Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

That's why I painted my workshop floor white. Makes finding stray pins and Jesus springs slightly less difficult.

LEAD PIPE CINCH Michael Keller didn't really run up the ladder. He climbed it, but he climbed it really, really fast. Michael had no idea what he was going to do, nor how to do it, but he'd at least snatched the lariat off Lightning's saddle before he ran for the ladder. It was bolted to the side of the warehouse. It rose three stories and curled over, like he'd seen ladders elsewhere. Below him, shouts, conflicting orders: someone made the mistake of snatching at Lightning's reins, and backed quickly away as she snapped at him, fighting fangs exposed when she peeled her fine-furred lips back for the warning bite: she turned, snarling, sidled up against the building, Cyclone and Thunder flanking her, dancing and shaking their heads, clearly unhappy that their Mama was clearly unhappy. Michael paid no attention to any of this. A man was on the roof, screaming. Shelly Keller's framed portrait hung with another portrait, that of her first, second and third paramedic classes, all of them told to look solemn and not one single soul she'd taught was able to do anything but grin for the camera. The Irish Brigade ran for fireboots and turnout coats, pressed-leather helmets and bunker pants, fireproof gloves and apparatus: the overhead doors rattled open and Diesel engines snarled impatiently, until the doors hit the wide-open limit switch and green lights flared into life, signaling the drivers that the doors were open far enough to proceed out of the bay. Kenworth pumpers rolled. Medics followed, two in the squad, one in the rescue with three other firefighters: the officer rode shotgun, fireboot heavy on the steel siren button. Engine, rescue, squad, constabulary, curious public, all ran with swiftness and haste to where a young man in a black suit came to the top of the ladder and sized up the situation. Michael looked around, looked at the mostly flat roof, at short vent pipes stubbed up out of what looked like round gravel pressed into asphalt. He stepped off the ladder and onto the roof, dropped the coiled reata from his shoulder, shaking it loose, his fingers working with eyes of their own as he locked eyes with a wild-looking man swinging a bottle at arm's length and raising an arm to point at Michael. "Friend," Michael called, "can you tell me what brings you up here to a place like this?" The man considered, swayed a little: he lowered his pointing arm, raised the other, drank until the bottle was empty, then tossed the bottle over the edge of the roof. "HEADACHE!" Michael yelled as sirens screamed their approach. The man staggered for the edge, either wishing to see the bottle's impact, or maybe wanting to see what the siren was. Michael's arm shot out. He didn't make a showy spin, he tossed the loop with a practiced wrist-roll, not quite sidehand, not quite underhand: he never had anyone to teach him how to properly sling a loop, so he developed his own method, and it worked. The loop dropped over the man as he overbalanced, as he screamed and tried to catch himself, and fell off the edge. Michael dove for the nearest of the vent pipes stubbed out of the gravel. He took a fast turn, another, pulled: as his reata snapped taut, the pipe collapsed a little, bent some, but Michael held hard and held down. Plaited leather thrummed and stretched and Michael could swear later he felt a crackle, he heard the man's scream -- He ain't dead if he can still scream -- Michael heard someone coming up the ladder he'd used, he turned and looked and saw the familiar silhouette of a firefighter with a handlebar mustache and a Philadelphia fire helmet. The firefighter turned, looked down, waved, turned back to Michael. "We'll have him got," the firefighter declared, "can ye hold?" Michael nodded grimly. A voice from below, the sound of a ladder hitting the side of the stone warehouse: a man's scream again, a scream that seemed to fall off to less prominent sounds of pain. Michael held down on the wrap with the heel of one hand, his other death-gripped around his lariat, holding it tight around the leaning, recontoured lead stub. His hand-laid reata slacked and the fireman at the ladder's summit waved again, turned triumphantly to Michael: "He's ours and safe!" Michael lifted the heel of his hand from where he was pushing down with a desperate strength: he gripped the reata, pulled experimentally, then drew it quickly up, hand-over-hand. His fingers found the snapped sections before his eyes did. I don't know if there's any fixin' to this, he thought, then coiled the line, slung it over his shoulder and followed the descending fireman down the hard-mounted ladder. Angela sat beside her Daddy as they watched the debrief on her Daddy's computer in his office. They listened to the Irish Brigade, that planet's Irishmen, taught in Firelands and trained by Earth instructors: they listened to the dispatcher describe the call as it came in, to the storekeeper who sold the whiskey (for some reason, alcohol seemed to be a common element on every world in the thirteen-star-system Confederacy), from witnesses who first reported a drunk scaling the side of the warehouse, shouting something about ending it all and she'll be sorry when I'm gone. And then there was Michael. Michael described arriving on the planet at a friend's invitation, he described Lightning receiving the adulation and adoring attention of most of a school's worth of children who absolutely mobbed the big, heavy-boned and hard-muscled Fanghorn, how Thunder and Cyclone rolled over for belly rubs and chirped in blissful, eyes-closed contentment at the attention: he described seeing the man ascend the ladder, realized there was trouble, and touched Lightning behind her foreleg -- his signal for her to belly down so he could mount. Linn leaned forward a little, frowning a bit as Michael said, "I cooned up that ladder and saw this fellow all a-sway. He took a drink from the bottle and slung the bottle and I could see he was staggerin' drunk. I yelled for him to get away from the edge and he didn't, so I tossed him a loop and spun a quick hitch around one of those short pipes stuck out of the roof. "It ruined my lariat," he admitted, "but that lariat paid for itself, for he got close enough to the ground to grab a handful of gravel rather than drive headfirst into the dirt." "Why did you hitch around the pipe in that manner?" someone asked. "Long habit. You ever rope somethin' that don't want roped? You take a turn or two around your saddle horn and you bring 'em to a fast stop, peacefully or otherwise." Michael grinned. "That pipe I stubbed off on was lead and I didn't know it. It bent some but the cinch held and he's alive to complain about it." "Oh, no," Angela moaned, tearing a sheet off her Daddy's blank legal pad and wadding it into a ball. "Michael Keller, don't you dare say it!" "You might say," Michael continued, "it was a lead pipe cinch!" Linn wasn't sure which made him laugh harder. Michael's straight faced statement, or Angela throwing the paper wad at his image on the computer screen.

. I enlarged and searched these wheeled, powered chassis, and could not find the "ACME" tag anywhere ... The US Army is making these to chase wildlife off runways. Supposedly the wheeled chassis will do 20 mile an hour!

THE PRICE IS RIGHT Sheriff Linn Keller consulted his mental list. Usually when they went to visit, halfway across the state, he'd drive and she'd sleep. He felt himself smile, behind his face where no one could see it, as he remembered her quiet voice, how she'd say "You give good ride," before she closed her eyes behind big goggly sunglasses and went back to sleep. He took pride in giving a good ride. She'd told him of a squad partner she had, years ago, someone who'd started running ambulance when the word "Ambulance" meant a black vehicle that looked like a hearse, made by Cadillac, driven by a man in a black suit with a plastic smile and a Johnson & Johnson first aid kit. Whoever this fellow was, said he and the other fellows read where the Rolls-Royce School of Chauffeur, had a final test that was pretty damned hard to pass: the instructor set a glass of water on the dash of the car, and the driver had to bring the car to a full and complete stop, without rippling the water. Apparently Shelly's old partner from many years before was one of two men who could do it in a Cadillac hearse. Linn wasn't THAT good -- he'd admitted that in a late-shift conversation with his boon companion Paul Barrents, when they were both still road deputies -- but he did his best to drive smoothly. Shelly was going to visit relatives. Usually he went too, he drove, she slept, but her sister would be coming in from out of state, she was looking forward to visiting an old and dear friend she'd known just forever, and he'd told her, "You go on ahead. You deserve a girls' weekend." He'd begun adding up things he could do in her absence. There was a kitchen repair he'd wanted to get done, but couldn't as long as she was using it; he'd figured to make a meeting and then an auction the next day ... he had a few days off, he'd been looking forward to these, maybe ride up on the mountain, something he loved to do and hadn't enough time to do under usual conditions. Shelly asked him to carry her big suitcase out to the car, a portable cooler with bottles of water, the usual stuff she packed and overpacked (Shelly was a girl, after all, and girls tended to overpack), and when she came downstairs, Linn frowned and stopped her. Shelly wobbled a little as he looked at her. "Darlin'," he said quietly, "you ... are you feelin' okay?" Fatigue was graven across her face and he saw she was shaking a little, as if she was quivering with utter exhaustion. Linn stepped in, caught his wife under her elbows. "Darlin', why don't you get a good night's rest and take out first thing in the morning." Shelly leaned against him and nodded a little, then looked up at him. "Morning," she sighed in agreement, then added, "I miss my travelin' partner." Linn shifted his grip and ran his arms under his wife's arms and knees, picked her up, his face serious. "You're in no shape to drive," he said quietly, and carried her back up the broad, solid stairs. "I usually drive and you usually sleep, darlin', I'm afraid you'll fall asleep at the wheel." "I need to call my uncle," Shelly mumbled, "let him know." "I'll call him," Linn said quietly, in the reassuring voice of a father soothing an overtaxed child: he laid his wife on his side of the neatly-made bed, turned her side back: he didn't bother to undress her. "Low barometer," she mumbled as he eased her over to her side of the bed and pulled line-dried bedcovers over her. She was asleep, just that fast. When Linn hung up from talking to her Uncle, he looked toward the kitchen, reviewed the mental list of things he'd intended to get done, then smiled, just a little. Those things would wait. There would be other auctions, there would be more meetings. He only had one Shelly.

Me dear Pappy spoke in like wise, shoveling groceries into us, then red off the table. We only pronounced it, we never spelled it, so it might well have two D's. SE OH not far from La Belle Rivière, a waterway called by natives, the O-Y-O.

DIDN'T EXPECT THAT! Jacob Keller considered the pasture. Jacob Keller loafed comfortably against the white board fence, one polished boot up on the bottom rail, arms folded across the top. Jacob's pale eyed Pa, in an identical pose, stood beside him. Two tall, lean men in polished boots and black Stetsons, two hard-muscled Sheriffs in tailored black suits, regarded horse flesh and humanity. Marnie and Angela was standing dead center in the pasture's northern third, straight out from where father and son watched. "You know," Jacob said thoughtfully, "in an earlier era, they'd be hanged as witches." "I said that about my Mama," Linn replied softly. Normally the horses, both saddle stock and the firehorses, were pretty well distributed through the long pasture: they were approaching Marnie, every last one of them, they were on approach and they were coming with purpose. Marnie Keller, daughter of a pale eyed Sheriff, had lifted her skirts and stepped carefully out into the pasture, her younger sister following: they'd turned and smiled at their father, and at their brother, Two genuinely beautiful women caressed the mare that came head-bobbing up to say hello, then they turned and looked the length of the pasture. Each had a hand on the Appaloosa mare's mane. Each extended her other arm, palm up: feminine faces turned toward the sun, eyes closed, as they took a deep breath of air that smelled like home! They sang. Their voices were gentle, harmonized: they grew in volume, and as they sang, horses the full length of a genuinely huge pasture stopped: heads raised, ears swung and pricked, focused like fleshly radar dishes. Victoria watched the live feed on her computer's screen, Michael beside her: Victoria rested her chin on her fist and gave a disappointed little sigh. "I'll bet I could do that," she said quietly. "I'll bet you could," Michael agreed. "We could go to ... which planet has the biggest herd?" "They're all about the same," Michael admitted. "We've been moving mares and stallions from Earth and back to keep a good genetic cross section." Victoria gave her brother a sly look. "Which one would get me in less trouble?" Michael grinned. The Ladies' Tea Society populated the choir loft that Sunday. Angela sat among them in a proper McKenna gown with a matching hat; Marnie, beside her, in a veil, as it might cause questions if someone known to Earth as last seen as Sheriff of the Second Martian Colony, was suddenly seen back on Earth, without having arranged some means of transportation ahead of time. Angela and Marnie sat side by side in the rearmost row; they were the apex of a human triangle, with nobody seated beside them. "Did you get that girl's dress finished?" Angela asked, her lips barely moving. Marnie's gloved hand formed the sign-language letter Y, then relaxed: Yes. "Why the rush?" Angela asked. Marnie's whisper was pitched to reach Angela's pink-scrubbed ear, but no further. "Her fiancée is returning from service next week. She wanted a special dress. I told her to test drive it today." The congregation rose at the Parson's request. Angela saw the back door open, then close. A lean young man in class A's stepped inside, eyes busy. An usher raised a finger, stepped three rows ahead, stopped at a particular pew and winked. A young man in uniform nodded once, his cover under his arm: he slipped into the near-vacant pew, stopped behind a particular young woman. "You arranged this," Angela whispered accusingly. Marnie's gloved hand, still on her lap, formed the sign-language letter Y. She watched as a silent young man sat with a hunter's patience behind a pretty young woman wearing a handmade dress, a dress she'd had custom made with intent to wear it in one week, for a very special occasion. Marnie and Angela stood with the rest of the congregation after the final benediction, stood and watched from their elevated vantage: Marnie's grin of absolute delight was hidden by her concealing veil, but Angela's face was not at all hidden, nor was her wide-eyed, hands-to-her-mouth expression of feminine delight. A young woman turned to leave. She glanced to her left, looked ahead, looked left again, shocked -- She froze -- A strong young man, just returned from overseas, caught his intended under the arms as she LAUNCHED up onto and then over the hardwood pew. A cloaked camera drone caught her at her ballistic apogee, her hair just starting to float behind her, a pair of strong and masculine hands firm under her arms, her arms wide and her mouth open, just before each crushed the other into the embrace that made other women jealous and other men proud. Angela looked at Marnie. "You arranged this, you witch!" she hissed accusingly. "You sing in the horses, you witch!" Marnie replied quietly, and Angela could hear the laugh hiding under her words. The couple waited until the center aisle was almost clear before the young man swung her over the back of the pew and down beside him, then he went to one knee and raised a small box, slipped a shining ring on a feminine finger. Angela felt Marnie's surprise and laughed quietly at her veiled sister's surprised, "I didn't expect that!"

TRUST Linn found himself in conference with his mother more frequently than he'd anticipated. By his own admission, he was not in the least little bit shy about asking for advice from those who knew what they were talking about. He'd raised twin boys, at least until they died, but now he had a little girl under his roof, and to be honest, he felt kind of lost. He recalled when the twins -- Emil and Gottleib -- were still in diapers screaming as if in intractable agony: they were not teething, Shelly had been at absolutely the end of her ideas, so she'd done something she swore she'd never do. She called the one most intimidating person she'd ever known, for help. Willamina was there in less than six minutes. Willamina came in, all business, she went to the downstairs crib where the twins were screaming in discordant harmony. Her face was serious as she opened one howling mouth a little more, shot her flashlight's beam inside, then the same with the other howling songster: her light thumb-snapped off and she told Shelly, "Draw me a tub of really warm water. Not quite hot but close to it." Shelly seized on this direction as if it were the Grail itself: she'd been so utterly lost, and now she had direction. Shelly honestly fled up the stairs, to the white-enamel bathtub, twisted the hot water faucet wide open. Willamina wrapped the twins snugly in white flannel, picked them up, bounced them a little, her grandmotherly murmur lost entirely against red-wrinkle-faced squalls that exceeded industry safety standards for unprotected hearing. Shelly was on her knees beside the tub -- the water was a hand's span deep, warm and steaming, when she felt a swirl of cooler air and she knew her pale eyed mother in law was coming through the door with the whimpering twins. Willamina unwrapped one little boy, then the other, laid them carefully in the tub. Motherly hands held stiff, protesting, rebellious little limbs, until they realized being warmer and wet felt pretty good. Willamina waited no more than three minutes before shooting her compact little flashlight's beam into one mouth, then the other. The twins were relaxing now, their screams settled down to intermittent whimpers. Willamina handed the compact tactical light to Shelly. "Look at the roof of their mouths," she said, her voice gentle, and Shelly did. "See those white spots?" Shelly nodded, her eyes wide, almost shocked. "Measles." They got the twins dried off and diapered, fed and wrapped up. "Measles," Shelly said, her voice as hollow as her eyes. Willamina smiled gently and gave the younger woman an understanding look. "It scared hell out of me when Linn got the measles," she said. "Doc Greenlees came out and knew what to do and what to look for." Willamina laid Gottleib back in the crib, relieved Shelly of Emil,laid him down with his brother, then steered the younger woman toward the kitchen. Willamina brewed tea and poured each of them a mug, then reached in her purse and pulled out a silver flask. "For medicinal purposes only," she murmured as she gave Shelly's tea a healthy dose, then winked: "Nerve tonic!" It had been some years since the twins' death: Jacob came along very soon after, and now Marnie as an underfed four-year-old. The Bear Killer immediately claimed Marnie, which was good, because Marnie had known things in her young life no child of her few years should ever endure. She did not scream and flail when touched, but she stiffened, she shivered. Linn had seen this before. He went down on his Prayer Bones and Marnie looked at him with honest, wide-eyed terror. The Bear Killer was laid down beside her and her arm was over his neck. Linn was satisfied that was the only thing that kept her knees from failing her. "Marnie," Linn said gently, "I think you don't want to be touched." Marnie did not answer. She just looked at her new Daddy, looked at him through a wooden face and wide, scared eyes. Jacob came up, curious: Linn opened an arm and Jacob stepped right into him. Linn held his son as he often had. "Marnie," Linn said, his voice careful, "nobody has the right to touch you if you don't want touched." Marnie blinked, but made no other move. Linn released his arm from around Jacob's waist, stood, backed up a pace, then turned and thrust one sock foot, then the other, into his boots, opened the front door, stepped outside. Marnie reached for Jacob's hand and Jacob returned the reach, then he turned and hugged his new sister, and she hugged him with one arm, the other arm still around The Bear Killer's neck. Marnie sat with her sister at a sidewalk table in front of a fashionable little coffee shop. "I know what happened to you," Angela said, "back East." "Oh?" Marnie asked neutrally, sampling her black elixir: the blend was new to the planet, and still commanded a premium price. "I remember you went from blue jeans to skirts and dresses overnight," Angela said quietly, "and you wouldn't wear anything but handmade. Mama wanted to go dress shopping with you and twice it came to bloodshed." Marnie's expression was unreadable as her pale eyes regarded her younger sister through a wispy cloud of coffee flavored steam. "It was the shoplifter's fault," Marnie said easily. "We'll just leave it at that," Angela suggested. Marnie frowned, lowered her coffee. "Do you really want to know why I ... changed ... out of blue jeans so quickly?" "I know there's a reason." Marnie placed her cup on its translucent saucer. "It was a dare," she admitted. "A ... dare," Angela echoed, blinking: she leaned forward, her voice low, earnest. "Marnie Lynne, you are the one most peer-pressure-proof soul I know. What do you mean, a dare?" Marnie's eyes were suddenly very pale, and Marnie's posture was suddenly very controlled, and Marnie's voice was suddenly very unemotional. "When I learned how to break someone's arm," Marnie said, "when I learned how to over power a joint lock and tear an elbow apart or shred a wrist or break a thumb, when I learned how to heelstrike a nose and dislocate a knee and drive a number two lead pencil through someone's innominate artery -- when I learned how to --" Marnie stopped abruptly, drew back a little, her eyes closed. "When you learned how to back it up if you said no," Angela finished for her. Marnie nodded, then she opened her eyes, and she smiled just a little, but it was not a pleasant smile at all. It was the smile of someone who knew the feel of splintering cartilage in her grip. "Once I found out I could kick better in a skirt, and once I learned I could say no and make it stick, I started wearing skirts as a dare." Her voice was low, the menace unmistakable. "I can look anyone in the eye and just dare them -- jump right on and do your worst, damn you, and know I can do very unkind things to them if they even try." Marnie looked down at her bodice, turned up a fashionable little pinned-on watch, smiled, rose, the absolute image of feminine gentility. "I have to go see Daddy," she smiled. "Wait a minute, you can't just drop that in my lap and leave!" Marnie paid their bill, smiled at the blushing young waiter, keyed a command into her wrist-unit, looked at Angela, tilted her head a little and smiled again. "Well?" she asked as the cat's-pupil-black Iris opened behind her. "You coming?"

FB OM, outstanding performance indeed!

When Hurricane Sandy came stomping across the Appalachians and screamed through my TAOR, it tore down my 40 meter loop antenna and the trees that held it up. Honest Engine, a full 40 meters of wire in the air. Best antenna I ever had! With those two fine and lofty supports gone, I'm limited to low altitude wire antennas, currently running an EFHW with a remarkable lack of success. Not the antenna's fault ... I have to engineer something better, so the Perpetual Search and Experimentation continues!

THE ELIJAH METHOD Michael Keller rubbed his eyes and sighed. It wasn’t a dramatic sigh – it was almost inaudible – his twin sister, working at a desk beside his, felt it more than heard it, thanks to that silent connection twins commonly share. “Why did I ever start,” Michael muttered. “Start what?” “Books. Hymnals, now printing houses, pianos … I’ve got …” – he gestured at a stack of forms, neatly laid out on his completely-occupied-but-organized desk top – “I’ve got firms that want to make pianos domestically, I have churches and concert halls and schools that want to buy genuine Earth pianos, now I’ve got orders for musical instruments I never advertised and I don’t –” Michael leaned back, pressed his hands against the sides of his head as if trying to confine a persistent headache. “Your sales figures are phenomenal, Michael,” Victoria said quietly. “You could –” Michael folded his arms and dropped his forehead on them. Victoria slipped out of her chair, came over, silent on black-patent slippers, laid a gentle hand on her twin’s near shoulder blade. “Michael,” she said gently, “you’ve been working on this long enough. Walk away.” Michael raised his head and Victoria tried not to let surprise show on her face as she realized just how worn-out tired her brother’s face really looked. “Yeah,” he said quietly. Victoria waited until he’d departed, then she finished her own work, gave his a cursory looking-over, decided it could wait, and followed. Ambassador Marnie Keller sat at her desk, frowning as she worked: she’d scanned everything into her computer, she’d converted everything to electronic files: it was at once a great savings, and more work: she, too, had multiple businesses, mostly pertaining to coffee, tea, and a lively commerce on heirloom crops: her fortunes, like the twins’, were looking distinctly prosperous. Unfortunately, a business demands time, and time demands concentration, and Marnie was only just returned from sensitive but necessary negotiations: like Michael, she was close to exhausted; like Michael, she worked herself too long, until she started making mistakes, then like Michael, she stopped, she pushed away from it all, she stood, and she walked away. Sheriff Linn Keller smiled a little as he played a video he hadn’t watched in quite a long time. Marnie, frustrated and exhausted after taking on too much schoolwork in her single-minded pursuit of an early graduation: he’d taken the video as he walked up on her. Marnie was not bound by convention. Marnie went where she always went for solace – she went to her Daddy’s horses – and when Linn came cat footing up on her with cell phone in hand, taking video, the wobbly image he captured was that of a pretty young girl, laid down on pasture grass, flat on her back, sound asleep. A long-legged colt had folded itself up beside her, warm and companionable, and another laid down a little nearer, with its head across her chest, and her arm over its neck. Linn did not see fit to trouble her. She was out like a light. The colts were comfortable. Linn got far enough away before whittling thick slivers off his ever present plug of molasses twist to bribe the other horses so he’d not disturb his wore out daughter. Marnie caressed her big black Frisian’s neck. The mare blew, draped her head over Marnie’s shoulder. It was not long before Marnie packed two bales of hay out of the adjacent barn and stacked them in Snowflake’s pasture, the bales set side by side. Marnie threw two saddle blankets over them, and laid down. Her mind honestly hadn’t realized how bone tired her body was until she laid down and curled up on her side, and when she did, a black Frisian grazed nearby, watchful, as a still-wobbly Frisian filly folded her legs and laid down beside the hay bales. Marnie’s dangling fingers found Frisian hair, and both Marnie and the filly slept, each comforted by knowing the other was there. Angela sized up the situations remotely, then loaded two woven picnic baskets. When Marnie woke, she found a shiny-red-painted, woven picnic basket covered with a folded white tablecloth, and a note. When Michael woke, he found the same thing: he reached over, touched the back of his twin sister’s hand with careful fingertips, which brought her to full awareness instantly if not sooner. Each basket had a hand written note under its hinged lid: The prophet Elijah was told to go take a nap and have a snack. Now it’s your turn. Angela

A brand new, fairly stiff Stetson saved my skull one summer afternoon ... a four foot long set of pipe tongs (family oilfield setting) slipped out of the user's hands and cracked me across the crown. Kind of reshaped the hat but saved the underlying scalp and whatever claimed to be rattling around inside my skull. I stepped back, examined the skypiece, allowed as it just got some character, and went back to work.

My friend, you ain't alone, my hand is a-wavin' in the air ... Testify! Particular instances omitted out of a wish for brevity and a general feeling of well deserved humiliation!

WHAT GAVE IT AWAY? The Firelands hospital’s nurses were not surprised when children under their care asked unusual questions. Especially questions about that nice lady that didn’t say much. Apparently that nice lady came to them when they were scared, when nights were long and lonely and frightening to a wee child who was in a strange bed in a strange place that smelled funny and people came in and did things to them that generally hurt: one of the nurses had to turn her head and squeeze her eyes shut, hard, to compose herself when a little boy on chemo thrust his fisted arm out and almost yelled “Hit me!” when it was time for his treatment. These same nurses sometimes saw people in their hospital chapel. Tammy was an old veteran nurse who’d been a hairdresser before becoming a nurse: her hair was always jacked up and elaborate, her makeup was done to perfection, her uniform immaculate: she had the same irreverent, almost jaded sense of humor that was off-putting to anyone not accustomed to the survivor’s sense of humor. Tammy was told in nurse’s training that a sense of humor was a “coping mechanism.” Tammy knew enough medics, enough lawmen, enough firefighters, enough fellow nurses, to know a sense of humor was most certainly not a coping mechanism. It was a SURVIVAL mechanism, and no two ways about it! Tammy listened to her patients – actually listened – and when a child spoke of that nice lady that didn’t say much, Tammy asked what she looked like. The answer ran a trickle of cold water right down her back bone. When Tammy went on break, she passed the chapel’s double doors with the stained glass windows, as she always did. Instead of just walking past, Tammy hesitated, then pulled the right hand door and slipped inside. And stopped. She watched as someone in what looked like a white-plastic spacesuit – red shoulders, red boots, a big red cross on what looked like a thin, white-plastic back pack – rose. The figure had been kneeling at the altar rail, but stood. A red helmet with white trim covered most of its face, but a clear faceplate was pushed up and the profile was young, female, and pretty. Tammy watched the figure flip a stethoscope overhead and around her neck with the casual ease of long practice. Tammy stopped, stared, wondering if there was a costume party she hadn’t been told about – The figure brought up a bent wrist, tapped at something on the back of what looked like a wristband, then stepped forward and disappeared as if stepping through an invisible doorway. Tammy blinked, she felt her mouth open, then shut it: she shook her head, backed against the door, backed out into the hallway. Tammy went back into the children’s ward. She didn’t usually work midnight shift pediatrics, but she’d been pulled off Med-Surg as Pedes had a call-off. Tammy stepped into the pediatric ward and stopped. A woman wearing a white cap, a white apron and a long dress was holding a little boy’s hand. Tammy froze again, not wanting to interrupt the conversation, then her eyes went to the wall clock. She backed up against the door and backed into the hallway. She still had seven minutes of break time left. “Coffee,” she whispered, before she headed toward the ER and its perpetual coffee supply. She stopped as she came abreast of the front desk, stopped and froze and stared at a very old portrait. Her eyes dropped to the hand-lettered card attached to the bottom of the hand-rubbed, heavy wooden, frame. Dr. John Greenlees and his wife, Nurse Susan, she read: the pair stood stiffly, unsmiling, in what was evidently a very old-fashioned physician’s inner office. “Did you see her?” a voice asked from behind her. Tammy turned, startled, her face the color of wheat paste, as she whispered ... "What gave it away?"

All calls go to my answering machine. My recorded message begins and ends with "We are on the Do Not Call list." Generally caller terminates the communication without leaving a message.

At his first slip, I thought "His gaffs kicked out!" When he began his descent and then turned that into an art form, I realized ... ... no gaffs ... ... he's barefoot ... My jaw dropped down to about my belt buckle watchin' this!

I've long had a big soft spot for horses and horsemanship! I can only admire the Canadian horsemen for their expertise, and I delight in their assuming this signal honor!

CHEAP LESSON Michael Keller stepped back from his computer. Young he was, with old eyes and an expression that would have been very much at home at a riverboat gambler's poker table. He turned his hat in his hand as he paced back -- one step, two, three -- and stopped, knowing he'd be visible from crown to knees. "Sir," he said, "a word, if you please." Sheriff Linn Keller frowned a little, nodded once. "Sir, the word is thank you." The Sheriff raised an eyebrow. "I put your lesson to work and it ... provided me with a cheap lesson." At the phrase, "A Cheap Lesson," the Sheriff went from being the county's chief law enforcement officer, to a father, listening closely. He'd used the phrase "A Cheap Lesson" after moments of minor catastrophe, where equipment failure or miscalculation brought things to earth at a rate of thirty-two-feet-per-second-squared, or a tow strap or two chain broke and snapped back, or a tree fell in a direction the feller did not really intend, resulting in a crushed fence, a mashed chain saw, and in one case, a somewhat dented truck cab. Linn regarded his growing son and said quietly, "Michael, what happened?" Michael Keller pulled the magazine from the .22 target pistol. He set it on the adjacent table top, laid it where he could see it with both eyes. Michael Keller gripped the pistol's reciprocating bolt, pulled it briskly to the rear. Nothing spun out the ejection port. Empty weapon, he thought, then looked at a spot on the far wall. He was in the basement of a house rented for Diplomatic purposes. It had a full basement. Michael considered the pistol, smiling a little at the memory of giving it a good wringing-out as a boy at home. He planned to have it out again that afternoon. He had a brand new pack of playing cards and absolutely no intention of shuffling or dealing: no, he intended to set them up edgewise and cut them in two. A .22 is the hardest to cut cards with, simply because of its small diameter. You can be off the bullet's width and still buzzsaw the pasteboard in two, and Michael well knew the trick of stepping a little to one side or another: edge-on, a card disappears, but if you take a slight sidestep, you can suddenly see it. He also knew that a .44 was a better choice, as you had twice as much came-and-went, owing to the bullet's larger diameter This particular .22 target pistol had a trigger like a wish -- clean as a hound's tooth -- he smiled as he remembered this. One dry fire drop won't hurt, he thought. Once won't batter the chamber. He brought the pistol up, the sight picture steadied, his finger eased back on the serrated target trigger -- "Sir," Michael said, and Linn saw his son's cheeks flush, "you told me once that the two loudest sounds in the world are bang when you expect to hear click, and click where you expect to hear bang." Linn nodded slowly. "I recall." "Sir" -- Michael took a long breath, then shook his head and laughed a little, his rueful grin crowding through his reserve -- "when I cleared the pistol, the extractor didn't pull the loaded round out of the chamber." "I see," Linn said carefully. "I puttied the crater and painted it over, sir. You can't tell it now, but I wanted you to know ... your lessons paid off, all I shot was a poured cement wall, and that was a cheap lesson." Linn nodded again. "The good news, sir," Michael continued, "I cut 52 cards in two with 55 shots." Linn's grin was instant, broad and sincere. "Sounds good to me, Michael!" After the conversation ended, after the connection closed, Linn leaned back in his chair, a quiet smile on his face. Sometimes a man wonders if his young actually ever listen, he thought. It feels pretty good when one calls to say Thank You!

I think Dapper Dave has the right of it! Sounds like the very reasonable Anti-Serious, Pseudo-Scientific ... no, wait a minute, that's them stealth bullets I got mixed in with mine some time ago ... ... anyway it sounds good when you say it fast!

SITSTER Jacob was unusually quiet. His older brothers – the twins, Emil and Gottleib – died before Jacob was born. Jacob was developing as if he was an eldest, and Shelly was concerned. Linn’s sister returned to Firelands with a child, and the news that she was dying. She’d asked her Mama if she could stay, for a little while, and Willamina said “Of course,” her eyes bright as she bit her lip and forbade water to fall from her eyes. The skinny little girl had pale eyes and the wariness of a child who knew too much about the world and the terrible things the world does to people. Linn regarded his sister mistrustfully, through eyes heavy with his own misery: he and Shelly had twin boys who died of brain tumors, died in the same day, a statistical impossibility, or nearly so: nobody else in the county, nor in a two county radius, showed any signs of glioblastoma in the past decade. Linn had planned to ask his pale eyed Mama how to handle grief: his Mama was a widow-woman now, and Linn thought she might be able to help ease the hole in his heart where two active, laughing, curious, ornery boys used to live. A pale eyed little girl let go of her Mama’s hand and walked up to a black, curly furred dog well bigger than she, and regarded him with the honest curiosity of a child. The Bear Killer snuffed at her collar bone, then curled up around her and laid down. The child’s name was Marnie, and Marnie sat down and stuck her legs straight out and laid her arm across The Bear Killer’s shoulders and looked up and spoke the first word she’d said since her Mama beat on Willamina’s door. “Bup,” she said, with an emphatic nod, as if her saying it made it so. The adults withdrew to the living room to talk things over. Marnie Keller, four years old, a survivor of horrors and hells she’d survived in the drug dens of New York, let her normal hypervigilance fall from her like a dropped cloak. Surrounded by the warmth and safety of a creature the size of a young bear, Marnie relaxed for the first time in a very long time. Jacob was unusually quiet. He was about Marnie’s age: her birthday was Christmas, his was early June, and he’d grown up as the oldest son. Shelly wasn’t sure she wanted more children, and Linn wasn’t going to force her, but when she found herself pregnant, she realized this new life under her heart was not just growing, it was helping her heal. “Jacob,” Linn said at the supper table, “come up here and set beside me.” Jacob gave him an innocent look, then an uncertain look: he obediently came out of his chair, came up beside his Pa, worked himself up into the adult size chair. “Jacob,” Linn said, his voice quiet but serious, “I need your help.” Jacob nodded, his eyes wide, hands clasped on the tabletop, just like his Pa was sitting. Shelly covered her mouth to hide her smile, for looking at Jacob told her what Linn must’ve looked like at that age. “Jacob, you know your Mama is growin’ a filly.” Jacob knew about horses and fillies and how horses got big and gave birth, Jacob knew how bulls covered cows and sired young on them. It was an easy concept for him to equate a female child with a filly, and he understood his Mama was not going to birth a creature of hooves and whinny. “Jacob, we’re gettin’ another child to raise.” Jacob looked confused. “Are they on sale, Pa?” he asked innocently. Linn blinked, took a breath, and Shelly said “Lliiinnnnn,” in a warning voice. Linn blinked, turned a little to look at his wife, who was leaning back against the kitchen sink, watching the pair. “Oh now,” Linn protested, “they were on sale at the Mercantile –” Shelly raised an eyebrow and lowered her head. Linn turned to Jacob. “You probably wouldn’t believe that anyway.” Jacob shook his head solemnly – or as solemn as a four-year-old who knows his Pa is full of it. “Jacob” – Linn’s voice changed, it got serious, and Jacob shifted in his seat, the way little boys will – “we’re going to adopt a girl.” Jacob said “Okay,” as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “She’s your age,” Linn continued, “about your height. I’ll need your help to show her stuff.” Jacob nodded, then looked at his Mama and frowned. “Mama, aren’t you havin’ your baby?” he asked in a disappointed voice. “Of course I am,” Shelly laughed, surprised. “Oh.” Jacob looked back at his Pa, waited. “That’s the big news, Jacob. She’ll be here tonight. Your Mama fixed up the twins’ room for her.” Jacob considered this and nodded, then frowned and looked at his Ma. “Does this mean I have to do girl stuff?” Linn and Shelly both laughed, and Linn laid a careful, gentle hand over his son’s, not holding it, just covering it like a warm, fleshly igloo: “No, Jacob, we’ll have plenty of man stuff to do. Your Mama will handle the girl stuff.” “Okay.” Linn spread his hands. “That’s it.” Shelly lifted her chin and Linn saw her eyes go to the door. “Car,” she said quietly. Jacob slipped out of his chair, drew back against the wall, getting out of the way: it was not a fearful move, it was habit, ingrained in him since he started to walk. When Linn opened the door, The Bear Killer came pacing in, headed straight for Jacob, and something with big pale eyes, a blue-and-white check pattern dress and honey colored hair, ran in with him. Jacob giggled as The Bear Killer gave him a happy face washing, then he looked at Marnie. “Hi,” he said. “I’m s’posta show ya stuff.” Marnie and Jacob hugged one another like two magnets coming together, at least until The Bear Killer cold-nosed their faces and they came apart, giggling. Jacob looked at his Pa. “I’m s’posta show her stuff,” he said. “I’m showin’ her she’s my sits-ter!” The Bear Killer dropped his bottom to the floor and gave a quiet whuff! – as if to agree with Jacob’s decree. “We got horses an’ barn cats an’ a tractor,” Jacob said, “wanta see ‘em?” Two children joined hands and ran for the front door, a great, black, curly-furred Bear Killer hobby-horsing along behind them: three adults watched their departure, then turned and looked at one another. “Somehow,” Shelly murmured, “I don’t think this will be a problem after all.”

BIG MEDICINE Michael was young. Michael was lean. Michael was tall and getting taller: he was not yet close to looking his pale eyed Pa in the eye, but the day was approaching, and they both knew it. Michael was also puzzling over an idea. He and one of the Martian schoolboys were well up on the mountain when they dismounted, when they worked their quiet way to a hanging meadow, where they bellied down, where they waited. Schoolboys are notoriously impatient -- Michael knew this, he'd been one himself -- he reached over, laid his hand over the back of his younger companion's hand and winked. Slowly, carefully, he turned his head, looked toward the meadow. Michael was as curious and as interested in history as the rest of his family. He'd read of Sarah McKenna taking an elk with a hand-knapped, obsidian-tipped spear. He'd read of Willamina, slipping away and bellying down behind a little rise, peeking through grass and brush and watching elk file -- cautious, majestic, BIG! -- into the meadow. Michael read delighted, hand-written accounts of hearing their joints click as they walked, of seeing a restless and very gravid cow elk (he'd called one such a "doe elk" at the kitchen table, and knew from shared looks he'd just miscalled something!) -- he himself saw such a very pregnant Mama stop and turn into the sun, and with the sun shining longways on her swollen side, he saw movement of new life within her. Now he lay bellied down at the edge of that same meadow. His breathing was slow, controlled, directed down. The schoolboy that came with him had never seen his breath steam before: Michael gave him a slight smile and an approving wink as the boy pulled his shirt collar up and breathed into it to keep a drifting breath-cloud from betraying their position. Michael expected to either see a few elk -- not many -- come in from the far side of the meadow, if they were lucky he might see a bull -- he'd shown the Martian classes holovids of the inside of the Silver Jewel Saloon, and they were curious about that set of antlers over the bar. He'd had to side track and describe Charlie Macneil teaching Sarah Lynne McKenna about life and about death and about life again, with the help of obsidian and rawhide leather and a straight shaft of hand cut wood. Michael heard his stallion mutter. His eyes swung across the meadow -- no threat -- they swung to its right margin -- Movement -- He turned his head to get both eyes on the movement -- "It was big," the schoolboy said solemnly. He looked around the classroom, he looked at the class sitting cross legged on the floor in rows of semicircles before him. "Earth is really big," he said. "We were way up on the mountain and we thought a string of elk would come in and graze." He took a long breath, shivered it out, looked at the floor, then looked up again, his eyes just above his classmates' heads, seeing something a couple miles on the far side of the classroom's back wall. "Michael called it a bull elk," he said, and a hologram sizzled into life beside him: life-size, its rack nearly touched the high ceiling: it was alive, it looked around, blinking, then disappeared. "Michael put his hand on my back and said 'Stay here and don't move,' then he got up and ran for his horse." A sleepy-looking Appaloosa stallion appeared beside him, head down, hip shot, looking like he might pass out and fall over, at least until something happened: the stallion's head came up, he spun, ears up and forward -- his white tail slashed spotty flanks as he danced on steelshod forehooves, muttering as his ears laid back flat against his skull. Even without his trademark black suit, Michael was well known to them: it was Michael, in a faded brown Carhartt and blue jeans that took two running steps to his stallion, shucked a rifle from the scabbard. Michael's body lit up with living fire as the bull elk trotted toward them. Michael heard bulls bugle before, but from a distance. This one did not bugle, it SCREAMED. Michael planted a hand on the schoolboy's back -- "Stay here!" he said, his voice urgent, then he launched from the dirt and drove toward his stallion. The Appaloosa was shaking his head and muttering, clearly not liking this situation. Michael seized his rifle's wrist, pulled it free. It felt like a toothpick in his hands. Michael cranked a round into the chamber, took two deliberately aggressive steps toward a bull elk with his fur up and a rack wider than Michael was tall. "DAMN YOU BIG SON OF A BUCK, GET BACK!" Michael yelled, rage in his voice and a rifle in hand that felt like the famous .30-30 Winchester just might be as effective as a hard thrown rock against this Monster of the Mountains. The elk looked at Michael. Michael looked at the elk. I don't want to gut that thing out, he thought, I'll play hell packing the meat out -- Michael drove a round into the dirt just shy of the bull elk's forehooves. "GIT ON! GIT!" Whether it was the sting of dirt, the rifle's sudden blast, or the memory of incensed Daine women chasing a bull elk out of her table garden with a bresh broom, the bull decided maybe he'd actually turn around and go someplace else. Michael sat at his father's desk, frowning at the computer screen. He had loading books open in front of him, he'd drawn up charts and had columns of data carefully scribed on a yellow pad: his expression was serious, his industry undeniable. Linn lingered over a late coffee before sauntering into his study with an exaggerated casualness. He bent over Michael -- he didn't have to bend far -- looked over Michael's head and studied the glowing screen as he rested a fatherly hand on his son's shoulder. "Ballistics charts?" he asked quietly. "Yes, sir," Michael said, leaning back and taking a deep breath, then blowing it out. "Sir, I have not found that for which I search." Linn squeezed his son's shoulder, just a little, the pulled up a chair and sat. "Sir, I ... there was this really big elk ..." "Schlitz," Linn said quietly. Michael blinked, surprised. "Sir?" "The Schlitz Malt Liquor Bull." Michael shook his head. "Doesn't ring a bell." Linn laughed, shrugged. "I'm old. Never mind. Monster elk, biggest rack ever." "Yes, sir. Wider than me." "I've seen him." "He ... surprised me, sir." "Rack that size and a neck big enough to hold it up? That would surprise a man on a good day!" "I had one of the schoolboys up on the mountain. I was hopin' to show him some elk. This fella comes ..." Linn waited as he saw the memory in his son's eyes. "Sir," Michael said softly, "that was genuinely impressive!" "I'd reckon it was," Linn replied, his voice just as soft. "Sir, it come at us." "And?" "Sir, I fetched out my rifle." "Did it stop?" "Not until I put one into the dirt in front of it." Linn nodded thoughtfully. "And ...?" Michael swallowed, looked over at his father's gunrack, then looked at his father. "Sir, that Marlin rifle felt just mighty puny." "I've ... had things ... that made a rifle feel ... puny," Linn nodded slowly. "Sir, I could go for a .444 or a .45-70." Linn leaned forward, elbows on his knees: he drained the last of his coffee, set the mug on the floor, then thoughtfully sandpapered his palms together. "You could," he agreed. "Sir, I was looking at ... there's an AR platform that runs a .45-70 Rimless." Linn nodded again. "I don't want to go into the belted magnums, or up to a .458." "Your back?" "Yes, sir." Linn nodded, considered, looked to his gunrack. "If you like, we can try and fine one of those ARs for you to try on for size." "Yes, sir." "I can also put a mercury tube in the butt stock of my Marlin. I've already got a shotgun kick pad on it." "Yes, sir." "As I recall, you already try to pull a shotgun in two when you bring it to shoulder." "Yes, sir. It does help." Linn nodded again, looked at the evidence of his son's work. "You're trying to calculate felt recoil." "Yes, sir." "That is quite a bit of work you've gone to." He looked at his son, a smile tightening the corners of his eyes. "You're doing the right thing." "Sir?" "It's easiest to make design changes while it's still in the planning stage," Linn said quietly. "A buddy of mine told me their new firehouse was one inch too short to fit their new pumper, and it took an unholy amount of cash money to fix the problem. Since then, every department in the state takes a physical tape measure, chalk lines and levels, gets the exact height of their tallest apparatus, and then compares this to dimensions on the blueprints." Michael grinned. "Yes, sir." "I'll ask around for that AR. Lower bore axis and gas system might well reduce recoil." "My ... back ... hopes so, sir," Michael replied carefully. Linn chuckled, stood, looked at his son. "I used to complain about my poor old back, until you went through all you did," Linn said seriously. "At my worst I don't have a damn thing to complain about!" Michael wasn't sure quite how to reply. "Carry on. I'm headin' for bed." Michael watched his father ascend the stairs, then looked back at his work, realized that he, too, was about worn out. Michael cleared his work off his Pa's computer, gathered his charts and calculations, stacked them neatly in a dark-brown briefcase: he checked the back door, set the alarm, turned out the lights. An Iris opened and closed, and the house was quiet once again.

Okay, I'm an old softy, and this has been working on me for some time. This is what was on the memory stick the Sheriff handed his Chief Deputy. Yes there's a story behind the story but it involves family so 'nuff said.

FIRELANDS INTERNATIONAL CRASH PATCH AND POPCORN STAND A young man sat with four other passengers: men in suits, women in business pantsuits and fashionably large sunglasses. The private jet was compact, fast, a little noisy; it was built for moving a small number of people quickly, and so lacked the space, the storage of a passenger airliner. The passengers did not mind. They were all experienced travelers, they all packed the minimum necessary, or sent luggage on ahead by common carrier, or bought what they needed at destination. All but one. A young man sat with four other passengers, staring out the window, part of his mind marveling that the entire damned continent he'd seen so far was cut up, gridded off, that it was squares and boundaries and he was honestly surprised he could pick out round brown tanks, or round blue tanks, or blue rectangles -- sewage treatment plants, water treatment plants, swimming pools ... young eyes followed waterways, lingered on sparkling ponds, remembering the dry and desert country he'd left not long before. He'd taken nothing with him when he enlisted, reasoning that if he needed it, Uncle Sam would provide it; he brought little back with him -- one satchel -- and he brought back one, and only one, token from his time in a place he never, ever wanted to see again. His hand rose and pressed against a lump in his coat pocket, and he smiled a little. "We'll be landing at Firelands International Crash Patch and Popcorn Stand in ten minutes," the pilot called cheerfully: "they have clean restrooms and they usually have fresh coffee." The young man blinked, smiled a little as he remembered the last time he had coffee at the little airport cut high on the mountain. He'd been a child when a military cargo plane landed, unloaded something for the Sheriff -- he'd been a little boy back then, they'd opened a crate and a big black-and-tan dog came out, shook himself, and launched after the tennis ball the Sheriff was slamming hard against the pavement. He remembered an entire aircrew coming out to play ball with a dog the Sheriff hugged and laughed and belly rubbed, and he'd seen the dog later, when the Sheriff came to school to introduce the Malinois she'd served with and now adopted. He felt the jet bank a little, heard the gear hum and thump under him. "Paul," Sheriff Linn Keller asked, "could you pick up Alicia O'Farrell?" Paul looked at his lifelong friend and boss, confused. "Pick up as innnnn ..." Paul spread his hands in question, and Linn laughed quietly, handed him a memory stick. "Take her up to the airport. Just before you get there, play this." Paul raised an eyebrow, then shrugged. "Can do." The big, black-haired Navajo took two steps toward the door, stopped, turned, looked at Linn, understanding finally arriving. Sheriff and Chief Deputy shared a grin and spoke with one voice. "Hot Wheels." Barrents laughed quietly, shook the memory stick at the pale eyed lawman. "Got it!" Alicia heard the knock, her mother's voice, a man's voice, then: "Alicia?" Her mother sounded uncertain. Alicia skipped downstairs in sock feet, blue jeans and a sweatshirt. "Alicia ..." her mother said uncertainly, and Alicia stopped, her eyes widening uncomfortably at the sight of the broad-shouldered deputy in the doorway, his cover under one arm. "Nothing's gone wrong," Paul said in that gentle voice of his, and he spread his palms innocently as he said it, "but I need your help. Could you come with me, please." "I ... what's going on?" Alicia asked uncertainly, looking from Paul to her mother and back before stepping into her red-and-white sneakers and lacing them quickly. The jet descended smoothly, slowed quickly: a Corporal in uniform smiled a little, for the small jet kissed the earth easier than either of the commercial flights he'd endured to get this far. They taxied a short distance, the engines whistled down, as they always do, and the young Corporal saw the pilot pick up a clipboard and start a timer, ready to mark the turbine run-down time. A young woman with a pleasant expression opened the side door, lowered the stairs: the uniformed Corporal stood aside to let two of the women passengers disembark first, likely headed for the powder room. He stood, bent to get through the doorway, descended, took a long breath, closed his eyes. It smelled clean. He hadn't smelled clean for ... well, since he left here a few years before. His hand came up to grip the sling of a rifle that wasn't there as he turned, eyes busy, suddenly hard and suspicious again, listening, searching. He heard someone come down the few steps behind him, felt a presence beside him. The pilot stood with him, just stood for a minute and a half before he spoke. "It's part of you now," he said in a quiet voice. "I was the same when I came back to The World." The Corporal turned to him, masking the surprise he felt try to cross his face. Two men gave each other an understanding look, two men shook hands, held the clasp for a moment longer than may have been necessary. Barrents hit the PLAY button. A gravelly voice came from the speakers: he turned the volume up slightly as Alicia tilted her head and listened, then smiled. The Corporal reached into his pocket and brought out a shiny red Hot Wheels car. "My girl," he said softly, "sent me a care package every week. When I told her some of the guys never got anything from home, she'd pack extra. She sent a bunch of these one time" -- he laughed, and the pilot grinned -- "now picture this, a whole squad of hard-bitten Marines down on their hands and knees making dirt tracks and running cars and making vroom-vroom noises!" The pilot's smile was soft, the smile of a man who knew what it was to be far from home, to get things from home that meant more than the sender could ever possibly imagine. "Mom called him Johnny One-Note," she smiled, "but I always like this song." They listened as they pulled the final grade and came up beside the runway. "My father listened to this when he was overseas," Paul said quietly as the singer spun a story: "he always liked the idea that a girl would be watching for him when he came home, that she would breathe thanks for his safe return." He glanced over at her as they stopped. Alicia's eyes went from uncertain to big. Her mouth opened, then she turned and clawed at the door handle. Two men turned as a girl in a baggy sweatshirt and blue jeans streaked like a blond-haired arrow in red-and-white sneakers, ran to a young Corporal in uniform just turning away from the pilot. He held something the two men were examining, something small and shiny and red, something the pilot caught as the corporal turned and surged toward the running girl, the Hot Wheels car forgotten, dropped. Paul Barrents remembered his Pa telling him about how his Mama abandoned all propriety when she laid eyes on him, how she'd charged him and how the net effect was like a pair of trucks colliding: this wasn't quite that, but it did result in denim legs flying, two bodies locked in embrace, turning, and somewhere dimly heard, applause from the other passengers from the little jet. Paul was never sure whether it was coincidence or not, but he never forgot that, at the moment of collision, an artist he particularly liked sang "I thank Thee, Lord, for bringing Rob MacDunn back safely home!" Paul was at their wedding. The cake did not have a bride and a groom on top. It had a little, shiny, red, toy car that had traveled half a world. Twice.

OCTAVO Marnie Keller looked like a very proper librarian. Marnie Keller wore a tailored, emerald-green dress and a serious expression. Marnie Keller sat with her ankles crossed, her knees together, her lower legs angled to the side, the very image of beauty, of femininity, of propriety: in spite of her few years, she was a young woman who presented a genuine visual image of how a young woman should look, how she should sit, how she should present herself. Marnie Keller was also possessed of a remarkable focus. At the moment, her eyes were focused on a single sheet of paper with an intensity that suggested her pale eyes were going to burn a hole through it. She held the single sheet with curator's gloves; she had not fully unfolded the octavo, she'd opened it far enough to read it, and as she read, she frowned, her other hand floating to her chin, to her upper lip, the move of a thoughtful individual deep in consideration. The town librarian watched Marnie, and smiled: Willamina, just as well dressed, just as properly postured, seated at this selfsame desk in this very chair, looked at documents and materials with that same studious expression, that exact, concentrated focus. "Can I get you some oil?" the librarian called gently. Marnie blinked, lowered her gloved hand to the desk top, mentally swimming to the surface of the deep pool of contemplation in which she'd been immersed. "I'm sorry?" she asked, and the librarian laughed quietly. "Your mental gears were turning so quickly I thought you might want a drink of oil." Marnie laughed quietly, smiled -- the librarian felt the ache of an old friend gone, for Willamina had been a good friend, and her granddaughter here was her very image, especially that quiet smile. Especially that smile. "This just arrived from a shirt tail relative back in Cincinnati," Marnie explained. "It's a letter from our fire chief's wife, way back when." "Oh, how nice! -- which Chief?" "Sean Finnegan. The letter is from his wife Daisy." The librarian tilted her head, curious. "What does she say?" Marnie laughed. "She described how Old Pale Eyes was stirring trouble again!" Sheriff Linn Keller removed his cover as Daisy threw a washpan's payload over her back porch rail: she glared at the Sheriff, handed the pan to one of her barefoot young, bade him take it back inside and put a hand on her hip. She opened her mouth to scold the man, at least until she saw his mouth open, then she closed her jaw, not having come up with an appropriate insult for the man. "Daisy, might I counsel with you?" Sheriff Linn Keller asked. Daisy was not quite expecting that kind of a question. "Wha' wad ye want wi' a puir Irishwoman now?" she asked suspiciously, turning and walking toward the stairs. Linn paced over to the foot of the stairs, looked to where stones and planks waited, apparently a project mostly in the planning stage. He looked back. "Daisy, Sean is a strong and capable man." "Aye," Daisy replied carefully, "tha' he is." Linn took a long breath, looked back at the red-headed wife and mother, looked at grinning young Irishmen with big ears and here and there a missing tooth, peeking around the door frame's edge at him. Daisy saw the Sheriff's eyes shift, turned, shooed her young inside, drew the door to: immediately youthful curiosity swarmed to the nearest window, looked through wavy-glass panes, all red hair and bright blue eyes and healthy, apple-cheeked complexions. Linn took a step closer, lowered his voice. "Daisy," he said carefully, "Sean is many things and he does many things well, but he is not a carpenter." Daisy lifted her chin defensively and Linn saw the warning look in her eyes. He raised a forestalling palm. "He has also been a good friend for many years, and I would do him a kindness, but I wanted to ask your advice first." Daisy was a proud woman. Daisy was a fierce woman. Daisy was very much enamored with that big, blacksmith-muscled Irishman of a husband of hers, but Daisy was also a woman, and women are curious, and the Sheriff's careful indirectness piqued her curiosity. "My ... advice?" she asked skeptically. "Ye're th' Sheriff, an' ye would ask ... my advice?" This time Linn looked very directly at her -- almost defiantly so. "Daisy," he said, "Sean intends to put up a work shed and he intends to build onto the house. He can do this, yes, but I'll be honest, he's ..." Linn considered his words, choosing to tread carefully. "Sean is not a carpenter." Daisy lifted her chin, slowly, her jaw hardening. "Here's where I need your advice, Daisy. Was I to have the Daine boys come in and put up that shed, would the man take offense?" "Th' Daine boys." Linn nodded. "An' why would ye ha'e th' Daine boys come an' build my husband's shed?" she asked, her voice taking an edge. Linn's jaw took on its own stubborn thrust. "Because he is my friend," he said bluntly, "and I would do him a kindness." "An' who is payin' f'r this kindness?" Daisy asked, suspicion in her voice, uncertainty in her expression. "Me." Daisy blinked a few times, brought her hands in front, gathered her apron a little: she frowned, she took a step forward, another, she came down two of the four back porch steps and sat, slowly, eyes wide and unseeing, staring at the ground halfway between the bottom step and the Sheriff's boot toes. "You would do this?" she asked, her voice suddenly quiet. Linn nodded. Daisy blinked again, brought her knuckles to her lips, looked off to the side, then planted her elbows on her knees and dropped her forehead into her hands, the move of a tired woman. She looked up at the Sheriff, and her expression was entirely different now. Daisy looked exhausted. "I'd like that, Sheriff," she admitted. "What about Sean?" Linn asked quietly. Daisy rubbed her closed eyes, then looked back up at the Sheriff. "Sean told me a priest back in Cincinnati was gi'en a gift, unexpected-like, an' th' priest laughed an' said 'All donations cheerfully accepted!' " -- she nodded, slowly, the way a woman will when she is remembering something, then she looked back at the Sheriff. "He'd be pleased ye did this f'r him," she said softly, "an' so would I." Marnie Keller read the letter, written in the careful hand of a woman who seldom wrote letters. It was addressed to family back in Cincinnati, where she'd lived, where she'd met Sean, where she'd thought him dead, fallen from a riverboat and drowned, the place from whence she took her broken heart and headed West: the letter described a conversation about a kindness one man did for another, for no reason other than they were friends. Marnie let the letter close along its original crease -- she'd opened the folded sheet just enough to read its contents, but no more -- she slipped it back into the envelope in which it arrived, and placed it in a drawer, locked the drawer. She would have it carefully preserved for archival display, but not today. After Marnie and the librarian drove back into town, Marnie drove up Graveyard Hill and stopped in the family section of the Firelands cemetery. A beautiful daughter of the mountains gathered her skirts and knelt before a tombstone, traced gentle fingers over the laser engraved portrait of a woman in heels and a suit dress, a woman who looked out of Eternity with eyes that challenged the viewer. "Gammaw," she whispered, turning a fresh-cut rose in her fingers, "you'd like what I got in the mail today!"

COLOGNE Michael Keller lay flat on his back on a hardwood floor. His knees were drawn up, feet flat, eyes closed, as he decided whether he really wanted to swing his knees slowly to the right again. Victoria watched him, her face expressionless. "If it hurts," she finally suggested, "don't." Michael never opened his eyes. "Sis," he said, an edge to his voice, "that's actually good advice." Victoria, silent in a divided skirt and cowboy boots, glided over to her brother, knelt. "How can I help?" she asked quietly, hands clasped in her lap as she looked at her brother's grim face. Michael opened one eye. "How well do you know the Witch of Endor?" he asked, his voice tight. Victoria blinked, shook her head. "Ummm ... what?" "Never mind." Michael waved a go-away gesture. "No. You meant something." Michael took a breath, set his teeth together, then put his hands on his thighs, pushed down, carefully, stretching his spine. Victoria saw the grimace he tried to hide. "What about the Witch?" she prompted. "You asked if you could help," Michael gasped. "The only way ... the only thing ..." Victoria waited. "Time travel to keep us from riding toward that nervous sentry that fried us with that energy rifle." Victoria took in a quick, noisy breath through her nose, raised her head, then sighed it out and looked back down at Michael. "I'm afraid I'm not much help," she admitted. "Is there a position that doesn't hurt?" "It helps to stretch my spine like this. Knees bent takes the bend out of my L-spine." Victoria nodded, blinking. "No good deed, eh?" she asked, and Michael grimaced, then chuckled, looked at his twin sister. "Yeah." "You danced her well." Michael swallowed, nodded. "And I'm payin' for it." "You did her a kindness, Michael. That's something." Michael closed his eyes, twisted his pelvis experimentally, bared his teeth with an indrawn hiss. "I could always get you that new men's cologne," Victoria offered helpfully. "You know ... Eau de Pain." Michael nodded, tried to laugh. "Experience teaches fools," he rasped. "Do you want to be seen at the spinal --" Victoria's voice cut off as Michael rolled, carefully, onto his left side, then came up on all fours: he worked his knees ahead until he could get the balls of his feet on the deck. Victoria reached under his arm and across the chest. "Ready when you are," she said softly. Michael rocked back, balancing on the balls of his feet, then stood, carefully. "Thanks, Sis," he said carefully. Victoria waited, her young face serious. "Michael, I understand that's the first time that girl ever laughed in public." Michael nodded, his eyes closed. "I'll be all right in a day or two." Victoria planted one set of knuckles on her belt, started to shake her Mommy-finger at her twin brother, thought better of it and hugged him instead. "I know you're in pain," she whispered, "but I'm proud of you!" Shelly came through the door and got hit in the face with the smell of bacon and eggs and fresh baked biscuits. She'd slipped out of the firehouse after B shift took over, hoping she'd come home to breakfast, and she was not disappointed. Her husband was wiping off the white-enamel stove -- bacon grease was poured into its crock, the crock was cooling on the countertop, fried eggs and a pound of bacon steamed on their platters in the middle of the table. Shelly set down her warbag as something feminine, flannel and fast moving came skipping across the floor and seized her in the happy hug daughters reserve for their Mamas, and the table was soon populated by family, by breakfast: Angela showed up with a platter piled with hot, steaming, fragrant waffles, and happy conversation filled the morning kitchen as bacon and eggs, waffles and coffee filled the several bellies. Linn looked at his wife and Shelly hesitated, recognizing the Look. She lowered her fork, raised an eyebrow. "Mr. Keller," she said, "what happened?" Linn cut through fried egg and the underlying waffle with an affected casualness. "Your youngest son," he said conversationally, which Shelly interrupted with "MY son?" Linn looked up, laid down his fork. "Mrs. Keller," he said quietly, "Michael did something very good, and a couple from another star system came to thank me for it." Angela remembered Michael's pain, and how well he wasn't hiding it, but said nothing: it was important for her Mama to know her young were seen as contributing in a positive way. Marnie exchanged a knowing look with her younger sister, but as she was delighting in wearing something other than her Ambassador's gown, and with breakfast with family, she chose only to slide a square box across the table to Angela. Curious, Angela reached for the box, brought it over, looked at the tag, blinked. "For Michael?" she asked, then, "You didn't!" Marnie gave her a wide-eyed look of utter innocence, which of course meant that yes, she did. Linn looked at his daughters but said nothing. Shelly looked at her daughters and looked at her husband, but said nothing. When Michael received the box that evening right before supper, he sat down on his Pa's big overstuffed couch, untied the ribbon bow and opened the box. He lifted the cardboard lid, laid it aside, reached in, extracted a fancy bottle bearing a hand-lettered tag. "Men's cologne," he murmured. His grin was immediate as he read the handwritten tag, ribbon tied to the bottle's neck. His grin was immediate, a little rueful, but he had to laugh as he read the tag aloud: "Eau de Pain!"

THANK YOU Sheriff Linn Keller smiled quietly as the Iris split reality like a zipper, three feet to the right of the gravid mare he was grooming. He ran his hand down the mare's foreleg, raising her forehoof and brushing her fetlocks, his moves quick, practiced: the mare leaned her head over his shoulder, blowing hot, moist breath against his ear and his neck. Had he been working, had he been sweating, she'd have happily tasted saltwater perspiration, which would have brought a laugh from the man: horses had done that with him since earliest boyhood, and his pale eyed Mama brought a bent wrist to her mouth the first time she heard his young laughter when she saw, and heard, this happen, for the very first time. Now he was a man grown, a man who found solace and relaxation with his horses, a man whose hands could be both firm and gentle at the same time. He straightened, laid an arm over the mare's neck: she dropped her forehoof and stood almost daintily, regarding the visitors with black and intelligent eyes. Introductions were made: Ambassador Marnie Keller occasionally brought visitors, and for some odd reason, she thought her pale eyed Daddy should receive this particular couple. The woman wore a long skirt, her gloved hand around her husband's arm: she dipped her knees, blushing, as her husband gravely removed his Low Topper, as the Sheriff nodded in reply. "Mrs. Henderson," Linn said gently, "my daughter tells me you have a matter you wish to discuss." Husband and wife looked at one another, then back to the Sheriff. "Indeed we have," Mrs. Henderson said tartly -- Linn swung his eyes to his daughter, who was doing her level best to look utterly innocent, which told the Sheriff she had some instigating hand in today's meeting. Linn waited. "It ... concerns your son, Michael." She saw the change in the Sheriff's face: his expression did not change, but somehow he went from pleasantly neutral to serious in a tenth of a second or less, and Mrs. Henderson had the distinct feeling that an invisible wall just surged up between them. "Michael," the Sheriff echoed. "Sheriff ..." Mrs. Henderson frowned, bit her bottom lip, looked at her husband. "Our daughter," Mr. Henderson said after a moment, "has a withered leg." "Go on." "She usually sits ... at gatherings, she does not ... mingle." Linn nodded, once, gravely. "It was a reception, there was dancing, and your son saw our daughter sitting, suddenly alone. "He went over to her and asked her if he may have this dance." Mrs. Henderson swallowed, leaned against her husband. Linn waited. Mr. Henderson waited several moments, until the silence grew long and awkward. "He told our Denise that all she had to do was stand, that he'd dance for the both of them." "And?" "And ... he had her around the waist ..." Mr. Henderson took a long breath. "She stood and he had her around the waist." "You have to understand, she wears woman's skirts to hide her leg," Mrs. Henderson interjected. Mr. Henderson nodded. "He had her around the waist and he danced her around the floor as if she were ... as if she were whole." Linn's left eyebrow raised a little, just the way the Ambassador's had when she was told this same thing. "Her skirt ... hid her ... she ..." Mr. Henderson looked away, blinked a few times, harrumphed gently, looked back, his expression and his voice both soft. "Sheriff, I have never seen Denise ... laugh ... in public before." Mr. Henderson swallowed, looked at his wife again and seemed to come to some decision. "Sir, your son is a gentleman of the first water. He could only have learned that from his father." Mr. Henderson stepped close, thrust out his hand: the Sheriff took it, and two men looked into one another's eyes. "Thank you for being the gentleman you've taught your son to be."