 
Meandering in a Muddled Mind

Mark Bell

**Published by Wadley House Publishing at Smashwords**

Copyright 2014 Mark Bell

All rights reserved.

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# Contents

Woodstock: The Parable

It Was a Blow Job That Caused the Wreck

Mid Life

The Big Blow

Baby Cakes

The Island

Internal Growth

#  Woodstock: the Parable

With much consternation I find that it is necessary to retell, and sadly relive, a part of my life that I have walked away from. Your letter requires that I give a full accounting of my actions, and that you shall receive, but perhaps not in the form that you expect. Please bear with me.

***

I was seventeen in the year 1969 and banished to my grandmother's for the summer. I loved my grandmother so you can stop worrying that this will be another youth rebelling against authority diatribe. This is a "na-na na-na boo-boo" piece. What the hell, you ask? Think of the little kid that runs away from the bullies: just as he reaches the door and safety he can't resist turning and sticking fingers in his ears, wiggling the leftover digits and yelling the afore mentioned citation. This of course leads to him getting a rock upside the head. Rock to follow.

As I was saying, Grandma's for the summer so that the 'folks' could have a little 'away from me' time. I later learned that, contrary to the prevailing opinion, parents don't only have sex for the sake of conception; they holed up in the house and screwed like bunnies. It seems that Mother had acquired a slow itch that needed some serious scratching. This is also something that seems to be a recurring theme in forty-something women, liberated or not, and explains why forty-something men begin to look haggard, listless and begin a long affair with Doan's Pills.

As it turns out, sex is a game of cards and I was about to garner my hole card. When I arrived at Grandma's things started real slow. All of the local kids had friends and figured that they didn't need another, especially one that was a transient, with little to offer in the way of looks, nor was I holding a good stash. All of the cool kids had heard of Woodstock and wished that they had known about it in time to attend, although none of them would have made the trip from Dingle, Florida, because it was above the Mason Dixon line. They had no idea where the hell New York state was located, nor would their parents have ever agreed to it. This did not stop them from having the discussion, and the normal swagger from a few who knew someone or had a relative that knew someone who went.

As I walked past a bunch of them congregated in the drugstore, I had no pick-up lines in my quiver, so I managed to stumble out the line that changed my life. I mentioned that I, "just came through Woodstock on my way here."

The guys looked at me with daggered stares, but most importantly the girls looked at me with star lust in their eyes. In my defense, I had not lied: the bus had passed through Woodstock, Georgia on my way to Grandma's house.

Pause and remember that this was not the era of the internet, no devices to whip out of your pocket. Spell check was a large heavy stack of papers bound in cardboard or leather. It even provided the definition if you took the time to read it. While I'm winding down this nostalgic labyrinth let me mention that the delete button on the 'word processor', we called them typewriters, came in a bottle. Archaic, but in that era information flowed from one uninformed mouth to another. The chance of being found out was slim in Dingle. The problem was finding some half-credible titbits to share.

My enlightenment came from the periodical archives of the Dingle Municipal Library. In that dusty, seldom used room in the basement were the gems of knowledge that would rocket me into stardom. They were titled the _New York Times_ and the _Washington Post_. Photos and articles from reporters on the scene, quotes from police officers, politicians and a few from the actual participants added spice to my little tale. The most helpful was a list of the bands that played and in what order they appeared. This last bit of knowledge was supplied by the relatively new and for the most part unheard of publication, _Rolling Stone_. This was not a rag that the library or its board would ever approve. There were plenty of photos in _Life_ and even a cover of hippy tie dyes in _Simplicity_ , but the _Rolling Stone_ was the holy grail of hippy and music culture. This treasure was provided to me by the most unlikely accomplice.

Elizabeth Barrett Sutter, when I met her, was twenty-five years old. She had reached the pinnacle of her aspirations. She was the head and only full time librarian of the Dingle Municipal Library and the reason that I can truthfully say that I made it on the cover of _Rolling Stone_. Not the typical librarian and not the porno version either, she was an intellectual, an island of thought in a sea of mundane. She liked ideas for their idealist qualities. She also was terribly withdrawn and as abstract as Aristotle's 'thought thinking of thought', but, unlike the abstract, she was a woman who had urges that, until my arrival, she had managed to contain.

The question that ignited this fiery relationship was a simple one. "Could you tell me where I can find pictures of Woodstock? I want to see if I can find me in the crowd."

I spent several hours a day for two days in the periodical archive, gleaning all of the titbits and the spatial layout of the stage and the crowd. I even found a picture that was wide-angle enough to claim that a dot in the back was me.

One evening I was in the archive, flipping through the Woodstock edition of _Life_ and mulling over how I was going to introduce my newfound knowledge to the crowd at the drugstore, when Dizzy Lizzy slipped in with a bundle in her arms. One should note that at this time it was common and desirable to give or have a nickname. Miss Sutter walked in to that room but Dizzy Lizzy walked out.

She covered the table with copies of Rolling Stone and the next to last thing she laid on the table was a copy of the _Kama Sutra_. I was the last thing that got laid on the table and thanks to my youth and vigor, she balled my brains out.

When this series of trysts and rendezvous ran their course I could proudly say that I was proficient in thirty-eight positions found in that storied edition. If you Google Dizzy Lizzy you will find that she went on to become the most read author on sexual manuals this side of Masters and Johnson. I can only suppose that after that summer Dingle Municipal Library lost its position as the pinnacle of her desires and that 'thought thinking of thought' was inferior to thought translated into action. My memories will adamantly attest to that.

The other thing of note from this encounter was an ink transfer from the now iconic naked man cover photo. The movement required to correctly administer the _Kama Sutra_ move of the day had rendered a face that moved and blurred as if breaking the speed of light. So noteworthy was this that Dizzy whipped out her Polaroid Instamatic and took a couple of pictures. While waiting for them to develop, I became the proud recipient of my first encounter with oral sex. It was brief because it only lasted as long as it took for the Instamatic to develop. This, if the advertisements were correct, would have been about four minutes. There is something to be said for delayed gratification.

My pursuit of the Woodstock information centered on impressing one young lady in particular, soon to be known as Squealy Sue. Squealy, not to be confused with Squeaky, and thank God for that, was one of the members of the drugstore group. Her father was one of two doctors in the mini-metropolis of Dingle and she had the perfect set of perky tits. You see it was at this time that women were shedding their bras. They had not burned them yet but some, not in Dingle of course, were beginning to abandon them. Sue Fuller's father was not a liberated man but he had a problem saying no to his daughter. As a matter of fact no one could recall when he used the word to her since her mother had died. This becomes relevant because after my initial tryst with Dizzy Lizzy, I was hell-bent on showing Sue what I had learned.

The two weeks that I spent in the archives had made me a mystery to the drugstore crowd, and when I did return I was not sure of my story so I was reticent to discuss my previous comment. This, as any teenager will know, only added to my desirability to the opposite sex and a deep uneasy loathing by the ones who shared my gender.

Sue was not accustomed to having anything withheld from her: she wanted to know what I had meant when I had stated that I was at Woodstock. My story had not coalesced but I was not completely without preparation. The leather necklace that I wore had a plastic keepsake holder on it that was now filled with dried up mud. I removed the necklace and tossed it to Sue, who looked at it with disgust until I said in an offhand manner, "it rained for a couple of days. This mud had at least a thousand hippy asses slide across it," and I turned and walked out the door.

It never mattered then and I should feel remorse now, because the mud came from the edge of Grandma's flower bed. Never before or since has an ounce of mud done so much. Halfway down the block Sue caught up to me. Later that afternoon I found out why her nickname would and should be Squealy Sue.

This hook-up continued until the fateful day that we were caught behind the courthouse. We were in the back seat of my grandmother's American Motors _Ambassador_. Sue's favorite attire for sexual encounters was one of my tie-dyed tee shirts that she had altered in the front. She had added a V-neck that exposed her cleavage and the mud necklace that she insisted on keeping. One has to remember, at that time, sexy boobs meant large. Jane Russell was famous to our generation for "lift and separate" and "full-figured girls", not that seeing _Gentlemen Prefer Blondes_ would have made Sue less self conscious.

That day, Squealy Sue was on top of me and I could see sweat starting to pop up on her cleavage. The mud medallion was swinging up and down, her nipples standing up under that cotton shirt and that was when she let out the most piercing squeal known to mankind. It was certainly not known to the courthouse bailiff who had stepped out for a smoke.

His tap on the window left me waving in the wind and Sue running away like a sprinter. She turned out of the alley and in front of the courthouse steps. Depending on your point of view this was the best or worst thing that could have happened because, just as she sprinted toward home, she broke in front of the photojournalist's composition of the sitting justices of the District Court of Dingle. As luck would have it, her erect nipples and tie dyed cleavage was in perfect focus.

As I stated before, her father was a paragon of healing in Dingle and had enough clout to stop the paper from publishing the photo and have me shipped back where I came from. The photographer was not so easily taken care of; he knew a great shot when he took one and he was not going to let this one get away. He sent it to a friend of his who worked for the _Saturday Evening Post_. Squealy Sue got an offer from a modeling agency in New York and the photographer got a job at Life.

It was an easy choice for Sue, given that her alternative was an all girls' school in Alabama. I was not given a choice. I got a ticket for public nudity, a humiliated grandmother, a bus ticket out of Dingle and a bird's eye view of what was to become the most famous cleavage of the early seventies.

College was scheduled for the end of summer but my pre-approved application was revoked because of a little thing called the morals clause. Evidently public nudity is frowned upon in the hallowed halls of academia, at least at that time. My parents were strangely calm when faced with a rejected son.

A couple of things to note during this time period: my mother started wearing tie dyed shirts like Squealy Sue's and I was sent to deliver a box of bras and girdles to the Salvation Army. The second noteworthy occurrence was that, since I was not in college, my draft status went to 1A. As it turned out it would not have mattered because they changed the law for student deferments shortly thereafter.

Mother had found little helpers. I don't know if it was the valium or the brown paper mail order catalogue that did the most to change her from an uptight housewife to a bra-burning feminist. She told me in strictest confidence that my incident in Dingle had opened her eyes, that there must be more to life than a Chanel suit, pill box hat and a girdle that molded every woman into the male idea of the perfect figure. My father did not agree and I became a product of a 'broken home'.

As my parents were working out the details of this seismic shift, and since I had no college to go to, I decided to attend one of my own choosing. I had a friend who attended the University of Maryland and since I had not seen him in a few months I decided to hitch to Maryland. I used a red bandana to flag down this one trucker. He was going to Hyattsville, he said, and that was close enough. His name was Chris but he spelled it funny. To entertain him on our journey I told him about going to see my friend, whose name was Bobby McGee, and how we had spent this one summer working on a farm because our parents thought that it would make men out of us and make us appreciate how lucky we were to live the life our folks had made for us. I also told him how I really missed Bobby because he was the coolest cat around.

I made it to Bobby's dorm. We went to a local bar and I began to tell him of my exploits in Dingle. As I conveyed the story of the mud necklace, and how I had told Sue about the "thousand hippy asses", a young girl of epic proportions happened to be passing by. Terrapin Tammy was a wholesome girl from the goat and cattle country of western Maryland. A farm girl who made it to college on a cheerleading scholarship, and determined to become worldly yet natural, she was one of a handful of female agricultural students.

She was the first person I met who talked of organic food and one's body being a temple. I was very interested in worshiping at that temple although as usual, there was a problem. Her boyfriend was an offensive lineman on the Terrapins starting eleven and was less than sanguine about his desire to pound anyone into hamburger who came close to his goddess.

Later, a thunderstorm blew up as I walked across campus. As the puddles began to form I saw a figure running toward me in a rain poncho. It was the Terrapin. She grabbed me by the hand and led me to an area that consisted of garden rows and greenhouses. We ran around one of the greenhouses and as I started to open the door she pulled me in between the rows of lettuce, pulled her poncho off and started to wallow in the mud. Not thousands of hippie asses in the mud, just a single organic one. I immediately became a proponent of healthy organic eating.

My luck, it seems, must always swing from one extreme to another because the same thunderstorm that had created the creamy mud between the lettuce leaves had also shortened football practice. I heard the cry of a wounded buffalo behind me, turned and saw a mass of enraged muscles bearing down on us. I rolled Tammy and myself over the lettuce and grabbed her hand to pull her up. A keen lightning bolt announced the coming of a torrent of rain and the loss of my assassin's footing. He skidded down the row with lettuce leaves flying in all directions. This I saw looking over my shoulder as Tammy and I, hand in hand, ran.

The rain was so intense that the mud was washed from our bodies and away we went in full nude stride. Just as quickly as the deluge had started it stopped. As we made our way past the Performing Arts building a group of dancers and would-be actors burst from the building. Evidently they were waiting for the rain to subside and when it did they came bursting out of the doors full tilt. Upon seeing Terrapin Tammy and myself running nude, spontaneity ruled the day and they all proceeded to run with us, discarding clothes as they went. Within fifty yards there were two hundred naked students headed toward the dormitories.

Wounded Buffalo had managed to regain his footing but not his composure. When you are nude and wet and running, what better camouflage is there than (the official estimate of) five hundred and thirty-three naked accomplices? A student newspaper reporter was in a phone booth when we made the turn and started toward him. He focused his camera on Tammy and me. Just as he squeezed off a shot I fell, and there was Terrapin Tammy followed by a crowd of like-undressed students. For my part I rolled out of the way to keep from being trampled and as I tried to regain my footing I heard him telling someone that they "just keep on streaking past me".

No longer in need of dignity or clothes I ran for Bobby's room. He greeted me with the solemn news that my mother had called and Uncle Sam wanted me more than the Wounded Buffalo.

Induction, basic training and specialist school can be lumped into one learning experience. I learned to smoke pot. I learned to smoke a lot of pot and I went back for refresher courses as often as possible. My specialist training was in community outreach programs. I was supposed to teach people who had raised rice for generations how to grow rice.

The war was winding down by the time I set foot in the jungles; the two sides were in Paris negotiating and Tricky Dick had problems other than the War. I spent most of my time in a village we liked to call Rice City. It was a small village on stilts and they grew rice and daughters. It was a town of shame, for female was not the gender that expectant fathers were looking for, yet it is what they got ninety-two percent of the time. They did not want or need me to teach them how to grow rice what they needed was male children. I was brought before the village council and told the decision had been agreed upon to use me as breeding stock. I humbly concurred.

I had reached my Eureka moment, or so I thought. I had visions of fresh young lasses, eager to learn my thirty-eight positions. Instead I got married women, escorted by their husbands who waited at the door for me to inseminate their wives. Can you say missionary position, with legs raised high? I did my part for community-building but more than half of the village women were on the same cycle. Can you say tired, worn out swimmers?

As you might have guessed by now, when the ladies were off-cycle I was left to my own devices in a village full of young girls who were off limits to me. But if you have gained any knowledge from my previous confessions, no was not a word that I was capable of using when confronted with the opportunity to have sex with a willing young woman who is equally inclined.

Rita Rice was willing, able and supple and a far cry from the older breeders that I was used to. She was also one of the village elder's daughters. Suffice it to say that neither my hut nor any other hut in the village was safe for our planned dalliances. Rita Rice came up with the one solution that I understand is still in use in many South Asian houses of ill repute. She took my army issued hammock, a piece of rope, and a stool into the forest and strung up the most stimulating contraption know to man. We worked hard and often to perfect the technique of the basket, but just as we were getting our rhythm down I received a radio transmission to return to home base.

Fearing that I might be replaced, we planned and executed the greatest sex swing extravaganza known to civilized or uncivilized man. Sadly, Rita Rice's father became an unwelcome and hostile onlooker. When he discovered that his daughter was in the swing, belligerence overtook hostile in seconds flat. The other thing that happened in seconds flat was me reaching my jeep and heading back to base. But fast don't beat bullets, and jeeps don't run on two tires, but feet do a fair job when given the right incentive. Bullets and pissed off fathers score high on the incentive scale even if the incentive wears off ten miles down the road and all you have left is another thirty miles to go and the desperate need of an excuse for a lost jeep. No motor pool sergeant cares if the jeep gave its life to save yours. What is guaranteed is that he will think it should have been the other way around because grunts were a dime a dozen but if you had a jeep you were in like Flynn.

The conversation never unfolded because when I arrived at base there was no one there. At least there were no soldiers. One guy was sitting on a jerry can smoking a doobie with cameras dangling from his neck. I was a quarter click from him when he swung a camera up and snapped off a few shots.

"Dingle man," he said, "you a long way from Caucasian cunt."

It was the photographer who had made Squealy Sue famous. A few tokes and a few words about famous cleavage could not change the fact that we were up shits creek. Even more distressful was his intel that all combat troops were pulling out.

I had to go or face court martial but his tour was not over and he was in no hurry to leave. As I split I could hear the whir of his auto-winder working. The famous photo on the cover of Newsweek of the last soldier walking away from a deserted base with one hand flashing the peace sign and in the other hand a large joint was me.

Iconic photographs do not an honorable discharge make. This I found out while I was waiting to be processed at Fort Meade.

What does a twenty year old male, skilled in rice growing in a tropical region and altering the genetic makeup of an Asian village, do for gainful employment? He goes home to live off of his parents. Well, parent, because while I was away, my mother's involvement with NOW and her alternative lifestyle had caused my father to slink out of town never to be heard from again.

It requires little imagination to believe that a mental funk hung over my head. Finding my mother attired in peasant skirt and see-through blouse did nothing to alleviate that cloud. Mother was forty-five at the time and I'm not saying that she did not have the right to dress in that manner, but she had nursed me as a child. That and gravity should have given her a clue. Not that it mattered at her home because she had moved to a little ramshackle farm house outside of town. Redemption for that location was found in the two acre pond that lay behind the little house.

Metaphorically I needed an island and at the same time I felt adrift. I addressed both by liberating a few fifty-five gallon drums, some planks, and with a large volume of rope I made a moveable island. I tied a nylon ski rope to trees on opposing banks and away I went to the middle of the pond. I used a tarp for a roof, had an ice chest full of Schlitz, and a twenty-two rifle to repel any onslaught of trespassers. As it turned out, the only natural trespassers were turtles. Their little heads would pop up and I could imagine what lay beneath but, like life, imagination can only suppose what really lies beneath. Besides, every time I put a turtle in the twenty-two's sights I only saw Terrapin Tammy and how could I possibly pull the trigger?

The turtles and I became co-inhabitants of my little island and that was fine as long as they left my Schlitz alone. I even named the four most persistent ones. Squealy had a chip out of her breast plate, Dizzy was the only one who could get off her back, Tam because she looked like a turtle, and Rita because she had slanted eyes. These four stuck with me because they enjoyed it when I shotgunned them with a J. Stoned turtles have an amazing capacity to entertain, especially if you are likewise stoned.

The problem was not on the island but lay in wait on shore. Her name was Ms Robinson. She and my Mother were co-chairs of the state chapter of NOW. It's not that I had never heard of _The Graduate_ but it was one of those movies that fell between the cracks. When it came out I was too young to see it, and when I was old enough it was out of the theatres and this was before everyone had a DVD player. Cassette players were the shit then and music was all that you could reproduce in a non-commercial venue. Ms Robinson was in her late forties, rich, married and horny.

Looking back I assume that she was one of my mother's part-time lovers. When she found me and the turtles she must have decided to satisfy her itch with someone young and knowing. Because my mother never could keep a secret, she knew of my _Kama Sutra_ moves, my fondness for sex in the out of doors, and of mine and Rita Rice's invention.

Since I had no job or ambition I was more than willing to give it a whirl. We did it on the island. We did it in the woods. We even once did it under her husband's bedroom window and that was OK until she wanted to re-enact Squealy Sue's orgasmic performance. It also became a sore spot between my mother and me. She was not exclusive but she wanted her share and it seems that I was cutting her out.

I was going with the flow like a good cosmic cowboy until I happened upon a copy of _The Graduate_ , the book. I spent a couple of days reading it and thought it was great fun until I realized that my life was now retro. I was living a life written in nineteen sixty-two. Up until that point everything that had happened to me was new, it was the happening scene. Suddenly life had passed me by.

The last big tango with Ms Robinson was on my island and it included my sex basket. She was bobbing and spinning in the basket and I was in the stool dutifully making her scream. When you are on an island, who cares if there is screaming, condemnations, or calls on a higher being? This had the makings of the best orgasm in the history of mankind but it wasn't. Just as the pressure was beginning to build I saw my four little turtles floating alongside the island. When release came it fizzled because reality smacked me like a Lude (Quaalude).

The turtles' heads were all that was showing but I knew that was but a small fraction of their totality. Introspection was short-lived at the time because my contraption that held the basket gave way and dumped me and Ms Robinson into the pond. I think, but am not sure, that it was Terrapin Tammy that bit her nipple. It did sound like something that she would do.

Ms Robinson took her divorce settlement money and started a new business. No matter how good an attorney you hire, it's hard to explain a severed nipple and a naked young man half your age, especially if it's in the newspaper. She and mother reunited and manufactured the first Love Basket in the United States.

I took my copy of _The Graduate_ and a duffle bag and set out for Drop City. I had not intended to record my youthful escapades while at Drop City, but what I found there was a microcosm of what was happening on the outside so I holed up in one of the domes and I wrote. Solitude and introspection suited me but even in rural Colorado I could tell that the world continued to spin: society continued on a different spiral, but a downward one just the same.

### Epilogue

The three books that came from the Drop City session are _Living and Lying Woodstock_ , _Naked in the Seventies_ , and _Doing Ms Robinson_. I have asked the publisher to send you a copy of each. I have never read them after publication but I am confident that you will find them consistent with what I described in this letter and the writing style to be the same. I have also requested that he send you bank records that show that all of the proceeds have and will continue to be sent to a small village in Vietnam.

If you take the time to read the aforementioned books you will find that I am responsible for: three careers, a personality change in my mother, streaking, a number one song, a small business, the changing of the genetic makeup of a town, and my image was on an iconic magazine cover. These things, I readily admit, I am personally responsible for. Yet all that I had to show for my life were four turtles that liked me and I managed to abandon them. I watched as the great communal experiment collapsed onto itself, brought about by the one constant that man can't remove himself from, that is, the human condition. I did not know who I was or what I wanted except to end my life as I knew it.

It was at that point that I made the one decision that made my life have value. It did not make me a saint but my vocation of teaching the youth of today about the search for the possibility of inner good in humanity has been a most gratifying reward. My methods have never been gentle; I am known as a taskmaster and I admit to using unorthodox teaching methods, but they are methods. I am more than willing to admit that perhaps my methods overstepped the boundaries of our esteemed organization, but I refuse to respond to the allegations of a spiteful youth or his materialistic, addled parents.

All of this brings us to the question at hand: will I appear before the archdiocese to answer the allegations of sexual abuse of a young boy? The answer is no, and I find the proceedings ludicrous and the accusation absurd. Begging your Holy Father's forgiveness, when I put on these monastic robes some thirty years ago I promised to forgo and forsake my hunt for snatch. To this I have remained true. Nor have I tried to substitute what I gave up and certainly not with a pubescent boy, for I did not agree to forgo my love of pussy, just my abstinence from it.

Sincerely,

Brother Timothy

#  It Was A Blowjob That Caused The Wreck

It was a blow job that caused the wreck. I wondered if that was the line that he would use. It was a legitimate excuse. It was not a terrible accident. A crumpled fender and a cleaned-out side ditch – worst-case scenario, a bent frame. But if he told the truth, anyone would think that the only thing bent was him.

Problem was that there was no other passenger; he was the only one in the car. He would have to further explain that the blow job occurred in the car behind him. Before he could stammer out the truth he would more than likely be face down and getting new bracelets like a twisted boy should. Talk about the cosmic forces turning the screws: how could the gods saddle him with so lousy an excuse and have to meet a deductible as well? But those dastardly cosmic forces were not finished. A State Trooper just happened to be coming down the road in the opposite direction.

It happened on one of those rural highways that serve to link towns that are not large enough for either to warrant a freeway. He would tell the Trooper that he was going down the road minding his own business. This car came up behind him, and he knew for sure there were two people in the car. The Trooper would ask if they were tailgating and since he had erroneously cast his lot on the side of truth, he would answer, "Well no."

"So how do you know if two people were in the car?" the officer would ask.

He would reply, "Because the passenger had blonde hair that glinted in the sun and the car could not drive itself." He knew for a fact that there were two people and he would mention that, when he glanced back, the long blonde haired passenger had disappeared. His initial reaction was to fear for her safety.

At this point he could see that truth had its faults and was edging toward virtue. What he was headed for was the bracelets. Like a train wreck he could not disengage or look away. Having squandered truth and virtue, his only chance was to shift the blame.

Supposition changed to realization. As we topped the next hill I saw him frantically pointing toward our car. A better man might have turned around and helped the fellow out, but his bad luck continued because I happen to be a pragmatist.

In my way of thinking he was a quasi-peeping tom. All that he had to do was keep his eyes on the road and his heart pure and everyone would have survived unscathed. If you walk into an elevator and two people are having sex you don't step in and ask, "What floor?" You politely step back and say you will take the next one. You hope that they say, "No problem, come on in." At least you offered to extradite yourself for their benefit. If they ignore you, you step back. Any other action would make you a peeping tom. And once so defined, becoming upset that they did not invite you in for tea would not be acceptable to any follower of Miss Manners.

Given the logistical problems that motorists in separate cars would have with conversation, it should be a given that the couple would opt out. He should have turned his rear view mirror to night position and continued to adhere to the posted speed limit. This he also refused to do. He slowed down but not enough that I could easily pass him. He slowed just enough to decrease the distance between the cars. This I took as an act of egregious aggression.

I was also busy moaning the universal signal for faster and my mate obliged. Maybe the reflection from her golden hair was flashing SOS in Morse code. Dot Dot Dot, Dash Dash Dash, Dot Dot Dot. Son of a Bitch! It was over and he was in the ditch and bemoaning what a sacrifice it was to perform his civic duty.

I also felt a duty, but to my companion. The lovely creature had bypassed social norms to relieve my suffering. Were it not for the fact that her short skirt and nylon encased legs instigated this affair, she could easily be considered the Mother Teresa of the Piedmont. The wreck could have been avoided if she had just fastened her seat belt and remained seated with both legs firmly planted on the floorboard. Instead she chose to cross her legs thus, creating that elusive and often thought of Triangle of Darkness. In her defense I will assume that she did not understand what a life-altering weapon she had unleashed.

It was, in fact, the reason you are reading this now. If a young scholar named Heidi had not sat beside me in Algebra I class, and if mini-skirts had not become fashionable, I would not have discovered the allure of the triangle. I might have paid attention to the teacher and it might have been the start of a career in science. If I had paid the slightest attention I might have known the formula for the area of a triangle. Instead I became a slave to the triangle. To this day the word hypotenuse draws a blank stare from me, but not short skirts and nylons: I stare, it's just not a blank one.

The allure of those items I understand all too well. That understanding is why I'm reduced to peddling words and recalling memories in the hope that someone will give alms to the poor or at least contribute to my alimony fund.

We did not start off the day by thinking that we would just for the hell of it alter someone's life. The lives that I sure as hell did not want to alter were mine and my companion's. The thought that I might be a lout or at least a pig has already crossed your mind. A few may have wished that I, at the very least, should have teeth mark scars in the pelvic region. But despite what you think of me, rest assured that I would never have subjected my companion to the humiliation of having to admit that she was the purveyor of oral sex, and in a public venue to boot.

This was way before kids with phones, with cameras attached, decided that pictures of garden fresh vegetables inserted in orifices not equipped to chew, or erect penises, constituted performance art. This was a time when we had our dirty little secrets and we liked them dirty and secretive. An orgasm should be enough. It should not have to go viral to be satisfying.

Besides, it was not my fault. I was not speeding. I was not swerving. Nor was I asking for public recognition of my good luck. The lessons learned are: a deed should be gratifying in and of itself, and no peeping tom should be invited to tea.

#  Mid Life

Bernard thought that he could find his former self if his marriage could catch its second wind. It was one of those clear and warm September days. The kids were back in school and Bernard had to inspect a house in his subdivision. The owners were trying to refinance. He knew the house, and his junior loan officer had correctly finished all of the paperwork. _A perfect excuse_ , Bernard thought, to leave work and surprise his wife. Flowers and trinkets in hand, he walked from the refi house to his own. No car, no garage door opener. He used his key on the front door. Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw in his living room.

Faint noises alerted Bernard. He quietly placed his presents down and slipped toward the origin of the sounds. Thoughts flashed through his mind and they all centered on that tanned asshole, the tennis instructor. To say the least he was one hundred eighty degrees off.

What he did was to pull his iPhone from his pocket and record to video the maximum his phone was capable of. Then he slipped out, retrieved his gifts and locked the door. A drunkard could have made it to the car better than Bernard but a drunk does not have billions of neurons bouncing in every direction off his skull.

### Bernie's Story

Mid-life is a bit presumptive. Who knows when the greatest muscle ever evolved will say, "Enough!", or those renegade cells will revolt and start to eat their harmonious neighbors? And don't forget the transgressions of youth that can be summed up in one word, PAR-TAY. He was in his prime, both physically and fiscally. Marital doldrums made the former a supposition and not a fact.

His wife Crystal had agreed to missionary on Sunday mornings. Being the good wife that she was, before the kids got up she would poke Bernie in the ribs, bend her knees and spread her legs. The only one in this household who asked, "Who's your daddy?" was his son. BJ used it to torment Mindy his little sister. This was followed by, "Mommy! He's doing it again."

Bernard had taken this Sunday morning ritual in the spirit given, which was stroke for stroke choreographed down to the last sigh. Spontaneity was relegated to which nights he would masturbate. He had dreams that a bulge became visible in the backyard and it would grow until nine months later a baby shit monster would erupt from the septic tank and terrorize the neighborhood. These kinds of thoughts kept him amused and sane in a world that continued to compress him into normalcy and conformity.

His house was one of four variations in his subdivision. His family was the correct mix, one wife, one son, one daughter. If he had agreed to his family's request he would be a pet parent of a dog and a cat, but Bernie had reached his responsibility threshold with his daughter's arrival.

There was no revelation, no clarion call from the depths of his soul; it was a slow moving force more like the car crusher that he had watched at a junkyard once. Methodical, unwavering and unstoppable until it was too late: the crusher and life made things smaller.

Bernard got it from every direction. After college he had found a job with Fidelity National as a loan officer. Life was pretty decent then and everyone called him Bernie. He met people; he knew people and he understood their problems and their lives, at least from a fiscal point of view. Talk about spontaneity, Crystal was the one who suggested they do it on the boardroom table. Now, every time he had to make a presentation to the board, his memory of her white flesh lying on the polished mahogany reminded him of what was, but would never be again.

Life was good back then, and from Bernie's vantage point could only get better, so they took the next logical step. They married. Marriage was good. Two pay checks meant disposable income, nice cars, chic apartment, dining out, clubbing and Caribbean vacations in the winter. Bernie wished that he had hit the pause button then. The woman he loved had eyes for only him and they had everything that a couple could want.

Life does not come with buttons and it never stands still. It moves at a methodical pace until some event, seen only in retrospect, alters your course forever. In Bernie's case it was a line on a stick that Crystal had purchased at the drugstore.

"Accidents happen," was what she had said.

He was happy and why shouldn't he be? He was going to be a father. Bernard Junior was the name that flashed in his mind and as far as he was concerned, that was the end of it. He already knew in his heart that it was going to be a boy. Bernie never wasted a thought on the fact that he hated the name given to him by his parents until after the birth certificate was signed. Lucky for Bernard Junior the television show BJ and the Bear was popular at the time and BJ became his moniker. But somewhere in the middle of bliss, diapers and teething, Bernie started to wonder.

Crystal was fastidious about the pill. Bernie wondered how they were the one percent that failed. It was not like he brooded over it. It was one of those thoughts that sneak up on you and flash across the mind and then it's gone. Except when the croup hit and he was up multiple times a night. The thought became more like a comet; it still passed in a flash but the tail remained a little longer each time it passed.

Bernie maintained a stiff upper lip and he threw himself into his work. The comet stopped coming when he made vice-president. Bernie left and Bernard took his place: youngest VP to head a division in the bank's history. He was twenty-eight at the time. His office moved up a floor and his wardrobe changed to pin-striped three-piece suits and the crowning touch was a watch fob. This he attached to the pocket watch that Crystal and the kids gave him for Christmas. He thought that the fob made him look older and gave him a more stately appearance.

What all of this did was remove him from the human race. No longer did he meet people and discuss their dreams and desires; he crunched numbers. He reduced the young couple starting out and wanting the American dream to a formula. Did they have the right percentage for a down payment? How did the application fit into the bank's loan portfolio? If his ratios were right then his bonus would be too. And he needed that bonus to be substantial.

The house in the correct housing development was Crystal's idea. A little out of their price range but, with that bonus, he thought he could swing it. The economy was booming. The house would appreciate ten percent a year. As a banker he knew that ten percent was not a historically sustainable figure but this was the 'new' economy, the new norm, and Bernard did not want to be the 'one' that missed out on the boom.

Upper-crust subdivisions, directly or indirectly, never stop at the house payment. There are homeowners' dues, lawnmowers or lawn service, and pool fees. Those are direct costs. The indirect ones were not trivial either. Crystal need a racket and tennis togs. Then, of course, lessons. BJ needed to be a member of the pool. Mindy was too young to want much other than a Beeber Baby poster. But in order for her mother to take lessons and her brother to hang at the pool, Mindy required a sitter. None of his family asked what Bernard wanted, nor did they seem to care.

Bernard did not drive up in a new red sports car. He did not join a gym. What Bernard wanted was Bernie back. He only looked at a sports car and he went as a guest to a gym. Bernie was not found in either place.

### Crystal's Story

Documentary film maker was all that Crystal wanted to be. She had worn out a couple of her parents' VHS recorders before she was sixteen. "Making a difference" was her standard answer to the question of career or 'life goals' and she meant it. In high school, she had the looks and the athletic abilities to be a cheerleader or a volleyball player. Instead she chose to be the person that sat on top of the field house and recorded the football games. She had a knack for framing a shot and a love for the way she could consolidate and order life in a viewfinder.

But Crystal had the curse shared by many leggy blondes. She was included in everyone's project in film school, except it was never in a position that mattered. She was given the position of being the ribbon on the Christmas package. Every penis that could sport an erection, and some that couldn't ,wanted her. Her frustration grew until she decided to take action. It was her director of photography professor that proved to be the catalyst. In her heart she knew that her assignments were good. Hell, they were better than any other camera jockey in the class. But when the assignments where handed out for the year end project, her hard work was awarded with a second assistant camera position.

"Your work shows promise," was what he said.

He had been a DP on several major motion pictures 'in the day'. Crystal thought that he probably had to quit because his arm got too old to turn the crank. What he implied was that he wanted Crystal to turn his crank. "I thought that's what you old fuckers used the School of Dance for."

That reply got her a one way ticket to business school.

Finance was as far from creative film making as Crystal could run. Math had always been easy for her and she grew to like the finality of an answer that was either right or wrong. She had suffered through all of the subjective that she could stand.

She finished her degree. The day after graduation she dusted off her video camera and went for a drive. Banking was a growth industry and she had several offers to choose from. It would have been so romantic if she had seen Bernie walking out of the Fidelity National Bank through her viewfinder and felt a spark. But her life was far removed from a romance novel.

She did meet Bernie when she interviewed for the job, but it was at the luncheonette down the street from the bank. He seemed nice enough, considering he had a tuna fish sandwich stuck in his mouth when they were introduced. The reason for her decision to accept Fidelity National's offer was twofold. She liked the town's blend of old stately downtown with a fringe of new: it appealed to her cinematic sensibilities. The second reason was the town was geographically positioned where she could drive to her parents' home, yet distant enough to keep her family from dropping in.

Independence and disposable income is a nice diversion, but it was still a diversion. Work had its rewards but as far as Crystal was concerned it was always a job, never a career. She did her job and she went home to a fashionably furnished but empty apartment. It was at one of her most vulnerable moments that Bernie asked her out. He seemed like a nice guy and she really did not want to go home to an empty apartment. A cup of coffee was innocent enough. Grabbing a bite to eat was harmless as well but she knew that if she allowed the evening to progress past dinner the inevitable "my place or yours?" line would come up.

They finished the meal and she rose to leave the restaurant. Bernie walked her to her car. It was a few blocks from the restaurant to the bank parking lot and Bernie was unusually chatty. When they arrived at her car he did the most startling thing. He thanked her for being a nice dinner companion, got in his car and drove off.

Sitting in her car, Crystal wondered what was wrong with him. She liked that he was polite but wrote him off. Maybe he was one of the many closet gays in the financial trade. Perhaps he had asked her out so that the 'water cooler boys' would never suspect that he was really eyeing them. But Bernie threw her a curve. The 'text received' beep sounded on her phone. It was Bernie.

Enjoyed it. Best part was the walk from rest.

Hope you digest well! LOL

Given her past experiences, how could she not like the goofball? A few meals followed with the same result. One night she had to finish several loan applications and was working well past regular banking hours. This was the beginning of the real estate boom after all. She had finished and was walking toward the side door when she noticed that Bernie's office light was on.

To this day she could not explain why she did what she did. Maybe it was the look of concern on Bernie's face or the pose that he struck looking out the window. One of those hero-in-the-spotlight-as-the-world-goes-to-hell poses.

"Why so late?" she asked him. She knew that one thing that Bernie never did was get behind.

He was having trouble with an application. A young couple wanted a house and he was trying to figure out how to make it work.

No need to put it politely. His compassion, her emptiness, and his pose in the spotlight made her horny. She was in no mood to analyze her feelings. She took Bernie by the hand and led him to the board room. No time to plan, plot or build expectations, she just let go. To her surprise, Bernie did not. He was a masterful, considerate lover.

It was later that she learned Bernie was in a relationship when he first took her out to dinner. She learned this the hard and expensive way. Her car was keyed and written across the windshield, in white shoe polish, the words 'BITCH – SLUT'. It seems that the woman that she replaced was an elementary school teacher and although the teacher was incensed she never lost her grammatical composure: hence the well-placed hyphen.

Crystal enjoyed their newlywed years. They had great fun. Most of all she enjoyed the companionship of her husband. Emotionally she was at peace with herself and her surroundings. Biologically she was beginning to change. First it was the suppleness of her skin; predominately her feet, then the skin on her arms was losing elasticity, and finally the ever so slight wrinkles around the armpits leading to her breasts. They served to remind her that youth was booked on the next outbound train.

First she blamed it on too much sun, so she stayed away from pools and island vacations. Then it was the pill. One read of the side panel was, in itself, enough to make her think that the Catholics were right. Withdrawal and a few Hail Marys seemed to be the way to go. Unfortunately she was reared Presbyterian and B.J. was on the way. She was happy and she thought that Bernie was as well. She got her wish; she did not want a girl. Given her experiences, she reasoned that a boy's life would be easier.

Bernie's promotion was what she considered the watershed event of their marriage. Bernie changed. It was all about numbers, portfolio balance and status. The house in a gated community was the first step. She wanted a nice house with a yard and neighbors. At the time she was waddling like a duck with Mindy kicking at her uterus' door, trying to get out. Her hormones break dancing on her emotions made her 'fall in love' with the place. At the time she would have said yes to a 'hell hovel'.

The first pregnancy was not as difficult as the second. This time it was morning sickness, cramps, and water retention. This pregnancy was different in another way. Crystal felt that, with this one, she was all alone.

It was the watch fob. Continents constantly drift apart but you never realize it until it's called to your attention. The watch fob made Crystal stop and look and measure. What had happened to the man who worried about getting a struggling couple a house? He was spirited away and in his place was a wannabe English squire. Bernie had transformed into Bernard and she hated it. She felt like Bernard had put his family in a cage and closed the gate. Zoo hours were between six pm and sunset.

'Go along to get along' became her mantra. On the surface she became the perfect suburban housewife. And it sucked. She became active in her children's school. Baking a few dozen cupcakes and chaperoning an occasional field trip was all in a day's work.

What she came to loathe was the constant barrage of invitations to infidelity. She was constantly being called in for teacher/parent conferences. You would have thought that her kids were hellions. It was the contrary. Her kids were smart and well-behaved but the teachers felt that she needed reassuring that her parenting methods were working. If one of the idiots had known anything about wooing a woman, Crystal might have been swayed. What she got was a feeling of being Sharon Stone in Fatal Attraction. And that might have been OK except that none of the teachers were Michael Douglas.

Sunday morning was the only thing that she looked forward to. It was not the actual act that made her eager. While Bernard was inside of her, she allowed her imagination to roam. It was never other men doing it to her. The truth was that she still loved Bernie, she just couldn't find him. What she dreamed about was film sets, cameras, and scene setups. In the most sacred cubby of her brain she wanted to direct films.

### The Economy

In most stories there are heroes, heroines, and villains. They scurry around, one foiling the other, and in the end the hero triumphs; but what if an external force so large and so powerful washes over everyone's life? Each life affected, but in comparison to the whole they are grains of sand being moved by a wave.

The Great Recession was such a wave. The housing bubble burst and the economy came crashing down. Well paid executives and workers were mowed down like their manicured lawns used to be. Houses were underwater. Foreclosure rates skyrocketed. Companies were throwing off workers like used condoms.

External signs of stress began to show in the little gated community that Bernard and Crystal chose to call home. The security guard at the gate was the first casualty. Soon to follow, the clubhouse grill was closed and the pool was drained. No one paid their dues any more. No one could sell their house, even though For Sale signs were placed in front of at least half the houses.

A strange thing began to occur: the 'gated community' began to evolve into a real community. Trailers with mowing machines were no longer seen parked on the street: home owners or their teenage kids mowed. If one neighbor was mower-less then someone let him borrow one until he could do better.

Bernard escaped the first wave of economic doom. He did not escape the second. The bank had suffered record foreclosures. The bailout money received kept it from going under but it did not relieve them of the need for a scapegoat. The goat's name was Bernard. With his severance package and savings, his family was secure for the immediate future. He, like so many others in the community, networked, went to job fairs and interviews, all to no avail! They carpooled, bought in bulk at the warehouse stores, divided and vacuum packed slabs of meat and bought toilet tissue by the two hundred unit case. It was at one of these divvy parties that the kernel of salvation was germinated.

### The Community's Story

Turmoil begets inspiration. The turmoil was a slow, festering one, carnivorous in nature, even as it was buried under a more pressing set of demands. Bernie put his pocket watch in Crystal's jewelry box and vowed never to wear it again. Blue jeans and flannel shirts became his trademark style but he never forgot the video stored on his phone.

He also became the unofficial leader of the community. He helped negotiate with the banks on behalf of his soon to be foreclosed-on neighbors. He also provided the van that carted the bulk items from the warehouse store.

Jimmy Payne and Bernie were in the kitchen of the closed down grill, slicing and packaging meat, when the conversation turned to sex. Jimmy was lamenting that since he had lost his job and no longer traveled for weeks at a time, he no longer received his wife's homemade porn videos. Not that Jimmy missed the road, but his wife Bitty was wilder on film than anything she ever did in person. Jimmy commented, "It was like she was a different girl, all wild and kinky-like.

Bernie knew this was true. The video on his iPhone that he had retained all these months was of Bitty, semi-bound and gagged, with devices strewn around. What his video also contained was his wife standing nude, filming the scene. He had thought all these months that his wife was a closet lesbian and a kinky one at that. What else would have explained the scene he walked in on?

This bit of news only compounded Bernie's dilemma. He had never seen Crystal's video. He did not know if she was behind the camera all the time or if he had missed the part where she stepped in front of the camera. He sure as hell could not ask Jimmy for a little look-see. Asking Bitty was off-limits as well. How could he possibly frame the question?

"Hey, Bitty did my wife and you do the nasty for your Jimmy, or was it just you?" Asking Crystal was out of the question.

Ever since he had slipped in on the filming, a cold silence had developed between them. Bernie thought that it was Crystal's fault and Crystal thought it was Bernie's fault. Either way, both were too busy trying to keep their family intact to worry about each other.

The solution was not painless but at least Bernie did not have to ask any questions. Crystal borrowed his phone one day and mistakenly played the video. Hell hath no fury like a woman secretly videoed. Bernie discovered that fact when his phone sailed by his ear and dented the wall. It was a full ten minutes before he was able to interject that, in his opinion, he was the one who had been violated. This opinion, he found out, was not universally accepted.

It could have ended at that moment, but for once in Bernie's life the car crusher paused. Jimmy and Bitty Payne rang the door bell and in the heat of the moment Crystal blurted out the cause for the commotion.

Bitty turned red. Jimmy looked dumbfounded and only managed to stammer out, "I guess I should have figured someone was there. Bitty was in no position to zoom in for the close ups." But Jimmy had watched with passion and camera moves were not on his priority list.

After the Payne's departed Bernie and Crystal talked. Really talked. Sometimes honesty has a bonding effect. Crystal told Bernie about her dreams, her experiences in film school, and the barrage of unsolicited invitations to infidelity. Bernie told Crystal about the crusher and how he felt that his life was a constant progression toward smallness. The strangest thing happened, and on a Tuesday of all days. Bernie and Crystal made love.

No Sunday morning choreography: passionate and spontaneous sex with Crystal's camera sitting on a tripod in the corner. Bernie even did a striptease dance, highlighted by a wang waggle ending. Crystal lost all reservations and for once truly enjoyed and trusted her man. They ended their re-bonding exercise with Bernie flushing his watch fob down the toilet as Crystal zoomed in for a close up of it swirling toward its septic tank destination. Bernie had to smile as he reasoned that this would be his final gift to the shit baby and if it did finally rise from underneath the ground it would be fashionably adorned. If this was a romance novel the story would be finished but the Great Recession was still raging inside and outside of the community.

Jimmy and Bernie were slicing and packaging a pork shoulder and discussing the porn industry in general when Charlie Chan walked by. Charlie was Chinese American and yes, he had heard all of the jokes. He was an IT man by trade and yes, he had heard all the stereotypical jokes as well.

Charlie's comment was, "You never see any porn that is sexy and funny. Soft porn is no more."

And as men with no jobs to go to will do, they started to make a fantasy company and speculate on how to run it.

Bernice Carlson walked by while the conversation was going on and suggested that they could film her baking cookies in the nude. You have to understand that what made this so hilarious was Bernice herself. She was one of the older members of the community at fifty-five. She stood all of five feet tall with a shock of red hair that glowed in the dark. She was overly endowed in the breast department and chunky the rest of the way down. She hailed from Minnesota and she had an accent that reminded you of Jesse Ventura.

She cupped her breast and laughingly said, "See boys? Got milk."

Everyone fell into fits of laughter including George Carlson, her husband.

At this point in the conversation everyone in the room was involved in producing, writing, or starring in the imaginary videos. Crystal was a late arrival: after listening for a few minutes she quieted the room by suggesting that she was more than capable of shooting them tastefully.

The banter came to a standstill until Bitty Payne spoke up and told her story of Jimmy's 'on-the-road presents'.

Bernie remembered a comic that his father used to love. He would come on stage wearing a brown paper bag over his head. "We could do the unknown porn stars," Bernie suggested.

This started another round of banter and jokes. This was the beginning of one of the most successful soft porn sites in history.

No one rushed out and began. It was a grass roots sort of thing. Weeks turned into a month. Then two months and still no one in the community found a job. Unemployment benefits dried up as well as savings. Desperation was taking over the community.

Bernice brought the subject up again and volunteered to be the first 'star'. "It's better than going home to live with Mother in Minnesota," she said.

Charlie Chan suggested that for a few bucks he could set up a website. Frank Faison was an advertising man and suggested a campaign to promote the site.

Bernice discarded her clothes, donned her half apron and broke out her prized oatmeal butterscotch cookie recipe. She mixed, she cut dough into shapes of boobs and penises and she placed them in the oven. It was her running commentary that brought the house down. That and George, her husband, dressed as a cookie monster. He gobbled up her cookies literally and figuratively and the closing line was, you guessed it, Bernice holding up her breasts and asking, "Got Milk?"

Within two weeks Charlie Chan had to buy more bandwidth and add another server. Not only did the video download fees begin to climb, the request for the butterscotch cookie recipe was in the thousands. And so a company was born.

John Holcomb was a real estate attorney who lived in the community. John was responsible for setting up several shell corporations and offshore accounts that shielded the ownership of the company. Frank Faision went to work getting sponsors and advertisers. With the first proceeds they bought a DVD duplicator and label printer. Marty Jensen and her husband David did the artwork and designed the posters and labels. All of this was done on the QT and arrangements were made for the parents with preschool children. Bitty ran the day care and after school care facility. They used the old clubhouse. Marty taught art there and even started a mural on the drained swimming pool walls, using water proof paint just in case they ever decided to refill the pool.

Everyone pitched story ideas. The only criterion was that they had to be willing to star in the episode. They produced house cleaning tips videos, how to build a rocking chair suitable to really rock in and one of the funniest was the 'Know Your Husband' video. Women wearing white gloves had to reach through a hole cut in a piece of plywood and guess which man was her mate by groping several men's penises. If she guessed wrongly she was interned in the colonial styled stocks placed in the public square. This bit became a weekly instalment and progressed to the point where the wrong guesser was pummeled with tomatoes.

_The Gated Community_ website grew and within six months they had a regular line up of recurring shows. Bernice's baking show was the most viewed followed by a new arrival, 'Community Trial'. Each week a contrived grievance was heard in court. Bernie sat on the bench and several members of the community acted as the jury. All sat with their bags on their heads and dressed in jock straps and/or panties. The defendant was escorted in and the trial would begin. If found guilty, the defendant could choose between the paddle or the public stocks. Bernie meted out the sentence: so many licks with the paddle or so many tomatoes thrown at the guilty party. Bernice even did a special on how to turn the used tomatoes into a nice Cream of Justice soup.

Out of the maw of economic ruin the community began to crawl toward stability. Mortgages were slowly but steadily caught up; less was bought at the warehouse stores and more from the fancy grocery stores. More DVD sales required more duplicators and more views required more bandwidth. More views meant more advertisers and higher ad fees. All for one and one for all lasted for about eight months. About that time 'real money' started to flow into everyone's pockets. It's not important who the first one to complain was, only that it spread like a virus.

Ideas were bandied about on the subject of a more equitable distribution of income, equitable meaning more for some and less for most. Bernice, the most popular of all and the biggest revenue source, was one of the few that remained neutral. Most wanted a return to their previous life of self indulgence and status.

Comfort breeds carelessness and sedition. None of the residents, living behind the seclusion of the 'gate', had any inkling of whose toes they had stepped on. The only thing that they knew was that they had survived the economic onslaught and they wanted to be cocky about it.

Cocky ran out the back door when a large limousine full of big burly men forced the gate open. It did not take them long to convince the residents to have a community meeting. The 'Smut Don', although no one was crazy enough to call him that to his face, came right to the point. Cutting into his revenues was not a prudent thing to do. It was _cute at first_. He actually used those words. Until, he added, some of his prize advertisers had left the fold and started to use _The Gated Community_ as their exclusive advertising source. In a nutshell, 'Penis Enhancement' and 'Hump Buddies Near You' had placed the residents in peril.

When asked who the leader was, Bernie was chosen by the tried and true comedic routine. Everyone, instead of stepping forward to volunteer, took two steps backward. All but Bernie. Charlie Chan made sure that Bernie could not move backward and once Bernie was anointed, Charlie slinked backwards into the crowd. Crystal had been pushed backwards by the mass of bodies but she fought her way to the front and took her place beside her husband. Hand in hand they stood before a mass of potential destruction.

"You two come with me," was all that the Smut Don said. He half turned round and held his hand out in a sweeping gesture.

Hand in hand, Bernie and Crystal walked to what they imagined was their untimely demise. The Don led them to the limo and even opened the door for them.

Once inside the Don made an offer to buy the franchise. Bernie and Crystal fell back into the plush leather seat and exhaled for what seemed like an eternity.

"To tell you the truth we can make a better deal than that." Bernie could not believe that the words had come from his mouth. Bernie told the Don the whole story behind Th _e Gated Community_ , how desperation had forced them into doing what they did, and he could not help but tell him how it was starting to unravel. Perhaps a better solution would be to buy the name and website for the sum of a dollar and contract with any one of the regulars who wished to continue to star in their weekly shows?

Bernie did this because the one he knew would be interested would be Bernice. George was having health problems and her mother back in Minnesota was in failing health as well. The other suggestion that Bernie made was that perhaps the Don might be interested in buying all of the houses in the subdivision.

Crystal spoke of the rift that was brewing inside the community and how she personally would like a change of scenery.

Like so many modern underworld figures, the Smut Don had numerous legit businesses and one of them happened to be a realty and development firm. One quick call and he had a uniform offer for all of the houses.

Bernie suggested that the Don leave. Bernie would hold a meeting and have an answer for him, probably before he was a couple of miles down the road.

Bernie did not have to use his best salesmanship after the Don left. He laid it out short and sweet. The community was selling the website and the content to the Don for one dollar. When a few grumbles began to bounce around the back of the room Bernie made himself clear. Anyone who did not like the deal was welcome to retain their part and negotiate a better offer from the Smut Don. And Bernie's pronouncement of, "And may God have mercy on your soul," gave reason for pause. He also told them of their option to sell their individual house at a uniform rate.

_Of course_ , they said, _why had Bernie not said so in the first place?_

As the meeting broke up and the crowd began to disperse, Crystal noticed that Bernice was standing in a corner with tears in her eyes. Crystal placed her arm around her and Bernice mumbled that it was well and good for most but she was afraid that George would no longer be able to find work and he was a couple of years from retirement age and they were going to have to move back to Minnesota to take care of her mother.

Bernie slipped to the opposite side of Bernice and whispered in her ear not to worry. If she liked, he felt sure that she could continue making her Bootylicious cookies for the Don. In fact the Don had insisted and Bernie would personally make sure that she was paid well for her services

If Bernie was a foot shorter, Bernice and her cleavage would have smothered him to death. Luckily for him she could only pull his head down so far and so deep into her cleavage.

For the second time in one day Crystal and Bernie walked out hand in hand. This time they were not under duress and it just seemed natural, what a married couple in love would do.

Bernie made the call and the details were marshaled into place. The houses were sold and moving vans began to litter the streets. A lot of hugging and crying ensued, along with a lot of false promises of keeping in touch. Everyone knew that this was one of those life episodes that no one would believe and, like a soldier returning from war, you had to be there to understand. But many are the nights that chuckles are heard emanating from bedrooms across the country as husbands and wives relive, but for a brief moment, the Great Recession.

Bernie and Crystal packed up the furniture and the kids and moved to a small town in a small state. The kangaroo state if I'm not mistaken. He started a debt counseling company and managed to keep the mortgage current and the car crusher paused. Crystal became proficient in documentary film making but was only able to sell them to PBS which meant that she made enough for seed money for the next one. But life was good for both of them.

I know that this seems like a fanciful tale and you have already written it off as whimsy, but for a few people who swim in a pool inside a gated community they will know it's true. The mural on the bottom and sides still remain as testament. If you are not fortunate enough to live there, then let me offer you one last bit of evidence. Try the recipe below and after one bite, tell me they are not the best damn oatmeal butterscotch cookies you ever put in your mouth.

### Ingredients

* 3/4 cup butter softened

* 3/4 cup white sugar

* 3/4 cup packed brown sugar

* two eggs

* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

* 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

* 1 teaspoon baking soda

* 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

* 1/2 teaspoon salt

* 3 cups rolled oats

* 2 cups butterscotch chips

### Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

2. In a large bowl beat the butter or margarine, white sugar and brown sugar together. Add the eggs and vanilla, beating well.

3. Stir together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir until blended. Stir in the oats and the butterscotch chips. Roll gently and cut out shapes. Place on a lightly greased cookie sheet.

4. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, until the edges begin to brown.

#  The Big Blow

I love my mother but I don't like her very much. She did to me what no man can do.

"Oh, don't give me that look. I've smacked the smirk off of more faces than just yours."

As I was saying, she did what no man could do and when I couldn't defend myself. I know that she was not all to blame. A nurse had somethin' to do with it. But Ma didn't have to listen. She could have named me somethin' else. Mississippi has a rich history of names. She could have picked any one of 'em. I wouldn't mind a Jefferson or a Beauregard. Hell, I'd settled for Joe or Tom.

My daddy never hung around to see me born so I can't blame him. I got plenty else to blame him for. One was gettin' on a boat and hightailin' it out soon as Ma told him about me. Sometimes I hoped that that boat sunk and his ass got eat up by the fishes. Other times I just wish he lived to have a miserable life. But this ain't about him, it's about me and you

Like I said, the big wind was comin' and the whole town of Pass Christian was told to skedaddle 'cept Ma was about to have me and they put her in the ambulance and she got a fast ride outta town. I was born in that ambulance and the nurse woman, she ups and tells Ma that she might as well give me a name to commemorate, I think that's the word she used, the event by naming me after the hurricane. When them two decided to do the deed, they knew that I was a boy. Addin' insult to injury, Ma didn't even give me a middle name in case I didn't like the first 'un she give me. When I got older I couldn't even use initials.

Time I got to my majority, I already had a police record and I won't going to see no judge about no name change. No sir. The first one sent me up for two years and sent me to the big boy house to boot, even though I was sixteen at the time.

That guy that I beat had it comin'. He thought that cause I was young he could just act big and be smart to impress some girlie. I showed him though. You don't come up with a name like mine and not get tough. I whupped his ass seven ways to Sunday and when I was through with him his girlie didn't want no part of him. Serves him right 'cuz he had no business messing with me. I told him as much before he got smart and threw the first punch. I told that judge that very thing and did he listen? Nah. He just sent me up 'cuz I was a "aberrant character". When I was doin' my time I looked up that word and if I had known then what he said, I might a slapped him a time or two.

Them two years went by slow. I got me my GED while I was in and got ready to make me a good livin' when I got out. That won't as easy as the prison teacher made it out to be. I bounced around a while and one night I got in a little scrap with a fella and this other fella, he saw me whup the first fella and ask me did I want to earn a livin' with my fists. Since I was havin' no luck with my education certificate, I said sure thing. Never bothered to ask him exactly what the job was. Tell you the truth, I didn't care so much whether it was bustin' up some guy for not payin' his debt or if it was fightin' in a ring. Fightin's fightin', don't much matter where you do it. Turns out he was a boxin' man and he took me to a gym and worked me hard.

I toured all the Southern states. I was makin' a name for myself. Since I couldn't use my real name they called me the Mississippi Hurricane. I guess the promoters thought that was some sorta funny inside joke. It was a name and the pay check had my real name on it and all that I cared about was the money. Sometimes, if things was slow, me and my manager would go into a town and offer five-hundred dollars to any man that could whup me. He would rent the local armory and sell tickets. I whupped me a ton of small town tough boys and made some decent money till one of them jar-headed yokels broke my hand. Hardest damn head I ever punched.

One-handed fighters ain't got no future and I retired from the fight game. I went back home to Pass Christian and a boy that I knew from school told me about some jobs on some oil rig out in the Gulf. That's where I met your Mama. She was the receptionist where I went to get the application. She sure was a pretty little thing then. But she won't havin' none of me. She give me the application but she shore won't gonna give me the time of day. Took me a year to get that woman to go out with me. Every time I come in from the rig I'd ask her and every time, she would say no.

I kept asking and she kept saying no until one time I come in and she said I could go with her to service that night. Hell, at first I thought she was talking 'bout joinin' the army but she said church service. I figured that I better take any chance to get on the in's with her and I said that would be fine. Had to buy me a suit and everything but that was OK except them shoes. Worst pair of shoes I ever tried to wear. By the time I got half way to walkin' her home I had to take the things off. We walked the rest of the way with her lookin' fine in her little high heels and me carryin' mine in my hand. She thought that was funny 'cuz she said that that was a good way to occupy my hands.

I been hit more than a few times but I ain't never been knocked down like lovin' your Mama knocked me down. I was out for the count and she knew it. I had to quit drinkin' and she made me save my money and it still took me five tries to get her to say yes. I know that I'm hard-headed but that woman sure took the cake.

I was thirty when she finally said yes. She was twenty-five. I told her about my record and what I had done since prison. I tell you it was tough. I was sweatin' bullets. All she said was, "I know." Seems she had checked and that's why she was slow in acceptin' my proposal. She even managed to find and buy one of my old fight posters. She hung it on the wall of our house. Course it got dee-stroyed the year you was born. I miss that poster but not near as much as I miss your Mama. You know it took us a long time to have you. Me and your Mama tried for several years to have young 'uns and it never would stick. Finally the doctor said it looked like we finally done it and your Mama was so happy. Tell you the truth, seeing her so happy made me git misty-eyed. I never owned up to it to your Mama but I'm tellin' you that it was the truth.

It was right tough on her being small-boned and all. She had to quit her job and stay in the bed most of the time. She always told me that we was goin' to raise our child right and she made me promise. Made me promise more than once! That woman was hard-headed that way. She had plans for you. Said that you was gonna get you a education and she made me start a account for your college the day after she found out she was with child.

I was out in the Gulf when you was born. The big blow was already startin'. My crew got sent out to secure the oil rig and batten down the platform. Nobody knew how bad it was goin' to be. We just knew this one was named Katrina. Now you got to know that all them tests that they run on your Mama and all them pictures that they took of you made them think that you was a girl. The last transmission I was able to get out was to tell her to name you Katrina.

By the time I got off that platform you was already born. Your birth certificate read: Katrina Theresa Goins. The sex part had a X placed in the male square. At the time the town had been blown apart and your Mama was dead. She never knew that you was a boy. By the time things got settled down your birth certificate was registered with the state. Like I said before, I ain't comfortable in front of no judge and I let it go. I called you KT and figured that would do till you got older. Now it ain't the end of no world. Your old man's Ma named him Camille and she was alive and knew I was a boy when she done it. Now stop that snifflin' and do your homework. You can change your name when you get older but right now you goin' to do your homework 'cuz your Mama said you was goin' to college and your Mama won't never wrong.

#  Baby Cakes

He should never have assigned the case of the State of Louisiana vs Baby Cakes to me. I was the ace trial reporter for the _Times Picayune_ , everything from robbery to malfeasance, but especially murder. I got the call and I went.

It was my job not to question the editor, just everyone else, but in this case I broke that rule. It was a single murder in a little town and the only thing that I could possibly see was that the headlines could be sensational: Baby Cakes Fate Hangs In Balance, Baby Cakes Murderess??? and Baby Cakes To Hang. This I understood because we were in the business of selling newspapers and catchy headlines sell, but this was cub reporter territory. I had covered most of the whore turned murderess trials, several lynchings and even the first Scottsboro Boys' Trial, but this one seemed open and shut and pretty boring. I even offered to spruce up any copy that was sent in but I did not want to go to Nepo, Louisiana.

My editor, or as I liked to call him, the Chief, provided the incentive to go in his most prosaic announcement. "You're getting paid so shut the hell up and send me daily post when the trial starts. And since you have nothing but a fifth of liquor going, if you leave now you can get all of the background."

The last part was shouted at me as I slammed his office door. I was pissed but not stupid. I had my expense voucher in my hand and I stopped off at one of the copy desks long enough to change the amount to double his original amount. If I was going to be in some backwater hole I planned to live first class.

After picking up the cash I made a beeline to Foust's Liquors and paid for a case of his best whiskey and made arrangements to have it shipped. I would telegraph him the address as soon as I was settled into what would pass as luxury accommodations in Nepo. This turned out to be a stroke of genius because the next day I disembarked at a train depot about the size of a saltine and that included the Western Union window. No one had thought of building a hotel, and for good reason. If you were not already there you sure as hell did not plan on staying there, except for me of course. It did have a courthouse; it was the county seat, after all.

Being the resourceful reporter that I am I found accommodations in the back of the general mercantile, run by a man named Doss who had one thing going for him, he had a telephone in the back office. It was a dry county which necessitated a call to Foust to repack my whiskey into a wooden crate with the words 'typewriter' plastered across all sides.

It took me all of three minutes to unpack and find the one cafe in town. It was across the street and deceptively went by the name of Best Cafe. When I entered, the only satisfied customers were the dead flies nestled against the window screens. It was ten o'clock in the morning and all that I could manage out of Plowboy was an egg sandwich and a cup of chicory-laced coffee. This was not the Cajun part of the state, it was the part that should have been ceded to Alabama but even they did not want it. No gumbo, no powdered sugar beignets, just eggs, dripping of Cottolene, on dry toast.

I mention Cottolene because it was the product that our esteemed ex-governor and now Senator, Huey Long, was famous for selling. It was a mixture of beef tallow and cottonseed oil. The beauty of it was that both were waste products but mixed together they made a "dainty" substitute for lard. There is no reason for you to know that but, damn it, I was bored and it would be at least a day before my typewriter was scheduled to arrive and I was already on edge.

I had no other choice so I went to work. This was also not hard because the courthouse was a couple hundred feet up the street. I should mention that the jail was attached to the courthouse.

You may think me callous, because all I've talked about is me, but I'm a reporter and my emotions never play into the equation. I have no problem reporting that the victim was disemboweled while eating a sandwich, or that some unlucky bastard was lynched because he was walking down the wrong road. My job was to report and any emotion was washed away in a bottle. Why do you think reporters drink?

Maybe it was the lack of alcohol in my system that changed my perspective that day, or maybe it was the haunting blank stare in those blue eyes. Small towns, at the time, were slack on procedure and big on self aggrandizement. Once I introduce myself, it's a cinch that the Sheriff is going to give me the grand tour. You see he had new bars on the cells. It had taken him two years of hard lobbying but now he had the same bars as the best jails in the big cities.

This was not my first time working a small town trial and listening to the drone of small town officials. Looking for affirmation was standard operating procedure. What I was not prepared for was Baby Cakes. She was young, I guessed fifteen, with wavy hair and skin that looked tanned but you could tell that she had not been in the sun. She never acknowledged my presence, nor did she act if she heard the Sheriff talking about her.

She was the ward, for lack of a better word, of the man she was accused of killing. No one knew where she came from, nor did they know who she came from. The preacher, Reverend Tomas, and his wife had found her sitting on the steps of the church on a Tuesday morning. That was a few months ago. She did not speak or make any attempt to communicate, which is why the town took it upon itself to name her Baby Cakes.

In case you are not from Louisiana nor familiar with the word Creole, let me give you a quick update. Baby Cakes was a mixed race child which was fairly common in the state, but blue-eyed Creoles were rare indeed. Creole women made the best whores, although it was never a good idea to try to skip out on their fee. They were also known for their tempers. But a blue-eyed one made me think that her sire was a lily white aristocrat. The race mixture of the state included remnants of Spain, Indians, French, and Negro, none of which were famous for throwing blue-eyed offspring, and the shade of blue was something that stuck in my craw.

Great, I thought, just when I assumed that I could call up the Chief and tell him that this was going to be bland, and sit in the back of Doss's and wait for my typewriter to arrive. The first order of business was to do a little background check on Baby Cakes' heritage. This is usually easy because, as I've said before, small-town people want to be quoted in a big city newspaper.

Best place to find out the scoop in any small town is the Women's Circle meeting. A quick check and lucky for me it was happening that night at seven o'clock. I got there at six and waited for the early birds. They were the most pious and the most likely to prove it by laying someone else's reputation in the mud.

True to form, Mrs Mary Jenks and her homely daughter, Tess, were the first on the scene. She was charged with opening up and turning on the lights. Within thirty minutes I knew who drank on the side, who slapped their wives on occasion and, most important of all, a background of the victim and his wife. The Reverend had arrived to serve the congregation in January. Baby Cakes was found a month or two after he arrived. Mrs Tomas was a bit withdrawn in Mary Jenks' estimation, better suited for a traveling salesman's wife than the wife of a man of the cloth.

Tess, slumped shoulders and all, nodded her agreement.

By that she meant that she was a good housekeeper, a good Christian woman, but she was withdrawn, and in Mrs Jenks' opinion she was not barren yet she was childless. I was left to draw my own conclusions, seeing as that was not a subject that God-fearing women would discuss in mixed company.

Again Tess nodded in agreement.

Taking care of Baby Cakes was a community project. The congregation got together and decided that the Reverend and his wife should oversee her, and they all agreed that she would be best housed in the little shed behind the church. They had all given something to furnish it. Mrs Jenks had personally given a day bed, the very bed that the Reverend was found murdered on. Tess, Mrs Jenks confided, was in charge of sitting next to her in church to make sure that she did not create any problems.

At this point I really needed a drink because it took all of my composure not to laugh. I had a vision of Baby Cakes as the 'hear no evil' monkey, Tess as the 'see no evil' monkey, but I already knew that Mrs Jenks would not qualify for the 'speak no evil' monkey. That image was dispelled when Mrs Jenks told me that although Baby Cakes did not speak or show emotion, she did understand what she was told and obeyed commands.

This was of interest; my first impression was that Baby Cakes was severely retarded. Now I wondered why she was the way she was, but that question would have to be answered later. The other ladies were arriving.

All but one light was extinguished in Doss's store but I saw a shadow in the alley. Doss was sitting on the back steps with a beer in his hand. He motioned to me to take a seat. I was more interested in alcohol. When I asked him if he had a drink he pointed to the well about twenty feet from us. Water was not what I had in mind but he insisted that I crank the handle so I did. Inside the bucket were eight or ten bottles of Dixie beer. Normally I'm not a beer drinker but alcohol is alcohol, no matter what form it's delivered.

I thanked him and he said no need, it would be included in the bill, ten cents a bottle. Forty cents later we got around to discussing the Reverend and his wife. Nobody knew where he came from because he was supplied by the same man that owned the church.

Percival Saint was a name that I knew well. Everyone in Louisiana knew it. He was the attorney general at one time, one of the Old Regulars and a sworn enemy of the Kingfish. I don't care for politics; in my opinion, it's the same as throwing two cottonmouths in a basket. The one that comes out is the one with the most venom and he's still a damn snake.

Why, I asked, did a man of his stature care about a preacher in a back water town?

Saint owned several thousand acres that surrounded the town and he built the church and paid for the preacher. If one left or died he just sent another. Reverend Tomas was sent when the Reverend Jacobs had met his end at a card game in New Orleans. No one knew that for sure but that was the prevailing rumor. What they did know for sure was that one truck took Reverend Jacobs' things away and another brought Reverend Tomas' the next day.

The next morning I placed a call to my editor. I asked what he knew of Percival Saint. Plenty, was his reply. Then it was a multitude of what had I done and why had I not done this or that, and ended with, "Did you think that I wouldn't find out about your embezzlement of funds?"

I had not thought that he would have found out that quick. We ended the conversation with his advice to go with the blue-eyed angle. He wanted a bio piece on Baby Cakes the next day and he wanted to know why I needed a typewriter. When I tried to explain that a man should be capable of growing he hung up with the word 'Bullshit' ringing in my ear.

She was wistful, very thin but with a bone structure that classic female beauty is built upon. When I arrived at the jail her breakfast was still sitting on the little three-legged stool which, along with the cot, constituted her amenities. No comb or brush and she was still wearing the same dress that needed washing yesterday.

The sheriff let me know real quick that she was given every meal just as they were supposed to, but she just sat and stared. I remembered what Mrs Jenks said about obeying commands, so in a soft but firm voice I said, "Baby Cakes, you may eat now."

She grabbed a handful of egg and gobbled it like a cur dog and she did not stop until everything on her plate was gone. The Sheriff agreed that another plate might be in order. When he left I gave her several commands, nothing complicated, just your routine stand, sit and lie down. When I spoke the last command she did an odd thing, she lay and spread her legs.

It was at that moment I saw a flash in her eyes, nothing dramatic, just a little gleam of fear or hatred. As I stumbled to tell her to sit back up I knew she had been abused, which is no great revelation and would not help her in her defense. Louisiana did not have an insanity defense and her sexual abuse would only give the prosecution cause.

The delicate part of my job is always interviewing the victim's spouse or close relatives. The way I always approached this was to find out as much as possible about the victim and the relatives. I was looking for an in, something that told them that I was on their side and if I asked tough questions it was for their own good. No one knew shit about the late Reverend Tomas and even less about Mrs Reverend Tomas. Sure, anyone could tell me their opinion on his sermons and Mrs Jenks had stated her opinion on the worthiness of her, but no one even knew their first names.

The mystery surrounding this case was starting to piss me off. It was supposed to be a simple murder in a backwater town but every piece of the puzzle made it harder to put the whole picture together. This assignment was causing the hair on the back of my neck to tingle and stand up and I hated that feeling. It also made me determined to find out what great secret this crossroad of hovels held. All of this was swirling in my head as I made my way to the church's parsonage.

I tapped on the door ever so softly and whispered a greeting. This was one of my favorite ways to enter a house. It followed protocol and left me with a truthful excuse when the occupant rebuked me for entering unannounced. Forget what I said about being delicate. I was mad. I was in need of a drink and I wanted one damn straight piece of publishable information. What I got was my nose smushed against the door. It was locked. What happened to the 'no one locks their door in a small town'? So I knocked harder and called out louder. Still no response so I ambled around back.

The back yard was sequestered by a six foot fence. I eased the gate open and used one eye to survey the surroundings. The yard looked abandoned: grass was high and crap was rusting in the weeds but on the back wall were a few well-kept cucumber vines. Standing in a house coat next to the vines was Mrs Reverend Tomas.

As I slipped past the gate I noticed a strange thing: the cucumber vines were well maintained but most of the cucumbers were well past their harvest time. They were huge! When I got about three feet from her I called her name. Experience had taught me that this was the right space needed to surprise someone, close enough to see all of their reaction and far away enough to avoid getting slapped.

The reaction worth observing was mine. She turned and it was obvious that night gowns were optional. Her open house coat revealed everything except modesty and she asked the obvious question, "Do you like my cucumbers?"

Being a gentleman I spoke well of her cucumbers but had to remark that they seemed a little long in the tooth.

Her reply was simple, she did not like to eat them, only to watch them grow and then to die and shrivel away. It was a perfect example of the circle of life, she said.

The rest of the interview went downhill from there, as you might expect, but I did find out a couple of pertinent facts. The reverend's name was Gabriel, hers was Eleos. She explained that she was named for the Athenian goddess of mercy. Her father was a Greek scholar, by the name of Joseph Biddle, who had died while they were abroad, and that she had met and married the Reverend Gabriel Tomas in Greece. The then Gabriel Tomas had also been a scholar but the cost of publishing his work and its failure to sell had forced him into the ministry. One of the few purchasers of the book was Percival Saint and that was how they came to live in Nepo.

One perfect story. They lived outside the country, names of a Greek goddess and an avenging angel and no way to verify any of it. Sounded more like a whore and an assassin to me but I wrote it off as me needing a drink. I did know that it was too pat for my taste, and that is why, when Mrs Reverend Tomas was not looking, I stole a small picture of each of them off the mantel.

I stopped by Doss's to use the telephone. It was obvious that I needed someone to start a records search. Lucky for me Doss told me that something had arrived at the train station for me. The phone call could wait a few minutes. I needed my typewriter.

You would have thought that I was the Kingfish himself, the way word had spread about my arrival. It was now obvious to everyone that I was something special. It's one thing to be a reporter, but one with a typewriter put me head and shoulders above anything that these bumpkins could imagine.

What was I supposed to do now? I fended off the prying questions and took my crate to the back of the store and cracked it open. As I took a swig I placed the call to New Orleans. I needed information, a private detective, and a typewriter.

What I did not need was twenty questions from the Chief. I got them anyway. Most of them were centered on why I needed a second typewriter, seeing as how I did not know how to use one, let alone two. The second salvo was centered on Baby Cakes and the late Reverend Tomas.

When I told him it was as if Tomas had suddenly appeared and had no known past, the Chief grunted, "Sounds interesting. When you get through with the widow, go to Siren Song.

This was the name of Percival Saint's estate. When I asked why, he responded with, "To do your damn job. Look for the Why."

I thought that he was being a bit premature since I was not so sure of the Who.

Now that I was off the phone I took pause to reflect on my liquor purchase. Eighteen bottles of what ought to be the finest blended whisky on the market. I had been told that it was the smoothest blend with the most wallop known to man. It was smooth but it sure didn't have as much of a wallop as I had hoped for. Still it beat the hell out of a beer.

When I asked Doss who was representing Baby Cakes he sort of laughed and told me that there were only two attorneys in the county and that whoever lost the coin flip would be representing her. As for the prosecution it was whoever was on the circuit at the time. The loser was Defoe Wilkins and that stood to reason, because Doss had just seen him walk into the jail.

I hopped from my chair and headed over. This would accomplish two things at one time. I wanted to see what type of defense he was planning and I wanted to examine Baby Cakes again.

Wilkins had no problem letting me know all that he knew. Tomas was killed in the shed. He had a knife sticking out of his chest and Baby Cakes was captured in the swamp outside of town. I asked the obvious question: did she have blood on her person or on her clothes? Wilkins cut right to the heart of the matter. She was naked when they found her and she was flopping around in brackish water and mud. He felt that the prosecutor would say that she had the presence of mind to get rid of the dress and to wash any blood off her body. This would be used to persuade the jury that she knew what she was doing and he would ask for the death penalty.

"What is her defense?" It was a simple question that required one of two answers. One would have to be complicated and require a fair sum of money. The other was simple - throw her fate on to the mercy of the court. It was not a question that I needed answered. I just wanted to hear Wilkins say it.

I looked at Baby Cakes and asked myself what had happened to this girl. Where did she come from and who had decided to make her life unliveable? I sat on that little three-legged stool and I talked to her, asked for a basin of water and washed her face, and I observed.

Wilkins was at a loss. He would ask her a question, but it's never what you ask, it's how you ask that brings results, and knowing how to look for the answer not spoken. She understood what was being said. I could tell by a faint flash in her eyes or a subtle flex in her hands. The Chief instructed me to find the why and I knew this was not what he meant, but I could not shake the feeling of outrage that was building in my gut.

This little child was born a victim. This was not a one-time circumstance; it was the grand finale of a miserable life orchestrated by someone or something other than Nature. This was the result of a lifetime of horrors and suddenly I wanted it to stop. I was angry and I wanted revenge on behalf of this child.

Emotional attachment is never a good thing. A cub reporter on his first day on the job knows it and I sure as hell knew it, but for once in my life I did care. I had two sisters growing up. One died of scarlet fever and the other died of influenza and I understood that was the way it was. A lot of children died and if you grew to adulthood you knew it was sheer luck. It's not like I had not wanted to have a family. I like children but that requires a mother and that was the one ingredient that I had not found. I was not as lucky as the maker of Cottolene. I remained the waste product in need of another waste product to make a useful whole but we all know that the only thing that two sullied humans make is each other's life hell, and that reminded me that I needed a drink.

A few belts later I was on the phone with the Chief. I relayed to him that I had sent him the photos of the Reverend and Mrs Tomas and he promised to put someone on it the minute they arrived. He also encouraged me to get cracking.

"Do I have to do your job for you? Get your ass out to Saint's house and ask him where the preacher came from. Time is getting tight and I want a story out of you before the trial begins."

The Chief knew that I know how to do my job and it struck me as strange that he was so insistent, so I called the _Picayune_ office and asked for a buddy of mine that worked the political beat. Hell was a-popping in Baton Rouge, he said. The Kingfish was back from Washington and was in a fight for control of the state with the Old Regulars. It had escalated into a showdown between the Kingfish and Judge Benjamin Pavy and it looked like Senator Long was winning. Pavy and Percival Saint were both kingpins in the Square Deal Society that had raised an army to throw the Kingfish out of the state in January.

The _Picayune_ had not allied itself to either side; but I had the feeling that the Chief had. I was in Nepo to find some way of linking Saint to this murder. He wanted me to find out who Reverend Tomas was and he did not give a damn about the girl. She was going to hang and that was unavoidable and of little concern in the big picture.

I needed transportation and once again Doss provided the solution. A swallow or two for fortification and a car rolled up in front of the store. It was a ratty-looking old car but its sound was a throaty growl

In the driver's seat was a fairly young colored fellow whose name I discovered was Willie Saint. Although it was obvious to me and most southerners, I will explain that he was a descendant of slaves who had been owned by the Saint family. When emancipation came they took the surname of their former owners.

It was also obvious that Willie was no stranger to the white liquor business. No one of color would have the resources to own a car, much less one that had a hot engine and a stiff suspension. The best way to approach someone in Willie's position is to be up front, so I asked him if business was still as good as it was in thirty-three. He looked me over a couple of times and answered that it was almost as good. The only difference was that the product had to be a little better since they had competition in the wet counties.

I let it go at that and changed the subject to his last name. A burden was all that it was to him. In his estimation it would have been better if his grandfather had responded to the census taker by saying his last name was Mud.

"Different times," I responded and Willie just shook his head.

In his estimation not a lot had changed and it sure as hell had not changed where we were headed. We turned up the long drive way and I nodded in agreement.

Workers were busy keeping the grass and bushes immaculate, tall columns graced the front and a Duesenberg sat in the driveway. Willie mentioned that the old man might not be at home because the other Duesenberg was missing.

I never had time to disparage the life of the poor rich people: a horse jumped over a low hedge and stop in our path. A woman of thirty or so hopped off and handed the reins to a waiting servant.

"Daughter?" I whispered to Willie.

He shook his head and with his hand on the seat he spread out three fingers. Willie sort of grinned and whispered, "Money don't get it hard but it sho' can get you somethin' to look at."

I disembarked and went to greet the third Mrs Saint. I managed to chat my way into the house and even got a free drink out of the deal. I must confess that in the back of my mind I was going to meet Mr Saint and discover that he had a haunting pair of blue eyes. I wanted it in the worst way. What I got when I walked into the foyer was not the man but a huge portrait of him and wouldn't you know it his eyes were as brown as a mule's ass.

Disappointment never stopped me from having a sip of good liquor and I noticed that she was giving me a glass of the same thing I had in my typewriter box. It was smooth and had a kick that declared its quality, so why was my typewriter stock not the same? When I looked around the study I almost dropped my glass. Portraits of three women hung on the wall. One had to be the mother to Saint. The second must have been his first wife and the third his second wife. I asked the present Mrs Saint if she planned on joining the wall and she told me that she was sitting for the artist now. I no longer needed to talk to Percival Saint. For the first time since my arrival the pieces started to fit.

In January an armed militia had tried to take control away from the Kingfish. Saint was rumored to be up to his neck in it. He was using the minister's position to house and hide his assassins. There was an attempt on the Kingfish's life, which must have been the Reverend Jacobs who was killed but never identified. The arrival of the third Mrs Saint made it necessary to get rid of Baby Cakes. What I had discovered at Siren Song was the blue eyes had belonged to the second Mrs Saint who supposedly had died in childbirth along with her stillborn child.

When I got back in Willie's car, one look told me that he knew what I discovered and that he had known it all along. Since the straightforward approach had worked earlier I decided to use it again. Simple and to the point, I asked, "Wonder why he didn't kill the baby too?"

Willie gave me a sly half grin and waved his hand toward all of the field hands working in the field that we were passing. "Them and my mother," was his reply.

All of the colored people knew. If Saint had tried to kill her they would have told. I asked the obvious question, "Who would have believed them?"

Willie looked at me and understood the implications to my question. "Doss knew and he knew who to tell," was all that was said.

Why Doss? It seems that when Doss was in the army during the first World War, Saint had made sure that he was sent to the front and made sure that he stayed there. Doss' crime was that he had the gall to stop Saint from beating a young black boy to death. That young boy was, of course, Willie Saint.

So why was Tomas killed? It was not something that Saint would have wanted. Publicity was the last thing that he was looking for. So who would benefit from it? The Kingfish was the name that popped into my mind. This was all speculation but a good educated guess. Long and his crew would have paraded Baby Cakes all over the media and this type of scandal would have driven Saint from the state. At that time a man would have been forgiven for stealing the state seal or pilfering the treasury, but not having a wife who consorted with coloreds. Long must have sent a crew to kidnap her and Tomas had intervened.

I was sent to finish the job. The one thing that I knew, (because I asked him) was, who Doss would have told his story to if it became necessary. He gave me his given name but I called him Chief. Given the botched kidnapping attempt the next best thing was to expose who Baby Cakes really was and that was supposed to be my job. My by-line would have added the validity that was needed.

It did not escape me that in all of the political wrangling, no one cared that an abused and wrongly accused child was going to die. The 'greater good' argument sure as hell was not going to fly with me. What good can ever come out of the death of an innocent person? I did not give a whit that Tomas was dead; he was a part of it and I did not care that the Chief was willing to betray all that was sacred in the news business. But I was not going to stand by and see the murder of an innocent child, and I sure as hell was not going to help a man who had watered down my liquor. That was the other thing that I had discovered at Siren Song. The Chief had gotten to Foust. It may sound strange but I understood why he did it. He wanted me without the shakes; focused enough to do my job and drunk enough not to care. Understanding the reason does not weaken my dislike for the despicable act but I understood his motives. What I did not understand was how someone could stoop so low. Unknowingly, that one act served as the catalyst for his undoing.

September 8, 1935 was an eventful date. The Kingfish was shot in Baton Rouge. When I learned of the news I knew there was only one thing I could do. I enlisted Willie Saint and Doss. I hit the Sheriff over the head and took Baby Cakes out of the jail. The nighttime express to New Orleans was pulling out of the station and we ran toward it.

Willie was waiting with his car on the other side. He drove the two of us to Memphis and Doss provided us with a few clothes for Baby Cakes, a few bucks, and told the Sheriff that he had seen us running for the train. That gave us enough time to get out of the county. If I had it figured right, once we got out of the state everything would politely go away. Percival Saint could not afford to dredge up the possibility of his involvement in Long's death; Long's people certainly did not want anyone snooping into Tomas's death and with the disappearance of Baby Cakes it was a wash. Neither side had won the battle of Nepo, but there were winners. Baby Cakes and I made our way to Chicago where I had a few friends.

In the ten years since Nepo, I no longer drink and my daughter Elaine has made great strides in overcoming her past. It took three years but she learned to speak and communicate. She reads and writes and has developed a personality. Unfortunately for me it is not a submissive personality. As I mentioned earlier, Creoles have a temper, but I would rather hear her rant about me not eating right or keeping the messiest study on the face of the earth than to hear the angels sing.

Now that I am the Dean of Journalism at Northwestern University, I indulge myself once a semester and teach a course in journalistic ethics. I tell my freshman students to look for The Truth, not the truth that they or anyone else wants or hopes it to be, and under no circumstances work for a man that waters down your liquor.

They laugh at that last line and I hope they can still laugh at it twenty years from now.

#  The Island

She was lovely and smart and married to someone else but Jack wanted her. He didn't try to rationalize his desires. She was the perfect woman and he was ready to do whatever was necessary to win her. It was his high school reunion and the theme was 'Rekindle the Flame'. One of his old classmates, Jason, introduced her as his bride. One look and a warm flush spread all over Jack's body and he knew that he was in love. Had his wife any idea that he was feeling flush she would have given him an aspirin and a look.

Bethany, his wife, was long-suffering and if you don't believe it, just ask her. Over the years she had assembled a litany that she recited at the least provocation. It began with Jack's failures in his chosen profession as an engineer, and ended with her having to sacrifice her body for the sake of furthering his lineage. What she never told was the part that in high school she had failed at being a majorette; she could not catch the baton and she had to settle for playing the tuba, which should be evidence enough that her body was not sacrificial material in the first place.

Svelte has never been a word associated with tuba players. Her talent was in revising recent history and polishing Jack's self esteem to a dull and lifeless luster.

Lost in all of this was that Jack actually had a good mid-level job and made a respectable living. It just did not supply Bethany with the social status that she thought she deserved. It did not matter that he was a good father and community helper. She had bounded out of college with an art history major and the notion that she would soon be hobnobbing and working for the rich and cultured.

Disappointment and unemployment were the reasons that she had married the shy but employed Jack. As the years came and went her bitterness grew. Her sacrifice, in her estimation, was multiplied exponentially. To hear her tell it, she was in the throes of a great career when she consented to Jack's proposal.

Jack never thought to dispute this claim for, in his mind, he did not live there anymore. He mentally moved out of 'Bethany town' and now resided on a desert island. As the years piled up, the time he spent on the island grew and he only returned to 'Bethany town' for his children's sake. He did so want to change the name because any time he heard "Bethany" uttered from someone's lips, he shuddered.

Jack would not have been a fan of Thurber and Walter Mitty if he had ever heard of them. He was a Mitty. Often he made his escape to his deserted island, or as he liked to think of it, Dessert Island, filled with every imaginable female dessert. French crepes, "Oui, oui, Jacques!" she would whisper in his ear. His Italian amaretto truffle Gina was another favorite. He poured the amaretto himself.

Neither of those would do in the future for he just met the one. The one that he felt sure would be his fellow island inhabitant forever. He dressed as Tarzan and she as Jane. So enamored was he that he felt compelled to use her given name. But he didn't know it because, when her husband, Jason, called her name, Jack only saw a sarong-clad babe and he heard the lapping of the waves as they lay on the sandy beach. She had offered her hand and he was about to embrace her when a sharp pain in his rib cage startled him.

Bethany retracted her elbow from his rib cage and he returned from his thoughts long enough to hear her telling his new goddess, "Overlook him. He has problems focusing. Don't you, dear?"

Jack managed to mumble something. The specifics he could not tell you but he did remember her smile. He also remembered the dressing down that Bethany gave him as they walked to their table. Not the specifics, only it was longer than average.

Name tags. Why had he not thought of it sooner? This was a class reunion, everyone had one. Everyone but his goddess; alas, late submissions could have had one written in felt pen, but she must have refused. _And rightly so_ , thought Jack; _how could anyone think of placing a handwritten name on a wet sarong_? He thought of dancing with her and casually mentioning that he had not gotten her name, but he thought that it might raise suspicion. Her husband need not know of their plan to escape the bondage of putrefied matrimony. He would find out soon enough. No. The right thing to do was to stay in the shadows and listen. Someone would mention her name, or call it out.

Sitting in the corner was not Bethany's style; she wanted to shake her money maker and for a sturdy woman she was quite adept. She dragged Jack to the middle of the dance floor. Jack wondered why she included him. She never danced with him. His role in this operation was to stand in one spot and bend his knees on occasion and swing his arms to and fro. Bethany used him the same way a tether ball uses its pole. Bethany the dancer was smooth, flashy, and gregarious; her dancing would best be described as orgasmic.

Other dancers cleared out of her way and soon a circle had formed, with men entering and exiting as she chose random partners for brief sorties. Jack gladly retreated to his corner table. From his vantage point the circle of swaying derrieres reminded him of waves hammering the shore of an island.

Jack's island was no longer a tranquil paradise. Storm clouds on the horizon, waves beginning to intensify and Goddess was not in sight. A big one crashed on the shore and he spotted her as the next wave was about to roll over her. A real man does what he must. The risk to his life was inconsequential; Goddess was in trouble and he rose to action.

The table slammed to the ground and the little cardboard flames that were the centerpiece of the reunion combined with the alcohol and the little candle in a glass to make a nifty blaze. The music stopped and the crowd turned and spread out. Some headed for the exit. Thank God, one grabbed a fire extinguisher.

Bethany stood frozen in the center of the dance floor. One arm raised, knees bent, and her booty about to groove. Upon seeing her husband standing in the fog of smoke and fire extinguisher powder she exploded.

Jack was used to a harangue spilling from her lips but nothing could have prepared him for the deluge of vulgar loathing that gushed from her mouth when they stepped out of the gym. He did not remember it all but he did remember how she grabbed his face and spat out the word, "Loser !" Once was not enough for she spoke it like a machine gun. "Loser! Loser! Loser!"

It echoed in his ears and down the hallway. School hallways were always good for that. Then she left him standing there and headed back in with a parting admonishment to, "Go home, just go home!"

If 'home is where the heart is' then Jack did go home. But in reality he slipped back in to the reunion and positioned himself behind the flame decorations which provided the backdrop for the refreshment table. He saw his wife dancing, chatting, and slipping out of the door with someone whom he could not recognize.

None of that mattered to Jack. He wanted to know – no, he had to know, what Goddess' name was. She walked toward the refreshment table. Jack stepped between the flames and cut a piece of cake for her. He tried to muster the courage to ask her name, but failed. All he could manage was a trembling hand that pushed the cake a little closer to her and a brief look at her eyes. Her eyes smiled back and her lips pursed as she said thank you.

They were eating mangos on the beach, the Goddess and Jack, juice running down their chins and onto their chests. Jack was playfully trying to lick the juice from her cleavage; life for Jack could not get any better. Goddess ran into the surf and Jack could not help but notice that the sway of her butt was in perfect time with the waves hitting the beach. Acting a bit of the coquette, she turned, smiled and then dove under the surf.

A fin broke the surface of the water and was headed toward his beloved Goddess. It was the fin that everyone knows and everyone dreads. He pulled his knife and ran for the water. He knew of only one thing to do and that was to stab until he could stab no more. The predator shark rolled in the surf and blood spread around it.

The official coroner's report called it a homicide. A man had stabbed his wife after an altercation at a class reunion. The reason, one witness stated, was the husband's response to infidelity. Post mortem tests confirmed that the victim had participated in sexual acts and they identified her partner as not being her husband. The arresting officer reported that the perpetrator was nonresponsive to all questions, but testified that the defendant asked a lovely female bystander what her name was. "Bethany," was the response noted.

An island is a lonely place without anyone to share it. Jack looked through the bars at the endless horizon and wanted to scream, but it would be of little use. On a deserted island there is no one to hear you scream.

#  Internal Growth

Walter Wenchell Scott hung himself today, the last deluded act of a ridiculously deluded man. The irony was not only in his choice of locations but in his timing. It was in a building dedicated to healing and the sustainability of life, and at a time when his troubles could have been cured, or at least diminished. Instead he found that even the movies had lied to him. There were no angels, devils, or blinding light, only a last gasp and the smell that accompanies a relaxing sphincter.

Most called him Walt, not from affection or familiarity but because no one felt obliged to exert the extra effort that "-er" would require. It should come as no surprise that with all the diligence and perseverance that he was capable of, he had risen to the rank of swingman mail carrier in a post office of six carriers. Perseverance came with the knowledge that with the next retirement or death he would have his own route.

His life was a series of dodges and detours, perpetuated by life's obstacles and his propensity for going with the flow. His marriage, a perfect case in point, was instigated by his wife and expedited by the growing expanse of her midsection. Walter never bothered to question the paternity nor the probability of his involvement. Given the circumstances, it would have been a reasonable question.

He had dated Molly a couple of times at the insistence of his mother. How, he sometimes wondered, could he have known that one little dodge from his Mother's nagging would determine his life's course? It also would have served him to count. Even if the 'rubber' had failed, the timing was suspect. Six weeks can make a huge difference in paternity but to save Molly and his mother from embarrassment, he and Molly drove to an adjoining state and that was that.

As the years wore on, something began to grow in Walter. He thought it was self-determination, rage, and righteous indignation. In fact it was a tumor. A small growth in the middle of his brain that provided Walter with the only feeling of superiority that he was ever able to muster. Even if he had known, it would not have mattered: for once in his life he was the sovereign and the arbiter of all the lives that he contacted.

Molly was sure that life had short-changed her. Had she not become pregnant and married Walt she was sure that she would have become a rock 'n' roll star, or at least a famous groupie. Humping stars was her dream since pubescent sprouts began to appear between her legs. A masturbatory machine at thirteen, she remained a thought away from an orgasm.

Marriage placed a cinder block around her ankles, stopped her from having orgasms, and forced her to lower her standards. Instead of Seal she settled for Hank, Stan substituted for Michael Buble, and the Hispanic kid that mowed the lawn was Beeber. Penetration no longer ended satisfactorily, even though the only man in town she would not screw was her husband.

Fortune found a way to creep up behind her. She was the proprietor of the Hair Moll, the only place to get a rad coiffeur in the plodding town of Plateau. She was, in the strictest definition, a successful entrepreneur and she never knew it. From blue-haired women to the preacher's son she did them all, their hair that is, although she would occasionally do the preacher when she felt like humiliating an orgasm out of him.

The problem with marrying a clod, as she found out from the lawyer that she humped out of his fee, was that she would have to pay alimony. This she was not willing to do.

The only adornment to their dead lives was a daughter who grew up to be the most popular, sexy, and puritanical child ever seen in this region of the country. This clash of values afforded the child with her only vice. She hated her mother and loathed her father.

Molly June Scott looked like she had their genes. That was indisputable, but Molly J. could not have been more unlike her parents. From the age of three she had a primal urge to disassociate herself from her lineage: she succeeded.

She was loved by all who met her. Bright, vivacious, scholarly and caring, she was the apple dumpling of the town of Plateau. She was first runner up in the state finals of the Junior Miss pageant. Everyone in town agreed that she was robbed of the title by some back stage finagling of a big city sponsor, but it only served to enhance her stature in the eyes of her fellow Plateau-ites. In fact, she was the symbol for what every red-blooded citizen of Plateau felt: that although they were superior to all others, they were beaten down by an onslaught of prejudice against a small and virtuous town.

The problem was, Molly J., like the town, was unable to see the obvious. The town could not see that it was insipid because it was. Molly J. was fine for a small-town beauty and talented enough for the little theater group, but the Plateau Playhouse, otherwise known as the gym, ain't the Great White Way. Instead of working harder and practicing more she gave up.

Lost dreams formed the common bond with her mother. She had no bond with her father, except that as she grew older she obtained his determined drive to become inconsequential.

Seventeen years of age is that tween period when brain development falls behind body development. Faced with the realization that her star was fading, and lacking the drive necessary to leave Plateau, Molly J. decided to flounder in a blaze of rebellion. The tattoo she had inked on her pubic region illuminated which parent's footsteps she planned to follow.

The words, 'Needs Cocking', placed above a tattoo of a derringer pistol, was all that Walt could remember about the day he came home early. He saw this after the local motorcycle thug rolled off his daughter. Rage, adrenaline rush, disgust are normal reactions to what Walt had witnessed. Despair is not the norm. But in Walt's case it was typical. If music was emotion, then Walt was a one note sonata: after playing his one note, he moved into the garage. He only came into the house for meals and refused to talk to either Molly or Molly J.

It was not many weeks later that the motorcycle thug got his comeuppance on a slightly moist curve outside of town. He was brought to the hospital in critical condition. This made Walt's night. When he woke the next morning and read the paper, the report of the thug's death made him even happier.

As he left for work he could not remember why his car was turned around. He always left it with its nose pointed toward the street. This morning the nose was pointed toward the garage. Thoughts and pictures flashed across his brain. Maybe he had been sleep-driving. It struck him like a thunderbolt. In the wee hours of the night, he must have visited the hospital and exacted his vengeance on the thug. His mind became clear. He saw himself slipping into the ICU and kinking the oxygen hose. He remembered the warm feeling that spread across his body as he watched the thug lose his struggle for life. It was the most empowered he had ever felt and he liked it.

Walt felt like a new man: a man that could be benevolent, almost warm toward his wife and child. He stepped into the house and said goodbye to the two Mollys and with a spring in his step, headed for the car. Molly and Molly J. could only stare with mouths agape.

The feeling of superiority is a marvelous thing. To Walt, not only was it new, but it was empowering. He looked at the world, not as its victim but as its overlord. Holding the power of life and death was the closest to God's dominion that a mortal could achieve and Walt now held that power.

The feeling lasted for a week or two but like everything in this world, the new wore off. Walt began to think of his power as a gift from above and to squander that gift would be sacrilege. He was a duly elected present-day archangel. Elected by whom he did not know, for his knowledge of the Bible was limited to placing his hand on it when he was sworn in at the post office. "The hand of God will smite the sinners," was the phrase that Walt remembered the man on the TV saying. He liked the word smite and thought of it often. He also looked around and saw a town full of people that needed a 'smiting'.

Plateau, like so many other small towns, had a veneer that to the casual passerby looked serene, innocent, and perhaps pastoral. But like most veneers one good scratch and the baseness underneath leaks out. A lackadaisical laziness was mistaken for serenity. Innocence was a ruse, a vain attempt to hide the lascivious nature of its inhabitants. Faced with boredom, the town's sport was musical beds. Its economic plan was to blame larger America and, more specifically, any town that was in close proximity to Plateau. proximity being relative since Plateau was the only town within a one-hundred mile radius. Even its name was an indicator of its lack of imagination: it sat on the only plateau on an otherwise flat plain.

Walt ran Route #6 that day, an in-town route. For the first time he began to see the town and its inhabitants for what they were. Of the two hundred and so odd mail boxes and door slots that he delivered to, only seven or eight merited continued existence. By the third day of his birth as archangel, he had visited over seven-hundred fifty odd boxes. Of those box owners, he could count on his two hands any that might show any redemptive value. It became apparent that his work was going to be overwhelming.

The Almighty sent him the answer in the form of a little postcard. As long as the citizens remained in Plateau they could wait their turn. It was the ones that tried to slip away that would require his immediate attention.

The change of address card, Walt realized, would be their death sentence. It was apparent that as long as they stayed in Plateau they would be available for God's wrath. He knew that when the Sodom and Gomorrah moment came, Molly would be one big ass box of Morton's. This made Walt happy. If she continued on the path that she had chosen, Molly J. would become a salt shaker at the very least. This was troubling. He could not deny that it hurt that she was turning into a replica of her mother.

Walt accepted that his divine calling was to keep the strays from escaping. He was like a cowboy who corralled the errant ones. He always liked cowboys, at least the ones in the movies. He was God's cowboy!

The town was, in truth, a festering boil on the ass of humanity. On this count Walt was not delusional. The town government was a cadre of special favors and insiders bending and breaking the rules. The four-term mayor had managed to accumulate a nice slush fund. The sheriff managed to go to Reno every year for a conference to enhance his abilities to police. What he enhanced was his ability to spot a hooker. Road improvement projects benefited a few of the large ranch and farm owners while the rest of the roads fell into disrepair. The general population was an amalgamation of backbiters, petty swindlers, whoremongers, wife beaters, and drunks. Yet the churches were filled every Sunday morning. Walt felt that this was the reason for his celestial calling. He did not mock the Supreme Being by attending church.

The first change of address notice came with the name Belinda Wilson Blount written at the top. She was an elderly lady who lived on the outskirts of town. Her children were moving her to a retirement home. In her prime she was thought to have embezzled funds from the county orphanage that she ran for thirty years.

As before, Walt awoke and as he was leaving for work, he noticed that his car was pointing in the wrong direction. This gave him reason to pause as a wide grin spread over his face. As before, he popped into the house and gave the Mollys a heartfelt good morning. The result was the same. Walt felt his spirit soar and the two Mollys stood with mouths gaped open.

Walt could hardly stand the suspense. He had to run Route #4 that day and Mrs Blount's house was on Route #5. He finished the route in record time and sped over to her house. No one was there. He knocked and called out her name. No answer. No response. _Giddy up, Cowboy!_ was what came to mind and Walt smiled.

The smile left his face as the sheriff's cruiser pulled in behind him. Sheriff Dodd did not bother to get out of his car. He rolled the window down and motioned for Walt to come over. "If you've got a package for her, you can send it on to her kid," was all that the Sheriff said.

Walt pulled out the change of address card and asked the Sheriff if he knew if this was the correct address. The Sheriff mentioned that Walt could forward all future mail to that address. She had expired last night. The medical alert pendant had only served to notify the authorities of her demise.

Walter, the archangel, tuned his radio to the public radio station and listened to the classical music pouring down from above. The tune had the effect of lifting him into the heavens. He would have stayed there except for the pain that began to radiate from the center of his brain until he could not bear to listen anymore and he came crashing back to earth. So severe was the pain that Walt stumbled out of his car and headed for the garage. He barely remembered hearing Molly J. practicing on the piano.

His vision was poetic. Mrs Blount should have known that showers are dangerous, especially when the archangel gave it a coating of baby oil. Chalk one up for all the orphans that got short-changed during her reign.

He called in sick the next morning. Molly noticed because Walt's car was parked behind hers and she had to go into the garage to get him to move it. She found him sprawled on the floor, with a fixed stare that caused her to think that he was dead.

"Damnit," was the word that spilled from her mouth. She had an assignation planned for lunch and sending her husband to the morgue didn't fit into her schedule.

Walt began to move and groan at the same time. It scared Molly so bad that she wet her pants. Walt tried to stand, and with Molly's help he managed to stumble onto his air bed.

Walt muttered, "Don't call a doctor. I'll be fine."

It was a pathetic utterance because as he said it, Molly was walking out the door with his car keys in hand.

It occurred to Molly that if her husband was going to die she might need to minimize his burial expenses. This came to mind as she thought of changing her urine soaked panties and remembered that Caleb Johnson liked to be covered in pee. She cancelled her planned rendezvous and gave Caleb a call. It just was not going to be her day as Caleb was busy interring the late Mrs Blount.

Molly J. skipped school after lunch and headed home. She was surprised to find her father's car in the driveway. She was delighted that the keys were in the ignition and she would not have to sneak into the garage and swipe them. Curiosity forced her into the garage any way. The sight of her pale father made her gasp. She forced her father into the car and took him to the hospital.

Hospital is a bit of a stretch. It was a large building that the town's three doctors had coerced the populace into building. Federal grants were received to furnish it. One of the things that the grant should have covered was the lease on an MRI machine and a technician to run it. The technician was the mayor's daughter and the machine, on permanent back order, became fast cars and boats moored on Lake Tahoe.

The doctor gave him a 'thorough' exam and declared him anemic and suffering from cluster headaches. It is unclear whether his tumor could have been discovered at this time. There were no documenting images taken. Walt did get a prescription for iron tablets and a narcotic to ease the pain. The next day the headache passed and Walt resumed his normal activities. Normal for an archangel.

Everyone knew that Billy Prescott was the scum of the earth. He was Molly's postponed assignation, previously mentioned. Molly used him when she felt especially dirty. He was a cruel and sadistic bastard and every once in a while she liked it that way. And it should be noted that she was not the only married female in town to use him. As a matter of fact, his profession, if you can call it that, was petty thief and part time drug dealer. This allowed his days to be free to access the back doors of many of the prominent households of the town.

It took his mother thirty some odd years to finally have enough of his foolishness and she told him to get out. He found a widow woman in the next town. She was glad for the company and gave him a room in the barn and a job as the handyman.

Walt experienced a warm feeling of joy when the change of address card arrived at the post office. He'd become aware of who and what Billy was before he was anointed as archangel. He had gone to the beauty shop to empty the trash cans. What he saw would have been disgusting even if it was not his wife it was being done to. Walt smiled and looked upwards. He patiently waited for the spirit to descend and lead him to his appointed duty.

For weeks Walt would spring from his bed and run to the door to see if the car was pointed in the wrong direction. And every morning he sadly turned and went back to his bed. The headaches returned. Not as bad as the first occurrence but certainly bad enough for others to notice. Molly J. was the one that noticed the most.

The pain and the visual suffering began to affect Molly J. This was, after all, her father. The fire of her rebellious nature was losing heat and she began to see what her mother was doing to her and her father. This is not to suggest that she had a magical transformation. It just didn't seem fun anymore. Instead, a melancholy settled over her. Reality and clarity of vision have that effect sometimes. She had first seen the world as a plum to be plucked, and when that was ripped from her at the Junior Miss Pageant, she saw it as a brick wall that she must demolish. Now she saw it for what it was: a dirty labyrinth of petty lives, entwined and writhing around, trying to win a prize that was not worth having in the first place. Her piano became her solace. More music and less human contact suited her just fine.

Walt began to question his vision. He stopped checking on his car the first thing out of bed. Then it happened. He was dressed for work and ready to go. He opened the door and there it was. His car pointed toward the garage. He could not wait to go to the diner for lunch because he knew that it would be buzzing with all the gossip.

Lunch time came and he drove like a mad man to the diner, got a corner booth and prepared to listen. He did not have to wait long. It seems that everyone knew about the hanging of Billy Prescott. It was a suicide. No, it was murder. Maybe, knowing Billy, it was one of those kinky sex things gone awry.

Walt sat in the corner, smiling. He alone knew that it was an act of God. Confirmation came as he joyfully slid into his car. He turned the ignition and flipped the radio on. Public Radio did not fail him. Classical music lifted him into the heavens and he soared.

The vision came to him and he loved it. He had slipped into the widow's barn. Using the taser that he kept under the seat, he immobilized Billy and hung him from a rafter. His vision clearly showed him writhing in pain, begging for absolution and a promise to do better. Archangels do not bargain. He set it up to look like a suicide. The following morning's newspaper had the details although Walt was unable to read them.

Like the previous time, he passed out, the pain emanating from the center of his brain. Once again it fell on Molly J. to take him to the hospital. Stronger narcotics incapacitated Walt for a week. He came out of his opiate haze with a smile on his face. He would never doubt the resolve of the Almighty and the position that he, Walt the archangel, held.

Details were sketchy about Billy's death by the time that Walt was back at work. What he was able to find out was that the widow was being charged for his murder. Evidence had come to light about her husband's death and even if a case could not be made for that murder, one could be made for Billy's death. Walt could only wonder at the power and abilities of a vengeful god. The Almighty had managed a twofer.

Molly J.'s turnaround became evident to Walt when she asked him for the money to have a laser procedure to remove the tattoo on her pubic area. Although he could not afford the whole procedure he did have enough money to have the words removed. Her mother was unwilling to donate any money to have the derringer removed. Her excuse was that business had fallen off, overhead had increased, and Walt's illness required her to save as much as possible, just in case. What she did not tell Walt or Molly J. was that she was putting all of her money into a record album and what she envisioned to follow, a concert tour.

Had Walt known, he would have given her his pension. He would even have filled out the change of address card for her. As a matter of fact he had thought of doing that very thing at one time but he knew that the Almighty would not fall for so thinly veiled an attempt at personal revenge. This was a mission with divine ramifications. He enjoyed the thought but let it go for the greater good.

Summer went and winter had sent its first snow before the next change of address card arrived. It was Sandy Ridge, daughter of the mayor. If you remember, she was the MRI technician for the non-existent MRI machine. Idle hands led to boredom and boredom led to trysts with all three of the town's doctors. Neither doctor knew of the other two's involvement.

It could have been a simple abortive procedure and no one would be the wiser. Unfortunately, she saw this as an employment opportunity. She would leave town, after convincing all three to send checks for the maintenance of their child. She was counting on all three being afraid of showing any vulnerability to the others. Honor among thieves means never letting your guard down. She had learned this at an early age from her father. And it would have worked except that thieves have wives who are territorial by nature.

Walt, of course, knew nothing of this. He only knew that another job of celestial importance was on the horizon. The appointed day was memorable because it was the day that he put snow tires on his car. The morning after, he awoke to discover that his car was pointed in the wrong direction and the light dusting of snow revealed the tire tracks leaving and returning. This he thought was a bit sloppy of the Almighty. Walt fixed the oversight with his snow blower, and a good thing that he did, because as he was working, the Sheriff rode by. This was so disconcerting to Walt that he never bothered to notice the set of footprints that did not lead to the garage.

It was only fifteen minutes after he finished the driveway that the pain began. In a perverse sort of way he looked forward to it. Not that he liked the pain but he was curious as to how he had accomplished his latest archangel act. In a turn of language: the suspense was killing someone else.

That was the last thing he thought because the pain hit and it came as never before. Blinding waves of torture radiated from the center of his brain. So intense was the pain that Molly J. found him in a pool of his own vomit. This was more than she could stand and she ran into the house to get her mother. This was not beneficial, because Molly J. was determined to carry Walt to a specialist in another town. Molly could not be bothered with that much of a disruption to her schedule and convinced Molly J. the local hospital would do nicely. Molly took him herself.

It did not matter which of the three doctors Walt saw that day. All three were distracted beyond caring or bothering to look past the standard diagnosis. More drugs. Bed rest. Get out.

Even Molly picked up on the strange vibes that reverberated over the hospital. She asked the nurse pushing Walt's wheelchair what was going on. In a whisper, she told Molly that the mayor's daughter, Sandy, was dead and something strange was in the air around the hospital. Walt did not hear the rest. The nurse and Molly tucked him in the back seat of the car, slammed the door, and finished their conversation. By the time Molly got in the car and drove off, Walt was in opiate dreamland... or was he?

He saw the headlights of the oncoming car. He saw a hand, his hand, shine a spotlight into the eyes of the car's driver. He floated above and saw the car first careen onto the side of the road and he followed it as it tumbled down the embankment, finally hovering over a limp and bleeding body that once housed the spirit of Sandy Ridge. Satisfaction in a job well done was all that Walt carried with him when he returned to the conscious world.

The town was abuzz when Walt returned to work. A battle royal was brewing. The State Highway Patrol had sent Sandy's body to the State Coroner's office and the locals, (the three doctors) wanted her returned to the county. It was comical in a way to see three people, intent on one result and at the same time afraid that the other two might find out. And for good measure, the mayor was dancing around the issue.

It was his daughter and he wanted what was right for her and he did not know that the three doctors were each a potential sire to his never to be born grandchild. His only concern was that the three stooges would not create any sense of impropriety at the hospital. He had taken great pains to buffer his involvement in the MRI scandal but he was not eager to find out if he was successful.

Before jurisdiction was settled and the autopsy completed, a call was made to the FBI. One of the three doctors' wives (it never was apparent which one) made the call. It would have been easy if only one had filed for divorce but all three filed the same day that the FBI came to town. They all managed to get their half of the assets before the judge slammed the gavel down on the defrauding of the government charge.

Mayor Ridge did manage to avoid conviction but he lost the next election. It seems that the townsfolk didn't mind a crook. They just refused to accept one that escaped on a technicality. And the autopsy came back normal. Sandy had died of trauma sustained in the automobile accident. No mention was made of her being pregnant because she wasn't. Her attempted fraud had killed her.

Score another triumph for the Almighty and his archangel Walter! At least that was the way Walt took it. Again he was awestruck at how the Almighty could work His magic.

The rest of the winter and most of the spring was filled with the trials of the doctors and the town elections. When the spring thaw began, Walt had a devastating thought. Graduation was not far off and it never dawned on him until that moment that many of the graduating seniors would be filling out change of address forms. His appointment as the angel of death had occurred after last year's graduation. Would the Almighty grant dispensation for some or all of the children or was Walt about to be the archangel of mass murder? He visualized a fire during the graduation service or maybe an activity bus plummeting into a ravine. Molly J. was a member of this year's graduating class at Plateau High. He would have to convince her to stay at home.

Perhaps he had not thought out the consequences of this archangel thing. He would quit: simple enough. He turned in his resignation while on his knees. He pleaded, cried, begged and even threw in a blasphemous curse for good measure. Nothing happened and Walt took this as a sign that his resignation was accepted. That is, until the ex-mayor Ridge 'committed suicide'.

Walt saw his car pointed in the wrong direction and he could only stare. He did not know, nor did he want to know, who or why. He stumbled back into the garage and took a handful of narcotics. He awoke a day and a half later.

Molly J. was seated next to his air mattress when Walt opened his eyes. She pulled her ear buds and turned up the volume. Walt had never heard such a horrendous rendition of an old rock standard. He imagined that if there was music in hell, whoever that was would be the house band.

"Why are you listening to that crap?" he asked Molly J.

"It's your wife," she replied. That was what Molly J. wanted to talk about. Her mother had assembled a fine professional group of musicians and had intended to go on tour. The problem was self-evident.

Unknown to her mother, Molly J. was secretly practicing with her mother's band. The band and Molly J. agreed to oust her mother and start touring the hotel circuit.

Molly J. punched her iPod and another tune spilled out. One that Walt had never heard before. That was not a surprise; he was not a big music fan.

"It's me!" Molly J squealed.

Walt had to admit that it was good.

"And I wrote it, Daddy." she whispered.

Daddy was not a word that Walt was accustomed to. It reverberated though his entire being. Until the words, "I have to leave," slapped him down.

No. No. NO! That was not possible. She could not be allowed to leave. He had to think of some reason, no matter how implausible, to keep her in Plateau.

As he tried to come up with an idea, the pain began to intensify. This time it felt like his brain was an atom having a nuclear reaction. In one brief second of lucidity he realized that his resignation had not been accepted, and he passed out.

Molly J. called an ambulance. She rode with her father the one hundred miles to the next town's hospital. This had the potential to be the luckiest day of Walt's life. With the three doctors fighting legal battles against the Department of Justice, the local hospital had to temporarily close. Walt was on the way to a facility that had the equipment and the expertise to discover the cause of his seizures.

During the ride Walt gained lucidity although his actions belied it. He grabbed Molly J.'s arm and held it tightly. He babbled on about a change of address card. Did she fill one out? Had she turned it in? To placate him, Molly J. answered the questions. Yes, she had filled out a card and she had dropped it off before she came home. Why did it matter? She finally told him that she was not returning home from the hospital. She was leaving on tour as soon as he was stable.

"Don't you see, Daddy? It's my one chance to get out."

And Walt knew that she was telling the truth

Walt was stabilized and his pain began to diminish. He was lying in a tunnel that made strange clanging sounds. It was in this tunnel that his course of action gelled. They took him back to a private room. Once alone, Walt found an ink pen but could not find any paper. He decided to use a tongue depressor and wrote a short message. He climbed onto the bed, pushed the drop ceiling out and located a steam pipe. He looped his bed sheet over the pipe, stuck the tongue depressor in his mouth, and it was finished. Walt had taken the only way out. He removed the sword of vengeance out of the Almighty's hand.

Molly J. and the doctor were walking toward Walt's room with good news in hand. Had Walt waited a few minutes his life could have been saved. Surgery and radiation would give him a fighting chance.

Efforts to resuscitate were unsuccessful. Molly J. removed the tongue depressor from Walt's mouth. She never went back to Plateau although she did make sure that his wish was carried out. Her career as a singer/songwriter headed upward and isn't that what any father would want?

Molly never forgave her daughter and sank even lower into a life of debauchery. The town continued on as it always had and every once in a while Walt's name would come up, always in the context of being delusional.

What was not delusional was, two years after Walter's death, a devastating earthquake destroyed the town of Plateau. The only thing left untouched: one tombstone.

WALTER WINCHELL SCOTT

HERE LIES A FATHER

Mark Bell

Wadleyhousepub@gmail.com

