 
### THE MAN ON THE PARK BENCH

And Twelve More Tales of Intrigue

By

Don McNair

Smashwords Edition

Copyright© 2012 by Don McNair

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews. All trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks, and registered service marks are the property of their respective owners and are used herein for identification purposes only.

THE MAN ON THE PARK BENCH

And Twelve Other Tales of Intrigue

Professional writer and editor Don McNair spent forty years writing for others, but at night he wrote fiction and non-fiction books for pleasure. This book presents his favorite short stories, never before published.

Contents

The Man on the Park Bench:

What were the dark secrets from his past? And his future?

Beulah's Glow-in-the-Dark Jesus:

He was such a _nice_ boy, educated and all. And Beauregard was gone...

Brotherly Love:

Jack's big brother had just gotten out of prison and the police were already hounding him. If someone didn't help him, he'd go right back.

Heroes on Parade:

A parade wasn't even scheduled. But there it was, and only she and Margaret could see it.

Home in Time:

Carl Nichols might be in his nineties, but maybe he could still save his parents.

The Chipmunk Sign:

Farmer Ben O'Malley finally visited the ritzy sister who'd abandoned him and their father years ago. But he sure wasn't expecting this.

The CLOSET Apprentice:

Where do old sayings come from? This retiring "old sayings" professional is ready to explain it all to his new apprentice.

The Green Bridesmaid Dress:

That dress was sure purty and all. But would it do what it was supposed to?

The Liaison:

Richard Smith was ready for a midlife fling. Or _was_ he?

The Merit Badge:

If Don had earned that merit badge fifty years ago, his life would probably have turned out a whole lot different.

The Old Furniture Polish Warehouse:

When Stacey Jenkins' mother ran away with the chemical salesman thirty years ago, she didn't get far.

The Quarantine Flatboat:

1770's pioneer Aaron Reeder thought he knew what love for his young daughter was, until he ran into problems going west on the Tennessee River flotilla to settle the land.

Deliverance at Last:

If God wouldn't save him, he'd have to do it himself.

## Man on the Park Bench

_What were the dark secrets from his past_? _And his future_?

Jim Morton tapped an idle rhythm on the park bench's iron arm as he looked up Christopher Street toward the town's center. The only people in sight were two old men talking together with hands clasped behind them. A cold breeze rustled red and yellow leaves, fallen from the trees lining the street.

He shifted his thin body and looked south at third rate houses with wrinkled asphalt roofs and gray plastic weatherboard, flanked with decrepit cars and junkyard bicycles. The day he'd left this town for good he could still see the river, but now those trees and little Monopoly houses blocked the view.

Maybe Betty lived in one of those houses. She didn't say where she lived, and he didn't think to look at the address in the telephone book when he called her not an hour before. But maybe she married well and lived uptown in one of them condos he'd heard about. Maybe she did.

He turned toward his bench partner, a black man wearing a tweed jacket under a London Fog overcoat. "I ain't seen her for more'n twenty five years," he said. "Think I'll recognize her?"

"You might, man. You just might. How old was she then?"

Morton's thick eyebrows bunched up. "Hell, I won't recognize her. She was only five."

"You might. Family resemblance, that type of thing."

"Yeah, I guess."

If pigs could fly. He tucked her into bed one December night, took off, and here it was twenty five, thirty years later. A lot of water had gone over that dam.

"Remember what she looked like then?"

The black man seemed bound and determined to keep it going. He turned toward Morton, who was hunched down in his khaki overcoat and wrinkled dungarees. Thick gray hair peeked from under his baseball cap. He was only in his fifties, but on days like this, when the wind gusted and the air smelled of snow, he felt old.

"She was pretty as hell, just like a picture book. But I couldn't pick her out now, even if she did handstands."

Something moved in the park. His eyes focused on a woman in a faded blue cloth coat and high rubber boots. She took quick steps toward them, head down against the wind. She looked up with squinted eyes and saw them, stopped, then took a cautious step.

"That's her," Morton whispered, sitting up. "God, don't ask me how I know, but that's her."

"Right. Well, you don't need me here. I'm moving on."

The black man walked north, whistling a soulful tune through his teeth. Morton stood and pulled the cap from his head, felt the wind's bitterness, and put it back on. She walked across the street toward him, head down, turned away from the wind, and stopped by the bench.

"You Jim Morton? I mean—my daddy?"

He took his hat off again, wadding it with busy fingers, then shivered and pulled it back over his ears to lock out the cold.

"Yes ma'am, I am. Didn't take long for you to get here."

"I just live over there in the apartment buildings, behind them houses," she said, pointing across the park. "I'd'a been here sooner, but John drove the car to work."

For several seconds they stood there, both looking down, not saying anything.

"Look, why don't you come over to the apartment? It ain't much, but it's warmer there. You have time to do that, don't you?"

"No, I... I really don't. I gotta move on in a minute. Gotta catch my ride."

"Well, let's sit down, then. How you been?"

They both sat. "Tolerable. Nothing to brag about, but tolerable. You doin' all right?"

"I guess."

"Well, it's good seeing you again."

Daddy, why did you leave us?"

Just like that. He looked at his dirty knuckles, then toward the park. "One of them things, I guess. Your Momma and me, we just didn't get on."

"She said you beat her up."

"Well, yes, and I'm sorry for that." He tried to think of something, anything, to change the subject. "What's happened to you since then?"

"I'm married, got three kids. Guess you already knew that."

"I didn't know about the 'three kids' part. Knowed you was married, though. I found that out."

She shivered and pulled her coat collar up around her ears, partially covering her bleached, dirty looking blonde hair. She did have the family look. Slit like eyes, a broad nose, high cheekbones, even the dimple. He rubbed his own thin chin absently, watching her. Was it the light, or did she have a black eye? He reached up to touch it.

"An accident," she said, pushing his hand away. "I had an accident."

"Looks like somebody beat you up. Your old man treatin' you all right?"

"He—he hit me there," she said. "He don't mean to. But sometimes he's been drinkin', and I say something he don't like. I guess it's as much my fault as his."

"Mebbe so."

He used to hit her mother, too, like she said. Sometimes she'd leave him, and then he'd cry and promise not to do it again, and she'd come back. He'd beat her up pretty bad that last time. She called the cops, and he just walked out and left her. Left with only a dollar in his pocket. He'd hitchhiked west, got as far as Kansas City before he robbed that convenience store to get something to eat. He blinked, trying to make the picture go away. The frightened clerk, her screaming sobs, the popping noise the Coke bottle made when he hit her to shut her up. It made headlines the next day, about her being nearly dead. He'd hid for three days before hitchhiking out of town.

"Three kids, you say."

"Two girls and a boy. The oldest's fourteen. She's got a mind of her own, I'll tell you. She's pregnant, too, don't know who the father is. I know'd who her father was, but he wouldn't marry me. One of them snooty people, know what I mean?"

"Yep, sure do," he said. "Enough of them in the world."

"My boy's eleven. Sharp as a tack. Wants to be an astronaut or a policeman or some such thing. Seems like it changes every day. But he'll probably wind up like his daddy and me, working at the tractor factory."

He nodded. "I worked there once. You know they've been there since before World War I? Made tanks for Uncle Sam, I think. Long time, ain't it?" He looked at his wristwatch, then up at her. "Well, I better get goin'." He shuffled his feet, as if to get up.

She stood and adjusted her wrinkled coat. "When you goin' to be back through here again?"

"You cain't never tell. I'm goin' out to California, now. Probably spend the rest of my life there."

"Well, if you come back, you can stay at our place. We'll make room."

"Mebbe I will." He looked at his watch again. "Well, I'll be seein' you."

"I can stay and wait with you," she said. "If you want me to."

He touched her arm. "I thank you, I really do. But you know, I'd like to remember how you look when you walk away. So I can see you all at once."

She looked puzzled, then nodded. "Okay, Daddy, if you want me to. Well, goodbye."

She hugged him awkwardly, brushing her lips on his cheek. Then with the same quick steps, her rubber boots crushing the fallen leaves, she was gone.

Morton leaned back and watched the spot where she'd disappeared. He wiped tears away with a dirty finger and looked toward town. The black man was coming back. He stopped by the bench and reached into his jacket pocket.

"Well, how was it, man? She like you thought she'd be?"

"Guess so. But I don't really know what I was expecting, Ron."

Ron fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a key. He knelt and inserted it into the leg iron that anchored Morton's left ankle to the bench leg and turned it until it clicked. Morton rubbed his ankle.

"You tell her you killed your old woman, an' was on your way to prison?"

Morton shook his head. "Didn't seem like a good time. She's got her own problems."

"Don't we all. Here, stick your arms behind your back."

Morton did. He cringed as the handcuffs snapped on his wrists.

"You know we broke the rules here. They find out, they'd probably fire me. Keep your mouth shut, understand?"

"Sure, no problem."

"Don't think I'm getting soft. I even hear you breathe wrong, I'll stomp you with both feet."

"Okay, Ron. I hear you, man."

"Well, let's go. The van's right around the corner."

They walked up the block and turned the corner. A guard stood there, a hand resting on his holstered pistol. Morton stared back across the park, now saw tops of grayed apartment buildings above the little houses. No, he'd never see her again. Life in prison was forever, but at least he was alive. He'd survive. He hoped Betty would survive her prison, too.

He turned, and they walked toward the van.

## Beulah's Glow-in-the-Dark Jesus

He was such a nice boy, educated and all.

_And Beauregard was gone_...

Homer Clopton balanced the partially eaten cookie on his left knee and held his saucered teacup out for a refill.

"Thank you, ma'am," he said, watching Beulah Schuck pour. He was stretched ramrod straight on her worn overstuffed couch's front edge. A hole in his white right sock peeked over a scuffed heel, then hid again as he tucked both feet closer to his sample case.

"It is very nice of you to offer me tea, I am sure." He paused a moment, then added, "The cookie is good, too."

"Oh, my goodness, don't think nothing of it, Mr. Clopton! Or can I call you Homer? That's such a purty name."

Beulah refilled her own cup and set the teapot on the coffee table between them. She, too, sat on the edge of her seat, a white wicker rocker inherited from her mother with the rest of the house fifteen years before. But she did so out of necessity. The last time she'd tried to force her ample body back between its arms she'd almost become stuck.

"Yes, ma'am, please do call me Homer." He sipped the hot liquid. "And what was yore name again?"

"Schuck. Beulah Schuck. It was quite a well known name around here when Father was alive, and we owned all that land. But that's been so long ago. Where did you say you was from?"

"Born and raised over near Pebble Springs," he said. "But I spent the last six months up in Bowling Green. At the Everlasting Love Seminary."

"I see." She sipped her tea and set the cup on the coffee table. She was short, about fifty years old, with salt and pepper hair, rimless bifocals, and three chins. She clasped her fat hands in front of her and looked up again at her visitor.

"You're on your own now, are you?"

"Yes ma'am." His huge Adam's apple bobbed up and down. "Ever since I joined the Redeeming Faith Bible and Plastic Wares Company back in March. I've been traveling for them for more'n a month, now."

"Ah, I knowed you was an educated man!" she said, beaming. "I could just tell it in the way you talked. You use such—such proper English and big words an' all. And now you're a career man, too!"

"Yes ma'am. And I thank you for the compliment."

He appeared to Beulah to be about nineteen years old, barely out of high school, if indeed he had graduated. Unruly red hair bounced across his eyes each time he moved his head. A receding chin and jug handle ears helped the hair frame his shallow face and thin nose. His toothpick like body was dressed in shiny kneed work trousers and a brown plaid sports jacket.

He gulped some tea, set his cup and saucer down, and rummaged through his sample case.

"If I may, ma'am, I'd like to show you our new line. May I first compliment you on your lovely home?"

"Why, thank you, Homer. It's only two bedrooms, but it's certainly big enough for me. More than enough, I might add."

"This here is the newest bible we have." He pulled the heavy tome out and laid it on the table next to their teacups, opened to its center. "All of Jesus' words are printed in red. And look here at the illustrations. It's pro—profusely illustrated."

"Well, so it is. Isn't that the purtiest thing you ever seen!" She reached over and touched it.

"But that's not all! Lookit here, at how strong it is."

He held two pages together and used them as a handle to lift the heavy book.

"Lordy me! Ain't that somethin', now?"

"It's strong, sure enough." He jiggled the book to prove his point. "Them pages won't come out. I mean, they're in there for good."

Beulah sat back in amazement. "Ain't that something! I can just see me readin' that when the rapture comes."

"Oh, do you believe in the rapture? I don't know if I do or not. I figure that when Christ comes he'll prob'ly take everybody and not just a chosen few. If you've been saved, that is."

"Oh, no. He'll get a handful of us true believers first," Beulah said, frowning. "And—and what else do you have?"

"Well, let's see..." He rummaged through his sample case again. "Now here's a nice little item. I would think it would be perfect for your home."

She clasped her hands together again in anticipation, and he brought out a twelve inch long white plastic replica of Christ on the cross.

"It's our glow in the dark Jesus. You can use it for a night light, if you wanted to."

"Now that is truly amazing! You know, sometimes I get turned around when I get up at night? If I hung that by my bedroom door, why—why, Jesus could be leading me on the correct path to the bathroom!"

"That's right," he said, caught up in her excitement. "That's a good way a doin' it. He'd be the light of your life, day and night. But if you think that's something, wait'll you see this."

He reached back into his box of miracles and pulled out a flat cardboard package, slightly larger than a piece of typing paper and perhaps an inch thick. He removed the lid and turned the open box up for her to see.

"It's our very latest product. It's a 3 D Christ at the Last Supper. It's been—" he stopped a moment, then read from the lid. "It's been 'vac—vaccu formed for lasting three dimensional beauty and inspiration.'"

She gasped at the sheer technology that promised to bring her closer to God.

"Let me see that." She heaved herself up out of the rocker and took the object reverently from him, waddled over to the front wall, and held it against the tattered wallpaper with both hands. The skin of her arms hung down like furled sails on a ship's mast.

"How does this look?" she asked over her shoulder.

"Why, that looks—delightful."

As he approached her so he could admire it with her, he stepped on a rubber ball and his foot flew out from under him. He caught himself on the couch's arm.

"Are you all right? That was one of Beauregard's toys. Here, let me get that up."

She handed him the Last Supper and reached down to retrieve the ball from under the coffee table. "I thought I'd already picked up all his little things. Every day I find somethin' else to put away. You know, you'd better start believing in the rapture real fast. You don't know when an accident like that will bring you face to face with Jesus. Or when the end is a goin' to come anyhow."

"I certainly will think about it. Is—is Beauregard a child, or a—"

"He was my little dog." She sat down again. "Poor thing. I had him ever since Mama passed away. Got him just the week after."

Homer looked around the cluttered room.

"Oh, he's not here now. The poor thing died of old age just last week. He was such a dear thing to me, and—now, where was we?"

"We was looking at the lovely three dimensional Last Supper," he said, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Can I put you down for one of them?"

"Oh, heavens yes. I'm sure it will be such an inspiration. And let me have one of those— those—"

"Our glow in the dark Jesus. That has been a very nice item for us, and I'm sure you will be blessed by it for many years."

Beulah disappeared into her bedroom and moments later came out with her purse in hand. She sat on the rocker's edge and carefully counted out her money, most of it in nickels, dimes and quarters.

"And where will you be staying tonight?" she asked. "Nearby?"

"Wherever the Lord leads me. Last night I stayed in the parking lot behind the IGA in Cooper's Ledge. I had a lovely view of the woods across the creek."

She nodded and frowned in deep thought. She looked toward the second bedroom, which had not been used for those fifteen years since her mother passed away, except by Beauregard. It was still furnished with a made up bed, the dresser, and even blankets in the closet. Beauregard's small bed was still in one corner, filled with the toys she had accumulated for him over the years, and which she had gathered with loving care after his recent demise.

Homer closed his case and started to rise.

"Uh—just a minute, Mr. Clopton. I wonder if you would do me a great favor? If you wouldn't mind."

He sat back down again. "I would be very happy to do anything that you ask," he said. "Anything at all. Just name it."

"Well... I've been thinking a long time about starting a—a Bed and Breakfast thing. You know, that's where people stay at night, and you feed them and all the next day?"

"Yes ma'am?"

"I don't know if I'd really like it. I think it's something you've just got to try out once and see. Don't you agree?"

"Well, I—I guess so. I never give it much thought, one way or 'nother."

She rushed on. "Well, I wonder if you'd do me the favor of helping me to find out. Would you stay here tonight? Then in the morning I could fix you a breakfast and maybe a lunch, too. That way I'd get me some practice and see if I liked it."

He thought a moment. "Well, Ma'am, I wouldn't want to put you out none."

"Oh, you wouldn't be putting me out atall. You'd actually be doing me a big favor."

"Really? Well, in that case, I don't see why not. If it'd help you out."

She pushed herself up from her chair. "Oh, I'm so pleased. Come in and see the room. Bring your sample case if you want. There's a closet you can put it in."

He stood. "Well, I'd better get in a couple more calls before the day is over. But I surely will come back. Is that the room over there? That looks like a nice room, all right."

He stepped over and peered into it, and smiled. "It looks somethin' like the room I lived in over to home. But there was three of us sharing that one. Just think—all that room to myself!"

He said his goodbyes and went out to his dilapidated car and drove off down the dirt road, and Beulah stood watching him until the car disappeared in its trail of dust. She walked around to the back of her little cottage, past the broken well pump and a stack of decaying fence posts, and stopped at a bare earthen mound next to her small vegetable garden. She looked at it for several moments, arms crossed, and wiped away a tear.

"He won't be a replacing you, Beauregard, honey," she said. "Nobody can do that. But it do get lonely out here."

She knelt and smoothed the mound with a chubby hand. A tear landed on the dirt and seeped in. Maybe next year she would plant some gladiolus here. She always did like gladiolus. Especially the yellow kind.

She stood and walked slowly to the house. She'd go in and put Beauregard's things up in the attic and clean out the dresser drawers. Then she'd fix Homer her rhubarb surprise for dessert tonight. Surely, he would agree to stay on. Maybe for a long, long time. There wasn't much money left from her daddy's land, but there should be enough to support them for a good while. Especially if Homer could sell a 3 D Last Supper every now and then.

She reached the back door and turned to look back toward the grave. She closed her eyes in a brief prayer, then went inside, a smile on her face. She'd get him to believe in the rapture soon enough. It looked like her new glow in the dark Jesus was already starting to work.

## Brotherly Love

Jack's big brother had just gotten out of prison

and the police were already hounding him.

_If someone didn't help him, he'd go right back_.

Maude Travis stepped onto the porch, hobbled to the swing, and groaned as she sat next to her son. She smoothed the lap of her print dress and began peeling the potatoes she'd brought with her in an aluminum pot.

"It's just like him to be a day late," she said, looking at Jack. She pushed gray bangs away from her face with the back of her wrist. "I've never knowed one time he wasn't late."

The swing's coiled springs squeaked as they swung slowly. It was only mid morning, but it was already getting hot. Jack unbuttoned his shirt and exposed his smooth white chest to what little breeze there was. Small sweat beads had formed on his high cheeks and the long bridge of his nose. He hitched up slightly from his slouched position and turned toward her.

"Maybe they had to keep him over a day or something," he said. "You know, paperwork, stuff like that."

"No, three years is three years," she said. "They could'a kept him locked up 'til Monday night, I guess, and he'd have come home on Tuesday. But this here is Wednesday already."

Jack couldn't refute that logic. He looked down the potholed street the direction his brother Ray would probably come, from the gas station where the Greyhound bus stopped six blocks away. There was no sign of him. Garbage pickup wasn't until the next day, but he noticed overflowing containers in front of several houses, all sitting forward on their postage stamp lots and presenting peeled painted fronts and an occasional ceramic dwarf or reindeer or waterless birdbath to the street.

As he looked, a blue police squad car approached. It slowed as it passed the Travis house, then sped up again.

"That's the second time they've been by this morning," Jack said.

"My God. Why can't they just leave him alone? He's done his time. Remember, that's the way they did back when he was here. They just hounded him and hounded him until they got him on that gas station holdup. I still think he was innocent."

"Ma, he said he did it," Jack said.

"Yes, well, that's what he said. He probably said it just to shut them up. I wouldn't doubt it."

She turned to look at him. "Don't you start acting like him, too." She dropped a peeled potato into her pan and picked up a new one. "Ray started running around when he was younger'n you are, and look at what it got him. Speaking of which, just where was you last night?"

"I was with Bob," he said. "We were just hanging around."

"Well, watch who you do this hanging around with. You could do better than Bob Martin. You better watch it, or you'll wind up no good."

She paused with her peeling and squinted up the street through the top of her bifocals. "Is that somebody walking this way?"

Jack looked and nodded. "I think it's him. Yep, it's him all right."

"My goodness, he's here." She stood and adjusted her dress and stepped to the porch railing. "That's him, all right. I'd know that walk anywhere."

She took the wooden steps sideways, one at a time, in deference to arthritis brought on by too many years of scrubbing floors at the Federal Insurance Building downtown. Jack reached out to offer her help.

"I can walk by myself," she said. "He looks a little taller, don't he?"

"Yes, Ma." Jack took her arm anyhow, and they walked toward Ray. He looked up and saw them.

"I'm home, Ma. Hiya, Jack, how's things?" He hugged his mother and winked at his younger brother.

"Where have you been?" she asked. "My goodness. You've been out of prison for two days, and you just now come dragging in."

He kissed her on the cheek. "I'm sorry, Ma. I spent the night with Mike. We had a lot of old times to talk about."

"Well, you should'a come home and seen your momma first, Ray. Help me up the steps here, and let's sit a minute."

Her sons, one on each arm, helped her negotiate the steep steps. She sat in the swing and picked up her potatoes, and Ray sat on the railing. Jack sat on the swing, too, and watched his brother. He did seem taller, and heavier built. He was a man now at twenty-one, and had a dark, two day old beard. They sat for several seconds, watching their mother peeling with utmost concentration.

"I got me a job, Ma," Ray said. "One of the guys that got out earlier told them about me."

"Well, that's good, Ray. What kind'a job?"

"It's being a sewing machine repairman at the StarTex pants factory up in Waverly. They said I could learn on the job."

"Why, that's nice, Ray. You always did like to fix up cars and such."

"I did maintenance up at State, too. They want me to start right away. Monday, they said."

"Oh. That soon?" Jack watched his mother's face and saw her eyes glisten. She pushed the hair back again and quickly wiped her eyes. "Well, then I guess you'd better be there when they want you. When do you have to leave?"

"I ought to leave by Friday," he said. "So I can find a place to stay and all. Ma, I'm going to make somethin' out of myself up there. That jail bit is no good. I don't think I could'a stood another day there. Not one more day."

"That's good. I—I better get these on the stove." She stood quickly and turned away. The back of her wrist went back to her eyes again. "You want to get that door for me?"

"Sure."

Ray held the screen door open and followed his mother inside, talking. Jack started to get up and follow, but thought better of it. They probably had a lot to talk about. Besides, he didn't really know how to act around his brother.

Jack sat back down in the swing, and soon the rhythmic squeaks of the springs set his mind free. Isolated snatches from the past swam by. His first day of middle school when he got to go to his brother's building. His brother's arrest and trial, his mother crying in her bedroom next to his.

A sound in the street caught his attention and the police cruiser pulled up to the front of the house. The policeman on the passenger side, shorter and heavier set than the driver, rolled his window down and motioned toward Jack. He got up and walked slowly down the steps.

"Isn't Ray home yet?" the policeman asked.

"Nope. He ain't here."

"We know for a fact he came in on the bus yesterday. We checked."

"What you want him for?" Jack asked. "He's already done his time."

"You sure he's not here? You lie to us, you're in big trouble."

"He ain't here. What do you want him for?"

"Somebody broke into Mason's hardware store last night," the policeman said. "We just want to talk to him about it, that's all."

"Well, he didn't do it. I know that."

"And just how the hell do you know that? You said you haven't even seen him yet."

"I just know it."

"Well, we'll be back. When he comes you tell him to stay here."

The policeman rolled the window back up and the car pulled away. Jack stood motionless for a second, unsure. He looked back at the house, then the police car. Suddenly he lunged at it and banged on the trunk. It screeched to a halt and the passenger side door opened.

"I know he didn't do it," Jack yelled. "I know it because _I_ did it!"

***

The cruiser arrived at the police station in under ten minutes. The two policemen escorted Ray and Mrs. Travis up the worn concrete steps and deposited them in a waiting room, made dark with dirty windows and half drawn shades. The heavy set one guided Jack down a long hall into an interrogation room. "Wait here," he said. He left, locking the door after him. Jack looked around and wondered if the small mirror on one side was a two way window, like he'd seen many times on TV.

What did his mother think of him now? She was crying in the squad car, with jerking sobs he had not heard from her before. Ray had tried to comfort her but said nothing to Jack about what was happening.

Jack leaned forward at the scarred conference table, his feet entwined around his chair's rungs, and made slow, invisible circles on the tabletop with an index finger. He'd never really known his brother. He was, after all, only twelve years old when Ray went to the penitentiary. Before then he had caught only glimpses of him when he entered or left the house.

No, that wasn't quite true. During the past three years, while lying in bed, he'd often thought of Ray's little kindnesses to him. The times he carried him on his shoulders through the snow to school, for example, because his worn shoes let water seep in. Or in the summertime when he played catch with him, because "Dad would have done it if he was here."

He heard a key rattle in the door lock, and a different policeman came in. He was older and had a mustache that stopped just short of having handlebars. He sat at the table, rifled through a stack of papers, and looked up.

"I understand you broke into Mason's Hardware last night," he said.

"Yes sir."

The policeman wrote something on his note pad. "What did you take?"

"Well..." Jack thought a moment. "Just things, I guess. I don't remember what it all was."

"Do you remember the electric tire pump and the shotgun? And a dozen knives?"

"Yeah, I remember them now. There were some other things, too."

The policeman appeared to take more notes on his notepad. Then he took his reading glasses off and put them in his shirt pocket.

"You're full of it," he said.

"I'm sorry?" Jack said. "What do you mean?"

"You didn't rob that hardware store any more than the man in the moon. How come you're lying?"

"I did, too! I just don't have a very good memory, that's all."

"You're fuller of it than a Christmas turkey," the man said. "You didn't break in there. No way."

"Did too." Jack glared at the man, then looked down at the table. His finger started making invisible circles again.

The policeman stood. He smiled as he gathered his papers and put his pen in his pocket. "We caught a guy a few minutes ago who had all the hardware store things in his car," he said. "He's in the next room right now, spilling his guts. Now you get on out of here."

Jack ran down the hall ahead of the policeman, into the waiting room. He ran to his mother, sitting on a hard wooden chair and hugged her with such fierceness that her glasses almost fell from her nose.

"What on earth?" she said. "What's got into you?"

The old policeman caught up and stood watching. "Damned if I know. All I know is that your boys didn't do that burglary. Neither one."

She squeezed her sons to her, then wiped her eyes. "Well can't you help an old woman up?" she said. "How am I supposed to get dinner on the table if we waste our time sittin' here?"

## Heroes on Parade

A parade wasn't even scheduled. But there it was,

and only she and Margaret could see it.

Helen O'Brien paused in front of her small frame house, looked west across Jessamine Avenue, and smiled. Margaret was right on time. Her friend checked for traffic and crossed the street.

"Good morning," Margaret said. "Another lousy workday, huh?"

"Oh, it's a lovely day." Helen patted her graying hair into place and glanced at Margaret's plastic grocery sack. "What's that?"

"This? Oh, it's a yellow bow for Dunkel's door. Just like yours."

Helen nodded. She knew Margaret had admired the bow she'd placed on the drugstore door to honor her son Ray and the other soldiers serving in Afghanistan. Margaret squeezed her arm in a "we're in this together" gesture, and they walked to Main Street and turned left.

The neat Victorian houses on Helen's street abruptly gave way to one and two story commercial buildings facing each other across a wide brick street. Helen peered towards Olson's store, three blocks beyond, and sighed. Maybe it was a lousy day, but she did rather enjoy talking with the customers.

"How many years have we made this walk together?" Margaret seemed to have read her mind. She was heavier and shorter than Helen and wore her hair in an old fashioned knot. "Seems like centuries."

"Six years, I guess. I started right after Ray got to high school, and you started the next spring."

"That's right. It seems like... Oh, my goodness!" Margaret stopped and stared into the street. "My goodness, will you look at that!"

"What on earth's wrong?"

"I didn't know there was a parade today."

"What are you talking about? What parade?"

Helen looked up and down the street and saw normal morning traffic. A young couple came down the courthouse steps, but Margaret didn't appear to be looking at them. She seemed focused on something in the street itself.

"Look how handsome they are! All in their uniforms..." Margaret stepped toward the street and looked left. "Excuse me," she said, as if someone was there. "Excuse me, I want to get a better look, and... listen to the music!"

"Margaret!" Helen touched her friend's shoulder.

"Look at them, Helen. Don't you see—" Margaret stepped to the curb and looked both ways, twice. She frowned. "Where—where did they go?"

"Margaret! Do you feel well? Do you want me to walk you back home?"

"I don't understand. No, I'll be okay, Helen. For a minute, I was sure that..."

Helen gently led her friend back to the sidewalk. They walked in silence, past the Shell service station and then the cleaners. "Maybe you've been watching CNN too much. Or maybe it's something you ate."

"I don't know what it was, Helen. Lord, I'm too young for Alzheimer's. My mother had that, you know."

"I'm sure you're fine, Margaret. Just fine. We'd best keep moving now. I've got to open this morning."

They reached the Olson Drugstore corner and parted company. As Helen got the cash box from the stock room, she thought back to what happened. They'd been best friends all their lives, had long ago found many unique ties. Yes, it had been a long time, and she treasured every minute of it. And in all that time, Margaret had never acted so... so peculiar.

The next morning they met at the same corner. When Margaret talked fast about little things and avoided eye contact, Helen realized she was embarrassed. They turned the corner at Main Street and walked past the Cutey Pie Bakery and the insurance agency. When they reached where Margaret had seen the parade, Margaret stopped.

"Oh, God." She touched her chin and looked into the street. Her eyes teared.

"Margaret? Are you okay?" Helen put a comforting hand on her plump arm. Margaret pushed her glasses up, wiped her eyes, and looked back into the street.

"They're here again! Look! Can't you see them?"

"Margaret, please..."

"My Lord, there's people in blue uniforms, and green, and—and up there, there's gray, and... wait, I recognize that soldier!"

Margaret walked, dazed, toward the traffic, sidestepping unseen obstacles.

"Margaret, stop!"

"That's my father! Don't you see him? It's Daddy! And look at those others!"

Helen grabbed her friend and pulled her back to the sidewalk. "Why don't we just stand right here?" she said. "We'll watch the parade from here until it's over."

Margaret's expression changed from ecstasy to sadness. Her shoulders slumped as she turned to Helen. "Honest, I saw them. They're gone now, but they were there as plain as day, Helen. You saw them, didn't you? Didn't you?"

"Well, maybe I did get a glimpse," Helen said. "But you'd better go home and rest now. I'll tell Mr. Dunkel you won't be in. Come on, now."

Helen walked Margaret home and called her daughter, who promised to go over and stay with her for the day. Twice Helen slipped back into the little office behind the drugstore shelves and called to see how Margaret was. That night she prayed, something she hadn't done for a long time.

The following morning Helen stood on Jessamine Avenue looking west toward her friend's house. Margaret approached carrying a digital camera. She crossed the street and stared defiantly at Helen.

"There was too a parade. Here, I want to show you something."

Margaret rummaged through her oversize purse and pulled out a small picture, the kind that used to sell three for a quarter in bus and train station booths. She thrust it into Helen's face.

"That's my Daddy. He took this picture at Pensacola in 1942, the day he shipped out. Helen. He looked exactly like that in the parade!"

She pulled an old Morganville High annual from the purse, found the page she wanted, and turned the book toward Helen.

"That's Daddy in high school. See those two boys next to him? They died in the war, too. In Germany. And they were marching with Daddy yesterday as pretty as you please!"

"Now Margaret, are—are you sure?"

"Do you know what this means, Helen? It means I really saw a parade. A parade out of the past!"

"Margaret, you'd better go back home." Helen put her arms around her friend as they turned left on Main Street. "Do you have a fever or anything?"

"No way. I saw what I saw, and today I'm going to take a picture of that parade for proof." She stiffened and turned toward the street.

"They're here again! I don't see Daddy yet... Oh, I'll bet he's with those soldiers up there, the ones with the olive colored uniforms. See those in front of us? They have two toned brown uniforms like you see on CNN."

"Margaret, come with me!" Helen pulled on her friend's arm. "Let's go home and rest."

"Look. Look! Oh, I can't believe my eyes! Oh, Helen, take a picture. Hurry!"

"Now, Margaret!" Helen released her and held the camera up. "Margaret, this..."

"Hurry, take it!"

Margaret ran into the street just as Helen snapped the picture. The driver had no warning at all. His truck hit her before his foot could even touch the brake. A circle of people gathered around her lifeless form, and soon a siren sounded from up the street.

A police cruiser stopped in front of Helen's house an hour later, and one of the two policemen walked her up to the porch. She let herself in and laid her purse, the camera, and the high school annual on the hall table. She didn't know why, but she'd clutched them throughout the ambulance ride to the hospital and the ride just now to her home. They seemed even more important now that Margaret was dead.

Helen's heart ached, and she rubbed her dry, red eyes. She was cried out but still felt the deep pain of her friend's death.

She went into the bedroom to lie down, and remembered the picture she'd snapped. Oh, God! Did it show the accident? Or did she take it just before it happened? She couldn't remember. She tried to convince herself to throw the camera into the trash without looking at it, but instead she held it up. She pressed the "monitor" button and peered at the little screen.

There was Margaret, looking back at her as she dashed into the street. Her right arm was up, waving.

But there was more. There _was_ a parade there! The camera had frozen row upon row of soldiers in colorful uniforms, all in lockstep, as they marched smartly up the street! She looked again, squinting. The three closest soldiers were smiling at her. She leaned against the wall, slid down it to sit upon the bare oak floor.

When the doorbell rang an hour later, Helen knew who was there. She eased herself up from the hall floor and walked, robot like, to answer it. The embarrassed looking army lieutenant informed her, as she knew he would, that her son had been killed in action in Afghanistan. She thanked him and quietly closed the door.

She would frame the picture with Ray in it. Anyone else seeing it would think it was only a picture of Margaret. They wouldn't be able to see anything else.

But _she_ could see her son in it, anytime she wanted. Marching proudly, happy to serve his country, happy in fact, to give his life for what he believed in.

The parade wasn't simply one from the past as Margaret had thought. Helen knew now it was made up of local war heroes, killed in action. Margaret's father, his two friends, her own son Ray—there could be no other explanation. The soldiers in gray were Morganville men who had died in the Civil War.

Helen looked at the picture closely now, and recognized the two smiling soldiers next to Ray. She sighed. That young lieutenant will visit Phyllis Bonner and Janet Stevens this morning, too.

She took the picture into her bedroom and leaned it against her bedside lamp, then laid back on her bed and willed her mind to emptiness.

## Home in Time

Carl Nichols might be in his nineties,

_but maybe he could still save his parents_.

Carl Nichols eased his tired legs out the taxi's back door.

"Take it easy, old timer." The driver grabbed his arm and helped him out. He removed his green Bettr Way Feeds cap and scratched his head. "Sure this is it? Just an abandoned house here and a lot of country."

The stooped old man eyed the two story gray house.

"Used to live here. Born here, in fact. Ninety-two years ago."

The old place mostly looked the same. A dented oil tank showed the wood burning furnace had been converted, though, and a rusted 1950s Chevrolet pickup chassis lay in the side yard. Weeds covered everything, even the once worn paths to the outbuildings.

Nichols pointed back behind the house. "If you could—could just help me to that there fence? I'd be grateful."

"Sure thing."

The old man put a gnarled hand on the other man's shoulder, and they slowly flattened a curved path through the goose grass and foxtails. Nichols took halting steps with feet more used to shuffling on a nursing home's tiled floor.

"You sure this is where you want to be? Standing here by this old fence?"

Nichols looked across it, over a fresh plowed field. "Well, I figured I could climb it. Where I really want to be is—over there. By that big oak tree. Out in the middle there."

Bushy white eyebrows tented under his bald forehead. He looked up at John—John something, the taxi license had said—something foreign looking.

"If you could just help me through this bob-wire fence and—and maybe across that plowed land. Don't know if I could make it on my own."

The taxi driver put a booted foot on the bottom wire and jerked hard on the next one, popping staples out of the rotting posts. He spread the wires apart and Nichols stooped and half walked, half crawled through. John followed, noting the distance and the rough ridged furrows. He smiled.

"Carryin's easier'n leadin'," he said. He picked the old man up like a stack of firewood. "You're not very heavy, you know. Not at all."

***

Carl Nichols stood alone under the oak tree on a small island of unplowed land. John Something would return later to drive him back to the Greyhound bus station in time to get back to Lonesome Pines before the staff missed him.

He knelt by the tree and pulled moss and dead, matted grass off a fallen tombstone with his leathery, wrinkled right hand. He stroked it lovingly, feeling the now faint letters and numbers. He slid his reading glasses from his sweater pocket and made out the words: Jesse and Bertha Nichols... April 23, 1914. He removed rocks from the weed covered mound, and for several minutes just sat there silently and motionlessly. He touched the tombstone again.

"Hi, Daddy. I'm sorry I stayed out all day hunting when that—that terrible thing happened to you and Momma. When I come back, you were already dead. I'm sorry I took so long to come home."

A whisper of wind rattled dead leaves along the distant fence line and set the weeds before him to nodding.

"Momma, I'm sorry I took so long. I always wished I'd come home in time because things would have been different. I just know it. Can you forgive me?"

The wind gusted, and leaves around the gravesite rustled. He felt its coldness through his thin clothing.

"Bout time you got back, Carl."

It was his mother's voice.

"Your father's just sittin' down to the table. Where were you?"

"In the woods. I got two squirrels."

"Don't bring that gun in here! Well, wash your hands and come in and eat. But comb your hair 'cause we got company."

Fifteen year old Carl Nichols took his 22 rifle into the mud room. He ran into the kitchen and worked the pump handle several times, splashed gushing water onto his long, tanned face. He rubbed his hands together under the dwindling water stream and dried them on the feed cloth dishrag. He took his accustomed place at the dining table, with his father at the right end, his mother at the left. The stranger sat across from him.

His father, a thin man with dark hair and a bent nose, frowned at him and continued talking to the stranger. Mrs. Nichols heaped Carl's plate with mashed potatoes, fried salt pork, and beans canned the season before.

"We do have a nice farm here," Jesse Nichols said. "Ninety-two acres, part of it good bottomland."

"Looked awful good to me," the stranger said. "I seen your plow horses outside. Looked like a good team."

Jesse Nichols nodded. He chewed on a piece of pork and glanced at Carl.

"This here's Peter." He pointed at the man with his fork. "He come looking for work. Just passing through, you say?"

"That's right."

Suspenders stretched over a bulging, tattered plaid shirt, to hold his wrinkled pants. His dirty gray union suit peeped out the holes and at the neck and cuffs, and where the shirt buttons stretched too tight. Yellowed, broken teeth showed through a rough black beard as they tore off a piece of bread.

Jesse Nichols took another bite. "Well, sorry you made the trip for nothing. We got everything well in hand."

The stranger stopped chewing. "But I thought I already had the job."

"Well, sorry you thought that. But the plowing's done, an' me and Carl here can handle the plantin' fine."

"Now that ain't right," the man said, louder. He pushed away from the table, his dirty fingers gripping its edge. "You make me sit here while you brag about your goddamned farm, then tell me I ain't even hired? I ain't some lackey you can treat like dirt!"

Bertha Nichols' hand went to her throat. "Goodness, we were just sharing the Lord's bounty with you. As the Lord said, 'What you do unto others, you do unto me,' and—"

"Don't give me no goddamned Sunday school talk!" The stranger jumped up, almost spilling his milk. "I need a job and some money. If you ain't goin' to give me the job, you're sure as hell goin' to come up with the money."

He stomped over to Jesse Nichols and smashed his right fist into his face. The old man's chair slammed back and his head crunched against the wall before he hit the floor. His body lay still in the overturned chair, its bloody head bent at a grotesque angle.

Bertha screamed and jumped up. The stranger touched the dead man's body with his toe. "It's your own damned fault." He turned to Bertha. "And you stop that screaming!"

"You've—you've killed him! Oh, my Lord—"

Carl jumped up and stared down at his dead father, and vomit erupted to choke him. The stranger stormed around the table to his mother.

"Stop that goddamned caterwauling!" He backhanded her with his right fist, and she slammed into the wall and slid down it. She screamed and covered her eyes.

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" the stranger yelled. Each time he said it, he kicked her face. Carl heard crunches, saw blood and tissue explode onto the floor and wall. He vomited again as he crawfished back toward the door. The stranger, face flushed dark red, spun around. "You stay there!"

Carl ran into the kitchen, and the mashed potatoes bowl crashed against the wall by his head. He ran into the mud room, grabbed his rifle leaning against the jam, and sprang out the door toward the freshly plowed field. The earth shook as the man got closer.

Carl tripped in the plowed furrows and fell onto the cold earth. He rolled sideways as the stranger lunged at him and fell face first into the soil beside him. The man grunted, looked dazed.

Carl jumped up and ran across the mushy fresh earth toward the trees where he'd earlier shot the squirrels. He worked a 22 long bullet from his shirt pocket and fumbled to open the rifle's breach. The panting behind him grew closer and louder. Carl tripped again in the furrow where the plowed field stopped. He rolled onto the unplowed ground and forced the bullet into the tight chamber. The stranger picked up a large rock in both hands and arced it down toward Carl's face with all the force of his heavy body. The rifle made a small spitting noise.

The farm was silent.

*****

Taxi driver John Zablonski stared down at the old man. Beside him were a police detective and two coroner assistants dressed in antiseptic white.

"Just like I found him," John said. "Laying here with his head busted to bits, holdin' onto that gun for dear life."

The swarthy detective looked down, a digital camera dangling from his neck. He scratched his stubble beard.

"Gorier n' hell," he said. "That there rock was the murder weapon. Look at all the hair and blood on it. Gorier n' hell."

He stood back and took several pictures.

"I don't understand about that gun, though," John said. "Looks brand spankin' new to me. But it's an old model, you can tell."

The detective worked his mouth. "Sure he didn't have it with him? How could he have gotten it, unless he brought it with him?"

"Damned if I know. But I carried him part way. I'd know if he had a rifle."

"Yeah, well—let's get him out of here. It's gettin' dark."

The detective gently pried the old man's fingers from the gun and smelled the barrel's end. "Been fired," he said, to no one in particular. He searched the area for a few more minutes and asked John more questions. The coroner's assistants rolled Nichols onto a chrome and canvas litter and carried him across the uneven field. John Zablonski and the detective followed.

John stopped and looked back, zipping up his jacket against the rising wind. "Go figure," he said, finally. He turned and followed the others.

The wind rustled the leaves, and some blew back over the gravestone. Moss formed again on the stone, and grass sprouted and grew around and over it, and died. By the time the taxi and ambulance disappeared over the hill toward town the stone was completely covered. Then the last leaf fell in place, the wind died down, and all was quiet.

Carl Nichols had made it home in time. .

## The Chipmunk Sign

Farmer Ben O'Malley finally visited the ritzy sister

who'd abandoned him and their father years ago.

_But he sure wasn't expecting this_.

Ben O'Malley shifted into second gear, and the 1992 Ford truck whined down to a crawl. He leaned out the window and searched for numbers on the houses that set back on manicured lawns. A large Chrysler honked and squealed around him and up the street.

Damn. Why couldn't they have mailboxes with names on them like back home? He pulled a wrinkled Christmas card envelope from his bib overalls and reread its return address. The Arthur Tremonts, Eleven Forty Two Morning Glory Lane, Birmingham. A cutesy street name in a ritzy neighborhood, and for all he knew his sister didn't even live here anymore. She'd sent exactly three Christmas cards since storming off the farm fifteen years ago, each from a different city. No notes, just a one size fits all card with "Carole" scrawled inside.

Eleven thirty eight, eleven forty—Ben turned into the next drive and stopped behind three late model cars. "Eleven forty two" was written out on the puke blue split level house, stuck under live oaks among shrubs almost trimmed to death. He slammed the truck door shut and wiped his shoes on the grass and walked slowly along a narrow concrete walk toward the house. He passed a small "Caution: Chipmunk Crossing" sign, went up two steps to the front door, and pressed the doorbell. Nothing. He banged the flying eagle door knocker, and the door opened.

"Hello?"

A teenage girl stood there, smiling. There was no question. This was Jennifer, the niece he'd never seen. She had the O'Malley nose, the same blue eyes and red hair his dad had in the old pictures.

"Your mama home?"

"Just a minute. Mom!"

She smiled again and left, and a stranger came to the door. No, it was Carole, fifteen years older and maybe thirty pounds heavier than he'd remembered. Of course he was only fourteen then, and she only eighteen. Maybe he didn't remember right. He did remember she was always cheerful until she got out of high school and got weird. Now she was a grown woman with hard features and frown lines and a full face and body that came with getting old.

She didn't recognize him, at least until she glanced at his truck where "O'Malley Farm" was painted on its dented door.

"Oh, my God," she said. She looked at him. "Oh, my God."

"Hi, Carole."

"Ben? Is that you? What on earth are you doing here?"

Her nose wrinkled up, and she looked back at the truck and down at his shoes.

"I just took some hogs to market and drove on up," he said. He followed her glance down and saw pig dung still on his shoes and wiped their edges on the grass.

"Can I come in?"

"Well—"

"I'll take them off." He did so, and set them on the steps. "Carole, I've got to talk to you."

"No, I—"

He pushed the door wide and stepped in. Through an archway opening he saw a dozen women sitting in cushy chairs, all dressed like they were going to church. They were surrounded by tissue paper and open boxes. They stared at him.

"I'm having a baby shower," Carole said. Then louder, "Let's discuss the new room addition in the kitchen."

He followed her down the hall. He didn't exactly come dressed for a party and understood her lie. But if she had a listed telephone number, she'd have known about his visit days before. She sat at the large oak table and motioned for him to do the same. Neither spoke for several seconds.

"Want some coffee?" She jumped up. "I just made some."

"Sure."

She poured him a cup and sat again with her own. "How—how have you been?"

"Carole, Dad's dying. The doctor says the cancer's all inside him, and he doesn't give him more than a week."

She set her cup on the table and stared at the wall.

"I know you got my letters or they'd have come back. How come you didn't answer?"

She shrugged. "I'm surprised he didn't die a long time ago, of cirrhosis of the liver."

"Carole!"

"I'm sorry he's dying. But he's not in my world anymore."

She bowed her head into her hands, and her long hair fell off her shoulders and hid her face.

"Are you serious? We're a family. He's your daddy, for God's sake. And you're telling me we're not in your world?"

"It nothing to do with you, Ben. It's just him. I never want to see him again."

He tried to make sense of what she was saying. "You married that Fremont guy, had Jennifer—and you didn't even let us know. It wasn't right to hear about it from the neighbors."

She still said nothing. She'd run away from home, broken her father's heart, and possibly now was hurrying his death. She was saying to hell with people who farm, who raise hogs, who work with their hands. They were not—quote, unquote—"in her world" anymore. Her world was this fluffy nothing that had tea parties, and carpeted yards and big cars and signs for chipmunks and God knows what all. And none of it was worth a damn. Thank God he wasn't in _her_ world, because it was all make believe.

He realized he was squeezing his coffee cup. He slowly set it down and stood. And he got an idea.

"I can see there's nothing more to say. But I brought you something from home. It's out in the truck."

"What is it?"

"Well, come and see."

He led the way to the front door. As he put his shoes on his niece smiled from the living room, probably wondering about the room addition. A whole new person, who was part of him. But he would never see her again.

He led Carole to his truck and opened the tailgate and jumped up onto the bed and reached out for her. "It's in that tool box behind the cab," he said. "You can't see it from down there."

"Can't you take it out?" She rested her hand on the truck bed and squinted toward the box.

"No, you have to come see it. You'll see why."

She put her foot on the bumper, and he pulled her up onto the bed. She walked forward, stepping carefully to avoid the animal waste. He slammed the tailgate shut and she whirled around.

"Ben! What are you doing?"

"You're comin' home. By God, you'll at least say goodbye to him!"

"Ben! Open that tailgate. Right now!"

He climbed into the cab. She screamed as he clashed the gears and backed down the driveway. Her daughter and two guests came out of the house in time to see the truck bounce into the street, stop, then lurch forward. Through his rearview mirror he saw them run inside, probably to call the police. Carole fell, stood, and fell again. She rolled in the animal waste, pulled herself up on the side railing, and screamed again.

Ben sped up. He dodged cars on his way out of the haughty taughty neighborhood toward the highway that led home. The truck bounced at each crossroad, keeping his sister off balance.

"Don't take me there, Ben, please don't!"

She pulled herself along the side rails to the front corner, behind Ben, and peered between the slats like trapped animal.

"You're coming home!" he yelled. "You think you're too good for us? We'll see about that!"

"I can't go back, Ben. I can't!"

The truck dipped at a cross street, and she fell and scraped her knees on the rough wood floor. Blood ran down her legs as she tried to get up. Ben crammed the brake pedal down at the highway intersection, and she flew forward, smashing against the front wall.

"Ben, please!" She stared at him through the slats. "I just couldn't get along with him. You know how he drank. And he dressed like a hobo, and—"

He gunned the motor and screeched onto the highway, but swerved suddenly back onto the shoulder. A new Chevrolet skidded past, honking. She fell once more, this time hitting her head on the tool box. He gunned the engine and drove along the rough shoulder, looking for another opening in the traffic.

"Oh, God in heaven, Ben! Dad raped me! Oh, God. He raped me, and raped me..."

She dropped into the pig dung and cried unearthly sobs. He heard her words, but they had no meaning. His father raped his own daughter? No. No, that didn't make sense. That—

But suddenly he knew it did.

Something twisted his stomach inside. He braked the truck and parked on the shoulder. An approaching siren wailed as he jumped from the cab and ran to the tailgate, threw it open, and climbed up. She lay in pig dung next to the cab, blood streaming from her knees and face. He ran to her, slipped and fell, then knelt and pulled her head to his chest. He stroked her hair.

"Carole, I didn't know. Carole... Carole..."

"Oh, God, it was so horrible! Ben, I'm so ashamed."

"Carole..." He hugged her, and wiped blood from her cheek.

"I haven't told a soul about it, not even Art. He thinks Jennifer is—is _his_ child, that she was born prematurely."

"You mean—Dad—Dad's her father?"

She nodded. "He got drunk one night and came in and raped me. He—Oh, God. No, Dad! Stay away! Get off!"

"Carole! Snap out of it. Carole!"

"I love them both, Ben. I love Jennifer and Art so much it hurts. Oh, God, I'm so ashamed."

The police cruiser's flashing red and blue lights glinted off the steel sidewall uprights. The siren wound down and two policemen jumped from the car, one with his gun drawn. Ben stood and pulled his sister up. He hugged her, and she wrapped her arms around him tightly. She shook with sobs.

"Go on, Carole, cry," he whispered. They walked slowly back to the truck's gate. "You deserve it, baby. You had to leave in order to survive. You had to."

He wiped her matted hair away from her face. "I won't tell Dad I found you. But later on, let's get back together again, okay? We _are_ family, you know. Would you think about it, at least?"

She looked up at him and nodded. He hugged her again and handed her down the back of the truck into the policemen's waiting arms.

## The CLOSET Apprentice

Where do old sayings come from?

This retiring "old sayings" professional is ready

_to explain it all to his new apprentice_.

A young man stepped into Norman Strickland's office, and he glanced up from his desk.

"I'm—I'm looking for a Mr. Strickland," the stranger said.

"You found him." Norman smiled broadly as he closed the CLOSET Proceedings manual he'd been reading. "Are you Bob Jackson?"

"Yes sir." The visitor looked around the large posh office, then back at the broom closet he'd just passed through.

Norman chuckled. "You're in the right place. I figured that broom closet might fool you. It also fooled that other visitor I had back in the early 70s."

The young man stared again at his surroundings. "But why—"

"Be careful of your thoughts. They may break into words at any time. CLOSET Convention, Munich, 1939. Coffee?"

Norman limped to his Mr. Coffee machine and poured two cups. Old age was taking its toll. His hair had already turned white, and his joints were getting stiff. His limp was noticeable now, and being noticed was professional death to a man in his business. He eyed his visitor. It was time to train a replacement. Would this be the one?

He returned to his desk, handed the young man a cup of coffee, and studied him as he sipped. He'd been about the boy's age when he took this job back in 1946. He'd grabbed it because it was a good idea to go out on a limb, because that's where all the fruit was. Time flies, but he was the navigator. CLOSET Convention, Amarillo, 1955 and Trenton, 1938.

"Williams over in advertising tells me you're a good man," Strickland said. "Says you might have a good future in the O.S. Department."

"O.S. Department? He didn't tell me where I was going. He just drew this map." The young man held out a crumpled piece of paper.

Norman nodded. "Standard operating procedure. If the other employees knew we existed, pretty soon outsiders would know about us. Remember, there's nothing wrong with having nothing to say, unless you insist on saying it."

His visitor looked puzzled. "But I don't understand."

"You will, in time."

Norman leaned back and threw his right arm out in an all encompassing sweep of the room. "This is the Old Sayings Department. I've done a lot of important work here."

"But I don't recall ever seeing it on the organization chart," Jackson said.

"Oh, and you won't! We're top secret. I assume you've heard of—of Cost Overrun?"

"Sure. That's when a program costs twice as much as we told Congress it would, and they pay for it anyhow."

Norman beamed. "Exactly. I report directly to the people over at Cost Overrun, our biggest profit center. Remember the Cold War? When we doubled the A 12 Navy bomber cost to $52 billion? I was partly responsible!"

Jackson smiled. "Gosh, that's important stuff, all right. But just what is it you do?"

Norman tented his fingers and touched them to his chin and frowned. "It can be complex sometimes," he said, slowly. "Anybody can grab a tiger by the tail. You only survive by knowing what to do next."

He stood and walked around the desk and leaned against it. "You see, buyers in Washington must maintain a positive attitude as a Cost Overrun escalates. They call me in at critical times to tell the customer old sayings that convince them to keep funding the program. Almost every Government supplier has someone like me on staff. We operate best, of course, when no one knows we exist."

He looked at his visitor and decided he liked what he saw. Jackson was non descript. Average height, average features, apparently average intelligence. He was very forgettable. Norman decided to take him a step further into the fraternity.

"It's time for lunch. Come with me, young man, and I'll show you what we do."

Norman led Jackson through the dark broom closet and a cluttered furnace room, into a dark hallway. They walked up two flights to the main floor and into the cafeteria, where they filled their plates and sat among a half dozen employees.

A short, blond man named Jim was complaining about his boss's attitude. Norman quietly and professionally slipped into the conversation and nodded and frowned in all the right places. Suddenly his time came. He nudged Jackson under the table and turned to Jim.

"Of course, Jim, you know what they say," he said. "Before you have an argument with your boss, take a good look at both sides. His side and the outside."

Jim looked at him for a moment. "That's a good point," he said. "I'll have to remember that."

The conversation continued and soon shifted directions. Norman and Jackson finished their lunch and left the cafeteria.

"See that?" Norman said. "In and out quickly, then move on. That's the sign of a professional."

"You're good, Mr. Strickland," Jackson said. "That was just the right thing to say!"

"Oh, I could have used any of a number of old sayings there. For example, when he got angry I could have said, 'Anger is never without reason, but seldom a good one.' I picked that one up at the 1969 CLOSET Convention in Ontario."

"CLOSET? What's CLOSET?" his young friend asked.

"C L O S E T. The letters stand for Confederated League of Old Sayings, ET cetera. It's a secret society I belong to."

Jackson scratched his head. "How'd that go now? Before you have an argument with your boss... wow, that was good."

He looked at the pro with admiration as they walked back through the furnace room and the broom closet and into the office. Norman sensed the fledgling's admiring glances, and knew they were well deserved. He had, after all, learned his craft well. From his early lean years he knew firsthand that, from the time an infant tries to get his toes into his mouth, life is a continual struggle to make both ends meet. CLOSET Convention, Brussels, 1921. Since then he had achieved the pinnacle of his success in Cost Overrun.

And now it was time to pass the gauntlet on.

They sat. Jackson frowned, and Norman waited for him to think through his troubled thoughts. After all, there's nothing wrong with having nothing to say, unless you insist on saying it. CLOSET Convention, Paris, 1971. Finally, Jackson spoke.

"Mr. Strickland, I don't get it. I've heard old sayings all my life. How can you make a living out of saying them?"

"Ah! Quickly—can you think of just one old saying?"

"Well, no, not offhand... "

"Exactly! Everybody's heard old sayings, but they don't remember them. They're gone like the wind. Speaking of which, you know we cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails. CLOSET Convention, Tokyo, 1965."

Jackson considered that nugget of wisdom. "That's right. I don't remember. But somebody had to say them for me to hear them. Somebody knew them."

"Ah, yes!" Norman exclaimed. "Somebody _did_ know. But do you remember anyone actually telling you an old saying?"

"No, I guess not."

"That's right. Because it was probably one of us! An O.S. Diplomat, we call ourselves, or OSD for short. That's the designation for those who reach the profession's highest level."

The younger man looked bewildered. "But I still don't understand. You hear old sayings everywhere, not just in big companies. In the streets, in crowds, in stores—everywhere."

"Yes, and we're very proud of that," Norman said. "That's what makes it all worthwhile. We do our work in the big companies, it's true. We all have to make a living. After all, God gives every bird his food, but He doesn't throw it into the nest. CLOSET Convention, London, 1912."

His glanced skyward, his eyes glistening "But the true professional does pro bono work. We do it for free for the public. If we can throw in an occasional cliche or truism and make someone else's life just a little better...why, we're proud to do it!"

"You mean, every time I hear an old saying, it's from one of your people?"

"Most of the time. Oh, once in a while a civilian will remember one a day or two later and pass it on. But that doesn't happen very often."

Norman went to the door and looked out to make sure no one was there. He closed it tightly and came back and sat in his desk chair and looked at his guest for a long moment.

"There's one other thing," he said softly. What I'm about to tell you is highly secret. Can I trust you to keep it that way?"

"Oh, yes. Yes!"

"The truth is, old sayings aren't old at all. They just _sound_ old. CLOSET invents them throughout the year, then reveals them to members at our annual conventions."

"My goodness!" Jackson sat up straight and grinned as if he had just found an answer to something that had been bothering him for his whole life. "Wow, I'm really impressed. This is the source. The motherlode! And I—I can tell you something, Mr. Strickland. I want to become an O.S. Diplomat, too, and—and I want to be the best darned OSD in the whole wide world!"

Norman smiled at his youthful exuberance. He looked exactly as Norman himself must have looked, oh, so long ago, when he'd been selected to tutor under the sheltering wings of a master. It was now time to pass the baton on, and Jackson seemed to be the perfect choice.

"We have a lot of work ahead of us," he said. "You have to learn hundreds—no, thousands of old sayings. And then you have to learn how to say them so people hear them but don't see you. Are you up to the task?"

"Yes, I am, sir! I'll do whatever it takes to become an OSD, just like you!"

"Good. Let's just start with some easy ones, then you go home and get some sleep. We have some long days ahead of us. How's this one? 'Before you borrow money from a friend, decide which you need more; the money, or the friend.' That was CLOSET Convention, Honolulu, 1939. Or this? 'If you can't be kind, at least be vague.' Or here's a good one. 'If it goes without saying...let it!'"

## The Green Bridesmaid Dress

That dress was sure purty and all.

_But would it do what it was supposed to_?

Tessa sent up a hasty prayer for forgiveness as she slipped on the dress Mama had bought her in exchange for a promise not to see Al.

She opened the closet and squinted into the narrow mirror taped to the door, a gift her mama got at the Dollar General last year for her fourteenth birthday. It was crooked, a fact she hadn't noticed before, since she'd never looked into it until now.

"That's sure purty, Honey."

Tessa whirled around. Her mama stood there, in the one upstairs room they and her daddy shared in the popcorn farm's old farmhouse, hugging a basket of clean clothes from the Laundromat. Her mousey brown hair, plastered against her head with sweat, divided over her faded dress's shoulders. She set the basket on the unmade double bed she shared with Tessa's father and flipped her hair back with bony fingers, exposing deep wrinkles that held her thin mouth in a perpetual frown.

"Mama, you scared me."

"You feelin' better? You didn't look any too good this morning."

Tessa grunted a "yes" and tugged the dress's zipper up as far as it would go. The floor squeaked as her mama dropped Tessa's folded clothes on her cot under the window.

"It was the purtiest one they had at the Goodwill, Honey. They called it a 'bridesmaid' dress. Here–let me fix that collar."

Her mama's rough, cold fingers forced their way under the stiff collar and straightened it. She gripped Tessa's shoulders and held her out at arm's length. "There. Now that looks real nice. Don't that look nice?"

Tessa nodded and twisted away from her mama. She leaned slightly and squinted to see more of herself in the mirror's crooked length. The room's one window faced south, and only indirect light came in from the sun setting over the aluminum grain bins to the west. Muffled tractor noises came from that direction now, along with an occasional high-pitched voice of one of the high school kids riding the wagon coming in from the popcorn fields. Was that her daddy's detasseling crew? Or Al's? She felt a chill.

The dress was too tight. She stared into the mirror at the two huge bumps poking out of her chest. Just three months before, when they drove into the barnyard and asked Mr. Peterson for work, they didn't seem nearly that big. They were just buds, easily hidden by a loose-fitting blouse. But soon after, the male workers started ogling her.

That's when Al first noticed her. He was a drifter in his twenties who had hired on a month before she got there. She'd been assigned to his crew, and one day her mama brought water to the field and overheard him say he wanted to see her tiddies. The next morning she made Tessa wrap them real tight, and for a while that helped. But finally they exploded all over the place and Mama went to Plan B and got her a brassiere at the Dollar General. Every day after that she made sure Tessa buttoned her blouse all the way up. Even this dress–this straightjacket–had buttons all the way up to the collar.

"They had a blue one," her Mama said, watching her. "It was just like this here green one, but it was blue. Do you like the green one?"

"It's fine, Mama."

"I could take it back and get the blue one. I 'magine they still got it."

"No, this is fine."

"Well, I could probably still get it."

They stood there looking at each other, then each turned away. Mama leaned over the bunk and stared out the dirt-streaked window toward the grain bins. "Your daddy's back," she said. "Guess they's the first ones in."

Tessa said nothing. She took advantage of her mama's distraction to take the dress off and put on her blouse and faded jeans. She, too, looked out the window. Her daddy stopped the tractor and wagon next to the big truck and the kids jumped off the wagon. Some climbed onto the truck bed and sat along the sides, but most just stood there and talked, or sat in the shade. Pretty soon the truck would take them back to town.

Another tractor and wagon came in from the fields at the left that Mr. Peterson called The Bottoms. It was Al. He stood up on the moving tractor, revved the engine, cut the accelerator way back, and let it pop and die as he stared up at her window. He was tall and thin and wore a ragged straw hat that threw a shadow over his bearded face. Tessa couldn't see his steely blue eyes, but she could almost feel them drill holes into her. She jerked back from the window. Her mama stared out at Al, then at her, and stiffened.

Tessa turned away. "I got to get some air," she said. She stepped out onto the stairs landing and cocked her head, listening for noises downstairs. She heard nothing but the kitchen faucet dripping. She breathed a long sigh and eased down the steep stairs, gritting her teeth at the squeaks the steps made. Two weeks ago the Dobson boy, who lived with his ma and pa on the first floor, cornered her there and ran his hand down inside her pants. She screamed, and he slapped her so hard she slammed against the wall, and he said if she ever told anybody he'd kill her.

She stepped outside. The setting sun threw long shadows from the grain bins and equipment shed. A hot breeze came from that way, bringing the suffocating stench of used motor oil and flowering weeds, and of smoke curling from the cigarettes of teenage boys who flipped ashes like old men. They watched with gleeful grins as she walked stiffly past them and entered the shed.

It was dark inside, except for the brief chrome glint from Mr. Peterson's vintage sports car, which flickered out as she slid the door closed. She sidestepped around the car in the darkness, touching it to keep her bearings, until she felt the metal cleats of the old tractor that sat in the back corner. Al said it was the first tractor Mr. Peterson's grandfather got to plow the farm back in the thirties. It smelled of dust, grime, oil, rotten rubber, and fabric, all mixed up to make a gagging decay odor. She knelt on the dirt floor and crawled under it to the back wall.

It must have been an hour later when her mama called her. Her shaky voice started by the house, moved to the grain bins, was now in front of the shed. Tessa scrunched up against the wall and held her breath. The door rolled open and a jittery light beam poked into the darkness.

"Tessa? Tessa, you in here?"

She sounded scared. Tessa bit her fisted hand and fought against answering, as tears hit her knuckles and rolled down her arm. The feeble light pried into murky corners and bounced against rough timbers and finally went away when the door closed.

Another hour passed. The night was moonless, and little light seeped in between the wall boards. Tessa kept thoughts about what she was about to do hidden from herself by squeezing her eyes closed and thinking of happier times, like when she was a little girl playing in the dirt while her mama and daddy worked next to her in the Texas cotton fields. She remembered the time they got paid and ate so much ice cream at the Dairy Queen in town that she thought she could never face another ice cream cone in her whole life.

A sound came from outside. It was the squeaking that came from Al's old pickup truck.

"Tessa?" The door rumbled open a crack on dry, metal wheels.

She crawled from her hideaway and stood in the oppressive darkness. She touched the old tractor and moved slowly along it until her fingers found the engine's cover latch. She pulled the cover up and got the three plastic Wal-Mart bags she'd hidden the day before. She wished she could have brought those clean clothes her mama put on her bed earlier.

"Tessa? Answer me."

"I'm coming."

Three overhead mercury lights outside threw bright light slivers through the barnyard's darkness, silhouetting Al and his pickup. He stood back as she stepped out onto the gravel.

"Here." He grabbed her bags and tossed them into the pickup's bed. "Your mama's looking for you."

Tessa ran around the truck and got into the passenger seat, which vibrated in time to the squeak coming from under the hood. Al climbed into the driver's seat and shifted gears, and the truck lurched against the brakes. He reached over to Tesse and gripped her stomach and massaged it, roughly.

"How's Junior?" he said.

She said nothing. The weight lifted from her stomach, and he let off the brake. The truck rolled forward.

"I figure we'd go to Florida," he said. "Pick us some oranges."

They drove up the lane to the highway, paused, and turned left. Toward Kentucky, she remembered. Less than an hour away, across the Ohio.

She glanced at the farm buildings as they passed, lit from above by the mercury lights. Nothing stirred. Nothing–but wait! Something appeared to the right of the house. A person. The silhouetted figure stood stark still under the lights. Tessa couldn't make out her features, but it had to be her mama, checking on the revving of Al's engine. Now listening to his truck speeding south, away from the farm. Carrying them to–

To what?

Tessa glanced at Al's rough features glowing in the yellow dashboard light. She stared out the cracked windshield into the darkness beyond the headlights.

Yes, to what?

Panic struck her. _Mama_! She whirled around and stared through the dirty rear window. Her hand gripped the door handle with deathlike strength.

But her mama was gone. Nothing was there but blackness. Nothing but three small specks of light she knew were the barnyard lights. She watched them disappear behind a curve in the highway. Tessa thought again about her mama and the green bridesmaid dress. Tears came, and went, and finally the motor's hum lulled her into a troubled sleep.

## The Liaison

Richard Smith was ready for a midlife fling.

_Or_ was _he_?

Richard Smith stepped into the restaurant's darkened interior. An odor of greasy hot dishwater and stale beer washed over him, and he caught his breath. He squinted, trying to make out the shapes.

A dozen young men sat at the bar on his left. A lone woman was at the far end, her purse lying open next to her mixed drink. She tapped a cigarette from its pack and lit it. The lighter's brief flare-up showed it was not Betty.

Richard looked at the mostly occupied booths that hugged the contact papered wall on the right. A middle aged waitress set two hamburger baskets on the nearest one, next to a plastic mesh covered candleholder that grudgingly gave off a small circle of light for the young couple seated there. All the patrons appeared to be cut from the same mold. Young men and women, an occasional sports jacket, loud voices, here and there a toddler in a booster chair—fifteen years ago, he and Janice would have fit right in.

He walked past the booths and tables. The narrow room opened into a larger one. Betty would be in there, probably in the far dark corner. She knew discretion was important.

"Mr. Smith."

He jumped and turned to see her smiling face, framed by long brown hair. She had apparently been in the restroom near the entrance.

"God, you scared me to death."

"Sorry. I have a spot back there," she said, pointing. "It's away from the jukebox."

He followed her to the small table, watching her graceful moves. It wasn't slinking, exactly, but it was close. She sort of—well, floated across the room. Watching her as she left his office that very afternoon had prompted him to ask her to meet him tonight.

Instead of being in the dark, the table she'd selected was directly under a bright wall sconce. He sat with his back to the entryway and hunched over.

"I would have ordered for you, but I didn't know what you wanted." She sat and adjusted her skirt beneath her. "Or even if you'd be here on time. Do you drink beer?"

"Sometimes."

"I've never seen you drink before. Except coffee, of course."

She sipped her beer. Richard rubbed at a spot on the plastic tabletop. Unsuccessful at removing it, he looked up at her face. Freckles, upturned nose, a quick smile, dimples—she could have been The Girl Next Door that people talked about.

"You come here much?" he asked, looking around. The tables were almost all filled.

"I sure do. It's only two blocks from my apartment. That's why I picked it."

"Nice place." A waitress came over and took his beer order.

"Well, it's not fantastic. It's not the 21 Club or anything. But at least I can afford to eat here."

"No, I mean it, it's nice," he said quickly. "It's got character. It's not McDonald's or Burger King."

She nodded and looked up at him. He started to say something but thought better of it. He glanced around the room again, then loosened his tie. A forty year old lawyer in a pin striped suit would surely stand out in this crowd.

"Mr. Smith, why did you pick me?" she asked.

"Pardon?"

"Why did you pick me? There are a lot of girls in the office."

"Well, I—I like you. You seemed like a nice girl. I mean, you _are_ a nice girl. And I thought you might like me, too."

"Oh, I do. You know, I suppose I should call you something besides Mr. Smith." She put her index finger to her chin. "Now, what should it be?"

"I suppose you should continue to call me Mr. Smith in the office. The powers-that-be might frown on anything else."

She laughed. "Of course I will, _there_. We'll act like we don't even know each other. But like right now. Should I call you Richard or Dick or what? Or how about something like Sweetie Pie or Dinky Poo?"

He frowned. "How about Richard? That's what Janice calls me. I guess you could call me Richard. But not in the office, of course."

"I was just kidding with that last part." She looked at him, and he gazed down at his beer. Someone played the jukebox, and it added its noise to the increasingly uncomfortable din. He swigged again and looked at his watch. Seven thirty. Janice and little Matt were probably flying over Colorado by now, or one of those other square states, on their way to Los Angeles. A week with her parents would do her good, but batching it would be a pain for him. He hated TV dinners.

"Food," he said suddenly. "Want to eat here, or someplace else?"

"How about my apartment? We're going to wind up there, anyhow. We could pick something up at Bruno's on the way. You pop for the steaks, and I'll cook them."

"Well—okay."

"And be sure to get some—protection. I believe in safety, don't you?"

"Safety? Oh—oh, sure." Safety was important, because he didn't want to take AIDS back to Janice. How would it be, giving Janice AIDS the first time he ever stepped out on her? He shuddered.

"Boy, this is going to be exciting! How often you think we can meet? Every week? You could act like you joined a bowling team or something."

"We'll just have to see how it works out," he said.

"Barbara Maxwell says Mr. Connors told his wife he joined a bowling league, and she's never suspected. Of course, he's got to leave the house every Thursday night now, whether they have a date or not."

Richard Smith toyed with his beer glass. Jim Connors was seeing Barbara Maxwell? He was a senior partner in the firm, for heaven's sake.

"Once, when he went out of town he took her along," she said. "They work in different departments, so no one put two and two together."

Richard finished his beer. He wiped his mouth with the paper napkin and pushed his chair back. "I'm off to the restroom," he said.

"Why don't you order us another beer while you're up there? It's too early to eat."

He stood and weaved his way among the young bodies. He recognized no one and prayed no one recognized him. The girl at the bar smiled as he passed, but he didn't return the greeting.

He walked right past the restrooms and out the front door. Bright sunlight blinded him. He shielded his eyes as he stepped onto the sidewalk, turned right, and walked toward his car.

Janice would realize before long that he had left. Maybe he should have told her he was going. But how? She probably wouldn't even mention it the next day, after she'd had time to think things over. No, he was dreaming there. Their office relationship would be pretty strained for a while.

He thought of his wife. Did she miss him? He sure missed her. Much more than he ever thought he would.

And then he wondered if Janice could keep her mouth shut.

## The Merit Badge

If Don had earned that merit badge fifty years ago,

_his life would probably have turned out a whole lot different_.

I tramped along the dusty road just outside of Fort Branch, Indiana, a step behind my ten -year-old cousin David. He looked real good in his tan Boy Scout hat, off center just enough to show his devil-may-care attitude. But hey, he was entitled. He'd already become a second-class scout, and I was still only a tenderfoot. And he'd agreed to visit from Evansville, twenty miles away, to help me earn my very first merit badge.

He stopped, and I almost ran into him. He gave me his patented disgusted look and pointed toward a patch of trees at the top of the hill.

"We'll camp there," he said. "You going to make it?"

"Sure, David."

I ignored my pinching new shoes. Mom said to wear my old ones, but who knew _she'd_ be right? I hitched up my backpack, heavy with a frying pan, eggs, and bacon, and looked up into David's eyes.

"Walk up here with me," he said. "The book says you have to walk a whole mile, and I bet you're not supposed to lollygag. Say, you got more gum?"

I gave him my last piece of juicy fruit, and he started chomping it. He walked faster, and I soon lagged behind again. I figured it was my right, though, since my legs were shorter. Besides, he probably had a lot of hiking practice. Why, he'd even gone to scout camp the year before.

We reached the trees. It was windier up here, and the treetops whipped around. I liked the breeze, because it was a hot day, but David looked worried. He turned in a complete circle, staring up at those waving trees, like he was doing a survey or something. Finally he stepped off the road, and I followed him across the ditch. He turned.

"We'll build the fire—here!" He jabbed a finger toward a spot that looked like every other spot I could see. "You brought the matches, right?"

"I sure did, David. Two, just like the manual said."

"Two..." He frowned and glanced again at the weaving trees. I looked down at their roots. At least the wind had blown down twigs and things. We started picking some up and soon had enough to start a huge bonfire.

We laid down dried leaves and grass and piled the twigs on top. Finally we leaned bigger sticks against each other over that pile so they'd look just like an Indian teepee. I'd seen Roy Rogers make one just like that the Saturday afternoon before at the matinee. We knelt with the stack between us.

David nodded. "Pretty good," he said. "Now, light it."

I looked up at him. He looked back, and it was quiet for a second.

"Well—well, light it," he said.

I looked at him. "I can't."

"What? What do you mean, you can't?"

"I don't know how. I've never made a campfire in my whole life."

He sat there, staring at the teepee, then the trees, then back at me. He inched around on his knees until he was directly between the wind and that teepee of kindling.

"Well, just light it, that's all," he said. "Just strike the match and _light_ it."

But a step was missing. A real important one. I couldn't remember what it was, though. I held a match up and considered its red and white head, then looked for something to strike it on. Dad always flicked his thumbnail across a match when he wanted to light his pipe, and it worked like a charm. The one time _I_ tried that the head got stuck under my thumbnail and burned like everything. I finally decided to strike it on my shoe sole.

Then I remembered what that important step was.

"You're supposed to blow," I said. "You know, strike the match and hold it in the grass and then blow so it will catch fire."

David's eyebrows went up. He looked at the kindling, then back at me.

"Well, everybody knows that," he said.

"Well, yeah, but—"

"So _blow_ on it." He was getting impatient again.

"But David, I don't know _when_ to blow. Will you tell me when?"

Now he frowned. He glanced at me, then at the match, then at the pile of kindling and grass.

"They blow on it in all the cowboy movies," I said. "They light the match, and then they blow."

"Well, sure they do," he said. "You gotta blow at just the right time, though."

"Right! But I don't know when that is!" I could hear my voice getting louder. "What if I blow at the _wrong_ time? You know, too early, or too late? Will you tell me when to blow?"

He didn't say anything for a minute. I sat there, holding that match up like I was the Statue of Liberty, waiting for him to answer. I sure didn't want to do it wrong and not get that merit badge.

"I'll tell you when," he said, finally. His voice was funny, like he was trying to sound real official. He did that sometimes.

"Okay," I said. "Here goes."

I struck the match one, two, three times, until it finally flared up.

"Cover it up!" David said.

"What?"

"Put your hand over it! So the wind doesn't blow it out!"

I wrapped my hand around it, and it flickered a lot, but it stayed lit. I jabbed it into the bunched-up grass.

"Now?" I said. "Now?"

"Now!" he yelled.

I leaned down and blew. The match went out, and a little line of smoke spiraled from it. Not from the grass, though. It was stone cold.

I looked up at David. He had fear on his face, like maybe something had scared him. He stared at the match, then at me.

"You got the other match?" he said, real soft like.

"Sure, David. I got it right here."

I got it from my pants pocket, and he stared at it like it was like a treasure or something.

"Now be more careful," he said. "You gotta blow exactly when I tell you."

I was determined to do it right. I took my backpack off and laid down on my stomach, my head inches from that teepee, and grabbed a piece of kindling to strike the second match on. David got down on his stomach, too, and adjusted one of the sticks. Apparently satisfied, he propped himself up on his elbows. I held the match to my piece of kindling. He paused, then nodded.

I struck the match. It flared, and the sulfur stung my nostrils. I jabbed it into the grass under the sticks, as much to get it out of my face as to start the fire. David sprung up onto his hands and stretched out so that his head was right over the match.

"Tell me, David! Tell me!"

He stared at me, dumbly.

When do I blow! When—"

"Blow!" he yelled. "Blow!"

Well, I blew. I blew so hard that the grass flew away, leaving the bare matchstick wavering at the end of my squeezed-tight fingers. That sulfur smoke spiraled into David's face, and he jerked back. Tears glistened in his eyes. He jumped up and ran a few feet toward the road and stood there, looking away from me. He cleared his throat, or maybe it was a sniff. I flipped the cold matchstick to the ground.

"David?" I said. "David?"

He didn't answer. I walked around him to talk to him but he kept turning away.

"David? Does this mean I don't get my merit badge?"

He mumbled something, and I said I couldn't understand him.

"It's your fault," he said, louder. "You just can't follow instructions, can you?"

"But David—"

He rubbed his eyes and whirled around to face me. It was real red around his eyes.

"Serves you right! I told you when to blow, but you just didn't listen. You got to learn to listen, Donnie."

He walked toward the fence, and I picked up my backpack. He walked real fast, and I followed him, almost running, all the way home. I tried to talk to him a couple of times, but he didn't answer. He didn't ask me to walk beside him, either.

I didn't see him much after that. He got an usher job at a movie house in Evansville, and the next thing I knew he'd gone to college and joined the Air Force ROTC. He graduated with an accounting degree and was sent off to Alaska for three years. He came home on leave, and we visited his family, and he showed us the slides he took. All I remember is a lot of snow and rows of buildings. He started working at IBM, and he's still there, in the accounting department.

I never did get that merit badge. I dropped out of the scouts not long after that, and just went to school and hung around and things. I finally got interested in girls and bought an old car and went to college myself. That was a long time ago, way back before we sent those men to the moon.

Once in a great while I think about that hiking trip and trying to make that fire. If only I knew when to blow, why, my whole life might have turned out completely different.

## The Old Furniture Polish Warehouse

When Stacey Jenkins' mother ran away

with the chemical salesman thirty years ago,

_she didn't get far_.

Jackson City Police Chief Ralph Johnson glanced at his watch. Nine o'clock, time to call Mayor Lambert. On the third Wednesday morning of every month, for the twenty years he'd been chief, he'd made that no problems here call before the town council meeting. He reached for his phone.

A button lit up, then the intercom clicked.

"It's Stacey Jenkins," his secretary said. "He sounds upset."

Johnson sighed and pressed the flashing button with a beefy finger. He'd heard the heavy equipment shut down not long before and expected a hitch.

"Ralph, I've got a problem at the old warehouse," the voice said.

"Your dad with you?"

"Well, we're both here. But Dad's inside, and I'm out."

"I'll be right there."

Johnson pulled the "Jenkins Warehouse" file from his cabinet and walked into the central reception area, his heels clicking on the tile floor.

"Tell Lambert I'll call him later," he told his secretary. He stepped out onto the sidewalk and slid into his cruiser, started it, and turned right toward the river.

Johnson was seventy-five pounds heavier than when he'd joined the force in 1956, just out of high school. A football hero then, perhaps, if a town of four thousand could have such a thing. Stacey was the quarterback, and as wide receiver he'd caught many of his touchdown passes and sometimes competed for the same girl. The town's population had since doubled. That one time muscle was now just flab, and his quickness was gone completely.

But age hadn't treated Stacey Jenkins much better. He wasn't as heavy, but somehow looked older than he should. He'd seemed to grow up faster than the rest of the class. Johnson noticed the change soon after Stacey's mom left town with the chemical salesman their senior year. Several times since, during quiet moments at The Spigot Bar, Stacey had wondered aloud why his mother hadn't even sent him a birthday card all those years. Stacey had married the girl everyone thought he would, had worked full time at his father's furniture polish factory, raised three kids, and become president of Jenkins Products when Byron Jenkins retired five years ago. But his football field fire seemed to be completely out.

Johnson picked up his radio mike.

"Car five."

"Car five here."

"What's the story, Jim?"

"I must'a been daydreaming. I lost Byron Jenkins and finally found him coming out of the hardware store with a package."

Johnson squeezed the mike. "You at the warehouse now?"

"Down the street from it. Stacey pulled up a few minutes ago. The wrecking crew's there, too, but they're cooling their heels."

"I'm heading there now. See what he got at the hardware store, will you? Ten four."

Chief Johnson replaced the mike and frowned. Byron was the one who'd really gone downhill. The seventy-five year old man was frail, became confused easily, and forgot simple things. But he refused to go to a retirement home or to stay with his son. Every day he put on his white shirt and black bow tie and drove to the old and empty warehouse. He'd stay an hour or two, then return to his big house on Fremont Drive.

Byron Jenkins started falling apart three years before, when the state announced it needed his warehouse property to straighten the highway and build a new bridge. It had been vacant since Jenkins Products built new facilities in the industrial park ten years before. Jenkins turned down all the state's offers, and officials finally condemned the property. The building was to be torn down today, but now it looked like there was a hiccup in the plans.

Johnson pulled into the crumbling parking lot and stopped twenty feet away from the warehouse. The two Chrysler New Yorkers belonging to Stacey and his father were there, but neither man was in sight. A large yellow front end loader sat silently in one corner near the low boy that had brought it, and two men sat in a nearby Chevrolet pickup drinking coffee from a thermos.

Johnson stared at the warehouse. It was a tall one story, red brick edifice with the date 1895 set in yellowing concrete over the huge wooden double doors. Tenacle like limbs of centuries old live oaks hung over the structure, and Spanish moss draped down to touch it. The two small windows on this side were set high to protect against burglaries, and a windowless access door was located to the right of the big doors.

Stacey walked into sight from around the building and came over to the squad car. He was bald and wore bifocals on his broad nose. Chief Johnson rolled his window down.

"I tried to get in the back door," Stacey said. "Everything's locked tight."

"What happened?"

"He wasn't home, so I figured I'd find him here."

Johnson nodded. "He really has a thing about that building, don't he?"

"I can't figure it. He's locked the doors from the inside, and he won't answer. I can hear noises in there. Big tapping noises. Maybe he just can't hear me over them."

Johnson thought a moment. He'd had his deputy follow Byron that morning, because he suspected he'd do something. What, he didn't know. Apparently, they'd find out soon.

"Well, we've got to get him out." He picked up the file and got his flashlight from the glove compartment. "I'll show him this legal stuff again, but it probably won't make any difference. Wait here."

He went over and talked with the men in the pickup truck. One got out and climbed onto the crawler loader and started it. Exhaust cap clanking and motor roaring, it dug its tracks into the cracked asphalt pavement and angled slowly toward the warehouse. The loader bucket's corner popped the smaller door from its hinges, and dust swirled up as it clattered to the concrete floor inside.

Chief Johnson and Stacey stepped into the warehouse and stood a moment, waiting for their eyes to adjust. Johnson turned on his flashlight, and they walked into the huge empty room, its silence broken only by echoes of their steps and a bird's fluttering between overhead steel beams. A musty odor of oil, dirt, and chemicals hit his nostrils.

"Dad? Where are you?" Stacey cocked his head to listen.

"Let's check the office," Johnson said, nodding toward a stud and panel afterthought built into the corner. He opened the door and stepped in, and Stacey followed him. Huge cobwebs turned white in his flashlight beam, and thick dust clouded up around their feet.

"Mom's desk was right there," Stacey whispered, pointing. "Remember?"

"Sure do."

Johnson and Stacey had walked into that room many times together in the early fifties. It had been Esther Jenkins' domain. She kept the books, answered the telephone, and bought the supplies. She sometimes asked them to help pack furniture polish after school, particularly when Byron was on the road selling. Johnson closed his eyes. He could still smell the polish and hear her high pitched laugh.

He touched his friend's shoulder. "Let's keep looking." Stacey nodded and followed him out the door. They turned right, toward the back wall where Byron Jenkins had mixed his polish in stainless steel vats. Johnson swept the flashlight beam back and forth, then down at the floor.

"Look," he said.

A wide path of footprints tracked through the gray dust mantle and turned the corner at the office wall's end. They varied from almost indistinguishable to sharp black imprints, the latter apparently made by Byron Jenkins only today.

Johnson heard a metallic click from around the corner. He froze. A crashing boom filled the warehouse, lingered, vibrated. Birds fluttered and screeched overhead.

Chief Johnson waited several seconds. "Mr. Jenkins? You there?"

They tiptoed around the office end, saw the brick outer wall, and then a four by six foot concrete block cubicle built in the corner. Large jagged concrete fragments littered the floor below a gaping hole in the cubicle's wall. A sledgehammer leaned against the partition.

Johnson shined his light into the hole. The beam hit a body laying face down on what appeared to be a pile of clothing. Johnson grimaced, reached in, and rolled the thin body over. The face was a mass of blood drenched flesh.

Stacey stared, gasped in recognition.

"My God," he said. "He's shot himself in the face!"

Johnson pulled his friend back. "Steady, Stacey. Look away."

Stacey buried his face in his hands. Johnson peered inside again, shined the beam around. Byron Jenkin's once white shirt and dark bow tie were soaked in blood. Fresh gunpowder smoke hung in the air, and a shiny pistol lay near Jenkin's right hand.

Johnson inspected the clothing under the body. He saw the end of a briefcase sticking up at the side, and leaned in to pick it up. When he turned, Stacey was gone.

"Stacey?" Johnson's footsteps echoed as he took long strides toward the entrance. He stepped into the bright sunlight and squinted. His deputy's cruiser was parked alongside his.

"I found out what he bought at the hardware store," Jim Parker started, leaning out the car's window.

"Never mind that now. Where's Stacey?" Johnson laid the briefcase on the cruiser's hood and opened it. He shuffled through its contents. He already knew what Byron had bought at the store. A sledgehammer and a gun. And a padlock, so he could buy some time.

"He went around there," Parker said, pointing to the warehouse corner where Stacey had appeared only a few minutes before.

"Get the coroner, Jim."

Johnson tossed the briefcase into his own cruiser. He half walked, half ran around the warehouse corner, holding his arms out to protect from overgrown limbs that were mere switches when they were kids. He stepped high through the overgrowth, and finally came out at a clearing at the water's edge. Stacey sat on a big boulder that stuck out into the river, staring dully into the murky water.

Johnson sat next to his friend. He waited a minute, then spoke. "Stacey, I have more bad news."

Stacey stared up at him, then back at the river. He tossed a pebble in and watched the expanding circles.

"There were two more bodies in there," Johnson said. "Under your dad. A man's and a woman's."

Still silence. Another rock, more circles. A car clattered over the old bridge behind them.

"There was a briefcase there, and I opened it. It had letters dated 1956, brochures about chemicals, some other things. Stacey, it belonged to the man your mother ran away with. But it looks like they didn't run fast enough."

Stacey stared at him, and tears ran down his cheeks. He turned his head and cried.

Another clatter came from the old bridge, and Johnson looked up. A new bridge would be built where they were sitting. It would take away the warehouse and let interstate travelers whiz by without giving a thought to what had been there. But the memory would linger. For him, but especially for Stacey, what had been would always be.

He patted his friend's shoulder and stared blankly out into the river.

## The Quarantine Flatboat

1770's pioneer Aaron Reeder thought

he knew what love for his young daughter was,

until he ran into problems going west on the

_Tennessee River flotilla to settle the land_.

Aaron Reeder stared south across the small campfire to his fourteen year old daughter and the Tennessee River beyond. The dawn sun flickered over the dark Appalachian Mountains to his left, a flattened egg yolk sandwiched between black rocky peaks and low hanging dark clouds.

The fire reflected off Phoebe's right cheek, almost hidden by the frayed gray shawl that fought against the stinging wind. The twenty two boats behind her squealed and growled against each other as the boiling river rushed past. His own small skiff nuzzled against Colonel Donelson's flatboat. The two dark blobs on the flatboat's deck were probably Donelson and his wife or his daughter Rachel, although they could be any two of the boat's thirty or so passengers. Donelson usually wanted to start early, what with the Indians active.

"Better get this stuff on board," Reeder told Phoebe, nodding toward the blackened pot next to the low fire. "If that thing ain't cooled yet, it won't never be."

He gathered their bedding as he watched her adjust her kersey skirt and draw her bodice strings tight, and shook his head. All old clothes, all hand me downs, all proof he couldn't take care of his own. Rachel Donelson had given Phoebe that bodice just last week, saying it didn't fit her any more. He'd spent every spare shilling on outfitting his skiff, and nothing was left over for women's things.

Phoebe leaned over to pick up the pot, and the fire's reflection danced on her face. Sabra. She was Sabra all over again. The same large eyes, the scooped nose, even the pout. Sabra, the woman he'd married, so far away and so long ago.

Reeder looked around. Other families were dousing their own fires, preparing for the day's float down the Tennessee River. They loaded their boats with clicks and clanks, talked in whispers, looked for Indians hidden beyond the campfires. At least they talked to each other. But his own daughter, his own flesh and blood, wouldn't talk. She'd said nary a word since he'd set her right about that Stuart boy the night before. Aaron looked at her, and their eyes met.

"Givin' me the silent treatment ain't goin' to help at all," he said. He rubbed his jaw, overgrown with a beard that hid caved in cheeks. "It ain't my fault that boy and his family got the smallpox. I said they're trash, and I'll say it again. Plague take it! You just shake yourself out of this damned mood you're in."

Not two hours before, a scream from the quarantine camp upstream woke both of them. Could have been a bobcat, though. Maybe even an Indian. For three nights now, ever since they'd made the twenty-eight smallpox people follow back a ways in their own flatboat, Reeder had heard whoops and yells and other strange sounds. Every night when they pulled to shore, Donelson had the bugle sounded to warn the castaways to make camp behind them. Then an hour or two later the commotion would start. They did have their guns, of course, but most didn't have the strength to use them. He'd seen more Chickamaugas along the shores in the past few days than ever before, acting like they owned the river.

"I'm goin' to go see if the Colonel needs me," he said. He threw the rolled bedding over his shoulder. "You come when you're ready. And goddamn it, straighten up."

He walked slowly down the bank, feeling for hidden rocks in the johnsongrass with his toes. He pulled his wool stocking cap tighter on his balding head and wished he had warmer clothes. The thin homespun pants and knit woolen stockings just weren't enough. He looked up to where the clouds broke overhead. The widening egg yolk ran down the sharp mountain edges and spilled into the swift river itself, framing the black gathering of boats that hugged the near shore. To the left, two men added packages to a small stack of supplies beneath a white makeshift flag, to be picked up by the quarantined people. It would be a race whether they or the Indians got there first.

A voice came from the right. "It's not much, is it?"

Reeder took off his cap and turned toward Colonel Donelson. Rachel jumped off the flatboat and came to her father's side.

"It's all we can do," Aaron said. He stared at the small pile of provisions and wished he could have given something himself. But all he owned was on that beat up skiff and second hand things he'd picked up at Fort Patrick Henry three months before. The parched corn, a handful of salt, and precious little jerky was about all the food he had left. It might not even be enough for just the two of them.

"Where's Phoebe?" Rachel said.

"Mornin', Miss Donelson. She's cleaning up breakfast." Reeder replaced his cap and pulled his boat into shore. He tossed the bedding in and released the rope, and the boat swung back against the flatboat.

"Can she ride with us today?"

Reeder looked at the girl. "Well, I don't want her to be no trouble. But I'd be obliged if she could. 'Course, it's up to your daddy."

He glanced at the Colonel, hoping he'd say yes. She'd be warm in that flatboat. She'd ridden there twice before, the last time when it rained steady for three days, and Reeder had to float down the river under his tarpaulin.

"We'd be glad to have her," Donelson said. "Rachel, go help get her things."

"I thank you, Colonel. Anything I can do for you now, afore we get under way?"

"Well, you could round up the sentries. We should leave as soon as possible."

"Happy to. Anything to help. S'pose Nathaniel's out there, huh? A fine young boy."

Reeder walked toward the first sentry. Maybe staying away from him today would help Phoebe get over her sulk. But damn it, she had to see the Stuart boy was no good. He wouldn't let her waste her life like her mother did. She would marry well. Maybe somebody like Nathaniel, Donelson's boy would take to her. Stranger things have happened.

***

Aaron Reeder swiped the water with his oars. The sun felt good in spite of sweat that drenched his body and ran down his spine. That sweat had not come from the sun, but from the hair raising stretch of white foamed narrows they'd just passed through, where the banks closed in and the current raced faster. For almost two hours the Indians had trotted through the trees on both shores. They kept up with the current, firing arrows toward the settlers as the boats threaded among half hidden rocks that could slice his skiff up like a knife through fat. He and the others squatted low, clutching primed rifles, shooting toward running figures to keep them from stopping long enough to aim.

The river had just widened into a pool that put the boats out of arrow range from either shore. It was flat and calm ahead, and the morning wind had died down. A flash of memory came of the Virginia mountain lake where he and Sabra had lived until she'd died birthing Phoebe. Reeder sat back on his haunches and reached for his leather sack of parched corn. He chewed a kernel slowly to make it last.

"Aaron!"

Colonel Donelson waved him over from his flatboat deck. As Reeder paddled toward him, a scream sounded from way upriver, then another. A gunshot, another scream, then some whoops. The Indians were attacking the quarantined boat people. A rifle barked in the distance.

Donelson's grim face looked east toward the noises. He nodded at the tarpaulin covered bulge in Reeder's skiff.

"How's she doing?"

Reeder blinked. "What?"

"How's Phoebe? Rachel said she didn't feel well."

A chill gripped Reeder. "What the hell you talking about? She's in your boat."

Colonel Donelson's face turned white. He stared back up the river, then down at Reeder. "Good Lord, man! She isn't here. She told Rachel she was going with you."

Aaron's mouth dropped open. He looked back toward the screams. Snatches of the early morning came to him. Her silence. Grieving over the Stuart boy. Packing the boats. Stacking provisions for the smallpox people to pick up—

Oh, my God.

My God, she—she stayed with the provisions, to be with that boy!

Reeder crammed an oar against the flatboat and spun his own boat around. "Damn!" He muttered the word over and over again, in time with the powerful oar thrusts he made into the dark water. He felt lightheaded, like he did when he'd climbed on Colonel Donelson's barn to fix the roof, then looked at the ground so far away. He paddled furiously and angled toward the slower water near the north bank. He met and passed one, two, three flotilla boats, ignoring Colonel Donelson's yells to return.

His skiff bounced into the rapids. The trees closed in and passed by more slowly despite his strong, panicked surges against the swift current toward the screaming and yelling.

A cracked voice came from the quarantine boat. "You damned bastards! You—"

Loren Stuart stopped in mid sentence. A woman screamed. Reeder wiped a dirty sleeve across blurred eyes and rowed harder toward the north shore. The skiff rammed the beach, and he grabbed his rifle and jumped out. The boat slipped away and bobbed aimlessly down the river.

An Indian leaped up in front of him. Reeder fired and saw the slug snap his head back. He reloaded and stumbled eastward toward the screams.

Another Indian. He shot again. Blood gushed from the savage's side and splashed on slippery pebbles.

"You sons of bitches! You goddamned sons of bitches!" His frantic gaze locked on the Stuart boat. Loren Stuart laid face down, with an arrow in his back. Young Stuart was dead, too, or too sick to fight. His mama had either fallen out or was on the floor. His daughter Phoebe knelt helplessly against a smoking rifle. _God, she doesn't even know how to reload! I raised her to be a lady, and now_...

An arrow struck her right shoulder. She dropped the gun and grabbed at the shaft and struggled with it. Reeder drew almost even with the boat.

_He_ could pull it out. _He_ could do it! He dropped his empty rifle and plunged into the raging river. He kicked fiercely and stroked hard and closed the distance to the boat as the current carried them all downstream. He lunged at the Stuart boat and grabbed its side and tried to pull himself up.

The first arrow struck his back. He felt a small prick, a sudden heaviness. His legs wouldn't move. Without power to tread water he was going under. He clinched the boat tighter and fought the current's pull. His weight tipped the boat and Phoebe's eyes met his for the first time. She reached for him, and her lips tried to form words. _Talk to me_! _Oh, Phoebe, talk to me_!

Another arrow tore into Phoebe's side. She pitched forward, eased down against the boat's side, and rolled into the water. She slipped beneath the surface. Her body bumped Reeder's chest as he floated over her. He gasped and tasted blood in the red frothed water.

Silence.

Her silence.

The sudden silence of the battle, in spite of yelling Indians and waves crashing on jutting rocks.

No sound at all.

Sabra was gone, and now Phoebe. Arrows came in slow motion, bounced against the boat, stabbed its contents. Then one, with a sharp point and a trailing turkey feather, pierced his neck and ripped through the other side. His fingers relaxed, and cold water covered his face.

Silence.

## Deliverance at Last

_If God couldn't save him, he'd have to do it himself_.

Wayne Jackson was just sitting there, half listening to Reverend Paul Mason talk about how people's lives were like trees, when he realized he did not believe in God.

He glanced sideways at Judy, then at the parishioners sitting beside her. Their eyes were glazed over. They'd all been brainwashed and would go to their graves believing. They'd call other religions cults, hate atheists, and demand their children be allowed to pray in school. And they would all go to their graves expecting to live forever after in the sky with Jesus and his disciples and everybody else that had died since the beginning of time. Except for those who went to hell, wherever and whatever that was.

Until that moment of revelation, this Sunday had been like any other day. No, his revelation actually started when they'd arrived at the church just minutes before, and he was backing their twelve-year-old Chevrolet into the narrow space between two parked cars. It somehow seemed to start there.

"Watch out, Wayne," Judy had yelled. She grunted and twisted her fat body to look out the back window. "You'll hit that car! Why didn't you just pull in straight like everybody else?"

He finished backing and turned off the ignition.

"Look at that. I can't even get out," she said, opening the door. But she had plenty of room. She was just in one of her moods.

"My, it is a nice church." She eyed the white brick edifice with the tall gleaming aluminum steeple at the other end of the parking lot, sitting among blossoming azaleas and large live oaks. She stood there, feet spaced apart and purse dangling, absorbing the scene.

"You have money for the collection?"

He felt the crumpled five dollar bill in his ill fitting jacket's side pocket and nodded. The bells rang, and the other stragglers walked faster.

"Look at that. We're late. I wanted to at least say hello to Paul and Susan before we sat."

"But we'll see them for lunch," Wayne said. "We can say hello all we want to, then."

She did one of her nose in the air things, and Wayne smiled secretly inside. Zing. Another small victory. Outwardly, he remained sober and serious looking, standing there in all of his five feet, nine inch height, looking innocently up at her. He smoothed his gray hair back and adjusted his rimless glasses on his narrow nose. He liked to get her going sometimes, when she didn't even realize he'd done it, almost as much as he disliked her constantly harping at him. Twenty five years before, he'd thought her way of acting was cute. But it got worse when he got her pregnant and had to quit high school to marry and support her. She found God for both of them just a month after they moved into their first apartment over her uncle's garage, but that didn't keep her from harping at him every chance she got.

He never did like attending church with her. Today was a little different, of course, since they also came to visit a cousin she saw only rarely who'd recently become pastor of this church. The four hour drive was almost pleasant. They'd eaten at a Shoney's breakfast bar not far back, something he could afford to do only occasionally on his pay from the body shop. And he did enjoy the different scenery along the way. But at home, he only grudgingly went to church with her.

***

Wayne was trapped in his new realization of his disbelief in God. Pastor Paul Mason was winding up his sermon, talking about tree roots, but Wayne wasn't really listening. He was trying to think of reasons to believe. Did God actually communicate with people? As far as he knew, there were no written documents since the time of Jesus. As he thought about it, it was a surprising contention that here is a god who created the entire universe, watches even the little sparrow that falls, has ears enough to hear every prayer directed to him from earth, and yet could not keep a simple record of his only begotten son whom he had sent to redeem the world. There was not a scrap, not a fragment, not a sentence, not a phrase anywhere concerned with Jesus Christ until a hundred years after his alleged appearance. People were asked to believe on faith, as if disregarding fact was a virtue.

Somehow Wayne Jackson made it through the ending prayer. He and Judy stood and joined the slow procession up the aisle and toward the exit. When they reached the one man receiving line at the door, he gave his usual "Good sermon, Reverend," and started to pass.

Reverend Paul flashed bright, white teeth. "Good morning! Glad you could make it. Wait around a few minutes, and you can follow us to the restaurant."

Paul Mason nodded and smiled at his flock and continued to shake their collective hands. He wore a pin striped suit and sparkling black shoes that matched his bushy black hair, an ensemble that reminded Wayne of a TV preacher.

Wayne and Judy waited for several minutes, smiles pasted on their faces, standing with Paul Mason's wife Susan, who wore the tight curls of a new permanent and the subdued colors of a pastor's wife.

Finally, Wayne could hold himself back no longer. He bounded down the steps, jogged across the lawn, and ran across the parking lot.

"Wayne!" Judy hissed after him. "Wayne, you come back here!"

She smiled grimly and walked in her most dignified manner, the heels of her squashed shoes clicking on the sidewalk and then the asphalt, all the while calling at Wayne under her breath. She caught up to him where he stood, catlike, ready to step between their car and the one next to it.

She slammed her bulky purse onto the hood. "Now what on earth was _that_ for?" She grabbed his arm, made muscular by years of hard, physical labor. "Would it have really hurt you to stand there and act pleasant?"

"Let's go home," he said, trying to pull away. He hadn't meant to act like that, but there it was. Why couldn't he have said nothing and let the day just go by on its own? Why couldn't he have stood there smiling, like she said? No, it wouldn't have hurt him.

"Wayne, just what's the matter with you? Are you sick?"

"No. I just..." He let it trail off.

"You tell me what's wrong!" She grabbed both his arms and shook him.

He looked at her. "I just—I just don't believe any more." He looked down, away from her hard face. There. He'd said it.

"You don't believe _what_ anymore?"

He stood there, like a school child in the principal's office. "In God," he said finally, louder than he meant to. He looked around to see if anyone overheard him. "I think that's all made up. It's a myth."

"Wayne, what are you saying?" Her face whitened, and her right hand came up to cover a gaping mouth. Neither spoke for several seconds. Then she grabbed his arm again. "You don't mean that, Wayne," she said. He didn't answer.

"Of course there's a God. Don't you believe in the Bible?"

"A lot of men wrote it," he mumbled, then wished he hadn't.

"But it was _inspired_ by God!" She sandwiched him between her and the car, blocking any chance of escape. Her mouth screwed up, a sure sign she was struggling with a decision. Then she dragged him back toward the church.

"God made it happen in this parking lot for a reason," she said firmly. "He did it in the presence of his servant, Paul Mason."

"What are you—Oh, God, Judy, don't!" He jerked hard and pulled out of her grasp.

"Come back here! You come back here this instant!"

"Look, Judy, I..."

"Now!" She pointed to the ground next to her, as if telling a dog to heel, and he came over. They walked up the wide steps and Judy motioned for Susan Mason to follow them. They marched down the aisle to the altar.

"Kneel, Wayne," Judy ordered. "Kneel down and pray."

She turned toward Susan, who stood with eyes wide and hands clasped. "Get Paul. He has some ministering to do."

Judy kneeled next to her husband. "Honey, we have to save your soul. Some people think the unforgivable sin is to believe unto him and then renounce him. Oh, dear God, that means you may go to Hell!"

She started reciting the Lord's Prayer. In a few moments Paul Mason was there with three, four, now five parishioners. She whispered the problem to them. Wayne glanced at the group, who turned toward him with faces filled with love and concern. He closed his eyes again. Paul knelt on the other side and began praying aloud. The others gathered around and laid their hands on him.

"Save this sinner," Paul said, looking heavenward. "Come visit him and save his soul!"

Paul Mason, Judy, and the parishioners prayed over him as he continued to kneel, head down, eyes closed. Their prayers varied from faint mumblings to loud shouts, and their hand pressures on his shoulders from tentative touches to abrupt slaps and punches. Their intensity increased as time passed—an eternity that Paul knew was actually less than ten minutes.

Then it happened. Suddenly, he started shaking. His whole body vibrated, and the group stopped praying and looked at him.

"Hallelujah!" Wayne yelled. He stood abruptly and spread his arms open toward heaven.

"Wayne, are you okay?" His wife sat back on her haunches and inspected him. The others didn't move.

"Praise the Lord!" Wayne yelled heavenward. "Hallelujah, and praise the Lord!"

Reverend Paul Mason stood and leaned over him. "Wayne, I—"

"I'm saved! I'm saved!" Wayne whirled around, knocking Paul Mason aside. The preacher's glasses fell and he grabbed for them, smashing them against the altar railing. One lens popped out, and broken into pieces when it hit the floor.

"Oh, Judy, it was such a wonderful experience," Wayne said. "I felt the warmth of God's love, his acceptance of me. He has welcomed me unto his wonderful presence!"

"Well, that's—that's great, honey. But wasn't that awfully fast?"

"Yes! The Lord works in mysterious ways. Reverend Paul, would you please pray with me?"

Paul Mason inspected his glasses. "I would be happy to, brother. Let's gather around and pray. Isn't it wonderful when a lost lamb rejoins the flock?"

***

Wayne Jackson checked his watch by the speedometer's light. Ten o'clock. He glanced at Judy, snoring in the passenger seat. He had been driving for two hours, and the excitement of the day had done her in. She'd watched him receive the Lord, then took part in a full afternoon of religious discussion at Paul Mason's house. Twice Wayne saw the perplexed, is this for real look on her face, but soon she entered again into the spirited, spiritual conversation. Wayne knew he must have resembled a sponge, asking all those religious questions and making notes. An armful of reading materials lay on the back seat.

The tall mast of an Exxon truck stop sign loomed ahead. He slowly decelerated, pulled off the interstate, and drove into the service station's lot. He parked behind the building where it was dark and left the engine running. Judy shifted slightly but continued to snore. He opened the door and closed it softly, letting it click only once.

The restaurant was at the other end of the building. He walked in and went to truck drivers' section. A short young man sat by himself at the end booth, writing in a notebook.

"You going far?" Wayne asked, smiling.

"Los Angeles."

"Me, too. I'll give you a hundred dollars to let me tag along."

The young man looked him over. "It's against the rules," he said. "But what the hell? Make it two hundred, and you've got a deal."

The truck driver paid his check and they walked out to his eighteen wheeler. Wayne climbed up into the passenger seat. The air brakes released and the driver shifted the big machine through its gears. They passed behind Wayne Jackson's car, and he glanced at it.

Zing, he thought. You've humiliated me the last time, Judy. You've given me your last order. Zing!

He felt his jacket pocket for the checkbook he had slipped out of Judy's purse. He could write a five hundred dollar check without it bouncing, enough to support him until he found a job.

He stared ahead. The truck paused, then turned west, toward his new life. Hallelujah, he said to himself, settling back into his seat's thick padding. Hallelujah. And praise the Lord.

* * *
