ON A SPACESHIP CALLED WANDERER                         4934 words

                             story by Patrick Breheny                               pjbreheny@proton.me

“I’m bored,” was heard a lot.

As the first four reached late teens, and younger children of their generation were born, all carefully not blood related, selective mating began to manifest. Nancy and Elizabeth were showing a preference for Bobby, something he hadn’t planned but didn’t object to either.

The only privacy anybody ever had was in a sleeping capsule, they hung out in each other’s and the break room, and it was in Bobby’s space that Rory confronted him with “It’s not fair. They both want you.”

Bobby laughed and said, “I’m already in the process of practicing pregnancy mode on both of them.”

The biggest taboo was incest, inevitable over time, but diluted for as long as possible to avoid a future crew of mental and physical deficients.

“But not attempting…?”

“No, using the prevention, but they each want my baby.”

“Do they know about the other?”

Bobby absently brought his hand up to his brown hair, over that handsome face. “We’re not in a place where you can keep a secret easily, but I don’t think they do. I’ll only impregnate one.”
“But right now, you’re…”

“Shagging both of them.”

He brushed back those sexy locks with his hand and said, “Don’t worry. You’ll probably get to knock the other one up. It’s the protocol.”

And he laughed again at Rory.

Armed with that bit of incendiary intel from Bobby, Rory approached the women separately. To keep a semblance of day and night, the ship kept an Earth 24 hour routine, had a wake and sleep schedule, and Rory made a late evening appointment with Elizabeth in the break room while the others he assumed watched old movies or TV shows, read, masturbated, and maybe even some of the younger kids, some now reaching puberty, had pregnancy mode practice like Bobby. Rory was as yet uninitiated to that. As to gay, the elders’ only guidance regarding later, when there would be more population--and acknowledging their pun--- was that they had no position. Except, they stated, it might deter against children being born from incest. Rory was not so inclined, and considering the only option---Bobby---knew sex from old porn movies, which were all the more pathetic because they were of young attractive females then that were now his parents’ ages.

Rory waited a long time for Elizabeth, whom he knew was off duty and already ate dinner. When she finally arrived, he grumbled, “You’re twenty minutes late.”

“What would you be doing, Rory, in your capsule alone?”

Implying he might be…He might be.

“I understand you have taken up with Bobby.”

“Well, there’s something, but it’s not your business. There’s Nancy for you.”

“No there isn’t. She wants Bobby too. Isn’t he practicing impregnation mode on you?”

“Aren’t you brazen!”

“Because he’s practicing with Nancy too.”

“Oh, Rory. Haven’t you always been the pathetic one. If this is your way of proposing to me, the answer is no. You think I will believe that, accept you and leave Bobby to Nancy?”

“That would be a sensible thing to do.”

“Feelings aren’t about sense. How could you know about such a fantasy as me and Bobby doing—I won’t say it.”

“Because he told me. About both of you.”

“I will ask him.”

“He’ll lie don’t you think.”

“He doesn’t lie to me. You do.”

“If he says he didn’t tell me he’s lying.”

“And maybe he was lying to you. What’s it called? Bullshit? False bragging. Machismo.”

“I’ve only informed you.”

“About nothing. If Nancy doesn’t want you, maybe she’ll mate with one of the childless elders instead. Then you can wait and hope for one of the new kids when they mature or yourself impregnate one of the original women.”

He made an appointment the next evening with Nancy.

She at least was there before him, but showed she felt as inconvenienced as Elizabeth, started with, “So what is it? Is this the part where you’re going to proposition me to pregnancy mode?”

Had Elizabeth talked to her?

“May I ask, so we all know regeneratively what we’re doing out here, is there a relationship between you and Bobby?”

“Oh! Well, maybe. Is Elizabeth such a bad choice for you?”

No, he thought, Elizabeth hasn’t spoken to Nancy.

She continued, “She’s better than you’d do back on home planet.”

“Why are all of you like this with me?”

“You must ask for it.”

“I do? How?”

“I guess because you take it.”

“Not about this.”

“What choice do you have. Take Elizabeth. Bobby’s mine.”

“Bobby is practice moding Elizabeth too.”

“What? I’ll find out if this is true.”

“And if?”

“Take care of it.”

He thought maybe he’d succeeded. At least she believed it could be possible. He could see her jealous rage of betrayal was like his.  May…be she…she…would….KILL Bobby! Then he could practice mode both, chose which one to get pregnant.

As they all said about him, and he knew it was true, he just never got that concept of “cool” the Americans on earth referenced so often. He just blurted,

“So you’ll kill him?”

“What? I love Bobby.”

“Even…?”

“Stop, Rory”

The originals were rich, and on only one of many other launches. Protestors who had tried to prevent departures were held back by military who were promised their own escape craft, but who would protect the last launch? They left Earth hearing screams of “Cowards” and “Traitors” and ‘White Trash” though they were mixed, until the rocket blast drowned out the voices.

Their First In Command was a silicon Valley CEO who had not an inkling of what being military or military command was except that he knew some generals he had worked with. The crew was chosen from among the wealthy who were either already couples but childless. though not from any biological impairment, or from pairs willing to couple. They would be expected to reproduce in space, from a single partner to hold off inevitable inbreeding. They had no destination, only hope of finding a habitable planet. They were wanderers.

The first group of the first born gen in space were, as planned, children of the crew but not siblings. The four of them were birthed at near enough the same time to encourage progeny. There was a child limit because of the space issue, though they sailed through unlimited space. Their births worked out for continuation of life, two boys, Rory and Bobby, and two girls, Elizabeth and Nancy. Natural selection was encouraged, as long as each female was impregnated by a different male.  More first gen in space children were planned from the original crew of twenty people, ten reproductive couples. for a few years after the first four. Six more children, then more children from each couple, and when first space born gen would have children too, it was designated that one of the grandparents would be ejected, though no protocol was yet in place for who that should be. It was the only way to survive as a society. Food was as regenerative as people, though there was no need to eject any of that, only the human waste generated

“I’m bored” was still heard a lot.”

The first four children were tutored, learned about their histories and people on Earth, were taught math, science, literature from the mundane to the great, watched old movies and TV programs, listened to former popular music, knew everything about Earth except what it was to be there. They were beyond any communicative contact, though one of the elders, Second  In Command and Bobby’s father remarked, “You can be sure they’re fighting with each other.”

Elizabeth told Rory she never asked Bobby about Nancy, said she trusted him.  And to prove it, as a little nostalgia, she invited Nancy to a “pajama party” like they had as kids. And the “kids” had a carving knife once pinched from the cafeteria a “just in case” in this environment they knew could suddenly become unpredictable. Nancy brought the knife from where she knew Rory kept it hidden but she wanted this to be self defense.

Once they were relaxed, played Scrabble (again), and watched a show from the beginning Saturday Night Live series with references they just didn’t understand, Nancy asked, “How are you and Bobby doing?”

“Oh, so you know. Well, he’s said he wants to real mode with me.”

“Do you practice yet?”

“Nancy!  What a question.”

“Sorry. Who do we have to gossip about but each other.”

“Can’t kiss and tell.”

“No.”

“There’s an admission there.”

“Fifth Amendment.”

“Well, I can only wish the best for both of you.”

“Thank you so much. And for you, there’s…” caught herself before she’d say Rory.

Nancy said, “Well, don’t be so fast to dismiss Rory. He’s good in bed.”

“YOU and Rory?”

“See, nothing to worry about.”

During her “confession” that she and Rory were…not!…Nancy had distracted Liz enough to switch teas in case hers was drugged. And if Elizabeth did spike the tea, she’d made this so simple now if she drank hers.

Nancy drank her tea, Elizabeth didn’t touch hers. Tired from their long day tech shifts, after Liz lent Nancy her high collared shirt, they went to sleep. Or pretended. And when Nancy was cozy with her head on the extra pillow, gently fake snoring, Nancy put a tether rope around her neck. The tether rope was intended for use on stairs. The craft was gravity conditioned, much the way airplanes had been decompressed, and was the only way they could live long term without weightlessness. But the gravity increased exponentially with decline, so tether ropes were used on stairs, because anybody descending without one would otherwise be sucked to death by the impact.

 Nancy had her hand around the knife, ready, but waiting to see… what? Liz cinched a noose outside the high collar, apparently intended to leave no marks, then stood and began pulling up and away, out of the room, and toward the stairs.

With Liz out of sight, Nancy used the knife to slice the noose, but held tight to the rope with both hands. She felt Liz pulling until the rope had no length left, and then Liz leapt down the stairs holding the rope, which she expected would not yield, break Nancy’s neck, and stop her fall. When Nancy felt the rope tugging hard, she let go.

Nancy was very traumatized and weepy upon the morning discovery, which was postulated as having been from a foolish accident, or Liz taking her own life. The corpse had to be ejected. None of the elders would now be ejected upon the birth of a first grandchild. Elizabeth’s grief stricken father had a suspicion and no proof, but an impulse to do to Nancy in kind. He did assert that neither he nor his wife should be ejected upon the birth of any grandchild, they having sacrificed already in their family.

Surviving was their mission, the reason they left Earth, to maybe find a habitable planet or if not continue through space until inevitably inbreeding would turn them into a crew of imbeciles.

Bobby wasn’t the sharing type and Nancy didn’t want him. Nancy and Bobby had teas one night in the break room with Rory, and unusually tired this early, they retired to Nancy’s capsule, so fatigued they forewent their anticipated romantic encounter.

Nancy was curled beside Bobby, who lay on his back, as she dreamt. What awoken her from her deep slumber, and disengaged her from Bobby, were his convulsions and desperate gasps for air, cause by a long carving knife that had entered under Bobby’s Adam’s apple and exited the back of his neck.

She screamed, and in a moment, someone---no other than Rory---was knocking on the capsule door, asking what was wrong. She leapt across the room to unlock the door, but it was---already unlocked.

She thought she’d locked it, but she’d been so groggy…

She opened the door to Rory, who inquired, “What is it?” but upon entering also screamed, “Oh my God!”

“Did you…?”

“Me? His hand is on the knife.”

“He wouldn’t…”

“It looks like another suicide. Unless you…”

“I love him!”

“Of course. I remember. No. it’s a suicide”

Bobby had what sounded like one gurgling word left, “Not”, but did not have the strength to move his hand. Rory seemed to dismiss that noise as an instinctive attempt to breathe, not speak, and reasserted, “It’s a suicide.” Bobby was beyond any communication.

Even as she cried over Bobby, Nancy was pragmatic enough to know she just no longer had him. And Rory could easily pull the knife out or Bobby’s neck, so maybe she was a bit insincere when she said, aware she was wide eyed with fear, “We were all wrong about you.”

“I didn’t do anything. I wasn’t in here.”

She only reported truthfully that she’d found Bobby as he was, his own hand on the knife, and aware Rory knew what happened to Liz, credited him with coming in to help. There was no CCTV in the corridors. The elders had not even considered crime, but Bobby’s parents wanted meetings. They were the only petitioners against the ruling of suicide, and the others stated there was no evidence to contradict that, even if he left no note and they couldn’t find a motive. Wasn’t life in space life in prison? There was motive.

Nancy still didn’t want to mode with Rory. There were some of the original men who were childless, still good looking and virile enough to impregnate her, and for that matter, some of the female originals without children young enough to be impregnated by Rory. Those who’d chosen this mission, the originals, weren’t entitled to petty jealousy about their spouse’s activities when it came to surviving as a species.

The same gen kids a few years younger didn’t have Nancy’s formed peer opinion of him. He was endearing himself with them, as was Nancy. They were older and wiser, to be looked up to, the bigger brother and sister they didn’t have and who weren’t kin.

It was Nancy who finally said the unthinkable. “We are going to turn this ship to Reverse Course and go back to Earth.”

Earth was in chaos when the elders departed, and though the crew had only aged similarly to Earth time, they were travelling at maximum speed, near light, and they’d still continue to age normally for them, but centuries would have passed on Earth by the time they returned. They did not know if there would be anything there but a planet as bare as Mars was when they left.

The elders were of course not in agreement with that radical idea. To them, it was a betrayal of the mission, though that had really been escape.  Rory and Nancy’s parents were now afraid of who they had spawned for a life in space.                 

Nancy scolded the elders with, “You all ran away instead of facing the challenges there.”

 Rory backed Nancy with “At least we know where a habitable planet is.”

The strongest objectors were Elizabeth’s parents, and Nancy, who could now do so, ordered the youngsters of her generation to eject them, which they prepared to enact without questioning. That became unnecessary. The parents of Elizabeth conceded, with simply the threat of ejection silencing any other dissent, and their chart was set to Reverse Course.

They didn’t know if there would be anyone back on Earth. The elders were still concerned about avoiding incest, and the new generation tried, but it would become inevitable unless they found their own species on home planet.

Nancy told the younger ones, “Just don’t go at each like they say rabbits did, and no cousins making babies. We’re not back yet, and don’t know if anybody will be there.”

In the years after that, second born-in-space gen arrived. Rory and Nancy were now middle age, and who to eject of the original crew became simple by the originals dying of natural causes. But when they ran out of original pioneers, Nancy and Rory would be next in line. Nancy solved that by declaring a moratorium on pregnancy, and the punishment for getting so would be ejection of both responsible parties. “We’re just so close to Earth. Wait.”  

The threat of that mandate was also enough. It never had to be used.

They set down where they could, and like the first transatlantic airplane flight, in a field they believed by coordinates to be in Ireland, selected for its overcast climate to avoid too much sudden exposure to natural sunlight

Wearing dark goggles, their skin covered with thick protective cream, the crew disembarked to real air, chilly and fresh, and smelling good of soil and crops and animals.

Earth seemed to have regressed. The field was a farm, and they saw a thatch house from which exited an alarmed couple with several children. The dad approached cautiously. He looked years younger than Rory and Liz, but had to be hundreds of years younger.

He said, ”I’m Mr. Flynn. Thomas Flynn”, and asked “All off?”

“Yes I believe so,” Nancy answered.

Many of the crew were on their knees, kissing the wet ground, and clasping their hands together, so it was perhaps understandable that the local man would inquire, “Where is He?”

“Who?”

“Is this not the Second Coming?”

Rory was being a wise ass without any real time practice at it when he said, “He’s on the way. We’re the advance party.”

“Disciples? New apostles?”

Rory’s street smarts were from old movies.

“Yeah that will work.”

One of the last born- in- space gen, a space grandson about ten, who did not worship Rory and Nancy like the younger of Rory and Nancy’s generation, knew the rumors around Elizabeth and Bobby, and safely out of space now, said, “Maybe more like cold blooded killers.”

Nancy said, “Kid, what happened out there stays. None of us asked to be born in space.”

The local father seemed to ignore this disrespectful remark toward elders from a youth, but would not be so easily had by Rory.

“Or are you not from out among the stars? Or maybe found a faster way to get here from America.?”

Rory replied, “We found the slowest way to get here from America.”

Nancy spoke. “We’re the former, from out there, but our parents and grandparents were from Earth a long time ago. May I ask, what do you know of the past?”

“That this is our second beginning. There was a big explosion, or several of them, but the Holy Book was left.”

“This explosion, was it a meteor?”

“A what?”

“Something from up there.”

“No, giant explosions on our planet, caused by us, and most of Earth died, but not everybody nor all the animals, and we began again. That’s what they teach us in school.”

Nancy saw that Mr. Flynn looked like them, except for imbedded burn scars on his face and hands that seemed to be genetic. With his heavy clothes in this damp climate, she couldn’t see other areas of flesh, but observing the children and woman still at a distance, they seemed deformed in contrast to the crew and the videos they had seen of people previously on Earth. If they were common to the planet now, they were still human beings and would spare the crew the curse of a genetic decline from inbreeding. And maybe the crew could ease the hereditary mutation plight of the survivors.

“Is this place still called Ireland?”

“It is.”

“And you know of America?”

“Correct.”

“Do people go there from here?”

“Ah it’s a long journey. Some sailors go. Its over a week on a ship and few people left there.”

“No airplanes yet.”

“No what?”

“I guess not.”

“You say funny things. And you ask, is this still Ireland? How long ago did you leave Earth?”

“You couldn’t comprehend.”

“Tell me.”

“Centuries.”

“So you are preparing us for Him!”

“I can’t make promises I can’t keep.”

“But your husband said...”

“He’s NOT my husband, and don’t pay much attention to anything he says. It’s mostly bullsh…baloney. Or…blarney.”

“Ah, yes, we have those types. Would you care for coffee or tea? You’re too many to invite inside, but we’ll bring a pot out to you. It looks like you’d have cups, and you brought your own accommodation.”

“Either would be lovely, thank you, and to meet your family. As to our accommodation, it will do as a B and B.”

“A what?”

“Bed and breakfast. I’ve only heard of them myself. Never been here before.”

“Well, you’re welcome to remain with us, but could you move your building off our crops?”

“Not possible, I’m afraid, but what if we worked for you to compensate?”

“Do you know farming?”

“We don’t know anything about your ways, but we’re willing to learn”

“Well there’s the right attitude, and welcome home to you say to a place you’ve never been, and a world your kin left before any of mine I know about. Pleased to make you acquaintance.”

“I can definitely tell you that that’s mutual”

“So would it be coffee or tea you’d prefer?”

“Where do you get tea and coffee?”

“From sellers who get it from the ships.”

“Whatever you’d have we’ll have with you, and show you lots of pictures of what Earth used to be like.”

“Well coming right up then.”

They met and hosted the Flynn family in the ship, showed them DVDs of what Earth had been, and told them some of their flight experiences. It was then that Mr. Flynn informed Nancy, who seemed to be in charge, that there were indeed some things to be discussed about the child’s accusation of killers.

“One teen girl and one boy died separately by their own hand”

“Let me explain law here. I am a constable as well as a farmer. Crimes reported from elsewhere are prosecuted, because in many places there are no jurisdictions. For murder there is no statute of limitations. Trials are in Dublin, called capital of these isles.’”

“Do the other isles object?”

“Oh, probably if they knew. Maybe calling themselves the same. Few left here or there, any more than in America. Some of our forebears managed to survive by hiding in stocked caves and tunnels. But you digress like a solicitor. Tell me, how did the lass you mention die?”

Nancy told the story about the rope around her neck, removing and holding it, then letting it go----everything except the “just in case” knife.

‘And why did you let go of the rope?”

“Self defense.”

“Was it? Couldn’t you have held on?”

”No. She would have pulled me with her. The gravity conditioning.”

“You can prove that? Gravity force?”

“We’re on the ship.”

“If the rope was still on your throat, would that have stopped her falling? That was her plan, you say.”

“She must have thought so. On level surfaces, with the gravity conditioning, we could lift our feet in the magnetic shoes, but stairs were caverns that pulled you down. If the rope was on my neck, and it didn’t strangle me, she would have brought me with her. We both would have died. I didn’t send her out on the stairs. When I felt the hard pull, I knew that either I let go or go with her.”

The boy, his name was Bradford, overheard, and emboldened by his new freedom asked, “How did you get a noose off your neck so easily?”

Nancy scolded, “Kid!”

Flynn asked, “Well…How?”

“It was a loop not a noose.”

Bradford objected “The loops are nooses. How long did it take Elizabeth to run out of the room holding the end of the tether?”

“You don’t interrogate me, boy.”

“Though he has the makings of a lawyer. How long did it take, Ms Nancy?”

“A few minutes.”

From Bradford came, “You mean to say…”

“Easy son.”

Nancy asked, “Mr. Flynn, How long would it take you to get a rope off your neck if you had to?”

“Ah, more digression. Not me”

“I got it off fast, sure.”

“And where did the knife the boy slew himself with come from?”

“Rory once stole it from the kitchen. We all knew about it. It was a last resort precaution.”

“Did you have it with you when Elizabeth died?”

“Only to defend myself if necessary.”

“Not intending to use?”

“Not unless.”

“A loop or a noose, you’d have to loosen and raise it over your chin, get it over your head. Did you cut the tether off your neck?”

“That could hardly be considered a crime.”

“Yet her demise was convenient to you.”

“There was an inquiry. The knife never came up. It’s irrelevant.”

‘And the other death?”

She told him the facts of that as she knew them, including Rory’s entry to help.

“There was motivation by someone.”

“We had an inquest. There were no witnesses or evidence.”

“Were you not a witness?”

“I woke up to him dying. Please…this is hard.”

“Why would the child make that accusation?”

“I don’t know. He wasn’t born yet”

“They tell that in America, where your parents were from, in that time, motivation was the prosecution’s argument, and often the defense’s justification.”

“Times have changed, huh?”

“We are inclined to go with motivation for conviction, not as an excuse nor a reason for leniency. But we still need witnesses and proof, and by your statements there weren’t any. I will need to see your records but I am puzzled, a state I rarely admit to. You, young Bradford, seem passionate about all of this.”

“I believe in accountability.”

“As I’ve just said, so do I. But you’re very emotive. You have a personal stake I believe.”

“I do.”

“Well, it won’t change the disposition, but perhaps you could share what it is.”

“Elizabeth was my sister I never met.”

It was Nancy to gasp, “WHAT? How?”

“Her mother is my mother, and Rory is my father.”

“Rory! That was a complete betrayal of our code for survival”

“NO IT WASN’T. Elizabeth was already dead. Remember, Nancy?  And her parents didn’t have any more children together.”

Flynn continued, “I don’t believe all facts were fully revealed in your inquiries, but if the documents reconcile what you say, by our law once a case is adjudicated anywhere it can’t be revisited. If your archives show such, I think we will have to say, after centuries, bygones are bygones.”

Nancy didn’t see it in her interest to remind him that to them it was only decades, but Bradford said, “Not for me.”

Flynn said, “Ms Nancy, if this matter is declined by Dublin, which is likely, I think you’d do well, as we hear they used to say in America, to be watching your back.”

“Counsel taken to heart, your honor.”

“We’ll have no sarcasm if that’s what you intend. Be glad if you are not questioned by the Dublin Court. They are not as gentle as me.”

“I’ll expel a sigh of relief for that. Rory do you think you could be a parent now?”

“I never knew.”

“How could you not suspect? And you know now. Talk to the kid.”

“A lot of questions he’ll have to ask me. I don’t know anything about being a father.”

“Neither did I. Nobody does. You just wing it’

“Don’t you mean mother?”

“Mother and father. I raised Susan. As you know, the married couple never had children. She kept miscarrying.”

“Yeah, she miscarried one of mine.”

“You can’t prove you were ever even with her, ‘stud’. She denies it. You’re Just trying to boast.”

“Now you identify as male and female, Nancy?”

“Would you like to wrestle?”

“No, because you might have the knife.”

Bradford said, “I wouldn’t want him claiming me. And my parents, especially my stand in father, never wanted me. It was my mother that told me who my biological father is.”

Nancy offered, “Rory, maybe you better also be watching your…step.”

Flynn mused, “Like the Greeks. There were some texts of plays discovered that we read in school. Written by people long before even you. The moral was, the sins of the fathers are visited on the children.”

Nancy had read the Greeks, and was relieved he said “sins” not “crimes”.

Rory groused, “They forgot to blame the women too.”

Flynn said, “Not completely.” He continued, “I wonder, Ms Nancy, would it be possible I could adopt this fledgling little barrister here?”

“We’re in your country. Is it possible?”

“Of course, but I’d want the lad to be willing, and the consent of the parents now raising him.”

Bradford said, “You’re the first to ever show any interest, sir.”

 Flynn tried to make it sound like a joke when he said, “But only if you promise not to kill anybody.”

“Its others who are inclined toward killing, not me, whatever about those plays.”

“They allowed for redemption too. Nancy, there will be no charges in Dublin if your records confirm what you’ve told. You are people from another time, yet people like us, though far more advanced. You can help us catch up on what we lost.”

Nancy said, “We’ll try, and with all due respect, Mr. Flynn, and understanding your yearning, maybe you’d be better off staying just as you are.”
“And are we not the same as you?”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

     WHO?  story

                                                                  WHO?                                                                                                 

                                                                 story              1898 words                                                                                         

The beautiful slim aesthetic young lady, past her teens and twenties now, was a riveting sight of sequins on a stage, and a master show woman, themes and lighting precise, sound that intimately reached  a 60,000 person live audience She was doing a Your Town tour, off the track of Vegas and Singapore and European capitals, in small places that could still accommodate the mass with stadiums or adventure parks, This stop was in Dorrmie, Eekland, a little spot of western Europe all its own. Lady arrived in the middle of the night and stayed surreptitiously at a motel, with most of the army of Eekland guarding it. She was at a disadvantage regarding  intel in that she knew nothing about Dorrmie, nor that there had been a minor fuss because she was playing the same night as Pete Cully’s band, who were booked previously to Lady for 200 tickets, a Dorrmie record at a downtown bar, and it had been a loyalty issue for Eeklanders, half the population of which would be at Lady’s concert.Joe Loony was Mike Cully’s manager, and also  the   announcer at the  ice hockey arena where Lady’s concert was to happen, This is on a CD .Loony told Mike he could probably get some of Lady’s fans down to The Hole for Mike’s 11:00 PM set, but Mike said, “Nah, man. Its not just celebrity Her style is not mine. I do old Johnny B Goode loud amps raucous country rock and roll.”

“Some of them will like what you do.”

“Its sneaky. We had the conflict of same dates, but I still have my tickets sold and my style is my style.”

“I’ll try to send a few”

“If you insist I can’t argue, but her fans won’t be mine.”

“I’ll get all of her 60,000 fans here.”

Mike laughed. “Where will they fit?”

“On the grassy knoll outside.”

That was a reference to an incline of land related to the JFK assassination that Mike  had  never heard  used  in any other context.

“Can you call it a sloping lawn?”

“Okay. They’ll fit on the lawn.”

 “The sound  wont carry outside...”

“At midnight? Bet the neighbors won’t agree. Your Maybeline will carry.”

“By our contract I can’t stop you. If I could I would,”

“Just leave it to me.”

 She had the crowd. They were transformed. They were   hers, She was theirs. It was a magical enchantment. Eyes glowed with ecstasy, some produced naturally by mental and physical emotion, and some by another kind of…All during the gig, fan s had thrown love notes, wedding rings, photos and articles of clothing at the stage. Some had thrown all their clothes, were completely naked,and she achknowledged that with just, “Wow!’

Shouts began coming, “Take yours off.” She smiled and expressed that she needed a moment before the finale, but she seemed to be feeling she was losing control. She was set up in the center of the rink, the audience in seats intimidatingly above  her.

THEN, when she’d caught her breath and was read for the last song, an announcement came from ABOVE, a voice on the crude loudspeaker system for games, that said, “Will you come hear Mike Cully’s gig? He invited you. He’s on at eleven downtown,”

The arena was then so quiet she tapped her mike to see if it was on. It was.

“What?”

“Will you come to hear Pete Cully?”

“Wow! Can I finish here first, okay? I can’t think.”

“But then you’ll tell us?”

“Sure.”

She strummed  the guitar and started her signature closing, which had been her first hit.

While she was singing, staff went thought the arena cutting wires on the many PA speakers throughout the venue, but there were too many to get all, and they couldn’t; find where the sound was initiating from.

The audience was still enraptured, yet combined  into something all its own, no mind driving it. At the end of the last song there was just a sound  like sizzling, as if something was being fried, maybe brains.

And then that omniscient voice came again.

“Will you hear Mike Culley?”

“Somebody can arrange…? Who is Mike Kelly?”

“Mike Cully?”

Static belched over pronunciation of the last name.

“Who?”

“WHO/” he parodied with contempt.

“Sorry, I just didn’t get you…  the name.”

”You just don’t get it?!” Again in derision: ”WHO?”

From the frenetic audience, sizzling was turning to hissing. That word of displeasure from above, WHO?, overtook them.

‘WHO?/” Our home boy. It started up at the front, at the stage, not where she’d want it, and if rolled up through the stadium, a chant of  ”WHO?”  She  had  her security and half the Army of Eekland guarding the stage, but now security was getting pelted by water bottles, belt buckles and shoes, and soon so was Lady. Then came chairs. The audience started smashing through the defense. Some of the soldiers hit back with batons, fired water, but the onslaught didn’t stop.

The reached Lady, plummeted while caressing her, ravished and ravaged, couldn’t decide which, lugged and hugged and kissed, then stripped  her naked, slapped, molested and bit, and finally, as if acquiring a new taste, began eating her

 It was assumed she died, but nothing remained to prove such. It was postulated that flesh was ingested, blood  drank, bones gone as souvenirs as were all the articles thrown on the stage. Afterwards most of the mob went in the direction of The Hole where Mile Cully was scheduled to play, but Mike, they say, was tipped and left town in a fast  moving car, Chuck Berry setting the pace on Mike’s headset.

It seemed impossible to prosecute. Phones had  been barred entry. No evidence was left. They did CT scans on ticket holders. stomachs, held endless interviews with people who wouldn’t incriminate themselves, especially Joe Loony, and did searches of premises with warrants. Not a bone fragment, fingernail or piece of a garment was ever recovered. The blood  might as well have been licked from the floor of the stage. Maybe was.

It was is if for one moment she had been there, and then the very next she just wasn’t.

PART  TWO    WHO?                

Now the real reason saliva results from audience showed  none of Lady’s DNA is  none of that concert end happened as rumored  by legend.. The batons and water kept the audience off the stage long enough that a hidden trap door opened and Lady did a Houdini on an elevator to the basement. When questioned, fans who had been at the back or middle of the facility could  not see what was happening below, and for those who did get there, she was gone, Yet everyone believed the fanfabulation ruse. A few said they didn’t think anybody touched  her, but then---where was she?

Joe Loony had a jacked up 50s Chevy waiting, with a black wig and grey pregnancy gown that she donned  as  he  revved that tuned engine and sped to The Hole, where Joe got out of the driver’s seat and Mike Cully got in. Joe offered, “Good set, Lady,” as Mike  left with her. She already had a passport and a California drives’ license as Annie Craig, and since she would be traceable  using  her cards now,  a good bit of cash preserved. Mike  had left a note on the door for his fans promising eventual refunds,  and saying “Lot of people coming, gotta go now.”

 It was almost immediate that her siblings, aunts and uncles and cousins began squabbling for shares of her estate. He parents stayed out of that. The relatives were frustrated ed by a formality. She was missing, not declared dead. There was no corpus delecti, no certificate of a death.

Let’s go back a bit to between that first conversation between Mike and Joe Loony and then Lady’s concert date.. When the dispute with Mike came up, she  met with  them to quaff  it, find the price to get Mike to reset his gig night. She held the consultation at the Sheraton’s VIP Meeting room in the capital of Eekland. She had taken it upon herself, at Loony’s request, to listen to some of his CDs and liked what she heard.  But never mind that, this was business with a rival. They had cocktails---she only had one---and  Loony asked, “What do you think of his music?”

“Oldies but greaties,”

“Could you help him?”

“Well he’s right here. Can’t he speak for himself.”

Mike said, “You know. Managers.”

“Oh, I know. That’s why I do it myself. How could I promote you?”

“I don’t want you to.”

Joe Loony’s face got so red it looked  like a cherry that could burst.

“Dude, this is Lady.”

“Pleased to meet you. I’m Mike.”

“Likewise, And why don’t you want promotion?”

“I’m a bohemian. That’s all I am .Bad  enough people stare at a guy with long hair, but I can walk in the street, go into KFC.”

 “I miss KFC. Oh, I can get anything delivered, but the ambience.”

Loony was incredulous. “At KFC”

“Yes, the plastic spoons and forks, The strollers and families with older kids and  outside the U.S. all those people who are binging and finger licking loving it.”.

Loony said, “They’re getting poisoned worse than if they shot fentanyl.”

Mike said, “No way.”

And from Loony: “You don’t contradict me.”

Lady was laughing.

Loony explained, “That’s  how he is.”

Like the magistrate she was accustomed to being in a court of her own, Lady counseled, ”Guys, you can’t negotiate with me  by arguing with each other.”

Mike said, “We’re  not negotiating.”

Loony was becoming apoplexy. “Why  are we  here then?”

Lady stayed calm as always., “So, what  is it you want?”

Loony said, “Promotion of course.”

“I didn’t ask you.”

Loony wiped his face so hard with a handkerchief she looked to see it there wasn’t  red  juice on it.

Mike said, “I just want to do my gigs.”

“You’re satisfied with your life?”

“I’m free. You’re not. I wouldn’t change places.”

 “Is that what this is? Some kind of trick? Are you psychic?”

“That’s  how you feel, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, sometimes. I sought fame but fame traps you. What would  my life be if not this?”

“Join me. That’s  my negotiation .”

“Join you how?”

“Run away with me. We’ll figure out anything else later.”

Loony said to Mike, who was actually older than him, “Kid, she  needs a little time to think about that one. And  what are you, a communist?”

“No, they’re all dictators, fakers. The democratic people’s republic of fill it in. They’re none of those.  We should address the m formally as what they are, The Elite’s Military Dictatorship of…”

Loony raged,”And what’s your life philosophy?”

“Cullyism. Chuch of Latter Day Hippies”

Lady asked, “How many congregants do you ?”

“Only one. Me.”

“Does your church have a Diety?”

“Doesn’t need one. Does Scientology?”

“You might be making a convert. Actually Mr. Loony, I would pay a fortune to  just disappear out of Eelkland, and Mike you can have anything you demand.”

“Nothing”.

 “Except me.”

“Not that either.”

“Unless?”

“Not a condition.”

As already stated, they fled together from the The Hole, and what happened after that--- well, that’s  a story for another time,  isn’t it.

This is a short collection of several new stories with a  common element---though not theme--- that lends me to call it

                                                              LIVING ARRANGEMENTS

                                      NOSTALGIA                                      published by Meniscus Journal, Austalia, 2023   

                                story by Patrick Breheny                       pjbreheny@hotmail.com          

     It was night and he was standing on a wooden ledge, wide enough, maybe 18 inches across, to hold them, four stories up on the side of a wood frame building. Light was coming from open windows above them. His back was to the outer world, and facing him from against the wall was a pretty blonde woman whose head was on his chest, her arms around him holding tightly. It felt as if she was keeping him from falling, though nothing was holding her up but him.

     On another ledge to the right was a kid, maybe 12 years old by size, darkness where he/she was, too much so to determine boy or girl. The kid might have grabbed the sill two feet above and pulled up, but that was risky, and body language showed frozen- catatonic- with- fear. The people inside had lowered a board, same dimensions as the one they all stood on, and secured it lengthwise along the child’s body, like a straitjacket, with straps from windows above and below. The kid wouldn’t fall, but seemed no less terrified.

    He and the woman couldn’t move because of each other. He was holding on to different flimsy grips he alternated between. One felt like plywood, another weaker like a section of linoleum. Whatever was going on with this building, there seemed to be renovation, there were planks stacked on a balcony to his left, from where the people above got the ones holding the kid up. Any one of those boards would be sufficient to let him move along the building to the balcony railing, but the people inside wouldn’t talk to them. They looked ethereal from the dim light above, like silhouettes, and wouldn’t answer questions, just spoke among themselves. He thought he understood their reasoning. You discussed the solution to a problem, you didn’t talk to the problem. He’d heard one say to the other, “They’re coming”, by which he surmised assistance had been called for, but they’d been there a long time, they were hungry, it was getting cold, and if they’d just lay that plank across. The side of the building had a grainy stucco texture, that was nothing to hold on to, but it seemed an advantage over a slick finish, maybe could help.

    One of the shadowy beings was above him, and he tried conversation again. He asked if they could lay one of those boards over from the balcony. He was again ignored, but the woman grabbed him so hard he knew he wouldn’t be crossing any plank unless they did it together.

     If municipal help had been summoned, they were very tardy. The secured kid was as stiff as a petrified totem pole, but at least couldn’t fall. He wondered where the kid came from. Where did the woman come from? He was getting comfortable with her face against his chest. He had no sexy urges, considering their plight that was understandable, but along with the physical connection he was feeling another one. He was getting attached to this situation. Their dilemma had continued for so long it was becoming what is---a kind of temporary status quo. He didn’t want to fall, but he wasn’t sure anymore he wanted to get rescued either. Maybe they could just stay put.

     He heard her---snore. That secure with him, she’d fallen asleep. He was exhausted too. Just a couple of winks himself?  If he could just---doze a little---and still keep his grip. Dangerous.  He shouldn’t…drop off….pushed that pun away…but… as he was almost transitioning…to a trance… he abruptly… CAME BACK… because the plywood he was holding started to loosen.

     He moved his fingers along to find a firmer spot, but his arm and hand were now in an awkward position, and he was just clutching another section of the same plywood held by the same adhesive. How much longer before that started separating too?

     His start awake had awoken her too, and she brought one hand back from his shoulder long enough to rub her fingers along his chest and smile up at him, as if to say this has been going on for so long it would just all be okay.

     He looked down once, then quickly away. It was a drop. If anyone was coming, where were they? Much as he thought he sort of liked this, it was getting colder. They couldn’t really sleep. They had to eat. He was thirsty. If no one came---he was beginning to consider the possibility that no one would---they’d have to fall. Only the kid would be left, secured and alone, safe and trapped.

     Suddenly they were awash in light. It came from below and above, motors grumbled, a rotor blade swished the air. From the windows above they dropped nets and harnesses, and when he and she had a net around them they helped each other fit the harnesses on, then were pulled up in them. After a net was around the kid, they released the restraints, but the kid was panicked, couldn’t get the harness on, so they pulled the net up with what could have been a captured wild animal scrambling frantically inside.

     The responders were very business like. That’s to say, they did answer questions but

didn’t engage. Made promises. She said, “I’m thirsty,” and one replied, “We have some water for you,” but didn’t offer any. The kid said, “My feet are numb,” and another said, “The doctor will look at you.” Wherever the doctor was.

     He said, “I lost my shoe.” Just now he had. It fell off, but he couldn’t see it anywhere.

Another of them said, “We’ll find it,” though nobody seemed to look for it.

     They were at another location, back at a house where they resided with a lot of other people, like roommates. He had some kind of trauma amnesia. He couldn’t remember what the living arrangement was, nor any of the people, including her. Especially her. He missed the physical closeness to her, wanted that back. An EMS medic in a spotless white starched uniform. had come back to this house with them, and he understood she might have to ask him some questions, but he didn’t like that she talked so nicely to him, nor that it seemed to him he was being unprofessional with his handsome smiles.

     He needed his shoe. He asked the good looking smiley EMS guy what the address they’d been at before was. He told him it was 2112 Haupthaus. His radio was blaring static, growling voices that sounded undecipherable adding to the racket, but somehow he understood the transmission. He said he had another call, and was going to have to go. Goodbye! Goodbye, but he knew there were a thousand more like him.

     He asked if she would go back with him to get his shoe. She smiled sympathetically, but sighed, “Tonight?” He said he needed it. She said, “I don’t have it in me to go back  now.” Seeing his disappointment, she offered, “Maybe tomorrow?”

      After work tomorrow he’d be near 2112 Haupthaus. He could get his shoe then He

did have others but these were his tan- to- almost orange leather semi-boots, expensive and classy, a pair he wore so often they seemed a part of him. If he came back here to get her to go back with him to look for it, that would be a lot of unnecessary traveling. It was okay with him, but would she know he’d done that? Did she know where he worked? He could only remember some things, like where this house was, and where Haupthaus was. Did she have a boyfriend? A job? She must do things that didn’t include him All he knew was that he’d held her up, and she should help him look for his shoe. Yet though she wasn’t secured to anything she’d been holding him up too. He wanted her head back on his chest. He wanted her clasping him for precious life, even as he knew it was because she wasn’t doing it now that it was so important to him.

     He’d been falling in love while she---she’d fallen into a survival reflex. Still he wanted that moment back when he asked for a board to cross alone to the balcony, and she’d embraced him with a drowner’s clinch. He realized now that at that wonderful instant when she woke up, smiled up at him and rubbed her fingers along his chest, it was because of embarrassment to recognize she’d been acting on instinct.

     He wished they were still on the ledge. Of course if they were, they’d have fallen off by now, but so what? He had fallen anyway. They had that shared experience, and she’d have to remember too, but he would re-live it often.--- forgetting he’d  been cold and hungry and thirsty, losing feeling in his arm from holding on, and impatient at the uncaring pace of a rescue arrival. All of that was inconsequential, none of it was part of the snapshot he’d recall, a lovely lie captured by his mind to be viewed and felt any time he wanted to put it on his screen. What a time it was!

      titles are  NOSTALGIA. SHADOW AND LIGHT, BACK HOME, BACK HOME Part 2, ICE MAN, ICE MAN 2, EYES AND EARS,  OCEANIC and OCEANIC  2, and spin offs from ICE MAN, ie the EPILOGUE and  the story ANOTHER TIME. (Last I checked, this page cuts off during EYES AND EARS  Links to it and the stories here listed after it can also be found in the STORIES INDEX page)  

JUST A LOOK Part One and Part Two are new, but not posted here, can be found under STORY 31, link from  SHORT STORIES INDEX page

                                                                     SHADOW AND LIGHT

 I see it now on the page. The shadow of my hand and the pen between my fingers. I am here. Here.  My form blocks the light. Sure, it could be a hallucination, but who could be having that hallucination of his shadow who wasn’t casting a shadow somehow? I create full or partial darkness. So do you, you old shadow maker, and it confirms that you materially exist. No, nothing to get a big head about, even if it might give you one. Half the world is a shadow, at different times. I know you know. Its called night. Is there a shadow hanging over you? No, it’s on you.

Your shadow doesn’t always follow you. Sometimes it precedes, the light behind you. This can be disconcerting if it happens suddenly. Afraid of your own shadow? At least startled by it, yes alarmed that maybe its not your shadow, not the branches of a tree, not a protruding sign., but a shadow shaped like your own. Somebody lurking behind you.

But with Cal, there was always an extra shadow.  When he turned around, there wasn’t anybody or anything there. It was unsettling and unexplainable, but as with everything that just is, it WAS. It was like his constant runny nose, but there was no antihistamine to stop a duplicate shadow.

In high school, it preceded him into the classroom, and he wasn’t the only one who saw it. The school was co-ed with assigned seats, and in his Algebra class he was behind Bernice Adams, who said first day, “Stop moving so much. It’s distracting.”

“I haven’t moved a hair.”

She looked. He wasn’t moving, but the shadow was.

Bernice, who planned on being a Psychology major in college and become a social counsellor, had an explanation and spread the rumor. He was suffering from Present Traumatic Stress Disorder.

That description didn’t satisfy Butch Lenning who strongly objected to the shade on him, and threatened Cal with , ”After school.”

Cal kept the appointment of honor around the corner, that tradition of showing up to fight someone you can’t win against and taking your beating. Since Butch called the event, he made the first move forward to punch, and Cal’s shadow enveloped him. He began punching at where it seemed to be coming from, which wasn’t Cal. Butch swung mightily at the air. He no longer knew where Cal was. A bit like Foreman against Ali, but Ali got hit and had to hit Foreman when he’d exhausted himself. Cal didn’t have to do that to Butch. He just finally fainted dead away. A TKO for Cal, who hadn’t even touched Butch. Butch’s seconds poured water from plastic bottles on his head and face, and he came back. Recalling with awe what happened, he uttered, “It was a total eclipse.”

It was then that Cal began to think his alternate was a gift, not a curse. He no longer endured but embraced it. His shadow was a protector, a guardian that came from…somewhere.

The first time he went on a date with Betty who became his wife, the shadow draped long across the carpet at the Paradise Theater. It alarmed her, or course and she exclaimed, “What is that?”

“Ceiling light.”

“The ceilings have neon.”

“It’s a creative design you don’t perceive.”

“No.”

“We’re in a movie theater. Show biz. It’s for entertainment.”

“I don’t get it.”

“The architects did it.”

“There aren’t any patterns in the ceiling that could cast that shadow.”

“Special effects. Magic needs illusion.”

“I don’t know how that could happen.”

“Well, neither do I.”

She just accepted in time, like him. He had his moving shadow, and he had

another one. It was a me and my shadow kind of thing.

Getting a job---employers just seemed alarmed by him, though couldn’t say why. He did find one construction job, bringing heavy wooden beams, with a partner, up to carpenters who nailed them in. These carpenters were faster than machines, than pistons, nails between their finger, their lips, driving a nail in with one swift accurate stroke. And they were talking trash as they did it. How do you measure intelligence?

About 4:000 PM the foreman showed up, and said “What have you guys been doing all day, fucking off?”

Cal thought, “Working their asses off.”

The foreman shouted at him, ”What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“I heard ‘They’ve been working their asses off. You guys heard him?”

“No.”

“Nothing.”

“Louie, you want to work tomorrow? What did he say?” Louie was his partner carrying the beams, a trainee too.

“I couldn’t tell. He mumbles to himself a lot. Kind of funny, you know.”

“Okay, okay. Louie, you’re OK for tomorrow. New kid, Cal, last day. You don’t have it in you for this kind of work.

It was like that everywhere for him, but he’d find the dregs jobs. He did marry Betty and they had children, a boy and a girl, and carefully watched the children’s growth. No, it didn’t seem genetic. It was his and his alone. Why him? Why not him? Maybe he’d find out sometime. At the End.

Then it got weirder. It cast itself on other people, in their shape. And he kept getting the transmissions, their thoughts. In a panic, he called the Pentagon and told them he wanted to talk to them. He didn’t expect them to give credence, but to his amazement, they gave him an appointment. He postulated they were of a mind set, Got to keep up on what the nuts are thinking.

He was met by a PFC, a young black girl --yes, girl, about 17, in Army fatigues and boots, and a name tag that read HARRIS, who acknowledged his dismay with “Something wrong?”

“No, no. Its just that…I thought I’d be talking to an officer.”

“They’re busy.”

She put a writing pad, with a ball point pen clipped to the top, in front of him, and said, “Just write it all down.”

“Look, I know I’m being recorded.”

“I swear I’m not recording you.”

“Well maybe you’re not…”

“You’re antsy about listening devices?”

“And writing would be like a confession.”

“Just an account. A confession would imply you did something wrong.”

“Smart girl.”

“PFC.  I have this chevron.”

“Congratulations.”

“I do hope to go further.”

“If they give you interviews like this already, you probably will.”

“Agreed. Do you want to be alone with your thoughts?”

“I came in to talk, not write.”

“Well, I can’t force you to write. It’s just that that would be more organized, but go ahead then, tell me what you have for us.”

“You can’t be qualified.”

“I have clearance.”

“But…”

“What”

“You’re a kid.”

“I’m going to OCS. I want to be an officer.”

“You’re not yet.”

“If you’re going to be stubborn, you’ll have to wait a while to see an officer. AND GET THAT OFF OF ME.”

“I have no control over it.”

“Ayee!”

“And you’re thinking, Lieutenant Colonel Williamson is listening, and you were doing pretty good, but what will he think now?”

The door that opened freely from the outside but needed a card key from the inside suddenly opened, and a Lt. Col by insignia, and in khaki uniform, entered and said, “Well done, Private. I can take it now.”

His shadow on the new arrival as the PFC left, Cal said, “You are a full colonel.”

“Impressive. I was just promoted, haven’t changed rank yet on my uniform. What else do you know.?”

“You have a conflict. You want to be loyal to your wife, but now you’re a colonel, you can have this young PFC Harris assigned to your unit, scheduled for guard duty and have the Officer of The Day pick her as Colonel’s Orderly. Then she can choose to sleep in the guard shack, or in the colonel’s quarters. Quite a compromising situation for her, and you could absolve yourself of making the choice. Something might happen, something might not.”

“I won’t put her in the situation.”

“I know that too, but you considered it.”

“Temptation. Get that fuckin’ shadow off of me.”

“I can’t.”

“We’re going to teach you to control it.”

 They couldn’t verify what he said people were thinking unless he was near the person being read, like the colonel. There could certainly be personal opportunities for himself, like at poker tables in Vegas where he could know what other bettors were thinking. If he could learn to control the shadow’s movement, as Col Williamson was wishing.

He was now beginning to wonder, as he was sure they were too, If he could read thoughts, could he plant them? And initiate actions?

Cal was conscripted into the Army at the starting rank of Specialist 5^th Class, which was the pay grade of a sergeant but without authority. He was exempted from Basic Training, soldiering not what they had in mind for him, but he was assigned to an artillery battalion in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, of which newly promoted Colonel   Williamson was the commanding officer, though that was cover, he was working for the CID Criminal Investigation Division. Cal could live with his own family off post in town, in Lawton, granted a housing supplement for married personnel.

The colonel had pastime inclinations besides all things military. There was an amateur theater group at Fort Sill, though more accurately it was off the post because the battalion was physically located outside the gate, by virtue of there not enough space inside the gate. The colonel was a director of some of the plays---a hobby to him---and he invited Cal to hang out at the theater. He acknowledged, “It will give me more opportunity to observe what you can do.”

Williamson set up an experiment. A young Army dependent was given an audition and told to read the character’s lines from the script, which she had not seen nor read, but that Cal was holding. The other actor trying out was reading from script, a copy of which she did not have.

The kid objected, “I don’t know the lines.”

Williamson kindly told her, “That doesn’t matter. I’ll describe the character and you just improvise. Respond for your character in dialogue as you think the character would.”

The young lady seemed not to want to appear unworldly and naïve. She said, “Oh, like method acting?”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose so.”

“I’m just 18.”

“We know that, Shannon. All I’m asking is that you try. Don’t be nervous. There is no wrong answer. You’re going on intuition.”

Cal, sitting with the script, with lights from the lighting booth lit to disguise that his alternate shadow was on Shannon, was to silently say the lines to her. Would he? What was in it for him? But he wanted to know too. Williamson also knew the dialogue, had memorized it.

What Cal passed to Shannon was sometimes dialogue exactly, sometimes what he himself made up, and also allowed her to improvise. She repeated everything he sent that came from the script and from his prompts.

Williamson was impressed, but, having hoped she’d recite line for line, was also disappointed. Cal needed training. If he could only partially transfer thoughts, how could he ever command actions?

Shannon asked, “Did I do good?”

Williamson said, “Oh yes, yes. Splendidly. You get the part.” Taking into consideration, he was, that he didn’t have a large talent pool and Shannon was the only one who tried out for the part.

Cal wanted to see how much he could do now. As the rehearsal was ending and people were picking up papers and bags, and he got close enough to Shannon to cast alternative shade, he transmitted to her, “Lets all celebrate and get a drink.” And she said it.

She followed that though as herself, saying “I can’t believe I said that. I’m not even old enough to drink.”

Williamson said, “I think we who are all old enough can get a beer at the PX, and Shannon, you’d settle for a coke?”

“Sure. I didn’t mean drink alcohol.”

Williamson looked at Cal and said, “Not bad for a rookie.”

Cal thought at first the colonel meant he was the rookie, but upon examining his shadow, he was referring to Shannon.

Cal agreed just to agree. “Maybe a young Bette Davis.”

Could Cal be weaponized? Could he concentrate and tell people what to do? Could he convince enemy soldiers that dying was inevitable anyway, so why not just do now?

Of course if Cal could do that, he could do it in his own country too. If he could control the actions of people everywhere by just getting them under his shadow, he could find a way to rule the world.

The Army considered that possibility too. Fort Sill had a jail and a stockade operated by the MPs and CID, and a small Super Max facility. His military occupation specialty was reassigned to “priority subject of examination”, his work location to the fort’s own special Big Max, which just for him, sole occupant, was lit from floors, walls and overhead, no shadows possible, all cancelled by other lights.  The guard staff were corporals under a sergeant, supervised by a major. Cal of course was on duty at all times, sleeping or awake, could not leave.

It didn’t work. The extra shadow came. He swore he couldn’t control it. They used food deprivation, loud music so he couldn’t sleep, pain coercion. A tortured prisoner will make up lies to stop the punishment, but Cal couldn’t make the shadow disappear or control it. They began to accept that. He was useless to them confined, but he was neutralized, and they’d keep him until they could think of how to use him.
There still was the genetic theory. He wasn’t allowed visitors nor outside information, knew nothing of the welfare of Betty and the kids. He was just told, ”Don’t worry, they’re alright. ” Then they supplied him with an endless parade of beautiful paid female volunteers to birth his children. He was assured Betty  would never know. But he did.

Just when Cal was thinking if they were keeping him forever anyway, life in a Super Max sex paradise really wasn’t that bad, they told him not one of the newborn they birthed had an extra shadow. They gave the program up as hopeless, and he was back to 24/7 sensory deprivation. Now he really wanted revenge, but that wasn’t going to be easy from inside a Super Max.

Unless he got creative. There were his guards, the corporals. One was Duke, who he knew, though was never verbally told, had domestic strife. So he’d kindly inquire with such as, ”How are you today, Duke?”

“Same same, another day.”

Which led to, “I have no life in here, so if I ask about yours, its vicarious experience, like I had a TV or could see movies. When you say ‘same, same’ you can’t mean its as boring as mine.”

“Sometimes I wish.”

“Trouble?”

“Sure.”

“What kind?”

 “Well, I can tell you. You never get out and talk to people. Our economy. My wife. The kid. Prices are high now, even with the off post supplement. My wife needed to work too, and---well, Lawton’s an Army town. For young women, most jobs offered are dancing or serving drinks in the bars.”

“Are you afraid…?”

“No, no, she wouldn’t do that. But she does meet all these good looking young GIs. Its… disconcerting.”

“You’re a bit insecure. Jealous.”

“I am.”

He thought if Duke could confide, he should too.

“I relate. I can’t have visitors or outside contact, but Betty must be facing the same problems, maybe she’s working in a bar too. That thought kills me. What’s the issue with your son?”

“Turning into a little juvenile delinquent. Only 12 and hanging around with the tough ones. Got arrested for fighting and vandalism. And I’m afraid he’ll get into the drugs.”

“Don’t you discipline?”

“Of course. But from my own personal experience, that just made me worse.”

“You were a bad one?”

“In need of a purpose. It didn’t get too bad.”

“You found the Army?”

“Just in time, I think before I went down the tunnel.”

The guards were trained to stay outside the cell and always avoid that shadow, but Duke’s familiarity with Cal was causing him to let down his “guard.’ There was a window Duke had told him was in the corridor, off at an angle Cal couldn’t see to, nor any light from.

 Duke had once slipped by saying he was the daytime guard. Otherwise Cal would not know when was day or night. He asked, ”Duke, what time is it now?”

“Can’t tell you that, Number One.” Cal was Number One, but only Duke was so intimate as to address him as anything.

“Can you tell me---what’s the weather like today?”

“Have no guidance on telling you that.”

“But if you weren’t told not to-- can you just look? I can’t.”

“I don’t know…”

“I mean, just is it rainy, sunny, what?”

Duke was close enough to the bars to cast on if shadow cooperated.

Cal knew Duke was contemplating regulations, as he turned his head from Cal and glanced toward the window.

With the shadow cast on him. Cal knew what he’d say before he said it, which was, “Its actually a beautiful day.”

“Perfect?”

“Could be, except for except for.”

He said telepathically, “But it is, Duke. It is a beautiful day. Do what you know you really want to do. Lie down right here, close to me and these bars, peaceful and comfortable, loose of those family and financial conflicts, and relax.”

Duke tensed, hesitated.

Cal relayed, “For a moment. You’ll feel better. It’s the thing to do.”

Duke did it, lay on the hard, cold ceramic floor, but the shadow was fitting him precisely, consoling and covering like a warm comforter.

 Cal continued silently, “And surrender to a deep slumber.”

Duke went to sleep, his breathing relaxed and even.

 In his soothing inner tone, Cal continued his counsel.  “Now make your heart stop beating, and free yourself of all the turmoil in this world.”

The cell keys were in Duke’s pockets. Cal cast at the surveillance cameras and told all watching to erase the feed and block out all personal memories of. He dragged Duke into the cell, switched clothes with him, and possessed his body. What he left behind was a shell, a dead zombie that had once been Cal.

He recalled first going into Max, he had all Duke’s plastic pass keys, so he knew how to get out, and when greeted by colleagues he just gave a busy wave.

The general felt Williamson knew Cal better than anyone, and used him to track. Cal wouldn’t have much money--- whatever cash Duke had in his pockets, and his ATM cards, but not the pins numbers. .He was also in duty fatigues. He could only get out of Lawton by car or bus, and his ID would be his Army ID card and his driver’s license. Greyhound was sometimes checking IDs, sometimes not. By luck, Duke was recorded the day before Williamson checked as purchasing a ticket to Tulsa. He was also remembered on the bus and noticed in the Tulsa bus depot, a G.I in battle attire in a civilian setting, but the trail ran out of witnesses after that.

 Williamson knew Duke had to get out of Army fatigues, had little money, and was homeless and conspicuous. He’d have to at least change attire, or the complete persona again, and find somewhere to stay. He was probably still in Tulsa, but why Tulsa? All he had enough cash to get to?

Cal roamed the skid row area downtown, checked out the prospective shelters and missions for lodging, and saw the public portable toilets for the homeless. He also saw an elderly woman go into one, and when he knew no one noticed, followed her in. He did that quickly, surprising her before she moved toward the commode. He prevented her scream with a quick hand muffling her mouth but said gently, “ I just want to give you a dollar.” With the other hand, he placed a bill in one of hers. He knew that gesture was enough to prevent the scream. He could shadow her now and transfer, but he needed information, so released his hand over her mouth.

She spoke first, “I’m too old for that and I never did what you want anyway.”

“You misunderstand. I respect my elderly brethren. But I need help too. Don’t know Tulsa, need a place to stay, where to get some food.”

“Aint you in the military, or young people just think that’s cool clothes now?”

“A little of both, I think. I’ve been discharged. Do you stay at a shelter?”

“Usually Helping Hand. Have to check in before five.”

“I do thank you. My name is Duke.”

“So I see. Don’t they just put your last name on the tag?”

“I go by both. And your name, if we meet up there?”

“I just go by one name too, Duke. Its Cassie.”

 “How are the accommodates at Helping Hand?”

“Don’t expect the Waldorf.”

His shadow was on her.

“Well its nice to make your acquaintance, Cassie. I think we’re going to see a lot of each other. Sit down now on that toilet lid and catch your breath. Just relax for a moment.”

When he shelled Duke, Cal didn’t know nor care where his spirits went, but Cassie was ornery. He had invaded her body, but her essence remained. He was in charge  but  sensed she would complain and nag if and  when she chose.

 The day after Williamson went to Tulsa it was on TV, in the papers, that an AWOL soldier from Fort Sill was discovered in a public toilet facility, no cause of death as yet determined. That was almost as big a story as President Easton’s reelection rally. Were they connected? Who was Cal now? If he switched in a porta potty, it almost certainly had to be to an indigent. Williamson coordinated with Secret Service, as Easton conducted one of the strangest rally speeches ever recorded, physically surrounded completely by agents, so that he could only be seen and heard on a giant overhead TV screen. The stage security went viral, was attributed to an immediate threat that day, but Easton couldn’t keep campaigning like that.

 For Cal/Cassie, this rally had been surveillance. He would have to be very careful becoming the current president. Maybe next time, with the laxer obvious security the press was reporting would happen, he’d tell him to have a heart attack, then Cal could become president, appearing to be the same person as the real president who’d “recover” but be gone too. He’d want Betty as First Lady, but couldn’t be too obvious with that. He’d find her, and put her in a glamorous makeover incarnation, find a way to be rid of the current president’s inconvenient spouse.and the appendage of Cassie. They could adopt their own kids, in different substitute personas. Some people would have to make unwilling sacrifices, but it was for the greater good as he saw it now. His.

What could he do internationally? He’d have to be cautious there. Others seemed also wise to shadows. What was that long table about when one of the top ones now met with other foreign leaders?

Easton was going to a business conference in St Louis in two days, at which he’d after hold a rally. Cal would transport Cassie there as the world’s oldest hitchhiker, a Guinness record if he had any reason to tip them to it.

 Easton wouldn’t keep having rallies surrounded on stage by body guards. Williamson and the Secret Service hoped they had devised a deterrent to Cal’s shadow. They had to bring Easton in on it. It was February, beginning of a campaign year, cold in St. Louis, and Easton was bundled in an overcoat. But the overcoat had a zipper, not buttons.

When, during the speech, a shadow began forming on President Easton, he on cue from an agent unzippered his long coat and pulled it open. Underneath was a mirror, enormously full in length and width, reflecting the shadow back. There was no commotion on stage. Easton joked, “Smoke and mirrors. I was once an amateur magician.” He rezipped his coat as supporters laughed with applause for his down home humor, and that he’d play a prank on a rally stage

 Cassie had considerately and politely been accorded an age- before- beauty seat earlier, and fell asleep in it. Not much fuss was paid to a minor emergency as medical staff tended to an aging woman.  Cassie was placed in an ambulance, as Cal was hearing his own unheeded counsel to Easton to relax, be comfortable and accepting, and exit this vale of tears

Cremation creates smoke, and as Pres Easton had noted, smoke made shadow. If they didn’t understand it, they’d at least control it. They buried Cal/Cassie at Fort Sill in a transparent steel shroud, twenty feet deep in the earth, with a concrete tombstone ten feet high, ten wide and ten long, covered by mirrors on all four sides and above. It would always be watched by five soldiers standing guard duty on top of and beside. The structure was publicly stated as bait for unexplained aerial incursions, and in fact could be used for that too.

With the exception of that explanation, the shadow was highly classified so Williamson couldn’t speak or claim any credit. For consolation he kept referencing to himself that famous old radio show, The Shadow, and the question that was asked at the beginning of each program about a good guy detective who could decipher bad guys thoughts, could not do mind transference, but had the enormous advantage of being able to hypnotize the baddies and become invisible to them.

“Who know what evil lurks in the hearts of men?”

And the response by the same narrator, that Williamson found delightful, was “The Shadow does.”

Not so good Cal’s shadow, and Williamson contributed a private lyric for his own entertainment: “The Shadow knows and The Mirror stops it.”                     

Or had for now.

There was also a bunker below the crypt, from where they planned on observing Cal/Cassie for a long time to come.

 But that’s another story.

                                                               WHICH IS:           ( Part Two)                 

Below the mausoleum was a laboratory bunker, to become a very busy place. They needed to comprehend, control and channel that shadow to weapons grade, and refine its mirror defense deterrent against others who might also know about.

  Here would be “Williamson’s Playground”, the place where dirty secrets would be performed and data stored. Williamson was a really nice guy who believed, “Nobody wins by being nice.”

Will what happens in the tomb stay in the tomb? They had Cal and Cassie combined, but who were each when they weren’t the other? The mirror didn’t shell either of them. They being two in one body, they stayed inert, under a spell, or in a coma, just for a while. What finally awakened from that state was a two-in-one in opposition to the other in Cassie's body, of different genders, backgrounds, ages and experiences, conjoined like Siamese twin who were enemies.

Williamson’s task was acquiring data by interviewing them, or it. His first effort is archived in video when he tries to speak only to Cassie. He starts with his aspirational director’s demeanor, confident and cordial, saying, as if I’m-just-trying-to- meet you, “Cassie, you were abducted by him in Tulsa. Are you from Oklahoma?”

“Yes, I was born in Anadarko.”

The male voice of Cal heckled, “Is that the Anadarko section onthe west side of Manhattan?”

Williamson tried to sympathize with his uncooperativeness.  “We did treat you unfairly,” he said in his consoling tone, “but we’re all Americans, and your peculiarity is a weapon we have to understand.”

Cassie screeched, “You’re going to be nice to HIM?”

Cal retorted, “They get mean with me it will be to you too.”

Which was a dilemma for Williamson. How could he discipline Cal---with loud music, sleep deprivation, withholding food, even striking---without doing it to Cassie too? He observed their disagreements about what seemed petty issues. Cal wasn’t itchy when she scratched their back, and taunted “Giving us a massage?” She wasn’t thirsty when he drank water and assertively told him so. He replied, “Bladder problems too, mamasan?”

Williamson could try siding one against the other, ridiculing, taunting. For that he’d need to know more of personalities, find vulnerabilities, learn what to ridicule, hit them where it hurt.  People have secrets. But how could he get one to confide if the other one heckled?

He joined with Cassie in nicknaming Cal “Yankee”, until she got wise and said to him “You sound like one yourself. Connecticut?”

“Virginia” he lied.

“Sound more like Boston. Pack the caah in the graj.”

“I sound like that?”

“Woise,” Cal said.

 “Now that’s your accent,” Williamson said.

But thought  maybe he’d better defend Cal here.  “He’s from New York City, Cassie. You won’t find anybody there who had ancestors in the Civil War. A city of recent immigrants.”

“New Yawk, Philadel-phia, Baston,  all Yankees. Kiss my  wrinkled flabby bootie with that ‘recents- since-the-Civll War shit. It’s Union turf.”

“That’s undignified speech from a woman of your age, Cassie”
“You go hang around a shelter a while if you think so.”

“She’s dead right there. She’s a lowlife Okie hag.”

“Okie and proud of it. As to hag, just you wait.”

Williamson said, “Cal, you’re younger but no Gregory Peck yourself.”

Cassie interjected, “You see what he’s doing?”

From Williamson, “What’s he up to now? Masturbating?”

“I wasn’t talking to you, your majesty.  MISTER Cal, can’t you see what he’s doing?”

And Cal said, “Yeah. Yeah, I see.”

Williamson wasn’t always there, and despite cameras and mirrors, Cal eyed a place along the wall where, it they were to stand in front of, their face could not be seen from any angle.

They had no one to fight with but each other, but no one to talk to either. It took a while to get Cassie to cooperate in getting into that area, but once she realized he was trying to secretly communicate, she did.

Their backs to the monitors, his volume as aspirate as could be and be heard, he said “You’re me now, I’m you. I can teach you my trick.”

They suspected nobody was always actively watching those monitors, that they were for later review. And one day after lunch, Cassie used egg yolk to put an X on the tech free spot on the wall. Why be subtle? Wouldn’t Williamson expect more sophistication if they tried to trick him? And to their credit about that, he mumbled “Vandalism now?”, dipped a napkin from the lunch tray into a water cup, and went to wipe the X off.  They got directly behind him at the only place in the room from where they could cast a shadow upon him, did, and both Cal and Cassie invaded Williamson. They freely fled the lock up as him, leaving the Cal/Cassie shell apparently asleep, and  were soon in downtown Lawton, Oklahoma.

 But it was too much excitement for Cassie. The exertion of their maneuver gave her a heart attack. Dead. Cal was in Williamson’s body, in which Cassie was quickly decomposing. If he could get back into the dungeon, into the Cal/Cassie duo, the problem would be the same-- joined with a deceased old lady. He had Williamsons wallet and plastic, but no pin numbers. The only place he could go to eat or sleep was at the officer’s club on base, but he didn’t know any of the friends of Richardson who’d greet him, and by now they were searching for new Richardson.  He could change attire, find some survival work, but it was the lethargy of lugging half of himself as corpse with that stench of death...

Maybe if he could cast on somebody else he could banish Cassie’s cadaver. There were some elderly locals in town who hadn’t mastered computers, read the Lawtonian newspaper, and bought it at either the newspaper office itself or the last remaining newsstand, still run as it had been for fifty years by a likewise geezer, now blind.

Cal went and bought a newspaper, got his shadow just so, and tried. But being half dead, Cal/new Williamson, wasn’t himself, didn’t have that old energy left. The news dealer sensed he was blocking the light and said, “How can I work on my tan if you don’t go. On your way now.”

The man was on the trust system, and Cal violated that---no more Mr. Nice Guy after all he’d been through---and took the few coins that had been left by customers, including Cal, in a  metal tray. And the newsie, hearing the moving chink, sighed, “You must need it more than me.”

“I do.”

There were a few dollars in Williamson’s trousers too, and just as a respite from Cassie’s smell, he went into a bar called The Silver Dollar. This was a drinking man’s bar, no baristas, no dancers, just for serous imbibers who needed to get well, and for Cal, desensitized. He ordered a double Jack on the rocks. At 9:00 AM opening the only other patrons were focused on their own misery, but he did see the bartender playing with his phone. When the first double started to take, he ordered another. He was on that second when two Lawton Police walked in with guns drawn.

The bartender said, “Here is your AWOL colonel and WHEW! Take him in custody and turn him over to the MPs.”

 It wasn’t nice for Cal, being buried alive while merged with one not alive and decaying, but they explained it to him reasonably, told him to find patriotism, logistics are logistics, he’d be remembered for his service, a legend in history books, they’d make sure of that, and anyway it takes what it takes.

 The tomb is still guarded with mirrors on top and beside. It might attract a UFO yet, but if not from light, then maybe from the scream below the crypt that they just can’t silence, no matter how deep they dig or what material they cover it with.

They dug it up, cremated the glob, but were afraid to release it into the air, so buried it again. The scream persists. It is described now as a strange wind phenomenon and has become a tourist attraction like Old Geiser. And they come from all over the world just to hear that wail and feel the promised chills down their spines it generates. Tour group advertisers and visitors all say the same: “Everybody’s sees it on the internet, but you just have to BE THERE for the experience.”

BACK HOME is a spin off story from the TAR franchise and OK KIDS franchise, and is also listed in  the Index 

                                                          BACK HOME                                             

                                       story by Patrick Breheny    Part 1, DOG GONE               pjbreheny@hotmail.com

The busses were running again, and African American OKC Detective Dayton had to get back to his family in Oklahoma. Carmen’s family was taking care of baby Georgie, her responsibility, and Rake’s if he’d stayed clean. The Portland bunch came up with the fund-me to get them tickets to OKC, and they left together. It was a day and a half from Portland to OKC because the interstate were canals when they went to Portland from Oklahoma by boat, and the only viable route along damaged and patched up highways was down to L.A., then east into Arizona, New Mexico, Texas panhandle to Oklahoma. They sat together, and Dayton’s shoulder inevitably became a pillow at night, but both had convictions that limited contact to no more than that.

At the OKC terminal, Dayton had his family waiting, and they gave Carmen a ride to the ‘house behind” and the front house, both in front of the “OK Mex Café”. Dayton said he’d be calling if he needed her skills again.

For Carmen, there was a welcoming committee at the café, of her parents, sister, brothers, baby Georgie, and, surprise, a healthy Rake looking like he was indeed in recovery. They all had the question, “What happened in Portland?”

“Some memories are best not recalled, but we took care of it.”

What mattered now was what she’d gone there for with Dayton and her friends, the psychic OK Twins Sharon and Edgar Mullens (Carmen finding that ESP bug to be contagious): Them, her family greeting her, Georgie ecstatic she was back, and she knowing he hadn’t forgotten her that fast. There was light in Rake’s eyes, and she thought life might become normal now, whatever that was, though definitely better than what just was.

The café swore OK Mex was better food than Tex Mex. Nobody but a Tex Mex would dispute that claim, and being Oklahoma, they had no shortage of  America’s original residents who’d also stand for their OK enchiladas.

So, normal. Rake, without any particular skills at anything, never mind food preparation or serving, was the dishwasher. And at that, they said he was too slow. They were always short of dishes when he couldn’t keep up, and he’d get a little attitude then and say, “Buy some.”

Poppa would rebuff him with a reminder, “They cost money.”

Living was having a roof over, eating and hoping, for all of them, and they’d survive with Rake’s slowness. None of the others wanted to wash dishes. They had a dishwasher machine, but for that, the plates, cups, glasses had to be arranged, so he was probably doing better with a sink of suds. He’d do. He never had bragged of any talent at anything.

Momma cooked, Carmen and Poppa waited tables, the other siblings were married and lived elsewhere, her parents had jobs, and everybody at the cafe took turns tending to Georgie, who was often just underfoot. It wasn’t that they just settled for what they had, it was that they had to just settle for what they had. In contrast to what recently was, they felt blessed even if things didn’t get better, just so they didn’t get worse again.

The “a”---apocalypse with a small ‘a’----had generated people of different types who combined to survive, as in Portland, and here too with Rake included when Carmen was gone. But it also produced loners, some just living, but others who were like old west stereotypical badmen, who invaded, plundered, even killed without a trace of remorse

Dayton ate at the restaurant every week or so with his family, but this visit was on a weekday afternoon, in uniform. Carmen was waitressing, Georgie playing with plastic horses and cowboys. He had the riders set up as good guys and bad guys, and punished the mean ones. It was a world where he alone administered justice. When they fought, he took two plastic men, one in each hand, and smashed them against each other. The wrong one was going to pay, by Georgie’s verdict.

Dayton ordered coffee and watched Georgie’s morality show.

Carmen said, “His tendency to violence is a little disturbing.”

“He’s administering retribution, which brings me to why I’m here.”

“Oh no.”

She had so hoped ‘normal’ would mean good.

“Not a big one, at least not yet, but disturbing. Someone is abducting dogs for ransom, and he or somebody else is killing strays. Its the sign of a badman and I’m partial to dogs.”

“He gives back the ones for ransom?”

“Correct. For credibility for the next dognapping.”

“What would motivate someone to kill poor strays.”

“We just stop crime, but maybe one barked at him. Any inkling you get on that, let me know.”

They both looked at small old Rufus sleeping on the floor, a mutt if ever there was one. Even kept clean and fed, he looked scraggly. Georgie’s plastic cowboy fisticuffs didn’t bother him, and Georgie didn’t interfere with Rufus. He’d only pet him when he was awake, wouldn’t intrude on whatever doggies dream about. Carmen said, “If I get any hunches, you’ll hear.”

“Good enough.”

Dayton took a couple of bills from his wallet and left them on the table.

“Detective, you don’t pay for coffee here.”

“Yes I do. I don’t play that ‘cops dine free’”.

“You’re a guest here, a friend.”

“Well I won’t pick it back up. Buy Georgie something with it.”

“That we might do.”

It was a weekday afternoon between lunch and dinner, the reason the place was so casual, with Rufus, not legally allowed in an eating establishment, sprawled on the floor, a technicality overlooked by Dayton. When Dayton left it was quiet except for Georgie ruling his subjects and Rufus snoring Slow as Rake was, he finished the lunch dishes and came in and joined her. They had time now, before any dinner people would arrive, to have coffee together.

But then the screen door did it’s screeching opening and banging shut twice as an arrival came in. There’s an immediate something about the impression a person makes that usually proves accurate, and this one was a caricature of the 19^th century badman forewarned of by Dayton. She wondered what the reverse of serendipity was called. Synchronicity at least.

He sat at the table closest the door and she wasn’t inclined to go over, just continued sitting with Rake as if they were customers. The man was Caucasian, had a thick black beard, a hard impassionate face, a chunky body, and was wearing dusty jeans, a corduroy jacket and boots, as if he’d arrived on a horse. He looked at them, looked long and greedily at the cash register, then appraised Rufus with the same intensity directed at the register. When he spoke, it was with an impatient twang.

“What’s the deal? Anybody running this place?”

Rake asked, “What do you need?”

“Service.”

“Staff’s off now, between meal shifts. Dinner starts at five.”

“They turn away business?”

“No sir, its just the operating procedure here. The elderly owners take siesta.”

“I wonder can I get a glass of water?”

“City water hasn’t been restored out here. We pump it from the well, won’t do that before dinner service.”

“We? Who are you?”

“I wash dishes here.”

“Without water?”

“No. That’s why we’re dry at the moment.”

“And her?”

“Actually, she’s my wife, and mother of this child here?” At least the second half of that was true.

“And I bet you love that mangy old mongrel there.”

“He wouldn’t bother a soul.”

But Rufus woke up a little, and emitted a sound neither of them had heard before. From a deep and aggrieved place, he growled. It was Carmen’s belief that pets understood every word people said, just couldn’t speak themselves.

“Never, huh?”

Rake said, “I suppose unless provoked.”

“So you open for business at five?”

“We set up when her grandparents finish napping.”

“Her grandparents, huh?. What do her parents do?”

“None of yours, but other jobs”

“Well I just came for water now, but dang your OK Mex tamales later if you can’t give a man a sip of water.”

Carmen said, “There’s a 7/11 about half a mile yonder.”

“They SELL water.”

“Last I checked, sir, that they do. We don’t but we’re out.”

He stood up, evaluated the premises one more time, said “Ugly damn mutt,” and left to the screen door banging twice again.

Her sensors were vibrating like an activated geiger counter. She called Dayton.

Through the screen door, she was watching the man’s back receding down the road. “Detective, how far have you gone?”

“A mile.”

“On Cache Road?”

“Right.”

“We had a visitor. Gave Rufus and our cash register quite an eyeful. He might be who you’re looking for. He’s on Cache too, moving toward downtown.”

“I’ll make a U. Can you describe him?”

“No need. You’ll know.”

Perhaps the biggest surprise for the drifter was not that he was being stopped, but that the police car didn’t come from behind as usual, but approached and spun, blocking the road so completely he had to stop. He’d been walking with his thumb stuck out, not glancing at the few cars that came by and sped up as they passed him. He was accustomed to that.

Dayton exited the car and walked toward him, but didn’t get too close.

“Where are you going?”

“Into town. That’s still legal, I believe.”

“Depending on what you did before and what you’ll do when you get there. So, what do you want in OKC?”

“I don’t have to explain that.”

“You have ID?”

“Sure do, but I don’t have to show that to you either for no good reason.”

Dayton didn’t want to reveal it was Carmen that set him on the man.

“People in the cars saw you sauntering along. There have been prowlers around, burglaries at night. Folks here are nervous.”

“I haven’t been out here before. I been staying in town at a mission and work out of a casual labor office. Just came scouting outside of town for a regular job, can’t find anything in the city.”

“Where have you looked?”

“At the OK Mex Café. Hoped they’d want a dishwasher or something.”

“And?”

“They didn’t.”

“Would they confirm you asked for a job there?”

“No, because I didn’t get a chance to. They have a dishwasher. I met him. Wouldn’t even give me a glass of water.”

“Not neighborly. You wouldn’t have been staking them out for anything?”

“Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. They must have some money in there.”

“I pleaded for a glass of water. You go right ahead and ask them.”

“Mind coming back with me while I do?”

“I sure do. I already done some tromping. I’ll go with you if you’ll drive me into town after.”

“Wait here a minute.”

Dayton got back into the patrol car, started it up and drove away. Carmen had been listening to all of it. He slid the phone out of his back pocket and asked, “You feeling that’s him?”

“What my instincts are telling me.”

“I got a good look at him. Only two missions and a few labor offices in town. I’ll see if he’s really been staying or working in any.”

“Be better to get him for what he’s done already than wait for him to do more.”

“Amen, but need witnesses and evidence, and we have priority over people killing other people, never mind dogs. Budget’s the reason yours truly detective is in uniform in a cruiser today. But I’m going to moonlight this. I fancy dogs too.”

The Reverend, before they fed, asked who would stand to be saved. Usually a few did, so wretched it wasn’t hard to believe they hoped for some saving, but tonight there was a pause and the man knew, having been the recipient of charity several consecutive evenings, it would be his turn to stand. Reverend beseeched the Almighty, “Take this man to Thy bosom” then spoke to the man and said, “Now speak your name to the Lord and say you accept Him.”

“I accept.”

“And your name?”

“God knows it.”

The Reverend wasn’t accustomed to such recalcitrance when conducting charity services, but needed to set the example of forgiveness for this mild transgression.

“Indeed the Lord does. If you will not speak your name publicly, will you do it in private?”

The man said nothing, which the Reverend took as agreement, so he said the Grace for the meal to come, the service ended, and the beans were served.

During his salvation, what he meditated on was all the nights he’d been in a dormitory room with these wino bean farters before he’d found the shed he slept in now, while that fat old pooch at the OK Mex Café was properly fed and pampered, and that pretty Mescan gal was the momma of the spoiled brat with the plastic cowboys, and married to ---the DISHWASHER. The man didn’t hate dogs, he hated the love people had for them but not him. He killed the strays because the strays could be got to easily---vulnerable if they were not in a pack, they were like him on that---and people loved the strays too. Not so easy getting house dogs, and he had to spare them to keep his ransom M.O. credible. There could be a way at that laid back restaurant that didn’t serve twixt meal times. What matter if they’d been lying to him about that, if they didn’t have customers then anyway? There was opportunity there.

At the Working Man Agency, that also hired women, the man wasn’t anywhere near first out on any morning. The younger ones of every ethnic got priority, so if he got work it was on a big call out for a platoon of manure shovelers or some such, or he came back at 11:00 PM to load freight at a trucking dock. He had as much acquaintance with Jack the owner/dispatcher as he had with any human, that is, not much, but one slow morning when even the young’uns weren’t getting sent out, he approached the counter behind which Jack had a fiberglass shield to protect from germs, and had it long before the pandemic.

He said to Jack, “I don’t look beautiful, but on the phone nobody knows that. What if I get on your phone and try recruiting some jobs for you?”

Jack said, “I’ll give you five dollars for every one you get.”

 Generous bastard, the man thought. Going to make a few thou and pay me five dollars for bringing it in.

Jack unlocked the door separating him from the riff raff and let him in.

There was a land line, and true to skid row bare bones frugality, it was an old black rotary. There were no phone books anymore, but fortunately the man, who didn’t know what to do with a computer anyway ‘cept push a button to turn one on, there was a paper business directory categorized by types of services. He’d finished 4^th grade, so could read, no talent to be taken for granted. He would have gone farther with school, but his father killed his mother, he went to foster homes, ran away from all of them, but he didn’t make excuses. He made revenge.Somebody had to pay.

After a few calls to freight offices, painters, moving companies and corporate places, he was getting rebuffed as an exploiter of human misery. He couldn’t explain, with Jack listening, that he was one of the exploited trying to make a buck. Five bucks.

At lunch time, afternoon usually, Jack chased everybody in the waiting area out and left to eat.  The man offered to stay on the phone, front door button lock on so no one came in. Jack usually had his calls forwarded to his smart phone, but the man said he’d be happy to book any incoming jobs for free, especially if maybe included him. Jack agreed. There was nothing to steal but the business directory.

The timing was right. He called OK Mex. Carmen answered the phone. He disguised his voice to sound like a yankee, and said, “I hear you’re slow in afternoons. I’m with the Working Man Agency, and we need a couple of workers to help a distance mover unload furniture at a house. If you have a couple of folks available, we could be generous.”

“How generous?”

“Twenty an hour.”

‘There’s only one man here at the moment. I’m a hard worker.”

“Yes. You could handle the lighter items, stack boxes on an appliance dolly and cart them in.”

“I sure could.”

“Can you come now?”

“Hang on. Rake, we’re going to be furniture movers this afternoon.”

“Huh?”

“What’s the address you need us at, sir?”

“Just come to the Working Man Agency on Grant in OKC. See Jack. He’ll be back from lunch when you get here.”

He left a note for Jack and told him he had a job booked over other side of town, two workers coming he’d recruited himself, somebody would go in to the office to pick them up. He himself had business to attend to, and would be back to collect his five dollars.

There was a city bus that went out OK Mex Café way, and he at least had the fare. He calculated the kid would be inside one of the houses, but was counting on the register, and maybe Rufus, to be available during siesta. Sure enough the café door was locked, but he’d never met a lock he couldn’t pick.

They weren’t fools enough to leave a lot of cash in the drawer, just twenty dollars in small bills and coins, but the real treasure, Rufus, was present. Rufus did assert with a token snarl, but, alone now, not too confidently, and besides the nice badman had a doggie biscuit for him and a bottle of water he poured into Rufus’ bowl. The snack and drink made Rufus quite sleepy, and the man shoved him into his backpack, He waited again for the bus and hoped Rufus’  bladder held.

When Jack got back from lunch, Carmen and Rake were waiting beside the front door with a few other workers hoping for a PM shift.

Carmen said, “We’re the movers Mr. Brown called.”

“Mister…?. Not inside?”

“Nobody seems to be.”

“Guess he went to lunch too. Well, let’s all go in.”

He had the others stay in the waiting room, and brought Rake and Carmen into his office, read the man’s note.

“How did Mr…Brown---know to call you?”

“I don’t know. Folks do know our café breaks in the afternoon.”

“All we can do is wait. He says somebody’s coming to collect you. You can wait in the next room with the others.”

Wait they did, all afternoon, until finally Carmen went to the counter window and said, “We have to get back to our own business.”

He brought Rufus to an abandoned shed by a railroad trestle, that he slept in, and tied him up in there. The man knew if this dognapping got reported, the café would report his visit, and that cop would find out he gigged out of Working Man. Not all the labor offices verified ID, and some just paid in cash, so he could slave, but he needed to disguise. He cut his long hair, shaved his beard, got sunglasses big as binoculars and used some of the café money for a makeover at the Salvation Army thrift shop. Tried to fashion toward what he was hearing now called punk metal. Would die that crew cut chartreuse.

From one of the few remaining phone booths, of course on skid row, he called the café. Carmen  answered.

Again sounding yankee, he said “I have your dog.”

“Don’t you…”

“I’ve not harmed it. I have a deal to make and I want to discuss it personally with your husband. No games, no po-lice, of your mutt dies. I’ll call again tomorrow. Remember, no cops.”

“You’ll prove our dog’s okay.”

“Sure.”

“I’ll talk to …my husband.”

“Speak again tomorrow.”

She told Rake and he said, “Let me meet the jackass, find out what he wants. There wasn’t much in the register.”

The man had Rake meet him at a bar from where invoices from Working Man were cashed. A good number of the workers were alcoholics, so it was a sweetheart arrangement between the bar and the labor office. Cash your voucher, have a beer, spend all the money here. The man suspected Jack owned the bar too.

They met in front. Rake didn’t recognize the man at first, so he thought, Good. His cover was working and he hadn’t even colored his hair yet.

Rake said, “I don’t drink.”

“No matter. We need to walk and talk, away from ears. Speaking of, you got a phone on, any devices in your pocket?”

“Phone’s not on a call.”

“I need to frisk.”

He did. Discovered the phone and another twenty dollars of so in cash.

“That’s all you have to offer for your dog?”

“Their family dog. You say we’re meeting to deal, but you know the economy  now.”

“She’s your wife, so your dog too.”

“Yes. Just not the same attachment.”

“I want one thousand, or…”He paused dramatically.

“Or what?"

“Thought I’d say kill the dog. No. One thou or the senorita for a night.”

“Sir.”

“She loves her doggie enough? You love her enough?. I’m being nice. For a thousand, I can get ten like her for a night. Just have a hankering there.”

“We’ll scrape up your ransom somehow. Take my twenty dollars as a deposit.”

“Think I will. Guy like you can get a ride home hitchhiking. I never can. You’re a lucky boy.”

“How do I know the dog is still alive now?”

“I can show you. Aint far from here.”

He brought Rake to the shed along the trestle. He took his padlock off the tin door, allowing sunlight into the dark interior, dust floating on the entering breeze and Rufus, scenting Rake, growled from his empty belly. But Rake couldn’t see him.

“He’s in the back room. Go say hello to him you like.”

“Why don’t I just take him now. We don’t have no thousand dollars.”

“Let him go for twenty?”

“And the money you got from the till,”

“You know where I live, can press charges.”

“I swear we won’t go to the police. We don’t want trouble, just trying to live.”

“You say you don’t drink? In recovery?”

“I am.”

“So not a snitch type.”

“No.”

“I do like you. People can only come up with what they can. Go ahead. Go in and take him.”

“If you’d bring him out…”

”I won’t.”

“Rufus, come boy.”

“He’s behind a door and tied, you fool.”

He pushed Rake to get him in, but Rake pushed back. Suddenly there was a gun. The man said, ”Inside.”

And inside, he tied Rake up beside Rufus, in the back in a kind of lavatory room where animals had once been kept. It had a drain of long vertical steel rods over a cesspool, and a hose for washing down the slop.

 When Rake wasn’t back at the dinner hour, Carmen did call Dayton.

“What’s the casual labor office you two were at?”

“Working Man.”

“He’s open late. I’ll find out who set this up.”

When Dayton told Jack about the bait to get them out of the café, Jack of course knew exactly who did it. Jack was legal and took out Social Security and tax deductions, so he had the man’s name. It was Silas Johnson, and he went by “Johnny.”

The man still had Rake’s phone. It was an oldie, had no GPS. “Call senorita. Tell her I have you, and to get that money fast. Tell her no cops or you and the mutt die.”

He put the phone on speaker, then to Rake’s mouth to deliver the message.

When told, Carmen said,  “I understand. We’ll come up with it.”

The man shouted “No cops.”

“Right, no cops.”

The man told Rake he was “Rocky,” his new metal nickname, because, he said, his actual name was Silas Rock.  Rake knew whatever Rocky wanted to invest a thousand dollars in, they had to survive now. Rocky only left once, he said to get groceries with the dwindling funds.

He returned from that excursion with a big bottle of port wine and brought Rake to the front room, using a slim pocket flashlight so they could see and talk and took the gag off Rake so he could drink with him. Rake wouldn’t, said “Alcohol was never my thing.”

 The wine was relaxing the man a little, and he said, “I’ll leave the gag off so we can talk. We are going to starve in here if neither of us are working.”

“You didn’t bring any food back.”

“No, but I ate. Maybe you could go do some casual labor, just remember I have Rufus, if you play any games.”

Rake knew the wine was talking. He wasn’t letting Rake, his collateral, loose.

“You can still work.”

“They’re looking for me now. Even in disguise I might get pegged.”

“What would you do with the thou, Rocky?”

“But some drugs to sell.”

“You don’t need a thou for that. I can get you crack fronted, but you don’t burn the dealers.”

“I was thinking meth or heroin, even weed. Sell to one big dealer. I don’t know how to sell rocks of crack.”

“I do.”

“I’d have to let you free.”

“Come with me. The dealers and users know me. “

“What would they think of me along?”

“They can make a cop, would know you’re not one.”

 “I’ll think on it.”

Rocky slept off the wine and his hangover, and when he was hungry, he left again.

This time he hotwired a new Corolla and drove to the café.

He pulled in across the road, under two close trees almost embracing, and waited.

He was long yards from the well when Carmen came with a bucket. She didn’t seem to notice the car, nor suspect anything until the oddly attired driver opened the door, a 45 in his hand, and his fingers on his lips signaling “Not a word.”

He took her to the shed and tied her up also. The car was destined for a chop shop, but not yet. Still might need it. After he had Rake, Carmen and the dog secured, he parked it legally on a street, better side of tracks, and hoped it would stay there.

Rake took Rocky to Crack Camp, a pile of shanties right along the tracks, not far from the shed. And Rake was known, greeted with “Where you been, man?”

“Oh, you know, the ‘a’. Is Manhattan still around?”

“He’s here, yeah.”

“Where”

The greeter pointed to a huddle of smokers, and Rake brought ‘Rocky’.

Manhattan said, “My man is back!”

“Yeah, hey, you can front me to sell, like before?”

“Don’t see why not. This here your daddy?”

“Well, no.”

“More like a Dutch uncle? Looks out for you.?”

“Not that either. He needs a selling lesson.”

“He wants to be a vendor? He smoke?”

“He’ll be a big buyer, soon as he gets the cash he’s waiting for.”

“Well. alright, I can give you thirty dollar rocks to sell, you get your old commission. How many you want?

“Ten to start.”

“Can do.”

The way it used to work for Rake, he’d smoke his commission. Now it would be for eating, but the closeness to product was triggering a craving he had to fight. Just one hit, and maybe the hydrogen bomb of the first time could go off in his head. Nobody ever again got that initial rush, but you’d sacrifice your life trying to retrieve it, and the thought was there that, off it a while now, he might once more get that crack-virgin euphoria. He knew he was conning himself, but that didn’t stop the impulse. Just once. Then stop again. Yeah, sure.

Rake knew the streets to sell on, and he returned with the proceeds, less the commission. Manhattan fronted more, and Rake had a plan forming. On the strip, he’d made an undercover. Carmen was still collateral, but if Rake went through with this, the man would be afraid of going back to the shed. Rake would go right up to the narc and offer dope to buy.  Rocky couldn’t want to get even with Rake for getting busted.

 When he offered crack to the undercover, he said, “Sure,” and then presented with a badge and a gun. ”Rocky’ had enough street sense to say, “I aint with him, he was just propositioning me to buy too.’ The officer didn’t prevent him from leaving.

Rake said, “Call Detective Dayton.”

“I want to know who you get it from, then we’ll talk about a deal.”

“No, call Dayton. About kidnappings.”

The badman went back to tell Manhattan, “Rake, he just got busted.”

“He had the dope I fronted?”

“That he did.”

“Well, see, now we have a problem, because he can give me up. So least you, as his partner, can do is pay me back.”

“I’m here because I don’t have any money.”

“And I’m not out here to discuss your financial situation. You owe me three hundred dollars by tomorrow. After that there’s interest. A lot. And don’t you think for a second that I don’t know that shack you sleep in.”

Rake took Dayton to the shed. Dayton took out a file to pick the padlock.

“Can’t we just kick it in?”

Dayton had shot a padlock off a door south of Wichita Falls, but this was a different situation.

“Oh, I have more finesse than that.”

He had the padlock quickly opened, and they left the door ajar to see where they were going. Rufus barked and Rake called out, “Carmen.”

“I’m still here. Is—he--- back with you?”

“I’m with Dayton. You’re getting out of here.”

The man wondered if Rake was going to report his wife was a hostage. He’d be risking her life, but…And that Manhattan…There was the car It was still there. He’d be afraid to drive it, reported stolen by now, but maybe the chop shop guy would make a pick up.

So, back at the Last Phone Booth, he called Grub Tows. Grub himself answered, but when the proposition was made, replied, “I don’t nab them off the street. You have to deliver it.”

He reconnoitered the shed and saw the padlock was still in place. Rake had held his mud. He went back to the phone booth and called the café, from where a man answered.

“I want to speak to Poppa.”

“Speaking.”

“I’m through playing games. You come here now with a thousand dollars or I’ll burn the billet down with your granddaughter and dog inside. It’s the only shed along the railroad tracks going south out of town. You come alone. You don’t have the money, I’ll take you inside too and burn the place.”

“I will borrow the money.”

“Within an hour.”

“Yes, okay, I understand. And you will release them unharmed?”

“I have always let the dogs go. My reputation speaks for itself.”

The man wasn’t going into the shed before Poppa came. He hid in bramble like a weeds hobo, rolled cigarettes from Bugler tobacco for recreation, and in time a scooter chugged up, driven by an elderly man.

When Poppa stopped in front of the shed, the man moved out of the brush and shouted, “Just stay there.”

When he got to the padlock his key wasn’t necessary. It was set but loose, opened easily before he turned the key. Funny. A cheap lock. But the neighborhood wasn’t as bad as he’d thought it was with all those low life around. Nobody had broken into the shed, and the Corolla was still there.

He said to Poppa, “Inside.”

“Why not here?”

“I don’t do transactions in public. No class. Inside.”

To encourage that proposition, the 45 was back in his hand.

With the gun pointed at Poppa’s head, they went in, the narrow beam of the pocket flashlight the only way to see anything when he closed the door. He called out cheerfully “Sweety, I’m home.”

 No reply. No bark. Maybe the girl and the mutt were asleep. He pushed open the door to the lavatory room and was instantly blinded by a bright beam of light shining directly into his eyes. 

A deep voice said, “Drop the gun.”

The pencil light was now in Dayton’s eyes, obscuring his vision too, but by his flashlight he saw the gun was moving away from Poppa’s head.

“NOW.”

The gun wasn’t dropped, was still moving in a hand. There was no time left to make any other decision. Dayton pulled the trigger.

CLICK

Again.

CLICK

His gun had jammed. He didn’t have time to unjam it. The badman had all the time he needed.

“Consider what you’re doing. You can’t get away with it.”

 If he could just unjam. He hit the gun against his thigh.

“No reconsidering. I’ve made my choice. Somebody has to pay.”

As he continued hitting the gun against himself, hitting the side with his hand, Dayton heard a round slide forward into his chamber. The man must have heard too. It was happening fast, but everything, the other hand, the gun moving in the light, seemed in slow motion.

 Dayton pointed again to fire as the man screamed, “Who shoots first?”

One loud terrible explosion echoed and reverberated through the tin shed, and somebody fell. A flashlight on the floor shone along the long steel frame of the open drain, blood flowing into it.

 It wasn’t Poppa and it wasn’t Dayton who had fallen. It wasn’t their blood.

Dayton hoped he who had fallen could be the last of the badmen, but he knew he wouldn’t.

 A choice had been made. This one at least killed the right person.Somebody did pay.  Dayton’s gun had misfired again.

                                    PART 2  BACK HOME      SERENDIPITY? IT WAS SOMETHING

Grub said, “I don’t nab them off the street.”

His contact sounded desperate, and was calling on the safe line.

 “Its an easy shot. Parked across the street south of downtown.”

“You say you already have it?”

“Right.”

“Well, deliver it. I can’t strip it on the street, nor drive it.”

“You tell me when you’re coming, I’ll have the motor running.”

“What is it?”

“A Corolla, recent.””

“Why can’t you drive it.”

“Afraid.”

“Me too.”

End of conversation. Grub thought, That’s one I don’t have to pay delivery for. I’ll bring Vin Wino---VW---from Crack Camp to get it, pay him with a jug.

A lot went down after that, that meant his caller couldn’t drive or start a

motor or do anything else ever again, though Grub didn’t know. First he

 scouted for the exact location, and when he found the Corolla looked for VW.

At Crack Camp along the railroad trestle he was interrupted by Manhattan who

ran things thereabouts. and said, “You know you want one of my rock vendors do

you a favor, you ask my permission.”

“Just need VW for an errand.”

“Like the last one?”

“Oh no.”  The last one cost him. He had VW bury the body of a car owner who

 traced his Vehicle ID Number to Grub Tows and Auto Parts.

“So what’s this mission?”

“Drive a car.”

“You lifting them off the street now?”

“Its already lifted. I can justify it. I get stolen car reports, just taking it to store

 safely, will report it to the police.”

“If its all cool and legal like, why don’t you just tow it?”

“My intention- to- report is back up if needed., but you know I might forget to do

 that right away, say it was stripped when I got it.”

“So you don’t want them to find you with it first. Two hundred dollars to

 rent VW.”

“I can’t make any money paying that for delivery. Parts sell slowly.’

“Look elsewhere.”

“Fifty dollars is going rate.”

“One fifty. Not a penny less.”

“A hundred.”

“My man.”

“One twenty five. One thirty five.”

“One forty. Vinny, get over here.”

To Grub, Manhattan said, “You know about insurance, right?”

“No.”

“He gets busted, you have to find me another vendor or will have to be you.”

“It won’t come to that.”

“Sometimes does. Just had such an experience, and good help is hard to find

 these days. But old VW’s at least as reliable as a crackhead.”

“I’ll be careful with him.”

“VW, go with this fella, do what he says. Now you, Grub, up front cash in this

 hand of mine. And Vin has the shakes. Get him a small bottle of high alcohol

 content wine before he attempts driving.”

“You know he has the shakes?”

“I watch out for my employees’ needs, I do.”

“I’ll see the man gets straight.”

Grub drove VW to the Corolla in the tow truck. There was a family

 living in the car. Grub told VW, “Just walk up and say ‘Out of my car.’”

“You have the key?”

“No.”

“How am I going to start it?”

“Shit! You don’t know how to hot wire. I’m not getting in that car. Why I brought

 you. Manhattan owes me a refund.”

“He doesn’t usually make refunds.”

“A replacement then, though I do know somebody who knows how. and the shed

 he lives in.”

“I’m relieved of duty?”

“No, you’re still going to drive. I just want this old boy to start her. Come on.”

Grub and VW knocked politely on the shed door, creating a noise that sounded

  like their fingers were tin cans.

It was opened by that detective that had been in the National Enquirer for using

 local psychics to solve and stop a kidnapping. He was with an old Mexican guy,

 and was mighty nervous with the gun he was pointing, like he didn’t trust it. He

 growled at Grub,

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“Just a friend of Johnny’s, come to say hi.”

“He didn’t have any friends.”

“Well, acquaintance. You say ‘Didn’t’?”

“Your heard right.”

“What happened?”

“Before you start asking questions, answer mine.”

“You asked what I want. Here to visit.”

“It’s the other one I’m interested in.”

“What other?”

“Who are you?”

“Oh. Name is John Grub.”

“Well whatever business you had with Johnny, best forget about it.”

“Yes sir. Come on, VW. We’re not welcome.

Grub drove VW back to the camp. Manhattan listened, tsk tsked VW for not

 knowing how to hot wire, but to keep his rep up provided Grub with another patron who assured he could start a car without a key.

Grub brought Dunn, his tweaker-on-loan, to the Corolla, gave the family a quick eviction order, and waited until he heard Dunn turn the motor on and saw smoke coming out of the tailpipe. He drove off in the tow truck, in a direction that did not directly lead to his shop, which the Corolla was destined for.

After the door knock interruption, Dayton had to call for uniforms, forensics guys, the coroner, and Poppa had to stay as a witness.

 While he was explaining what happened to the chief, his phone beeped. The computer GPS was now working in the Corolla stolen from him, because the engine was on and the car was moving, not far away.

To his chief, Dayton said, “Sir, I have another case.”

Dayton being pop media star Dayton, he was free to make his own assignments and left to retrieve his car. In plain clothes, following the signal from the Corolla and driving an undercover car, when he saw his car ahead on the country road, he had no siren to make it stop, and, better, followed to see where it went.

When it went to the yard of Grub’s Tow and Used Auto Parts, he stopped at a surveillance distance to see if in that yard he’d see John Grub, whom he’d just met. Was that serendipity? Well, It was something, wasn’t it?

Then the tow truck pulled up with no car hitched to it, and Grub drove it into the yard. Dayton waited for the anticipated arrival of his car that was showing on GPS signal as approaching.

The family that had been living in the Corolla certainly thought it was serendipity They did their own surveillance from brush, saw the medical types take a body shrouded in muslin out of the shed, saw the yellow CRIME SCENE tape strung in front of the open doorway, and waited for dark to crawl under the tape and occupy.

They weren’t a patriarchal family. That figure, Harry, was missing since St. Louis, when the car wouldn’t take third gear anymore. They had driven from Portchester, New York, Harry and Betty with the two kids---Barry 10 and Tina 8---and Betty’s younger sister Molly.

Without Harry, trying for the promised land of L.A., they made it to OKC from St. Louis in second gear, where, as they were pouring gas into the stalled carburetor, flames started shooting from the engine and they all ran like hell from the old Dodge’s fiery explosion as it burned beyond possibility of residing in.

So, without even that, they came upon an unlocked Corolla that would do until  somebody chased them away, which just happened.

Dayton made the collar on John Grub and Dunn Talbert. He intended to bring Grub up on charges, but Dunn had value as a witness. He told the tale of how he was recruited by Manhattan. Manhattan was paid, didn’t lose anything that they got busted, but he’d be suspicious if Dunn was let go.

Dayton hung on to Dunn in the jail for a day while he figured out how to traverse the minefield of using Dunn and not getting him killed as an informer. The shed. He could place him in there and supply him with enough rock to stay, while he decided how to use him---and let Manhattan think he and Grub just got themselves busted, which was actually what happened. Dayton could chippy from the police drug locker. The court never wanted to see the physical evidence, accepted the written certification. Eventually the stored evidence got burned, or…

In the evening, he drove Dunn to the shed. Something strange already going on in there. The door was closed on the tape, and he heard kids and women’ voices, but no adult male’s. He listened a while, then politely called in, “Everybody properly dressed?”

The door opened a couple of inches, and there was candle light in there. He saw the face of a young woman, who said authoritatively, ”Cant’ you read. This is a crime scene.”

An inner female voice said, “Molly, that can’t be Harry..”
“How could he find us?” To Dayton she said, “If you don’t go we’ll call the police.”

“ Only want to add one member.”

“He could be a danger to us.”

“I’ll leave him handcuffed.”

“Who are you?”

He badged and said “Detective Dayton, OKC Police.”

“And you’re not throwing us out?”

“I believe in families staying together.”

“The initiator of this one didn’t believe that.”

“Sorry to hear, but not surprised. If we leave this addition here, there’s a small budget to feed him. I’ll see you get that. He’ll be smoking some crack, so he won’t have much appetite.”

“He could be a blessing?’

“An unlikely one, but maybe.”

Sharon and Edgar came home too. Missed Ma’s home cooking, Pa’s earthy life coaching. They missed Carmen too, and there she was involved again with her former nemesis and abuser Rake, who was drug free and smiling---an expression they’d never before witnessed. He said his rehab program ceased to exist during the ‘a’, but he remembered what they taught him, the most important mandate being, “Don’t use.”

 They were all at a table in the café. The twins being both alike, Edgar spoke for both, sounding like he was joking with Rake listening, but he wasn’t, and they couldn’t anyway fool Carmen.

“We’re Jealous.”

Rake got up and went to his dishwashing station in the kitchen.

Carmen said, “Give him a chance.”

Sharon said, “Seems like he’s had one.”

“He’s different now. If its any solace we don’t…you know.”

From Edgar came, “None of us ever did.”

“So what’s the problem.”

Sharon said, “We’re insecure. We admit it.”

“You’ll get to like him”

“It’s the feeling of loss.”

“You think I’m not still connected to you guys? All we’ve been through?”

“We’re afraid there’s not enough to go around.”

“I’d never expect this of you two.”

“That we’re human? Haven’t you ever been jealous?”

“I’m young yet. I guess I could learn.”

Carmen got up to use the temporary outhouse, municipal water not yet supplied. When she was gone, they spoke in an aspirate because Rake was in the kitchen.

Sharon said, “We’re overreacting. She’s asexual.”

“He doesn’t say he is.”

“He’s respecting that.”

“Georgie arrived in this world, didn’t he?”

“We have to live with it, like it or not. The Spirit is speaking to us.”

Was Dayton getting extra perceptive too? Or was it just, knowing about Carmen and Rake, and seeing the twins demeanor, detective that he was, he was deducing on arrival at the café? Because he said to them, “Welcome home. I hate to interrupt your domestic strife, but a distraction might be therapeutic. I need your help.”

Dayton had led the chase by him, Edgar and Carmen, to save Sharon, had the faith in Edgar’s psychic connection to her, and in Portland rid the world of Strode. Hopefully. This time.

She said, “You know we’re always of service if you need.”

“I’ve sort of adopted a homeless family. They’re in that shed where the last bad…no, the most recent badman…shot himself. Could you look in on them when I can’t, see they have what they need?”

“You want to introduce us to them?”

“That would be magnificent.”

At the shed, Dayton and the twins remaining outside, he said,  “These are two good fiends of mine who are going to be on your side.”  He was addressing Betty, the mother, the eldest there. “If anybody else thinks to squat here, you tell them you rent from the owner, me, Detective Dayton Dayton of the OKC Police Dept, and trespassers will be breaking and entering with intent to commit robbery and assault, and shall so be prosecuted.”

“Can I write all that down?”

“Just improvise, it will be more effective. End it with, So, get your you know what out of here.”

“You can say ass. I’ve been around. Believe me, the kids have heard worse from their father.”

“I wasn’t going to say ass, but you can.”

“I’d find a more colorful phrase too.”

“It’s the message that will count. And remember you have back up.”

To reinforce that promise, he presented an old cell phone.

“Remember these? The kind you could just make a phone call on? You still can. My number and theirs’ are in here”

“I do thank you.”

“May you not have to live like this for long.”

Dunn, who’d been an almost invisible outline Dayton saw in the flickering candle light inside, asserted his presence with, “I don’t know about that.”

Dayton took that as affirmation that at least to him living conditions were satisfactory.

Harry had continued his journey to the L.A. promised land alone, hitchhiked into Oklahoma City, spent a night at a mission, and the next day saw his wife’s kid sister Molly had a job passing out advertising flyers in the downtown. She didn’t spot him, and he stalked from a distance until she was through giving out fliers and went to the shed.

The sagging and soggy from rain crime scene tape was disconcerting, but they had to be in there, so he knocked. Betty opened it, and upon seeing him forgot any planned expression of what part of anatomy should go away, just said, “Get out of here.”

“Break my heart.” To Barry 10 and Tina 8 gawking incredulously, he petitioned, “Hey, kids”

 Kids were unresponsive. He said to Betty, “Got them brainwashed against me. Breaking my balls too.”

“Can’t break what you don’t have.”

“Hurt a guy, why don’t you. Let me in to rest.”

“Go or I’ll call the cops.”

Harry had a good laugh then, until he heard another male voice from inside say, “She aint shittin’ about that,” and he saw a guy in manacles.

Betty again said, “Go!” and slammed the door as hard as she could without dislocating it off the fragile hinges.

Harry wasn’t giving up hope. He found a TV box and set that up as habitat a few yards from the shed. And Betty called Dayton about her box squatter ex.

Dayton came when she said Harry was present, and was civil when he asked Harry to come out for a chat. He looked with concern at the forbidding sky and said, “Carboard box won’t do. We’re going to have some weather, and you’re in tornado country now.”

“Maybe I can find some tin too, reinforce it.”

“You probably can, but I can do better by you.”

“How so.”

“Let’s take a ride.”

“Not to jail?”

“No.”

In the car, Dayton said, “The man you want to see where I’m taking you is called Manhattan. Just hang around a while, let him know you want a job.”

“Oh, I don’t know I do. I didn’t say that.”

Dayton was of two opinions about homelessness. There were some it was imposed on, like the shed family, and those who were willing, like Harry.

“There’s no labor.  He’ll give you a job selling for him, but your real job will be reporting to me what Manhattan tells you to do. I’ll see you eat and have a place to slep at night.” Not quite at the Hyatt. He was planning to talk to the Reverend,  get Harry nightly priority at the mission.

”You want me to be a snitch.”

“Up to you. You can stay in your box if you want, just not next to the shed.”

“Let me check out this camp.”

What to do with Dunn?  Didn’t need him now. He’d waited too long to charge him, but he’d still be in danger if released too soon. He’d leave him handcuffed in the shed for the moment, but he was no longer necessary and the witness protection allotment was running out.

He visited the shed to impress on Dunn that he’d have to prepare himself for that eventuality, only to see that his handcuffed detainee was holding hands with Molly.

He remarked, “That can’t be easy to do in cuffs.”

Betty said, “He’s quite talkative when he smokes that stuff. You know, personable. And they’ve actually found a way, late at night when they think everybody’s asleep, to…you know.”

“Don’t tell me!”

But she had. “I don’t care so much about that. Is she smoking with him?”

“I haven’t witnessed such. I don’t think so, but I don’t know.”

”I have to do something about this.”

“I think too late to break them up.”

“What have I started?”

“She has nothing more than him, but they have each other.”

“She didn’t have his curse.”

“If that’s what she’s doing, she’d have found it without him or you. She’s an adult, if a young one. Not on you.”

Soon Dunn could plausibly go back to the camp as a loser/user jail kickout. Dayton was already weaning him with a reduced drug supply, so It was not likely he’d be inclined to share, if he ever was. But maybe Molly was getting high from side stream smoke. What about all of them, in this tight space? That would be on him.

Dunn had to go, before Dayton created a family of crackheads. He provided a washing machine box close to the shed and told Dunn, “You’ll get product provided you stay in there. You can go in the house to the toilet…” (It was close enough to downtown that they had water)  “…eat if you have any appetite, but otherwise stay in here tripping. I’ll take the cuffs off.”

He gave it two days and went back to bring Dunn more medicine, be sure he was staying inside. He was, but unfortunately Molly was in the box too.

“I’m not supplying crack if you’re with her.” But he didn’t smell the smoke.

“I don’t want it. The cutback got me off it without a bad withdrawal. Just give food in the house. We’ll eat over there too.”

“If you’re not accepting rock, and not going out for it, you can stay in the shed too But time is limited. The subsidy is ending. Y’all have to find some source of income.”

Molly said “Fliers.”

“That is something.”

The next time he saw Dunn and Molly they were on different streets downtown, as was Betty with the kids, all passing out fliers. Betty told him they were still in the shed, would accept the food aid as long as it lasted.

Out at the café, as the twins got to know new Rake, Sharon fell under his spell too. Carmen was okay with that, being mutually attracted to Sharon and Edgar, and she and Edgar became an item. Dayton thought it was a kind of spiritual-for-the-moment menage a quatre, expressed as platonic for now, but had to remind himself to remain a loyal family man. Was it serendipity? It was something, wasn’t it?

Manhattan wasn’t quite as bad as he made people believe, but there was a sentence to serve. Mostly it was over arranging the hiding a body, He had nothing to do with the initial act, but he knew the jingle, “Don’t do the crime, If you can’t do the time.” And he cooperated in court against John Grub.

 Grub was the one who met the big time, convicted as the actual killer, and got life without the possibility of.  Pathetic VW had a stretch ahead of him too for his part in disposing of a corpse.

And Harry knew, after legal proceedings originating from his information, that continuing his odyssey to L.A. alone had to be a good survival strategy.

The rest of them kept on. Life continued, such as it was. Things would change again. Serendipity? Sometimes its opposite? There were more synchronicities, dramas, to come. They knew there were. Of course there were.

 Meanwhile,Damen and Allison were still in Portland,  Gus and Spokes at the Paradym Club and….well, we'll just have to visit them, see what they’re up to now.

                                                          ICE MAN                                  

                                            story by Patrick Breheny        (also listed as Story 28 and, with the sequel, ICE MAN 2, Story 28 (b) as a novelet)

     “He’s a killer.”

     Kate Madigan was talking about their resuscitated find, known until now in social  media, on TV, in newspapers, as the incredible Ice Man, a young blonde long haired adult male, who was found in the Arctic, perhaps frozen before the last Ice Age He was castrated, but they kept that from the media.  Found also were the Frozen Ice Tablets, left by a community sophisticated enough to have a written language, Part of Kate’s job was decoding it.

    There was no scientific explanation yet of how a human could be frozen alive. If someone freezes, they froze to death, organs failed. But his society had developed a technique for freezing alive. It was referenced in the tablets, though he was the only specimen so far recovered

     This meeting with Kate and Dr. Dillaby Marcus was about information from the tablets, with X present to be questioned by Kate. What  Dillaby didn’t expect was that the subject would be manacled, with a uniformed deputy intimidatingly close to him..

    He asked, “Why is he being treated like a criminal?”

     That was when she said, “He’s a killer.”       

    “This is in their records?”

    “Yes. He’s royalty. The second son of the king.so not in line for the throne unless his brother died.”

      “And the brother did die?”

     “Yes.”

     “Killed by X?”    

       “Yes.”

      “He was castrated and frozen for that?”

      “No to the first, yes to the second. In his society, the punishment for murder was being drawn and quartered, ripped apart by horses, not by freezing. Freezing was reserved for aging kings and princes, in hopes of transporting them to a time when maybe people were immortal.  X’s crime is millenniums old, but to him it just happened.”

  .      Until Kate’s revelation now, no one knew if he was a sacrificial victim or a criminal. If he was a criminal, there would be a court hearing in the present to determine if he had been adequately punished previously, and if not, he would be.  It was part of Dillaby’s function--- to present an opinion of culpability to the court.

       He said, “Well turn on the sound and video, and let’s hear it from him. Explain motivation and defense to him.”

      They set up for recording, and she spoke to X in her broken Ice., listened to him, then spoke as if she was X.

      “Motivation didn’t matter to us. If something happened, it happened. All we did was give our reason for doing it. Now speaking as Ms Madigan, I told him, as you instructed, that’s not like today, when the motive is the prosecutor’s case and often the same motive is the defense.”

     “Ask him why he killed his brother.”

    She spoke in Ice again, and X became quite emotional, his catharsis seeming immediate to the event. He went on for a long time, maybe fifteen minutes, laughed, cried, coughed, and when he stopped, Kate herself was having breathing difficulty.

     “He said ‘I was abused.’”

      “He spoke for long minutes, and all he said was ‘I was abused.’”

      “It’s all on the tape. He hardly wants to say it again.”

      “So play it and translate.”

       The technician started playback. X screamed. and. Dillaby said “ Stop the tape. Tell the subject that’s enough.”

       The tape was stopped, she spoke to X, .he replied.

       “Well?”

       “I told him calm down, he’s hurting his future. He said he can’t talk about it or listen and stay calm.””

        “Let’s give him a break. Deputy, if you could escort him to the restroom, the canteen, give us a few?”

        The deputy took him from the room.

        “Play the tape back a little at a time and translate.”

        She played some, stopped it, and translated. “My parents hated me. S