Thursday, November 30, 2017

Jonas



Received some good feedback on last week’s “Murder… or Mayhem?” The twist at the end apparently worked. Thanks to those of you who gave me your comments.

This encouraged me to write another little story.

*****
Stop Prejudice!
Courtesy of Pixabay
JONAS
Jonas Lonewolf came up fighting. If the four small-town bullies who’d jumped his ass had known him, they would have been expecting it. As it was, they were high-fiving an imaginary victory and forgot him. Big mistake. He exploded off the ground and caught the biggest and meanest right in the balls, elbowed one in the ribs, hip-butted another, and broke the nose of the last one with a rattlesnake strike. Three were out of it; the fourth broke for parts unknown.
Jonas took off in the opposite direction. Once he’d turned a couple of corners, he slowed to a walk to attract less attention and made straight for the highway to stick out his thumb. The police cruisers came at him from two directions. In his experience, you didn’t run from cops unless you had a safe place to hole up. He stood his ground as they closed in.
“What’s up there, Chief?” The beefy one heaved his bulk out of the cruiser, his hand hovering near his holster.
Jonas was tempted to go for it. The fat fuck would probably shoot his partner sneaking up from behind. With a little luck, they’d plug one another.
“Not much, officer. Just trying to get home to Montana.”
“You been in a fight, son? Bruised eye. Bleeding lip.”
“Four guys jumped me back there.”
“Ought to have reported it to us. We don’t put up with nothing like that in our town. It’s a clean place. Can you identify them?”
“By the way, Tonto,” the cop behind him cut off his answer. “It’s illegal to hitchhike in this state.”
Jonas shrugged. “Don’t have any other way to get home.”
Lard Ass, the older cop, took over again. “Let’s go down to the station and talk this over. See if that eye needs attention.”
They slapped cuffs on him before hauling him four blocks to the dinky police station. Three battered boys and their agitated parents milled around the reception area.
“That’s him!” one of the boys shouted.
The place went quiet when the adults realized a slender eighteen-year-old had dealt serious punishment to their husky heirs.
Jonas nodded into the sudden silence. “Yes sir, officer, I can identify them. That’s three of them right there. Don’t see the fourth though. Guess he escaped justice.”
Pandemonium broke out. The same old bigotry he’d heard before. It looked like he was going to take a beating while handcuffed, but things settled down short of that. He waited in a jail cell while the officers of the law and the citizens of Snow Blizzard, or whatever the hell this eye-blink town was, argued over their revenge. His eye never did get any attention.
Sitting on a cell bunk with one booted foot on the mattress, he settled down to wait. Trouble was always on the lookout for him. But maybe he looked for it. People said he walked around like a pine cone ready to explode with seeds.
The town’s lawyer refused to make a fool of himself by prosecuting one skinny Indian kid for ganging up on four of the town’s finest. Jonas collected a few more bruises when the two cops tried to reason him into a confession, but they weren’t killers, so he outlasted them. All they could do was lock him up for thirty days for vagrancy and hitchhiking.
People claimed they could do thirty days standing on their heads. Despite his quiet aplomb, locking him up was akin to tossing him into a dark hole and shoveling in the dirt. Things got easier when he was assigned to a work detail with three others. Miscreants, Lard Ass called them. They chopped weeds and picked up trash and worked on the police chief’s house and the mayor’s ranch. It probably wasn’t legal, but Jonas didn’t give a damn. He was chained, but not locked behind bars on the work gang.
Learning Lard Ass’s nephew had been one of the kids who’d tackled him, gave him heartburn. The cop and his buddy, Skinny Butt, were out for a bigger piece of his hide than just thirty days. The day his sentence was up, they’d find a reason to haul his ass in again before he made it to the city limits. This could turn into a life sentence—thirty days at a time.
When release day finally arrived, Lard Ass surprised him by sending him on a work detail. They wanted to give him one more chance to screw up. The deputies even removed his shackles, hoping he’d run.
As they cleared weeds from a vacant lot next to a convenience store, a coal-black SUV pulled up to a gas pump. The man who got out was as sleek as his Range Rover. He was white, but he looked special somehow. Maybe it was the way the guy’s body language proclaimed “Don’t fuck with me.” The stranger gave Jonas a slight nod.
Skinny Butt called a halt, and the work gang settled down on a concrete half-wall adjacent to a small outside eating area while the cop went inside to buy goodies. Jonas had no money, so he’d gone cold turkey on sodas and snacks and cigarettes. Might quit for good. Old Lard Ass probably extended his life ten years or so. He’d have to remember to thank him.
Jonas caught another glimpse of Range Rover striding inside to pay for his gas. Ice-blue eyes scanned like a laser as he passed. The guy could probably describe every one of them right down to the dirt under their fingernails. And he’d given Jonas a second look.
As Range Rover and his milkshake settled at a shaded table in the outside eating area no more than ten feet from where they sat, one of the crew, a Mex he’d dubbed Droopy because of his moustache, asked if this wasn’t his release day.
“Yeah.” Jonas’s eyes flicked to the eating area. Range Rover appeared to pay no attention, but he knew the man was absorbing everything.
“You don’t go on detail on release day,” Big Nose said.
Droopy laughed and glanced at Jones—Skinny Butt—inside the store talking up the pimply, redheaded clerk. “Buckmeister’s got a hard-on for Littlebear. You know they’ll be laying for you when you get out.”
“Unless you got a bus ticket outa here,” Big Nose said. “You got one of those, Jonas?”
He looked up. Might as well make use of the butt-kisser. “Somebody’s picking me up.”
“Who?” The question was out before Big Nose could stop it. “That’s good, kid. Hope he’s right there waiting for you at five o’clock sharp. Else Buckmeister’s liable to get his shot.”
“Friend of my grandmother’s. A white man. He’ll be here this afternoon. Drives a black Range Rover.”
Jonas gave an inward smile as Range Rover lifted his can of coke in a salute and gave a sly wink. What would the man want in return? Well, he’d deal with that when it came.

*****

Sometimes racial prejudice—make that prejudice of any kind—is costly, to both those who give and those who receive. That seems to be the case in today’s story. Wonder what Range Rover’s gonna want in return for saving Jonas's ass?

Keep on reading. Keep on writing. And keep on submitting your work to publishers and editors. There are a lot of you out there with something to say… so say it. If you feel like it, drop me a line. My personal links are:

Facebook: Don Travis
Twitter: @dontravis3

Here are some buy links to City of Rocks, my most recent book.


See you next week.

Don


New Posts are published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.

Thursday, November 23, 2017

Murder… or Mayhem?

Last week’s piece of flash fiction received a pretty good reception, so let’s try another short, short story this week.

*****
Courtesy: Amazon.com
MURDER… OR MAYHEM?
What will it be today, murder or mayhem? As a fiction writer, I dealt in both. That is… I wrote about both. But there was nothing deadly or chaotic in my life. Pedantic was more like it. Wake up, get up, clean up, eat up, and sit at the computer to write before leaving for my day job. Or of late… try to write. My creative juices ran dry some time ago. Sitting before the computer and conjuring another plot, another murder, another disaster that did not strongly resemble the one just before it was now pure, agonizing labor. My desktop developed a memory of its own and insisted on ambling down the same lane over and over again.
Was it time to chuck it all? I no longer made a decent living at it. Be honest—at least with myself—I never made a living at writing. At best, I augmented my slender salary as a clerk in the accounting department of a local department store. The occasional $100 check or even the rare $500 payment for a story allowed me to accumulate a small savings account, but that was all.
This morning, I sat before the blank, blue-gray screen and tried to analyze the situation. I could not continue the way I was going. It was killing me inside. I needed to shake things up. Find out what the real problem was, and take steps to correct it.
As I sat there, a line fed me in a creative writing course many years ago coursed through my brain. Write what you know. What did I know about murder? Nothing more than what I’d read… other than suppressing the urge to kill my pesky little brother a thousand times when we were kids.


I do not believe I left my apartment for work with murder on my mind, but as I drove down Hampstead Street, a bag lady shoved her purloined shopping cart into the street from behind a parked car. My reaction time was slow; before I put foot to brake pedal, the grill of my fifteen-year-old Buick Century plowed into her, sending the woman flopping onto my hood, practically staring me in the face before sliding off into the street. Oh, Lord! Had she or the big Kroger’s shopping cart damaged my grill?
I had the presence of mind to ascertain I could render no aid to the middle-aged woman before dialing 911, only to find someone had already reported the accident. I’d like to say I was shaken by the incident, but in all honesty, I felt euphoric… and not a little disgusted when other homeless individuals descended upon the overturned cart to snatch away the unfortunate victim’s worldly possessions.
An ambulance and police cruiser arrived almost simultaneously, but the victim was left lying in the street until the medical investigator’s people arrived to declare her officially dead.
The police officer, who wore a nametag reading Crown, questioned me thoroughly before a sergeant arrived on scene. I was fortunate that other people had witnessed the incident and described it as an unavoidable accident. I kept my lips glued together to keep from proclaiming them wrong. I had deliberately run down the woman to savor the reality… the experience of actual murder. The sergeant called in the crime scene investigators before inviting me downtown to an interrogation room while trained criminalists swarmed my vehicle abandoned in the 4900 block of Hampstead.
The cost of the entire escapade was likely the loss of a day’s work and a $250 insurance deductible for repair of my Century. I wouldn’t even have to engage a lawyer. Accident, the official report read. The conclusion was prompted by the dead woman’s known history of challenging moving traffic by belligerently shoving her cart in front of numerous other cars. The accident merely achieved the inevitable, the police declared. But I knew better. I recalled how slowly my foot moved to the brake pedal and how feebly I applied pressure.


After sympathetic telephone calls from my boss and a few others at work—who knew they cared enough to pick up a telephone?—and a casserole from the upstairs neighbor widow woman, I lay back in a Lazy-Boy recliner almost as old as my car and gloried in the moment. I committed murder and got away with it. Now I had experienced the actual emotions a killing evoked, so I could write such things convincingly. The stories… no, the novel that followed would be my best work ever. A masterpiece to put me on the New York Times bestseller list. It would brim with hard-boiled authenticity, legitimacy.
I must have dozed because I woke with sweat beading my brow. The sweat of indecision. Had I really committed murder? Was that beat of time between recognition and reaction deliberate? I relived the moment with sinking heart, hovering between the opposite poles of conviction. I had delayed braking the car deliberately. But only for a fraction of a second before instinct took over. Thereafter, I reacted as quickly as possible. Had that slight hesitation signaled murder… or merely mayhem?
My mouth went dry as I realized the true answer. My breath caught in my throat, and my skin prickled. Disappointment—like fear—carried its own odor, something akin to a stuffy old tool shed. This had been mayhem—chaos, havoc, disaster—not murder. I struggled to a sitting position, weighed down by the knowledge I still had murder to do. Who? Where? How?
Well, there was still my nasty little brother living a mere half-mile down the road. And as a rabid NRA member, his house was filled with guns.

*****

Hey, all you writers out there, you can write about things you haven't lived but are able to imagine. Let's not all run out and start doing all sorts of forbidden things in the name of the craft!

Keep on reading. Keep on writing. And keep on submitting. If you feel like it, drop me a line. My personal links are:

Facebook: Don Travis
Twitter: @dontravis3

Here are some buy links to City of Rocks, my most recent book.


See you next week.

Don


New Posts are published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.

Thursday, November 16, 2017

Johnny Liu Loves Cindy Sue

The piece of flash fiction I’ve written for today is a bit longer than usual. Enjoy:

*****
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
JOHNNY LIU LOVES CINDY SUE
By Don Travis

Johnny Liu
Loves Cindy Sue
And Cindy Sue
Loves him, too.


          John Raymond Liu remembered the day he carved that sentiment into a bald spot on the old oak. Providence, itself, must have cleared the rough bark from that particular spot precisely big enough for a signpost to hold his proclamation, their juvenile whims. Dreams.
          He pulled his Burberry cashmere overcoat tighter around his stocky frame before removing one suede glove to touch the weathered lettering with a bare forefinger. A sensation fully as sharp and tingling as when he’d first taken his Swiss Army knife to the tree some forty-odd years ago surged through him. His heart soared like a nestling eagle taking to the air for the first time to kiss soft-faced clouds and ride brilliant sunbeams before crashing to ground, as if he’d missed his landing.
          Uncharacteristically weak, John leaned against the trunk and let his cheek warm the letters forming her name. Cindy Sue. A tear leaked out of one eye, making him glad he’d left his driver in town and maneuvered the Mercedes Maybach the eight miles to the old Lintner farm himself.
          Fighting the emptiness of grief and the roiling of misery, he slipped to the ground with his back against the bole—caring not a whit that the left leg of his Balenciago suit pants rested in a small puddle of mud—and allowed his mind to wander back as he sought to recapture their youth, their love…their essence.


          He met her when they were both fifteen at a school-sponsored sock hop. He’d been aware of her ever since his family moved to this small farm town, but as the only Orientals in the county—in the state, for all he knew—they were outsiders. Personally confident but socially shy, he’d never mustered the courage to speak to her or cultivate a friendship. Mary Sue Lintner belonged to what amounted to aristocracy in Okartex, Oklahoma, someone beyond his station. Yet whenever he was in class with her, he went to extra lengths to demonstrate his mental acuity, thereby raising the grade point average and driving the football jocks crazy. He taxed his lungs to the maximum by straining to excel in races—fifty and hundred-yard dashes, the only sports activity he indulged—when she was in the crowd of spectators.
          At that dance—the dance—he’d shucked his penny loafers along with everyone else before walking onto the gymnasium floor. He’d worn his best socks, thick and furry, so as not to embarrass himself, but he noticed many had worn heels, some with threadbare patches little more than outright holes. An occasional toe poked out here and there. Perhaps he should have dug out a pair of worn socks so as not to remind everyone that the Lius were among the few affluent families in town. The Palace Cleaners and Self-Service Laundromat thrived while others lagged.
         The hop was halfway over, and he hadn’t screwed up the nerve to ask a single girl to dance, when he beheld this blonde vision standing in front of him. Mary Sue Lindner. Beauty personified. The Goddess of Purity and Femininity in human form.
          John’s blood stirred to the beat of ethereal music as he recalled that dance. She molded to him, unafraid that his race, his yellowness, would rub off on her. They moved, hesitantly at first, and then with rhythm and purpose. She whispered in his ear, asking questions, exhibiting curiosity… no interest in him. The vinyl recording of Danny and the Juniors singing "At the Hop" sent other couples bouncing energetically, yet they moved slowly, intimately.
          Casual meetings followed that magic night. Then a date… sort of. He asked her to the annual Harvest Fair… along with several other kids. Then their first real date, to a movie where she’d marveled at stately homes called Tara and Twelve Oaks. He’d boldly promised to build her one someday and then nearly died of mortification at being so presumptuous. But she laughed and switched from an Oklahoma twang to a southern accent to say she’d hold him to that promise.
          Miracle of miracles, they’d stood against the town and their families, even against the prejudices of the time to become an item. A couple. Lovers. And eventually, bride and groom. His father had disinherited him for marrying outside his own race. Hers had done little better, simply cutting off communication for a period of years. But they’d persevered. He’d borrowed capital from an uncle in Taiwan and opened his own shop, spending hours every day seeing that all the clothing entrusted to his care was cleaned properly, snags repaired and buttons replaced gratuitously, going that extra mile to bind customers to him. He became so successful, he bought his father’s business and appropriated the honored title of Palace Cleaners as his own.
          They worked side-by-side for long hours, happy in success and comfortable in marriage. But it required more in order to keep his casual but sincere promise to build Cindy Sue her own Tara. He opened another shop in a nearby town. She handled the original; he, the new one. Two shops became three, and then four. Little Raymond came along, which took some of Cindy’s time away from the business. When Susan arrived, Cindy became a full-time mother.
          Even so, driven by an urge to keep youthful promises and to succeed at something in which he excelled, John opened new businesses, spending countless hours searching out competent, reliable managers and opening additional shops.
          One day, he paused to discover he was no longer Johnny and she wasn’t Cindy Sue. They were Mr. John Raymond Liu and Mrs. Cynthia Susan Lintner Liu. Shocked that the years had stolen by so swiftly, he took stock of his life and realized he’d never built Cindy Sue’s Tara. They had a nice, comfortable home, but it wasn’t a mansion. Other trappings of wealth were there—cars, beautiful clothes, golden and bejeweled trinkets, stocks and bonds stuffed in bank boxes—but there was no mansion.
          When he announced his intention to begin construction, she pulled him to her and kissed his cheek softly. “It’s been a good life, hasn’t it? This round-eyed white girl and her slant-eyed yellow boy made it work, didn’t we?”
          He laughed as she called up some of the vitriol they’d endured early in their union. “We made it work. It’s been wonderful. I just wish I’d spent more time with you and the children.”
          “Maybe you can do that now, instead of taking on a new project.”
          He frowned. “You mean instead of building your Tara?”
          She nodded and gave a faint smile. “I want you, not some brick and wood palace. There’s something I haven’t told you, John. I have this lump in my breast.”


          That had been a year ago. He’d immediately turned his business enterprises over to his son, now an adult with a family of his own, and belatedly devoted himself to his wife. The ensuing months had been almost equal parts euphoria and pain. Of loving and suffering. And then her strength gave out. Exhausted, she succumbed to the cancer that spread beyond the doctor’s capacity to control it. The unselfish part of him welcomed her freedom from pain and suffering, but the Johnny Liu of the old oak on the Lintner farm raged against her fate. Her funeral earlier that day drove him back to this spot where they’d first promised themselves to one another.
          How could he have believed that chasing a Tara was more important than spending time with his Cindy Sue?

*****

I sincerely hope you do not wake up one morning and discover yourself in Johnny’s Gucci loafers. In a sense, we all squander our youth and early adulthood… or so it seems from the second half of your life. At any rate, I wanted to acknowledge the fact that it happens, and perhaps give a caution to others.

Keep on reading. Keep on writing. And keep on submitting. If you feel like it, drop me a line at dontravis21@gmail.com.

Here are some buy links to City of Rocks, my most recent book.


See you next week.

Don


New Posts are published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.

Thursday, November 9, 2017

Who Changed? Me or the Movies, A Repost

Courtesy of Commons Wikimedia
I am running a reprint this week and feel obligated to explain why. This past week, I joined the twentieth century…sort of. I gave up my treasured flip phone and purchased an iPhone 5 SE through Xfinity Mobile. (If you understand how long it took me to understand those last four words, you already know what I’m about to say.)

Never in my lifetime has the simple exchange of one telephone for another caused such pain and angst and loss of productive life. I’m inches away from finishing my next novel, Abaddon’s Locusts, but the entire project fell by the wayside with the acquisition of the iPhone. After one full week, I am able make telephone calls pretty much without error. I can text (something I was never able to master) with only a few kerflaws. Maybe review emails but not answer them.

Imagine my surprise when  I recently woke to the fact that it is approaching midnight on Wednesday night, and I haven’t prepared a post for my blog due Thursday morning at 6:00 a.m. So… take refuge in a rerun, right?. The following continues the theme of my total ineptness.

*****
WHO CHANGED…ME OR THE MOVIES?

Unable to find anything of interest on television, I recently resorted watching old movies…
Courtesy of Commons Wikimedia
including three Thin Man flicks on the Turner Classic Movie Channel. I remembered them as marvels of sophisticated comedy based on Dashiell Hammett’s novel. I had always liked William Powell, and Myrna Loy was “Woman” for me when I was growing up.

To my amazement, I only managed to watch one complete film and about ten minutes of the other two before realizing that either someone had futzed around with these classics or else my idea of sophistication… not to mention comedy… had changed. Chasing around after an alcoholic drink no longer filled the bill. And the mystery seemed to solve itself when no one was watching… including William Powell.

However, the activity called up a memory from July 2004 when I was lying in the Albuquerque VA hospital recovering from the prior day’s exploratory Laparotomy, which is a fancy way of saying the surgeon ripped me open from stem to stern and yanked out 20 cms of my jujunium. The only thing I understood about the last part of that sentence was “20.” That’s simple enough, but what the hell is a jejunum? I never knew I had one, much less 20 cms of it. Was there anything left? Would they have to install some kind of pump to handle all my juju juice? But back to my suffering.

Pain-wracked and lethargic, I huddled on my bed imprisoned by raised and barred sides. A a myriad of needles pierced my right arm. One was for a saline drip, another was for something that escapes me, a third held a big gadget that let them take blood samples without sticking a big hypodermic needle in me every time some vampire got hungry and needed a sip of blood. The fourth one, in my opinion, was simply to piss me off.

To fully comprehend my situation, there are a couple of things you need to know about me. First, I am needle-phobic. Point a needle at me and my skin cells become so tense a nurse must make at least two... and more often three… tries before striking the desired vein. Add to that the fact that I have an extremely low tolerance for pain. By way of example, there have been times when I equated waste elimination with the pain of childbirth. My wife tried to disabuse me of that, but she had no idea of the agony I was enduring at the time.

And finally, there’s my relationship with blood. Blood is just fine when it stays where it’s supposed to be, snug in some vein or artery and properly covered by a thick layer of epidermis. I can remember people speculating on why veins (even the word makes me queasy) appear blue when they are filled with bl… uh, that red stuff. I never cared to learn the answer. Veins can choose any color they want so long as they remain leak-proof.

Of course, when it comes right down to it, blood isn’t as bad as needles or the pain of sutures or the other stuff because while I have an unpleasant moment or two upon its appearance, that is generally followed by a more or less instantaneous nap. And even if the sight of the thick, oozing stuff doesn’t render me totally unconscious, at the very least I’m in that never-never land where I don’t really give a crap.

Courtesy of Commons Wikimedia
But enough of that. Back to the experience I was about to reveal. A day or so after my life-threatening surgery, I was lying back in my bed bored to tears, suffering quietly and heroically with my blood safely coursing through its proper channels… when suddenly, something captured my attention. My total attention. A great big bubble of air detached itself from the saline bottle and plopped into my drip-line.

That’s where the old movies kicked in. How many times have we watched a sinister film character make his (it’s almost always a he) way into some sleeping innocent’s room to inject air into the patient’s IV and then sneak out without being seen? Shortly thereafter film pandemonium breaks out. An ominous screeching of monitors. A horrified nurse screaming as if she’d never seen a hospital emergency before. Raucous Codes Blue or Red or Dead.

Anyway, as I watched this humungous blob of air lazily make its way down the line, my initial reaction was calm curiosity. That didn’t last long. I was watching Death approach. I didn’t have time for calm. I sat up… which diverted me momentarily from my panic… and fumbled for the call button. Couldn’t find it. Should I yell and disturb the poor sap in the other bed? Jerk the needle out of my arm? Oh, crap no! That would hurt. So I calmed down and took matters into my own hands. I very deliberately flicked the hose to break up the bubble.

I succeeded. That ominous thing exploded into a thousand tiny fragments that wouldn’t harm a fly. I slumped back, weak but proud. I had done what the U. S. Army had taught me to do. Take decisive action. I clearly remembered from back then that every time I recovered from a swoon, I’d been able to staunch the flow of that strawberry colored stuff gushing from a splinter in the finger or a scrape on the knee.

Then I took another look at the IV. A funny thing was happening. As the cloud of tiny air pockets drifted down the line, they started to collect. Just a few at first. One joined with another to make a bigger bubble. Then others melded with that one. Good Lord! It was going to end up bigger than ever.

I closed my eyes and awaited the arrival of Fate. How long would it take to kill me after entering my bloodstream? Was this a vein or an artery. A vein. That meant it would go directly to my heart. Wouldn’t have to go through my toes and fingers before reaching the Grand Old Pump. Arm to heart. Splat! Would it hurt much? Damn those old movies, anyway. I wouldn’t have known what was coming had it not been for them.

As the re-formed pocket of air… seemingly much larger now… finally disappeared from sight, I closed my eyes and tried to compose a prayer. Better to go out that way, wasn’t it? But all I could think of was “don’t let it hurt!”

I woke up an hour or so later when the nurse came in to take a blood sample. I was tempted to let her know about eluding the tentacles of Fate, but decided Gary Cooper would have kept his escape from Death to himself. So that’s what I did.

*****

If you quit reading halfway through that, I don’t blame you. On the other hand, if you quit reading, how is it that I wouldn’t blame you for doing so? One of life’s conundrums, I suppose. As I said in the original piece, this may remind you of some of your own brushes with death… but I seriously doubt yours were as perilous as mine.

The following information provides my contact information and DSP Publications links:

Don Travis Email: dontravis21@gmail.com
Blog: dontravis.com
Facebook: Don Travis
Twitter: @dontravis3


As always, thank for being a reader.

Don

New blogs are posted at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.


New Posts are published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.

Thursday, November 2, 2017

THE LOVELY PINES

Artist: Maria Fanning
This week, I’d like to remind readers that the fifth book in the BJ Vinson Mystery Series will be The Lovely Pines. I have not been advised by DSP Publications as to an actual release date, probably sometime in mid-2018. (Good Lord! That’s right around the corner, isn’t it?)

As usual, the setting of the novel is New Mexico. Most of the action centers around Albuquerque and a small, fictional town called Valle Plácido located just east of Placitas on the slopes of Sandia Peak. However, a few chapters take us to Las Cruces and Carlsbad in the southern and southeastern part of the state. BJ, our intrepid private eye—uh, make that confidential investigator—looks into a break-in at a winery in Plácido called the Lovely Pines and quickly discovers it is something more than mere mischief. It could be that the intruder was being stalked. But why does this all take place around a remote winery? Then dead bodies begin to show up, and BJ finds his own life threatened.

And in between, we’re exposed to some intimate moments between BJ and his hunky soul mate, Paul Barton.

As a history buff, I am sometimes criticized for getting lost in the past of a place to the cost of action. I’ll risk that disparagement again by showing you a trip up the old highway between Albuquerque and Bernalillo and thence to the winery in the scene below. The passage comes at the beginning of Chapter 2 of the book. The Ariel Gonda mentioned is BJ’s client, the owner of the Lovely Pines Vineyard and Winery.

*****

THE LOVELY PINES
          In a bucolic mood, I took the old Highway 85 to Bernalillo about fifteen miles north of Albuquerque. Bernalillo was an interesting town, at least to history buffs like me. The area had been more or less continuously inhabited for probably close to 1,000 years, first as an indigenous Anasazi town and later by the Spaniards when they arrived in the late sixteenth century to claim it as a trading center and military outpost. In one of those odd coincidences, Albuquerque became the governmental center of Bernalillo County, while Bernalillo was the seat of Sandoval County. Go figure. The present day town fathers liked to say their community was the gateway to the Jemez Mountain Range to the west and the Sandias to the east.
          At the north end of town, I hung a right on Highway 550 and crossed over I-25, climbing steadily toward the mountains on what was now a gravel state road. Before long, I passed through another former Anasazi settlement renamed Placitas, which meant Little Town. With its large adobe homes tucked into folds in the foothills or hanging on the slopes, Placitas managed to bring some of the famed Santa Fe style south.
            Shortly after leaving the town limits, I entered an even smaller settlement about whose history I had no knowledge—Valle Plácido. All I knew of the place was that people had grown grapes and made wine here for centuries. New Mexico was one of the earliest wine-making centers in North America.
         As instructed by Ariel Gonda, I turned north on a well-graded gravel driveway and saw the winery about 200 yards ahead of me. My first impression was of a French chateau plopped down in the middle of New Mexico. As I grew nearer, the image was reinforced. I passed over a cattle guard between an impressive black wrought iron gate anchored to solid four-foot stone walls stretching off in both directions. I assumed it enclosed the entire place, or at least the ten acres of the winery. The wall would probably have stopped a tank but provided little protection from stealthy intruders afoot. The vineyard lay to the east.
        Up close the stately house did not seem so forbidding, less of a mysterious manor harboring psychopaths and star-crossed lovers. House, of course, was a misnomer. It was truly a chateau, even though small by European standards. I judged it to be three floors of around 1,500 square feet each. The gray stone of those tall walls wasn’t native rock. A cloudy green patina stained the copper mansard roof. Brown brick framed doors, windows, and the roofline beneath the gables.
         As I swung around to park beside a few other vehicles, some with out-of-state license plates, I caught sight of another solid-looking stone building about a hundred yards behind the chateau. Probably the winery.
      A sign with black lettering mounted on a field of white to the right of the main entryway confirmed this as The Lovely Pines Vineyard and Winery. The placard mirrored a larger billboard I’d seen out on the highway. The effect of the whole layout was stiff and formal. A bit off-putting for my tastes.
        That changed as soon as I walked into the front hallway. High ceilings gave the place an airy feeling, and windows that seemed rather small from the outside admitted bright light to play off eggshell and pale gold walls tastefully hung with good art. I couldn’t be certain from this distance, but some seemed to be old masters. Reproductions, probably. The chocolatier’s kiosk was modern without being jarring. The word Schoggi was prominently displayed, leading me to believe this was Swiss German for chocolate. An attractive woman of about fifty lifted her head from a notepad and smiled as I entered. I clicked the REC button on the small digital voice recorder on my belt as she spoke.
        “Welcome to the Lovely Pines. Please feel free to make yourself at home. Our wine tasting won’t begin for another half hour or so. The entire first floor is given over to our public rooms—the Bistro, a salon for lounging, our gift shop, and, of course, our tasting room.”
          I thanked her for the sales pitch and let her know that Mr. Gonda was expecting me.

*****
Sorry, but--like me--BJ is fascinated by all those historical figures hovering in the background as we pass through towns that were originally aboriginal settlements, superseded by Hispanic and Anglo cultures, each in turn. Nonetheless, he eventually able to focus on the task at hand. Hope you’ll get the book and read it upon release.

The following information provides my contact information and DSP Publications links:

Don Travis Email: dontravis21@gmail.com
Blog: dontravis.com
Facebook: Don Travis
Twitter: @dontravis3


As always, thank for being a reader.

Don

New blogs are posted at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.


Blog Archive