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Dodging Bullets   Kevin Brown
No Backtracking The Whole Enchilada
 
Bob Eager
The Man In The Blue Shirt
 
James A. Ford
Dead Man's Mail  
Maureen Griswold

Chain Of Custody   Robert Laughlin

The Story Of My Life  Wayne Scheer
The House No One Lived In
  
Tom Sheehan
By And Through the Distances
 
Susan Dale Stacy
Impervious To Change
 
Thomas Sullivan

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

                                                             

Dodging Bullets                                                                                                                    

by Kevin Brown

 

remember the day my school bus crashed, because I wasn’t on it. The day the fire department ripped the bus top into metal ribbons, I was in the counselor’s office, talking about my feelings since my mom ran away.

I liked the counselor’s office. I’d eat hard candy and hold a stuffed teddy bear three times my size. With the counselor asking if I feel it’s my fault, I’d rub its tattered fur and trace the busted threads along the seam lines. That afternoon, I told her how I used to see Mom and Dad’s reflections washing dishes in the window above the sink. Smiling, blowing soap bubbles, leaning in to kiss. I wrapped my arms halfway around the bear and said how one day, the reflections weren’t smiling. How one day, Mom’s reflection was gone.

Then, we heard sirens scream by like the world was ending.

That night at home, after the news poured in—how many lived, died, and might not make it through the morning—it hit me that I took that bus every day. At the kitchen table, eating a baloney sandwich, I said, “Dad, if I was on that bus, would I have died?” He twisted a glass of whiskey back and forth in half-arcs, leaned on his elbows, and said, “Don’t know, son. Either way, you dodged a bullet.” His eyes were raw and red-webbed. A framed picture of Mom beside him. He took a sip. “We’re all dodging invisible bullets,” he said. “They zip by our heads, every second of every day.”

“Who’s shooting at us?” I said, and he said, “God.”

He drained his drink to the ice. “You turn left and live. Another guy turns right, and…” he slapped the table, “dies.” He stood and walked to the sink. His reflection looking back at him. Thick raindrops popped his face in the glass and slid down in clear streaks. “The same store you were in Monday, burns down Tuesday. A guy gets shot, the doctor tells him another inch to the right or left and he’d be gone.” Lightning fluttered, whitening his face out a moment. Then it returned, his reflection looking down. “At any given moment, we’re all just an inch to the right or left from tragedy.”

Munching my sandwich, the crust arced in a smile, I pretended Mom left so I’d have to see that counselor. Hug that bear, while up the road my bus was rolling off the road. Maybe she pushed me out of the line of fire. Sacrificed their marriage for the better me. Now, I wonder if she took a bullet herself. If she was shot down, or is still moving through the world, bullets popping divots in the ground around her.

But Dad was hit, and the whiskey got him years later. In the hospital, I held his purple hand as he twitched and shook from the bullet that found its mark years ago. From the wound that never healed.

 



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No Backtracking The Whole Enchilada  
   
Southwest Desert Step By Step Guide
                                                                                      

by Bob Eager

 

his is a spiritual eating method. It will help you in many ways gain the focus direction and energy needed to improve your life. This method is about the way you eat literally. It is important that we eat our food individually no cross contamination. If you want to gain the energy needed to complete your daily activities invest in this program.

I am giving you this information free. Because after you have success with this program, you will come back to me for all of your other spiritual eating needs.



PREPARATION AND PRESENTATION



Two words are very essential to the success of this program—Presentation and Preparation. Presentation means the literal way food looks on the plate. Remember we eat with our eyes and our digestive system correlates with our mental picture of the food. Preparation is the way food was cooked separately. Yes, these two concepts are technically the same thing but the minute details between the two are extremely important for indigestation techniques



STEP 1 Presentation

Remember as was, stated before, we eat with our eyes. And our brains tell us no lies. If your steak, potatoes and green beans were blended together ,in well a blender, would you still eat or drink it. Why not its the same thing. Exactly, its the presentation of the sustenance that causes us joy. Why ruin that. The joy of eating is part of it. When we are having fun eating we are having fun ingesting. We will get to the specific eating method in a moment. Just remember move around your plate counterclockwise.



STEP 2 Preparation- No Cross Contamination

Many people mix their corn in with their peas or their rice with their beans. Don't do it. Don't do it. If your cook would have wanted them that way they would have prepared them that way. Keep your food segregated. Although mixing your food might be fun and pleasurable to the pallet that is actually too much enjoyment. We all want to enjoy ourselves but we must understand the fulfillment of our digestive system is equally as important. Spiritual eating and meditation relies on the connective melding of all processes involved.



STEP 3 Recognizing First And Second Preparatory Items

Lets get into the specific details of this program. First preparatory items are things like lettuce, tomatoes and onions. Make sure you order these items the same way. Now technically, you will not be able to get the same amount all the time. BUT you will at least get consistency of items. We also must discuss Secondary preparatory items like ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise. One thing is key. Consistency. Consistency. Consistency. If you put ketchup on your hamburger one week don't put mayonnaise on it next week.

Once again, eat the entrée first and then move around the plate counterclockwise. Sometimes it will be beans then the rice or vice versa correlate with however they are prepared on the plate.

(Side note do not drink anything until after you are done eating all items.)

In Closing, do you want to reach that higher plateau you have always yearned for. If you want to climb to the top of Mount Serenity than join me why don't you. If you want peace of mind and more energy then try my program. You have nothing to lose. Or you can just stay where you are now and never understand the enlightenment spiritual eating will create for you.

 



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The Man in the Blue Shirt                                                                                                 

by James A. Ford

t’s all up to you." The man in the blue shirt said.

Janice Carter looked up from her kneeling position as she shoveled spilt lipstick, gum, keys, and other personal items strewn on the sidewalk back into her new red purse.

"What did you say?" She asked just a bit peevish, glancing up at the man. At least he could help her after bumping into her. He said nothing, his lips held only a slight smile.

Janice finished with her retrieval and stood up facing the man. She was now level with his easy smile. Had she met him somewhere and forgotten or was he some nut, one of the many the city seemed so eager to produce. Janice looked behind her, nervously chewing her bottom lip, was the man talking to someone else—there was no one specifically, just the flood of early afternoon pedestrians flowing past them without a second thought.

Janice started to feel just a bit foolish staring at this strange man who she was now sure she had never seen before. His smile was so benign, so calm, it held her there waiting, despite her feelings of foolishness. What did he want?

"What do you want?"

"You," he said. Janice started to open her mouth unsure of a response.

"It’s all up to you," he stated again, then turned and walked away. Janice watched for a moment until his blue shirt disappeared among the throng of surging bodies. Janice knew for a fact, that, that was the weirdest thing she could ever remember happening to her. First he bumps into me, she thought, spilling the contents of my purse, and then this deal about it being up to me.

What was he talking about?
What was up to her?
Weird.

Janice took a deep breath and shook her head as pedestrians streamed around her. She glanced down and discovered more of her spilt change still on the sidewalk. Oblivious to the traffic of bodies, she knelt and picked up the coins placing them one by one in her new red purse, as she did so a thought came to her. A thought that surprised her even more then the man in the blue shirt had:  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he was right.
What if somehow, someway, something was up to her and her alone.

The thought made her smile. What? What might she control? She had no idea but she would find out. Her smile broadened. It was her first smile of the day.

Janice stood, straightened her skirt and turned to walk the short distance back to her cubical and the rest of her day. As she took her first step, a man in a dark brown suit, walking quickly towards her, looked up from his newspaper just in time to avoid a head on collision. He gracefully spun to her right but caught his newspaper on Janice’s purse. The paper clumped to the ground. As if on reflex the man knelt at once to retrieve it. 
 

"It’s all up to you." The woman with the red purse said. Brian Davis looked up at her, "Excuse me, what," he asked. The woman didn’t respond. He collected his newspaper and then stood up facing her. He found her face calm and pleasant, carrying a slight smile. Had he met her somewhere before, he didn’t think so. She said nothing, just smiled.
Brian Davis started to feel just a bit foolish.


                                                                                                        
 
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Dead Man's Mail                                                                                                                           

by Maureen Griswold


y brother declared them “idiots.” I declared them “dolts.”

“What waste, sending this—paper, postage, time, resources. No wonder our insurance rates go up,” criticized Antoinette, our mother and octogenarian survivor of the Great Depression.  Of course she would criticize, she of the generation fated to disdain waste, to rail against the foolishness of nitwits who had again mailed a solicitation to her long-departed husband, Maurice.

“Dad’s only been dead—oh, what?  Eleven years,” Kim, my brother, grinned.

“Eleven years and seven months,” I calculated.

“If I were in charge of a company, this wouldn’t happen,” Mom insisted.
 
True, Kim and I knew, our eyes met as we stifled laughing which would peeve Mom even more.  Had she been born a few decades later, had she the opportunities available to women in the latter part of the Twentieth  century, Antoinette Griswold could have run a company or two or three.  Solicitations of the deceased would not occur under her watch.
 
She huffed and tossed the letter onto her dining room hutch as she departed to the order and symmetry of her backyard garden.

Kim and I retrieved the letter from GE, General Electric, reading again its offer to mail the quite dead, quite long-departed Maurice D. Griswold information about GE’s “Long Term Care Plan” to protect his retirement assets.  Incredible.

This was not, however, our first acquaintance with the phenomenon known as Dead Man’s Mail. 

Decades before, Dad himself had dealt with a stubborn case of Dead Man’s Mail courtesy of the Wall Street Journal. Despite his firstborn, Scott, having been killed in action as an Army helicopter pilot in Vietnam, the Wall Street Journal pursued Scott to subscribe long after his death.  Offer after offer, enticement after enticement to Scott arrived at my parents’ mailbox for almost three years postmortem.  Several times throughout this lunacy, Dad phoned as well as wrote diplomatic letters to the Wall Street Journal informing them of the death and requesting the Wall Street Journal to cease and desist soliciting a dead young man to subscribe to their stellar publication.  No wonder, years later while watching the Tonight Show I laughed out loud when Johnny Carson quipped if anyone can find you in the afterlife, it will be a subscription department. 

Dad had a good sense of humor.  A shame he wasn’t here to see GE’s letter.  As Kim and I skewered GE, I imagined our Dad in his business suit prime and good health.  There he stood with us, chuckling, amused until, like Antoinette, becoming exasperated.   The waste . . .

The next morning I sat at my dining table, paper and pen in hand for the mundane task of paying bills.  The phone rang, a brief, ordinary call.  I returned receiver to cradle, stopped, and gasped.  The morning fell out beneath me, a dream before awakening flooded consciousness.

In dream I sat at the dining table, the setting and soft overhead light exact to the present.  I was taking a phone call, holding the receiver firm to my left ear, hurrying yet careful, meticulous, transcribing a caller’s instructions.  It was a long-distance call, the male voice on the other end of the line serious, all business.
Yet, my right hand slowed and stopped.  I clutched the receiver tighter, listening, recognizing, remembering tone, rhythm, cadence.  Mental flashes of my businessman father in his mid-forties, healthy, vibrant, his hair thick and dark, clothed in the blue suit selected for his funeral, streamed lightening swift.  Next, flashes of skyscrapers against a vivid, sunny sky, a New York City autumn afternoon.  He had often traveled to New York City on business trips when he was in his forties. 

“Is this Dad?” I interrupted, slow, cautious.

The voice stopped, his answer spoken as slow as my question: “Yes.”

“Are—are you dead?”

A pause of soft long distance static passed through the line.

“Yes,” he answered, matter-of-fact.

Questions arose, swirled—shock, incredulity, excitement yet hesitancy. 
Spoken language, receded, communication became telepathic.  I asked a question about Scott which my father answered before imparting further questions were not be asked.  Time was limited, the task at hand this call.  The dream ended with me resuming taking dictation, my right hand and pen diligent upon the steno pad.
A numinous dream, its realism extraordinary.  I could still sense the tone, the timbre of his voice.  What was the message?  What had I transcribed?

Still the mind. Be still as you were in the dream, have pen and paper, wait.  Do it, skeptic.  There’s no one watching  . . .
Receiving . . . hand and pen moving . . . cursive movements . . . time vanishing, vanquished . . .
Stillness.  I opened my eyes, stared at the pad’s blue-ink crawls and mazes.  Discernment was possible, gradual: curves, dots, letters, words, sentences, sense and logic.  It was a business letter:
 
July 22, 2000
To: Mr. (name mercifully withheld by author)
      President, LTC Division
             &
The Remainder of GE’s Esteemed Marketing Geniuses

Dear Mr. XXX & GE’s Marketing Personnel,

Being that I acquired the status of “deceased” on January 5, 1989, my residence changed shortly thereafter to: Golden Gate National Cemetery, San Bruno, California, Headstone #4512.

Due to this unfortunate occurrence, I must decline your generous offer of a FREE Information Request on “how a GE Capital Assurance Long Term Care Plan can help protect my retirement assets . . .”

I am intrigued, however, by GE’s impressive motto, “We bring good things to life.”  If this motto is to imply that GE provides services pertaining to resurrection, please mail me the pertinent marketing materials, ASAP, at my correct address.
You impress me as a very intelligent, competent group of business people.  Congratulations on your abilities and achievements in enhancing GE’s image.

Most sincerely & best regards,
Maurice D. Griswold
Golden Gate National Cemetery
San Bruno, CA
Headstone #4512
DOB: 4/15/1917
Deceased: 1/5/1989
 
 
Yes, this sounded like Dad, although it’s odd he emerged from The Great Beyond to dictate a letter to GE.  Yet perhaps, yet however brief, a doorway had opened, a veil had lifted.  I had drifted off to sleep thinking of him the night before, what I associate with him: World War II, Army Air Corps, Camel cigarettes, Elmira, New York, New York City business trips, golfing, his laugh, his smile, his humor, his ingrained distaste for waste.
 
 
So, as transcriber and dutiful daughter, I typed his letter and mailed it to GE.
 
 
His letter was never acknowledged by GE, but the phenomenon of Dead Man’s Mail ceased soon thereafter Dad’s message from the Hereafter.
 
 
When we next visited Golden Gate National Cemetery, no letter from GE nor any other communiqué lay upon the sod where Maurice and Scott rest beneath nor was anything tucked between their shared white marble headstone and the sod’s edge.  As always, the wind swept through row upon row of a vast green measure of stone and earth beneath flight paths of planes and jets coursing an endless horizon above.


 



                                                                                                        
 
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Chain of Custody                                                                                                            

 by Robert Laughlin

said: publish my ms. as is. Editor heard: add chaps from Alice in Wonderland. Reviewer was: prez of The Society of Lewis Carroll Haters.

 



                                                                                                      
  
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The Story Of My Life                                                                                

by Wayne Scheer


  was sitting at the computer, too depressed to even look at porn, when this ad appeared on my email—"Make her feel like you're the only one in the room."  Usually, stuff like that gets sent directly to my spam folder, but this one somehow managed to elude it.  I took it as a sign; that's how desperate I was.  A love potion for only $29.99.   It was a sham, of course.  Still, I thought: what the hell? 
 
My plan, if you can call it that, was to invite Molly, who works in production, over for a dip in my new hot tub.  I'd been attracted to her ever since I began working in the business office at the studio.  At least she smiled at me and we had lunch a couple of times, which was more than I'd been used to lately.
 
I spent over five grand on the tub—after all, this was L.A.—-thinking it might attract the kind of wild sex parties I fantasized about ever since Cindy ran off with that two-bit actor.  I knew it was crazy even then.  Guys like me don't have orgies.  The closest I ever get to that kind of action is writing off some big shot's party as a business expense. 
 
"Accountant to the Stars" was the way Cindy described me when we moved out here.
 
"Bookkeeper to the Has Beens and Never Wases" is more like it.
 
When the mailman delivered a small vial of clear liquid with the words, "Love Potion #9" written on it, I laughed.  Couldn't these scam artists at least come up with something more original?  But I didn't toss it into the trash the way I knew I should.
 
Oddly enough, it gave me the confidence to invite Molly to join me for a hot tub party at my place.  I tried sounding casual, like it was no big thing, while my heart pounded.  I felt bad because I could tell she thought this was her big chance to make the Hollywood party scene and be with celebrities.  Like the jerk I am, I didn't correct her.  I really liked her, and if she was impressed with me—even if it was a lie—I didn't want to do anything to change her mind.
 
But I should have known the feeling wasn't mutual when she asked if she could bring her friend, Justine, who I'd seen around the studio.  She was an extra who worked as a nude body double for shy actresses.  I said, "sure," while my heart threatened to jump out of my body and perform solo.
 
I rush ordered a second vial of the love potion.
 
I knew I was acting like a fool.  But I'd been so down since Cindy left that I had lost the ability to make simple conversation with a woman.  A friend had fixed me up with someone just recently and I swear I couldn't think of a damn thing to say to her all through dinner.  She was as eager to call it an early evening as I was.  This love potion was bogus, I knew that, but what could be the harm?  Besides, the image of Molly, Justine and me in my hot tub danced in my head.
 
Molly showed up wearing this little black dress that had me drooling while Justine's outfit displayed breasts that obviously had cost her a fortune.  They were disappointed my house wasn't crowded with celebrities, and I explained it was just us.  Molly offered her smile and apologized for misunderstanding.  I felt bad, but they agreed to a nice Pinot and some cheese.  I knew it was wrong, and yet I poured the potion into the bottle and split the wine between us.
 
Almost immediately, they seemed to relax and not mind the absence of a glamorous party.  Even I relaxed.  We spoke, listened to soft jazz and sipped wine.  They paid attention to my stories and laughed at the right places.  It seemed natural for me to open a second bottle, which, of course, I spiked with the other love elixir. 
 
I didn't know what they were feeling, but I sure knew what I felt.  Although I really wanted to be alone with Molly, I began thinking that partying  with both of them just might be possible. 
 
I suggested we try out my new hot tub. 
 
The two friends whispered and giggled.  "We thought you'd never ask," Molly said.
 
I was about to tell them I had a couple of bathing suits that belonged to my ex when Molly and Justine stripped naked and ran to the tub. 
 
With my heart now doing a Gene Krupa impersonation, I pulled off my clothes and chased after them.
 
When I got out on the deck where the hot tub was I saw these two gorgeous naked women kissing each other.  Awesome. 
 
But when I tried slipping in between them, they moved closer to one another and made it clear I was intruding on their party.  They drank more wine, hardly noticing me.
 
That was about two hours ago.  Now I'm finishing off another bottle, allowing my heart to return to its normal, dull thud.  Molly and Justine are sharing the guest bedroom.

 



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The House No One Lived In                                                                                                 

by
Tom Sheehan

 

(he names, except Frank’s, have been changed to protect the guilty.)

They considered themselves as midnight adventurers, coming off the hill they so lovingly called Henshit Mountain, to cross the pond in the dead of winter with sleds to “borrow” lumber from Artie Donolan who had ”borrowed” it from Breakheart Reservation, a state park. The park, at its deepest end, bordered on land that the Donolans had worked for years, including timber they ripped out of the state park as long as a few eyes stayed closed. To the boys from Henshit Mountain, the Donolan rape was not unknown, not to these teenagers, who were only enacting their own form of justice, borrowing enough lumber to build themselves a clubhouse at the thickly-treed section of the mountain. With various spurts of energy, even in summer when they floated rafts of lumber across the same pond from the same lumberyard, rooms were added to the clubhouse. The building rose majestically, they all agreed, they who had to a man become proficient carpenters and finish men.

Over a number of years, as they grew toward a global war surfacing on both oceans, meetings were held, elections concluded, designs and improvements of all genres initiated, trysts enamored, hope burst continually from that domicile in which no one lived.

Came the day when the town, through the office of the chief of police, demanded taxes be paid on the property, thus quickly abandoned by the clubmen to the town, to the weather, to the times, as they relocated their activities to another site, another phantom house they’d build on a tract of land without a road, deeper in the patch of tall pines, stray apple trees feeding off the ground since the Civil War days, soft maples, and tyrant oaks that never let go their territory.

Building membership included Frank Parkinson, Eddie Oljay, Bud Petitteau, Homer Barnard, Allie Devine, Clete Weavering, Asa Parnell, Poker Symonds, Nial O’Hara, Chuck Grabowski, and others, by adoption or temporary association, whose names will only resurface as the story progresses. Some girls, of course, toward that quick run at war gathering in Europe, had honorary admission at all hours after a code of secrecy had been imposed. Not one of those girls, from what I have heard over the long years, ever broke that code.

Even as the members pillaged materials in small doses from other ready sources on Route One, begged and borrowed in addition to the stealing, the noises on the far side of two oceans began to sift into their meetings.

“Hey, guys,” Poker Symonds said one night as the moon sifted through the trees atop them, “I just heard Buzz Marchowski joined the Canadian Air Force, the RCAF, and is already up there in Moncton or Shediac or St. Something somewhere. Eddie Smiledge down The Rathole told me. Says Buzz’s all pissed off about the Germans screwing up Poland where his grandparents are, still living on the family farm.”

Symonds, whose name had been changed from a hard–to-pronounce beginning like Sczy and whatever, kept shaking his head as if he wondered why his name had been hidden behind soft edges. As it turned out, he’d be the first to leave the clubhouse one night soon and never come back again. Under the moon that night and in the light of the kerosene lamps, others knew what was cooking in him, for his eyes told about the deep unrest so recently kicked free.

Each knew his turn was coming, that he was bound elsewhere on the face of the globe. If it touched Saugus in any manner, any manner at all, they all swore an oath they’d be in the first line of recruits.

Germany was making too much noise, stepping on too many toes, bustling and bragging of their great inroads on small nations guarded by token armies, and Japan was stretching its imperial hands across the rich skin and into too many orifices of the tasty Orient. Within a week the balled fist of war came at them; one classmate, flying for the RCAF, was shot down over the English Channel; a neighbor of Parkinson’s was missing from an RAF flight over France; Clete Weavering’s uncle was stomped to death on the China coast trying to sneak out to a submarine after secret service on the mainland, and Oljay’s distant cousin was shot by a firing squad at the edge of a Polish ghetto.

War, in its demand for enlistment, called them, young and exuberant in their outlook. The next week they gathered in the clubhouse, the house nobody lived in, and made plans to help save the world.

Frank Parkinson said, “We don’t go as a group. We don’t get in one line to any branch of the service, and end up in one squad or one flight or one patrol, go down with one bang. We each go our own way. If we come back, or those who do come back, we’ll meet here. No Trafalgar Square for us or even under the clock at The Ritz. We will celebrate here someday. We ought to go down to see the Chief and tell him our plans. He might understand. If not, we’ll tell him not to tell us.”

“Why can’t we go as a group, the whole club of us?” Oljay said, seeing the whole group as a squad of its own, firepower from the start, Robin Hoods or Lone Rangers waging battle.

Parkie said, “If we walked in, got consecutive numbers, they’d split us up. They do things like that so we don’t clique it up. Makes sense to me, so we should each go our way. I’m for the army. When I heard about Big Red in Burma, I knew I’d end up in the army.”

In a day’s time, all was decided, for each of them. All services were involved.

The war to end all wars bruised them all, each one, each in different ways, some with dread permanence. Clete Weavering was blown off the deck of a Navy supply vessel in the Pacific, never to be seen again. A year later an envelope ended up at the Legion Hall, from Clete, simply addressed to The Boys of Henshit Mountain, Saugus, Massachusetts. The Post Office, having no proper or known address, delivered it to the Legion Post, #210, to hold for any survivors of the war who might have been The Boys of Henshit Mountain. As it was, one old WW I vet said he knew them and would deliver it to the first one who came home. The Legion held the letter for almost two years.

It was delivered to Bud Petitteau one evening at the Meadowglen Club. Bud had come home from two years in the far Pacific and hospital time, one hand gone from a nasty grenade. The old Legionnaire heard Bud was home, spending time at The Meadowglen with some guys already home, and delivered the letter, which was simple enough in its message:

“Miss you guys like hell, but some good guys here. I want to see if this gets through to the clubhouse or to any of you. We’ve heard stories about miraculous deliveries of short addresses. If I don’t get to see you on the mountain, I’m sure that we will catch up to each other sometime, someplace. Your clubhouse pal, Clete

PS: Say hi to Mildred Derning for me. I got her last letter about a year ago and never did answer for one reason or another. She’s a cute kid I’ve thought about a few times.

(A note here: It was not revealed until 1950 that Mildred Derning had an eight-year old son she had named John Cletus Derning. She never married as far as I know and died in 1981. John Cletus Derning took down his physicians shingle in 2002. I don’t know if he ever knew anything about his father, but I hope he did. If this tells him, it’s about all I can do.)

Homer Barnard didn’t come home from the 2nd Infantry Division in the Pacific, and the 31st Infantry Regiment of the 7th Infantry Division in Korea, until 1954 and after he had served in a POW camp in North Korea for two years. One of his letters, addressed to The Clubhouse on Henshit Mt, Saugus, Mass., was hung up in a dead letter box and a postal center under construction until it fell from between the cracks of time in 1963. It was delivered back to Homer by a personal friend, an employee of the USPS and an army comrade from basic days, who had intercepted it finally en route to Saugus and recognized the sender’s name. He drove from New York one day in the fall to deliver it and spent a week in Saugus. He even visited the original clubhouse, which by then had been jacked up and a cellar placed under it, three rooms added, and a porch wrapped half way and more around the house from where a huge section of Rumney Marsh was visible as well as a great chunk of the Atlantic Ocean on a good day. The two men sat on the porch a good part of one afternoon with the owner, in Italy with the 10th Mountain Division with a few other Saugus boys, and the beer was free. They even went to see the Patriots play the Kansas City Chiefs at Fenway Park, which ended up in a tie game.

Parkie, who admittedly only wrote one letter to the guys, which has not yet surfaced, but about whom much has been written by me, ended up on the hot sands of the Sahara and could have been dead a few times. Of him it has been said, him being The Municipal Subterranean in a poem: He comes up, goggled, out of a manhole in the middle of a street in my peaceful town, sun the sole brazier, like an old Saharan veteran, Rommel-pointing his tank across the four-year stretch of sand, shell holes filling up quick as death. I think of Frank Parkinson, Tanker, Tiger of Tobruk, now in his grass roots, the acetylene smile on his oil-dirty face, the goggles still high on his high forehead, his forever knowing Egypt’s two dark eyes.

Frank told me his story one evening as we drank beer by old Lily Pond. It came around as “Parkie, Tanker, Tiger of Tobruk,” and many people have read it elsewhere.

Asa Parnell, it has been said, wrote dozens of letters to the guys but sent his via Harry Clemson at The Pythian Alleys (The Rathole Poolroom its other half), who held them until one of the guys picked them up in 1945, after the big boom went down. Parnell had 25 missions as a waist gunner of a B-17 over Europe, went to school on the GI Bill, ended up with his PhD, taught at two Maine colleges for more than 30 years before he drowned in a kayak ride on the Allagash River when he was over 70 years old. He only came to Saugus at the Founders Day festivities, out front of the Town Hall in September of the year when, at times, 10-15 thousand people might pass through the center of town during the celebration, the accompanying mini-marathon race, and the high school football game every other year. One year I heard that he found two other guys and they sat for four hours on the steps of the library hashing over the old days, and then he went north again, for his last ride a few years later.

Every so often, as if I’m being summoned by a voice, a face, the edge of a shared incident, I leave the vets section of the cemetery and visit Henshit Mountain, trying to find any remnant of a clubhouse, cellar in place, second floor added, perhaps a porch and a garage, a garden for summer attendance. Once an old fishing buddy, who had lived on the mountain for many years, pointed out two or three places that had strange beginnings. “There are no shortcuts in those places. They were built well by guys who knew their business. They had OJT before there was OJT. Go down alongside old Lily Pond and more than half the houses down there were summer camps before the big war, and when the boys came back home and were looking for cheap quarters, they bought a camp erected on cement blocks and after a while jacked it up, put in a stone or poured foundation, got central heating, raised a family, added rooms, sold it, bought or built a new place, all part of the economy. Some of the original camps are now so sprawling over the landscape you’d have to get a pre-war aerial map to find the beginning forms of them.

Parkie carried on for 20 some torturous years before he hugged the earth for the last time, but not on Henshit Mountain, home away from home for a long time in his short life. Every Memorial Day I re-flag his grave along with a host of people re-flagging other graves, and have done so for more than 25 years.

All of them are gone now, some here, some elsewhere. Four of the membership share the same plot with Parkie. None of them ever climbed to the back end of Henshit Mountain after the war. The house that no one lived in really had passed on in their growth, even its nostalgia, for they had rushed onto the real estate of the whole globe.

Now and then, usually close to Memorial Day and again at Veterans Day, I drive up the hill, for that’s what it really is, a rise of about 500 feet above sea level, on a series of paved roads. From the road I can see two houses, now lived in for more than half a century, where no one lived when they were built. I can visualize the membership crossing the pond in winter on sleds loaded with purloined lumber and supplies, or on rafts tied together in the dead of summer nights. I know where they kept their beer in underground coolers, where it stayed cool and was hidden from the temptation of potential thieves. I know some of the girls, still here with us, grandmothers time and again, and great-grandmothers, who swore to the secrecy code and will carry it away with them.

It’s on a rare occasion when I come face to face with one of those ladies in the aisle of a mall store, or at the library with a chosen book, or in the cemetery on a special day, and get a wink acknowledging the deep and mostly hidden years. We understand the past, the pact, the passions. We understand what loyalty means, and where things have gone in this short passage.

 

 



                                                                                                        
 
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By And Through The Distances                                                                                                

by Susan Dale Stacy



ommy hears his long and lonely journeys, and with them the cackling CB that accompanies the hum of the cab’s motor. Together, they comprise Tommy’s traveling song. Along the way are truck stops that glow with dim lights. And Tommy knows that behind the walls are lives that Tommy becomes part of when he parks his rig and stops in for some chow. He eats, flirts with the waitresses, pays his bill, leaves a tip … and out again to climb inside his rig. He drives off with the yellow ribbons of the roads waving him along blacktop roads. In the distance are lights and grazing animals that don’t look up when he passes by. Even lowly livestock know how inconsequential is Tommy. His mind flashes with an arc of the wheel and the whining motor of his rig; they are the meager connections between Tommy and the vast world outside his cab windows.

A world chock full of people, buildings and animals, streaks of sky and rolling hillsides; here but momentarily, then quickly left behind; like time; like eternity. Gone before Tommy can touch them. The emptiness within widens until it smothers his yearning heart.

 Rushing by Tommy are the cars and trucks, trailers and over-wide loads; all are left behind in moments fleeing by. Left behind too are the children who wave to Tommy, and the men and women who look at him with inscrutable faces. When he waves back, Tommy wonders, are any as empty as he? Unfathomable faces, remote their thoughts. They are here and gone on Tommy’s journey through time. 

By massive boulders Tommy drives his rig; past purple mountain ranges and the cacti of the southwest; a prickly, jagged territory rugged—stark. In the eastern seaboard rise the tall, proud trees and the church steeples that point to the heavens; both too high for Tommy to reach. Nor can he measure the vastness of the fields of cackling corn and ripening wheat he sees stretching into a wide, deep horizon. Through the Carolinas he goes, around their mountains, valleys, and the ebony swamps that stretch to verdant Florida with their vines rushing helter-skelter to cover everything in their paths.

Through all and more Tommy drives his load of farm machines. And the beauty and pageantry that once filled him with wonder now saddens him. He has come to realize that the bounty of his motherland is his only for the moments that they are within his line of vision.  

The roads that stretch before and behind Tommy are broken by the yellow ribbons of the roads; ribbons that wave him on to the promises of glorious destinations. That is where Tommy heads. But he has yet to reach the glory of which the ribbons are waving him onto. And so he huddles in the darkness of his cab with a lonely hum of the motor echoing in his head; his rig the sole security of his life. But there are times when even the rig terrifies him. Times when Tommy climbs inside, and in those first, true moments knows that the cab too is a stranger; a dusty, dank cavern filled with spaces and echoes. But Tommy climbs in anyhow. What else can he do; where else can he go? 

On he goes, the truck groaning to stops at lights, grinding gears up and down hills. He circles twisting roads to drive around a curve of the bend that tomorrow might have a gas station on it. But to Tommy, the bend will always and for a thousand times be a curve he circles to find the place that holds yesterdays’ promise; a promise, which doesn’t come to fruition; a promise that doesn’t keep.

Driving the rig Tommy tells himself is nine to five-ing. But in his core, Tommy knows that he drives to escape his hollow spaces; they echo back to him his hollow life. He drives on under the vast skies so blue as forever … and under the limbs of trees that can’t embrace him. And so Tommy puts on his sunglasses and cries.

 


                                                                                                      
  
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Impervious To Change                                                                                                       

by Thomas Sullivan

 


y wife and I head down south for a second stab at buying a used car.  Rolling onto a busy four-lane packed with speeding cars and endless dealerships, I think back to our last trip down here, two weeks ago.  It was our first foray into the world of used cars, and we needed the next fourteen days to recover before trying again.  Our first attempt occurred at a Volkswagen dealership.  The visit didn’t last long.  When Molly asked about the mileage for a Jetta, the sales guy didn’t miss a beat.  Standing next to the car with a thin wisp of yellowing hair dancing on the breeze, the guy tweaked his bolo tie and confidently responded, “This car gets thirty.”  I glanced down at the sticker, which said “22 City/ 28 Highway” and managed to stifle a laugh.  A few minutes later the guy glanced at our car, an aging Honda, and said, “The thing about a heavier car like this is that it’s safer.  Granted, you don’t get as good mileage, but you don’t slide around on the road.  Has that happened to you in your Honda?”

No.  Never. Not in the ten years and 240,000 miles that we’ve had it.

We slog through a series of lights, roll into the Honda dealership, and park.  I yank the emergency brake, hop out of the car, and march toward the lot, away from the office.  I want to get some distance between myself and whoever comes out of the building.  Molly doesn’t keep up and gets brought down like a weakened animal on the savannah.  I’m thirty feet ahead of her and walking at a brisk clip when I hear the guy’s voice.  I slow down, prepare myself, and turn around.  I could just keep cruising away from the office, but I enjoy my low-key marriage.  I can’t abandon Molly.

The sales guy walks up to me and says, “Hey big guy!”

Stay nice.

I smile and shake his hand, answering a few questions about what we’re looking for.  Mostly we’re looking for a place that will let us browse cars in peace and will refrain from bad sales lines.  Admittedly, though, I’m not expecting this.  It’s a lot to ask for.

The sales guy proves to be a tagger.  There are two basic types of salesmen in the car business: floaters and taggers.  Floaters let you browse alone but always hover a car or two back, pretending to check windows or stickers on other cars.  Taggers stay right by your side, asking about the weather and playing up the merits of cars as you pass them by.  The guy two weeks ago was a floater, and we put some good wear on his cowboy boots by the end of our visit.

I glance towards Molly, who is looking at a Civic, two vehicles back.  As I move forward with the sales guy, Molly maintains her distance.  She’s floating our tagger, abandoning me to a stranger in a striped shirt with a plaid tie.  But I can’t blame her—she took the initial heat.  We’re like a championship wrestling team, taking turns with an opponent in a steel-cage match.

Molly eventually catches up when I stop by a solid looking ’02 Honda.  2002, not 1902.  The sales guy gets chatty, pointing out the merits of the car.  He’s suggestive but not forceful, and I’m staring to relax.  We drop into the car and check out the feel.  I glance around the floors and don’t spot any blood stains.  We decide to take it out for a drive.
Molly gets behind the wheel and I head for the back seat.  The sales guy offers me the front, but I chuckle and tell him that I’d prefer he have an air bag.  He looks at me for a moment, not sure if I’m serious, and then gets in the front.  I’d love to know how often these drives end in mishap.  Someone really should come up with a reality show called Alcoholic Test Drive.

We roll out of the lot and head down the road.  At the first light Molly starts turning left and the sales quickly directs her to the right.  Laughing, she swivels back the other way.  I lean forward and say, “She’s a bit rusty … just got her license back from suspension.”  The sales guy handles the incident beautifully.  I’m starting to like him.
As we roll down the street the guy tells us a bit about himself.  He’s finishing college and has recently married.  Congratulations pass around the car.  The guy seems surprised by our response, as if customers rarely care, and is appreciative of our encouragement.  He loves ‘80’s music, which, by his estimation, is the only decade worth a damn musically.  The topic dies quietly.

We do a quick jaunt on the highway, make a few more turns without incident and approach the dealership.  It’s been a fun trip with pleasant small talk.  As we roll into the lot the sales guy chuckles and says, “You know, I work on a salary here.  I had a choice, but no way could I handle that commission racket.  What’s nice is that if someone doesn’t seem interested, I’m like ‘I could care less if you buy this car.’”

We all laugh.  I really like this guy.

We park and walk towards the office.  Heading into the glass-walled building we reiterate the fact that we’re just interested in talking about down payments and loans.  We don’t want to buy anything yet.  The sales guy assures us that this is fine.

Molly and I grab a seat at a table in a bustling showroom with a big car on display.  It occurs to me that dealerships always put their most expensive and fuel-crappy car in the showroom.  It must be a way to show your highbrow merits to the golf course set after they stroll through the lot.

Our sales guy shuffles off and comes back with some coffee.  I like this guy even more.

We fill out paperwork while the guy jots some notes on a paper form.  He grabs our attention, points down at the figures, and says, “The list price on the car is $12,995 and the sales price is $9,995.  So, you save $2,000.”  He circles the number assertively.

I’ll only take if we can save $3,000.

He grabs the forms and heads back into the office to get the manager.  A moment later a short guy with spiky, jelled hair comes out to our table.  He’s dressed in a sharp suit with a slightly loosened tie.

Uh-oh.  It’s a Closer.

I glance at Molly.  We’re not ready to buy—we just want to see some figures on loan amounts after various down payments, and then check out some other dealerships.  That’s all.  Molly flashes me a hesitant look.  We’re quickly losing control of the situation.

The guy asks about a down payment.  We throw out two numbers, which seems to set him on edge.  He’s looking for specifics and pushing to finalize the deal.  We’re still in the hypothetical zone, an annoying wasteland for Closers.  The guy asks the classic question about what it would take to get us into the car today.  A pistol?  Our hesitation is clearly getting to him.

The guy looks up from his sheet and says, “I can tell this isn’t the right car for you.  If it was the right one you wouldn’t be considering other options.”

There’s nothing like being chastised to help things along.  This guy enters the sales-line Hall of Fame, beating out the one in the stereo shop who asked my dad, “Are you looking for price or are you looking for quality?” To which dad replied, “I’m looking for something expensive that sounds like crap.”

We fumble through another minute before I get assertive.  I’m done and so is Molly, who looks tired with slack, baggy eyes.  She’s stopped talking and is staring at the tabletop, like a rape victim waiting for the police questioning to end.  I get a business card and jot down the car number.  I tell the Closer that we’ll think things over and call back later; if the car’s still here, great.  If not, no problem.

The Closer looks at me and says, “We sell almost forty cars a week.”  The insinuation is that we’ll miss out on the chance of a lifetime if we don’t get the car today.  Like we’re passing on the last cup of water in the middle of a scorching desert and will surely perish. 

The Closer heads into the back and we take a moment to thank the first guy, the one who took us out for the test drive.  He’s been sitting at the table the whole time, silently watching the ugliness unfold.  We start walking through the showroom, heading toward the parking lot and freedom.  We’re almost to the door when the Closer suddenly reappears.  He looks at me with a serious, jaded expression and says, “Why did you guys come inside if you didn’t want the car?”

Cause we like screwing with salesmen?

We have no answer.  We didn’t say we didn’t want it, pal, we said we were considering it.  Yes, there is a difference. 

But it’s pointless to elaborate.  Sales-speak is an entirely different language, one where the words “maybe” or “possibly” don’t exist.

Driving home Molly suggests looking on-line first before our next attempt.  It’s the perfect idea.  You can say “maybe” to a computer screen without feeling the need to shower afterwards.

* * * 

Over the next two weeks Molly researches cars online.  We narrow the selections down to two promising prospects, a pair of well priced Honda’s.  On a rainy night we head toward to the airport to meet a guy selling a newer model Civic for $2,000 below its Blue Book value.  We should know better.

Driving down the highway in rush hour stop-and-go traffic I realize that this new approach has committed me fully to searching for a car.  With dealerships I can feign an existing commitment and escape this hell, allowing Molly to shop alone.  People don’t disappear from dealerships.  But a woman meeting some random guy in a Shari’s parking lot doesn’t cut it in today’s world.  I don’t want Molly to end up in a Bangkok bar as some sex worker.

With wipers flying we trudge through a stream of traffic leaving the industrial parks near the airport.  We roll into the Shari’s, park, and start looking for our mystery man.  He hasn’t arrived, so we sit watching the traffic and listening to the stereo.  I’m starting to think that the best way to car shop would be to enter all the contests that offer vehicles as a prize and just take whatever comes your way. 

A car backs quickly into the spot next to us.  It’s an impressive move given the heavy rain and darkness, executed with deft precision that mocks the narrowness of the parking slot.  The skill required suggests that the driver would be good at backing a stolen car up a ramp and onto a semi-trailer.

The guy steps out of the car and greets us in a Russian accent.  We hurry into his car to get out of the rain, which is falling in thick drops.  I jump behind the wheel, with Molly at my side and Igor in the back.  After a few questions I roll out onto the road for a test drive.

Creeping down the road we hear the car’s alleged history.  It was in a “minor” accident, requiring replacement of the headlights and bumper.  According to Igor the body is fine, since the airbags didn’t deploy and the light indicating their readiness is still lit up.  It occurs to me that the airbag system could be faulty, or a mechanic re-engaged the light after replacing the front half of the car.  I don’t say anything, however, and focus on preventing the car from having a second accident.  Headlights and neon shine through the rain into my eyes while I navigate an unfamiliar set of roads.

We land back at Shari’s.  Thinking things over I’m tempted to go for it.  The car is nice and rides well.  The mileage is low.  Igor seems like a good guy who isn’t hiding anything.  There aren’t any post-Katrina lines of slime running down the doors.

When I turn to compliment Igor on his car I notice the baby seat in the empty space at his side.  It could be legitimate, but something feels off.  If I was into buying totaled cars at insurance auctions and rebuilding them, I’d definitely try to make it feel like a family vehicle.  Something safe and well cared for with a lot riding on its tires.

Igor picks up on my subtle change in enthusiasm and offers to drop the price.  The low price is already a concern, and lowering it further doesn’t help.  I stumble through a series of words, an almost incoherent sentence, claiming to want to look around some more.  The car buying shift has occurred, where you just want to flee, and I sense the same feeling in Molly.  She agrees to the plan and Igor rambles through how to contact him, a vague process involving a call to his brother.  As Molly jots down the number I sit starting at the traffic, wishing the world were completely honest and trustworthy. 

Sitting in the Sharis, Molly and I look at each other tiredly.  We both know we’ll be back at it in another week or so.  The thought is discouraging.

Molly looks over at me, laughs, and says, “You know, we’re exactly the same when it comes to this stuff.”

I smile, thinking to myself that I could have jumped on this one.  Get it over with.  The two different shades of red on our car, which just recently became noticeable after ten years or trouble-free driving, suggest that a rebuild was done.  Maybe Igor’s car would be fine, rebuilt or not.  But we’ve had a good run with one questionable car and I’m in no mood to tempt fate.  And then there was that damn baby seat, calling out to me like a lighthouse shouting “steer clear.”

I look over at Molly and say, “I don’t know.  It seemed okay.  But I don’t really want Homeland Security kicking in the door and taking us away for supporting Chechen rebels.”

I stare out the window, thinking it might just be time to buy a bicycle.

 


                                                                                                      
  
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