DON’T TELL ME …

When my wife died, she was occasionally taking care of three or four dogs for friends of ours, and I continue to sit one of those critters, a white and black Papillion named Gizmo. I happen to think Gizzy is one of the most intelligent animals around, but I love him and cannot be considered an objective observer.

However, the following is something that actually happened with two very likeable dogs I’d never met before I took care of them for a few days. Since I had no prior attachment to the dogs, I can represent myself as an absolutely unbiased observer. I got a big bang out of what happened and hope you enjoy reading about it.

###

Dogs don’t think; they don’t reason. Everyone knows that. Their actions are dictated by a pack instinct and by rote training, right? At least, that’s the cachet. My education came a few year ago when I was cajoled into dog sitting for two families who were going on a joint vacation. The dogs were strangers to me and had only a passing acquaintance with one another.

Ursa was a loveable chocolate miniature Poodle whose primary mission in life was to sit on someone’s lap…anyone’s lap…for as long as possible. Sparkie, a West Highland Terrier, was far too independent for that sort of thing. If I plopped down on the couch, he might sit beside me, but that was the extent of his bonding.

About five days into the dog-sitting caper, I was watching television with You-Know-Who sprawled across my legs. During a commercial, I glanced at Sparkie lying under the dining room table and noticed him observing us carefully. A few minutes later, Ursa hopped down and went to the kitchen to get something to eat. The Westie immediately came over and climbed into my lap. When Ursa returned to reclaim her seat, she was clearly annoyed at the new situation. First, she leveled “the stare.” That didn’t work, so she did a little pacing, a little sitting, and periodically gave what I can only describe as a moan. A few minutes later, she tried out a yip.

When Sparkie ignored all of her tactics, the Poodle suddenly ran to the front hallway and began barking furiously, something both dogs did when anyone walked near the house. Sparkie came off my lap like he’d been goosed and raced to the door, adding his manly bark to her feminine voice.

As soon as he reached the front door, Ursa trotted back and jumped into my lap. When the Westie finally figured out no one was outside, he came back into the den. Now it was his turn to stop and stare. He’d been snookered. Ursa, the little dickens, had planned and executed her plot to regain the lap she considered her private property. I laughed myself to sleep that night.

The next evening, events played out more or less as they had the day before. As soon as Ursa went to get a drink of water, Sparkie scurried over and wanted up. The Poodle wasn’t so patient this time. Within a couple of minutes, she headed for the front door, barking as if she were fighting off crazed intruders. Sparkie came halfway out of my lap, froze for a moment, and then settled back down.

I’ll swear Ursa looked absolutely shocked when she returned to find Sparkie still taking his ease on my lap.

Don’t tell me dogs can’t think.

###

Hope you enjoyed my little tale (no pun intended). Anyway, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Don

Next week: I’m getting a new computer tomorrow, and I’m sure that will provide a few oopsies to tell you about.

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

PANIC TIME!

My computer crashed last week. Talk about panic time! I couldn’t check my emails. Okay, calm down. Just sign into my blog, instead. Oops. Can’t do that, either. Edit my novel. Nope. So I sat frozen in front of a useless keyboard while the realization sank in. I was helpless. Emasculated. Rendered less than human by the failure of a piece of electronics.

A tragedy! Or is it? Perhaps it's a wake-up call. Get a life, Don! Wean yourself away from the computer. Go take a walk down in the Bosque. Skip a few stones in the Rio Grande. Check out the wildlife. Count the birds. Breathe some fresh air.

Air. Oh, yeah! There's plenty of that. The wind is blowing. It’s springtime in New Mexico, so the wind is really blowing. “Lean into it” blowing. And a cold snap has set in. Better start my new life some other way.

Go to a movie. Haven’t been to one in a while. Great. Wait. Nothing I want to see at the $2.00 theater, and nothing I’ll pay $8.00 for at the other houses.

Okay, read. I haven’t kept up with my reading properly. I pull out a James Lee Burke novel. He’s one of my favorites, so that’ll distract me for sure. But Dave Robicheaux and Creole Belle just couldn’t compete with my sense of loss. I’m off the internet, man! Disconnected from the Big World!

Oh, sure. I get news on the TV. But I can’t interact with it. What if some movie producer has sent an email desperately begging me to sell him the rights to The Zozobra Incident or The Bisti Business? What if a reader has attempted to get in touch through my blog, and I’m falling down on my promise to answer each and every contact? What if … what if … what if ….

Reality sets in. I'm a twentieth-century man caught in the twenty-first century. So I start my new life by running out and buying a new computer. Talk about pathetic!

Don

Next week: I’ll try to stop whining.

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

Who Shot Shorty: Finale

The story so far: Shorty Colson, owner of the Cartwheel Ranch was killed by a double-barreled blast of buckshot at his kitchen door one stormy night. As the crew tries to figure out who could have done it, new and surprising facts about the Cartwheel and its denizens begin to surface. Last week’s segment ended with Bushy Bushmiller turning the tables on Pencil and questioning why the old man had put up with his shenanigans over the years. Part 3 of the story begins below.

###

WHO SHOT SHORTY (Continued)

     My ears flamed. I lurched to my feet. The old cowboy shuffled backwards. “Shorty Colson never laid a hand on me, and if he had, I’d have knocked him clear into next year. Shorty wasn’t—that way!”

     “Then how do ya account fer the kid there?” Bushy smirked and threw a thumb over his shoulder. Five pairs of eyes turned to focus on Pedro, who sat staring at the ground.

     I shook my head. “There’s a better way of going about this than tearing one another apart. Shorty took both barrels to the chest. A double blast from a twelve gauge has a hell of a recoil. Whoever did it oughta have a bruise.”

     “It might not be one of us, Pencil,” Tex pointed out. “And if it is, you sure you wanna know?”

     “Maybe not, but I sure as shooting want everybody to know it wasn’t me.” I stripped off my shirt.

     “Well, I ain’t got nothing to hide,” Tex declared. There wasn’t a mark on him either.

     After Red John followed suit, Bushy exposed his scrawny chest. No bruises on either one of them. As a man, we swung around to confront Lubell.

     “Now wait a minute! I’m a lady. You expect me to bare it all to you bozos?”

     Tex grinned. “Ain’t nothing we never seen before.”

     “You ain’t seen these particular ones,” she snapped. Nonetheless, she unbuttoned the man’s shirt stretched tight across her torso and pulled it down around her shoulders. “Satisfied, you perverts?”

     The arbor fell quiet as we turned to Pedro. Lubell stepped over and put an arm around the slender frame. “You leave her alone!”

     After a stunned silence, four masculine voices thundered, “Her?”

     Pedro peeked up from under Lubell’s protective arm. “You knew about me?”

     “Course I knew, honey. You tried to be almighty careful living with me in the bedroom back of the chow hall, but you slipped up a time or two. Besides, why else would Shorty put you up with the only other woman on the spread?”

     The girl pointed at Tex. “I afraid he figure it out. He a woman’s man.”

     Lubell sniffed. “If you mean a woman-chasing man, you’re right. But he ain’t no more sensitive than any other male around here. Why don’t you tell us what all this is about?”

     I stepped in. “Do you have a bruise, Pedro … uh, ma’am?”

     “Consuelo,” she said. “My name, Consuelo. Yes, bruise on mi espalda…my shoulder.” She began to shake. “Dios help me! I…I kill my papa.” She collapsed against Lubell and sobbed.

     As she told her story, the tears dried up and a streak of steel emerged. Her mother was a Mexican Shorty got sweet on after his wife passed. Worried about his son’s reaction to a new woman with a baby, he sent her home to Juarez. To the old man’s credit, he acknowledged paternity of their child—at least he sent money regularly.

     After her mother died, Consuelo made her way north to the ranch, arriving in the middle of the fall gathering when all of us, except for Shorty, were chasing cattle out of the bush and hazing the animals down to the loading pens.

     According to Consuelo, Shorty swore her to secrecy, dressed her up like a boy, and passed her off as a new hand until he figured out how to tell Junior he had a half-Mexican sister. When Consuelo overheard him talking about selling the ranch, she decided to press him to acknowledge her as his daughter.

     “I pick a bad time,” the girl said in her soft accent. “Like Lubell say, he drinking bad. But I go anyway. It was mistake. He drunk. Look at me with wild, crazy eyes. He grab me. I get away, but he catch me at the door. He…he say he don’t believe I his hija. Call my mama a bad name and say she swindle him.” The girl broke out crying. “He try to rape me!”

     Another thunderbolt out of a clear, blue sky. “Oh, Lord!” Lubell spoke for all of us.

     “The dirty old somabitch,” Bushy added. “Musta been drunk outa his skull.”

     “So … so,” Consuelo continued between sobs, “I grab big gun he keep in corner of kitchen and try to back out door. I think he stop then, but he grab the cañón … the barrel. Gun go off. I think you all hear and come running. I think whole world hear the big boom, but nobody come. I get up out of the mud and go clean up in my room. Then I cry me to sleep.”

     I straightened my spine. “Well, that solves the mystery of who shot Shorty. Somebody better go call the sheriff.”

     “The sheriff?” Everybody looked at me as if I were loco.

     “Or,” I backtracked, “we can let him do his own sleuthing.” Then with an eye to the future, I mused out loud. “Wonder if Junior will lease the spread to us?”

THE END

###

Well, that’s it. Hope you enjoyed the story. Let me know if the serial thing works. Please let me hear from you.

Don

Next week: We’re back to “who knows” again.

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

Who Shot Shorty: Part 2 of 3 Parts

Last week, Shorty Colson, owner of the Cartwheel Ranch was blasted into eternity by a double-barrel blast of buckshot. After the authorities leave, the crew (Pencil, Tex, Red John, Bushy, Lubell, and the new kid, Pedro) sit around trying to make sense of the murder.  Part 2 of the story begins below.

###

WHO SHOT SHORTY (Continued)

     Lubell stirred the emotional pot again as John claimed part of the bench beside Tex. “Anybody notice Shorty was drinking more’n usual lately? He was tying on a blue-ribbon lulu last night before all this happened. Wonder if it was cuz he was selling the place?”

     “Shorty wouldn’t do that.” Bushy spoke for all of us. “What the hell’d he do, he didn’t have this spread to run?”

     “Heard him talking to Shorty, Jr. on the telephone. The kid wanted his old man to sell and let him invest the money.”

     “With Shorty gone, the Cartwheel’ll get sold for sure,” Tex said.

     “Lordy, I hope not.” Bushy stroked his facial hair like it needed taming.

     Red John spoke up. “Hell, old man, you oughta have enough put away so you don’t have to worry.”

     Bushy turned the color of an overripe pumpkin. “Keep yer mouth shut, hear?”

     Lubell straightened up, jutting out her awesome bosom, her belly coming right along with it. “What was Bushy and Shorty up to up in them mountains, John? Something was going on none of us knew about. Except maybe you. You spent lotsa time up there with Bushy.”

     “Now hold on!” The old cowboy struggled to his feet. “Shorty ain’t been dead fer a whole day, and everbody cain’t wait to dump on him. Leave it be, ya hear!”

     “Leave it be?” I said. “We’re trying to figure out who pumped him full of lead pellets.”

     “It was weed.” John held up a hand to forestall Bushy’s explosion. “Cool it, old man. They got a right to know. He’s been growing it up in the high country for years. I helped harvest the stuff these past four seasons.”

     “And ya got yer share, too.” The old cowhand looked like he wanted to take John on.

     “I’ll be horse-whipped,” Tex said. “Wondered how this place kept going in the bad times. Now it makes sense.”

     So did the big crew and paying for leases he didn’t need. I shoulda known. Shorty pinched a penny until it howled out loud—except for keeping me on to help out while I went to college part time, even buying some raw horseflesh now and then to make my job of busting broncs look real. Somehow, he never got around to explaining I was an orphaned shirttail cousin a couple of branches away on the family tree.

     “Did that pot get Shorty gunned down?” Lubell asked.

     Bushy blustered a minute before coming clean. “Naw. It’s a straight up business. Not none of that Mexican cartel stuff.”

     Lubell nodded at him. “You found out he was gonna sell and didn’t want your sweet deal going south. You took Shorty out.”

     “Me! You been festering fer years over Shorty taking the Cartwheel offa yore old man in a poker game. Ya blew him away, didn’t ya? Go ahead! Own up to it!”

     The cook turned three shades darker. “You old coot! That’s a fairy tale.”

     “I ain’t so sure ‘bout that.” Bushy turned on Tex. “And yer still smarting over Shorty breaking his promise to set ya up with that art dealer over in Taos.”

     “Don’t look at me, old man. I ain’t no killer. Maybe Red John didn’t like the cut he was getting and hit Shorty up for a bigger share of the grass.”

     “Wait a minute!” I stuck my nose in before John had a chance to blow. “Let’s slow down and look at this with a level eye. It doesn’t make sense that Bushy took him out. Even if Shorty was thinking on selling the Cartwheel, shooting him makes the sale a done deal. Both of them’s got short fuses, but they always ended up just cussing each other out.

     “And if Tex got his back up over a broken promise,” I went on, “he’d pull up stakes and head back home for a job. Besides, he’s on the edge of being good enough to make a living from painting, so that doesn’t hold water.

     “As for Red John,” I eyed the Indian, “that’s not his way of handling things. He’d of done something if he figured he was getting cheated. Maybe go to the law, but he doesn’t cotton to authority. Naw, he’d have pulled all the plants up by the roots.”

     “Lubell?” Shorty asked.

     “Even if the story about Shorty and her family is true, why would she wait twenty years to take revenge? I don’t believe it.”

     “Well, what about you, Pencil?” Bushy jabbed me with a twisted, arthritic finger.

     “Me? Why would I kill him? He gave me a roof over my head.”

     “Yeah, and why’s that? The old man kept ya awful close, putting up with yore drinking and running around. I figger Shorty turned funny in his old age when he couldn’t even buy a woman no more.”

 ###

The plot thickens. But now that Pencil’s debunked theories about the rest of the crew as the killer, suspicion is centered on him. Did he do it? What do you think? Look around the site before you go…and let me hear from you.

Don

Next week:Who Shot Shorty: Finale.

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

Who Shot Shorty: Part 1 of 3 Parts

I’m tired of the short-short stuff, so thought I’d try something else. I wrote “Who Shot Shorty” some time back, but have never really put it out there for publication. 

     “So why not serialize the story,” you ask.

     "Well, why not,” I reply.

Ergo, Part 1 of the story begins below.

###

WHO SHOT SHORTY

     Shorty Colson, longtime owner of the Cartwheel spread, opened the back door of the ranch house and took a double-barreled shotgun blast to the chest on a November night heavy with rain and thunder and the smell of ozone. Bored through with double-aught lead pellets and shreds of flannel from his long johns, the old rancher flew back against the dinner table like a scarecrow losing his stuffing.

     Nobody heard the shotgun blast that blew Shorty away—or else they took it for thunder. The whole countryside heard the cook bellow when she went to fix breakfast the next morning and found him splattered all over the kitchen.

***

     My name’s Pencil Martinez Gold, and I’ve ridden for Shorty since I was a skinny kid built like…well, like a pencil. Even though I’ve filled out pretty decent, the nickname stuck.

     About two hours after the cook woke the countryside, the County Sheriff and Medical Investigator showed up, scratched their heads, and eventually left toting the corpse and the outfit’s two twelve-gauge shotguns. Shorty, an ornery old cuss, had made plenty of enemies over his seventy-odd years, and some woulda been happy to squeeze that double trigger. Trouble was—he’d outlived them all.

     After tending a few chores, all the ranch hands settled down in the brush arbor beside the bunkhouse to commiserate and cogitate. Eyeballing the spooky crime scene tape stretched around the old adobe ranch house gave a man a snaky ripple down his back.

     It struck me—not for the first time—that Shorty had a heap of help for a ranch this size, even if you included the twenty leased sections that sprawled across the nearby mountains. Paying an animal unit rental for vertical ground never made much sense, although high meadows carry heavier animal loads than desert range. Even that didn’t add up. Shorty never stocked his ranch to capacity.

     “Where’s Red John?” Tex asked. Our top hand was tall and good-looking and talked with a drawl. The stereotype ended right there. He didn’t cuss or drink, and he painted pictures of flowers and mountains on his own time. Tex was a hell of a line dancer who, as the old saw goes, rode Ensolado’s women hard and put them away wet. He worked the lower pastures.

     “You think he coulda done it?” Lubell asked of our missing cowboy. Lubell was short for Lula Belle, and folks still whispered about Shorty cheating her family out of the Cartwheel years back. But people are always claiming a muskrat hide is a beaver pelt, and I never gave that rumor much weight. Why would she stay on the place if that was true? A hard fifty, Lubell was dumpy and lumpy, but she set the best table in northern New Mexico. She was the reason we all put up with Shorty’s venomous temper. During the spring calf crop, she cowboyed like everybody else, tossing a noose that rarely missed horn or heel.

     “Truck’s coming,” Pedro piped in a thin voice. The kid was our misfit. On the Cartwheel for only a couple of months, he was likely a wetback, but nobody ever asked or wanted to know. Minding your own business was pretty much the law around here. Shy to the point of painful, the kid kept his mouth shut, answering questions in a voice constantly on the edge of breaking. He handled the domestic animals and kept the buildings and grounds cleaned out.

     We all turned and watched the vehicle splashing through mud and water from last night’s storm turn into Red John’s ’77 Dodge pickup.

     I answered Lubell’s question. “John didn’t have any reason to shoot Shorty.”

     “Mebbe not, but he cleared out the back way soon’s the law crossed the cattle guard,” she said.

     “A man crazy on drink don’t need no reason.” Bushy Bushmiller was crippled up and pretty near the end of his run. He toted around the smell of chewing tobacco and mangled the King’s English something terrible. Strange, because he’d surprised me more than once by his knowledge of Shakespeare back when I was wrestling with literature classes over at Ensolado Community College. Bushy worked the high pastures from spring thaw until the fall gathering.

     “That’s baloney!” Tex said. “Don’t you go painting him with that brush. John’s a stand up Indian. I had to guess, I’d say he don’t drink as much as you do.”

     “Don’t hold it as good as me, neither.”

     Nobody said another word until John strode over to join us. Tall for an Apache and on the skinny side, he was the most efficient-moving man I’d ever seen. He covered ground like he was storing up energy for hard times. He’d married a gal from nearby San Miguel Pueblo and made the trip back and forth most days except when the War Chief threw everyone not on the tribal rolls off the reservation during religious festivals. He’d got “Red” tacked onto his name back when we had two Johns on the crew. He divided his time between Tex in the lower pastures and Bushy in the high country.

     “They find out who done it?” he asked by way of greeting.

     “Naw.” Bushy’s grizzled beard quivered, a sure sign he was up to mischief. “Ya vamoosed so quick thought mebbe it was you.”

     “Went and told the wife about the shooting so she wouldn’t worry over it.”

     “Likely seen one of them medicine men, too.”

     “Yeah. He warned me clear of stove-up old cowpokes chewing tobacco and quoting Shakespeare.”

###

I hope that piqued your interest enough to bring you back next week. Thanks for reading. Take a look around the site before you go.

Don

Next week:Who Shot Shorty: Part 2.

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

The Case of the Vanishing Penny

Well, my umpy-umph wedding anniversary is next Tuesday, so a kiss to my late wife and a sigh that my blue period is coming to an end … for this year, at least.

Enough of that. Let’s get on to another short story.

###

THE CASE OF THE MISSING PENNY

     The usual gang was hanging on the street corner—Squiggly and Wiggly, also known as the Hoffman brothers, Maxine, and me—doing what ten-year-old kids do at high summer. Killing time. Actually, I was showing off one of my magician’s tricks when Ryan walked up. He was another kid from this neighborhood just south of the tracks not quite in the dumps but not uptown either. Ryan’s bigger’n we are and a bully, but he gets by ‘cause all the girls says he’s “sooo good looking.” Couldn’t see it.

     Anyway, I was bamboozling them with this penny—my entire bankroll at the moment. I’m pretty fast, so I was doing a fair job of keeping them guessing which hand it was in until Randy Ryan showed up. Then all my fingers turned into thumbs.

     He gave a horse laugh. “You ain’t very good.”

     I don’t know if it was because Maxine went all twitter-twitter-and-chirp when he was around or because he’d given me a bloody nose last summer, but I didn’t like Ryan very much. My mouth went motor on me.

     “Yeah, well I can make this disappear. Completely.” I was holding up the penny and smirking at him when it hit me that was as likely to happen as me breaking the four-minute mile. Cripes. He hopped right on it.

     “You do that, Colin, and I’ll buy ever body a RC Cola down at the corner store.”

     “Rather have a Dr. Pepper, Wiggly said.

     “Strawberry,” his brother piped up.

     A Nehi orange was Maxine’s choice.

     “Whatever,” Ryan dismissed them. He could afford to. His dad was the only one on the block had a job except for some CCC work. Those three Cs stood for Civilian Conservation Corps, but us kids mostly called it Civil Constipation Cramps. People kept talking about the Great Depression, but we didn’t know what that was. We just knew everybody was poor. Raggedly-assed underwear poor. Hell, I wasn’t even wearing any beneath my bib overalls. Saved the only patched pair I had for church on Sunday. Frankly, all I had on was the overalls and my brother’s hand-me-down shoes…about a size and a half too big.

     Naturally, my pals were salivating for a treat like a nickel soda pop. We likely couldn’t put together enough among us to buy one of them, and that included my penny. But I didn’t trust Ryan. He probably had the twenty-cents all right, but he wasn’t dangling the coins in front of us for free.

     “What happens if I can’t do it?” I asked.

     The bully gave a real mean smile. “Then I get to whomp on you without nobody telling.”

     Made giddy by shouts of “You can do it” and “Show the bum,” I heard the part of me that’s always getting me in trouble accept the bet. Dumb-ass. Nothing but a dumb-ass.

     With no idea of how I was going to come out of this without a beating, I started my routine under the sharp, beady-eyed stare of Ryan Dilfigger. Fear made me fumble-fingered at first, but desperation soon restored some agility as I flipped the penny between my fingers and started moving it from hand to hand and pocket to pocket. It went on so long my digits started to cramp, and Ryan got tired of waiting. I couldn’t stall any longer.

     I switched from the right hand to the left, and dropped the penny into my overall pocket while pretending to palm it. After supposedly switching it from hand to hand again, I turned my palms up and unclenched my fingers. Everyone went “Awww!” at the sight of my empty hands.

     Except for Ryan. Declaring it was in my pocket, he started pawing around with both hands without any regard for my personal dignity. Then he felt all up and down my legs. “Crap! Where is it. Pull your pockets out.”

     “You can’t pull overall pockets out,” Squiggly said. “They’re sewed to the legs.”

     So Ryan shoved his hands down in both of them. “A hole! He’s got a hole in his pocket. Without another word, he shoved me aside and started grubbing in the dirt. I figured that was the end of me, but he came up empty.

     Then he got another bright idea. “Your underpants! You stowed it there.”

     “Not wearing none.” I got kinda red-faced admitting that in front of Maxine. I couldn’t imagine her telling me she wasn’t wearing panties. But Ryan didn’t leave anything to chance. He tugged at my waistband and peeked down inside. I jerked away, but he’d seen enough to know I wasn’t lying.

     It took another five minutes of pawing, but after that, even Ryan had to give up. Muttering dire threats, he led us down the street to the grocery store. Before trailing along behind, I paused to sweep the ground with my gaze. Where was that danged penny? Maybe it had disappeared. Be great if I really did have powers like Mandrake the Magician.

     Halfway down the street, I felt something flopping in my left shoe. That danged penny didn’t bother me until it got stuck under my heel. Then I started limping.

     I’d have a blister tomorrow, but a blister was better than a beating.

### 

Thanks for visiting the site.

Don

Next week: You never know.

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

A Looker, Not a Doer

I trust everyone had a good week. Thursdays are kind of strange days, aren’t they? One of the anticipatory days. The day before the work week ends. Two days before the weekend begins. Don’t know why I picked a Thursday to do my blog posts, but that’s the way it worked out. Let’s try another short-short story this week.

###

A LOOKER, NOT A DOER

     Jimmy Worley was a looker, not a doer. A geek. A dork. Worse, a doofus, although he wasn’t sure what the difference was. Like he was already a high school senior and still called Jimmy. Worse, Jimmy Boy by his mother. What it would take to become Jim? Would he ever reach James? In his obituary maybe.

     But he was more or less content to sit in the back or off to the side and just watch. Now, from the rear of the classroom, he imagined being BFF with jock Dave Brill and chillin’ with prom queen Susan Smith. Never happen, of course. Except in his head.

     He particularly liked watching girls. Nice and soft and … well, squeezable. Or so he imagined. Even from a distance, he could tell a lot about them. He knew which ones wore falsies and which ones didn’t. Doris was wearing a pad this morning, and it wasn’t her bitchy attitude that clued him. Zelda was limping. Probably a blister from the tennis court yesterday. Miriam’s honeysuckle aroma drifted two rows back to tickle his nose.

     A recent transfer gave him someone new to case. Great, because he’d figured out all the other girls. Her name was Beatrice, shortened to Bea. She was kind of a loner, too, but you couldn’t call her nerdy. Somewhere between bobby-soxer and egghead. Did the guys still say bobby-soxer, or was that just his mom’s word? Bea was fly. A short freckled nose, but still definitely fly. He like her ears. The way they lay close against her head. Short hair. Blonde…but not quite blonde. Ash, maybe. Nice eyes. Blue? He dreamed about chirpin’ with her like a regular guy. Like a dude with his girlfriend. A shiver ran down his back.

     One day, as he sat alone at a table in the far corner of the cafeteria, the new girl walked in. He watched Bea fill her tray and turn to look around uncertainly. His belly fluttered as her eyes lighted on him. And then … and then she started walking in his direction. He thought for sure she’d swerve. Take a seat somewhere else. But no. She walked past two empty tables to stand in front of him.

     “Hi, can I join you?” Nice voice.

     “Uh, sure. If you’re sure you want to.”

     She slipped sideways into the chair without pulling it out. Kinda graceful. “My name’s, Bea.” She held out a small hand. He wiped his on a pant leg before taking it.

     "Jimm—” He swallowed. “Uh, Jim.”

     “Hello Jim. I hear you’re into photography.”

     “Uh, yeah, sure. I dig the camera. How’d you know that?” He blinked at her lipstick. Orange. Well, not exactly orange, but he’d have chosen something different for her.

     “I heard it around. What kind of camera do you use?”

     “My granddad’s old Leica. He brought it back from Germany…you know, after the war.” Maybe her nose was a bit too short.

     “How interesting. It still works?”

     “Better’n most they make today. The Germans were great at lenses.” Jeez, was one of her boobs bigger than the other? “Uh, what kind do you use?”

     “Oh, I don’t know anything about taking pictures. Maybe you could show me one day.”

     “S…sure. Maybe.” Violets. Her scent was violets. Violets made him sneeze. His nose started to itch.

     “How about Saturday? I’m free Saturday afternoon.”

     “I…uh. Sorry, but I gotta bounce. Catch you later.”

     Sweat flooded his armpits as he scrambled to his feet and swept up the luncheon tray, almost dumping dirty dishes on the floor. He turned and fled.

     Jimmy Worley was a looker, not a doer.

###

This remind you of anyone you knew back in high school? Hope you enjoyed it.

Don

Next week: We’ll see.

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

How about a little more short fiction?

Thanks to everyone  who sent messages of empathy over last week’s post. With your help, it gets easier each year.

Let’s try some more short fiction this week. Can’t rightly call it flash fiction because it exceeds 1,000 words, and that appears to be the upper limit for that genre. Anyway, here it comes.

###

SPIRIT WOLF

The big wolf slipping through the trees a hundred feet to my right unsettled me. I wasn’t worried about the beast, but he spooked my horse. A wolf’s howl – real or dreamt – punctuating the same dream three nights in a row had started me on this trip. I considered shooting the thing, but Ma’am’s got Ojibway blood, and she looked on wolves as medicine animals.

My sir had wanted me to wait until after planting before taking off for Waususa ten miles to the west. And I’d agreed, until those vague, formless dreams about Tillie, each punctuated by the call of a wolf, riled me up.

Matilda Thorgensen was my best friend until her widowed pa pulled up stakes for Waususa. The day she left a year ago this coming April had been magical. We’d snuck off to say goodbye, and until casting eyes on her exposed bosom, I hadn’t known I lusted after her. I entered that pine grove an eighteen-year-old boy and left it a man. Then, after that magnificent awakening, she was gone.

Other than claiming I was mopey and likely needed a tonic, Sir was blind to my discovery. Ma’am saw right through me. She might even suspect I’d had a taste of the carnal.

So I set off for Waususa before a proper spring arrived. Heavy, dark clouds pressed the sky down on me. The air smelled like rain. Trees struggling to bud dripped water. Mushy ground made the going slow. Old Red, our riding horse, splashed through springs and brooks – all running high from snow melt – without any trouble, but Beaver Creek looked more like a river. With my heart down in my boots, I stared at the tumbling water. I’d have to turn back.

Suddenly, Red jumped sideways, almost dumping me. I got him under control and saw the timber wolf had snuck up on us. I made threatening noises, but he kept coming. So I let the horse retreat down the bank.

The lobo halted in his tracks when I came to a spot where the creek fractured into three shallow branches the horse could wade without dumping us both. Fifty yards on down the trail, I saw the wolf was still with me.

I started looking for Tillie as soon as I reached Waususa late that afternoon. People mostly avoided me, but someone finally steered me to a burned down house. Neighbors turned shy, so I ended up on Main Street in front of the Silver Spur. The saloon was too wild and noisy, but that’s where the people were, except for God-fearing folk home having supper. I went to every table in the honky-tonk asking about Tillie and her pa without learning nothing.

Just as I gave up, I came up on a woman like I’d never seen before but heard about all my life. Little bitty skirt. Bare legs showing through black stockings made like a fishnet. I’d never seen a woman’s legs before, except for Tillie’s that one time. Naked shoulders. Bad women, my ma’am called them without explaining. But I knew. They drank whiskey with men and did other things with them, too. Remembering I’d done that same act with Tillie last spring put a blush on my face.

She rested a small hand with fingernails painted bright red on a sprung hip. “Hello, handsome. Buy a lady a drink?”

“Excuse me, ma’am, but I don’t have any money.”

“I hear you asking after Tillie Thorgensen?”

It felt like I turned redder. “Yes, ‘um.”

“Your name ain’t Luke, is it?”

I glanced up. Her eyes were blue. Like Tillie’s. “Yes, ‘um. Luke Streller.”

“Tell you what, Luke. You mosey on out the door over there and meet me round back.”

“Ummm, I don’t have any money—”

I’d heard about bawdy laughs but didn’t know what they were. I figured I was hearing one right now.

“Honey, I might take a cutie like you on for free, but that ain’t it. Go on now.”

My face musta face matched her fingernails as I scooted for the door. But as I walked the shadows between the saloon and the building next door, I went squirrely. What if she set one of the big bouncers on me? The alley at the rear of the saloon was even darker. I paused and wrestled with my doubts.

“Luke!”

I made her out beneath a stairway leading up to the second floor. A lace shawl covered her shoulders. That red dress splashed with shiny spangles looked black in the night. The alleyway smelled like cat piss as I approached her.

“Tillie talked about you. That’s how I knew it was you,” she said.

“Where is she? Her house is all burned down. What happened?”

“They think Old Man Thurgensen fell asleep while he was smoking one of his cigars. He’d been drinking a lot ever since the baby came.”

I thought she’d hit me in the head with a club. I got swoony. “Baby? What baby?”

“Your baby.”

“My baby?” my mouth asked without any help from me. Hell, we’d only done it once. A fellow couldn’t make a baby on the first try, could he?

“A little boy. She named him Lucas, after you.”

“Where are they?” My voice sounded like I was at the bottom of a well.

“Oh, honey, Tillie and her daddy died in the fire.”

She might as well have slugged me in the belly. My legs went wobbly. I think I woulda fallen over if she hadn’t reached out and grabbed my arm. Some sort of God-awful sound came outta me.

“Why wouldn’t anybody tell me?” I managed to ask.

“The whole town treated them awful. You know, her without no husband, and all. But the baby’s alive. Tillie threw him out a little window at the back, but she couldn’t get through it herself.”

“Where … where is he?”

She led me down the dark, rank alley to the back door of a small house. She knocked once and entered with me right behind her. A fleshy black woman with short, graying hair rose from a chair with a small bundle in her arms.

“Mazie, this here’s Luke. Big Luke.”

“Yes’um, Miss Lupe. Pleased to meet you, sir.”

“Is that ….”

“That’s Little Luke. Your son,” Lupe said.

I don’t remember reaching for him, but somehow he was in my arms staring up at me through Tillie’s eyes. He was littler than I thought a human could ever be. When I pulled him up for a closer look, his tiny fist grabbed my lower lip … and yanked my heart right out of my chest.

As I set out for home with Little Luke in my arms, I was a believer. Wolves were medicine animals … at least this one was. And I had to let him see I’d got his message.

###

Hope you enjoyed it. Check out the rest of the site while you're here.

Don

Next week: Time will tell!

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

Indulge me a personal moment, please.

February, March, and April are particularly difficult months for me. February 12 is the day my wife died, March 13 is her birthday, and April 8 is our wedding anniversary. So I tend toward the morbid until those dates pass. Each year (it’s been five now since she died), becomes a bit easier, and something happened a few days ago that lightened my mood. It takes a bit of explanation. (Big surprise, right?)

My older son is single and has some physical and emotional issues. He and his mother had a rocky … no, that’s not being honest … a difficult relationship. He is something of a loner, and a score of years ago, we were pleased when he got a German Shepard/Husky cross, which he named Lieba. She was a lively pup of about seven months at the time. She became his friend, his companion, and at times, his connection with reality. He tended her needs, including walking for exercise, but she gave back more than she received.

Lieba was truly a wonderful dog. Gentle. Patient. Protective. Loving. She grew to be quite sizeable, and in her later years, a little overweight. She was my son’s constant companion, and often his only companion. When she was around eighteen, she developed cancer, and her decline was difficult to watch. She tried her best to continue to be his shadow, but when she began hiding in the closet, we knew the inevitable was near. The day he took her to the vet to end her pain, Betty and I were unhappy that she was disappearing from our lives, but mostly we were apprehensive over how our son would handle the loss of what sometimes appeared to be his only friend.

Shortly after Lieba’s death, our son picked up and moved to Texas, heightening our fear for him. However, he coped and built a life for himself there. When his mother died, I don’t believe my son actually dealt with the fact. Over time, his attitude toward her has mellowed, and when we spoke on the phone the other day, he planted a great picture in my mind.

“Dad, I’ve been thinking about Mom a lot lately, and do you know what I see? I see Lieba at her side, taking care of her.”

I don’t know what he could have said that would be more uplifting.

Thanks for indulging me in something so personal.

Don

Next week: Another Flash Fiction Story

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

More from The City of Rocks

Although BJ has visited the Lazy M Ranch several times, his first visit to the City of Rocks on the vast property doesn’t come until Chapter 17. He and his companion, Paul, borrow horses for a ride to the rock pile. Paul calls him Vince rather than BJ like the rest of the world. While on this visit, they have unwelcome visitors.

###

The horses set an easy pace. Paul kept a snug rein on Streak, who broke into a gallop at every opportunity. On the other hand, the farther Lucy got from the stable, the slower her gait became. After another hour, Paul pointed ahead of us.

“Is that it?”

“Yep. The Lazy M’s own City of Rocks.”

“Man that looks weird out there all by itself. Even weirder than the big one up at the state park.”

“New Mexico’s full of weird. You think you’re standing on the moon at the Bisti Badlands. And then there’s Carlsbad Caverns, Tent Rocks, White Sands, and those eerie lava beds in the Malpais.”

“I gotta get out of Bernalillo County more often,” he said.

We went silent, falling increasingly under the spell of ghostly monoliths as we approached the City. The horses plodded between the first two hunks of mute rock on the north-northwest side. The “street” that opened up before us was a broad avenue strangely devoid of plant growth. I saw no human footprints, but wind whistling through the alleyways raised weak, wispy dust devils. Footprints in the sand would not last long out here. Our mounts’ hooves no longer clopped; now they made a huffing sound. It was as if we had passed through a portal separating two worlds.

“That big boulder in front of us looks like a hotel. An old western hotel.”

I stared at the hulking mass. “Why? It’s just a big rock.”

“Come on, where’s your imagination? It’s a couple of stories high. It’s kinda square. It looks like those pictures of a frontier hotel minus the balcony that runs around the second story. And that’s Muldren City’s saloon over there.” He pointed to the right.

I fell into the spirit of the thing. “Okay, then that’s the bank. And the telegraph office.”

He laughed, obviously delighted I was playing along.” “Let’s go see if we can find the freight office. Then the town’s complete.”

“Oh no. Not without the jail, it isn’t.”

“Right. I forgot the sheriff’s office and the jailhouse.” He twisted in the saddle and pointed. “There it is, right across the square from the hotel.” Paul dismounted and looked for a place to tether Streak. “They forgot the hitching rail. No western town’s complete without a hitching post.”

He tied his reins to the only bit of green in sight, a small mesquite bush. “Hope that holds. I’d hate to walk back to the ranch house.”

I joined him on the ground and dubiously tethered Lucy to the same puny plant. While he scrambled up the side of the “hotel,” I searched for evidence of human habitation.

“Watch out for snakes,” he yelled, already out of sight atop the boulder.

In a natural alleyway at the side of the jailhouse, I found impressions like miniature buffalo wallows. The small lane was sheltered from the worst of the wind. People had rested here, smoothing out the dust and dirt to make a bed, probably for an overnight stay. A pile of debris and tumbleweeds lay against the end of the small passage where the rock walls met again. I nudged the garbage with my boot. It was all food related: greasy sandwich or tortilla wraps and crumpled Styrofoam containers for coffee or posole.

The human coyotes had probably hidden illegal immigrants here while they stocked up on water from the windmill in the distance. Then, before the morning light came, they would have spirited their charges across the desert onto the highway where someone waited to pick them up. It was a natural—and obvious—spot. I was willing to bet the smugglers had not remained with their human cargo during that long, anxious wait. They had probably camped somewhere in the near vicinity, realizing the Border Patrol would be aware of the City’s potential for hiding illegal aliens and other contraband.

A muffled shout from Paul drew me out of the mental drama playing out in my head. I walked back to the plaza, but found no sign of him.

“Vince,” he said from above me. I looked up to find him squatting atop the hotel. “There are people out there.”

“Where?”

Walking across the hardpan. I think they’re headed here.”

“Keep out of sight. I’m coming up.”

###

Things liven up after that. 

Thanks hope you enjoyed the read.

Don

Next week: Maybe I’ll haven an Oopsie worth writing about by then.

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

Thanks.

Don

Next week: A big mystery.

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