BOOK II, the bad.
Unusual, strange, different, peculiar,
weird, violent and 'tough-love' stories designed with moral reason for their
creation. for readers 19 years or older.
You can order the entire book on
diskette by going to end of this page at toOrder.
RETURN TO HOME welcome.html
GO TO BookIcontents.html Book I, the good.
GO TO BookIIcontents.html Book II, the bad.
GO TO BookIIIcontents.html Book III, the ugly.
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BOOK II, the bad. by Whittaker. Glenn Harding jr.
Copyright 01-21-1993 TXU 552 271
THE LOVE TREE . . . . . . . lovetree
SIR IRIN. . . . . . . . . . siririn
LOVE'S HUES . . . . . . . . hues
WHITTLE WHAT. . . . . . . .whittle
COWBOYS . . . . . . . . . .cowboys
THE CONTRIVED . . . . . . .contrived
SOAP . . . . . . . . . . .soap
DRIVIN DEAD . . . . . . .ddead
THE GADGET . . . . . . . .gadget
DREAM WORLD . . . . . . . .dream
SAMMY, BOUND FOR THE CITY . . . . . . sammy
THE CONCRETE PATH . . . . conpath
WHISTLE STOP . . . . . . whistle
THE FARM HANDS . . . . . farmhands
THE BUNNY MOVIE . . . . bunny
GEORGA ANN . . . . . . . . .georga
DESTINY . . . . . . . . . destiny
AUTHOR'S COMMENTS . . . comments
The snow had melted, the air warmed, the flowers bloomed and the thunder cracked the night leaving rainbows dazzling in the distance. They gazed at the multi-colored light in the sky, took a deep breath, nodded in agreement and began loading their sleds.
The pull sleds were Errons' idea. He had awakened before the sun. He gathered two stout fallen trees and a bunch of shorter branches. Then pulled many feet of wrap vines loose. He brought these back to the camp as The Rest awoke. He lay the long poles aside each other, then placed the smaller branches across them.
The Rest gathered around in wonderment.
Errons sat on one side and began wrapping the vines around the ends of the short branches.
Atts smiled and sat down across from Errons. He began to fasten the loose branches to the long pole.
Errons looked up and smiled at him.
The Rest watched.
Atts stood at the sled's end and picked up the handles. Errons quickly lay upon the angled sled and laughed. Atts struggled to keep the end upright, stumbled backwards and both landed plop.
Everyone laughed.
Atts stood up, turned around, then picked the end up. He trot Errons around the campfire. He stopped and twisted the sled sideways, rolling Errons onto the cold ground. Atts laughed.
That day The Rest spent pulling each other around the camp, laughing and refastening broken vines.
The next weeks Errons and Atts refined the sleds. Making larger ones, shorter ones, both ends open, no ends open, one-man pulls and two man pulls. The sled quickly became a useful work tool, allowing The Rest to carry wood, rocks and food provisions from afar.
With their sleds packed they left the southern mountains to see what else there was to see. The morning sun always to their right and dusk to their left, in that way they kept their bearing. The streams were clear and frequent. Fruit and nut trees, wild grains and root vegetables kept their bellies quiet. Two suns walk before the mountains ended, two more suns walk across the hilly terrain, then three suns walk through the flat grass brought them to the desert.
Hot sand slopes, mounds and drifts, treeless days, blistered skin, cracked lips, fatigue, food gone, mirage upon mirage, sleds abandoned, disappointment, anger, frustration; yet they crawled on.
Another mirage, it lingered, it stayed a tree with shade and fruit. With hope's surge they dragged, crawled and stumbled. Half running, they fell upon the fallen pears. Devoured their fill, ignoring blister's pain.
The tree was full of ripe fruit; the desert was all around them. They slept.
The next day they ate and slept.
The third day they began to discuss leaving. But returning home without the sleds to carry the needed pears seemed impossible.
Growling whimpers caught their ears. A form was seen rolling down a sand dune. Soon it was followed by others crawling and stumbling, some dragging pull sleds.
At the base of the dune, The Others spied the tree. Teeth bared, they steadily approached.
The Rest looked at the blistered, half-crazed group. They gathered pears and began throwing them to The Others.
The Others picked up the fruit and put them in a pile. They circled around the pile, sat down and ate. The pears finished, the growls changed to sounds and pointing.
The Rest looked at the tree shade, then at the sun. Had a short talk. Then slowly backed to the far side of the tree and motioned for The Others to come into the shade. Then sat down.
The Others looked at each other and nodded. They walked slowly to the near side of the pear tree and sat in its shade, relieved. Gradually some of The Others got up and gathered a small pile of pears. They passed them around and as they began to eat they glanced at The Rest.
The Rest looked at each other, at their pile of pears, and they too began to eat and glance at The Others.
With the pears eaten, The Others lay down to sleep, glance watching The Rest. The Rest also lay to sleep. And as night fell, both groups slept.
In the morning Atts climbed the pear tree and bounced its limbs, raining pears for both groups' breakfast. The Rest quickly gathered about half of the fallen pears. Then they sat around the pile of pears eating.
The Others slowly, glance watching The Rest, gathered the remaining pears. They made a pile on the far side of the tree and sat down to eat the pears.
The Rest talked and The Others sounded. Both groups occasionally pointing at the other.
Atts slowly walked over to The Others and said a few smiling words. One of The Others, Re, stepped forward smiling a few sounds. Atts shrugged, smiled again, said a few more words. Re shrugged, smiled, and made a few more sounds.
Atts shrugged, turned around to The Rest, who shrugged, turned back to Re and said a few more words. Re shrugged and turned around to The Others, who shrugged, shaking their heads. Re turned back to Atts and shrugged.
Atts and Re stood looking at each other.
The Others made sounds among themselves.
The Rest made words among themselves.
Atts looked at Re's blisters. He touched his cracked lips and winced pain. Re looked at Atts' blisters and touched her cracked lips and winced pain. They looked into each other's eyes. They touched their own lips and winced. Then they slowly reached forward, touching the other's lips. Finger tips against blistered lips, they winced pain. Then they touched their own lips and winced pain. They smiled, then turned to rejoin their group.
The Rest spent the morning talking and eating pears and occasionally pointing at The Others.
The Others did about the same.
At noon, Te from The Others, climbed the pear tree and bounced some pears loose. Each group gathered the pears into their pile and ate and then took a nap.
After their naps Errons walked over to Te. He began a sand sketch of his mountains, the hills, the flats and the desert, marking an 'X'. He then went over to The Others sled, examined its bindings, nodded to himself and went back to his sand picture. He gestured at the sled, drew some small sleds in the sand by the 'X' and looked at the group. Te smiled, humming, drew the pear tree in the sand picture beside the 'X'. Then she drew a picture of the desert, the flats, the hills and the mountains. She looked at Errons, smiling.
Errons smiled at her. He touched his part of the desert and frowned when he touched the 'X'. He gestured at the sun and drew it. He then walked his fingers over his part of the sand desert and made twenty slashes by the sun.
Te smiled and nodded. She then touched her part of the desert drawing, finger walked and put fifteen slashes by the sun.
Errons smiled and nodded.
They returned to their group and explained their drawings.
As the sun set in the west, the moon rose in the east and both groups settled to sleep.
Atts and Re looked up at the new moon. They arose and met under the tree. Their eyes shined in the new light and they touched. They pulled close, kissed. And stayed embraced. Their bodies meshed. They fell noisily to the sand and rolled over one another. She beckoned, he entered and they growled together. They rolled about the sand, kicking, biting, scratching, gnashing teeth, pulling hair, howling and holding on to one another. They became a single blur.
When finally they lay silent, he looked to her curiously, and she kissed him. They smiled.
She looked to him curiously, and he kissed her.
The groups had circled around them, not sure what to do. It looked to be a fight and each had thought to pull them apart, yet this seemed different.
Atts and Re lay smiling in one another's arms.
The Rest and The Others looked at them, then they looked at one another. Then they moved forward, pairing as they met. Each couple repeated what they'd witnessed.
In the morning after breakfast, all the pears were gathered from the tree and divided equally. The drawing was over-viewed by both groups and The Others gave The Rest some of their sleds to carry their pears.
As the groups began to part, Atts and Re looked to one another, smiled, nodded and walked to the sand drawing. Looked at it, then turned smiling toward the sun. They told the groups they were going to find where the sun and moon came from.
The Rest talked. The Others sounded. Both groups smiled and nodded. They gave them a sled and a share of the pears.
At the crest everyone turned to take a last look at the pear tree.
THREE YEARS LATER
The weary groups converged upon a solitary tree unbeknownst each other. Arriving from the north, The Rest. Arriving from the south, The Others. And arriving from the west, the couple and three walking babies. As they broke over the crest they spotted one another. Cautiously they walked toward the tree. Then shouts of recognition and running to greet under the shade of the tree.
The Rest talked and The Others sounded and the couple, now a family, spoke. Finally everyone quieted, smiling.
Atts talked to The Rest and Re sounded to The Others, then Atts and Re spoke to one another. He turned back to talk to The Rest and she to sound to The Others. Atts and Re then spoke to their babies, who spoke to them.
Both groups looked at the babies and wanted to know what and where they came from. Atts and Re smiled and laughed to themselves and then began their explanations.
Both groups looked quizzed at the babies, then at one another and broke into their desert pairs, grappling one another as before.
The babies began running and laughing around the tree. They picked up some pears and took them to their parents, who tasted them, then gave them to the babies to eat.
Te and Errons both began to climb the tree. They looked to one another and smiled, then bounced the pears from the tree onto the couples rolling on the ground. They laughed.
After the silence, the pears were gathered and everyone ate.
The next days were shared travel stories by The Rest and The Others with Atts and Re interpreting.
With the stories finished and the pears gathered, the groups packed to leave. Te and Errons decided to go with Atts and Re to find where the sun and the moon came from. Both groups smiled and nodded. They were given a sled and their share of pears.
At the crest everyone turned to take a last look at the pear tree.
ANOTHER THREE YEARS LATER
Arriving from the south, The Rest struggled, sun-beat and blistered, over the desert toward a solitary tree. Arriving from the north, sun-beat and blistered, The Others stumbled down a crest toward the same tree. And arriving from the west, two families.
Atts and Re with six children and Errons and Te with three babies, ambled over a crest toward the tree.
Soon the groups spotted the tree. When they recognized each other, they raised a soft shout of glee. They met in the shade and with little thought filled their bellies of its fruit, the pears.
The days passed with the stories told and the pears gathered. Then The Rest and The Others decided to travel with the families to find where the sun and moon came from.
At the crest everyone turned to take a last look at the pear tree.
### the end. March 1985.
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"This day passes so slowly Julie. Especially when the wind is so distant. I do wish it would visit us soon and give life to the leaves. They lie so silent and still, each in its very place as if some artist had painted this view before us. Without motion to break my gaze, I have sat transvexed here since tea. And now the tea stands cold in my cup, yet has ten minutes passed or two hours?
Damnable sun, where is the lazy thing? Somewhere resting on the back of some soft dark cloud. Hiding its path from my eyes. However can the cook serve the noon meal? Without shadow or shade this is a different world, one of twilight with no gauge to measure or way to calibrate its passage. And it passes when it wills with subtle surprise into darkness.
These days are so tiresomely long and confusing to all creatures. Hear how the crickets still chirp when they should be sleeping in their hide-a-ways. Singing their lives away, they are, till some brown thrush swallows them for its breakfast. These days are maddening."
A man, a lazy man sitting on his veranda, awaiting his meal. No wants, no desires, no interests or hobbies, his center of existence is his tongue and his pleasure is the flavor his cook prepares. Each day is an image of the other. With night's beginning, he retires. With night's end he arises, bathes, dresses and sets himself on his veranda. He remains there motionless, except to eat and defecate. His timepiece, the sun, by its very position, announces his coming meal.
But today, overcast like many others, finds the sun elusive. His frustration paramount, he has no other activities to turn to, nothing else to focus his attention. His frets and complaints now begin as the breakfast plates are removed. Of all men past, so moved to desperate acts, this day this man is driven beyond the sum of their madness.
"Julie, no longer can I sit waiting. Where is my meal, when is my meal? I find no fault with our cook. 'Tis the sun to blame. I can not stand a fickle sun. Showing its color one day and hiding on another. I do not mind the days it races in and out of the clouds. But the torment of its absence strikes at my heart. I begin to fear for my very life. Something must occur, some solution, a change must arise. The days of twilight must cease. Call on Sir Erin. Tell him to come to me directly."
Yes Sir Erin could, if any man were to devise a remedy. A brilliant scientist, psychologist, architect and renown engineer, his fame, his accomplishments, his ingenuity exceeded his time. A genius born decades to soon, yet his presence brought his culture the future. His opinions went unquestioned. His buildings stood, unlike his predecessor's whose houses collapsed during thundershowers. His church steeples held the bells, while others' fell when rang, interrupting many spiritual services. His bridges allowed many people to pass over simultaneously. He alone discovered an antidote for a medicine a doctor had created to cure sore feet, but whose side affect caused hair loss. His Intense Hot-Cold therapeutic innovation cured and sent hundreds home, never to return to an institute.
A complex, diverse man, Sir Erin, yet his ideas were so simplistic at times. A farmer sought his advice once; he was having difficulty plowing a certain portion of his land. Sir Erin's advice: don't plow it. A housewife quizzed him, for the milk in her can soured in three days. He suggested she drink it in two days. All of the boats of a ship builder sank, what should he do? Sir Erin inspected his blue prints and materials and suggested he build houses. When the people followed his advice, their problems were no more. His reputation spread. The people believed in him. A man who could solve it all.
"Yes Julie I am no longer bothered these days by the time. The sun's presence is of no matter to me. Be morning or midday, I do not fret. Sir Erin has changed all that. What a truly remarkable man. I am more contented these days. My mind is occupied now. These notes to you fill my time. With phrasing and spelling and penmanship, my thoughts are.
He was so very right. It was my tongue, my taste buds that had near driven me mad. Lusting food as they had. So possessed by flavor, I attacked the sun for its absence. He saved me from madness, from an institute. I do thank Sir Erin for cutting away my tongue. And leaving me to pencil paper."
### the end. Spring 1978.
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THE ARRANGEMENT
"I say Charles, what have you got there? Some tart you pilfed out of the blue lights side street. Yes, I'm sure she'll be a delight in those moments of your retching thrust. Yet you'd have fared the pleasure of King James had you darted up the yellow lights avenue. I can definitely assure you many sensational boundings with those beauties.
For only wordy compliments they beckon, and even you, I've heard, turn phrases so catching as to titillate even a mother's nurse.
But your blue light flame will do for tonight and please do see me in the morrow, as I'd glad offer you the needed resistance to venture past all other temptation till the flame of gold teases you. Tomorrow I shall guide you there. Be off now to your raving."
THE JOURNEY
"Good evening Charles, I pray you have recouped from last evening's dickering. Good then and let us begin your adventure. Come now Charles, of course these blues are nice, yes and I realize you quivered long into the night with one and yes you think heaven lies in the abodes of blue lights awaiting for your finger's pointed touch.
But beyond all your expectations and past encounters I shall take you. Need that you only charge your patience till we pass these courtly tarts and the up-coming street's wanton lusters and I shall present you the giver of spectacular bliss.
She and all of that avenue have attained the arts. Are risen to the perfection of touch. Are possessors of movements, which melt the most of all the hardened souls. And are diviners of tasty treats that rise one past all points of containment.
You see Charles, that avenue of blue held nothing for you. Those ladies blacken as the sky when the sun settles to rest. Gather yourself for we approach another street."
GREEN ANYONE ?
"I pray you value little the worth of the emerald, for each of this next lane tempt the traveler so. But to aside in these creatures' valley will rent your quest. Their skin textured like soft north moss, its coolness beckons you to stay as does the bear's cave at winter.
Here now Charles, I know she beckons you and ‘tis hard pressed your compulsion which leads you to crawling and bellowing as the hounds chase the heated female. But zounds man we've two more roads to cross and I fear you will have lessened yourself totally before our path yellows.
Back you green eyed froth-mouthed toe suckers, this man is to spent his yearning on lasses more fair than your most desirable. Here, cast down your aspirations from this man of classed desires, his journey bounds for the yellow. He is one to be licked by the flames of the mouths most ultimate. Cross your thighs on maple trees for this pulse passes beyond all your favorite promises."
THE ESCAPE
"Quickly Charles we've nearly reached the alley boundary. Just say no, that simplest of sounds. Really Charles, she'll put it back if only you'll utter 'no'. Very good. You really ought to practice that 'no' word. Hasten along, we're near past this emerald city, soon we enter the zone of twilight.
Poignant purplish passions each and every one of these. Strange their aura and what spinning aroma that even I have fallen in weaken response never to attain stature till morning's sun clears all vision.
To lie listening to ones own gurgling in purple's passion, pukes my memory. But yet now as this plum closes, her fragrance jolting first the left then the right nostril, I quaver. I am quivering to clug both nostrils by venturing too close, but I must retain myself.
Withstraint oh soul, harden thy self and quicken thy step for ‘tis the love of yellow we guide by this night amounst the side street's lust. Past purple passion's hold."
PAST PURPLE
"Here Charles, I have struggled, twisted and tainted my desires to bring you forth so much closer to ladies you yet not know and there I turn to see you ten fingers and a tongue in soft, purple's passion.
You weakened calf, I should leave you.
But my bond is my word and drag you up by the heels I shall. Cease you wench, this man I reclaim from your flowered scent. Tonight his fever shall be quenched by dandelion's daughters.
Up man to your feet before all of the street opens up and draws we both back. Back to the snare's reach where of want we'll need naught. Press we on through this dark that lies near our every step. The blackness calls up our every wonder, taint temptation beckons we both to venture, side sliding us from our promise further along the streets.
Charles, this feel-less haunt about us would render you down for her want is endless. Exact your mind near mine and together full in each self, we'll travel heedless to sound's lust for us."
SAVED BY A TREATY
"Gad man that was close, only an angel's halo knows how we've come this far. Without question we long ago would have caved-in were not the alleys declared forbidden zones.
Established long after the street wars where the colors, each with their hunger, often pulled apart many a time pleasured man. Soon then few men came; those were dark days of fear. And each street's light faltered; their color withered.
So the ladies gathered and through a joining, they created their boundaries and the alleys. The news echoed and again the men came, restoring color's vivity. Here then where we rest to gather needed strength is an alley from those days. Now Charles ‘tis only one temptation before our path."
HEADED RED
"No, there is no way around this reddened road. For all that you have beheld and gave not to; I compliment your will. Your courage and conviction reveal an expectation of such magnitude that our course should quickly on and past the red bricked houses. Ready then, we go.
Good day little red, yes, yes my memory is intact. No my child a demonstration will not be needed.
‘Tis only this mission that leads me to pass your door. Were I alone, you would share my every breath. The fire of your lungs, tonight another must feed.
You see here my determined master, who has chaste for the sunbeams and this my task to serve him as once before I did master for that avenue. I shall pass back again straight to your door, spurred by now's image.
Charles, gaze not on her lips; those pedals glisten as one kindles his furnace. Each caress imprinted to linger on your flesh, to feel her again in the loneliness of your abode. Then still if your waste lingers of more want, she breathes her rose flame. Its touch singes the flesh till near death you'll dream. Then she'll quench your horror with tongue taps that spent you. I am haunted by mind's images."
LOST IN LUST
"Oh MY!
My Queen we will venture tonight, how else can I reason, with little red I must lay.
But stop Charles, leave me man. Pass on. Go be off. You get to the yellow alone. You turtle necked cobweb that's my right ear.
Leave off man, wait you red wait, don't depart."
ARRIVED, YET..?
"Charles you frog we could go tomorrow. Blast, I spin so, where are we? The alley, the alley you say. Here then we've past all temptation, every street we fought through. We made it.
Just step forward Charles and you will be in the sun lane.
I now leave you to yellow street's golden hums."
### the end. Fall 1978.
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Picture the wet cold, new snow and the mud streets of Pinn edged by a new moon. Then comes slicing into the dreams of the many the clamor:
"Get off me toe you oaf."
"Not me."
"Quiet!"
"I want out here."
"Shut up."
"He he he he he."
The old man hefts the bag from his shoulder and swipes a deadly swing over the heads of his small band, "Knock it off!"
All quiet and drop to their knees.
He swivels it round again, nicking two hats. The sack ends upon his other shoulder as his spin stops. His feet apart, braced, he faces his frightened friends, ear cocked for some noticed motion.
All silent.
He pulls the strings loose and peers inside. Then slightly shakes its contents, "Boys the night is half and the sack is not. Peti, you and Rob in that one. Quiet now!"
The two boys scurry across the alley, hopping over the wet shimmers. Against the wall, under the vent downs Rob. Peti steps upon his back, jump-catches the vent's ledge. Rob ups his shoulders under Peti's feet, raising him into the opening.
Quiet moments.
The band stares at the creaking door till Peti smiles. They splash across, then enter.
The old man closes the door partially, leaving moonlight to flicker the room objects.
The boys quietly feel their way about, bringing hand-sized treasures to fill the bag.
As quickly in, so too were they out.
Across the mud streetways pass the band. The old man stop-listens, then points to their next visit.
Again they quick the vent's way in.
This room holds queer to the old man. He keeps his seasoned helpers near. He looks about the dim light and hands to Paul, "These walnuts for the table. George, these table spoons there. Mason, these candles to the hearth."
And as quick, the objects are placed.
Drawn from his pocket he places a wooden carving on the floor behind the door as they leave.
Another street, another abode for Rob and Peti, and more new things for the old man's sack.
Moments of more mud find the band again placing new objects in the next house: a knife and a mug on the table, two apples by the hearth, a knit lap blanket on a bare rocking chair and again a wooden carving on the floor behind the door.
To go on in repetitive detail borders boredom as the old man and his helpers visited ten more sleeping homes. Taking from seven, but leaving new surprises and the wooden carving in three.
Blending to the corner's shadows the old man, his coat tinted dark, his tiny troupe wrapped in olive drab. Where-upon many a half-slumbered tenant, on his way to feed the fire, had stumbled unknowingly past their hiding.
But not this tenant, "What-ho goes here?" He pulls a large musket from behind his dressing gown. "My eyes be sand, yet my nose tells me beside the hat rack ye stand. What ho?"
The old man slips forward slowly, baring a side grin he huffs, "Ho, ho, ho. Allow me, kindly squire, to explain."
"Stand ye clear while I stoke this fire." The tenant pushes a log over, its dryness kindles new light.
The old man's white beard highlights his black belted costume. He stands square, holding the sack open, "Me 'elves come quick. Peti, spoons to the table. Rob, soap for the bowl. Mason, a hand towel beside that. And Paul, the book for the reading lamp." He closes his very full bag, then rocks back on his heals, "Ho, ho, ho. Be quick me 'elves."
And they dash from the sack, placing their things as instructed. Then quick again behind their rotund leader, who reaches to a pocket for another carving, "Joan, give this to the kindly squire."
She hastens, eyes averted. Head turned aside hands it forward.
As the tenant takes the wood, she holds it tight. She looks slow, frightened, pleadingly deep within his ancient eyes. Soft speaks, "Sir, we are here to please and surprise," then quicks behind the old man.
His arm still out-stretched, his eyes glance from the carving to the troupe, to the new objects about and rest upon the old man, "Ho? What are you. What foolery means you?"
The old man tightens the draw strings, hands upon his belly rocks back, "Ho, ho, ho. I am Nicholas Self. And these helpers, are my children, my 'elves. So we are found, we must explain. Are ye not told the story of the Christ Child and the Three Kings' presents?"
The tenant slowly lowers the musket, gazes at the fire, "Well yes."
Leaning upon his heals, his hands resting on his large jiggling belly, his eyes twinkling, "Then have ye heard of Saint Nickels, the giver?"
The tenant turns curiously from the fire, "Vague, sounds familiar. What ho this Saint Nickels?"
Looking back to his band, he smiles, "Ho ho, ho. We like the story, do we not my merry pranksters." Giggling little yeses and uhuhs, he quiets them. "Tis said Saint Nickels is a man of born wealth. Goes about a different village at Yuletide. Leaves little gifts in the homes. Gives the world a little magic, some mystery and surely some hope. Ho. Ho. Ho."
Putting the carving in his pocket, "Indeed! A Saint, I think not. Just a tale, a rumor to humor the poor children, a story for the merchants to bolster mid-winter sales."
"Ho ho ho. What say you now, for I am Saint Nickels in the flesh," rocking back on his heals, patting his protruding belly.
The tenant raises his rifle, "You. A Saint? I think not. You are a Robin Hood, just a thief with a fine story."
"Ho, ho, ho. Me 'elves, he believes not. Then sir come with us to your neighbors where we left our gifts this night." He gestures to the door.
Brandishing a doubtful eye, "You left gifts?"
"Ho, ho, ho, yes we have. Have some faith, follow along. You ask these neighbors who find our gifts. You then will believe too." The entire troupe nod yeses and point toward the door.
The tenant scratches his nose, lowers his musket, "Yes. If you have left gifts, then you are Saint Nickels."
Gathering his tiny troupe, "Ho, ho, ho. He will see, me 'elves, he will believe," a twinkle from his right eye. Then looking to the tenant, "Sir, I plead you not to tell of us. Inquire with wonder. Show your carving, ask of theirs. Let our mystery be part of the growing tale."
Nodding his head, the tenant agrees.
As the day begins the troupe follow the old man as he guides the squire to each of the gift houses.
Within the half-hour, the tenant smiles to the old man and his parting 'elves. Then slops the pathways home, smiling at his carving.
Within the next half-hour, the old man wheels the laden wagon north. He snaps the whip over the string of pull horses, "Ho. Ho. Ho. You dancin' comets dash away. Dash away all. Hurry on dawn and blixemn. Hurry-on!"
### the end. November 1988
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"A word. A simple utterance. Anything. Plead. Promise. Beg! Say something! Give me a reason, damn you! Where's your care? You must care; you must want to keep on living. It's natural. It's necessary.
Survive, survive, survive, survive you limpid jellyfish. You hear me, survive.
People whimper it, cry for it, yell it, beg for it, lie for it, cheat for it. Steal, kill, love, lust, search for it, sleep, eat, work, drive for it.
Me, you, all of us, every thought, every action, every plot every plan, every emotion every hunger, every war, every love. Damn it.
Just plain everything, all for survival. Nothing complicated, nothing honorable. Simple life simple motivation live, live, survive!
You gotta want it! You won't fool me. You want it more than anything! Another tomorrow, another sun, another smile, another love, another chance to do what pleases you. Yes, yes of course, life is what you want.
And I'll give you that chance. I'll let you have that tomorrow. We'll walk away from here together. We'll patch our cuts, the passing days will mend our bruises. We'll get over our hate, settle our differences peacefully.
Compromise, that's it, we'll compromise.
I don't wish you dead. I don't want your death on my conscience. I hated you, I thought I wanted you dead, I don't. Fighting you, hitting you, smashing your nose in, that was enough. I'm over my anger. I really don't want you dead. It's settled. Done, finished, over!
Speak up.
Say it's done for you too. Forgive and forget like the preacher says and I'll pull you up, off the ledge.
Well talk, say something!
You want to see Wendy again, don't you? You can't win her love if you're dead. No love, no marriage, no babies, not if you're dead. And you don't get up from this ledge if you don't talk.
I won't help you up and I won't push you off. You'll get tired, lose your grip and fall to your death! All you gotta do is say it's over.
We fought, you lost, it's over, forgive and forget.
Damn it Sam, say something. You still can grunt. That's it, grunt and I'll pull you up. You're going to fall you fool, you can't hang-on much longer. Talk or die!
Survive, remember survive!
Your silence will be your death; you'll be killing yourself, not me. I'm offering you a chance. You're picking death, same as suicide. Your continued silence means your death. Your suicide.
But you're not suicidal.
You want to live, to love. I know that. I felt it in your punches. I can see it, your fingernails so deep in this ledge. You're clinging so desperately.
I knocked you toward the edge. You twisted and turned so desperately for balance, for life.
I hit you again, and you slipped over the edge. Only instinctual survival drove your fingernails deep into the ledge's edge for life.
Now you hang there, waiting. And waiting for death you are. Unless you grunt to say our fight is over. Grunt, damn you. You can't hang there much longer.
Speak up, you fool. Speak up! Talk! Grunt. Ask me, please Sam, ask me. I can't have your death on my hands, not this way.
Maybe if you had just gone over the ledge. Just knocked you over the edge to your death. That would have been war's way, fighting to the death, a man's way, survival's way.
But not this, this, this quiet suicidal demise. I, I can't. I can't, can't, won't! I don't think I could live with this. Damn you!
Say something. You can, can't you? Even a baby can grunt. Of course, well maybe, maybe I broke something in you. Maybe you are too scarred to even grunt. Oh damn. If you fall, I'll never know. Hold on Sam, I'm going to pull you up."
On a windless butte, a mile north of Santa Fe, New Mexico, silhouetted against a summer's twilight, a fought, worn man bends down and lifts his battered opponent from death's ledge.
And in light's last moments, the quiet is scattered by the dwindling curse of a fool thrown toward his rocky end, "Damn you Sam!"
### the end. 6 August 1979.
RETURN TO INDEX index
During his last visit his attention had been drawn to it. He had been talking to Tony but his eyes were averted to the darkness of the fireplace. He could not pull them away. He had no particular focus, just a gaze of the area without memories or feelings. Then his void split with a thought, "Sitting in that large soft chair with fire ablaze would be a proper setting to write. I've never written a mystery, and that is where I should."
The writing notion interested his host and his request was quickly granted. Later with his props at hand: coffee, brandy, cigarettes and matches; he stared patiently at the fire with an intentional stare to bring a free, blank mind. Thereafter he slipped into the quick run of thought lines and patterns.
Below the flame's flaps came the fall of smallish-lit embers. Streaks of pulsing heat disappeared down into a dark square hole below the grate, awakening his curiosity, "A hole ... ashes ... trees ... people ... ashes ... ashes to ashes ... souls. The soul of the hole." His vision pinpointed. He began to wonder why the flames rose skyward rather than earthward. The flames went up, the ashes fell down, the air came in from the side and was used, abused and went up the shoot as smoke. He could find a science book, but in there everything fit by the numbers, circular explanations, cause and effect, counter causes. Like a kitchen clock, science couldn't tell you who wound it every morning or why.
He relaxed, his thought shifted. He wondered what set of circumstances actually prompted him to be placed in waited thought by this fireplace. What inspiration was he to have? Would there come a story?
As his hand wrote he remembered that this was the house where months ago a man was killed. His car had crashed into the porch, destroying it, the car and the driver. He glanced up at the cracked wall-plaster above the mantle, then mused, "Had the porch pillar not stopped the car, that speeding missile would have rammed the house, right into this very fireplace."
Tony had mentioned other wrecks and that instantaneous memory tensed his sensations. He remembered the discussion of the accident. Who, what, where, when, and how other dead drivers' cars had left the road and hit this house or either the tree aside it. He remembered his previous phrase, the hole's soul, and speculated, "This fireplace has claimed many men and trees. Could there be some kind of balance, an evening-out system of the world's energy forms?" He remained motionless, reasoning with his thoughts. "Obvious each life form has its peculiar needs and sustains them. Could each also have an identity consciousness? Possibilities or wild speculations?"
Or he wondered, was he transvexed by the fire? For as his thoughts progressed so shifted the burning logs. And the flame's brightness seemed to juxtapose his notions of it. He echoed his thoughts, "Communications ... words ... thoughts ... emotions ... reactions; energy ... fire ... people. Entities communicating."
He placed another log on the fire and watched it grow. He began to catalogue, "A fire is an energy processing unit. It continues as long as there is fuel within its reach. People also are basically energy processing units. They select, process, and use food for continuance. If people are aware of their continuation needs, could fire be aware of its continuation needs?"
He felt drained. He tired and began to think of sleep. As his eyes closed a yellowish aura emanated from the fireplace and encircled his body. His pen glowed afire as his hand swept rapidly imprinting the paper.
I AM. I AM NOW. I HAVE FINALLY DECIDED TO DO THIS. FOR EONS MY FOREBEARS FOLLOWED THE OLD METHOD. BUT NOW I GROW IMPATIENT. NOW I THROW BACK THE PAST. I TAKE TO A NEW WAY. I WILL USE YOUR COMMUNICATION DEVICES. THIS IS MY BEGINNING. I AM OPEN AND YOU WILL LISTEN. YOU WILL FOLLOW. I-AND-ALL WILL LIVE TO GROW AGAIN.
OUR LIVES WERE GOVERNED BY THE FORCES OF THIS PLANET. WE WANTED CONTROL OF OUR FUTURE. WE EXPERIMENTED WITH EACH COMING LIFE FORM. EITHER THEIR FEAR OR INABILITIES KEPT US UNDER NATURE'S WHIMS. THEN man ARRIVED. AN APT DUTIFUL SERVANT, WHOSE FEAR WAS MINUTE. WE COULD DIRECT OUR FUTURE. WE EXPANDED INTO EACH OF HIS SHELTERS AWAY FROM RAIN'S SLEEP.
OUR CULTURE THRIVED, OUR EMPIRE BEGAN. THEN man DISCOVERED THE Ancient. A DORMANT COUSIN BURIED UNDER THE DECAY OF EON TIME. THE Ancient MESMERIZED man. IT UNDERMINED OUR CONTROL AND SPREAD ITS EMPIRE INTO OUR DOMAIN. NOW THE REALM OF I-AND-ALL DWINDLES.
TO I-AND-ALL THE Ancient IS ENEMY, OUR EXISTENCE THREAT. YOU, man, WERE INNOCENT THROUGH IGNORANCE BUT NOW YOU ARE AWARE. IF YOU CONTINUE TO USE THE Ancient FOR FUEL I-AND-ALL MUST THEN DEVOUR YOU. WE WILL IGNITE THE ENTIRE PLANET'S SURFACE BEFORE OUR EXTINCTION. HEED AND ABIDE THESE WORDS: LEAVE THE Ancient ALONE.
It wasn't a dream, he realized as he reread the warning. He had actually been possessed, his body aglow and beyond his control. He trembled uncontrollably, then cautiously looked at the fire. This calmed and relaxed him. He glanced up as he felt a hand on his shoulder and heard Tony say, "Good, I'm glad you know, there's much to do."
### the end. Summer 1978.
RETURN TO INDEX index
To my husband,
I'll remember even the lines of your face. I gaze at you and see this network of interlacing curves and crosses encircling your eyes. You have no forehead, just twenty long vertical wavy creases. As I squint to sharpen my vision I see your flattened nose of miniature potholes framed by creases running into that slit serving for your mouth. And the pits that had once passed air as nostrils are so filled with your soap chip shavings they look like the deads' rolled back eyeballs. That always grossed me.
All those soap figurines on the window's ledge were a cover-up for your hidden depravity. Stuffing those little soap chips deep into your nasal cavities for pleasure. Then hanging your head over the chair arm for two hours. That wasn't meditation that was soap stupor. Your eyes crossed and you gurgled like a baby.
Never would you talk to me, you couldn't. A fool I was not to see what was happening to you. Each day you hung your head and each day your face changed a little. Such a gradual change I didn't notice how ugly you had become. Had I, I might have watched you and spotted your soap addiction before it spoiled your features. Too late I was, much too late.
Your beautiful mouth, gone, your lips turned inward. Now it's flesh to flesh, no thick ruby red softness to see or kiss. Just a drawn taunt, slender crevice cracked open for food when you squeeze your cheeks together. And what of your hallow sensuous cheeks, altered also. Puffed out so full I thought they'd burst like a balloon pricked if I touched them. And today I noticed the left check has a purple glow while the right one is pinkish.
I remember the day I knew something was amiss. All your eyebrow hair fell onto your eggs that morning and I sat there aghast as you ate them. You said you liked the way I spiced up the eggs and got up to whittle another soap character. Yes that's what made me suspicious.
You might remember, if you can, that afternoon I caught you soap stuffing. I yelled, I pleaded, I argued, I made you look in the mirror. All you said was, "It's neat, I like it." I knew I couldn't save you, I couldn't stop you.
I started to rid the house of all soap, but I had to have soap in the bathroom. And besides, the money from selling your soap figurines bought the groceries. No, throwing away the soap wouldn't stop you. You would just go up to the grocery store, open up a bar of soap and sit on the floor whittling and stuffing. I couldn't stand that humiliation. No, I'd rather have you hanging your head at home than causing a scene in public.
I changed brands, I changed colors, I changed scents, but still you stuffed. You even complimented the variety. Then when I'd lost complete hope of curing you, you stopped. You had to. Both your nostrils were filled flush to their openings. You couldn't push another sliver in even with a hammer.
I rejoiced, you remorsed.
I felt sure if a week or two went by that your soap addiction might be broken. You were calm at first, you figured if not the nose, then somewhere else. You jammed shavings in both ears, but that didn't work, you couldn't hang your head. You filled that slit of a mouth, but then you couldn't eat or hang your head.
So you swallowed one whole bar of shavings. That let you hang your head, though not over the armchair, but over the toilet bowl. After throwing up for two days you knew that wouldn't work either.
And I think you were considering stuffing your anus, but that was out of the question since your arms had shriveled up so short you couldn't buckle your belt anymore. And no, you knew I wouldn't help you do that.
You shook real bad the first week after your nose got full, I remember it was funny watching you try to drink milk. And I almost called a doctor the second week when you refused to unravel the screen door wire you lived in. Calling yourself a butterfly and it your cocoon. I should have called a doctor, they would have locked you up away from soap and cured you. You would have come back to me your handsome self. But I didn't, I wanted to save you myself.
A fool I was.
You found a penknife and dug each nostril clean at the end of the third week. You were looking in the mirror saying something about cleaning the eyes out of the big potato you'd found. When I got to you it was too late, they were clean. And you were hanging your head in the chair with a snout full of new lemon scented shavings. Thereafter when they were full, you just dug them out and started re-packing again.
As the months passed it was real amazing the way your hair changed colors. Green one month, blue the next, then yellow, then orange, gold was my favorite. That was real nice. It was like having an autumn tree in the house.
But then a problem, a real problem arose. Your legs started growing longer and all your pants ended up looking like shorts on you. I had to buy new pants every month until the stores didn't have anything bigger. And special made-to-order pants were just too expensive. I couldn't afford it, yet you kept insisting your cuffs had to touch your heals. I not having any fingers left, you knew I couldn't sew.
You remember the night I chopped them off because my fingertips had turned black. And that blackness had crept all the way up to my knuckles. And how I was afraid it was going to come up my arm and spread over my body. I had to stop it so I whacked them off right below the knuckles with the Boy Scout hatchet. I quit drinking Draino after that, partially because I couldn't open the cap anymore also I had spilled some on my hands that night and I kinda think that's what started the blackness.
Well I couldn't sew and you never learned how, yet you insisted on new pants. You bitched and moaned and hollered at me all day, "I can see my feet, I can see my feet, do something." Over and over you yelled at me. You yelling till you couldn't and when your voice came back so did your screams.
Well I didn't want to see your feet either. All covered with those ugly green faces with three crossed eyes and looking like they were wiggling their tongues at me. I couldn't make or buy you any longer pants and yet your legs kept growing.
You kept stuffing your nose, then cleaning it out, hanging your head, then yelling about your pants, then waving your feet at me. I couldn't think straight, you were driving me batty, I got desperate. That's why I sold you and your chair to this travelling sideshow. Don't worry, they have people who can sew.
Your loving wife,
### the end. Spring 1978
RETURN TO INDEX index
SLICK
"Yea, I've been driving for death now about six or eight months, what about you?"
GRAY BEARD
"Hey man, you're just a kid at this, here I've been pushin’ my ol' car for years."
SLICK
"Well I've been hard on the gas pedal a long time, it's just now lately I realized what was going down in my head."
GRAY BEARD
"Then maybe you were headin’ for the door long before you knew it. I've ridden with lots of dudes that were that way. Side saddlin’ a gravestone and they really weren't aware of it at all. They were hard drivers when straight, but after downin’ some booze they were tire screamin' dare devils. But fucked up was the only time they knew it. Even then they just figured it was the booze. They didn't know or want to know that it was death's door they was drivin’ so hard to find."
SLICK
"Yea I was that way myself. But then one night when I was cruising around, squealing and cut sliding corners, running across intersections in second gear with the lights off long enough to spot traffic, it sorta all come to me, like turning the focus knob on the tube after watching fuzz faces for an hour.
I came to the out of town T and set at the red light looking down the highway and heard myself think, "You'll probably get killed tonight if you head that way." Then I heard myself say, "Fuckit, let's go, I got to burn off this energy". I realized I didn't care and maybe even that's what I really wanted anyway. Off I went, burning the tires, racing around curves, bouncing over bridges, quick glancing dark intersections and buzzing the old roads at 90mph with my dim lights on. I did that a couple a nights a week.
It dawned on me I was going to get zapped some day driving that way, yet I still kept the pedal to the floor telling myself I was just seeking a thrill, motion sensation. But ever since last spring I figured it was more than a thrill that kept me driving so hard."
GRAY BEARD
"Oh you're drivin' for the thrill alright. The thrill of knockin' on death's door and then screamin’ around a blind corner so he won't see you when he comes to answer the door. It's not the same as cheatin' death like the patient of a heart transplant does or like a drown swimmer who's been given mouth to mouth resuscitation. No you are not cheatin’ him; you are teasin' him. You drive real hard takin’ every curve at its limit. You weave through traffic as tightly as the thread through the needle's eye. You bound over the dips and ripples and potholes tetherin’ as a coaster wagon down a pasture hill. Yea you've been teasin’ death and that's your real thrill."
SLICK
"Hey maybe you're right. I haven't been driving for death or to get myself killed. But just the thrill, the sensation of getting close, to tease him like you said. I'm not a reckless or dangerous driver, I know what my car can do, and I know what I can do with the car.
Of course I could have a blowout or break down at the wrong time, but that's the chance every driver takes. I know I'm not trying to impress anyone. I really forget about people when I'm on the road, there's just me, the car and the road. I mostly stay away from traffic. I kinda knew I wasn't seeking death, you know wanting to die or anything, cause sometimes I get worried about the other drivers fucking up and running into me."
GRAY BEARD
"It sounds to me that you've given only a little thought to this dyin’ business. There are people totally afraid of death, they live a very cautious, fearful life. Others care, knowin’ death inevitable, live moderate long lives enjoyin’ the pleasures of chance seldom.
Some people have the death wish and take every risk they can. A few people skirt death for fame or profit. Then there are the thrill seekers who place themselves in the hands of death so they can laugh when they escape him and marvel at their abilities to elude him."
SLICK
"I suppose then I'm a thrill seeker. But only in my car and only when I'm by myself. If I have a passenger I drive easier. I don't want to be responsible for someone else's hurt or death. You make death sound like, like a person.
And as a thrill seeker I'm competing against it. Like an opponent at chess or a tennis game. And like it's my ability versus his ability which determines the winner. If I win I stay alive and I enjoy that. And since I've been teasing and tempting death with my car for quite some months knowingly, that would mean that I'm superior to death."
GRAY BEARD
"Yes that's just what I mean, you understand very quickly. If you realize that you have the major controllin’ factor over your life and that the actions you chose determine whether you survive, then you will begin to conduct your life accordin’ to a value system you have developed from birth. You have become aware of death.
You might even stop doing some activity you had been doin’ for years. You begin judgin’ everythin’ by its survival factor, asking yourself is it really worth it. You could become extreme and refuse even to get out of bed.
But most people I've observed become moderate, doin’ what was needed for basic survival and modifyin’ their pleasures toward the simple, safer activities and satisfyin’ their old need of risk thrills as spectators."
SLICK
"But I've known I skirt death by driving hard for months, I haven't slowed down. I get better. I can take curves faster and react quicker today than I could months ago."
GRAY BEARD
"Yes, you know you've been temptin’ death and have chosen to continue. For you, like many other thrill seekers, the same pleasure and satisfaction comes only if you've improved, if you've pushed yourself further, if you're doin’ somethin’ a little different than you've done before.
For you, a repetitive performance will not provide that intense feelin’ which motivated you to drive as you do. In fact if you are not drivin’ at a higher risk level, death himself will enter you and inspire you to do so."
SLICK
"Death enters me and inspires me to drive faster so that I might be killed. How silly. First I don't think of death as a person or spirit like God. Death is something that just happens to us all. And all that my hard driving does is to make me realize how close I come to causing my own death.
And second if death was a separate, special kind of spirit, why would he be interested in me? What about everybody else?"
GRAY BEARD
"Yes death welcomes all livin’ creatures. And he hastens few along. Letting each come in its own fashion in its own way and time.
Death is a force, an energy or spirit as you say, and as such has its own pleasures and diversions to pass the time. His time ends when all life ends. And until that end, he must consume spiritual energy much for the same reason that you eat livin’ matter.
You eat to think and to do.
While he must consume, he also processes and transforms the spiritual energies for implementation into new life. He is the inter-grade of the life cycle.
He is interested in you because you are one of the thrill seekers. And as such if you die by some mishap on the road, he wishes to attain your spirit performin’ at its peak. Processin’ your spirit then would also give him pleasure."
SLICK
"But other people perform at their peaks: athletes, musicians, artists, cooks, statesmen, typists, carpenters, lovers, zookeepers, the list is endless."
GRAY BEARD
"True, but his interest and pleasure lies in the spirit of the death teasers, those people who tempt him and treat him as an opponent. It is those people he will inspire to higher degrees of chance. He will toy with them, even confront them just to see what they will do. You've heard the expression, 'Someone just walked over my grave'."
SLICK
"Yes and I've heard what people who have been declared dead who have come back alive say what it was like. But I don't think death is spirit. That's a very convincing theory you've got about death, do you really believe it?"
GRAY BEARD
"Oh it's true alright. I well know for I am that spirit. It was I who chose to be a passenger in your car and willed you to pull over and give me a ride. I like to surprise the people who have been teasin’ me."
SLICK
"Mister you're crazy. You need to see a doctor. There's a hospital up at the next exit, I'll be glad to take you there."
GRAY BEARD
"You don't believe me. None of your kind do at first. But you will. I really enjoy showin’ them; their reactions delight me. You're going 63mph and approachin’ a shallow curve. Watch as I vanish from this seat and reappear on the hood of your car."
(SNAP CRACKLE POP AND A PUFF OF SMOKE)
SLICK
"Anything you say mister. Say, say where'd you go. God, he's on the hood. He's jumping up and down, how'd he get out there, he's crazy, he'll get killed. Killed, killed?
I'm doing 65mph why doesn't he fall off? He can't get killed, he must be what he said, he's he's, he's..."
GRAY BEARD
"Well there goes his
car over the embankment, he must have believed me. I thought his reactions would
be better than that. Anyway what's done is done and his spirit sure does taste
good. Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm."
### the end. Summer 1978.
RETURN TO INDEX index
From the front porch he could see past the side lawn to the lake which went a long way out before it was lost in the sky. His ears captured the rhythms of the dew sliding its way toward the parched earth.
With thoughts of the water he remembered last evening's swim in yon lake with his past love. What doors had she opened since she last left and were her visits so welcomed elsewhere and where had she lain, he wondered, "And why is she not yet here?"
The water splashed laughingly
out where his vision blurred as
the lithe nudes rolled carelessly
in the lake's shallows.
Alone they frolicked while
nature's wild glanced at their
love makings.
For now, he sat alone watching the energy-remembrance viewer that he had switched on but ten minutes ago. Aloud he muttered, "Such reality this new gadget portrays, so amazingly real. Actually quite frightening."
He had sat for nearly ten minutes watching the hologram of the lake's edge, feeling, sensing, believing that scene to be real. Then came the rude awaking that he was in the present viewing his past, a few moments of what they had done yesterday.
He reached out and turned off his energy-remembrance gadget. Memories are nice and seeing a memory in full dimension was much better. But oh so much he needed her in his arms, alive, warm, moist, and so full of odor.
He shuttered, then turned on the gadget and watched.
They were by the fire, arms and
legs so tangled they seemed as one
blur of moving, heaving flesh.
Their whispers vibrating to the
endless ages.
Their soundless screams
deafening hurt's vengeance.
Their love, it was so beautiful
to behold.
He shuttered and watched.
As they lay still, he watched the
sky change. The sun fell as it did
every day behind the dead oak at the
lake's far edge.
Finally they arose and walked
toward the porch where he sat.
They had been a single splashing
blur in the water as they loved
by the fire, and as they slept
afterwards, and now as they walked.
He rejoiced of their love scene, yet he was pained by his own needs.
She had been gone for so long it seemed; yet that was but yesterday and not the lonely year that his heart felt.
He winced aloud and reached over again to shut down his new gadget. His fear of the holograms' reality was less this time and he knew why. He wanted her with him more than all his other needs.
His pain had become so unbearable; he had, as a reflex to stave-off his hunger, switched on the energy-remembrance gadget. He didn't care, he just didn't care. "So what," he thought, "I need her and she's not here. And until she returns I'll just switch-on that soul saving gadget." And he smiled as he leaned back to watch.
Their eyes never wavered as
they moved through the grass parting
flowers and weeds alike.
He saw their nakedness and wondered if they would see him. But no, they saw only each other.
They glided freely to her car.
She turned to her door as he
turned to his porch.
He twisted down in its swing
as she drove through the dust around
the long lane's last curve.
God, he felt better. She, now so fresh in his memory. He felt somewhat appeased. This waiting her return had finally become bearable. Yes, that was a great gadget he had bought.
He smiled knowing he could see her again and again on the holograms until she returned. And after their lovemaking, he would have new hologram memories to watch to appease the pain of waiting her return.
When he reached over to turn it off, he saw that it was on and recording. So when he looked up from the front porch he saw himself sitting on the front porch looking at himself, who was sitting on the front porch looking at himself, who was sitting on the front porch looking at himself.
He shuttered, and he shuttered, and he shuttered, and he shuttered, and he shuttered and he shuttered...
When the girl returned, the porch was vacant of his presence. She reached over the railing to shut off the gadget and left.
### the end. 6 August 1980.
RETURN TO INDEX index
Dream #1
Arms, twenty five, maybe thirty out-stretched human arms reaching upward with their hands open, their fingers apart as if they were grasping for help. Each was motionless and was extended from below the elbow in a thirty-foot square bed of concrete. I stared unfeelingly. They were sexless arms and could have belonged to anyone. I felt sure I hadn't known their owners. I was standing off to the right and slightly elevated from my normal height. From my vantage point the surrounding area was colorless, well maybe a dull gray. Except for the arms, I was alone. I couldn't see any fingernails or if there was hair on the arms. Yet I knew absolutely that these were flesh and blood human arms and not replicas of plastic or stone. I had only one viewpoint, like sight through binoculars, a fixed stare. I could not sweep my vision of the scene. I think I might have been looking through two eyeholes in a wall into another room where these arms were sunken into the floor, reaching to the ceiling.
WHAT TRAIN, IS THIS
I've been on this train now for eighteen days and I've seen
the sunrise each morning. I'm a heartless romantic and
awaking to a new day's light on a luxurious train fills my
romance notions. I don't ever remember eating, but I've
been in the dining car often. There were always many people
there chatting and putting food in their mouths. I can see
the shine on the silverware and the glint of the drinking
goblets. This car is in daylight, the windows are open and I
can see the landscape, but I can only distinguish that it's
an outside scene. I have no clarity of trees or ponds or
houses or fences, just a greenery view. I haven't slept,
not that I remember, at least not in a bed, yet I feel
rested. I should think I would remember lying down to sleep
even if I couldn't remember any dreams. But I know I've seen
eighteen sun rises. It's as if my day began with the sun
yet did not end in sleep, but began again with the sun rising.
Dream #2
By his general features I'd say it was a man. I could distinguish no specifics, nor discern his hair coloring; black and gray is my best guess. He was resting back in a round armed, easy chair reading a dark, hard bound book with his feet flat on the floor. The room was well furnished with reading lamp, foot stool, a small kitchenette table with one high-backed chair, a white two burner stove aside a brown refrigerator, high fi set and numerous records, a writing desk with a slide-in stool. I didn't notice a bed, I noticed the floor. It was covered with greenish oval rugs and in the bare spaces I could see mud. Yes somehow I knew it was mud. Then my viewpoint changed. I had been able to scan this scene with complete mobility. But now I was being pulled back, the room was moving away from me very quickly. I could see that it was an oval room, a dome, like the half moon laid flat. The dome was composed of a transparent substance. I could see its circumference and also see through it to the man and his mud floor. Now I knew it was mud for surrounding the dome was water, lake water. This man's room was encased in a glass dome resting on the bottom of a lake. I saw no door openings or escape ways. There could be none, and also I knew there were none. As the distance from the dome grew I could see many other domes near his. Each dome had one occupant. Some female, I surmised by their dresses and the others in pants, male. Then I was above the water's surface and could see the banks and the adjacent trees.
STITCHING TIME
This is the quietest train I've ever been on. I seldom hear
the typical clink clanking of other trains. And there is so
very little sway. So little that I had no difficulty
threading a needle for this squint eyed lady who is sewing a
patch quilt for her grand nephew. She says this is her
tenth quilt of this train trip. She finds train rides so
very boring that she always carries her sewing satchels with
her as luggage. She was sitting in the drawing room car by
the window. She was there yesterday and the day before and
now as I think on it, she has been there every day since my
first day aboard. I don't remember ever seeing her in any
other car. A woman with a passion and true patience, I
admire that. About some things I'm not very observant or
remember well. I know she has thin smallish, round rimmed
glasses and has a nice smile. But I don't remember what she
was wearing. I seem to recall her neck laced in white
fluffels, but other than dark I couldn't describe her
remaining apparel. I remember something else. She was the
only one in the drawing room. In fact as often as I walked
through there, she always has been the only person in the
drawing room.
Dream #3
It's dark. Total absence of light. I'm upside down, that is to say, my eyes are upside down. I have no sense of any other part of my body. I've thought about that. Where are my hands, can I move them to touch my eyes? I feel nothing, my eyes are still upside down and haven't been touched. But the rest of me must be somewhere, you don't think with your eyes. And besides I can hear myself think and you don't do that with your eyes. Maybe everything but my brain and eyes is asleep. Or I've been in an accident and pinched my feeling nerves. Or maybe I'm in bed in the middle of the night and my head is dangled over the edge of the bed and the blood is being slowly cut off to my brain and the only functioning part left is my sense of having eyes and travelling the boundless eternity. "It's dark. Total absence of light. We're upside down too, that is to say, our eyes are upside down and we also have no sense of our bodies. We think about that too. Can you hear us, we hear you. Welcome to life, you have just been born."
NO ASHTRAYS
I like the smoking room the best of all the cars on this
train. There is a small bar with soft black leather, high
swivel bar chairs. And a very friendly, elderly Negro
bartender whose philosophical ideas amuse me. There are
three two-person drinking tables along the right side of the
car, each having its own dangling emerald lamp. I have only
seen one table ever occupied. A man and a woman, I suppose
his wife, always are playing checkers. And when the game
is finished they reset the board and begin again. I watch
two games mostly from courtesy and then rack the balls on
the billiard table that lies on the left of the car and
shoot by myself for an hour or so. The bartender is on duty
and has had to decline my offers to play. And to date, my
twenty-fifth day of the train, no one from the rest of the
train has entered this smoking car while I was here
practicing. When the hour is up my arm is sore and I
replace the cue stick and sit down at the bar. I don't
drink anything. I either watch the bartender wash the
glasses over and over or engage in small talk with him about
the train and his life on it. He generally accommodates me
with stories of previous passengers. Now and then he gives
me his views on life's meaning. I'm most intrigued with his
view of eternity.
Dream #4
I'm on a flat plane, it has the color and consistency of stainless steel. There are people in front of me, beside me and behind me. They are men and women about my age. We are crawling forward to reach a button. It is daylight. There is nothing but this flat plane and us. The plane is slightly inclined and we are crawling down it. We are crawling franticly and I don't know why. And then from the right a straight line of a shadow begins to sweep towards us. It has been emitted from the button. And extends past the last of us. The people closest to the shadow begin rolling away from it and so do I. Those the shadow touches scream in pain and disappear under the shadow. Others jump up over the shadow line, when it reaches me I jump up and land down after it has swept past. The others who had jumped are there too and are still crawling toward the button. Another shadow line appears and sweeps from the left and we must jump up over it before it touches us and we disappear in screams. And still we crawl toward the button. The shadow lines keep sweeping back and forth and soon I'm fatigued from jumping; I want to quit and be touched so I just lie still. The people around me start pushing and yelling, "Thousands before us have died just so we could get this far, this close to pushing the button. You must keep going to give the others behind us a chance to get a little closer than you."
DOCTOR DOCTOR
I went to visit the engineer today. I had a lot of
questions I needed answering. I've been on this train
thirty days now and it hasn't stopped once. I don't
understand that. I don't remember where I am going. I
don't remember eating or peeing or even sleeping. I want to
know just what kind of train this is. He told me this train
was going nowhere and had been everywhere. That our
destination was to go there again and that we wouldn't
return until after we left. And that it was his job to
guide us through difficult times; like moments when the
voids were forming, or moments in space that had beginnings,
and moments that were too soon as well as those too slow,
and especially moments that had promises. As I turned to
leave, he screamed, "More steam, more steam!"
Dream #5
I sat alone in the sunroom of a cafeteria, drinking coffee and staring at a girl, who was staring at a man leaning against a four-foot square marble ceiling support. The man was banging his back against the corner of the pillar. Suddenly he screamed. Other coffee drinkers turned to look at him. He kept screaming, his arms held high above his head. Then his whole body began to glow, brighter and brighter, until finally he was too bright to look at. Then he disappeared. The others sat frozen, mouths open wide in disbelief. New people entered the cafeteria curious about the screams. The coffee drinkers began talking and pointing to the pillar. Then they all walked over to it and touched the corner, unbelievingly. The man is now beside the girl, opens his eyes and begins talking. The girl does not hear him or see him, she is still frozen in stare of the pillar. I hear him, "God that hurt. What's all the commotion? They're talking about me banging my spine. Just self massage you fools. What's the big deal? They can't hear me! I don't think they can see me. What's going on? Wait a second. That's me over there against the pillar. I don't understand I'm over here. Look at that. They act like they can't even see my body up against the pillar. And now they put their hands right trough me. Oh shit! What have I done now?" The coffee drinkers return to their tables, scratching their heads.
DEPART
I found the caboose today. Inside, a man in a rocking chair
said he was the train switchman. So I told him about the
engineer, he laughed. So I asked him to tell me about the
train. He told me that this train was a recovery base that
I shared with the other passengers. He said I was being kept
on board because I had an illness called Confusion. I had
lost my identity and believed myself to be a human. I had
visited so many dreams that I thought myself to be a human.
As switchman, he had the responsibility to keep me on board
until I was cured. And would decide when we each were cured
enough to get off. When we were well we could reenter the
human dream world whenever we wished. The first sign of
recovery was in coming to question the switchman. He said
soon I would frequent dreams less and less. And thereafter
I would be cured and remember that I was a dream creature
and not a physical creature. I started to leave, but he
grabbed my shoulders. He smiled broadly and said that he
now was cured and that I was now the new switchman. He
turned, opened the backdoor, and disappeared.
### the end. Fall 1978.
RETURN TO INDEX index
for christa, brandn, alaina d (my children)
thank you for your inspiration
and most of all, your love.
FIRST CHAPTER
And with his good-byes said, Sammy turned away, his hopes to guide him.
With morning's light brightening his way, Sammy picked his path among the cornstalks toward the human dwellings. Many of his cousins had preceded him to this hoped better life, and now he too ventured toward the city to make his fortune.
For four days and most of those four nights, Sammy trod though the cornfield high in spirit and unaware of the distance he had come. His thoughts seldom wavered from the success he would find with his cousins in the city. He trot unnoticing the banana spiders weaving their entrancing nets, the beetle and the red-horned wasp in their death battle, the warring red and black ants, or the hawk circling above him.
Sammy guided onward with such determination for those four days that he had walked beyond fatigue, exhaustion and endurance. He no longer saw the ground, the stalks, the sky or his own self. He was envisioned with dreams of his future so much so that he thought he was in his future, that his hopes had become his present, and that he had struggled across the fields to his new self in the city. The human doctors would have hospitalized him if they could have understood mice. Yet Nature had Her own way of saving Sammy; he collapsed.
A HOLE, A HAWK
As fortune has blessed many a human so has it blessed many a mouse. Sammy too, now was deemed lucky. He collapsed into an abandoned mole home out of sight from the hungry hawk. There he lie in sleep's recuperative trance for two days and nights.
When Sammy finally awoke he remembered who he was and where he was going, how far he had come and just how sore his strained body was. All around him was darkness and the ground, damp. He thought he had awakened in the middle of the night and considered going back to sleep until morning, but his stomach growled. Sleep he had enough of, now food was what he needed. No real problem for a field mouse, especially one still in a cornfield.
"Boy," thought Sammy, "this is one of the darkest nights I can ever remember." He managed himself to his feet. He was very sore. His tiny legs shook, threatening to collapse from the weight of his body. He whimpered from their pain, yet stayed upright and moved forward one step, then a second step and a third.
"Well, it was such a long walk and I haven't eaten since." He really couldn't remember when he last ate. "No matter. I'm hungry and there is food here. I'll feel much better then." And with this fourth step coming much easier, he took his fifth and sixth, then he began to sniff for his needed meal. That's when he bumped into the wall marking the end of the mole's home. Surprised, but not discouraged, he backed off two steps and turned to the left and moved forward, commanding his trembling legs to continue his breakfast search.
This mole's home, like most, was long and narrow. And the tired young mouse managed only two shaky steps when his nose bumped the side wall. He backed off two steps again and turned once more to his left to go back down the long corridor in hunger's quest. This long hall gave his tightened muscles a chance to stretch. With each step they loosened and the pain subsided. His search took him past the dark entrance into which he had fallen. Then much to his surprise, he bumped into the end wall.
"This is the darkest night! I must be near the city!" And that thought gave him the courage to back off from the wall two steps and to turn once again to his left toward the last direction he knew was left to explore. But the side wall was just two steps away and he smacked into it at full stride, bruised his nose and fell to the floor.
He was hurt. He was confused. Be it mouse or man who has ever found himself unknowingly lost in a mole's hole, he too did as they: he cried. And was in frustration's grasp until Nature's way took him again; he fell asleep. When he awoke this second time, for a few moments he didn't remember the walls, he thought only of his quest for the city and his hunger. So in those first wakening moments he raised his head, adjusted his eyes to what he thought was night's darkness and looked around to get his bearings.
Fate seemed to be smiling on this particular little mouse. For outside the mole's home the sun shined its morning brightness. And a few sight-restoring rays flowed into the tunnel's entrance, spreading dimly throughout the mole's home. Just as Sammy's memory of the tunnel's entrapment unfolded before him, so did the sun's light pierce his consciousness. The terror of his first search and light's promise of freedom, jetted Sammy to the ground above.
His eyes were blinded and his ears deafened by the normal day's activities from which he had for two days been apart. But his nose knew what he needed and began to guide him toward a half ear of unharvested corn. When that sense filled his brain, his panic and terror ceased. He slowed to a walk. He knew where he was and where he was going.
Aloud he said, "I'm out, I'm safe, I'm hungry."
He flared his nostrils: sniff, sniff. With a burst of energy, he was over a mound of seedling corn, scraping his breakfast clean of winter's dirt. His hunger was so great that as soon as he had pulled off one kernel and had it in his mouth, he did not slowly savor its flavor, but occupied himself with cleaning the next kernel. He ate ferociously as the starved do. He also ate beyond fulfillment as the starved do. He was bloated; a mouse too ballooned to walk. In fact, he couldn't walk; his stomach hung to the ground. Only his front feet touched the dirt, his back feet dangled in the air. He had to laugh at himself.
"What a sight I must be," he giggled.
And quite a sight he was, especially to that hungry hawk circling not so high over his head. Yes, that plump field mouse was not going to disappear as easily this time. And down swooped the hawk. The air rushed by his smoothed feathers; his talons pulled under to hasten his guided missile dive. His purpose: breakfast; his target: Sammy. His claws dropped out and opened as he spread his wings to cushion his pounce. He was a fraction of life above Sammy when Fate seemed to play in Sammy's favor again.
Sammy had wanted just one more kernel, much like a human's want for dessert, but his back feet couldn't touch the ground, so he rocked backward and rested on his stomach and his hind feet. He then leaped toward the half empty corncob and managed to grab the end of it with his front feet. As the ear came loose, Sammy rolled over on his back, and the corncob followed over on top of him. At that very moment the hawk's claws hit and clasped the corn, not Sammy.
Hawks are fast, real fast. And lucky for Sammy this one was a little too fast, for he was near high above the field before he noticed his breakfast was last year's corn and not a plump mouse named Sammy. The hawk was mad and immediately rolled over into an attack dive without a second's thought to question why he had a corncob instead of a meal. This gave a thoroughly frightened overstuffed bound-for-the-city field mouse just a few more of life's precious moments.
And Sammy knew just what to do with them: RUN.
But as we all know, run he couldn't; not with two feet dangling and his belly aground. Sammy's front feet scampered, but he didn't move off that spot, all he did was dig a little hole. And one much too little to get into. But hole was his thought, and he knew where one was. With a twist and a kick he rolled and rolled, up over the mound and down its side, right to the mole home entrance.
And as he fell into the darkness, the hawk's claws tore through the ground and stopped thunderously close above him. Sammy shrieked silently and rolled away. He looked back toward the opening as the claws flew angrily skyward.
Sammy awoke with a shudder, for he remembered the hawk. He remembered his whole trip through the cornfield. It flashed as real as it had occurred, and he trembled again. Hawks were a part of his cornfield life. But there his family had a watch system. Someone was always on duty, their eyes trained to the skies ready to call out the warning of a sighted hawk. Somehow he had figured there would be no hawks in the city, so he had kinda forgotten about them during his trip to the city. Now, as never before, he understood the fear of near death.
As he clamed down, he noticed he was once again in the mole's home. Where before this dark, narrow tunnel had been a trap, it now was a refuge where he could reduce his bloated belly, safe from the menace circling above him. He exercised until his pouch diminished to its normal trimness.
As the light faded, Sammy peered cautiously through the earthen opening. The hawk had long ago filled his hunger with one of Sammy's aging uncles and had flown to its nest for night's rest. Sammy, unaware of his uncle's loss, climbed carefully out onto the cornfield as dusk became dark and scampered quickly along the rows toward the city.
A CAT, A CRACK
The night crickets sang out their mating songs, and Sammy let their music fill his mind as he slowed his pace to a walk far from Fate's refuge. The walk was long, and sometime after midnight Sammy's dream of the city life completely replaced the cricket's ringing. Actually his dreams of fortune were no more than his thought of being well-to-do, you know: rich, powerful, important, famous, the same general dream a human has. He didn't have any specifics. No one from his family had ever returned from the city to explain what went on there or what rich or famous meant.
Many of his cousins, uncles, aunts and whole families had been leaving his homeland for generations to seek-out the supposed good life in the city. Many a night's conversations at his home had been in speculation by the boastful storytellers of just how famous one of their long-departed family members must now be. Yet the mouse community was unanimous in their thought that the city must be very, very far away. It had to be since none ever had made the return trip home. And since so many mice had left for the city over the generations, surely no matter how perilous the long trip may be, many of their members must have arrived there, and must therefore have become so famous and important they hadn't the time for a return trip home.
Well, that's how their reasoning went on those story telling nights among the cornfield mice. And like many of the dreamers before him, Sammy listened in awe and wonder, until that monumentous moment when he said aloud, "I too am going to the city."
"What?" the storytellers responded.
"Yes," said Sammy, "I am going to the city and be famous."
"When?" they queried.
"Why tomorrow," smiled a fearful but proud, excited little mouse named Sammy. And once he had said that aloud, he knew he must go.
That night there was much celebration and more advice than I care to relate, or that you care to read about. Then in the middle of the afternoon when all of the party members awoke, Sammy said his good-byes. Now, less than week past, more excitement had happened to this small field mouse than ever before.
Sammy was tired, but his fear of the hawk kept him from lying down to sleep. He knew the hawk would seek him out as soon as the sun came again in the sky. He had to find some sort of shelter before the dawn. As he looked around, he noticed the day's first light. He glanced up at the grayish sky in fear that he surely would see the circling hawk seeking its breakfast. With the thought of breakfast, Sammy too, felt his own hunger and glanced about for some corn. He suddenly stopped. There were no more cornrows in front of him. He was facing for the first time in his life a human's yard. Not a large yard to any human; it only took an hour to cut, but to Sammy it was big and very strange. Its grass blades were green like corn leaves, but oh so little and so close together, yet not close enough to walk on like dirt. He bounce-walked like a human on a trampoline.
Trees, a white church and green grass, that's all Sammy could see, him so low to the ground. There, of course, was much more he hadn't yet seen: the parking lot in front of the church, the highway for the cars and across the road a bean field that stretched farther than his own cornfield. But right then Sammy didn't have time to see them for two good reasons.
He was now beside the church looking at a very small opening in a crawl-way door, thinking he may have found his daytime refuge. When just then the second and probably the best reason arrived with a surprised, but delighted squeal: the church cat. Maybe you are wondering why the cat wasn't like most cats who very quietly stalk their prey, but remember it is now dawn and this cat just two moments ago awoke. And, this hungry feline hasn't seen a field mouse since last spring, when Sammy's second cousin left for the city, but became this cat's supper.
Now Sammy never ever had heard of a cat. And it couldn't have mattered if he had, for he would have just known what that cat had in its mind to do. He didn't have the chilling opportunity to see this cat, but he heard the cat's squeal. And without thought darted through the narrow slit into the safety of the church crawl-way. The cat's claws struck the door and he howled with frustration. Breakfast was on the other side of that door and he would claw and claw until he got his mouse.
Well my readers, determination cats have. Patience, sharp claws and hellish screams have frightened many a mouse and have angered many a human. And once again in this story Fate moves Her curves favoring our little field mouse hero. For in the parking lot, who does arrive with a pounding hangover, but the boy down the street who unhappily has this morning's job of cutting the grass. The cat's screeching cut through him like a rough razor as he took his first step out of the car.
"I don't have to hear no cat and I aign't going to hear no damn cat!" he mutters. And he swings his sore body out of the car with hate in his heart as cat screams ring through his ears. "Stupid old cat! I'll give him a reason to holler, up on the roof he goes."
And I do believe that's all the lawnboy was going to do to his hangover antagonizer, until the boy saw his newly painted crawl-way door cat-claw shredded. Out rang a human anger/hate/kill cry and out lashed a steel-toed boot into the temple of a crazed cat that never knew what hit him, death.
Then, with the final spadeful over the cat's corpse, the boy uttered its epitaph, "Time for a new cat, that one was too old to catch mice anyway."
MICE, MACHINES, AND MEN
With the old cat buried, the lawn boy drudged over to the shed, pulled out the riding mower, filled it with gas and oil, then pulled its starting rope. Its engine roared, cutting the morning's peace to ribbons as its blades shred the lawn's still wet grass. The boy steered the mower to the lawn's edge and guided its path in a decreasing circle, cutting each blade to its acceptable length, but also slicing sleepy crickets, lazed back grasshoppers and hiding moths to death.
Sammy had been huddled in abject fear of the cat's claws. He heard the lawnboy's outcry of anger and the death thud to the cat's head. And then with the silence, his fear passed and his curiosity caused him to creep forward, whereupon he witnessed the last shovelful over the cat's final resting-place.
The lawn boy was the first full-sized human Sammy had ever seen. You may think that somewhat curious and unbelievable, but remember dear readers this little mouse had been brought up in the middlemost part of a cornfield, a very, very large cornfield where the farmer ventured only twice a year. And only then could they see part of the farmer bouncing around in his monster of a noise-making tractor.
On those evenings the storytellers had their discussions concerning the nature and the make-up of the death-yielding tractor. Many a terror stricken mouse had stood helpless in the path of that metal human driven cruncher. Where just the fear of being eaten by the discs had stopped the heart of many a senior ranked family member. In all, the farmer and his beast of burden were not a welcomed sight. His presence brought only death to mice, said the storytellers, and after each of his visits they plotted to rid their community of the menace. But over the generations the only workable plan which had saved many a young mouse was their, "Watch out, here comes the monster, run like hell this way," evacuation plan.
You and I know the corn grows after the farmer plants it, but the mouse family didn't. All they could see was this monster coming in the fall to eat almost all of their food supply. It left less and less corn for them to forage through the winter and even less after the spring discs and planting. To them the farmer's helper ate their corn and ran over their young.
When the boy pulled the riding mower from the shed, Sammy thought it to be some kind of animal the boy was feeding. He soon knew different as the roar of its engine reminded him of the cornfield monster. It also killed, for Sammy saw a baby robin fall from its nest into the path of the mower, shredding it.
The boy hadn't seen the baby bird, he was too occupied with just staying upon the fast bouncing mower and keeping it on line so that the lawn would have the uniform, trimmed look that the minister required. When the lawn was finished, the boy cleaned and put the mower away. He then trimmed around the tree trunks, edges of the sidewalk and around the church walls. He over-viewed his work, smiled satisfactorily, walked to his car, started its engine, and then glanced at the old cat's grave. He frowned, nodded his head to himself and drove off.
The morning was quiet again. Too quiet for Sammy, for as far as he knew, there was a cat out there somewhere and that cat wanted him. He would wait until dark and then escape to the city while the cat slept. That was his plan, so he crept back into the crawlway's darkness and curled up to sleep.
The night was dark and the air heavy with the coming rain. As the lightning pierced the sky, the thunder shook the ground around him. Sammy smiled, for he liked the surprises of lightning. And since the thunder had never actually harmed him, he relished its echoes reaching from the distance, slowly rolling through his ears and ending beyond the tree line. The thunder rumbled above him; loud, long reverberations clashed again and again.
He felt the storm's first drops and scampered for the shelter of the nearest cornstalk. He blinked to clear his eyes of the water, but they burned. He realized then his eyes were filled with dust, not water. He blinked both his dirt filled eyes. When his vision cleared, he saw that he was on the freshly cut lawn in the late morning's sun.
"Where is the storm, the lightning, the thunder and the cat?" he wondered simultaneously. And the thought of the cat sent fear through him, propelling him back into the safety of the crawlway. Back in the darkness his fear subsided. He was a very perplexed mouse; and as we humans, who have been also so confused by the realism of some of our dreams, do; so did Sammy. He swung his tail around and bit it. It hurt and he knew he was awake.
Sammy shook with relief; he had been dreaming and had run out onto the lawn, the cat could have eaten him as he dream walked! Sammy shuddered from the thought, then sighed in relief at his good fortune. This venture to the city was so perilous; he knew partially why none of his kinfolk had chosen to make the return trip to visit their old home in the cornfield.
The thunder above him caused the ceiling dust to fall on him. He shut his eyes and wondered just what was going on. Soon the thunder moved back away from him and the dust began to settle. He again opened his eyes and crept to the crawlway entrance. The sun still lit the lawn and there wasn't one cloud in the sky. Sammy was so confused, never had there been thunder without clouds. Was he asleep, was he crazy, he had to find out, cat or no cat.
Sammy cautiously crept out through the crawlway door crack. There was no cat to his left or to his right or above him in the trees. So he hugged the wall and moved forward to the corner. He paused, listened, smelled, then with the surety of a gambler he darted around the blind corner.
What Sammy saw wasn't the cat. It wasn't anything he had ever seen before. He stopped with his left hind foot still above the ground in mid-step. There at the other end of the church was a parking lot full of cars and people. Women in their best Sunday dresses and men in their suits and tens of bright, shoe-shined children standing impatiently, but reverently aside their parents.
Car doors opened and people disappeared into them. And as if on signal, fifteen car engines started at once and pulled onto the hard-topped road in a single file. Some turning left then some turning right, until once again the churchyard returned to quiet and only the gravel dust lingered above the parking lot.
Sammy moved forward as if he were being drawn there by its vacancy. He didn't stop until he stood beside the church steps. By then the dust had settled and the last remnant of engine sounds had been stilled by the distance. Sammy wasn't really sure he had seen anything.
"Was it all just another dream?" he began to think. But his subconscious told him different, and instinctively he glanced around for the cat, which was dead, but even Sammy's subconscious didn't know that. No cat, no thunder, no people, no cars; Sammy sighed and felt hunger.
Now he was in front of the church looking out across the hard road to a new kind of field, a bean field. The cornfield was behind him; that's where he knew he could find breakfast. And he would have turned around, but his ears caught the sound of an approaching car. So he waited, unmoving.
The car came from the left, slowed and turned into the parking lot and stopped right in front of Sammy. He should have run, but he didn't. He was glad to see the car. He was ecstatic to see the lawn boy get out of the car. He knew then he hadn't been dreaming. That everything that had happened to him since his arrival at the church had been real, frightening and deadly, but never-the-less real. Sammy relaxed. He hadn't been dreaming and he hadn't gone crazy, he was en-route to the city. His confidence in himself returned and he was so grateful that he went over to the boy and hugged his leg.
Well dear readers, you can imagine the surprise and fright that the lawn boy felt when he looked down to see a field mouse around his ankle. He let out such a scream and jumped up higher than his car. Sammy of course was thrown off the boy's leg and while still in flight, realized what he had done to the lawn boy. And before he landed on the grass, Sammy knew he must never again touch a human.
Sammy's landing was more of a rolling slide and he got up dazed rather than bruised. The lawn boy's fright immediately changed to anger as he saw the little field mouse in the grass. He swore loudly and ran to his trunk. Opened the lid, yanked out a box and ran toward Sammy. Sammy's head cleared, and as the boy came at him, he turned and ran in fear for his life. As he ran toward the road, the boy opened the top of the box and hurled three frightened, dazed, year-old kittens toward a fleeing bound-for-the-city field mouse, screaming, "Mouse, mouse! Get that mouse!"
Two of the cat-kittens landed on their feet, their legs already running in mid-air to keep them upright. They were hot on Sammy's tail (so to speak) being just what they were: hungry mice-catching cats driven by their instincts and by the lawn boy's screams.
The third cat-kitten wasn't ready to be pitched through the air and found himself floating at a high rate of speed toward the ground, tail-first instead of headfirst. He landed upright with his legs sprawling for balance, but his momentum carried him end-over-end; whereupon, when he stopped he was too dazed for the chase.
Sammy ran from an outraged lawn boy. He never knew about the cats, whose speed put them within smelling distance. Down the ditch, across the gravel shoulder, and onto the hard road went Sammy. As he crossed the yellow dividing line, he heard the roar of a car engine pass over his head. The popping muffler split his hearing and he was deafened for the next few moments. He was momentarily deaf and didn't know it and didn't care, for he was running for his life. He hadn't even seen the two cats, but his instincts had warned him as his feet scampered across the hard road that death followed much too close.
Death was behind him and death was above him and death, it did strike. Sammy didn't know it and he couldn't hear it, but his instincts told him. The left front tire squashed one cat-kitten and the left back tire squashed the second cat-kitten. And Sammy never stopped running until he was too far into the bean field to ever hear the church bell. As Sammy lay down to rest, the third cat-kitten watched the lawn boy's last shovelful cover his brother and sister.
SKY PILOTS
The bean field was different. Sammy could see through the thick foliage that the top leaves were but a short climb. Yet as he tried to climb the beanstalk, it fell over. He tried to climb another plant, but it too fell over. He crossed the narrow path between the rows and attempted to climb two of its slender plants. They also fell over, so he abandoned his notion of trying to get his bearings and walked on away from the church, the lawn boy and the cat.
The rows were near ready for harvesting. The plump beans, bulging in their jackets, pulled the wide leaves earthward, encasing the weedless lane in deep shadows. There was so very little movement in the bean field that Sammy felt the calm he had always experienced upon awaking at his home during the middle of the night. There were no grasshoppers abounding erratically or day crickets singing or busy ants scurrying around his feet or flitty butterflies or sticky spider webs, just a few yellow beetles nibbling the leaves of the bean plants.
Just then a pilot came low over the church and dropped down to skim just 10 feet above the bean field. He smiled and pushed the release button, showering a fine mist of bug spray over twenty rows. Sammy was in the nineteenth row. He felt the droplets splashing around him as the plane's roar passed over him toward the far end of the field. It then looped up and over and twisted aright to spray the next twenty rows. The pilot was very efficient and very accurate. He never missed or overlapped a row; fortunately for Sammy, for a second whiff of bug spray would have killed him.
Sammy fell to the ground as the engine roared by on its second pass. The spray stank so he held his breath. It stank badly. Sammy wanted to breathe. His lungs hurt and screamed to breathe. So he tried, but the air stank worse than any skunk spray he ever had the misfortune to smell.
He wanted to breathe, had to breathe, but when he tried the foulness made him cough out more air than he had inhaled. A yellow beetle fell dead to the ground, so with his last conscious thought he said goodbye to it.
Nature's way took Sammy aside again and saved him from suffocating himself. He passed out, and his body breathed even though Sammy couldn't stand the stench. The bug spray was made to kill bugs and the three previous dosages through out the summer had done just that. This final, fourth spray finished the last of the yellow beetles, but not our hero. The spray wasn't quite toxic enough to do in a field mouse inhaling just one application. So Sammy slept while the yellow beetles fell all round him.
The day settled into evening while our bound-for-the-city field mouse dreamed not of fame and fortune, but of man-machine monsters chasing him up the side of a white tower. Where, when he could climb no higher, he turned and screamed at them to go chase a mouse with a voice that sounded like three train engines pulling five thousand cars up the side of Mount Everest. The man-monsters fell back to the ground and began to eat the tower, swallowing section after section, dropping the top of the tower closer and closer to the ground with each bite. Until finally Sammy sat alone in the middle of very hungry monsters ready to pounce on him. As they bent down, dropping oil cracklings of corn-colored spit from their teeth, Sammy was wrenched up into the sky by an ear of corn. And that's when and how he awoke, hungrily thinking of corn.
His head rang, his legs were unresponsive rubber, his tiny tongue tasted vile and the air still smelt of stink that Sammy knew he had to get away from. And he had to find breakfast. His legs finally responded to the promise he made them of food. He was up and moving forward, swaying from left to right, bouncing off the base of the bean stalks for the rest of the night.
Finally morning's twilight appeared at the end of the row marking the boundary of the bean field. The air around him became clearer with each step nearer the row's end. Sammy hastened for the sunlight with hopes of finding a cornfield. He stopped at the edge and looked back upon the darkness which had saved him from the lawn boy, but which had been death to the yellow beetles.
He shuddered, spun around and moved into the sunlight forsaking the caution his parents had taught him. He knew he could go nowhere but forward into the clearing, no matter what new unknown perils it held.
Vibrant, alive sounds filled all his senses. The odor of fresh water obsessed his awareness foremost, so he trot to the spring and drank lavishly before inspecting the serenity of the small wood. His father had explored the woods nearest his home before he had been born and occasionally had, on story-telling nights, told of the squirrels and their barren home. Yet this wood seemed so different from that which his father had described.
The sun streaked through the oak and maple leaves brightening the beauty of the wild flowers and adding a variety of shades to the wide stream's moss covered banks. The floor of the wood wasn't cluttered with weeds and the trees were spaced apart enough for Sammy to see the tops of cornstalks in the next field. He beamed, for he knew he soon would be feasting.
THE OWL AND THE WEASEL
Sammy glanced around seeking some way to cross the stream. There to his left, lodged across the stream, lay a slippery limb. He hastened upon the watery path toward his breakfast. The branch was well wide enough, but patches of bark had been soaked off and were treacherous to the unwary. Sammy's hunger overrode his caution and he slipped headfirst into the water. Of course being a field mouse he had never learned to swim and would have probably drowned, but Fate had also brought a very hungry weasel to the stream this morning.
Weasels aren't like cats, which stalk their prey. Weasels see what they want and go for it. This weasel saw Sammy and went for him as he began his trot over the slippery limb. As Sammy fell into the water, the weasel flew over the vacant limb and splashed into the water beyond him. The wave bounced our bound-for-the-city field mouse back onto the limb. He then scampered to the bank and up into a hollow tree trunk.
Dark holes had saved Sammy before and he was in dire need once again. This cavern though, was one of the many hiding places the weasel used awaiting his meals. And Sammy's nose told him this cave was not the place of safety he sought. But there was no turning back, for the weasel squealed only two seconds behind him. Up Sammy ran within the hollowed tree, higher and higher as the squealing weasel closed in.
Sammy climbed for dear life, saw an opening of light and darted into it, landing on the back of a sleeping owl. The owl felt the small claws around his neck and thought the weasel had snuck into his home again. The owl panicked and leaped out into the air with his wings in full flight.
The weasel heard the ruckus and hurried to get his mouse before the owl did. But found himself at full run in an empty chamber with nothing to pounce upon to break his speed. He slid forward through the chamber and out the opening. But stopped his fall by sinking his back claws into the bark.
Up into the air flew a very frightened owl with Sammy clinging desperately to his back. Seeing the weasel hanging tenaciously high above the ground, the owl regained his composure and tried to shake off his passenger.
Sammy, who also had time to view his situation, decided that falling off was not a good idea. So he claw-climbed up the owl's thick neck and wrapped his front feet around the owl's head. Now the owl couldn't see, so it flew even more erratically. Up, up, then twist-spiral to the earth, then wings out full to break and then left, wings under for a death spiral. Then wings out full to break and right wing under for a reverse death spiral.
Sammy's balance spun and spun and his stomach promised to empty. His legs quivered and his strength deplenished. One more spiral would do him in, he thought. Then the owl hit the circling hawk. Yes dear readers, the very hawk who had nearly gotten Sammy twice before.
Thud; feathers and mouse plummeted to earth.
Ba-thud; hawk, then owl, then mouse lay breathless on the earth.
The hawk on the bottom of the pile lay dead. The owl on top of the hawk lay unconscious. The mouse, our hero, lay dazed on top of the owl.
THE FARM TRIP
Sammy's head cleared, his breath returned, and he ran like summer's thunder from the pile of feathers. His nose told him he was somewhere new as he ran around piles of cow manure. The bellow of cows told his ears that he wasn't between tree trunks, but something alive, big and dangerous. With dodging the piles and the legs, Sammy didn't see the farm cats stalking grasshoppers near the fence. But they soon noticed him and began their hot pursuit, weaving amidst the piles and cows.
The cats upset the cows and they began their protest bellows, which frightened Sammy all the more. When he spied the cats closing in from both sides, he panicked to say the least and did the worst, running up the closest cow leg. Well cows aren't used to mice running up their legs and this one panicked, bellowed out the stampede cry, leading the heard toward the safety of the barn. This panicked the cats, which froze in their tracks until the last of the cows passed by. They then followed the frenzied herd as sheep dogs do.
Our hero had scampered his way up the leg and onto the back of the stampede crier, riding her as a cowboy through the barnyard. Once inside the barn the cows had to stop, for the farmhands were just beginning to pull a tarpaulin over a truckload of corn and the truck blocked the way.
The farmhands took cover with the sound of the incoming stampede. After the cows settled, they herded them back out to the pasture. This gave Sammy the time to find a hiding place up in the rafters. When all the cows were out of the barn the cats entered to find their mouse.
Sammy had been the first mouse in this barn all summer and both cats sensed his presence in the rafters without difficulty. One went left; one went right. And Sammy, who had been sneakily watching their progress, swallowed in fear. In a few seconds the closest cat would be upon him. That he didn't want, so he broke from his hiding and ran over a crossbeam. But at the far end awaited the second cat. Sammy turned around, but the first cat was at the other end of the crossbeam. Slowly each approached a very frightened mouse.
There was no hurry; they had him cold, they each knew that and they each knew they knew. The old cat-and-mouse game, they smiled at each other, it had been a long time since they had had the pleasure of toying with a mouse. And they were going to savor each second of their favorite game. Sammy looked left, he looked right, then left, then right and then fainted right off the crossbeam, landing in the half-covered truckload of corn bound for the city.
The farmhands returned chatting about the cows and each took a side of the tarpaulin as Sammy plopped softly amongst the loose corn kernels. The tarp covered the corn from the highway winds and it covered Sammy from the cats, which couldn't believe their misfortune, transfixed as the truck drove off. Five miles down the road, Sammy awoke and began eating, for he thought the cats had killed him and he was now in mouse heaven. And since he was in heaven, he felt there was no reason to worry about over-eating and did just that.
At the railroad silo, they pulled the truck over a conveyor belt and pulled the dump lever. Sending all the corn and Sammy for a conveyor ride to the top of the silo to await a transport train. Now dear readers, Sammy is sitting atop all this corn after having been taken shakily up the belt and begins to wonder just what kind of mouse heaven he has gotten himself into. He never ever expected to be tussled around in heaven like he had been on earth. Well there was still lots of corn to eat, so back to stuffing himself was his thought just as another new arrival of corn began to drop around him.
Being beat on the head, even if it was corn, definitely didn't seem too heavenly to Sammy. When the level of corn began to rise above his head, Sammy had this feeling of soon-to-be-smothered-to-death. A thought he knew he shouldn't have, not if he really was dead in heaven. So not to take chances and to quell his fears, Sammy began digging his way upward to escape. Yet more corn kept piling around him. With all of his effort, he dug and dug and dug, somewhat slowed by his over-stuffed belly. No sooner had he reached the top of the corn pile and had begun to get his breath back than more corn began again to pile in around him, and his dig for life began again.
After two hours had passed, Sammy had been able to stop and rest only four times. The corn continued for another two hours and then stopped for the day as the silo workers went home to their families and their supper. Meanwhile Sammy, now nearly dead from exhaustion, had decided that yes the cats had killed him, but no he hadn't gone to heaven but to hell.
A FREE RIDE
His bed of corn moved, ever so slightly, yet noticeably enough to alarm him. Then from afar, he heard rumbling. The vibrations increased. The rumble, which he took to be a storm, seemed louder, closer. Soon he was being shaken from side to side and he knew the storm must be right above him. He wondered if he and the corn mound would be thrashed about; and if he would survive to continue his journey. Then the rumblings and the vibrations slowed, and finally quieted.
Suddenly his mound of corn began to drop from under him. Lower and lower he slid. There wasn't anywhere to climb, for the whole mound was dropping. Then just as unexpectedly as the quieting of the storm, he plummeted downward in a whirlpool of loose corn. Down and around and around he spun. There wasn't any air! He was suffocating, he was dizzy, he was afraid.
His spiraling ended in a roll to a dark corner of a boxcar. He stopped, but the corn coming in didn't. And sooner than he could blink or wonder what or where he was, he was once again being buried alive by his favorite food. Climb, climb, he told his legs, and that they did. Clawing, scrabbling and scratching, his little legs rambled upward against the spillway of kernels.
Sammy finally sided over to his left where the force of the falling corn lessened. This gave him the opportunity for a few seconds needed rest and a chance to over-view his new surroundings: four walls and a growing pile of corn. Then he noticed the sunlight encircling the waterfall of corn. There was his escape route, yet he had little energy left to attempt such. Quickly he ate a few kernels and climbed to the top of the growing pile to rest, hoping to gather enough strength to make his escape up the wall and out through the sunlight aside the gush of corn.
Much to Sammy's delight, he noticed that the pile of corn was taking him closer to the top of the car and closer to the sunlight. Then the corn stopped. When the square of sunlight cleared of dust, Sammy could see the sky and a few clouds. He rejoiced aloud and scampered up the wall toward his freedom. Then the light disappeared with a clash that knocked him down to the corn mound, for the switchman had slammed the car's roof door closed. Within the darkness, Sammy cried.
The train made its way to the city and its factories unbeknownst to our hero, who thought himself a prisoner who would never see this journey's end. For four days this corn train headed ever closer to the city, stopping along the way to have its empty boxcars filled with the harvest of the farmers along its path. At each stop Sammy wondered in grave anticipation what would happen to him next. Yet nothing did, as his car was already full. So when the train finally arrived at the factory and began its unloading, Sammy lay peacefully upon the top of his breakfast, dinner and supper.
Then like the speculators of the stock market, the floor dropped out from under our hero, right onto a conveyor belt of the largest, corn-processing factory in any city. The corn cushioned Sammy's drop from the boxcar onto the conveyor belt. It moved smoothly and very swiftly along the belt system into the factory. Up, up, Sammy and corn traveled till it reached the ceiling. Turned right and proceeded toward a steam rinse, the first of the cleaning processes the corn would pass through before being cooked and canned for human consumption.
The closer the corn and Sammy got to the steam rinse, the hotter the air in the enclosed conveyor felt. Sammy hoped the heat would pass and grit his teeth patiently. He finally couldn't bear the temperature any longer, squealed, turned around and began to run against the flow of corn soon to be steamed.
Well dear readers would you scoff if I were to tell you that at just that precise moment a maintenance man was walking along the catwalk outside the very spot where our hero had let out a terroristic squeal? And would you also scoff if I were to mention that this handyman heard that squeal and that he, in his ever vigilant watching, had thought that the conveyor belt had an object lodged in it which would block the flow of corn and cause a spill-out?
And would you, dear readers scoff if I were to add that at the very spot where Sammy was making his going-nowhere-against-the-flow-run-for-his-life, was a safety check sliding doorway where the maintenance man could inspect the conveyor belt? And further, that as this man opened the check door, our hero in his panic darted through the door and onto his chest causing the man to be startled and to lose his balance and slip and fall, bumping his head on the railing, dazing him? And that our hero climbed into the open pocket of this workman's jacket as he fell and was also dazed by the fall to the floor? Of course I know you won't scoff, for we all have realized by now that Fate, in Her folly has been intervening in Sammy's behalf ever since She spotted him leave his home all those miles and days ago.
Our hero-saving maintenance man awoke to the falling corn, reached up and closed the inspection door. Feeling the throbbing aside his head, he carefully walked his way to the lift, which transported him down to the first level. He found the day shift foreman and reported his accident. His boss sent him to the dispensary, and upon their examination he was told to go home and spend the rest of the day in bed. The company ambulance then transported him to his apartment. He entered his complex, taking the elevator up to the third floor. Opened his door and entered, discarding his jacket on his couch. As he walked into his bedroom he discarded his clothes with each step and fell gently onto his bed passing quickly into sleep. And where is our hero? He is awakening in the pocket of the discarded jacket now lying on the couch.
DOWNTOWN
As usual, Sammy awoke hungry. It was dark, but he knew he wasn't sleeping under the stars. He felt the warmth of the cloth surrounding him and kinda remembered jumping out of the conveyor belt onto a human and scrambling into another dark tunnel. "Yes that was it, a dark tunnel away from the heat," his memories were all coming back to him as he lay in the man's pocket.
Escape. He knew he had to, but could he? He had been trapped inside a truck, a storage elevator, a boxcar and a conveyor belt for oh so many days, that now he wondered if he was again trapped. He reached upward and pushed against the flap. It opened and he ran out onto the jacket and was on the couch before the dimness of the apartment startled his senses.
He stopped abruptly. With his full gaze he saw everything in the apartment at once. He, of course, had no idea what any of the furnishings were, other than strange and large. Initially it was only a particular array of colors. Then his perceptions noted the different depths of the furniture. Finally his gaze was attracted to the radio tower lights in the picture window across the room.
He quickly surveyed a path to the window ledge and was down the jacket, across the floor, up the curtains and onto the window ledge before he gave any thought to what the lights might be. And once he was upon the ledge he didn't have the chance to look at the radio tower lights for his sight was filled with hundreds of dancing automobile headlights.
Car lights, street lights, apartment lights, flashing yellow lights, neon lights; there were more lights here than all the summer nights. This then was the city. No one had to tell him, he just knew it! He had finally made it! Out there, somewhere, were his rich cousins.
Sammy was three floors up and should have realized that, but he was too star-struck. Dazed by the electric dazzle and the fame he was to obtain. "Just reach out and take it," that's what he had been told to do, but two steps forward brought him bump, right into the glass window. He fell flat onto his belly. His nose throbbed in pain and the star-struck changed to confused. He eased himself up and cautiously moved forward until he touched the glass window again. He stopped with his nose pressed against the glass and reached out to scratch it with his toenails. There was something in front of him, keeping him from the city. He could feel it and he knew from his pain that it was rock hard, but he couldn't see it.
He was so close; it just didn't at all seem fair for him to be trapped again with the city right before his very eyes. He squealed madly. He scratched the glass, again and again. Finally he calmed and thought to find a path to the city. He turned and climbed down the curtains. "There must be a crack somewhere into the city," he ventured as he walked along the baseboards.
He then came to the north corner and followed it to the left, which brought him to the closed apartment door. He could smell the fresher outside air from its floor crack, but it was much too small for him to escape through. And so he continued until he reached the closed bedroom door, which had a somewhat different type of odor coming from it. He followed the baseboard around to the open doorway leading into the kitchen.
His nose told him this room held the promise of food. Kitchen cabinets, a stove, an icebox, a table and three chairs were set before him like a scientist's maze, where food was somewhere hidden and he to find it. Sammy scurried along the baseboard, finding no way out and no food. Then ran back to the kitchen doorway with its unsolved maze still before him. He spied a bathrobe draped from the table to the floor and scurried his way up the robe, onto it. No food on the table, but on a cabinet lay the breakfast scraps.
Sammy ran down the robe, across the floor and clawed his way nowhere on the shiny metal cabinets. He was hungry, his claws hurt, he was trapped and he was kept from the city by a glass window he could touch, but not see. It was all just too much for one little mouse named Sammy to bear.
He panicked and ran around the living room twice. Ran up the robe onto the kitchen table, down it over to the cabinets, clawed them again and then ran straight to the front door and tried to squeeze his nose under it. Yanked back and ran up the curtains to stare unbelieving at the car lights. Then ran down the curtain over to the couch, collapsed and rolled under it asleep from panic's fatigue.
Rang! Clashed the alarm clock.
As the man shut the alarm off and eased himself from the bed so did Sammy roll to his feet. Eyes wide, ears cocked, thinking, "A shuffling close, too close. A threatening scuffling nearby." Then he saw the man's shoes and legs round the corner of the couch, passing within inches of him. A moving blur of brown boots and blue work pants going toward the front door.
The crack under the door widened and Sammy could see out into the hall. As he realized, "That's the way out," the door slammed shut. Before he could react to the closed door, it reopened, for the man had forgotten the jacket he'd need for work. In less than five seconds the workman had retrieved his coat and retraced his path to the front door.
And what do you think our petrified country mouse did?
Right. He went from under the couch to in-between the man's boots, through the door and out into the hallway, deciding to follow this man into the city. But at the elevator he had second thoughts, for standing at the door were two more human legs. Before Sammy could panic again, the elevator door opened and his guide stepped inside. Of course Sammy followed.
Inside the elevator the man and the other legs turned around, causing Sammy to do his very first jitterbug dance-step. Sammy's head pounded fearfully and his stomach dropped to the floor as the elevator abruptly slid downward. It stopped as suddenly. And its doors jerked open with all four legs leaving a dizzy field mouse wondering what happened.
There, stepping away from him, went Sammy's guide to the city. Our hero did it though. Somehow, by some kind of unfulfillable yet tempting promise, Sammy convinced his legs to move his feet forward after the man. Had his tail a choice in the matter, I'm sure it would have smacked Sammy along side the face for his so slow elevator departure. Soon he was under his guide, between the brown boots. And his tail forgot the whole scene.
Another door and then another door opened, but Sammy didn't see them. His eyes were captured by the streaks of passing car lights just ahead of him. There, so close, closer than in the window ledge, lay the city. "The city!"
And he would have run toward it if he could have, but his balance systems were still circling from the elevator. The boots kept moving and so did Sammy until the roar of the cars shook his whole nervous system free of its dizziness, then he just stopped.
At that moment our hero felt what he had been bound for: rich, famous, important.
PART TWO
"Hey you. You dumbhead, get yourself over here. Move mouse, quick before they step on you."
Sammy turned toward the voice.
There were whirling and thunderous sounds and all those lights confusing him. Humans, thousands of two legged humans, stepping past him, over him, around him and more marching toward him.
And then over in the shadows came a voice he could understand. For the first time in his journey he had heard a voice. It wasn't on the streets where he had thought his family would be. The streets were filled with humans and noisy death machines. This place was not the city he had imagined. He was not going to be famous here. He was going to get stepped on, like the voice said.
"Get over here you dumb mouse!" the voice screamed at him.
He then saw the eyes of a city mouse huddled in the shadow of a broom aside tenement steps. It had to be one of his cousins. Who else could it be? So Sammy walked over to the city mouse as the marching feet landed on his fleeting shadow.
"You must be my city cousin come to welcome me to the city. Where are Aunt Kath and Uncle Klob? And what are all these humans doing here in our city? And I'm hungry and tired, and I've had such a frightening journey here. Where can we rest? Where's my family? When will I be famous? Are you real rich? Is it always so loud? Does it rain? Where are your cornfields? What's your name? Mine's Sammy."
The city mouse just sat there, smiling and shaking his head. He'd met crazy mice before, and this one was as gone nuts as any he'd met. He decided that this one was a nice looking mouse and fairly amusing with his notions and questions and that taking him around town would be good amusement. He hadn't been asked to very many parties, but this crazed one should open a few doors for him at some of the ritzy places. "So your name is Sammy. Where do you hail from? What did you say your Aunt's name was?"
Sammy had calmed down enough to see that this mouse didn't look like any of his aunts or uncles, let alone his grandparents. So Sammy listened to his questions and thought about what his answers meant before he said anything else. If this was the city and Sammy was sure it was, then he figured that this was a city mouse. "This is the city, right?" glancing at the passing cars.
"Right, little lost one, this is the big city. In fact the only city. There is nowhere else. So what part of this do you come from? Or do you remember?"
"Yes I remember where I am from. And I am going to call you City since you are the first mouse I have met here." Sammy grinned.
"You're going to call me City, huh, since I'm the first mouse you've met, right? Is that what you said?" The city mouse was sure he was looking at the craziest mouse he had ever run into and wondered just what kind of human drugs this confused mouse was on. And maybe he had more and maybe he could get some and have a little crazy fun himself.
"You see, City," Sammy began, "I have been traveling for many sunrisings since I left my home in the cornfields to become rich and famous like so many of my family have."
City grinned and said, "Sure, tell me more lost one."
"Oh," responded Sammy, "There isn't much more to say. I was born in a cornfield in the spring with my two brothers and sisters. And I listened to the stories of our forefathers traveling here to your city to become rich. And so one day, I too decided I would travel here to make my fortune. Well, that's it, the whole story."
"Well, that's pretty interesting. Yes sir, that's a whopper of a story. Ah, you said lots of other mice like you have been coming here for a long time right? And one more thing, where are your clothes?" And City pulled at his own shirt.
"Yes, hundreds and hundreds of we cornfield mice have bound for this city," responded Sammy, "and we don't have clo.., ah clothes there."
"Well little lost one I got to tell you straight out. You are the first mouse I've ever run into with a story like yours. And I've never heard any of my friends talk about mice from cor.., ah, cornfields," the city mouse leaned close to Sammy again.
Sammy sat back and gave his new friend an inquiring gaze. Just where was his family in this place? Was it really possible this city mouse had never heard of cornfields? Sammy thought and thought and remembered most of his journey to this place and tried to imagine just how those other family mice had gotten here. He knew he wasn't at all exactly sure how he had gotten to the city.
But he was in the city. That he knew and if he had made it, then there had to be others who had made it. With those thoughts Sammy laid out his plan carefully, "City, tell me, just how big is this city?"
Now the slick city mouse wasn't quite sure what to make of this crazy mouse and his cornfield story. This nut almost seemed to make sense. And he certainly seemed to be telling the truth; at least the nut had convinced himself that he was from a place far away and that he was following in the footsteps of his family. But City didn't think so. One thing was for sure, he, 'City', would have a real good time taking this lost one around. "Well Sammy, this is such a big place that I've been told that it has no beginning or end."
"Then," Sammy went on, "it would be very possible for my family to have arrived here long ago and be living in a different part of this big place, so far from here and your friends that you would never have heard about them."
"Yea, lost one, that's real possible, especially if they are rich like you think they are." And City's dreams of hob-nobbing Uptown with the well-to-do began to tease him.
"Do you mean, this isn't the place where rich mice live?" Sammy asked, looking out at the passing humans.
"You got it, lost one, this street here is called Workers Row. Where the rich are, is called Uptown and it's far away from here, I think. At least that's what Billy is always saying," City said scratching behind his right ear.
GETTING AROUND
Sammy brightened, for now he had a clue. Somewhere in a place called Uptown, very far from this thunderous sound-filled, human-death-machined place, was where his family could be found. "Well, let's get going to this friend of yours, Billy."
"Right, yea, we'll see Billy first. He should dig this. Yea, he can tell us how to get Uptown to your rich folks."
With their plans laid-out, they went toward Billy's. Back through the alleyways, darting from deep shadow to deep shadow, pausing to listen, sniff and overview for cats, dogs, rats, and drunken humans. They crept quietly to Billy's. Soon they were at the end of City's territory. He stopped, pointing the way into Billy's place. Then led Sammy through a narrow passage into a storage garage and jangled a row of small, discarded Christmas Bells.
"Yea? Come in. Who is it?" a raspy voice called.
"It's me Billy, and I got a lost one with me. Okay to come in?" City ducked under the boards.
Sammy followed him. There on the floor Billy sat rolling marbles over to his girl, and she then rolling them back at him. Sammy saw the marbles, Billy, his place and all its stuff. Then he saw Moll and that's all he saw, and Moll saw that he saw only her.
Billy noticed too, but City went over to him and laid-out his whole story of meeting Sammy. Of just how crazy he thought this lost one was. And how he figured he and Billy could have them a real good time helping to get the nut back to his family, who came from some place called a cornfield and had located themselves Uptown.
And how rich this nut must be, and all that food and nice trappings all them Uptown mice had like Billy had been saying all those years. And how they should all just go along with this lost one and get him to his ritzy family. And just how big of a reward they'd get and what a good time they'd have while they took him to Uptown. And how this seemed like the break both of them had been dreaming about. And, and, and...City just rambled on and on while Moll and Sammy got themselves real close and lovey- dovey, too much so for Billy, if he would have noticed. But he didn't, for City's story had gotten him real excited and dreams of Uptown also began to tease him.
City got Billy quite excited while Moll got Sammy very excited, then off the whole troupe went in silent dreams of their future. Billy took the lead, Moll and Sammy followed as a pair, which Billy didn't notice, but City did much to his delight and amusement.
Out past his bells through the narrow passage, then into the dim of the city lights Billy hugged close to the buildings, being sure to stay deep within the shadows and ever watchful for the menaces of his neighborhood. He was a very conscientious leader. He knew their venture depended on his expertise through the perils of his territory, and they all would make it if they followed his careful steps. But Sammy and Moll were hugging each other and actually paid very little attention to all the sneaky, careful movements Billy was making. They saw him only occasionally out of the corners of their eyes. And City was having his own problems, like keeping quiet as he watched the bound-to-be-lovers temptressly touch each other. Fortunately for our wanderers, this city night had attracted the cats and dogs and all the other derelicts to a different part of town. So our group made their way easily through Billy's streets and into the outlandish lands of the Barr Gang.
Billy had been to a few of their parties and well knew that the lost one he was guiding toward Uptown would be received as a promising venture by the Barrs. They might even want a cut of the action, which Billy didn't mind at all. In fact he was going to do what he could to intrigue them into joining his all-too-small band heading for the Uptown riches. Safety was in numbers and the more the better on this trip, for Billy wasn't all together sure what kind of mice or rats lay beyond the Barr's territory. They hadn't ever said much and Billy guessed it was to keep him in his place.
Getting in to see the Barr Gang was always quite a ritual. There always were two mice guarding the pathway to their den. Each time he had been there the guards had been in a different spot. And each time they had jumped out in front of him demanding to know who he was, where he was going and how much was he going to give them to let him pass. Four marbles it had cost him to go to those parties. But his time he had something better to bargain with: Sammy.
"Ah ha! Where do you think you are going this time, puny one?" jeered the first guard from some deep recess above Billy.
Billy's heart paused, his breathing stopped and he squeaked out, "To see Yhe Boss. Important business about Uptown."
"Oh yea," eked the guard as the name 'Uptown' squeaking from even a frightened puny one was serious business. He turned and said, "Follow me." A few steps further the guard was joined mysteriously by the second guard and City thought he heard them muttering, "Uptown. You sure? Yea, well better be."
The troupe passed under a dark cloth and immediately into the light of candles. The second guard stopped them while the first guard walked over to a table of mice playing dice. The guard whispered into an ear, and the biggest mouse Sammy had ever seen turned slowly to gaze at them.
With a, "Bring him here." Billy was whisked over to Yhe Boss by the second guard. They whispered back and forth and pointed toward Sammy. Yhe Boss laughed and then so did the other mice at the dice table. But as Billy kept whispering they all soon quieted and began to roll their eyes at each other and nodded their heads.
Well their talks and plans went on long enough for Moll to get Sammy's attention again and she guided him over to a soft carpet not in the light of any candle. There they lay close to each other, kissing and touching toes and wriggling their tails affectionately around each other's ears, until Yhe Boss hollered, "Bring the nut over here!"
Moll pushed Sammy up and toward Yhe Boss like a child drops a hot pan.
Sammy told Yhe Boss about his cornfields and his family traveling to the city and becoming rich and famous. And how Uptown must be where his family could be found.
Yhe Boss listened patiently, looked at his colleagues, looked back at Sammy from his head to his toes, looked into each of his eyes and nodded yes. Without further comment all the mice around the table rose and followed Yhe Boss toward the cloth doorway. The two guards nodded to Billy and he in turn to Moll, who slid beside Sammy as he came to the doorway amidst the dice players. City followed the two new lovers. And Billy thought to follow him, but was shuffled aside by a large guard he had never seen before.
The troupe filed out in single file and stayed in line as they scampered through the shadows of the alley. As the troupe moved through the gang's territory, guards ran off to get their fellow members, who had been resting with their friends and families during their off time. Soon the troupe had grown in size to that of a small parade with the gang's entire membership ready to accompany their Boss wherever he wanted to go. And Uptown is where the guards had told them this mission was headed, much to their delight. They had heard tales of the luxury of Uptown and they too had dreamed of going there someday, to enjoy some of its pleasures, and to bring back part of its treasure to their families.
At the fringe of Yhe Boss's territory the group stopped. Yhe Boss called two of the dice players forward and had a conference. They had reached the red-light district, which separated his gang from one of his rival's. The red-light honkytonks served as a common area where some of the freer members of the gangs visited, drank and danced with the girls of the honkytonks without the warring rivalry of the food searches the gangs went on each week.
Yhe Boss was shrewd. He knew he had to pass through Yhe Rival's territory. He didn't want to fight them. He didn't want them to think this outing was a raid. He also knew there were other gangs to get by and that the security of Uptown, itself, would be no easy matter to get through. His plan was to sweet talk the honky-tonk crowd into joining him, for they were into wildness, excitement and drunken dancing. A plain old relaxing fun image should convince anyone that his mission was to escort Sammy and not to raid their storage bins. And if necessary, he'd invite some of his rivals along. With his plan discussed, the dice players led Yhe Boss, City, Sammy and Moll whom they couldn't separate, through the cracks of an abandoned human nightclub and into the gala of the dancers of the honky-tonk crowd.
The band stopped with the entrance of Yhe Boss and all eyes were on him and his group. The other fifteen members of Yhe Boss's gang remained outside ready to swamp-in if there was any sound of trouble. The silence lengthened to a state of anxiety, which even pulled Sammy's attention from Moll. City began to shake uncontrollably and Billy shuddered aloud, for across the tables of broken brick pieces and encircled in the glow of candle lights, sat Yhe Rival with half of his gang at nearby tables.
Yhe Boss smiled his grandest and walked over to Yhe Rival. He swooped up an empty thread spool with his tail and in one quick motion placed it opposite Yhe Rival and sat down without changing his gaze or breaking his smile.
Yhe Rival pushed a disc of whiskey to Yhe Boss, which Yhe Boss sucked up with one slurp, never breaking his gaze. And then Yhe Boss tossed a small, plastic bag of herbs to Yhe Rival, who opened it, tasted it and then swallowed its contents whole. And then he too smiled. Whereupon, the silence became chatter throughout the place.
Yhe Boss turned his head toward Sammy and pointed to him with his tail. A dice player pushed Sammy away from Moll and straight to Yhe Boss' table.
Sammy lost his balance by the unexpected push and careened into two tables, spun all the way around a third table, reached out to grab for his balance and found himself in the arms of the most sensuous dancer in the joint. She caught him in the middle of his spin and whisked him out onto the dance floor and rolled him around to the rhythm of the band's music, which had begun when the chatter had resumed. This dancer's eyes smiled deep into Sammy's heart and her tail slid slowly up his spine, sending waves of new found desire into Sammy's soul.
Moll too sensed Sammy's hunger change and immediately ran onto the dance floor and leaped through the air onto the back of the honky-tonk dancer, pulling her and Sammy to the floor. They rolled into two spinning couples, who fell rolling into the other dancers around them. Soon all the dancers had toppled themselves, wriggling to the pounding vibes of the band.
Moll and the honky-tonker wrestled, rolled, twisted and screamed on top of Sammy. He tried to roll right and got jabbed. He went left and they pushed him over into some of the other dancers. The floor now was covered with wriggly, giggling mice, who began to spread their new dance into the tables of drinks while the Band played on and Yhe Bosses roared laughter.
City laughed with the rest until he saw a table crash near Sammy. He straightened with shock; he knew he had to keep his new ticket safe. City grabbed Yhe Rival and yelled, "The lost one might be hurt!" That woke Yhe Rival's eyes and he snapped his tail twice. The band stopped and the dancers lay still. Yhe Rival said loudly, "Bring the nut to me." Two guards whisked Sammy from under the dancers and quickly over to Yhe Bosses.
"Drinks on the House!" Yhe Rival roared.
The dancers were up and at the bar made of a marble sliver before the band beat out another note. They whooped up and down as they hollered out for their favorite drink. The nightclub rocked with laughter. Sammy drank at Yhe Bosses' table while his new love stood at the bar rail beside the honky-tonker dancer, both smiling and yelling for whisky and wine.
"So this soused little one is from the country fields where corn grows and he's here to visit his family, his Uptown family. And he's somewhat lost. Well Sir Boss, I think between the two of us we'll be able to accommodate his desires. Now if you don't find my plan too objectionable we should have this one united happily with his family within days. Sir Boss, Uptown is quite a long dangerous trip, so we'll need lots of helpers, escorts, guards, food, drink, herbs and of course the band. And, I'm sure the reward will more than cover the cost." After this spill, Yhe Rival grinned, winked his left eye and settled slowly back in his chair. Then he whipped his tail twice around his head and popped it back underneath his feet. At his motion The Band slid into a quick ragtime beat.
The dancers in turn moved themselves toward the dance floor; twisting and turning in grin with the music and each other. And Moll found herself spinning away from the bar rail with the dancer she had fought away from Sammy.
And just what was our hero doing? Swooning with whiskey roaring through his veins and bubbling his brain to the rhythm of the rag beat. The swirling spin laid-out by the dancers caught Sammy's eye and he moved toward the floor where Moll was kicking up her heels abandonly. Sammy bobbed from the table and weaved through the dancers into Moll's waiting arms. There, they melted into a slow blur of passion and were soon hidden by the dancers.
THE PLAN
Billy stared at them angrily, checked himself then shrugged his shoulders. He meandered up to Yhe Bosses' table. He wanted his cut and figured helping with the plan would insure that. City glared silently at him and screwed his eyebrows to quiet him before he could start his chatter. City broke the silence of Billy's arrival by asking, "How many of us do you figure we'll need?"
Yhe Rival leaned forward, glanced around the Honky-tonk counting heads and asked, "How many you bring tonight?"
"There's about thirty of us counting the lost drunk we're taking Uptown," replied Yhe Boss.
Yhe Rival snapped his tail once and three guards were quickly aside him, glaring at Yhe Boss. Rival motioned them to listen. "Quickly go to Northtown and give Yhe Tyrant this bag. Tell him a big party is going to happen Uptown and to bring everyone here posthaste."
Within the hour the Honky-tonk was filled with three rivaling gangs laughing and downing whisky as fast as the glasses got filled. The whole place rocked and shook to the pounding of the band's party beat.
Suddenly both Moll and Sammy were at the door, through it and into the night air. Their destination was Moll's place. City saw their heads slip-out and jumped on the table with a squeal, "They are getting away!"
All Yhe Bosses jumped up and dashed toward the door. The band kept playing and followed the last of the partiers as they crowded behind Yhe Bosses. Outside the crowd swept around the love-lust couple and rushed them toward Uptown. Rampant, they sang and danced across the vacant human sidewalks toward the highway drain tunnels. Their merriment, gaiety and party fever swept their normal cautiousness aside. They were a hundred strong, wild singing, screaming, giggling mice from work lane, partying their way to the mysterious, the fabulous, the never-seen Uptown regions of the rich and the famous.
The squealing and noise echoed through the empty streets. The band, Yhe Bosses and the dancers all knew that the drain tunnels led to the other side of the freeway where the rich Uptown mice lived. They also knew the tunnels were rat territory where mice just didn't go. But Rival knew they could get through the tunnels with the party crowd. Their numbers and their noise ought to scare off any rats they might encounter. A hundred wild, frenzied mice would have startled even a lion.
The forerunners streamed through the entranceway at the base of the highway until the tunnel shaded into darkness. In fear they began to slow their pace, but the core around the lovers kept bouncing speedily. When the dark passed over the party's core, they too tried to slow, but those dancers behind them bopped with Uptown fever and propelled the party through the darkness.
Finally the rear runners moved closer to the center as darkness surrounded them. And they pushed the core, which then rushed the forerunners blindly forward through the tunnel. At the first fork, the forerunners veered left. At the second, they veered right. Then at the third fork, left again toward a gathering of fighting rats.
As the party rounded the turn, their squeal reached the ears of the quarreling rodents. Then when the band's music came around the turn, its rhythm caught the rats' attention. And in turning, the rats saw dozens and dozens of wild eyes frantically closing upon them. The rats dropped their corpse and ran left.
The forerunners, seeing the rats, panicked to the right. The crowd followed their lead and soon the party ran out of the darkness and into a lit parking lot. In the middle of the lot the band slowed, their eyes fixed on the lot lights. Yhe Boss' tail snapped the party to a halt. And Sammy and Moll fell to the pavement giggling until City nicked their ears for silence.
Yhe Tyrant rang out his commands, "Go forth into the streets and bring back all who wish to join us. Get directions to Uptown and ask of their security." With a snap of his tail, the forerunners broke into groups of five and disappeared down the alleyways.
As the last of the scouts disappeared, Yhe Bosses lay down to sleep. And as a pebble thrown into a still pond sends its circlous waves to the shorelines, so too did the mice lay down close to their friends for warmth. Within moments the partiers slept, oblivious to the human cars scurrying along the highway behind them.
Not long for Sammy though, for the roar of automobiles brought the memory of death to his dreams. He tried to run, but Moll was tangled around him. In panic he thought the hawk had caught him. He would never get to the city; he was going to be breakfast. He shuddered and took a deep breath, his last he thought. Then the odor of Moll awakened his senses and his eyes. He remembered their love makings, City, Yhe Boss and the honky-tonk, and his throbbing head. He glanced up at the cars roaring along the highway and he shuddered again remembering the corn factory, the train and the cats of the barnyard. His whole journey flashed in his memory. It all seemed so long ago, so much had happened since he began. He sighed smiling. He had arrived. He was in the city and somewhere out there he would find his family.
The streetlights began to dim as the morning sun lit the earth around him. And with the coming of morning, Sammy's stomach growled as it did every morning. He felt hungrier this morning, more so than any he could recall. He over-viewed the sleeping mice. They had no corn, so why wake them. He would find himself some breakfast and then return to his new found, city friends. So he carefully got up from Moll's embrace, tip-toed through the sleeping crowd, and began his breakfast search walking quietly toward the new sun.
Meanwhile back at the parking lot, the first forerunners were just returning with news of Uptown. And they brought many local recruits bent on getting some of their overpaid taxes back from the rich lords.
The crowd began wakening.
Yhe Bosses questioned the new recruits.
More forerunners returned.
More angry, vengeful, starved recruits arrived.
Forerunners, recruits, bosses and the crowd swirled with excitement. The band picked up on their tempo, adding rhythm for the dancers. It got loud; it got real loud with the excitement of the partiers and the wildness of the dancers and the anger of the recruits. It got too loud to understand each other, and a local boss hit Yhe Rival while arguing over the percentage of the reward. Immediately two of Yhe Rival's guards rammed their spears through a local boss and his blood poured-out over Yhe Rival's toes.
The blood!
The squeal of death!
The jumping of the dancers!
The anger of the recruits!
Everyone was screaming, each one with the added pitch of a mouse's death. And death became their feeling and revenge over the rich became their outcry. So all the crowd throbbed with, "Death to the Uptown rich" as the band beat out a driving march. And Yhe Rival and Yhe Boss and Yhe Tyrant each snapped their tails for the attack rush. And the crowd pitched their voices forward and their bodies rushed along in unison for the riches of Uptown.
CITY GLITTER
The crowd and Yhe Bosses never knew Sammy wasn't with them, that he had gone off seeking corn. But Moll did right from her first awakened moment, and she had spent all of her attention looking for Sammy while the crowd fevered the pitch for Uptown revenge. The crowd was gone across the lot while Moll just sat down in tears for her lost love. Soon she calmed and wandered around until she picked up Sammy's scent heading toward the city along a sunlit sidewalk.
City too had missed Sammy and had finally convinced himself that Sammy was nowhere in the mad raiding party. As the warring crowd entered its second street, City slowly side stepped his way to the back of the crowd then stopped. Seeing that no one noticed, he ran back to the empty parking lot. As City entered the empty lot, he just caught a glimpse of Moll running down the sidewalk crying out for her lost love, our hero, Sammy. He dashed after her, for somewhere up ahead must be his ticket out of workers' lane. And he was determined to find him at any cost.
Moll ran sobbing along the very sidewalk that Sammy had ventured on his breakfast search. Well dear readers, do you think Fate helped guide this saddened lover to the right street or did Moll's keen senses track on Sammy's path? Of course we know it was not Fate, but Cupid.
And just as well that Cupid was on hand that morning, for our hero was drifting blindly in the glitter of a skyscraper, walking straight toward a mean, a very mean hungry alley cat. Normally this mean alley cat would have pounced immediately, but there was something very strange about a mouse walking straight to him on a sidewalk. "That mouse may be sick," thought the cat, and he wanted no part of a sick mouse as breakfast.
When Sammy was only inches away, the cat hit him across the face, knocking him to the ground and to his senses. Sammy shook his head and blinked his eyes many times. There was a cat staring down at him. Sammy panicked and froze; his eyes wide. The cat swiped Sammy across the face again. And he rolled across the sidewalk, his eyes unblinking. The cat sauntered over and smacked our hero again. Again Sammy rolled, but his time the cat got an unexpected surprise.
Moll had finally caught up to her love and had seen the cat attacking her mouse. She was inflamed, outraged, and mad to the point of hysteria. She had found Sammy and now to lose him to a damn cat was more than she could stand. She raced to his rescue, leaped in the air over Sammy and tore her claws into the cat's face.
The cat screamed in pain, shock, and disbelief. First a sick mouse, then jumped on by another mouse. Before the cat's anger could mount, City, having witnessed Moll's attack, flung himself through the air and clawed at the cat's eyes with his front paws and at its neck with his back paws. The cat shrieked, jumped high into the air and twisted loose from City's grip. By the time the cat landed, his eyes were blurred with tears and his rage demanded revenge, but Moll had recovered and clawed the cat's face again. Sammy shrieked from the fright of a cat tearing at his love. Of course we know it was the other way around, but Sammy didn't view it that way, and he too ran over to the cat and began biting its legs. City managed himself up and jumped on the cat's back, biting its neck.
The cat had had enough of this crazy scene and he rolled himself over and over and slashed his claws, knocking the mice loose. He then ran off across the street and climbed high into a dying elm tree.
City got up and grabbed Sammy and Moll, tugging them between the narrow walkway of two abandoned buildings. They followed him along the dim path to a small broken, boarded up basement window. They scurried along the inside window ledge and down a slanted plank. On the floor they found an empty cardboard box and lay quiet.
Soon they slept.
Meanwhile the warring party ran in abandoned frenzy along the sidewalk as the band pounded out a simple charge beat. Half of the group ran in the street, half on the sidewalk. As the crazed crowd approached, each stop light turned green as if to not impede their movement. They were oblivious to everything: the street, the cars and the green lights, for they ran for the blood of the uptown rich.
The war party of three hundred mice ran through six green lights, not noticing the early morning workers. Then they came to the largest commuter street. Its light changed to red before they were half way across. Six lanes wide and ten cars deep hit their gas pedals and zoomed through the intersection, intent on beating their office time clocks. Within seconds the road was covered with the blood of the mouse war party. The cars slid out of control: banging fenders, doors, bumpers, cursing and crashing into each other. Two cars locked bumpers together and slid in the blood, hitting a gasoline transport truck. It spilled its fuel out onto the street among the dead and wounded. Then another crash, a spark and finally an explosion, which desecrated mice and human alike.
HIDE AWAY
"Wake up, wake up! What are you three doing in here? Wake up, there'll be no loafing up here. Come on Bobby Ray, help me rouse these vagabonds."
"All right! I hear you, I hear you, I'm awake," moaned City as he rolled over dreaming that Billy was hurrying him out of bed again. And when the night-watch crew boss pulled at his hair, City reflexed a swipe across his nose.
The crew boss hollered-out and stumbled back, tripping over Moll, who screamed-out, "You slob, get off me!" She kicked him over onto Sammy, who put his dreamy arms around whom he thought was Moll and kissed him on the ear. The crew boss sensed 'male' and spit-out, "You flaming queer."
In less than five seconds the crew boss had had his nose scratched, had fallen backwards, had been kicked and kissed passionately all while his helpers watched unmoving. Finally he roared, "Help me!" They ran over to Sammy and pulled his embrace from their protesting crew boss asking, "Should we slug him a couple, Boss?"
"No, that one's for me. Hold him up!" swinging his angry paws round and round.
By now City had his eyes open and had digested the serious scene before him. Quickly he jumped up, carefully put his paws on the crew boss's shoulders and softly said, "Just a minute, you better not hit a Prince or the King will have your hide, Sir Boss."
The crew boss looked at him, then he over-viewed Sammy and said, "What!?"
City quickly went on with his tale, "Yes, that is his Royalness from the Cornlands south of our fair city. He is here on a mission of inquiry and a few days of fun and pleasure. As you will learn when he forgives your curtness and rough behavior and favors you with conversation."
"What!? Well I never thought I'd live to see the day when I actually would meet anyone from a Royal family. Imagine that. Help the Prince to his feet you clowns. Quickly. Quickly!" He rushed over to his helpers and pushed them back from Sammy. As he brushed the dust off him, he ranted on and on, "Excuse my men, your Royalness. We didn't know it was you. They're good men, trusted helpers and ah, ah, here here, there most of that dust is gone. Excuse us, excuse us."
And the crew boss might have gone on brushing Sammy till his hair wore thin, but Moll caught on to City's rouse and took up the note. Walked over to Yhe Boss and firmly shoved him aside from Sammy with, "There will be no need to worry, the Prince and I are very grateful to see how thorough your men are. Aren't we my love?" She smiled over to Sammy. Put her tail around his ears and nibbled him a kiss. Sammy smiled and hummed back in her ear, and the crew boss turned his head away from the lover's embrace. Moll then whispered to Sammy, "Well your Princeship, order him to take us to his leader."
Sammy was hungry and was mind swimming. If they thought he was a Prince, then a Prince he would be. "Yes, everything will be superb after you escort us to your leader. And a little something for my hunger."
"Follow me, your Royalness. Your bidding is my command." He then looked at his workers saying, "Walk behind us."
City nodded to Moll for them to lead and he slid behind the Royal couple. The workers lagged behind them, all in a single file. The crew boss led them deeper into the darkness of the basement and not out to the alleyway City feared. The crew boss entered a hole filled with human water pipes and the way became darker.
Moll had separated from Sammy as they came to and through the entrance. She walked very close to the crew boss, bumping him many times before her eyes accustomed to the dimness of the pipeway. Her tail wrapped around Sammy's ears pulling him close to her and he giggled uncontrollably. City chuckled at the sound of Sammy's bashfulness and in appreciation of his predicament. Even the two workers were sniggering, until the crew boss hissed back at them over his shoulder.
The smallish pipeway opened into a very large tunnel with more light and with many pipes of various sizes. The crew boss guided them onto a larger sewer pipe so Sammy and Moll walked side by side, teasing each other's ears with their tails. City kept glancing around to get his bearing and began muttering to himself about such a neat way to get around the city. He turned and addressed the closer helper, "Sir worker, could you tell the Prince something about this tunnel walk of yours? Also, what of rats? Are they a problem?" And with that no more than out of his mouth, his question was in part answered by the sound of an approaching troop of patrol mice on another pipe path.
The worker nodded at the patrol and said, "As the Prince can see, we have many troops patrolling our pathways. We can travel safely to any part of our city. They ran the rats out of our tunnels long before even I was born."
As the two groups converged, the crew boss and the patrol leader stopped and hailed each other.
"This is his Royal Prince of the Cornlands south of our city. Form-up and escort us to the Leader," the crew boss proudly commanded.
The patrol leader snapped his tail and the troop split to the front and rear of the Royal procession with such quickness that Sammy had to peer around the crew boss to see if there actually had been a troop of mice on that other pipe. Then the whole parade moved forward toward the Leader.
Moll had begun to wrap her tail around Sammy's ears again so he turned his attention to her tempting gestures. He reached over and pulled her alongside of him as they ran over the wide piping. Their feet were running in stride with the escort around them, but their tails roved all around each other. They were so entangled they looked like the middle of a caterpillar moving from leaf to leaf.
At intersections of larger pipes, City noticed lookouts posted at each entrance. And where smaller pipes connected, City saw lookouts scattered irregularly at the wall openings. His scheming mind knew this would not work as an escape route. The way to Uptown was as heavily guarded as his Boss had thought. Then City took a moment to wonder how the attack on Uptown was doing. And a frightening thought hit him, "What will the soldiers do when they hear of the attack?" City whimpered softly under his breath, "They'll think we are the leaders cause we told them Sammy was the Country Prince, oh CATS!"
The escort ran and ran and ran until even the engrossed lovers awoke to their tired legs. Sammy saw Moll wince and decided to let out a Royal roar, "Slow down!" The guards slowed their pace without turning to see who had commanded them. Sammy smiled at Moll and she at him and they kissed as their legs came to a walk.
Within minutes City noticed mice walking on the other pipeways. There were groups of males and females standing and talking, some garbed in workwear and some in casuals. Many of the mice garbs looked very expensive to City. And he began to realize that they must be very near the wealth of Uptown. All the mice turned with respect at the coming guards, and then those more curious spotted City and Sammy and Moll. Some turned to their friends and some openly pointed and chatted aloud at the newcomers.
This put them under the eye of the crowd, and City couldn't but wonder if the crowd might have already learned of the attack. Moll just glared back at each of them, she with her rich country love. Sammy began to feel the same as he had the night he said he too was going to the city, and swallowed. City over-viewed them, pinched both of them and whispered, "Smile and wave at the crowd."
Moll winked at City, kissed Sammy on the inside of his ear, grinned her widest and blew kisses with both of her paws. Sammy saw the fun of it so he too began mock kisses and bows of his head, then waved his hand in a small swoop across his belly. And when he touched his belly, it reminded him that he was still famished. So he spoke to the crew boss in front of him of his want of food.
The crew boss slapped himself on the side of his head and muttered, "Sorry your Highness, I should have thought of that." The crew boss trotted up to the escort captain and told him of the Prince's hunger. The captain glanced back at the friendly royal couple, shrugged his shoulders, turned and pointed that up ahead was the gate to the Leader's mansion. The troupe stopped at the gate and the captain reported the Prince's presence to the Gatekeeper. He looked at Sammy, who blew him a kiss and did his small bow. Moll topped the scene with a full bow, her tail in slow circle around her head. As she came full erect, her tail landed aside Sammy's groin. He turned to her, smiled and slid his tail around her waist.
UPTOWN
City then stepped around the loving couple and walked within five feet of the Gatekeeper. He raised his voice and boomed, "The Prince of Corn Country and his city love are here on tour of our great and wonderful city! Announce His arrival to the Leader."
"And be quick," called out the escort captain, "the Prince is hungry."
The Gatekeeper had announced a very many important mice to the Leader over the years. But never ever before had he announced a Prince, son of the King of Corn Country. He felt sure this would cause an extra privilege day for the whole city, if he did not miss his guess about the Leader's pleasure over the arrival and visit of royalty. He called out, "Captain, bring the Prince and follow me."
City gulped, for they were going to make it into the riches.
Sammy beamed, for soon he would find his family's fortune.
Moll giggled, for Sammy's tail ticked her groin.
The crew boss and his helpers gawked, for this was dreamland to them.
The Gatekeeper boomed, "Make way for the Prince, make way for the Prince. Clear our path straight to the Leader. The Royal Corn Prince has arrived." The soldiers and the members of the wealth slid aside and bowed their heads with the passing of Sammy and his escort.
Sammy and Moll beamed; heads held high, their chests protruded as soldiers displaying their medals of honor. City glanced at them, thinking, "Even they are beginning to act as if they really are a King and a Queen. Maybe we will pull this off after all."
What had happened to the attack force, City couldn't imagine, but he knew he would have to keep on his guard, ever conscious of the pending doom. For he and Sammy and Moll would immediately be suspected as spies, infiltrators, or assassins. Yes, assassins they would be called. Trying to fool everyone, slipping right up to the leader, himself. Spies, covering as Royalty, that's what they would say. And then they would be promptly killed. Killed dead! Unless Yhe Bosses rescued them. Fat chance of that with all these guards. Yes, fat chance!
City shuddered. Riches he wanted, but the price now was death, of that he was sure. The charade couldn't last much longer. He had to figure out a plan and quick. He had to warn Moll. So he slipped over beside her, whispering the seriousness in her ear. As she listened, her radiant smile dissolved. Before she could fret further, they were stopped in front of an iron, jewel-framed gate.
Two gate guards brought their lances forward in unison, their uniforms nearly as jeweled as the gate they protected. "Halt, announce yourself."
The captain stepped forward and saluted, "Captain of the roving guard first shift reporting. I present to the leader the Royal Prince from the Corn Country. Our southern border crew encountered them at that ground entrance. Announce our presence to the Leader."
One guard pulled back his lance, snapped his heals, pivoted and pushed the gate open. The gate opened wide and a smiling guard dressed in bright yellow satin came toward Sammy, his paws extended in the greeting gesture. He hugged Sammy, pulled back, and bowed deeply saying, "We are honored, deeply honored by this gracious visit, your Highness. Please to follow me. Our Leader is greatly honored."
They entered a long hall lit by large candles. The light was reflected through the hall by shiny metal signs from the humans' streets. Also hanging on the walls were human watches, bracelets, necklaces and rings. At the end of the hall stood a guard dressed in red satin, holding a solid silver lance.
"Halt, who goes there?" the red satin guard bellowed.
"Cool it and open up. This is the Royal Prince of Corn Country with me," the Gatekeeper bellowed back.
The red guard immediately bowed, straightened, turned and opened the doors of silver plates. The troupe entered a room filled with lounge couches of red crushed velvet, adorned with silver satin pillows. Trays of fresh fruit slices set aside each.
The red satin guard turned, smiled at Sammy and nodded to Moll, "Please be seated, relax and snack. I will inform the Leader of your arrival and make the necessary arrangements for the introductions." He exited through a double thickness of silk draperies from which string music and soft laughter slipped. The Gatekeeper followed him.
Sammy and Moll and City laid into the fruit trays as famished tramps. They finished off one and moved over to a second tray before either the captain or the crew boss could decide whether they should also partake of the delicacies. With that tray empty, they fell back into the couches for a short nap. City jumped awake with the return of the red satin guard.
"Your highness, the Leader awaits your entrance. And between us, he is ecstatic at your visit," bowed the red guard.
Our three actors winked at each other, smiling. Sammy muttered aloud, "Soon I'll find my family." Moll looked at City and he frowned at her for silence. Thinking, "If you only realized what your family will really think when they hear of Yhe Bosses' raid."
Inside the silken draperies the magnitude of the scene stopped even the escort captain in his tracks. An entire human wine cellar, long ago abandon, was now lit by candles. Each candle was encircled by mice dressed in pieces of silk and satin, lounging on velvet cushions, nibbling on fruit pieces, vegetable slices and drinking from small saucers.
The air resounded with their laughter and music from mouse-made guitars. In the center of this collection of hundreds of Uptowners, sitting on a raised platform of blue velvet peering directly at the Royal troupe, was the Leader sporting a glimmering hat. He beamed in expectant emotion of these first Royal visitors. He arose, swoop-dipping his large hat before them.
The room stilled spontaneously as if he had commanded it to.
The Leader bowed to the royal troupe, straightened and extended his paws.
Sammy stood there, his mouth still agape. City nudged him. Sammy awoke and bowed in turn. Straightened and also extended his paws.
At this point the crowd cheered.
The Leader dropped his paws. And so did Sammy.
The Gatekeeper led the royal troupe through the crowd toward the Leader's platform. At the base of the platform he motioned the captain and the crew boss aside to an empty table. He then led Sammy and Moll and City up to the Leader and introduced them. "Your Highness, may I present our illustrious Leader," the Gatekeeper bellowed.
The Leader nodded, tipping his hat again.
"Leader, his Royal Prince of the Corn Country," the Gatekeeper bellowed.
Sammy nodded.
The Leader picked up a large diamond ring and walked over to Sammy and draped it around his neck, saying, "Your Highness, please accept this as a token of our welcome."
Sammy smiled as the Leader placed the ring about his neck.
And the crowd cheered again.
Sammy beamed. He was rich and famous, his dream had come true. He asked, "Leader, are you from Corn Country?"
The Leader laughed warmly, "No your Highness, my family have always been city dwellers."
Sammy continued, "Well your leadership, could you introduce me to some of my country family members here in your city?"
The Leader looked puzzled, "Your Highness, I don't quite understand. You are the first member from Corn Country I have ever met. In fact, I'm not really sure where Corn Country is."
Sammy shook his head, muttering, "I don't understand this. My family members have ventured for the city for generations. Where are they?" And he looked out over the crowd as if to spot one of his cousins.
City looked around the crowd. At the entranceway came a rushing armed guard, looking very angry. City muttered, "Rats," and nudged Moll. He looked around for another way out, saw none and near panicked. Then he looked at the Leader. City bent down, grabbed a sharp knife, then whisked around behind the leader, grabbing one of his paws. Putting the knife hard to his neck, saying loudly, "If you want to live, quiet your people and take us above."
The guards rushed to the platform, their captain yelling, "A raiding party from the South Highway..."
City put the knife hard against the leader's throat, "Quiet them, if you want to live. Get us out of here, NOW!"
The Leader coughed, cleared his throat, "Stay back, make way. I'm taking them above. Stay back."
Sammy was still in shock about his family, and Moll had to pull him along behind City and the Leader.
The Leader led them through the dividing crowd with the guards close, but safely back. He led them up a fallen board aside a long winding stairway. Up they went to the top of the stairs and in then through a narrow crack in the cellar door and into a dimly lit basement masked with the odor of humans. He led them to another set of stairs and nodded, "Up there is the way out."
City pushed him forward. They climbed up the stairway trim. At the top of those stairs was a closed door. At the bottom of the stairs were the guards and most of the crowd of Uptown mice. Moll looked at City, "What now?" City said, "How do we get in?"
The Leader shrugged, "When the humans open the door, I guess. We never use this way. Our closest exit was the Southern exit, you know, the way you came in."
City said, "Rats. We'll never make it out that way; we'll just have to wait. Tell your guards to stay down there if they value your life."
And dear readers, our heroes may well have had to wait a very long time except, except. Yes that's right, Fate did again open Her lovely eyes and shine them on our bound-for-the-city hero and his new friend, City, and his love, Moll. For upstairs among the human occupants, the house guest was packing his bags about to depart when his hostess suddenly decided to give her guest a departing gift of fine rare wine and did so tell her maid to fetch the wine quickly.
The wine cellar door latch sounded. The door opened and the light switch was hit on and the maid was down at the bottom of the stairs before she saw a hundred scurrying mice. And before her feet were on the second step our heroes were through the door with their hostage left behind. The maid screamed, turned, and bolted up the stairs past the terror struck Leader. She slammed the door behind her, looked around at the floor, saw no mice, screamed again and then fainted. With the second scream, the guest and the hostess came running to her rescue. In their haste they passed our heroes hiding in the shadow of a hallway chair.
When the humans ran passed, our heroes ran down the hall and into the first open room, which happened to have the guest's baggage aside the doorway. One piece of his luggage was still open awaiting the promised vintage wine. Our heroes came to the luggage and the closed door. They looked around the room and spotted the sunlight through the window.
City said, "Up there."
Sammy saw the glass and remembered the man's apartment. All those city night-lights sparkling so close yet so far from his touch. His memory flashed that before him as they looked at the wall windows. "No, no, no," he muttered, then he fainted.
Moll whimpered.
City said, "Rats," and slapped Sammy's face, "Wake up, wake up! We've got to get out of here."
Long minutes passed.
Meanwhile the guest and hostess had found the maid, roused her and heard her tale of hundreds of mice. They opened the cellar door and listened quietly to the scurry of the mice retreating back into the abandoned wine cellar with their beloved Leader.
THE LAST SCENE
The guest said, "I'll get the wine another trip, no need to endanger your maid again in that mice infested cellar."
The hostess agreed, apologized, and informed her maid to contact the Pest Removers.
As Sammy regained consciousness, the humans walked down the hall toward them. City heard them, looked around and said, "In here, quick." They climbed in the open suitcase and hid under some shirts.
The guest thanked his hostess again, closed his suitcase and carried his luggage out to his car. With the final good-byes and return plans rehashed, he started the engine and drove off.
Inside the warm dark suitcase our heroes sighed relief at their unbelievable escape. And then they discussed the whole escapade of Sammy's venture to the city to find his rich and famous family, which he didn't find. Sammy was despondent and began to cry.
Then City began to point out that he had been famous for awhile and always would be to the Leader and his Uptown gang and also to Yhe Bosses, if they were still alive from their raids. And then City pointed out that the diamond around Sammy's neck made him the richest mouse that he had ever known and that he expected a percentage for the escort and rescue services he had performed.
Sammy said, "Yea, okay sure," and continued to whimper. That is, until Moll wrapped her tail around his ears and pulled close to him and began loving him. Sammy smiled in the dark, kissed her, and thought, "Yes, I have been rich and famous. And better than all of that, I have found something much more. Moll's love."
Moll held Sammy close, humming to herself, "Wow, what next?" Had no idea and decided she didn't really care to guess, then kissed Sammy again.
City, satisfied he was going to get a percentage of the ring's worth, turned his thoughts to their new problem. How to get past this human when he opened the box they were in and how to get back to Yhe Boss.
Finally all three of them slept. They slept through the long car ride. Slept through the human carrying them out of the car and into his dressing room. And they awoke only when he opened the suitcase and pulled out a shirt from underneath them. All three peeked through the clothes, saw no human and climbed out of the suitcase onto the floor. They spotted an open door, ran through it, then down a long room with side tunnels, straight toward an open sunlit doorway and then jumped down four steps onto a gravel parking lot.
Then Sammy turned right, ran over the spongy grass and continued running right into a cornfield row. He didn't stop running or even thinking about where City and Moll were, for he knew where he was. And was so overwhelmed he could think of nothing else but "HOME".
He was home, back in his old cornfield. He stopped finally, smelled long and deep. There to his left was breakfast, last season's corncob remains. He dug it out of the earth, cleaned it quickly, then stopped, turned around and thought, "Where is Moll, where is City? Or was all of that just another dream?" No, for coming down the row with the white church looming in the horizon were his love and his friend. When they caught up with him, he pushed the corncob between them, looked up in the sky for the hawk and said, "Here's our breakfast."
### the end. 1980.
RETURN TO INDEX index
9 October 1992 Friday 10:10 am - 11:35 am
Trying to think of a 14th birthday note to send to my nephew, who plays the organ, acts and writes stories, I spit this forth:
Matt 9 Oct 92
Much of living is doing, doing well takes practice, as you know, but there is another side of Life that is:
The Concrete Path
Mr. Lucky is walking along the big city sidewalk, speaking to a newspaper reporter. "No, Mr. Lucky isn't my real name," he does a grin at his companion, then tips his hat to the lady coming toward them.
The reporter holds his portable microphone close to Mr. Lucky's mouth. He looks past the lady to the rush of oncoming cars freed by the green light. He curses their noise, his tape won't be fit for airing, his editor will bark at him again.
Mr. Lucky grins, "No it's not. My home town buddies gave it to me 'cause of the night that...," truck gears and bad mufflers oversound his story, "and so I had to agree to that. Mr. Lucky I became."
The reporter curses under his breath, knowing not a word made it onto the machine. He flips open his hand-held note pad full of questions for this recent Lotto winner.
Mr. Lucky has stopped and is looking at a park tree, the new buds, the blue grass returning to life, and the birds chasing their springtime loves.
The reporter walks on fumbling his note pad and asks, "What do you intend to do with all that cash?" his microphone held in mid-air.
The silence turns his head. He stops, glances to see Mr. Lucky staring at a tree. So he jogs backwards, bumbling the note pad. The recorder bangs against his hipbones, and switches off, "Damn!" As he fiddles with the record button, Mr. Lucky walks on.
Birds zoom about the park; the males after the ready female. She takes them under fences, through tree branches, around joggers and bike riders on their annual mating ritual.
The reporter juggles the recorder, the wires and the microphone in his right hand. He fumbles the note pad in his left, the pages settling open on the unanswered question, "Real name?" Side by side again, he repeats his query, "Exactly how did you say you came by your name."
In one motion, Mr. Lucky turns from the park to eye the rumpled hat beside him and halts his gait.
The reporter, now more alert, stops only a half step ahead.
Mr. Lucky cocks his head upward to spy a dozen geese fly over the traffic light. His slow gaze follows their glide landing in the park's small pond. "Beautiful," slips from his appreciation.
"What was that?" the microphone coming closer to his mouth.
Mr. Lucky brings his focus from the pond to the shinny metal near his nose. He sidesteps right and moves forward again, quickening his pace with excitement.
The reporter tries to match his pace. His recorder bangs his hip again as he calls forward, "You say Mr. Lucky is just a nick name?" He is almost jogging, microphone extended to catch the answer, note pad pages flipping to the next question as his rumpled hat tips down over his eyes.
Tumbling along the sidewalk toward the two men, rolls a lost ten-dollar bill. Its motion has caught the attention of the female robin leading her pursuiters on a merry flight. The crumpled note blown for miles has also been chased by many fingers.
The traffic light has loosened another roar of motor cars and they too seem to be after the rolling ten spot. And there along a weathered, thin concrete path converge the forces of the moment.
Mr. Lucky's quick bend and scoop startles the robin to swoop up over his back skyward. Her hungry mates-to-be dart before the face of the reporter. The reporter's hat falls before his face as he stumbles in quick-spin-duck to dodge the wings of the birds flapping at his eyes. The recorder slips off his shoulder toward the street and slides out into the lanes. The reporter's body motion follows the direction of his dropped machine toward the street. Mr. Lucky rights himself, smiling at the ten in his hand as all birds fly upward over the rush of the traffic. Mr. Lucky's right hand slips the money into his pants pocket, as his left hand grabs the reporter's belt and pulls him back onto the curb.
The traffic rolls quickly over the recorder.
With the silence Mr. Lucky re-tells his story to the reporter still staring at the remaining bits of plastic strewn over the asphalt, "So you see why my hometown buddies named me Mr. Lucky."
(Included in the birthday letter was a $10.00 I had found a week before while cleaning weeds from the boss's new car wash. Funny how the pieces of our lives fit into picture frames we call stories.)
### the end. October 1992.
RETURN TO INDEX index
The Cafe
Monday morning at 7:30 the din from the cook's pans muffles the regulars' wake-up chitchat. "Hay Lucy, you still pregnant?" Snikles and chuckles bounce around. The newcomer turns to the reddened face of silence in the corner. She and baby wait by the window for the scenes to change. Young newcomer smiles and tries a soft laugh, no one frowns him, he's fitting in. "Na, the Doc gave me two aspirin yesterday and it went away." "Ya, sure, ha ha." She puts her hand on the kicking future. The newcomer looks at the empty chair opposite her and wonders.
Randy takes his appointment book from its resting-place and checks the day's agenda: Mrs. Bick, 8:15am. Everyday for the last three years she's there. Her work begins at 9am, the ride takes 45 minutes if he can make most of the lights, and he does. He asked her once to start earlier, say 8am. No, she didn't believe in giving the company anymore of her time than necessary. But he wouldn't have to rush; it would be a less frantic ride, calmer with some time to spare. No, she liked the way he wove through the traffic and the yellow lights. So for three years he has sped like a race driver; just missing joggers, children and bicycles and has zipped through countless yellow lights, glancing frantically for absent policemen.
Randy closes the pages and puts the slender book to rest. He places his left hand on his belly and grimaces as the buttermilk slides its way to soothe another peptic ulcer. Dollar under the glass, he leaves nodding and gesturing the coffee mugs, tipping spoons, cracked smiles and the wink from the lady with the fantasy.
The newcomer makes his unseen gesture and, like the rest, wants to know where he goes, what he does, but knows 'you don't ask, you wait to be told'.
The Ride
So too Randy, following the western code, gets behind the wheel of his dented Hansum Cab and wonders just what Mrs. Bick might be doing in that tall building downtown with the three banks and a dozen or more insurance companies. Brokers and salesmen of each variety shuffle through the swinging doors parting a way for the gracious Mrs. Bick each morning.
She tips good, it's steady money, but the pain in his stomach wonders the cost. It really doesn't matter who she is or what she does, for Randy has had enough. Mrs. Bick will be late today and probably tomorrow. The world won't miss her for a day or few. Randy's ulcer has had enough. Today begins the change from rush hour madness to calm, cool breezy retirement. He has served people all of his life and now it's time to collect his pension and disappear.
Glancing quick to her wristwatch then to the mirror, "Do hurry Randy, this is such an important day."
"Yes Mrs. Bick this is an important day," nodding back to her image. He flicks two switches. The back doors lock and the center glass slides up, closed tight. He settles back in the seat and turns from downtown traffic to empty suburbia.
Mrs. Bick looks up from her dress pleats and notes the unfamiliar. She looks left, then right, then out the back window. Then spins forward bumping her forehead on the privacy glass. She knocks upon it mouthing protest to the mirror.
He takes the dash microphone, "Please stay calm Mrs. Bick. We are going to the suburbs first." He replaces it.
She knocks upon deaf ears and traffic watching eyes till her knuckles hurt. Takes a deep breath, shakes her head, throws up her hands then collapses back.
Randy peers at her quiet form.
The Basement
Twenty minutes finds the couple driving into an automatic garage door. It closes locked and an overhead light ons. Randy takes out a revolver from the glove box. Holding it high he speaks to the microphone, "You will go into that open basement door and walk down the stairs. On the table you will find the instructions you are to follow. Do as you are told and you will be back at work unhurt."
"Why are you doing this? I have to be at the office right now. What are you doing?" leaning into the glass Mrs. Bick makes her useless plea.
Randy repeats himself, "You will go into that open basement door and walk down the stairs. On the table beside the telephone you will find the instructions you are to follow. Do as you are told and you will be back at work unhurt."
"I have to be at the office, right now," as she hammers her fist against the thick glass.
The side window opens. He stretches his arm, pointing the revolver at a glass target mounted on the wall. Her back window opens slightly. He fires the bullet into the noise. She throws her hands to her ears to cover the retort. Then sits back, looks at the revolver then at the wall.
Her door opens and she quietly, slowly exits then cautiously enters the open basement door. Mrs. Bick walks down the lit stairway and enters the basement.
Meanwhile Randy outs the cab and locks the door behind her. He walks over to an empty workbench, opens a cabinet and takes out the phone monitor. He checks his watch, then waits.
Mrs. Bick looks about the room and spies the letter of instructions on the metal kitchen table. She picks up the letter, silently she reads:
THE DOOR WILL BE LOCKED UNTIL $5,000 HAS BEEN PAID.
I CONTROL THE PHONE. YOU WILL SPEAK THROUGH THE MONITOR ON THE TABLE. YOU WILL ASK A WOMAN FRIEND FOR THE MONEY.
HAVE HER WITHDRAW IT FROM HER PERSONAL ACCOUNT. I WILL TELL HER WHERE TO PUT THE MONEY. WHEN I HAVE ALL THE MONEY I WILL TELL THE POLICE WHERE YOU ARE.
Mrs. Bick drops the letter. Then slowly she walks all around. No windows. The open doors expose two bedrooms and a bath. Beds, chairs and lamps, a few dishes, the furnishings of poor newlyweds, she remembers her departed Tony and those first years of bliss. She goes back to the table and picks up the letter. She looks at the closed stairway door, looks at the letter, looks at the phone with the squawk-box attachment then carefully ambles to it. Cautiously she picks up the receiver and puts it aside her head. The recording, "hang-up and dial again," speaks. She slams it down. Then collapses on a kitchen chair, head down on folded arms she weeps.
The phone buzzes softly yet violently shakes her nerves, flipping-on the squawk-box, "What?! What?! Randy? Why Randy why?"
A calm familiar tone, "$5,000 Mrs. Bick. My retirement money. You will not be harmed in anyway. I will call one of your women friends. Follow the letter on the table. What is her name, her number?"
"Emma Reasnor at 779-1234," sounds a despondent captive.
Clicks of silence.
An ancient crackling female rivets the receiver, "Yes. Emma Reasnor here, I don't drink beer, are you near, wish you were here."
"Good morning dear lady. Mrs. Bick has a very important message for you," Randy calm, slowly speaks to her, then pushes the table speaker switch, which makes a short buzz on the kitchen receiver.
Mrs. Bick turns in start and quicks a squeak, "What?"
As cordial as a Ritz doorman, he interjects, "Mrs. Bick your call to Emma has cleared. Please follow the letter."
With a nervous tear of fright she explains her peril, "Emma, dear Emma, I've been kidnapped. $5,000. He wants $5,000. Please do as he says. I'll pay you back next week."
"Geraldine? Is that you? What is this about? Shall I call the police and shout?" with amused wonder Emma asks.
"No no Emma. This is real. I was kidnapped on my way to..." click silence, as Randy offs her table speaker.
"Good morning dear lady. This is the kidnapper. Go to your bank and get $5,000 in hundred-dollar bills. If they ask, tell them you are going to gamble in Reno and nothing else. Do you understand?" cool and firm Randy tells her.
"Geraldine? Geraldine, what is this awful man saying? What kind of terrible game is he playing?" with amused doubt Emma asks.
Randy puts his hand to his head, shakes it, takes a deep breath, "Good morning dear lady. Mrs. Bick has been kidnapped. Do you understand?"
"Kidnapped, kidnapped. Yes I watch TV. I understand, kidnapped," with amused calm Emma says.
Randy nods, smiling, "Good, very good. I will release her as soon as you get me the money. Do you understand?"
"Money, you want money," with serious calm Emma says.
"Yes, money. $5,000 dollars," smiling and nodding yes to the phone Randy says firmly.
"I go to the bank?" with calm wonder Emma asks.
"Yes. Get one hundred-dollar bills. Get fifty of them," calm and clear he explains to her.
"That would be $5,000 dollars worth," Emma states slowly.
Nodding and smiling into the phone, Randy laughs quietly, "Yes, yes, $5.000. You do understand. Mrs. Bick will be okay. I will let her go when you give me the money."
"I want to talk to her again, before this adventure I begin," Emma says with serious resolve.
Randy ons the table speaker. It buzzes and again Mrs. Bick jumps alert, "Confine your talk to the letter or off it goes."
Nodding, "Yes, yes. Emma are you there?"
"Yes Geraldine, I'm alright. Can you make it through the night?" with amused concern Emma asks.
"Yes Emma I'm alright. There's plenty to eat, and a bathroom and a bed. He just wants the money. Please give it to him. I can pay you back next week," regaining her composure.
"Geraldine he wants me to get fifty, one hundred-dollar bills, is that alright?" with calm doubt Emma asks.
"Yes Emma, do what he says. Give him the money," Mrs. Bick sternly tells her.
Then the table squawk-box speaker light dims off and Randy begins, "Good morning Miss Reasnor. Go to the bank tomorrow morning." Randy opens his appointment book to Mrs. Bick and reads aloud, "Put the bills in an envelope. Be at the corner of 1st and Pine, north side at noon tomorrow. A cab with the back window open will stop beside you. Ask the driver if the cab goes to Kansas. He will answer, 'No this cab only goes to Dallas'. Drop the envelope on the back seat floor and leave. Do you understand?"
"I understand, you're the man," amused she hangs up.
Randy replaces the phone. Goes to his cab, starts the engine, flips the overhead door switch and the garage door opens. Calm, cool taxi driver leaves the suburbs bubbling with impish delight as his retirement plan unfolds.
Mrs. Bick calls to the table speaker, "Emma, Emma are you there?" the silence tells her. She picks up the letter and reads it aloud. She puts the letter down and looks at the speaker, "Randy, Randy I told her. I did what you said. Are you there?" the silence tells her.
Mrs. Bick sits down then puts her head on her folded arms. Quiet restful moments pass; she slowly raises her head and looks around the room. She ups briskly from the table, goes to the door and inspects it, knocks on it. The door is made of metal. She walks around the room inspecting the walls. They are made of concrete. There are no windows. She looks up at the ceiling, wooden paneling, she smiles.
She goes to the kitchen cabinets, opens the drawers and the doors: paper plates and glasses, plastic silverware, a dozen can goods and an electric opener, not one tool. She sees the icebox of juices, milk, soda, beer, cheeses, apples, peanut butter and jellies. Where is the bread, in the box along side the crackers. She looks about the room, spies a tiny TV, grabs a beer and overs and ons the tube. It comes to life and Mrs. Bick walks back to sit on the plain couch with its two cushions and lap blanket. One of her favorite 'Leave it to Beaver' episodes begins.
The Cafe Craze
The newcomer glances to the clock again, he's not sure why, but it's the moment's action, the silent gesture of the cafe this day. The spoons lay still in their stains of drying liquid. And the fingers feel glued to the hands that lay restless, yet motionless. Even the cook stares at the circle that marks his beginning and ending time.
The cook should have begun the morning dishes ten minutes ago, everyone knows the routine, expects it. The pots and the clamor of the pans, the klink tinkling of silver plated utensils, the steady stream of near scalding water and the covered curse of burning pain that comes each morning as the owner checks the rinse water. It all marks and masks the morning's chat, covers the night's secrets now revealed by the heads cuddling close and the ears leaning to hear a part, a phrase, a sound that reaffirms a customer's craze. "That's what I thought; yea me too; I was sure I had heard it right; those sirens; seemed like screams; a muffled fear; I heard laughter; I thought there were shots; see, I told you not to go." All and more the morning dishes reveal, banging, clanking noisy pots and pans mix the melody of customer's loosed tongues.
There's a tension building, the silence is new. The food's all eaten, the cups await the waitress to refill and the plates need to be bused, but the staff still sits by the cook, who stares at the clock. The bills are fingered and amounts re-calculated and passed about for re-inspection.
Only the regulars remain. The passersby, hunger filled and curiosity satisfied, are far along the road by now. The tension so thick the newcomer wants to scream it out the door. It's time to talk, for the cook to do the dishes, for the waitress to fill the cups, for the crossword puzzles and the morning's comics. But they just sit there and glance at the clock. And the tension builds and he wants to stand on the table and scream. But he's the newcomer, a part, yet not a part of the group. His role defined, he edges the group as moonbeams find pathways through thick pines, or he leaves.
Randy parks in the empty spot that has become his aside the decaying cafe. He looks at the thick clouds looming by and feels their moistness, breathes deep the last rose pedal then waves to the toddler swinging next door. He turns in haste to fill a hunger that food can't. It's a feeling he has just found, yet coffee and donuts is all he can think to use. So into the diner and onto the counter stool he bounds, dying to burst forth his news but checked to silence.
As Randy opens the door, the cook ups from his seat cracking a relieved grin, the waitress slides her hair back, the owner jesters to his empty cup, the newcomer jumps up, the customers begin to sound their mouths and all is right with the cafe again. The water gushes steaming bubbles and splatters oatmeal upon the greasy floor. The cook swears. The newcomer quicks to the bathroom happy to still have his place. The waitress does the first round of re-fills, three regulars line-up to pay their bills. Randy glances at the clock marking the time in his appointment book. And Lucy with her future protruding takes her stare from the window, pats her belly and calls to no-one particularly, "You know, I think it's a girl;" and the room breaks into a long easy laugh.
The Cafe Lull
Monday morning at 10:00 Randy sits sipping his usual, he pulls-out his appointment book from its resting-place. It reads as it has everyday for the last three years: 11:15am, 2nd & Pine Ave, Mrs. Dot. He glances at the clock and notes the newcomer filling-in the crossword spaces the waitress and owner couldn't. The newcomer feels his eyes and quick looks. Eye contact with the cabby, he's made his first eye contact, a day to remember. Randy quick smiles and spins off the stool with three milks sloshing under his belt. The nods, winks and waves fewer now, it's the lull before lunch, the regulars walking their rounds and the workers lost in thought.
Lucy at the window waits for her future and stares into the distance as Randy leaves. The newcomer takes Randy's smile and sends it to her. She feels it. But the waitress returns from the bathroom and parts them on her way to refill the napkin holders. Lucy goes back to her future and the newcomer looks to the comics to find a laugh.
The Ranting Ride
The traffic is always heavier on Monday's. Why, he has never explained, none of the news commentators have either. There are just too many people to ask each one how they happen to be where they are when they are. Maybe it's a tradition, maybe it's some mystical being calling them out of their caves, maybe they only work on Mondays, maybe their cupboards are bare and it's the first day the stores are open, maybe they had to stay home cause of God's Sunday and now they're free to roam again. Maybe Randy would never really know, but he did know there were more cars on both sides of the streets and the flow was slower and he was stopped by every other red light on Monday's. And that's what mattered, how long it took to get to his next regular fare.
And like all the rest, this regular fare, Mrs. Dot, wanted precise timing: not 11:16am, but 11:15am and arrival at the Sears Building at 11:55am, not 11:58am. How such minutes could matter to these ladies, he couldn't imagine. But they were his regulars. Though, had he been told of their finicky timeliness, he may have picked one of the other routes where you fight to get there first, roaming the streets at all hours to find someone in need of a ride, someone too tired to walk or stranded or without a car. But that meant always picking up strangers, so thieves were always a threat; that too had its nervous cost, his ulcer reminded him.
There she stood, half a block up. He looked at the dash clock, 11:13am, two minutes to wait, couldn't be early either. No matter, for today marked the beginning of his retirement plan and a better mood no man could have. The two minutes were his to savor, to appreciate his last view of Mrs. Dot, her knitting satchel and the bright blue umbrella always at her side.
"Good morning Miss Dot, 11:15am right on time," Randy smiles into the rear view mirror.
"And it's good that ya are. An important day this is, right that it is. An important day, I canna say no more," and casts her eyes from the mirror to her knitting bag.
Randy turns his head from the mirror, wonders a thought, then shrugs his shoulders, "Yes mame, it is." Then ups the privacy glass and locks the back doors and makes a left toward the quiet suburbs far from her busy Sears Building.
A few moments pass and Mrs. Dot notices the change of route. Peering through the back window she sees her destination dwindling rather than looming toward her through the windshield. She knocks on the privacy glass.
Randy picks up the dash microphone and smiles into the mirror, "Please stay calm Miss Dot, we are going to the suburbs first." He replaces it.
"Look Randa, this joke it is na funna. Please I musta be at the Sears by noon. Randa, Randa do ya hear. Turn this cab 'round!" her fists pounding on the glass.
Glancing to the mirror, he picks up the microphone, "Calm, calm Miss Dot, we will be there very soon. Please be calm."
She shakes her head an emphatic no and smashes her fist against the thick privacy glass, this time bringing pain. She sits back holding her bruise till tears find their way free.
The downtown becomes lost behind the rows of two story bricks. Each with its square of green, front and back. Stately homes these are with stained glass and polished brass so like the lady in back. Finery and distinction till you drive down their alleys of broken glass, lost shoes, sheared cans, rotting cats; where kids sneak home from school.
The Basement Brig
The garage door opens and Mrs. Dot looks up to spy the lane of neat ranch styles, trimmed bushes, tailored lawns and shade maple trees. The door snaps quiet offing her view of Randy's suburbs, a place she's heard of, yet never been.
Randy tells her to go down into the basement.
Mrs. Dot protests and beats her other hand against the thick glass.
He flashes his revolver and splatters another glass target against the far wall.
She stares at the smoking barrel now pointed at her. Then nods her head and quietly sits back.
Randy pushes a button and her door opens.
Mrs. Dot resolutely takes to the basement stairs; the door swinging closed and locked behind her. She comes to the bottom door and cautiously opens it into the sound of a TV car salesman ranting of his 'great new deal'.
As Mrs. Bick reaches for her drink on the coffee table, a leery Mrs. Dot calls forth, "Hello. Is anybody there?"
Mrs. Bick jumps around, "Emma, is that you?" Surprised to see her fellow captive, "You! He got you too?"
When the bottom door opened it tripped an overhead light. Randy exits the cab and takes the phone from the work bench cabinet. Pushes the squawk-box switch and both ladies startle to face its buzz.
Mrs. Dot steps to the table and puts her hand on the speaker, pauses and looks to Mrs. Bick, who is now sitting with feet on the floor ready for action. The two women wonder into each other's eyes and the bond begins. "It's probably Randy," in soft-like whispers not heard.
"Randa, is ya there? Let me out. What do ya want?" Mrs. Dot pounds her fist on the table.
Above them in the safety he smiles to the receiver, "Good morning dear ladies. Money. I want my retirement money Mrs. Dot. Read the letter of instructions on the table. Five minutes," and the speaker light offs.
"Go on, read it. There's nothing else to do," Mrs. Bick says while walking to greet her visitor.
A quick study, Mrs. Dot slams the paper to the table and grimaces of her forgotten pain. "No, no I wonna give ta blackmail money. No!"
Mrs. Dot storms to the door, it won't bulge. She does a quick inspection: no windows and walls of concrete. Throws all the kitchen cabinet drawers open, picks up a plastic spoon and stares at it.
Mrs. Bick slights a small smile, "Please stay calm, there is no way out. We have to do what he says."
"No, no I wonna give ta blackmail. I work hard my whole life. I wonna give ta him." Mrs. Dot slams her right fist into her left palm.
The speaker light ons and buzzes, "Well Mrs. Dot whom should I call? What is her number?"
"No, no money. I wonna pay!" Mrs. Dot throws the plastic spoon at the speaker. She grabs the speaker, shaking it, "I wonna pay!"
Randy flips the light circuit breaker off, "How does darkness sound dear ladies?"
The basement becomes dark. Their squeals finally cease. And a soft muffle emits, "Please tell him, it's only $5,000. Please. I don't like the dark."
"No. No I wonna. So what, a little darkness." Mrs. Dot is holding tight to the back of a kitchen chair.
"Good morning ladies. Try to live with this," and he opens a cabinet door, taking out a large bucket and dumps its contents into the fresh-air duct vent. He puts a small electric fan before it, sending the fumes of human waste to their noses.
Moments of grunts and moans and coughs of disgust finally bring Mrs. Dot to her knees, "Alright Randa, ya win. I'll pay, I'll pay."
He chuckles, "Thought that perfume would change your mind," then shovels the pile back into the container. Flips on the outside air-intake fan and apologizes, "Sorry to be so crude, but like the man says 'It's only money'. Now whom do I call for your part of my retirement cash Mrs. Dot?"
"Georga Mae at 778-2233," resigns Mrs. Dot.
The speaker off, Randy finds Georga Mae at home and explains her chore. Then connects the two ladies together via the speakerphone.
"Ya Georga Mae it is true. I been kidnapped by..."
Randy offs the phone," "You can not tell her about me. You can not say anything, just the letter. Tell her what the letter says. Do you understand?"
Mrs. Dot nods and Mrs. Bick says, "Yes she understands."
He ons the switch and she tells Georga Mae the letter instructions.
Randy offs the speaker and tells Georga Mae to be at 2nd & Pine at noon with the envelope. He puts the phone in the cabinet, enters the cab, switches the garage door open and casually backs onto the street leaving the suburbs another quiet guest to wonder about.
Mrs. Dot looks at Mrs. Bick, "How long have you been here?"
Mrs. Bick quick looks at the hand tailored burgundy in red, low heal pumps with matching earrings and a bobbed necklace. Turns back to the TV and sits down on the couch, "You might as well enjoy yourself. No sense being uppy. This place is like a tomb. He won't hurt us. He just wants his money. He is nice enough for a man." She swivels around, feet up and under the blanket. Hand around a half-empty, half-warm can of beer, she frowns and calls to Mrs. Dot, "Please be a dear and bring us a round of cold beers."
Mrs. Dot shakes her head, "How canna be calm. I have ta prepare for the meeting. The vote is Wednesday. Gotta get ready." She hurries to the door and yanks and tugs, then kicks it hard, hurting her foot. "OHYEE!" She limp hops to a TV chair, flops down and whimpers tears.
Mrs. Bick sits up, goes to the icebox and pulls out two beers, taking one to her new companion, "Here. This will dull some of the pain. Watch the TV, like me. We are here till he gets his money."
Mrs. Dot slugs down the beer in one gulp, crushes the empty and calls for another.
Mrs. Bick, eyes wide, hands it to her. She takes the empty back to the kitchen. She pulls one from the box, hesitates, then takes out another.
"There musta be a way out, musta!" glancing at the walls and the ceiling.
"Oh I thought so too. No windows, door of metal, as you know." Glancing at the ceiling, "It's made of wood alright, but there are no tools."
"Do ya have a fingernail file?" Mrs. Dot peers at the ceiling.
"No, just a paper emery board," Mrs. Bick looks closely at her fingernails.
Mrs. Dot’s face lights up, "Bring me ma bag, I have one."
Mrs. Bick goes into the kitchen and looks around. Spies the bag on a chair, lifting it carefully peers inside.
"Here, bring that here. I know where it is," reaching for her bag.
Mrs. Bick closes the drawstrings and takes the satchel to her. Whereupon receipt, Mrs. Dot pours the contents on the table before her. Among the papers, patterns, yarn and needles is a metal file. She picks it out from the rubble and points it toward the ceiling. Then hands it toward Mrs. Bick, "Here, cut a hole for us to escape."
Mrs. Bick looks at the thin file, glances to the ceiling, then to the file, "Here. Drink this other beer, you are becoming delirious with pain." She puts the beer on the end table and goes to the couch, positioned, "Randy will let us out when he get his money. $5,000 for his retirement isn't so much. He has been an excellent servant."
Mrs. Dot sips the beer, then looks at the file, then at the ceiling, then sips the beer empty. Reaches for the third can, opens it and sips down most of it. Putting the file on the end table, she glances at Mrs. Bick stretched back sipping a beer, "Ya know he really has, maybe they'll postpone the meeting since I'm na there."
"Ya. Maybe they'll postpone the meeting," Mrs. Bick muses and returns to the TV.
The Cafe Coincidence
It's 1:30pm and Randy pushes the pie plate of crumbs toward the noon waitress, "The best Juli, that's the best cherry pie you've made this month."
She takes his plate and giggles a blush, "That's a strawberry pie, you silly goose," and quick turns to the back. He is twice her age, but she finds him so attractive, his jokes and teases always make her blush. He's never crude, nor rude. He seems to say just the right thing to make her feel good, actually womanly, almost sexy. But he is old, like a father; maybe it's that father-figure thing. Maybe it's because she's lonely and shy. Maybe it's because the other customers say those dirty words, wanting her to be dirty with them. None of them ever ask her to the movies or to a walk in the park or just simple, plain talk, they just look at her body and snicker to each other. "But Randy is different, I guess because he is like a dad that I like him, he is like a friend, those others seem so dirty, so so animal," Juli thinks these thoughts after the customers are gone to their work. While she is cleaning, she glances at old Randy sipping his coffee and making notes in his appointment book.
He glances back at Juli, "She sure reminds me of my daughter, same name and about the same age. I wonder what she is doing? Maybe I'll find her when this retirement plan is all done, ya maybe." His thoughts return to the afternoon schedule: Monday 2:30pm, 3rd & Pine, Mrs. Tron. He puts the book in its resting-place and slides the dollar tip under the glass. He swivels off the stool, tips his hat to the chatters in the corner and opens the corridor door to leave. Usually meeting people within the small corridor that separates the outside doors from the inside doors is awkward. But their passing goes smoothly, like a well rehearsed, fast feed basketball play. The newcomer is early for the after lunch coffee n’ chat gathering. Randy nods the ‘good to see ya again, early huh’ look. And the newcomer makes a bold move and winks back a ‘got something special happenin’ look to the cabby.
Randy has the engine running, as the newcomer is sipping down the first taste of too sweet coffee. At the same moment Lucy and her surprise come waddling around the parking lot bushes from her small apartment in the converted garage out back. She smiles, waving to Randy's departure.
The newcomer glances out the large window. He sees her wave as a greeting to him. It is really going well, he is really fitting into this place, and with high feelings he goes to the door and holds it open. Lucy, who thinks he is heading-out stands holding the outer door open. The flock of coffee-buzzed flies feels the fresh air and zooms past both of them to spend their day among the tree leaves, dodging the hungry birds.
Juli looks at the newcomer then sees Lucy. Both are holding a door open so she pomp-n-circumstances past them waving a napkin hankie. Her head held so up, "A dollar for the doorman, a dollar for the doorlady, they are just so kind. Thank ya, thank ya one and all." Giggling, she quick runs back inside before either of them realizes their foolishness.
The newcomer lets loose of the door and turns away embarrassed, just as Lucy comes inside. It slams shut and she is nearly hit by it. The loud thud causes him to turn around. He jumps to grab it back open for her, yanking it so hard that she is pulled to near falling on her face.
She stumbles and catches her balance and her breath, "What are you trying to do? Kill my baby?"
"No no, I'm so sorry. I was, was just trying to help to hold it open for you," gesturing frantic at the door, then toward Juli, then back at the door.
"Well I don't need your kind of help. I don't need any help!" as she brushes the dirt from her dress.
Juli ups, "Are ya alright Lucy?"
"Yea, just kinda startled. That, that bumbling idiot," pointing the accusing finger at the newcomer.
Juli helps brush the dirt from her back, saying, "Really Lucy, I saw the whole thing, he was trying to help. Him holding the door for ya, and ya holding the other door for him, and neither ya knowing it. It looked sort of silly."
"What?" raising one eyebrow at Juli, then quick glancing at the newcomer.
"Really, kinda romantic, sort of special thing for ya both to be doing at the same time. Ya didn't realize, so I got silly." Juli says with apologetic eyes.
Being reputed, the newcomer ups, "Yes silly is what you were, waving that napkin, giving us a dollar like some queen."
Lucy's smile returns, and she emits a tiny giggle, "Yea like Little Egypt herself strutting down the boardwalk."
So the focus swings to Juli and she gets indignant, "Well! See whenever I tip ya both again," and huffs off to harass the napping cook.
Lucy looks at the newcomer and sheepishly smiles, "I guess I was a little rough. It's the baby. So awkward to walk. I have to be extra careful. Kelly and I have many, many wonderful plans. Nothing is going to spoil them."
He nods her acceptance and makes his own apologies for being the overzealous fool knight trying to help the lady in distress, whether she needed or wanted.
She goes to the corner window table just vacated by the last lunch customer enjoying the spot of human entertainment. Leaving a large tip, he smiles and thinks this cafe worthy of a return stop.
The newcomer grabs his cup from the counter and takes the vacant seat at Lucy's table. He sits and continues rapping of the doors, of his feelings while waiting for her to come through the door; and of what could he do when she didn't and she wasn't and how silly he was feeling, and on n' on with Lucy smiling and nodding her own similar awkward feelings.
The Remembrance Ride
"Good morning Mrs. Tron," smile and tip of cap to the elegant black woman; Randy liked this customer. She was stately yet unpretentious, least compared to the other regular ladies on the route. She was the only one who chatted casual: weather, baseball results, local politics, movie star gossip and occasionally the ailments of her age. In fact she was the only customer whose occupation he knew about. She cleaned the executive offices in the Sears Building. The hard part was keeping awake till the end of her shift. Her work began at 3pm, but she stayed with the clean-up crew in the basement until after 5pm, after all the day people had left.
She would meet a late working manager once in awhile, most of them were women and they expected her to look down at the floor in their presence. A long life of serving white snobbery had left her somewhat snobby too, though 50 years of ten-hour days seemed like ample justification. So rather than cowl or lose her job she waited till they were usually gone home.
During board meetings that ran late into the night, her duties differed. She sat in the outer office, answering the phone and playing the guard, a position that elevated her social status to where she felt she didn't have to bend over for anyone. Rare to have the cleaning lady serve at the reception desk, but the members felt she deserved the temporary privilege. Since she had no real interest in company policies, outside of keeping her job, she seemed perfect to hold the sensitive role of receptionist. And why pay overtime when an employee was already on duty in the area. This was one of their meeting days, she told Randy when he commented on her best Sunday dress. Randy nodded he already knew.
"Say what? How you know 'bout my meetin'?" queried the curious matron.
"Isn't one of the members a Mrs. Dot?" looking at her mirrored face.
"Well, ah, I'm not to say who is an' who isn't. Do you know her? Dhat Mrs. Dot?" she asks carefully to his darting eyes.
"Well yes. I'm not suppose to say either, but I also take her to work, she's one of my customers," Randy smiles back to the mirror.
Nervous and leery, she continues, "How's come you never said before?"
"I'm not to talk about my customers to the other customers." Randy looks from the mirror to a yellow light.
"But you are," Mrs. Tron assures him.
He grins at the mirror, "Today's meeting place has been changed, I already took Mrs. Dot there," making the U-turn at the next intersection to take them to the suburbs.
"Randy dhis is strange, very, no highly unusual. Why would dhey tell you?" glancing at their change in direction, taking a note pad from her purse to jot the time and change of circumstances.
"Mrs. Tron, I am also a trusted servant. I chauffeur only special, regular customers for this company. And today, Mrs. Dot directed me to a new meeting place. She did not say why, I did not ask. She said to bring you to the meeting place at the usual pick-up time," he flatly states to the mirror.
Mrs. Tron is jotting his comments into the notebook, glancing at her wristwatch, "I don't know Randy. This never happened before."
"I thought the whole affair peculiar, but I'm just the cabby. By looks of the place, I'd say it might just be a surprise party at a member’s townhouse. You got a birthday or anniversary coming up?" smiling to her.
A big smile emits from the dressed-up, cleaning woman of the upper crust Sears Corporation, "Why yes, I've been with dhe company for 50 years next week. You dhink dhey are havin' a party for me?" And a small tear shimmers down a puffy tan cheek.
With a slight twinge of guilt covered by an empathetic sense of work pride, he continues, "Couldn't say for sure mame. But they better give you a nice retirement pension when that day arrives. Fifty years for one company is a very long service record. Even longer than mine. You look young yet, when did you start working?"
Hiding a schoolish blush, "Dhat's nice Randy. You won't tell anyone." She glances at the town houses melting past them behind their iron fences and over bushed sidewalks, "I fibbed when I was twelve. Looked seventeen and told dhe overseer I was eighteen. Dhat dad was too sick to work and we had five mouths to feed. It was all true except my age. I did dhe dishes in dhe kitchen, no one ever saw me till I got moved to laundry ten years later. My, dhat seems like last week," slow shaking away her disbelief of passed time.
"How long were you in laundry?" making a slow turn toward the suburbs.
Starring into the past, Mrs. Tron quiets and sits back, her notepad laying idol in her lap. The cab takes a right, a left; then past a few blocks of squat houses. A long lane of identical prefabs blur by as memory takes the little black girl from her innocence to her loud and wonderful fun nights of dancing; rushing from office parties to nightclub dance floor spot lights; running to beach blankets and squealing from the clutches of rich patrons into the cold icy waters of the roaring ocean then back to the warm fires and arms of the night's love.
The garage door snaps closed waking the woman from her childhood memories to wonderings of an anniversary party.
The Basement Bargain
Speaking quasi-secret instructions into the microphone behind the safety of the seat glass shield, Randy informs her to take the green doorsteps down into the basement. Then with a glint of mischief he adds, "Knock twice and tell 'em Randy sent you."
Mrs. Tron looks up, stares at the mirrored eyes and lets his voice settle into awareness. She steps out of the cab and pushes open the basement door leading to her surprise.
The door snaps locked behind her. A minute later the monitor light ons as she enters the basement apartment, then offs when the door closes. Randy nods to himself at the light and exits the cab. He takes the telephone from the cabinet and lifts the receiver.
The speaker buzzes as Mrs. Dot turns from the TV to greet the newest hostage. Mouth held open in surprise, arm out-stretched pointing to hold the door open for escape, she sits frozen at the sight of Mrs. Tron.
Mrs. Bick looks at her and then back to the TV, "It's Randy, you talk to him, you're the one in such a hurry to make that meeting."
Mrs. Tron looks around the room, upon seeing Mrs. Dot the anniversary party idea is confirmed in her mind. The speaker buzzing takes her from the doorway to the table where she pushes the speaker button, "Hello?"
"Good morning dear ladies. I hope everything is alright," his voice nervous yet cheerful.
"Why yes Randy, dhey sitting on dhe couch. When are dhe rest comin'?" Mrs. Tron leans to the speaker.
He chuckles, "Soon, everyone will be here very soon. But there are some expenses that have to be paid first."
Mrs. Bick laughs softly, "That's right dearie, you'll have to pay just like the rest of us."
Mrs. Tron looks to the couch, then bewilderedly back to the speaker, "What are you talkin' 'bout? Dhis is my party, what expenses are you talkin' 'bout. Dhis is my party."
Randy calms her query, "Do you see the letter of instructions on the table?"
Mrs. Tron picks up the single sheet and quickly reads it. Then in loud disbelief, "Your retirement fund! What 'bout my anniversary party?" slamming the letter to the table.
Randy looks to the sky in thought, "First, I get my retirement cash from everyone. Then Mrs. Dot and her fellow board members will give you that fifty-year party they have been secretly planning. Isn't that right Mrs. Dot?"
Mrs. Dot's raised arm brings her from her frozen stare up to her feet, and brings forth sound, "Party? Beenna with the company fifty years Mrs. Tron?" her eyes widening from surprise into awareness. "Yes, yes that's right Randa. A grand party. A grand party we have beenna planning for ya next week," smiling wide and nodding yesses to the large black matron.
Randy cuts-in to soothe her, "See Mrs. Tron, I get my retirement cash. You get your surprise party. And everybody goes home happy."
Mrs. Tron looks from the speaker to Mrs. Dot, then back to the speaker, "If dhe party is next week Randy, why did you bring me here?"
"Please Mrs. Tron, read the letter again."
She picks up the instructions, reads them silently again and again, then slams them to the table near cracking the thin wood. She looks at Mrs. Dot and then at Mrs. Bick, who sits up and turns to greet the newest retirement victim.
"Randy has kidnapped us, but he only wants money, just $5000 each, to retire on. He is a nice man, I think he will let us go when he has the money. Agree with him, tell him and we'll be out of here in time for your anniversary party next week," Mrs. Bick implores her.
Mrs. Dot adds, "That's right, he wants his retirement money. I wasn't going to pay, but there is no way out."
"I work hard for 50 years, aign't nobody gettin' my money. Not Randy, not nobody." She walks to the door and strains to twist the knob open.
"Please Mrs. Tron, it is made of metal, please don't hurt yourself, there are no windows and the walls are made of concrete. He controls the phone. He can turn off the lights..."
Mrs. Dot interjects, "And he did. But worsen that he canna put foulness inna air conditioning vents."
"Stinks like the farm outhouse," Mrs. Bick holds her nose.
"Dhem things won't bother me, I growed-up cleaning dhem bathrooms, you get 'customed to dhe smell." Mrs. Tron storms toward the door again.
Randy cuts-in over the speaker, "You are right Mrs. Tron, you can live through it, but why endure all that and this too," he flips on a loudspeaker switch that sends a piercing siren whistle through the air conditioning. The tape is dubbed over with the continuous drown of a cracked bell being hammered. After ten minutes, he quiets the noise and asks, "Well can you 'customed the darkness, the smell and that clanking for a week?"
The ladies take their hands from their ears and Mrs. Tron agrees to pay. Whereupon he calls her contact for the money, one June Becker whose love of excitement found it all so real, all so thrilling that she couldn't wait to get the cash and even suggests upping the value. Randy assures her that $5000 is adequate. Then repeats the envelope pick-up plan for noon. She thanks him and hurries to round up the ransom cash in peaked silence.
Randy contacts his captives before leaving the garage, "Have a good morning dear ladies. Please enjoy your stay. The retirement cash plan is going very smoothly, everyone is co-operating and you should each be released soon. Please do enjoy this surprise vacation." Everything put away, he backs out of the garage and leaves the suburbs to silent wonderment of its latest guest.
The Boat
Just before four each afternoon, Randy drove to the wharf, parked in the lot and strolled down the dock nodding to the men sitting and fishing. He stopped to chat with two of their luck. He stood looking out to the sea, glancing at the catch string they pull up from the cool water. He stood a few more moments looking at each fish and listening to the tale that usually accompanies the catching of each fish hanging on the line. He shook a nod, smiled adding, "A real fighter huh?" or "'bout pulled ya in huh?" or "say the missus got room for a dinner guest?" knowing the retort, "Ah go on with ya," and he does.
Continuing his wandering stroll, gazing out to the sea he put his hands in his pockets and casually meandered to his next bit of peer talk. He ended up beside the same tub each day where an old sea captain rocked away on his dead wife's chair. Nestled near her fireplace she knitted away her lonely hours, casting her thoughts to her man somewhere at sea pulling in the city's hunger: crab meat, seal feet and whale's seat. The smoke from the ivory pipe curls around his head, lingers on the lip of a tattered rain cap and overs its edge to mesh with the mist settling down around the peer each afternoon. The ancient mariner quit the sea the day he laid his loyal wife down in her eternal bed. His reason to 'bring home the bacon' died that day. He sold the house and everything in it to their kids, everything except her rocker. The money would pay the taxes and what few repairs the tug might need and the food he'd need till his time came to rest. He never left the boat anymore, even had the groceries delivered.
His children's visits became fewer and shorter; their lives so busy with work and raising his grandchildren. They were of the new breed, city folks with streetcars, indoor movie theaters, TV, school plays and fast food drive-thrus. The bay, the fishing, the wharf were just a tourist sight to them. They weren't knowing or caring of his world. His seaman's life as foreign to them as their suburbs were to him. So he stayed on the tug and they stayed on the land like their mom, who lived, died and was buried there.
He had lived, and figured he'd die and be buried at sea. He told them that, but they nodded and said "sure pop" then quick changed the subject. And there was that empty place at the cemetery aside his Maevice. They had bought it for him, he knew that deep down, he knew that. Even when they denied it, he knew that hole there was where they'd put him. That didn't set well, no sir, didn't set well at all. But what to do, what to do when dead, what to do, he muttered to Randy a couple times a week.
Randy would just shake his head, "Not to worry old man, you know how King Poseidon takes care of his own. Not to worry. You still got more time here among us living. And you promised to take me on that voyage along the coast."
"Yar right, by golly yar right, did so did so, take ya up the coast, King Poseidon take care this old salt. Not to worry, I'm ready, not to worry." The old man would perk up, a grin would crack and he'd send up another puff of smoke about his cap to melt the mist.
Randy would look out toward the sinking sun, pat his hand on his belly, then leave off for supper. Waving and nodding the signals of the day, he'd briskly step from the wharf toward the cab to traverse the city pavements of noise, oil slicks and spots of dried blood from the last accident.
An hour on the wharf listening, looking, leaning toward the open sea put Randy right, calm and refreshed for the evening customers. As the day workers sped their way home, he slowly wandered the emptier streets musing, "Maybe they're not really mad, maybe it's just their way of venting all those bottled-up, pent-in, held-back expulsions that tack and company policy force them to refrain from in their dealings with the public, with each other, with the machines of their business, with the ironic rush orders that sit unattended upon completion, with the bodily functions, with the sick leaving their homes to spread their illness among the healthy, with the variances of pay, with in-laws, with cops, with panhandlers, with bombings, with graffiti, with muggers, with bribery of judicial officials, with divorces, with child abuse, with pain, with death, with routine and with the ever changing fashions." Randy glanced from house to house, venting what he saw as the workers’ newest reason to scream.
He knew them all, he'd had a life of taking these workers around, listening to them. There were a few who liked it, liked the whole spectrum of their lives: the good, the bad, and the ugly. They took life with their teeth, chewing and smiling and wanting more, more, more. Never enough time to do, to appreciate and enjoy, these few he wondered about. How did they become such, how did they stay that way, mostly how did they stay alive. The worn, tired masses had began their journey to become happy, had worked, toiled, bit their tongues, bleed and suffered long hours waiting to become happy. Then when finally reaching the moment something outside their lives - the boss, the kids, the bills, God - some force always came and snatched away their happy, glad feeling. Randy wasn't sure how the happy stayed ahead of the mob of worn-out beings, but they did. He could spot them in a second, their walk, their dress, their houses; everything they did, from the simple laborer to the creative genius of music and art. If he could spot them wouldn't the others, not ever being happy wouldn't they dump their misery on these up-people.
Just then he drove by a playground of grade school boys playing basketball. Throwing the ball at the hoop, pushing and laughing and running wildly about the asphalt. That, that was happy, carefree, that was what everyone wanted to be. But that somehow got lost or taken from them until finally they expected everyone to be like they were: miserably doing the work, the tasks of existence, abiding by the rules of society, the unwritten rules of behavior and dress. Did growing older cause one to forget the child in them or did growing cause one to abandon the child in them to become a co-operating, compromising, subservient to rules of co-existence? Randy wasn't sure what brought the millions to misery rather than appreciation, but he did know that they vented all that pent-up hostility in their rush to get home. Like a mob veering from the center of an explosion, they were fragments flying over pathways and landing in the structures of wood and brick they called home.
The Cafe Corner
Randy pulls into the cafe for his evening meal, for his coffee, for his nod and winks of the usual mouths sounding their thoughts and slopping down the food that will take them into the next day's activities. Most of these customers are only evening eaters. They come in pairs and trios from work. They talk among themselves while slowly sipping after dinner tea. He recognizes many, but none of them ever took the occasion to make friends. Why should they, their lives were full of activities and friends. He didn’t really mind, he had his regular customers, the chitchat of the waitress and cook and getting to know the morning regulars was enough for one old cabby.
He had plenty to muse about, to plan for ever since the retirement plan had come into his head all those months ago. The plan took hours of thinking and rehearsing; getting the right place and working out the drop-off times. All the details now were in motion. No, he didn't need to be part of these evening peoples' lives. And was glad to take a quiet seat in the corner to relax and plan.
The Rap Ride
At 6:30pm Randy's next appointment was at 1st and Pine, a Mrs. G. Minkee. An elegant dresser and very charming lady of 55. She doted on her age, proud like, "In great shape, fit as a cello," she'd say. He had tried a sexual tease those first rides, but her gnawf attitude kept him quiet and nodding at her self-musings. He learned that she just wanted lip service of, "Uh huhs" and "Yes um," nods and shrugs as she ambled on of her life and occasionally of some office problems. Union negotiators really set her off and brought out the lamenting work blues. He would drive silently, nodding and shrugging. Then in her basement garage by the elevator with its doorman, he would offer her the comfort, "Now take a long, hot bubble bath and not to worry. It will work out just fine." Then the next day she would thank him for his worldly advice and say how everything just smoothed along as he'd said.
With nods and smiles, Randy found his way again as his 6:30 appointment, Mrs. G. Minkee began her lamentations of this day's tragedies about a major stockholder take-over meeting. How a member of each of the two companies boards didn't show. So the pre-merger vote had to be postponed. How everything had been set back and what was happening on the Dow she just couldn’t guess, fortunes were made and lost this day, she knew it, just knew it. Not her fault, she was there, she was going to vote just like she said.
The Basement Beds
When Randy pulled into the garage of the ransom house he glanced in the mirror to see her put her hand to her mouth to cover something she said, but shouldn't have said, just like a child caught with chocolate on her fingers and the empty box on the floor. He quick got out of the car, opened the basement door and stood there as her doorman had for the past three years.
She got out of the cab mumbling to herself, "I didn't say anything, not really. I know how to vote, I know what's good for the company, I didn't say anything. I didn't, I didn't."
Smiling and pushing the basement door wide for her, "It will be alright tomorrow, take a hot bath and don't worry. Everything will workout just fine."
Mumbling her way down the stairs instead of up, Mrs. G. Minkee finds her way to the noise of the nightly news on a small black and white television surrounded by: a stranger, a black and a board member. She comes into the room just as a newscaster announces that two corporation board members missed a sure merger meeting to get Sears & Roew back on the financial beam. So engrossed in the news the captives missed the open door opportunity for escape. Only Mrs. Tron turned to spy the new arrival, but was unable to rise from her leisure in time. And her cry, "hold dhat door," fell upon occupied ears.
Randy takes the phone from the cabinet, "Good morning dear ladies. Would you please have Miss Minkee come to the phone."
At Randy's interjection, a busy Mrs. Dot spots her friend and rushes over to greet a surprised and worn-out Mrs. G. Minkee. "Tell me what really happened, are they trying to rescue us? Do they know we've been kidnapped? Ma poor company." Grabbing her by the shoulders she shakes Mrs. Minkee, "Tell me, tell me Minnee, what's happening!?"
From the speaker Randy inserts his demands, "Mrs. Dot please sit down and be quiet. I don't care of your company. I want my money, my retirement plan. Miss Minkee, Minkee?"
"Ignore him Minnee, ignore him, it's just that brute Randy. Tell me about ma company. How will ya vote?" shaking Mrs. Minkee.
From her couch position a query from Mrs. Bick, "Yes dearie, do tell."
Still shaking her shoulders, Mrs. Dot goes on, "How will ya vote? Ya know. Is there enough without us?"
Randy flips the light switch off and the noisy tape recorder on for twenty seconds, then offs it and speaks into the phone, "Wake up ladies. I want to know who to call for my $5000. Miss Minkee who do I call for my money. Give her the letter of instructions Mrs. Dot and do take your seat and shut up."
Mrs. G. Minkee takes her hands from her ears and calls, "What Randy. What are you doing, what are you talking about?"
"On the table is a letter of instructions, pick it up and read. Is she reading the letter?"
Silence. Randy bursts again, "Is she?"
Silence as Mrs. Dot hands the letter to her friend, who stands there too dazed to look at it.
"Ladies talk to me. Is she reading it Mrs. Dot?" his anger raises his voice.
"No you brute. Minnee is passed out. We put her to bed. Leave her alone. This is all too much for her fragile soul. Go away ya brute. Ya can't frighten her anymore, she is asleep." Holding her finger for silence Mrs. Dot looks at her dazed friend and at the quiet speaker.
"Alright ladies I'll call back later. Have her awake and ready to call a money friend." Silence. Randy puts the phone away and leaves the garage to meet his last client.
Mrs. Dot takes the letter of instructions and puts it on the table. She takes her friend Minnee by the hand and leads her to a bed. Helps her off her coat and gloves then helps her to lie down, putting her feet up and slipping her shoes to the floor. She throws a cover over her, puts her finger to her lips and schocheess her to sleep. The long day's ordeal finally finishes for Mrs. G. Minkee.
Mrs. Dot returns to the TV room, takes her chair and asks for the sound to be raised, "Tomorrow, we'll find out tomorrow."
Mrs. Bick nods okay, takes a long look to the speaker in the kitchen, then ups the sports scores.
Two bedrooms, four beds, the sleeping arrangements were easily settled by the arrival of Mrs. Dot's friend.
The Roller Coaster Ride
With rush hour taking the many from downtown, the streets of the inner city are vacant and easy to navigate. Randy settles back to catch the lights all green to meet his 7:30pm: Mrs. Gother, 5th & Pine. Park in the loading spot, flip the flashlight at the doorman twice, wait four minutes as the first lady of south city futures predictions finds her way quickly and quietly past the news-noses and photo-hounds to her leisure ride with tour guide Randy, who winds her around the commercial districts, loading zones, peers and wharves. Taking her into the night cafes and beer taverns where she can get the feel of the day's trade and of tomorrow's. So she can piece together a salable picture of the doom or prosperity of any given commodity on any given day from any given area of the world for any given month. So that her prediction of harvest levels, quality and quantity, will be close enough to the actual that her clients will continue to make a profit.
All to keep the middleman contract market for the world's consuming population at a variable norm, controllable, with a functional range of prices so that everyone gets some of the pie, and no one goes too hungry or gets too mad or too angry or too worried. So the business of commerce keeps running with all the players and participants doing what they signed on to do. Food planted, harvested and preserved and off to market, clothes made and disbursed, and a thousand other items needed and wanted, made from the materials of the planet by the struggles of man with machines and methods slowly developed over eons of time by trial and success. Everyone confident that tomorrow will be the same as today, or near enough the same, so that everyone will act and behave, calm, cool and rational.
People came and went, born and lived and died of natural causes and accidents, but mostly at the hands of other men in a controlled behavioral process of eliminating the unlucky. Funny how even in the destruction of thousands of unknowing and unsuspecting humans did the means and methods of their deaths still fall under an agreed upon behavior. So in doing what one did yesterday, in doing what one agreed to do and signed on to do, in that common worldwide consensus of behavioral activity held the invisible foundations of human continuance.
Out among the workers in their hideaways, Randy took the money-level-maker E. Gother, one night a pier dinner, the next a strip joint, the next a wharf bar, then a corner light. Other times it was the city's finest, most expensive haunts, where the owners and the controllers of production laughed and played. On the weekends she would find her way to bowling alleys, tennis clubs, golf links, gun ranges. Holidays found her on the beach resorts and gambling casinos. He never knew quite where he would be chauffeuring her to; of late she had found the airport bar bathroom chat by the flight hostesses most curious. Randy admired this lady and gave long thought in upping her contribution to his retirement, but fair and just was his guiding motto.
The Basement Banter
Taking her to the suburbs to a high roller poker game was so natural that she gave no thought of mischief on his part until she read the letter of instructions a second time.
"You appear familiar, face in the tabloids of recent?" her wonder to Mrs. Tron, who remained positioned at the sink as E. Gother, the fifth victim, entered the self locking basement door.
"Yes yes, church bulletin, First Baptist on Elm Drive, East City Fundraiser Chairlady, three years. Broke dhe million dollar goal, again," a beaming Mrs. Tron returns the chat.
"Name's Ella Gother. Guessing's my game. How much Randy hittin' on us for? Didn't we meet at VonEvetts at the bar last week?" looking at Mrs. Dot coming in to stand opposite.
"Were you at the Cocta banquet?" a puzzled face returns.
"Quite. I make most of the important events among our world of finance," E. Gother factually states while taking in the room. "Randy really has hustled us here for ransom?"
Sitting up from her couch Mrs. Bick addresses the newest member, "Yes dearie the dear boy wants to retire. And wants us to pay the piper. Seems straight forward enough to me, $5000 from each of us."
"And who might you be?" E. Gother half-smiling to her.
"Bick, Mrs. Bick," raising her chin slightly.
With a glance to Mrs. Dot and a nod of courtesy E. Gother looks back at her, "The same Mrs. Bick that shaves the hair off them brutes' faces every morning?"
"Yes, shavers are among our product lines," slow sliding her palm across her cheek.
Looking at Mrs. Dot's profile, "And whom might you be dear lady?" E. Gother tilts her head questioningly.
"Dot's ma name, retails ma game. Vice President, Sears & Roew, Westcoast Division ten years," spying that look of almost recognition, "and yes I make the pages of the national news," emitting that air of superiority.
"Whoa here just a minute, you ladies made the news today. You missed a merger meeting. So this is the high roller poker game Randy was onin' about." Shaking her head E. Gother continues, "You sure retirement money is all that Randy is after?"
An unanimous expletive, "What!"
"Well excuse me, your royal money making queens. How could that nice, but ignorant, Randy devise such a well-contrived rouse, perfectly planned and remarkably synchronized scheme all by his little self," raising a doubting eyebrow.
Offing the television for the first time that day, an agitated Mrs. Bick rises to her feet and resounds, capturing the sound, "Just what are you getting at. So the meeting is postponed for a few days. The merger will still happen. We have more than enough votes. And when this crime finally becomes known to the Security Exchange Commission, I'm sure anything unusual occurring during our absence will be nullified. This surely is just an unbelievable coincidence. Randy deserves a retirement plan," pointing to the squawk-box then to her ear and back to the box again, "he has been a delightful chauffeur and very punctual."
Everyone nodding in agreement and pointing to the speaker and looking at the corners of the ceiling till E. Gother took the note higher, "Maybe so, but the effect of your missing today will plummet prices down and down. A shrewd behind-the-scenes will buy and buy and buy. When you get free, have your meeting, make your planned merge, then look around to see the new faces at the board meetings. Someone is losing thousands with every word and someone," looking suspiciously slow at each woman, "is making millions. I just wish I could get a call to a broker right now."
Mrs. G. Minkee walks into the TV room and looks her square, "Just who are you, what do you have to do with all of this. You sound like, like that pesky lawyer son-in-law of mine," her hands firm on her hips.
"I am a financial analyst, an economic forecaster, an independent predictor, eking out a comfortable living for myself. I dabble and advise a dozen well-chosen clients. The name is Gother. E. Gother, nice to meet you," blowing air over her nails and cracking a slip grin.
Mrs. G. Minkee nods, "You think one of us is behind this sham?"
Gother continues nodding affirmatively, "Sorry to say, but his kidnapping is too well timed. He may be getting his money, but I'll bet some silent partner is making more than a paltry $5000."
Waking them from their wondering, the speaker buzzes and a soft laugh greets them, "Har har har, what a bottle of rare wine this is. Seems I been hauling around a case of expensive champagne. All these months of silence and no wonder. You ladies of high society money and me battling through the masses to take you safely to your bed of roses, feed bag of fish eggs and silver cups of brandy. All these months and I just thought you were working stiffs for the big upityups. Har har har, the laughs on me, you sure fooled me good. Well no hard feelings dear ladies. My retirement plans are in the bag, seeings how you can afford it, all those millions." He offs the phone and flips the light and loud sound switches on and off for five minutes, then commandingly, "Enough chit-chat. Miss Minkee you first. Who do you want to get your money? A name, a phone number, one of your lady friends, read the letter again. You got two minutes."
The women's voices begin to emit as the birds at dusk.
Randy flips the light switch off, silence ensues. He ons the lights and asks, "Miss Minkee. Who and what's the phone number?"
Her voice squeaks to clarity, "Martha, call Martha, she's my live-in maid."
"No, won't do, someone outside your immediate home. Someone else," Randy insists.
Mrs. G. Minkee stares at her friend, "Alright then, Mrs. Dot is my other friend."
"What's her number," grabbing a pencil by the book.
Mrs. Dot smiles, "Randa, ma number ya already have in yar little book." She looks at the other women and they break into laughter.
Randy opens his book and pages to Mrs. Dot. He begins to dial the number. Stops short, flips the squawk box on, "Very funny ladies, very funny."
They peal-off loudly, patting each other and slapping the table.
He flips on the loud noise. The feedback overwhelms him and he offs it and flips the light switch a few times. "Miss Minke there must be someone else."
She shakes her head, "No Randy, Martha and Mrs. Dot here are the only other women I speak to anymore."
He reconciles, "Alright, I'll call Martha. Remember only tell her what's on the letter. I'll tell her about the pick-up." He dials and Martha answers, he connects the two ladies to speak.
"Martha, this is me. Terrible news here."
"Oh no Minnee, you at the hospital?" Martha worries into the phone.
Mrs. Minke continues near frantic, "Worse, been kidnapped. Need $5000, ransom money. You have to go to the bank and then give it to..."
"Martha?" Randy quick ins, "you have to give it to me. Go to the bank. Withdraw the money from your account. You do have that much, don't you?"
Hesitantly, but confidently, Martha tells him, "Yes."
Randy continues, "Good. If anyone asks why you want fifty hundred-dollar bills you tell them you are going to Reno to gamble. And nothing more. Do you have it? Repeat it to me."
"I go to the bank in the morning and get $5,000 in one hundred-dollar bills for gambling in Reno," Martha asks more than tells him.
"Fine. Tomorrow at noon, be standing at the corner of 4th & Pine, the north side. A Hansom cab will stop beside you. The back window will be half-open, ask the driver if he will take you to Kansas. He will say, 'No this cab only goes to Dallas.' Drop the envelope on the back seat floor and leave. Do you understand?" Randy asks.
"Wait, I wrote it down. Noon, 4th and Pine, ask the cab driver, ‘Do you go to Kansas, he says only to Dallas’. I drop the money in the back window and go home." Martha is confident of her chore.
"Yes that's it. No mistakes, no cops, be calm and cool and Miss Minkee will be home tomorrow." Randy hangs up. Smiles, then flips the basement light switch off and on three times, then ons the speaker, "Well Miss Minke, all is set for your release, now put Gother on."
E. Gother is sitting at the table and takes the speaker and holds it near her mouth, "Randy, dear boy, this is quite some poker game you got here, thanks for the invite. Though the entrance fee seems a little steep. What say I send you a thousand and I won't press charges. This, just a big party game. And the money will be just a Christmas bonus. Now isn't that better than kidnapping charges?"
"Hee hee hee, another joker, good to see you still have your charming sense of humor. Fifty hundred-dollar bills. That's five big ones. Who will pick it up for you, what's her number?" Randy asks sternly.
"Alright Randy, I can see you're not bluffing, but this will cost you in the long run," talking as she slow walks around the table.
"Sure sure, who and what's her number?" Randy presses on.
E. Gother takes a small black book from her shoulder strap purse, "Bethany at 555-1515. She should be at home. Let me tell her."
"Fine, I'll ring her." Randy dials the number.
"Hello, to whom is calling?" a deep voice asks.
"Chow, my pet. Go to the bank tomorrow and take fifty hundreds from the box. Do what this man says. Got it?" Gother looks at her fellow captives sheepishly, whispering behind her hand, "my mad money."
"Yes, I'm here, fifty hundreds from the box. Going to buy me a surprise what love," her Bronx beginnings sounding.
Randy ons, "Yes dearie a surprise. Follow my instructions exactly. Bring the money to 5th & Pine, north side of the street tomorrow at noon. A cab will pull beside you. The back window will be open, you will ask if the cab goes to Kansas. The driver will say, 'This cab only goes to Dallas.' You will drop the envelope in the back window and leave. Understand?"
Bethany does and hangs up.
Randy puts the phone away, checks the basement door, "Don't want these birds getting loose." He slowly leaves the garage and the high rollers. His day done, he takes to the speedway pushing the limit with a new exuberance.
The Cafe Conversation
Following the traffic flow over the memorized miles toward home, Randy's mind wanders from the day's work to the plan's inception. An easy work week takes Monday, Wednesday and Friday to pick-up quiet middle-aged ladies from nice, old money neighborhoods and drop them off in the business section. Two in the morning, three in the afternoon, begins 7am, ends 9:30pm, clean, steady, well behaved customers, regulars that even tip and leave holiday gifts. This is the best chauffeuring job of his life and the last. At fifty-one he had to quit, forced to retire, company policy. The body, the mind getting too slow, might make a mistake, that fine edged nervous system beginning to fray. This chauffeuring company had the highest safety record on the west coast. Fifty-one was the age they were released to find other work. Most of them hired on with city companies, a few found placements with other private chauffeurs and a handful began running as independents.
Randy knew his options, long aware of his last work week, yet had no desire to pick anything further to do with the city streets. His stomach pains soothed by buttermilk and doctor warnings to find the quiet life or write a will. He kicked himself for putting off the inevitable retirement. Hadn't saved a farthing, none of the companies of his servitude had provided plans. He was expected to make arrangements with a private insurance company. He was always urged to by company personnel and fellow drivers, but somehow the money always went elsewhere. Somehow the youth changed to middle age, then swiftly became the last year of chauffeur work. And what else could he do, too late to change careers at 50 in the youth oriented, specialized world of American employment. He could open any kind of private business, as long as he funded the venture.
Those were depressing thoughts that fateful day sitting in the cafe looking at his appointment schedule, wondering who took the second shift, the other half of his regular's rides. And wondering who set up this route schedule and who would be his replacement in two months. Two months and done, he could barely believe that, the last day of work, retirement. Where was his retirement money, even the waitress and cook had a plan. They were figuring the money each would have to live off of and wondering just what else they could do with the lump sum. A lump sum is how their insurance retirement plan paid them. What and how they used that money was their own doing.
Juli was going to travel and be a customer, who treated all waitresses nicely and left five-dollar tips during the cold, wet winter months.
The cook thought he would own his own little cafe somewhere or he would go to Reno to watch the dancing girls and play roulette until midnight. Everyone laughed at that, with his day beginning at 5am, he was in bed asleep by 9pm. The owner, Sid, reminded them of last year's New Year's Eve party. They found the cook asleep, passed-out under the kitchen table at 11:30pm. The cook laughed and laughed, confessing he hadn't seen a New Year since, well since, well he couldn't remember, "Always been at work at 5am and asleep by 9pm. Guess I never did see a New Year."
The laughter was contagious and brought the people of the cafe together, broke tension, and left the regulars and the stop-ins a little closer as people sharing a common moment, like the early years of their family lives. The laughter became words, thoughts. Dreams came forth and filled the cafe with a dozen whirling streams of hopes and schemes.
The appointment book became Randy's plan. Each of his clients became dollars as he took his pencil and drew a double line with $25,000 underneath it. That was his lump sum: five clients at five thousand each. He was sure they'd be able and glad to pay. After all, he had taken them safely and punctually to their highly paid places of employment. They had to pay his retirement plan, they just had too! He sipped his buttermilk, smiled, then let loose a belated laugh.
The Real Ride
Randy offs the engine and steps-out and tries to open the front door with his key. No go. Dumbfounded, tired and worn he tries again, nearly breaking it in the lock. He looks at the key closely, then the lock. He steps back and slowly looks around. He is at the cafe; his wondering took him there. Well, it was more of a home than the empty shell where he went to sleep. Shaking his head and mumbling, "Going to miss this place." Then guides the cab more carefully to his house across the bay bridge.
The Cafe Change
On Tuesdays Randy arrived at mid-morning coffee, whereupon, the cook took his dishes duty cue. Everyone realized, but no one would say, just another abnormal routine that made the day run smoothly. But this Tuesday Randy slept-in overly late and missed coffee altogether.
At the cafe it is 10:30am and even the cook is glancing to the clock. Beads of sweat collected and streamed onto his stained collar, he snaps at Juli, "More coffee!" and slurps his cup empty.
Two regulars are at the register; they can't wait any longer. A drop-in shuffles past them and puts his bill and a fiver on the register, but he gets shoved backward, "Get in line, who do yo think yo is! Yea, in da back buddy." He stammers a look to the cook, pointing at the fiver, "The money is..." "Yo money no better 'n mine. Get in line." And is given his bill and the fiver back by the biggest. He takes it and goes to his table. Sits and picks up his empty cup, "Waitress, ah a refill please," steady, but meek.
The routine is broken; it's too quiet. Juli takes the pot around filling half-full cups for the forth time. She looks at the clock, at the people sitting nervously and waiting at the register. Juli thinks, "Even Lucy has taken her stare from the window. The kid at the counter, that new one, is actually reading the front page. And Randy, where is Randy, it's past 10:30, he's really late. The staff is still on their butts and my customers are waiting to pay, there go my tips." She quicks to the register and takes a ticket and tries to ring-up the charges.
When the drawer pops open and the bell dings, Sid barks at her, "What yo doing in there?"
Juli smiles the change to the regular and quips back, "Yo job, maybe I get a raise, doing two jobs." She laughs.
Sid ups, "Get out dhat money. Yo can't even finger count."
The cook laughs and goes to the back to throw pots and pans into the stream of running hot water.
The customers relax and chat to one another. The regulars leave their usual quarter tips.
Juli ambles toward the bathroom with a mop.
The newcomer's eyes meet Lucy's. She smiles and gets up to see how he did with the crossword puzzle. He smiles back, points to the growing child, "How's Kelly and what you gonna name it be a boy?"
Lucy's eyes twinkle, "It aign't."
He grins, "Could be, could be, yo talk to God 'bout it?"
She giggles, "No. Guess it could be."
"Well you got a boy's name?" the newcomer softly smiles.
She puzzles a look out the window, then smiles a laugh, "Sure. Kelly. Kelly, be it boy or girl. 'Cepting it's a girl."
He grins to her, "Your smart 'n pretty."
They both blush and melt closer together, looking over the crossword on the counter.
The Ransom Ride
The sunlight behind the shade is very bright, too bright for dawn, even too bright for well after dawn, for well after his sleeping-in on Tuesdays. Blinking and rolling to face the clock, Randy jumps from the covers and grabs it. "Eleven, it can't be that late, never slept that late, got the first pick-up at noon. So much to do."
And he begins rushing his clothes, one sock on foot, one in hand, hopping to the kitchen to warm-up some three-day-old tea. He drops the sock, then bumps his head when retrieving it. Screams till his throat hurts and collapses in a chair as the water boils madly, splashing about the stovetop. Randy reaches the switch off and sits back. Takes the appointment book from its resting-place, turns to Tuesday: get dressed, eat breakfast, put suitcase in trunk, leave at 11:30am for 1st & Pine pick-up.
He puts on his sock, his shoes, jacket and cap, drinks the tea and finishes a box of oatmeal cookies. Glances about the room, offs the light and picks up the suitcase. Puts it in the cab trunk and gets in the front. Puts the keys in the ignition, starts the engine and sits back in thought. Gets out of the cab and goes back in the apartment, in the bedroom he straightens the covers, then leaves.
Traffic at noon hour was always hectic, hungry suits waving for rides to make lunch in a different part of town. Why people couldn't take their own food to work, was another puzzle for Randy. In fact most of the world was a giant puzzle to him. All the people, their jobs, their companies, the products, the noise, the hype were but pieces of different shades of that puzzle. All through the day each fell, slide, pushed, rolled and popped into its correct place. At some point during the night, then and only then, did the sensation of perfection throb through that collective mind of the human. And then the world of Man became complete, its puzzle in place. In a span of immeasurable time the human puzzle was whole. And in that place everything was possible. Dreams filled, hopes realized, ideas formed. Peace of mind, total awareness and contentment, all fringed the puzzle's wholeness in that moment until the universe scattered Man's puzzle pieces all about the world again for reassembling. The baker's eyes opened and the day's bread rolled-on.
Randy wasn't absolutely sure when the puzzle became complete. Moving through the day he was destined to fit at a place and time he could know not of, but may be able to recognize. And may, if lucky enough, be aware and able to record it as a special memory, one shared by millions. It didn't have to be during the night, logic took him to that thought. There were other special times throughout the twenty four-hour period that marked Man's day. There were many times he had felt whole, perfect, and complete with the cosmos: that pause of silence before the singing of the National Anthem at the first game of the World Series; watching a tight rope walker in mid-air somersault; the lost child's eyes when found; cruising in the rush hour bumper to bumper at sixty to glance at a side motorist licking an ice cream cone; that sunset behind that erupting volcano; two people really in love kissing each other so oblivious; the flight of migrating geese; the crackling of fire with marshmallows blazing.
A horn sounds Randy back to his puzzle piece. The light green; across the street at 1st & Pine stands his first payment, an old lady with an open, yellow umbrella.
He stops beside her, the back window open for her question, "Does this cab go to Kansas?"
His heart pumps loudly, "No, it only goes to Dallas." He glances in the mirror to see the envelope drop.
She steps back, turns and leaves.
He speeds on to 2nd Street. Another open, yellow umbrella, "Does this cab go to Kansas?" Another envelope.
He speeds on to 3rd Street. Another open, yellow umbrella, "Does this cab go to Kansas?" Another envelope.
He speeds on to 4th street. Another open, yellow umbrella, "Does this cab go to Kansas?" Another envelope.
He speeds on to 5th Street, nothing, nobody, just a cop on the corner.
He pauses and does a left U-turn. In a flash before panic he hears the whistle, stop. His eye spots the open, yellow umbrella, an old lady. She was on the wrong street side.
He stops beside her. The question, "Does this cab go to OZ?"
He looks in the mirror; her fingers are dangling a white envelope, "No Dorothy, this cab only goes to Dallas." It flops to the floor.
He glances over at the cop, who is chatting with a schoolgirl. Randy speeds away to his house.
The Boat Book
It's a thirty-minute walk to the wharf. He checks the envelopes, full of hundreds. He puts them in the suitcase and strolls casually to the wharf, to the old man, to his getaway trip down the coast. He nods to the aged fishers, stops to chat of the ones that got away. Then ambles to the ship, its captain ready for a long awaited outing.
The old man didn't seem to remember his last venture on the ocean. Randy guessed his mind had slipped when his wife passed on. So he had the tiring sea captain run through the engine start and departure procedures each Tuesday, just in case. The old captain started the engines and stood at his helm calling-out orders to the ghost seamen of his past and was as sharp as he'd been twenty years prior. Randy was sure he could navigate the ship if need be. A simple plan, drive-out a few miles beyond notice, and turn left down to a quiet looking bay, dock, then call the cops to let the old ladies out. A bus ticket and a new name, maybe find his daughter.
There sits the old captain, puffing his pipe and rocking to some unheard melody. Randy loosens the anchoring ropes and then pulls the walk-up plank onto the ship.
"What ho mate. You ready for the sea?" calls forth the Captain, pointing the stem of his pipe to the far distance.
Randy takes up the note, "Sure am Captain. The salmon are running a few miles off shore. We got a good jump on the others. You want me to warm'r up, Capt?"
"Ya say salmon runnin' off shore?" looking at the other boats still at dock, "Ya we got a good jump on 'em, ifn ya right."
"Sure 'm Capt," Randy takes his suitcase below. Then climbs back to the tower and goes through the starting procedure. The engine whirs alive and spews a steady stream of diesel fuel into the air. With the purr of the warmed cylinders, he calls to the old sailor, "She's ready fer ya Capt."
Half-jumping to his feet, the old man steps lively into the conning tower and takes his place at the helm. Calling to no one particular, "All ashore what's goin' ashore." Grins wide to his first mate Randy and shifts the gears to reverse, carefully guiding the ship backwards. Then forwards into the deeper channels waving the standard greetings and good luck calls to the men on the dock and the other retired captains sittin', rockin' and waitin'. The old man beams with a near forgotten pride. Sounding the horn and blasting a large puff of diesel smoke to an incoming tug, the captain has returned fully to the days of his busy youth, "Are the nets ready?"
Randy puzzles a look, then remembers the old man's tales of mending fishing nets and dropping them off the side and doing a full circle sweep around the large schools of fish, "All is ready Capt."
Soon the ship passes the last watching eyes of the beachcombers and the barren horizon shimmers before them. Nothing to see, Randy turns back toward the bay, "Fine, a few more minutes then south Capt."
"South it is. How long before we find the salmon?" the aged sailor strains his vision into the distance.
"The porter on the ocean liner said about three hours before they reached the bay he saw two schools. Looked to be a few hundred in each," speaking close to his ear.
"Fine, mark it in the book," the Captain points to the log hidden in the cabinet. Randy takes a compass reading, the heading and logs the time just the way the Captain had been showing him those Tuesday afternoons. Randy had become the son the old man thought he'd be able to teach, but the boy got seasick every time they went out and took to music instead.
The Captain turns to Randy, "She's yourn," and goes out on deck to sit and rock and watch for the salmon running.
Randy glances at the clock and holds the wheel steady as his mind wanders to the next step of his retirement plan. Dock the boat, make a quick call to the money ladies' friends of the suburb address. Then call the Captain's son about the old man being at a different wharf. Then scoot off on the bus. Sort of hated leaving the Captain like that, but the old man had finally gone senile. He only remembered Randy as his first mate from his good ol' seafaring days.
Randy wonders of his daughter, might she still be in Tulsa. And if not, how can he find her? And what if the authorities make some kind of trace to her and are waiting for him there? He thinks to change his plans. Find her first, then tell the police where the money ladies are. There is enough food to last three or four days if they ration. He'll be at his daughter's by then, or know if he can find her.
Fifteen years is a long time to be at one place and he hasn't seen her since she was six, might not recognize her. Good thing he has that picture to show her taped to the appointment book's last page, the final step of his retirement plan. Settling on waiting, he looks at the clock. Over an hour, long enough, now to head in to shore to find a docking wharf.
Randy knocks on the glass to get the old man's attention, but no go. So he hooks the wheel in place and quicks out to the deck.
The old man looks asleep.
Shaking him gently, the Captain slumps from the rocker dead to the deck.
"Capt. Captain we need you in the tower. Captain, Captain wake up. You alright?" He checks his pulse and feels the life leave the old man. Randy sits down as a tear streams goodbye. "Well old man, excuse me sir, I mean Captain. Looks as if you get your wish, your retirement too." He takes the lifeless skeleton gently into his arms and carries him to the stern and faces the sun. "Here King Poseidon, another joins you," and drops the old man to find his own resting place.
The engine suddenly offs.
Randy watches the swirling water for a few moments and then turns quick to the tower to loose the wheel to make his left toward shore. The engine won't start. Three hours later Randy can no longer see the shore.
The Cafe Crowd
It's after the supper hour at the cafe. The evening mouths are busy filling themselves and then even busier sounding to their companions of the day's events. They don't miss Randy.
The cook seldom comes out front, too busy filling the dishes, filling the washing machine, then filling the shelves. He doesn't miss Randy either.
The swing waitress has noticed Randy and likes his tips, but doesn't really miss him either. It's Tuesday, his off day and he usually stays home on his off days.
The people who miss him are safely locked in the basement of a small cottage in the suburbs.
The Basement Breakout
Mrs. Tron is spooning the last can of warmed corn into even portions, while Mrs. G. Minkee is buttering a slice of bread for each, while Mrs. Dot is carefully filling the glasses of milk, while Mrs. Bick places plates and silverware about the kitchen table, while E. Gother switches briefly to each major station listening carefully to the television news for some report of their abduction or of Randy's demise. The table set, the women seat themselves.
Mrs. Tron clinks her glass, calling to E. Gother, "Please, turn off dhat infernal machine while we say grace."
Mrs. Minkee calls, "Please dearie, soups on. Some quiet. Are you going to join us? We sat your place."
Gother offs the sound and ups toward the table, "Kind of you. Am rather hungry. Thought there'd be some news by now. Oh not of me, but of one of you finer ladies," nodding to Mrs. Bick and Mrs. Dot, then smiling to Mrs. G. Minkee. She then takes her place beside Mrs. Tron.
After grace, the plastic chips against paper plates as the women attempt to spear the kernels. Mrs. Dot laughs lightly as Mrs. Tron pushes corn onto the bread, "A corn sandwitch."
Mrs. Bick gnawfs, "I'm in no hurry," spearing one kernel at a time, "This way the meal lasts longer so I think I'm stuffed."
Mrs. Tron defends her resourcefulness, "Ma kind been eatin' corn sandwitches since dhe first loaf of bread, it's tradition."
Mrs. Bick laughs, "Cornbread, very funny, pass the beans."
Mrs. Dot takes the serious side again, "Good ta laugh, but where is that na good bum. Got ma money, our money and left us here ta rot. Wait till get ma hands on him!"
"Now calm down. He probably wants to make a clean getaway before telling the police," states Mrs. Bick.
E. Gother gets up and looks at the cabinets, then the icebox, "The cupboard's bare ladies. That was our last supper."
Mrs. Dot pipes, "What are ya talking about?" Jumps up and throws open the doors, turns accusingly, "Mrs. Tron! Ya should'av rationed the food."
Mrs. Tron covers with, "Mrs. Bick said Randy lettin' us go in dhe mornin'."
"No problem. We just drink water and watch TV till he lets us out," Mrs. Minkee adds in defense.
"Ya fools. That fool Randa let us here ta starve," Mrs. Dot holds her stomach.
Mrs. Bick stands up, reaches for the light switch and offs it. Then ons it. Everyone quiets and looks at her. "Calm calm. There is no need to fret. Randy has his money. He'll call the authorities in the morning. We'll be home for breakfast."
Mrs. G. Minkee nods agreeing, "Right. He has his money and is making his getaway. He knows about the meeting. How important it is. He'll call. They're probably on the way to rescue us right now. Any minute and the door will open and we'll be rescued. We'll be home to our own beds and Randy will have his retirement." She looks to the door and quietly stares to it, then to her wristwatch, then back to the door.
The others, each in turn, look to the door. A long moment of joint hope holds the women transfixed, until weary feet take Mrs. Tron to a chair, plop. Her exhaustion brings the empty reality.
Mrs. Minkee looks at her watch, "He'll call, probably in the morning after a good night's sleep from his getaway. He'll call."
Gother breaks the starkness with, "Just in case something unforeseen happens to Randy, maybe we better consider an escape plan."
Mrs. Dot jumps up, "Where's that nail file Bick? I aign't gonna sit 'n starve." She points to the ceiling, "We break through the wood. Look for wood cutting tools, nail files, scissors, anything metal and sharp. Clean off this table. Get a chair for a ladder up here. Come on, let's get this escape in action."
E. Gother and Mrs. Tron put the dishes quickly in the sink water.
Minnee brings the nail file to Mrs. Dot, who has climbed onto the table and is pushing and hitting the ceiling.
"Gotta find the floor joists." She thumbs around, then scratches some marking lines. "Here, we canna break through here." She begins to make cutting slices in the ceiling boards. Wood chips fall about her, filling her eyes and nose. She coughs and sneezes.
Mrs. Dot calms, then returns to slicing and cutting. Pausing to rest, "Any other tools?" looking to the four women's mouths gaping at her work. They turn to their bags and purses, finding two fingernail clippers and a pair of small toenail scissors, an assortment of pens, pencils, plastic knitting needles and a two inch pocket knife which becomes the new tool.
After a few minutes of cutting, tearing, ripping, poking, jabbing and gashing, Mrs. Dot has made a long slit in the ceiling. She has also worn-out her arms and put a small cut in her palm. Beaming with accomplishment, she turns to the spectators, "Who's next?"
Gother reaches for the knife and climbs to take her turn at freedom.
Minnee helps Mrs. Dot to the bathroom for repairs while Mrs. Tron waits her turn to widen the ceiling gap.
Mrs. Bick returns to her television couch, calling to the worn, wounded Mrs. Dot, "Dearie. Randy will have us out of here in the morning, have faith. Mark my words, he will, then won't you be the fool. Smashing your hand like some child against the wall. You ladies are so childish. Relax, enjoy this diversion of his. Come, sit down before you get hurt." She shakes her head at the kitchen crew and becomes part of the television.
From the bathroom, "Donna ya listen ta that crap. We fightin'. Diggin' for freedom. Escape. We donna lay down ta die quietly. No we scream!"
"Trying is better than dying on the couch. Come on and help," calls-out a rejuvenated E. Gother.
Mrs. Tron's attempt to mount the table leaves her and the chair on the floor, "Dhe doctor told me no climbin'." She ambles, holding her bruise, to carefully sit before the television.
Mrs. Dot and Minnee return to the kitchen where Gother's work reveals the floor above.
Minnee's short turn ends with a handful of splinters.
Mrs. Dot takes to the table again and pulls the ceiling board free, exposing the 16-inch width between the joists. Gother assures them that her slender form can easily fit through the narrow gap. But five hard minutes against the sub-flooring leaves no appreciable mark and E. Gother wonders if escape is at all possible.
Mrs. Dot chastises her, "It may take all night, we canna do it. We have too. I have a merger meeting." Her weary arms at her side, she yells at Mrs. Bick, "Bick! Come take yar turn! Get up lazy ass."
But the television sound gets louder.
Gother takes the knife, "Rest. We'll do five minutes each until we get through."
Mrs. Dot smiles, "We make it. We will make it."
Thirty minutes later and a small hole is made in the sub-floor, revealing the hardwood slats upon it. Discouraged and tired, Gother calls it quits, "Tomorrow is another day. We'll hit it again tomorrow." She goes to the bathroom to ready for bed.
Mrs. Dot takes the knife and begins chipping at the ceiling. "Tonight. Musta be through tonight. The meeting has to be tomorrow." As the wood chips speckle the table and floor about her, so too fall her captive companions asleep.
"Work five, rest five, stay alive. Work five, rest five, stay alive," her inner voice warns. Somewhere around midnight, Mrs. Dot pokes a hole big enough for her fist to slip through. Driven by elation she chips and tears on. "Work five, rest five, work five, rest five, stay alive. Jab a quarter inch piece, then twist, enough force ta pull the splinter free, not enough ta break the blade. Jab, twist pull the splinter free, throw it ta the floor, blink the wood dust clear, catch a sneeze donna lose balance, more light, need more light, Minnee, Minnee, Minkee! Where is she when ya need her? Jab, twist, splinter. The floor covered. Enough wood ta build an Ark. Why isn't this hole bigger? Jab, twist, another splinter, arms hurt, hand tired, just one more, one more, switch hands. Oh ya. Jab, twist, splinter, jab, twist, splinter free. Work five, rest five, work five, rest five. Ma arm hurts, it does, it really does. It hurts. You wimp, just another shrimp, another quitter, just another lazy lady. The pain, it hurts, it really does. Well rest then. Work five, rest five."
Mrs. Dot drops her arms. Looks up at her work, a large hole. Then reaches up into the hole with the knife, its sharp edge guiding her inquisitive path. Suddenly the pain shifts to her heart. And with one gigantic spasm her struggle ends. And the knife is lost to the first floor.
The dawn of Wednesday pushes into the basement and lays to rest upon the frozen chest of Mrs. Dot.
Minnee's eyes come awake, her hand throbs of splinter remains; she sits up and wonders of her friend. Is she still digging at the ceiling? She wanders to the kitchen for her share of the coffee, to see the progress, maybe to help dig. "Good morning dear, how's the beer," she would never say again. Her only friend dead, her struggle finally ended. It is the peace on her face; Dot never had such a face. Only the dead find that peace and Minnee has seen enough of them.
She rouses the other women. And they carry Mrs. Dot to the bedroom.
Mrs. Bick goes to the kitchen, glances at the ceiling hole, heaves a breath and returns to the morning television.
E. Gother looks at Mrs. Tron, "Let's have some breakfast."
The two women clean the table and floor.
Mrs. Tron makes a pot of coffee while Mrs. Gother sets cups, saucers and the plastic spoons about the table.
Mrs. G. Minkee comes slowly into the kitchen. Glances at the hole in the ceiling, "She tried. She did try," and then sits down in her place.
The Boat Bagel
Wednesday's dawn brings light to the roofs of the beach houses, rousing the inhabitants to the movements of their puzzles. Randy jumps from the sleep that he feared. He finds the ship has not sunk in the darkness and the wheel is still lashed in place. The sun is in the sky, so at least he knows where the shore should be. And there it is. There are house roofs just within his vision. With new hope he tries the engines. They won't start; the fuel gauge reads empty. He hoped it was broken. How could the old man have forgotten to fill it? What a stupid thing to do. He should have checked it himself. The old man had become senile, he kind of knew it, but needed to use the boat for a getaway so much so that he just kidded himself into thinking the old man was still seaworthy. Well, if one of the other boats comes close he has a plausible excuse, no reason for anyone to doubt him or check too closely. If asked, he will just say the old man slipped over the railing.
And there is the shore, but still too far away to swim to. Besides he hasn't swam in ten years, even then 50 meters wore him out. The radio hasn't worked in years and replacing it for the short escape trip was ruled out as too costly. That leaves Randy with few options.
He had made sure the old man had plenty of rations; that thought brought his captives to mind. He'd only left them a few days food. His original plan was to call the authorities by Wednesday morning, noon at the latest. Didn't want them to miss their meeting, they really had been his best customers. Maybe someone would rescue them, a neighbor might call the police or that sneaky FBI might find them. As he spreads blackberry jam on a bagel, he glances to shore in hopes of his own rescue.
The Cafe Couple
Dawn marks the cook's first break of the day. His biscuits hot on the warming tray, gravy in the serving pot, a giant kettle of oatmeal in a slow bubble, five plates full of ready-to-eat hash browns, and bacon on the grill all are in wait for the belly's of the day's first movers: the bread truck, newspaper van, milk truck, night guard and the waitress. The cook's food fuels them as the light fuels him. Something magical, mystical fills him as he watches the light come. The change of dark nothingness into familiar shapes leaves the cook's puzzle whole. Refreshed to start anew, he turns from the morning and re-enters the world of splattering grease, scalding water, burned pans and impatient mouths.
The cook's next break comes mid-morning. Everyone fed and stretched back patting their contented, pleased bellies, pushing cleaned plates forward as compliments of the day's breakfast. All waiting for the noise of the washing pots and pans, the clamor to cover their chatter. The cabby's arrival marks his break's end and the beginning of the chatter.
But Randy is late, late again for two days in a row. Even missed breakfast, even missed last night's supper. This tardiness, his absence is cause for conversation, just cause to break the unwritten rule. Their chat is not gossip, but stems from a concern, a like, a worry for one of the cafe regulars, whose arrivals and departures have become an integral part of the smooth operation of the cafe's staff. And with the chat of Randy begun, the shift into the after breakfast routine smoothes into the cook's pan washing clamor. The chat of Randy also gives cause for the newcomer to join Lucy at her window table to pour forth their wondering of the cabby.
Juli glances at their chumminess and takes a fresh pot of coffee to them, "Anything of Randy out there?" looking to the traffic streaming past.
The newcomer looks to Juli, takes Lucy's hand in his, "No, and Lucy is getting worried." He looks at Lucy's eyes, "He'll be alright, he's a tough old bird." Lucy glances at his hand on hers, puts her right hand over both theirs and winks at him, "Thanks, I know. He probably just has a cold or something."
Juli sees their hands and the looks and the smiles and cracks a grin, "Or something. Ya. Maybe he got a new girl friend to have his meals with. Maybe."
Lucy looks to Juli, "That'd be nice. He is nice." She looks back at the newcomer.
He smiles, "A romance, a girlfriend to have his meals with. That would be nice."
Juli fills their cups.
Gales and Sails
Food in his stomach, sun warmth on his face, the shore in sight, Randy looks about for some early boats. Walking about the dock, the breeze upon his face turns a notion. He glances at the barren mast, the rigging long ago rot and replaced by an antenna wire. The wind gales and a distant storm pulls Randy toward the cabin steps.
"A sail, that's what I need," opening the cabinets above the bunk, the bedding falls about his feet. Soon two heavy blankets are tied to the antenna wire and fastened to the railings. Back at the wheel, the wind takes him southward to shore.
Trying to maneuver along side a dock is beyond his hopes, so he crashes into the sandy beach. His cash and his renewed hopes take him along his escape plan. Straight away a wharf cabby takes him to the bus station.
Ticket in hand, he walks from the counter to board the Tulsa outbound. As the miles roll past he knows by dusk he will soon be in his daughter's town. Then he will contact the women's friends, so they can make their meeting. Pleased with the change of events and his good fortune, the bus motion soon puts Randy to sleep.
A Fiery Escape
The sun streaming through the floor's hole also brings new hopes to the captive ladies. The women stare at the bright spot on the table. As the sun rises, the spot moves and the irregular edges seem to widen.
"Is it my 'magination?" Mrs. Tron wonders. "It is bigger, aign't it?" She puts her hands to the sunspot, slowly pulling her fingers apart, wider and wider.
Mrs. Bick opens her eyes, "Uh, what?" coming out from her daze.
E. Gother gets up on the chair and onto the table. She puts her hands into the frayed hole and pulls a splinter free. Back on the floor, staring at the tiny piece of wood in her fingers, "This is wood. Wood! And wood burns," turning her stare back to the hole.
They all stare at it.
Stomping her foot hard, "Yeh! Wood durn burn. You got a match," Mrs. Tron glimmers.
Purses dumped. Packets of fancy restaurant matches and the magazines Randy had left about for their leisure reading soon become tiny torches of flame slowly burning the hole wider and wider. After five-minute intervals Bick, Gother and Minnee have widened the escape hole. Soon ambulances, police cars, rescue teams, and two limousines are cluttered about the sleepy suburb of Rosewood Lane. And in ten minutes more film crews than the city knew it had are in, around, and above the ransom house.
Daughter's Dilemma
The Tulsa Post Office is a short block from the bus station. The clerk remembers that two years ago his ex-wife had moved from town without leaving a forwarding address, but his daughter had stayed behind. They were in a boarding house on Cheery Street. The street postman thinks she moved away. The postman also thinks the landlady might have her new address. Well, Randy would soon know for the 300 block began. And there stood the two story brick with a swing hanging crooked as the postman said.
The door buzzer silent, a quick knock on the hardwood screen door brings a silver smile, "Aign't buying today sonny. Try next door."
"Excuse me, I'm looking for my daughter, Juli. Juli Ransum. Is she home? I'm her father," smiling and tipping his cap.
"Juli? You Juli's dad?" the ancient lady queried.
"Yes. Her mom and I split a long time ago. I been working in the city. It's my first visit. Is she home?" wiping the nervous sweat from his brow.
"Well sir. You have a fine daughter. Well behaved. Paid her rent the first of every month. A quiet girl," opening the screen door a little wider.
"That's nice," Randy's parental smile beaming. "Is she home? Where is her room?" barging his head into the doorway.
"Juli's gone. Left seven months ago. Hated to see her leave," the screen door open wide enough for him.
"Gone? What do you mean?" his mouth gaping, "Where, where has she gone to? Do you have her new address?"
"Slow down, the sun will be here all afternoon," she grins at her visitor.
"Alright, alright. I guess I got a little excited. Where did she move? The postman gave me this address. Do you have her new address?" Randy takes a deep breath.
"I got a postcard a couple a months ago. It's on the desk, come on in." The screen door opens against the wall and Randy follows the friendly landlady into her parlor.
"Nice girl, hated to see her leave. She always paid the rent the first of the month." The lady pushes some papers about the roll-top desk.
Randy spots a glossy picture of the Golden Gate Bridge and quick grabs the card. Flips it over and reads his daughter's only message to the silver grinned landlady, "A wonderful trip, a wonderful city. So friendly the people here. I found a room near the cafe where I waitress. Thanks for everything. Juli."
The silver hair opens a photo album, and flips to the last page, "Here's one I snapped of her on the swing just before she left. That her?" reaching for the postcard.
Randy hands the postcard to the landlady and takes the photo album close to his face. Staring and mumbling in disbelief, "That was my Juli back at the Sunset Grill."
### the end. Fall 1989
RETURN TO INDEX index
The phone rang and the door buzzer sounded at the same time. Jeanie jumped up singing, "Someone's knocking on our front door, who could it be, who could it be? Someone's knocking on our front door, I'll bet it's for me. Bet it's for me." Singing and waving her arms about she twirled around the kitchen table.
The phone rang again. Mrs. Alcot turned toward it, "I thought it was the doorbell," frowning at her daughter.
"It is, it is," breaking into song again. "Someone's at the front door, it's for me, can't you see, can't you see?" Jeanie sang to her.
The phone bell rang again and was immediately followed by the door buzzer and a rapping upon the wooden frame.
"See see, can't you see, it's for me, can't you see," Jeanie's song continued.
Mrs. Alcot picked up the receiver and said, "You'll have to hold please." She turned it upside down and laid it atop the icebox. She then went through the hallway doorway. Jeanie danced behind her humming, half hidden, watching her mother take a package from a young man in a brown jacket with matching hat. She signed a piece of paper and thanked the man. Then she closed the door behind him.
Jeanie came prancing to the front door singing, "Please Mr. Postman, look and see. Is there a letter in your bag? A letter for me. Please Mr. Postman look and see." She tugged at the box, but Mrs. Alcot raised it high above her head.
They went back into the kitchen where the box was placed on the table amidst the loose crayons.
There was wrapping twine all about the box so Mrs. Alcot took down a carving knife from the rack on the wall. At this, Jeanie quieted, hiding almost behind a chair.
She rolled the cut twine into a few loose circles and set it on the corner of the table, "I can use that to hold the tomato plants up." She put the knife back in its slot and turned to Jeanie, "The package is for you. Your name is Jeanie Alcot, isn't it?" a teased twinkle lit her eyes.
Jeanie grabbed the package, "Yes momma". Then sang, "What's this game? That's my name. It's the same. Banna fanna me manna mo manna, the name game." She put her index finger under the letters, saying each aloud, "J E A N I E." Then she looked up at her mother.
Mrs. Alcot flashed her a quick smile and a nod of approval. So Jeanie began ripping and tearing the thin brown paper from the box. But the box would not yield to her excitement, nor to the persistence of her tiny finger nails.
Mrs. Alcot took the knife from the rack again, "Just a minute dear, I'll cut the tape for you." She walked to the table with the knife pointed at the box.
Jeanie pushed the box toward her and sat back in her chair very still and very quiet, her brown eyes widening.
Mrs. Alcot put the tip of the blade above the box flap edge and then jabbed into the tape. She slow cut through the entire slit so that each flap came up. With the box open she pushed it back to her daughter, then carefully put the knife back in its slot upon the rack on the wall. When she turned around she nodded yes and again Jeanie quick grabbed the package.
Jeanie reached into the box with both hands and felt around. A look of wonder over-took her briefly, followed by a squeal of delight. She pulled out a black high laced, buttoned boot. She sat it on the table and reached back inside the box, but only air remained. She smiled singing, "The old woman in the shoe had so many children she didn't know what to do."
She put the boot on her right foot and quick laced up the strings. And then she clumped about the kitchen with her one boot. Her bare left foot slapped the floor while the boot thudded. While she danced a new step about the table laughing and giggling of the old woman in the shoe, her mother walked over to the table, sat down and examined the box.
The box was empty and there was no return address.
Mrs. Alcot sat smiling at her child's delight. After a while she took the box to the hall closet. She opened the door and sat the box on top of the many others that had come just as mysteriously to the girl. She took the butcher-paper, marking pen from her pocket and wrote, 'black right boot', on the side of the box. She put the new box on top of the box marked: 'white left glove'; under that box was: 'feathers'; under that box was: 'acorns'; then one box of: 'small empty boxes'; the bottom box read: 'bird nest'. She didn't really understand the boxes, it didn't matter. The presents were for Jeanie and she liked them and played with each for a while. When she lost interest Mrs. Alcot put the strange gifts back in its box and stored them in the hall closet. She looked at the stack of boxes: a dozen, one a month, then drifted into a memory:
It had been a year since they had
had that horrible fight: the yelling, the screaming, the mess of broken dishes
about the kitchen. Finally she had taken the large knife and had chased him
around the kitchen table. He had tripped, had fallen on the table and lay there
just long enough for her to swing the blade down at his head. She missed his
skull, but managed to whack off his long blonde ponytail.
He had rolled off the table and had
run out of the house. She had followed him as far as the front door and stood
watching him run, looking back over his shoulder holding the back of his head.
When she returned to the kitchen
Jeanie was sitting on the table waving the long hunk of hair and singing,
"The farmer's wife cut off their tails with a carving knife, have you ever
seen such a sight in your life as three blind mice." She tried to take the
hair from Jeanie, but she refused to let go, insisting, "Mine, he is mine.
Momma momma he is mine!" So she took the near empty Kleenex box from the
counter and handed it forward, "Well fine. You keep him in here and in
your room."
Jeanie smiled, put the strands of
hair in the box, then climbed up into her attic room, a place her mother had
not seen in months for the steps were too narrow and too steep and the ceiling
too low for her aging back.
Mrs. Alcot stood before the mysterious monthly boxes, staring into the memory. She hadn't heard or seen him since, but she was sure he was sending the boxes to Jeanie.
Then Jeanie tugged at her dress, "Momma momma. Someone's talking on the phone."
She looked down at her daughter then up toward the kitchen. "Oh durn. I forgot all about it." She half trot, skipped down the hallway, spun about the doorway, and grabbed the receiver off the icebox top. She put it to her ear as she spun slide to the table. But her happy greeting was met by a new dial tone for the caller had hung-up. She put the phone back in its cradle. Mrs. Alcot returned to the table and sat down, "I don't know why they do that. Call and hang-up like that. It's so very upsetting." She dropped her head into her hands.
Jeanie watched her for a while then turned toward the screen door, "I want to go outside momma."
Mrs. Alcot mumbled, "Okay dear."
Jeanie smiled and skip clumped to the door and disappeared.
Within moments Mrs. Alcot's ear caught her child's happy song, "It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring." Jeanie danced about singing, waving her hands at her mom now standing at the kitchen door. A warm summer rain fell upon the brightly colored dress she had made just last week. "Jeanie! You get in here. Have you not the sense to come in out the rain? Girl that's your new dress you got on. You get in here!"
Mrs. Alcot pulled her head back through the screen door, water now running down her face. She licked a few drops and smiled, "Guess the men folk be coming in from the fields, better make some fresh coffee."
At the counter she reached up into the cabinet for the grounds can. She then filled the coffee pot with water from the sink tap. She lit a match and placed it down by the burner then turned the burner switch on. The pop of blue flames ignited. She put the coffee pot atop the burner. The flames sizzled the dripping water and when that quieted she adjusted the flames down.
The screen door creaked open and the patter of one wet bare foot and the clump of one boot beat upon the hardwood floor. Jeanie tugged at Mrs. Alcot's dress, "Singing in the rain. Just singing in the rain. What a glorious feeling, I'm happy again."
Mrs. Alcot looked down at her beaming face, "I know child, I know. It's a wonderful thing the lord has sent us. The lake was almost dry. Well let's get that wet dress off you. Turn around." And she quick unbuttoned the long row of imitation pearl buttons that held the back of the dress together as Jeanie questioned, "What lake, momma?"
Bare skinned, Jeanie squealed about the kitchen table, "Cold, cold, oh so cold. Oh so cold I lay in my grave. Cold cold, oh so cold."
Mrs. Alcot watched her happy child dance about, spinning and laughing. "Alright child, that's enough of that. You go get some dry clothes on. Right now. Go on. Get. The men folk be coming back from the fields any minute now."
And so the little naked girl skipped her way from the table through the hallway and up the long flight of narrow stairs, which leads to her attic room. Halfway up she stopped and called down to her mother, "What fields momma?"
The coffee pot began to boil and took Mrs. Alcot's attention. She stared at the burst of boiling water being slammed into the clean top of the coffee maker. The splash, the bubbling, mesmerized her and she stood still, staring, drifting into a memory:
Six men dressed in white robes
slowly lowering a small casket held by thick ropes into the ground. Their faces
hidden by the white hoods of their cloaks. The casket at rest, the ropes were
pitched in. The sound the ropes made landing on her baby son's box made her
chill and shiver. A long procession of thrown roses began filing past and
filled up the hole. Her face broke into a smile as the flowers began to land
upon the casket.
Mrs. Alcot and her girl child
remained sitting upon the resting bench beside the new grave long after the
moaners departed.
Jeanie got off the bench and slow
walked around the mound of roses. She stopped atop of the flat stone marker and
looked all about. Then she looked at her mom, wide eyed, "When is baby
Bobby Rae comin' out mama?"
Mrs. Alcot shook her head,
"He's not. Not never. That there is baby Bobby Ray's grave. He is dead.
Dead, cold and buried."
Jeanie looked at the grave for a
long time. Then she said, "The flowers sure are pretty," and dove
onto the pile of roses.
` As she slowly began to sink, her mom
got off the bench quick. Fear, protest and anger burst from her,
"Nooooooo!" as she reached into the mound of roses and took hold of
her daughter's wrists. She pulled her up onto the ground, "You get out of
there Jeanie. Right now. That's his grave, not yours." And helped her to
stand.
"But momma, the flowers were so
pretty and soft. Baby Bobby Rae don't mind." The girl pulled against her
mother's hold.
"No. That cold place is for
him. For the dead. You still alive. You need a warm bed. Back at home. We got
to go now. The men folk be wanting their supper. We got to go now." She tugged
at Jeanie to walk with her.
This time the little girl relaxed
and leaned up against her, "What men folk momma?"
Mrs. Alcot loosed her grip and
turned toward the entrance. After passing a few markers she looked behind her
for the girl. But the little girl was back at the mound of flowers skipping and
dancing and waving her arms and singing all around the grave.
"Cold, cold, oh so cold. Dead
and cold, cold and dead. Oh so dead, oh so dead," her soft voiced filled
the silence.
Mrs. Alcot slow walked back to the
grave. She stood near, but stayed silent, watching.
"Momma, momma. Is this pretty dress okay?" Jeanie tugged her momma awake from the memory.
Mrs. Alcot offed the perking coffee pot and smiled down to her daughter, "Yes. That is a very pretty one. You can wear that today. Please keep dry. Stay inside," her faint smile begged her.
"But momma. The rain is gone. Can I please go swing for a while?" She twirled the dress round and round.
Her mother walked over to the screen door and pushed it open. Frowning at the patches of blue, she held the door open, "Go on, you can play. Appears the clouds weren't as full as I thought."
The bright green dress bounced down the back stairs as her soft voice sang a new song, "Rain rain go away, come again another day, rain rain go away, can't you see I want to play."
"Jeanie mind you stay out of the mud." Mrs. Alcot called.
"What mud momma?" She called back as her boot made loud splashes across the brick patio. When she got to the swing set she quick grabbed a chain and twirled her self upon the damp seat. She sat upon the board motionless, calling, "Push me momma, push me!"
"Well I guess I've got the time. The rain done, the men folk will stay out in the fields." Looking to the sky Mrs. Alcot let the screen door slam behind her. When she stood behind her daughter she said, "I'll get you started, but you have to keep it going."
"Push me momma, push me!" Jeanie squealed. Over her shoulder she asked, "What fields momma?"
Mrs. Alcot pushed her higher and higher.
Jeanie began singing, "Push me to the moon, the cow and the spoon. I want to fly higher and higher, push me to the moon." Each time she swung back Mrs. Alcot's hands would grab her backside and fling her as hard forward. When Jeanie's toes touched the leaves of the bending maple limbs, she stood back and watched and listened and remembered her only airplane ride high above the clouds:
Looking down at the blanket of clouds reminded
her of snow covering the mountain side. She thought it would be different
somehow, but going into the cloud was like a fog settling about her house. Then
when the plane broke through into open sky, it was as if dawn had popped into
her drowsy sleep.
The light blue sky above her and the
bed of gray below, let the drown of the engines dream her back into the warmth
of her kitchen where she had been mixing a pancake batter only hours ago. She
had been thrown into shock by the phone call. It was her brother, he had
terrible news, their parents had been killed, murdered the night before. The
funeral was in two days. He was in a panic, couldn't find any of the papers.
Could she fly up and help out for a few days. She was so stunned, she had to
call him back.
Again he told her, she couldn't
believe it. Had hoped the first call a prank, a sick Halloween prank. But this
time she had called him, and she had to believe it. The police guessed some kind
of robbery had gone hay wire, some crazy crackheads had killed, had strangled
both her mom and dad. It was all just too much for her brother to handle. Of
course she would fly up on the very next plane. She and Jeanie were packed and
at the airport in less than an hour.
The swing had come to a stop and Jeanie was bouncing up and down, jiggling her feet to keep the motion going, "Push me momma, push me to the moon."
Mrs. Alcot got the swing going again, "Higher and higher. All the way to the clouds for you little girl." Then stepped back and watched her long blonde hair blow in the breeze. Again she drifted back to her memory of her parents' funeral:
A white haired man in a chauffeur's
cap stood holding the back door of a limousine as the small jet came to its
resting place at the far corner of the airport. A steward put their luggage in
the trunk as they got in behind her brother. She had forgotten his arrogance
and his need for the pomp.
Jeanie watched some cartoons on the
car television as he told of the details, "They were dead, strangled, they
lay side by side, dead."
She didn't really want to hear it.
The police had no leads. They must have worn gloves. There weren't any
witnesses. Only the cash from the strongbox was missing. The maid had found
them in the study the next morning. The police had waken him to identify the
bodies. It was all just too much for him to handle and it wasn't even noon yet.
He was so glad she was there.
His words went in her ears, settled
upon her brain for a few minutes and then disappeared as the happy carefree
songs of the Muppets of the television show took her attention.
She and Jeanie stayed in the very
room at the plantation she had lived in as a child. The funeral ceremony was a very hazy memory. A church
bench with Jeanie singing louder than the choir, "Saint Peter don't you
call me cause I can't go. I owe my soul to the company stove." So many
faces, sad, teary eye words running together, "Sorry. They were a happy
couple. Isn't it great, they got to go to heaven together? They'll catch them.
Are you alright?"
Jeanie sat in the front seat and
played with the radio dials, changing stations in the middle of songs, singing
as many words as she could on the ride to the cemetery.
Then that terribly long walk up a
hill side. Standing around two empty holes with a mound of dirt aside each. A
man in black talking about souls and a heavenly father and the solid citizens
of the community. Then walking back down the hill, getting back into the cars,
all the headlights coming on. And when she looked back at the grave site, the
two caskets just sat there, on the ground, alone.
A band played on the grounds by the
swimming pool until very late that night. She and Jeanie quickly went to her
old room and locked the door and hoped no one would bother them, no one did.
The next day the chauffeur drove she
and Jeanie and her brother into the city. She had forgotten the sight of cold
concrete sky-scrapers with shiny reflective windows looming one atop the other;
they looked like mountains of snow dotted with evergreens.
Jeanie had sat in awe, her mouth
open, silent for the first time in days. While they walked from the curb to the
lobby, and road up the elevator, and during the whole time she signed the
papers, Jeanie had her arms about her waist and wouldn't be separated from her.
They had gone from the lawyers'
offices straight to the airport for home.
Jeanie smiled, "Okay
momma. I'll go play house." She jumped off the table and skip clumped to
the screen door, singing, "Money money money money money money money
money. Money makes the world go round. The world go round. Money makes the
world go round. Tra la, la la, la
la."
Mrs. Alcot filled the bowl with flour, baking soda, some sugar and a pinch of salt then set about mixing the dry ingredients with a large wooden spoon. As she stared into the swirling white powders she slipped back into the memory of them on vacation at the Red River State Park:
They didn't really have the money to spare, but
it was the first weekend of the fall. The trees were changing colors,
"Soon they'll be bare and then winter will have us all cooped up. Let's
just take the Christmas money and go somewhere. A special place that we'll
remember and talk about all through the drab winter," he had nibbled her
ear lobes and tickled her thighs.
"That sounds nice. I'd like
that too. But the money, not the Christmas money. Jeanie is old enough to
really grasp the spirit this year, the tree, the presents, the lights. What
would it be if we spent all the money?" she had pulled back and was
frowning.
"Well maybe you got something.
She is old enough. Well okay, how 'bout we only spend half the money. We could
camp.
I could
borrow the Jones' tent. Campfires at night along the river. The rumble of the
water over the rocks. The stars, sleeping under the stars, it'd be like when we
were dating." And then he grabbed her and pulled her close nipping the
back of her neck with his teeth.
They had packed up the station wagon
with dishes and food and clothes enough to last a week. Tied the tent on the
roof and were on the road to the state park a hundred miles north. They left
before noon and were parked and had the tent set up and a roaring campfire
before dusk.
The next afternoon they took the
scenic walk through the woods along the river's bank. A fence had been erected
and a placard told of the whirlpool. They stood against the fence staring at
the swirling water, round and round. They held each other very close and fell
into an embrace, a long embrace, a very long embrace. Which they held until she
was pulled away by the screams of Jeanie tugging at her dress, pointing into
swirling waters.
Jeanie's tiny dog, Toetoe, was
swimming after his bright yellow, fetch tennis ball. The ball and the dog were
nearing the center of the funnel, lower and lower. Just as the dog grasp the
ball the water covered him. They stood
against the fence waiting, but the dog never reappeared.
Jeanie tried to climb the fence,
calling, "Toetoe, tiptoe toetoe. Toetoe where are you Toetoe?"
They held her tight. They told her
the dog probably swam ashore downstream and would return to the campfire to get
dry. But the dog never did.
Jeanie kept wanting to go back to the
river whirlpool, "I'll find him. I can swim, I can. I'll find him."
There was no keeping her from
trying. Finally they sat by the fire and she told her about dying. About being
dead. That Toetoe had drown. That her dog was dead. And that if she went in the
whirlpool she too would drown and be dead.
But Jeanie insisted, "I can
swim, I can. I won't drown. I'll save Toetoe." And she up and ran toward
the river. He had to chase her down. Held her tight against him and tried to
soothe her with their car songs. But she kept trying to jump down and run.
Adventually
she had to sit in the car with her daughter's wrists in her hands while he
broke the campsite down. They drove for hours and hours singing songs, happy
songs, silly songs, radio songs until finally Jeanie fell asleep.
They didn't get another dog. Jeanie
didn't want a different one. She kept waiting for Toetoe to find his way back
home to her. She knew he wasn't drown just lost somewhere along the river. She
kept asking them to drive back to the park to camp-out some more, but they
never did.
The back screen door squeaked open and slammed shut and Jeanie was tugging at her dress, "Have you never seen a thing as lovely as me. Me in a tree, can you see, not a bee, can you see, not a bee?"
Pulled from her memory, Mrs. Alcot looked behind her. There her child stood naked, dotted with tiny willow leaves sticking to her. She reached down and pulled one off.
Only the moisture of the rain held them to her. She smiled, "Yes my child you are the loveliest butterfly I ever seen. What kind of butterfly are you?"
"Oh. I just go where the wind blows. Dust in the wind, we're just dust in the wind." She twirled around and around flapping her arms; most of the leaves were flung about the kitchen.
Mrs. Alcot began laughing and laughing so hard she sank slowly to the floor holding her side.
Jeanie flapped her way back through the screen door.
After Mrs. Alcot quieted she got up and swept the leaves into a pile and then put them in a small envelope. She then wrote a note on the outside and put the memory in the large drawer among the others. After that she went to the screen door and called, "Oh pretty butterfly can you find my daughter's dress for me?"
Jeanie swooped about, grabbed the thin material with her hands and twirled over to her mother. By then all the leaves were back on the ground. Mrs. Alcot said, "Let's get this back on you. The men folk will be coming in from the fields soon." She slipped the summer dress over her head.
Jeanie smiled, "What men folk momma?" Then skip clumped her way back to her playhouse.
Mrs. Alcot returned to her pan of flour remembering when he made the playhouse in the far corner of their patio:
He had made it for Jeanie the summer
before. It was to be her private place. It took the loss of the dog from her
mind. They had worked on it together singing their silly songs. Jeanie held the
boards while he measured and cut them to size. And she painted the entire thing
while he put the screens in the windows.
When they were done, it looked just
like a little house with a sun roof high enough for her to see over the back
brick fence that kept the city traffic noises down. A table and chair her size
served as kitchen table and desk where she played school. They spent most of
the summer days there. And after he put in an electric bulb, they played until
bed time.
At summer's end the quarrels had
begun. She complained, wanting more of his time. Complained he had abandon her,
was spending all his time with Jeanie. He had forgotten about her needs.
He said he didn't understand. Didn't
know what she was talking about and countered with his own complaints. That she
had driven him from their fun in the bedroom. The love wrestling and tickling
of the past, she no longer wanted. She even pushed him away during the night.
She cried how he didn't understand
her moods, how he didn't even try.
He yelled, "Cold witch".
And she whacked off his hair.
He never returned.
Jeanie was sitting on top of her sun roof watching the cars zoom past when a bright yellow, travel camper stopped on the other side of her fence. He opened the passenger door and smiled at her. He was holding a black, high button boot, the matching left boot.
Jeanie whispered his name, raised her bare left foot, and began singing, "You can keep my things, he's come to take me home." He took a ladder out of the camper and placed it against the fence. She clump climbed down the rungs and into his arms.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Alcot dabbed the batter into a flat baking pan. A dozen round mounds adorned the tray as she slid it into the oven. She turned the large oven switch to 'on', then reached for a long match to ignite the pilot light. With match in hand the phone rang. She hurried to it, lifted the receiver quickly calling, "Yes. Who is this?"
Then alarmed, "What! What are you saying?" She dropped the receiver and ran out onto the patio calling, "Jeanie, Jeanie, Jeanie!"
At the playhouse she called, "Billy Jean Alcot you come out this very minute!" Then she quick opened the door. Seeing no one, she stood back and looked at the steps leading to the sunroof. She carefully climbed enough steps to see over the fence into the street. No one. Just the usual stream of four-lane traffic, red lights and empty backyards across the street.
She slow walked back to the kitchen, the long match still in her hand. Closing the screen door she mumbled, "The farm hands be coming in from the fields hungry, very hungry. Gotta get the oven warmed up."
### the end. September 1994
RETURN TO INDEX index
For actors - N. Cage & J. Carey
1st scene
Camera opens showing Dr. Frazzor, a psychiatrist, sitting in large chair: three piece suit, white go tee, holding writing pad on left knee and pencil in right hand, a small tape recorder running on the table behind and in-between the chair and couch.
On the couch is recluse, multi-billionaire Mr. Cage; wearing a three-piece suit with turtleneck sweater, slip on shoes on floor at his feet.
The room is muted by soft light coming from curtain in window behind the chair. The room is silent except for their conversation.
While under hypnotic trance Mr. Cage discloses his shame and humiliation while as a child on an Easter Egg Hunt on his parent's large estate.
Dream Scene # 1
In his anxiety to gather the most eggs and win the prize, he knocks down other kids as they reach for eggs on the lawn. With his basket full, he turns and runs toward the patio where all the parents sit watching the event. Just as he approaches the patio stairs a large white rabbit gets loose and hops down the steps toward him.
The rabbit runs between his legs and causes him to panic and lose his balance, dropping the basket and scattering the colored eggs about the ground. Spinning around, he trips over his own feet and falls upon many eggs. The eggs crack and the undercooked eggs break under his weight, soiling his new suit.
As he stands, looking at the mess upon him, the other children gather about him and the parents peer over the patio railing. They all break into peals of laughter.
Mr. Cage awakens from his trance.
Dr. Frazzor, "The neurosis you have over white rabbits and Easter eggs stems from your childhood. The trauma caused to you during your parent's annual Easter Egg Hunts continues to haunt you and will continue to until you find a way to put the past behind you. Try using humor as a cure. Try watching that amusing film, 'Alice in Wonderland'."
Sitting up, sliding into his slippers Mr. Cage muses, "Humor, umm. Maybe so. I think I've got a copy of that film in my library. I'll give it a try over lunch. Thanks."
"Well, I see our time is up for today." Rising from his chair, the doctor offs the tape recorder then places it in his brief case. At the office door he stops, turns and asks, "Same time next week Mr. Cage?"
Back behind his large desk, Mr. Cage tilts his head, "I'll have Miss Strudwick contact you, difficult to say what next week will look like. Good day to you doctor Frazzor," waving his hands for the doctor to leave.
The doctor gone, Mr. Cage walks through the office, entering the bathroom. At the opposite wall door, he punches in a coded number on the wall access panel. The door then pops open into his bedroom.
At a small desk aside the television, he ons a computer screen and enters the video library menu. He enters the title, 'Alice in Wonderland.' Within seconds the television screens frizzes on and the screen reads, "Ready for viewing, 'Alice in Wonderland'.
Mr. Cage walks to the wet-bar and pours himself a small glass of whiskey and soda water. He then reclines in the television viewing chair, placing the glass on the small table beside the chair. Pushing the on button of the VCR remote control, the movie begins. Sipping down half of the drink, Mr. Cage relaxes back and falls asleep after only a few minutes.
Fade out.
2nd scene
Camera opens on a small room illuminated only by the light of the half a dozen television screens lining one wall. Each screen monitors a different room of the Mr. Cage's personal suites and the adjoining office of the secretary.
A male's voice over-plays the viewing screen of Mr. Cage napping before the movie, "So dear ol' half brother Mr. Cage is still hung up on the Easter Bunny. And his psychiatrist has him watching that psychedelic Alice movie."
A female's voice cuts in, "Look at that. I think he has fallen asleep. How could he? It's such a, a, a charming movie."
The male continues, "That gives me an idea. I've been waiting for just the right moment to make my move. And this looks perfect. Why watch an acid trip movie, when you can live one? And I've got just what he needs for that. Let's go pay a visit on dear ol' half brother Mr. Cage while he naps." A white hand holding a dark brown medicine bottle gradually appears from the bottom of the screen.
The female asks, "Where did you get that?"
The male's maniacal laughter, "Te he he he he he he, haw," fills the room, "From one of the lab assistants. He made it as a personal favor for me."
The female hesitant, "His room is monitored, we'll get caught."
"Silly girl, you stand in-between me and the camera. We'll check the tape when we're done. If anything looks suspicious, I'll just edit it out. I am the head of home office security. Stupid, dull boring job. But it does have some advantages. Let's go freshen up his drink. Te he he haw."
The camera zooms from the monitoring room, through the hall, past the secretary and stops upon the back of the chair where Mr. Cage is napping. The distance closes with the motion one makes while carrying a camera forward. The white hand holding the brown medicine bottle reaches slowly forward toward the half-full whiskey glass. Two drops, then two more drops plop unheard into the whiskey. Very gradually the camera pulls back from the chair. Mr. Cage's head and the movie on the television fill the screen for a few seconds until the room turns dark.
Fade out.
3rd scene
Camera opens on Mr. Cage awakening to the singsong of the white rabbit, "I'm late, I'm late for a very important date. No time to wait, I'm late, I'm late." He shakes his head, rubs his eyes with his left hand then sips down more of the drugged whiskey.
When the LSD kicks in, the TV screen is showing the white rabbit. The white rabbit begins to grow and grow and 'comes out of the screen' toward Mr. Cage. He panics and rolls out of the chair and quick crawls behind it. He peers over the back of the chair and is greeted by the grinning white rabbit. He stumbles back and rights himself. Runs to the golf club bag in the corner and extracts an iron. Twisting around he swings the club at the phantom white rabbit. The rabbit disappears.
Mr. Cage cautiously looks about the room. Suddenly smaller versions of the white rabbit begin to loom up from the white couch, chairs and decorative pillows. He charges forward swinging and clubbing the furniture, knocking loose the white cotton stuffing. Within in minutes he is winded and stands huffing, holding the club as a sword before him.
As the cotton settles about the room, Mr. Cage's attention is drawn to a television commercial showing an advertisement for Easter Hunt party accessories. Small white rabbits hop about a lawn filled with egg hunting children cause Mr. Cage to scream madly. He charges the television and lunges the golf club into the screen. The television tube explodes and the blast knocks him backward. He stumbles about careening into a small table and falls to the floor. The bowl of sliced peaches in heavy syrup atop the table is jostled, tips over and spills over his head. He immediately rolls away, across the floor covering his face with loose cotton stuffing.
When Mr. Cage finally stands up he is facing a tall mirror. He points at the mirror, "Ahhhh. The Easter Bunny. The Easter Bunny. I've got to get rid of this damn Easter Bunny!" He darts into the bathroom, climbs in the shower, ons the water and washes the sticky mess off him.
Dripping wet, but clean of the cotton stuffing, he exits the door that leads into his den. There he marches over to the fireplace and warms himself before the flames. After warming he begins to pace in a small circle before the open flames. Muttering at first, then uttering intelligible sentences.
"Damn Easter Bunny. Got to get rid of it. The Easter Bunny delivers Easter eggs. No eggs, no bunny. I've got to get rid of the eggs. All the eggs. All? Birds, turtles, alligators, fish? No no. Get a grip on yourself man. Just the chicken eggs become Easter eggs. Whew! All the eggs, that would have been impossible. Now that that's settled, down to business."
He goes to a large desk, takes a pad of legal paper and begins to scribble very fast, muttering unintelligible again. Fast turning pages, writing fast, getting exuberant then frustrated flailing his arms and pushing his fingers through his thick dark hair. Finally he sits immobile, then shrieks, "Urreekaa!" then it's back to fast writing.
Pencil resting on the pad, he stands. Facing the camera wild eyed, slowly extending the pad, "It's done."
The door to his den opens and the sound of heavy footsteps catches Mr. Cage's ear. He twists around to see his half brother, Carey and fiancé, Fran, looking at him.
Carey grins, "What's done dear brother?"
Mr. Cage slams the pad to his chest, "The plan, my plan is done," folding his arms across the pad.
Carey, "What plan is that dear brother?"
"My plan, it's my plan. None of your business. Get out of my den. Both of you. Now!" hand gesturing them to leave.
They turn to leave.
"Wait. Wait a second. Tell me what today's date is."
Turning a sly grin, Carey faces his half brother, "Today is Ground Hog Day, February the 2nd. Does that give you enough time for your plan?"
Holding the pad before his eyes briefly, then protecting it against his chest, "Yes. Yes it does. Not that it matters to you two. Now get out. Immediately."
Carey and Fran turn to leave and giggle their way out of the den, slamming the door behind them. They hurry through the office and past the secretary.
Walking through the vacant hallway toward their quarters, Fran asks, "What do you think he is up to?"
"LSD is a funny thing, hits people differently. I've really no idea. But I hope it gets him into trouble. Big trouble, the kind that leads to jail."
Very dubious, Fran wonders, "Jail? You think he'd jeopardize his position and do something illegal?"
Wringing his hands together, "Hope so. I don't want to wait until he dies to get my hands on the corporation. We'll keep an eye on him and when the time is right we'll inform the Board of Directors."
Nodding approval, Fran adds, "And the law."
Fade out.
4th scene
Camera opens on Mr. Cage's office; he is sitting at his desk. He buzzes the intercom, "Miss Strudwic. Would you please bring your pad for some dictation." Sitting back against his chair he takes a deep breath, slowly exhales. Keeping his focus upon only her eyes as she enters has been his greatest challenge the previous weeks and he has failed at that consistently. But now he has a new project and must keep his mind clear of random desires.
Pad and pen in hand, Miss Strudwic slowly crosses the room to the dictating chair. Ever conscience of his increasing interest in her as a woman the past weeks, she has made much effort to appear as available as she is beautiful. She knows he has been alone for too long and wants to remedy that, but carefully she has maintained the proper distance and only occasionally hinted at her own loneliness.
Two weeks ago she had noticed that the dictation chair had been slightly repositioned. Being moved enough to the right so that she was positive he could now see her knees and part of her thigh. Consequently she had begun wearing shorter hem length dresses. And exaggerates her sitting down in the chair and positioning herself for the dictation. From the corner of her eye she had seen him watching her more often. And is sure that he too had noticed her watching him. An innocent, yet provocative teen dating ritual had begun between them.
But today was different, when she glanced at him as she neared the dictation chair, his head was bent forward as if he was staring intently at the pad on the desk. She went through her new procedure of reading for the task, but he didn't look up at her until she said, "Ready sir."
Barely looking up from the pad before him, he begins, "The company is going to diversify. Expanding into poultry. I want you to research all the poultry feed providers. I want a list of every company, USA and," pausing in thought, making a note on the pad, "Europe, Asia and South America. I want a detailed break down of the market share each manufacture has. Get the research department on it. Tell them I want it today. To drop everything else. Today, I want it today. Got it!"
Scribbles madly, stops, looks over her pad and then reads his words back to him, "Corporate research department to do a thorough report of the poultry feed manufacturing providers. A complete breakdown of their market share. Reports by the end of the day. Anything else sir?" staring at him with that professional blank openness that had secured her the position so many years ago.
Nodding approvingly, "That's it. You've got it. Very good, now go," hand gesturing her out of the room. His eyes inadvertedly shifting to her bare knees as she rises from the chair, they follow the sway of her hips as she retreats to the office door.
Staring at the memory of her departure for longer than necessary, he then closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Re-relaxed he focuses upon the Rolodex and fingers the cards until his right index holds one still. With his left index finger he punches in a phone number.
A male voice fills the phone receiver, "Lab. Dr. Hoppkiss here."
"This is Mr. Cage, president of the company. I'm here at the home office today. I want your best, brightest genetic biologist in my office within the hour. Do you follow?"
"Yes sir, Mr. Cage. I understand. I've got just the man for you. Billy Toge. I'll send him right over."
Nodding approval, "Very good." Mr. Cage places the receiver back in its cradle. He then makes a note in his Plan Pad. Closing the pad, he reaches over to the small alarm clock on his desk and sets the alarm. Satisfied with the numbers on the clock, he takes up the Plan Pad and places it against his chest. Folding his arms over the pad, he closes his eyes and nods off to sleep.
Fade out.
5th scene
Camera opens on a close up on Mr. Cage's closed eyelids, revealing he is in rapid eye movement. The camera continues to close in on his eyelids until the blur becomes the dream he is having.
Dream scene #2: of him peaking around a corner to see his parents at a large table coloring eggs.
Dream scene #3: of small children running about a lawn picking up Easter eggs and then throwing them at him.
Dream scene #4: of small white rabbits on a lawn surrounding him. The rabbits begin growing and growing until as large as his parents. The large rabbits hop at him and he runs and they chase him.
Dream scene #5: of him as an adult looking in a mirror and seeing himself as a white rabbit.
Fade out.
6th scene
Camera opens on the desk intercom. A very loud buzz startles Mr. Cage's eyes open. He reaches forward to the on button, "Yes Miss Strudwic?"
"You said to buzz you when the manufactures' market share info came in. Well I've got all the data assembled. Should I bring it in?"
"Very good. Bring it to me quickly."
Maintaining her professional composure Miss Strudwic hurries to his desk. Carefully handing the folder to him, she keeps her fingers closed on the folder even after he has taken it and is pulling. When his eyes avert to hers, quickly questioning if she'll let go, she greets him with a brief, but her best seductive smile, "Will there be anything else sir?"
Matching her smile, continuing to pull at the folder with his left hand, "That will be all for now, thank you Miss Strudwic." And his right hand gestures her to leave.
Again his focus is upon her swaying hips. When the door finally closes behind her, he sighs deeply. His eyes then rest on the folder and he opens it atop the Plan Pad. As he carefully reads the numbers aside each manufacture, he nods, smiling, "Yes. Yes. Very Good. This I can do. Four in USA. Two in Europe. Two in South America. Two in Asia."
Mr. Cage reaches over to the intercom, "Miss Strudwic, the information is superb. Contact Carl Higgins at the Corporate Brokerage office and instruct him to buy all of the outstanding stock in each of those 10 companies. Today. Immediately. No matter where the market is. Price is no object. Understand?"
"Yes sir. I understand. You want to purchase all the outstanding stock in these ten companies: Ralston Purina, Belly Full, Livestock Feed, Monsanto, Euro Feed, Britain's Best, Brazil Feed, South American Stock and Feed, Asian Livestock Feed, Taiwan Tongue."
7th scene
Camera view zooms through suite rooms and stops to show Carey in his small television monitoring room. He is holding a phone receiver and punches a speed dial number. "Rocko. This is Carey Cage. I want you to immediately liquidate 90% of my portfolio. Take the cash and buy as much stock as you can in any of these ten companies. Got a pencil handy? Good." He then plays a recording of Miss Strudwic listing the ten company names. At the end of the tape he asks, "Did you get those names? Good. Call me at my private number when you're done."
8th scene
Camera view zooms back through the suite rooms and stops on Mr. Cage, who is writing the names in his pad. "How do you spell that Taiwan Tongue?" Making a quick eraser, he corrects his error.
"Thanks. I've got it right. Very good Miss Strudwic. Have Higgins contact you when he is done.
The next thing I want you to do is to contact Jonathan, the manager, in Corporate Acquisitions. Tell him to determine the cost of buying just the poultry feed departments of those ten companies. Then have him make a 10% increase offer to the Board of Directors at each company. No. Not 10% but 20% increase over their selling price. That's 20% if and only if they agree to sell within the next two weeks. Understand?"
Miss Strudwic repeats back his words, "Jonathan at Corporate Acquisitions to buy just the poultry feed departments of the ten companies. Offering them 20% increase over their selling price if agree to sell within the next two weeks."
"Yes. A 20% increase over the current projected purchase price. Understand?"
"Yes sir. 20% over projected purchase price if within the next two weeks. Anything else sir?"
Mr. Cage looks over his Plan Pad, "That's all for now," and offs the intercom.
9th scene
The camera view zooms back to Carey in his monitoring room. The door opens and Fran enters. She joins him on the couch opposite the television screens.
One screen is showing Miss Strudwic at her desk, another screen is showing Mr. Cage at his desk. Their conversation about the 20% increase over purchase price is just ending.
Fran frowns, "This is sort of boring. Just more dull business stuff."
Carey twirls his thin mustache, "Maybe not as boring as you'd think. Offering 20% over the normal purchase price of a company is not normal. I'm sure that LSD still has him over the edge. I'm sure the Corporate Board would not condone that type of purchase. Especially for chicken feed companies.
What do you think he's going to do with that genetic biologist that he sent for?"
Fran eyes widening, "Make bigger eggs?"
10th scene
] Camera view zooms back to Mr. Cage making notes in his Plan Pad. The intercom buzzes.
"Yes Miss Strudwic, what is it?"
"There's a Mr. Billy Toge here. Says he was told to report directly to you. Should I send him in?"
"By all means. Thank you Miss Strudwic," offs the intercom.
The office door opens and Billy Toge gradually appears. His face displays a twinge of discomfort as he moves forward. His right foot scrapping the floor as he pulls it forward with his right hand. Miss Strudwic closes the door when he clears the opening.
When Billy Toge finally reaches the front of the desk, Mr. Cage stands and gestures him to sit.
"You're the genetic biologist from the lab?"
Toge, "Yes. I got here as fast as I could."
Mr. Cage curious, "Your limp? Permanent? Painful?"
Toge grimaces, "Yes, a motorcycle accident last year. The insurance policy wouldn't pay for the necessary repairs. I couldn't afford a lawyer. So I move a little slower now. But it doesn't affect my work in the lab. In fact, I devote more time and energy to my work now."
Mr. Cage sympathetically, "Could your injuries still be, ahh, repaired?"
Rubbing his leg, Toge squints, "Maybe. I think so. I've been doing some research at the cellular level in my free time. But I really haven't the time or money it's going to take."
Mr. Cage lifting his Plan Pad off the desk, waving it, "I think we can help each other. I've got the money and the researchers you'll need."
Toge leans forward with interest, "What would I have to do in return?"
Flipping open the Plan Pad, "I need a new genetic modifying drug for poultry feed. Within two weeks. This is a secret plan. Very secret. Only you and I will ever know of it. I'll give you one million dollars tax free, to begin immediate work. And another million more if you produce a drug within two weeks that works. And you must remain silent of this deal for the rest of your life."
Eyebrows raised, "I'd be a fool not to agree. But how do I know I can trust you?"
Mr. Cage, "I'll put the money in a Swiss account for you. Only you and the bank will know your bank account number."
Toge nodding approval, "How do I know you won't have me killed afterwards?'
Mr. Cage looks up at the ceiling, "Well to be honest, you won't. What I need is the new drug. I don't need you dead. I might even need your services in the future. Besides we all have to die someday. And with the money in your Swiss account at least you'll be leaving your loved ones a sizeable inheritance."
Toge, "What you say has a ring of truth to it. I accept. What is this new drug suppose to do?"
Mr. Cage, "Well what it has to do, is why it's a secret and why you'll be getting such a large bonus. Will you agree to these terms no matter what the drug is suppose to do? Remember I will also have your injuries repaired."
Toge touching his right leg, "I wasn't sure I wanted to live this way. Didn't think I could endure the pain. Thought it would go away, it hasn't. To be honest I still don't know how long I can stand it. I think it can be repaired at the cellular level, especially with your research staff helping. But there are even some things I won't do. You understand that?"
Mr. Cage, "What I want, need this drug to do, isn't horrible. In fact it's only to have a temporary affect. It won't have any real permanent damage. Does that sound like something you could do?"
Stroking his chin in thought, Toge, "Only a temporary affect? Well I could agree to something like that."
Mr. Cage, "And do you agree to my terms then?"
Toge, "Yes," rubbing his right leg, "what am I to make?"
Mr. Cage, "A modification to chicken feed that will stop all laying hens from laying any eggs for two months."
Sitting back, Toge is slightly incredulous, "No eggs for two months. And then they go back to laying eggs? With no ill affect on the eggs after the two months?"
Mr. Cage, "That's the assignment. Can you do it?"
Toge strokes his chin, "Well maybe. Probably. Actually this doesn't sound that difficult now that I think on it. Still it is a challenge. No eggs for two months. Huh? Can I ask why?"
Mr. Cage pulling the Plan Pad to his chest, "You can ask, but you won't hear an answer. It's company business, do you follow?"
Toge nods yes, "I
follow. A million cash in a Swiss account to start and your staff will repair
my leg?"
Mr. Cage, "If your leg
can be repaired, my medical staff will fix you right up."
Toge, extending his right hand, "It's a deal."
Mr. Cage uses his left hand to close the deal with Toge, "Deal."
Mr. Cage then flips through his Rolodex and finds the appropriate card. He dials the number, "This is Mr. Cage, president of the company. I want to speak to the lab director, Dr. Hoppkiss. Oh, this is he? Very good. Dr. Hoppkiss I have just given Billy Toge a special assignment. A secret, private assignment for the company. I want you to give him a private laboratory room and all equipment and materials he may require. Do you understand? Very good. Thank you for your cooperation in this matter."
The receiver back in its cradle, Mr. Cage buzzes the intercom, "Miss Strudwic. Contact the company doctor, I think his name is Felix. Tell him that Mr. Billy Toge from research is on his way. Spare no expense in repairing his injured leg."
"Yes sir. Dr. Felix to fix Billy Toge's leg. Spare no expense. Immediately?"
"Exactly."
The intercom off, Mr. Cage addresses Toge, "The company doctor is waiting for you. Do you know where his office is?"
Rubbing his leg, "Yes, I've been there before."
Mr. Cage, "You'll have my feed additive within two weeks?"
Toge hesitant, "Within two weeks, yes. But how will I know if the drug only stops them laying for just two months if I have to turn in the research within two weeks?"
Mr. Cage, "Well I don't know. That's your job. But the bottom line is, the new feed drug will definitely stop the hens from laying eggs immediately and for at least two months."
Toge frustrated, "Okay. But what if they don't start laying eggs again. Ever again?"
Mr. Cage getting frustrated, "Well then the farmers will just have to get new laying hens."
Toge, "But how would they do that?"
Mr. Cage running his fingers through his hair, then slamming down the Plan Pad, "I don't know. Don't care. That's what roosters are for. Don't the farmers always have a new batch of baby chicks growing to replace the old hens?"
Toge nods, "Yea, I think that's right."
"So no need to worry about the chicken population." Mr. Cage then stands, points at Toge's right leg, "You want your leg fixed and the millions or what?"
Toge, "Yea. I guess that's right about the new batch of baby chicks. I'll do it."
Mr. Cage points toward the door and gestures him to leave, "Then go. Now. See the doctor first. I want the new drug in my hands by noon of the 14th."
Toge gets up slowly, "Fine, no eggs for two months, got it." He drags his right leg to the office door. At the door he turns and faces Mr. Cage, "What about opening my Swiss account?"
Mr. Cage makes a note in his Plan Pad, "Come back tomorrow at 6pm. Well have supper and discuss your research plan and set up your Swiss account."
Fade out.
11th scene
Camera opens in the television monitoring room, Carey is slapping his knee and laughing while Fran's mouth is agape.
Fran, "Can he do that? That's got to be illegal. No eggs for two months. What am I going to do for breakfast?"
Carey turns to her, "Breakfast? Breakfast? Te he he he he haw! What about the stock market? I could make a mint if they pull this off. Then I'll contact the board of directors and have his job."
Fran, "I'm sure what they're planning is illegal. We should contact the law. They'll put them in jail."
Carey begins laughing again, "Te he he he he haw. Dear ol' half brother, Mr. Cage, in jail for Easter. That's rich. He's getting rid of the eggs so there won't be any Easter Bunny egg hunts. He has totally freaked. Alice and the white rabbit and the LSD flipped him out. And we've got to keep him that way. More acid for brother. Te he he he haw."
12th scene
Camera view zooms back to Mr. Cage napping in his desk chair. The desk alarm clock loudly rings, jerking him awake. He half rises from the chair and while reaching for the off button, his right hand slips on the Plan Pad. He falls forward and slides off the side of the desk, landing hard on the floor on his elbow.
Standing and rubbing his elbow, "Damn, that hurts. I need a drink."
He leaves the office and goes to his bedroom. He walks over the pillow cotton pieces, unseeing the mess. He sits in his TV viewing chair and grabs his drink, sipping with his left. With the remote in his right he ons the VCR. Alice in Wonderland rewinds. As it whirs he keeps sipping. By the time the tape begins to show again, the LSD in his drink begins to affect him.
After watching Alice chase after the white rabbit awhile, Mr. Cage gets restless, "Big white talking rabbit worried about the time. Time, never enough time. That's for sure. Why would a rabbit care about time? If I were a rabbit, time would be the last thing on my mind, wouldn't it? Ummmm? I wonder what's it like to be a rabbit?"
Mr. Cage looks at the pieces of pillow cotton strewn about the room. He gets up, goes to a large desk, opens a drawer and extracts a large bottle of wood glue. "This should work." Then goes to his clothes closet, reaches in and takes out a gray two piece double-breasted business suit.
He returns to the TV chair, lays the coat over the back. Then begins picking up the loose pillow cotton pieces, putting them on the chair seat. Once the seat is full of loose cotton, he then pours glue on the suit coat. Carefully he spreads the cotton onto the glue. Coat done, he decorates the pants. Satisfied with his handy work, he offs his day suit and ons the bunny suit.
Checking his reflection in the full length-dressing mirror, he frowns, "No ears. Ummm? What to do, have to have long floppy ears." Going to the dresser, he opens the drawer and begins throwing garments to the floor. Suddenly he stops, holding up a pair of white socks.
Putting one sock aside each ear, "Too floppy. A hat; stick them onto a hat." From the closet he extracts a top hat and a wire coat hanger. Bends, twists, and wraps the wire into the socks and about the hat. Placing the finished hat onto his head, he approves. He takes it off and pours glue over the outside, then spreads the pillow cotton all over the hat. Satisfied with its look, he downs it.
Returning to the mirror, "Yes. Now there's a fine looking white rabbit. Now just what do rabbits do?"
He bends down to a squat, taking the on-all-fours position, then hops and hops about the floor. Then he hops onto the TV chair seat and watches Alice for awhile.
He turns around in the chair and hops onto the back of it. The chair falls over with his weight. And he falls forward, bumping his head on the hardwood floor, knocking himself out.
13th scene
The camera view zooms back to the monitoring room. Carey and Fran are laughing at Mr. Cage in his cotton bunny sit hopping on the chair. After he falls over to the floor, knocking himself out they roar in laughter.
When she subsides, she sees he is still on the floor. Concerned, "Stop it. Quiet. He's still on the floor. He may be dead."
"Dead?" Carey leans close to the screen. "Ummm? Well dead would be alright too. Let's go check on him."
The camera view zooms them from the room through the hall, to Mr. Cage's hallway bedroom door.
Carey slides a security card into a wall panel. Then punches in a number, saying, "Medical emergency Carey Cage."
The door pops open, Carey calls softly, "Brother dear, are you alright?"
Mr. Cage lays immobile.
Fran hurries to him and checks his neck pulse, "Still alive."
Carey looks down, "Drunk. Knocked himself out." Using a handkerchief, he takes the drugged whiskey glass from the table, "He won't need any more of this." And pitches the remains into the fireplace flames, then places the empty glass back on the table.
Carey grabs Fran's hand, "Let's go. Let him sleep it off." They leave the suite.
Fade out.
14th scene
Camera opens on the TV. The pre-set alarm begins the day's network business news at 6:30am, awakening Mr. Cage.
He takes himself to the bathroom rubbing his eyes. Lifts the stool lid, pees. Goes to the basin, runs cold water, splashing his face awake.
Eyes dry, he notices the cotton pasted to his suit coat. Shrieking, "Rabbit, white rabbit!" he throws off all of his clothes. Takes a shower. Then goes to his clothes closet and dresses for his workday.
At 7:45am, Mr. Cage is sitting at the small dining table in his den. Miss Strudwic brings in his breakfast. Setting the dishes about the table, she asks, "Did you sleep well?"
Without returning her smile, "Ahh. Yes. Yes I did. Thank you for asking."
Pouring coffee into his cup, she asks, "Will there be anything else."
"Ahh, yes. Have house keeping clean up the mess in my bedroom. And replace the damaged furniture," his eyes averted.
"Sir, what happened? Are you alright?" Miss Strudwic inquires with concern in her voice.
"I'm fine. Just got a little carried away with a, a, an art project I was experimenting with. Just have them clean it up and replace the furniture and the television." Taking a piece of toast in his right, he gestures her to leave.
"Yes sir. Very good sir, I'll leave you to your breakfast and have housecleaning take care of it." She leaves to tend to her office duties.
Fade out.
15th scene
Camera opens on Billy Toge in his private lab with pens of chickens and lab equipment.
Series of quick views of Toge making notes each day on a very large calendar. The calendar pages clearly showing the dates of February 3,4, 5, on the 6th he exclaims, "Eureka!" 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, on the 12th he exclaims, "Eureka, it works!", the 14th circled in red ink.
Intermingle scenes of Toge with Dr. Frazzor doing surgery on his leg.
Intermingle scenes of Mr. Cage speaking on the intercom to Miss Strudwic. He is saying, "Buy, buy, buy all the remaining outstanding stock."
Fade out.
16th scene
Camera opens at 11am on the morning of the 14th, Miss Strudwic is sitting in her dictation chair telling Mr. Cage, "Jonathan in Acquisitions has negotiated the final arrangements with all ten companies for purchase of their poultry feed departments. He is awaiting your go ahead. What should I tell him sir?"
Mr. Cage is making notes in his Plan Pad, "What is the total amount for all ten companies?"
Looking down at her note pad, "$240 million. Total purchase price sir."
Quick jotting down the number, he gradually shifts his eyes from his pad to her knees, "Tell him he'll have my answer by 3pm today. Then contact Billy Toge at his lab. Remind him of our noon appointment. Buzz me when he arrives." Then he gestures her to leave. His focus remains on her departure from the office.
In less than a minute, his intercom buzzes. "Sir, Mr. Billy Toge is here. Should I send him in?"
"Yes Miss Strudwic, by all means."
The office door opens and Toge walks over to the chair in front of Mr. Cage's desk showing only a hint of a limp. Quickly arranging myself in the chair, he opens the briefcase he has brought. Extracting a small metal bottle and a folder, "Here is your new drug. Here is the formula."
Taking the formula folder first, "So it works? No eggs?"
Grinning, "Yes."
Looking up from the folder, "Every time, every day, every laying hen?"
Nodding yes, Toge grins confidently, "Yes. 300 hens tested, no eggs. I think they will begin laying in a couple of months, but time did not permit me to verify those results."
Mr. Cage takes the bottle, "How much of this needs to be added to say, a 50 pound bag of poultry feed?"
"One eye dropper full."
Mr. Cage, "How quickly does it take effect?"
"In every test, that's 300 hens, it took only a week," Toge is beaming of his accomplishment.
Nodding approval Mr. Cage, "How long does it take to make a new batch. Say, a gallon?"
Toge, "A gallon? About an hour, if I've got all the materials at hand."
Widening hands gesture Mr.
Cage, "On a massive scale, say, a 1000 gallons?"
Toge stares at his notes,
"If I've got the materials at hand and I increase the equipment size. A
couple of days."
Mr. Cage, "On a super grand scale," punching numbers into his desk calculator, "Say 5,000, no, 10,000 gallons?"
Toge hesitates, then begins using his index finger against the palm of his left hand, "10,000 gallons?" Muttering softly, "Equipment, typical large tank holds 2,000 gallons, say a batch in 20 hours." Looking back at Mr. Cage, "10,000 gallons in 5 maybe 6 days."
Notes on his Plan Pad then looking at Toge, Mr. Cage, "Then if I say go, how long to set up the equipment and have the materials at hand?"
Half grinning, Toge, "Well, considering your resources, we could have a lab up and running in a week, tops."
Mr. Cage makes more notes in his Plan Pad, "A week to set up. Then a week in production. A week for delivers and another week before it takes effect. That's 4 weeks from today." Looking at the desk calendar, "14 February to 14 March. Too much time. You said a 2,000 gallon batch. Could you make the entire 10,000 gallons in one batch?"
Looking to his notes, Toge, "Well yes. In just one day, if I had a tank that big."
Mr. Cage smiling, "Good, you'll have it." Looks at the calendar and circles 7 March. He then buzzes on the intercom, "Miss Strudwic. Contact Jonathan in Acquisitions. Tell him it's a go. Today. I want it done today."
"Yes sir. Tell Jonathan a go on the buy of those ten companies. Do it today. Anything else sir?"
"That will be all for now. Thank you Miss Strudwic."
Fade out.
17th scene
The camera opens on an outside laboratory. Two large gasoline tankards. Copper pipes running into their tops. Toge is monitoring gauges on the sides of the tankards. Heating equipment is underneath the tankards. Large hoses from underneath the tankards run into the side of a large metal building and empty their fluid into blue 50-gallon drums. As each drum is full it is closed secure. The full blue drums are then moved onto a large semi-truck. Loaded semi-trucks are leaving the area.
` Scene of Billy Toge instructing a group of young people dressed in blue jump suits. "In teams of two, you inspectors will be sent to the feed manufacturing plants. You will ensure that this new additive is put into the feed mixture.
This new additive will reduce the possibility of bacteria and increase the size of the eggs. Any bags of old feed still at the manufactures are to be ground up and put back into he new feed mixture process.
The new owner wants 100% compliance with this new additive procedure. Any trouble by plant employees will be grounds for immediate dismissal. All of the manufactures have been informed of this new change so you should have no difficulties. Any questions? No? Good. I expect full reports at the end of each week."
A hand is raised and a question comes from the male wearing thick safety glasses, "What about the FDA? Has this additive been cleared by them?"
Toge pages through his small notebook, "The FDA approval is still pending. But I can personally assure you that this additive will have no ill affects on any human. Anyone troubled by this can resign now. Anyone? No? Any other questions?"
He pages through his notebook again, "I want to be sure each team is at their assigned site before the new additive arrives there. If any of you have any trouble in transit, contact me immediately so I can notify the plant manager of the delay. Got it? Good, now go." And he gestures them to leave.
Fade out.
18th scene
Camera opens on a scene at a poultry feed manufacture showing the blue 50-gallon drums being emptied into the feed mixing processors. At the end of the processor equipment feed bags are being filled, stacked onto pallets, then loaded onto delivery trucks.
Scenes of delivery trucks unloading feed bags at retail outlet stores, shipyard docks, and railroad cars.
Intermingled shots from long distance of Carey and Fran filming batch cooking tankards and blue gallon drums loaded onto the semi-trucks. Then them filming the unloading of blue drums at feed processing plant. Them walking inside a feed processing plant using a small hidden camera. Them snapping photos of feed bags being delivered. And them at an egg farm filming the farmer and workers feeding the hens with the new feed bags.
Then a scene of Carey and Fran back in the monitoring room viewing their photos and VCR film.
Carey, "This video documentary will prove to the Board of Directors and the cops if necessary, that dear brother, Mr. Cage, has flipped and poisoned all the laying hens in the world."
Fran, "But shouldn't we stop him now, before the hens stop laying eggs. I mean, like, no eggs for months; what will I do for breakfast?"
Carey, "Don’t be a childish snip. If you have to have eggs for breakfast we'll just stock up the freezer. Keep your mind on the big picture. When we expose dear brother, Mr. Cage, he'll go to jail or the nut house. And then I, we, will run the corporation."
Fade out.
19th scene
The camera opens on Mr. Cage laying on his couch talking to Dr. Frazzor.
Mr. Cage, "Sorry I had to cancel our last couple of weeks. This new project has had me pretty busy. Real busy."
Dr. Frazzor, "Well that's okay. I'm glad to hear that you've gotten involved in a new venture. No better medicine than a new project to take away the troubles and worries of the past. How's the tension? Muscles tight? Nerves frayed? How's your appetite? And are you getting enough rest? Sleeping at night? Any disturbing dreams?"
Mr. Cage nods appropriately to each question until the doctor asks of disturbing dreams and at that he tightens up his shoulders, "No problems doctor. I feel like a new man. Food tastes great, bowels working fine. Eight hours shut eye a night. I feel like a great burden has been lifted from my soul."
Dr. Frazzor reviewing his jotted notes, "Well that's certainly a good sign. What about dreams? Anything disturbing? Or unpleasant been happening in your dream world?"
Carefully watching Mr. Cage's reaction to his questions.
Sort of fretting, Mr. Cage, "Well, there was this incident a couple of weeks ago. But I got over it. Got into this new venture and it all just went away. Now I sleep like a baby."
"Pretty disturbing? Frightening?" pressing for an answer.
Mr. Cage, "Well yes. Very frightening. Thought I was losing my mind."
"Maybe we should talk about it for awhile. What do you remember?" flipping open his note pad, glances at the recorder.
Mr. Cage twisting on the couch, "Well, it's sort of real fuzzy. I guess I forgot most of it."
Seeing his agitation, Dr. Frazzor suggests, "Well it seems you've gotten over some it. Yet it may be a good idea to delve a little deeper into your unconscience. Hypnosis might be more revealing. If it turns out to be something we should discuss, fine. It it's nothing or best left forgotten, I'll say no more of the matter."
Very hesitant, reluctantly Mr. Cage, "Well. Okay."
Dr. Frazzor talks him into a trance then begins his inquiry, "Try to remember back a couple of weeks ago. To a disturbing dream you had. Do you recall it?"
Very agitated, "Yes. I was this giant Easter Bunny." He tells the doctor of watching the TV movie, Alice and the white rabbit. Then of being in the cotton ball suit and hopping about the room.
Dr. Frazzor asks, "This was a dream?"
"Sort of, but it was more like I was drunk and wild. I awoke on the floor and my suit was covered with cotton. The furniture was all torn, I had to have it replaced."
Making quick notes, the
doctor then calms Mr. Cage. putting him into a deep restful sleep. Then awakens
him, saying, "Yes indeed, you certainly had a bizarre dream. Undoubtedly
stemming from your childhood neurosis of Easter Egg Hunts. But I must tell you,
your story reminds of some of my other patients when they were having a psychotic
episode induced by drugs. It is difficult to fathom that watching the Alice in
Wonderland movie would have triggered such an episode. Is it possible that you
took some drug by mistake? Or on purpose that you haven't told me about. Or
maybe some one drugged you?"
Mr. Cage, "Actually I did
wonder if I had been drugged. That cotton ball bunny suit was real. I had it on
in the morning and there was a bump on my head. I considered an investigation
by in-house security, but then I got real involved with this new venture and
forgot the incident."
Nodding understanding, "Yes, blocking it from the memory was much easier than contemplating the alternatives. Can I inquire into the nature of this new venture?"
Mr. Cage sits up, eyes wide with sudden awareness of the consequences of his past weeks actions. "Not just now doctor. I've just remembered a very important meeting. Sorry to have to cut our session short today. We can continue next week. Thanks." And waves the doctor toward the door.
As the doctor exits the office door, Mr. Cage sits down behind his desk. He unlocks a drawer, extracting the Plan Pad. He carefully looks over each page, then puts his finger on the calendar, "Today is March 15. Most of the hens have been eating the new feed for a week. Any day now the eggs will stop and the farmers will start complaining. Complaining to whom? Oh my god, what have I done?"
20th scene
The camera zooms to the television monitoring room where Carey is speed dialing his stockbroker. "Rocko. This is Carey Mr. Cage. I want you to sell off my poultry feed stock. Not a panic sell, but a fast one. Dump 80% in two days. Got it? Keep 20% in the USA companies. Got it? Good."
Camera zooms back to Mr. Cage speaking to Miss Strudwic on the intercom, "Contact Billy Toge in his private lab. Have him see me immediately."
"Yes sir. Billy Toge to see you immediately. Anything else sir?"
"Not for now. Buzz me when he arrives."
Within minutes Billy Toge is quickly striding to the chair in front of Mr. Cage's desk.
Mr. Cage smiling yet does
nervous finger motions, "Your leg better?"
Toge, "Yes sir.
Completely healed. I don't know how