Not Today
The uncertainty of my steps
Echoes the heaviness of my spirit
The future seems like a darkening tunnel
Closing in with no end and no light
Then a stranger says "Merry Christmas"
Another lights a candle and welcomes her family
We celebrate what was and what may have been
With horns and champagne we anticipate a new year
The morning rain creates a rainbow
The air is fragrant and wet with hope
Birds stop and feed on their way to a better place
Some days I long to join them, not today
It will be clear 1
In the mailbox on
a mountain top,
I find a pencil
stub, a pack of note paper, and
a stack of folded
notes, stuffed into a sack.
Letters from other
adventurers.
The notes have
names, dates, poems, and
Well wishes from
other lonely wanders
Flattening a scrap
of paper on a rock,
I write my name
and the date.
Evidence that I
made it, 9,980 feet.
Evidence that I
exist.
In a postscript, I
leave a riddle for the next explorer
“One day, it will
be clear,” I write.
Picking up my
pack, I start down,
Leaving some
future traveler to consider my meaning.
1. Roger C. Lubeck: “It Will Be Clear,” poem in One Day: Redwood Writers 2024 Poetry Anthology, Les Bernstein (Editor). Redwood Writers Press. 2023.
Because of Canada1
My grandparents
built a two-story, three-season, Cape Cod-style lakefront vacation cottage in
Kingsville, Ontario. In Canada, I learned to swim, fish, row, drive a
speedboat, and water ski. I also learned that opportunity is a brief visitor.
In 1963, when I was thirteen, my
best friend, Doug, stayed a month with us at our cottage. Doug and I spent our
days hanging out with a group of summer kids. Some days we’d walk into town for
ice cream. One day we earned thirty-five cents a basket picking yellow wax
beans. Doug and I talked about girls when we were alone. We knew next to
nothing about sex, but we were ready to learn. My older brother Dave, who girls
considered cool, knew quite a lot but offered little advice.
That summer, my father and older
brother lived at home during the workweek and stayed at the cottage on the
weekend. Most Saturdays, my dad would play cards and drink old-fashioned with a
neighbor. My older brother Dave divided his time between sleeping, swimming,
and borrowing my mom’s convertible. When friends of my parents visited the
cottage, they came for lunch and cocktails on Saturday. One Sunday, my mom
announced the Nelsons would be visiting on the next Saturday with their twin
daughters.
Doug and I had gone through grade
school with the Nelson twins, Barbara and Kathy. The girls were not identical
twins. Most considered Barbara the prettier of the two. She had a beautiful
oval face with pink apple cheeks. More of a tomboy, Kathy was cute, athletic,
and funny. She was the one who always laughed at my jokes.
In fifth grade, Barbara and I
became friends while learning to dance the waltz in gym class. No one had to
teach us to twist. Barbara was easy to talk with and tolerant of my clumsy
dancing. The next year, our entire sixth grade went on the train for a
three-day trip to Washington, DC. My mother and Mister Nelson were parent
chaperones. Doug and I and a dozen other boys did everything we could to be
near Barbara and Kathy during the tour. Over the summer, the two sisters had
matured. Kathy developed curves and Barbara became slim and shapely. They had
turned into the type of teenage girls that cool guys, like my older brother,
wanted to date. They became unobtainable to guys like Doug and me.
Doug and I spent the next week
talking about what we should do when the twins arrived. Getting free of
parents, sunbathing, and swimming were high on our list. In my imagination, I
pictured Barbara and me alone on our beach. The sun beating down; the waves
lapping the shore, a transistor radio playing music for young love. Did I
mention I was applying Coppertone to Barbara’s back, and she was wearing a
bikini?
The atmosphere Saturday morning was
chaotic. Neighbor boys kept stopping by to glimpse the fabled twins. My brother
Dave and my dad went into town to buy perch. My mother assigned me to
straighten and clean the cottage. Doug, who had taken a dose of his allergy
medication after breakfast, laid down on a daybed in the dining room and fell
into a deep, unconscious sleep.
I was shucking corn in the kitchen
when the Nelsons arrived. Dad and Dave had yet to return. My mom made a fuss
over the girls and how they had grown since she last saw them. The girls had on
identical white blouses, shorts, and tennis shoes. Only their hairstyles were
different. Barbara had long blonde hair below her shoulders, similar to Joni
Mitchell. Kathy had cut her blonde hair in a short style made popular at the
time by Jane Fonda.
“Aren’t they cute, Roger?” my
mother asked.
I said nothing. The awkward silence
was broken by Doug’s snoring in the next room.
“Roger, go wake Doug,” my mother
said.
“I tried. It’s his allergy pills. I
can’t wake him.”
“I bet the girls can get a rise out
of him,” my mother laughed.
Giggling, Barbara said she would
try.
Barbara sat beside Doug on the
daybed, stroking his face and whispering, “Doug, wake up, wake up.”
Arising from a medicated stupor and
seeing the girl of his dreams sitting beside him, Doug did the only sensible
thing he could do. He grabbed one of the daybed’s mildewed pillows and placed
it over his lap as he sat up. It is a biological fact that most teenage boys
wake up with an erection. Doug’s plight was obvious to me. His salvation came
when my mother suggested I show the girls where they could change into their
swimsuits.
Kathy said, “That would be great. I
swim every day in our pool.”
“I’ll show you,” I said, now
worried about where we would swim. Swimming off our dock was possible, provided
one didn’t mind seeing the occasional dead fish float by or stepping down into
the mucky lake bottom.
Changing into our bathing suits, Doug
and I argued over who would sit with Barbara. What we failed to consider was
the girls were on the verge of being women and any decision would be made by Barbara
and Kathy.
Looking like goddesses in their
one-piece suits, the sisters walked together and ahead of us, to the lake.
Perhaps they were embarrassed to be seen with Doug, a beanpole in a speedo, and
me, a sun-burned white whale who needed a mask and snorkel to swim underwater.
The cottage stood back from a
gravel road overlooking Lake Erie. Our strip of the lake had a sandbar an
eighth of a mile from the rock-covered shore. The sandbar offered one hundred
feet of fine yellow sand at its widest part. The water in between cycled slowly
and never got over five feet deep. Perfect for water skiing, if it weren’t for
the lake weeds that grew in abundance in the silt and muck-filled bottom.
Beyond the sandbar was an ideal stretch of clear blue water with a white sand
bottom and no weeds. The only problem was getting there.
The smell of seaweed and dead fish
on our rocky narrow section of sand forced us to move the beach towels to the
end of our dock. The girls sat on one towel with their feet in the water. Doug
and I sat on another. Why I thought I’d spend the afternoon applying Coppertone
to Barbara’s golden shoulders is beyond me.
After a few minutes in the sun, Kathy
stood up and suggested we go for a swim. Until that moment, I had not perceived
how attractive Kathy had become. She had a brilliant smile, a face full of
freckles, and an energy that outshone her sister.
Doug, who was on the junior high
swim team, said, “Let’s swim to the sand bar.”
“Don’t you have a boat?” Barbara
asked.
“We used to have an army surplus
life raft,” I said. “But it sank.”
“What happened?” Kathy asked, laughed.
“It’s dumb,” I said.
“Come on,” Kathy teased.
“A couple of weeks ago, we thought
it would be funny to fill a neighbor kid’s rowboat with water.”
“We sank it, along with the
outboard,” said Doug, “and his dad didn’t think it was funny.”
“Anyhow, the next week, Doug and I
were paddling out to the sand bar, when the life raft sprang a leak in three
places.”
“What did you do?” asked Barbara.
“We made it halfway back before it
deflated and sank. We don’t know how he did it, but we’re sure it was the local
kid getting back at us. Anyway, the raft needs a rubber patch.”
“Besides, it would have been
crowded with the four of us,” said Doug.
Barbara and Kathy gave us a look.
“It seems like a long swim,” said Barbara,
looking out to the sand bar. “Could you borrow a boat?”
“We can walk,” I said.
“Walk.” They both exclaimed.
“We walk half the way to the sand
bar in tennis shoes and float the rest of the way on these green and yellow
pool rafts,” I said, not mentioning I’d need a snorkel and dive mask to swim.
“Tennis shoes,” Barbara said,
looking uncertain.
Any further discussion of walking
to the sand bar in their clean white tennis shoes was averted by my brother.
Wearing a summer hat and dressed in Madras shorts and a white Izod polo shirt, Dave
looked like a young Elvis.
After awkward introductions, Dave
asked, “Girls, would you like to take a ride later to see the lake and get ice
cream in Kingsville?”
“Why not now?” Barbara asked.
“We can all go,” said Kathy,
looking at me.
“No, the car only seats four,” Dave
said, knowing we took five and six kids in the car. “You girls can go with me,
and we’ll bring the ice cream back for dinner.”
Doug looked at me and I shrugged my
shoulders.
“You don’t mind, do you, Roger?” Dave
asked.
“No …”
“Great,” he said, taking Barbara’s hand,
with Kathy following.
The girls spent the rest of the day
driving around with Dave in our English-built Sunbeam convertible. When they
got back, we had an early perch dinner, with ice cream and fresh strawberries
for dessert. All Barbara and Kathy talked about at dinner were Kingsville and
the fun they had with Dave. Doug and I never had a chance.
Fifty years later, I am still a
cottage person, Doug and I are Facebook friends, and my brother has no memory
of his day chauffeuring the twins. In Canada, I learned there is a difference
between real and imagined relationships. I also learned never to trust another
man around any woman I liked, even when that man is my brother.
1. This memoir is an updated version with correct names of the people in the story. A version of this story was published in Remember When: Fiction & Memoir Tales of Memories and Times Past. Redwood Writers Press. 2020.
Roger C. Lubeck: “Because of Canada.” Remember When: Fiction & Memoir Tales of Memories and Times Past. Shawn Langwell (Co-Editor) Crissi Langwell (Co-Editor). Redwood Writers Press. 2020.
THE MANHATTAN BOOK CLUB
NaNoWriMo Novel Idea # 7
The five women in the Manhattan Book Club meet monthly
to discuss a new mystery they have read and to gossip. What is important to
understand is the club’s name has nothing to do with the city that never
sleeps. The club is named after the ladies’ preferred pre-dinner cocktail, the
Manhattan. The women, Charlotte Mayerling, Connie Shoemaker, Marla Townson, Katherine
Wilmore, and Gail Wonderlich first met when chance placed them at the same
table for a local author’s book reading. After the reading, Charlotte Mayerling
who was with her friend Connie Shoemaker mentioned they were going to Charlie’s
Traven on the Water for lunch, and asked if the other women would like to join
them. Over crab cakes and wine, the women discovered they each loved reading,
especially mysteries, and they agreed life in the small resort town of South
Haven, Michigan wasn’t very exciting, especially for retired career women in
their late sixties.
Over time, the five
became close friends. On Saturday, they might go shopping at the local thrift
stores, walk the art and wine trail, or attend music in the park. On one Tuesday
a month, they played Bunco with a group at the senior center. On the first Friday
of the month, they met for lunch and cocktails. The supposed purpose was to talk about the book they had read. Often, they talked about their current and past lives and never discussed the book.
This Friday, Gail Wonderlich admitted
she didn’t finish the book, saying it was duller than her life. Joking,
Charlotte Mayerling said what the club needed was a spicy sex murder. Which is exactly
what happens.
NO SCRETS
NaNoWriMo Idea # 6
Violet “Dee-Dee” Davenport is going to learn you can never go home.
According to her publicist, there are “No
Secrets,” when Dee-licious pens a story. Ask a famous past president, the ex-want-a-be
senator, and that famous cowboy who admitted to wearing a dress when he goes on
his men-only hunting trips.
Violet “Dee-Dee” Davenport learned early
that she was invisible. Growing up poor and lonely in Kalamazoo, Michigan, she
discovered town folks said things around her that should have been secrets―were
secrets, except for Dee-Dee.
Dee never told these secrets, rather she
recorded them. She wrote them in her diary. She crafted them into a story that
was easily told. Then when the minister at the New Faith Babtist Church asked
her about attending bible class, she’d mention how grown-up little Cleo Newburg
seemed. Dee learned she didn’t have to say the crime, just mentioning the
victim was enough to get what she wanted in school or church.
While attending Kalamazoo College, Dee-Dee
wrote a column for the school newspaper, called “Happenings.” Under the
watchful eye of an Editor with far too many secrets, Dee-Dee became Dee-licious,
and a career was born.
Now after ten years at the top, her book
editor was pressing her for one more bestseller. A new tell all. The problem
was her sources had run dry. She wasn’t invisible. No one with any smarts. No
one with any secrets would talk to her. The only stories she had were those
left in her diary. Stories from her past. Stories she never published. So, for
reasons she couldn’t explain, she went home.
In interviews, she claimed she was going
home because she needed a break. Her publisher said she was going home to write
about her past. About her time in Kalamazoo. The first was true, the second,
not so much. The stories in her diary were decades old. Most of the people are
dead or gone.
As far as Violet Davenport was concerned, the only
story left was about the invisible girl who grew into a cunning and ruthless
gossip columnist with no friends, no lovers or spouses, and no family to tell
her true story when she was gone. Violet was going home to change her life. To
become visible. The question is will the people with secrets let her write her
story?
TRACKER
NaNoWriMo Novel Idea # 5
TRACKER
Based on the short story "Damocles" by Roger C. Lubeck, Published in Transitions, the 2024 Redwood Writers Prose Anthology, Janice Rowley Editor, Redwood Writers Press, Santa Rosa, CA, 2024.
I
am surprised to find Bert’s All-Night Diner and Bar empty. New Orleans never
sleeps. At three in the morning, the bar stools and booths are normally filled
with hookers, sleeping drunks, and drug addicts. Originally, Bert’s was a
shotgun house built a century ago for Black workers employed by a now-abandoned
factory. The bar runs half the length of the building with a kitchen behind the
bar. There is a window booth at the front and five booths across from the bar.
At the back, past the two restrooms, is a curtained-off room with a small stage
and dance floor. Bert’s has music on Friday and Saturday. This is Sunday.
Bert
is behind the bar reading the daily racing sheet. He and I go way back.
“Mr.
D,” he says. “What will it be?”
“Coffee
with room for cream and extra sugar,” I say.
“Not
hungry?”
“Any
donuts?”
“Not
until four.”
“Just
coffee,” I say.
Good
news. Donuts mean cops. Cops and I don’t mix.
Coffee
in hand, I check out the bathrooms and peek through the curtains. Satisfied
that I am alone, I sit at the last booth before the rest rooms and sip my
coffee, waiting for the caffeine and other drugs to kick in. Tracking is never
easy. The older I get, the more I question the sensibility of it all. The need
for it.
A
college crowd, two boys and a girl, stagger in from a bar down the street. The
girl is an overly made-up blonde with large half-exposed breasts. She collapses
into the window booth at the front, laying her head against the window.
A
small skinny boy takes the seat across from the blonde. The other boy is large,
with broad shoulders and a beer belly. He orders a burger and fries from Bert
and then sits beside the blonde putting his arm around her shoulders. Alone, the
blonde might be a good choice for a hunter, but her large boyfriend would make
the play more difficult.
A
second girl stands at the diner door, scanning the room. She is pale, with
short jet-black hair, violet eyes, and a wide mouth. Her lower lip has crimson colored
lipstick. Her upper lip is painted black like blood. Her eyebrows have been penciled
into a V-shape, giving her an exotic look.
She
turns and glances my way. The blood coursing through her jugular makes the skin
on her throat glow pink. Her violet eyes dart back and forth.
Tasting
the air, I sense something hiding beneath her cool, dark demeanor. She might be
a first-time hunter going through the change.
Taking
a dollar from my pocket, I select E-17 on the mini-jukebox in the booth. “I
Feel Love,” by Donna Summer. The electronic beat sets the mood. Donna and disco
made hunting easy in the 1980s.
I
stand and slow-walk toward the front booth. My eyes focus on the violet-eyed
girl. I stop and wait for Donna to begin.
“Ooh,
it’s so good, it’s so good, it’s so good,” she sings.
I
approach the girl.
“Would
you like to dance?” I ask.
She
gives me an appraising look. Wetting her lips, I see sharp teeth.
“Fuck
off, old man.” says the fat boy.
“I’m
not talking to you. I’m talking to the young lady.”
I
give him a hard look.
“Tommy,
call the manager,” says the blonde to the fat boy. “He looks dangerous.”
“I
don’t know about dangerous, but he certainly stinks,” says the other boy,
trying hard to sound both brave and clever. His eyes betray his fear.
“I
mean no harm, and I smell as nature intended.”
I
stare at the girl. The connection is there. I lean down. “Donna Summer,” I tell
her softly, “stirs old memories in me, and I feel the need to dance. To dance
with a pretty girl “
“Where
can we dance?” the girl asks.
“There is a small dance floor at the
back of the diner.”
I
take her hand.
“Violet, stay where you are. Freddie,
get the owner,” says the blonde to the skinny boy.
“Violet, beautiful like your eyes. Dance
with me. I think you are ready. Ready for the dance.”
She
looks deep into my eyes.
“I
am ready,” she says, walking ahead of me toward the curtains.
Sensing a threat, I turn as Tommy
reaches for my shoulder. I grab his hand and twist his arm backwards, driving
him hard to his knees. Freddie is hiding under the table.
“Violet
will be fine. You should go.”
“I’m not afraid of an old man like
you.”
“I am not the threat. Violet is going
through a change. I want to help her, but I can’t if you are here. Go before it
is too late.”
Tommy
looks at the other boy. Confusion and fear. They want to leave.
“There isn’t time to explain,” I say. “If
she comes back out, none of us may survive. Take your friends and go.”
I lift Tommy to his feet and push him
toward the door.
“Run,”
I shout.
The
three flee the diner. Bert, holding a tray of food, gives me a sour look.
“Bag
it up,” I tell him. “I’ll take it home after my dance.”
I
walk to the back of the diner and part the curtains. The stage is dark. The
dance floor is illuminated by a single spotlight. Violet sways to the music.
She has her eyes closed, dreaming of some long-forgotten place.
“Are they gone?”
“Yes.”
I
move close to her, and I put my arm around her waist. Her body is on fire. She
is electric.
“Are
you a hunter?” she asks.
“When I was younger, I hunted. Now I
am more like a tracker. I help new hunters.”
I
take her in my arms. We move as one, letting the music guide us.
“What
about the owner? Is he one of us?”
“Bert only knows burgers and the ponies.”
She
looks back through the curtains. Bert is sitting at a booth eating a plate of
fries. Her green eyes sparkle. She wets her lips; the hunger in her is clear.
“We
need to get out of here,” I say.
“I don’t know if I can. The transition has
started.”
“I
live close by. I can help you.”
***
We
walk the three blocks to my house in silence. It isn’t much; a colorful shotgun
in a block of similar homes. The inside is neat and orderly, like its owner. I
show Violet around, pointing out the bathroom and the guest bedroom. While she
is using the bathroom, I set out cheese and crackers, pour glasses of wine,
turn on Miles Davis’, “Kind of Blue,” and sit in one of the two easy
chairs by a fireplace.
“Is this your first?” I ask when she is seated
across from me.
“My
first was an infant. A neighbor’s little boy. The change happened in the summer
before I entered college. My parents helped me. It was awful. After, I felt ashamed,
but I also felt alive for the first time. My father says human sacrifice is
necessary for us to live as true Gians. We must feed or die.”
“Feeding during a change keeps the
cycle alive,” I say. “In my experience, if you can keep from hunting and feeding
on humans, you don’t die, you just return to normal.”
“For
how long?” Violet asks.
“That’s
up to you. If you are willing, I can show you another way.”
“Isn’t
it too late?”
“When
I was in high school, I only needed one hunt to sustain me for a year. When I
was thirty, I was hunting all the time. Consuming more than I needed.”
“Why?”
“I
loved the hunt. In college, I used sex to capture my prey. I found in the act
of sex, as the woman climaxes, she is most vulnerable. In consuming her life, for
an instant, I had a vision of Gia, before the great death. Back then, even
sated on human life, I hunted and fed, if only for that brief vision.”
“I’ve
had that vision. How did you stop?”
“The newsfeeds talked about the police hunting
for a serial killer.”
“I
suppose in their eyes, that’s what we are, serial killers,” says Violet.
“On
Gia, hunting was a way of life. We are hunters. From birth, we learn to track
and trap our prey. One day I caught a young woman, very much like you. Her name
was Faith. Beautiful and clever. In hindsight, I didn’t trap her … she trapped
me.”
“How?”
“We
were hiking on a trail along the coast. The area was remote and isolated. At
some point, I stopped and tried to kiss her. She pushed back, saying she wasn’t
ready for sex.”
“Did
that matter?”
“It
did for me. I didn’t rape my victims. I never used violence. Their lives ended
in a moment of shared ecstasy. She took my hand. ‘Look around,’ she said, ‘what
does this remind you of?’”
“The
windswept coast, untouched in its beauty, made me feel like I was back on Gia
and my hunger was gone. ‘I’m on another world,’ I said. ‘Gia,’ she said. Only
then did I realize she was Gian.”
“Finish
your story.”
“Off
the trail, Faith took me to a meadow of flowers. We lay together and I slept.
When I awoke, Faith was kissing my chest. Soon we were naked, and the urgency
of our lovemaking overwhelmed me. Nothing in my experience prepared me for the
magic when we came together. My sense of being one with another person—not two—not
human and alien. Gian and Gian. One being in a moment of ecstasy. To my
surprise, when I lay back exhausted, Faith continued to climax; wave after wave
of pleasure washed over her and onto me. When she finished, I realized my need
to feed was gone. All I wanted was to make love again. Lying on the flowers
with the sound of the waves, I wanted nothing more in life. I slept for a time
and when I awoke, Faith was dressed and I was bound with my zip-tied hands
behind my back.”
“’Are
you with the police?’ I asked her.”
“‘No,
I’m a healer,’ she said.’”
“Healer?”
Violet says.
“’Healers
find Gians. They are like anglers who love to fish, but they release the fish
once caught. Faith was like that. She tracked Gians and when caught, she helped
them overcome the need to hunt and kill. Like a fisherman who catches and
releases his prey.”
“Is
that possible?”
“Faith’s
parents didn’t believe in hunting. They taught her a different way. She told me
her role in life was to help hunters like me become human. ‘I don’t want to be human,’
I told her. ‘To be human is to die inside.’”
Violet
is staring at me intensely.
“Faith
asked me if I had ever wondered why it is we look like humans; why we can
breathe their air and eat their food. Why we can have sex.”
“I’ve
wondered the same thing,” says Violet.
“According
to Faith, the human’s idea of a supreme being may not be that far off. It was
her belief that billions of years ago, a race of aliens visited our two worlds
and planted the seeds for life. Similar worlds with the same seeds and after
millions of years of evolution, we are cousins.”
“Where’s
the proof?” Violet asks
‘There
isn’t any. That is why she called herself Faith. She had faith that Gians can
live with humans without hunting. Faith is the reason I became a tracker.”
“You
mean healer,” says Violet.
“No,
I’m a tracker. On Earth, trackers find the prey for the hunters. They don’t
hunt and kill. They track and find. What happens then is up to the hunter. I
found you. What happens now is up to you.”
“I
don’t know your name.”
“I’m called Damocles.”
“Like the story of the sword?”
“There
is a sword hanging over your head. Life or death. Determined by your actions.”
“How
long will it take?” Violet asks.
“Tonight
may be the worst. I’m putting you in my spare bedroom. If your hunger is too
strong, wake me and I will keep you safe until your need to hunt is over.”
It
is hours later when I feel her slip under the sheets, her sweating body
naked. The first rays of sun have turned the sky dark blue. In the Quarter,
they call this time of morning l’heure bleue. The blue hour.
Our
lovemaking is violent at first and then tender and sweet. As we climax, I
expose my throat, giving her the option to change; to complete her hunt.
Instead, she writhes on top of me, allowing me to share in her ecstasy. In that
moment, I take her life, as I had Faith’s all those years ago, and I am back on
Gia. A prime hunter. The lord of a dying world. The joy of being on Gia doesn’t
last. It never does, but it is enough. I am a true Gian again. Tracking and
hunting my own kind. Faith wanted to heal Gians of their need to hunt humans.
On Earth, we only hunt humans because they are so plentiful. For me, predator
and prey are two sides of the same tarnished coin.
CUTTER
NaNOWriMo Idea # 4
Cover 1 and Cover 2
CUTTER
Cutter
sat down on a stool at the empty bar. In was three in the morning on the wrong
side of New Orleans.
“What’ll you have?” the woman behind
the bar asked.
“I looking for a woman named Glory.”
“You see any women in this place?”
“Only you, and I’m guessing you are not
Glory. Where is everybody?”
“It’s three in the morning. I locked
the door and turned the sign off an hour ago. How did you get in?”
“Is it too late for a drink? Can I buy
you a rye?”
“Sounds
good. Where’s the harm?”
The
bartender poured out two fingers of rye into glasses.
“To
life,” the woman said, tossing back the whiskey.
“L’Chaim,”
said Cutter, doing the same.
“What’s
your name?” the bartender asked.
“Cutter.”
“Cutter
what?”
“Just
Cuter.”
“How
do you come to be called Cutter? Did you cut yourself as a kid? Serve in the
Coast Guard? Perhaps it’s an occupation, like glass cutter or diamond cutter.”
“Yea,
something like that. People hire me when they need to do a bit of cutting in
their life.”
“Why
don’t they do their own cutting?”
“Some
do, but it’s always better to use a professional. My cuts are cleaner and
always final.”
Cutter
reached over the bar; grabbing the women by her apron, he slashed across the
woman’s throat with a Karambit knife. A cut deep enough to nearly sever her head
from her neck. Already dead, the woman’s face looked resigned to her fate as
her body collapsed to the floor.
Wearing
surgical gloves, Cutter took his time wiping the bar of blood and any prints he
might have left on the counter or glass. His contracts normally stipulated that
he would dispose of anybody. Removing any evidence of his presence, of his art,
meant he gained no fame, but his safety came first. Cutting up the body and
packaging it for disposal was the simple part. Cleaning the floor of blood took
longer. Spots of blood on a barroom floor might be easily explained.
At
the back entrance, Cutter carried the wrapped body parts into the trunk of his car.
He then placed a false floor and spare tire on top of the parts. He had already
prepared a hole in a forest over an hour away.
Cutter
had thought of everything, except the surveillance camera in the back of the
bar. The light on the camera was burned out. Cutter assumed it was turned off. Even
so, he kept his back to the camera. The tape never caught his face, but it certainly
captured his skill with a knife.
COYOTE MOON
.
Coyote Moon
When folks hear “coyote moon,” they have the image of
a coyote howling at the full moon, but that isn’t right. Coyote is a trickster.
He doesn’t hunt in the day and he doesn’t hunt in the full moon. He liked to
hunt when there was the barest sliver of a moon, enough light for him, but not
enough for his prey. From waxing to waning moons, these were the nights when coyote
was at his best.
Owen Longfellow Johnson considered himself as a coyote,
a modern-day trickster preying on the weakness and vulnerability of wealthy aging
women. Sex starved widows with a big empty houses and bankbooks full of cash. Owen
has no problem courting a widow in the daylight, but he saved the nights with a
coyote moon for his conquests and the dark of the moon as the time to hide the
bodies and leave.
Helen Marshall, nee Cleasach seemed perfect. A childless
forty-nine-year-old widow, with fifteen million in the bank, and a house on a
golf course in Naples, Florida and a condo on beach in Captiva Island. Owen met
Helen at a charity event at her golf club. A plain, slightly overweight woman
who seemed hesitant to talk about herself. Her disinterest in Owen’s stories at
lunch peeked his radar. He wondered if she was hiding something? Perhaps she
was a lioness in bed? Owen set to work, knowing he’s have to work fast, if he
was going to take advantage of the next coyote moon. The only problem was Helen
had ideas of her own.
On the boat to America, Helen’s great grandfather
changed his name less the police in Belfast or New York happen upon his arrest warrant.
Shawn O’Malley adopted the name Cleasach, meaning trickster in Gaelic as one of
his little jokes. He need not have bothered. He and his son were always one step
beyond the law. A family trait Helen learn to use yet hide from an early age. Owen Longfellow Johnson considered himself as a coyote,
a modern-day trickster preying on the weakness and vulnerability of wealthy aging
women. Sex starved widows with a big empty houses and bankbooks full of cash. Owen
has no problem courting a widow in the daylight, but he saved the nights with a
coyote moon for his conquests and the dark of the moon as the time to hide the
bodies and leave.
Helen Marshall, nee Cleasach seemed perfect. A childless
forty-nine-year-old widow, with fifteen million in the bank, and a house on a
golf course in Naples, Florida and a condo on beach in Captiva Island. Owen met
Helen at a charity event at her golf club. A plain, slightly overweight woman
who seemed hesitant to talk about herself. Her disinterest in Owen’s stories at
lunch peeked his radar. He wondered if she was hiding something? Perhaps she
was a lioness in bed? Owen set to work, knowing he’s have to work fast, if he
was going to take advantage of the next coyote moon. The only problem was Helen
had ideas of her own.
On the boat to America, Helen’s great grandfather
changed his name less the police in Belfast or New York happen upon his arrest warrant.
Shawn O’Malley adopted the name Cleasach, meaning trickster in Gaelic as one of
his little jokes. He need not have bothered. He and his son were always one step
beyond the law. A family trait Helen learn to use yet hide from an early age.
THE
WATCHMAN
Prankster
William Smiley loves practical jokes. Billie was a class clown, a joker. As he grew older his jokes became more physical. He conceived elaborate pranks designed to humble classmates he disliked. Practical jokes that pointed out a person’s weakness or vulnerability. Like the plastic snake that fell out a locker onto the football quarterback who Billie filmed running and screaming out of the locker room as Billie put it like girl. Billie didn’t expect the quarterback to punch him in the nose when he posted his joke on YouTube and Tic Tok. He also didn’t expect ten thousand views.
Billie’s fame as a prankster grew with each new film “PJ
Video.” Local sports figures and celebrities became his favorite victims. His business motto was pay or play. Billie would spend weeks studying a person
and then setting up the joke, which he filmed using three different remote
cameras. After, he shows the person the video and give the victim the option of
buying the video or seeing it on YouTube.
All this should have changed when Billie’s Black Widow
gag didn’t just scare Carla Bombarito, a popular local female athlete with
Olympic dreams. It sent her to the emergency room with a broken arm from the
fall she suffered jumping backwards from the plastic spider springing out of a gift box.
Billie went out of his way to apologize anonymously to
Carla, sending flowers and paying her hospital bills, and promising to never
post the video. What Smiley didn’t realize was Carla and her brother Vince
believed revenge is a dish best served cold.
