FRANK JAGGER "The Numbers Game"

Copyright (c) 2016 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

By R. Peterson

The office phone was ringing, but I couldn’t find it. My eyes were still stuck on the singer at Clide’s Oasis, a juice joint in the basement of a candy store across from Hyde Park. Kit Malone had it all, a smile that made you ravishingly hungry and a body hot enough to fry two eggs plus a side of bacon. She was also the property of Machine Gun McGooganheimer. If I’d done more than stare, I’d be feeding trout on the bottom of Lake Michigan instead of waking up on my office floor with a pounding headache.

The handset was under my desk two feet away from the receiver with the cord wrapped around an empty bottle of Golden Wedding Whiskey. I staggered to my feet. Damn! An operator with a voice as sharp as an ice-pick said she rang-through my open-line because it was an emergency.

The emergency turned out to be an accountant I’d grown up with in Montana, a town that had recently changed its name from South Fork to Cloverdale. It’s tough on a kid growing up anywhere … tougher if you’re Jewish. We met when I pulled three Hicks Brothers off him that were trying to take his lunch money. I’d eaten Knish at his long dead mother’s house too many times to remember. Lewis Goldstein was a mathematical genius who knew his apples, peas and onions. He could add, subtract, divide and multiply millions of dollars in his head while auditing a half dozen commodities clients inside a casino while shooting craps … and never drop a dime. Today he sounded like a rabbit with two nickels trying to bribe his way out of a vulture’s nest.

“I’m going to die this morning at exactly eleven forty-eight!” he screamed into the phone.

I figured he must have caught the wrong mobster cooking the books. “That’s bad, Lewis!” I told him. ‘Who would want to take an up-an-up guy like you for a ride?”

            “It could be anyone or anything,’ he said. “All I know is the exact time it’s going to happen.”

I looked at my watch; it was eleven thirty. The cab ride downtown took fifteen minutes. “You still counting pork bellies?” J.R. Placer and Associates were the biggest commodities brokers in the Windy City. It was the last place I’d seen him.

            “Yes! I’m at my desk. I’ve got eighteen minutes left!” Something reminded me of the worst two years of my life waiting for my number to fall in the filthy trenches during the Great War in France. His voice sounded like a Salmson 2 coming in for a landing with both wings missing.

            “Get out of your office and into a public place,” I said. “Water Street is good.” It was Friday; downtown Chicago would be bustling with pedestrian traffic leaving early for lunch. “The more people around the better.”

            “I’ll be on the sidewalk!” he promised. “You coming?”

            “I’ll be there,’ I said.

I dragged a comb through my hair and kicked the bottle of Golden Wedding Whiskey back under the desk as I slammed my office door shut …the honeymoon was over.

-------2-------

I picked the wrong hack and I’ve hated myself ever since. The driver wouldn’t break the speed limit if you held a gun to his head … and I tried. I was pulling out clumps of his hair as we crossed the Franklin Street Bridge, lucky we didn’t go for a swim. It was eleven forty seven when we pulled up across from the high rise. I jumped from the moving cab when I saw Lewis trying to make himself part of the recently renovated building’s new brick façade. I told the driver to wait; he sped away as soon as my back was turned. I looked both ways crossing the busy street with a thirty-eight held loosely at my side. Some of the cars slowed down, while others hit the gas. If it was going to be a drive-by shooting it hadn’t happened yet, and now that I was here, it wasn’t going to be an easy one.

There must have been hundreds of people moving in both directions on the sidewalk. I was looking at hands and faces. You can’t always tell who’s a killer, but a mob torpedo is usually the guy least likely to draw attention and he’s always calm … too calm.

I was less than ten yards away from Lewis when the upper part of his body suddenly exploded in a white blast. A split second later, an eight-foot long two-by-twelve wooden plank knocked the brief-case out of a man’s hand before it bounced off the cement and slapped an overweight woman square in the fanny. The dented two-gallon metal can that had struck Lewis in the head dripped white paint in a wiggly line as it rolled across the sidewalk. I looked up. Two men dangled from a broken scaffold five stories up. The four-foot high letters they were painting on the J.R. Placer sign now had a long smear on the first R.

I tried to wipe the paint from Lewis’s eyes before he opened them for the last time. “Beshert,” he whispered as he took his last breath. I looked at my watch as two cops appeared and pushed me to the side. It was exactly eleven forty-eight. Lewis’s numbers were always right on the money.

-------3-------

I hung around talking to the cops and especially the sign painters after they were rescued by a fire-truck ladder. A bolt holding a pulley to the building had rusted through, causing one end of the hanging scaffold to fall. The bolt was an inch thick. If it was murder, the people responsible were years in preparation and incredibly lucky. Still, Lewis knew he was going to die and the exact minute that it was going to happen. I no longer had a client but a dead friend. I couldn’t afford to lose either one. I’d remembered standing up for him in grade school. The only way he could pay me back was by doing my math homework and inviting me for meals at his mother’s house.

“Was he a friend of yours?”  “Dutch” Winze smirked as two ambulance attendants hovered over Lewis’s body.

“He still is and always will be,” I told the fat city detective.

“Friends of yours have a way of turning up dead.” There was now a smile on Dutch’s face.

“It’s a good thing we’re not pals,” I told him. “You would positively be next.”

“Your license is up for renewal next month,” Dutch grinned. “The mayor raised it fifty bucks. It would be a shame to have to shut you down.”

The one thing Harvey Winze hated more than anything else in the world was competition. He was ready and willing to hang out in the police station, eat donuts and let Al Capone or the other mobsters who ran the city call all the shots. I was the fly in his illegal beer that wouldn’t stop buzzing.

            “Someday people are going to have had enough of your so called police work and take this corrupt city government down,” I warned him.

            “I like to keep my finger on everything and no one is untouchable,” he laughed.

They lifted Lewis onto a gurney and the white paint left an outline of his body on the cement.  “Too bad all crime scenes aren’t this well-defined,” a young reporter named Oscar Fraley marveled as he helped carry the stretcher toward an ambulance.

-------4-------

Lewis’s death had to be an accident, but I was intrigued as to how he’d known the exact time it was going to happen. I talked to the attractive secretary in his office, Gladys Monroe. Lewis had introduced me to her once. Her face went as white as the sidewalk paint when I told her the news and she dropped the newspaper she was reading. “Lewis didn’t have any enemies,” she sobbed. “Numbers were his whole life.”

She put her head in her hands and real tears fell on yesterday’s Chicago Times October 28^th headline … STOCKS PLUMMET!

            “We were going to a restaurant on Friday and to see a film The Broadway Melody.” Gladys’ eyes looked reflective.  “Lewis didn’t care for musicals but he knew I did. I always dreamed of going back to Los Angeles to work in the film industry. Lewis was the only reason I moved here … so my daughter could be close to her father.”

“Lewis called me this morning and predicted his own death,” I told her. “Any idea where that came from?”

“He seemed distracted as of late,” Gladys said. “It wasn’t just the ups and down of the stock market. Lewis was convinced that numbers were the keys to everything in the universe. He was spending way too much time with that Soarta group two floors up.”

“Soarta?” I’d never heard the word before.

“They are a group of mathematicians from Asia doing some kind of research with some kind of new electrical equipment,” she said. “The elevators are crowded all the time with job seekers going up to that floor. I hear they pay people to fill out pages and pages of forms: eye color, shoe size, everything about themselves.”

Gladys pushed aside the Chicago Times and I noticed a pamphlet on negative film cutting careers lying under it.

            “I remember Lewis saying you both grew up in Montana,” Gladys said. “The head of Soarta happens to be an American from your home town of Cloverdale … John Callahan, I believe Lewis said his name was.”

We talked a little more and then I left. It was depressing, Gladys Monroe had a three year-old daughter named Norma Jeane to care for. Now she was alone in a tough town.

It sounded like John Callahan and Soarta Incorporated were in the business of gathering information … I intended to gather a little of my own.

-------5-------

The security on the twelfth floor of the J.R. Placer Building was incredible. A long line of bohunks waited for the easy cash. I decided to wait too. I got to the front of the line twenty minutes later and was handed a printed form seventy pages together with three sharpened pencils. I was promised a clam when I finished. I was ashamed to admit that I could use the dough. My new job was to fill in a circle next to the closest correct answer to endless numerical questions such as height, weight, date of birth, finger-length everything about me. I was about halfway through the form when I saw what was apparently a white-haired Mr. Callahan stroll through the busy room and open a door at the back. It was like seeing a dead man come back to life.  The guy was already skeletal and creepy when I was a boy. The stories they told about him couldn’t possibly be true. I caught the faint electrical hum of what sounded like thousands of vacuum tubes as the heavy steel door closed behind him. If it was a radio in there, they could pick up stations from Mars.

I took my time on the questions. They wanted to know the shape of the house I grew up in. I filled in the circle numbered seventeen next to uneven rectangle. A fat man brushed past me pushing a cart loaded down with obituary notices from newspapers across the U.S. He unloaded the paperwork onto a long table filled with women trying desperately to wear out the number two pencils in their hands. I wondered how the dead people got paid the buck for their information.

When I finished, I edged closer to the door John Callahan had disappeared into,  determined to get a better look inside. Two bearded goons each at least seven-foot tall gave me the bum’s rush before I could reach the door knob. They slammed me onto the outside hallway floor with excessive force. One of the men dropped a crumpled dollar bill onto my chest. “Thanks for taking our survey,” he growled. I couldn’t help staring. Both the men had the same yellow canine-eyes you see on a timber wolf.

I limped over to Clancy’s the only speakeasy in town that let me run a tab. Last year, I’d tracked down Clancy’s kid sister after she’d run away from the family farm. She was working topless in a gin joint with a mob manager. I think I found her before she started earning her money between-the-sheets. A cop friend of mine arrested her for dancing without a license and I helped her father pay the seven-dollar fine. I don’t know if she’s still shucking corn in Wallace Bend, Iowa, but I hope so. Chicago is no place for a thirteen year-old.

Clancy and a half-dozen others were clustered around the radio when I walked down the stairs into the basement and asked for a beer. “Get it yourself,” Clancy said without even looking up. Something big was going on with the stock market. Wall Street had been setting fire to stock certificates all day and now it was a raging inferno.  The excitement and panic in the news broadcaster’s voice was better than listening to Amos ‘n Andy. I filled the first mug and chugged it while no one was looking, then filled another. I don’t lie, cheat and steal from friends often, but I will if I have to.

A man wearing a grey Allerton suit and a Knap-felt hat stood up, removed the hat from his bald head and stomped it flat on the tobacco stained floor. “I’m cleaned out!” he yelled. He pushed his way out the door trading blows with two pals who tried to stop him. Seconds later we all heard screeching tires and the thud of a body dancing with a half-ton of metal coming from the street above. “Jim’s wife Dora is still gonna think he got off easy,” one of his friends said.

“How much did you lose?” Clancy finally noticed I was there. I looked around; at least a dozen pain filled faces were staring at me. If I said nothing, they’d probably ice me on the spot. “Everything,’ I said. “Every damn last dime!”

Twenty minutes later a man dressed to the gills in Italian wool and wearing a diamond watchband that was probably worth more than the State of Kentucky asked for Jamaican Rum and a Cuban Cigar. Clancy fetched the illegal booze and the expensive stogie from a locked cabinet after the guy slapped a stack of C-notes on the bar. The cigar was only half smoked when the man pulled a silver plated revolver from his coat pocket and stuck the barrel to his temple. He then softly crooned four lines from Ethel Water’s popular song Am I Blue … he had a fine voice.

It was a morning, long before dawn

Without a warning I found he was gone

How could he do it, why should he do it

He never done it before

Then he pulled the trigger. Bone fragments and blood coated half the people in the basement. I was untouched except for the gunpowder smoke that burned my eyes.  I never mix the blues and booze … no matter how low I get.

I spent the rest of the day and half the night getting sloshed. Clancy didn’t even bother writing down my drinks. We all figured the way things were going, Chicago would be burned to the ground by morning.

At three AM Clancy pushed everyone out. The gutters along Michigan Avenue were littered with stock certificates now worth less than toilet paper. I heard a man’s hysterical laughter descending  from the sky as I passed the Union Carbide building. The guy splattered like an egg when he hit the pavement.

            It was too early to go to sleep and my office was too depressing. I decided to walk past the Placer Building.  I had no place to go and I wanted a closer look inside John Callahan’s radio tube room.

This time the hallway outside the suite was empty. Security must have all gone home to tear up their own stock certificates. The lock on the door was a McMasters, impossible for all but the best can-openers to pick. It took me just five minutes with a bobby pin from Kit Malone’s hair that I’d picked up off the Oasis dance floor for luck.

The spacious room was dark with only starlight coming from an un-curtained window. Stacks of surveys lined the walls and filled the tables. I could see pulsing light coming from under the door that John Callahan had entered earlier. I counted to fifty twice before I took a deep breath and reached for the knob.

Flickering colored light came from one end of the cavernous room.

My first thought on entering was that I’d walked onto the set of the German Film Metropolis. Thousands of blinking vacuum tubes lined rows of shelves like a futuristic library where people read reflected light images instead of books. They were all hissing like snakes.

“I’ve been expecting you!”

I whirled around. John Callahan was even more of a monster up-close and in-person. White flesh hung from his boney face and arms like a roast that’s been slow cooked for a week. His filthy white coat and pants were in tatters. Parts of his stomach were transparent and I could see pea soup moving through his intestines.

            “Sorry, I was looking for a bathroom. I must have opened the wrong door,” I stammered. I wasn’t totally lying. I could feel a warm tinkle running down my leg.

Callahan laughed … a sound that could terrify Lon Chaney. “I think we both know why you’re here,” he said. “You’re in luck, Mr. Jagger. We have your survey results and I’m sure you’d like to know the exact date and time that you’re going to leave this dreadful world.”

            “No thanks, I want it to be a surprise!”

I turned and started to run. Four huge arms grabbed me before my feet could contact the floor. The security people who’d thrown me out before, lifted me once more into the air. They didn’t drag me into the hallway this time, but deeper into Callahan’s electrical labyrinth. John Callahan continued talking as he followed. “Your demise is going to happen much sooner than you think Mister Jagger … much … much … sooner!”

Those same wolf-like eyes were staring at me once more from at least a foot above my head.

This time they looked hungry.

To be continued …

BROKEN part 2

Copyright (c) 2016 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

BROKEN

Part 2

By R. Peterson

            All the objects from the refuse cart were tumbled downward toward the raging inferno. Wind rushing past the broken cup, Stein, made a mournful foghorn sound. Ladle spun round and round like the falling shaft of an arrow, his fond days stirring in the castle kitchen passing before him like images from a carousel. Lute played frantic descending scales that became a madman’s funeral dredge, his fragmented string streaming behind. The broken scissors beat at the air like wings without feathers. “Eeeeaaaahhh!” he screeched. Right before they reached the flames, a blast of steam lifted them all upward. “I’m about to enter the gates of hell and then I’m saved by …” Jack, the old worn-out boot gasped as he stared upward. “A river pouring from the sky!”

            “You didn’t think I’d abandon my friends did you?” Rain said. She was hovering over the refuse-pit pouring torrents of water into the burning hole.

“Nor would I!” When they were once again above the rim of the smoking chasm, Wind blew them sideways where they plopped to the ground in safety.

The boy saw the load of garbage that he’d just dumped come flying back up out of the pit and reluctantly turned around. “This won’t do … they’ll blame me for sloppy work,” he said. He was approaching the steaming jumble lying everywhere on the ground when an enormous blast dropped him to his knees. A second explosion sent him running back to the village without his cart. “Don’t forget my help,” Thunder rumbled.

            “Good heavens!” Ladle exclaimed. “No more than twenty of us went in from the cart but hundreds came out!”  Jack, Lute, Stein and Scissors all stared. Charred books, wheels, pots and tools littered the ground.

            “They had no right to destroy me!” a thick cookbook with a broken spine grumbled. “How was I to know the King doesn’t like worm pudding?”

            “And I kept falling off the wagon because the driver never fastened me on properly,” a wheel said.

            “I’m not going back in that pit again!” Jack began to stomp soot from his heel.

            “I suppose it’s too late to catch up with the minstrels,” Lute sighed.

            “We don’t have to go back to the way things were,” Ladle told them. “I noticed the carnival packing-up while the boy was hauling us to our doom. There is plenty of space in the market. Why not offer ourselves to people who will appreciate what we have to offer?”

            “I could hold all kinds of things if I only had a pin to help me,” a table with a wobbly-leg cried.

                “My whole family has been starving!” A bent-nail tumbled from a smoking bag. “Sure! Even my little ones have some rust, but aren’t we all tarnished in some way?”

            “Alone we are worth nothing,” Ladle said. “But if we band together, we can make new lives for ourselves!”

All the broken and discarded items from the pit began to cheer as Jack announced that he would lead them all back home. They looked like a raggle taggle army as they marched down the dusty road toward the village and the castle beyond … and the Wind and the Rain and  Thunder followed.

-------2-------

            “There!” Table pointed his loose leg at the empty space left by the traveling minstrels. “We can set up our shop and find people who want us.”

Ladle noticed Stîngace’s glaring face behind a booth selling cabbages. The cook’s helper who had broken him lifting a heavy pot had apparently lost her job in the King’s kitchen. Stîngace noticed him and yelled. “That spoon was sent to the garbage heap!’

Several of the surrounding merchants began to look at the group suspiciously. “Who brought this load of junk into our market?” An overweight man sniffing stuffed meats to their left yelled. He threw a sour smelling sausage that just missed Lute.

            “No one brought us,” Ladle told them. “We are castaways, thrown-out and discarded … therefore we consider ourselves  free merchandise!”

A man selling snakes from an empty rum-barrel on their right, shook another barrel filled with terrified mice and laughed. “Who would want any of you?”

Ladle had to restrain Jack from kicking him as he and Rain mixed a cracked goose egg with dusty chunks of red ochre.

Scissors helped a battered Sea Captain’s log-book, that had lain underwater for years and then dried out, remove one of its unwritten crusty pages and soon they had a sign that read:  Free to Good Homes. Two pieces of used chewing gum offered to stick it to the edge of the table.

Soon the empty market stall was filled with broken and discarded items each trying to show its best side to the prospective customers walking past. No one stopped or even looked in their direction.

            “We need something to get their attention,” Ladle said.

Just then, a hissing snake startled a woman carrying a high stack of fabric and thread as she walked past. She jumped sideways and tumbled into a fat man eating a dripping sausage that he’d just purchased. “Spooked yah a bit did it?” he stared at the barrel of snakes as he helped the obvious seamstress pick up her cargo and then walked over. “Nice wiggly scarf to have around my neck when I comes home from the pub a bit late and the missus is waiting up an polishing her rollin’ pin.” He left two minutes later with an African Python wrapped around one arm and holding a bag of squirming mice in his other.

“That’s what we need,” Ladle said. “Something to get the people’s attention.”

Rain was helping Stein clean out the paint stuck to his insides but was running low on water. Thunder produced a deep rumble to help the cloud make more. Several people walking past finally looked in their direction. “That’s it!” Ladle cried. “We all need to make noise to get the people’s attention!”

Scissors began to click his blades together once each second. In between each click, Ladle would strike his wooden head against Stein. After eight beats, Lute began to play a rousing melody. The pause that came from the broken string only served to heathen the unique sound. Soon a large crowd had formed around the booth filled with junk.

            “A doll with the stuffing missing from one leg! I had one just like it when I was a girl!” one elated woman exclaimed.

The other merchants in their booths were furious. “That pile of junk is stealing all of our customers!” they cried.

            “All this wheel needs is a new bearing and it will fit my wagon!” a happy farmer said.

A bare-foot pirate with a peg leg howled when he found Jack and they danced away together toward a world of adventures.

Ladle, Stein, Scissors and Lute kept on playing and soon all of the unwanted objects had new homes.

The woman who had been frightened by the snakes pushed her way through the crowd and gasped when she saw Scissors. “That is a pair of Hinchliffe dressmaking scissors!” she exclaimed. “The finest fabric cutters in the whole world!”

The man selling sausages laughed. “Not anymore,” he said. “Look at that point!  It’s broken!”

The woman picked up Scissors and examined him carefully. “Only the tip,” she said. “I don’t take long snips, only short careful ones. The cutting edges are still excellent! I can’t wait to put these to work!”

Just then Stîngace pushed her way through the crowd followed by three of the King’s soldiers. “There,” she cried grabbing the spoon she had broken. “This collection of junk has been selling merchandise in the village without a license!”

            “Is this true?” one of the soldiers asked Ladle.

            “Not at all,” ladle told him. “We offer ourselves free to good homes and promise to work hard for the people that want us!”

            “There is no law against giving things away,” the smiling soldier told Stîngace as he took the spoon from her hand.

Ladle, Stein, the scissors and Lute all began to cheer. No one noticed the clink as Stîngace dropped a penny into Stein. “They lie!” she screamed. “They’ve been collecting money all along and hid it to avoid paying the King his rightful taxes.”

The soldier lifted Stein and the penny fell to the ground. “I’m sorry but I’ll have to take you all to the magistrate!”

The soldiers bound the four objects with heavy rope and dragged them toward the castle. Some distance behind, Thunder followed grumbling, the Wind howled and Rain wept openly.

-------3-------

            Stîngace made up lie after lie to the magistrate in the courtyard of the palace. She was determined to see all the unwanted objects burned.  “We have to do something,” The Wind whispered to Rain.

            “We’ll go fetch the King,” Thunder said. “He’s a good man and will set things right!”

The King was eating hot porridge from a golden bowl when Rain tapped on his window. He ignored her. Wind rattled the castle’s eaves and tore shingles from the turrets; still he did not look up. Thunder finally grew furious and shook the entire castle so that even the foundation stones trembled. “What the devil is going on?” The king threw open his window, looked up at the sky and then spied the proceedings below in the courtyard. Minutes later he pushed his way through the crowd.

            “What is the meaning of this?” he asked the magistrate.

            “These broken items are charged with selling without a license to avoid paying taxes.” The magistrate told the King.

Stîngace held up the penny. “I have the proof in my hand.” She cackled.

The King sighed as he looked up at the sky, the swirling Wind, the rumbling Thunder and the Rain that was beginning to fall. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But the laws in this kingdom must be obeyed.”

            “To the fire pit with them!” Stîngace cackled. She was dancing with joy.

            “There will be no burning,” the King proclaimed. “These four convicts will hang in the morning.”

-------4-------

            Ladle, Lute, Stein and Scissors were all locked together in the highest tower of the castle. Stein sat glumly in a corner listening to Scissors snip at nothing while Lute played heartbreaking music. Ladle starred through the barred windows at the night sky. “At least we won’t burn,’ he said.

            “The time we spent in the market making happy sounds was the best time of my life,” Stein exclaimed. “I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

            “And just having that woman admire me was the best feeling,’ Scissors snipped.

            “I didn’t realize how lonely I was until I had friends,” Ladle said. “Let’s make the sounds together on the one night we have left!”

            Lute began to play the happiest songs he knew and joy echoed through the entire castle.

-------5-------

            The King woke early the next morning from the most delightful sleep he’d had in years. “It was as if a chorus of birds had sung me through my dreams,” he told the servant helping him dress.

The magistrate, Stîngace and an angry group of merchants were just dragging the four prisoners away when the King spied them. “Where are you taking the prisoners?” he demanded.

            “Why to Gallows’ Hill,” the magistrate replied. “It was by your decree that they were to hang!”

            “That is correct, it was my pronouncement,” the King said. “But I didn’t say where … did I?”

The royal executioner placed four tiny hooks just inches apart into a wooden beam overhanging the elaborately carved doorway leading from the courtyard into the palace, and then bound thin but very strong wire around each prisoner.

            “Will it hurt … this hanging?” Stein asked as the wire wrapped around his broken handle.

            “I was often hung on a hook by the stove,” Ladle said. “Not so bad. At least we’ll die together!”

Scissors was elated when the executioner only placed the wire trough one handle eye. “I can still snip,” he whispered.

Lute couldn’t help but play the saddest song he knew.

The crowd gasped and then grew silent as the executioner hoisted the four skyward. Ladle, Stein, Scissors and Lute were all hung so close together they were almost touching. After several minutes of silence the crowd wandered away and after an hour … so did the sun.

-------6-------

            Stars swept across the night sky and the kingdom was silent. The Wind found Rain crying behind some mountains and together they looked until they found Thunder hurtling lightning bolts at the ground in uncontrolled fury. “I just want to touch our friends one last time,” Wind said.

It was after midnight when the three floated above the castle grounds. Everything was deathly still. The four noisy friends hung lifeless from the wooden beam. Rain began to cry and her tears plunked against the silent body of Lute. Wind came in close and brushed against Ladle softly and he bumped against Stein. Thunder couldn’t hold back his grief and began a deep low grumble that made even the stout wooden beam the four hung from vibrate.

Lute was the first to open his eyes, then Stein, Ladle and Scissors. “We are alive,” they whispered to each other.

The Wind was so happy she became a summer breeze and Thunder a deep rumbling bass. Rain plunked out a steady beat of joyous tears and all the friends together began to make the most delightful noises.

On the other side of the village, in a barn next to a pig pen, Stîngace woke from the hayloft where she was sleeping and shrieked. The sounds carried on the night air were driving her mad. She loaded all her belongings into a small bag and left, never to be seen again, cursing the infernal noise that was in the air.

The King smiled in his sleep. Everything was right in his kingdom and in the world.

And on a silent summer night, if you listen closely, you can still hear the seven friends who hung together and proved to everyone that all things … even those broken … have value.

THE END?

           

BROKEN

Copyright (c) 2016 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

BROKEN

By R. Peterson

The foolish woman shouldn’t have used the old wooden-spoon to try to lift the heavy steamer. She flung the broken pieces across the kitchen then beat her flabby fists against the heart mantle. Frightened pots, pans and dishes held their breath as she stomped down the stone hallway. After a minute of dark stillness, to insure that Stîngace wasn’t lurking in the darkness to catch culinary enchantments, Ladle, finding his broken-half, climbed to a ledge under the kitchen window. He washed his face under a dripping faucet then gazed beyond the castle walls whispering loudly so the boiling kettle could hear.  “Ages ago I was long and smooth, and every rich soup was stirred without fear. I was wiped clean daily and rested on a gleaming shelf. The Chef shared with me his compliments from the King.”

Ladle sighed as a molted crow flapped across the night sky and his own tiny splinters drifted into the filthy sink. “But the banquets gone have grown voluminous and the bright salvers round the tables now taunt me bust and fractured. The moon is much larger tonight … What does it portend? Listen! Footsteps! Illumination!” Ladle’s voice sang with hopeful joy. “Has his sodden Majesty come to rush me to the wood-carver? Will the repairs hurt?”

The wretched cook’s helper banged in, lamp-lighting a dirty-faced child pulling a wagon. “There! That broken dollop!” Stîngace pointed at Ladle cowering on the sill. “Not worth a short-chop for kindling … to the rubbish pit with it!”

-------2-------

Ladle felt himself lifted from the window sill and cast onto a cart piled high with broken jars, empty bottles and worn out shoes. “Where is the boy taking us?” Ladle asked a Jack boot with a broken heel.

“To our new home Reeking Downs,” Jack said. “If only I’d thought to bring Swatter along. He would have been a handy companion where were going. Old Swat was always spoiling for a fight with the flies. He slept on the shelf next to me all winter … and I knew him well.”

“Flies? What are flies?” Everything was happening too fast for Ladle.

“You’ll find out soon enough!” Jack laughed. “With that short bit of a broken handle of yours, they’ll be crawling all over you before you can beat them back!”

The boy pulled the cart through a doorway into a cobblestone courtyard outside and Ladle could not believe how bright it was; he had never been beyond the dingy kitchen.

            “Good heavens!” Ladle gasped pointing himself toward the sky. “There! Up in the air. Is that a fire?”

A large burning ball glared down at him.

The old boot laughed. “You have been shut in haven’t you? That’s the Sun and he’s what makes everything warm.”

Ladle looked around in amazement as they rolled past numerous stands filled with everything imaginable from elaborately sewn clothing, household goods and toys to fruits and vegetables. “I never knew the world was so large!”

            “This is not the world!” Jack laughed again. “All you see is part of an insignificant little kingdom on the edge of a forgotten forest beyond a tiny lake that nobody’s heard of. Why my mate and I sailed the seven seas, tromped across the deserts of Africa and danced before the Queen of Egypt.”

            “Your mate?” Ladle was hearing many words he’d never heard before.

            “Yes,” Jack said. “My twin and my best friend. We were inseparable until the soldier who owned us staggered home from the pub one night and lost him in a mucky puddle after a heavy rain.” Jack began to cry. “That was the last time I saw poor Harry.”

            “Rain,” Ladle said. “What is rain?”

            “I think were about to find out!” Jack pointed toward the sky where a rumble of thunder chased a dark cloud over the face of the sun.

Tiny drops of water began to fall and Ladle felt splattered-on like when he was stirring a boiling pot only this was not warm at all. The lad pushing the cart took cover under a striped umbrella covering a long table piled high with linen and shiny new objects leaving his cargo of discarded junk to get wet. “Hey!” Ladle yelled as a cold drop of water ran off his head.

 “Sorry,” the rain said pointing to a dark cloud. “I was floating along minding my own business when that clap of thunder scared me!”

“Don’t blame me!” The voice coming from the cloud voice was so low you almost felt rather than heard him. “I was pushed by the wind!”

“I don’t see any wind,” the rain said splattering in all directions. “I think you’re making it all up!”

“You can’t see the wind.” Jack sighed, as if speaking to children. “It’s a spirit sent by God. You can only feel it!”

“I’ve never before had such magnificent conversations,” Ladle was all but laughing. “Only with an old black kettle and he was always boiling mad or simmering about something.”

“You’ll have to leave at once!” the man behind the table yelled at the boy. “I don’t need a wagon load of refuse sitting out front to drive my customers away.”

A long row of crystal-glass goblets turned away and refused to even look at the refugees.

“Oh dear,” Ladle said as the boy began to push the cart away. “I’ve been called broken and now refuse! What a bad day I’m having!”

“You call this bad?” Jack sneered. “I was once stranded on a desert Island for three weeks and was almost eaten by my master.”

“I don’t know about you, but I’ll be glad to be rid of this place,” the rain said. “That awful man put up that umbrella just to keep me out!”

“Hey wait up!” Thunder rumbled. And the wind followed.

They were moving past a filthy house with a dozen roosters out front; each was tied to a flagpole by a length of string looped around its neck. A beefy man with traveling bags under his sad eyes lumbered out of the dilapidated hovel and tossed a broken cup on the cart’s pile. “Might as well take along my poor old Stein,” he said, “If you’re bound for the dump. T’was a good cup that served me well, but last night the misses took aim at my head and hit the stove instead! The man sighed. “Every morning as each rooster crows, I salute the king’s colors and toast to his health and long life. Tis a pauper’s job for sure but tis honest work. Alas! What am I to do with half a cup?”

            “Get a job that pays more than chicken feed,” a raspy woman’s voice screeched from inside the cottage as the cart moved away. Around the next corner, a man ran from the back door of a restaurant and emptied a pail of slop on top the pile. “Be a good lad and see that this gets home,” he muttered. Some of the vendors had begun to throw stones and to complain about the smell.

            “It wasn’t my fault,” Stein said as they flew through the streets. “I warned him again and again to hide from his wife’s temper … but he wouldn’t listen!”

-------3-------

They left the castle grounds and made their way through several small villages. Just outside a minstrel show was tearing down a stage and loading up equipment. A man wearing skin-tight red and yellow striped pants and with an unbecoming sneer on his face tossed a musical instrument onto the cart. “Take this box of noises with you,” he said. “Just when I have the audience dancing and tossing money into my hat … he goes and breaks another string. When I get to the city I’m going to buy a horn instead!”

Lute was obviously in misery as he bounced along on top of the pile. “I did the best I could.” The musical instrument moaned. “He uses the broken end of a knife-blade to pluck out his tunes … of course my strings break!”

The trees began to thin and the group crossed an open field to where a huge hole had been gouged into the ground. “This is as far as I go,” the boy said. “From here on out you poor things are on your own.”

The cart teetered on the edge of a dark abyss. Ladle tried to see the bottom of the hole but it was too deep. "There must be some mistake,” he cried. “The king always complimented the chef and I on our wonderful soups … how can this be my end?”

            “I smell smoke,” Stein gasped. “We’re about to be cast into a fire!”

Just then a pair of broken scissors wiggled up through the rubbish from the bottom of the cart. “Cut the crap,” he said. “You all knew your lives were spent when you were thrown away. A few minutes of agony and it will all be over.”

Flames began to leap into the air like hungry fish.

            “I don’t hold as much as I used to,” Stein moaned. “But I can still quench a thirst on a hot summer’s day!”

            “I’ve known boots that traveled the world alone, with help from a crutch,” Boot said. “I can’t believe my life is over!”

            “I play beautiful music when I’m strummed with soft fingers,” Lute began to beg the boy. “Just listen …” He began to play but Ladle thought it was the saddest song he’d ever heard.

It’s too late,” the boy said. “I’ve brought you all this way … so in you go!”

Just then a strong wind came up and blew the boy and the cart away from the hole. The lad struggled to keep the cart upright. Muscles bulged on both his arms as he slowly pushed the cart forward. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But this is my job!”

He somehow lifted the back of the wagon and it tipped forward. Boot kicked at the air. Ladle spun in circles, the cup dropped like a rock and Lute screamed like a violin as the pile of garbage tumbled down into the flames.

To be continued …

LOTTERY part 3

Copyright (c) 2016 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

LOTTERY

Part 3

By R. Peterson

Three Latino men and one Anglo woman were preparing the one-hundred thirty-foot Toro Natación for an unscheduled night cruise when Janet Reynolds and four of Rico Alfaro’s men arrived at the Miami Beach Marina. A brisk night wind drove large waves against the wharf pilings, but the huge yacht was unmovable in the water. No crew member looked twice when a body was dragged aboard and a sobbing Janet was forced below deck with a gun in her back. “No esperes ninguna ayuda from any of them,” the gun wielding man told her as he locked her in a spacious cabin. “All Mr. Alfaro’s employees saber a la mente su propio negocio (know how to mind their own business.)” The stateroom was larger than her double-wide trailer. Janet plopped face-down onto a king-size bed and began to cry.

Janet felt only a slight tremor as the huge yacht moved out into the ocean. Five minutes later, one of the Anglo women crew members entered the room carrying an expensive-looking crimson dress. “Hi, I’m Karen. Ernesto wants you to wear this,” she noticed the question on Janet’s face. “The brute with the scar across his face who had the gun in your back.” She placed the garment carefully on the bed, then brushed short blond hair from her eyes. “Ernesto is in charge when Rico is not around. He and the his macho friends like to pretend they woo women into having sex with them … but no matter how they do it …. rape is rape!”

“How can you work for people like this?” Janet sobbed.

“I don’t have any choice,” Karen said. “My husband ran a charter business, taking tourists on fishing and sight-seeing trips. I’d only been married six months when I found he had a serious gambling addiction. I was only supposed to work three months to pay Rico off for an eight-thousand dollar debt.  I’ve been here more than a year and we now owe more than ten-thousand.”

“Where are we going?” Janet asked.

“About twenty miles off-shore,” Karen said. “They’ll weight the dead man’s body and then toss it overboard, after that … the party will begin.”

“Does this happen all the time?” Janet gasped.

“Money attracts all the wrong kinds of people and Rico has business interests all over Florida,” Karen said. “Drugs, prostitution … even some things that are legal. He’s one of the largest contributors to the Governor’s re-election campaign and most of the state legislators. It literally allows him to get away with murder.”

“Is there any way to get out of this?” Janet picked up the dress, looked at the label, and then flung it onto the carpeted floor.

“My husband Ted is the pilot of this vessel and the radio operator,” Karen said. “There was an earthquake in the gulf about two-hundred miles east of Havana. Ted advised against taking even a huge boat like the Toro Natación out, because of the chance of giant waves, but Rico insisted. All you can do is stall for time and hope that Ernesto and the others get drunk enough to fall overboard.”

Thirty minutes later, Janet heard the diesel engines come to a stop. From somewhere above on the deck she heard a splash as something large was thrown in the water and then music began to play. Thankfully, Jack and her children were locked up in the back room of Rico’s bar. Janet closed her eyes and her three children’s tiny faces seemed to be looking at her for answers. She opened her eyes and took a deep breath. If her family was going to get out of this jam, it would be up to her to do it. She picked up the expensive dress and sighed.

-------2-------

The three children were asleep on the filthy mattress, but Jack lay awake worried about Janet. A thousand times he wished they had never bought the damn lottery ticket. Finally the door opened and Sheriff Buford “BB” Jackson waddled in carrying the next day’s printed itinerary. “The plane leaves at six in the morning,” he said handing the paper and the lottery ticket to Jack. “Rico will fly us to Atlanta himself.” He looked at Jack and grinned. “Your wife should be back from her pleasure-cruise by then.”

                “If Janet is hurt in any way … I’ll kill you,” jack promised.

BB ignored him and went on. “Rico will wait in the rental car with the kids while you, me and your wife, go inside lottery headquarters to collect the money. Remember, I’m hired as your spokesman, attorney and bodyguard … No one will suspect the sheriff of the county where you live. There will be no pictures and no publicity. I’ll do all the talking.”

                “How do you ever expect to get away with this?” Jack was furious.

                “I’ve been looking for a way out of my own financial situation for over a year,” the sheriff said. “After you won the lottery, everything just fell into place.” He reached down as if to stroke a sleeping Kit Kat’s soft baby hair but Jack knocked his hand away. “When Harry Walton and his gang got involved … I thought that eighty-six million might slip out of my fingers … but everything works out in the end. That kind of money can buy a new identity anywhere in the world.”

The sheriff was laughing as he closed the door. Jack sat on the bed and thought about Janet. He prayed that she was okay.

-------3-------

The ocean was strangely calm and the sky clear when Janet strolled onto the upper deck of the expensive yacht. Nat King Cole’s Mona Lisa played over loudspeakers crooned by a Latin singer. Starlight reflected off the intricate beadwork of the red Oscar de la Renta cocktail gown. Janet had to admit the dress fit like a glove with just the right amount of cleavage. She knew she looked better than good and it somehow made her feel stronger …. Maybe she could use these men’s lust to her advantage.

“Alabanzas a los cielos! Senorita you look exquisite!” Ernesto strolled toward Janet extending his pudgy arm. When his fingers brushed against her waist, she slapped away his hand. Janet strained to remember the Spanish she took in High School. She addressed all of the men, gazing at each with a look that she hoped promised that he was the only one. “Yo no soy alguna puta para ser pasado como una botella de tequila! (I am not some whore to be passed around like a bottle of tequila!)” She turned and adjusted the straps on her low-cut dress. “Voy a elegir uno de ustedes para una noche de placer exquisito... pero sólo uno! (I will choose one of you for a night of exquisite pleasure … but only one!)”

Ernesto laughed. “It takes a very strong man to tame such a woman,” he said glaring at the others. “No hombre on this boat can defeat me in a fight!”

                “It takes more than a strong arm, to win a woman’s favors,” Janet told him smiling at the others. “If you are such a man … then prove it!”

                “Yes,” several of the others said. “Deje que la mujer a elegir (Let the woman choose) who she will sleep with.”

                “I will play along with this little game of yours,” Ernesto said taking a switch-blade knife from his pocket and flicking it open. “But you will be in my bed before this night is over … or you will be food for the fishes.”

-------4-------

 Jack couldn’t keep Kit Kat from crying; he was making the other children cry as well. A large Latino reeking of alcohol and with vacant eyes, had been back twice pounding on the locked-door in the rear of Toro Magnifico telling him to callar esos malditos niños! “We need food … and milk for the baby,” Jack told him when he stormed back again. “Your boss won’t like it if we get sick before he gets our money!” Jack thought what he said sounded stupid, but he was surprised when the guard staggered back twenty minutes later with a bag filled with burgers and fries from McDonalds along with two cartons of milk. “The baby needs a bottle to drink out of,” Jack told the obviously drunk man when he was handed the bag. The man shook his head. “No entiendo,” he muttered. Jack stuck his thumb in his mouth and made sucking noises. “A bottle,” Jack said removing his finger. “The baby needs a bottle!”

The man was staring stupidly at Jack’s wet thumb and so Jack jabbed it in his eye. A split second later Jack hit him as hard as he could when the man was bent over rubbing his eye socket. The large Latino stood erect and smiled showing rows of gold-capped teeth. “I’ve done it now!” Jack gasped.  “He’s going to kill me!”

                “Mama dijo que llego a montar el burro a continuación (Mama said that I get to ride the donkey next),” he muttered just before both his eyes turned inward and he crashed to the floor.

Jack held Kit Kat under one arm as he dragged Sally and Mick through a storage room filled with cases of beer and wine. “Where are we going?” Sally began to cry again holding a half-eaten cheese-burger in her hand.

                “Shhhh … you must be very quiet,” Jack told her. “We’re going to find momma!”

-------5-------

Janet had slow-danced with every man on the Toro Natación at least twice including Karen’s husband Ted. The man let his hand roam across her backside whenever he was turned away from his wife. Poor Karen Janet thought This guy is a real prize.

                “Enough of these games!” Ernesto thundered stopping the music. “It is time for you to choose!” He pulled the switch-blade knife from his pocket. Starlight glimmered off the razor-sharp edges as he flicked it open. “Let’s hope that you make the right decision.”

Janet was standing near the railing on the upper deck and she happened to look down into the water. The ocean was full of shimmering fins and lashing tails all streaming past the hull going in the same direction. She looked across the hull toward the horizon. A dark wall of water was coming toward the boat. “Line up across from me,” Janet said undoing several of the buttons on her dress to keep all eyes on her. “I want to compare each of you … before I pick the lucky winner.”

All seven men lined up on the deck opposite from her flexing their muscles with several sucking in their stomachs including Karen’s husband.

Karen, standing beside Janet, was furious. “Ted! What the hell are you doing?” she screamed.

                “Sorry babe,” Ted told her, “se trata de un concurso para los hombres (this is a contest of men) … it wouldn’t be right to leave me out!”

                “If she chooses you, I will exchange your markers for the three-hundred you lost last night to take your place,” one of the men suggested.

                “You are still gambling?” Karen screamed. “I don’t believe this!”

The wave was as large as a four storey building on the horizon, a black wall moving rapidly toward the yacht from behind the men. The huge water craft was beginning to list. Several eyes were beginning to turn. Janet unbuttoned the dress all the way and let it drop to the deck and all eyes were on her. “Hang on to the rail,” she whispered to a sobbing Karen.

The men were all too busy shouting to notice the sound of vast amounts of moving water.

                “Buscarme, y no te arrepentirás (Pick me, and you won’t be sorry).”

                “Era el mejor amante en la Habana! (I was the best lover in all Havana!)”

                “Vamos a hacer amor a ti... ¿por qué no elegir el mejor primero? (We’re all going to make love to you … why not choose the best first?)”

The massive forty-foot wave struck the huge yacht from the rear port-side thrusting it upward like a surfboard before turning it vertically in the air. Janet put both arms around Karen and held tightly onto the boat-railing as they capsized and were plunged under the cold Caribbean waters.

-------6-------

Jack and the children crawled between cars until they were away from the gravel parking lot behind  Toro Magnifico and then they ran.  They skirted behind several warehouses and then down the sidewalk and into the street when they spotted a slow moving truck with Biological Disposal Systems printed on the side. Jack had just twenty-six dollars and the lottery ticket in his wallet. “I’ll give you twenty bucks to drive us to the marina,” Jack pleaded with the driver after the truck applied its brakes.

“The Miami Marina is only two miles from here,” the driver said looking at the frightened children and touching a silver crucifix dangling on a chain above the dashboard. “My name is Pablo Rivera … and I do not charge for being a Christian.”

                “It will be crowded with all of us in your cab,” Jack said. “If you want , we can ride in the back.”

Pablo shook his head. “You would not like the company you were riding with.”

                “What are you hauling?” Jack asked him as they filled the cab.”

                “The unwanted parts of the dead,” Pablo whispered to Jack and then smiled at the children as he began to shift gears.

-------7-------

Janet thought her lungs would burst when with an explosion of bubbles the Toro Natación up righted. A dripping Karen was still holding onto the railing beside her. “I thought we were going to drown,” Janet moaned.

                “Rico Alfaro is an evil gangster,” Karen said gasping for breath. “But he does know quality in a boat.”

All the crew members had been swept a hundred yards into the ocean except for Karen’s husband Ted. He pulled himself back onto the deck clinging to a mooring line. “Help me throw these to the crew,” he said releasing two self-inflating life-rafts from an emergency station. He stared at the ravaged yacht as he dragged one now inflated raft toward the port side. “I’m probably in deep trouble with Mr. Alfaro.” He moaned.

                “No deeper than the trouble you are in with me,” Karen said as she rushed up behind her husband. She pushed him and the raft over the side.

                “These are four-man rafts,” Janet said looking at instructions on the second raft that had just self-inflated. “With provisions for a week at sea … perhaps we should put this other over the side too?”

Karen produced a tiny knife from inside her brazier. She quickly punctured the raft in four different places. “Made for four men … but they will hold seven rats,” she said as she pushed the destroyed raft over the side.

                “Do you know how to operate this boat?” Janet asked.

                “Of course,” Karen said. “Who do you think has been the real Captain of this ship while he’s been drinking and gambling?”

-------8-------

Pablo Rivera was easy to talk to. Jack ended up telling him all about winning the lottery and then being held prisoner by first Harry Walton and then by the sheriff and the mobster Rico Alfaro. “Money attracts all the wrong people,” Jack told him. “If I can get my wife back, I’d be happy to never see that found money again.”

                “Do you know the name of Alfaro’s yacht?” Pablo asked as they pulled into the marina.

                “I don’t,” Jack said almost breaking into tears. “It will take a miracle to find her. All I know, is one of his thugs said it was very large.”

                “In order to have miracles happen,” Pablo told him as he stroked the crucifix dangling above his dash. “You must first believe that they will happen.”

Pablo slowed down as he drove the truck past hundreds of moored boats big and small. “We’ll look for the most expensive boat here,” he said. “Your Mr. Alfaro sounds like an egomaniac.”

                “That’s got to be the biggest yacht here,” Jack said pointing toward a huge boat coming in from the ocean heading toward the docks.

                “Whoever is piloting that thing is either drunk or crazy,” Pablo said. “They are coming in much too fast!”

Jack gasped as the Toro Natación got close enough to see two women standing on the deck. They jumped off just as the huge vessel rammed and splintered the dock. “My wife doesn’t drink,” Jack yelled with joy. “So she must be the crazy one!”

-------9-------

                It was after midnight, two days later when the Reynolds family returned to their double wide trailer just outside of Baxley Georgia. A huge crowd of people covered the lawn in front of their house and half the street. A large pile of fresh dirt stood on the lawn. “How did they know we’d be home today?” Janet asked as they looked for a pace to park. “It looks like half the town has been digging for buried treasure!”

                “They probably been waiting here ever since we left,” Jack told her. “We ain’t staying long we’ll dash inside, grab our photo albums, that quilt your mother made before she died, a few other things and then we’re out of here for good.”

Deputy Bobby Joe Tinker tried to escort them safely inside their home but the crowd was too large. Jack and Janet both rushed toward the door carrying the children wrapped in blankets.

                “What about all our old times? They don’t mean a damn thing now?” Tony Cordess yelled just before he threw a beer bottle. The empty container just missed Janet’s head.

                “You people are crazy,” Jack yelled back. “We’ll be happy to share, but we need time to get our heads on straight.”

A lawyer from Atlanta tried to shove a paper in Jack’s hand. It was a class action suit that said a half-dozen people had injured themselves walking on Jack’s unkempt lawn. “You should have put up a sign warning people of the danger,” he said.

                “I want my casserole dish back now!” Ruth Watson spat just before Janet slammed the door in her face. “There better not be even one chip or scratch in it!” Janet could hear her yelled warning from inside the house.

“Bobby Joe said to let him know when we’re ready to leave and he’ll have two deputies escort us out of town,” Jack told Janet.

                “It’s funny,” Janet told her husband. “Now that we have a fortune … I no longer see its value.” She put her arms around Jack and kissed him. “We are together as a family and that’s all that matters.”

Just then, a bottle crashed through the living room window and burst on the carpet spreading flaming gasoline across the old battered couch and quickly spread to the walls. Within seconds the mobile home was consumed in flames.

Two fire trucks responded from Baxley and a third from Rockingham but the trailer was a total loss within minutes.

Eighteen hours later, police and fire officials found the charred remains of a man a woman and three children in the still warm ashes.

                “She should have married me,” Deputy Bobbie Joe Tinker bawled as two EMT’s loaded the burnt bodies on a gurney. “I would have given her a Porsche!”

-------10-------

                Dotty and Mike Purser ran from the waves across the white-sand beach toward where their parents sat with their baby brother. Three weeks  at the Fiesta Americana resort in Acapulco had given them all deep glowing tans. Janice Purser scolded her daughter. “Dotty! I told you to put on suntan lotion after each time you go in the water. You don’t want to get a burn do you?”

                The girl looked around the beach and laughed. “For a minute there I didn’t know who you were talking to,” she said.

                Fonzareli Estaza and his wife Kim walked arm in arm from the tennis courts. “How are the new bride and groom doing today?” John Purser asked.

                “Better,” Fonzi laughed. “You don’t know how much driving a truck affects you until you no longer do it!”

                “Do you miss your old job?” John asked him.

                “It was amazing what my employers did with the donated bodies once they were used up,” Fonzi said. “They burned them together and then sent each family a box of ashes with a name tag on it. I won’t miss that at all!”

                “Did we tell you we’ve been thinking of buying a yacht?” Kim gushed.

                “She keeps telling me what a great Captain she’d make.” Fonzi winked at John. ‘But we know better don’t we?”

                “Speaking of money,” Jack said. “You remembered to mail your brother that check didn’t you?”

                “I gave him enough to buy out his partner in the excavation business,” Fonzi said. “Let’s hope he spends it wisely.”

                “He was the best tunnel digger I’d ever seen,” John gushed. “A tunnel that collapses behind you and leaves no trace. That’s ingenious!”

                “People that can vanish and leave no trace …” Janice leaned-in and kissed her husband. “That’s even better!”

THE END?