments.
“I love you, Mr. Chapman, wherever you are,” he finished, patting the rifle before he held it out before him. Dragging the pack, he headed down the hill toward the camp, remaining aware that wounded men could still be extremely dangerous.
The cat preceded him. Before he could come upon the scene he heard one more loud scream, then it was suddenly cut off. Peter peered around the trunk of thick birch. The cat had one downed man by the throat. He shook once, and then cast the body aside. The strength of the animal was astounding to observe. The cat stared at the remaining man. It was Johnson. He held his rifle up, as if that might deter the cat from attacking. His face was covered with blood. It appeared obvious that he’d been unable to reload after being hit, or Cat would have been shot.
“Don’t let him eat me?” Johnson begged, his voice quivering. Peter ignored him, collecting guns. Four rifles, all flintlocks. Up on the hill he was never in any danger, Peter realized. The importance of the new equipment came home to him.
Cat sat, ten feet from Johnson, looking at him quizzically, tilting his head upon occasion, as the quivering man shuddered and tried to ease backward in his half-sitting, half-laying position. Peter moved to cut the woman down from the trees.
Once released, she rubbed her wrists, quickly pulled her torn leathers over her, and then smiled. Peter stood stunned. He’d never seen the woman smile before.
“Did not think you come back,” she stated, as if they were in the middle of some celebration.
Peter examined the men he’d shot. Both were dead. He’d aimed up around their shoulders but hit both in the center of their torsos. He walked over to Johnson. The man next to him was dead, his neck bent at a ninety degree angle. Cat still waited, watching Johnson in its curious manner.
“Please,” the man begged. Peter grabbed his leather jerkin, then dragged him all the way to the river and dumped him in. Johnson floundered for a while before recovering. He crawled to the edge of the water.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“Do?” Peter asked. “I’m not doing anything. Get the hell out of here.
I’ve killed enough scum like you for one day.” Peter didn’t mention that the men were also the first men he’d ever killed, and the last he ever wanted to kill.
“Who are you?” Johnson asked, climbing to his feet, holding one hand against the damaged side of his skull. Peter just looked at him.
“First you were a tenderfoot. Then you were a mountain man. Now you’re some kind of shooting expert. Who are you?” Peter stared at him, unmoving. Slowly Johnson backed down the riverbank.
Neema stood beside Peter, Cat moving to sit next to the body of the man he’d killed. All of them looked in the direction of the slowly disappearing Johnson.
“Chameleon,” Neema said.
“He is chameleon,” she yelled through cupped hands, before turning to the river and throwing off her leathers. Suddenly, Peter realized, there seemed to be no barrier between them.

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http://www.themastodons.com
copyright 2010

Chameleon, Rendezvous, Part III

2009-12-31T15:25:00.000-08:00

Chameleon
Rendezvous
Part III

It was a hard winter, with snow coming regularly about every third day. Treks back and forth to the cache were long, and potentially treacherous. The Indian woman had proven to be more than simply difficult. She and Peter shared the lean-to, separated by a pile of supplies. The woman was cold, demanding and almost totally silent unless poked or prodded in some way. The cat demanded meat. Peter had become a good shot with the rifle by practicing on a target range he’d established by the river, and because it took fresh meat, at least every other day, to satisfy the damaged predator. He’d gotten so good at muzzle-loading that he could shoot twice in ten seconds, faster if he just spit the ball down the barrel without a patch, but not as accurately.
Neema had fashioned snowshoes from twine and twigs. The ungainly things worked well but they were extremely work intensive to use. In spite of the food supplies they had, and the constant flow of fresh game, Peter lost weight. He could cover miles in the shoes by the end of winter, however, and the rifle, which had once seemed so clumsy and heavy had become like an extra limb of his body. The woman came up with solutions to every problem they faced but never discussed any of them.
“The cat is a better companion than you,” Peter said to the woman, in exasperation one day.
“Cat likes you,” she responded.
“And you?” he asked, but there was no answer. He looked at her for a long while, waiting for the answer that never came. She worked on sewing some new piece of fur and leather adornment while she prepared their meal at the same time.
She was severely attractive. Peter felt longing deep inside his body, but rejected it. The woman was an Indian, and she had about as much regard for him as she had for the cat, which was close to nothing at all.
Peter could not touch the cat. Any time he came close the animal focused its eyes on him intently. The message was easy to read: ‘touch me and you die.’ Peter got the message clearly each time, drawing his hand back, happy to still possess the appendage. But Neema was not governed by the same rules. She shooed the animal, sometimes smacking it hard on the rump to get it further away from the fire or out from under the small leather tent Peter had built for it off to one side. The cat would simply move, and then sit a distance away, licking its bad paw. Those were the only times when the cat and he looked at one another with any understanding.
He’d taken to talking to the cat, which caused Neema to stare at him as if he was insane. The cat did not seem to mind. Somehow, Peter found it more comforting to be deliberately ignored by the beast rather than by the woman. He called the cat ‘Cat,’ which seemed to bother Neema all the more.
In the spring Peter prepared to leave for Rendezvous, hoping that he was guessing right about when the event was and what day it was in his life. The woman seemed to understand, equipping him with new lighter moccasins, new pouches for his ‘possibles’ and a fine coonskin cap. The cat simply disappeared one day in the week before. Peter had looked for the animal constantly, sometimes calling his name, then looking back to see if the woman had heard him. She never turned, however. Peter realized that the animal’s paw was probably healed and that the predator was doing what predators were set upon the earth to do. He missed whatever the cat had provided, as well as being forced to hunt successfully every few days. With that need no longer in place, his shots with the rifle seemed to miss as often as they hit.
One day, with the sun just above the horizon, Peter prepared himself to leave. Neema helped load the pack onto his back, strapping it down securely, then patting it sharply to indicate she was done. He turned to the woman, prepared to say something about his leaving and eventual return, but she walked away into the brush above the camp.
He walked for days; dry camping at night without a fire. He knew nothing about who or what might be about in the strange valley he was traversing. He moved north. He knew nothing about trapping, skinning, or even jerking beef. He also knew he was about the poorest excuse for a mountain man as had ever prowled the area. Only Rendezvous could help him. There he could find advice from real mountain men, some supplies and possibly friendship. He had money. He could pay for the advice and supplies. Friendship would be more difficult, he knew.
Once he had crossed the last swale into the final valley Peter knew he was headed for the right location. He had not run across a single living soul. In fact, he had not seen another man since he’d left rendezvous the year before. Peter heard movement in the brush off to his right side. He froze, and then slowly dropped down to his knees, swinging the beautiful rifle up smoothly. He stared over the top of the barrel into huge unblinking eyes.
“Cat,” he whispered, lowering the weapon. The mountain lion sauntered out of the brush, walked right by him, and then swatted him once across the thighs with its black-tipped tail. It sat ten feet from him, staring. Peter sad down too, cradling the rifle across his knees.
“So, you’re going to Rendezvous? That would be some scene,” he laughed out loud at the thought, “there would be real mountain men running for the hills, I’d be willing to bet.” The cat just stared, licking its lips, as if wondering whether Peter was worth biting into or not.
“Don’t get any ideas,” he cautioned the animal. “I’m pretty good with this thing now,” he said, gesturing with the rifle. The cat blinked once, very slowly, as if completely discounting the threat. Peter pulled his pack from his back, took out his remaining supply of Pemmican, about half a pound, and tossed it before the cat’s front paws. The cat sniffed, and then lay down to chew.
“There, I’ve bought momentary safety from your clutches. I’ve got to go down. Maybe we’ll see one another again some day.” The cat ignored him, as it chewed on the Pemmican. Peter began the long hike down to the bottom of the valley, where smoke rose up in the distance. He didn’t look back. He knew the cat would never give him the benefit of looking to see him leave.
Men began appearing out of the trees, walking parallel to his own path.
He heard them before he saw them. His hearing had seemed to improve immensely since living through the winter. Peter came upon the welcome scene of the rendezvous. Fires burned everywhere. Temporary shacks had been thrown up that appeared as substantial as any built on the main street of a regular town. Animals were corralled behind fences all over the end of the valley, with open areas occupied by men playing games, riding horses or putting up new tents. Peter slowed as he walked through the area, from one end to the other. He looked for the men of Jim Bridger. The same men he’d tried to get on with the year before. They proved to be easy to find. Laughing, yelling and an occasional gunshot came from their camp.
Without preamble he stepped in among them, meaning to announce himself, but he never got the chance. The same man who had fooled him into being a target for the previous year’s spitting competition encountered him directly.
“That’d be Jed’s rife,” the man stated, flatly, bringing a quiet over the entire area. The man’s outstretched finger pointed directly toward Peter’s chest. Peter stopped. He thought for a moment about explaining how he had come by the dead mountain man’s rifle, and other stores, but he again did not get the chance.
“I’ll be taken that,” the man said, moving sinuously toward Peter, his hand still outstretched, but no longer pointing. He wore a huge coonskin cap, the kind with the Raccoon’s head set above his own.
“What?” Peter asked, shocked by the turn of events.
“The rifle. He promised it to me, if he went over to the other side. You wouldn’t be strutting around with his rifle if he weren’t a deader. Maybe you had something to do with that. The rifle is mine, hand it over.” The man stopped five feet before Peter. They stared into one another’s eyes.
Peter saw mean-spirited drunkenness in the man’s eyes. He’d seen that same look in his uncle’s eyes, the day he was cast from his family’s property. He brought the rifle down from his shoulder, and then swept it up, all in one continuous move. He aimed quickly and fired. The man’s coonskin cap shredded, with bits flying all about through the air, while the man screamed, clutching his head in both hands.
Peter reloaded faster than he’d ever done before. Spitting the ball down the barrel, tamping the rifle butt once hard upon the earth, then swinging it back up into battery. Men ran all about around him. He held the rifle barrel rock steady, aiming at the recovering man’s chest.
“Gentlemen!” a powerful voice shouted. Quiet again came over the encampment. A tall man in splendid new buckskins walked into the open central area. “What do we have here?” he said, opening his arms wide.
“I’m gonna gut him,” the man who’d lost his hat said, through gritted teeth, his face near black from powder stains. His large ‘Bowie” knife was extended in his swinging right hand.
“Put that away,” the big man intoned. He was instantly obeyed, but not without complaint. “What about my cap? He shot my cap right between the eyes.”
“Tell me,” the big man demanded, looking straight into Peter’s eyes, ignoring the other man. Peter knew that he was standing in front of Jim Bridger himself.
“Jed died. Tree fell on him. I found his body. Took him awhile to die.
I got this,” Peter pulled up his Jerkin, and then carefully retrieved the paper he’d found on Jed’s body. “I found this note in his hand.”
Bridger took the scrap of paper. He read, and then began to laugh. “I’ll be damned,” he said, “that son of a bitch had more class than I thought. Actually thought of somebody else but himself in the end.” He handed the note back.
“This here is the White Man who found Jed’s body. Jed left him everything proper and legal. He’s got the paper.” Bridger talked to the men around him, almost all of whom nodded back at him in agreement. When he was done with his speech, he pulled Peter aside. “Walk with me over to the exchange.” They walked for a bit before the big man spoke again.
“You’re the tenderfoot from Ohio who came though here a year ago, aren’t you? The one my men spit on?” he asked. Peter said he was. The man looked Peter up and down as they walked. “That idiot Johnson was lucky you didn’t shoot him right between the running lights, instead of his coon. Shouldn’t have happened, what they did to you. What’d you come back for?”
“Need some advice and supplies,” Peter said, leaving out the friendship part.
“You can get all the supplies you can buy over at the store. What advice you lookin’ for? Bridger stopped. They faced one another.
“I got this rifle, skins, twenty-one double eagles,” Peter pointed at his stomach, “an Indian woman back at the camp, a cache of stuff and some strange mountain cat who’s adopted me, I think.” Peter blurted out everything he could think of.
“Don’t tell another living soul about the double eagles,” Bridger replied, looking around them, but there was no one nearby. “What’s the advice you’re lookin’ for?
“I don’t know what to do? Do I go back to Ohio and claim the land my uncle stole? Do I go back to school? Do I try to sign up with one of the companies here?
I have money, and all this stuff, but I don’t know what to do.” Peter finished, feeling exhausted in giving his huge problems over to a man of such known wisdom. They walked for a while without speaking.
“Let’s see if I got this right. You came here last year with nothing. Now you got what you learned during the winter, a fine rifle, skins, an Indian woman, a cache of supplies, some sort of mountain lion, and twenty-one double eagles. I don’t have any advice. But I do have a question. What does God have to do to get your attention?”

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copyright 2009

Chameleon, All Alone, Part II

2009-12-28T20:46:00.000-08:00

Chameleon
Part II
All Alone
The sun shown brightly against the wall of supplies just in front of his face, as Peter groaned, working his way out from under the pile of blankets he’d pulled on top of him in the night. The fire was long gone, and it seemed that the biting cold had departed with it. He refolded the blankets, just as he would have done back on the farm, then he attacked the small wooden box of Pemmican. It was impossible to eat it fast. It was just too tough. Made from jerked lean meat, bison fat and local berries, it was considered the indispensible travel food of all mountain men, even though it had originally been created by Indians. With one pocket stuffed full of the rope-like strands, Peter chewed while climbing from the life-saving cache.
The sun was high and everything was melting when he climbed out of the hole. He examined Jed’s body. He realized that he needed the man’s leathers and gear. Travel through winter altitudes with the season just coming on was not possible in his condition. Not in the hopelessly threadbare garments he had. A hand axe lay atop all the boxes stacked in the hole. Peter bent and retrieved it. The tool was so sharp and well made that he was able to chop and worry one of the sprouting branches from the fallen oak in only minutes. Using a nearby rock for a fulcrum, it didn’t take much longer to lever the much larger branch upward, brace it and then pull Jed from under it’s fatal weight.
The man’s rifle was under the brush behind him. Peter retrieved it. His father had owned a flintlock, although he’d never taught Peter to shoot it. Jed’s gun was percussion, a much more advanced weapon. The hammer struck a small brass cartridge instead of a flint and open powder. There was no flash in the face of the shooter, no failure to fire from moisture, and only an occasional misfire, at least according to the men who had gathered for the rendezvous.
Peter hefted the rifle. He decided to examine it in more detail later. The sun was melting the snow. Before long the beaten trail Jed had made would be gone. Peter knew he needed to find out where that trail led. He stripped the body, changing into the dead man’s soft leather jerkin and pants. They fit badly.
Peter was too hefty, but they would do. The heavy leather moccasins were most welcome and nearly a perfect fit. Pulling them on, he noticed a leather band that circled Jed’s body. Loosening a leather tie he pulled the band to him. It was a long pouch. Inside the pouch, between thin folds, were new gold coins. Peter sat on the snow. There were twenty-one coins, each bearing the word twenty over the top of an eagle. They were ‘double eagles,’ Peter knew. He’d heard of them but never seen one.
Strapping the leather band around his own waist he looked down to see a piece of paper in the dead man’s hand. He pulled it free. A pencil fell from Jed’s stiff white fingers. The note said: “If White Man finds me have all. Use well. Body be buried at river, face water.” Peter tucked the note into a fold of the belt under his leather jerkin, and then proceeded to cut more branches with his new hatchet.
At rendezvous, the Indians present, those with horses, had traveled with triangular shaped devices called travois. He loaded the body onto newly cut branches, covered the cache as best he could, slung the rifle over his left shoulder, and then took up the pointed head of the travois. He would act as the horse.
The trip was not a long one. Melting snow lubricated the branches splayed out behind Jed’s bouncing body. The last hill was the hardest, not because of the incline but because of bad footing. Finally Peter came to the top of the rise. He stood, panting, gazing down upon a thin winding river. It was early in winter so the line was of black moving water instead of white covered ice. The tracks he was following also meandered in a dark line, right down to near the edge of the river.
Half sliding, half running, Peter guided the travois toward a thicket where the tracks seemed to end. He wondered what he would find. He fell twice, swore, got up and then went on. The leathers had not been dry when he started. After two plunges into the wet soggy snow they were nearly soaked through.
Smoke came from the far side of the thicket. Peter stopped, dropped the travois and crept slowly forward, peering through the branches of trees for which he didn’t know the names. His new rifle was at the ready. A lean-to came into focus, set forty feet, or so, up from the slowly moving water. He could not see inside it.
“How could a fire have burned that long?” he said, aloud.
A woman in pigtails stepped out of the lean-to. Peter almost sat down in shock. The woman stared at the thicket. She was an Indian, he realized.
“Come,” she said, very softly.
Peter backed up, regained his hold at the point of the travois, and then moved around the thicket. He lowered it next to the lean-to. The woman did not move.
Peter took the rifle from his shoulder. He leaned on it uncomfortably.
“He died when the tree branch fell near his cache,” he said, haltingly.
The woman walked to the side of Jed’s body, took a step back, and then kicked it in the head as hard as she could.
“Made sure,” she stated flatly, before returning to the lean-to.
Peter stood frozen, gazing from the body to the woman, and then back at Jed’s newly crooked neck. When he looked up again he caught movement further up the hillside, above the lean-to. Quickly he shouldered the rifle, pulling back on the hammer.
A large cougar sat not twenty yards from the lean-to, staring down at him hungrily. He took careful shaking aim, centering the top of the long barrel on the animal’s chest. He pulled the trigger. Snap. Nothing happened. He tried it again.
Another loud snap. The animal did not move. The woman walked to his side and stared up at what he was trying to shoot at.
“Cat,” she said, unconcerned, while Peter struggled with the weapon.
The cat took a few steps toward the lean-to, holding its left paw up, limping badly. It sat down once again.
“Cat sick, why shoot?” The woman asked.
“Its dangerous,” Peter said, his voice shaking, his eyes glued to the wild animal. “What’s it doing here?”
The woman sighed. “That one,” she motioned with her foot toward Jed’s broken body, “was feeding it, try to draw closer so he could take fur, but would not come close enough.”
“Oh,” Peter stated, knowingly, as if he understood. “What should I do?”
“Feed cat. Cat sick. Why shoot. Then learn to use rifle.” The woman sat next to the small hot fire when she was done. “Cat never come this close. Must know you cannot shoot.”
“What does it eat?” Peter asked, curious as to what the strange talking woman would answer.
The woman kicked a haunch of meat nearby, half buried in the melting snow.
“Deer. Cut. Throw. Cat comes close in night. No other animals. That,” she motioned toward where Jed lay, “not notice.”
“Not notice,” Peter mouthed. “And why’d he leave such a visible track to the cache?” The question had bothered him while he’d been dragging the travois.
The woman pointed toward the lean-to. Peter went to the pine and mud covered structure. Ceramic bottles, like the mountain men at the rendezvous had ‘pulled’ from lined the back of the lean-to.
Peter took out his new knife. It was a huge wonderful piece of sharpened metal. He severed the half frozen leg at the haunch of the deer, hauled it up behind the hut-like structure and tried to throw it. It thudded to the earth ten feet away.
The cat stared at him, the injured paw raised, as if in a wave of encouragement.
Disgusted, Peter grabbed the haunch again. This time he dragged it up toward the wild beast.
“If she’s not afraid of you then I’m not either,” he gasped out, slipping in the bright white snow. The cat never moved. Ten feet from the beast, Peter balanced it on end then let it fall forward. The cat slowly rose up on to its three feet. It stared into Peter’s eyes until the boy had to look away.
“Alright, alright, you can have it. I’m going now. Please don’t attack me.” He breathed the last words quietly, so the woman would not hear him. Bravely, he held his back square, not looking back as he made his way to the fire. Once there he squatted down, across the embers from the Indian. He fondled the rifle, wondering what was wrong with it, but not wanting the woman to see him trying to figure out the problem.
“Needs cap,” the woman said, in her unemotional way.
“What?” He gasped, understanding that she was trying to explain what was wrong with the weapon.
“Cap. In bag. On stomach. There.” She pointed at his waist. Peter looked down at the small bag hanging from a tied leather fringe secured to his belt. He opened the drawstring on the bag. The inside was filled with small brass caps. Carefully he took one out. He examined it. It was a tiny pointed thing, flat at one end. He brought the rifle up, pulled the hammer back and saw a similar brass surface. It was crushed. He turned the rifle over and pounded lightly against the lock with one hand. The old cap fell out. He put a new one in, and then carefully let the hammer down. He smiled thankfully at the woman.
“Load,” was all she said, looking into the fire. Peter’s face turned red. Of course, the gun had been fired and not reloaded. Jed had probably fired it to try to draw anyone nearby to him. Peter decided to load the weapon later, when the woman was not watching him. He did not know how to load the rifle, even though he’d seen his father load the flintlock many times.
“Who are you?” he asked, to change the subject. Steam came off his buckskins from the warmth of the fire.
“Take off skins. I fix. Skins too small. I take care. You no sell me.”
Peter stared at her. What was he supposed to put on if he gave her the skins? He was naked underneath. He’d left his farm clothes back at the cache. He shivered, and attempted to change the subject again.
“Name?” he asked, trying to talk like the woman.
“Neema. I Shoshone. That thing bought in summer,” she again pointed at Jed’s naked body. “Bad man. No honor. No soul. Bad heart. I with you now. Do not sell me.” Her last statement was not delivered as all she had said before. It was impassioned, and she had extended her hands before her, where they still were. Her face was down between her arms. Peter was deeply affected.
“I won’t sell you. I’m not sure I own you,” he replied uncomfortably. His life had suddenly become complex. He was a rich man. Four hundred and ten dollars would buy almost sixty fine horses, or a hundred head of cows. And now he had this woman. He looked up toward the cat, as it had moved again from where it had been. Somehow it had worked itself down to the side of the lean-to. It lay and munched comfortably, ignoring Peter and the woman.
“Cat has pride. We pride. But cat sick. Make good fur coat.”
Peter was stunned. “No, the cat can stay. Or the cat can go. But we won’t hurt it.” He didn’t know why he said the words, as they seemed to have come out all on their own.
“How is it that Jed,” Peter pointed at the body as the woman had, “said that he lived alone. That he howled at the night alone. That he’d die alone?” He didn’t expect the woman to understand him. She put her hands up, smoothed her raven black hair, and then looked at him intensely with her huge brown eyes.
“Did live alone. Did die alone. Is true,” the woman said.
Peter looked at the body, then all around him, and understood.

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Chameleon, The Cache, Part I

2009-12-27T20:28:00.000-08:00

Chameleon
Part I
The Cache

Peter moved as quietly as someone wearing leather street shoes and fabric clothing could move through heavy snow. The trees were spaced fairly closely so he could creep from one to another in turn, wait a few seconds and then move on. That he was lost and cold no longer mattered. He had a trail. A mountain man who went by the name of Jed left his tracks nearby. The mountain man’s trail did not flow from tree to tree, as he did not appear to be tracking anyone, attempting to avoid detection.
Peter had been following the man for five days. He calculated that he was about a day behind. Both men had come from the Green River Rendezvous up above the Utah Territory. His attempt to become a mountain man at that annual celebration had been a complete and utter disaster. Coming out of Ohio, with farm clothes on his back, without a gun or proper travel equipment had been his undoing. That and his childlike wonder and enthusiasm. He could not shoot, wrestle, knife-throw (he had no knife) or tell tall tails. He also had no money. To the bands of mountain men and trappers he had been nothing but a ridiculed source of rolling entertainment. They’d tossed him coins after they’d used him as the target in a spitting competition. When he had simply stood there, not bending to pick up the coins, tears in his eyes, they’d laughed some more and taken them back. Reflexively, he looked down at the brown stains still adorning his torn woolen coat. There had been no chance at all that any of the companies filling the valley would let him join them, much less as a sharing member of their group.
He was going to die in the pine forest. He knew it, but he continued to trudge from one unfeeling foot to the other anyway. There was no place to go back to, and he lacked the energy. He followed Jed, his only hope. The man was a loner. He didn’t hunt or trap as part of a team, as most of the men did. Peter had figured that it would be easy enough to follow the man to wherever he was going. But there had been no snow at the lower altitude of the Rendezvous. There had been no intense cold. He could not go back. He knew he’d come to far. He could only go on, hoping that Jed might be holed-up just ahead. Peter knew that he could not last another night without proper clothing, a fire or a place of warmth.
He was twenty-two, but he looked fifteen. He was tallish, thick of body and whipcord tough. His blue eyes were bright with an educated glint of intensity. He could read. He understood numbers and he knew how to work, long and hard, but the snow was slowly sucking the feeling and life from his body with each swishing step. He thought about the farm, where his sister and parents had perished in the fire. About his uncle who had come and taken ownership of the land. Ohio law, the sheriff had told him, when he’d guided him to the county line.
Jed had won the shooting competition and Peter had been impressed. The beautiful English rifle the man had used had impressed him even more. Jed had proclaimed the rifle itself to be the real winner, as it had shot so straight. The mountain men had loved that. But it was Jed’s other comments that had caused Peter to follow him. After drinking, or‘pulling,’ as they called it, many times from an acrid smelling bottle, in celebration, he’d told everyone why he was a loner.
“I was born of woman who left me to be alone. I’ve lived alone, hunted alone and howled into the night alone…and I’ll die alone.” The mountain men had laughed, but not Peter. He’d understood.
“And I like it that way,” the mountain man had finished, to more 'pulling' from the ceramic container. Peter had watched the man intently after that. He wanted to live alone too, but he needed someone to teach him how to do it. So he’d decided to follow Jed and learn.
The light was beginning to fade when Peter saw a large oak rise above the pine in the distance. Following the tracks, his mind beginning to grow numb as the rest of his body, he made for the tree. A huge branch had fallen from it earlier. The great thing lay atop the snow, with only a light dusting on it’s bark. Peter squinted. The branch had fallen recently, he knew. The wound way up on the oak’s trunk was bright and fresh, although barely visible in the fading light. He crouched with the smell of smoke. Someone had had a fire nearby. He knew the smell of old wet smoke.
Slowly, Peter moved to the main trunk, then eased around. He looked for Jed’s tracks. He found them, but saw immediately that they were too thick and deep.
It was like the tracks had been made by several people walking the same path, or one person going back and forth to some distant destination. His eyes grew round. The deeper tracks began at the far side of the fallen branch. Peter ran to the mess of limbs and old dead leaves. Down through the bracken he saw the outline of a man’s torso.
“Oh no,” he whispered, gently climbing up over. Breaking branches and casting twigs aside Peter uncovered Jeb’s upper torso. A small pile of ashes lay near the man’s head.
“He lit a fire, but there wasn’t enough fuel,” he said to himself, having brushed aside enough to see the man’s pinned and mangled legs. The branch had fallen across Jed’s lower body. The man was frozen hard to the touch. Peter knew he had died during the pervious night, when he himself had almost passed, warmed only by a thick layer of needles beneath a large pine tree. He climbed back atop the main trunk of the branch, to consider how to free Jed’s body. The climbing activity warmed him, but he knew he didn’t have much light left to work in, or much energy either. Fleetingly, he wondered why it was important to move the body at all, but he discarded the thought. He jumped down to the ground at Jed’s side, having come up with an idea, but the ground was not there. Peter plunged right through the earth, wood and dirt cascading around him as he fell.
He hit the bottom hard, knocking the wind from his lungs. In panic, he clutched his chest, and then looked up. As the first breaths sucked through his gaping mouth, he stared at the broken opening above him. He breathed deeply several times. All around him were stores. Hides, blankets, boxes of lead and pemmican were neatly stacked against the walls of the pit.
“The cache,” he sighed, thinking of Jed at the Rendezvous. The men had talked of caches buried around special high mountain hideouts. In such secret store houses the mountain men kept supplies which enabled them to weather through the long cold months of winter.
Peter climbed to his feet, his head just barely rising to the height of the hole he’d created by jumping through the roof of the cache. A stack of split firewood lined one side of the pit. Conveniently, a forged iron bar and a flint striker hung from leather thongs over the wood. Using the kindling from broken door pieces, Peter set to work building a fire at the bottom of the cache. Once lit, he propped ‘Tee-Pee’ stacked chunks of fire-wood over the small fire. He then pulled down several thick blankets from a pile, threw then under, around and over him. He stared at the box with pencil writing on its side that said ‘Pemmican.’ His mouth watered but he could not move to get the box as deep sleep claimed him.

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The Present

2009-12-22T19:22:00.000-08:00

The Present
By
James Strauss

The child who was not a child crouched, his back to the warm window. It was below zero in Wisconsin, but not in the deep window well. A mouse looked up at him, its puzzled stare demonstrating no understanding, but also no willingness to back down. The child smiled. He looked down at his fellow traveler, but did not extend a hand. He knew about wild animals. Wild animals survived. Wild animals fought and died over territory. He was in the mouse’s territory, but he wouldn’t fight. They could not be friends. Wild animals had no friends. He knew that, at eight years of age, for he was a wild animal himself.

His name wasn’t Zack, but that was the name he called himself. His real name didn’t matter. The police couldn’t do anything with Zack, because he’d made it up. A couple of times he’d been printed but his finger-prints were too small to register in their computerized network. He’d been remanded to youth authority custody as Zack Zack each time, a name he’d seen in a cartoon somewhere. The window was warm to his back. He turned his head to study it. The basement light was unaccountably on. If someone was in the basement he would be visible, but he’d seen no one at all in the hours he’d been there. The lock to the window was not fastened. He pushed. Very very gently he applied sideways pressure to the multi-layered glass. He didn’t have gloves. The glass was so cold, even though much warmer than the above-ground temperature. It moved. An inch. Then a few more. Warmth cascaded out, filling the window well. Zack checked back for his companion, but the mouse had disappeared. Zack was not disappointed. Everyone disappeared in his life.

He didn’t try to open the window far enough to enter the basement. He was not stupid. If he went in, and got caught, then the cops would be back real quick. If he stayed out he could jump out of the well and run.

The window was open about four inches when the cat appeared. A gray cat. Big. Sitting there, having come silently form nowhere. Zack felt a pang of fear. The cat was nearly a fourth of his own size. If it had claws it could hurt him, he knew.
The cat stuck its head through the window, its eyes wide open, unblinking, as if in question. Zack stared. He didn’t know what to do. He’d never had a pet. Cats ran when they saw him. Dogs too. But not this one. Unable to stop himself, Zack reached out one dirty hand to pet the cat’s head. The cat did not react. It blinked once. Zack patted its head several times. When he stopped, the cat stepped through the window, and then curled up on the cold detritus of autumn leaves and junk which had fallen into the window well earlier, before the snow had come.

Zack stuck the fingers of his right hand into the cat’s gray fur. The cat looked up at him, but made no move at all. The boy’s hand felt wonderful. The cat’s fur was warm and it seemed to draw his fingers in welcome. He sighed deeply. The coming night was the best he’d had in a week, no matter what. Sleeping in the fields, even under rolled crops or piled hay, had been terrible. But that was before the colder temperatures. When it was as cold as it was there was no sleeping. Zack intrinsically knew that. Sleeping in the fields was the same as dying, and he didn’t want to die, so he’d come to this house. The lights had attracted him. There were other homes about but they were all dark. He knew he would have been safer from discovery there, but the promise of warmth from the lights had drawn him in.

The lights were Christmas tree lights. A single tree, down the hill right in front of the house, glowed. Across the back yard was a row of five more trees, all lit up as well. Only one tree, in the middle of the five had colored lights. The rest were little white ones. Zack wondered why the one tree was colored. Deep snow covered the trees so the lights were a glowing soft white, except for the colored tree.

Zack loved Christmas. Not for the presents. He’d never had a present. His family had not been a family at all, just a collection of people laying around in different states of sleep. Zack loved Christmas because people were nicer during the Christmas season. They gave him money and things. That didn’t happen during the rest of the year. But he wanted a present. One Christmas present would be okay. Zack sighed again. He didn’t know anybody. He’d run from where he had been weeks before. He’d only gotten to the country because a drunken man had picked him up by the side of the road. He’d wanted Zack to drive for him, not understanding that he was only eight years old. Zack hadn’t minded the drive. The car had driven all over the road and it had been kind of fun, like circus rides he’d heard about but never experienced.

A boy appeared in the window. Zack froze in terror. The boy called softly, not looking a the window.
“Harvey, Harvey, where are you?” The boy said the same words over and over, looking up into the basement rafters, then at the many boxes stacked along the concrete walls.

Zack looked down at the cat. The cat had to be named Harvey, but he didn’t move. Zack gave him a gentle shove, but the animal just looked up at him, as if he was smiling in pleasure at the other boy’s inability to find him. The boy, who appeared to be about his own age, turned to the open window, noticing it for the first time. He saw Zack. They stared at one another for a full minute.

“What are you doing with Harvey?” the boy asked, pointing at the curled up cat.

The cat ignored the boy, remaining on the cold ground next to Zack’s foot.

“Nothing,” Zack whispered, truthfully, through the opening.

“Its cold out there. Why are you there? Its warm in here. Come in here, and bring my cat.” The small boy crossed his arms, waiting for his orders to be obeyed.

Zack crawled through the window, after pushing it open. He didn’t touch the cat. The cat seemed to know that he was supposed to follow, so he did. Both of them stood to face the child, once they were in and the window was closed.

“You don’t look happy,” the little boy said, “but Harvey seems to like you. Do you live around here? I didn’t know there were any kids around here. All the rich people go back to Illinois at this time of the year, and they take their kids. Not that those kids like me anyway. I don’t have any friends.”

“I don’t know,” Zack said, hesitantly.

“You don’t know what?” the little boy responded.

Zack’s face grew red. He didn’t know what to say.

“I think I need to go before the police come,” he forced out, turning to look back at the closed window.

“Why would the police come?” the little boy said, “Are you a criminal?”

“I don’t know,” Zack responded truthfully. “I don’t know what a criminal really is, but I may be one.”

“No, I don’t think so,” the little boy replied. I think you’re here because of Christmas tomorrow. I asked God for a different Christmas gift this year. I didn’t want a sled, an electronic game or a scooter. I wanted something interesting, like a real friend. My parents don’t understand me. So God sent you. Do your parents understand you?”

“I don’t really have parents and I don’t know about God. I went to school but only for a year. I’m not sure why. I learned to read, but I don’t have any books.” The little boy reached out one small hand. “I’m Clark, and I live here. You learned to read in one year? I can read now, but it took me three years. Maybe you can’t really read. Maybe you’re just saying that.”

Zack shook the serious little boy’s hand. “That box over there says ‘Maytag, this side must always be up," he intoned, pointing.

Clark followed Zack’s gaze, then nodded.

“Okay, you can read,” Clark said.

“Why are you down in the basement?” Zack asked, tentatively.

“Harvey,” the little boy replied, instantly, picking up the big cat, but not for long. Harvey twisted and jumped down. The boy laughed, delightedly. “Harv is my only friend, but he runs away from me and hides. He likes the basement.”

“What time is it?” Zack asked.

“Almost midnight on Christmas Eve,” Clark responded. “My parents are asleep. They ‘overserved’ themselves a bit. That means they drank booze. That’s why all the lights are on. I kind of like it. I can do whatever I want. What do you want?”

The question caught Zack off guard. He almost said that he didn’t know, but held back. He thought about what he really wanted. “I’d like a present,” he said, smiling for the first time.

“Cool,” Clark said. “I’ve got lots of presents. Let’s go upstairs and check them out. They’re all wrapped but I’ve opened every one without Mom or Dad knowing about it. Maybe you can guess what’s in the boxes.” Without another word Clark walked to the stairs Harvey followed him, then turned to look back. Zack realized that the cat was more like a dog than a cat. He liked that. He moved to follow the boy and the cat up the stairs, brushing the dirt and leaves from his clothes as best he could. The house was warm.
Clark lead him through a hallway at the top the stairs and into a front room library. A decorated Christmas tree stood against the outside window, its lights blazing with reflections of the lights in all the many decorations hung on its branches. In the distance, out the window, Zack could see the softened light of the snow covered tree in the front yard. Clark and Zack moved presents about until they’d handled every one. Zack had not been able to guess even one of the presents correctly, but he had loved trying. There was only one flat box left.

“This is from my crazy grandpa. He’s crazy but I love him. I never can guess what he’s going to give me. My Mom says that’s because he’s crazy. But that’s okay. Old people can be crazy and still love you. My grandpa taught me that."

Zack handled the wrapped box. It was wrapped with some kind of bright gold paper. He shook it. “Gosh its pretty,” he said, delaying his guess.

“Yeah, my grandpa is colorblind so he goes for the wildest colors possible. He has no clue. That’s why the one Christmas Tree outside is colored. Its for grandpa. But he’s crazy, so it doesn’t matter.”

Zack nodded, as if he understood at. He had no grandfather that he knew. The crazy grandpa sounded pretty neat to him.

“You can have it,” Clark said, out of the blue.

“What?” Zack asked, in puzzlement.

“The present. If you can guess what’s in it then you can have it.”

Zack set the box down. It was too much. He knew he could never guess what was in the box. It was like the rest of his life. He was never going to understand any of it. That was just the way it was. A tear almost rolled down his face. He grimaced, then turned away. He would not cry. He could not cry. He was in the best Christmas place he’d ever been in his life. He wanted to crawl under the beautiful tree and sleep. Then wake up and live there.

“You don’t have to guess. Here, its yours. Merry Christmas. Grandpa is so crazy he’ll never know his gift is gone when he comes tomorrow.” Clark pushed the box toward him.

Zack fought his tears back, knowing that Clark knew he had almost cried. He liked the boy for ignoring it. “He’ll know. You’re not telling the truth. I can’t take it if he’ll know.” Zack slid the box back.

Clark sat back on his think knees, staring at Zack. “Okay. You’re right. But grandpa is different. When he comes I’ll take him aside and tell him that there was this boy who came in the night and needed a present. Grandpa is the only person in the world who will understand. I just know it. He’ll just shake his head, and like me even more.”
Clark pushed the present over to Zack again.

This time Zack grabbed it and tore the wrapping off. It was a small model train. Inside there was even a small transformer. He opened the box very carefully. The train was from Switzerland, a place Zack had never heard of but loved the sound of its name name. Both boys worked to set up the tracks into an oval. They connected the transformer and plugged it in. The train ran. Zack could not believe it. The present was a marvel of wonder. A small light illuminated the engineer in the engine compartment. They ran the train around the oval many many times. Finally Clark told Zack that he had to go to sleep. Carefully, they packed the train back into the well formed box. Zack followed Clark upstairs to the bedrooms. Clark showed him his sleeping parents. Both of them snored gently. The boys smiled at one another.

“My Dad is kinda serious when he’s awake, but he’s a great dad. He wears an expensive watch called a Nardin, which I’m not allowed to touch, but I do when he's in the shower. Mom acts silly but she's not, even though she's a blond. She's okay.

Zack made believe he understood. They moved to the last bedroom on the floor. Clark climbed into his bed, then pulled the covers up to his neck. A small blue blanket was on the pillow next to his head. He reached for it, then inserted part of it into his mouth.
“Mom says I have to give up my blanket soon, and Dad says my 'rag' is unhealthy.”

“Its okay,” Zack said, standing next to the bed, with the train box under his arm, wondering what it would be like to have such a blanket.

“Will you be gone when I wake up?” Clark said, his voice beginning to grow sleepy.

“Yes,” Zack said, gazing down upon the boy.

“Are you the friend God sent me?” Clark asked.

“Yes” Zack replied, not knowing why he said it.
“Will you come back again.? You can live in the basement. Nobody will know. And then we can play every night when my parents are asleep. Harvey can come too.”

Zack stared at the boy. Clark’s eyes closed, then his breathing slowed, although the blue blanket never left his mouth. Zack reached for the light switch, and then flicked it off. He stayed for a few more minutes, just watching the sleeping child.

Back before the window in the basement he crouched. His back was to the glass, which now felt icy cold. He would sleep until morning and then be gone. The train set, his first Christmas gift ever, was clutched tightly under his right arm. Harvey lay stretched across his left ankle. Zack thought of Clark, in the bedroom way above him, as he waited for the dawn.

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copyright 2009

Diamonds and Rust

2009-11-21T18:21:00.000-08:00

Closer To God
Diamonds and Rust
Chapter VII

I carefully removed five more one thousand shilling notes and presented them to Wendy.
“That’s about one fifth the average wage in Kenya. It ought to get us dinner served in this cabin, and, unless my judgment about such things is sadly flawed, your natural allure ought to count for something.”
Wendy took the money. I saw a glint flash from her eye under raised eyebrow. I wondered how much of the five thousand would end up in the hands of the crew. She and Dingo headed out into the aisle.
“Who are you two?” I asked the remaining women.
“I’m Helen and this is Anice,” the blondest of the two blonds said, waving one hand toward her companion.
“Where you from?” I asked, making conversation while I thought about everything that had happened to us since stepping aboard the train.
“Troy,” she said, noting my lack of real attention.
“Helen of Troy…neat,” I responded with a smile.
“Why don’t you two join your friends at finding us all something to eat?” I said. I held the door open. Anice went by me, her short curly hair so thick and tight it resembled Velcro. When they were out of the room I secured the one-sided deadbolt. I stood before Burt.
“Want to tell me about it?” I asked him, pointedly, my arms crossed. He watched the evening countryside go by for at least a full minute before answering.
“Ah, about what?” Burt answered, his tone evidencing both ignorance and innocence at the same time.
I frowned. I was not accustomed to my team members withholding information pertinent to the mission, nor on acting independently.
“The three bad guys you forced to leap from the train. Take a close look at the window next to you. They’re safety latched, but you’d play hell at getting them open far enough to squeeze a full grown American through without using a lot of time and tools. Then there’s the terminal nature of what would have likely happened to guys. I don’t think you’d send three men to their deaths that way. I know something about you now. You didn’t force them from the window, so where are they?”
I watched Burt consider. I was determined not to be surprised at whatever he came up with. I didn’t know what had happened to our pursuers, but I knew Burt was lying about whatever had happened.
“I’m sorry, “ Burt apologized, But this isn’t a mission you know. Not anymore. I don’t have to report to you or do what you tell me. We’re on our own. I said I threw them off the train to impress the lassies. I haven’t been with a woman for awhile.” His eyes left mine to roam again across the moving Savannah.
In spite of myself, I was surprised. Burt was impressing young women while three guys, apparently still on the train somewhere, were trying to kill us for unknown reasons. I couldn’t think of anything intelligent to respond to that part of what he’d said, so I ignored it.
“Where are they?” I said instead, getting right to the point.
“Back in their cabin. Just like I left ‘em. One has a broken ankle and the other two broken wrists. They don’t have any guns. I threw their cell phones out the window.” Burt offered the last as if it made up for his earlier lie.
I glared at him, getting control of myself before speaking.
“This is a mission and I’m the mission commander, unless you don’t want to survive. We’re not going to get through this by trying to impress young women. We won’t live long doing stupid things like throwing their cell phones away either. Those phones had numbers and identities on them. Now you either accept that or you’re on your own. And, if you accept it, I don’t want any more of this crap. I make the decisions, on everything. That’s what I do. You implement those decisions in the manner I tell you to. That’s what you do. And you don’t keep anything from me. Got it?”
My voice had dropped in both tone and volume. Burt and I were in more trouble than I could calculate. I needed him, but I could reasonably survive without him. On his own, he wouldn’t last another day.
Helen of Troy’s voice could be heard through the solid wood door. She had one of those irritating nasal voices, but her looks were so great you tended not to notice when in front of her. I waited, my hand on the deadbolt, staring back at Burt.
“Alright. It’s a mission. I’ll do my part.” This time Burt's tone was sincere, but I didn't know what to think. However, Burt was all the team I had.
I twisted the small brass knob. Four women filled the cabin, settling onto bunks and floor as if a gaggle of geese looking to forage.
“It’s done,” Wendy stated, proudly. “They’re bringing dinner in about an hour, between the early servings. I couldn’t understand their word for the meat.
I think its called Punda.”
“Punda milia,” I added, instantly sorry I’d spoken up. The words translated into striped ass or Zebra.
“Means beef, I think,” I recovered, looking over at Burt, who was staring at Dingo too intently to pay attention to me.
“About the sleeping arrangements,” I began, but got no further. Obviously, the Earth Mother’s had discussed more than dinner when they had gone to the dining car.
“You’re sleeping in my bunk. I’ll stay on the floor with Helen. Burt can have the padded bench, with Dingo on the floor next to him.” Wendy’s rapid delivery gave away the preparedness of her comments.
There was silence in the room. The earlier arrangements discussed had seemed to include a whole lot more than just sleeping, but the amended plan suited me perfectly. The last thing any of us needed was more complexity, although I could not ignore the fact that the small room was going to occupied through the night by four attractive females and two men who had not known many women of late.
“The train is likely to stop soon,” I informed them. “While its stopped would be a good time to have dinner served. I’ll try to time it right,” I said, gesturing toward Burt to accompany me. Wendy frowned, but asked no questions.
“Wine, you have more wine. Might as well trot it out. We’ll be right back.”
I slipped out into the passageway with my last words hanging in the air. We didn’t need company with what we were about, and the Earth Mothers were just a bit too bright and adventurous. Keeping them from participating in anything would not be accomplished with force. Especially not since I’d allowed one of them to become armed. Our current and continuing presence in their lives was a risk to them, however, and I would not overlook it.
Burt led our passage through the dining car. I marveled at the old world charm of the décor. Red leather, deep brown wood and polished glass. It resembled some Hollywood director’s idea of what a dining car should look like, rather than what you would expect to find in a third world country. Eating in the cabin would be much less entertaining, but a whole lot more secure.
We made our way to the last car. We reached the last door, which Burt plunged right through, his weapon out and raised. I noted that the lock had been shot away, just like the one in our door.
Three men were in the room. Two sat on one lower bunk, opposing us, and the remaining man sitting on the floor, propped up against the wall. With the bunks down, there was not much floor space in a Fourth Class cabin. Burt moved deep enough into the space to allow me to sit on the lower bunk, across from the two men.
“Who are you gentlemen?” I asked, no threat in my voice. Burt’s gun was out and ready, but mine still in my pocket. They looked at me. The man on the floor had the broken angle. It was evident from off angle of the bones. The other two had wrapped wrists. One right wrist. One left wrist.
“Left handed?” I asked Burt, pointing at the appropriate man, but his attention was on the three men.
“Who are you people?” I inquired again. None of the three answered, each looking from one to the other.
I noted the very bottom of a tattoo sticking out from under the short sleeve of the one with the broken right wrist. I stepped carefully over the broken ankle of the floor positioned one. I pulled the sleeve gently upward. The tattoo was in blue. It was of the head of a water buffalo. Then I noted the age of the man. He was not young. Older than I, all three of them were, and I was old for the business.
“Thirty-two Battalion?” I asked. The man nodded once.
“Shit,” I mouthed to myself.
“What is it?” Burt asked, gauging the regret in my tone.
“Thirty-two Battalion is the old Boer Commando outfit, disbanded in 1993, I think. It was pretty hot shit. All three of you?” I pointed at the other two. I received no answer.
“Burt here will be glad to take your shirts off, and then break your remaining joints,” I offered. The one who had signaled before did so again.
“Who are you with now?” I inquired, not expecting an answer. I waited, but I knew I was wasting my time. The situation could only play out in one of two possible ways. Either the men were actually going to jump from the train, at high speed with their injuries, or they were going to see reason. I could only play the cards I had been dealt. I couldn’t change them.
“Okay. Have it your way. I don’t expect much. I know you guys. I was a United States Marine. I have a mission to perform. Either Burt here tosses you off the train or you tell me whom you’re working for. I’ll work something out. It’s not much that I’m asking. No names. Not even what this is all about. “ I waited, while once again they looked at each other. They had to be mercenaries. They worked for the money, so their loyalty was not to a cause. But their habit patterns where from the old school, and it would near impossible to break them down. I was not willing to resort to physical torture, and I didn’t really have the equipment for such an operation anyway. Physical torture always works. On everyone. No single human is immune, or tough enough to ‘gut it out,’ as that is the province of movies and television. But it comes with a high price, for the tortured and the torturers. I’d tortured. I knew the price, and I was no longer willing to pay it.
“Aegis,” the man said, his voice low. “Diamonds. It is about diamonds.”
I sat back stunned. Aegis didn’t bother me. It was one of the mercenary companies operating out of London. There were bunches of them. But his volunteering of ‘diamonds’ perplexed me. Tea, textiles, coffee and a few other things were exported from Kenya. There were no diamonds. Not that anybody had ever found or reported on.
“Where,” I asked, not sure what I expected to hear. And what I got I did not expect.
“Freetown.” We cannot tell you more. Our families will never be paid if we tell you.”
I liked the fact that the man was thinking about the money Aegis would pay out to their families following death. I had their full attention. There was no Freetown in Kenya. There was a Freetown in a place that had a ton of diamonds, however. Sierra Leone. A shit-hole of a place. The unadvertised, unclaimed, and nearly unknown, poorest country in Africa, which was saying something.
“We cannot give you anything else. Do your will.” The man bowed his head. Without sharp instruments and a controlled environment I knew that I wasn’t going to get more.
“Lighten up, Francis,” I quoted from the movie Stripes. “You did what you were asked. Here’s the deal. I’m gonna pull the emergency stop.” I stood up and grabbed the single line running corner to corner near the top of the car. “The trains gonna stop. Only you three will be here. They’ll come in hordes once they figure out the cord was pulled in this room. Stopping the train is a First Class Felony in Kenya. You’ll be arrested, guarded, and taken to jail in Mombasa. When you get there one of you needs to confess that he did it. Claim drunkenness. The natives think all White Men are drunks. Or you can claim that you need medical care from the injuries you suffered fighting with one another. Once one of you confesses the others will be set loose. Strange Kenyan Justice. The two released can pay the fine for the felony, and then you can get some splints and treatment for your problems.” I stopped and looked at them carefully.
“If you don’t claim you did it, then there is going to be trouble. Burt here is going to take your going back on your word badly. You won’t survive this mission, I promise you. I want your word as an ‘Os Terriveis’” I stopped again. Portugal had contributed a lot of men to 32 Battalion, and had loaned it the name “Terrible Ones,” not without good cause.
“We agree,” the man said, this time without looking to the others for approval. I was giving them a rare gift, and the man seemed to understand. It would be safer to leave them for dead, strewn along the harsh landscape of the beautiful Savannah, then have them reaching their superiors to tell of their contact with us.
I pulled down hard on the cord. Squealing sounds came from the wheel brakes of our car. It was going to be a slow stop as the emergency cord only worked for the car it was pulled in. The train whistle blew long and loud. The crew had figured out that there was a problem.
I took out another ten thousand shillings and placed them firmly in the man’s good hand. “You’ll need this for the fine. They won’t take your cash when you’re in custody. Trust me, I know about custody in Kenya.” I then took my box of cigarettes out and offered one to each man. They sat there, each with a white tube sticking out of his mouth. Burt brought out a lighter and went slowly from man to man, keeping his suppressed automatic trained on each while he lit their smokes.
“Dankie,” the man said. Dankie is Afrikaans for thank you. He slipped the bills into his shirt pocket. Burt and I stepped out of the room, then made our way quickly back to the dining car, which was full. The non-stop train was slowing to a stop, which caused a lot of discussion from everyone around us as we made our way through.
“What if they try to lay it on us?” Burt asked, just before we reached the room.
“They’re screwed. Strange Kenyan Justice. They’re the ones in the room where the cord got pulled. The exact place is registered down by the side of the car, near the tracks. There’s no Crime Scene Investigation over here.”
“Will it work the way you told them?” Burt inquired, his voice evidencing skepticism.
“I lie when necessary Burt, but I’m not cruel. Those were brothers-in-arms, whatever path they’ve taken since, and, because of your ‘assistance’ they won’t be a problem for us anymore.” I didn’t mention any of the problems that might arise from they’re eventual report to higher ups.
Wendy welcomed us into the room, locking the door behind us. I noted another empty bottle of wine primly set against the far wall, where a partially filled one sat next to it.
“We’ve been wondering where you were. And the train is almost stopped, just like you said would happen. How did you do that? And, when are we going to get to Mombasa?”
I laughed at her tone and obvious gaiety rather than her comments.
“When is dinner served?” I asked. I was terribly hungry and so very tired. I looked up at Wendy’s upper bunk with longing.
“It’s coming. It’s coming, Wendy giggled, but first we want to sing you a song.
Dingo has a ukulele. It’s made from Koa wood carved in Hawaii."
I slunk down the wall between the bunks. I prayed that there were no more players aboard the Iron Snake. Our stopping had risk. Anyone paralleling the train on the Mombasa Road could use the opportunity to get aboard. We could only plan for so much, however.
The Earth Mother’s started their song, the words brining an immediate rye smile to my face: “Well, I’ll be damned, here comes your ghost again…”
The song was a Joan Baez thing from many years in the past. I knew that the final words were: “…and if your offering me diamonds and rust, I’ve already paid.” I hadn’t understood the phrase any of the times I’d heard it. I could never figure out what diamonds had to do with rust, since diamonds are a crystal and rust is, well, rust formed on iron. I listened to song, being sung by some of the toughest angels I’d ever come across, and I knew that diamonds and rust did indeed go together and that the amalgam was one of hardship and pain, just as delivered by the words of the song.

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