Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

JOURNEY "I can hear you thinking," Linn said gently. Marnie blinked, her train of thought disappearing in a little puff of vapor: she turned, barn fork in hand, smiling a little, then laughed. "I'm sorry," she said gently. "I should've drunk some ninety weight to keep my mental gears quiet!" "I do the same thing," Linn said in a soft voice. "Is all well, darlin'?" Marnie parked the fork -- she'd been mucking out stalls, she'd gotten them scraped out, clean, hosed, and not for the first time, she considered the good work of previous horsemen who'd built the barn tight, windproof against winter's cold fingers, who'd dug it into the hillside and kept a slope for drainage, and how subsequent generations plumbed in water, then boxed this in to keep it from freezing: she picked up a hose, turned the valve, hosed off her muck boots. Marnie coiled the hose neatly, shut off the valve, relieved the pressure, closed the insulated door: she turned to her Daddy, her head tilted curiously. "Daddy," she said, "where's Jacob?" "He'll be home directly." "Assignment." "Nnnnooo," Linn said slowly. "At least ... not exactly." Marnie looked around: she'd spread fresh straw, she'd grained the mares, she'd swept up afterward, she was warm with exertion: she reached for her Carhartt, spun it around her shoulders, knowing if she put on her coat now, she'd preserve that exertional body heat. Father and daughter spread a double thickness of saddle blankets on a hay bale, sat side by side, hard up against one another -- Marnie found this reassuring, and it helped keep her warm. Besides, she liked being Daddy's girl, even if she wasn't the youngest. Linn hugged his daughter to him. "Jacob is on funeral detail," he said quietly. "Oh, no," Marnie murmured, looking at her Daddy with wide and serious eyes. "Nobody we know," Linn said reassuringly, "and not a line of duty death." Marnie nodded, tilted her head again, a nonverbal prompt for her Daddy to expand on the idea. Jacob Keller cultivated his father's talent for turning invisible -- that is, if a handsome young man of just over six feet, wearing a well fitted, Western cut suit, with a Stetson correctly tucked under his arm, can ever be invisible: he looked around, considering how many men chose to attend a funeral in ... well, casual attire. He'd discussed such matters with their Parson, and he'd told Reverend John Burnette that he was of the opinion that dressing up for Sunday showed due respect for the Almighty, just like dressing up for a wedding, told the newly wed couple that they were worth the trouble of getting dressed up, they were worth the trouble to journey to the church to witness the service. Reverend John nodded and smiled a little, and said he was of the same opinion, but styles had grown casual over the years: Jacob's pale eyes were busy, his mind mentally cataloging potential trouble spots, gauging voice tones: he'd been called, as a deputy, to more funerals than one, when passions overrode good sense. Here, though, he saw no such tension. It was a funeral; it followed the usual service; when Jacob went past the open box, he reached in and placed a small telegraph key beside the dead man's hand. "You remember you and Jacob set poles for his long wire antenna." "I remember." "Jacob would sit up late with a set of headphones, his fingers running a telegraph key." Marnie nodded. Linn smiled a little, remembering Jacob's description. "He told me once he can talk to the other side of the world on less power than it takes to light the bulb in our refrigerator." Marnie nodded. "He said one of his regular correspondents passed away, and I asked if he wished to attend the funeral." Marnie's head raised, slowly, then lowered: that explained his absence. "He'll be back right here directly." Marnie smiled: her Daddy was prone to interesting turns of phrase, and she'd giggled when he described an inundating rain as "sounding like 'twas pouring dried peas on a rawhide" -- Marnie never forgot the phrase, but used it rarely herself: she preferred to listen to her Daddy, hoping something inherited from his native Appalachian Mama would fall unexpectedly from between his teeth. Marnie looked up from her homework, waved her brother in. Jacob leaned into his sister’s room, grinning, held up three sheets of paper. “Thank you,” he said: Marnie dropped her pencil on the open book, slid her chair back, surged from her chair and skipped happily across the floor. Jacob opened the door the rest of the way to receive his sister’s happy hug. If one were there to view the scene, one would see the sheets he held, were pencil drawings, skillfully rendered indeed: they showed Jacob on the tractor, turned to look back at three poles, chain-bundled and being dragged behind; another, of Jacob, running the three-point-mounted, tractor-powered auger, digging postholes: other sketches, arranged in a circle, showed Jacob stretching wire, connecting a hand-held instrument of some kind, connecting wires to a telegraph key: in the center, Jacob, hunched over a little, frowning in concentration, fingers light on the paddles of an antique Vibroplex bug, earphones in place, eyes distant. He looked at his Sis, smiled. “I’m glad you’re back,” Marnie murmured. “How was the funeral?” Jacob shrugged. “That good.” “Never met the man.” “Why’d you go?” “We talked every night on forty meters.” “Ham radio.” “CW.” “Morse code?” Jacob nodded, his jaw sliding out a little. “I’d heard of the man but never knew he’s the one I’d been talking to.” “Oh?” Jacob nodded, suddenly solemn. “He was Vietnam. Proximity blast, I think a satchel charge. Left him deaf and blind. He had an old set of worn out headphones. He couldn’t hear a thing but he could feel the vibrations, and that’s how he communicated. Morse code was his … well, it’s all he had.” Marnie’s eyes were big and serious. “I used to tell him about riding Apple-horse, he’d ask the colors and how cold the wind was in my face when I rode. He asked me to describe the inside of the barn and the back pasture, I told him about the colts and how they’d run and romp and play tag and how Pa’s Outlaw-horse liked to steal the bandanna out of my hip pocket.” Marnie’s smile was soft as his words brought up those very memories. “His sister came up to me at the funeral and thanked me for those late night conversations. She said she used a computer program to be able to read Morse code, and he’d tell her how much talking with me meant.” Marnie patted her brother’s chest with a flat hand. “Jacob,” she whispered, her expression serious, “never doubt the good that you do.” Jacob looked at the sheets he held, looked back at his Sis. “I could tell you the same thing.”

This does not consider those clocks with a second hour hand. One to point to local time. The other to point to Zulu. I'm sorry, UTC.

CONSTIPATED Michael and Victoria sat side-by-side on the hook rug, legs crossed, listening to their Daddy read from their Gammaw's account of her first years in Firelands. Victoria frowned, looked at her seven year old twin brother. The two looks remarkably alike, for fraternal twins: Victoria took one of her ribbon-tied braids, chewed thoughtfully on its end, looked at her Daddy with big innocent eyes and asked, "Daddy, what's mant-sti-pated?" "It means constipated," Michael hoarse-whispered. "Dad-deee!" Victoria complained in a distressed-little-girl's voice. Linn opened the center drawer of his desk, pulled out a pair of spectacles, slid them on his face: he ran them halfway down his nose, then leaned over his chair and looked over top of them at his son. "Sorry," Michael mumbled. "Dunno what it means." Linn removed the ancient set of Uncle Pete's spectacles from his face, replaced them in the drawer where they'd lived for at least half a century. "It means," he said gently, looking at Victoria the way a father will look at his youngest daughter, "that your Gammaw Willamina became an adult in the eyes of the law." "You can do that?" Victoria breathed, and Linn nodded solemnly. "Yep," he said in a deep, reassuring Daddy-voice. "Butbutbut," Victoria stuttered, and Michael mocked "Butbutbutbutbutbut" -- while parading around in a circle, like an orbiting motorboat. Linn lowered his head, glared over a nonexistent set of spectacles at his grinning, unrepentant little boy, who stopped and reached behind him to turn a nonexistent key: "Brrrr," and his pretend outboard purred to a stop. "Your Gammaw was seventeen years old," Linn explained, and Michael interrupted: "I thought you had to be twennyone!" Linn rolled his wrist, dropped a finger at him: "Twenty-one is the legal Age of Majority, the Age of Adulthood," he agreed. "It's possible for a minor to be emancipated, given special circumstances." "What kind of cir-cump-stantces?" Victoria asked carefully. "Well, in your Mama's case," Linn said, "she came out here to live with Uncle Pete and Aunt Mary." "Howcomwhy'd she do that?" Michael blurted, running his words together the way an excited little boy will when he's trying to keep up with his quick-running thoughts. "Daddeee, howcum Gammaw an' Marnie looks alike?" "Howcum you an' Jacob look alike?" Linn raised his palms, stopping the sudden surge of youthful interrogation. "Stand up, the both of you." Brother and sister stood. Linn squatted, ran an arm around the back of his daughter's bare thighs, around the back of his son's denim-sheathed thighs: he stood easily, two giggling children happily gripping his muscled upper arm as he packed them both upstairs. Linn eased his bedroom door open with the side of his sock foot, packed the two inside this nocturnal sanctum, squatted again, released. "Now. Michael, you stand in front of me and face the mirror." Michael slid in front of his long tall Pa, looked at Linn's image towering behind him in the reflection. "Victoria, stand here beside me and look in the mirror at Michael and I." Victoria sidled up beside her Daddy's leg, looked in the mirror. "Now. Victoria, do Michael and I look alike?" Michael and Victoria both looked at the reflection, both looked at their Daddy's reflected face. Both children shook their heads. "Trade places now." Two children of very similar height switched spots. "Michael, do Victoria and I look alike?" Two sets of solemn young eyes regarded their long tall Daddy. "No, sir," Michael said. Linn squatted again: he gathered his twins into his arms again, turned sideways to get through the bedroom door, squatted and set them down. He picked up Michael, laid him belly down on the bannister, released: Michael, ankles crossed behind him, feet hooked over polished railing, slid down until he hit the end-post, bent legs taking up the impact: Victoria shook her head when Linn opened his hands toward her. "No thank you Daddy," she said, and Linn smiled: his little girl preferred to walk downstairs, holding her Daddy's arm: she practiced this with the mincing step, the nose in the air of a Princess of the Blood. Michael swarmed off the bannister, got his feet under him, waited until father and daughter were at the bottom step before hissing "Show-off!" Victoria turned her head, stuck out her tongue. Linn went over to his desk, opened a deep bottom drawer, pulled out a photo album: he crossed his legs and sat, in that order, and his twins piled up on either side of him. "Here," Linn said, opening the album to a full page sized portrait, "is your Gammaw. She made that gown. And this" -- he turned the page -- "is Marnie." "It is?" "Yep. See how much they look alike?" Linn turned back two pages, revealed another full-page-sized portrait. "And this is Sarah Lynne McKenna." Linn paged back and forth between the three photographs. "Wow," Michael breathed. "Your Gammaw made this gown," Linn said, "she made it off Sarah's portrait, and this very gown" -- he tapped the picture with a nail-trimmed finger -- "is in the Museum. This one" -- he turned the page -- "Marnie made, using the museum gown, your Gammaw's gown and the photograph, all three." Michael looked at his Pa and intoned solemnly, "She's ver-ry very-ry pretty." "Of course she is," Linn winked. "Why do you think I married your Ma?" "Daddy howcum I don't look like GammawnMarnie?" Angela blurted in a distressed voice. Linn smiled at his little girl's discomfiture. "Darlin', you remember when you stood in front of me and look in attair mirror?" Victoria nodded sadly. "Who did you see in that mirror?" "Us." "If I'd stepped to the side and left you there, who would you have seen?" "Me." "Do you know who you look like?" Victoria looked at her Daddy with big innocent eyes and shook her head. Linn knelt and touched his little girl, very gently, on the tip of her nose. "You look very much like yourself, Princess," he said, "and I think that is a very good thing."

MR. SMITH, I PRESUME Willamina Keller sat demurely in the back seat of a taxi, looking out the window, considering what was about to happen. She was dressed for the occasion. Her suit dress was entirely handmade; she wore nylons and heels, her hair was carefully styled, she wore no makeup -- frankly, she needed none -- she carried a fashionable little clutch purse, but its contents were entirely disposable: vital content that might otherwise be stowed in the clutch, rode instead in concealed pockets about her suit coat. She thanked the driver after they arrived, paid him and tipped him, then cocked her head and asked, "What's the easiest way to get to the City?" He grinned, looked at his gas gauge. "Me," he admitted. "I'll wait." Willamina smiled. "Thank you. This should not take long at all." The driver woke from his drowse as the back door opened and someone got in. He looked in the rearview. His pretty young passenger looked at him with pale eyes. "Special mission accomplished," she said crisply, leaned forward: he took the folded slip she handed him, unfolded it, nodded. "Okay," he said. "I can find the place." The taxi idled patiently in front of the blacksmith shop. It was on the outskirts of the City; the neighborhood was not what it once was -- nothing was, anymore -- but the driver felt no need to lock his doors. He watched as a pretty young woman (with really, really nice legs!) looked around, then went down beside the blacksmith shop, out of sight: the driver heard the rhythmic ring of hot metal being hammered, and in his imagination, he fancied an Old West smithy, with a sweating, muscled giant of a man, addressing a glowing-red horseshoe with a short-handled sledgehammer. Seventeen-year-old Willamina Keller, a thick manila envelope clamped under one arm, stood back a little from the anvil, from the ebony-skinned, hard-muscled giant addressing an ornately-curled gate hinge with a fairly small hammer: he held his work with an ancient, pitted set of tongs, thrust it into a sawed-off water barrel, looked at Willamina through the rising cloud of steam. "Mr. Smith, I presume," Willamina said crisply. "I didn't do it," he said, "an' if them papers is for me --" "They're not. I need your help." Black Smith sloshed his work around in the water, laid it up on the anvil, frowned and looked at Willamina more closely, thrusting his head forward like a nearsighted bear. She saw the frown tighten his forehead, but she saw a puzzle in his eyes. "You ... ain't ... Miz Sarah," he said slowly. Willamina laughed, shook her head. "No," she said, shoving out her hand. "Willamina Keller. I understand you do custom work." Black Smith shook his head. "Damned if you ain't ..." Willamina tilted her head a little to the side, smiled gently, then her head came up straight and the shutters behind her eyes dropped as he turned and boomed, "MADDIE!" A stout woman came bustling out at his summons: she came up to his shirt pocket, she was stout and motherly, she looked at the blacksmith and at Willamina, and Willamina saw the woman's eyes grow wide, white and shocked in her flawless brown face. "Now don't she look like what Great-Granddad said!" Maddie clapped a hand to her mouth and gave a little squeak. "Miz Sarah!" she mumbled into her cupped palm. "Do ... I have a twin?" Willamina asked cautiously. "Maddie, go get the scrapbook!" Maddie turned, almost ran back into the house. "You sure you're not Miz Sarah." Willamina shook her head slowly. Maddie came back out with a scrapbook -- from its battered corners, from the wear at the hinge and the faded cover, Willamina could tell the artifact had been handled often, and for some long time. Black Smith took a shop rag, wiped off a clean place on a work table. "You might want to see this." Willamina seized the bridle, yelled "WHOA!" The horse didn't whoa. Seventeen-year-old Willamina Keller, dressed for an appointment with an attorney, bent double as the horse reared, as she was hauled off the ground: her heels pointed straight up, her skirt fell open and she was probably giving the world at large a free show, but she didn't care. Right now she was holding onto something that outweighed her ten times over, something that was far stronger than she, something that could cause her great harm, something that was not willing to listen when she whoa'd at it! Willamina felt herself coming down, and she reacted by instinct. Somehow -- somehow! -- she drove her feet flat against the hard ground, pushed, twisted: she had no idea how, but she slung herself back skyward, using the pitching horse's efforts to her advantage -- she fell a-straddle of the horse -- she seized the other cheek strap, locked her legs around as much of his barrel as she could, she pulled hard and screamed, her lips but inches from the laid-back ears, "DAMMIT, I SAID WHOA!" Willamina Keller, lean and wiry, seventeen years old and feeling like she'd just grabbed hold of a Texas twister, yanked hard, intending to pull the horse's jaw back alongside its neck. It didn't work. What did work, was her cheerleading practice, the acrobatics she'd learned, that she'd programmed into muscle memory. Black Smith, his wife, four children of his own and two from the neighborhood, watched as Willamina released the bridle, tucked, tumbled, stuck the landing flawlessly -- in three inch heels -- she thrust her arms triumphantly upward and shouted "YESSS!" -- and the horse Black Smith had been trying to shoe, paced back and forth, blowing, throwing its head. A grinning little boy ran up, thrust a cellophane wrapped peppermint into Willamina's hand. "Here," he blurted, "he likes these!" -- and stepped back as Willamina squared off with the restless chestnut, as she unwrapped the crinkly cellophane, as the chestnut came head-bobbing over, cautious, suspicious. Willamina fearlessly rubbed his neck, caressed him under his chin, as he rubberlipped the treat from her flat palm. Maddie hugged her husband's hard-muscled arm, looked up at him, delighted. "Grandaddy said she'd come back!" "Damn if she didn't." The scrapbook lay open, forgotten, where they'd looked at several articles cut from newspapers -- they were yellow with age, fragile, preserved in clear plastic sleeves -- articles describing The Black Agent, articles showing a singer in a feathered mask on stage at their fine Opera House -- and a letter, in handwriting Willamina was honestly surprised to see, for the handwriting bore a truly remarkable resemblance to her own script. Just before the horse shoved Black Smith aside, just before Willamina ran to the man's aid and was hoist suddenly skyward, she made a mental note to buy a set of dip quills, to see if she couldn't improve her handwriting to the absoltuely beautiful standard she saw on the two letters on that last open page. She was especially delighted with the signature -- an ornate, capital S, with graceful curlicues and loopy zigzags under it. She'd never heard the name Sarah Lynne McKenna before, but something told her she wanted to know more. Willamina dedicated an entire day to her efforts. She'd not gone to school that day; instead, the taxi let her out at the schoolhouse, and waited while she went inside. When she came out, her gait was brisk, her carriage erect and confident: she'd gone in as a student, and she came out as an adult, for she'd requested a formal meeting, in which she'd presented Principal, Superintendent and President of the Board, their copies of her legal emancipation. That evening, when she finally got home, she had the taxi stop at the end of the driveway: she got out, got the mail from the big rural box: she got back in and they idled up the driveway. Willamina got out, went to the open driver's window, paid the man well for his day's work, and thanked him for his patience: he grinned and said "Anytime, little lady," and Willamina climbed the steps, stopped and looked at her Uncle Pete, just come in from mucking the barn. Willamina placed her envelope and the mail on a handy chair, tilted her head, looked at Uncle Pete, blinked rapidly. "Uncle Pete," she asked hesitantly, "can I still be your little girl?" Uncle Pete hugged her and laid his cheek over on top of her head as she seized him, almost desperately, like a drowning man will seize a float. "Darlin'," he rumbled reassuringly, "you'll always be m' little girl!"

Now by the Prophet's beard, Reaper miniatures are her favorite! This is perfect, an Occasion is upcoming on the calendar, and that'll be the very thing! Many thanks! Subdeacon, I rejoiced at your wisdom: Just think, Monday is the best day of the week because it's farthest from the next Monday! ... until I realized that, with my typical luck, the rest of your incisive observation, We all know that Wednesday is called "Hump Day" because everything is humped. ... is in all probability, spot-on! I know my luck! We were supposed to be covered in a crystal layer of icy Magic Shell this morning ... no sign of it as of 6 am ... I am wondering if this means Nature is winding up a Sunday punch that just hasn't arrived yet ...

My beautiful bride was tired and went in for a nap. As it was crowding noontime, she said I should get whatever I wanted for lunch. Shrimp basket sounded good. Off to Wellington to our south, to the ATM to withdraw some shekels. Tire went down on me while on the road, aired it up with the little cigarette lighter compressor, right there in the bank parking lot. Got home, finished bringing the offending tire up to working pressure with the 110 volt compressor in my garage, went over to the pub, sat down and had a shrimp basket and waffle fries. Came out and found the tire was not just flat, it was clear down on the rim. Parked on blacktop, parked on the level, if I aired it up again and took it home to change for the spare, I'd be changing a tire on a sloped driveway ... no, better handle it here, on the level. I went ahead and changed the tire, used the aluminized windshield sun shield as a hillbilly creeper so I wouldn't get wet and filthy when I set the jack under the axle. Took the tire to the dealership -- I have all my work done at the dealership -- tire had to be replaced, which explains any howls of financial agony you may've heard shivering on the chilly and damp wind this morning: it run me twice what I expected. Got home and pulled the property tax bill out of the mailbox. More financial howling, along with wailing and gnashing of teeth. No rending of garments. Still too chilly for that. No rending of garments until the temperature is above my age. Looked at my driveway with a grim satisfaction -- it took some effort, but a few days of persistent shoveling, snow blowing and profanity, and the concrete is free of snow and ice ... and then the phone went beep, weather alert, we're supposed to have Magic Shell ice tonight. So much for my nice clean driveway. I get inside and don't realize my waffle stomper soles were tracking ice into the house. The drowsy wife came padding out to get a drink of water, she stepped in fresh ice melt and came to full wakefulness, which explains the higher pitched yelp, as opposed to my own lower-frequency but just as heartfelt, financially related sounds of distress and agony. Since she was now at full wakefulnes, she sat down at the table and proceeded to touch up some modeling scenery pieces. She shifted her chair, she bumped a stacked plastic set of pantry shelves and dumped our total accumulation of pantry goods to the floor, knocked over the trash can and spilled a bottle of paint. (Her luck is better than mine. The bottle was nearly dry, one drop escaped to hit the floor, and was intercepted by a box of something called Quinoa) Anyway -- Considering all the lovely happenings this day, my wife and I concluded that yes, this is indeed, a MONDAY!

My wife wished most sincerely she'd had a Roo Bar on our little Nissan pickup, some years ago. The deer she hit, came out in second place. Unfortunately, so did our little Nissan pickup!

I'm not far from Rye, and his report is correct. Sunny and warm. I took the electric leaf blower out and cleared the driveway from last night's light, fluffy accumulation -- I'm doing my part to promote global warming -- the more concrete I strip bare, the more sun can soak into it and turn it into heat!

ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN Chief of Police Will Keller eased his white Crown Vic cruiser down the recently plowed driveway. The sewage treatment plant was technically in town, though removed from the town proper, on the sound engineering principle that Everything Runs Downhill, especially the second hand political speeches which municipal treatment facilities specialize in processing. He slowed as he approached the wide-open, chain-link gates. A cloud of something snowy and rather noisy was advancing toward the gate: occasionally a half-seen figure could be glimpsed, but the sun was out and glare alone was hindering visibility: it wasn't until the operator turned, not until the breeze-borne cloud of sparkle and glare drifted a little away, that Will saw it was the sewer plant's operator, wearing a backpack leaf blower, using the hand held wand to blow snow away from where it wasn't wanted. Will considered this and nodded. Shoveling that much white stuff would be more work; this wagging of a plastic air blast nozzle did the job faster and more completely, and besides, it was probably more fun -- or at least less drudgery -- than employing the Hillbilly Dragline. Will could call it that. He and his twin sister Willamina originated from Appalachian Ohio, and more times than one, both had been called a damned hillbilly -- which gained the speaker either a good laugh in return, or a punch in the gut, depending on the situation. Will waited until a larger area was blown free of snow before easing into the fence enclosure; the snowy, sparkle-hooded, melt-beaded-goggled figure raised a glove, a finger with it -- Give me a minute -- he blew out a turnaround area, backed away, returned to what he'd just cleared, gusting the fine return-flakes that rode back in his wake. Will eased in, turned around, pressed the switch, his window hummed down: the leaf blower gratefully accepted the sedative of the kill switch, and Grant came over, hoisted his goggles. "I'm tryin' to think of a good smart remark," Will admitted, "but the mind just went blank." "What, like I'm the Abominable Snowman or something?" Grant laughed. "That, or I didn't think you wore white coveralls." Grant turned, swatted his belly a few times, revealing Carhartt brown: "I'm wearin' my insulateds today, but it's warm enough I'm ready to burn up!" "Yeah, if it's not below zero, those get warm in a hurry," Will agreed. "They feel good if I'm tryin' to waylay meat for the pot." "Oh, they do that, I'll grant you!" "What brings you down here to my foundry?" Will laughed. "I saw a big snow cloud and heard a two cycle engine and I couldn't figure what in the Sam Hill you were doin', so curiosity got the better of me!" Grant turned, looked at the stretch of bare concrete. "It's cold enough and the sun hadn't yet hit the Corn Crete to warm it, I figured I'd just leaf blower it off rather'n hurt my back shovein'." "Spare your back," Will agreed. "Voice of experience!" "That's what your sister told me," Grant grinned. "I can offer you hot coffee, if you don't mind instant." Will reached over, picked up a faded, dented metal thermos: "Still half full, but thank you anyway!" "Other'n that," Grant said, "can't think of a thing. If I tell you anything else I'd have to lie to you!" They both laughed; it was a standing joke between them, that one or the other laid awake all night to tell the other a big lie, but their mind went blank and couldn't come up with a single thing. Grant stepped back, waved; Will waved back, eased the Crown Vic the rest of the way around, headed out the gate, chuckling. "Abominable Snowman," he muttered, and as he headed back down the long, plowed-open drive, he realized he was still grinning, and in a considerably better mood than when he'd arrived.

Sounds like the Eastern whitetail around here!

Much good wisdom here. A fine tribute to someone who improved his world!

DAMN STRAIGHT!!!

THE BUILT IN HEATER Deputy Sheriff Angela Keller swiped irritably at her goggles, wiping blown snow from the lens: she eased the snowmobile to a stop, looked around. She pulled a glove free, unzipped a pocket, brought out the little square speaker-mic on its curly cord. "Dispatch, Angel One. I'm downhill from Hatfield's cabin, nothing in sight." "Roger your location, Angel One. Proceed as discussed." "Roger that." Angela thrust the black plastic speaker-mic back in the pocket, drew the zipper across: she looked over her shoulder, at the oversized infant carrier that started out life as an accessory for a bicycle. "You okay back there?" she called. Something huge and black raised a massive head, looked out at her, laid back down. Angela smiled behind her quilted snow mask, twisted the throttle: she knew this terrain, and she knew where to look. She didn't have to go far. Sharon's head came up as she heard the repeater kick in. "Dispatch, Angel One." "Dispatch, go." "I found a boot." Sharon stopped, curved fingers poised over the transmit bar: she looked over at the Sheriff, who was bent over a table, studying the map he'd weighted with coffee mugs and a sheathed knife to keep it from rolling up again. Linn opened his mouth, but closed it when he heard his daughter's voice. "There's a foot in the boot," they heard, "and a little boy bolted to the top end of the foot!" Angela Keller unzipped the child carrier. The Bear Killer gathered himself to leap out and join her. "Stay," Angela commanded in a quiet voice as she brushed snow off the chilled, stuporous little boy: he was dressed for the weather, but he'd gone headfirst off the side of the hill, apparently missing the dropoff he used to run along in warm weather. Angela stripped off his coat, brushed snow from his drawers with quick strokes of her mittened hands: she snapped the blanket open, laid it over the seat -- "Bear Killer, stay," she said softly, and The Bear Killer, interested, curious, watched as she pulled off the child's boots, then a mitten: she gripped his foot, frowned -- wet and cold, she thought -- she dunked him down into the blanket lined cocoon, wrapped him part way. "Bear Killer," she said, "lay on him." The Bear Killer was no stranger to being used as a pillow, a backrest, a cuddle buddy for the Keller young: Angela had used The Bear Killer in this same manner with her youngest siblings, in the back seat of her Daddy's Jeep: she knew that her best bet was to get back to where she could get this little fellow into a warm bath, where she could pull a hospital around her like she'd pull the flaps of a welcoming, sheltering tent together once safely inside, out of the rain and where she could get this little fellow warmed back up. His sock feet, wet though they be, would warm quickly in proximity to the great mountain Mastiff. "Dispatch, Angel One." "Go, Angel One." "There's no way the squad can make it up here. We're going direct for ER." "Roger that, Angel One." Angela zipped the cover shut -- a little air would circulate, but not enough to lose the heat the two of them would generate -- she threw a leg over the padded seat, cracked the throttle on her snowmobile, scooted downhill to where she remembered the ground was flat: she turned around, throttling hard, she assaulted the grade like a personal enemy, lips peeled back from her teeth under her insulating snow mask as she fought her way uphill, as she exploded over the rim in a great spray of powdery-fine snow. Michael Keller stood up in his stirrups, binoculars to his eyes. He heard Angela coming, and he knew about where she'd be. He dropped the binocs -- they came to the end of their neck strap, he raised the camera -- Come on, Sis, come on, Sis, come on, Sis, he thought, then his finger pressed hard on the shutter button. He heard the digital camera sing, knew it was biting off chunks of time in thin, rapid slices, knew it was engraving what he was seeing through the viewfinder, onto a memory chip the size of his thumbnail: Michael had never known film photography, he thought digital was all there'd ever been, and he was determined to put a picture, his picture, on the front page of The Firelands Gazette. He did. Bruce Jones published the photograph just as Michael saw it through his viewfinder. Michael cut the photo from the newspaper, framed it and hung it over his desk in his upstairs bedroom. It was a dynamic shot, it was the kind of picture you can hear, just looking at it: an anonymous figure in goggles and helmet, wearing a snow mask and mittens, screaming up a grade and getting a foot of air as she did, and behind her, a trailer, also in mid-air: snow was exploded around them as they blew through the little crest of a drift at the top of the grade, and Michael grinned unashamedly the first time he saw the picture, his picture, when Bruce handed him a fresh copy of the weekly. The article discussed a lost child, a deputy with an encyclopedic knowledge of her county, a modified child carrier attached as a trailer: a second photograph, with the article, had the deputy, in her snowsuit, with helmet under her arm and mask hanging from her fingers, at the bedside of a little boy who was grimacing happily as a great black mountain Mastiff happily laundered his face, right there in the hospital bed. The deputy was quoted as saying she'd originally helped fabricate the trailer so she could take her younger siblings for snowmobile rides, and that she'd enlarged and reinforced the trailing child carrier so it could contain a certain curly-furred canine as well. When asked about this, she said, straight-faced, that "The Bear Killer makes a fine built-in heater."

It's aggravating, yes, but it's completely understandable. Consider that in a day's time we make thousands of individual decisions, and tens of thousands of information bits have to be processed. An occasional slip of the mental gears is perfectly understandable! I also read -- and have to consider it might not be wrong -- that the older we get, the more stuff we know, and simply sorting through that sheer mass of experience and knowledge, takes longer because there's more to be sorted through! We're not old. We're freaking brilliant! To this let me add -- back in '90, during the flu epidemic in SE Ohio, when I was a nurse on the Med-Surg floor -- we had every bed filled, we had beds in the hall, we were racked, stacked and packed, we agreed we nurses should have worn roller blades ... and the every last one of us started to have a bad case of the "Oh what was I going to do next?" moments. We compared notes and we were honestly getting scared, and speculation grew as to whether this was some kind of Contagious Oldtimer's Disease. By some fluke of fate, the corporate headshrinker set foot on the floor shortly before end of shift, so we buttonholed him: "Hey Doc, this is what we're experiencing, what the hell is going on here?" He laughed and said, "First of all, you're all nurses." Comparing notes later, we agreed we were debating whether to beat him to death on the spot, or later when we could avail ourselves of jack handles and ball bats. He raises his palms and said "Here's what happens. "When you come on shift, you sit for report. "During report, you automatically prioritize care to your assigned block of patients: who is seen first, who's next, meds when, bandage changes when, treatments in what sequence, who is on oxygen, who'll be seen by Respiratory, whether a patient goes down for x-ray. You're arranging priorities on your assigned block of patients. "At the same time, you're listening to report on everyone else's patients, and you're setting up the same priorities list with them, because sooner or later everyone has to cycle off the floor to drain the bladder and take a break. "Your mind then has to rewrite all this given real world changes, new admits to the floor, a patient is discharged or dies, your mind gets loaded up with such an overwhelming amount of very important information, that the human brain throws up its hands and screams "I'M OUTTA HERE!" and goes on a mini-vacation. "That's the momentary mental blank you're all describing. "It's perfectly normal, it's absolutely healthy, if our minds didn't take that emergency vacation, you would quite literally go insane from overload." Suddenly we weren't quite so alarmed at our collective mental lapses.

That great gusting sound was my big sigh of relief from this side of the Mr. and Mrs. Sippi! DELIGHTED to hear this good news! Still standing up on my knees for you both!

Standing up on my knees for Filly and for yourself as well!

My grandmother once warned me, "They'll work a willin' horse to death." Tolerate this "borrow" and it'll happen again. And again. You were right to get it back and put them on the spot. You've quite probably ended future problems of the kind.

Love the stuff myself! My wife has a rotary spice rack with powdered lots of stuff in shaker jars ... I've been known to sprinkle powdered garlic, powdered onion, there's a little shaker of yellow popcorn salt in the cupboard I'll use sometimes ... of course, the melted butter ... sprinkled Parmesan ... a friend of mine swore by his air popper, it had a built in butter melter cup but he said he was too lazy to use it as he'd have to clean it afterwards!

MAYBE IT'S TIME NOW Jacob Keller sat cross legged on one handmade hook rug, listening closely to his father reading aloud from Gammaw Willamina's unpublished manuscript. Marnie sat beside him. Two children with shining pale eyes, looking up at the man they both adored, listening to the carefully researched account of life a century before, the story of their ancestors, their ancestresses. In their young imaginations, characters took shape in glorious color, in a magnificent surround sound: they imagined this Goddess, this Ancestress, this angel with a double barrel shotgun and a short temper, legs gripping a mountain-tall, shining-black horse and riding arrow-swift across the mountains, skimming easily from peak to peak, with a huge, shining, bituminous hound from Hell beside her, fangs long as man's arm, shining ivory, eyes trailing flame and smoke in their wake -- all this while draping an arm over The Bear Killer's curly-black fur. They listened to accounts of Sarah, rising from what was supposed to be an imprisoning wooden trunk, with a short twelve-gauge, a bulldog .44 and full intent to avenge herself on all who brought her to this point -- they listened to accounts of Sarah, stepping quickly to the side and drawing the blocky Bulldog, driving it out ahead of her in a cold-eyed, clench-jawed thrust of Justice, saving an oblivious Denver policeman from sudden deadly attack: they giggled over the description of Sarah, anonymous in a feathered glitter-mask, dancing the Can-Can, all stockinged legs and yards of petticoats, their imagination had her looking like a Queen or maybe a Princess, driving a carriage with her little girl-cousin Angela beside her -- how she stood, all Warrior and Valkyrie, driving .32-20 brass into the air as she fired on the escaping felon who made so bold as to push a .45-70 slug between them as they turned into view. They listened to Sarah as a little girl, punching a Derringer hard into a bank robber's soft ribs and pulling the trigger, they listened to Sarah as a woman grown, married off to royalty in a European country, screaming defiance and scything through the attacking mob with a pump shotgun and her full intent to stack as many carcasses at St. Peter's feet as she could possible manage. They imagined Sarah, slim and dignified in a mousy-grey schoolmarm's dress, hair pulled up in a severe, old-maid's walnut on top of her head, a hand-whittled pencil thrust through the knot, at once severe and kind as she surveyed the interior of the one room schoolhouse they knew: Marnie looked at Jacob, her expression delighted, as their father's gently spoken words spun the vaporous image of Sarah Lynne McKenna in a lobstertail dress, her hair drawn back, black-chestnut castanuelas in her hands, hard little heels punishing the varnished wood floor of the opera house stage. Both children were quiet, still, their imaginations working, turning, processing: when Linn was done reading, Marnie blinked and asked, "Daddy, was Sarah an angel?" Linn laughed, considered for a moment. "She sang like an angel," he said softly. "She looks like Gammaw." "She looks exactly like Gammaw," Linn agreed. "Does Gammaw sing like an angel?" Jacob asked, his eyes big and sincere. Linn hesitated, looked at his son, at his daughter: The Bear Killer raised his head, looked at Linn as if asking the question as well. "I think she does," he said with a quiet smile. "Pa?" Jacob asked in his sincere, little-boy's voice. "Yes, Jacob?" "Pa, how come there's never been a Sarah since .... well, since Sarah?" Linn laughed. "Maybe nobody measured up just yet." "Oh." Jacob frowned a little, disappointment on his young face. "Daddy?" Marnie asked in her little-girl voice. Linn looked at his innocent faced little girl, all bright eyes and sincerity. "Yes, Sweets?" "Daddy, I'm a Marnie now, but if I raise enough hell, can I be Sarah?" The Bear Killer looked at Marnie as she stood, bottom lip shoved out, as she shook her Mommy-finger at her Daddy and scolded him: "Daddy, stop laughing, that's not funny!" Sheriff Linn Keller, father to two pale eyed children and with more on the way, chief law enforcement officer of the county, amateur historian, could not help himself. He slid slowly from his chair, laughing, landed on his bony backside on the floor protector, red-faced and, by his own subsequent admission, laughing like a damned fool.

LATE APRIL, WITH PALE EYES "Sir?" Sheriff Linn Keller was in his study, looking out on a cold and snowy landscape. "Yes, Jacob?" Linn stood at the window, one hand holding a thick, heavy mug of steaming coffee, the slight fragrance of vanilla tickling his palate: the maid knew he loved vanilla in his coffee, she knew he was too thrifty to ask for it himself, so she added just a trickle -- they had plenty, thanks to the Sheriff's thrift and his wife's business acumen, and the maid took pains to stock plenty in their stores, both in the upstairs cupboards, and in the cellars below. "Sir ... I recall your advice to Spencer yesterday." Linn smiled, just a little, he felt a slight tightening at the corners of his eyes, felt the muscles of his face shift just a little -- his right ear, especially, pulled back just a fraction more than his left -- he took a savoring sip of coffee, sighed out his contentment, his breath fogging the wavy window for just a moment. Linn turned, his off hand still behind his back: Jacob knew this meant the man's sway back was troubling him again. Linn raised an eyebrow. "Coffee?" he asked, and Jacob grinned and shook his head. "Thank you, sir, I've had plenty. Don't want to water every fence post from here to home." Linn nodded his understanding, lifted his chin toward a chair: Jacob and his father sat at the lean old lawman's unspoken invitation. "Sir, I've been wonderin'," Jacob said thoughtfully. Linn's expression was carefully neutral as he regarded his son. "Sir, I recall you told Spencer women are like birds, and birds think of buildin' nests and raisin' little birds." Linn nodded, slightly, remembering his words to that effect. "You are wonderin' about your own wife," Linn suggested. "I am, sir." Linn set his half empty mug on the doily-covered sidetable, shifted in his upholstered chair, trying to find a less uncomfortable bend for his congenital discomfort. "Jacob, you met your wife under unusual circumstances." "I did, sir." "For one thing, you have a genuinely excellent sense of direction. Someone could set you blindfolded anywhere in these mountains and in three minutes or less you'd have your bearings, you'd know where you were and how to get home." "Thank you, sir." "Your gettin' lost in San Frisco was an unusual situation." "It was, sir," Jacob admitted ruefully. "I've never been so honestly turned around in my life!" "Your first sight of your wife wasn't quite ordinary either." Jacob was quiet for several long moments. Linn allowed him the moments: he saw the slight closing of Jacob's hands, the almost imperceptible movement of his right arm, as if to seize the handle of his engraved Colt's revolver, the subtle shift of his weight as if to knee his stallion into attack and gallop, and Linn knew Jacob was remembering seeing a pretty young woman, seized, tied, cloth stuffed in her mouth to keep her quiet, being picked up and shoved into a closed carriage with other bound, gagged, abducted young women. "It's out of the ordinary for a man to ride up and declare war, to bring death and justice to the sinners, to free his wife and the others, and then to drive the whole shootin' match to where the Mayor is declarin' crime to be nonexistent." Linn saw his son's face tighten the way it did when he was trying to keep from laughing: he knew this because his own face did the same thing, and he felt it now as he leaned forward and said quietly, "Jacob, I would give a poke of gold dust to have seen you wheelin' that carriage right up the sidewalk and seen all those mad as hell young women come a-boilin' off it and stormin' the Mayor at the top of their lungs, screamin' what-all had been done to 'em, while you and Annettee jumped on your Apple-horse and got the hell out of town!" Jacob gave up any attempt at a poker face: he grinned, he nodded, he rubbed his callused palms slowly together as he chuckled a little, delighted in his father's approving words. Jacob's early lifetime had been beyond difficult; the approval of this pale eyed man who'd taken him in as his own, was a powerful thing, and a thing Jacob honestly cherished. "Jacob, most girls dream about bein' a princess held prisoner in a high castle tower, and a knight in shining armor comes ridin' up to their rescue. Annette is that princess and that's how she sees you." Jacob looked sharply at his father, his eyebrow raised in surprise: it was one of the very rare moments when Linn ever saw his son honestly taken aback by someone telling him something he knew, but knew on a very deep, never-admitted-to-himself level. "Yes, sir," Jacob said seriously. Silence flowed through the Sheriff's study: he reached over, picked up his coffee, drained what little was left: he turned the mug over, smacked its bottom, watched something nonexistent fall slowly to the floor, stepped as if on an invisible insect. He felt Jacob's laughing memory, and remembered the first time he'd done that, in the Silver Jewel, how Daisy had given him hell for suggesting her good coffee was bad and how Jacob turned a remarkable shade of red as Daisy swatted his brand-new Pa with a dishtowel, and how she'd turned to him, stabbed a finger at him and declared "And don't ye go gettin' any ideas! He's a bad influence an' no two ways about it, insultin' a puir hard workin' woman's efforts! I oughta take a fryin' pan to him!" -- she'd turned, stomped off, muttering in Gaelic, throwing a hand in the air to emphasize a phrase: Jacob blinked, and the memory retreated, and he looked at his father. "Sir, Annette begs me to give you a message." Linn nodded slowly, his face carefully neutral: he knew Annette as a lovely and cultured young woman, altogether a credit to their family; Esther and Bonnie delighted in sewing her wedding gown, and the community made sure Jacob's newly built house was furnished, and stocked against the approaching winter. Annette was a diminutive young woman, and it would be easy for the Sheriff to think of her as a girl, but he reminded himself that she was another man's wife, and his habit was to discuss other men's wives with respect: this his circumspect nod, as his only answer. Jacob sat up straight, took a long breath, his jaw thrusting out as he frowned just a little. This told Linn that -- whatever Annette wished to have said -- it was important. "Sir," Jacob said formally, "my wife begs to inform that I am to be a father, come warm weather." Linn was a lawman, and had been for some long time now. Linn practiced the Poker Face, especially when given unexpected tidings. This, however, was not met with his usual expressionless expression. Sheriff Linn Keller's face split into a broad grin, he thrust to his feet -- Jacob rose with him, as was his own habit -- Linn took a long stride toward his son, seized his hand in a fatherly grip, laid his other hand on Jacob's shoulder, pale eyes shining with delight. Linn's mouth opened a little, as if he were trying to come up with the right words -- he released his son, turned, strode to the sideboard and seized the brandy decanter -- two glasses, the gurgle of liquid California sunshine cascading into two squat, cut-glass receptacles -- Linn dropped the tapered stopper back into the bottle's neck, set it back on the shelf, turned, handed Jacob a libation of fatherly wishes. Linn hoist his glass. Jacob raised his own. Two men drank. Linn stood, his head tilted just a little, a soft smile on his face, something Jacob had seen only once before, when Linn held his newborn child, just before he handed the wiggling, arm-waving, red-faced new arrival to Jacob. "We must tell your mother," Linn said, and looked up, and Jacob saw his smile widen. Esther had come into the room, silently, as she always did. Jacob turned to face her, stepped forward, took her hands. "Mother," he said gently, "Annette begs to inform that she is with child." Esther caressed Jacob's smooth cheek with a maternal palm, smiled that gentle, understanding smile of hers. "I know," she whispered. "He will be born in late April, and he will have pale eyes."

BOTTLE PICKER Shelly wasn't bristled up like a Banty hen, but she wasn't far from it. Linn could feel the waves of disapproval beating against him like heat from a hard-fired cast iron stove as he chased corn and diced onions around his plate with his spoon, finally corralling them against a half-eaten biscuit. He looked at his wife, raised an eyebrow: once his mouth was no longer full, once he'd swallowed and chased the kernels down with a good slug of coffee, he placed his spoon very carefully on his plate, looked directly at his wife and said "Out with it, Crane." "You told Angela to quit her job." "I told her I'd rather see her picking up bottles alongside the road than work for that treacherous bunch of back stabbers." Shelly shook her fork at her husband, shook her head, pressed her lips together: she frowned, looked away, looked back. "It's the best paying job she's ever had!" "I know that." "She'll get a reputation for just walking off the job." "She'll get the reputation of someone who won't put up with their --" Linn stopped himself, knowing there were young ears listening, young eyes watching. "She'll get the reputation of someone who won't put up with their mistreatment," he amended in a slightly lower voice. His voice was a shade quieter, but there was an edge to it, and Shelly knew she was going up against a brick wall, but she pressed on anyway. "Linn, she's got dry floors to work on, good light, no rain down the back of her neck --" "And she's got more knives in her back right now than you've got in your knife block," Linn interrupted. "I asked her if she'd like me to go over there with a singletree and straighten 'em out." Shelly glared at her husband -- glared, because she could see the imp of mischief in his pale eyes. "She actually considered saying yes." "She did not!" Linn raised an eyebrow. "Darlin'," Linn said gently, reaching over and laying his hand carefully over hers, "I know what it is to be back stabbed, throat cut, screwed, blued, tattooed, reamed, steamed, dry cleaned, trompled underfoot and treated like genuine dirt. I walked off he best job I ever had and went across town to work security at half the wage and no benefits and I was a hell of a lot happier. That was before you'd even heard of me. My Mama gave me the same advice I gave Angela, and God be praised I was not so prideful as to not take it. Wasn't long after that something better opened up and here we are today." "But what if she can't --" Shelly began, and Linn raised a teaching finger and an eyebrow. "Your daughter," Linn said slowly, "saved up money enough to buy her car outright. Her housing costs are minimal. Her education is paid for. If need be, we can take care of her, but I don't see that need arising. She's a go-getter and I understand she's well compensated for her other" -- he hesitated, again conscious of young ears -- "her other employments." He didn't want to say "otherworld assignments." His young knew the need for discretion, if not secrecy, but the least risk put forth meant the least risk overall. "I'm just worried, that's all," Shelly whispered, turning her hand over and gripping her husband's. "I know, darlin'. That's what parents do. Mama worried about me, bless her, and she said the hardest thing for her to do was to watch me make my own mistakes." Shelly closed her eyes, smiled, nodded: Linn knew she had similar memories, and for very similar reasons. "Angela is smart and she's capable. I doubt me not she'll do all right." Angela was, quite honestly, lost. Her escort was called away on some urgent matter -- she was inside a military installation, she knew, she had a visitor's ID clipped to the collar of her white uniform dress -- she stood out from the grey-clad soldiers, a woman in white, navigating a sea of eager young men in lead-colored uniforms. Angela carried no rank in this planet's military, she wore nothing that could be identified as officer's insignia, yet she was saluted by every individual that came into range, and she returned each salute: she knew this was a mark of respect, for if any individual was recognized in most of the Thirteen Systems, she knew she was it! There was to be a conference, and she'd intended to attend, and hopefully not participate: she knew generally it would be at their infirmary, or hospital, or however it was called on this world: she stopped a nervous young man and asked with a smile where she might find the base hospital. His directions were immediate and gratefully simple: she returned his salute and resumed her journey. She'd walked an impressive distance, and was finally within a couple hundred yards of the facility, when a dull grey hovercar came whizzing up behind her, beside her: it stopped, the driver nearly leaped from the open, oval vehicle, saluted, apologized: if they'd known she was on foot, they'd have sent conveyance much earlier! Angela returned the salute and thanked the eager young man, considered the intricate embroidery on his sleeve: she allowed him to open the passenger-side door, waited until the single step was lowered, then stepped aboard, settled herself into the seat, looked left and right. No sign of a seat belt. Angela waited until the young man was behind the controls -- apparently this steered with a stick instead of a wheel -- before leaning a little closer and asking quietly, "Can I give you a secret?" He didn't quite jump, to his credit, but he was clearly less than comfortable: he nodded and said "Yes, ma'am." "You have a beautiful, almost floral embroidery on your sleeve -- there, on the forearm. Does this denote rank?" "It does, ma'am," and she saw the bashful grin of the boy he used to be: "this is the first time I've worn this. I was commissioned First Lieutenant yesterday." "How delightful!" Angela exclaimed, then tilted her head and regarded the man with an interested expression. "You realize," she said quietly, "rank isn't simply given. You earned that rank, Lieutenant, and if an off-worlders' words carry any weight, I'm pretty damned proud of you!" "Thank you, ma'am," he grinned: he turned his attention forward, the dull-grey floater skimmed soundlessly ahead, toward a broad, two story building that reminded Angela a little of her hospital back home in Firelands. A week later, when The Bear Killer stood, shook himself, went to the door with his great plumed tail swinging, the Keller household took note. Marnie would simply open an Iris, generally in her Daddy's study, but Angela insisted on a more conventional approach: her Iris opened in the barn, a Confederate shuttle eased ahead, into an area kept open for that purpose: a force-tunnel would extend from barn to house, its holographic camouflage completely masking Angela's passage. The front door opened a crack, at least until The Bear Killer, with paw and muzzle, widened the opening: the huge mountain Mastiff danced on his front paws, and his wagging tail seemed to begin its swing at the base of the skull: Angela squatted, whispering baby-talk to the great canine, her hands busy, and the look on The Bear Killer's face was one of absolute, utter delight. Supper was more animated that night, with Angela's laughter brightening the meal: she described how she'd asked that eager young Lieutenant to escort her into the conference, mostly because she was already lost, and didn't want to get any more turned around -- when she came into the great hall, everyone came to their feet, and she was both formally announced, and formally received. Angela looked at her Daddy, her ears reddening: "When I see the Ambassador again," she said quietly, "I am going to kick him right in the liver!" "Why?" Michael blurted: Victoria's bright-eyed expression told Linn that she was about to ask the same question, but decided to wait for the answer instead. Angela gave a great sigh and laughed a little. "It seems," she said, "that I've been promoted to a very high rank in the Confederacy, which nobody seemed to think was important enough to tell me, and I outranked everyone there! Talk about intimidating!" "It's bad enough to be called on to speak without preparation," Linn sympathized, "but to find out you're suddenly over everyone there?" He shook his head in sympathy. "Daddy," Angela said softly, "I watched you put on your diplomat's hat so very many times. Do you remember when we were" -- she lowered her palm beside her, indicating a little child's height -- "when we were wee little, and you'd read to us before we went to bed?" Linn's face had the soft look of a man seeing a favorite memory again, one he'd not visited for some long time now. "I remember Scripture that you favored, and I put it to use." She smiled again and recited, "A soft answer turneth away wrath -- I've used that one so many times -- Ecclesiastes, of course, a time for all seasons" -- Shelly saw her husband's quiet humor in their daughter's eyes as she added, "And of course that incisive Scripture, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it!' " Linn nodded, chuckling. "Daddy, I remembered how you used your diplomatic skills when things were kind of tense. I did the same thing." She looked at her plate, looked up. "It worked." "So you won't be pickin' bottles 'long the roadside?" Michael asked innocently. Angela laughed. "Not today!" "Pa said if I found plastic bottles with liquid in 'em I should put a hole in 'em from a good distance." "Oh, dear," Angela groaned. "They're still using those?" Linn nodded. "Sorry to say, we're still finding 'em." Angela made a face, snarling up half her mouth and half her nose, which got an immediate laugh from her younger siblings, then she smiled again, looked at her Mama and let her Inner Child out for a moment. "Supper was good, what's for dessert?"

MY ADVICE? ARMOR! Sheriff Linn Keller smiled a little as a familiar figure shoved through the heavy glass doors. He set his mug down, drew a second, as Angela Keller glided across the polished quartz floor, arms stiff at her sides, insulated-nylon-gloved hands fisted at her sides: her head was pulled down into her turned-up collar, her knit cap was pulled down over her head, and she had the appearance of a contained explosion in blue jeans and a puffy coat. Linn drizzled milk into two mugs, held one out. Angela stopped, glared at her Daddy, looked at the steaming mug, muttered "Does yas knows me or what!" and accepted the offering. Linn took a noisy slurp, picked up a paper napkin and mopped the excess from his lip broom. Angela glared at him through the steam of her chin-level mug and snapped, "Don't you give me that innocent look, mister!" "Habit," Linn deadpanned. "It's never worked yet but I keep tryin'." Angela looked away, looked back: she studied her Daddy's face, then she put her untasted mug on the antique table that lived under their coffee maker. Linn did the same. Angela pulled off her gloves, stuffed them unceremoniously into the slash pockets of her pastel pink coat, reached for her Daddy's hands. Linn opened his arms and she fell into him, hugging him with a surprising strength. "Darlin'," Linn rumbled quietly, "what happened?" Angela pulled back to arm's length, her eyes full of misery. "Daddy," she complained, "why wasn't I a boy?" Linn considered for a moment. "I could make a wise guy comment," he said slowly, "but there's more to your question than your words. What happened?" Angela turned. "Paul," she called. Chief Deputy Paul Barrents came over. Angela took his hand in hers, held her Daddy's hand in her other: "Paul, if two guys get into it and they can't settle things with words, what do they do?" Paul's Navajo eyes were veiled, his face almost wooden -- clearly, his walls were up -- but he replied honestly, "They'll go out in the parking lot and settle it with knuckles." "What happens after that?" "They'll come back with their arms around one another's shoulders, they'll buy one another a beer and it's over." "Right!" Angela let go of both men's hands: she reached up, seized her zipper pull, yanked savagely: the zipper snarled open, she whipped off her coat, turned it around. "Look close. What do you see?" Paul frowned, gripped the coat under its arms, drew it taut. He looked at Angela. "Nylon?" he guessed. Angela snatched the coat back, stopped, turned and draped it over a chair, turned back to Barrents. "Paul, I'm sorry," she said, taking both his hands this time: "you didn't deserve that." "Princess," Paul said gently, "I used to hold you when you cried because someone hurt your feelin's on the playground. It's no different today. Someone got to you. Tell me who and I'll skin them." His voice was quiet, and Angela did not doubt the sincerity of his words. "Alive," Paul added. Angela began to doubt that he really meant it. "With a spoon." Angela smiled, Angela giggled, Angela seized Chief Deputy Paul Barrents in a quick, impulsive hug, the way she did when she was a little girl and her Daddy wasn't there. Paul looked at the Sheriff. It was the Navajo's turn to practice that Innocent Expression, and he tried it, with the same utter lack of success as his boss. "Isn't this your department?" he asked, a smile widening his weather-tanned face, and Linn chuckled. "Why don't we park our backsides and talk 'er all over." The Valkyries met in the big round barn under the cliff's overhang. The Valkyries prided themselves in being what their founder, Willamina, called "Being Effective." Angela was too young to have trained under her pale eyed Gammaw, but she had the full dose of pale eyed blood, all the hot and violent passion as her pale eyed ancestresses, and when she came in to practice with the Valkyries, she was careful to work the heavy bag and the padded simulacrum, rather than her fellow feminine fighters. Angela warmed up steadily but quickly, and it did not go unnoticed that her address to the heavy bag was done at full speed and at full power. Angela was known as a sweet girl, she was known as a gentle soul, she was known as a compassionate but effective nurse, and as she drove punches, chops, elbow strikes, kicks, kneestrikes and brutally murderous attacks on her inanimate opponents, none of the Valkyries doubted but that she had been provoked to violence, and rather than killing the offender barehand, she'd chosen to come here, and discharge the full lightning-strike of her anger on the unliving. Angela did not sit. Neither did the Sheriff. Barrents slouched against the back wall, thumb hooked in his gunbelt just ahead of his sidearm, coffee in his other hand: obsidian-black eyes regarded the Sheriff's little girl (yes, a woman grown, he knew, but he'd known her since she came home from the hospital with the warranty sticker pasted on her cute little bottom, or so he'd kidded her!) -- he watched as Angela paced back and forth, as the Sheriff waited patiently. Angela stopped, looked very directly at her Daddy. "I was warned," she said. Linn frowned a little, turned his head as if to bring a good ear to bear. "Daddy, when I went into nursing school, Mama warned me" -- she stopped, swallowed, crossed her arms, turned: she marched to the far wall, turned, marched back, stopped and looked again at her patiently listening Daddy. "Mama warned me when I said I was going to nursing school that I should wear my body armor." Linn nodded, once, a slow lowering of his head, an equally slow raise, his eyes never leaving her face. "Mama warned me I needed to wear level III ballistic armor with the ceramic impact plate especially in the back pocket because I was going to inherit a fine collection of knives between my shoulder blades." She stopped, looked at Barrents, looked back at her Daddy. "That ... sounds like something ... you would say," she said slowly, suspiciously. "He did," Barrents agreed. "I did," Linn confirmed. "I was quoting my Mama." "Well, you were right, all of you." Angela dropped heavily into a chair, the way she used to when she was a little girl in what Jacob called an "Eight-Cylinder Huff." Linn looked at Barrents, raised an eyebrow: his chief deputy shrugged. "Daddy," Angela groaned, "if I'd been born a guy, we'd knock the dog stuffing out of one another and have a beer and it would be over." "But with women, once they get their knives into you, it's forever and they don't quit." Angela lowered her head into her hands, nodded, then she looked up. "You can quit that chicken feather outfit," Linn said bluntly, "and tell the boss exactly why, and tell her if they straighten out the troublemakers you'll be willing to come back, otherwise adios. Are you filing a formal discrimination complaint?" "No, Daddy," Angela sighed. "Quitting sounds good. I'm too busy the way it is." Linn looked at Barrents, nodded ever so slightly. The Navajo paced slowly, deliberately the length of the conference room, stopped, set his mug on the table and rested both hands on Angela's shoulders. "They'll work a willin' horse to death," he said softly. "I know," Angela sighed, reaching across her chest to lay her fingers over Barrents' comforting knuckles. She looked up at her Daddy. "If I do quit there," she said, "I'll still be making the one armed paper hanger look like an amateur!" Linn sat, slowly, deliberately, leaned over, elbows on his knees, looked very directly into his daughter's troubled face. "Darlin'," he said quietly, "whichever choice you make, understand the knives in the back will never end. Mama told me about bein' knifed more times than one, and mostly by her fellow nurses. That's why she quit nursin' and just kept the license active, she said it made a good parachute in case other employment fell apart and she had to fall back on another marketable skill. "My advice?" Angela looked hopefully at her Daddy, nodded. "Same as Mama told me she wished she'd done before she started nursin' school." His voice was quiet, his eyes full of memories as he remembered his Mama, recalled looking at the front page newspaper photograph of his Mama in her nursing whites, a scared little girl hipped on her left, a .44 revolver extended in her right hand -- a picture in the paper from where she'd rescued an abducted child, a picture that got her hailed as a hero, and fired as a nurse. "My advice? Armor!"

THE HELL WITH YOUR LAWS Flight Commander Hans Hake half-ran, half-fell from the simulator. He looked at two of the Valkyries, who regarded him with surprise: they'd never known the man to get excited, not even when his wife presented him with a fine, strong son. Hans landed on all fours: head down, panting, gasping, half sick: he raised his head, looked at two pretty young women in black skinsuits, their black, spherical helmets under their off arms. "It's not possible," he gasped, shaking his head. "NOT POSSIBLE!" "Look," Marnie said, spreading gloved hands and looking from one table of skeptical negotiators to the other table of equally skeptical negotiators, "I don't have a dog in this fight. You" -- she extended one hand, palm-up, fingers bent a little, a very feminine gesture -- she turned, which put a slight twist in the drape of her skirt -- she wished to look feminine, womanly, ladylike, non-threatening --"You want the Peninsula and the Cluster Islands." "They are ours by right," came the carefully firm reply. "I can appreciate that," Marnie said. "Your people have lived there for more than two-tenths of a century." She turned to the other table, raised a palm as if to deflect the indiginant, red-faced "See here!" -- she glided a few steps, putting herself between the two tablesful of opposing opinion. "You've maintained a political claim on that coast for an equal length of time." Marnie turned, slowly, a full circle: her steps, hidden beneath her floor-length skirt, were quick, small, smooth. She looked as if she was a figurine in a music box, turning smoothly, mechanically, as if she was on wheels. "None of the Cluster Islands have any great mineral wealth. Fishing is much better to the north. The peninsula offers little beyond a shallow harbor, not deep enough for your oceangoing vessels." "We can deepen the harbors!" "With what?" Marnie asked, turning to the speaker, resting her hands on her womanly hips: "You lack the technology to deepen that harbor. The bottom is solid rock. You lack the ability to drill that obdurate strata. It's not freestone, you can't drill it, and you haven't explosives powerful enough even if you could drill it. The harbors are deep enough for a twenty foot fishing smack and that's about it." Marnie looked from one table to the other. "Your national sovereignty is not in dispute. The Islands and that peninsula are not critical for your national defense. Your warships draft too deeply, they could never get into the harbor at high tide, let alone at low tide. "As a matter of fact" -- she folded her arms, then raised one gloved hand to the side of her face, curled her fingers under jaw and tapped the side of her cheekbone with a thoughtful finger -- "I seem to remember talk of abandoning that part of the coastline." "We never agreed to abandon it!" came the blustering reply. Marnie turned, glided to her table, sorted delicately through a stack of folders: she opened one, paged through it, smiled. "Actually, sir, your government already surrendered that section of the coastline to its occupants." "Impossible!" "Twenty years ago." Marnie smiled over her round, schoolmarm spectacles, worn halfway down her nose: she glided over to the challengers' table. "The documents, sir." "Forgeries!" "Bearing your signature, and the Governor's seal." The documents were snatched away, passed from hand to hand as the red-faced man shook his head and muttered impotently. "And we also have" -- Marnie paused, knowing men would stop their talk, knowing they would strain to hear what additional rabbit she might pull out of the bonnet she wasn't wearing. "We also have a handwritten order to destroy all copies of the abandonment documents." "Preposterous! Impossible!" "It is written in your own hand, sirrah," Marnie said coldly, glaring at the jowl-shaking politician over her spectacles, for all the world a schoolmarm correcting a naughty schoolboy. The handwritten note made its circuit up the table, then back down. "Gentlemen," Marnie said primly, "I believe we've come to the end of negotiations. Your own government surrendered all ownership, control, rights and claim to the Peninsula, to the Cluster Islands, and half a hundred miles of coastline north and south both. These abandoned lands were lawfully annexed by the people who chose to live there. Are we agreed that these are the facts?" A formal vote was taken; the pale eyed Ambassador was informed that she was, indeed, correct. "Good," Marnie said briskly, dusting her hands together and smiling. "Now that we're finished, I feel like a dance. Gentlemen, if you will kindly move these tables and chairs back, there are musicians waiting in the wings, ladies enough for each of you, and I should like very much to tread a measure with the gentlemen with whom I have butted heads for the past two days!" "It can't be done," Flight Commander Hake muttered, shaking his head. "An object in motion stays in motion, in a straight line, unless acted on by some outside force!" Two of his best pilots, two Valkyries, whose likenesses were the nose art on their respective Starfighters, listened patiently as the man got his mental legs under him. "You, you, you can't turn and bank, you can't Chandelle, you can't split-S or loop or roll into a turn or out of a turn --" "The laws of physics?" one of the Valkyries interrupted. "Yes. Immutable, unchangeable, laws!" The two Valkyries looked at one another, looked at their Flight Commander. "Sir," they said with one mind-linked voice, "the hell with your laws!" Two Valkyries spun their black, spherical helmets between black-gloved hands, dunked the globes over their shaven scalps: they turned, and as they did, their Interceptors lowered their lower jaw, exposing the form-fitting flight couch each would occupy. Two black-suited figures lay back in their couches, disappeared: the visual effect was that of a sleek, needle-shaped silver bird opened its mouth, and swallowed two gleaming, licorice coated humans. The Interceptors did not roar into life with the turbine blast of mighty jet engines, nor did they sear the hangar walls with Mach diamonds screaming from rocket nozzles. No, the Interceptors withdrew their landing gear: the rectangular feet of the landing gear became part of the hull, and the Interceptors simply ... ... disappeared ... Hans stood, staggered over to the control panel. He stared at the holographic representation, he honestly gawked at the sight of two sleek warbirds with yawning cannon running the length of the hull, open mouths black and menacing beneath the cockpit and on either side, and he shook his head in denial as the two Interceptors turned, banked, drew shining silver curves through empty space, as smoothly and naturally as if they were in atmosphere. Hans heard the airlock hiss open, shut: hard little heels were loud on the smooth ferroplast floor, a gloved hand rested on his shoulder. "You look troubled," she said, "or you had some bad seafood for lunch." "No, it's" -- Hans gestured toward the holo-sim tank -- "it's not possible to fly a spacecraft like a, a, an atmosphere fighter!" "Why not?" Marnie asked innocently. "I just negotiated a dispute, I proved a politician a cheat and a scoundrel and made him like it, and you're telling me the Valkyries can't fly their Interceptors the way they've been flying them since day one?" "But, but, but -- Ambassador, the laws of physics!" Marnie leaned close, looked over her spectacles at the troubled officer. "The laws of physics?" she echoed, and smiled before speaking again. She whispered, for she knew when a woman whispers, a man listens more closely. Ambassador Marnie Keller smiled and whispered gently, "The hell with your laws," kissed Hans quickly on the cheek, whirled and skipped away, giggling like a schoolgirl.

If memory serves, this is a child's grave: a little girl who was terrified of storms. The mother had the stairs installed so she could go down to coffin level and read to her daughter, looking at her coffin through a window, until the thunderstorm was past. Publicity and notoriety prompted removal of the window and bricking it shut.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Paul Barrents looked at Linn with knowing eyes. Linn felt his chief deputy's attention directed like twin obsidian searchlights against the side of his head. "How long, Boss?" Linn eased the cruiser over the rise to where they could see the lights of nighttime Firelands ahead. He squinted, a little, unconsciously, trying to minimize the starbursts. "How long what?" "How long are you going to ignore those cataracts?" Linn hit the brakes, stopped: no other vehicles were visible to either horizon. He turned, looked at Paul. "That bad?" "That bad." Linn's teeth clicked together, barely audible: Paul saw the Sheriff's jaw muscles bulge a little. "You've time enough," Paul said. "Hell, you've got a couple months of vacation time." "More than that of sick time," Linn agreed. "Take the time, Boss. Get 'em fixed." Linn's foot was firm on the brake pedal; the big block Chevy idled quietly, patiently. Linn blinked several times, nodded. "I'd be a damned fool not to take my own advice," he said softly. "That's why I used your exact words." Linn looked back at Paul, laughed. It was not a common thing for Linn to laugh in public -- but that sudden grin, that easy, relaxed laugh, was something that did happen on occasion -- with close friends, or with family. "Paul," he nodded, "your advice is sound, and I shall take it. Let me make some phone calls and I'll let you know when." Paul nodded impassively as Linn eased off the brake, came down gently on the throttle, headed back for the office after a late evening of keeping things peaceful. Dr. John Greenlees bounced his fist-chewing, chubby-armed little boy on his leg, grinned at the screen. "How can I help, Sheriff?" he asked. "Doc, my cataracts are bad enough I need 'em taken care of." "Shouldn't you consult an ophthalmic surgeon in the City?" "Doc," Linn confessed, "few things scare me, but the thought of someone cuttin' on my eyeballs just terrifies me. I was wondering if some of that Confederate medicine might be easier than cuttin' out the old and sewin' in a new lens." "Let me make some calls," Dr. John said thoughtfully. "That's one area I'll need to consult." "You're quiet," Shelly said after supper. She'd come into his study, she'd taken his hand, pulled: Linn rose, knowing this to be her signal for a conference, and they sat on the couch together. "I have a call in." "You have a call in," Shelly echoed, frowning a little. "Is this ... a good thing?" The annunciator chimed; Linn rose, went to the desk, tapped a few keys, and an iris opened beside his desk. Marnie stepped out, hugged her Daddy: "Pack your toothbrush and give the office a call," she said, then she swept over to her Mama, sat, took her hands. "I'm going to borrow your husband," she said. "I'll bring him back eventually." Linn did not remember the light touch of the anesthetic clamp Marnie slipped onto the base of his skull; he had no recollection of the procedure, the recovery, the follow-up tests: he woke in his own bed, two days later, with Angela sitting beside him, holding his hand and smiling gently. Linn looked around, puzzled, looked at his daughter. "Did something go wrong?" he asked quietly. Angela squeezed his big, strong, callused Daddy-hand between hers, and she laughed, just a little. "Daddy," she smiled, "it's all done, your cataracts are gone, you did fine!" Linn blinked, considered, then smiled uncertainly. "Here I was going to tell you to proceed with the operation." Angela laughed quietly. "I'll note that on your chart," she said. "That tells us your anesthetic was properly regulated." Angela rose. "I have to get back," she said quietly, and bent to kiss her Daddy's forehead. "Dr. John got you right in. He says Happy Birthday." Linn laughed a little: "He's early for my birthday," he replied, "but like the old preacher said, all donations cheerfully accepted!"